M. Hyland - Carry Me Down

‘What changes?’ I ask.

My father leans forward and reaches out for my hands. His hands are sweaty. ‘Such as where we’ll live,’ he says.

‘But can’t we go back? You said we were only staying for a while.’

‘We might be Dubliners from now on,’ says my mother.

‘Won’t that be good?’ says Aunty Evelyn.

I am angry and don’t know what to say or how to say it. What about the money and The Gol of Seil under the mattress?

‘What about Crito?’

‘OK,’ says my father. ‘That’s enough for now. Go up to bed and we’ll have porridge for breakfast tomorrow.’

‘What’s so good about porridge all of a sudden?’ I say.

My father stands up. ‘Porridge has always been good,’ he says.

Uncle Gerald is smiling at me but all I can see is Granny hitting Crito over the head with a shovel and saying, ‘You have too much dander.’

I go up to the third floor and sleep, head to toe, in the single bed, with Liam. He snores and gyrates in his sleep, as though he’s having a fit. I move to the edge of the bed but fall back to the deep sag in the middle of the old mattress and find myself up against Liam’s legs.

I wake early, before the streetlights have been turned off, and I think that Liam is also awake. I hear him say, ‘To the bearer,’ and ‘One million pounds.’

‘What?’ I say.

‘To the bearer. One million pounds,’ he says again, as clear as though he were awake.

He is sleeping on his back, with his mouth wide open. I want to put something in it, like the lightbulb that hangs from its broken socket above my head.

I get out of bed at half eight and go into the kitchen in my pyjamas. Nobody is there, but the lights are on. I don’t want to be alone.

I go down the stairs that lead to the bookshop in the basement. The staircase is dark. There are rats scratching behind the walls and they sound like the ones we had behind the walls in our old flat in Wexford. Sometimes, when we had been sitting in silence in the living room, one of the rats would come out onto the carpet in the middle of the room and look around, as quiet as a pillow, as though it were sightseeing. Then it would see or smell one of us and run back to the hole it had come from.

The rats always came out alone, never as a family, and there was one especially big brown rat with a long black tail. I decided he was the boss rat. After I saw him a few times I expected to see him all of the time. If I walked into the living room and saw something brown or black on the floor, out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was the rat, and I’d feel jumpy. I’d often think I’d seen that rat. My father said I had a rare case of rat psychosis. ‘You saw one rat in the middle of the floor,’ he said, ‘and now you think everything smaller than a shoe is a rat.’

A few weeks after my father said this the rats stopped scratching behind our living room wall.

I stand for a while and listen to the scratching and then kick the wall once before I open the back door that leads to the bookshop.

‘Morning,’ says Aunty Evelyn, who is standing on a short stepladder reaching up to some bookshelves.

My twin cousins, Celia and Kay, sit on the floor and look up at me. They are seven years old, but small for their age and, like their father, hardly ever speak. Instead of speaking, the twins look at people; fix their eyes and stare. No matter where you move to, their eyes are on you. But they don’t seem to see anything. They aren’t really watching, I don’t think, not properly watching. Their eyes move as though pulled by magnets, as though they have no choice.

‘Morning,’ I say as I sit down behind the counter. Aunty Evelyn climbs down from the ladder and sits next to me. She takes hold of my hands.

‘Where are they?’ I ask.

‘Who? Mammy and Daddy?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’ll be back soon.’

‘Where are they?’

‘They were in the greasy spoon a few doors down a while ago, but I’m sure they’ve gone somewhere else by now.’

‘But where?’

‘Ask them yourself when they get back. And move over out of the way. You’re taking up a lot of room.’

Kay and Celia, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bare floor, look up at me.

‘How old would you say I am?’ asks Aunty Evelyn.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘About the same age as my mam.’

‘No! I’m eight years older, but I don’t look as old as I am, do I? I use this cream. See here! It works. So, how old do you think I look? Not as old as I am, right?’

‘I suppose not.’

She stands. ‘Go up now, John, and get some breakfast.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You are hungry,’ she says.

‘Aunty Evelyn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me one more story about Niagara Falls before I go upstairs?’

‘I’m busy now,’ she says.

It is ten past nine.

She tidies books on the shelves and serves the only customer who comes in. He is old, has one false eye, white, like a marble, and uses a walking stick. He buys a crossword puzzle book for 5p. When he leaves, she sits down again.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Let me see. OK, there was a woman in one of the museums. It was night-time and the foyer was very dark …’ She puts a pile of books down on the counter and wipes her dusty hands on her apron.

‘Why was it dark?’

‘Because this was a museum of ghouls and ghosts and old medieval torture contraptions. Anyway, this woman had long painted fingernails, very long and painted orange, and the fingernails were painted with glow-in-the-dark polish. Can you imagine?’

I want more. ‘Can you tell me something else?’

She picks the biggest book off the counter and holds it to her chest. ‘If you’re not happy with the story I’ve told, there won’t be any more. Go on, get away with you. Up the stairs please and let me get on with my work.’

I go up to the kitchen. Liam is at the table, eating cereal. In between mouthfuls, he picks his nose, and then eats what he fetches from his nostrils.

‘It’s after ten,’ I say.

‘What’s it to you, goody-two-shoes?’

‘Nothing,’ I say.

He holds the bowl of cereal up to his face and slurps the milk; the noise makes me think of my grandmother and I wonder what she’s doing, what Crito is doing, and whether Brendan is still playing with Kate. And Mr Roche. I wonder has he asked about me.

‘For your information,’ says Liam with a mouth full of mush, ‘our school has two sessions, the morning and the afternoon.’

‘Why?’

‘Cause there’s too much kids.’

He has a Dublin accent and mumbles most of the time. I fiddle with the bowl of sugar, but I can’t eat. I’d like not to fight with Liam and so I keep talking, try to be friendly.

‘What time does the afternoon session start?’

‘Twelve,’ he says.

‘What’re you going to do till then?’

‘Kick the football over the road with me friends,’ he says. ‘I dunno.’

I am just about to ask him if I can join in when my mother and father arrive home.

My father is wearing a suit and tie.

I stand up. ‘Hello,’ I say.

‘All right?’ asks my mother.

‘All right,’ I say.

My father looks at me and frowns. ‘Not getting out of your pyjamas today?’

‘Why should I?’

‘You’re not sick, are you?’

‘No, but …’

‘Go and get dressed, please. Then come back and help your mother.’

When I come back, my father is gone again and my mother is at the sink, peeling potatoes. Aunty Evelyn comes up the stairs with some rashers from the grocery shop next door. ‘Sit,’ she says to my mother. ‘I’ll start the dinner nice and early. It’ll be ready by twelve.’