Part 23 (1/2)

She called to him, gently. He stirred and sucked his teeth but didn't wake. She called again, a little louder. He sighed and woke, his eyes searching the room until they found her face. For a moment he looked bewildered, as though her presence there didn't fit with the dreams he had been having. Then he recovered his confidence, smiled his sweet smile and sat up.

Tess smiled back. 'Sorry to wake you. But it's a beautiful day outside.'

'Is it?' Martin yawned and stretched. Tess moved over towards the window, but he said, 'Whoa, hold on. One step at a time, eh?'

He reached out and switched on a heavily-shaded lamp which stood on the bedside table, then he leaned back and stretched himself again.

Tess cleared a chair and pulled it up beside his feet. 'Your mother's bringing us breakfast,' she said. 'Well, lunch, actually.'

Martin laughed and rubbed his bleary eyes. 'I was out until nearly dawn, but the pickings were mean. I hope she's making a fry.'

Tess made no answer and there was an awkward silence for a few minutes. Then Martin sighed and cuddled himself back down into the bedclothes.

Tess looked over at the mop of red hair which shaded his marble-green eyes and felt a sudden surge of affection for him. He couldn't be that bad, he just couldn't. He was only a boy, after all.

'You didn't tell me that your father died,' she said.

Martin shrugged, pulling the covers tight for a moment over his toes. 'Did my mother tell you that?'

'Yes. Just now. Downstairs.'

'She tells everyone about it. She thinks it's like, some kind of big tragedy in my life which made me go wrong. She thinks it explains everything, but it doesn't. It doesn't explain anything. It didn't make any difference to me at all.'

'I find that hard to believe. How could you lose your father and not be affected by it?'

'How could you, you mean?' Martin's voice had a sharp edge that Tess hadn't heard before. 'You're talking about yourself,' he went on, 'not about me. Everyone does that. You'd miss your father so you a.s.sume everyone else would, too. But I didn't, not one bit. I didn't miss him 'cos I hated him.'

His face wore a sullen, bitter expression as he spoke, and his eyes were like glinting granite when he turned to Tess and said, 'Do you understand?'

Tess kept her face straight, determined to hide the unease his words had produced in her heart. 'Not really,' she said.

'Do you want me to tell you about it?'

'If you want to.'

'It's very gory. Do you like gory stories?'

Tess shrugged, torn between ghoulish curiosity and what she liked to think of as her finer sensibilities. 'I don't mind.'

'No, I'm sure you don't.' Martin's tone was sarcastic. 'But I'll tell you anyway. I like talking about it. I've talked about it to every shrink in Dublin, so it doesn't bother me one bit.'

He stopped, listening. There were slow footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later his mother elbowed the door open, struggling beneath the weight of a heavily-laden tray. Tess jumped up and unloaded the plates, then, while Martin's mother got her breath back, reloaded the tray with yesterday's empty cups and dishes.

'I'll bring it down for you,' she said.

'No. You stay here and have your chat. If you need anything else, give me a shout, all right?'

When his mother was gone, Martin began tucking into his plate of rashers and black pudding.

'We used to live in the countryside, you know. Just outside Dublin.'

'Did you?' Tess thought he had changed the subject, but he went on, 'Yes. We had a run-down old cottage and a few acres. My dad used to breed greyhounds and sell them to people from England. That was all he thought about: greyhounds, greyhounds and greyhounds.'

He paused for a minute to chew, then went on. 'It was a weird kind of life. One minute we'd be living on bread and margarine, wondering how we were going to last another week, and the next thing, he'd sell a dog or a pup for silly money to some English trainer and we'd be rolling in it. New clothes for me and my mother, Chinese takeaways every night of the week, him off to the pub buying rounds for the parish. Then back to bread and margarine again. I didn't mind, though. At least it was exciting.'

Tess poured out tea and handed him a cup. He took a few sips, then perched it on the bedside table beside the lamp and returned to the fry.

'Then what?' said Tess.

'Where was I? Oh, yes. I was into top gear by that time with this animal thing. What did you call us? Switchers, that's right. Well I used to be off in the woods and fields every spare minute trying out all kinds of things. I suppose it was good while it lasted. Then one of our neighbours gave me a donkey foal. Have you ever seen one?'

'Only in the zoo.'

'Yeah. Not many people keep donkeys these days. But the foal was ...' He felt silent, staring ahead of him, and for a moment Tess fancied that he was vulnerable, that his guard had finally dropped. But if it had, it wasn't for long.

'Fact was that I was dead soft in those days. I doted on that little donkey like a right eejit. Spent half my time out in the shed with it, sometimes being another donkey, sometimes just being myself.'

'Bet you didn't tell that to the shrinks.'

Martin laughed. 'Be a lot more probable than some of the things I did tell them. They wouldn't know the difference anyhow. I didn't meet a single one who was the full s.h.i.+lling. I don't know how they're supposed to cure anyone else.'

He gave his full attention to his breakfast until Tess said, 'Go on. About the donkey.'

'There's not much to tell. Except that my dad said we had to get rid of her.'

'Why?'

'He said he needed the shed for his hounds. And she couldn't live out on the land because he sold the hay every year and then exercised the dogs there. He said I could have a pup from the next litter instead of the donkey and it would be worth twenty times what she was, but that wasn't the point. Not then, anyway.'

Martin stopped to finish his breakfast. Outside, the birds were beginning to tune down as the short day drew towards an end, and Tess wished that she could see a last glimpse of suns.h.i.+ne. She looked over at the curtains, then decided against it, unwilling to disturb the atmosphere.

Martin wiped up the last of the grease with a piece of soggy toast, then put his plate down beside the bed, balancing it on his upturned trainers.

'So, anyway,' he said, wiping his mouth on the hem of his T-s.h.i.+rt, 'one evening my dad borrowed a cattle trailer and we brought the donkey out to some friends of his in Naas. Fifteen quid is all they gave me for her. It wasn't that, though. I didn't care about the money. The worst thing was that they had greyhounds, too, and I was sure they only wanted my donkey for dog food.

'I wouldn't care now, but it bothered me then. There was nothing I could do about it, you see. I felt completely helpless. And then they got down the bottle of whisky and my dad sat there the whole evening drinking and laughing his head off. Have you seen people get drunk? Have you seen how stupid they look, and how clever they think they are?' Martin's sour expression accentuated the anger he was feeling. 'I hated him. I hated him so much I wished he was dead.'

He gulped down his tea and held the cup out to Tess for a refill. 'Ready for the gory bit?'

She nodded, putting aside her half-eaten fry. Martin's face held a strange kind of delight as he started up with his story again.

'It was pitch-dark when we started home that night, and there was only one headlight working on the van. My dad took the back roads home because he didn't want to run into the cops with all that drink in him. He was driving too fast, as usual. I always wore my seat belt when he was driving, never with my ma. He didn't wear his, specially since they brought in the law that said you had to. He wasn't a violent man, but he'd go out of his way to get on the wrong side of the law if he could. That was just the way he was.

'So when this black cow appeared in the middle of the road, he didn't have a chance. I don't remember hitting her. I just remember seeing her on the road, coming out of nowhere, then waking up in the van with blood all over the place.'

Martin looked over to check Tess's reaction, but she was giving nothing away.