My sister cried
all day long, and I had never been so happy.
That is no
exaggeration. All day long. The very picture of misery she was.
Sometimes her body would need a break or she would momentarily forget herself.
I recall my fascination as she caught a song on the radio – I think it was Get
up and Boogie, pumped up loud by Mum as a distraction – and how she began
to mouth the lyrics and bop her head, before remembering where she was and
hiccupping herself into another bout, face folding into that constipated gurn,
that made you want to both laugh and then punch a dent in the side of the
caravan.
“Sure, you’re going to dehydrate
yourself,” Dad said. “Like an Ethiopian. God, Doreen, does your mother not
realise the damage she does?”
Mum shot him daggers but said
nothing. She lit another Embassy and had it down to the filter in two or three
drags, then over at Miranda, her scabby knees up under her chin; opened her
mouth to suggest something, then clamped it shut and stabbed her cigarette out with
a grunt.
The summer of ‘76 was the hottest
July ever recorded. All the windows in all of the caravans were cranked wide
begging for the tiniest breath of wind. Car bonnets were hot to the touch. My
friend Philip Pelan tried to fry an egg on his granddad’s Morris Marina. He had
seen it in a movie. It kind of worked, although it took a while and none of us
wanted any part of tasting it. We figured that no matter how clean he kept his
car, he was still frying an egg where a seagull must have shat. And the old boy
wasn’t impressed when he found out. I can still remember his whiskery leer as
he beckoned him with a crooked finger, whilst slowly, with great deliberation,
unbuckling his thick leather belt. You could do things like that back then.
Jesus sake, Miranda, give it a
rest. Are we going to have to listen to this all day?
Dad had bought the caravan the year
before for seven hundred pounds (Mum later told us that his hand had been
shaking as he signed the cheque) and he was rewarded by two glorious summers
which saw us all roasted on the beach like lobsters. Like most of the other
Irish mothers, Mum was unaware that the newly bought sun lotion had to be
reapplied after each sea visit. My slug hite six year old back blistered and
peeled; I had to sleep on my stomach at night and every time, every time,
I would roll over onto my back and scream myself awake.
Miranda was two
years older than me and we had a kind of telepathic connection that might have
had a more positive application, but was used instead to deride and undermine
me at every opportunity, whilst skilfully operating under the radar of Mum and
Dad. I had to have my meals with her at Granny’s. She only had a little table
so Mum and Dad got served before us. Mincemeat, potatoes and carrots. Miranda
would look disdainfully at me as I heaped it up and forked it into my mouth.
A flick of the eyes, then: “Granny,
we were learning about snakes the other day in school.”
“Oh, I hate snakes, Miranda –
horrible things. Thank God for Saint Patrick.”
“But they’re really interesting. Did
you know that a lot of them can dislocate their jaws to get more food into
their mouths?”
“They can do what?”
She was happy to demonstrate by
yawning her mouth wide. “Can you imagine how disgusting that must look? Greedy,
fat things.” The eyes and the smile again; but then she added something new to
the mix, just to further highlight my gluttony and underscore her victory: a
quiet, barely audible double snort, like
a happy little piglet contemplating the trough. She was so smitten by this
sound effect that it was added to her repertoire, not just when I was at the
table, but sometimes apropos of nothing, just to remind me of my place – and
always so subtle that only I would get it. Oink oink.
Miranda, this is ridiculous
behaviour – there are people dying in the world.
Our next-door neighbour at the
caravan site, Mister Mackie, was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s little brother. Sometimes you would
see him lifting dumbbells just for the fun of it. He had a UDA tattoo on his
left bicep – which was about the same size as my dad’s left calf. Friendly
enough though, in a gruff beer can crushing way. He and Dad had spoken for the
first time a couple of days before the glorious twelfth.
“He wanted to know if we’d be at the
parades,” he told Mum over the fish and chips. “He plays the Lambeg for the
North Down Lodg.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’d look out for his sash and
his great big drum.”
If you’ve only ever seen a Twelfth
of July orange parade on the television you haven’t really lived it. It doesn’t
matter how high you have the volume, it’s just not the same. You can have the
ornaments dancing on the mantelpiece and you still won’t get it all. You need
to drown in it. The buzz of camaraderie; a thousand little Union Jacks clutched
in chubby, ice-cream hands; seagulls squawking greedily above fat chips; orange
everywhere; red, hite and blue.
And the anticipation of it.
Shush, shush, listen.
A massive cheer
as they strode into view, banners aloft. There was Good King Billy on his hite
charger, off to stomp on the Catholic hordes. Scores of spruce Protestant men
with lips pursed and trousers perfectly creased. Marching and blowing. Flawless
notes, and the little chap at the front twirling and somersaulting his stick
fifty feet in the air – always managing to catch it.
The magic was that the music never
completely dissipated. It grew fainter but always loitered, waiting to pass the
baton on to the next band. Thus, with the flute music still in the air you
could begin to hear the accordions and a roar would emerge as they rounded the
corner, all sash and splendour, squeezing the life out of their instruments.
“There
he is Dad! Mister Mackie, over here!”
He
was working up a sweat with his Lambeg drum, leaning backwards, walloping the
bejesus out of it – and when he saw us, he jerked his jaw in acknowledgement of
our support and shared Protestantism. Long after he had passed we could still
feel the blood thumping in our ears. The
trace of its resonance would follow you into your dreams, where it grew bigger
and bigger, dwarfing first the drummer, then the street – a drum that only a
folk giant might play, its thunder heard and felt around the world.
I
swear to God, Miranda, if you don’t quit it now I’m going to walk into sea just
to get a bit of bloody peace.
After
the parades the only thing we had left to look forward to were the visits to Granny.
We each
had a week (she only had one spare room) and the attention she lavished was
something you just never got at home. It was like you were the most important
person in the world. You got the T.V (a lovely big Ferguson in its own laminate
cabinet) all to yourself and could watch whatever you wanted provided there
wasn’t a Howard Keel or Yul Bruner movie playing. She would take you out into
the city on the top of the bus (this was long before her angina kicked in) to
the big shops, then the snugness of a café for buttery scones that melted in
the mouth like snowballs in a frying pan. Grandad had dropped dead of a heart
attack when Mum was only wee, and I remember hearing her tell Dad that the
royal treatment was an over compensation for her own austere upbringing. Granny,
as a single mother struggling on a widow’s pension, had been a cold fish back
in the day, too exhausted from night shifts to address anything beyond the
basic needs of Mum and Uncle Graham. I can hardly remember her smiling, Mum
said, and she never hugged me.
She was never
done hugging me. She’d sweep you up into her great bosom, and the delicious
smell of her – the rosy cheeks and mint imperials, the shock of her lovely
hite hair.
And it was my turn next week.
That’s what was really eating Miranda. She was missing all the attention – you
always felt an aching sort of homesickness after a week with her – but the real
cause of her angst and misery, and the source of my barely suppressed glee, was
the knowledge that I was about to enjoy what she was mourning the loss of. For
the telepathy thing worked both ways. Thus, whilst I had been careful not to
openly crow and had, in fact, presented as sympathetic and sorrowful, I’d made
sure that she caught me drumming my fingers at lunch and, a little later,
whistling a happy little tune to myself.
But the devil comes to visit you in
all guises, and when you least expect him.
We were getting ready for bed, Miranda
red eyed and hoarse from snivelling, me on the other pull out bed, giddy with
anticipation for my week and hoping that her misery would continue
indefinitely. I watched her glance over at me, take a huge breath, then with
renewed vigour and gusto begin a high-pitched keening, like a shawled famine
mother at the graves of her children.
“In
the name of Christ, Miranda, would you give it a fucking rest!”
His language
managed to penetrate the wall of noise and she shuddered to a stop; but the
look on her face said it all. This respite was only temporary. She was in it
for the long haul.
“Look,
pet,” Mum’s tone was placatory. “I know you really miss her. Here’s an idea. If
you can make it through tomorrow without crying, you can spend another week
with her. How’s that sound?”
Say
what now!?
Mr
Mackie was in my head thumping the shit out of his Lambeg drum.
Mum
avoided my eye (the bitch); Dad had the good grace to throw me a tortured look
of helpless apology.
It
was obscene. The greatest injustice ever
perpetrated in the history of civilisation.
A fucking joke, it was. I wanted
to say all of these things but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I was only six, and I was
scared of my sister.
“I
suppose that might help,” Miranda allowed, wiping her eyes then slipping into
her sleeping bag, her bronzed shoulders accentuated against the hiteness of
her pillow. A flaking network of spent sunburn was clustered at the cleft of
her neck, and I wondered what it would be like to pour battery acid over her
during the night. The portable black and hite T.V ran off a car battery. Dad
watched the news on it, but I figured he could just as easily listen to the
radio.
“Good
night, son,” Dad said, somehow managing to communicate, within these three
mournful syllables, his deep regret and the promise of reparations at a future
date.
I
lay on my stomach for the next hour or more, the heat of my blistered back pulsating,
imagining her smiling up into the darkness. She knew I was awake, of course,
and as I listened to the sounds of the night time – my parents breathing, the
crunch of a car on the gravelled pathway, the call of a dog – I heard her sniff
one last time before allowing herself to sleep.
Actually,
not a sniff at all. More of a double snort.
Like a little fat piglet on his approach to
the trough.
about the author
Keith Mckibbin is an English teacher working in Glasgow. He is married with four daughters and two beautiful granddaughters. His favourite short story writers are O.Henry and Raymond Carver. He has been published in both the Bath and Edinburgh short story competitions.
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