Long Story Short (7 page)

I put my phone away—it wasn't out of juice as I'd said to Julie, but it was running very low by now—and then I called over to her and made a big show of dropping the postcard in the postbox, but I hadn't written the address on it.

As we came out of the shop, a Garda car pulled up beside us and the door swung open before the car had even come to a stop. The driver stuck his head out of the door and called, “Jonathan! Is that you?”

I don't know how I managed it, but I never flinched at the sound of my name, just went on walking. Luckily I was holding Julie's hand, so I was able to give it a fierce squeeze to warn her not to give us away, and fair dues to her, she got the message immediately and she never as much as faltered, just went on skipping along beside me.

The guard came after us and tapped me on the shoulder. “Jonathan?” he said.

I turned around. “Hello, Guard,” I said cheerfully. “Are you talking to
me
?”

“Ye-es,” he said, his eyes searching mine.

“On'y I'm Paul,” I said, and I tried to make my voice country, or at least not Dublin. “I doan't knoaw inny Jonithins.”

The guard looked sideways at me, and then he squatted down to Julie.

This is it, I thought. She's sure to say the wrong thing, and we'll be caught. My heart was doing jigs and reels inside my chest, and my mouth was dry.

“Hiya, Julie,” he said.

Julie stared at him for a moment, and then she looked up at me and said, “He thinks my name is Julie, Paul.”

God, she was a star. She should be on the stage.

She looked back at the guard and gave a gurgly little laugh, like Shirley Temple, and said, “My name is Arabella O'Brien.”

Arabella! I nearly choked.

“What happened to your face, Arabella?”

Julie put her hand slantways across her mouth and said, confidential-like, “It was in a fight.”

The guard tried to hide a smile. He stood up and brushed his hands together.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I could have sworn…” Then he looked suspicious again. “Rucksacks?” he said. “It's not holiday time.”

“Schoolbags,” I said, and rolled my eyes to show I was not a happy—I was going to say not a happy camper, but I suppose I mean not a happy schoolboy. I was delighted that I'd used Julie's schoolbag as a rucksack for her. It had these pen and pencil motifs on it, all very businesslike. My own rucksack was just ordinary, but lots of lads carry their school stuff in ordinary camping rucksacks if not in sports bags. “An' yeah, we're dead late,” I added. “Long story.”

“I see,” said the guard, and for two awful seconds I thought he was going to ask to look in the rucksacks, but he didn't. Instead he turned back to his car and opened the door. Just before he got in, he said, as casually as anything, “Where do you go to school?”

The pavement seemed to fall away under my feet, like a down escalator. This was it. I'd walked us right into it.

I looked over the guard's head, over the top of his car, and I saw—I couldn't believe it—a school! It looked like a primary school—a low building with a freshly tarmacked yard where they'd painted hopscotch on it, and high iron railings.

So I pointed and said, “I'm just dropping Arabella into her school over there, and I go to Scoil Ehnnnnnnhhh.”

I'd somehow remembered that a lot of the schools in Galway are Irish ones, with
Scoil
as part of their name. I met a lad from Galway last year, he told me that. And I gobbled the last word—the old Closed Mouth is great for that—so it might be nearly anything.

The guard screwed up his face, but he must have thought I said something close enough to a real Galway school, because he got into the car and closed the door.

“Right, so ye'd better get yeer skates on and hurry along,” he said through the window, which was fully rolled down.

The car screeched away from the curb and Julie and I crossed the street, towards the school. When we got to the school gate we didn't go in, though, we just kept on walking. After we'd gone about a hundred yards, Julie pulled on my hand like a bellpull. “Did you like my name?” she asked.

I looked down at her. “Where did you get it out of?” I asked.

“It's my teddy's name. Gramma called her that. Miss Arabella O'Brien. She christened her the day she gave her to me, when I was four.”

“I didn't know teddies could be girls.”

“Well of course they can. Where do you think the baby bears come from?”

I laughed. But I knew they were onto us. It was getting serious.

We went wandering around for ages that day, not knowing where we were going or why, looking for somewhere warm, but everywhere was crowded in the city, and there was no place we could mingle in and not be noticed. And the money was beginning to get pretty low too. I don't know where it went, but we were down to coins now.

I desperately needed to think, but I couldn't think and be with Julie. The two things don't go together. I did have one thought, though. I thought: this could be it, so let's just enjoy today, or what's left of it. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as you think you should be enjoying a day, it turns really horrible on you.

That's what happened. It started to rain. Just a fine mist at first, but it soaked our hair and shoulders, and I knew we couldn't last the night out of doors. Julie started to cry with cold and exhaustion. She wanted to go back to the cathedral to sleep again that night, but I said no, that would be pushing our luck. What I really meant was, the guards were onto us, that priest probably heard us after all.

I took her into a chipper and bought two singles of chips with the last of my money. It was lovely and warm in there, and we made the chips last as long as we could. When we finally had to leave the greasy comfort of the chipper, we stepped out into driving rain.

“We have to go to Daddy's house,” Julie moaned. “We
have
to. That's why we came, Jonathan, isn't it? Why are we walking around all the time, when Daddy lives here?”

“Julie,” I said, and I was tucking her hair in between her clothes and her back, to keep it dry, “I don't think we'd be welcome there.”

“I don't care about that,” she said. “I'm cold. I just want to be inside.”

My heart was heavy, but I knew it was over. I'd done what I could, but we weren't going to be able to live forever like babes in the woods. I had tried to fool myself, but part of me deep down must have known that it was impossible. Why else would we have come to this city, if not so that I could deliver Julie over to Da when the time came?

“Have you got his address?” I asked her. I was just playing for time.

“We could ask the guards where he lives,” said Julie. “They'll know.”

She was shivering and whimpering, and I put my arm around her.

“Don't be silly, Julie,” I said. “Remember that guard this morning? They're looking for us. It'd be a bit of a giveaway if we waltzed into the station and asked them where Da lives.”

She smiled. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “But why are they looking for us? We're not
crinimals
.”

“You're not allowed to run away from home, you know,” I said.

“Is it against the law?”

“Not exactly.”

“Is it a sin?”

“No, not that either, but they can't let kids run around the streets with no one to look after them. There are people whose job it is to make sure they—we—are safe.”

“Oh, well then, that's good. Let's find them and tell them we need to be safe.”

“Only, there's still the problem of your face,” I said gently. “Your bruise, I mean.”

“It's dark,” she said. “They won't notice.”

“Sure thing,” I said, but I didn't offer to go looking for the social services. “Only, they're probably not at work now, those people. They'll be at home, cooking rashers for their children and watching the telly.”

“Rashers!” she whined. “So what are we going to
do
?”

Reluctantly, I put my hand in my inside pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

“As it happens, I have Da's address,” I said. “I found it in Gramma's desk.”

I moved under a streetlamp to read the address. It was in a place called Knocknacarra. I knew vaguely where that was because I'd seen a sign for it, out Salthill way.

“Let's go,” I said, and I took Julie's wet little hand in mine and off we went in the direction of Salthill.

We trudged along for ages in the icy rain, and I checked the address a few more times. The piece of paper was wet and the writing was smudgy, but I could still read it, and every time I looked it said the same thing. I don't know why I kept rechecking it.

We entered the housing development, and we wandered around parks and lanes and avenues and gardens, and in the end we found the crescent we were looking for. It was easy to find the right house because there was a blue light flashing in the driveway, whirling round and round on top of a Garda car.

You took your time,
I said to them in my own mind.
Three days to track us down.

“See that house, Julie?” I said, bending down to her level.

She nodded.

“That's where Da lives. The guards are there, but that doesn't matter now, because we're not running away anymore, see?”

She raised both eyebrows, but she didn't argue.

“Now, listen, I can't go in with you. I don't think Da wants to see me, right? But you are cold and wet and hungry, and you need to go in there and Da will look after you, because you are his little girl. Right?”

She was listening, but she gave no indication.

“So, I want you to go up that drive now and knock on the door, and ask Da to mind you. I can't go in with you, Julie, but I'll be all right, and I'll send you a postcard in a few days. Okay?”

Julie's little two-tone face was streaming with rainwater. Or tears. She looked up at me, and she whispered, “No, Jono. No. You have to come too.”

“I can't, Julie,” I said. “It's complicated. Don't do as I do. Do as I say. Right?”

She gave a little shadow of a laugh. “Gramma,” she said.

“Yeah. She always gave good advice. Off with you now, and don't look back. I promise about the postcard.”

She nodded and took a step towards the door.

She turned then and said, “Wait a minute. I have to give you something.”

She wriggled her rucksack off her back and opened it.

“Here, you hold these,” she said, thrusting handfuls of clothes, worn and clean all mixed up together, into my arms.

At last she came up with what she was looking for. It was a hardback book with an uninteresting red cover.

“What's this?” I asked.

“It's your book,” she said. “'Member when you sent me to get a book and a teddy. Well, I got the teddy, right, 'cos you said, which was good, even though I don't
do
teddies anymore, 'cos that's where I got the name, right? An' I got one of your books instead, 'cos you're a better reader than me. Right?”

In the middle of it all, I had to smile. Either she was taking me off, sending me up, or she had picked up that “Right?” thing from me.

“Right,” I agreed.

The book looked vaguely familiar, but at the same time not the kind of book I would be reading.

I opened it at the title page. “
The Merchant of Venice
,” I read. “By William Shakespeare. This isn't mine,” I said.

“Well, it was on your desk.”

Then I remembered. Mr. O'Connell had given it to me. Said we'd be starting it soon and I might like to take a look over it ahead of the posse. “Steal a march,” was how he put it. He has this weird idea I'm good at English.

“Well, that's great, thanks, Julie,” I said, and I leafed forward in the book to the first page of the play.

“‘In sooth, I know not why I am so sad,'” I read.

Huh! I thought. I could give him a few reasons.

“Is it a good one?” Julie asked anxiously.

I looked at her wet little figure standing there in the rain, her hair streaming and her mouth open on a rosy space with a gappy fringe of white teeth.

“The best book in the world,” I said.

“You're only saying that,” she said with a squirm, but I could see she was delighted.

“No, it is, really it is,” I said, and I kissed the top of her head. Wet lemons.

Then she heaved the sodden rucksack onto her back again, and she took a step towards the house.

“Don't look back,” I whispered. “Just keep going. And remember, you don't know where I am. Right?”

She stopped in her tracks.

“Go on,” I urged her, and she did.

I waited no more than a couple of seconds, just long enough to see the door opening and Julie disappearing into the square of light.

Then I turned and ran and ran and ran into the rain, which was driving down now like chips of ice. I had no idea what kind of reception she got. They'd have to take her in, I thought. They'd
have
to. She's only eight. And the
guards
are there.

PART II

9

“So that's your story, and you're sticking to it?”

Paudge Rooney stared into Jonathan Kinahan's eyes.

“No,” said the boy.

Rooney sighed and licked his pencil.

“Hmmm, here we go again,” he said, pulling his notebook towards him. “So what happened?”

“I already told you,” said Jonathan.

“But you just said you wanted to change your story.”

“I never.”

“
So that's your story, and you're sticking to it.
That's what I said, and you said no.”

“Yes.”

“Yes you said no, or yes you are sticking to it?”