Creature of the Night (15 page)

When we went in for our tea my ma and Dennis were
sitting in the kitchen. I couldn't believe it. It felt like an
enemy invasion.

'What are you doing here?' I said to her.

'I was just out for a walk, weren't we, Dennis?' she
said. 'We said we'd just call in.'

Margaret was making tea and ham sandwiches. Me
and Matty washed our hands in the sink, but when he ate
his sandwiches he still left big black pawprints on them. I
wondered how much grease he had eaten and how much
more he would eat before he died. I wondered if Coley was
right, and he really was a greasoholic.

My ma and Margaret talked about the weather like
it was headline news. Then Margaret asked my ma
about her family in Dublin and she told her about how
her ma had been killed a couple of years ago by stepping
off the footpath in front of a lorry, and about how her
da and his brother went to England and never came
back. She never said about the hundred pounds he sent
every Christmas, inside a card, in dirty old notes. That's
only a hundred and fifty euro in the whole year, and my
ma with the two of us to feed.

I looked at Matty. He was in the chair by the range,
reading the newspaper. He had the right idea.

Then Margaret started on her family and what all
her kids were doing. The one who was in Australia and
the one who was in the hotel business – that was Tom –
and the one who was married and had two children, one
of them the same age as Dennis.

'So you're a grandma?' said my ma. 'You don't look
old enough!'

She did, though. She looked ancient to me.

'You know what?' she said to my ma. 'While you're
here I'll show you the photos of your house.'

She went off into the sitting room. I looked at
Matty. I was hoping it was time for us to go back out
again, but he just grinned and winked and went back to
his newspaper.

Margaret came back with an album.

'Coley put them all in the one book for me,' she
said. 'I thought that was a very clever idea.'

'It was,' said my ma. 'I've loads of photos somewhere.
I must get one of them books.'

Margaret opened the album. 'That one's from the
old days,' she said. 'A very long time ago. The nineteen thirties,
maybe.'

My ma took Dennis on her lap so he could see, too.
He was on his best behaviour after last night. I was looking
at the pictures upside down but I could still see. The
house was smaller, then. Just one storey, and the porch
extension wasn't on it.

'The place was very tidy back in those days,'
said Margaret. 'There was a little orchard there beside
it, see? I wasn't here in those days. I never saw it.'

She turned over the page. There were more black-and-white
photos. 'And that's Peggy, just after she
married Joe and moved in.'

'Ah,' my ma said. 'Isn't she gorgeous?'

'And that's another one of her,' Margaret said.
'That was before her daughter was born. And that's Joe
again, and the fella with him is PJ's father.

She turned over again and suddenly the house was
in colour, and there was an old man standing outside the
front door, smiling at the camera.

'Who's that?' my ma said.

'That's Joe again,' Margaret said. 'He was old by
then. That was about ten years ago, I'd say.'

'But where's the daughter?' my ma said. 'Is there no
pictures of her?'

'No,' Margaret said. She turned the page again.
'The house got very run down when he was old.'

It did, too. All the whitewash was gone off the walls
and even upside down I could see that the roof was
falling in and there were bits of plastic covering the holes
and sandbags on ropes holding them on.

'He couldn't really manage it by himself,' Margaret
said. 'By rights he should have gone into a home, but he
wouldn't go, and we couldn't make him. We used do
what we could for him. One or other of us would go
down there every morning and evening, do his shopping
and that. In the end I used send him a bit of dinner, with
one of the lads.'

She turned over again. The roof was completely off
the house.

'That was after we bought it,' she said. 'He didn't
leave any will so the state took it over and a couple of
years later they put it up for auction. We only wanted the
land but the house came with it so we said we'd do it up.
We thought one of the lads might like to use it but they
never did yet.'

There was a few pages then of restoration photos.
The walls being raised. The new roof timbers going in.

'There's Tom,' Margaret said. 'And that's Coley,
holding the ladder.'

In the middle of these pictures my ma said, 'Why
didn't he make a will? Why didn't he leave it to his
daughter?'

'She died, God bless her,' Margaret said.

'Oh no,' said my ma. 'What of?'

''Tisn't certain,' Margaret said. 'She was never in
good health. She was very small when she was born. She
must have been very premature or something, and
she never thrived.'

'They murdered her,' I said, and Matty put down
his paper and looked at me. Both women looked at me
as well. Dennis was bored with the photos and he was
leaning back against my ma's shoulder, picking his
nose.

'They were put away for it,' I said.

I know my ma thought I was lying but Margaret
said: 'Nothing was ever proved. I don't believe they did
it. Joe wouldn't hurt a fly, God rest him.'

'But she was mental,' I said. 'She thought the babby
was a fairy. She died in prison.'

Margaret looked at me. 'You wouldn't want to
believe everything Colman tells you,' she said.

'It wasn't Coley,' I said. 'It was his grandma told
me. Isn't it true, then?'

Margaret didn't answer that. She turned over the
next page, quickly, like she was trying to escape from
something.

'There's the slates going on,' she said. 'We used the
old ones again, and a few more we found around the
place. Blue Bangors, they're called. New ones would
never have looked right at all.'

But I could see my ma wasn't listening. She was still
back a few pages, shocked by the story of the murder. I
wished I'd said it to her before. We might have been back
in Dublin by now if I had.

'And that's how it is now,' Margaret said. 'All
finished. And there's Lars.'

He was standing beside the Skoda. I bent my head
sideways to get a better look. Dennis sat up on my ma's
lap, suddenly interested, and pointed at Lars.

'Stupid man,' he said. 'Why is he wearing a dress?'

'He's not wearing a dress,' my ma said. 'What are
you on about?'

Dennis put his finger on Lars's blue lumberjack shirt.

'That's not a dress,' my ma said. 'It's a shirt, silly
billy.'

I never heard her say 'silly billy' before. That was
for Margaret's benefit.

'It's not a shirt,' Dennis said. 'It's a dress. It's the
little woman's dress.'

My ma stood up and put him on her hip.

'Thanks for showing us the pictures,' she said to
Margaret.

'You're welcome,' Margaret said. I could tell she
was uncomfortable. The little session hadn't gone the
way she expected. 'We must get one of you sometime.
The three of you beside the house. I'll send Coley down
some day with the camera.'

'Oh, yeah,' my ma said. 'That'd be nice.' But she
wasn't happy. She was freaked out about living in a
house where a child had been murdered.

'Come on, Bobby,' she said to me.

'I'm not going,' I said. 'I'm helping Matty clean up
his workshop. I promised him.'

She didn't like it but there was nothing she could
say in front of Margaret. So she went off with Dennis,
and Margaret went off to put away the album and she
didn't come back while Matty and me were still in the
kitchen.

We worked right up until nine o'clock that evening. I
never felt the time passing. The place was like a
knacker's yard, with bits of old cars and tractors piled up
against the walls and in the corners. We went through it
all, sorting out what could be used again and what was
useless. We put the good bits on steel racks Matty had in
a locked shed at the side near the house, and the useless
bits in blue chemical drums in the corner. He said the
travellers came round looking for scrap metal and his da
always liked to keep stuff like that for them. He said the
same family had been coming round there for a hundred
and fifty years.

Some of the bits were so heavy it took both of us to
lift them. Matty told me what everything was while we
worked our way through it all. There were cam shafts
and con rods and CV joints and brake drums and clutch
plates and differentials and gearboxes. He knew what
car every part came from and he could tell by looking at
it whether it was worth keeping or not. I did loads of
unscrewing nuts and bolts and stuff, but he wouldn't let
me use the torque wrench because he said you only
needed that for tightening things up and not loosening
them, and it was a top-of-the-range one and it cost him
an arm and a leg. We kept all the nuts and bolts and
washers and split pins we took off the useless stuff, but
some of them were rusted on so tight I couldn't move
them and Matty said to leave them.

When we had all the big stuff sorted out Matty
went into the house and his ma gave him a rake of jam
jars and biscuit tins and ice-cream cartons. Then we
went through the pile of small things and put them all in
their own special containers. There were ones for small
and middle-sized nuts and small and middle-sized
bolts and a jar for split pins and one for counter-sink
screws, and a biscuit tin for all the electrical bits like
fuses and wires, and a big jar for all the different kinds
of washers. Then he emptied out all his old tins and jars
and we sorted through all that as well, and he threw a
lot of it out. And when we were done with that we
picked up all the rags and swept the floor, and another
load of small bits turned up in the sweepings and we
went through those as well.

Matty never stopped talking but I didn't mind.
I liked hearing about engines and driveshafts and
synchromesh and everything, even if I didn't know what
half of it was. He told me which cars were good and
which were useless, and where they were all made,
and which makes were getting better and which ones
were getting worse, and what he would buy when he
changed his car next year. I told him which cars I liked
best to drive, but I know he didn't believe me and I
didn't bother pushing it, even though he must have
known about the Skoda.

The place looked brand new when we'd finished
tidying up, but I didn't want to go. I kept looking around
for something else that needed doing. When he offered
me a twenty-euro note I said I didn't want it, and then I
couldn't believe I'd said that.

He said, 'Go on, take it,' so I did, and that meant I
had thirty-five euro towards the deposit on my room.
But I still didn't want to go. I said: 'Will you be working
on the cars again tomorrow?'

He said, 'I will, but I'll tip away on my own. My
parents like a quiet Sunday.'

I still didn't go, and while I was hanging around
with my hands in my pockets he said something that
knocked me so far sideways I nearly went through the
wall.

'How old is your mother? She looks very young.
She doesn't look old enough to have a lad your age.'

I didn't answer him. It was like the sky suddenly
changed colour, and nothing would ever be the same
again.

I walked down the hill.

Fourteen. My ma was fourteen when she had me. It
was no secret, I'd known it for years. But I was younger
then, and fourteen was no different to me than eighteen
or twenty-one. But not now, it wasn't. I was fourteen
myself, now.

Fourteen. I couldn't get it out of my head. I would
have loafed anyone who called me a kid. I thought of
myself as a man, and so did the lads. But that didn't
mean I was grown up. I couldn't imagine having my own
kid and having to look after it and all.

'Bobby!'

I turned round. Matty was coming down the hill
after me, pushing my bike. I waited for him.

'Are you all right?' he said.

'Grand,' I said. 'Why wouldn't I be?'

But I wasn't grand. I didn't get on the bike. It would
get me home too fast. I pushed it along the road and I
kept stopping and picking stuff out of the hedges and
crushing leaves, and smelling what they smelled like.

Fourteen. All my curiosity about who my da was
turned sour. I wasn't sure I wanted to know any more. It
made me feel sick. If it was just some lad she knew at
school she would have told me, I was sure of that. So it
wasn't just some lad. It was someone else, some dirty old
bastard who was bad enough to take advantage of a
school kid.

I knew she wasn't the only one in the world. I heard
of a girl in my school who had a kid when she was fourteen,
and another two when they were fifteen. But that
was the point. You heard about it because it was unusual
and because it was terrible and it ruined their lives for
them. My ma went back to school after I was born, and
she did her Junior Cert and all, but after that she left
and stayed at home with me in her ma's house. She had
a job for a while until her ma said she was sick of minding
me and my ma would have to take over again. When
she was eighteen she got her own flat and that was it.
That was her life so far. She never had time to enjoy herself.
She never had a life of her own. Maybe it was no
wonder she was useless.

When I went in she said: 'I'm not staying here
after that. I can't stay in a house where a little girl was
murdered.'

'I told you,' I said. 'You wouldn't listen.'

'You did not tell me!' she said.

'I told you it was haunted.'

'It is not haunted!' she shouted at me.

'Well, what are you worried about, then?' I said.

'We'll have to move,' she said. 'I can't stay here.'

I helped myself to a bar, then took another one. I
was starving. 'It suits me,' I said. 'I never wanted to
come down here in the first place.'

'I don't mean back to Dublin,' she said. 'I'm not
going back there. We'll get another house. In Ennis,
maybe. Near the shops. I'll get my deposit back off him.'

'Not all of it, you won't,' I said. 'You'll have to pay
him for that mattress.'

I took the bars up to my room and ate them. Then
I took the little spanner that Matty gave me out of my
jacket. I put it on my locker, like I was the kind of
fella who always found spanners in his pockets, and
other things too, like spark plugs and sets of old
points.

I lay down on my bed and took out my fags. When
I counted them I realized I hadn't smoked a single one
since I left the house to go up to the Dooleys'. I lit one
now and started thinking about my ma again, but I
didn't want to think about her so I thought about
engines instead, and I dreamed about one then, a huge
Volvo truck engine chugging away, and carrying me
wherever I wanted to go.

I woke up really early, starving hungry. It wasn't light yet
but it wasn't dark, either. The window was kind of grey.
I thought of the drawing in Lars's book again and it
scared the bejaysus out of me, but I knew I'd never get
back to sleep unless I got something to eat.

The wind was noisy outside but everything in the
house was quiet. The light was on in the kitchen and
the little green bowl and a smeared glass were upside
down on the draining board beside a heap of dirty
dishes. The milk carton was empty and there was no
more in the fridge. All the bars were gone.

'I'll fucking burst him,' I said.

I made my sandwich and I was about to go upstairs
again but I seen Dennis through the window. He was out
on the grass in his pyjamas, trying to make the dog chase
a stick. I went out and got him.

'Come in, you little bollix,' I said to him, but I
didn't kill him and I kept him quiet. If he woke my ma
she'd go ballistic and I wanted to go back to sleep again.
I sent Dennis back to his room and ate my sandwich in
bed, but he was clattering around and making such a
racket I was sure he was going to wake my ma. So I went
and got him and made him come in with me. He kept
whispering to himself and wriggling, and there was no
way I could sleep. I shushed him and he went quiet for a
bit. Then he said: 'Bobby?'

I said, 'What?'

'She says she used live here. She wants you and
Mammy to go away.'

I went rigid in the bed. I couldn't even tell him to
shut up.

'She has no husband and no babbies. There's no one
left, only her, on her own. Isn't that very sad?'

I still couldn't answer. I couldn't even breathe. He
said: 'I could marry her, couldn't I, Bobby? 'Cos I'm
little, too.'

'No, Dennis,' I said, and suddenly I felt calm. It was
going to be all right. 'You can't marry her 'cos we're
going back to Dublin. You and me and Mammy. This
place isn't right for us. We're all going home.'

He didn't say anything else and after a bit I realized
he was gone asleep. But I stayed awake for ages, listening
to the house, terrified of what I might hear
downstairs.

When I woke up again a few hours later he was fast
asleep in the middle of the bed and I was hanging out
over the edge. I started thinking about what he said, but
then I seen the little spanner on my locker and I remembered
Matty and the brake blocks and all.

Any excuse to get out of that fucking house. I went
out before my ma got up and I started thumbing it to
Ennis. An old fella picked me up in an ancient VW Golf.
He had a dog in there with him and he had to make it
get off the front seat so I could get in. From the smell of
the car, the dog lived in it.

But your man was decent enough. He didn't say
much after we'd agreed about the weather, and he went
out of his way to drop me off near the shopping centre.
By then I'd already realized how stupid I was. It was
only eleven o'clock and the shops wouldn't be open until
two on a Sunday. I had three whole hours to kill.

I'd had my toast and I could make that last me
through until I got home, but I hadn't had a cup of tea
because there was no milk and I couldn't do without
that. I was more addicted to tea than I was to fags. So I
had to break my fiver to get a cup of tea, and once it was
broke it was gone, so I had another one as well, and a
scone, and then I went down by the river to stop myself
from spending any more.

There were ducks floating around on the water. I
threw a stone at one of them. I missed, and the duck
went after it. It thought it was a bit of bread I was
throwing for it, and it looked into the water and there
was nothing there, and it made me break my arse laughing.
I did it again and it worked a few more times, and
all the ducks went paddling after my stones. But then
they got wise to me and stopped chasing the stones, so I
went back to trying to hit them again, and I got one on
the neck and it quacked and flew away, and the others
all went after it.

All that stuff with Dennis in the night kept trying
to get into my head, but I wouldn't let it. I did what my
ma did. I put my hands over my ears and made noises
so I couldn't hear what I was thinking. I wandered
down the river a bit and there were some swans with
their heads under the water and their arses in the air. I
threw a big rock in the middle of them and they soon
came up again, but they didn't go away and it was
better craic just watching them go under and come
back up with their long necks like snakes and their
mouths full of weeds.

When they went off I smoked a fag and chucked
some big rocks in the water to see the splash. I still had
two hours to wait. I was getting bored and I was afraid
of what I might do if I went back into town, so I took
out my phone and played the racing-car game for a
while, and then I sent Beetle a text message.

back in dublin soon wot u up 2

Then I played the game again until the battery ran
out. I never got an answer from Beetle.