—Perfect, he said.
He was looking up; I felt his neck driving his head upwards. I copied him. I had to tell myself to lift my head; there was nothing for me to look up at, nothing to help my eyes climb. I looked up, and saw nothing.
—They’ll never find the opening, he said.—They won’t even be looking. They’ll be trying to climb the wall. Slipping on their own lard.
I could hear the water.
—Welcome to the Swan River, lads, he said.
Victor was starting to cry, a wet blubber like an engine starting.
—Shush shush, said my father.—You’re grand.
There was still nothing except the noise that was running water. I was surprised at how big my voice was. I enjoyed it.
—Is it deep? I said.
—Are your feet wet?
—No.
—That answers your question.
He stepped forward - I thought it was forward. He went on the wooden leg first because it was the second flat step that thumped the water.
—Mind you, he said.—Mine are wet enough. Let’s get going.
We moved through the freezing, dripping darkness. He felt us shivering, and stopped. He opened his coat, then tucked us inside it; I liked the smell of animals and blood that crept from the fabric that now cuddled me - I didn’t know that I was inhaling years of violence and murder. Then he started moving again. He hummed bits of songs.
We’ll go home be the water.
And he chatted to us all the way.
—That’s the great thing about having one of your legs made of wood, he said.—I’m only freezing half the time.
He splashed on.
—Where are we? I asked.
—Under Dublin, he said.
He took us out of Ballsbridge, along Pembroke Road, under Northumberland Road, under Shelbourne Road and Havelock Square. But he was carrying us through unbroken blackness. He crouched, and slowed down, straightened, rested. By his movements and stops, I could tell how close the walls were to my face, how low the ceiling. I felt wet, slick stone against my legs. I heard the river just below me, fast and slow. I heard other faint noises that could have been anything - claws on stone, wet fur parting the water, dry wings being shaken over my head. I could smell the water, as hard and cold on my nose as a clout from a dead man. And, when the roof was near my head and the walls were almost meeting, when it felt as if my father was burrowing into the earth, I was hit by the whiff of the rubbish that had come from the west with the river, the shit and rot from Kimmage and Terenure, Rathmines and Ranelagh.
—I’ll tell yis something for nothing, boys, said my father. —Wherever you find water you’ll find people queueing up to piss in it. If I could swap me leg for a wooden nose I’d be a very happy man.
Water dripping and climbing, the splash of his real foot, our coughs and snorts, his heart when I buried my head in his chest. No sounds from above, no carts, shouts or seagulls. No roaring rozzers. Dublin had disappeared, and so had everything else. There was just us and the water. Nothing else. Me and my father and Victor.
And he talked all the way. As he plodded and crept, he filled the black emptiness with words. He led us across Dublin, told us all that we couldn’t see.
—That’s Beggars Bush above us now, boys. There isn’t much to see up there, so we’re as well off where we are.
He invented the world above us.
—The house on top of us belongs to a doctor that can make babies disappear.
—How?
—Money, he said.—He can do it with money. It’s a sad house, boys. Full of ghosts and tears. And his wife’s in the madhouse.
—Why?
—Because she’s mad, he said.—She ate her dinner without blessing herself and a big bit of spud got caught in her gullet. She coughed and coughed for days and weeks till her common sense dropped onto the plate in front of her. She has a beard and a tail that swishes every time she coughs. And that’s so often, by the way, that the rough hairs of the tail have scrubbed the arse clean off her.
The three of us laughed and we became dozens, hundreds of laughing boys and men as the ground over us trapped our noise and multiplied it.
—And here now—
He stopped.
—We’re right under the house of a man who made his money by making the pips for oranges. Listen.
We did.
—What can yis hear?
—Nothing.
—Exactly. And do you know why?
—No, I said.—Why?
—He’s dead.
—How did he die?
—He just got fed up and stopped, said my father.—That happens sometimes. We’re nearly there now. We’ll have to go back up now or we’ll be washed into the Dodder and that’s not a river you can just walk through like this one.
We saw the striped light above us.
—Here we are, said my da.—Bath Avenue. Hang on tight, boys.
He stopped holding me and began to climb what I could see was a wall of slick blocks. Victor and me could see each other, side by side inside his coat. Victor began to laugh.
—Hang on, said my father.—Not yet. Quiet a sec till we see if the coast is clear.
The side of his face was pushed into the rusting slats of the shore. He pushed the shore up till he could straighten his head and see the world. He looked left and right.
—Right, he said.—You first, mister.
And he shoved me up onto the street. I rolled and then Victor was beside me, the two of us lying in the gutter. I turned to watch my father climbing out. But he wasn’t there. And I knew immediately that he wouldn’t be. And I knew, as the terror and rage raced out from my stomach, before I had words to give to them, I knew that I would never see him again.
I knew it even as I heard him talk to us and his voice came out of the ground.
—Bye bye now, boys. Be good for your mammy.
His words burst and disappeared in front of me as I crawled over and peered through the slats and tried to see him. But there was nothing. The memory of his voice was still down there; it drifted just under my face, and then I could hear splashing as he marched away from us.
I dropped my head to the street. I lifted it, and dropped it again.
I wished now that he’d never seen me. Only an hour, maybe two hours before. The royal procession, my perch on the lamppost - I tried to knock them all out of my head. His hands as he lifted me, the crazy escape, his laugh, his hands as he lifted me, his hands as he lifted me - I dropped my head onto the cobbles again, and again and again. I made darkness to match what we’d had down below but nothing came back with it. I was absolutely alone.
But then Victor was crying, pining for something he’d never had. I could hear him now but I didn’t want to. I tried and tried to forget the last hours and minutes. I moved and hit the shore with my forehead and tried to kill my father’s face and his hands and voice. I hit and hit until I could see nothing and all I could hear was Victor bawling and my blood roaring to escape and I knew that it was dropping through the shore, although I couldn’t see it, falling onto the stones and into the Swan River below and on to the Dodder and the bay and the sea. I could feel it hit the water. I could feel it sink and join.
And then I was dead for a while. There was nothing at all. I was dead and gone nowhere. Until something dragged me by the collar, pulled me so that I had to breathe, lifted my head and dropped it, and there was pain again. And did it again. It was Victor. I could hear him before I saw him.
—ENY, he cried.—ENY.
And I loved him so much. I was able to stand up through the pain and blindness. I shook my head - lights and flakes flew into my skull. I roared. I shook my head again against the pain. I let the blood fly away. But I could see again. I took off my ruined shirt and pushed it into my forehead, pushed until I could feel the blood retreating.
Victor was beside me.
—Come on, I said.—Let’s go.
—SO-DOR, he said.
He wanted to get up on my shoulders.
—ENY, SO-DOR.
—Fuck off, I said.
We went home. Home to the stinking, smoke-choked hollow and the wet basement and our share of our poor mother’s lap. I led the way, staring through the dried blood and the agony and the heartache that made a little death of every step away from the rusty shore and the river under it. And Victor held on to my trousers.
My father was a gobshite.
He went back to Dolly Oblong’s and slept soundly for a few hours, with his leg at the ready beside him. He woke up, and stretched, then put his ear to the ground and listened to the singing of the floorboards. The house was already busy. There were beds rocking, drifting away from the walls. He strapped on his leg and stood up. Duty called.
He walked down the hall. He listened to the piano and to the noise right over his head, the strangled groan of a man emptying and the bored encouragement from one of the girls. One of the girls from the country. Mary from the dairy, the other girls called her.
—Good man yourself; one more for the pot.
He stopped and picked a dead cigarette from the mat inside the door. Then he opened the door. In time to stop a huge crowd from charging in. A crowd made entirely of rozzers. And the rozzers went mad when they saw Henry. Before he’d a chance to retreat, before he had time to think about it, they were around him and on him, clubbing him into the granite of the steps. Their anger was wordless. Only when he began to sink below the chests and guts of the blue uniforms did Henry remember the morning’s fun.
—Now, lads, he said.
But a baton hit him straight on the face and he knew two things: words were useless and he wanted to live. He screamed and shoved his shoulders and massive head into the bodies and pulled away from those who had gone behind him. His face was nearly on the ground but he kept shoving. He ignored the boots, fists and truncheons. He saw steps right below his eyes, his chest was on the ground. He broke away from hands and slid down the steps, under rozzers, and he was on the street. He had the leg off now. Wood hit bone, and he had room. He could see individual uniforms. He had a piece of railing to hold him up. And he held back the rozzers with the promise of his leg. He made it whistle through the air in front of him.
—Come on. Come on!
But they were surrounding him again. He saw a quick shape, and a rock hit the side of his head. He had to get away, didn’t let himself realise that he could never come back, could never serve Dolly Oblong again. Escape was all he knew. He looked at the faces on the rozzers as they slowly closed in on him, testing his reach, testing themselves. They were going to kill him. Another rock slapped him and bounced down into the basement well behind him. One last vicious swing - he lit the air - and, as bodies fell back, he skipped and had his leg back on. And he charged.
He was through. Nearly there. Batons hit his head and back but they were nothing. There was fresh air in front of him. He elbowed and shouldered through the last ranks, tearing with his nails, gouging. His shoulders worked and fell. He was through. Just the weight of the ones behind, holding on to him; he lifted and dropped his broken shoulders and fell out of his coat. His palms met the street and lifted him back up. He was weightless without the coat, and gone. Nothing could stop him. He ran out into the dark and the ones who ran after him soon gave up. His hurried tap taps echoed off the walls and back out from the alleys and sent them in every direction. He was gone.
They had the coat. Four of them held it. Held it up as if Henry was still in it, or at least a dangerous part of him. Some more of the rozzers looked into it. They held their breath as they peered down the sleeves, tapped the collar with a baton. A rozzer who held one of the shoulders felt the dirt and ooze and let go. The coat dropped like a solid thing and another rozzer kicked it.
—God, it stinks.
—Like its owner.
They all wanted to kick the coat. One of them lit a match and bent down to light it. Another one kicked it away, and something inside it clinked.
—Hold your horses.
A rozzer with gloves picked up the coat and shook it. He found the clink and took Henry’s knife from a pocket. He held it up. He passed the knife to another rozzer and gave the coat another shake. Nothing. His glove went into another pocket and came out empty. He laid the coat down on the street and looked for more pockets. He saw one, and put his hand in. It came out empty. He took off the glove and sent his hand back in. It came out holding a piece of paper.
They followed him over to the streetlamp. They crowded around him.
He unfolded the paper. Names.
—Brennan.
—Is that all?
—Desmond, Cecil.
—Jesus.
The love letter from Dolly Oblong. They queued up and read it. They knew the names. They knew the story. The empty house. The blood. Warm kettle and crumbs. The chairs and blood-soaked ropes on the floor. They looked into the darkness my father had gone into. They huddled and named other names. And other empty houses. People who had disappeared. One of them thought of another name, a name from way back.
—Constable Costello.
I never saw my father again.
Five
T
ell me again, he’d say. We huddled in any corner, under any box or bin that we could claim and I made us warm by telling him about the times before the bad times. I told him about Missis Drake, the visiting women, about our father’s hands and how he could make a cradle of them.
—Was I alive? he asked me once.
I thought, and decided.
—Yeah, I said.—You were just a baby.
I shared everything with Victor, even the stories that were only mine. He went into the crib beside me. There was never me; it was always us. We slept where we fell and ate whatever we could find and rob. We survived.
The streets were ours. No one could touch us. We knew every sound and warning, every escape route. We grabbed what we needed and ran. No looking back, no need to look left or right, we knew and expected everything. And we could escape without moving. Our dirt merged with the streets. We were made of Dublin muck.