M. Hyland - Carry Me Down

‘Clean yourself up,’ he says. ‘The rest of you go home.’

I stand by my desk and wait until everybody has left the classroom. He comes to me and takes my hand. ‘You’d better go home now, too,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I smile weakly.

‘You’ve no reason not to hold your head up high, John Egan,’ he says. ‘Hold it high for me and show me what you look like when you are proud.’

And, even though Kate is crying and watching, I hold my chin up.

‘Not that high,’ he says. ‘Like this.’

And he puts his hands on my face and puts it where he wants it.

‘Like this. You are strong and you should look strong.’

And when he lifts my chin up he stares at me and I get a surprising and nice feeling in my stomach.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you, Mr Roche.’

‘Go now,’ he says. ‘I’ll look after Kate.’

When I get home the cottage is quiet and there are no lights on. I think, at first, that nobody is home, but when I go to the living room I find the door won’t open. Somebody has pushed a chair under the handle. My heart thumps too hard and hurts my chest. I can hear low voices behind the door. I push, but it will not open. I call out, ‘Who’s there?’

My mother answers. ‘We’re having a bit of a talk, John. We’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Can’t I come in?’ I ask.

‘Just hold your horses,’ says my father, and I turn away and go to my room.

My nose tingles the way it does when I trip over and fall, the same tingling that happens on the way down to the ground. I need to go to the toilet but when I get there no urine comes out. I go to my room, close the door and reach under my mattress to make sure The Gol of Seil is still there. It is. And I check the money I took from Granny’s purse. It is still there.

I have put a hair in the first page of The Gol of Seil so that I’ll know if anybody has moved it, and I have put the money carefully under the mattress between two pieces of cardboard with a line marked with a black biro on the bottom piece of cardboard where the first note should be. Nothing has been moved. Still, I worry.

At half six, my mother comes in.

‘I’m sorry the door was locked, John. Your granny wanted to talk about some very private things.’

‘That’s all right,’ I say.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, John.’

‘I’m grand,’ I say. ‘I’m not worried.’

‘We’re having stew for tea. Will you come and help me with the carrots?’

‘OK.’

I don’t need to know what the talk was about.

Kate is not at school the next day, and Mr Roche behaves as though nothing has happened. He makes us laugh with stories of Dublin, and he explains how fractions work.

I look carefully and closely at him all day. I pay attention to everything he does, the way he speaks, the words he uses, what he does with his hands and how he holds the chalk and a pen. He looks at me, too.

He doesn’t smile or wink at me, but that’s because he should be careful: nobody should know that what he did yesterday was done for me. It would be wrong to make it obvious.

I’m happy on the way home and I follow the path I have made. But, after a while, walking doesn’t seem right for the mood I’m in and I pretend I’m running the marathon for Ireland in the Olympic games.

When I get to the doll stuck up the tree, I think, for the first time, that she looks comfortable, as though the branch is an arm holding itself up for her so that she can have a better view of the world.

But my happy mood does not last.

When I arrive home, my mother and father are waiting by the car. The engine is running and there are six suitcases on the gravel driveway. One of the suitcases — the small, blue, cardboard one — is mine.

I wonder if we might be taking a surprise holiday in a caravan park, the kind of holiday my father so often promises.

My grandmother’s car is at the side of the house, instead of in the front drive, and this change in the usual order of things tells me that something has happened to her, and that something other than a surprise holiday is about to happen to me.

‘We’re going to Dublin for a few days,’ says my father.

I need him to say a bit more before I can know if he’s lying. I wasn’t paying enough attention. Maybe he has passed his exam.

‘Why?’ I ask.

He comes forward with his arms outstretched, with the intention of putting his hands on my shoulders. I move away from him and he puts his hands on his hips, as though this is where he has always meant his hands to be.

‘Why are we going so suddenly?’ I ask.

‘I’ll tell you in the car.’

My stomach drops. What about my money and The Gol of Seil?

I stand up close to him and look him in the eyes. ‘But Da, is Crito coming? Can I go and get her? She’s probably on my bed. I’ll go and get her.’

I start walking but he grabs my arm. ‘Stop worrying about that stupid cat and get in the car,’ he says.

‘You’re hurting me. Let go.’

He lets go and I step away from him. I move back, back towards the door, towards Crito and my money.

My mother comes forward, her arms outstretched. ‘I’m sorry, darling. But we need to go before it gets dark. And you can’t stay.’

‘What about my Guinness books?’

‘We’ve packed five of them. That’s all you’ll need. Please get in the car.’

‘Which five?’

‘Get in the car,’ says my father.

We travel a few miles in silence and then my father asks my mother to light a cigarette for him. She takes a few puffs before she hands it to him. He holds the cigarette between his thumb and index finger and sucks on the filter until it is flattened and wet.

‘But are we staying with Aunty Evelyn and Uncle Gerald?’ I ask.

My mother turns in her seat to look at me and as she turns she reaches out and puts her hand on my knee. ‘Yes, for a few days.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

My father slows the car and speaks in a low voice. There is a lorry behind us and I can barely hear him. ‘I’m going to tell you why but you must promise not to hound me for more information.’

‘I promise.’

‘There’s been a bit of trouble with your grandmother and she’s asked us to leave.’

‘Just for a while,’ says my mother.

‘What kind of trouble?’ I ask.

My father swerves the car and almost takes us into a ditch. The lorry blows its horn as it passes, and the driver looks at us.

‘I’ll only say this once,’ says my father. ‘Right?’

He throws his cigarette out the window without extinguishing it.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Right then,’ he says, ‘I’ve had a bit of a falling out with my mother and until things are patched up, we’ll be living in Dublin. You won’t ask what the falling out is over, and I won’t tell you.’

‘Is it because of money?’

My father pulls over to the side of the road and begins to shout; a kind of screaming, so loud it’s hard to hear what he’s saying. He is screaming at me, I think, but he looks at my mother. And then he leans his head against the steering wheel and he cries. At least, it sounds like crying, but I can’t see his face.

‘Why can’t I just live?’ he says. ‘That’s all I want. Why can’t I be allowed to live?’

And he says this, and words like this, over and over — sometimes loud, sometimes quiet — while my mother tries to calm him by putting her hand on his arm.

‘Will I drive?’ she asks.

‘No,’ he says, his voice hoarse and tired. ‘I’ll drive.’

And we drive without another word.

We drive slowly through rain on dark country roads. When we stop in towns at traffic lights I look into the other cars and notice that, even when the person I am staring at can’t see me, they often sense that I am staring and they look around. Each time somebody looks at me, I turn away, embarrassed. I would like to be able to keep on looking and to smile at these people, but this is difficult to do. I wonder what it is that makes the other person know they are being watched. Perhaps it has something to do with my gift.