Chapter 38 #2
‘Look, there’s Campbell Street,’ I pointed out.
It was a street Ronan would have known from before last summer because it had McCluskey’s sports shop on it, which was featured in the colour picture of ‘Now’, but the black-and-white picture had a greengrocer’s in its place.
Both versions looked eerily the same. We continued down the row of similar pictures, like a trip down memory lane, except the memories weren’t ours, which I suppose is what a museum really is: a house for the memories of others.
At the end of the architecture display was a large pearl clock face with golden Roman numerals and rusty hour hands.
The information board told us that it was the original clock face that had been in the tower above the courthouse before it was bombed.
The little hand pointed to four and the big hand pointed to ten; stopped at the time the courthouse fell.
I saw Ronan’s face reflected in the glass staring up at the clock.
‘Says here it was bombed in 1993, we were only seven,’ I said.
Ronan didn’t respond. Behind the glass there was a picture of how the courthouse looked today after it had been rebuilt alongside blueprints for its reconstruction. The architect had obviously been trying to be as loyal to the original as possible.
It felt like Ronan was looking at me in the glass, staring right through me with the clock face behind my reflection; gleaming solid. Without needing to ask I pushed on.
The next area was the most well-lit part and was as far back as the ground floor stretched.
It was dedicated to the Great Train Disaster of 1889, where two trains collided and many people died, mainly children, with hundreds injured.
The local station closed after that day and no trains ever passed near or through our town again.
The beginning of the exhibit showed trains of the 1800s in all their glory, several of which were pictured in the local station with Victorian men, women and children boarding with happy faces and waving from inside.
Further along there were pictures of railway staff in offices behind typewriters and conductors with their ticket machines strapped across their shoulder and railway maintenance staff on the lines – all happy at their work, oblivious of what was to come, which the pictures further along were showing.
The part of the line the accident had happened on was at the top of a high sloping bank, so when the two trains collided their carriages splattered down the sides and hung there.
One picture of the scene was taken about fifty yards away from the wreckage, the photographer’s perspective of a field where all the survivors were standing in groups.
Every single head was turned towards the trains.
I pushed Ronan past these pictures to the final part of the exhibit, a small glass case all on its own.
It was the brightest thing in the room, illuminated from within by spotlights in each corner of the case, which made it seem almost sacred.
It was a scale model of one of the trains looking how it would have on the day when all those passengers boarded it.
Its smooth dark green surface sparkled, its golden metal shone. The perfection of it preserved forever.
‘Goh,’ Ronan suddenly said. ‘G-goh.’
I came round to look at him. His gaze was fixed on the train in the glass case. Then he turned his head away and tried to lift his arm to point away from it.
‘G-goh,’ he said again.
‘You want to leave, Ronan? Go home?’
I was panicking that he was about to get distressed but there was something about his energy that wasn’t like it had been at Kilmare or in the canteen, it was determined, focused.
‘Noh,’ he said, shakily lifting his arm again trying to point in the direction of the entrance of the museum, ‘g-goh …’
‘OK,’ I said, going behind him to spin us around, ‘we’ll go back.’
Ronan was humming hoarsely as I sped off back the way we’d come, past the train pictures, past the architecture section and on to the linen section.
‘Stah-p,’ he said, trying to lift his other arm and point down towards the glass cabinet filled with lace embroidery.
Ronan was breathing heavy and hard, almost frantic but without much noise; he was quietly, but restlessly, set on something.
I pushed him down the line of lace and linen-filled rows.
‘Keep going?’ I said as I pushed him fast towards the end of the display until we stopped at the picture of the barley field.
Ronan’s breathing started to slow down as we came to a stop and he started to hum gently once again, his energy easing down and his head stock still, staring straight at the picture in front of us.
I came round to him and knelt down. He was fixed on the picture behind me of the barley field and the combine harvester.
I turned to look at it too, and when I turned back Ronan was staring at me.
‘What happened that day, Ronan?’
His hand lifted to point towards the picture.
‘The barley field?’
He tried to lift his hand further, but it dropped onto the armrest of his wheelchair.
‘Yeah-sh,’ he said and started to get agitated again, turning his head over his shoulder and trying to point back the way we’d come.
‘Goh,’ he said with that fiery energy rising in him once again. When I didn’t move immediately he said it louder, ‘G-goh!’
I leapt to my feet, spun him round and sped towards the other end of the linen display until Ronan’s right hand came up to indicate towards the architecture display.
‘Goh.’
I spun us in that direction and he made another gesture with his right hand for me to turn us down along the display cabinet with all the photos of buildings until he told me to stop at the clock face.
I came round to hunker in front of him again. He was red in the face and words were failing him as he struggled to articulate; he was making garbled sounds I couldn’t make sense of.
‘What is it, Ronan? The clock?’
He was shaking his head frantically.
‘It’s OK, Ronan, just breathe, take your time and breathe.’
I started taking deep breaths to demonstrate and he followed my lead until we were breathing together, calmly.
‘It’s OK,’ I said.
‘Oh … oh—kay,’ he said.
We breathed as one.
‘Tie-mm,’ he said. ‘Tie-mm.’
‘Time.’
‘Mah … sheen … Mah … sheen.’
‘Machine?’
He nodded.
‘Time machine?’ I said.
He nodded and continued to breathe steadily, looking at me with eyes that were focused and scared.
I didn’t know what he meant, but he was trying to tell me something about that day; the day when everything changed.
I’d been waiting for this moment for so long, but I had imagined he would tell me in his own voice, his own words.
He couldn’t do that yet, so he was trying to tell me the best way he could in the only way he could at that moment, in that museum on that Sunday afternoon.
‘Ronan,’ I said, ‘do you know what people are saying happened to you?’
He stared straight at me and didn’t reply.
‘They say you were in the middle of the field, they say you were by the stump of a fairy thorn tree when it happened. Is that true?’
He nodded gently.
‘Why were you there?’
His eyes went up to the clock face behind me.
‘Tie-mm … mah-sheen …’
‘Time machine?’
He nodded.
‘I don’t know what that means, Ronan; a time machine?’
He started to get agitated again.
‘It’s OK, Ronan, breathe with me.’
We breathed until we matched each other once more.
With slow strength he lifted his left hand to point in the direction we’d just come from.
‘Goh,’ he said.
I sprang to my feet once again. When we reached the end of the architecture display he lifted his right hand to point in the direction of the railway section.
‘Goh.’
I pushed him along until he stopped me at the picture of the wreckage. Both of us still breathing at exactly the same rate: fast.
‘Mee,’ Ronan said quietly, then in a whisper he said again, ‘me.’
I stayed behind Ronan looking at the picture of the wreckage. I didn’t go round to face him immediately because I felt I needed to be stronger before I did. I could hear that he was crying. I slowly walked round and knelt down in front of him and saw his face soaking wet with tears and sweat.
‘Dehs …’ he started to say through his tears, ‘dehs … troy … mee.’
‘Destroyed … you?’
He nodded once.
‘Mee.’
He was staring at the picture of the wreckage and I turned to look too and then back at him.
‘You don’t feel like that, do you? Destroyed?’
He nodded once.
‘You’re not. You’re here. I’m here. You and me. Our friendship isn’t destroyed.’
‘Uh-sss,’ he said.
‘Us.’
He was looking at the picture again. But I stood up immediately and spun him round to face the case behind us. The one with the brand new, shiny model train gleaming in its own spotlight. Pristine. Perfect.
‘You,’ I said, pointing at it, ‘you.’
He almost stopped breathing.
‘Say it,’ I said.
He took a big breath.
‘Say it,’ I said again.
‘ME!’ he belted out, ‘ME!’
He was shaking.
I shook too.
‘You know,’ I said, noticing how breathless I was, ‘I could have said something like, let’s get you back on track but I don’t think it’s a time for jokes, do you?’
He started to giggle.
‘But seriously,’ I said, ‘we’ll get there, Ronan, we really can, we will.’
He tried a smile.
‘Boys!’ came a stern voice behind us, ‘I don’t know what you’re up to but I’ve been watching yous on the monitor and this museum is not some sort of race course, if you can’t be attending to each area in a more respectful manner then I’m afraid I might have to ask you to leave.’
Ronan and me looked at each other and burst out laughing, which only added to Annie’s annoyance and confusion.
‘Well, that’s just the height of bad manners, boys.’
‘Sorry, Annie,’ I said, recovering from my laughter, but Ronan was still laughing and I had to speak over him.
‘Sorry, we don’t mean to be disrespectful, honestly, it’s just we’ve made a bit of a discovery today in your museum and, I mean this when I say it, today has probably made a difference for the rest of our lives. ’
Ronan’s laughter eased off and Annie cleared her throat, studying the both of us as if she wasn’t sure whether we were making a fool of her or not.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘well … that’s just … well, you see, that’s the power of history, boys. Learning about the place you come from, where it all started.’
‘And where it’s all going,’ I said.
‘And where it’s all going,’ she repeated. ‘To make sense of the future you need to make sense of the past.’
Ronan and me looked at each other.
‘You know, Annie,’ I said, ‘I think that’s the very thing we’ve started to do today.’
Before we left, I thanked Annie once again and said we’d see her next time and she said we’d be more than welcome as long as we didn’t treat the museum like a Formula One track.
Matty was sitting on the kerb smoking. He spotted us and threw his cigarette away.
‘Yous weren’t that long,’ he said, ‘mustn’t’ve been all that interestin’, was it?’
Ronan tried to turn his head towards me. I could see the corner of his mouth grinning.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘pretty boring really.’
Driving home, Ronan was looking out his window and I was looking out mine, the world whizzing past. I could feel Matty sneaking glances at us in the mirror. I looked up and caught him once; I could only see his eyes. He winked at me; I winked back.