Taken Away (5 page)

Dad regarded us dryly from the cooker. A grill of rashers sizzled in his hand; a pan of eggs were frying on the hob. ‘Bit hungry are we, lads?' I made a move towards the rashers and he turned slightly, shielding them from me. ‘Sit down,' he said, the way you would with a dog you weren't sure of.

We sat, our eyes glued to the food. Dad deposited rashers and eggs and fat, sizzling sausages onto our plates. We were barely containing ourselves, our eyes devouring the food before it left the pan. He refilled the bread plate, poured us all mugs of milky tea and, finally, sat down himself.

As soon as Dad picked up his knife and fork, Dom and I dived in. I lost track of everything but shovelling food into my gob and banging back cup after cup of tea. It was only after I had wiped up the last smear of egg yolk with the last hard-won crust of bread and was looking around hopefully for a few remaining scraps that I realised exactly how much nosh I'd packed away. I was
stuffed
. I was
crammed
with food. My belly felt like a perfectly round football straining against my pyjamas. At the same time, I wanted more.

Dom was sitting very still, his hands flat on the table, his jaw working slightly as he stared at Dad's plate. I followed his gaze and had to swallow a surge of saliva at the sight of Dad's half-eaten breakfast.

Dad hunched protectively over his food. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' he muttered. ‘It must be the sea air.' He pulled the plate closer to him. ‘Don't suppose either of you gannets heard a word I just said to you?' We looked blankly at him and he rolled his eyes. ‘I
said
your mam and Dee are still asleep, don't wake them. Dee had a bad night and your mam was walking the floor with her.'

That snapped me out of my food-induced trance long enough to ask, ‘What's wrong with her? Is she sick?'

Dad shook his head and stuck a mass of fried bread and egg into his gob. Dom followed the food with his eyes. His mouth opened with Dad's, his jaw worked in little chewing movements as Dad ate. Dad eyed him as he answered me. ‘I think she's just out of sorts because of the move,' he said. He swirled a bit of rasher in egg yolk and stuck a blob of brown sauce on top. ‘She had bad dreams all night. Couldn't get to sleep.'

Something tickled the back of my mind, and I saw Dom frown thoughtfully. Bad dreams? I seemed to recall something about Dom having a dream . . . or had it been me? I couldn't quite . . .

‘What kind of bad dream?' Dom was looking very intently at Dad; he was obviously thinking the same as me.

‘Not sure. You know what Dee's like – it's hard to understand her when she's upset. Said something like, there was a bad man or something. He wanted to take her away, or,' – he gestured at Dom – ‘take
you
away. I don't know. Anyway, they're both knackered, so don't be galloping up and down the stairs.'

‘A bad man?' The tone in Dom's voice had us both looking sharply at him.

Dad paused in the middle of cutting a sausage. ‘You alright, bud? You've gone very pale.'

Dom hadn't just gone pale; he'd gone white. He was gripping the edge of the table so hard that I had visions of his fingernails popping off in bloody flakes. ‘He's not taking
me
away!' he cried, his voice high and shrill – like Dee throwing a tantrum.

Dad was putting his knife and fork down. He was starting to stand up. ‘Dom.'

Dom's colour scared me. I suddenly remembered something. ‘Dom had an asthma attack last night, Dad!'

‘Hey!' snapped Dom. ‘No, I didn't!' He was perfectly normal again – normal colour, normal voice, no death-grip on the table, just righteous indignation and denial that he'd been ill the night before.

‘Jesus! Why didn't you call me?' Dad was on his feet, his hand on Dom's forehead, Dom already pulling away in irritation. ‘Where's your inhaler?'

‘I
don't need it
. There was no bloody asthma!' He pointed at me. ‘Yer man there had a bad dream. That's all!'

Dad pulled back Dom's eyelids and felt his neck like some doctor from the telly. Dom submitted to this ridiculousness with tight-lipped anger, and I knew I was in for it later. ‘You . . . you look just fine,' said Dad, puzzled.

‘I
am
fine,' gritted Dom.

And he did look fine. There were none of the lingering telltale signs of an attack, no dark rings under his eyes, no pallor – nothing to indicate that the bloody awful menace was back to haunt us.

‘Alright.' Dad stepped back uncertainly, giving Dom another anxious head-to-toe examination with his eyes. ‘Alright,' he said again. ‘Go on upstairs and get dressed, the two of you. And don't wake the girls.'

He watched us go up the stairs, and I knew he wasn't going to let it go that easy. Dom was in for a good three days of anxious hovering – and I was in for a right bollocking as soon as we got out of earshot.

WE HAD A HISSING
, almost sub-audio argument as we pulled on our clothes.

‘You
prawn
!'

‘I'm sorry!'

Dom sat on the floor and glared up at me as he dragged on his jeans. ‘He'll tell
Ma
and she'll
freak out
and the two of them will spend the next week treating me like feckin'
Helen
bleedin'
Keller
.'

‘Oh, shut up. It's not
that
bad.' But I knew he was right. They were going to make a huge deal of this in their own quiet way. Why had I opened my big mouth?

‘What the
hell
you were
thinking
?'

‘It's your own fault anyway. What was that all about in the kitchen?'

He looked at me blankly. ‘Eh?'

I paused in the middle of putting on my shoe and did a vicious impersonation: little girlie voice, clawed hands, eyes rolled into the back of my head. ‘Don't let the bad man take meee. Wruuhhh!'

I laughed at myself, but Dom just squinted up at me, puzzled. ‘Pat,' he said, ‘I haven't a clue what you're talking about.' Something about his tone made me stop arsing around. He was studying me carefully. ‘I don't remember saying
anything
in the kitchen,' he said. ‘All I know is one minute I was guzzling food like a starvin' Bangladeshi and the next minute, Dad's hovering over me and you're telling him I had an asthma attack.'

I sat slowly onto the edge of the bed. ‘Dad said Dee had been up all night with bad dreams,' I said. This lit a small flare of recollection in Dom's eyes. ‘She thought a man was going to take her away,' I said, ‘to take
you
away.'

A muscle in Dom's face twitched. He jerked forward. For a minute I thought we were going to repeat the whole kitchen scene again. But then he just sat back, his eyes thoughtful, his hand on the shark's tooth that had become a permanent fixture around his neck.

I had a bad dream last night,' he said softly. ‘

I nodded. ‘So did I. Can you remember yours?'

He shook his head. ‘Tell you what, though, what you said just now . . . about the man? It scared me, Pat. Really . . . my heart's pounding. But I don't know why.'

We sat deep in thought for a while. ‘I think I dreamt about soldiers,' I said quietly.

‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah. Soldiers in mud. Like that stupid film the night . . . last week.'

I couldn't bring myself to say which night we'd been watching that film. We both went quiet.

Then Dom cleared his throat. ‘Jesus,' he said, ‘that film was boring as shite, wasn't it? World War I wasn't half as good as World War II.'

He grinned and I grinned back. What else was there to do? Last night had been freaky, one of those freaky nights where everything seems weird and off kilter. But now? Now, the morning sun was pouring through the window, there was a whole gansey-load of birds singing their heads off in the bare branches of the apple trees and everything was just so bloody
normal
.

I stood up and reached a hand out to pull Dom to his feet. ‘C'mon. Let's explore.'

As he stood, he gasped and bent double at the waist for a moment, his face turning a delightful shade of green.

‘Jesus, Pat. How much did we just
eat
?'

I groaned quietly as we crept down the stairs. ‘God, I know. I'm full as a frog. If I don't fart or burp soon I'll burst.'

Dom gawfed, and I slapped him on the back of the head with a hiss. ‘Shut up, you eejit. You'll wake Ma.'

We headed out the back, through the garden filled with sand, past Dad's car and through the shuttered amusements. We'd told Dad we were heading up around the headland and back down the harbour. He said he wanted us back for one o'clock. ‘Don't take any chances, you two. If there's trouble, just walk away. You're not with your cousins now.' As we were leaving, he gave Dom a troubled look. ‘Don't get cold, Dominick.' Dom had sighed and nodded without turning around. He whacked me as soon as we were out of sight.

The day was blinding after the rain, the sun reflecting off a million puddles and hanging droplets. We cut straight onto the beach, jumped down off the grass wall and headed left towards the headland and the Martello tower. The tide was out, the great expanse of the flats stretching away in ripples of sand and water all the way to the island. The wind was wicked coming in off the sea and we huddled into our jackets, pulling the collars up to our ears and raising our voices to be heard. We had our usual conversation about taking a chance on walking out to the island: the dangers of quicksand, the possibilities of sharks and seal pups.

I don't know what it was that changed Dom's mind about the beach and made him take the harbour road. All I know is we were halfway to the rocks before it occurred to him. I was swinging a stick around, swishing it through the air, trying to make perfect ‘Z's in the sand, like Zorro. Dom was doing his best Mick Jagger impersonation, all hips and lips. The two of us were singing ‘Sympathy for the Devil' and were just on the eighth go-around of the chorus when Dom let a
whoop
out of him and took a sudden curve for the steps.

I immediately followed, his loping enthusiasm too infectious to resist. ‘Where are we going?' I yelled.

He stopped at the top of the steps and turned to look back at me, his arms as wide as his grin, the wind whipping his hair and his army jacket and throwing sand into his teeth. ‘Let's take the harbour!'

The town was all ours. The Easter holidays didn't start 'til next week, and all the other kids were in school. There were no summertime packs of sharp-eyed gurriers, no lounging teenagers. We were as free and unselfconscious as mutts. We tussled and ran and fenced our way up the harbour road, the fierce salty tang of the harbour itself already in our lungs. There were workmen and fishermen and auld wans out shopping, but they were on another plane of existence. They didn't impact on us at all.

Then we rounded the corner and caught them throwing the old man out of the pub.

HE WAS VERY OLD
, maybe Nan's age, but these two big men were hauling him out the door like a bundle of rags. One of them was shouting, ‘Out, you old bastard. Out!' The other was silent, but his face was stony with rage and he had a grip on the auld fella vicious enough to snap his twiggy old arm.

From the smoky murk behind them, the Wolfe Tones were playing very loudly on a jukebox, and there was the general hubbub of a packed bar. A few faces were turned to the door, watching the eviction. I could just see the barman as he turned away, his mouth a firm, approving line. There were harp and shamrock flags over the bar; there was a ‘Free all Irish political prisoners' poster on the wall.

The auld fella didn't seem to even notice the treatment he was getting. He was singing to himself – a gravelly, emotional waver. ‘The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling,' he sang. ‘For youuu but not for meeee. And awl de little devils have a sing-a-ling-a-ling, for you . . . but not for me.' His head bobbled about on his neck, his fine white hair a tufty cloud in the sunlight.