Hugo Hamilton - The Sailor in the Wardrobe

‘Just you fucking wait,’ I hear Tyrone say, before he picks up the fish box and disappears away up the pier.

Dan finds his cap and brushes it off before putting it back on his head. He stands for a moment, staring after Tyrone with black marble eyes, unable to say a word because he’s breathing so heavily. His mouth is open and there is spittle hanging from his chin as if he’s got no energy left to wipe it off. I wait to see what he’s going to do, if he’s going to get the hatchet, but he doesn’t. He locks the door of the shed, fumbling with the keys for a long while, unable to do it any more, and I want to run back and help him. He doesn’t see me and I know he doesn’t want me to talk about this to anyone. Then I finally see him wiping the spittle off his chin with the sleeve of his jacket and I cycle away.

By the time I get home, it’s already too late and I find the door of the house locked and bolted from inside. It could only be little more than five minutes past eleven, but the curfew has fallen and my father has closed the fortress against me. I rest my bike against the side of the wall and look up at the windows, but all the curtains are drawn. The lights are out, as if they’re all in a rush to prove that they are asleep. I can’t ring the bell, so I wait outside for a while until my mother realizes that I’m back and sneaks down the stairs to open the door very quietly. My father doesn’t hear her locking the door again, though there is a loud click as the lock jumps back into place.

We stand in the hallway for a moment. My mother likes this secrecy, as if I’m doing all the things she wishes she had done herself. She holds my hand and looks into my eyes for a moment.

‘Is there something wrong?’ she asks.

Maybe she can sense what I’ve witnessed. But I tell her nothing and we creep up the stairs like two thieves. I know the creaks on the landing and how to avoid them. We wave at each other in silence and go to bed.

I lie awake for a while thinking of what I have seen. I imagine what’s going to happen next at the harbour and how it will end. I watch the light from the street throwing the shadows onto the wall of my bedroom. I see the fight starting again and again, like an endless film, Dan picking up his cap and wiping the spittle from his chin, until I’m exhausted and fall asleep, But even in my sleep I hear more shouting, right in close to me. This time I am no longer just a bystander. I can see the rage in Dan Turley’s eyes. I can see his bottom lip pushed forward and hear him breathing. I can see blood on his neck, on his hands. I can see drops of blood on the pier, leading away to where Tyrone has gone to find an oar or something better to fight with. A trail of blood that you sometimes see along the pier after somebody has carried up a box of freshly caught mackerel. A trail of blood that you sometimes see on the street and wonder if it was a fight or an injured dog. I see Tyrone moving quickly around the pier with a broken oar in his hands.

‘Come on yah fuckin’ buffaloes,’ he’s shouting.

And this time he’s coming for me. Tyrone swinging his oar around, aiming straight at me, pinning me back against the shed. I want to wake up, but I can’t get out of this nightmare any more and I feel the oar hitting the side of my face. I can hear the sound of the wood echoing inside my head and when I wake up at last, I find that my back is right up against the wall of the bedroom. The light is on in the room and I can hardly see anything, except my father, standing over me, punching his fist down.

‘You let him in,’ I hear him shouting. ‘That’s treachery.’

I am blinded by the light overhead. I can see him in his pyjamas, without his glasses on, my mother trying to pull him back by the elbow, trying to stop him hitting me again. I can hear him gasping with the effort. I have no defence and I feel the punches coming one after the other and my head knocking back against the wall behind me. I feel myself sinking down under the blows, as if the oar is striking me again and again and my back is sliding down the side of the shed. Tyrone standing over me with a look of insanity in his eyes and Dan Turley holding him back to stop him from finishing me off.

It is all the punishment in history being passed on blow by blow, all the revenge and all the resentment going back for centuries, here in my bedroom. Nobody can stop it. My father is breathing so hard he can’t speak. It’s the breathing war. He rolls up his sleeves to do it better. I can see he has already taken his watch off. I can smell his sweat. As my eyes finally get accustomed to the light, I can also see that the whole house is up and the room is full of people, the entire family around me, with their hands together as if they are all praying for this to end.

‘Peace,’ my brother Franz suddenly calls out.

Then everything stops. There is silence in the house, as if somebody from outside has spoken and our family has begun to see itself for the first time. I see them crowding around my father, trying to help him out of the room, as if something terrible has happened to him. They ignore me and keep looking after him. They are afraid for him and worried because he’s so angry and upset by what he has done. They know he will feel terrible about it and want him to sit on the stairs, to calm down and take in a deep breath.

‘I want him out,’ he keeps saying. He sits on the stairs for a moment, with everyone around him, as if he was the person who was attacked. I’m left sitting up in bed feeling my face and then I realize that my eyes are wet and I can’t stop myself crying. I feel so guilty. I feel so hurt, so angry that I want to kill him. I feel like running away and never coming back.

My father gets up suddenly and goes down the stairs to the front room. He says he’s going to call the Gardai because there is an intruder in the house. If only my father could see how ridiculous this has become, calling the police to evict his own son. He is determined to make the call, right in the middle of the night, while my mother begs him to leave it till the morning. She puts her finger on the button to cut off the dialling tone a number of times, but then he fights her off.

‘Yes, an intruder,’ I can hear him saying out loud.

I’m afraid I will soon be homeless. I get worried about having to live for the rest of my life as an outsider. But then I hear the phone hanging up again.

‘Think about it,’ I can hear my mother pleading with him. ‘You don’t want him to be like Stefan, disappearing and never coming back.’

So then I leave the house. Before anyone can stop me, I call my father’s bluff. While they are all still in the front room trying to stop him from calling the Gardai to our house, they hear the front door slamming. My mother runs out and I hear her calling me back, but I keep running down the road with tears in my eyes, saying to myself that I will never come back again because the whole house is like a wardrobe and if I don’t escape now, I never will.

I walk the streets on my own. I spend some time back at the harbour, but then I have to keep moving, like the mackerel, because now I’m homeless. I walk all the way up the hill where I can look down over the whole city, like an orange bowl in the distance. I sit on one of the benches thinking how I want to go back and kill my father. I think of him with spittle on his chin, staring at me, out of breath. But then I can’t live with the hate in my head any more. I can’t hold on to my anger and I can’t help wanting to forgive him again. I want to be friends with him and feel sorry for him. It’s my fault that he lost his temper, and I’m glad I didn’t retaliate. I’m glad I didn’t do something like Stefan that I could not repair.

I look across the flat orange bay and think about my future, how I will soon escape and be free. It makes me want to think of all the good things my father has done instead. I think of how he made me a pair of stilts for my birthday one year. He produced them at breakfast and I was amazed that he could have made them in secret without me knowing anything. I’m not a child any more and I watch what’s going on in the house all the time. But still he made them without anyone knowing, except for my mother. It was like a conspiracy of kindness. They were painted in blue, with the foot steps painted in red. I keep thinking about my father constantly trying to do his best, tricking us with great surprises.