The Scattering (10 page)

‘Why can't I swear on your life?' I say.

‘Oh here it is, but you better not bloody tell.' Then Isabel produces from behind her back a dirty brown paper bag. She reaches in, delicately, and fishes out from it a yellowed and bloodstained needle, like the ones I've seen used on Francis in the hospital.

‘Jack Duffy sticks this in his arm,' she says. Then we all fall about, laughing, pretending to stab it into each other. Finally, Isabel wraps up the needle and proceeds to hide it by standing on the long corroded nails that are staggered into one of the castle's walls, placing the bag high up under a moss-covered brick.

We have been begging Dada for a television. But he says he has seen the other families on the Littlemarshes sitting in silence, eating meals off their laps, glued to the flashing screen in the corner, their exhausted fathers asleep on sofas – and he doesn't want that life for us. Aunt Sarah says she will get us a television for Christmas if Dada doesn't. Isabel says a television will stop us being bored, as we are most Sundays waiting for Ed Molloy. The arrival later of Dada's best friend means that Francie and Isabel have to close up their books, as the men will want the front room to talk in.

‘Go into the kitchen,' Dada says, packing Francie and Isabel out of the room. ‘We won't be long.'

‘I don't want to be with the girls,' says Francie, who wants to carry on with his schoolwork, just not with all of us.

‘Well, go to the room upstairs,' Dada says, ‘can't you use the dressing table?' The look on Francie's face, I know well what it means. Before Christmas, Francie – who has his own room at the top of the house with a bed and no desk – would do his homework at the long dressing table in Mammy and Dada's room. But now we only go into that room if we want to stare at Mammy's pictures, or pick up and smell the scent off her perfume bottles or spread our hands across the coral and black hairbrush with her hairs still inside it. None of us would use that room for studying in. Not now.

‘I'll read outside,' Francie says, ‘it's warm enough.'

We are excited to see Ed Molloy as he always brings sweets. When he arrives we all stand but say nothing about the big bag he holds out in his arms like a baby. Dada allows us the Curly Wurlys and Fry's bars, I think, mainly as a distraction so he and Ed can go into the front room to do their talking. When Francie goes out to the yard to read, and Isabel and Nora are doing their homework in the kitchen, I go to the front-room door and listen, though my father's and Ed's conversations are not much to report as they are always the same: about the days they lived in London. Ed had lived on the same road as Dada and Mammy in Kilburn. They went to dances and to see showbands together. The photographs of Mammy in Mammy and Dada's room, and the one that was in the paper in January, were all taken by Ed. Through the door I hear Ed say England is a godless country that allows unborn babies to be murdered and that we are well out of it. I hear my father say he misses London and that he only ever came home because it was what ‘she wanted'. I have heard my father say this before.

Ed is tall, with dimples in his face. When Mammy would show people our photographs they would often say, ‘who is that handsome man,' and say nothing about our father. Ed often tells us about his days as an actor in a group and he knows everything there is to know about films. Ed came home from London first, before Mam and Dada, and I remember Mammy saying it was because London had made him sick. I think of this every time Ed says something in the room bad about London. I would like to say to my father he should know not to praise a place that made his dearest friend ill, only he'd know then I was listening. Once, when I asked Mammy how did London make Ed ill, she said it was to do with something that happened to the three of them in a dancehall one night but that it affected Ed the most. She never said what it was. I suppose if I really want to know now I will have to ask Dada.

When they finish, Ed comes out to the yard. Isabel wants to show him the den but Dada says Ed must be getting off home. Ed says he would like to see it though he has to leave after because he has an early start. As Isabel and Nora tug at Ed's jacket, dragging him towards the gate, I turn towards the kitchen and see my father watching us. He waves and I wave back.

Francis walks ahead of us, acting like he is a stronger, bigger boy. He is shouting out to Ed, telling him that we are in acres of bogland known as Cox's fields, that to the left are Haliday's Mills and a small indigenous wood and he gives detailed descriptions of the plants and birds Dada has taught us about since we moved here. Ed seems to know nothing about nature, and when Francie shows him the falcons circling above us and the raspberries ripening along the hedgerow, Ed is fascinated. All along our trip to the den, Ed wants to listen to what Francie has to say. Francie is clever and he knows it. Because Mammy wouldn't let him do chores, he has spent more time with his books than any of us.

Ed has brought his camera and he takes photographs of things that Francie points out. Ed wants us always to be in the shots, making big grins. Where it is most parched in the bog there are swarms of ladybirds on the rocks, and Ed suggests we pick up the ladybirds, let them crawl on our skin while he photographs them. Ed says he loves ladybirds as they are sacred to Our Lady, which is why they are named so. (Ed is awful religious.) So we put them on our arms and legs and Ed says a rhyme as he takes photos of the ladybirds crawling up under our skirts and T-shirts, and we all laugh as it is so ticklish. He says the rhyme, and we all repeat, like as if we were in a school play:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,

your house is on fire and your children are gone.

All except one, and that's little Anne

for she has crept under the warming pan.

When Francie tells Ed about the tunnels that lead under Roche's castle to another part of town, Ed tells me and Nora and Isabel to wait by the river. He says we are to skim the stones across the water to see who is best at it while he photographs the castle, which, he says, is so interesting it should be in the history books. We don't mind; we are glad to keep cool on the hot evening.

The river is so still and I am distracted from skimming my stones by the quiet that is in the air. A willow tree is being tugged at by the water coiling around the tree's light-green branches and this is the only movement I can see apart from the ripples from our stones. As Isabel and Nora battle it out, skimming further and further down river, I look over at the castle, and I think about all the years it has been sitting there, and how it will probably still be there when I and everyone I love is dead. The thought makes me feel sad, as I have never imagined myself not being on the earth before. I wonder if Mammy ever had such thoughts.

By the time Ed and Francie come back to us, the sky is darkening and Ed says he has to get home. Francie looks pale and I think that maybe he did too much talking and tired himself out, that he will be needing a blue pill when we get back to the house and I feel instantly bad that a few weeks before I'd stolen half his supply.

*

When the school holidays come, Francie does not go out with us to the den but stays in all the time in his boxroom with the window open, listening to his transistor. Always the music he listens to is loud and angry. He says it's the music young people are listening to now in London. He also says he wishes we never came to this country because everything has gone wrong since. He secretly cries sometimes, too, and I think it must be over Mammy because I often cry for her as do Isabel and Nora. Then one evening there is a big row. Dada says he has found something in Francie's room in a toffee tin. It is a small lump of something that when he found it had been wrapped up in plastic. Lying out on the kitchen table it looks like sheep shit to me though it is herby smelling and oily. When Dada starts to bang his fist down on the table, I tell him to stop.

‘Mammy would not be happy,' I wail, ‘you shouting at Francie.' Dada looks at me then and he straight away stops the shouting and banging. Mammy had always protected Francis; sometimes it was like he was the girl, while me, Isabel and Nora were the boys – and I think Dada is finding it hard to protect Francie the same way Mammy did. The word ‘drugs' is said and I know what this means. Then Isabel comes in and Francie takes the opportunity to run out of the room, so I say: ‘There's a thing, Dada, in the castle. A thing in a paper bag that Jack Duffy does stuff with.' Isabel looks at me as if she would kill me. Dada sees this look on her.

‘What stuff and what thing?' Dada asks, and Isabel turns to leave when she sees how annoyed he sounds.

‘Isabel, come back. Explain to me what Claire means,' Dada demands, but Isabel won't answer.

‘A needle thing,' I say, ‘in a bag under a brick. Isabel says Jack Duffy sticks it in his arm whenever he goes there. Nora says you put drugs inside it.'

‘Duffy? The councillor's son?' Dada asks. Isabel nods.

‘Fella you been chatting ta up there sometimes?'

‘Yes Daddy, but he's very nice,' Isabel says.

‘Jesus, Isabel. That's it. I forbid you, all of you to go up there again. Do you know what that means, that needle?'

‘No.'

‘You do, Isabel, you do!'

‘But he's nice. Kind. He gives me…'

‘He gives you what?'

‘Books. Music.'

‘Come on,' Dada says, ‘you both lead me now to that brick. Put on your coats, the two of you.' He then leads Isabel and me through the bog at the back of the house towards Roche's Castle. We are not even fully dressed. We have our pyjamas on with coats thrown over and Wellingtons on and it is sticky and dark and we can't see the warrens and rocks in the high vetch even though Dada has brought a torch. When we get to the castle, Isabel finds the brown bag and hands it to Dada.

‘Why d'you want to take it, Daddy? Jack will know it's missing when he comes.'

‘Evidence,' he says to both of us, ‘for fucken evidence.'

Dada brings me to the barracks with him because he says the others are too stupid to mind me. He is annoyed with all his children. He bangs loudly on the little shutter so that the sergeant will not keep him waiting. He jumps a queue of two women waiting with forms. They fan themselves with the forms and say things under their breath. My father says nothing about his pushing in front to the women, which makes them say more things and look at me with tilted heads and eyes that are full of pity. He bangs on the glass until two sergeants show up at once, both chomping on biscuits.

‘I want to report a crime,' Dada says.

‘What crime would that be?' the slimmer of the two sergeants says, and he winks at me.

‘The crime of plying drugs to a boy of fourteen years with a heart condition. That's what.'

‘Is it your boy?' the sergeant says and my father nods. The sergeant goes to open the doors.

‘Come inside now for a chat, man, and you tell me what it is you're claiming was done to your son.' As we walk through the offices of the barracks, the guard beckons to a ban gharda
^*
 
sitting at a desk.

‘The wee one will have to wait outside, Mr McCourt. Don't worry, she's in good hands,' he says, and my father stops and hunkers down to me. He looks hard-eyed at me, like a sparrowhawk, and gives me a hug.

‘Be good for the ban gharda now, won't you Claire?' he says, and I say: ‘No. I won't be good. I want to come in with you.' The two guards look at each other and I hear the other guards in the office laugh. The ban gharda brings me in to the room where my father is and we sit by the wall. Perhaps she brings me because she sees the distress on him. Perhaps they all know here that our mother was one of the people who died in the bomb at Christmas and they want to help us. It seems everyone has wanted to help us since that time. The ban gharda holds my hand all the while and I let her.

I watch my father pass the brown bag over to the sergeant. He makes a complaint about Jack Duffy and the sergeant writes it down. As Jack, Dada explains, is eighteen, he should go to jail for giving drugs to our Francie who might have died had he taken stronger. I see the sergeant raise his eyebrows when Dada tells him Jack Duffy is the son of Eoin Duffy, one of the town's councillors.

‘Good luck,' the sergeant says.

Dada is pale and quiet all the way home. When we get inside the house he sends me into the bed with Isabel, who has her eyes closed and is clutching a photo of Mammy. I curl up beside Isabel but she shrugs me off. She is annoyed, I think, because I told about Jack's needle. That night, I hear Dada climb the stairs to Francie's room and speak softly to my brother.

Two or three days pass and things get calm again in the house. Dada has gone back to the bakery and everything seems normal – with him getting up early and coming home in the afternoon. Nora is in charge when Dada is away as she is the only sensible one among us, he says. Then on Sunday morning there is a heavy knock on our front door. Dada goes down to answer and I hide on the landing with Nora and Isabel. I peep my head round the wall of the landing, see Dada usher in a small man with greying sandy hair to the front room. I have seen this man before. His face is on every telegraph pole in our part of town and on the roundabouts towards the border. He has a pug face, which Mammy used to say reminded her of a Hollywood film star, such as James Cagney or Mickey Rooney. Some of the posters have things written over them. One in our own street had ‘a vote for Duffy, is a vote for murder' written across Mr Duffy's face – before it was taken down. I go close to the door. Eoin Duffy is pleading for Dada not to press charges against Jack, but Dada won't listen. I hear our father shout: ‘Ya can't believe a word comes out of an addict's mouth, do ya not know that, Eoin, hah?'