Lamb (7 page)

Owen, who had been one of the boys perched on the wall-bars, let out a screech and toppled down behind them. There was a gap of about a foot between the bars and the brick wall. Owen slithered down, but because of the wall-bars, remained upright during his attack. He gyrated and threshed, his knees and legs unable to bend. His head pummelled on the bars. His eyes rolled and he made strange noises. Brother Sebastian ran from behind the table, clambered up the wall-bars, the skirts of his soutane flying, but could not reach down to the boy.

‘The pipes. He's getting burnt by the pipes,' someone yelled. Owen continued to jump and twitch like a puppet behind the bars. His hair was too short for Brother Sebastian to get a grip on it and he himself was too bulky to squeeze his shoulders down to reach his clothing. The grammar school boys stood staring. One of them nervously began pounding the ball off the maple floor in a static dribble. And still Owen's attack continued. There was blood on his face and collar now and he was making a noise in his throat like the draining of a sink. Brother Sebastian jumped down and reached his hand through the wall-bars. He bunched up the front of his jacket into a fist, then raised the struggling boy a little. He put his other hand through a higher wall-bar and raised him a little more, still gripping his clothes. Slowly he inched him up behind the bars. Other boys – the older ones – saw what he was doing and came to help, slipping their hands between the bars and easing the stricken Owen to the surface.

Brother Benedict stood at the table, his fingers splayed and his face white. Later he said to Michael, ‘Although I'm an educated man, it is easy to see how, in the past, it was construed as demonic possession.'

For weeks afterwards Brother Sebastian's forearms were mottled and blue with bruises. Owen would bear the scars of burns from the pipes for the rest of his life.

Michael lay in the darkness, watching the streak of yellow light from the crack in the curtains swing from one side of the ceiling to the other. The London traffic seemed to go on until all hours. The sound of Owen's breathing came quick and regular from the other bed.

Michael opened his eyes and knew that he had no chance of going to sleep. He had been keeping his eyes tightly shut and his jaw clenched. He tried to relax but could only do so when he was conscious of it. Each time his mind returned to the past his jaw tightened up and he found his fists were knotted. A drink might help him sleep. He dismissed the thought, not wanting to leave the boy on his own so soon. What if he should wake up? Or even worse. He looked at the green specks of his watch and was amazed to see that it was only a quarter to eleven. He got up and dressed quietly in the dark and went downstairs. Little harm could come to the boy sleeping.

The same girl was still sitting at reception, looking more bored than ever. She was painting her nails with blue nail varnish which had flecks of silver in it. She directed him to the bar, calling him Mr Abraham after a quick glance at the open register in front of her.

Michael, after the quiet of trying to sleep and the silence of the foyer, walked into a room rowdy with noise. The bar was crowded, the talk almost drowning the background of piped music. He ordered himself a pint.

‘Bitter?' said the barmaid and he nodded. What a strange thing to call a drink. Bitter. Aloes. Sorrow. For something that was supposed to make you feel happy. Vinegar on a sponge offered as an act of kindness. One of the Brothers had told him of being in Rome and drinking a wine called ‘Tears of Christ'.

He sat down in a free corner with his pint. He didn't want to talk to anyone and hoped that nobody, drunk or otherwise, would disturb him. He always found it difficult to lie. He was no good at it – although he thought he had done not too badly in the past two days. Normally he found himself speaking the truth even though he didn't want to. Once on holiday with another Brother, both of them in civvies, they met two nice-looking girls who laughed a lot. They were getting along fine until his asked him what he did and without a moment's hesitation he said he was in the Brothers. He didn't want to say it but it had just come out. After that the other Brother spent the rest of his holiday hitch-hiking on his own.

Michael knew that he must get himself into the frame of mind where lying came naturally to him. His and Owen's future depended on it. If it was left to Owen, there would be no difficulty. They would have to work out a story which both of them knew and stick to it no matter what situation they ran into. In the Home Owen's lying had been professional, but Michael felt he had got inside that. He felt that the boy told him the truth now, although about some things he was not absolutely sure. Things he could not verify about his mother, about his past.

Owen had told him that his mother had tried to kill him. Michael found difficulty in believing this story. Was the boy just looking for sympathy or was it horribly true? Some of the details seemed genuine – but that was the mark of a professional liar, to get the details right.

Owen said that his mother had been drinking all night – vodka with orange juice. She had had a man with her and she had made Owen go to bed early. Sometimes when this happened he sneaked out of the window on to the flat roof and climbed down the pipe, then through the back yard into the street. The back-yard door had been torn off its hinges many years ago and never replaced. This night he stayed in bed and listened to the voices and silences between the man and his mother, until he fell asleep.

It must have been the slamming of the door as the man left that wakened him. He lay awake waiting for his mother to come to bed. He heard her open the bedroom door and he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. He heard her stagger against the plywood wall. She was mumbling to herself. He felt her ease the pillow out from under his head and he thought she was going to take it for herself. Then suddenly he felt it close over his face. He began to struggle and shout but she pinioned him tight where he lay. He remembered wondering if it was another kind of fit that he hadn't had before and he was imagining it all, with the breathlessness the only real thing about it. He screamed and gasped and managed to turn his head sideways where there was air. He felt her hand try to force his face back into the pillow and he bit it, as hard as he could. She screamed and for a minute let go of him. He wriggled away and ran for the light of the other room. He heard her call after him drunkenly,

‘If it wasn't for you . . . ya wee shit!'

Those were the words she had used, he said. He then went on to tell what happened when a neighbour found him in the bottom hallway behind the bins wearing only his vest. Owen had spun him a few lies and had been taken in to his downstairs flat for the night. The man had provided him with striped pyjama bottoms with white draw cords, big as a tent, and had helped him roll the legs up until they reached Owen's ankles. The next morning the boy went back up to his own flat. His mother had cried most of the day and had given him the money for enough chewing gum to last the week.

When Michael asked him about the story later, on different occasions, it remained substantially the same. There were some differences. Once he said that his mother had brought a cushion from the other room. Another time he said it was the man
upstairs
who had found him. Michael did not like to trip him up by grilling him on these points, for, on a matter so serious, it would have displayed a terrible lack of faith.

His bitter had inched its way down the glass without him being aware. He bought himself another. The crowd had become very noisy, laughing and shouting to make themselves heard above the din. There was no one drunk like in Ireland, but looking around it was hardly an English pub. The people in the bar seemed to be mostly tourists and foreigners. He had heard American accents and the girls in the opposite corner looked Spanish, like the posters of dancers. He felt secure in this atmosphere. If they mixed with the tourist crowd they would be very difficult to trace. Just another holidaymaker and his son.

The beer had begun to relax him and he felt warm. He actually felt he was on holiday. There was plenty of hope that they could make it. He yawned, finished his pint and felt that he could sleep.

On his way upstairs he noticed that the receptionist had finally gone. In the bedroom he put the light switch down slowly, minimizing the snap as it went on. He went over and looked at Owen as he undressed. He was still breathing normally. His elbow was high on the pillow over his head and his face was turned into its crook. The bedclothes had been pushed down about his waist and his new vest had rumpled up. His rib-cage, each bone outlined, rose and fell. His eyelashes were long and dark. Suddenly the boy smiled, not a grin, but a deep warm satisfied smile. Then he snuffled and began to snore lightly.

Michael had not seen that look on his face before. It depressed him, the thought that the only way the boy could be really content and happy was when he was sleeping.

The next morning at breakfast Owen made the waiter smile by asking for a third plate of cornflakes.

‘Leave room for something else,' said Michael. But he needn't have bothered. Owen then went on to eat sausages, bacon, fried tomatoes and to finish what toast and marmalade was on the table.

‘It'll not take long to fatten you up at this rate,' said Michael.

‘Smashin',' was all Owen would say.

‘What we need is a map of London. Then we can plan what to do.' Owen shrugged. In the foyer Michael bought an
A–Z
of London and they took it to their room to study it. From their window, Michael could see that it was a bright sunny day.

‘Right,' he said. ‘Let's not waste too much time over this or the best of the day will be over.'

Michael suggested various places he thought Owen might like to see, the Tower of London, the Zoo, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, but the boy just shrugged and said ‘I dunno' after each one.

‘Is there anything you want to see?'

Owen thought, screwing up his eyes. Then his face became animated. His eyes widened and lit up.

‘Any slot machines?' he shouted.

Michael sunk his head in his hands.

‘Aw God, Owen. The capital of the world and all you can think of is slot machines. Where do you think you are, Bundoran? There's no slot machines in London.'

The boy sat on the unmade bed and swung his feet.

‘Anywhere you like then,' he said.

‘I think . . . ' said Michael. He paused. ‘I think . . . we're not organized. There's confusion in the camp. I think . . . ' He began again. ‘We'll go to Piccadilly and start from there.' He stubbed the Underground map decisively with his finger. The boy looked at the maze of coloured lines.

‘There's a couple of things we
have
to do today,' said Michael, clapping his hands together.

‘What?'

‘Get our story right, for one. And buy a radio.'

‘Smashin',' said Owen.

Michael did not like to admit it to the boy, but he was stunned by the Underground. The moving stairs that bore them down to the guts of the city, the stopping each time they came to a sign to interpret it as people rushed around them. Northbound or southbound? The speed at which the trains thundered into the stations, pushing a warm gale in front of them. He kept assuring the boy that he knew what he was doing. On the platforms Owen stood very close to him. After only one mistake they arrived at Piccadilly.

Above on the pavement, Owen let out a shout:

‘Look. Look, Brother!' The boy was dancing up and down, pointing. He stuck out his tongue at Michael. Michael followed the line of his finger and saw a huge amusement arcade, its double doors open, its machines whirring and whining, their coloured lights flickering.

‘Can we go in?'

‘O.K.,' Michael laughed, ‘but we're not going to spend all day.'

But they spent the best part of an hour and about four pounds as Owen ran from one fruit machine to another. Michael stayed on the same machine, thinking it was bound to pay out sooner or later. His only substantial win was on three lemons. They also played T.V. games in various forms, trying to shoot one another down as British and German pilots, condemning one another to horrible deaths in knocked-out sunken submarines.

Eventually Michael could stick the noise no longer. The air was full of the whine of diving planes and gunfire and police sirens and clattering coins. A policeman had been standing inside the door for some time and Michael kept an eye on him. He seemed to be scrutinizing the crowd, which was mostly teenage lads.

‘Come on, Owen. Let's go.'

‘Just another while.'

‘No.'

Michael took him firmly by the shoulder and led him towards the door. The policeman gave them a funny look as they left.

They began to walk round Piccadilly. The sun was shining and it was warm. In the crowd Michael felt relaxed. He was about to say something to Owen when he discovered he was not there. He spun round, his eyes searching for the boy's blue denim and blond hair. He began to retrace his steps, slowly trying to batten down the feeling of panic that was rising inside him. The crowd surged about him in both directions. Faces he didn't know or want to know. Then he saw him. Standing by a shop window full of magazines. Girls pouting forward clutching their breasts, with their legs open, bums, flesh. He grabbed the boy by the shoulder and shouted,

‘
OWEN, DON'T WANDER AWAY FROM ME
.'

‘Would you look at that,' said the boy, not taking the slightest notice of Michael's anger. Michael pulled him away, the boy still looking over his shoulder at the window.

‘I can just see it now,' said Michael. ‘“Yes, Officer, I want to report a missing boy. I know he couldn't find his way back to the hotel. So he's well and truly lost – in London, a city of . . . fourteen million? Yes, you see we ran away together from a Borstal in Ireland. No, I'm not his father.” That would be just great now, wouldn't it? All because you want to look at women's . . . things.'