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‘Let’s get back to the game,’ Duncan says as Mammy screams again.
‘He’s not allowed to play unless he takes his turn again,’ Angus says angrily.
‘Fine, he will, calm down,’ Hamish says.
‘Hey!’ I protest. ‘I didn’t cheat.’
Hamish winks at me. ‘You can show them.’
I sigh. I’m ten, Duncan is twelve, Angus is fourteen and Hamish is sixteen. The two Doyle boys, Tommy and Bobby, are five and two. With three older brothers I’m always having to prove myself, and even when I’m better than them, which I am at marbles and they can’t stand it, then I have to work even harder because they think I’m a cheat. I’m the one who teaches them the new games I’ve read about in my books. I’m better than them. They all hate it but it drives Angus mental. He hits me whenever he loses. Hamish hates losing too but he’s figured out how to use me.
We’re playing Conqueror, me, Duncan and Angus. Angus wouldn’t let Tommy play because he’s the worst, he’s so bad he just ruins the game. When my older brothers aren’t around I teach Tommy how to play; I like doing that, even though he’s diabolical. That’s the word Hamish uses for everything. I use my worst marbles, just the clearies for him, because he chips them and everything. Tommy’s sitting on the steps away from Hamish. He’s afraid of Hamish. Tommy knows that Hamish and his da don’t get along so he thinks he has to defend his da when he’s not there. He’s only five but he’s a tough little shit, scrawny and pale like his da too. The lads call him Bottle-washer because he’s so skinny and wiry.
What happened to put me in the headlock was that Angus threw the first marble, then Duncan shot his marble at Angus’s. It hit and that’s why Angus got mad in the first place. Duncan captured Angus’s marble then threw another to restart the game. I hit Duncan’s, captured his then threw another to restart.
Angus threw his taw and missed mine.
Duncan aimed at Angus’s corkscrew, not because it was closer but because I know he could tell Angus was already getting angry and wanted to wind him up. Anyway he missed and it was my turn. I had two targets; I could have chosen Duncan’s opaque, which I don’t much want because everyone has them – that’s marbles that are just one colour – or Angus’s Popeye corkscrew, which I’ve had my eye on for a long time. Angus says he won it in a game but I think he must have stolen it from Francis’s corner shop. I’ve never seen anyone with one like that. I’ve only ever seen a picture of one in my marble book, so I know that his is a three-colour special called a snake corkscrew. It’s a double-twist and has a green-and-transparent clear with filaments of opaque white. It has tiny clear bubbles inside. I found it in his drawer a few days ago and he caught me snooping and kicked me in the balls to let it go. I didn’t drop it though, I know better than to let it get scratched, but watching him play with it hurts more than the kick in the goonies did. He should be keeping it in a box, safe so it doesn’t get ruined.
I decided to do a move I’d been working on and impress them all by putting a spin on my marble and hitting both marbles in the one throw. I threw my taw and it hit Duncan’s opaque first like I planned, then Tommy shouted and they all looked at Bobby who had a snail in his mouth, shell and all. Angus rushed over to grab it from him and chucked it across the road. He opened Bobby’s mouth wide.
‘The snail is missing from the shell. Did you eat it, Bobby?’
Bobby didn’t answer, just waited for a clatter, his big blue eyes wide. Bobby’s the only blond. He gets away with murder because of those blue eyes and blond hair. Even Hamish doesn’t hit him half as much as he wants to. But anyway when they were all busy wondering about where the slug part of the snail went, nobody was looking when my taw hit Angus’s marble as well, which meant that I could capture both marbles in the one throw. They looked back at me to see me holding two of them in my hand, and that’s when Angus accused me of cheating and wrapped me in a headlock.
Free now of the headlock I have to respond to the cheating allegations by trying to repeat the move, which should be fine, I know I can do it, but I can’t when they think that I’m a cheat. If I can’t do it again it proves to them that I cheated. Hamish winks at me. I know he knows that I can do it, but if I don’t win he might not take me out tonight. My hands start to sweat.
Mammy screams again and Tommy’s eyes widen.
‘Baby?’ Bobby asks.
‘Nearly there, pal, nearly there,’ Hamish says, rolling up another cigarette, cool as fuck. Seriously, when I grow up I want to be just like him.
Mrs Lynch’s door opens – she’s our next-door neighbour – and she comes out with her daughter, Lucy. Lucy’s face is already scarlet when she sees Hamish. Lucy is holding a tray with a mountain of sandwiches all piled up, I can see strawberry jam, and Mrs Lynch has diluted orange in a jug.
We all pile on top of the food.
‘Thanks, Mrs Lynch,’ we all say, mouths full and devouring the sandwiches. With Mammy in the throes of it we haven’t eaten since dinner yesterday.
Hamish winks at Lucy and she kind of giggles and runs inside. I saw them together late one night, Hamish had one hand up her top and the other up her skirt, and she’d one leg wrapped around him like a baby monkey, her thick white thigh practically glowing in the dark.
‘That mammy of yours will keep going till she gets that girl of hers, won’t she?’ Mrs Lynch says, sitting down on the step.
‘I’ve a feeling it’s a girl this time,’ Hamish says. ‘Her bump’s different.’
Hamish is serious; for all his trouble he notices things, sees things that none of the rest of us do.
‘I think you’re right,’ Mrs Lynch agrees. ‘It’s high up all right.’
‘It’ll be nice to have a girl around,’ Hamish says. ‘No more of these smelly bastards to annoy me.’
‘Ah, she’ll be the boss of you all, wait’ll you see,’ says Mrs Lynch. ‘Like my Lucy.’
‘She sure is the boss of Hamish,’ Angus mutters, and gets a boot in the stomach from Hamish. Chewed-up jam sandwich fires out of his mouth and he’s momentarily winded and I’m glad: payback for my headlock.
Hamish’s green eyes are glowing, he really does look like he wants a girl. He looks like a big softy thinking about it.
Mammy wails again.
‘Won’t be long now,’ Hamish says.
‘She’s doing a fine job,’ Mrs Lynch says, and she looks like she’s in pain just listening. Maybe she’s remembering and I feel sick thinking of a baby coming out of her.
The midwife starts chanting, as if Mammy’s in a boxing match and she’s the coach. Mammy’s squealing like she’s a pig being chased around with a carving knife.
‘Final push,’ Hamish says.
Mrs Lynch looks impressed with Hamish’s knowledge. As the eldest he’s sat through this five times; whether he remembers them all or not, he’s definitely learned the way.
‘Okay, let’s finish this before she comes out,’ Angus says, jumping up and wiping his jam face on his sleeve.
I know Angus wants to prove me wrong in front of everyone. He knows Hamish likes me and just because he’s too weak to hit Hamish, he uses me to get at him instead. Hurting me is like hurting Hamish. And Hamish feels that way too. It’s good for me but bad for the person who treats me bad: last week Hamish punched out a fella’s front tooth for not picking me for his football team. I didn’t even want to play football.
I stand up and take my place. Concentrating hard, my heart beating in my chest, my palms sweaty. I want that corkscrew.
The midwife is screaming about seeing the baby’s head. Mammy’s sounds are terrifying now. The piggy’s being slashed.
‘Good girl, good girl,’ Mrs Lynch says, chewing on her nail and rocking back and forth on the step, as if Mammy can hear her. ‘Nearly over, love. You’re there. You’re there.’
I throw the taw. It hits Duncan’s marble just like I planned and it heads to Angus’s. I want that corkscrew.
‘A girl!’ the midwife calls out.
Hamish stands up, about to punch the air but he stops himself.
My marble travels to Angus’s corkscrew. It misses but nobody’s looking, nobody’s seen it happen. Everyone is frozen in place, Mrs Lynch goes still. Waiting; they’re all waiting for the baby to cry.
Hamish puts his head in his hands. I check again. Nobody is looking at me, or my taw, which went straight past Angus’s, it didn’t even touch it.
I take a tiny step to the right but they’re still not looking. I reach out my foot and push my marble back a bit so that it’s touching Angus’s Popeye corkscrew. My heart is beating wildly, I can’t believe I’m doing it, but if I get away with it then I’ll have the corkscrew, it’ll actually be mine.
All of a sudden there’s a wail, but it’s not the baby, it’s Mammy.
Hamish runs inside, Duncan follows. Tommy grabs Bobby from the dirt and carries him into the house. Angus looks down at the ground and sees his marble and my marble, touching.
His face is deadly serious. ‘Okay. You win.’ Then he follows the boys inside.
I pick up the green corkscrew and examine it, finally happy to have it in my hand, part of my collection. These are incredibly rare. My happiness is short-lived though as my adrenaline begins to wear off and it sinks in.
There’s no baby girl. There’s no baby at all. And I’m a cheat.
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(#ulink_161b2e98-7c5b-5016-991b-8d7283dd0afc)
‘Sabrina, are you okay?’ Eric asks me from across his desk.
‘Yes,’ I say, keeping my voice measured while feeling anything but. I have just fired my mug at the concrete wall because I missed a near-drowning. ‘I thought there would be more pieces.’ We both look at the mug sitting on his desk. The handle has come off and the rim is chipped, but that’s it. ‘My mum fired a teapot up at the ceiling once. There were definitely more pieces.’
Eric looks at it, studies it. ‘I suppose it’s the way it hit the wall. The angle or something.’
We consider that in silence.
‘I think you should go home,’ he says suddenly. ‘Take the day off. Enjoy the solar eclipse everybody’s talking about. Come back in on Monday.’
‘Okay.’
Home for me is a three-bed end of terrace, where I live with my husband, Aidan, and our three boys. Aidan works in Eircom broadband support, though it never seems to work in our house. We’ve been married for seven years. We met in Ibiza when we were contestants in a competition that took place on the bar counter of a nightclub to see who could lick cream off a complete stranger’s torso the quickest. He was the torso, I was the licker. We won. Don’t for a moment think that was out of character for me. I was nineteen, and fourteen people took part in front of an audience of thousands, and we won a free bottle of tequila, which we subsequently drank on the beach, while we had sex. It would have been out of character not to. Aidan was a stranger to me then, but he’s a stranger to that man now, unrecognisable from that cocky teenager with the pierced ear and the shaved eyebrow. I suppose we both changed. Aidan doesn’t even like the beach now, says the sand gets everywhere. And I’m trying to stay off dairy.
It is rare that I find myself alone in the house; in fact I can’t remember the last time that happened, no kids around asking me to do something every two seconds. I don’t know what to do with myself so I sit in the empty, silent kitchen looking around. It’s ten a.m. and the day has barely started. I make myself a cup of tea, just for something to do, but don’t drink it. I stop myself just in time from putting the teabags in the fridge. I’m always doing things like this. I look at the pile of washing and ironing but can’t be bothered. I realise I’ve been holding my breath and I exhale.
There are things that I need to do all the time. Things that I never have the time for in my carefully ordered daily routine. Now I have some time – the whole day – but I don’t know where to start.
My mobile rings, saving me from indecision, and it’s my dad’s hospital.
‘Hello?’ I say, feeling the tightness in my chest.
‘Hi, Sabrina, it’s Lea.’ My dad’s favourite nurse. ‘We just got a delivery of five boxes for Fergus. Did you arrange it?’
‘No,’ I frown.
‘Oh. Well, I haven’t shown them to him yet, they’re sitting in reception, I wanted to wait to speak with you first, just in case, you know, there’s something in there that might confuse him.’
‘Yes, you’re right, thanks. Don’t worry. I’ll come get them now, I’m free.’
And that’s what always seems to happen. Whenever I get a minute to myself away from work and the kids, Dad is the other person who fills it. I arrive at the hospital thirty minutes later and see the boxes piled in the corner of reception. Upon seeing them I know immediately where they’ve come from and I’m raging. These are the boxes of Dad’s belongings that I packed after Dad’s home was sold. Mum had been storing them, but she’s obviously chosen not to any more. I don’t understand why she sent them here and not to me.
Last year my dad suffered a severe stroke, which has led to his living in a long-term care facility, giving him the kind of skilled care that I know I could not have given with three young boys – Charlie at seven, Fergus at five and Alfie at three years old – and a job. Mum certainly wouldn’t have taken on the role either as she and Dad are divorced, and have been separated since I was fifteen. Though right now they’re getting along better than they ever have, and I even think Mum enjoys her fortnightly visits with him.
There are those who insist that stress does not cause strokes, but it happened during a time when Dad was the most stressed in his life, coping with the fallout of the financial crisis. He worked for a venture capital company. He scrambled for a while, trying to find new clients, trying to win old ones back, and all the while watching lives fall apart and feeling responsible for that, but it wasn’t sustainable. Eventually he found a new job, in car sales, was trying to move on, but his blood pressure was high, his weight had ballooned, he smoked heavily, didn’t exercise, and drank too much. I’m no doctor, but he did all of these things because he was stressed, and then he had a stroke.
His speech isn’t easy to understand and he’s in a wheelchair, though he’s working on his walking. He’s lost an enormous amount of weight, and seems like a completely different man to the man he was in the years leading up to his stroke. The stroke caused some memory problems, which enrages Mum. He seems to forget all the hurt he caused her. He has been able to wipe the slate clean of all of their problems and arguments, their heartache and his misdemeanours – of which there were many – throughout their marriage. He comes out of it smelling of roses.
‘He gets to live like none of it happened, like he doesn’t have to feel guilty or apologise for anything,’ Mum regularly rants. She was obviously planning on him feeling bad for the rest of his life and he went and ruined it. He went and forgot it all. But even though she rants about the Fergus before the stroke, she visits him regularly and they talk like the couple they both wish they’d been. About what’s happening in the news, about the garden, the seasons, the weather. It’s comforting chat. I think what angers her most is the fact that she likes him now. This sweet, caring, gentle, patient man is a man she could have remained married to.
What has happened to Dad has been difficult, but we haven’t lost him. He is still alive and in fact what we lost was the other side of him, the distant, detached, sometimes prickly side of him that was harder to love. The one that pushed people away. The one that wanted to be alone, but have us at the end of his fingertips, just in case, for when he wanted us. He is quite content where he is now; he gets along with the nurses, has made friends, and I spend more time with him now than I ever have, visiting him with Aidan and the boys on Sundays.
I never know what exactly Dad has forgotten until I bring something up and I watch that now all too familiar fog pass over his eyes, that vacant look as he tries to process what I’ve just said with his collection of memories and experiences, only to find it coming back empty, as if they don’t tally. I understand why Nurse Lea didn’t bring the boxes directly to him; an overload of too many things that he can’t remember would surely upset him. There are ways to deal with those moments. I gently sidestep them, move on from them quickly as though they never happened, or pretend that I’ve gotten the details wrong myself. It’s not because it upsets him – most of the time it goes by without drama, as if he’s oblivious to it – but it upsets me.
There are more boxes than I remember and, too impatient to wait until I get home, I stand there in the corridor and use a key to pierce through the tape on the top of one of the boxes and slice it open. I fold back the box, curious to see what’s inside. I expect photo albums, or wedding cards. Something sentimental that, far from conjuring beautiful memories, starts Mum spouting about everything that was taken from her by her own husband. The dreams that were shattered, the promises that were broken.
Instead I find a folder containing pages covered in handwriting: my dad’s looping, swirling letters, that remind me of school sick notes and birthday cards. At the top of the page it says Marbles Inventory. Beneath the folder are tins, pouches and boxes, some in bubble wrap, others in tissue paper.
I open some of the lids. Inside each tin or box are deliciously colourful candy-like balls of shining glass. I look at them in utter shock and amazement. I had no idea my dad liked marbles. I had no idea my dad knew the slightest thing about marbles. If it wasn’t for his handwriting in the inventory, I would have thought there was a mistake. It is as if I have opened a box to somebody else’s life.
I open the folder and read through the list, which is not as sentimental as it first seemed. It is almost scientific.
The pouches – some velvet, others mesh – and the tin boxes are colour-coded and numbered with stickers, to save confusion, and adhere to the colours on the inventory.
The first on the list is a small velvet pouch of four marbles. The inventory lists them as Bloodies and, beside that, (Allies, Fr. Noel Doyle). Opening the pouch, the marbles are smaller than any others I can see offhand and have varying red swirls, but Dad has gone into detail describing them:
Rare Christensen Agate ‘Bloodies’ have transparent red swirls edged with translucent brown on an opaque white base.
There is a cube box of more bloodies, dating back to 1935 from the Peltier Glass Company. These are appropriately colour-coded red and are listed together with the velvet pouch. I scoop a few marbles into my hands and roll them around, enjoying the sound of them clicking together, while my mind races at what I’ve discovered. Pouches, tins, boxes, all containing the most beautiful colours, swirls and spirals, glistening as they catch the light. I lift some out and hold them up to the window, examining the detail inside, the bubbles, the light, utterly enchanted by the complexity within something so small. I flick through the pages quickly:
… latticinia core swirls, divided core swirls, solid core swirls, ribbon core swirls, joseph’s coat swirls, banded/coreless swirls, peppermint swirls, clambroths, banded opaques, indian, banded lutz, onionskin lutz, ribbon lutz …
A myriad of marbles, all of them alien to me. What is even more astonishing is that in other pages of his handwritten documents he has included a table charting each marble’s value depending upon how it measures up in terms of size, mint, near mint, good, collectable. It seems that his humble box of bloodies are worth $150–$250.
All of the prices are listed in US dollars. Some are valued at fifty dollars or one hundred, while the two-inch ribbon lutz has been priced at $4,500 in mint condition, $2,250 in near mint, $1,250 in good condition and collectable is $750. I know next to nothing about their condition – all of them appear perfect to me, nothing cracked or chipped – but there are hundreds of them packed away, and pages and pages of inventory. What Dad appears to have here are thousands of dollars’ worth of marbles.
I stop and think. All around me are the sounds and smells of the care home and it transports me from the parallel marble world back to reality. I was worried about him being able to pay for his hospital costs but if his pricing is correct, then he has his nest egg right here. I’m always worried about those bills. We have no way of knowing when he might need another operation or new medicine, or a new physio. It’s always changing, the bills are always climbing and the proceeds from the sale of his apartment didn’t go far after paying his mortgage and numerous debts. None of us had known that he was in such a bad financial state.
His writing is impeccable, a beautiful flowing script; he hasn’t made one mistake and if he did I imagine he started the page over. It is written with love, it has taken great time and dedication, research and knowledge. That’s it: it’s written by an expert. It’s the writing of another man, not the one who now grasps the pen with great difficulty, but neither does it fit with the father I knew, whose only hobby seemed to be watching and talking about football. Wanting to take my time to go through the boxes at home, I pack everything away again and Gerry, the porter, helps me carry them to my car. But before locking them in the boot, I hesitate and take out the small bag of red marbles.
Dad is sitting in the lounge, drinking a cup of tea and watching Bargain Hunt. He watches the show every day: people searching for items at markets and then trying to auction them for as much as possible. Maybe there have been hints of his passion all the way along and I missed them. I think of the inventory and wonder if I should go back for it. As I watch him staring intently at the pricing of these old objects, I wonder if in fact he does remember exactly what is in those boxes after all. He sees me before I have time to think about it any further and so I go to him, to his smiling face. It breaks my heart how happy he is to receive visitors, not because he’s lonely but because he could often be so irritated by others before, unless it was to convince them to buy something from him, and he now can’t get enough of people’s company, for nothing in return.
‘Good morning.’
‘Ah, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ he asks. ‘No work today?’
‘Eric let me off early,’ I explain diplomatically. ‘And Lea called me. She said it was an emergency, that you were revving up the inmates, trying to organise a breakout again.’
He laughs, then he looks down at my hands and his laughter stops immediately. I’m holding the bag of red marbles. Something passes on his face. A look I’ve never seen before. As quickly as it arrived, it’s gone again and he’s smiling at me, the confusion back.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’
I open my hand, reveal the red marbles in the mesh bag.
He just stares at them. I wait for him to say something but nothing comes. He barely blinks.
‘Dad?’
Nothing.
‘Dad?’ I put my free hand on his arm gently.
‘Yes.’ He looks at me, troubled.
