My sister cried all day long, and I had never been so happy.
That is no exaggeration. All day long. The very picture of misery she was. Sometimes her body would need a break or she would momentarily forget herself. I recall my fascination as she caught a song on the radio – I think it was Get up and Boogie, pumped up loud by Mum as a distraction – and how she began to mouth the lyrics and bop her head, before remembering where she was and hiccupping herself into another bout, face folding into that constipated gurn, that made you want to both laugh and then punch a dent in the side of the caravan.
“Sure, you’re going to dehydrate yourself,” Dad said. “Like an Ethiopian. God, Doreen, does your mother not realise the damage she does?”
Mum shot him daggers but said nothing. She lit another Embassy and had it down to the filter in two or three drags, then over at Miranda, her scabby knees up under her chin; opened her mouth to suggest something, then clamped it shut and stabbed her cigarette out with a grunt.
The summer of ‘76 was the hottest July ever recorded. All the windows in all of the caravans were cranked wide begging for the tiniest breath of wind. Car bonnets were hot to the touch. My friend Philip Pelan tried to fry an egg on his granddad’s Morris Marina. He had seen it in a movie. It kind of worked, although it took a while and none of us wanted any part of tasting it. We figured that no matter how clean he kept his car, he was still frying an egg where a seagull must have shat. And the old boy wasn’t impressed when he found out. I can still remember his whiskery leer as he beckoned him with a crooked finger, whilst slowly, with great deliberation, unbuckling his thick leather belt. You could do things like that back then.
Jesus sake, Miranda, give it a rest. Are we going to have to listen to this all day?
Dad had bought the caravan the year before for seven hundred pounds (Mum later told us that his hand had been shaking as he signed the cheque) and he was rewarded by two glorious summers which saw us all roasted on the beach like lobsters. Like most of the other Irish mothers, Mum was unaware that the newly bought sun lotion had to be reapplied after each sea visit. My slug hite six year old back blistered and peeled; I had to sleep on my stomach at night and every time, every time, I would roll over onto my back and scream myself awake.
Miranda was two years older than me and we had a kind of telepathic connection that might have had a more positive application, but was used instead to deride and undermine me at every opportunity, whilst skilfully operating under the radar of Mum and Dad. I had to have my meals with her at Granny’s. She only had a little table so Mum and Dad got served before us. Mincemeat, potatoes and carrots. Miranda would look disdainfully at me as I heaped it up and forked it into my mouth.
A flick of the eyes, then: “Granny, we were learning about snakes the other day in school.”
“Oh, I hate snakes, Miranda – horrible things. Thank God for Saint Patrick.”
“But they’re really interesting. Did you know that a lot of them can dislocate their jaws to get more food into their mouths?”
“They can do what?”
She was happy to demonstrate by yawning her mouth wide. “Can you imagine how disgusting that must look? Greedy, fat things.” The eyes and the smile again; but then she added something new to the mix, just to further highlight my gluttony and underscore her victory: a quiet, barely audible double snort, like a happy little piglet contemplating the trough. She was so smitten by this sound effect that it was added to her repertoire, not just when I was at the table, but sometimes apropos of nothing, just to remind me of my place – and always so subtle that only I would get it. Oink oink.
Miranda, this is ridiculous behaviour – there are people dying in the world.
Our next-door neighbour at the caravan site, Mister Mackie, was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s little brother. Sometimes you would see him lifting dumbbells just for the fun of it. He had a UDA tattoo on his left bicep – which was about the same size as my dad’s left calf. Friendly enough though, in a gruff beer can crushing way. He and Dad had spoken for the first time a couple of days before the glorious twelfth.
“He wanted to know if we’d be at the parades,” he told Mum over the fish and chips. “He plays the Lambeg for the North Down Lodg.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’d look out for his sash and his great big drum.”
If you’ve only ever seen a Twelfth of July orange parade on the television you haven’t really lived it. It doesn’t matter how high you have the volume, it’s just not the same. You can have the ornaments dancing on the mantelpiece and you still won’t get it all. You need to drown in it. The buzz of camaraderie; a thousand little Union Jacks clutched in chubby, ice-cream hands; seagulls squawking greedily above fat chips; orange everywhere; red, hite and blue.
And the anticipation of it.
Shush, shush, listen.
A massive cheer as they strode into view, banners aloft. There was Good King Billy on his hite charger, off to stomp on the Catholic hordes. Scores of spruce Protestant men with lips pursed and trousers perfectly creased. Marching and blowing. Flawless notes, and the little chap at the front twirling and somersaulting his stick fifty feet in the air – always managing to catch it.
The magic was that the music never completely dissipated. It grew fainter but always loitered, waiting to pass the baton on to the next band. Thus, with the flute music still in the air you could begin to hear the accordions and a roar would emerge as they rounded the corner, all sash and splendour, squeezing the life out of their instruments.
“There he is Dad! Mister Mackie, over here!”
He was working up a sweat with his Lambeg drum, leaning backwards, walloping the bejesus out of it – and when he saw us, he jerked his jaw in acknowledgement of our support and shared Protestantism. Long after he had passed we could still feel the blood thumping in our ears. The trace of its resonance would follow you into your dreams, where it grew bigger and bigger, dwarfing first the drummer, then the street – a drum that only a folk giant might play, its thunder heard and felt around the world.
I swear to God, Miranda, if you don’t quit it now I’m going to walk into sea just to get a bit of bloody peace.
After the parades the only thing we had left to look forward to were the visits to Granny.
We each had a week (she only had one spare room) and the attention she lavished was something you just never got at home. It was like you were the most important person in the world. You got the T.V (a lovely big Ferguson in its own laminate cabinet) all to yourself and could watch whatever you wanted provided there wasn’t a Howard Keel or Yul Bruner movie playing. She would take you out into the city on the top of the bus (this was long before her angina kicked in) to the big shops, then the snugness of a café for buttery scones that melted in the mouth like snowballs in a frying pan. Grandad had dropped dead of a heart attack when Mum was only wee, and I remember hearing her tell Dad that the royal treatment was an over compensation for her own austere upbringing. Granny, as a single mother struggling on a widow’s pension, had been a cold fish back in the day, too exhausted from night shifts to address anything beyond the basic needs of Mum and Uncle Graham. I can hardly remember her smiling, Mum said, and she never hugged me.
She was never done hugging me. She’d sweep you up into her great bosom, and the delicious smell of her – the rosy cheeks and mint imperials, the shock of her lovely hite hair.
And it was my turn next week. That’s what was really eating Miranda. She was missing all the attention – you always felt an aching sort of homesickness after a week with her – but the real cause of her angst and misery, and the source of my barely suppressed glee, was the knowledge that I was about to enjoy what she was mourning the loss of. For the telepathy thing worked both ways. Thus, whilst I had been careful not to openly crow and had, in fact, presented as sympathetic and sorrowful, I’d made sure that she caught me drumming my fingers at lunch and, a little later, whistling a happy little tune to myself.
But the devil comes to visit you in all guises, and when you least expect him.
We were getting ready for bed, Miranda red eyed and hoarse from snivelling, me on the other pull out bed, giddy with anticipation for my week and hoping that her misery would continue indefinitely. I watched her glance over at me, take a huge breath, then with renewed vigour and gusto begin a high-pitched keening, like a shawled famine mother at the graves of her children.
“In the name of Christ, Miranda, would you give it a fucking rest!”
His language managed to penetrate the wall of noise and she shuddered to a stop; but the look on her face said it all. This respite was only temporary. She was in it for the long haul.
“Look, pet,” Mum’s tone was placatory. “I know you really miss her. Here’s an idea. If you can make it through tomorrow without crying, you can spend another week with her. How’s that sound?”
Say what now!?
Mr Mackie was in my head thumping the shit out of his Lambeg drum.
Mum avoided my eye (the bitch); Dad had the good grace to throw me a tortured look of helpless apology.
It was obscene. The greatest injustice ever perpetrated in the history of civilisation. A fucking joke, it was. I wanted to say all of these things but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I was only six, and I was scared of my sister.
“I suppose that might help,” Miranda allowed, wiping her eyes then slipping into her sleeping bag, her bronzed shoulders accentuated against the hiteness of her pillow. A flaking network of spent sunburn was clustered at the cleft of her neck, and I wondered what it would be like to pour battery acid over her during the night. The portable black and hite T.V ran off a car battery. Dad watched the news on it, but I figured he could just as easily listen to the radio.
“Good night, son,” Dad said, somehow managing to communicate, within these three mournful syllables, his deep regret and the promise of reparations at a future date.
I lay on my stomach for the next hour or more, the heat of my blistered back pulsating, imagining her smiling up into the darkness. She knew I was awake, of course, and as I listened to the sounds of the night time – my parents breathing, the crunch of a car on the gravelled pathway, the call of a dog – I heard her sniff one last time before allowing herself to sleep.
Actually, not a sniff at all. More of a double snort.
Like a little fat piglet on his approach to the trough.
about the author
Keith Mckibbin is an English teacher working in Glasgow. He is married with four daughters and two beautiful granddaughters. His favourite short story writers are O.Henry and Raymond Carver. He has been published in both the Bath and Edinburgh short story competitions.
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