The Street and other stories by Gerry Adams Page B

course,” Martha would smile. “Your daddy would teach you.”
    “Right,” Tom would say, and that would be that.
    Work gave Tom a small but important measure of independence,
    and his experiences at work rarely impinged on his home life. Martha and Joe’s relationship with him remained largely as it had been before. They still never permitted him to go off alone, except in his own street. Tom didn’t seem to mind. He collected postcards. When he was at home he spent most of his time counting and recounting, sorting and resorting his collection in scrapbooks and old shoeboxes and writing down their serial numbers in jotters which his father bought him.
    He also did small chores around the house. It was his job to keep the coal bucket filled and he always cleared the table after dinner. Occasionally he helped with the dishes and he fetched dusters and polish or things like that for his mother when she did her cleaning. Most mornings he also collected the paper in the corner shop while his mother prepared the breakfast. Seamus Hughes, the shopkeeper, always delighted him with his greeting.
    “Ah, Tom, you’ll be wanting to catch up on the news. Here’s your paper.”
    Tom would be especially happy if there was anyone else in the shop to hear Seamus’s remarks. He would beam with pleasure and mumble his red-faced and affirmative response.
    His father and he went for walks regularly every Saturday and Sunday afternoon and Tom loved these outings. His usual facial expression was blandly benign, but when he smiled he smiled with his whole face, and during the walks with his father the smile rarely left him. Everyone knew the pair and had a friendly greeting for them both. Usually they walked out the line where the doggymen exercised their greyhounds, and on one memorable Sunday they took the back road across the border and went the whole way as far as Doherty’s Fort at the Grianán of Aileach in Donegal. The following day was the only occasion on which Tom missed work; he was so tired after their outing that Martha couldn’t rouse him from the bed. His father joked with him about it afterwards.
    At Christmas there was a pantomime at Tom’s work. Tom had a small part as Aladdin’s servant. All the parents and families along with various agencies and local dignitaries were invited tothe centre for an open night. Samples of handicrafts were on display and photographs of their projects adorned the walls. On the night of the performance when the audience were milling around in the main corridor sipping tea and lemonade while they waited for the show to start in the main hall, one of Tom’s workmates, a young man from the Brandywell called Hughie, suddenly started yelling and bawling.
    At first everyone just looked away and pretended that nothing was amiss, but as Hughie’s parents failed to pacify him the commotion increased. One of the supervisors intervened, but that only seemed to make Hughie worse. Apparently this was the first year that Hughie had not had a part in the pantomime. When rehearsals had begun earlier in the year he had insisted that he didn’t want a part. Now when he saw the gathering and the excitement of his friends as they prepared for the evening’s performance and when it was too late for him to do anything, he had changed his mind. He wanted to be in the pantomime and nothing would satisfy him except that.
    His parents were distracted, and as Hughie continued his bad-tempered hysterics their consternation spread to the audience. Some of the pantomime players came from the big hall, where they were nervously finalising last-minute arrangements, to see what the racket was about. Tom was among them, dressed in an oriental-type outfit made by his mother from old curtains and an old dressing gown.
    No one paid much attention when Tom left his costumed friends and made his way through the throng to where Hughie stood bawling in the corner, surrounded by his distraught parents and two of the day