The Story of Before (10 page)

Paddy, for his part, seemed just as excited about the plans, saluting the boys as he swung into his driveway each evening, and tugging thoughtfully at his curly red beard while they studied the
contents of his van. When they’d carried away their haul, he’d chuckle to himself and lay his huge hands across his fat stomach. I was surprised at first that Mr and Mrs O’Dea let
David be part of the preparations at all. But I think they were happy enough to allow him tiny slivers of ‘freedom’ as long as it didn’t interfere with his piano practice.

Bridie referred to David as ‘that lovely O’Dea boy’. She couldn’t understand why he hung around with Shayne.

‘It’s his poor parents I feel sorry for,’ she said to me one afternoon.

We were in her kitchen, making a Hallowe’en brack. Shop-bought ones, she said, were full of nasty ingredients and tasted like damp cardboard. I wondered how she knew what damp cardboard
tasted like, but I didn’t ask. She’d answered the door to Pat, the vegetable man, and while she was paying him what she owed, she’d spied David trailing behind Shayne, carrying
piles of timber across the green. She chattered away while I busied myself choosing from the selection of gaudy rings she kept in a black velvet purse. Picking out the ring for the brack was an
important job. After I’d tried them all on, I settled on one with a large emerald stone and an adjustable gold band, wrapped it tightly in a square of greaseproof paper, and popped it into
the bowl of doughy mixture.

Bridie scampered over, her feet bulging out of the orange sling-backs she’d insisted on squeezing on as soon as she’d heard the doorbell ring. ‘My Dick said they had a child
prodigy on their hands the very first time he heard him practising his Chopsticks,’ she said. ‘A child prodigy. And look at him now. Under the thumb of that Lawless gurrier. And him
trying to corrupt your brother too,’ she said, taking the butter wrapper and rubbing it vigorously over the inside of the cake tin. ‘All that upset, landing in that Saturday
night.’ She set the tin down. ‘There now, that’s ready for you.’

She eyed me closely, breathing heavily as I slopped the mixture into the tin in two big mounds. The flesh-coloured lumps looked just like Liz Lawless’s bosoms. I took the wooden spoon and
bashed them flat.

‘And tell me, has your daddy finished painting their kitchen?’

‘I . . . I think so.’

‘Well, at least that’s something. The less contact there the better.’

The night before Hallowe’en, Mam had the dinner almost ready when she discovered we’d no brown sauce.

‘I’ll walk to the shop with Kev and get some HP,’ I said, knowing Dad couldn’t eat shepherd’s pie without it.

‘Would you, love?’ She took her purse from behind the kettle and handed me a folded pound note.

‘And can I get my mask?’ I asked. The others had already got theirs and had been teasing me that there’d be none left in Mealy’s if I didn’t hurry up.

‘’Course you can. Here, take this in case you haven’t enough,’ she said, handing me a fifty pence piece.

It was cold outside and I made sure Kev was tucked up snug and warm under the pram cover. In the middle of the green the bonfire was already taking shape. Small sticks and old chair legs leaned
against each other in a sort of tepee shape. Larger pieces lay waiting to be broken up and added to the pile: a three-legged coffee table; a small yellow-painted chest of drawers; a black leather
armchair with curly springs and clouds of orange sponge bursting through its split seat cushion. And then there were the various lengths and chunks of splintered planks and odd-shaped bits of board
that Paddy had donated. There hadn’t been any rain for days and all the timber was dry as bone. It was going to be a huge blaze.

As I came up out of the cul-de-sac I could see, on the far side of the green, Shayne and David sitting on Vaughans’ wall, waiting for Paddy to come home. I knew they saw me but they
didn’t let on, and when I was almost at the lane, I looked back to see them nudging each other, clearly finding something very funny.

Mealy’s Mini Market was about five minutes’ walk from our house. Just before the hill down to the village, a lane led into both Churchview Park – a semi-circle of bay-windowed,
detached bungalows with huge front gardens, built a few years before Hillcourt Rise – and Cherrywood – a brand-new, sprawling estate of yellow-bricked houses. At the end of the lane, to
the right, stood the shops. As well as Mealy’s, there was Boylan’s Butchers and Sheila’s Fashions. Boylan’s window display was always the same: kidneys and sausages in
silver dishes decorated with bits of plastic parsley and fake tomatoes. Bridie said Sheila Dowd was stretching it when she used the word ‘fashions’ to describe her shop, but she still
bought the odd hideous dress there. Most of the clothes Sheila stocked were years old and none of us would’ve been seen dead wearing them. The window was permanently covered with yellow
cellophane to stop the clothes on display from fading, and the two models behind the glass looked like crazy mental patients, with their badly fitting bowl-cut wigs and limbs twisted in towards
their bodies.

Mrs Mealy was alone in the shop when I walked in, weighing quarters of bulls-eyes into brown paper bags. She was tiny; only her head and shoulders showed above the tiled counter. Her hair was
screwed into such a tight bun that her eyebrows were pulled halfway up her forehead, making her look permanently surprised. A line of sharpened pencils sat in the top pocket of her pale blue shop
coat, and along her lapels she kept a selection of brown and gold hairpins, each of which eventually ended up on her head at some stage throughout the day. Bridie said it was because a customer
once found a hair in between their slices of cheddar cheese and Mrs Mealy never wanted to go through that sort of humiliation again, especially since it’d been someone from Churchview
Park.

Kev had fallen asleep on the walk, so I’d left him in his pram outside the shop. It was far too much trouble to try and bump the wheels up the concrete step and force the door open with my
bum. It wasn’t as if Mrs Mealy would be goo-ing and gaaing over him anyway. When I asked for the HP, she made a big deal of screwing the lid back on the jar of bulls-eyes. She huffed and
puffed taking the bottle down and then walloped it onto the counter. And when I said I wanted to buy a mask, she tried to frown and muttered something about Mr Mealy hanging things up too high. She
took a sweeping brush and, holding it like a sword, stabbed it up towards the row of masks hanging above her head. When she eventually managed to unhook the one I wanted, I was finally able to
admire it close up. It was a devil’s face: deep, fiery red, with black-rimmed eyeholes and dark green lips.

After I paid, I shoved the HP in my coat pocket, hung the mask on my wrist and went back outside. Plumes of coal smoke puffed from the chimneys of Cherrywood and Churchview Park, the smell
crawling up my nose and stinging the back of my throat. I passed the mountain of briquette bales, orange gas bottles and bundles of fire sticks that were piled up against the wall. The days were
getting colder; it would soon be winter. It was almost dark already though it was barely half past five.

I blinked so I could adjust to the soft grey light outside after the blinding fluorescent tubes in the shop. I blinked again.

The pram was gone.

I stood looking at the spot where I’d left it, convinced my eyes were foggy and blurred from the smoky air and it would reappear if I just kept staring.

But all I saw in front of me was an empty space.

I spun around. And around again. I opened my mouth then closed it. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t.

I pressed my face to Boylan’s window and peered inside. Only the butcher boy was there, wiping a bloody cloth over the chopping board. The lights were out in Sheila’s Fashions, the
closed
sign on the door.

I started to shake. I knew I had to run but I didn’t know where to. Which direction? What road?

I was still trying to decide when I realized I’d already taken off and my wobbly legs were carrying me back towards Hillcourt Rise.

My feet slapped hard against the concrete, pounding out his name in my head as I ran.
Kev Kev Kev Kev.
The lane seemed wider, darker; the walls loomed higher. I bolted straight down the
middle, away from the deep banks of shadow that seeped out from either side.

Why would someone take him?

I could already see Mam’s face. I could hear her shouting.
Don’t be ridiculous, Ruth. What do you mean he’s gone?

My chest heaved as I gulped cold air into my lungs and sprinted even faster.
Kev Kev Kev Kev . . .

I burst out of the lane into Hillcourt Rise. I’d no idea what I was doing. Whoever had him could’ve gone through Churchview or Cherrywood. They could be anywhere. I could hear a
voice in my head.
A baby boy was taken from outside Mealy’s Mini Market, Kilgessin at about half past five this evening.
I willed it to go away but it continued.
Gardai would like
to speak to anyone who was in the area at the time. Any information, however insignificant, could be vital to their investigations and will be . . .

I tried to think of Kev’s face, his laugh, his cry, anything to get the voice to go away. It couldn’t go as far as that, could it? Not the news. It wasn’t going to be on the
news. It wasn’t real, was it?

I would find him. I had to. I shouldn’t have left him outside. It was all my fault. Was he really gone? Maybe someone took him by mistake? Maybe it was a joke? But who would play a joke
like that? Who would be that heartless, that utterly horrible? That . . .

Then I saw him.

David.

Rattling the pram at speed towards Shayne, his lolloping legs kicking high in the air behind him.

I raced across the corner of the green, reaching the path just in time to grab hold of his arm and pull him to a stop outside the Vaughans’. I shoved him away as roughly as I could and he
stumbled against the wall.

‘What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?’ I screamed at him.
‘Are you mental or what?’

‘Take it easy. It was just a joke,’ he said, rubbing at his shoulder. He glanced at Shayne. ‘We . . . I . . . I didn’t mean any harm.’

I ripped off the pram cover and there was Kev, wrapped in his blanket, fast asleep.

‘A
joke
?’ I asked, my voice rising. ‘You think that’s
funny
?’

Before he could answer, Shayne butted in. ‘Told ye she wouldn’t like it, didn’t I? But ye just wouldn’t listen.’ His eyes were hard and dull like old pennies, even
under the warm glow of the fancy carriage lamp. He slid from the wall and leaned against it, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He shook his head. ‘Think ye know everythin’,
O’Dea, don’t ye? Big eejit.’

David shuffled, clicking the stud on his wristband and staring at Shayne. He had that look again, the one that made me think about people who burst into flames. He bit at his lip then he turned
to me. ‘I’m sorry, OK?’ he said. I held tight to the pram handle as I listened. ‘It was . . . I mean . . . look, I’m sorry. That’s all.’

It was strange hearing him speak normally, with no weird accent or odd words.

‘How could you think something like that was funny?’ I asked. ‘How would you like it if you thought your sisters were in danger? Would you think that was a joke?’

He stared at me, then glanced again at Shayne and was about to say something, but at that second Paddy Vaughan arrived home in his van. He swerved into the driveway, beeping the horn and nearly
hitting the garage door. He jumped out, beaming at the boys, his stomach wobbling under his shirt.

Shayne came away from the wall and moved towards the Vaughans’ gate, patting the hood of Kev’s pram as he passed. ‘Sure there’s no harm done anyways, is there?’ he
said and went to see what Paddy had brought home for the bonfire. I caught David’s eye and though there was sorrow in his gaze, I couldn’t be certain that was all he was feeling. I was
sure he was hiding something, that his face wasn’t showing all that he felt inside. He followed Shayne, keeping his head down. My heart beat so fast I could feel it in my throat.

I leaned in to the pram and stroked Kev’s face. I felt sick at the thought that he could’ve been hurt. David had been running so fast, the pram might easily have toppled over. I
wanted to believe it was all a joke, but if David really was sorry, he had a weird way of showing it.

He hadn’t once looked in at Kev or asked if he was all right.

I was still shaky as I started to walk home. I decided not to tell Mam what had happened. Or anyone. There was no point in worrying them. Kev was OK despite his ordeal. And I was sure Mam would
give out, even though she often left the pram outside the shops herself.
But I’d always be keeping an eye
, she’d say, and I knew I’d end up thinking it was my fault. I felt
bad enough without anyone else making me feel worse.

I carried on towards the cul-de-sac. Kev was awake now, making little gurgling noises. He squirmed and struggled and loosened his blanket, so I leaned in to tuck it back around his legs. He
smiled up at me and I tickled him under his chin.

‘Who’s the sweetest wittle angel?’ I said. ‘Who’s the best wittle boy in the wo—’

I heard footsteps behind me. I didn’t want anyone to hear my baby talk so I stopped and busied myself with Kev’s blanket, waiting for them to pass. But no one did.

I threw a quick glance over my shoulder. Nothing. Not a sign of anyone. Only the weak, hazy glimmer of the nearest streetlamp and the faint
bong-bong
of church bells.

I pushed the pram a few feet. Then I was sure I heard steps again. I flicked my head around but the path was dark and empty behind me. My mind was playing tricks; my head was all muddled after
the scare I’d had. I squeezed the pram handle and was about to carry on when, without warning, a figure leapt out at me from behind a gatepost, arms and legs flailing like crazy.

‘Booooooooo!’
Then high-pitched shrieking laughter.

I screamed, terrified.