It seemed to take decades for two o’clock to come around. The constant ticking of the clock tempted me all day, and at times I had counted down to the exact minute of how long was left for my mid-term break. For hours I sat on a rickety wooden chair pressed up against a cold brick wall of the sick bay. The distant sound of a cricket ball hitting a bat made my ears prick, or sometimes there’d be a silence when the ball went to the keeper. I wanted to be outside playing cricket like I usually did every day, not sitting in a cold room, waiting.

And then two o’clock groaned around.

I heard solemn voices outside of sick bay, low mutterings meant to be kept from my ears between the nurse and whoever Pa had sent to pick me up. They walked in. It was the Doyles.

Before I left Bellaghy for my scholarship, Mr. and Mrs. Doyle were my neighbours. They didn’t have kids, which was a damn shame ‘cause we always needed more people on the street to play cricket, but Mr. Doyle was awesome. He owned a red Austin A70 Hampshire Saloon, which was probably the most feckin’ nice car in Londonderry. He would sometimes let me wash it on a Saturday morning and I would spend an hour gazing over the smooth, rounded cherry red bonnet of the  car. The last thing he said to me before I went to college was “Who’s going to wash my car now, eh?”

He had driven his Austin to school. I’d only been back home once during my time at school, and I'd been told that I'd have to take the train to get there. This time was different. Usually, I would be thrilled to sit on the strapping leather seats and admire my washing skills while gazing at the bonnet, but this time I wasn’t thrilled for the trip in the Austin back to Bellaghy.

When I stood to greet him, he put his hand on my shoulder, not harshly but with some form of sad, sympathetic affection.

“How you goin’ lad? Holding up well?” he asked.

I nodded numbly, looking at the floor.

I wasn’t.

“Well then, let’s get goin’.” His face was to the floor, like mine, awkwardly thinking of what to say next. “Is this your luggage?” he asked, holding up my battered suitcase.

I nodded again. Enough clothes for a mid-term break lasting a week.

The trip in the Austin lasted a long time, with the odd remark from Mr. Doyle and his wife, who gave me uneasy glances through the rear-vision mirror. Half way there he finally got the message that I wasn’t particularly interested in talking to him. Or anyone for that matter.

Pa was on the porch when the Austin pulled up alongside the kerb of the street. Four o’clock and it was already dark. There was a hulking figure standing next to him. It looked like Big Jim Evans. He lived in the neighbourhood and ran a mechanic shop out of the back of his shed.

Seeing him and my pa together was an odd sight. Don’t get me wrong; they were best mates and Pa was often at Big Jim’s house with a bottle of whiskey and two tin cups.

But Big Jim had this strained look on his face, and there were bags under his eyes.

His thick arm was around my pa’s shoulders, and my pa’s head was in his hands.

He was crying. The strongest man I knew was bawling on the porch, being comforted by Big Jim who looked like he had been crying too.

Why was he crying? Why were tears of pain screaming from his face?

I lugged my suitcase up the driveway and climbed the steps of the porch. Big Jim was muttering to Pa that it was a hard blow. Pa saw me and rushed over. He hugged me tight, and I dropped my suitcase at the strength of the embrace. He ran his fingers through my combed hair, then stood back and sniffled.

“Good to see you son,” was all he could manage as he wiped his red eyes. He was a different man; I didn’t know him.

I then heard a happy cooing coming from the pram on the porch. I went over and saw the baby laying in the white folds of the pram, kicking his legs up and down. The metal pram shifted back and forwards and the baby gurgled and gave a toothless grin. He was lucky that he had no idea what was happening, kicking and gurgling away merrily in the pram. It felt wrong to be so sad in front of a happy child.

The front dear creaked as I opened it and Mr. Doyle offered to take my suitcase. Conversation halted as soon as I walked through the door and twenty-five pairs of eyes clothed in black pierced me. Quiet, respectful chatter halted and the chinking of teacups ceased. I felt a blush slowly creep up my neck and onto my cheeks and I bowed my head. I was embarrassed.  

Old men who knew Pa, or even Grandpa, stood and their calloused hands shook mine. Mr. Murphy, a man ten years older than Pa was the first to shake my trembling, blushing hand.

“Sorry for your trouble lad,” he murmured.

I nodded. It was all I could do.  

Two excruciating minutes later I had shaken every hand in the room, and then began the whispering.

Perhaps they were trying to be respectful and gossip at the same time, thinking that if they whispered they would achieve doing so.

“... eldest son…”

“... away from school…”

“... he won a scholarship for St. Columb’s college…”

Women gossiped among themselves over tea in China cups on saucers as Mam held my hand tightly in hers, her brittle fingers crushing mine. She coughed out an angry tearless sigh which she did whenever she was frustrated or upset. All the women gossiping immediately stopped when they heard the cough; Mam’s way of telling them to shut it. They stared shamefaced into their cups.

The afternoon wore on with many sorry’s and hand shaking. Countless cups of tea were shoved into my hands by Mrs. Doyle and other women like Mrs. Murphy. Did they think that tea was medicine for my pain?

The cups kept coming.

Pa hadn’t been in the house for the entire afternoon and had stayed on the porch with Big Jim. I was angry at him for doing that, leaving Mam to do everything herself while he cowered on the porch. As far as I was concerned, I was the one being a man. Not him.

Ten o’clock came around and only a few families remained: The Doyle’s, the Murphy’s, Big Jim and his wife and my old school teacher, Miss Miller. The baby had long gone to sleep and the men scattered themselves around the living room. Pa sat next to Big Jim, on the brink of drunk, clutching a cup of whiskey like it was the next thing to go. Mr. Murphy and Mr. Doyle stared blankly ahead at a wall. I was slumped on the couch with the buttons of my jacket undone and my rumpled shirt hanging out. I could hear Mam furiously washing tea cups in the kitchen, spits of water hitting the floor. Miss Miller, probably the nicest person I knew, was gently taking the soapy cups out of Mam’s hands and drying them, whispering assuring words to her. Mrs. Doyle and Mrs. Murphy were no doubt gossiping somewhere and eating the rest of the sponge cake.

I heard a twisting of gravel under tyres of a car and we all jumped, fixing our eyes on the front door. Dishes crashed into the dirty water, hitting the sink with a thud. Big Jim was the first to stand and he opened the front door. Mr. Murphy and Mr. Doyle followed him. Pa didn’t even budge, his puffy eyes resting firmly on his whiskey.

I lingered in the door frame to see the ambulance. It had a bloody red cross slapped on the side of the white tin box, and a corpse was wheeled out of its mouth.

A corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

I was about to walk outside and join Big Jim and Mr. Doyle and Mr. Murphy when I felt an iron grip on my shoulder. I shot around and saw Mam, hair falling out of the tight knot she had it in at the back of her head, her chest rising and falling quicker than it should, and water seeping from her hand through my white shirt.

“Seamus, go up to your room.” Her straining voice was failing to hold back a teary, angry sigh.

Pa let out a sob and then he drowned it with liquor. Mam looked like she wanted to puncture the wall with her fists. For the first time in my life, I saw Pa crying; bawling his eyes out into a drink.

At this point it seemed as if I was the only one holding it together. It was like they had swapped positions; whenever Mam was sad she would cry, whenever Pa was sad he would shout and get angry at us.

I said nothing. I obeyed. I climbed the stairs up to my room where my suitcase had been put down on my bed by Mr. Doyle. My old faded car posters splattered the walls, some pulled from the pins and ripped, jagged edges were all that remained.

I pushed my suitcase to the floor and went shoulders first onto the old bedspread, looking at a picture of me washing Mr. Doyle’s cherry red Austin as I went to sleep.

I woke the next morning, slightly disoriented with a heavy head and heart, wondering if yesterday had been a bad dream. I looked down. I was still wearing a scratchy, stiff suit.

It was not a dream.

The sun told me that it was early; I could not hear any footsteps echoing through the house either. I loosened my tie and threw it on my bed, taking my shoes off as well. The hallway creaked a high note as I stood on a floorboard. I had been away for so long, I had forgotten about that bloody floorboard. It stuck less than half an inch out from the rest of them, and it was the reason why I used to get a shouting in the mornings.

I would always try to sneak outside in the mornings on the weekend. I was rarely successful, but if I was I would pelt out of the house like the sleek cat that I was and go out onto the farm to check my rabbit traps. Pa didn’t trust me; he thought I would fall down a ditch, snap my neck and go to high heaven.

And it was that ruddy floorboard that caught me out almost every time.

This time I didn’t even care if Pa caught me sneaking around that early in the morning. He’d had whiskey the night before and was likely to sleep soundly.

For the first time in my life, the room at the end of the hallway looked as if it might swallow me alive. The door, only opened a fraction, lured me down the hallway. The room scared me; snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside, the curtains were drawn to a close. My home was a tomb, his room was a grave.

I saw him for the first time in six weeks. Paler now.

Bloodless.

He slept in a cotton-lined box, hands as white as the fabric clasped at his front, wearing a suit like mine, but less slept in. Faint shadows flickered across his pale face from the flames of the candle fire. He had faded into the coffin.

He was wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, so weak of colour it almost wasn’t there. It was as if he was sleeping in his cot; an unmoving, permanent sleep that would never stop and would continue forever. The perfect sleeper; always still, never waking to cry for Mam or Pa. A beautiful sleeper; no gaudy scars.

The bumper had knocked him clear.

Christopher had never been good at sleeping. Once or twice a week he would wake up screaming, waking up the rest of us with a bleedin’ loud screech. If I had a shilling for how many times he woke up screaming, I would be rich.

Screaming used to annoy me. Now it stabbed me with its silence, because it wasn’t there anymore. Now little Chris was the best at sleeping.

Coffin and all, he slept in the flickering room, far too quiet for my liking. Cherry red now makes me sick; any coloured car makes me sick.

The night time screech was no more, and all I heard was an echo of the yell from a metallic beast as its brakes were pushed too late.

My brother, playing village cricket, victim of it.

A victim, in a four-foot box, a foot for every year.