M. Hyland - Carry Me Down

‘Not just now. Maybe later. We can all play tonight. Your cousins too.’

I hold the picture of the rope in front of him and I notice that, although I feel nervous, my hand is steady.

On Monday we go to church for a christening and we sit near the front in the same pew. I sit between Aunty Evelyn and Uncle Gerald, and Liam sits nearest the wall, which he kicks with his foot. Celia and Kay stare up at the Stations of the Cross and whisper in their private language.

When the priest comes out to the altar, his vestments flowing around him, it is as though an animal has come out of its cave. I want to see where he lives, to see behind the sacristy door into his cave and find out what it is like in there.

On the way home, my father suddenly stops outside a bookie’s shop, with Turf Accountants written across the smoky glass. ‘I’m just going to pop in here for a minute,’ he says. ‘You go on ahead.’

He goes inside and we stand on the street. Uncle Gerald shuffles his feet, embarrassed, and my mother’s face and neck turn red.

‘The bookie’s the last place he should be,’ says Aunty Evelyn.

‘I’m not going to stop him,’ says my mother. ‘Let him do what he wants. Let him ruin …’ She stops what she is saying and looks instead at a passing bus.

‘What’s being ruined?’ I say. ‘What’s he ruining?’

She looks through the window of the bookie’s shop and then rubs the back of her soft fingers against my cheek. She opens her mouth, then closes it.

‘What?’ I ask. ‘What were you going to say?’

‘Never mind.’

‘What?’

She takes a deep breath. ‘He …’

‘He what?’

‘He hit your granny,’ she says.

She looks down then, down at sheets of newspaper flying around by the lamp-post near my feet.

‘And now we’re out on the dirty old street.’

‘What?’ I say.

‘You are not out on the street,’ says Aunty Evelyn.

‘Why did he hit Granny? When?’

My mother puts her hand on my shoulder and Aunty Evelyn takes hold of my hand and pulls at me, the way she did when we arrived in the night. This is weird, the two of them touching me, one holding me down, the other pulling at me. A bolt of shame travels up my spine, all the way to my face.

‘Come on,’ says my mother. ‘It’s time to be getting home.’

‘I’m going to find out for myself,’ I say. ‘I’m going in there and I’m not coming home.’

I go inside. The Turf Accountant’s is full of smoke and noisy with the sound of the horse races on the radio. I stand by the doorway for a few minutes and scratch at the scab on my head until I draw blood and then I go up to him.

My father has already untucked his white shirt and is in a queue for the cashier’s desk. He stands near the back of the crooked row of men, all of them holding tickets and, like him, looking at the man at the head of the queue to see how long he might be.

I stand by my father’s side. ‘Da?’ I say.

He doesn’t seem surprised to hear my voice. He looks straight ahead at the counter, at the bars in front of the cashier’s window and at the grille under the sheet of glass where the money is put before it is taken by the cashier. ‘What?’ he says.

‘Is it true you hit Granny?’

Still he doesn’t look at me.

‘Well, did you?’

He clears his throat. ‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘Now go home. Get out of this filthy place.’

‘We have no home,’ I say.

The hand that hangs down by his side curls into a fist, and the red worms he has for fingers hide under his hairy knuckles.

‘Go home,’ he says.

‘Why did you hit her?’

He looks at me. ‘Because she wanted to be hit,’ he says. He turns away again, to face the cashier. ‘I hit her because she nagged me. She knew I was about to hit her and still she nagged me. And then she told me to get out of her house. And I hit her and she knew I would.’

‘Did you fail the test at Trinity?’

The Adam’s apple in his neck bulges and he stares ahead.

‘Did you?’

He turns to me and there are tears in his eyes. ‘Do you know? You even look a bit like her.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like your granny. You’re like a pair of gargoyles keeping watch over other people’s lives.’

I feel sorry for him and guilty and sorry for myself. I keep looking at him. If he cries, I’ll say I’m sorry. Then, maybe, when he’s finished in here we could go to the greasy spoon near Aunty Evelyn’s for a piece of cake. But he just coughs, puts his hand in his pocket and turns back to the cashier’s window.

‘Go home,’ he says.

I walk out.

On the way back to Aunty Evelyn’s I buy a Mars bar with the money he gave me yesterday to replace the one on the living room floor that Liam or one of the twins took.

When I get back everybody is sitting at the kitchen table. Uncle Gerald is at the end nearest the toilet, with the twins sitting close to him. He is playing with them. He whispers and smiles as he makes his hands into the church and the steeple. ‘Here is the church, and here is the steeple,’ he says. ‘Open the doors, and here are the people.’

The twins laugh when Uncle Gerald’s fingers poke up and wiggle like naked people and it makes me feel sick. He does it again and when he says, ‘Open the doors’, the twins open their mouths wide and show bits of mashed food and stretch the saliva between their teeth.

Liam is nearest the living room door, where he always sits. My mother and Aunty Evelyn are together, holding hands, in the middle. My mother has been crying.

They all talk about nothing. About weddings and the bridesmaid who was eating a chewy sweet and had a choking fit during the ceremony and spat the sweet onto the bride’s dress.

There is chicken pie in the cooker for tea and, even though everybody is hungry, my mother says we should wait for my father to come home.

When it is seven o’clock and he still hasn’t come, we eat, except Uncle Gerald; he doesn’t eat because he doesn’t like to eat in front of people, not even in front of his own family.

I look at the placemat on which there is a picture of a foxhunt — men in caps on horses, dogs, and dead foxes hanging from a fence. My mother sees me looking at the foxes. She makes her hands into paws and puts a frightened look on her face.

I smile and she smiles back. I wonder if this means she is feeling better and, if she is, whether I soon will be. Liam lifts his plate, holds it close to his face, then, when he thinks nobody is looking, sucks off bits of pie.

‘Liam,’ says Aunty Evelyn, ‘Go to your room and let us alone so we can talk.’

Liam leaves without argument and the twins follow him like puppies.

‘Well,’ says my mother. ‘I shouldn’t have told you what your father did, but now that it’s out I might as well set things straight.’

She stirs her tea while she speaks and I don’t hear the spoon hitting the side of the cup. She tells me that my father hit my granny during a row and she fell against the dresser. It was an accident and she was taken to hospital to have stitches. When I ask why Da doesn’t apologise so we can go back, she says, ‘He’s already made his apology, but it hasn’t been accepted yet.’

She tells me we won’t be here long; that we might live in a hotel for a while until we find our own flat.

‘What kind of hotel?’ I ask.

‘A cheap one,’ says Uncle Gerald from his place at the end of the table near the toilet door.

‘There’s a nice hotel near the gates of Phoenix Park,’ says my mother. ‘Right near the zoo and the elephant. We can take him peanuts.’

‘Is Da going to go to prison?’

‘Your granny isn’t pressing charges,’ says Aunty Evelyn. ‘She knows it was an accident.’