I am cowering in the hallway. Me and my sisters were in the bathroom earlier, squinting through the leaf-patterned windows, listening to the men’s voices out in the field. The house is dark. Everything is quiet.
All the adults are outside in the back garden and my father is up the field with Peadar Ryan. They have Drum. They have it in for Drum. Drum is going to get it tonight. Me and my four sisters are all in our nighties, wandering up and down the corridor, going in and out of each other’s rooms, not knowing what to do. Where is Sean? Could he be outside begging the men not to do what they are planning? Maybe he ran off. Jumped onto his 10-speed racer and pedalled away in a huff.
There is a lot of talking and cajoling. Perhaps Sean is out there with them? So much talking. Such a build up. It’s making me nervous. Were the Nazis like this at executions?
I’m not sure if I like this house anymore. There is always something to be afraid of. Some drama. Somebody getting hurt. Somebody crying. A week ago, I saw Mammy crying in her room. She didn’t see me. I had gone into the little sitting room next to hers to look through old photographs. I heard her talking on the phone so I carried on poring over the pictures, holding my breath and keeping as quiet as I could.
I was holding a dog-eared shot of Grandad with his greyhounds. He looked so proud. I was always told Grandad was a lovely man. That he was good and fair. I never met him. My parents told me he died young, but my sisters told me he drank a lot and used to get into fights and eventually he ran off to England with some horsy woman. If that’s true, it means he wasn’t such a good man. Or maybe he was a good man but he kept making mistakes. I don’t know. I wish someone would tell me the truth sometime.
I wish I could go up to my parents and ask them straight out about Grandad but my sisters once tied me to the front gates and cycled around me making Indian noises, squawking and squalling. “Big babby tell-tale. Don‘t you dare, or you‘ll get it,” they threatened. They left me there on my own for about three hours. Daddy was at work and Mammy was gone off visiting for the day with her friend Angela. My hands burned. My back hurt. It was cold and I only had a t-shirt on. When my sisters came back, I had lost my defiance and I promised to keep my mouth shut. I would keep their secret.
I am getting used to secrets. Like Mammy crying. I know better than to say it to anyone. Still, I wonder what is upsetting her. Who is she talking to? I sneak out of the room and head for the phone in the hall. Ever so quietly, I pick up the receiver.
“It’s a horrible, undignified way to go, Mrs. Roche,” a voice says angrily to my mother.
“I know, I know, I‘m so sorry,” I hear Mammy say. “Something will have to be done and I‘ll see to it,” the angry man says. Mammy, still in tears, agrees and says not to worry and that it’s been arranged for the following week.
I hang up the phone. It suddenly dawns on me. I know what she means because it is the thing the whole family knows and won’t talk about since the night the Doyles from down the road came up to the house and threatened Daddy. And that was probably Mr. Doyle on the phone.
I remember clearly. We had just finished having our tea. Scrambled eggs on toast. I had moved up to Mammy’s seat while she and the others were clearing away the plates. I was sugaring and milking everyone’s tea and the doorbell rang. Daddy went out. All we could hear was someone shouting at him and it sounded like someone else was crying. Daddy came back to get his jacket and said he had to go. He and Mammy were muttering in the hall. But we couldn’t hear anything. By the time Mammy came back, she was in a foul mood and wouldn’t drink her tea. Nobody said a word and as everyone sat quietly, trying not to fidget and looking at the table, I watched in fascination, as a thin skin appeared on the top of mammy’s tea.
My sisters told me the Doyles threatened Daddy over Drum. They said it was Drum’s fault the Doyles were angry. I am glad I didn’t see them at the door because they are a scary enough looking family without being angry. Mrs. Doyle has a pinched mean-looking face and wheels an old black bicycle everywhere. I have never seen her cycling it. She just likes to carry a bag of shopping on each handlebar and wheel it round all the time. Mr. Doyle works up in the leather factory and nearly all his sons work up there too. They’re real grim looking, with roundy white faces and pigeon chests. They’re big into shooting and I see them going up the road in the evenings with their rifles. They never say hello, just tilt their caps and nod, even the younger one my age. Tough men. I suppose they think they’re real dangerous looking with them rifles. Ever since the night they came to our house, they haven’t walked past. Maybe they are going another way. Or maybe Daddy threatened them back and told them not to walk past our house.
My brother Sean told me, the Doyles are ignoramuses. I had to go and look it up in the dictionary to see what he meant. He could’ve just said they were stupid.
Sean had a fight with one of the Doyles yesterday. I know because when he got home, he came straight into the bathroom where I was trying on Mammy’s old lipsticks and he had to tell me because he had a bloody lip and his jumper was torn. He showed me his back and his belly which were covered in scratch marks. He was so chuffed with himself. He said it was the black-haired one who used to be in his class but left school early to join his older “ignoramus” brothers in the leather factory. He was laughing telling me he “kicked the shit out of him”. He said he had spotted him in the park on the way home and decided they needed to have a little “one-on-one”. I said he shouldn’t be going picking fights and if Mammy and Daddy found out he’d be dead. Sean got really mad and said Mammy and Daddy are just as bad as the Doyles and they have no right to order him to do anything and, anyway he said, that Cyril Doyle needed a good leatherin’. With that, he threw the bloody tissue down the toilet and stormed off in a huff. I looked at the red and white swirling round the bowl as I flushed it away and thought, I hate fighting but I suppose my brother is growing up and becoming a man.
Tonight is a test for my brother. If he gets through tonight, he’ll get through anything. I’m scared though. I don’t like Drum much. I’m afraid of him and he is always half-eating other dogs. There’s trouble whenever Drum is around. But I don’t want Drum dead. Who would ever ask for that only the “ignoramus” Doyles? It doesn’t seem fair. Sean loves Drum so much, and Drum really does love Sean. He’s going to be mad.
Me and my sisters have now moved into the big bedroom at the window. We’re all standing up on the bed trying to see through the trees and out into the field. All the voices have sort of faded and there seems to be a general hush outside. We’re all muttering and whispering and flapping our hands, shishing each other when we think we hear something different. We hear Peadar Ryan, the vet, say something to our father and then suddenly, Bang. Silence.
A howl like I have never heard before comes from the field and the sound of someone running hard and fast. The back door bangs shut, the metal chairs clang in the kitchen and the bathroom door is walloped shut. Inside it gets louder and with the mirrors and windows and bath, there is an echo too. It’s deafening. He is hysterical. At the crack of the gunshot we all scarpered to our rooms and now each of us is lying stiff as a board in bed, joining in with our brother’s wail.
The night is long. Sean stays locked inside for hours, bawling, weeping, then shouting out abuse at my parents who try to reason with him, console him. He won’t come out. Drum is gone.
Hot tears drip down into my mouth and I find comfort in their salty taste.
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