The Story of Before (24 page)

‘Don’t mind him, Cis,’ she said. ‘Heart like a brick, he has.’ And then to Dad she whispered, ‘Have you no sense? Don’t you know that bird was like a
child to her?’

Dad puffed up his cheeks and blew out a sigh. ‘And a merry shaggin’ Christmas to you, too,’ he mumbled, taking a bottle of beer from the fridge and disappearing into the
sitting room.

‘Don’t be too upset,’ Mam said, stroking Cissy’s hand. ‘Sure you have had that bird for . . . what? It must be ten years, isn’t it? They don’t last
forever, Cis. It was his time to go.’

‘Twelve years, Rose. I have had him nearly twelve years. Don’t you remember you were there the day Frank brought him home? Ruth was only a baby.’ She looked at me and smiled
through her tears.

‘I remember it,’ I said. ‘Uncle Frank lifted me up to see Bertie in his cage.’

‘Don’t be silly, Ruth,’ Mam said. ‘You can’t have been more than a few months old.’

But I could see the image clearly. And I could ‘feel’ Uncle Frank’s hands around my middle, the grip of someone unsure of how to hold a baby.

‘Vivid imagination, she has,’ Mam said, tousling my hair as if I was about three. ‘Always has to know more than she possibly can.’

I gave her a bit of a scowl. ‘No I don’t. I can’t help if I know things. And I do remember it!’

‘Yeah, yeah, OK. We believe you,’ Mel said, clearly desperate to get the present opening started.

‘I even remember what Uncle Frank was wearing, so there,’ I said.

Cissy took hold of my hand and squeezed it. ‘Tell me then, dear. Because I remember too.’

‘A red jumper. A really bright red. A Christmas kind of red.’

‘That can’t possibly be right,’ Mam said. ‘Sure Frank never wore anything but brown.’

‘She’s right, you know,’ Cissy said. ‘I bought it for him the week before. It was the only day he ever wore it. Hated it, he did. Said it was bright enough to stop
traffc.’

‘Told you,’ I said to the others. ‘Now do you believe me?’

‘Who cares anyway?’ Sandra said. ‘It was years ago.’

‘You’re just jealous because I was right.’

‘I am not. Why would I be concerned about what you can remember? You think you’re so special with your psychic powers or whatever it is you think you have.’

‘I never said I was psychic. You and Mel did. Just because I pay attention to what’s going on around me and spend time thinking about things.’

‘Waste time, you mean. No one cares what you think, anyway. We’re all too busy living our own lives to be worrying about everyone else’s.’

‘Shut up, you.’

‘No, you shut up. If you’re that smart, why didn’t you know Bertie was going to die? Or Uncle Frank? Maybe we could’ve saved them and poor Auntie Cissy wouldn’t be
sitting here in tears, would she?’

‘Stop it now, the pair of you!’ Mam said. ‘For God’s sake, it’s Christmas Day.’ She handed Kev to Sandra. ‘Take him into the sitting room. And tell your
father I want him. Sorry, Cis, but we’ll have to, you know, get rid of . . . I mean, we’ll have to do something with Bertie.’

‘Bury him, you mean,’ Cissy said, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.

Sandra shouted in from the hall, ‘Ruth’ll do that for you. It’s her favourite job.’

Dad came into the kitchen, not looking very pleased. Mam handed him an empty tea-bag box and nodded her head in the direction of the cage.

‘Come on in to the sitting room, Cis,’ she said quietly, taking Auntie Cissy’s arm. ‘Mick’ll take care of everything.’

If it had been any other day, we might’ve had a bit of a ceremony. Like the one we’d had for our goldfish back in the South Circular. We’d wrapped it in toilet paper and placed
it in an empty Bisto box. Then we’d carried the ‘coffin’ out on a cushion and buried it in the corner of the front garden, scattering the grave with rose petals. But as it was
Christmas Day, Bertie was given a simple send off. While Mam poured Auntie Cissy a Babycham and kept her chatting about this and that, I followed Dad out to the back garden and, in not much more
than a minute, Bertie was laid to rest.

Dad brought his bottle of beer out with him, and when the deed was done, he stood looking up at the house and took a long slug. ‘Burying a bird on Christmas morning,’ he said, wiping
his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘Eating one, yes. But digging a hole in the back garden for one?’ He shook his head. ‘Sure you’d have to laugh.’

‘It’s not really funny though, is it?’ I said. ‘Auntie Cissy’s upset.’

‘Ah, she’ll get over it.’

‘Do you think death really comes in threes? Like she said?’

‘Sure that’s all rubbish.’ He dribbled the last of his beer into his mouth. ‘I didn’t think nonsense like that’d scare you.’

Lots of things scare me, Dad
, I wanted to say
. Like seeing you down in The Ramblers with Liz Lawless.

‘But what if she’s right?’

‘She’s not, do you hear me? She’s superstitious. Always has been.’

‘I suppose we’ll soon find out.’

‘Find out what?’

‘If she’s right. If someone dies, I mean. Then we’ll know this was a sign.’

‘Look,’ he said, not even trying to hide his annoyance, ‘no one is going to die. That –’ he said, pointing the beer bottle at Bertie’s grave – ‘is
a budgie. A shaggin’ budgie! It’s not a sign for anything. It was old. Probably diseased! It was always going to die.’ He started walking back up to the house, turning to face me
when he reached the back door. ‘You need to grow up a bit, Ruth. Stop all your airy-fairy notions.’

I stared at him. In the past few weeks, he’d allowed his hair to grow out of its usual neat cut, and it rippled out from his skull in little kinks, making his head seem bigger. His
moustache was thicker too, more bushy, and I wondered was it because he couldn’t be bothered trimming it any more or because he actually liked it that way. He had a strange expression on his
face, like he was looking at someone he thought he knew but couldn’t quite place. We stood there for what seemed like ages and I could’ve used a million words and still not have been
able to explain what passed between us.

After that, the day got worse and worse. No matter what we did, none of us could cheer up Auntie Cissy. She sat staring at the fire, tears welling in her eyes. She opened our
present and said, ‘Thank you, my dears,’ but instead of pinning the brooch to her jacket, she put it back in its box and slipped it into her handbag. Mam and Dad gave her a clock made
out of a china plate and when she took it out of its box, she said, ‘Lovely, Rose. Don’t know if I’ve a whole lot of time left to be counting, but thank you all the
same.’

I tried my best to act over-the-moon with the presents I got, and although there were quite a few books I knew I’d enjoy and a crystal-making set, nothing was really going to cheer me
up.

Dinner wasn’t much of an improvement. The turkey was left in too long and got dried out; Kev flung a Brussels sprout and hit Cissy on the nose; and Dad kept avoiding me, even asking Sandra
to pass the bread sauce when it was clearly far closer to me. Then we discovered that not only did the crackers not bang when we pulled them, there were no jokes inside them either, and the paper
hats barely fitted our heads. Mam said sure, what could you expect when we’d got them in Mealy’s, and Dad sat there stony-faced, because it was him who’d bought them. I
didn’t think things could get any worse. But then, to top it all, as Mam got up to get the pudding, the doorbell rang.

‘Ah now here,’ Dad said, slapping his hands on the table. ‘It’s Christmas feckin Day! Who in the name of God?’

Mel answered the door. I’m not sure if he asked our callers into the house or whether they barged in uninvited, but either way, in the space of ten seconds, Mam was offering Geraldine
Farrell and Nora Vaughan a seat at our Christmas dinner table.

‘No, we won’t, if you don’t mind,’ Geraldine said, speaking for both of them. ‘And we’re sorry to be arriving in the middle of your dinner, but, well, this
can’t wait, can it, Nora?’ She stood with her feet spaced apart and her arms crossed over her huge belly. I knew it wasn’t easy to find nice things to wear when you were having a
baby, but surely, I thought, she could’ve made some sort of an effort on Christmas Day. She was dressed exactly the way she always was, whether pregnant or not, and wore one of Clem’s
floppy jumpers and a pair of stretchy slacks. Nora, by contrast, looked as though she might be a good example of what Bridie would term a ‘dog’s dinner’ – all frilly and
flowery in a dress I was certain I’d seen in Sheila’s Fashions, with a string of large purple beads around her neck and her hair newly dyed a sort of squirrely-red.

‘This girl put a broken bottle up to my Tracey’s face yesterday,’ Geraldine announced, looking directly at me. ‘Now before you say a word, I want to let you know that
Valerie was witness to the event, wasn’t she, Nora?’

‘She was. She saw the whole thing,’ Nora agreed.

Dad glanced at Mam, then turned to me. ‘Is this true?’

I knew it could go either way. There was just as much chance of me saying ‘yes’ as saying ‘no’. It was like tossing a coin. Mam stood at the table holding the pudding on
a plate, watching my face for clues to the truth. I juggled the possible answers in my head. Whatever I was going to say, it’d cause trouble. There was no easy way out.

‘Well?’ Dad said, realizing his paper hat was still perched on top of his head. He pulled it off, screwing it into a ball and stuffing it in his pocket. I could feel the man in the
tree looking at me from behind his cover of pots and onions. Watching, watching, waiting . . .

‘We’re not here for the good of our health,’ Nora said, wagging her finger at me. ‘And we have our own Christmas Day to be getting along with, don’t we,
Geraldine?’

‘We do, Nora. But we had to come over and get this sorted. Now, if you’ll admit the truth and apologize, we can all get back to enjoying our day. It’s been spoiled enough
already with this. Tracey’s very upset.’

‘Well, I’m sorry . . .’ I began, watching the look of satisfaction that spread over Geraldine’s face as she thought she was getting her apology. ‘But I’ve no
idea what you’re talking about.’

Her wishy-washy eyes bored into me. ‘You’re quite sure about that, are you?’

I nodded.

‘So our girls are lying, then?’

I shrugged.

‘And why would they make up something like that?’ Nora wanted to know.

‘Look,’ Dad said, ‘she says she didn’t do it. What more do you want?’

‘Just the truth,’ Geraldine said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Well, you’ve got it. Now, if you don’t mind, can we finish our dinner in peace?’ He took the pudding from Mam and put it in the middle of the table. ‘Get the
bowls,’ he said to Mel. ‘Ruth, bring over the brandy sauce. Sandra, see our visitors out, like a good girl.’

Nora looked at Geraldine. ‘Well! Of all the—’

‘Happy Christmas,’ Dad said, giving them a false smile. ‘Enjoy the rest of your day now.’

‘There was no need to be flippant,’ Mam said, as soon as our ‘visitors’ had left the room.

‘Ah, come on, woman. Don’t give me that. Marching over in the middle of our Christmas dinner! Did you ever hear the like?’

The pudding was served in silence. Auntie Cissy picked the cherries out of hers and pushed them into a little pile, which she spooned onto her placemat. Dad wolfed down his then helped himself
to some more. Kev spat out the bit Mam allowed him to taste, rubbed it into a streaky brown mess on his tray, then wiped it into his hair.

Sandra smirked at me from across the table. ‘Why do you think Tracey would’ve made up something like that?’

‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?’

Before she could reply, Mam butted in. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about it, do you hear me, both of you? We’ll get to the bottom of it another day. Let’s forget about
it for the moment. Isn’t that right, Cis?’

Auntie Cissy’s face was blank. ‘Cis? Isn’t that right?’ Mam said again. ‘We’ll just forget about it.’

‘What? Oh . . . yes . . . yes, Rose . . . We’ll do that.’

By the looks of things, Cissy had forgotten about it already. Mam and Dad didn’t believe I’d done it. I could tell. It wasn’t only because it was Christmas Day that Dad had
rushed Geraldine and Nora out; it was because he thought Tracey had made the whole thing up. He wouldn’t be able to believe I’d done something like that, as much as he’d said
I’d changed. Did that mean he trusted me? Or did it mean he didn’t know me at all? I wasn’t sure. There was a lot I wasn’t sure of any more.

I pictured Tracey’s face, how close it’d been to mine. I remembered how angry I’d been. Burning angry at the way her mouth had curled around the words ‘Shayne
Lawless’. Like she knew them better than anyone else. Like she’d more of a right to use them. Like she owned them. I saw her cold, see-through skin, her icy veins like frozen rivers
underneath. I watched myself press the jagged glass to her cheek, and felt a rush of relief inside when I imagined I’d drawn blood. I pictured it oozing thick and black, flowing freely to the
ground in a steady drip-drip that settled in a circular pool on the frosty grass. I watched the whole thing like it was a film.

But I told myself it wasn’t really me that I saw. Not the proper me. Not the me who’d moved into Hillcourt Rise a year and a half before. But the me I thought this place had turned
me into.

As usual,
The Wizard of Oz
was on in the afternoon. While everyone else settled down to watch it, I lay out on the rug to look at my books and eat some chocolate from my
selection box. Auntie Cissy soon fell asleep, the only indication being that her eyes closed. Her body remained as stiff and upright as ever, her hands in her lap, and her head not even slightly
bent to one side. Kev sat on Mam’s knee and on more than one occasion, she had to pull him back as he leaned over and tried to prise open Cissy’s eyelids.

By half past four it was dark outside, and the heat from the fire and the glow of the fairy lights made me drowsy. With the sounds of Dorothy’s silly little-girl voice telling us
there’s no place like home, I laid my head on a cushion and closed my eyes.