Carry Me Down (24 page)

‘We came to wake you,’ says the social worker. ‘But you woke yourself. How did you sleep?’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Fine.’

‘You’ve missed breakfast,’ says the housefather as he opens the curtains. ‘It’s eleven o’clock.’

I sit up and an insect lands on my face, and then on my arm. The room is hot and infested with midges. I’ve never seen midges inside. They shouldn’t be here.

‘Get dressed. We’ll wait outside.’

I dress in the same clothes I came in and go out into the hall.

The housefather folds his arms across his chest. I do the same. But I feel stupid, unfold them, and lean my shoulder against the door.

‘Your mother is coming for you later this afternoon. She came to get you at nine o’clock and was waiting for you but she didn’t want us to wake you. And your father will be here on the afternoon train, but first you need to come with us to the interview room. Then you’ll have some lunch.’

‘If my mother is here, why can’t I see her?’ I ask.

‘She was here but we sent her home for some rest. She’ll be back later this afternoon. We need to sort out some paperwork first. We need to sign your discharge papers.’

‘Does that mean I’m leaving?’

‘Yes, but let’s take care of that business somewhere other than in the corridor.’

They sit at one side of the wobbling table and I sit at the other. The housefather does all the talking. I don’t have any thoughts about anything much except my nervous stomach.

‘Your mother says she doesn’t want to pursue any charges against you. She hasn’t been to bed. She was with the guards most of the night, and came in here this morning.’

I stare at him.

‘We need to sign you in, and this must be done quite formally, since you were unfit to sign anything last night.’

‘But why should I be signed in when I’m about to be signed out?’

‘Can you read?’

‘Of course I can read.’

‘Then read this, and if you agree to it, sign it, and then you’ll be free to go home with your mother, if that’s where she’d like to take you.’

‘Back home?’

‘Looks like it,’ says the housefather. ‘And you’d better stop rubbing your face. It muffles your words and you’ll end up with acne vulgaris.’

‘Acne vulgaris is …’ offers the social worker.

‘I know what it is.’

The two-sided discharge paper says that I was taken ‘involuntarily into the custody of the Department of Justice’ and that I am being ‘discharged by order of the same’; today’s date, a few names, something about ‘indemnification against damage to property’, and that’s about it.

I’d like to keep it as a souvenir.

‘So I can go now?’ I ask. ‘Back home?’

The social worker clears his throat. ‘Well, you can see your mother and I’ll be sitting in with you in the family room for a few minutes, just to be sure everything is ship-shape.’

‘Oh.’

* * *

At lunchtime, I sit in the dining room, with the social worker. There are seven tables, with five or six boys at each. They are between ten and seventeen years old, and make so much noise that every few minutes a man in a brown and green uniform walks down beside them and bangs two frying pans together, saying, ‘Who wants to lose their ears now? Who?’, but they all laugh and go back to the noise, including the man in the green and brown uniform. I’ve never been on a school camp, the kind that Americans have, but this must be what it’s like.

My appetite is back and I eat two helpings of mashed potato and sausages and two helpings of trifle. The social worker eats a cheese sandwich cut into triangles, and he takes small bites, the sharp, small bites that a rat might take. It is as though he is afraid of opening his mouth too wide.

‘If you had stayed here,’ he says, putting his sandwich down while he speaks, ‘you’d have enjoyed the meal on the first Sunday of every month.’

‘Why?’

‘The trainee chefs for the big hotels come in and try out their new recipes. Trainee chefs for posh hotels like the Shelbourne.’

‘I want to stay there one day.’

He ignores this.

‘And on Thursday nights there’s a billiards competition and on Saturday there are darts and table tennis.’

‘But after here the boys go to prison, don’t they?’

‘Some do. Some don’t.’

‘Would I have been charged with attempted murder if my mam had wanted to press charges?’

‘Very likely.’

‘I’m lucky, then.’

‘One of the luckiest boys I’ve ever met. Do you have any idea what your life might have become?’

‘I’d probably have been in prison.’

‘More likely you’d have spent a very long time in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.’

‘Children don’t go there.’

He puts his sandwich down. ‘That’s true. But adolescents do.’

I stare at him.

‘Well then, I wouldn’t have gone there.’

‘Just count yourself lucky you have such a loving mother.’

I don’t want to talk about my mother, I want to see her. He doesn’t continue with his cheese sandwich and it stays there on the tray like something in a cartoon, with his tiny teeth marks in it. He looks at me, waiting for me to speak and when I don’t, he tells me to go my room to pack my bag.

I lie on the bed for a while, stare up at the ceiling, and hit the midges with the small softcover Bible that was in the bedside drawer.

At four o’clock the social worker comes in. ‘OK, they’re waiting for you.’

The family room is large, with three orange settees, a big television, a record player and two bookshelves filled mostly with magazines.

My mother stands up when I walk in. She has make-up on and her hair is plaited. She holds her arms out and I walk into her embrace, and she holds me and I smell the milky tea with sugar she must have had while she was waiting. I am happy.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ she says.

She lets go and stands back to look at me.

‘You’re my son, and I love you and I can’t see your life ruined. Your life will not be ruined. Your life will not be ruined. Not by you, and not by me. Your life will not be ruined. Do you understand?’

Her voice is strong and loud.

‘Yes,’ I say.

My father stands in the corner, holding two helium-filled balloons, both orange, the same as the colour of the settees.

‘And you’re sorry,’ he says without moving. ‘We know you’re sorry. Aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ says my mother. ‘You’re sorry.’

They look at each other, and something seems settled. My mother collapses onto the settee and weeps silently. I stay standing; the social worker is standing behind me, breathing heavily but saying nothing.

I don’t want to sit. I want to leave. I look at my father; it is easier than looking at my mother. ‘What are the balloons for?’ I ask.

‘Something to hold me up,’ he says.

This must be a joke, but he doesn’t smile. ‘Oh,’ I say.

‘The balloons are for the twins,’ says my mother. ‘It’s their eighth birthday today. We’re going around to Aunty Evelyn’s house for tea. And we’ll stop on the way to pick up the cake. And we’ll not talk about what you did. And you’ll not say that you’ve been locked up here. What you did is forgotten and forgiven. There’s no other way.’

I smile at her but she doesn’t look at me; she looks at the floor.

‘It’s forgotten and forgiven,’ she continues, ‘and we will forget, and you will drop the nonsense about lie detection. There’s no point in ruining a perfectly good and promising life.’

I look at my father. I study his reaction to what my mother is saying. Maybe he has a punishment in store for me? His shoulders rise and fall with his breathing and, impatient but not angry, he moves the balloons from one hand to the other.

He looks at me. ‘We’re starting again,’ he says. ‘The three of us. We’re starting all over again.’

‘Are we going back to Gorey?’

‘Yes. We’ll leave tomorrow.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘I want to go back.’

My mother gets up to leave and the social worker steps forward and asks her if she is ready to go.

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

He opens the door and takes us down the hall to the front door. We stand to say goodbye on the footpath outside, by the car.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Thanks for all your help.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ he says, putting his hands in his pockets.

‘Yes, thank you,’ says my father.

The social worker nods and turns away without saying goodbye. He walks towards the door of the home.

My mother says, ‘Let’s go now,’ and opens the car door and we get in, but my father stands by the car, and watches the social worker.

He calls out after him, ‘Thank you.’

And when the social worker has not heard, my father calls out again, ‘Thank you! Goodbye!’ but his voice is too loud.

The social worker turns around and, when he sees my father still looking at him, he waves and my father waves, his hand beating too fast and too long in the deaf air.

We drive to Aunty Evelyn’s for the birthday party and my mother and father talk about the traffic and the weather. But when I wind the window down and stick my head out, my father turns around in his seat and yells at me.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

I don’t argue. I say I’m sorry, wind the window up and sit back, quietly, in my seat.

In the kitchen at Aunty Evelyn’s my mother helps light the candles on the cake with a slow, steady hand, and my father starts the singing. He sings so well that Kay, who rarely speaks, unless it is in unison with her twin sister, says, ‘You sound nice, Uncle Michael.’

After the cake, Aunty Evelyn brings out a tray of ham sandwiches. ‘Beautiful leg ham,’ she says.

My mother covers her nose and mouth with her hand. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me, but I can’t stomach the smell of those ham sandwiches.’

Aunty Evelyn laughs. ‘Who ever heard of such a thing!’

My mother takes a sandwich but she doesn’t eat; it stays in her hand, held down close to the table.

‘I could make some cheese sandwiches instead,’ I say.

Uncle Gerald doesn’t lift his head, but his voice is loud and sarcastic. ‘Put that boy in the
Guinness Book of Records
for being the first teenager to offer his mammy lunch!’

Aunty Evelyn laughs again. Alone.

* * *

In the afternoon the adults go to the good room upstairs to drink port and whiskey. I’m in the living room with Liam and the twins watching the FA Cup final. I can’t sit still. I am worried that Aunty Evelyn and Uncle Gerald will find out what has happened. I close my eyes for a few seconds, and by the time I open them again I can’t remember what the score is.

Liam starts shouting, abusing the Man U goalie for letting a penalty through. The goalie didn’t do anything wrong, it was a good shot, that’s all, but Liam keeps on screaming at the goalie, ‘You idiot! You mongoloid! You sissy!’

All the Man U supporters in the crowd are screaming at the goalie, their mouths wide open, most of them standing, waving their fists. When a close-up of the goalie’s face comes up on the television, Liam moves in close to the screen and spits at him. The goalie is trying his hardest to block the balls. In the close-up he looks frightened.

I rush to the toilet.

I have diarrhoea. It floods out of me, and I get a sharp pain down my thighs. The diarrhoea keeps coming, so much of it, and as it rushes into the toilet some of the dirty water splashes up against the back of my legs. The smell is terrible. I flush the toilet three times, all the while holding my nose. I use a towel to wipe the back of my thighs and rinse the towel in the bath. After I have washed the towel, I wash my hands, and I run the hot water tap for a long time, hoping the heat and the steam will cover up the smell and stop me feeling sick.

Liam knocks on the door. ‘What’re ya doin’ in there? Havin’ a bath?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

He keeps knocking and shouting at me and I want to go out there and hurt his face. I picture myself going at his face with my hands.

But I stay where I am. I wait. Instead of going out to him, I run hot water in the bath again. While the tap is running, I can’t
hear Liam and I feel better. I stand in front of the mirror and the hot water steams it up so that I can’t see my reflection. But I face the mirror and look at the steam on the surface of the glass.

‘On the count of ten,’ I say, ‘you will come back and everything will be normal again.’

I wipe the mirror clean. When I can see my face again, I don’t like how it looks.

I let the mirror steam up a second time. I wipe it clear once more and look at my face. I smile. The second time is better. I put my hand on the reflection of my hand and I say, ‘You will be all right. You won’t be a criminal. You will be better than other people.’

I wash my hands and scrub under my nails, then I get Liam’s aftershave and splash it on my underpants and the legs of my jeans. I go back into the living room. The football match is over and Liam and the twins are eating more cake. I sit in the chair nearest the window and look down at the street. I watch a hunchbacked old man cross the road. He doesn’t look to see if there are any cars coming.

At eight o’clock my parents come to take me home. My mother smiles without showing her teeth. My father looks at me properly for the first time since he came to collect me from the boys’ home. I’d like him to hug me instead of looking at me.

‘Time to go,’ he says.

I fall asleep in the car and go straight to bed when we get home.

In the morning, my mother comes to my room. ‘You’d better get washed. Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony are coming for breakfast. They’ve agreed to move the furniture.’

I want her to come and sit on my bed, but I don’t think she will. She will stay in the doorway. ‘Do they know?’

‘Only Granny knows.’

‘What about Aunty Evelyn? Did you tell her?’

‘We told her what we’ve told your uncles; that we’ve decided to go back to Gorey because we like it better there.’

I stand up and move towards the door. She puts her hand across her chest and reaches for her shoulder. She holds her shoulder as though it is sore.

‘John. Listen to me. You’ll be seeing a doctor in Gorey. He’s a child psychologist. I’ll be taking you to see him as soon as we get back and you’ll go for as long as he says you need to.’

I don’t care about doctors. I want to know what she thinks, and I want to know why she is taking me back. But if I ask, things might change; things that aren’t clear or certain might become clear and certain. She might decide to have me locked up; my father might leave again; I might be punished.

‘Are you happy?’ I ask.

She walks away without answering.

Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony come just before nine. They eat two helpings of eggs and rashers and black pudding, and drink three pots of tea. I eat only toast. I’m too nervous about diarrhoea.

‘Why won’t you eat?’ my father asks.

‘I have a toothache.’

Immediately after I say this, Uncle Tony distracts everybody by complaining about his gout, the swelling and soreness of his big toe. ‘Even the weight of the sheet on my foot gives me pain,’ he says.

My mother has no patience with him and talks to him the way she used to.

‘Well, if you’d stop eating all those kippers and fatty foods you might not have the gout.’

My father smiles with the corner of his mouth.

‘Fair play,’ says Uncle Tony.

‘Time to pack now, John,’ says my father.

I open my cupboard drawers. All five editions of the
Guinness Book of Records
are missing. That’s five whole years gone.

I go back into the kitchen. My parents are holding hands, looking at each other, whispering.

‘Where are my books?’

‘I’ve given them to charity,’ says my mother. ‘I’d prefer you to read something else from now on.’

‘Like what?’

‘School books.’

‘But I needed them.’

‘Let’s pack and get out of here,’ says my father.

I go to my room but instead of packing I sit up on my bed and throw my clothes out the window. My shirts and trousers and socks float down more slowly than I expect them to and they land on the ground-floor balconies; only one pair of trousers makes it all the way down to the ground.

I go back to the kitchen with an empty suitcase. I open it and put it on the floor near my father’s feet. ‘I’m packed,’ I say.

‘Where are all your clothes?’ he asks.

‘I threw them out the window.’

They look at each other and don’t seem at all surprised. They don’t protest. Then, suddenly, as though somebody has pressed a button, my parents start laughing and then the laughing stops.

‘You were outgrowing most of them anyway,’ says my mother. ‘It’s probably just as well.’

* * *

At eleven o’clock, we are ready to go. Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony lean against the car and say how exhausted they are. My father hands each of them an envelope. They both refuse, but my father insists they take it.

‘Something small. That’s all. Please take it.’

‘We’re very grateful,’ says my mother.

‘Not at all,’ says Uncle Jack, and then we say goodbye.

My mother sits in the back of the car and my father tells me to sit in the front passenger seat. ‘There’s more room for your legs in the front,’ he says.

But I think my mother wants to sit in the back because she feels safer there.

It’s a nice sunny day, no clouds, and the traffic moves quickly. We talk about Ballymun. My mother says she’d never have got used to the smell of the rubbish chute and the noise, and my father says he’s never been gladder to see the back of a place.

And then all that they talk about is the roads and the drive. Talk about nothing. The kind of talk robots would have. It makes me nervous. It makes me think that there will be a sudden explosion when we get to Gorey.

And then, out of nowhere, my mother says to my father. ‘By the way, I was right about Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes. They were around at the same time. Jack the Ripper committed his murders in 1888 and Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887.’

‘What on earth made you drag that up now?’

‘I just saw a wee pub called The Sherlock. And then I remembered that I’d checked up on it in the Ballymun school library.’

‘You win,’ he says, and he pats her leg and they smile at each other.

We stop at a pub for something to eat and so my father can rest from driving and we sit in a booth near the back. The food comes
from the kitchen to the bar through a service hatch. I like it that I can see the white sleeves of the person holding the plates but not his head.

There’s a good smell of burnt chops and I like the heavy cutlery and the big plates. My father smokes. He lights one cigarette from another. My mother goes to the bar and gets three fizzy drinks. We sit for a while without speaking.

A little girl walks in and out of the bar and leaves the door open. Her brother gets up and closes the door after her and the people sitting nearest the door complain each time she leaves it open. I hate it when people leave doors open and cause draughts.

But this is almost exactly what happened when we stopped at the hotel near the Wicklow mountains on the way to Dublin. I’m sure of it! There was a little girl there, too, who left the door open and her brother had to get up and close it after her.

My heart is thumping so hard I can feel the blood in my teeth, and I’m very nervous, but I have to speak. ‘What’s going to happen?’ I ask.

‘Well, we’re going home now, and your granny will be very happy to see you,’ my father says. ‘But first I have something for you.’

He gives me a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. I unwrap it. It’s a cap, the kind of stupid cap farmers wear.

‘It’s yours,’ he says.

‘Why?’

My mother and father look at each other, wanting the other to say it.

‘To stop your scratching,’ says my mother. ‘At least until your head heals and you get out of the habit.’

‘I don’t want to wear this.’

‘You’ll wear that hat,’ says my mother. ‘You’ll wear it all day, every day, until I tell you not to.’

I put the cap on my head and I feel like a fool. It’s a soft brown cap, not a hat, not quite a beret. I don’t know what to call it. I
take it off and look at it. ‘This is stupid. I haven’t even been scratching,’ I say.

‘You’ve been scratching that hole in your head non-stop since we left Ballymun,’ says my father.

I didn’t know. ‘Where did you get it from?’

‘It was your Uncle Gerald’s.’

‘Why did he give it to you?’

My mother laughs and looks happy, pleased with herself. ‘He didn’t,’ she says. ‘Your father found it yesterday down behind a chair and it was covered in fluff and cobwebs. So he took it.’

I put the hat on and then I realise what I have done: I have brought her back. I have brought her back. She is better now.

My grandmother is waiting outside the cottage when we arrive; standing on the doorstep, her hands on her wide hips. She’s dressed in blue from head to toe and this usually means a special occasion. Blue jumper and cardigan and skirt and pale blue stockings and blue shoes.

I get out of the car first and walk towards her. I want her to be glad to see me and I had hoped she might be standing outside by the road, smiling, holding Crito in one arm, the other ready to hold me. But there is no sign of Crito, and her hands stay on her hips. She doesn’t move towards me.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘You had a fine day for the drive.’

‘Hello, Granny,’ I say.

‘Smart hat,’ she says.

She stays where she is, on the doorstep, looking at me. ‘Aren’t you going to help your poor mammy and daddy with all those big, heavy cases?’

I go to the trunk and take out the last case, a small red one.

‘You’re big, enough and bold enough now to offer a helping hand.’

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

I was thinking: thinking that I would like a better welcome home. But I don’t deserve it. There’ll be no understanding of what I have done. I will be given no forgiveness; there will only be forgetting.

‘Better get you inside and unpacking,’ she says. ‘And I’ll make us all something to eat.’

I go to my bedroom, close the door, and check under the mattress. The Gol of Seil and the money are still there. I’m very relieved to see my things: nobody should know where I keep them and what I do with them should be up to me.

I sit on the floor and make my decision. I probably won’t keep the money and I might not keep The Gol of Seil either; it’s full of mistakes of learning, mistakes of the past. If I find a way to return the money and get rid of The Gol of Seil, everything will be normal again. There’ll be nothing in my way of setting things right.

At tea, we are all in our old places at the kitchen table, and we eat runny stew with more carrots than meat and mop it up with thick brown bread. Crito sits by my feet and when I lean down to stroke her I realise that she is fatter than she was when we left. I lift her and put her on my lap so that her face is near my belt buckle. She seems to remember who I am and curls into a ball before closing her eyes. Nobody tells me to put her back on the floor.