The tide was going out. That was good; the plank wouldn’t keep coming back in. Sinbad had cleaned the rat. He’d put him on the ground under the pump at the cottages and he’d pumped four loads down on top of him. He wrapped the rat in his jumper with just his head showing.
Kevin was holding the end of the plank, trying to stop it from bobbing.
I started.
—Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee—
It sounded great, five voices together and the wind. Kevin picked the plank out of the water; there was a wave coming.
—now and at the hour of our death amen.
I was the priest because I was useless with matches. My job was done. Edward Swanwick sat on the wet steps and held the plank for Kevin. Kevin turned his back to the sea and the wind and lit the match. He turned and saved the flame by the shield of his hand. I loved the way he could do that.
The flame lasted long enough. It was like a Christmas pudding for a while; I could see the fire but it wasn’t doing anything to the rat. I could smell the paraffin. They pushed the plank out, not too strong like a battleship; we didn’t want the fire to go out. The rat stayed on the plank. The fire was still going but the rat wasn’t changing.
We all made trumpets out of our hands. Edward Swanwick as well even though he didn’t know what was happening.
-Now.
We all did The Vikings music.
—DUH DEEH DUH - DUH
DEEEH DUH—
DUH DEEEH DUH DUH - DUH DUH - DUH
DUH DUHHH—
The flame lasted long enough for us to do it twice.
I had a book on top of my head. I had to get up the stairs without it falling off. If it fell off I would die. It was a hardback book, heavy, the best kind for carrying on your head. I couldn’t remember which one it was. I knew all the books in the house. I knew their shapes and smells. I knew what pages would open if I held them with the spine on the ground and let the sides drop. I knew all the books but I couldn’t remember the name of the one on my head. I’d find out when I got to the top, touched my bedroom door and got back down again. Then I could take it off my head - I’d bring my head forward slowly and let it slide off and I’d catch it—and see what it was. I could have seen the corner of the cover if I’d looked up very carefully; I could have got the name from the colour of the corner. But it was too dangerous. I had a mission to complete. Steady was better than too slow. If I went too slow I’d go all unsteady and I’d think I’d never make it and the book would fall off. Death. There was a bomb in the book. Steady was best, steps one two; no rush. Rushing was as bad as too slow. You panicked towards the end. Like Catherine walking across the living room. She walked fine for four or five steps, then you could see her face change because she saw that it was ages to go to the other side; her smile became a stretch, she knew she wouldn’t make it, she tried to get there quicker, she fell. She knew she was going to; her face got ready for it. She cried. Steady. Nearly at the top. The point of no return. Napoleon Solo. When you got to the top you had to get used to not having any more steps to go up; it was nearly like falling over.
The toilet door opened.
My da came out with his paper. He looked at me and past me.
He spoke.
—Monkey see, monkey do.
He was looking down, past me.
I turned my head. The book fell. I caught it. Our Man In Havana. Sinbad was on the stairs behind me with a book on his head. Ivanhoe. My book slid out of its cover and dropped onto the floor. I was dead.
Liam broke his teeth playing Grand National. It was no one’s fault except his own. They were his second teeth, the ones he was supposed to have for the rest of his life. He split his lip as well.
—His lip’s gone!
That was what it looked like when it happened. The blood and the way he was holding his hand up to his mouth made it look like his whole mouth had been cut off. All that stood out was one big front tooth that was made pink by blood. The pink gathered into red at the bottom of the tooth and fell off, into what was behind his hand.
His eyes looked mad. At first—when he came out of the hedge—they’d just looked like he’d been in the dark and the light had been turned on, but they’d changed; mad, scared and sticking out, pushing out over his eyelids.
Then he started howling.
His mouth didn’t move, or his hand. The noise was just there. The eyes told me that it was his.
—Oh mammy—!
—Listen to him.
It was like someone doing a ghost but they weren’t any good at it; they were trying to scare us but we knew; we didn’t even start being scared. But this was scary; this was terrible. This was Liam right in front of us, not behind a curtain. He was making this noise but he wasn’t pretending. His eyes said that; he couldn’t do anything else.
If it had been ordinary, an ordinary accident, we’d have run; we’d have run before we were given the blame for it just because we were there. That always happened. A fella kicked a ball and it broke a window and ten fellas got the blame for it.
—I’m holding you all responsible.
That was what Missis Quigley’d said when Kevin had smashed her toilet window. She’d shouted over her high side wall at us. She couldn’t see us but she knew who we were.
—I know who you are.
Mister Quigley was dead and Missis Quigley wasn’t that old, so she must have done something to him; that was what everyone thought. We decided that she’d ground up a wine glass and put the powder in his omelette - I’d seen that in Hitchcock Presents and it made a lot of sense. Kevin told his da about it and his da said that she’d just bored Mister Quigley to death, but we stuck to our version; it was better. That didn’t make us scared of her, though. She hated it when we sat on her wall. She knocked on her window to make us go, not always from the same window, sometimes upstairs, sometimes downstairs.
—That’s just to let us think she isn’t in the front room looking out all the time.
We weren’t scared of her.
—She can’t make us eat anything.
That was the only way she could get us, by poisoning us. She didn’t know any other way. She wasn’t small and wrinkly enough to be frightening. She was bigger than my ma. Big women - not big, fat ones—big women were normal. Little ones were dangerous; little women and big men.
She had no children.
—She ate them.
—No, she didn’t!
That was going too far.
Kevin’s brother knew why.
—Mister Quigley couldn’t get his mickey to go hard.
We never went over the wall. I told my parents this when Missis Quigley complained to them about me. She’d never done anything before. They did their usual, made me stay in my bedroom till they were good and ready to deal with me. I hated it; it worked. They made me stay in there for hours. I had all my stuff in the room with me, my books and my cars and stuff, but I couldn’t concentrate on the sentences in the books and it was stupid to be playing with my Dinkies when I was about to be hammered by my da—it was Saturday. I didn’t want to be on the floor playing when he came in; I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. I wanted to look right. I wanted it to look like I’d already learnt my lesson. It was getting dark but I didn’t go near the light switch. It was too near the door. I sat on the bed in the corner made by the walls. I shivered. I let my teeth chatter. My jaws went sore.
—Explain yourself.
It was a terrible question, a trap; everything I’d say was wrong.
—Explain yourself I said.
—I didn’t do any -
—I’ll decide that, said my da.—Go on.
—I didn’t do anything.
—You must have.
—I didn’t, I said.
There was a gap. He stared at my left eye, then my right one.
—I didn’t, I said.—Honest.
—Then why did Missis Quigley come all the way down here—
It was only five doors.
—to complain about you?
—I don’t know; it wasn’t me.
—What wasn’t you?
—What she said.
—What did she say?
—I don’t know. I didn’t do anything, I swear, Dad. Dad. Cross my heart and hope to die. Look.
I crossed my heart. I did it all the time; nothing ever happened and I was usually lying.
I wasn’t lying this time, though. I hadn’t done anything. It was Kevin who broke her window.
—She must have had a reason, said my da.
Things were going well. He wasn’t in the right mood, when he wanted to hit me. He was being fair.
—She prob’ly thinks I did something, I said.
—But you didn’t.
—Yeah.
—You say.
—Yeah.
—Say Yes.
-Yes.
That was the only thing my ma said. Say yes.
—I only—
I wasn’t sure if this was right - wise - but it was too late to stop; I could tell from his face. My ma sat up when I started speaking and looked at my da. I thought about changing, and telling him about Missis Quigley poisoning Mister Quigley, but I didn’t. My da wasn’t like that; he didn’t believe things.
—I only sat on the wall, I said.
He could have hit me then. He spoke.
—Well, don’t sit on her wall. Again. Okay?
—Yeah.
—Yes, said my ma.
—Yes.
Nothing else; that was it. He looked around for something to do, to get away. He plugged in the record player. His back was turned; I could go. An innocent man. Wrongly convicted. Trained birds while I was in jail and became an expert on them.
Liam’s howling stuck us to the grass; we couldn’t move. I couldn’t touch him or run away. The howl went into me; I was part of it. I was helpless. I couldn’t even fall.
He was dying.
He had to be.
Somebody had to come.
The hedge he fell out of wasn’t Missis Quigley’s. It had nothing to do with Missis Quigley. It was the only really big hedge on our road. Liam and Aidan’s was bigger and branchier but they didn’t live on our road; they lived off it. This one grew quicker than the others, and it had smaller leaves that weren’t as shiny or as green as normal. The leaves were nearly not green at all; the backs of them were grey. Most of the hedges weren’t that big; the houses weren’t old enough. Only this hedge; it was the last jump, we kept it till last.
The hedge was in the Hanleys’ front garden. It was their hedge. It was Mister Hanley’s. He did everything in the garden. They had a pond in their back, but with nothing in it. There used to be goldfish but they froze to death.
—He just left them in there till they rotted.
I didn’t believe that.
—Floating.
I didn’t believe it. Mister Hanley was always in his garden, picking up things, bits of leaf, slugs - he picked them up with his hand; I saw him. His bare hands. He was always digging, leaning in near the wall. I saw a hand when I was going to the shops, Mister Hanley’s hand, on the wall, holding himself up as he dug; only his hand. I tried to get past before he stood up, but I couldn’t run—I could only walk fast. I wasn’t trying not to let him see me; I wasn’t scared of him; I just did it. He didn’t know I was doing it. I once saw him lying down in the front garden, on his back. His feet were in the flower bed. I waited to see if he was dead; then I was afraid someone was looking at me through the window. When I came back Mister Hanley was gone. He didn’t have a job.
—Why not?
—He’s retired, said my ma.
—Why is he?
That was why he had the best garden in Barrytown and that was why invading the Hanleys’ garden was the biggest dare of all. And that was why the Grand National ended there. Over the hedge, up, through the gate, the winner. Liam hadn’t been winning.
In a way, winning was easiest. The winner was the first out onto the path. Mister Hanley couldn’t get you there, or his sons, Billy and Laurence. It was the ones that came over the hedge last that were in the biggest danger. Mister Hanley just gave out and spits flew out of his mouth; there was always white stuff in the corners. A lot of old people had mouths like that. Billy Hanley and especially Laurence Hanley killed you if they got you.
—It’s about time those two slobs went and got married or something.
—Who’d have them?
Laurence Hanley was fat but he was fast. He grabbed us by the hair. He was the only person I knew who did that. It was weird, a man grabbing people by the hair. He did it because he was fat and he couldn’t fight properly. He was evil as well. His fingers were stiff and like daggers, much worse than a punch. Four stabs on the side of your chest, while he was holding you up straight with your hair.
—Get out of our garden.
One more for good measure, then he let go.
—Now—stay out!
Sometimes he kicked but he couldn’t get his leg up far. He sweated through his trousers.
There were ten fences in the Grand National. All the walls of the front gardens were the same height, the exact same, but the hedges and the trees made them different. And the gardens between the fences, we had to charge across them; pushing was allowed in the gardens, but not pulling or tripping. It was mad; it was brilliant. We started in Ian McEvoy’s garden, a straight line for us. There was no handicapping; no one was allowed to start in front of the rest. No one would have wanted it anyway, because you needed a good run at the first wall and no one was going to stand in the next garden alone, waiting for the race to start. It was Byrne’s. Missis Byrne had a black lens in her glasses. Specky Three Eyes she was called, but that was the only funny thing about her.
It always took ages for the straight line to get really straight. There was always a bit of shoving; it was allowed, as long as the elbows didn’t go up too far, over the neck.
—They’re under starter’s orders—, said Aidan.
We crept forward. Anyone caught behind the group when the race started could never win and would probably be the one caught by Laurence Hanley.