The Story of Before (9 page)

We had about half an hour of peace and then Kev woke up. Sandra brought him downstairs and tried to give him his bottle but he didn’t seem to want it. Then I took him in my arms and walked
around the room, gently rocking him from side to side. Mel sighed loudly every time I passed in front of the telly so I went out into the hall. As I paced up and down, I laid my cheek against his
soft, warm head and hummed a tune. He seemed to like that and after about ten minutes he was fast asleep.

I had my foot on the bottom step of the stairs when the doorbell rang, loud and long. Kev’s arms few out from his sides and his eyes opened wide. He stared at me for a second then began to
scream. Mel came rushing out to open the door, and I wasn’t a bit surprised when I saw Shayne standing on the step.

‘Thanks for waking him up,’ I said.

‘Who? Me? What did I do?’ he asked, coming into the house.

‘You know Mam said not to allow anyone in,’ I said to Mel.

‘So what? It’s only Shayne. She won’t mind.’

‘Oh yes she will. She said no one.’

‘Shut up you,’ he said and Shayne smiled, stuck his tongue out at me and punched Mel on the arm. Mel gave him a playful push and then Sandra appeared, her eyes lighting up. She bit
at her bottom lip and went all stupid, as if she’d lost any bit of sense that she had. Kev continued to cry, his face growing redder by the second and I groaned as I made my way upstairs. Mel
and Shayne continued hitting each other in a sort of mock fight while Sandra looked on, mesmerized. I was just on the top step when I heard a familiar voice.

‘It’s only me! I have something nice for you to share.’ It was Bridie. She stepped into the hall wearing an ivy-patterned apron over her turquoise trouser suit and carrying a
doily-covered plate that held a pyramid of deep-pink meringues, each one sandwiched together with a squelch of thick cream. ‘Thought you children might like a few of these,’ she said,
waving the plate under Sandra’s nose. ‘Made two-dozen this afternoon, I did. And would you believe they didn’t have caster sugar in Mealy’s? Had to knock into the presbytery
and borrow some from Father Feely’s housekeeper. Remind me to drop a plate of them into him before mass tomorrow, Ruth.’ She looked around the hall. ‘Ruth? Where’s
Ruth?’

‘Up here, Bridie,’ I whispered from the top of the stairs.

‘There you are! I should’ve known you’d be the one trying to settle your baby brother. The poor mite. I heard him screaming the place down and I knew your mammy and daddy were
out so I—’ She stopped mid-sentence when she realized Shayne was there. She looked him up and down. ‘And what are
you
doing here?’

Shayne made a face at her and she stiffened, her bosoms expanding as she breathed heavily up through her nose. I crept quickly to the bedroom and settled Kev back into his cot. I gave him a kiss
and stroked his cheek and I knew it wouldn’t be long till he fell asleep again. I closed the door and heard some sort of a scuffle coming from the hall. I got to the top step just in time to
see Bridie making a lunge at Shayne. He laughed in her face, ducking out of her way, but his elbow caught the edge of the plate in her hand. She tried to steady it but it was no use – I
watched, almost in slow motion, as each and every one of her pink meringues slid off and landed on the floor with a plop. The doily followed, floating gently through the air like a crocheted flying
saucer before coming to rest on the bristles of the welcome mat inside our front door.

Shayne sniggered. Sandra dug her tooth even harder into her lip and cast her eyes up to the ceiling. Mel looked down at the pile of broken meringues and splattered cream, his shoulders slumped
in grief at the sheer waste of it all. I understood his despair; we’d been so close to such a plate of treats. Even though they were ruined now, they looked so good: the cream whipped to
exactly the right thickness, the broken, crispy shells revealing a sticky, marshmallow-type goo that would’ve been absolutely melt-in-the-mouth divine.

I wondered who’d be the first to speak. It was one of those moments where no one quite knew what to say. The doily fluttered in the breeze that blew in through the open door, before its
movement was killed by the stomp of a big brown shoe.

It was Dad. With Mam behind him. Home early for some reason, their faces hard and stony even before they fully took in the scene. Dad frowned, his eyebrows becoming one long, black caterpillar.
He walked straight into the meringue mess before anyone could warn him.

‘What the . . . ?’ he said, lifting each of his feet in turn.

I shrank back from the top of the stairs, not wanting to be part of whatever was about to happen. But Mam didn’t even ask for explanations. She took one look at Shayne and almost shouted,
‘Get out of here, you! You’ve no business being in our house.’

Shayne grinned up in my direction and I slunk even further back into the shadows. Then he bounced out the front door, and in the silence of the hall we heard his pounding feet echo around the
cul-de-sac.

‘I . . . I’ll go and get something to clean up this mess,’ Bridie said, all flustered, clumsily attempting to slop dollops of broken meringue and cream onto the plate.

‘It’s fine, Bridie,’ Mam snapped. ‘You go on home. There’s obviously been enough action here for one day.’ She glared at Dad like the whole thing was his
fault. He rolled his eyes and mumbled something under his breath. We were in for it.

As silently as I could, I tip-toed back across the landing into Mam and Dad’s room and hopped into their bed, snuggling down under the cold sheets and pulling the layers of blankets in
around my body. I lay in the centre, my head in the dip between their pillows, listening to the sound of Kev’s breathing. I strained to hear what was happening downstairs but there
weren’t even any muffled murmurings. It seemed as if nothing was being said at all. After a few minutes, Mel and Sandra were marched upstairs. I heard the light being flicked on in our
bedroom.

‘Where’s Ruth?’ Mam asked. Her voice had a
don’t-mess-with-me
sound.

Sandra mumbled something about me putting Kev to bed. I started to breathe as deeply as I could and curled myself into a tight ball. When Mam came into the room, she didn’t even call me;
she was fully convinced I was fast asleep. I heard her walking over to Kev’s cot to check on him, then she switched on the lamp and began to get undressed. It was only about half past nine,
much earlier than she usually went to bed on a Saturday. I reckoned she must’ve been really mad.

Dad came upstairs and into the room. I heard him undo the buckle of his belt, whip it angrily from the loops of his trousers and toss it on the chair in the corner. He pulled off his shoes and
kicked them under the bed where they clunked against the cardboard box of photographs that had been shoved there when we first arrived in Hillcourt Rise. He was saying nothing, but making so much
noise that you’d have to have been deaf not to figure out he was angry.

‘Don’t be so childish,’ Mam said in a loud whisper. ‘You’ve no one to blame but yourself.’

I didn’t understand. For what? For the crushed meringues and the fact that Shayne was in our hall when they arrived home?

‘What did I do?’ Dad wanted to know.

I shifted a little in the bed, aware that people are never completely still when they’re asleep.

‘Sshh,’ Mam said. ‘You’ll wake them both.’ There was a pause, then she said, ‘And you know right well what you did.’

‘Jesus, woman! This is shaggin’ ridiculous.’

‘Eyes out on stalks. I’m surprised you didn’t spill your pint down your front. It’s no wonder that paint job took the length it did.’

The hangers in the wardrobe rattled as Dad hung up his jacket. Mam sat down on the bed and felt for her nightdress under the pillow.

‘Lift Ruth into her own bed,’ she ordered. ‘And be careful not to wake her.’

Dad did as he was told. I felt the cold air on my body when he pulled down the blankets. He slid one hand under my knees and the other under my back, heaving me up and into his arms. I made sure
to flop my limbs like a rag doll. I did deadweight really well; no one would’ve suspected I was wide-awake. I could smell the awful stench of The Ramblers from his hair.

‘I didn’t know where to look, Rose,’ he whispered. ‘Sure no one could help it, the way she was dressed.’

‘
Un
dressed, you mean.’ She rustled about in the dressing table drawer. ‘If it was someone attractive, I might even understand. But
Liz Lawless?’
If Dad felt
my body stiffen, he didn’t seem to notice. ‘And then we come home to find that brat of hers in the house!’

Dad carried me into my room. He laid me in my bed where I kept up the pretence that I was asleep, ignoring Sandra as she whispered my name through the darkness at regular intervals for at least
five minutes. Not long after, Kev woke up again and screamed for what must have been two full hours.

The next morning, we got ready for mass in silence. Mam said she was too tired to go because she’d been up half the night with Kev. But there’d been plenty of other
occasions when it had been hard to get Kev to sleep and still she went to mass. I said nothing to the others, but I knew it was partly because she was mad at Dad for looking at Liz Lawless in The
Ramblers.

Later that afternoon, after we’d given up hope of going for a Sunday drive, Mam began her sewing and Dad fell asleep behind
The Sunday Independent
. I watched part of a Western on
telly with the others. There didn’t seem to be any Indians in it at all, and I was rarely interested in the cowboys, except maybe Blue Boy from
The High Chaparral
. So I left them to it
and went to get Kev from his cot when he woke from his afternoon sleep. He was round about three months old now and beginning to be a bit more fun. He loved being played with so I brought him
downstairs to the kitchen and slid up and down on the lino with him in my arms. He seemed to like that for a while but soon grew bored and began to whimper. I tried to make him smile, wriggling my
fingers to tickle him as I held his firm and chubby body. He just stared at me with his glassy eyes and dribbled down the front of his baby-gro.

It was a dull and dreary day outside, and inside it wasn’t much brighter. I wished something would happen that might cheer everyone up and make Mam and Dad start talking again. I thought
about doing something bad so that they’d have to discuss my punishment with each other, and then maybe they’d forget about the night before. But then I realized that not only might it
bring Mam and Dad together, it could have a similar effect on Mel and Sandra. They adored watching me get into trouble and I wasn’t in the mood for their gloating.

I started to make funny faces at Kev. He gurgled and cooed and his cheeks grew round and fat and then he showed off his toothless gums.

He was smiling! For the very first time!

I held his head close to my neck, twirling around and around the room. Everything spun past in a blur of colour and light and though Kev was enjoying it, I soon got dizzy and had to stop. I
flopped down at the table and the onions and pots on the wallpaper danced in front of my eyes. Then I wondered if the man was watching me and I had to turn away. But Kev kept looking at the wall.
His eyes got that intense look, the one where it seemed he was staring at something that nobody else could see. Then he started to cry.

I took him into the sitting room, announcing that he’d smiled his first smile. Mam took him in her arms and gave him a cuddle. Dad reached over and rubbed her shoulder. She didn’t
look at him, but I could tell she wasn’t that angry with him any more. Mel found the news far from interesting, just uttering a quiet ‘Oh’ before turning back to the telly. Sandra
said with a sulk that she didn’t believe me; she thought Kev was far too young to be smiling. But Mam said she wasn’t surprised, and that she had a feeling Kev was one of those babies
that was in a hurry to do everything in life as quickly as possible.

Shayne took charge of preparations for the Hallowe’en bonfire in Hillcourt Rise. From early October, he seemed to be in full control of the operation, organizing the
collection of wood and stashing it away in piles in the side passage of his house. He did allow David to help, but no one else got a look in. Mel tried his best to get involved but, to be fair, he
wasn’t really up to the job. His previous experience seemed a little pathetic compared to the celebration that Shayne appeared to have in mind. Back in our old house, getting ready for
Hallowe’en usually meant making toffee apples, carving a lantern from the biggest turnip Mam could find in the vegetable shop, and whacking the daylights out of a hairy coconut with a hammer
so we could taste the dribble of milk we found inside. In Hillcourt Rise, Hallowe’en was all about the bonfire on the green.

In the weeks leading up to the big night, we began to see Shayne and David loitering outside the Vaughans’ house each evening after school, waiting for Valerie’s dad to arrive home
in his van. Paddy Vaughan had easy access to heaps of discarded timber in the builders’ suppliers and was more than happy to add off-cuts to the stash pile that the boys had started to
assemble. We soon learned that there’d been a bonfire on the green every Hallowe’en since the estate was built. The first year was, we were told, as much about getting rid of rubbish
left behind by the builders as it was about celebrating the night of the living dead. By the time we came along, it had become a huge community event. With each fresh delivery from Paddy
Vaughan’s van, the excitement increased. Shayne took possession of the wood with a seriousness that was almost comical, cradling the lengths as though they were precious gold bars. He’d
run his fingers along them and when he was satisfied that each piece met his standard, he’d hand it on to David who carried it over his shoulder to the pile.