‘You could’ve caught a cold, I suppose,’ I say, thinking of Ma’s fear of losing Joe, and they all look at me in surprise and laugh their arses off again.
‘We brought you something,’ Angus says as the laughter dies down. ‘One game and we’re gone, if that’s okay with Dr Loftus?’
‘Perfectly fine with me.’
‘Tada!’ Duncan lifts up a game of Aggravation.
When a member of the family leaves or dies, it changes the dynamics of a family. People move and shift, take up places they either wanted to have or are forced into roles they never wanted. It happens without anybody noticing, but it’s shifting all the time.
The week that we heard Hamish left Ireland for London, and the week I’m in trouble with the gardai for being with Hamish when he beat up those boys in school, Ma is like a banshee. She won’t let any of us leave the house, go anywhere, do anything. Angus has a school dance she won’t let him go to, which is a big deal, so he’s in a foul mood especially as Siobhan was going to let him pop her cherry. It’s pissing rain outside and we’re killing each other, testosterone levels high as we’re all on top of each other in the two-bed house. Mattie is close to beating the living daylights out of all of us and he goes to the pub for the umpteenth time that day.
I come up with an idea. I spend an hour in a corner of our bedroom, the only space and peace that I can find, and I work on it. Duncan accuses me of wanking and gets a clatter over the head from Angus, which is surprising, the first protective action from him. He’s probably surprised himself but he stands by it and for the first time Ma doesn’t punish him because he only did her job by telling Duncan off, which makes Angus and Ma allies, and Angus and me allies. The dynamics are shifting and it’s confusing.
I come into the living room with a handmade game of Aggravation, a game I’d seen in my marble book. It’s a board game for up to six players and the object of the game is to have all players’ pieces reach the home section of the board. The playing pieces are glass marbles, and we can choose our own as long as we can tell them apart. The game’s name comes from the action of capturing an opponent’s piece by landing on its space, which is known as aggravating – something we’d been doing to each other all week since Hamish left for good.
We play the game. We sit around the dining table, and Ma and Mattie can’t believe it as for one whole hour we battle it out on the cardboard game. Bobby wins the first game. I am the best marble player, but this game has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with the roll of the dice. Bobby the charmer has always been the luckiest bastard of all of us.
We play that game all day, every day for a week until Ma is sick of us under her feet and says we can go out. In a way it teaches us about finding our place, our base, in the family and not just through the game, but from the sitting down and spending so much time together, quarantined together and learning to live without Hamish.
We play it again in my room forty years later; not the homemade version but a real game that Duncan has bought. Bobby wins again.
‘You lucky bastard!’ Angus says, disbelievingly. ‘Every single time.’
I roll the marbles in my left hand, my right side was the paralysed side, the side that now has limited movement, so I couldn’t knuckle down like I used to, even if I wanted to. But I like the feel of them in my hand, rolling them around, and I like the familiar clink as they tap against each other. It’s rhythmic and it’s relaxing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say suddenly.
They stop bickering and look at me.
‘For all those years. What I did. I’m sorry.’
‘Ah would you stop it, you’ve nothing to be sorry for,’ Angus says. ‘We were all … we all had our own thing going on.’
I start to cry and I can’t stop.
Dr Loftus politely tells them to leave, and I feel their supportive hands on my head and shoulders, patting me as they say their goodbyes. Angus stays with me, my protective big brother that stepped up to the plate when his nemesis had disappeared. He hugs me, holds me, rocks me, cries with me, until my tears finally subside and I fall asleep, utterly exhausted.
I’m driving and I can’t breathe. My chest feels tight and my muscles are tense and I’m about to shout at anybody who so much as looks at me the wrong way, and whoever makes the slightest mistake on the road will get it. I’m racing to confront Dad and I know this is a bad idea. He remembers nothing, I know we are to be gentle with him, no aggressive pushing on matters he simply can’t remember as it will upset him, but I am raging. It seems everybody knew about this woman and these marbles apart from me and Mum. His own family. It took the arrival of a box of marbles to learn this? What else is there about Dad, about everything in my life, that I don’t know?
I park in the car park and clamber out. The car park is quiet, it’s after nine p.m., not many visitors now that they’ve returned home for their Friday night out, or their Friday night in.
I race through the front doors, and as I wind my way through the corridors I slow down, my chest heaving with the effort of holding back an emotion I don’t want to release. What am I doing? I can’t go into Dad like this, it will worry him, upset him, set him back, stress him. I’m not even sure I can talk. I slow down to a stop. I smell chlorine. It’s comforting. I have lived in the water since I was a child. I liked that it was my own world, I could float and drift and not have to speak to anybody, explain anything, just swim beneath the surface. It was always my escape. It still is now.
I’ve slowed down but my mind is still racing, it’s getting darker and the moon is visible, perfectly round and full, keeping an eye on me as I’ve gone about my day, on this most peculiar day. And the biggest thought of all which occurs to me now is this: am I this closed, inside person that Aidan tells me I am because my dad was somehow shadowy and secretive? Did I get this trait from him? Though I never picked up on it when I was younger, never thought of Dad as shadowy and never considered myself as closed, until Aidan started mentioning it. Perhaps it’s true that you never know yourself until someone else truly knows you. Today’s mission stopped being about looking for missing marbles early on, it grew to become a quest to look for the man who owned them. I didn’t know that it would mean eventually looking at myself. And I don’t like what I’ve found. I don’t like any of these discoveries. I can’t breathe.
I stop walking altogether and instead turn and make my way towards the swimming pool. Through the viewing pane of glass I can see that it’s empty; of course, nobody swimming at this time, and physio all finished for the day. It’s 8.5 metres long, the tiles beneath are blue, the tiles on the wall are blue, with a wave effect in shades of blue mosaics. I pull the door open and the chlorine hits me.
I hear somebody call out. I’m not supposed to be in here. I can hear footsteps behind me. I speed up. They speed up. More footsteps. Then someone calls my name. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. My chest is tight. I think of Dad, I think of Hamish, I think of the marbles and the secret woman. I think of Aidan and me. I kick off my shoes. I rip off my cardigan. I dive in. I escape. And I breathe.
I don’t want to ever come back up. I stay close to the floor of the pool, feeling weightless and free, the tension gone. I don’t have to think, my body relaxes, my heart rate reduces. I see the legs and feet of others by the edge of the pool, shimmering like mirages, like I’m the only real thing here. I hear the water in my ears, smell the chlorine, love how my hair tickles my skin, feeling like velvet as it moves with me. I tumble and twirl around the pool floor, perhaps looking like a beached whale, but feeling like a ballerina, graceful as can be. I don’t know how long I’ve been under. Over a minute, maybe two, but I’m feeling the need to go to the surface to get some air, just a quick gulp and then under again. This is what I love about being in a pool, this is my territory, I’m safe here.
I hear the sound of clapping or slapping and look around to see a hand slapping the water like they’re calling a dolphin.
I whoosh to the surface.
> Gerry, the kind porter, is looking at me with worry, concern, confusion, like I’ve completely freaked out and lost the plot. Mathew from security is halfway between amused and angry, but Nurse Lea is smiling.
I’ve attracted quite the crowd at the viewing pane. No sign of my dad, thankfully. I float on my back.
‘Come on, Sabrina,’ Lea says, reaching out her hand.
I’m tempted to pull her in with me.
The moon made me do it.
But I don’t. Instead I climb out, a sopping mess.
‘Feel better?’ she asks, wrapping a towel around me.
‘Much.’
The last time I saw Hamish before he was a corpse in London was when we parted ways in the alley after he beat up those two schoolboys. I was fifteen, he was twenty-one years old.
It was the last time I saw him.
But it wasn’t the last time I heard from him.
I’m seventeen, I’ve finished school, the only one out of Hamish, Angus and Duncan who made it to the end. They’re working with Mattie and I know that will be what I’ll have to do too, there’s nothing else I can think of that I want, but before that begins, I’m going to have an entire summer ahead of me to do whatever I want. Mattie can’t give me a job until September because he has another young lad as an apprentice. Doesn’t mean I get to sit on my arse though. I got a job working on the school grounds with the groundskeeper, Rusty Balls. Not his real name but we nicknamed him that because he’s so old he practically squeaks when he walks. I’m making my own money but I pay Ma every penny I earn. She gives me back an allowance as she sees fit. It’s always been that way with everyone. All the bills are in Mattie’s name and Ma takes care of paying them all. It’s unusual for me to get anything from the postman is what I’m saying.
I go home at lunchtime covered in muck, thorns and pine needles stuck in my skin, calluses on my hands, scratches on my face from clearing the bushes of beer bottles and rubbish. Bobby and Joe are playing outside on the road, down on all fours, dirty legs and hands as they concentrate on racing snails against each other. There hasn’t been a marble played on the road since we all went to work. I always want to play but the lads are too lazy. They want to go out with their girlfriends or go to the pub with Mattie. No one ever wants to play marbles with me. Tommy’s twelve and he’s still as useless as a chocolate teapot. Neither Bobby nor Joe ever caught the marble bug, it seems to have been a solely Boggs trait. I know a few lads that still play but they’re hard to find, seems as though everyone is outgrowing marbles except for me.
Bobby and Joe warn me about Ma’s mood, so I kick off my dirty boots and leave them outside and intend on doing everything right from the get-go. I can’t think of anything I’ve done wrong today.
‘What’s this?’ she snaps at me when I walk in.
She’s standing beside the table, knuckles resting on the plastic cover like she’s an ape.
‘What’s what?’
‘This.’ She jerks her head at it like it can hear her.
I look at the table and see a parcel. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t tell me you don’t know, you do know,’ she snaps at me.
I step closer and look at it. My name is written in capital letters in black pen on the only piece of brown paper that hasn’t been covered in brown sticky tape.
‘I don’t know, Ma, honest.’
She can tell I’m genuinely surprised. The ape knuckle goes from the table to the hip.
‘Is it from Marian?’ I ask. Ma brother’s Paddy lives in Boston and his wife Marian is the only person who ever sends me anything. She’s my godmother, I’ve only met her once and I don’t really remember her but every birthday and Christmas card has some sort of miraculous medal inside. I don’t believe in them but I stuff them in the bottom of my underwear drawer, because it would be bad luck to throw them out completely.
Ma shakes her head. She looks worried. The only reason she didn’t open it is because she’s afraid. Ma doesn’t believe in privacy, what is in her house is hers, but she’s looking at it like it’s a bomb about to explode in her face. She’s like that with new things, or if anything out of the ordinary happens. The same with new people in the house; she’s quiet, looks at them like they’re about to attack her, and she gets all defensive and snappy because she doesn’t know how else to react.
I don’t want her to watch me open it but I can’t figure out how to say that to her.
‘I’ll get you a knife,’ she says, going to the kitchen. At first I think it’s so I can defend myself from whatever jumps out and then I realise it’s to open it.
While she’s in there we hear a blood-curdling scream coming from outside and Ma goes rushing outside to her baby Joe. While Bobby tells Ma about the bee that stung Joe, I grab the knife and slip upstairs to my room. The parcel has been badly wrapped, a lot of brown tape all over the place makes it a tough job to open, but I manage it finally and toss the paper aside. All I can see is a load of scrunched-up newspapers. Inside is a blue glass bottle. I’m confused. It takes me a while to see what I’m looking at but after some inspection I see that it’s empty and on the top there’s a rubber washer in the neck. Inside, there’s a marble. My heart starts pounding and I know who it’s from. Well, I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it’s from Hamish. It’s been a year and a half since he left and I haven’t heard a thing, but this feels like a message from him. I root through the crumpled-up newspaper pages on the ground, searching for a note, but there’s nothing. My eyes finally fall upon a pair of tits. And then another pair of tits. I quickly uncrumple every single piece of paper to find it has been protected by two weeks’ worth of the Sun’s page three. Loads and loads of tits. I laugh and hope Ma doesn’t hear me. I quickly fold them up and stuff them under the carpet that comes away from the floorboards. I rush back to work, taking the bottle with me, before Ma finds me and demands answers that I don’t have.
‘Do you know what this is?’ I ask Rusty.
Rusty, who always has a cigarette in his mouth, looks at it and smiles. He flicks his cigarette into the trees that I just spent the morning cleaning out.
‘You find that in there?’
‘No. It’s mine.’
‘It’s mine if you found it here.’
‘I didn’t. It’s from my brother. In England.’
‘You don’t even know what it is.’ He gestures, ‘Give it to me.’
I move away.
He grabs it from me, strong for an old man, and he studies it. ‘Codd Neck bottle or marble-in-the-neck bottle. Haven’t seen one of these for some years. My mother used to have them, all stored in the shed before the Black and Tans destroyed them all. She had poteen in the shed. Not what these bottles were supposed to be for, but that’s why she put the poteen in them. It was designed for carbonated drinks, fizzy drinks,’ he adds when I’m confused. ‘Problem with glass bottles is that the pressure of the gas would force the cork stopper out, especially if the cork dried out. So a man named Codd came up with these marbles in the neck. The bottles were filled upside down, the pressure of the gas in the bottle forced the marble against the rubber washer, sealing it in.’
‘How do you get the marble out?’ It’s all I want to know.
‘You try to do that and I won’t give you this back. You don’t get the marble out. Some kids smashed them to get them out, but don’t you go doing that. Some things are better left the way they are.’
The marble is plain and simple, just clear glass, no signs or markings that I can see that tells me it’s a certain brand or make. There’s nothing special about the marble at all, just that it is in the bottle.
‘These bottles are rare. Blue was a colour for poisons so any smart mineral company wouldn’t have used blue. I doubt there are many of these around.’
He looks at it closely, checking it for marks as I would a marble and my heart starts pounding, feeling possessive. I reach for it and he pulls it away.
He chuckles. ‘What will you give
me for it?’ he asks, gripping it tight.
I could tell him what I think of him, put up a fight, but that won’t get me the bottle back. Besides I’ve to spend every day for the rest of the summer with him. Reluctantly I reach into my pocket and give him a folded-up page three. I was planning on having a go in the bushes when I got time to myself; Beverly, nineteen, hot tits. Rusty looks at her and hands the bottle back instantly, and disappears into his woodshed with the page for twenty minutes.
I sit on the grass outside and stare at the blue bottle, wondering what it means. Does it mean anything? I know instinctively that it’s from Hamish, it could only be from him. The fact that it’s a marble and the page three girls make it obvious, his kind of humour. He was probably hoping Ma would open it, or that I’d open it in front of her. I can hear his chesty chuckle as he wraps it all up, probably wishing he could be there to see our reactions. Homebird Hamish, stuck away from us all. I search the bottle for answers; does it mean Hamish is working in a bottle factory? Does he want me to find him? Is he a bottle washer? I remember we called larger taws ‘bottle washers’ but never knew why; now I know it’s because of the marble in the neck. Is the large taw a link to a big brother? Is he trying to tell me something? I look for hidden messages but then I realise that it’s clear as day: there is a message in the bottle. Hamish didn’t write it on a note and stuff it inside, but instead he found a bottle with a marble in it.
A message in the bottle.
It speaks loudly and clearly to me.
It says to me, I’m still here, Fergus. I haven’t forgotten you, I haven’t forgotten the marbles like everyone else has, I know how important they are to you. Saw this, thought of you. Still thinking of you. Sorry for all that stuff that happened. Let’s be pals.
It says Truce.
I sit in the cafeteria with Lea, who has the ability to make you feel that the oddest thing you’ve ever done in your life is the most normal, like she sees it all the time, does it all the time, and maybe that’s true. She emanates warmth and care and I can understand why she’s Dad’s favourite, and why he grumbles so much about the others.