We hear Mammy bellow like an animal upstairs and Angus loosens his grip on me a bit. Enough for wriggle room. Everyone tenses up at the sound of Mammy. It’s not new to us but no one likes it. It’s not natural to hear anyone sound like that. Mattie opens the door and steps out even whiter than usual.
He looks at Angus. ‘Let him go.’
Angus does and I can finally breathe. I start coughing. There’s only one other person Angus doesn’t mess with and that’s our stepdad, Mattie. Mattie Doyle always means business.
Mattie glares at Hamish smoking. I get ready for Mattie to punch him – those two are always at it – but he doesn’t.
Instead he says, ‘Got one spare?’
Hamish smiles, the one that goes all the way to his green eyes. Daddy’s green eyes. But he doesn’t answer.
Mattie doesn’t like the pause. ‘Fuck you.’ He slaps him over the head, and Hamish laughs at him, liking that he made him lose his temper. He won. ‘I’m going to the pub. One of you come get me when it’s out.’
‘You’ll probably hear it from there,’ Duncan says.
Mattie laughs, but looks a bit scared.
‘Are none of you keeping an eye on him?’ He gestures to the toddler crouched in the dirt. We all look at Bobby. He’s the youngest, at two. He’s sitting in the muck, covered in it, even his mouth, and he’s eating grass.
‘He always eats grass,’ Tommy says. ‘Nothing we can do about it.’
‘Are you a cow or wha’?’ Mattie asks.
‘Quack quack,’ Bobby says, and we all laugh.
‘Fuck sake, will someone ever teach him his animal sounds?’ Mattie says, smiling. ‘Right, Da’s off to the pub, be good, Bobby.’ Mattie rustles Tommy’s head. ‘Keep an eye on him, son.’
‘Bye, Mattie,’ Bobby says.
‘It’s Da, to you,’ Mattie says, face going a bit red with anger.
It drives Mattie mad when Bobby calls him Mattie, but it’s not Bobby’s fault, he’s used to us all calling Mattie by his name; he’s not our da, but Bobby doesn’t understand, he thinks we’re all the same. Only Mattie’s first boy, Tommy, calls him Da. There’s Doyles and Boggs in this family and we all know the difference.
‘Let’s get back to the game,’ Duncan says as Mammy screams again.
‘He’s not allowed to play unless he takes his turn again,’ Angus says angrily.
‘Fine, he will, calm down,’ Hamish says.
‘Hey!’ I protest. ‘I didn’t cheat.’
Hamish winks at me. ‘You can show them.’
I sigh. I’m ten, Duncan is twelve, Angus is fourteen and Hamish is sixteen. The two Doyle boys, Tommy and Bobby, are five and two. With three older brothers I’m always having to prove myself, and even when I’m better than them, which I am at marbles and they can’t stand it, then I have to work even harder because they think I’m a cheat. I’m the one who teaches them the new games I’ve read about in my books. I’m better than them. They all hate it but it drives Angus mental. He hits me whenever he loses. Hamish hates losing too but he’s figured out how to use me.
We’re playing Conqueror, me, Duncan and Angus. Angus wouldn’t let Tommy play because he’s the worst, he’s so bad he just ruins the game. When my older brothers aren’t around I teach Tommy how to play; I like doing that, even though he’s diabolical. That’s the word Hamish uses for everything. I use my worst marbles, just the clearies for him, because he chips them and everything. Tommy’s sitting on the steps away from Hamish. He’s afraid of Hamish. Tommy knows that Hamish and his da don’t get along so he thinks he has to defend his da when he’s not there. He’s only five but he’s a tough little shit, scrawny and pale like his da too. The lads call him Bottle-washer because he’s so skinny and wiry.
What happened to put me in the headlock was that Angus threw the first marble, then Duncan shot his marble at Angus’s. It hit and that’s why Angus got mad in the first place. Duncan captured Angus’s marble then threw another to restart the game. I hit Duncan’s, captured his then threw another to restart.
Angus threw his taw and missed mine.
Duncan aimed at Angus’s corkscrew, not because it was closer but because I know he could tell Angus was already getting angry and wanted to wind him up. Anyway he missed and it was my turn. I had two targets; I could have chosen Duncan’s opaque, which I don’t much want because everyone has them – that’s marbles that are just one colour – or Angus’s Popeye corkscrew, which I’ve had my eye on for a long time. Angus says he won it in a game but I think he must have stolen it from Francis’s corner shop. I’ve never seen anyone with one like that. I’ve only ever seen a picture of one in my marble book, so I know that his is a three-colour special called a snake corkscrew. It’s a double-twist and has a green-and-transparent clear with filaments of opaque white. It has tiny clear bubbles inside. I found it in his drawer a few days ago and he caught me snooping and kicked me in the balls to let it go. I didn’t drop it though, I know better than to let it get scratched, but watching him play with it hurts more than the kick in the goonies did. He should be keeping it in a box, safe so it doesn’t get ruined.
I decided to do a move I’d been working on and impress them all by putting a spin on my marble and hitting both marbles in the one throw. I threw my taw and it hit Duncan’s opaque first like I planned, then Tommy shouted and they all looked at Bobby who had a snail in his mouth, shell and all. Angus rushed over to grab it from him and chucked it across the road. He opened Bobby’s mouth wide.
‘The snail is missing from the shell. Did you eat it, Bobby?’
Bobby didn’t answer, just waited for a clatter, his big blue eyes wide. Bobby’s the only blond. He gets away with murder because of those blue eyes and blond hair. Even Hamish doesn’t hit him half as much as he wants to. But anyway when they were all busy wondering about where the slug part of the snail went, nobody was looking when my taw hit Angus’s marble as well, which meant that I could capture both marbles in the one throw. They looked back at me to see me holding two of them in my hand, and that’s when Angus accused me of cheating and wrapped me in a headlock.
Free now of the headlock I have to respond to the cheating allegations by trying to repeat the move, which should be fine, I know I can do it, but I can’t when they think that I’m a cheat. If I can’t do it again it proves to them that I cheated. Hamish winks at me. I know he knows that I can do it, but if I don’t win he might not take me out tonight. My hands start to sweat.
Mammy screams again and Tommy’s eyes widen.
‘Baby?’ Bobby asks.
‘Nearly there, pal, nearly there,’ Hamish says, rolling up another cigarette, cool as fuck. Seriously, when I grow up I want to be just like him.
Mrs Lynch’s door opens – she’s our next-door neighbour – and she comes out with her daughter, Lucy. Lucy’s face is already scarlet when she sees Hamish. Lucy is holding a tray with a mountain of sandwiches all piled up, I can see strawberry jam, and Mrs Lynch has diluted orange in a jug.
We all pile on top of the food.
‘Thanks, Mrs Lynch,’ we all say, mouths full and devouring the sandwiches. With Mammy in the throes of it we haven’t eaten since dinner yesterday.
Hamish winks at Lucy and she kind of giggles and runs inside. I saw them together late one night, Hamish had one hand up her top and the other up her