Reading

Mothers are supposed to love their children.  So why does mine hate me?  Dad says she doesn’t. But I heard her. “I hate him! I can’t bear the sight of him!” Why would she say that if she doesn’t?  Dad says it’s the depression talking. She has the depression because of me. I gave it to her, by being born.

Dad came up with an idea, to give her a rest. He calls Belle Moony his cousin, but she’s not really. She was his neighbour when he was a boy. She used to mind him. Now he wants her to mind me.

Belle is tall and thin, and she wears big hats, and coats with fur collars. She visits our house a couple of times a year, on a Sunday, driving her funny little car. Her coats,  hanging on the banister, give off a musty smell, She is not like other adults, though. She doesn’t talk in riddles.

Belle said she would be glad of the company, and of a little help in the shop. So that’s why dad is driving me up to Durrow. It’s winter time and there is snow on the hills. The fields are white with frost, and fog is rising up from them. The gates all have big yellow signs on them. NO ENTRY. Some have skulls and crossbones too.

Belle's shop is really her front room. Her house is in a row on the edge of the town, and her door opens directly onto the street. There are no houses on the other side, just fields. Looking out the small shop window, which is really her front window, you can see a gate with its yellow sign, and a bucket of disinfectant by the pillar. There are no cows in the field. I don't know if that is because of the Foot and Mouth, or whether its is just because it's cold. In the distance you can hear the cars on the Dublin road. From the front door you can see some low hills, covered in trees.

The first morning Belle gave me a job to do. Clear out underneath the stairs, There are boxes there, filled with books, There are piles of newspapers, as tall as I am. There are magazines of all shapes and sizes.

It was not a good idea to give me this job. I read too much, Mam says. I should be out, playing football, or cycling my bike. But there is no-one to play with. All the boys along the road laugh at me. “Your mammy is a looney”, they chant. “She should be in St Luke’s.”  “And so should you, you freak.”

At break time in school, I go to the library. I like encyclopaedias, and history books. And I like detective stories. I don’t really like Harry Potter though.

So while I am doing the cleaning, I keep stopping to read. But Belle doesn’t mind. She says it’s good to read.

I ask her if I can keep one of the books. It is a big fat book of stories, ‘The Book of American Short Stories”. She says of course. I keep in in my little room, with a window looking out over the backs of the houses. The backs are very small, just concrete yards and small sheds. No grass.

We pack the rest of the books into boxes, and bring them into Abbeyleix, to the second hand book shop. The shopkeeper says he had no use for them, but in the end he gives her twenty euro for the lot. Belle gives me five because I did all the work.

Some of the houses around here are different from the houses in Tipperary. They have small, latticed windows, and high roofs. The chimneys on some of them are so tall you would think they were church steeples. Belle says they are protestant houses. From the plantations. When Laoise and Offaly were known as Queen's County and Kings County. There are lots of forests, and tall trees along the side of the road.

At night we sit in the parlour above the shop.  I read my book, and Belle watches TV, with her dogs on her lap or at her feet. Their names are Minnie and Maxie.  Which is funny, because Minnie is Maxie's mother.  Sometimes, Belle is funny too. Sometimes you can hear her fart. Then she looks at me. “It’s a natural bodily function”, she says. I don't mind, because there is no smell.

One morning Belle told me that she was taking the short story book back. I’d forgotten to bring it up to my room when I went to bed the night before, and she’d read some of it. It wasn’t suitable, she said, for a boy of my age. Now I’m a fast reader, and I’d say I’d read nearly a third of the stories. I racked my brains to remember if I’d read any dirty bits, but I couldn’t remember any.  There was a strange story about a man who tricks a girl into taking off her false leg, and then he steals it. I didn't really understand it.

There was pile of magazines too, under the stairs, that I knew she’d never let me read, so I hid them at the back, behind a mound of newspapers that I hadn’t cleared yet.  Real Life Detective Stories, they were called, and the covers were drawings of women in bright, tight dresses, their hands over their mouths to stop their screams.  Sometimes, there was an outline of a body on the ground, that the cops had drawn with chalk.

There was a story in one about a man and his girlfriend who had killed about five children, and had buried their bodies somewhere, so that they would never be found. There were pictures of the children, a boy with a chubby face and glasses, a girl of about 14, smiling awkwardly.  But I was mostly drawn to one of them.  She was eleven, the same age as me.  She had fair hair, curly, and she had this sort of smile, but not really.  I kept looking at her picture, and wishing that I could have saved her.

Sometimes, sitting behind the counter in the shop, waiting for customers, I would daydream. What if they hadn’t killed her? What if, instead, she’d been kidnapped by travellers, and they were hiding her away in the woods above the town?  What if I sneaked up into the woods and found their camp.  I would do it so quietly that the would never see me. And I would see her, sitting sadly by the bonfire. Then I would lead the police there. She would be rescued,and her mother would be in floods. Her little girl whom she thought was dead, had been brought back to her! And the Chief inspector would say, “of course the real hero is Kevin Moran. He found her, all by himself, and led us to her.” Everyone would love me. They would have a parade in my honour, and carry me on their shoulders through the town square.  And all the boys on the road would be jealous.

I told Belle that I was in love with a girl. I thought that she would be understanding, like she was of the farting, or of not going to church. But she wasn’t. Not at all. She said I was too young for than kind of thing. She sounded angry when she said it.

On Christmas Day, Dad rang, and Belle put me on the phone. “Your Mam is resting, but she is feeling much better. She sends her love, and hopes you have a Happy Christmas.” I had already got my Christmas present, Belle had given it to me earlier. I thanked Dad for it.

The days after Christmas were very quiet. Hardly anyone came into the shop. So Belle let me wander round the town. I walked on the edge of the road, my footsteps crunching the frost beside the ditch. I walked part of the way to the woods. But I was scared to go in them. And I knew she wasn’t really there anyway.

Finally, the end of the holidays came. I has to go back to school on Monday.  Dad came to collect me.

“Is Mammy feeling better?” I asked him.

“Oh she is!.  Sure she’s looking forward to having you back.”