Part 16 (1/2)

'My, my, you have quite the collection,' Sonya says as we sit down at a table in a bedroom. People swirl around us, talk, swap, play, even watch her at work, but they're not registering in my mind. I keep my eye on her. She's huge, so big her a.r.s.e sticks out on both sides of the chair. She thinks I'm Hamish O'Neill, winner of the World Champions.h.i.+p of 1994, individual best player in the same year. She wants to talk about that for a while and I don't mind reliving my glory days when there are very few people I can tell the story to. I tell her all about it in detail, how we beat the Germans' ten-in-a-row run and the bar fight that broke out afterwards between Spud on my team and one of the German teammates, and USA having to act as peacemakers. We laugh about it and I can tell that she's impressed and we return to the marbles.

'I bought your book to value them myself but I quickly learned there's an art to it, one that I couldn't master,' I say. 'I learned there are more reproductions out there than I thought.'

She looks at me intently. 'I wouldn't worry about reproductions as much as people want you to worry, Hamish. When it comes to the collectable world, reproductions are not a new thing. Sparklers and sunbursts were an attempt to mimic onionskins, cat's eyes an attempt to mimic swirls. Bricks, slags, Akro and carnelian agates and 'ades were an attempt to mimic hand-cut stones, but despite this, all these marbles except of course cat's eyes are highly collectable today.'

I smile, thinking of my joke with Cat about her not being collectable at all, though she is the most valuable thing in my life, and Sonya looks at me over her gla.s.ses which are low on her nose. She watches me, as if evaluating me and not the marbles, twirls them around with the 10x loupe in her thick fat fingers, gold rings squished down on most fingers, with fat gathering around them. Those suckers are never coming off. 'But usually everyone and everything is mimicking something or other.'

I swallow, thinking it's a direct evaluation of me. As if she knows I'm not Hamish O'Neill, but she couldn't possibly.

After a time studying, during which I've downed too much whisky, she speaks, 'You've got some reproductions here and this, this has been repaired to fix a fracture, see the tiny creases and the cloudiness in the marble?'

I nod.

'That's from re-heating the gla.s.s. And you've a few fantasies,' she says, moving everything around. 'Items that never existed in original form. Polyvinyl bags with old labels,' she looks disgusted. 'But no, you're generally looking good here. You obviously have a good eye.'

'I hope so. We'll see, won't we?'

'Yes, we will.' She looks at the collection and laughs wheezily. 'Hope you've got time, because this will take all night.'

It is four a.m. when somebody called Bear drops me back at the inn in a pickup truck and speeds off. I can barely see straight after downing a bottle of whisky with Sonya. I try to concentrate on the path ahead of me and fall with my bag of marbles into the vines. Laughing, I pull myself out and stumble to the room.

As the pickup truck pa.s.sed the vineyard I saw to my surprise that the wedding had wrapped up and there wasn't a guest in sight, not even my Cat. Unusual for an Irish wedding, though I suppose we aren't in Ireland and I should have known that it would be over early, with such a conservative bunch. I stumble into the inn, receiving angry glares from the owner who had to let me in at such an hour, and I bang into everything, door frames, furniture, on the way to the stairs. When I reach the bedroom, as if by magic Cat pulls the door open, hurt written all over her face.

'Where the h.e.l.l have you been?'

I know I've done it again. No matter what I think about myself, how I think I can change, I always slip back into hurting people. The Hamish in me comes out, but I can't blame him any more, I never really could. It's me. It's always been me.

I wait in my car for Lea as she gets ready for the party. I blare the heating, trying to dry my jeans, which stick to my legs. I take the inventory out of my bag again and flick through it. Scanning his lifetime of memories, all catalogued in a neat script. I look through the photographs I took of the newspaper article on the Marble Cat wall. It's grainy and Dad is hiding in the back row, but it's him all right. For the first time I notice the date on the newspaper.

I call Mam, who answers quickly for so late at night.

'Mam, hi, I hope I didn't wake you.'

'Not at all, we're still up drinking wine Robert is drunk-tweeting NASA,' she giggles as I hear Robert in the background shouting about aliens waving at him from the moon. 'We're out on the balcony watching the moon, isn't it marvellous? I should have known you'd be awake, you know you could never sleep as a little girl when there was a full moon? You used to sneak into our bed. I remember Fergus brought you downstairs for a hot chocolate one night, I found you both sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, him asleep, you looking outside.'

The moon made us do it.

I smile at the image. 'I haven't changed much.'

'Did the boys have a great day?' she asks.

'The best.'

She laughs. 'And I'm sure you have too. Nice to have the day to yourself. You don't get that much.'

Silence.

'Everything okay?'

'Do you remember my thirteenth birthday party? We had a marquee in the back garden, didn't we?'

'Yes, about thirty people, catering, the works.'

'Was Dad there? I can't really remember.'

'Yes, he was.'

'So he wasn't away that day?' The newspaper report is dated the day of my birthday, though it refers to the champions.h.i.+ps being held the day before.

She sighs. 'It was a long time ago, Sabrina.'

'I know, but can you remember?'

'Of course he was there, he was there in all the photographs, remember?'

I remember now. Me in my short skirt and high heels, looking like a tart. I can't believe Mum let me dress like that, though I know I didn't give her much choice.

'And what about the day before?'

'What did you find out, Sabrina? Just spit it out,' she snaps.

I'm taken aback by her coldness.

'I suspected,' she fills my silence, 'which is probably what you're about to tell me, that he was having an affair, away with somebody. He said he was in London for a conference, but when I called the hotel they had no record of him. I suspected something, he'd been doing his usual secretive thing leading up to that, heading off to places I knew he wasn't going to. He did that a lot. He came home the day of your birthday. I confronted him, I can't remember now, but he managed to weasel his way out of it as usual. Made me feel like I was going crazy, as usual. Why? What did you find out? Who was she? Was it that Regina woman? G.o.d knows there were many others, but he never admitted to her. I always thought they were together before we split.'

'I don't think he was with another woman, Mum. He was having a love affair all right, but not the one you think.' I take a deep breath. 'He was at the World Marble Champions.h.i.+ps in England. His team of six men, the Electric Slags, won. A newspaper published a photograph and an article about it on the day of my birthday. He's hiding in the back, but I know that it's him.'

'What! Marble champions.h.i.+ps? What on earth are you talking about?' She slurs as she talks and I don't think this is the best time to discuss it with her. I was wrong, I should have waited, but I couldn't.

'I told you about them, Mum, he's been playing marbles all his life, compet.i.tively. Secretly. He's been collecting them too.'

She's silent. So much to take in, I'm sure.

'It's him in the photograph, but he used a different name. Hamish O'Neill.'

I can hear her intake of breath. 'Sweet Jesus! Hamish was his brother, his older brother who died when Fergus was young. He wouldn't talk much about him, but I learned a few things about him over the years. Fergus thought the world of him. O'Neill was his mother's maiden name.'

So Mattie was right. This was all about Hamish. Hamish died using Dad's name, Dad in turn took Hamish's name. I don't know if I'll ever truly know why. I don't know if I need to.

'There was a best individual player trophy for a Hamish O'Neill. I met with his team, they say that Dad is Hamish.'

Mum is quiet. Food for thought, I can't even imagine the memories she is accessing as she tries to understand it and piece it all together.

'Mum?'

'And he won this the day before your thirteenth birthday?'

'Yes.'

'But why didn't he tell me?'