The Marble Collector Part 4

'Ma told me not to touch it.'

'She also told you not to take your eyes off Bobby.'

That's me told. That nervous flutter again in my tummy, visions of a crown of thorns and being forced to carry a cross through the street, though maybe in Ma's case it would be a load of dirty washing. That's her cross to bear she always says. That and the six of us boys.

'And just in case the bread's not enough to flush it out ...' Hamish says, taking a bottle of castor oil from the cupboard and grabbing a spoon. He throws off the towel and picks up the bread. 'Oh, Bobby,' he sings, dancing the bread in the air in Bobby's face. Bobby's eyes light up.

An hour later I've changed two of the most indescribably wettest s.h.i.ts I've ever seen and there's still no sign of the fox.

'You've really trapped that fox, haven't you, buddy?' Hamish says to Bobby and laughs hysterically.

He offers another slice of brown bread and spoon of castor oil to Bobby and Bobby says, 'No!' and runs away. I don't blame him and I'm glad. I'm literally up to my elbows in s.h.i.tty terry cloths. I don't know how Ma cleans them but I've boiled up some water and have steeped them for as long as I could, burning my hands in the process, tried rubbing the parts together to get the stains off but nothing. I still think I get the better end of the deal as it's Hamish that sifts through the poo first with a knife before handing it to me to deal with. If I wasn't so terrified about Ma coming home and finding the bread gone and a marble stuck inside her precious baby then I'd be able to laugh like Hamish is.

It is when Hamish is looking through Bobby's third c.r.a.ppy nappy that I hear the key in the door. Ma's home and my world ends. My heart thuds and my throat closes up like it's the end of my world.

'Hurry up,' I whisper and Hamish sifts through the poo faster.

The front door opens, Hamish dashes out the back door, and Ma and Angus are greeted by a naked-from-the-waist-down Bobby who's demonstrating tumbles on the floor, his pudgy legs crashing into everything as he follows through.

'Everything all right?' Ma asks, stepping into the room.

Angus is behind her, quiet, one red cheek like he's been slapped, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, and I can tell she's had a good go at him. He looks at me suspiciously. Hamish is in the back garden sifting through the poo. Or at least I hope he is; part of me thinks he's nipped out the backyard door into the alleyway and left me to deal with this mess on my own.

A grin works its way on to Angus's face, he knows that I've done something, I must look guilty. He'd love it if I got caught out. Convinced I'm about to get it, that the spotlight will be taken off him for a while, he grins at me.

'What's wrong, Tick?'

'What on earth?' Ma asks, looking at Bobby who's on tumble hyper-drive. Then she sees the empty bread plate on the table, crumbs everywhere and out the window I see Hamish with a s.h.i.tty hand in the window, a white marble between his fingers and a great big smile on his face. My relief is immense but now I've to deal with the brown bread situation.

'Bobby ate some, I'm sorry,' I say quickly. Too quickly. She suspects there's more to it.

'My brown bread!' Ma shouts. 'That was for tea. I told you not to touch it!' she yells. Hamish appears beside me and dumps the soiled terry cloth in my hands, slips the marble in my pocket, his hands now clean.

'Sorry, Ma, that was my fault,' Hamish pipes up. 'I told Fergus I'd watch Bobby for him, but I must have taken my eye off him because he ate it. You know what he's like with putting things in his mouth.' When Ma's not looking, when she's staring at her half-eaten loaf, devastated, he looks at me and winks.

Ma shouts a tirade of angry abuse at Hamish and all the time I think I should interrupt and confess to it all but I don't. I can't. I'm too chicken.

Ma sees the nappy in my hand, and the boiling water outside filled with cloths, and her expression changes so I can't read it. 'How many did you change?'

'Three,' I say nervously.

She surprises me then by laughing. 'Oh, Fergus,' she laughs, then ruffles my hair and kisses the top of my head. She goes outside to the toilet to flush the faeces, laughing as she goes, and I see Hamish watching her, sadly.

I ask him later when the others are asleep why he did that for me, why he helped me and then took the blame.

'I didn't do it for you. I did it for her. She doesn't want to be disappointed in you, she's used to it with me.'

Ma was right about Hamish being smart because when he gave me a calculating look in the eye and said, 'You owe me one,' I knew that he meant it and that he had me over a barrel. I don't know if he always had what we did next planned, and that's why he took the blame for the brown bread, knowing I'd have no choice but to do what he'd ask me to do, or if he thought about it after. Either way that was the beginning of our marble adventures, or misadventures, and brown bread incident or not, I would have gone anywhere with him.

But that pretty much describes Hamish. He was willing to go through any amount of s.h.i.t to save my a.r.s.e.

It's three a.m. and I'm out with Hamish. He often comes to get me during the night, but these days it's different, no nudging, kicking, or hand across the mouth so I won't scream with fright as I used to do when he woke me in the middle of the night. Instead he has to throw stones against the window to wake me up. He hasn't been living at home for a few months now since Ma threw him out. She found out he was working for The Barber, but that's not why she threw him out. Mattie and him had a ma.s.sive fight, where they thrashed the house walloping each other. Hamish even put Mattie's head through the gla.s.s of the good cabinet gla.s.s everywhere and he had to get three st.i.tches. Tommy p.i.s.sed his pants even though he said he hadn't.

So Hamish is out of the house. At twenty-one years of age Ma says he should be out of the house anyway, married and working. Even though he's out I still see him. We can't hustle people any more like we used to, I'm fifteen now and everyone knows I'm the best marble player around, or one of them; there's a new fella on the scene, Peader Lackey. People like to watch us play against each other, The Barber sets it up in his barbershop at night. He likes to entertain his people, he has meetings in the back, in his office and while that's going on he has drinks and smokes in the shop, cards, marbles, women, you name it. Hamish says The Barber would bet on a snail race. Not to his face, obviously. You don't want to p.i.s.s off The Barber. If you do, and you go in for a cut and a shave, you can end up with a lot more damage done.

The Barber gives me a few bob for showing up, Hamish takes most of it. Still it's the same as with the caramels when I was ten: I'd do it for free then and I'd do it for free now. People place bets on who'll win and Hamish is the tote. You better watch out if you don't pay up, Hamish commands a lot of respect, with him being close to The Barber, and the ones who don't pay are looking for trouble, which they get.

But Hamish didn't wake me up tonight, I find him in the alleyway behind our house, bent over and looking for pebbles. I sneak up on him and kick him in the a.r.s.e and he jumps like The Barber has a hot blade to his neck.

I break my s.h.i.t laughing.

'What the f.u.c.k are you doing up?' he says, trying to play it all cool but his pupils are all wide and black.

'None of your business.'

'Ah that's how it is, is it?' he grins. 'Heard you've been getting fresh with one of the Sullivan girls. Sarah, is it?'

'Might have been.' It always surprises me how Hamish knows everything. I haven't told anyone about Sarah, kept it right to myself not that there was anything to tell, she won't do much till her wedding day, said as much herself. She's sweet enough, but I didn't meet her tonight. I was meeting her sister Annie, who's a lot less sweet. Two years older and she caught me up on what her baby sister wasn't sharing. My legs are still shaking from it, but I feel alive, like a man, like I can do anything. Which is probably a bad place to be in when Hamish is involved.

He motions for me to follow but doesn't tell me about what we're out to do. I figure it's a game of marbles somewhere that he's set up with an audience to bet, which is what it usually is. On the times it's not, it's about visiting the lads who haven't paid up. We go to the school, climb over the back wall and get to the dorms easy. Hamish already knows a way in, and when we climb in a window I send a jar of marbles on a desk spilling all over the floor. I expect Hamish to clock me one but instead he p.i.s.ses himself laughing. None of the brothers come, thankfully. It's one thing getting a clatter on school time, it's quite another to get it when you shouldn't even be there. Hamish is laughing like a maniac, and slips on the marbles, and that's when I smell the drink on him. I get a bit worried then.

Two boys sit up in their beds, sleepy. They're fifteen, same age as me, but I look younger.

'Get up, you f.a.ggots,' he says, hitting them both over the heads. He uses shoelaces and school ties, anything he can find, to tie their hands behind their backs, their ankles to chair-legs and tells them we're going to play a little game.

While he's messing around with them I tidy the marbles up from the floor, and take a look at them. The collection has no value, just a bunch of opaques, cat's eyes, swirls and patches, nothing mint, nothing collectable. This surprises me because I know one of the lads is a rich boy. Daddy's a doctor, drives a fancy car, I would have been expecting a little bit better than this. I root through the jar and find gold. It's a two-colour, peerless patch made by Peltier. It stands out because the edges are curved instead of straight and it's my lucky day because he has three of them with picture marbles on, that's with black transfers of one of twelve different syndicate comic characters fired on the marble. I've never seen these before. The young lad watches me studying it. He's right to be worried. He's got three of them, Smitty, Andy and, can you believe it, Annie. Annie is red on white with the black transfer. It's kind of like fate. I'm not a cruel b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I only pocket one: Annie.

Eggs in the bush, Hamish tells them we're playing. It's a guessing game, which requires no skill whatsoever. The kind of game we play when the family go on a long journey, not that we go anywhere much. It's too expensive and Ma says we're a b.l.o.o.d.y nightmare and that she can't take us anywhere. We usually end up getting split up and going to different members of her family for a week. Two years in a row I've gone to Aunty Sheila, who has two girls and only lives around the corner. Back sleeping on her floor again, I have no good memories of being there and they're the worst summer holidays ever, except cousin Mary was friends with Sarah Sullivan and that's how I met her. It was worth pretending to be the nice kind gentleman cousin for a week.

Back to the game, and a player picks up a number of marbles and asks the other players to guess a number. If they guess correctly they get to keep the marbles, if they get it wrong, they have to pay the questioner the difference between the number guessed and the number held. Except Hamish puts his own spin on the game. Every time they get it wrong, the difference in the amount guessed and the amount held is how many times he lands a punch to their face and body. It stops being fun really quickly. We've gone collecting money a few times before, scared lads a few times, usually it's just enough for them to see Hamish in their room at night, knowing he's been sent by The Barber, but never this or at least, never this bad. Hamish is wired. He punches too much, too hard, those boys are bleeding and crying and tied to the chairs.

I try to tell him that's enough and he fires himself at me, pulls my hair so hard on my head I think my scalp's about to come off. The alcohol from him smells worse now, and his eyes are bloodshot, like it took a while to hit him. What I mistook in the alley for a fright and then joy at seeing me was something else. He roughs them up a little more and one of the boys cries really loudly for help, his nose bleeding, his eye all shut up. I don't get any satisfaction from it, they're only kids, and it's not even that much money. Hamish gets his hands on their savings and takes it all, then we're out of there. We walk back to the house in silence; he knows I disapprove and Hamish hates that. Although he tries to be the big man, what he really wants is for everyone to like him. But he has never known how to make that happen.

He doesn't walk me back to the house, just leaves me at the alley entrance. I think he's going to walk away without a word, but he's got more to say.

'So, The Barber told me to tell you not to win tomorrow night.'

'What?'

'You heard me. Don't win.'

'Why?'

'Why do you think? He's got something going with someone. You lose, he wins a packet. You might get a bit of it.'

'Who am I playing?'

'Peader.'

'I'm not losing to Peader, no way.'

'Lookit, you have to.'

'I don't have to do anything. I don't work for The Barber, you do, and I'm not losing for anyone.'

He grabs my collar and pushes me hard up against the wall, but I'm not afraid, I just feel sad. I see a bully, my brother, where I once saw a hero.

'You be here at eleven tomorrow night, okay? Or else.'

'Or else what? You won't be my brother any more, Hamish?' All of a sudden, I'm furious. Furious with the way Hamish hit those boys, furious with the way he's implicated me in it, furious that he thinks he can still tell me what to do and I'll do it, no questions asked. 'You going to slap me around like you did with those lads tonight? I don't think so. You think Ma will ever let you set foot in the house again if you do that?'

He shifts uneasily. I know he wants to come home more than anything. He's a homebird, though he has a funny way of showing it. He's the kind of fella that teases a girl senseless if he fancies her, who treats you bad if he wants to be your friend, who hangs around his family and acts the prat when really he wants to be invited inside.

'The Barber will come after you,' he threatens me.

'No he won't. The Barber's got better things to be doing than worrying about me and a marble game. He just uses it as a distraction to whatever he's doing in that room. He uses you to cause a distraction, Hamish, that's all. Has he ever asked you into that back room? He won't even bother coming after you, he'll get someone else to do it for him. He doesn't care about you. I'm not losing for him, I'm not losing for you. I'm never losing, full stop.'

It must be the way I say it because he gets it straight away, he believes me, he knows he's nothing to The Barber, has always tried to make himself more important than he is, like pulling the stunt he pulled tonight. I've revealed him and he hates it. He knows there's nothing he can do to talk me out of it, or into it.

When I walk down the alleyway and get close to the house I suddenly feel a slap on the side of my head. It stings. I think it's The Barber at first, not him but one of his boys. Instead it's Sarah and she's crying.

'Jesus, Sarah, what are you doing out here at this hour?'

'Is it true?' She's crying. 'Did you and Annie ... do it?'

By the next day I can forget about Annie, I can forget about Sarah and I can forget about Hamish.

The guards come round looking for Hamish, but Hamish has already legged it. He's luckier to have escaped the wrath of Ma than anything the guards would have done to him. Everyone thinks I know where he is but I don't. I tell them I don't and that I don't care either. It's true too. He went over the line last night and I can't back him up on that one. For the first time, I can't. It should make me feel sad but it doesn't, it makes me feel tougher, stronger, like if I can think I'm better than Hamish then that practically gives me superpowers. I've never thought of myself as better than Hamish and I spend the day puffed up with something like pride.

That night in bed the lads and I are whispering, we have to because Ma is so close to the edge any one of us will get it over nothing. Duncan says a lad he knows who works on the docks saw Hamish getting on a boat going to Liverpool.

And now I feel less like a superhero. I didn't think our meeting would be the last. I wanted a chance for us to make it up, for him to say sorry, for him to see what a big man I was. The lads talk about what Hamish will do in England, having a laugh picturing him in situations, but all I do is lie in the dark and see him working his way through England to Scotland, some old-fashioned image of him climbing across the land with a stick, finding some of Da's family to settle down with, living on the farm I can't remember any more, working the land like Da did. The thought helps me drift off to sleep, but no less worried, no less guilty, and feeling none of the superpowers I'd felt only moments earlier.

I get a warning from the guards for being a stupid kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, being influenced by my older brother. As a gesture I give the rich boy that Hamish beat up his Annie marble, much as it pains me to do it. But I win it back off him a few weeks later. That and the whole comic collection. Whenever I see those marbles they remind me of the night I became a man with Annie and the night that I went one way and Hamish went another. And sometimes when I really want to go the other way, Hamish's way, when life is just begging me to do it, I take them out as a reminder and it quietens the voice.

I don't see Hamish for a long time, and when I do, the sight of him is enough to tell me never to cross to the other side, ever. But seeing a dead body will do that to most people.

Armed with the new information from Mum, I hop in the car and drive to Virginia. I get parking on the street, outside Mickey Flanagan's office, which is between a closed-down DVD rental store and a not-yet-open Chinese takeaway. The window on to the street is covered in frosted gla.s.s and his name stencilled in black on the front. Mickey's secretary, her name badge says Amy, sits behind a protective screen, with holes punched in the gla.s.s in a circular design either for her to breathe or for us to talk. It's only when I go to speak that I realise I've been holding my breath. I must have been doing that all the way to Virginia because my chest feels tight.

'h.e.l.lo, I'm Sabrina Boggs.' I made an appointment as soon as I hung up the phone to Mum and they kindly squeezed me in, though now that I look around the empty waiting room I'm not sure much squeezing was necessary.

'h.e.l.lo.' She gives me a polite smile. 'Please take a seat, he'll be with you as soon as he can.'

The waiting area is beside the frosted gla.s.s. I sit between a water cooler and a waxy-looking potted plant. The radio is on to hide the usual uncomfortable silence in a waiting room, more talk about today's total solar eclipse, which has commanded every news station and talk show for the past week: what can we expect to see, where can we expect to see it, how to look at the sun, how not to look at the sun, where best to look at the sun. I'm all eclipsed-out. Aidan is taking a half-day this afternoon to collect the boys from school, then they're going to a campsite, one of the official areas for watching the total eclipse. He'll be joining his brother and his kids, whose new money-making scheme has been to invest his savings in solar eclipse gla.s.ses, which he's been selling the past few weeks at hiked-up prices. My boys have been so excited about it all week, wearing the gla.s.ses, making versions of solar eclipses with cereal boxes, Styrofoam and b.a.l.l.s of string, decorating their bedrooms with glow-in-the-dark moons. It helps that it's a Friday night in May and we're having good weather so everyone can show interest and actually be able to see the sky. I'm not disinterested in sky-gazing but I'm not a camper and so I have a night to myself.

'I'm just not a camper,' I'd said to Aidan when he'd told me of his plans last week.

'You're not a happy camper,' he'd replied, watching me. I knew he was watching me though I pretended I didn't, continuing to make the school lunches. His comment had irritated me, but I didn't want to let it show. Count to five in my head, b.u.t.ter, ham, cheese, bread, slice. Next. He was still watching me when I jammed the raisins into the lunch boxes.

'This is a natural phenomenon,' a scientist is saying on the radio. 'In some ancient and modern cultures, solar eclipses have been attributed to supernatural causes or regarded as bad omens. It was frightening for people who were unaware of the astronomical explanation, as the sun seems to disappear during the day and the sky darkens in a matter of minutes.'

'I totally believe in all of that,' Amy says suddenly from behind her screen. 'I had a boyfriend once who used to go totally mental when there was a full moon.' She screws her finger into her temple. 'Locked me in a wardrobe, threw my shoes in the toilet. Accused me of saying things when I hadn't even opened my mouth, of moving things I didn't even know he owned, like "Me, did you touch my chessboard?" and I'd be like, What chessboard? And I hated being called Me. It's Amy. Isn't it weird that he called me Me, like he wanted me to be a part of him? Weird stuff. If I'd stayed, I'm sure he would have killed me like he killed that rat.' She looks at me to explain. 'He kept it for three days in the bas.e.m.e.nt, torturing it.'

I picture a rat being waterboarded.

'Days like today scare me. Especially when dealing with the public. You wouldn't believe the calls we get. Freaks. The word lunatic comes from it, did you know that?'

I nod but she continues anyway. 'Lunar. Lunatic. It brings out the worst in people: violence, mentalness, you name it. I have a friend who works as a paramedic and she says full moon days and nights are her busiest. People just flip out. It's to do with the tidal effect and the water in our bodies,' she says. She's quiet for a moment, thinking. 'Though I think there really was something wrong with George. He was mental on days when you couldn't even see the moon.'

I think of me throwing the mug against the wall at work. Of saying to Eric, 'The moon made me do it.' It would be ridiculous of course but not so far out for me. I've always had difficulty sleeping during full moons. Not so much pounding headaches as too many thoughts. Too many thoughts too quickly, all together, like the moon acts as a signal tower for my brain. Everything flowing all at once instead of slowly filtering. I think of me sitting here today, on a quest to find Dad's marbles, and wonder if this is lunacy after all. The moon made me do it. But I don't care what's making me do it. I'm doing it and if I need the moon to urge me on, then I'll take it.

I think of how excited the boys will be if the day actually darkens. If the clouds don't cover the perfect sky first and ruin everyone's chances of witnessing it. I wonder where I'll be, what I'll be doing during it, and hope it will coincide with my discovery of Dad's marbles, s...o...b..-Doo style, in Mickey Flanagan's house, using the veil of darkness to sneak in unnoticed and steal them back from his safe behind the oil painting in the walnut-panelled study.

'It's a new moon today,' Amy continues. 'Also known as a dark moon, because it's just a black circle. You know how crazy people go when it's a full moon, now imagine a black full moon. I mean, we should really have just stayed inside today and locked the doors. Who knows what will happen?'

She leaves us hanging on that thought.

The phone rings and we both jump, and then laugh. 'He'll see you now.'

I enter Mickey Flanagan's office, feeling anxious about what I'm here to do, and am faced with a short bald Humpty-Dumpty-like man with a welcoming face. We met just after Dad's stroke, to discuss how to manage Dad's affairs, but we've had nothing but the occasional electronic correspondence since. Each time I see an email from Mickey I worry that the money's run out, that Dad's rehabilitation will have to come to an abrupt end. I've avoided every type of meeting with him since to avoid discussing that inevitability. Mickey struggles to his feet, b.u.mping his belly off the edge of the desk and comes round the desk to shake my hand warmly, before returning behind his desk.

I'm nervous. I pull the plastic folder with Dad's inventory out of my bag and prepare myself for my questioning. If he has taken the marbles, I know that he won't admit his theft right away, maybe he won't admit it at all, but I'm hoping my appearance will rattle his conscience at least. I've thought of every possible scenario, I've heard his every possible answer: I had to sell them, he hadn't paid me for months, do you expect me to work for free? Or of course I sold them, we had an arrangement, see this contract here, he is paying me through the sale of his marbles. I've thought about it all, but my answer will be the same. Get them back.

'Nice to meet you, Sabrina, how's your dad doing?' he asks, concerned.

'How's he doing?' I ask, feeling my legs starting to tremble, my whole body in fact, including my tongue. My lip starts to twitch, which irritates me and makes me even more frustrated and angry. I want to be able to say what I want to say without impediment. I need to be emotion-free but it has bubbled up inside of me so quickly, the mere question How's he doing? acting as the trigger, that my emotion clouds my clarity. This feeling reminds me of the dream I have when I'm trying to explain myself to someone, always a different person, but chewing gum gets stuck in my mouth and the more I pull it out the more it keeps forming, stopping the words.

I clear my throat. 'Sometimes he doesn't even remember yesterday. But then he'll tell you a story with pinpoint accuracy from when he was a child, so clear and vivid, it's like you're back there with him. Like today, this morning he told me about being at the All-Ireland final in 1963 when Dublin beat Galway, when he was a boy. He remembered every single little thing, explained in so much detail I felt like I was there with him.'

'Well that's a day to remember,' he says politely, good-natured.

'And then he'll forget something that is or once was apparently incredibly important to him.' I clear my throat again. Make the segue, Sabrina. 'Like his marbles. Up until today I didn't even know he had marbles. But he has hundreds of them. In fact, probably thousands if I was to count. Some of them are valuable, but regardless of the price all of them are important, or otherwise why would he have taken the time to do all this?' I fumble to pa.s.s over the inventory with trembling fingers. He goes through each page, from the page to my face, up and down, over and over again.

'Mickey,' I start, 'there's no way for me to say this politely. You had these marbles in your possession until yesterday. There's a part of his collection missing. Do you know what happened to my dad's marbles?'

He looks surprised, freezes with the inventory still in his hand. 'Goodness, no!'

'Mickey. I really need to know. I'm not accusing you of stealing them, I mean, obviously there could have been an arrangement with someone, with Dad maybe, where you were given permission to take them. Whatever happened, I don't need to know. I just want to find them so I can get them back and complete the collection.'

'No. No, I didn't take them and there was no arrangement with anyone, not your dad.' He straightens up, and is firm. 'As you know, the boxes were delivered to me after his stroke and, as you say, he doesn't remember owning them so he couldn't have instructed me to do anything with them, nor would I have so much as laid a finger on them.' He is genuine, also clearly annoyed to be accused of such a thing, but he is being professional about it. 'You have my word on that, Sabrina.'

'Could anyone have had access to them in your house? Was there ever a break-in?' I try to soften the accusation of his nearest and dearest. 'The marbles that were taken were the most expensive marbles, it seems somebody went through the inventory and chose them.'

He gives me the courtesy of appearing to think about it before answering. 'I can a.s.sure you that neither I nor anybody who was in my home is responsible for the missing marbles. I never opened the boxes. They were sealed on arrival and still had the same seal when they left. They were kept in the garage for the past year and they were out of sight and out of reach in all that time.'

I believe him. But I'm stuck because I don't know where else to go after this.

Mickey hands me back the inventory and I just stare at it, at Dad's lovely loopy handwriting, seeing, Sabrina could not come to school today because she had a doctor's appointment. I see handwritten birthday cards. I see scribbled notes around the house.