I can, I said.
The Country You Called Home
The brick crashed through the front window shortly after midnight and Émile woke with a start, his heart pounding, his eyes raw from interrupted sleep. The room was dark and as he reached across for the wristwatch that lay on the bedside table, he knocked it off and heard it land on the wooden floor with a heartbreaking crack.
‘No!’ he whispered to himself in dismay.
His father had given him the wristwatch two weeks earlier as a present for his ninth birthday and he treasured it. Looking down now, he saw that the glass that covered its face had shattered, scattering splinters across the floor. The watch wasn’t new, of course. It had belonged to his grandfather, William Cross, who had bought it more than fifty years before on the morning he left Newcastle to begin a new life in West Cork. He’d passed it down to his son, Stephen, who in turn had given it to Émile, telling him that he needed to take great care of it for it was a precious family heirloom.
And now it was broken.
The boy put his head in his hands, wondering how he would ever tell his dad.
A moment later, he heard his parents’ bedroom door open and the sound of their feet running along the hallway into the front parlour of their small cottage and Émile remembered the noise that had woken him in the first place.
He jumped out of bed, his left foot landing on one of the small shards of glass, and sank to the floor, curling his foot around to examine the damage. A small chip, like a piece of broken ice, was half submerged in the ball of his foot and he turned his thumb and index finger into a pair of pincers to pull it out. A spot of blood appeared in its wake but he pressed his hand against it and when he took it away again it had disappeared. Standing up, he tested his weight on the injured foot before opening his bedroom door and following his parents into the parlour.
‘Émile,’ said Marie, turning around when she heard him. ‘What are you doing up?’
His mother was wearing her nightdress and her hair hung down loosely around her shoulders. He hated seeing her like this. Marie usually wore her hair up in a tight bun and even though she didn’t own many clothes she always made an effort to look elegant. Stephen, Émile’s father, put it down to her French upbringing. He said women looked after themselves over there, not like Irish women who’d go around in a potato sack every day except Sunday if they could. But seeing her like this, in the middle of the night, she looked old and tired and not Marie-like at all.
‘I heard a noise,’ he said. ‘It woke me up.’
‘Don’t come over here in your bare feet, son,’ said Stephen, who had taken yesterday’s newspaper off the table and was using a brush to sweep the broken glass from the window on to the front page.
‘The window!’ said Émile, pointing across the room. A breeze was blowing through, making the net curtains on either side dance in the early-morning air like a pair of young girls waltzing in their nightclothes. ‘What happened?’
‘Someone put a brick through it,’ said Stephen.
‘But why?’
‘Émile, step back,’ said Marie, putting her hands on his shoulders and pulling him away from the fragments of glass. ‘Just until your father is finished.’
‘Why would someone put a brick through our window?’ asked Émile, looking up at her.
‘It was an accident,’ said Stephen.
‘How can a brick fly through a window by accident?’
‘Émile, go back to bed,’ said Marie, raising her voice now. ‘Stephen, should I look outside to see if they’re still there?’
‘No, I’ll do it.’
He folded the newspaper into a neat package, the broken glass wrapped carefully inside, and placed it on top of the table before reaching for the latch on the front door.
‘Wait,’ cried Marie, running into the kitchen and returning with the heavy copper saucepan that she used to make soup.
‘What’s this for?’ asked Stephen, staring at it with a confused smile on his face, the kind of smile he always wore when Marie did something that both baffled and amused him.
‘To hit him with,’ said Marie.
‘To hit who with?’
‘Whoever threw the brick.’
Émile looked around the floor and saw a rectangular shape lying beneath the table, brick-like for certain, but it was enclosed in paper and the whole parcel was held together by string, like a Christmas present. His mind raced with possibilities for who might have done such a thing. He was currently engaged in a war with Donal Higgins who lived two doors down and their acts of retaliation had grown over the last few days. But it was hard to imagine Donal doing something as bad as this and, anyway, he was probably in bed since he had to go to sleep at eight o’clock every night while Émile was allowed to stay up until half past.
‘I don’t think whoever it was will be waiting outside for me, do you?’ asked Stephen, opening the front door while Marie stood behind him, holding the saucepan on high as he stepped out on to the street. Émile picked up the brick and began to untie the twine. It came loose easily enough and as the paper unfurled he was surprised to realize that he recognized it. He smoothed out the creases now, pressing it flat against the kitchen table, and examined it carefully. Green, white and orange, the colours of the Tricolour itself, the poster bore a picture of a serious-looking man sporting a big white moustache. The words ‘Tyneside Irish Battalion’ were written across the top with ‘Irishmen – To Arms’ inscribed beneath a harp in the centre of a shamrock. ‘Join To-Day’ was its closing demand.
‘What’s that?’ asked Marie, coming back into the parlour, and Émile lifted the poster to show her, watching as his mother closed her eyes for a moment and sighed before shaking her head, as if she was both surprised and not surprised by what she saw. ‘I knew something like this would happen,’ she said. ‘I said so, didn’t I? But your father had to have his own way.’
‘But why would someone wrap it around a brick?’
‘Émile, your foot,’ she cried, ignoring the poster now as she looked down at the floor where a small streak of blood had stained the woodwork. ‘I told you to keep away from the glass.’
‘There’s no one outside,’ said Stephen as he came back inside, closing the front door behind him and putting the latch on.
‘I knew those posters would only bring trouble,’ said Marie.
‘I know, love, but—’
‘Don’t love me,’ she snapped, a rare moment of anger, for most days Marie and Stephen seemed to do nothing but laugh together.
‘How was I to know that they’d attack our house?’
‘What did you think they’d do, throw a party for you?’
‘I didn’t hurt my foot in here,’ said Émile, unable to meet his father’s eye as he told them what had happened when he woke up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said when he was finished. ‘It was an accident.’
‘Ah Émile,’ said Stephen, coming over and lifting the boy up to carry him back to bed. ‘Don’t be worrying about something like that. I can fix it. Sure I’ve broken the glass many times myself. Trust me, we have bigger things to worry about right now.’