When All Is Said(10)

There was this one lunchtime, I must’ve been about seven, when I decided I’d had enough. Three years I’d been trying at that stage. By then, Tony had only a couple of months left in school. He was twelve and once June came he was leaving to work the land full-time with our father. The football had been particularly good that day. I had been brilliant. In my memory, I had scored every goal, made every deciding tackle, even getting the ball from Tony once or twice. I was a genius. And then the master called a halt to proceedings to get us back inside. I knew then, at that moment, that I couldn’t. It felt like a weight had been planted on my head, not allowing me to move. I sat on the low wall that marked the school boundary, breathing heavily, watching the fallen-down socks and bruised legs of the others scurry and kick their way through the door. I could see the master looking at me. But he didn’t move; instead he called Tony and whispered something in his ear. I watched them watching me, before the master headed on inside and Tony trotted over.

‘Alright, Big Man? Come on, we have to go in.’

‘I want to go home,’ I said.

‘You can’t be doing that. Come on, the master will be waiting,’ he said, heading on again.

I said nothing, not moving an inch.

‘Listen,’ he said, returning, his hand now between my shoulder blades, pushing me off the wall and ahead of him with some strength, ‘the day’s nearly over. We’ll be out of here before you know it.’

I near fell in the door of the classroom, with the force of his pushes. I walked slowly by each table, my finger trailing along every one, to get to my seat, where I stayed for the long afternoon with a big sulky head on me.

‘I hate it,’ I repeated, over and over on our way home.

‘It’ll get better.’

‘Yeah, right. Well how come I’m still as stupid as the day I started, then.’

I ran ahead of him, like it was his fault. Ran all the way back into the house. Flew in through the kitchen, ignoring my mother’s gaping mouth and was down with the dust balls under the bed before she had time to stop me. Refused to come out. Lay there, picking at the threadbare rug that half-covered the cold concrete floor, listening to the muffled talk seeping through the slats of the latched wooden door.

‘What happened, Tony?’ Mam asked, when he eventually landed in.

‘Nothing. Seriously. Nothing happened. I don’t know what’s got into him. I’ll sort him.’

Tony sat down by the bed bringing me the glass of milk and buttered soda bread my mother always produced after the school day was over and before we headed off to find our father and the work he had lined up for us. Tony placed his plate beside mine. When there was no sign of me coming out he pushed mine in under a little further. I ignored the food for as long as my stomach let me, then I reached to take bits of the bread. Eventually I pushed them and myself back out and sat beside Tony. We said nothing. Just ate and looked at my sisters’ bed opposite. Made to perfection, not a pillow or blanket out of place, the crochet-knitted cover, made by Jenny and May over the previous winter, that gave weight and warmth at night, spread smoothly on top.

‘Do you think we should make one of them?’ Tony said. ‘One of those crochet covers?’ I looked at him like he’d gone mad. ‘Like I know women are good at all that kind of stuff but I don’t see why we couldn’t do it. It’d be fierce warm in the winter.’

‘I’m not taking up knitting so people can laugh at me even more.’

‘Hold on, Big Man, that’s not what I meant.’

‘Yes it is, you think all I’m good for is women’s work.’

‘Ah now, Maurice, that isn’t what I was saying at all. And no one is laughing at you, either.’

‘Oh yes they are. Joe Brady called me a dumbo yesterday when I got the spelling wrong.’

‘So that’s why you hit him,’ he laughed, impressed. ‘He’s no feckin’ genius anyway. He can’t even tie his laces for feck sake. And have you seen the state of his ears? I mean no man with ears that stick out like that has a right to call anyone a dumbo.’

Despite myself, I smiled.

‘Come on, Big Man. We’ll figure this out, OK? Me and you, right. Me and you against the world, yeah?’ He got me in the gentlest headlock and ruffled my hair. ‘You’ll be grand.’

But I wasn’t. And every morning after, they had to pull me kicking and screaming from my bed. My father was pushed to limits that were not naturally him.

‘Get out to blazes, ya pup.’

He pulled at me until there was nothing left in my grip of the leg of the bed and I gave way. I stood crying in my nightshirt. Screaming the odds, telling them I wouldn’t go back. My mother had to dress me with me holding my body as stiff as I could. I refused to take a crumb of food and went to school defiant and starving.

Day after day, Tony walked by my side still trying to encourage me. While my parents had long given up coaxing and pushing me out the door, Tony never stopped telling me I was full of greatness. People didn’t really do that back then, encourage and support. You were threatened into being who you were supposed to be. But it was because of Tony’s words that I made that journey to school every day and suffered through the darkness, when my brain felt exhausted from not knowing the answers. I didn’t want to let him down, you see. Couldn’t let him know that I knew I was totally and utterly thick.