The Sailor in the Wardrobe (25 page)

‘What did you say?’ Tyrone shouts.

The mackerel come back to life in the box and slap around furiously for a moment. Before I know it, the two men move up to each other, cursing and growling, face to face. Then they begin to go at each other with fists. Suddenly there are no more words and it’s just straight violence now. It’s a real fight. Two old men trying to kill each other on the pier and nobody around to stop it.

‘Go on you fuckin’ buffalo,’ Tyrone shouts.

There’s blood on his mouth. He must have got a punch, because his face has lit up with a red colour that almost looks black under the harbour lights. Now I know why blood is red, because it’s the most alarming colour you can imagine, the colour that makes your heart race. Tyrone is trying to get back at Dan, trying to connect a decent punch, but they have locked on to each other in a wrestling match, huffing with the exertion. It’s a breathing war as they shift around the pier, each trying to drag the other down.

I want to leave, but I’m paralysed by what I see. I can see Dan’s white cap lying on the ground, so I pick it up. I place it on the trellis outside the shed, afraid of going any closer. It seems like a nightmare that has been coming for a long time, but I can’t wake up or walk away. Dan Turley and Tyrone gripping at each other, pushing back and forth, just breathing and groaning as if they will never let go. I can see spittle on Dan’s mouth, foam around his lips. I can see the whiteness of his head and the mark left behind by the rim of his cap.

Against the remaining light in the sky, I see them embracing each other in a vicious dance, as if they are suddenly doing a waltz, moving from one side of the pier to the other, all the way towards the edge until they nearly go over the side into the harbour, then all the way
back towards the shed, swinging back so fast that it looks like Tyrone is forcing Dan to sit down on the trellis. They seem to be completely unaware of where they are. Nobody sees any of this happening and the nursing home seems a million miles away, with everyone fast asleep. Every now and again a car lights up the fight for an instant, as they sway back to the edge of the pier and stop at the crane, then all the way back until they crash right into the side of the shed. Twice more, Dan’s broad back slams into the shed before they fall to the ground just inside the door.

I don’t know what to do to stop this. I’m afraid to intervene. And then I wonder if they’re only fighting because I’m watching, if I go away they might stop and come back to their senses. They pick themselves up like small boys off the ground and instantly lock on to each other again, waltzing around towards me so that I have to jump away and pull the bike out of their path at the last minute. My mouth is so dry that I can’t even say a word. Then I get on my bike and start cycling away to get help.

And then the fight comes to an end. I stop to look back and maybe I was right, that I’m only keeping the fight alive by being present. They let go of each other and I watch them standing there, leaning forward a little, with their hands on their hips, just breathing heavily.

‘Just you fucking wait,’ I hear Tyrone say, before he picks up the fish box and disappears away up the pier.

Dan finds his cap and brushes it off before putting it back on his head. He stands for a moment, staring after Tyrone with black marble eyes, unable to say a word because he’s breathing so heavily. His mouth is open and there is spittle hanging from his chin as if he’s got no energy left to wipe it off. I wait to see what he’s going to
do, if he’s going to get the hatchet, but he doesn’t. He locks the door of the shed, fumbling with the keys for a long while, unable to do it any more, and I want to run back and help him. He doesn’t see me and I know he doesn’t want me to talk about this to anyone. Then I finally see him wiping the spittle off his chin with the sleeve of his jacket and I cycle away.

By the time I get home, it’s already too late and I find the door of the house locked and bolted from inside. It could only be little more than five minutes past eleven, but the curfew has fallen and my father has closed the fortress against me. I rest my bike against the side of the wall and look up at the windows, but all the curtains are drawn. The lights are out, as if they’re all in a rush to prove that they are asleep. I can’t ring the bell, so I wait outside for a while until my mother realizes that I’m back and sneaks down the stairs to open the door very quietly. My father doesn’t hear her locking the door again, though there is a loud click as the lock jumps back into place.

We stand in the hallway for a moment. My mother likes this secrecy, as if I’m doing all the things she wishes she had done herself. She holds my hand and looks into my eyes for a moment.

‘Is there something wrong?’ she asks.

Maybe she can sense what I’ve witnessed. But I tell her nothing and we creep up the stairs like two thieves. I know the creaks on the landing and how to avoid them. We wave at each other in silence and go to bed.

I lie awake for a while thinking of what I have seen. I imagine what’s going to happen next at the harbour and how it will end. I watch the light from the street throwing the shadows onto the wall of my bedroom. I see the fight starting again and again, like an endless film, Dan
picking up his cap and wiping the spittle from his chin, until I’m exhausted and fall asleep, But even in my sleep I hear more shouting, right in close to me. This time I am no longer just a bystander. I can see the rage in Dan Turley’s eyes. I can see his bottom lip pushed forward and hear him breathing. I can see blood on his neck, on his hands. I can see drops of blood on the pier, leading away to where Tyrone has gone to find an oar or something better to fight with. A trail of blood that you sometimes see along the pier after somebody has carried up a box of freshly caught mackerel. A trail of blood that you sometimes see on the street and wonder if it was a fight or an injured dog. I see Tyrone moving quickly around the pier with a broken oar in his hands.

‘Come on yah fuckin’ buffaloes,’ he’s shouting.

And this time he’s coming for me. Tyrone swinging his oar around, aiming straight at me, pinning me back against the shed. I want to wake up, but I can’t get out of this nightmare any more and I feel the oar hitting the side of my face. I can hear the sound of the wood echoing inside my head and when I wake up at last, I find that my back is right up against the wall of the bedroom. The light is on in the room and I can hardly see anything, except my father, standing over me, punching his fist down.

‘You let him in,’ I hear him shouting. ‘That’s treachery.’

I am blinded by the light overhead. I can see him in his pyjamas, without his glasses on, my mother trying to pull him back by the elbow, trying to stop him hitting me again. I can hear him gasping with the effort. I have no defence and I feel the punches coming one after the other and my head knocking back against the wall behind me. I feel myself sinking down under the blows, as if the oar
is striking me again and again and my back is sliding down the side of the shed. Tyrone standing over me with a look of insanity in his eyes and Dan Turley holding him back to stop him from finishing me off.

It is all the punishment in history being passed on blow by blow, all the revenge and all the resentment going back for centuries, here in my bedroom. Nobody can stop it. My father is breathing so hard he can’t speak. It’s the breathing war. He rolls up his sleeves to do it better. I can see he has already taken his watch off. I can smell his sweat. As my eyes finally get accustomed to the light, I can also see that the whole house is up and the room is full of people, the entire family around me, with their hands together as if they are all praying for this to end.

‘Peace,’ my brother Franz suddenly calls out.

Then everything stops. There is silence in the house, as if somebody from outside has spoken and our family has begun to see itself for the first time. I see them crowding around my father, trying to help him out of the room, as if something terrible has happened to him. They ignore me and keep looking after him. They are afraid for him and worried because he’s so angry and upset by what he has done. They know he will feel terrible about it and want him to sit on the stairs, to calm down and take in a deep breath.

‘I want him out,’ he keeps saying. He sits on the stairs for a moment, with everyone around him, as if he was the person who was attacked. I’m left sitting up in bed feeling my face and then I realize that my eyes are wet and I can’t stop myself crying. I feel so guilty. I feel so hurt, so angry that I want to kill him. I feel like running away and never coming back.

My father gets up suddenly and goes down the stairs
to the front room. He says he’s going to call the Gardai because there is an intruder in the house. If only my father could see how ridiculous this has become, calling the police to evict his own son. He is determined to make the call, right in the middle of the night, while my mother begs him to leave it till the morning. She puts her finger on the button to cut off the dialling tone a number of times, but then he fights her off.

‘Yes, an intruder,’ I can hear him saying out loud.

I’m afraid I will soon be homeless. I get worried about having to live for the rest of my life as an outsider. But then I hear the phone hanging up again.

‘Think about it,’ I can hear my mother pleading with him. ‘You don’t want him to be like Stefan, disappearing and never coming back.’

So then I leave the house. Before anyone can stop me, I call my father’s bluff. While they are all still in the front room trying to stop him from calling the Gardai to our house, they hear the front door slamming. My mother runs out and I hear her calling me back, but I keep running down the road with tears in my eyes, saying to myself that I will never come back again because the whole house is like a wardrobe and if I don’t escape now, I never will.

I walk the streets on my own. I spend some time back at the harbour, but then I have to keep moving, like the mackerel, because now I’m homeless. I walk all the way up the hill where I can look down over the whole city, like an orange bowl in the distance. I sit on one of the benches thinking how I want to go back and kill my father. I think of him with spittle on his chin, staring at me, out of breath. But then I can’t live with the hate in my head any more. I can’t hold on to my anger and I can’t help
wanting to forgive him again. I want to be friends with him and feel sorry for him. It’s my fault that he lost his temper, and I’m glad I didn’t retaliate. I’m glad I didn’t do something like Stefan that I could not repair.

I look across the flat orange bay and think about my future, how I will soon escape and be free. It makes me want to think of all the good things my father has done instead. I think of how he made me a pair of stilts for my birthday one year. He produced them at breakfast and I was amazed that he could have made them in secret without me knowing anything. I’m not a child any more and I watch what’s going on in the house all the time. But still he made them without anyone knowing, except for my mother. It was like a conspiracy of kindness. They were painted in blue, with the foot steps painted in red. I keep thinking about my father constantly trying to do his best, tricking us with great surprises.

On the morning of my birthday, before he went to work, he helped me to get up on the stilts in the hall. I had to lean with my back against the wall to get myself up onto them, and then I was suddenly looking down at my father smiling below me, telling me to give it a go, even though I was nervous of falling off. He was clearing the way so that I could walk through the hall, taller than anyone else in the house.

Next day, the war in our house came to an end. I apologized to my father, because I hated to see his hurt mind and my own hurt mind. I didn’t ever want to see him breathing hard again. He was outside with the bees buzzing around him and when he came in and took the cage off his head, I told him it was my fault and I would be on his side from now on. I was going to keep his rules. It was peace at any price now. My mother negotiated
another amnesty and the house returned to normal. We were all friends again and I had a pact with my mother, to keep my father happy, to escape in more creative ways that would not hurt him.

Some days after that, Stefan returned without warning. Out of the blue, he appeared as if he had never even been away and no time had gone by. I came back from the harbour and heard his voice in the house, like the voice of a ghost who had returned from the dead. I walked into the breakfast room and Stefan was sitting there, with my mother and my brothers and sisters all looking at him as if they couldn’t trust their eyes. The brother we lost, the un-dead brother returned home.

At first there was more trouble because he had made everybody worry so much and my mother kept asking him how he could have been so thoughtless not to have sent at least some word home that he was alright. Stefan was annoyed when he heard that his name had been read out on the news and that he was classified as a missing person. Of course he went missing, but there was no need to go to the police, because he was only touring around for the summer and he didn’t want to think about home. When my father got back from work, I could see that he was furious and it looked like he preferred Stefan to be still missing.

‘How dare you come back like this?’ my father said. He was speaking to Stefan the way he speaks to me. It looked as if my father was going to hit him like he attacked me in the middle of the night.

‘We thought you were dead,’ my mother said. ‘Stefan, your mother was here, crying.’

Stefan went silent. It looked like he, too, was sorry he came back and felt like getting up and leaving again,
maybe getting lost for ever this time. My father was waiting for him to apologize for causing so much trouble, as if that was all people ever had to do for the rest of eternity, to keep on apologizing to each other.

‘I was trying to find myself,’ Stefan said.

Maria could not stop herself from giggling, a spontaneous burst that came out through her nose, but my father said there was nothing to laugh about. He stared at Stefan and said it was a fresh answer. It was an insult to come back to our house and speak in such an impertinent way. The funny thing was that I think Stefan actually meant what he was saying, that he really was trying to find himself, because he had lost contact with the real world.