The Eye of the Sheep (11 page)

‘Are you sure?’ Robby asked.

‘I’m sure. You go. It’s better that way. Come on, Jimmy, on your feet and let’s get you to bed.’

I got to my feet. I was as loose as a rag.

When half of Robby was out the door he stopped and said, ‘I love you, Mum.’ Then he was gone.

Down she sat again,
boom
. Propped up by her elbows, she let her head fall into her hands. Even if I shouted she wouldn’t have noticed me. She was with her firstborn, carrying him in his
blue blanket, carefully, as if there was no more important thing in the world. I left her there, her tears catching in her fingers.

I went back to the sewing room on my own.

I didn’t see Robby for two days; he was at Justin’s or at practice. Then on the third day Mum said, ‘Your brother is coming home early to see you, Jimmy. I want you to apologise to him, okay? You don’t want him to leave without you apologising.’

When a picture of Robby entered my mental it hurt. Any picture. Just his knee or just his shoe or his mouth. If I saw the picture something in me went in the wrong direction. It was caught and couldn’t find its way out. I couldn’t stop anything. I had no powers. I had no vest and no refinery and no flame. I couldn’t change things. I couldn’t transform them. They were what they were going to be no matter what I did. Something was missing in my chemicals.

Mum put angel sponge cake on a plate and she made Robby a coffee and she said to me, ‘Well, Jimmy?’

‘It’s okay, we’ll be alright, Mum,’ Robby said, smiling at her.

‘Call me if he gets out of hand,’ Mum said to Robby, then she left us.

Robby looked at me.

‘I won’t get out of hand,’ I told him.

‘That’s okay,’ said Robby. He sat on a chair so our eyes were level. He said, ‘Jimmy, I really need you to be okay. For Mum. You have to be okay about this or I can’t go. I won’t go. Tell me the truth. Can you do this, Jimmy?’

I looked into his eyes – his guards were down, we were level, it was my rare opportunity, he wasn’t on the way anywhere or doing anything else. I looked in and I saw the deep and powerful
wishes, forces that hurt him to disobey. They were hurting him now. They would hurt him until he surrendered to them. ‘Yes, Robby,’ I said, looking down at his big hand holding mine. ‘Yes,’ I said.

He hugged me. ‘You’re a good brother, Jimmy,’ he whispered. ‘The best.’

Then Mum came back in. ‘Let’s all eat some cake,’ she said, cutting down into the sponge.

In the nights after Robby said he was leaving I tried to count sheep but the sun was gone from the field. I could hear the sheep, but I couldn’t see them. They called out over the top of each other without tune or sense, as if they were lost.
Bleat bleat bleat,
sheep after sheep after sheep.

I was at school battling the enemy the day Robby left. When I got home I knew he was gone as soon as Mum said, ‘Chocolate crackle, Jimmy?’

‘No thanks, Mum, no thanks.’ I went straight to Robby’s room. Mum had taken the sheets off his bed. I could see the mattress, stained with a dark yellow outline from all the times I’d got in beside him. I sat on the edge of the bed, tracing the outline until I met at the point where I started. There was a pressure in my chest, as if someone was pulling on my inners. I got up and looked in the cupboard. Robby’s boots weren’t there and neither was his blue check coat. I sat down inside the cupboard and made a wall around me with the remaining shoes. Most of the shoes Robby never wore; his feet were too long, but Mum kept them anyway.

Soon Mum came into the room. She bent down to me. ‘Oh, sweetheart, Jimmy. We’re going to miss our Robby, aren’t we?’ She held me to her and I smelled bread and vanilla. Over her shoulder I could see the coats and shirts and pants Robby had left behind, hanging like ghosts.

Dad didn’t say anything about Robby leaving. After the last fucking time he couldn’t get his words out because the apertures were blocked and to unblock them would need an operation that he might not survive, the way Pop Flick didn’t survive. Pop Flick died on the table when his heart wouldn’t start, it didn’t matter how many volts they gave him. The things Dad couldn’t say were so important, and so serious, that the smaller things, like
What a sunny day, hey?
and
How are you, Jimmy, my son?
and
I miss Robby
couldn’t get past. I was the one in the house who said the most; maybe that’s why I repeated.

The day after Robby left I was passing the sitting room when I saw Dad standing at the window. He held the framed photograph of him and Robby on the
Lady Free
. He didn’t notice me at the door. Dad was on board the
Lady Free
with Robby and the fish. There was nobody else; just Dad and his firstborn. He stood and stood with the picture gripped in his hands.

A few days later Dad walked into the kitchen while I was eating baked beans on toast and he said to Mum, ‘I want to take the boy to visit Rod for a few days.’

I stopped eating the toast – bean sauce dripped down the crust.

Mum turned around from the sink, rubbing her wet hands on her apron. There was a gap and then she said, ‘You haven’t seen Rod in ages, love.’

‘About time, then,’ Dad said.

Mum nodded as Dad’s answer moved through her network, the new words illuminating her tubes. You could see them flashing under the surface of her skin, light then dark, light then dark. It was only Paula that managed me; she was the expert. ‘When were you thinking you would go?’ she asked him. Her hands were dry but she kept twisting them in her apron anyway.

‘I’ve got holidays due. I’ll call Rod. Maybe in a couple of weeks.’

Uncle Rodney lived on an island. It had a name that didn’t work, as if it had been dropped, like a plate in pieces. What was it? Broken! Broken Island.

Mum stopped twisting her hands. In between her and my dad was air, floor, a lamp, a cookbook, a telephone, a bottle of orange juice, my toast, the empty bean can, my plate, Mum’s book, me and the table. ‘Alright, love. What a good idea.’

Dad nodded. ‘Great,’ he said, leaving the kitchen. Mum turned slowly back to the dishes, as if she had to be careful of something new in the house and she didn’t know if it was great or dangerous.

We lay on my bed and I asked Mum questions. ‘What will happen on the holiday with Dad? What will happen? What will we do?’

Mum said there was only one way to find out and that was by going. She said, ‘You like your Uncle Rod and he could do with the company since Shirl’s gone. I will miss you but you
will have a good time and then you will come home and you can tell me all about it.’

‘But, Mum, if nobody has done it before, and nobody knows what will happen, then how do I know that I will even come back home? Nobody knows how it ends because it has never happened anywhere before, so how do I know what the ending will be?’

‘That’s enough, Jimmy. You’ll go and you’ll come back and that’s all you need to know.’

‘But, Mum, why are we going?
Why?
’

‘Because your father wants to take you on a holiday,’ she said, turning off the light. She pulled up my top and drew letters on my back.
I L O V E Y O U
. It was true, Dad wanted to take me on a holiday, but why? It hadn’t been just me and Dad for a long time; not since Mum got sick and went into the hospital and Dad and me made the go-cart. Not since then. It was always Mum.

‘Mum? When Dad and me go on the holiday will there –’

‘Shhhh, love, shhhhh.’

It was late. I was lying on my bed looking for things to count when I heard Mum and Dad talking. I got up, crossed the hall and sat outside their door.

‘But why now, Gav?’ asked Mum.

‘Why not now?’

‘You’ve never wanted to before.’

Between each of their answers lay small spaces of thought. Dad didn’t like the questions, but he knew Mum had to ask them. I heard a rope tugging on his plexus.

‘Lost one son, don’t want to lose another.’

‘You haven’t lost Robby, Gav. He’s just finding his feet out there.’

‘I’m not talking about the fishing.’

‘You haven’t lost him, Gav.’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

‘Robby loves you.’

‘Well he’s not here.’

There was a small quiet gap, then Mum said, ‘And Jimmy is.’

‘Jimmy is.’ The rope was pulling at its tightest in my dad. ‘If I don’t do something . . .’

‘But . . .’

‘Paula, I have to do this.’ His voice was firm, but it took all his strength to keep it there.

I got up and I walked back across the hall to the sewing room – it was the first time my dad had fought Paula for me. I got into bed and I felt as though it was too small for me, the son who was still here.

Mum drove us to the airport. Dad wore his striped tie and his suit, and his shoes shone from when he’d polished them that morning.

‘You look handsome, Gav,’ Mum said, with a shy smile.

When we got to the airport I held on to her, not wanting to let go. I had to hide how much I was speeding by biting down. Mum faced me, holding my shoulders in her hands. Dad turned his head as if he didn’t want to see. ‘You’ll be back before you know it, Jimmy,’ she said. But it wasn’t true; when I was back I would know it. There she’d be again.

I couldn’t let go. I was clamped stiff to her warmth. ‘Jimmy,’ she said, looking into my eyes, ‘do it for me, hey? For Mum?’ I could see tears brewing in her pipes. Air hung in stubborn clouds around her face, refusing to go in.

‘Goodbye, Mum,’ I said, stepping back.

‘I’ll call you from Rod’s, love,’ Dad said, kissing Mum on the cheek.

‘You boys take care,’ Mum said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

I turned away. I couldn’t look for her wave or her eyes as she left us. They would be in direct communication with my feet and my feet would run back to her, pulled by her need and by mine.

Aeroplanes lifted into the sky, the long row of windows too small to see a face behind. I closed my eyes, looking for sheep to slow myself down. I thought I saw them peering out from behind rocks, but I couldn’t be sure. I tried to count them, hearing Mum’s quiet numbers just before mine. I repeated the same number when I got too fast.
Seven seven seven
I blinked and the sheep became shadows without the light. I followed my dad’s body-in-a-suit to the ticket counter.

Dad walked through a doorway with no walls, and no door. The doorway beeped and he had to go back and take off his boots. He walked through again just in his socks. His yellow nail poked through a small hole. Mum only cut mine, not his. When I walked through the doorway nothing beeped at all. After I got to the other side Dad smiled and said, ‘Enjoying yourself, son?’

Was I enjoying myself? What were the signs?

•

We walked down a white tube that led to the door of the aeroplane. In we went, one by one. I followed Dad between the rows of seats. There were people ahead of me and people behind. I felt hot and itchy under my clothes. My centre trembled; I had never been inside an aeroplane before. I watched them flying over our house. They joined up to an underground computer the size of a factory and every plane that took off and landed made an electric green line across a glass map. Planes were the fastest living things.

When we got to seats 9A and 9B, Dad checked the tickets and said, ‘This is us.’ He put his bag in the cupboard above our heads and then he buckled me into the seat beside the window. ‘You’ll want the window, won’t you, Jimmy?’ he said.

I didn’t know. A small seed of sickness, somewhere near the root, took hold in me. The air in the aeroplane was manufactured in the toilet, by machines just under the lid. The air came out of the bowl, down the aisle, entered my nostrils and nourished the seed, the same way blood and bone nourished Mum’s roses. Ladies dressed up in orange hats and scarves like Sherry, the secretary at the dentist’s, stood in the aisles and waved their arms in a pattern of up and down and side to side for directions. They said make sure you blow the whistle loud, and don’t deflate until you’re out of the water. Their lipsticks all matched their scarves. When their emergency dance finished they sat down and a picture of a seat belt came up in lights. Buckle up.

When the aeroplane started moving forward I gripped the seat.

‘Be a while yet,’ said Dad. ‘Have to get down the runway first.’

My throat felt dry. The toilet air was cold and bleached. There was no space in it. The aeroplane got very fast and began
to roar. I leaned back and Mum’s scrambled eggs rose up to my throat as the plane left the ground. I gripped the armrests, closed my eyes and swallowed. I didn’t move for a long time, as if my stillness was helping to drive the plane. Dad whispered in my ear. ‘Open your eyes, son, and see how small the world is getting down there.’ I opened my eyes and I saw the sea down below. My face went cold as the seed of sickness blossomed inside me. The toilet air couldn’t reach my particles; there were sections going dry. I kept very still, suspended above the sea in the aeroplane without Mum.

A woman came wearing a hat and a badge that said
Tina
. ‘Would you like to take the young one into the cockpit for a special treat?’ she asked Dad, smiling.

‘How about it, Jim?’ Dad said to me.

I shook my head.

‘Come on, Jimmy. It’s a real treat to go into the cockpit. You can tell them about it at school.’

Cock.
Cockpit. ‘Okay, Dad.’

Dad unsnapped my belt and we got out of our seats. I followed Dad to the very front of the aeroplane. Tina opened a small white door. The captains steered the aeroplane by looking at a panel. Lights flashed orange, on off, on off. Rows of clocks told different times, arrows pointed the way. The sky was spread before us, never-ending space. If you pulled out the root did you see the same thing? Was the skin an optical illusion?

‘Look down there,’ said Dad, pointing.

I looked down and I saw the cracks between mountains, the walls looming black and steep. They were very dark and they went all the way into the earth’s core.

‘Bloody great, isn’t it? Bloody beautiful,’ said Dad.