‘Firstly: chewing surfaces.’
The saying of this makes us stop. We both look at each other. Then we ignore ourselves.
It’s only a short walk to school. The skinny cats follow us, so we scare them off. It rained last night, but it’s sunny now, which makes the road shine.
If I almost close my eyes this brightness joins up with the shine coming from the sea. When I tell Elizabeth about this, that it’s one way of making everything look back to normal, she nods and does her distant look.
We sit down in our usual classroom seats and unpack our bags. Alex is very fussy about how he sets out his pens: he has to get the colours right before it’s good. Elizabeth sits beside Alex, then we wait for the MacNeil brothers.
I wait until the clock shows 9:02 before starting. We do reading first – this is Alex alone. Elizabeth leaves it to me, so I give him plenty of praise and tell him he’s a Good Communicator. I put a star in his reading book, then get him to read it again in his head. Then we do writing – I draw two lines in Alex’s book, ask him to do his best vowels. After this we do words, then sentences.
While he’s doing a story I take myself aside. In my head I think: All right Rona. Read this page to this page. Then do a story where you use plenty of Wow Words, and especially these – Frog, Dainty, Wolf, Tiredly.
Elizabeth is about to start her lesson when Calum Ian comes in, with Duncan following after him.
Duncan is wearing his hood up high today, the way he does when he wants to be invisible.
They take a seat as far from us as possible. Calum Ian takes out his pencil and sharpener. He starts to sharpen his pencil onto the floor in one long unsnapped strand.
‘Martin far,’ says Elizabeth.
I know she can’t help it, but she never gets it right. She says madainn mhath like there’s a Martin who’s far. The first time she said it I nearly went – ‘All right, where?’ I’ve tried to correct her, but there’s no chance she’ll come wise.
‘Pòg mo thòin,’ Calum Ian replies.
This is very rude and should never be said, not even to your worst enemy.
Elizabeth: ‘I know what Poke Ma Hone means.’ She gets the sound of that right at least.
Calum Ian looks like he knew she knew already.
‘What is it, Duncan?’ Elizabeth asks. ‘Why are you hiding yourself away?’
Duncan’s jacket scrunches.
Calum Ian: ‘He’s being quiet. He only wants to sit in peace and quiet. That’s right isn’t it, Duncan?’
Duncan doesn’t answer.
Elizabeth takes the teacher’s seat. There are ten empty places, five filled. She writes our names in the register, then hands around bits of paper.
‘We’ll start with an activity,’ she says. ‘As part of our remembering. It’s the thing where you choose a colour, then a number. All right? Then there’s a message. We can all make one. Who wants to have a go?’
She calls it a fortune-teller for our fingers. It’s like a beak with four spikes, made of paper. My first try ends up wrong. Alex can’t do his and he ends up getting offended. Calum Ian does his but looks grumpy about it, while Duncan’s hands are quick and skilled.
Me: ‘Choose a colour.’
Alex: ‘Blue.’
Me: ‘B – L – U – E. Choose a number.’
Alex: ‘Four.’
Me: ‘One two, three four. Open this up. And the message is – Keep calm and keep playing.’
In the end it’s a good enough project. We laugh at some of the ruder messages, then Alex finds one which says You see a ship! And we stop wanting to play.
We have a break, then Elizabeth says we should change activity: to real remembering.
‘Who wants to go first?’
When nobody volunteers she begins:
‘Dad used to talk about memory. He said there was short-term, and there was long-term. Can anyone tell me what the difference is?’
Nobody wants to say and get it wrong.
‘All right, so short-term’s the thought you just had. It doesn’t last, unless you remember it again. Long-term lasts, but sometimes you need to remember it to keep it strong. Otherwise it can fade, and you forget.’
She waits for us to understand. I try to remember what I had for dinner – no, it’s gone. I should’ve practised.
Elizabeth: ‘Who’ll go first?’
No one answers. Calum Ian looks up at the cracks on the ceiling, then stretches out his arms and collects back like he’s years after being bored.
‘Will you try, Duncan?’
Duncan pretends to be reading his jotter. But then, to surprise us all, he stands. He stands for the longest time, even past the point of my being nervous for him.
‘Dad used to have a game where he pretended he was a robot,’ he says in a hurry. ‘You’d control him, except he might attack.’
He waits for us to say anything. When nobody does he goes on: ‘I remember he was friendly after the pub. If he’d gotten drunk he had a joke about people annoying him to give him a trophy. He didn’t want it. They’d run up the street after him, chasing him. It was sort of stupid …’
He looks out at us, seeing if we’re still listening, looking like he’s sure we’ll be bored.
‘I thought he was trying to make himself out to be important … I thought he was worried about being too ordinary as a dad. That’s why I always practise my fiddle: so he can see how good I am when he comes back. So I can make him proud.’
He stops. Elizabeth makes a go-on face. We’re meant to be writing it all down for Duncan to keep in his diary, but I mostly prefer just to be listening.
‘Mam, she played I spy. She said it in the Gaelic. Said it with sounds, as well: I hear with my little ear. You could hear the kettle, or the wind. Or the fridge. Once she did it for her stomach rumbling. Then for her baby.’ He stops for a while, picks at some fluff on the edge of his sleeve. I can see all his face now. There’s new scabs on his chin.
‘Dad didn’t play the robot game when everything went bad. There wasn’t much I spy then either.’
After a long time and with a quiet voice he asks: ‘If a baby isn’t born, does it still get up to heaven?’
Calum Ian stops writing. He leans across and raps Duncan hard on the arm.
‘That’s
