Carry Me Down (7 page)

My mother is coming down the stairs. ‘Hello?’ she calls.

‘Hello,’ I say.

She comes into the bathroom. ‘What are you doing home?’

I felt sick, I tell her, and Miss Collins has sent me home.

She asks me why the school didn’t call. ‘I would have come and got you.’

When I lie, I feel heavier and when I try to move it is as though my legs are filled with hot water. The lie moves through every part of my body, like sickness.

They rang twice, I say, but there was no answer. I use fewer
words, just in case they get stuck in my throat, besides, my voice is tighter, almost squeaky. She asks me why I’m washing my clothes and I tell her I vomited on them.

‘Again?’ she says. ‘More lying?’

‘I wasn’t lying.’

‘I didn’t say you were. You jumped to that conclusion all by yourself.’

She smiles now and I wonder if I have been caught out.

‘Oh,’ I say.

She holds my hand up and feels my palm. I’m not sweating, if that’s what she’s checking for. Most people sweat when they lie. But I don’t.

‘Smiling stops the gag reflex,’ she says. ‘Did you know that?’

‘Da already told me that.’

‘Well, he’s right. And you’d better get straight into bed if you’re sick.’

I sit on the bed and wait for her to come to see me for a chat, but she doesn’t. I hope she’ll go to the kitchen and make me a toasted ham sandwich or get me some biscuits and a cup of cocoa, but she doesn’t.

I listen to her go up the stairs to her bedroom, and then I hear my father.

They are talking in loud voices. Something falls on the floor, and then they are silent.

I lie under the covers for a while, and think of a funny thing to tell my mother. I wish that she’d come to me.

Please come, please come, please come.

She does not come.

I lie in bed but can’t read or sleep.

I talk to myself for an hour or so. I talk to myself in two voices, as though two people are having a conversation.

I talk about what has happened. I ask myself questions in one voice, and answer them in another, different voice. I talk about what I will do tomorrow.

I would rather die than let my father find out. I would rather die than go back to school.

I go into the bathroom and scrub my legs with a nailbrush and then I hang my trousers on the clotheshorse in the living room in front of the fire, and wish somebody would come and talk to me.

It is half two and nobody has visited me. I stop saying, please come.

In the morning I tell my mother that I’m too sick to go to school, but the phone rings during breakfast and I know I’ve been found out. She comes to my bedroom to tell me that it was Miss Collins.

‘She says I need to come in today. The district nurse is at the school and Miss Collins and Mr Donnelly would both like you to see her.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve been told what happened yesterday.’

‘Oh.’

‘You go to school now, and I’ll meet you outside the nurse’s office at eleven o’clock.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s where I’ve been told to take you.’

‘I won’t go to school.’

‘You must.’

‘Please don’t tell Da.’

‘No, I won’t. But I can’t promise he won’t find out for himself.’

I get dressed and go to the kitchen for some breakfast, but when I look at my half-eaten boiled egg, hatched and jagged in its eggcup, I can’t be bothered sticking another piece of toast into its yolk.

I get up from the table and walk to school but I don’t go to
class. I wait around by the back of the shed and pace up and down and try to keep warm.

At five to eleven I go to the front door of the convent and ring the bell. Sister Ursula lets me in and then returns to her position behind the glass and grille. It’s dark and warm inside and two old women are told to sit in the corner and wait for the priest. I stand by the front door and they look at me as though I have stolen their place in the queue.

My mother comes in and we go through to the nurse’s office.

‘Don’t worry,’ says my mother. ‘It’ll be over in a minute.’

Sister Bernadette is waiting outside the nurse’s door. When she see us, she runs her hands along her rosary beads as though to get the dust off them, then she knocks and puts her head through the gap.

‘Nurse, I have John Egan and his mother here to see you.’

‘Tell them to come in,’ says the nurse, and Sister Bernadette leaves.

In the small, square room, which smells of laundry powder, there is a desk, a filing cabinet, and a gurney covered in a white sheet. I look at the gurney while my mother talks to the nurse. I try to work out how I might climb on, if I’m asked to.

I like the idea of lying on the white sheet and having my temperature taken. The retractable legs of the gurney are like the blades of my Swiss army knife, which can slide easily and neatly in and out of their home. I think about faking an illness; clutching my stomach and groaning, so that the nurse might ask me to lie down and cover me with the soft blue blanket that is folded at the gurney’s end.

‘I’m very surprised,’ says my mother. ‘He’s never done anything like this.’

The nurse looks at me as though I wet my pants on purpose. I want to tell her that I was conducting an experiment; that the wetting wasn’t the accident of a baby.

‘Is your boy enuretic?’ asks the nurse. ‘Is he a bed-wetter, Mrs Egan?’

‘No,’ says my mother.

I’ve been in the nurse’s room only once. When I first came to this school, a few days after our move from Wexford, I had nose-bleeds every day for a week. I was eight years old, and the nurse sat me down and told me to put my head back while she pinched the bridge of my nose to stop the bleeding.

Because I swallowed some blood, I felt sick, and when I told her she gave me a brown kidney dish to vomit into. I tried but nothing came out. After my failed attempts to vomit, she said, ‘Be careful not to cry wolf too often, little boy.’

Now, as then, she smiles weakly and rocks her head from side to side, as though she has just stood out of the bath and is trying to drain the water from her ears.

I want to leave. I want to go home. ‘My bladder burst,’ I say. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘I don’t understand,’ says my mother.

The nurse suggests possible causes – nervousness, anxiety, trouble at home – and my mother denies each one. I begin to feel ashamed.

The nurse blames the fact that I’m an only child. She asks my mother if perhaps I am lonely.

‘He is not lonely,’ says my mother. ‘He has the company of his parents and his grandmother who love him very much.’

‘And my cat,’ I say.

The nurse ignores me and holds out a piece of paper for my
mother to take. My mother looks at the piece of paper but doesn’t take it.

‘You should read this,’ says the nurse. ‘And maybe John should take the day off today. He can start again on Monday.’

But then it occurs to me: taking the day off school is a terrible idea. It would give my classmates more time to think up torments. I should go back in and behave as though nothing has happened, as though I don’t care. Even better, I will make it not exist. I will act. It won’t have happened.

‘I want to go to class today,’ I say.

The nurse tucks her chin into the folds of fat in her neck. I look past her and out the window. Joseph the Tinker is walking his piebald horse across the field. I want to wave, but he probably wouldn’t see me.

‘It’s up to you, Mrs Egan. He’s your boy.’

The break-time bell rings and my mother reaches out for my hand but I don’t let her hold it.

‘Are you sure you want to go back today?’

‘Yes. I’m sure.’

We stand to leave and the nurse follows us out. ‘Mrs Egan,’ says the nurse, holding the same piece of paper, ‘you’ve forgotten this.’

My mother shakes her head. ‘We won’t need it,’ she says, ‘Sister … I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.’

My mother has met the nurse before but she forgets names deliberately. It’s her way of making unpleasant people feel inferior.

The nurse looks at me as though it is my fault. ‘My name’s Sister Carmel,’ she says.

My mother takes my hand and we walk down the corridor to classroom 5G.

I look up at her when we are outside the door. My classmates are standing behind their desks: it must be a spelling test, and I would like to win it. ‘Why am I an only child?’ I ask.

‘You ask me that every time somebody else talks about it.’

‘I want to know again.’

‘You’re an only child because I wanted you to be the only one. Is that all right with you?’

I wait for her to say more, but she turns and walks down the corridor without saying goodbye, without kissing me.

As soon as I sit at my desk, the whispering and laughing begins. Mandy, the girl on my right, sings, ‘Wee, wee, wee, all the way home’ and the boy on my left joins in. I look at Mandy until she stops, and the boy stops soon after. Jimmy, the redhead, puts a ruler against the crotch of his pants and makes a pissing sound. I look away. Miss Collins doesn’t call on me during lessons and Brendan doesn’t turn in his desk to make funny faces or pass signals.

When my classmates tease me and whisper things against me, I use a new trick. When Miss Collins speaks, I repeat what she has said three times in my mind. When she says ‘The Tuskar Rock is a dangerous low-lying rock six nautical miles north east of Carnsore Point on the south east of Ireland and the lighthouse was lit for the first time on the 4th June 1815’, I say the same thing in my head three times and promise I will never forget it.

I know I haven’t the brain of a scholar and that, if I did, a good memory would come naturally. But I can make myself clever. There’s no reason whatsoever why not. So I practise. When I read a sentence in a book, I read every sentence three times, close my eyes after each one, and repeat the sentence in my mind. This trick is not only good for my brain, it helps me to ignore the whispering and teasing, and it helps me not to think bad thoughts. The more I do it, the more I begin to see that it will help me with other things too. If I am going to do important things, and
become a great person, then having a good memory is sure to come in handy.

I check in the
Guinness Book
and see that, on the 14th October, 1967, a man recited 6666 verses of the Koran from memory, in six hours. This man, Mehmed Ali Halici, has an eidetic memory and he can remember everything he has read.

By the time the lunch bell rings, I have spent several hours without feeling nervous, and I have discovered a new way to think. I get my lunch and meet Brendan at his desk. ‘Let’s go,’ I say.

‘I want to stay inside,’ he says.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘We’ll stay in.’

He looks at his desk. ‘I want to stay in by myself, I mean.’

‘Come on. Let’s go to the shed,’ I say.

On cold days – and this is a cold enough day – Brendan and I usually sit by the stove in the caretaker’s shed and read all the annuals and my favourite Beano comics. The caretaker likes Brendan and me, and we talk to him and he is happy for us to be in his shed, and he comes and goes, and works around us.

‘It’s too cold for the shed,’ says Brendan.

‘So?’ I say. ‘We can sit by the stove and then it won’t be cold.’

‘I’m sick of sitting in the caretaker’s shed,’ says Brendan. ‘It stinks.’

‘It doesn’t stink,’ I say.

‘It does.’

‘So?’

‘So, I just don’t want to go in today,’ he says. ‘I want to stay inside the classroom today.’

‘Fine.’ My anger makes me nervous and I don’t know what I’ll do, so I leave Brendan without looking at him.

During class, I wait for him to look around at me, but he
doesn’t. I stare at the back of his head sometimes, but mostly I read and memorise things, or look out the window to stop my anger from hurting my teeth.

On the way home, I recite the things I have memorised during the day and, when I can’t remember, I stop walking and close my eyes until I do. When I reach the tree with the doll stuck in it, I stop and look up at her.

Her hair has gone. I thought she had blonde hair. This was the one thing about her that hadn’t changed or decayed. But she has no hair. There is only black scalp. Maybe the person who put her in the tree has come to take her hair. Maybe it fell out gradually and I didn’t notice. I feel angry with people and I run home.

When I get to the last field before the cottage, I stop and look across at the lighted window in the kitchen. I can see the dark outline of my mother, father and grandmother. They stand by the table, my father nearest the range, their dark shapes moving slightly, and my father’s hand goes up, then down, and then my mother’s hand takes hold of her long hair and she lifts it away from her shoulder. I want to know what they are saying, I want to know what is happening, but even if I dart across the road and through the gate and down the gravel path and get through the front door as fast as I can, I’ll never know what they have said. This part of what has happened will always be missing. And they will stop talking and change the subject as soon as they see me.

But I am happy to see the light on, to know they are there and it is warm and there’s a place for me at the table.

‘You’re late,’ says my father. ‘It’s after five.’

‘I walked the long way,’ I say.

He goes to the cooker and takes out a plate. ‘Here. Eat these,’ he says. ‘They’re jumbo fish fingers.’

I sit at the table and my mother sits too. Granny stays by the stove, stirring a pot of custard.

‘How was school?’ asks my mother, and I notice that her eyes are bloodshot and her hair is messy. ‘Good,’ I say.

‘Do you want me to fry an egg to go with your fish fingers?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Why is your hair all messy?’

My father stands up from the table so abruptly that his chair falls backwards. Nobody speaks. We wait to see what he will do. He leaves the kitchen and when he comes back he stands behind my mother and brushes her hair.

‘There’ll be hair in the baked beans,’ she laughs.

I watch my father brush my mother’s hair and can see that the knots are catching and she must be hurting.

I say, ‘With the hair in the beans we can say, “Whose bean hair?”’

She reaches under the table and strokes my knee. ‘Want some more food?’

‘No,’ I say as I push the beans around the jumbo fish fingers.

‘Eat your fingers,’ says my father.

After tea, my father brings out a large box of Cadbury Roses and we sit together on the settee in front of the television and take them one by one out of the foil and paper wrapping and eat them. He has agreed to let me stay up late to watch an Alfred Hitchcock film,
Strangers on a Train
.

‘If you can spot Alfred’s appearance, I’ll give you a quid,’ he says.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘Consider yourself one pound poorer.’

‘Want to know one of the reasons chocolate is addictive?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Because it melts at blood temperature.’

‘Maybe before the film you and Mammy could teach me how to do cryptic crosswords.’

‘We need a good afternoon to do that. Remind me on Saturday.’

‘Did you remember my present?’ I ask.

‘What present?’

‘The one you promised.’

‘These chocolates are your present and I’ll get an even bigger one for you later.’

The book from the Wexford library,
The Truth About Lie Detection
, is the best book so far and I have copied thirty-five pages of it into The Gol of Seil.

I will memorise as much of this book as I can. Already I can recite several passages, such as this one, which I say out loud on the way to school.

‘Many people mistakenly believe that if somebody lies they will not make eye contact and will rub under their nose. Neither lack of eye contact nor nose rubbing is a sure sign of lying. It is vital to look for a cluster of signals. It is also important to compare the way a person is behaving with the way they usually behave.

When a person is lying he needs to concentrate on keeping his story straight and will often slow his speech or become more hesitant. Some people try to control their facial expressions, but most people are not able to keep their feelings from showing, because some of the muscles of the face involved in expressions are not under conscious control, especially when people feel strong emotions.’

The author of
The Truth About Lie Detection
also says that these strong emotions are called primary emotions and that they show, for a fraction of a second only, as micro expressions.

I also know from reading this book that only a small group of people are exceptional at spotting lies and these people are sometimes called wizards. Such a person can pick up behavioural signals that most people miss, most of the time.