M. Hyland - Carry Me Down

‘Mam? I have something really, really important to tell you.’

‘Stop scratching your head.’

‘Can I tell you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll wait till you’re ready and you’re listening properly.’

‘Tell me now. I’m listening properly.’

‘I think Da is doing something funny with them upstairs.’

‘For goodness’ sake!’

‘No, Mammy. Listen. I think you should know. Just listen to me for a minute.’

I tell her that Da came into the room at 3.15 am and that he was drunk, that he lied about where he’d been. I tell her that he’s been upstairs with them.

‘This is crazy business,’ she says. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m telling the truth.’

‘Not this time, you don’t. Your father would never do such a thing. Not ever. He might have fibbed about where he was, but I know this for sure: he wasn’t upstairs with those women.’

‘How can you not believe me? Why can’t you just listen?’

‘I don’t like this talk one bit.’

‘If you don’t believe me, why don’t you go up and talk to the women yourself? Ask them if Da has been up there.’

She stands up. ‘I’ll do no such thing. And you should wash your mouth out.’

I protest and beg her to believe me.

She puts her head in her hands. ‘OK. You’ll go back to your own bed tonight. A boy as filthy as you can put up with a bit of stink from a rubbish chute.’

‘I’m not filthy. I’m the opposite! I know the truth!’

‘You weren’t filthy in Gorey, but you are some filthy now.’

I get my anorak and go downstairs.

I hope I might run into the gang. I don’t care now what happens, and I feel the urge for something to take the place of the trouble and drama I wanted but didn’t get with my mother. But I don’t see the gang, so I go alone to the new housing estate and walk around in the concrete trenches. There’s a small red wellington boot stuck in one of the newly laid cement slabs.

When I get home, my father is at the kitchen table with my mother, eating corned beef, carrots and mashed potatoes.

‘Yours is over there,’ says my mother.

My plate is being kept warm on top of a saucepan filled with hot water.

‘Where’ve you been?’ asks my father.

‘Just went down to the basement to see if there were any activities.’

‘And were there?’ asks my mother.

‘Only a bit of painting and little kids making stuff like snakes out of egg cartons.’

‘That’s funny,’ says my father. ‘I was down there not so long ago and it was closed for cleaning. There’s a sign on the door saying so.’

I’ve been caught but he lets me go.

‘Anyway, you’re a bit old to be making snakes,’ he says, smiling, and patting me on the hand.

‘I s’pose.’

‘Remember, Michael,’ says my mother, ‘how much John used to love those colour-by-number books? Oh, and Fuzzy Felt. Remember how he loved that?’

‘I didn’t love Fuzzy Felt,’ I say. ‘I hated it.’

They laugh.

‘I know what I liked and what I didn’t like. You must be confusing me with somebody else.’

They are still laughing, and my mother is trying to make me feel jolly by tickling me under the armpit.

‘Don’t!’ I say.

After what she has been told, I don’t understand her happy mood.

I leave as soon as I’ve cleared my plate and go into the living room to watch television. I have the volume on low so that I can still hear them talking.

They talk about the central heating, about the flat being too hot, the fact that the fridge always stinks, the cost of petrol, whether oil might run out one day, and the size of Phoenix Park; whether it is the biggest city park in the world.

I know it is. ‘What are we having for dessert?’ I call out.

‘Peanuts!’ shouts my father and they both laugh.

I go back into the kitchen. ‘I have to go to the dentist again next week,’ I say. ‘I have another sore tooth.’

I want his sympathy. But I won’t get it.

‘Jesus,’ says my father, ‘you’d be the only child on the face of the earth volunteering to go to the dentist.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘I like the dentist.’

‘I think he likes Dr O’Connor because the man wears a fancy suit and speaks so nicely,’ says my mother. ‘He’s like a lawyer who gives advice to teeth.’

They laugh at my mother’s clever joke, and I pretend to laugh too. I will never be a person who is left out of things.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘A lawyer who gives advice to teeth and who makes you pay through the nose.’

My father grins and holds out his hand for me to shake it. I hold out my hand and we shake hands for a good while. It’s an odd thing, and I’ve not noticed it before, but he has skin as soft as my mother’s.

I go to the bedroom with its smell of rubbish and lie on the bed. On my stomach, on my side, on my back, it doesn’t go away. There’s a sad sickness in my stomach when I think of Brendan and I miss him and can’t stop myself from imagining him with Kate and laughing together, laughing at me, and I lie on my back and it’s the same thought over and over … in the darkness and the sadness with the blackness on my backness … in the darkness and the sadness with the blackness on my backness.

I turn over onto my stomach and my father knocks on the door. I tell him to come in and he sneaks in on tiptoe as though he is a cat burglar. He closes the door quietly behind him and sits on the end of the bed.

I close my schoolbook and sit up cross-legged.

He sits next to me, his legs over the side. ‘Hey, fish-face,’ he says. ‘We haven’t had a good chat for a while. How are you?’

‘What?’ I say. ‘But we talked in the middle of the night.’

‘Well, I’m sorry about that. I’d had a few drinks and you know how I am. I’m not an expert at drinking. I’m sorry I woke you. I shouldn’t have.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘I remembered your present this time.’

I see no sign of any gifts.

‘But when I give it to you, I want you to forgive me for forgetting your presents so many times in the past. Will you do that? Now that I’ve remembered, will you forgive me?’

It’s too late, I think, but give me the present and let me see how good it is. ‘OK,’ I say.

He takes a pair of enormous brown socks out of a paper bag. ‘Well, son, here you are! I’ve a pair of famous socks for you and you can make a puppet out of them or whatever you want.’

He is grinning and so pleased.

I hold the brown socks. They are huge, have several holes in both left and right toes and a big hole on the left heel and are thin and almost see-through in places around the foot.

‘I don’t get it.’

He speaks slowly.

‘These socks belonged to the tallest man who ever lived. These were a pair of socks worn by the tallest man in the world.’

I am amazed. My mouth falls open and my eyes water. ‘Robert Pershing Wadlow? These belonged to Robert Pershing Wadlow?’

‘Yes, thats the one. They’re a size 37AA foot. Eighteen and a half inches long,’ he says. ‘He wore them in the last year of his life. They were among his final possessions and kept by his father.’

I sit up straight, happy, astonished, but mostly happy. I hold the socks up and examine them. The foot of one sock runs almost the length of my arm from elbow to the end of my index finger. The whole sock is as long as my arm.

‘How about that?’ says my father. ‘They are very old, so a bit crusty and worn out. But that just goes to show that they’re authentic.’

My happiness is smashed to pieces. I didn’t notice it before. I was too busy in my excitement. But I notice it now: he is lying.

I am too sad to test him. I cannot believe what he has done again. I want to go to bed, get under the covers, sleep, and have him gone.