M. Hyland - Carry Me Down

The new girl stands straight, with her feet together and her hands by her side. ‘Hello, everybody. My name is Kate Breslin. I am an only child, and I’ve just moved here from Dublin.’

She has long brown hair — down to her waist — and green eyes and a straight posture. ‘My father has taken over a deceased estate in Gorey,’ she says. ‘We are four miles from the school.’

She sounds as though she’s reading. I wonder what a deceased estate is, and I want to put my hand up and ask, but I lose my nerve and open the lid of my desk to hide.

‘We lived near the Shelbourne Hotel,’ she says. ‘Where all the famous people stay.’

Miss Collins gives Kate the spare desk in the front row, next to Brendan’s, and appoints him, and Mandy, as Kate’s minders. I watch them carefully. During the first lesson, Kate leans across and says something to Brendan. He smiles when he answers and pushes his hair back with his hand.

In the second and third lessons, Kate leans across and speaks to Brendan again. I wish I could hear. At the beginning of break-time I go to Brendan’s desk and they both look at me, then at each other. Brendan gives the impression that he has known Kate for a long time.

I leave the classroom and go around to the window where I see Brendan run his hand through his hair and give one of his exercise books to Kate. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she says as she touches him on the arm. I want to be touched on the arm like this. I like the way it looks. And even though Brendan is being touched and not me, I can feel it in my stomach. I keep watching.

On the way home from school I throw a rock at the doll in the tree, but it misses her and hits the branch instead. I bury the rock in the ground near the trunk. When I get home, my mother and father are sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of letters and bills in front of them.

My father gathers them up when I sit down. ‘Good day at school?’ he asks.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘A new girl started today.’

I tell him about Kate Breslin. He is surprised that a new girl has started in the middle of the school year.

‘It’s because of a diseased estate,’ I say. ‘They moved into one.’

My father laughs in the loud and horrible way he sometimes does when my uncles are with him or when somebody has made a fool of himself on the television. My mother lowers her eyes to the table.

‘A deceased estate,’ he says, still laughing at me. ‘Not a diseased estate.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘That’s what I said.’

‘No you didn’t,’ he says. ‘You said a diseased estate.’

‘No I didn’t,’ I say.

Crito jumps onto the kitchen table and, instead of pushing her off, my father pats her on the head. ‘Crito? You heard. Didn’t John say a diseased estate?’

‘Michael,’ says my mother, ‘he just had a slip of the tongue. Let it rest! Leave him be.’

The three of us sit in silence. There’s no tea on the range, no food on the table, and nothing to do. My mother takes the papers from the pile and looks through them. My father pushes Crito off the table so hard that she wails.

I watch my mother, hoping she’ll tell me what those letters and bills and papers are. I want my father to leave so we can talk. Then it occurs to me: they are both waiting for me to leave. They are willing me to leave.

I won’t.

I look at my mother and keep looking at her as she rifles through the papers.

‘Stop staring at me,’ she says.

‘I’m only looking,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing wrong with looking.’

‘You’re staring. I want you to stop.’

‘You never tell me not to stare when we’re by ourselves.’

My father puts his book down, suddenly interested. ‘Go to your room and leave us in peace,’ he says. ‘We’ve things to talk about.’

My mother is running hot and cold, just like him. Just like my father, she has become two different people. Now there are four of them. Four different people instead of two.

I go straight to my room and get under the blankets. I listen to them eat and talk and laugh. I lie on my side, all my weight on my arm. I turn to my other side. I want to sleep to stop the thinking. My blood is pumping so fast and so hard it makes my whole body shudder. My blood pummels me, pumping through my arm; there’s too much of it, like a dam that wants to burst, and it won’t let me sleep.

At half eight my mother comes to me. ‘John,’ she says. ‘Come and eat something. You can’t go to sleep without food.’

‘I can,’ I say. ‘What difference does it make?’

‘You’re too old to sulk. Come out to the kitchen and make yourself a sandwich.’

She closes the door and a minute later my father comes. He doesn’t knock. ‘I’ve made you a blackcurrant jam sandwich. Here.’

He puts the sandwich on the bed, near my feet. I want to kick the plate onto the floor, but I can see there’s thick butter on the fresh bread and I’m very hungry.

‘Thanks,’ I say. I want to say more, but I’d prefer him to start. I want him to say something first, so that it is his idea to talk to me. I look at the sandwich and wait.

‘John? Is anything the matter?’

‘No, not really. But there’s something the matter with you and Mammy. You seem different.’

‘Different from what?’

‘Different from yourselves.’

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t know. You seem strange around me.’

‘Maybe you’re strange.’ He laughs but when I don’t join in, he pulls at his fringe and keeps pulling at it until it covers the right side of his forehead and right eye.

‘Sorry, son. I just don’t know what you mean. The only thing I can think of is that we’re worried about you. We want you to be all right.’

‘Are you sure? Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’

‘No, the only thing wrong with us is the worry about you. Worried a bit about how you’re getting on.’

‘I’m getting on fine. I’m better than anybody realises.’

‘That’s good to know. Shall we stop worrying so?’

‘Yes. Stop worrying.’

‘Will you eat the sandwich I made specially?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Will I give it to Crito then?’

‘No. Leave it. I’ll give it to her myself. Later.’

‘Shall I send her in to you then? Will I tell her she’s wanted in the master’s bedroom?’

He is smiling now and I can’t help it. I smile back and once I start I notice that I feel happy. Happiness makes my body warm, my stomach and all the way down. He laughs and I laugh too.

‘Wait here. I’ll fetch the jam-eating contraption.’

I want to act out my happiness, get to my feet, jump up and down on the spot and clap my hands. I want to get up off the bed and run and go after him and not be ashamed and keep him with me longer, just now, just the way he is now, just us, and with him smiling at me the way he did.

I wait for him. But he doesn’t come back straight away. I won’t go out to the hall and I won’t go to the living room. I take my watch off and wait for the second hand to get to twelve and then I start the countdown to sixty seconds. If he doesn’t come in one minute, I’ll never wait for him again. The second hand reaches the nine and he comes back, with Crito wrapped in a blanket, her black-and-white face sticking out.

‘Special delivery for Master Egan,’ he says. ‘A four-legged friend in need of jam.’

No , my brain says to me, the only thing wrong with us is the worry about you .

‘Thanks, Da.’ And he goes and I keep Crito in her blanket while I eat the blackcurrant sandwich.

At school the next day, I am alone during the break, sitting in the empty classroom reading a book about Harry Houdini and eating chocolate cake, biscuits and a ham sandwich. I like reading about Houdini’s underwater escapes from locked containers while handcuffed and shackled with irons. But I’m disappointed to learn that his escapes were ‘protracted and agonised’ and that the fastest straitjacket escape he performed was 138 seconds. I know from the Guinness Book that this is a long way from the world record broken last year by Jack Gently. On 26th July, 1971, in front of an audience of 600 witnesses, Gently escaped from a standard straitjacket in forty-five seconds.