Taken Away (4 page)

‘Jesus, Olive!
Stop that!
' The shock at Ma's terrible language was evident in Dad's voice. It was frightening to hear her talk like that; it didn't sound like her at all.

There was an inarticulate cry from my mother and the sound of something being flung
hard
into the other side of the wall next to our heads. Dom flinched and pressed closer to me. I hoped to God that Dee would stay asleep; the last thing we needed was for her to wake up screaming for her tea.

Ma was crying now; I could hear it in her voice and it surprised me. Anger didn't make my ma cry. Anger made her cutting – it made her scary – but it
never
made her cry. Her voice came floating up the stairs, wavery and broken, and I think it frightened me more than if she had been shouting.

‘Dave, I can't have her here. How can I?
Look
at this place, look at those bloody stairs. There isn't even a proper bathroom. Dave . . . ' She started to cry in earnest. There was a soft scuffling sound, and then she yelled sharply, ‘Don't
touch
me. I don't want a bloody
hug
! I want some
help
. I want them to
take
her. Just for a little while! For God's sake, is it so much to ask?'

Dad's voice spoke, so softly: ‘Olly,' he said. ‘Look at me.'

‘You won't even be HERE! You'll be off at work!'

Again, Dad, gently: ‘Ol, I 
have
to go to work.'

Ma's voice, much softer: ‘I think I hate her.'

‘Oh Jesus, Ol. Please don't . . . '

‘Every time I look at her now, I'm afraid I'm going to think . . . I'm going to think of my luh-little house and how . . . and how hard we worked for it. And how she buh-buh-burnt the place
dooown
.'

The last word came out in a wail and I could imagine my mother standing there, her face creased up and covered in tears. I felt sorry for her then, and I wanted to hug her. But my ma was a fierce woman. You didn't just go over and hug her – not in situations like this.

Okay, Olive. I'll talk to Conner again. I'll ask him to try and ‘get Maureen . . . '

‘
No
.' This statement came flat and decisive. ‘No. I'm sick of them. Poor Cheryl. God, they're such . . . poor Cheryl.' There was a scraping tinkle, shards of china being swept up. Even through the wall, I could feel my mother pulling herself together. I could hear it in the tone of her voice. She was battening down the hatches. ‘I'm not leaving her with them any longer than we have to.'

‘Olive . . . '

She interrupted him before he could finish. ‘Tell them they can bring her down on Saturday, like they planned. Tell them we don't need their help. Cheryl will be no trouble to me. She's a lovely woman; their dad was lucky to find her. They didn't deserve to have her in their lives. You
tell
them that, Dave.'

There were gentle sounds now: a chair scraping; my dad's voice, muffled as though he had his face pressed against her hair. ‘I will,' he said. ‘I'll tell them all that.'

‘Okay.' Ma was barely audible. I knew he was hugging her now. She only came to his shoulder; her face would be buried in his chest. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘So am I, love. I wish . . . '

‘Go get some chips, will you?' She would have stood back now, cutting him short, scrubbing her face. ‘I'm damned if I'm going to cook.'

There was a gentle laugh, a moment of stillness and then the sounds of Dad gathering up his keys and heading out the door. We could hear Ma tidying things up. Then, very softly, we heard her sobbing, the private, muffled sound of quietly desperate tears.

We slunk back to our bedroom, soundless as phantoms on the darkly attentive stairs.

For once, Dom didn't even
try
to talk about it. That was just fine by me.

IN THE DARKNESS

IT IS MY
birthday, October 30th 1917. I am twenty years old today and running for my life. It is raining. The duckboards are slippery as ice. My feet fly out from under me and I fall. As I go down, I catch the edge of my helmet on a support stake and it is jerked from my head, wrenching my neck. I leave it swinging on the stake. Then I'm down on my back, my rifle gouging into my ribs. I try to roll over, keep running and scramble to my feet all at the same time. The other soldiers leap over me and pound past me, skidding and sliding on the treacherous boards. The rain is falling so heavy and my heart is pounding so loud that I'm deaf to anything else save my own ragged breathing. I get my feet under me and half run, half crouch, my hands supporting me on the slick wood. Someone grabs my collar and yanks me up so that I'm on my feet again. A shell bursts overhead and I'm blind but still running. That guiding hand stays on my collar, holding me up, pulling me on.

Dear God, don't let me run off the edge of the boards.

Sweet Mary, guide my feet and let me stay on the boards.

Mud is raining down on us, sloppy great clods of it, spattering the backs of our heads and our shoulders. I keep running blindly until my vision clears and my unseen saviour releases my collar. It's my pal Shamie. He looks back at me once, finds the God-given heart to grin at me, and is gone, just a black shape amongst all the other black shapes running for their lives in the night.

I turn a corner into Black Paddy's Trench and my feet go out from under me again. I go right over this time. I feel some huge bruiser go down behind me. He rams into me, sending me sliding. I reach back, feel my fingers brush his rain-slicker. But I'm unstoppable – his weight has sent me skating across the glassy wooden planks on a smooth plane of water, sliding towards the edge of the duckboards. The mud waits there, the silent glistening heave of it. Bottomless.

I scream, ‘Oh Jesus! Help me! Help me!'

My voice is silent even to myself, my scream nothing against the roar of the shells and the thunder of the guns. I slide off the edge of the boards. My heart, my lungs, my stomach – all contract with fear. My eyes fill with tears at the terrible, terrible knowledge of how I am going to die.

The mud inhales me feet first. A cold gullet squeezing around my legs, my thighs, my belly, my chest, it pulls me right off the boards and into its arms. It is very fast. Men run past me, their feet a blur as my chin and mouth and nose go under.

Before the mud wraps its blindfold over me, I find myself staring up into someone's eyes. There is a boy standing above me, a solemn-eyed child of ten. Untouched by the rain and the mud and the shells, he watches me go down. I know him; I know exactly who he is. No amount of years could have erased the memory of his face.

He says my name and I am gone.

I LEAPT AWAKE WITH
my heart hammering in my throat and the taste of rain and mud on my tongue. I flailed around for a minute, making small panicked noises, before I realised I was lying in bed, doing battle with my blankets. Already the dream was gone, and I found myself lying there with a racing heart and no clear idea of why I was so scared.

As the silence of the house settled around me, I became aware of a familiar sound coming from the bunk above me – a hoarse, scratching wheeze. It was Dom struggling for air, desperately gasping in a way that I hadn't heard him do in years.

‘Dom!' I scrambled and half fell out of my covers. I stood on my mattress, pulling myself up to look over the edge of his bed. Dom was rigid and staring at the ceiling, his arms straight down by his sides, the blankets bunched in his fiercely clenched fists.

‘Dom! Sit up!'

I tried to climb the side of the bunk and failed, scraping my belly on the battered side-rail as I slid back over the edge. Dom rolled his unfocused eyes towards me. His mouth was wide, his chest heaving, but it was obvious there was no oxygen getting to him. Just enough air to make that awful rusty-bellows heave in and out of his throat.

‘Hang on, Dom! Hang on!' I took the ladder, missed the first step, took it again and scrambled to the top bunk, crawling up Dom's straining body to the head of the bed. There was nothing in this world that scared me more than Dom's asthma. I'd thought we'd seen the end of it two years ago, when the last of the really bad attacks had put him in the hospital. It was this damned house. It was this filthy, dusty house, bringing it all back again.

Sit up!' I grabbed his shoulders, with the intention of dragging him into a sitting position, but froze when I saw his face. ‘ His eyes were all pupil, and he was searching the ceiling with horrified desperation.

‘Lorry . . . ' he gasped, just a whistle of air meant to be a word. ‘Lorry!'

He wasn't even awake. He was having an asthma attack in the middle of a nightmare.

‘DOM, wake up!' I shook him so hard he'd have bruises in the morning where my fingers had dug into his shoulders. He took in a tremendous gasp of air and his head snapped up, nearly loafing me. I scurried back and the rickety bunk creaked dangerously under our combined weight as Dom bolted upright, wide awake.

‘Jesus, Pat!' he yelled. ‘What are you doing climbing all over me in the middle of the night?'

‘You were having an asthma attack.'

‘No, I wasn't.'

‘Yes, you were!' But I had to admit, he didn't look like he was anymore. There was no sign of a wheeze or a cough, no difficulties breathing. Just Dom, staring at me as if I'd grown two heads, rubbing his shoulders where I'd grabbed him.

He pulled his feet out from under me and clutched the covers to his chest. ‘Patrick,' he said, ‘I believe you may have had a bad dream.' He was doing what he called his ‘schoolmarm' voice, blatantly taking the piss. But damn it, I'd been bloody well awake when he was shredding the covers and gasping for air.

I gathered my dignity. ‘You were the one whimpering like a big girl's blouse,' I said. ‘You were dreaming about a car crash.'

He almost snorted, but seemed to think better of it halfway through and suddenly looked thoughtful, as though remembering something.

I jumped on it. ‘You
were
having a dream!'

‘No . . . well, yeah.' He looked at me, puzzled. ‘What makes you think it was about a car crash?'

‘You said
Lorry.
Twice.'

Now he did snort, laughing at me, though obviously intrigued. ‘Lorry?'

‘Yeah! Lorry! You must have been hit by a truck or something.' ‘Oookaaay.

I've had enough.' He shoved my knees with his feet and pointed at the ladder. ‘Goodnight, Patrick.'

I climbed back down, miffed, creeped out and mortified all at once.

I was crawling under the covers when he called down to me. ‘Pat?'

Expecting more slagging, I snapped my reply. ‘What?'

‘Thanks for coming to my rescue . . . even if you
did
nearly kill me in the process.'

I smiled. ‘Shut up, you eejit. Some of us are trying to sleep.'

I bunched the covers up under my chin and settled comfortably into the pillow, but I didn't sleep. I lay listening to Dom instead; the gentle, untroubled rhythm of his breathing was reassuring, but not quite trustworthy enough for me to let go.

I found myself watching the mirror over the dressing table. Its mottled surface had little to show me of the dark room, but I could just make out the lumpy silhouette of my sleeping brother in the shadows of the bunk above mine. Car lights occasionally travelled across the walls, sending crosshatched slashes of shadow from the apple trees, and hazy rivers of reflection from the rain-soaked windows. Each intrusion of light sent a flare across the mirror glass, and the bunk would leap into focus for a moment before the car passed on.

Despite myself, I began to drift off. Just before I fell asleep, another set of beams strobed across the mirror, making me jump but not quite waking me. As I slipped under I heard Dom whisper, loud and clear as though he was calling warily into the room, hoping for but not expecting an answer.

‘Lorry?' he whispered. ‘Lorry? Are you still there?'

THE AULD DRUNK

THE FIRST THING
that leapt to my mind the next morning was FOOD. I went from deeply asleep to mindlessly starving all in one go. I was so thoroughly hollowed out that it felt like someone had gutted me in my sleep. I lurched out of my bed before I knew I was conscious, and was out of the room and following the smell of bacon rashers down the stairs before my eyes had even opened.

Dom and I flanked each other into the kitchen and launched ourselves at the table like wolves. I hadn't noticed him following me, and even if I had, I wouldn't have bloody cared. I was solely focused on getting something down my gullet. We paid absolutely no heed to the rest of the world, our attention centred on the six slices of batch bread that we buttered one after the other and swallowed in a compulsive, ravenous gorge. We paused at the sight of the suddenly empty bread plate and turned to scan the room, our hands opening and closing, ready to pounce on anything edible.