Taken Away (31 page)

Dom would slide his eyes to her and whisper, ‘Milk.'

And that's what he'd get. That's all he'd been living on: glasses of milk. Ma would hold the glass for him, and he'd drain it in a couple of swallows and then lay his head back, his thoughts turning inwards again, and nothing else would get any response from him. I don't think he was ignoring us. He just simply didn't notice we were there. Even his rare trips to the bathroom were nothing but expressionless trials of physical endurance, the shuffling journey there and back enough to drain him of what pitiful energy he had.

‘Hey!' I pucked him gently through the covers. ‘Lizzy or the Lips?' He didn't look at me. I sighed and turned to the player. ‘Alright, so, one more listen to
Sweet and Dandy
and I'll put on
The Táin
.'

We listened through to the end of the song once more, and I wearily lifted the record from the player. ‘Here we go,' I said. ‘Let's switch to the sound of a million hairy men stamping their feet.'

I was carefully slipping the record into the dust-sleeve, trying to hold it only by the edges, when a thin, pale hand touched my arm. I jumped and nearly dropped the album. I spent several dodgy seconds juggling it from hand to hand, still trying to hold it only with my fingertips. When I finally got it back in the sleeve and my heart back in my mouth, Dom was almost grinning. Almost. On anyone else, it would have been the merest hint of a smile. On Dom, right then, it was the sun coming out.

I tried not to overreact. For a minute I just sat there, trying not to let my eyes fill up with tears, trying to think of something okay to say.

I finally decided on, ‘Hey.'

He gestured tiredly at the record, the vaguest movement of his hand. ‘Like that one,' he whispered. ‘'S good.'

I held the Maytals up, my eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Yeah? This fella?'

He nodded, ‘'S good,' he said again.

I jumped enthusiastically to my knees and pulled the record from its sleeve again. Dom hissed at my clumsy pawing of the vinyl.

‘Careful!' he whispered.

I rolled my eyes as I slipped it back on the player, side two this time. ‘You think the last song was good, listen to this one.' I carefully dropped the needle and ‘54-46 (That's My Number)' began its jumpy upbeat groove. I grinned at him, my head bobbing in time, willing him to love it. ‘Heh? What you think?'

His eyes lost focus as he listened, and his head nodded. Gradually the music seemed to infuse him. He began tapping time with his fingers.

‘Well?' I said, dropping to my arse, laying my arm casually along the bunk.

‘'S good,' he said again. It seemed to be the limit of his vocabulary. ‘Like it.'

We listened through the song, and then to ‘Oh Yeah' for a few minutes. Then I jumped up and put ‘Broadway Jungle' on for him.

‘This is great,' I said. ‘It's not as old; you can hear a real hard edge moving in . . . ' I let him hear a few bars and then just started talking, telling him all the things James had told me about the Rude Boys and ska and the beginnings of reggae. He nodded and made the occasional murmur of interest, but mostly he just bobbed his head and tapped his hand to the music.

I was telling him about the heatwave in 1968 that led to a whole new form of ska, and he was chuckling at the thought of the musicians being just too hot to play as fast as they used to, when I looked up and saw Ma standing in the doorway. For a minute I couldn't understand what was wrong with her. We'd fallen so deeply back into our usual groove that I couldn't fathom the huge tears in her eyes, the fingers pressed to her lips. And then I realised: I was sitting talking to Dom. I was having a conversation with Dom. I slumped back against the bed, and Mam and I shared a shaky smile of disbelief.

She cleared her throat into the cupped palm of her hand and wiped her sleeve across her eyes.

‘Pat,' she said, her voice remarkably steady, ‘would you like anything to eat?'

I grinned at her. ‘I'd love a boiled egg, Ma. You want a hand?'

‘No, love. You're alright.' She looked uncertainly at Dom, hesitant to ask the question that might confound her hopes. ‘Dom?' she said, and I saw her swallow down hard when he turned an enquiring face to her. ‘Yuh . . . you want anything to eat, love?'

‘Milk?' he rasped. She bit her lip and nodded. She turned to go. ‘Ma?' She turned back to him, and he grinned a ghost of a cheeky grin at her. ‘Can I 'ave a rasher sandwich?'

I saw her face squeeze up for a moment before she nodded and hightailed it down the stairs.

‘Jesus,' I said, staring at the shut door. ‘I wouldn't've minded a rasher sandwich.'

‘You should've asked then, you eejit.'

I looked round at him, and we unintentionally locked eyes. I felt suddenly and almost overwhelmingly emotional. I bit down on my lip and once again felt my eyes fill up. Oh Jesus. This was just great. I was such a bloody sop.

‘Your nose is running,' he whispered.

He was sunk back into his pillows, very tired again, and solemn. I scrubbed my nose on my sleeve and coughed, not sure where to look.

‘Hey,' Dom said. ‘Put another record on.'

So I did.

SURPRISE

TWO DAYS AFTER EASTER,
three days after our miraculous conversation about ska, Dom and I were camped out in the sitting room. We were each of us immersed in our separate activities, both in our own little worlds, paying no heed to anyone. Ma and Dee were out in the front garden with Nan and the two old biddies, sitting in deckchairs and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather.

I was sitting at the table under the window, my pens laid out in orderly rows, my copybooks neatly stacked according to content. I was working on four stories at once, and each had its own set of copybooks. At the moment, Carlos was dragging himself into a cave on some outlaw planet. He was hoping to find shelter from an oncoming meteor storm. I had other plans for him. I rested my chin in my hand and tried to think of another word for ‘slime'. Nothing sprang readily to mind.

Dom had commandeered the sofa, his legs covered with Nan's tartan car-blanket, his markers a technicoloured scatter around him. Sheets of neatly executed comic panels were arranged along the top of the sofa-back, and he was bent over his current page with a fierce look. He was paler and skinnier than I'd ever seen him, but that was okay, because he was Dom. Most definitely Dom. He still hadn't spoken to me about the grey. Hadn't spoken much about anything at all, really, since he'd come back – but that was okay, too. I could do the talking for both of us.

He finished whatever minute detail he'd been hunched over and sat up straight, holding the page at arm's length and regarding it with an intense, critical eye. I had to hide a smile into the crook of my hand. His face was covered in multicoloured smudges and fingerprints. Messy git.

He glanced up at me and silently turned the page so I could see it. It was one of his recent, darker pieces. It had one main panel, with only a narrow inset at the top. Four small boys were depicted, engaged in bloody battle with a huge and nebulous creature. The creature was made of smoke, and in its centre glowed a fiery eye that could have been a door of orange flames. Its many tentacle-like arms were edged with teeth, long and white, shining in contrast to the creature's smudged body. I flicked my eyes to Dom's face and back to the drawing. The boys were too small for the heavy weapons they carried, and it was obviously an effort for them to hold them up. Still, the blades were dripping with the fiery blood of the creature, and the boys were fierce and determined. The narrow panel that ran along the top of the page was filled with bright blue: it was a sky of some sort, seen through a narrow window, but clever use of a drop-shadow made it seem to be suspended over the other panel, as if not even part of the same narrative. The sky was background to a row of expressionless adult faces, all looking down at the battle, as if viewing it from another world.

I swallowed hard. ‘It's brilliant.' I said. ‘Wouldn't mind reading that, when it's done.'

He sighed and turned the drawing so he could see it again. He wasn't happy with it, as usual. ‘Nearly finished,' he whispered. He draped the page over the back of the sofa with all the others and began ruling out the panel-boxes on a fresh sheet.

I turned back to my story.
Slime
, I wrote. Then
ooze
. I scratched both of them out, replacing them with
vile green jelly.
Heh. Well, why use one word when three will do? ‘Vile green jelly' it would be.

The garden gate rattled and we looked up to see who was coming in. It was the tall old biddy, Jenny. She had to stoop to pass under the apple trees. She was unusually animated, calling out before she'd even come around the corner, ‘Boys . . . boys!' She paused at the door to catch her breath, her normally stern face all pink with excitement. She gasped and waved her hand about for a minute in an attempt to get the words out, and finally she said, ‘Your mother . . . wants you . . . A surprise!' And she waved us after her as she hurried back out to the front.

I flung an excited glance out the window and threw my stuff together in a haphazard attempt at tidying. I almost ran out of the room before I remembered Dom. He was only now pushing his blanket back, and swinging his legs to the floor. I gripped the table to stop myself from helping as he got to his feet. I matched his hobbling pace to the door.

The day was a blinding glare as we stood in the shade of the apple trees, and we shielded our eyes with our raised hands. Dom caught on before I did and released a soft exclamation of joy. Ma's smiling voice said, ‘Your uncle John traded his motorbike for it.'

It was a great big pastel-coloured Volkswagen van. It had huge blue and yellow flowers painted on it, and it seemed to be crammed to the roof with squirming people. The engine shut off, and it was only then that I noticed all the cousins grinning at me from the windows. Aunty Pet and Aunty Breda were wedged tight into the front seat. I could just about see my Uncle John, leaning back from the steering wheel and laughing at someone over his shoulder.

The side-door creaked and groaned and finally slid open in a metallic squeal of protest. An improbable number of human beings began to tumble out. Kids were scrambling over each other in an attempt to be first out the door, and I knew by the look on their faces that there was already some mischief afoot. Dom grinned and raised his hand in greeting.

Aunty Breda stuck her head out the window and yelled, ‘To hell with the bleedin' bus strike!'

They all cheered.

Dom grinned at me. ‘Race yah,' he whispered, and together we ran, neck and neck, out from beneath the shadows of the house and into the clear promise of a magnificent summer.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TO MY DEAR
Elise Jones, thanks for the major laughs and the wonderful editorial insights. Jumper over head, lady! Jumper over head!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BORN AND RAISED IN DUBLIN
, Ireland, Celine Kiernan has spent the majority of her working life in the film business. Trained at the Sullivan Bluth Studios, her career as a classical feature character animator spanned over seventeen years. She spent most of her time working between Germany, Ireland and the USA.

Celine wrote her first novel at the age of eleven (it was excruciatingly bad), and hasn't stopped writing or drawing since. She has a peculiar weakness for graphic novels as, like animation, they combine the two things she loves to do the most: drawing and storytelling.

Her popular Moorehawke Trilogy has been internationally acclaimed. For more information about Celine, see her blog:
celinekiernan.wordpress.com/