Lamb by Bernard Maclaverty

lights and the buzzing and clicking of the counter as the score mounted to incredible thousands. And yet every game, no matter how nimbly the boy operated the small rubbers which batted the ball back for another score, Michael knew that eventually the ball would trundle out, rattling hollowly in the dark guts of the machine and the score would return to zero. That was luck – his luck. He knew it and knowing it did not reduce his disappointment every time it happened.
    Once they went back to the big toy shop in Regent Street and saw a machine for stamping T-shirts with a photograph. Owen said he wanted one with Michael’s picture on it. Michael stood smiling into the camera with his ten-day-old beard bristling and a look of disbelief on his face. Then Michael said he wanted one with Owen on it. The machine clattered and typed across the plain surface of the two shirts and came out the other side with their photographs on. That night they wore them to dinner in the hotel and for once the waitress smiled.
    The conversation between them grew, the boy contributing more, Michael feeling more relaxed in the inevitable silences. They laughed a lot, the boy’s childish sense of humour not being so far from Michael’s own.
    One of the best laughs they had was the morning Owen woke up, having wet the bed. Michael was loath to move hotels yet again and after a thinking breakfast they went back to their room. Michael went out into the corridor with Owen at his elbow. He knocked on the door opposite but got no reply. He tried the door but it was locked.
    â€˜Damn,’ he said. He moved down the corridor, knocking quietly on doors and when there was no response trying the handle. Then he found one open. He tiptoed in and called,
    â€˜Anyone at home?’ There was no reply. ‘Quick,’ he said to Owen and they rushed back to their room and stripped the soaking sheet off the bed. It had elasticated sides. Michael bundled it up and they ran on tiptoe back down the corridor laughing.
    â€˜It stinks,’ he said. They quickly pulled back the clothes from the other bed and stripped the sheet off.
    â€˜You keep an eye out,’ hissed Michael. Owen went to the door with a suppressed wheezy laugh. Michael lifted each corner of the mattress and inserted it into the shape of the wet sheet. Then he made the bed quickly over the top of it. He lifted the dry sheet and ran.
    Back in their own room they laughed at the thought of some Lady Muck sleeping in the bed.
    â€˜Oh, Rodney, this bed’s ever-so-damp,’ said Owen. He was useless at an English accent and this made it even funnier.
    â€˜Kane the Stain strikes again,’ said Michael. He turned over Owen’s mattress, stained with a dark jagged outline, and put on the dry sheet.
    â€˜You’re a crafty bugger, Sebastian.’
    â€˜Just don’t piss the bed every night, that’s all,’ and they rolled about laughing on the newly made bed.
    In public places, where they could be overhead, Owen called him Dad and gradually Michael began to accept this, not as a game but as reality, and because he was beginning to accept the father role as real he made other attempts to teach the boy some lessons, but they ended in frustration and angry words.
    Towards the end of the week Michael began to notice the speed with which his money was dwindling. On Friday night, after Owen was asleep, his unease about the situation forced him to count it. He was shocked to find how little he had left.
    He could not sleep. Long after he had snapped the cash book shut and dropped it on the floor beside the bed, he lay with his eyes open. He heard voices on the street below and got out of bed. He opened the curtains and looked down but could see no one. The yellow sodium lights made haloes in the rain droplets on the window. Occasionally a car engine changed its note as it came to the hill on which the hotel was built. Somewhere not far away he heard a factory