The Story of Before (7 page)

Dad was at the door for ages. We could hear a husky voice, going high then low, like a singer practising their scales, and Dad mumbling ‘Mmms’ and ‘Uh-huhs’ in harmony. I
tried to place the voice. It wasn’t any of the usual suspects, and it definitely wasn’t Bridie – she was much more shrill, and she never called at dinnertime, anyway. She
would’ve considered it rude.

‘God only knows what useless article he’ll come away with this time,’ Mam said. ‘Should’ve answered it myself.’ She sighed and told us to eat up.

I began piling up my liver strips to see how tall a structure I could make before they toppled over. Anything was better than actually eating it. But I soon got distracted. I could feel the man
watching. Though he was trapped beneath the layer of vinyl wallpaper, I still had a feeling he could see me. I glanced up at the wall and was sure I spotted a sort of eye shape in the middle of an
onion like he’d poked a hole through and was watching me picking at my dinner. I imagined he might tear his way out of his paper prison one night while we were in our beds. He’d creep
upstairs and kick at Mam and Dad’s door, the buckles on his boots glinting in the moonlight. I could see myself peeping out at him, my mouth open wide in a silent scream and . . .

‘Ruth!’ I dropped my fork and it clattered loudly on my plate. Mam was frowning at me. ‘Stop playing with your liver,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake, just eat it
up!’

Sandra was about to whisper something to Mel when we heard Dad calling from the front door.

‘Ruth! Come here for a minute.’

The others widened their eyes. Dad’s voice sounded different, softer, almost persuasive. Not like Dad at all. I jumped down from the table, certain it was the encyclopedia man at the door.
He’d called the previous week and I’d nearly succeeded in pestering Dad into signing up for
The How and Why Library of Childcraft Encyclopedias
– all fifteen volumes.
He’d said he’d be back, and now, I thought, here he was, and Dad was finally coming round to the idea. He just needed my final seal of approval.

When I got to the door, Dad was leaning back against the doorframe, his feet crossed over one another and his hands in his trouser pockets. I immediately suspected I’d been wrong; his pose
was too relaxed, not at all suggestive of someone about to sign up to a couple of years of weekly instalments.

‘There you are, Roo,’ he said. He’d never called me Roo in front of anyone before, apart from Mam or the others, and even then, only on really special occasions, like my
birthday, or the day I won first prize in school for my project on the life cycle of the butterfly.

‘This is Mrs Lawless,’ he said, smiling, ‘Shayne’s mammy. She wants to ask you something.’

I chewed at the inside of my mouth. It hurt a bit, but at least it tasted better than the liver. I looked at the woman standing at the door. She had her arms folded across her chest, one foot on
the drive, and the other planted firmly on our porch step. She was dressed in sky-blue denim, her jeans tucked into knee-high, tan zipped boots, and the sleeves of her Wrangler jacket rolled up to
her elbows. Her hair was black with reddish roots and permed into loose, frizzy spirals that curled against her cheeks and down around her neck. A large orange and purple feather hung from one ear,
twirling and bobbing with her slightest movement so that it looked like she had a small exotic bird resting on her shoulder.

‘Hiya,’ she said, with a smile that was all mouth and no eyes. ‘Nothin’ to worry about, love, but d’ye know where my Shayne’s snake might be?’ She had a
cigarette voice – throaty and smoky and sort of rough – and from her accent I knew she was from somewhere down the country. All her sentences ended on a high note, making everything she
said sound like a question. ‘See, ’twas a present from his uncle Joe. Brought it back from Orlando, so he did. It’s kinda special to Shayne, y’know.’ Her eyes were
icy-blue, outlined with thick black lines. She blinked a lot when she looked at me, waiting for an answer.

‘Well, do you have his snake or not?’ Dad asked me. ‘Don’t keep Liz waiting all day.’ He turned to her. ‘Kids!’ he said with a laugh, as if I
wasn’t there.

‘Sure, who’d have them?’ she said, stepping fully up onto the porch and leaning down. I could see her white, blobby bosoms peeping out from the V of her stretchy black top, and
the silver-tipped horn on a leather string that nestled between them. ‘I’m not going to eat ye,’ she said with a laugh, showing me her teeth. I could tell she was trying very hard
to be nice. Not much about her was pretty, but I could see how some people might think she was attractive. And the way she hid nothing made you think she was happy with who she was and
couldn’t care less if you liked her or not.

In my head, I weighed up my options. I’d seen the way Mel tried hard to keep lies going to avoid getting into trouble, and how his elaborate weavings always unravelled. But I considered
myself smarter than my big brother.

Liz began tapping her toe on our brown porch tiles. From next door came a scraping sound as Bridie came out and began sweeping her already spotless driveway. I could see her bum wiggling from
side to side out of the corner of my eye and knew she was earwigging. As far as she was concerned, I’d tossed the snake out with the heap of dead roses.

‘I threw it away,’ I said.

Liz Lawless took a long sniff of air in through her nose and shot Dad a piercing look.

‘Go and finish your dinner,’ he blurted, shuffling his feet. I happily skipped back to the table.

Mam wanted to know what was going on. When I told her, she shook her head. I readied myself for a good giving out to, but instead she said what a stupid woman Liz Lawless was to be coming round
here looking for trouble when she should be spending her time putting manners on her son.

‘I’ve heard more than enough about those two already,’ she said. ‘All kinds of gallivanting going on there, by all accounts. That child seems to have more uncles than any
of us have had hot dinners.’ She pointed a finger at me. ‘And speaking of hot dinners, eat up. That’s the best of liver.’

I complained it was cold now, and that it wasn’t my fault I’d had to leave the table to talk to Liz Lawless. Mam tut-tutted and shook her head. She knew she could make me sit in
front of it all night and I still wouldn’t eat it. ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said. ‘Just leave it.’ At least I had Liz Lawless to thank for something. ‘But no
rice pudding,’ she added.

Dad spent another few minutes at the door before he came back into the kitchen. He plonked himself back down in his chair with a puff and ate what was left of his dinner. ‘Glad I sorted
that out,’ he said, after a few minutes of chewing. He looked over at me. ‘And what have you got to say for yourself?’

‘Bridie was scared,’ I said. ‘She thought it was real. I had to get rid of it.’

‘You should’ve handed it back. You’d have to feel sorry for him. No daddy in the house to keep him in order. That snake must’ve meant a lot to him.’ Mam raised her
eyes to heaven. ‘Anyhow,’ Dad continued, ‘I said I’d touch up the mammy’s kitchen, you know, give it a lick of paint. Just to make up for it. Least we can do for
her.’

I expected Mam would say something, but she just sat looking at Dad as he hacked at his liver. Mel and Sandra wolfed down their dessert and ran outside. As soon as they were out of the room, Mam
set a bowl of the rice pudding in front of me, as I knew she would, and I ate it in silence.

When I looked over at Dad, I noticed that his neck was very red. All the way from his chin to the curly black hair that poked out of his shirt.

The next Sunday, we went for a picnic to the Phoenix Park. After we’d eaten all the corned beef sandwiches and jam sponge, Mel and Sandra ran off to try and catch one of
the deer. Mel said it’d be easy – all you had to do was grab hold of their antlers. I stretched myself out on the tartan rug beside Kev, closing my eyes and pretending to fall
asleep.

‘How long do you think that job’s going to take?’ I heard Mam say after a few minutes had gone by.

‘What job’s that?’ Dad asked after a pause. I imagined his eyebrows turning into big hairy question marks, his whole face distorted from pretend puzzlement. Even
I
knew
what Mam was talking about.

‘For that woman,’ she said. ‘The Lawless woman.’

‘Oh! That one. God, love . . . I don’t know.’ He drew breath in between his teeth, then blew it out again with a s
woosh
. ‘Couple of Saturdays should do it,
I’d say.’

‘Remember we’ve plenty of half tins in the shed,’ she said.

I opened one eye ever so slightly. From behind the screen of my eyelashes, I saw Dad press a finger into the cake crumbs. He rolled them about then flicked them onto the grass.

‘We do indeed, Rose my love,’ he said. ‘Her kitchen might turn out like a patchwork quilt, but at least we won’t be forking out for fresh paint.’

‘For God’s sake, I’m just trying to save us a few bob, Mick. I mean, you’re not getting paid for it, so it makes sense, doesn’t it?’

‘Whatever you say. Look, I know you’re not happy about it, but we don’t want to fall out with the neighbours and we only after moving in.’

‘Well, I suppose so,’ she said. ‘But don’t be making a habit of it.’

‘Would you look at the two of them,’ Dad said. ‘Dead to the world.’

Mam tucked Kev’s blanket around his little legs.

‘Do you think they’re happy?’ she asked. ‘I mean, do you think we did the right thing, moving?’

I breathed in and out more deeply and squirmed a bit to make my ‘sleep’ more authentic.

‘No doubt about it,’ Dad said, stroking my hair. ‘Best decision we ever made.’

Mam said nothing. I wondered why she’d asked if moving had been the right thing. Maybe she wasn’t sure any more. It was obvious she didn’t like the idea of Dad painting the
Lawlesses’ kitchen for free. I felt a bit guilty; it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t lied about the snake. But then again, I’d seen the way Dad had acted with Liz at the
door, and how he was all red when he came back to the table. Maybe he’d have offered to paint her kitchen even if there’d been no mention of the snake at all.

August came around, and with it the horrible realization that summer wasn’t going to last forever. We’d almost forgotten that we’d have to go back to school.
And not the one we’d been used to; a new one – Kilgessin National. Mam had enrolled us as soon as the offer on our house had been accepted but, at the time, September seemed so far away
we were quite sure it would never arrive.

I was in fifth class, and found myself sharing it with the twins, Tina and Linda, and Aidan Farrell. Like most of his brothers and sisters, Aidan had started school much too early; he was nearly
a whole year younger than me. Geraldine Farrell’s insistence on rushing her offspring out from under her feet meant that in almost every room of Kilgessin National, a Farrell was responsible
for slowing progress. Along with Tracey and Shayne, Mel and Sandra were in sixth class. They’d started school together when they were little – Mam thought it’d be easier that
way.

One Saturday, a few weeks after school started, Dad asked Mel to help him carry the paint around to the Lawlesses’ house after breakfast so he could get started on the job. Sandra had
already left to go to her first Irish dancing lesson in the church hall. She’d spent ages deciding what to wear until Mam went to the bedroom and made her mind up for her. She sat sulking on
the stairs, picking at the raised seam of the stretchy, maroon slacks she hated while she waited for Tracey and the twins to call for her as arranged. Just before half past nine the doorbell rang
and I watched the four of them link arms and skip down the driveway. Mam had half-heartedly tried to get me to join them. She knew right well she’d never persuade me to go, but I suppose she
thought it was her duty to at least attempt to encourage me.

As soon as Sandra left, I went upstairs to the bedroom and took my jewellery box down from the top of the wardrobe. Before I opened it, I examined the almost invisible Sellotape seal I’d
stuck across the opening; as far as I could make out, it was still intact. I was sick of Sandra going through my stuff and then denying it. At least this way, there was proof if she’d been at
it. I lifted the loose bottom and, very carefully, took Shayne’s snake and placed it in the patch pocket of my skirt. I left the tongue sitting on its little bed of cotton wool, thinking it
looked like a teeny tiny version of the snake itself. I closed the box, applied a fresh piece of Sellotape, and put it back in the wardrobe.

I touched the snake in my pocket. I liked the way it felt: sort of wet-but-dry. I’d decided to go outside, hoping maybe I’d see Shayne on the green. I imagined myself talking to him,
looking him right in the eye, all the while squishing the rubbery length of the snake in my fingers.

Mam was kneeling on the stairs, hoovering. It was one of her Saturday jobs, and one she did even if the steps didn’t look dusty at all. She’d taken the long metal pipe off the hoover
and was, with great concentration, moving the short plastic bit of the tube from side to side over the carpet’s pattern of orange and yellow autumn leaves. ‘Where are you off to?’
she shouted over the roar of the hoover.