Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

We were coming down our road. Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with his stick. It was Missis Quigley’s gate; she was always looking out the window but she never did anything.

– Quigley!

– Quigley!

– Quigley Quigley Quigley!

Liam and Aidan turned down their cul-de-sac. We said nothing; they said nothing. Liam and Aidan had a dead mother. Missis O’Connell was her name.

– It’d be brilliant, wouldn’t it? I said.

– Yeah, said Kevin. -Cool.

We were talking about having a dead ma. Sinbad, my little brother, started crying. Liam was in my class in school. He dirtied his trousers one day – the smell of it rushed at us like the blast of heat when an oven door was opened – and the master did nothing. He didn’t shout or slam his desk with his leather or anything. He told us to fold our arms and go asleep and when we did he carried Liam out of the class. He didn’t come back for ages and Liam didn’t come back at all.

James O’Keefe whispered, -If I did a gick in me pants he’d kill me!

– Yeah.

– It’s not fair, said James O’Keefe. -So it’s not.

The master, Mister Hennessey, hated James O’Keefe. He’d be writing something on the board with his back to us and he’d say, -O’Keefe, I know you’re up to something down there. Don’t let me catch you. He said it one morning and James O’Keefe wasn’t even in. He was at home with the mumps.

Henno brought Liam to the teachers’ toilet and cleaned him up and then he brought him to the headmaster’s office and the headmaster brought him to his auntie’s in his car because there was no one at home in his own house. Liam’s auntie’s house was in Raheny.

– He used up two rolls of toilet paper, Liam told us. -And he gave me a shilling.

– He did not; show us it.

– There.

– That’s only threepence.

– I spent the rest, said Liam.

He got the remains of a packet of Toffo out of his pocket and showed it to us.

– There, he said.

– Give us one.

– There’s only four left, said Liam; he was putting the packet back in his pocket.

– Ah, said Kevin.

He pushed Liam.

Liam went home.

Today, we were coming home from the building site. We’d got a load of six-inch nails and a few bits of plank for making boats, and we’d been pushing bricks into a trench full of wet cement when Aidan started running away. We could hear his asthma, and we all ran as well. We were being chased. I had to wait for Sinbad. I looked back and there was no one after us but I didn’t say anything. I grabbed Sinbad’s hand and ran and caught up with the rest of them. We stopped when we got out of the fields onto the end of the road. We laughed. We roared through the gap in the hedge. We got into the gap and looked to see if there was anyone coming to get us. Sinbad’s sleeve was caught in the thorns.

– The man’s coming! said Kevin, and he slid through the gap.

We left Sinbad stuck in the hedge and pretended we’d run away. We heard him snivelling. We crouched behind the gate pillars of the last house before the road stopped at the hedge, O’Driscoll’s.

– Patrick-, Sinbad whinged.

– Sin-bahhhd, said Kevin.

Aidan had his knuckles in his mouth. Liam threw a stone at the hedge.

– I’m telling Mammy, said Sinbad.

I gave up. I got Sinbad out of the hedge and made him wipe his nose on my sleeve. We were going home for our dinner; shepherd’s pie on a Tuesday.

Liam and Aidan’s da howled at the moon. Late at night, in his back garden; not every night, only sometimes. I’d never heard him but Kevin said he had. My ma said that he did it because he missed his wife.

– Missis O’Connell?

– That’s right.

My da agreed with her.

– He’s grieving, said my mother. -The poor man.

Kevin’s father said that Mister O’Connell howled because he was drunk. He never called him Mister O’Connell; he called him the Tinker.

– Will you look who’s talking, said my mother when I told her that. And then she said, -Don’t listen to him, Patrick; he’s codding you. Sure, where would he get drunk? There’s no pubs in Barrytown.

– There’s three in Raheny, I said.

– That’s miles away, she said. -Poor Mister O’Connell. No more talk about it.

Kevin told Liam that he saw his da looking up at the moon and howling like a werewolf.

Liam said he was a liar.

Kevin dared him to say that again but he didn’t.

Our dinner wasn’t ready and Sinbad had left one of his shoes back in the building site. We’d been told never to play there so he told our ma that he didn’t know where it was. She smacked the back of his legs. She held onto his arm but he still kept ahead of her so she wasn’t really getting him properly. He still cried though, and she stopped.

Sinbad was a great crier.

– You’re costing me a blessed fortune, she told Sinbad.

She was nearly crying as well.

She said we’d have to go out and find the shoe after dinner, the both of us, because I was supposed to have been looking after him.

We’d have to go out in the dark, through the gap, over the fields, into the muck and the trenches and the watchmen. She told us to wash our hands. I closed the bathroom door and I got Sinbad back for it; I gave him a dead leg.

I had to keep an eye on Deirdre in the pram while our ma put clean socks on Sinbad. She wiped his nose and looked at his eyes for ages and pushed the tears away with her knuckle.

– There, there; good boy.

I was afraid she’d ask him what was wrong with him and he’d tell her. I rocked the pram the way she always did it.

We lit fires. We were always lighting fires.

I took off my jumper so there wouldn’t be a smell of smoke off it. It was cold now but that didn’t matter as much. I looked for somewhere clean to put the jumper. We were at the building site. The building site kept changing, the fenced-in part of it where they kept the diggers and the bricks and the shed the builders sat in and drank tea. There was always a pile of bread crusts outside the shed door, huge batch crusts with jam stains on the edges. We were looking through the wire fence at a seagull trying to pick up one of the crusts – it was too long for the seagull’s beak; he should have grabbed it in the middle – when another crust came flying out the shed door and hit the side of the seagull’s head. We heard the roars of the men’s laughing from inside the shed.

We’d go down to the building site and it wouldn’t be there any more, just a square patch of muck and broken bricks and tyre marks. There was a new road where there’d been wet cement the last time we were there and the new site was at the end of the road. We went over to where we’d written our names with sticks in the cement, but they’d been smoothed over; they’d gone.

– Ah gick, said Kevin.

Our names were all around Barrytown, on the roads and paths. You had to do it at night when they were all gone home, except the watchmen. Then when they saw the names in the morning it was too late, the cement was hard. Only our christian names, just in case the builders ever went from door to door up Barrytown Road looking for the boys who’d been writing their names in their wet cement.

There wasn’t only one building site; there were loads of them, all different types of houses.

We wrote Liam’s name and address with a black marker on a new plastered wall inside one of the houses. Nothing happened.

My ma once smelt the smoke off me. She saw my hands first. She grabbed one of them.

– Look at your hands, she said. -Your fingernails! My God, Patrick, you must be in mourning for the cat.

Then she smelt me.

– What have you been up to?

– Putting out a fire.

She killed me. The worst part was waiting to see if she’d tell my da when he came home.

Kevin had the matches, a box of Swan ones. I loved those boxes. We’d made a small wigwam out of planks and sticks and we’d brought two cardboard boxes with us from behind the shops. The boxes were ripped up and under the wood. Wood by itself took too long to get going. It was still daytime. Kevin lit a match. Me and Liam looked around to see if there was anyone coming. There was no one else with us. Aidan was staying in his auntie’s house. Sinbad was in hospital because he had to get his tonsils out. Kevin put the match under the cardboard, waited for it to grab the flame and let go of the match. We watched the fire eat the cardboard. Then we ran for cover.

I couldn’t really use matches properly. The match broke or it wouldn’t light or I’d pull it along the wrong side of the box; or it would light and I’d get rid of it too quickly.

We waited behind one of the houses. When the watchman came we’d run. We were near the hedge, the escape route. Kevin said that they couldn’t do anything to you if they didn’t catch you on the building site. If they grabbed us or hit us out on the road we could bring them to court. We couldn’t see the fire properly. We waited. It wasn’t a house yet, just some of the walls. It was a line of six houses joined together. The Corporation were building the houses here. We waited for a while. I’d forgotten my jumper.

– Oh, oh.

– What?

– Oh janey.

– What?

– Emergency, emergency.

We crawled around the side of the house; not all the way because it was taking too long. There was a barrel over near where I’d put my jumper. I ran for cover. I crouched behind the barrel and breathed in and out real hard, getting ready to go. I looked back; Kevin stood up properly, looked around and got back down again.

– Okay, he hissed.

I took a last breath and came out from behind the barrel and dashed for the jumper. No one shouted. I made a noise like bombs exploding as I grabbed the jumper off the bricks. I slid back behind the barrel.

The fire was going well, loads of smoke. I got a stone and threw it at the fire. Kevin stood up again and scouted for a watchman. The coast was clear and he signalled me to come. I charged, crouched down and got to the side of the house. Kevin patted me on the back. So did Liam.

I tied the jumper around my waist. I put the sleeves in a double knot.

– Come on, men.

Kevin ran out from behind our cover; we followed him and danced around the fire.

– Woo woo woo woo woo -

We put our hands to our mouths and did the Indian stuff.

– Hii-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa -

Kevin kicked the fire at me but the pile just fell. It wasn’t much of a fire now. I stopped dancing. So did Kevin and Liam. Kevin pushed and pulled Liam to the fire.

– Lay off!

I helped Kevin. Liam got serious, so we stopped. We were sweating. I had an idea.

– The watchman is a bas-stard!

We ran back to behind the house and laughed. We all joined in.

– The watchman is a bas-stard! The watchman is a bas-stard!

We heard something; Kevin did.

We escaped, dashed across the remains of the field. I zigzagged, head down, so no bullets would get me. I fell through the gap into the ditch. We had a fight, just pushing. Liam missed my shoulder and punched my ear and it stung, so he had to let me hit him in the ear back. He put his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t try to stop me.

We got out of the ditch cos the midgeys were landing on our faces.

Sinbad wouldn’t put the lighter fuel in his mouth.

– It’s halibut oil, I told him.

– It isn’t, he said.

He squirmed but I held onto him. We were in the school yard, in the shed.

I liked halibut oil. When you cracked the plastic with your teeth the oil spread over the inside of your mouth, like ink through blotting paper. It was warm; I liked it. The plastic was nice as well.

It was Monday; Henno was in charge of the yard, but he always stayed over at the far side watching whoever was playing handball. He was mad; if he’d come over to our side, the shed, he’d have caught loads of us in the act. If a teacher caught five fellas smoking or doing serious messing he got a bonus in his wages; that was what Fluke Cassidy said and his uncle was a teacher. But Henno only watched handball and sometimes he took his jacket and his jumper off and played it as well. He was brilliant. When he hit the ball you couldn’t see it till it hit the wall; it was like a bullet. He had a sticker in his car: Live Longer, Play Handball.

Sinbad’s lips had disappeared because he was pressing them shut so hard; we couldn’t get his mouth open. Kevin pressed the fuel capsule against his mouth but it wouldn’t go in. I pinched Sinbad’s arm; no good. This was terrible; in front of the others, I couldn’t sort out my little brother. I got the hair above his ear and pulled it up; I lifted him: I just wanted to hurt him. His eyes were closed now as well but the tears were getting out. I held his nose. He gasped and Kevin shoved the capsule half-way into his mouth. Then Liam lit it with the match.

We said we’d get Liam to light it, me and Kevin, just in case we got caught.

It went like a dragon.

I preferred magnifying glasses to matches. We spent afternoons burning little piles of cut grass. I loved watching the grass change colour. I loved it when the flame began to race through the grass. You had more control with a magnifying glass. It was easier but it took more skill. If the sun stayed out long enough you could saw through a sheet of paper and not have to touch it, just put down a stone in each corner to stop it from blowing away. We’d have a race; burn, blow it out, burn, blow it out. Last to burn the paper completely in half had to let the other fella burn his hand. We’d draw a man on the paper and burn holes in him; in his hands and his feet, like Jesus. We drew long hair on him. We left his mickey till last.

We cut roads through the nettles. My ma wanted to know what I was doing going out wearing my duffel coat and mittens on a lovely nice day.

– We’re doing the nettles, I told her.

The nettles were huge; giant ones. The hives from their stings were colossal, and they itched for ages after they’d stopped stinging. They took up a big corner of the field behind the shops. Nothing else grew there, just the nettles. After we hacked them over with a sideways swing of our sticks and hurleys we had to mash them down. Juice from the nettles flew up. We built roads right through the nettles, a road each because of the swinging sticks and hurleys. When we were going home the roads had met and there were no nettles left. The hurleys were green and I had two stings on my face; I’d taken off my balaclava because my head was itchy.

I was looking at crumbs. My da put his hand on the magnifying glass and I let him take it. He looked at the hairs on his hand.

– Who gave you this? he said. -You.

– Oh, that’s right; I did.

He handed it back.

– Good man.

He pressed his thumb down hard on the kitchen table.

– See if you can see the print, he said.

I wasn’t sure.

– The fingerprint, he said. -The thumb.

I shifted my chair over closer to him and held the glass over where his thumb had been. We both looked through the glass. All I could see was the yellow and red dots of the tabletop, bigger.

– See anything? he said.

– No.

– Come on, he said.

I followed him into the living room.

– Where are you two going when your dinner’s just ready? said my ma.

– Back in a sec, said my da.

He put his hand on my shoulder. We went to the window.

– Get up there till we see.

He dragged the armchair over for me to stand on.

– Now.

He hauled up the venetian blinds. He spoke to them.

– Out of the way and let the duck see the rabbit.

He locked the cord and held it for a while to make sure that both sides of the blinds stayed up.

He pressed his thumb on the glass.

– Now, look.

The smudge became lines, curved tracks.

– Do yours now, he said.

I pressed my thumb on the glass, hard. He held me so I didn’t fall off the chair.

I looked.

– Are they the same? he said.

– Yours is bigger.

– Besides that.

I said nothing; I wasn’t sure.

– They’re all different, he said. -No one’s fingerprints are the same as someone else’s. Did you know that?

– No.

– Well, now you do.

A few days later Napoleon Solo found fingerprints on his briefcase.

I looked up at my father.

– Told you, he said.

We didn’t do the barn. We didn’t put it on fire.

The barn had been left behind. When the Corporation bought Donnelly’s farm he bought a new one near Swords. He moved everything out there except his house and the barn, and the smell. The smell was really bad on wet days. The rain freshened up the pigshite that had been lying there for years. The barn was huge and green, and great when it was full of hay. We crept in from the back before the new houses were built. It was dangerous. Donnelly had a gun and a one-eyed dog. Cecil, the dog’s name was. Donnelly had a mad brother as well, Uncle Eddie. He was in charge of the chickens and the pigs. He raked the stones and pebbles of the driveway in front of the house every time a car or a tractor went over them and messed them up. Uncle Eddie walked by our house one day when my ma was painting the gate.

– God love him, she said to herself but loud enough for me to hear her.

My ma mentioned Uncle Eddie when we were having our dinner one day.

– God love him, I said, and my da smacked my shoulder.

Uncle Eddie had two eyes but he was a bit like Cecil because one of them was closed over. My da said that it went that way because it got caught in a draught when Uncle Eddie was looking through a keyhole.

When you were doing a funny face or pretending you had a stammer and the wind changed or someone thumped your back you stayed that way for ever. Declan Fanning – he was fourteen and his parents were thinking of sending him off to boarding school because he smoked – he had a stammer and he got it because he was jeering someone with a stammer and someone else thumped him in the back.

Uncle Eddie didn’t have a stammer but he could only say two words, Grand, grand.

We were at mass and the Donnellys were behind us and Father Moloney said, -You may be seated.

We were getting up from our knees and Uncle Eddie went, -Grand, grand.

Sinbad burst out laughing. I looked at my da to make sure that he didn’t think it was me.

You could climb up the bales of hay, right up into the barn. We dived down from one level to another level of bales. We never hurt ourselves; it was brilliant. Liam and Aidan said that their Uncle Mick, their ma’s brother, had a barn like Donnelly’s barn.

– Where? I said.

They didn’t know.

– Where is it?

– The country.

We saw mice. I never saw any, but I heard them. I said I saw them. Kevin saw loads of them. I saw a squashed rat. The marks of the tyre were on it. We tried to light it but it wouldn’t go.

We were up in the top of the barn. Uncle Eddie came in. He didn’t know we were there. We held our breaths. Uncle Eddie walked around in a circle twice and went back out. There was a block of sunlight at the door. It was one of those big corrugated-iron doors that slid across. The whole barn was corrugated iron. We were so high up we could touch the roof.

The barn became surrounded by skeleton houses. The road outside was being widened and there were pyramids of huge pipes at the top of the road, up at the seafront. The road was going to be a main road to the airport. Kevin’s sister, Philomena, said that the barn looked like the houses’ mother looking after them. We said she was a spa, but it did; it did look like the houses’ ma.

Three fire brigades came out from town to put the fire out but they weren’t able to. The whole road was flooded from all the water. It happened during the night. The fire was gone when we got up the next morning and our ma said we couldn’t go near the barn and she kept an eye on us to make sure we didn’t. I got up into the apple tree but I couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t much of a tree and it was full of leaves. It only ever grew scabby apples.

They found a box of matches outside the barn; that was what we heard. Missis Parker from the cottages told our ma. Mister Parker worked for Donnelly; drove the tractor and went to the pictures with Uncle Eddie every Saturday afternoon.

– They’ll dust them for fingerprints, I told my ma.

– Yes. That’s right.

– They’ll dust them for fingerprints, I told Sinbad. -And if they find your fingerprints on the matches they’ll come and arrest you and put you in the Artane Boys Band.

Sinbad didn’t believe me but he did believe me as well.

– They’ll make you play the triangle because of your lips, I told him.

His eyes went all wet; I hated him.

Uncle Eddie was burnt to death in the fire; we heard that as well. Missis Byrne from two houses up told my ma. She whispered it and they blessed themselves.

– Maybe it’s for the best, said Missis Byrne.

– Yes, said my ma.

I was dying to get down to the barn to see Uncle Eddie, if they hadn’t taken him away. My ma made us have a picnic in the garden. My da came home from work. He went to work in the train. My ma got up out of the picnic so she could talk to him without us hearing. I knew what she was telling him, about Uncle Eddie.

– Was he? said my da.

My ma nodded.

– He never told me that when he came up the road with me there. All he said was Grand grand.

There was a gap and then they burst out laughing, the two of them.

He wasn’t dead at all. He wasn’t even hurt.

The barn was never green again. It was bent and buckled. The roof was crooked like the lid of a can. It swung and creaked. The big door was put leaning against the yard wall. It was all black. One of the walls was gone. The black on the walls fell off and the whole thing became brown and rusty.

Everyone said that someone from the new Corporation houses had done it. Later, about a year after, Kevin said he’d done it. But he didn’t. He was in Courtown in a caravan on his holidays when it happened. I didn’t say anything.

On a nice day we could see the specks of dust in the air under the roof. Sometimes I’d go home and it was in my hair. On windy days big dead chunks fell off. The ground under the roof was red. The barn was nibbled away.

Sinbad promised.

My ma pushed his hair back from his forehead and combed her fingers through it to keep it on top of his head. She was nearly crying as well.

– I’ve tried everything, she told him. -Now, promise again.

– I promise, said Sinbad.

My ma started to untie his hands. I was crying as well.

She tied his hands to the chair to stop him from picking the scabs on his lips. He’d screamed. His face had gone red, then purple, and one of the screams went on for ever; he didn’t breathe in. Sinbad’s lips were covered in scabs because of the lighter fuel. For two weeks it had looked like he had no lips.

She held his hands at his sides but she let him stand up.

– Let’s see your tongue, she said.

She was checking to see that he wasn’t telling a lie.

– Okay, Francis, she said. -No spots.

Francis was Sinbad. He put his tongue back in.

She let go of his hands but he didn’t go anywhere. I went over to where they were.

You ran down the jetty and jumped and shouted Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, and whoever got the most words out before they hit the water won. No one ever won. I once got as far as the second The but Kevin, the ref, said that my bum had gone into the water before I got to Of. We threw stones at each other, to miss.

I hid behind the sideboard when the Seaview was being swallowed by a giant jellyfish; it was terrible. I didn’t mind it at first and I put my fingers in my ears when my da told my ma that it was ridiculous. But when the jellyfish kind of surrounded the submarine I crawled over to the sideboard. I’d been lying on my tummy in front of the telly. I didn’t cry. My ma said that the jellyfish had gone but I didn’t come back out till I heard the ads. She brought me to bed after it and stayed with me for a while. Sinbad was asleep. I got up for a drink of water. She said she wouldn’t let me watch it next week but she forgot. Anyway, the next week it was back to normal again, about a mad scientist who’d invented a new torpedo. Admiral Nelson gave him a box that sent him bashing into the periscope.

– That’s the stuff, said my da.

He didn’t see it; he just heard it. He didn’t look up from his book. I didn’t like that; he was jeering me. My ma was knitting. I was the only one let up to watch it. I told Sinbad it was brilliant but I wouldn’t tell him why.

I was in the water down at the seafront, with Edward Swanwick. He didn’t go to the same school as most of us. He went to Belvedere in town.

– Nothing but the best for the Swanwicks, said my da when my ma told him that she’d seen Missis Swanwick buying margarine instead of butter in the shop.

She laughed.

Edward Swanwick had to wear a blazer and tie and he had to play rugby. He said he hated it but he came home on his own in the train every day so it wasn’t too bad.

We were flinging water at each other. We’d stopped laughing cos we’d been doing it for ages. The tide was going out so we’d be getting out in a minute. Edward Swanwick pushed his hands out and sent a wave towards me and there was a jellyfish in it. A huge see-through one with pink veins and a purple middle. I lifted my arms way up and started to move but it still rubbed my side. I screamed. I pushed through the water to the steps. I felt the jellyfish hit my back; I thought I did. I yelled again; I couldn’t help it. It was rocky and uneven down at the seafront, not like the beach. I got to the steps and grabbed the bar.

– It’s a Portuguese man of war, said Edward Swanwick.

He was coming back to the steps a long way, around the jellyfish.

I got onto the second step. I looked for marks. Jellyfish stings didn’t hurt until you got out of the water. There was a pink lash on the side of my belly; I could see it. I was out of the water.

– I’m going to get you, I told Edward Swanwick.

– It’s a Portuguese man of war, said Edward Swanwick.

– Look at it.

I showed him my wound.

He was up on the platform now, looking over the railing at the jellyfish.

I took my togs off without bothering with the towel. There was no one else. The jellyfish was still floating there, like a runny umbrella. Edward Swanwick was hunting for stones. He went down some of the steps to reach for some but he wouldn’t get back into the water. I couldn’t get my T-shirt down over my back and chest because I was wet. It was stuck on my shoulders.

– Their stings are poisonous, said Edward Swanwick.

I had my T-shirt on now. I lifted it to make sure the mark was still there. I thought it was beginning to get sore. I wrung out my togs over the railing. Edward Swanwick was plopping stones near the jellyfish.

– Hit it.

He missed.

– You’re a big spa, I told him.

I wrapped my togs in my towel. It was a big soft bath one. I shouldn’t have had it.

I ran all the way, up Barrytown Road, all the way, past the cottages where there was a ghost and an old woman with a smell and no teeth, past the shops; I started to cry when I was three gates away from our house; around the back, in the kitchen door.

Ma was feeding the baby.

– What’s wrong with you, Patrick?

She looked down for a cut on my leg. I got my T-shirt out to show her. I was really crying now. I wanted a hug and ointment and a bandage.

– A jelly – a Portuguese man of war got me, I told her.

She touched my side.

– There?

– Ouch! No, look; the mark across. It’s highly poisonous.

– I can’t see -. Oh, now I do.

I pulled my T-shirt down. I tucked it into my pants.

– What should we do? she asked me. -Will I go next door and phone for an ambulance?

– No; ointment -

– Okay, so. That’ll mend it. Have I time for me to finish feeding Deirdre and Cathy before we put it on?

– Yeah.

– Great.

I pressed my hand hard into my side to keep the mark there.

The seafront was a pumping station. There was a platform behind it with loads of steps down to it. When there was a spring tide the water spread over the platform. There were more steps down to the water. There were steps on the other side of the pumping station as well but it was always cold over there and the rocks were bigger and sharper. It was hard to get past them to the water. The jetty wasn’t really a jetty. It was a pipe covered in cement. The cement wasn’t smooth. There were bits of stone and rock sticking out of it. You couldn’t dash along to the end. You had to watch your step and not put your foot down too hard. It was hard to play properly down at the seafront. There was too much seaweed, slime and rocks; you always had to keep your eyes down searching under the water. All you could really do was swim.

I was good at swimming.

Sinbad wouldn’t get in unless our ma was with him.

Kevin once dived off the jetty and split his head. He had to go into Jervis Street for stitches. He went in a taxi with his ma and his sister.

Some of us weren’t allowed to swim down at the seafront. If you cut your toe on a rock you’d get polio. A boy from Barrytown Drive, Sean Rickard, died and it was supposed to have been because he’d swallowed a mouthful of the seafront water. Someone else said he’d swallowed a gobstopper and it got caught in his windpipe.

– He was by himself in his bedroom, said Aidan. -And he couldn’t slap his back to get it up.

– Why didn’t he go down to the kitchen?

– He couldn’t breathe.

– I can slap mine, look it.

We looked at Kevin thumping his back.

– Not hard enough, said Aidan.

We all tried it.

– It’s a load of rubbish, said my ma. -Don’t mind them.

She spoke softer.

– The poor little lad had leukaemia.

– What’s leukaemia?

– A disease.

– Can you get it from swallowing water?

– No.

– How?

– Not from water.

– Sea water?

– No kind of water.

The seafront water was grand, my da said. The Corporation experts had tested it and it was perfect.

– There, said my mother.

My Granda Finnegan, her father, worked in the Corporation.

The teacher we had before Henno, Miss Watkins, brought in a tea-towel with the Proclamation of Independence on it because it was fifty years after 1916. It had the writing part in the middle and the seven men who’d signed it around the sides. She stuck it up over the blackboard and let us up to see it one by one. Some of the boys blessed themselves in front of it.

– Nach bhfuil sé go h’álainn, [1] lads? she kept saying after every couple of boys went past.

– Tá, [2] we said back.

I looked at the names at the bottom. Thomas J. Clarke was the first one. Clarke, like my name.

Miss Watkins got her bata [3] and read the proclamation out for us and pointed at each word.

– In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called. Signed on behalf of the provisional government, Thomas J. Clarke, Seán MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett.

Miss Watkins started clapping, so we did as well. We started laughing. She stared at us and we stopped but we kept clapping.

I turned back to James O’Keefe.

– Thomas Clarke is my granda. Pass it on.

Miss Watkins rapped the blackboard with the bata.

– Seasaígí suas. [4]

She made us march in step beside our desks.

– Clé – deas – clé deas – clé – [5]

The walls of the prefab wobbled. The prefabs were behind the school. You could crawl under them. The varnish at the front of them was all flaky because of the sun; you could peel it off. We didn’t get a room in the proper school, the cement one, until a year after this, when we got changed to Henno. We loved marching. We could feel the boards hopping under us. We put so much effort into slamming our feet down that we couldn’t keep in time. She made us do this a couple of times a day, when she said we were looking lazy.

While we marched this time Miss Watkins read the proclamation.

– Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

She had to stop. It wasn’t proper marching any more. She hit the blackboard.

– Suígí síos. [6]

She looked annoyed and disappointed.

Kevin put his hand up.

– Miss?

– Sea? [7]

– Paddy Clarke said his granda’s Thomas Clarke on the tea-towel, Miss.

– Did he now?

– Yes, Miss.

– Patrick Clarke.

– Yes, Miss.

– Stand up till we see you.

It took ages for me to get out of my desk.

– Your grandfather is Thomas Clarke?

I smiled.

– Is he?

– Yes, Miss.

– This man here?

She pointed at Thomas Clarke in one of the corners of the tea-towel. He looked like a granda.

– Yes, Miss.

– Where does he live, tell us?

– Clontarf, Miss.

– Where?

– Clontarf, Miss.

– Come up here to me, Patrick Clarke.

The only noise was me on the floorboards.

She pointed to a bit of writing under Thomas Clarke’s head.

– Read that for us, Patrick Clarke.

– Ex – eh – executed by the British on 3 May, 1916.

– What does Executed mean, Dermot Grimes who’s picking his nose and doesn’t think I can see him?

– Kilt, Miss.

– That’s right. And this is your grandfather who lives in Clontarf, is it, Patrick Clarke?

– Yes, Miss.

I pretended to look at the picture again.

– I’ll ask you again, Patrick Clarke. Is this man your grandfather?

– No, Miss.

She gave me three on each hand.

When I got back to the desk I couldn’t put the seat down; my hands couldn’t do anything. James O’Keefe pushed the seat down for me with his foot. It made a bang; I thought she’d get me again. I put my hands under my legs. I didn’t crouch: she wouldn’t let us. The pain was like my hands had dropped off; it would soon become more of a wet sting. The palms were beginning to sweat like mad. There was no noise. I looked over at Kevin. I grinned but my teeth chattered. I saw Liam turn round at the front of the row, waiting for Kevin to look his way, waiting to grin for him.

I liked my Granda Clarke, much more than Granda Finnegan. Granda Clarke’s wife, my Grandma, wasn’t alive any more.

– She’s up in heaven, he said, -having a great time.

He gave me half a crown when we went to see him or when he came to see us. He once came on a bike.

I was messing through the drawers in the sideboard one night when Mart and Market was on the television. The bottom drawer was so full of photographs that when I was sliding the drawer back in some of the photographs on the top of the pile fell out the back onto the floor under the sideboard. I got them out from under there. One of them was of Granda and Grandma Clarke. We hadn’t been to his house in ages.

– Dad?

– Yes, son?

– When are we going to Granda Clarke’s?

My da looked like he’d lost something, then found it, but it wasn’t what he’d wanted.

He sat up. He looked at me for a while.

– Granda Clarke’s dead, he said. -Do you not remember?

– No.

I couldn’t.

He picked me up.

My da’s hands were big. The fingers were long. They weren’t fat. I could make out the bone under the skin and the flesh. He had one of his hands dangling over the chair. He was holding his book with his other hand. His nails were clean -except for one – and the white bits at the top were longer than mine. The wrinkles at his knuckles were a bit like the design of a wall, the cement between the bricks up and across. There weren’t many other wrinkles but the pores were like hollows, with a hair for every pore. Dark hair. Hair came out from under his cuff.

The Naked and the Dead. That was what the book was called. There was a soldier on the cover with his uniform on. His face was dirty. He was American.

– What’s it about?

He looked at the cover.

– War, he said.

– Is it any good? I said.

– Yes, it is, he said. -It’s very good.

I nodded at the cover.

– Is he in it?

– Yes.

– What’s he like?

– I haven’t got to him. I’ll let you know.

World War Three Looms Near.

I got the paper every day for my da when he’d get home from work, and at the same time on Saturdays. Ma gave me the money; the Evening Press.

World War Three Looms Near.

– Does Looms mean Coming? I asked my ma.

– I think so, she said. -Why?

– World War Three’s coming near, I told her. -Look.

She looked at the headline.

– Oh dear, she said. -That’s just newspapers. They exaggerate things.

– Will we be in the war? I asked her.

– No, she said.

– Why not?

– Because there won’t be one, she said.

– Were you alive in World War Two? I asked her.

– Yes, she said. -Indeed I was.

She was making the dinner; she put on her busy look.

– What was it like?

– It wasn’t too bad, she said. -You’d have been disappointed, Patrick. Ireland wasn’t really in the war.

– Why not?

– Oh, it’s complicated; we just weren’t. Your daddy will tell you.

I was waiting for him. He came in the back door.

– Look. World War Three Looms Near.

He read it.

– World War Three looms near, he said. -Looms, no less.

He didn’t seem fussed.

– Have you your gun ready, Patrick? he said.

– Ma said there won’t be a war, I said.

– She’s right.

– Why?

He sometimes liked these questions, and sometimes he didn’t. When he did he folded his legs if he was sitting down and leaned a bit to the side into his chair. That was what he did now, leaned nearer to me. I couldn’t hear him for the first bit because it had been what I’d hoped he’d do – fold his legs and lean over – and it had happened the way I’d wanted it to.

– between the Israelis and the Arabs, I heard.

– Why?

– They don’t like one another, he said, -basically. The same old story, I’m afraid.

– Why does the paper say about World War Three? I asked him.

– To sell papers, first, he said. -A headline like that sells papers. But as well, the Americans are backing the Jews and the Russians are backing the Arabs.

– The Jews are the Israelis.

– Yeah, that’s it.

– Who are the Arabs?

– Everyone else. All their neighbours. Jordan, Syria -

– Egypt.

– Good man, you know your stuff.

– The Holy Family went to Egypt when Herod was after them.

– That’s right. There’s always work for carpenters.

I didn’t get it, fully, what he’d said, but it was the kind of thing that Ma didn’t like him saying. She wasn’t there though, so I laughed.

– And the Jews are winning, said my da. -Against all the odds. Good luck to them.

– Jews go to mass on Saturdays, I told my da.

– That’s right, he said. -In synagogues.

– They don’t believe in Jesus.

– That’s right.

– Why don’t they?

– Ah now.

I waited.

– People believe different things.

I wanted more than that.

– Some believe in God, others don’t.

– Communists don’t, I said.

– That’s right, he said. -Who told you that?

– Mister Hennessey.

– Good man, Mister Hennessey, he said.

I knew by the way he said the next thing that it was a part of a poem; he did that sometimes.

– And still they gazed and still their wonder grew that one small head could carry all it knew. Some people believe that Jesus was the son of God and others don’t.

– You do, don’t you?

– Yes, he said. -I do. Why? Was Mister Hennessey asking you?

– No, I said.

His face changed. -The Israelis are a great people, he said. -Hitler tried to exterminate them, nearly did, and look at them now. Outnumbered, out-gunned, out-everythinged and they’re still winning. Sometimes I think we should move there, to Israel. Would you like that, Patrick?

– I don’t know. Yeah, I might.

I knew where Israel was. It was shaped like an arrow.

– It’s hot there, I said.

– Ummm.

– It snows in the winter though.

– Yep. A nice mix. Not like here, all rain.

– They don’t wear shoes, I said.

– Do they not?

– Sandals.

– Like what’s his name, your man -

– Terence Long.

– That’s right. Terence Long.

We both laughed.

– Terence Long -

Terence Long -

Wears no socks -

What a pong.

– Poor oul’ Terence, said my da. -Up the Israelis, anyway.

– What was World War Two like? I asked him.

– Long, he said.

I knew the dates.

– I was a kid when it started, he said. -And I was nearly finished with school when it ended.

– Six years.

– Yep. Long ones.

– Mister Hennessey said he never saw a banana till he was eighteen.

– I’d believe him.

– Luke Cassidy got into trouble. He asked him what the monkeys ate during the war.

– What happened to him? said Da when he’d stopped laughing.

– He hit him.

He said nothing.

– Six.

– Rough.

– Luke didn’t even think it up for himself. Kevin Conroy told him to say it.

– Serves him right then.

– He was crying.

– All because of bananas.

– Kevin’s brother’s joining the F.C.A., I said.

– Is that right? That’ll straighten his back for him.

I didn’t get it. His back was straight already.

– Were you ever in it?

– The F.C.A.?

– Yeah.

– No.

– During the -

– My father was in the L.D.F.

– What’s that?

– Local Defence Force.

– Did he have a gun?

– I suppose so. Not at home; I think anyway.

– I’m going to join them when I’m old enough. Can I?

– The F.C.A.?

– Yeah. Can I?

– Sure.

– Was Ireland ever in a war?

– No.

– What about the Battle of Clontarf?

He laughed, I waited.

– That wasn’t really a war, he said.

– What was it then?

– A battle.

– What’s the difference?

– Well, let’s – Wars are long -

– And battles are short.

– Yes.

– Why was Brian Boru in a tent?

– He was praying.

– In a tent though. You don’t pray in a tent.

– I’m hungry, he said. -What about yourself?

– Yeah.

– What are we having; any idea?

– Mince.

– Righto.

– How goes gas kill you?

– It poisons you.

– How?

– You’re not supposed to breathe it. Your lungs can’t cope. Why?

– The Jews, I said.

– Oh, he said. -Yes.

– If Ireland was in a war would you go into the army?

– It won’t be.

– It might be, I said.

– No, he said. -I don’t think so.

– World War Three looms near, I said.

– Don’t mind that, he said.

– Would you?

– Yes, he said.

– So would I.

– Good. And Francis.

– He’s too young, I said. -They wouldn’t let him.

– There won’t be a war, he said. -Don’t worry.

– I’m not, I said.

– Good.

– We were in a war against the English, weren’t we?

– Yes.

– That was a war, I said.

– Well, it wasn’t really – I suppose it was.

– We won.

– Yes. We murdered them. We gave them a hiding they’ll never forget.

We laughed.

We had our dinner. It was lovely. The mince wasn’t too runny. I sat in the chair beside Da, Sinbad’s chair. Sinbad said nothing.

– It’s not Adidas. It’s Ad-dee-das.

– It’s not. It’s Adidas.

– It isn’t. It’s eee.

– eee.

– i.

– Spa-face; it’s eeeeeeee.

– i i i i i i i i.

None of us had Adidas football boots. We were all getting them for Christmas. I wanted the ones with the screw-on studs. I put that in my letter to Santy but I didn’t believe in him. I only wrote to him because my ma told me to, because Sinbad was writing to him. Sinbad wanted a sleigh. Ma was helping him to write his letter. Mine was finished. It was in the envelope but she wouldn’t let me lick the flap yet because Sinbad’s letter had to go in as well. It wasn’t fair. I wanted an envelope of my own.

– Stop whinging, she said.

– I’m not whinging.

– Yes, you are; stop it.

I wasn’t whinging. Putting two letters in one envelope was stupid. Santy would think it was only one letter and he’d just bring Sinbad’s present and not mine. I didn’t believe in him anyway. Only kids believed in him. If she said I was whinging again I’d say that, and then she’d have to spend all day making Sinbad believe in him again.

– I don’t know if Santy brings sleighs to Ireland, she told Sinbad.

– Why doesn’t he?

– Because there’s hardly ever any snow, she said. -You wouldn’t get a chance to use it.

– There’s snow in winter, said Sinbad.

– Only sometimes.

– Up the mountains.

– That’s miles away, she said. -Miles.

– In the car.

She didn’t lose her temper. I stopped waiting. I went into the kitchen. If you held an envelope over the steam coming out of a kettle you could open it, and close it again without anyone knowing. I needed a chair to plug in the kettle. I checked to make sure that there was enough water in it, over the element. I didn’t just lift it up and weigh it; I took the lid off and looked in. I got off the chair and put it back. I didn’t need the chair any more.

I went back to the living room. Sinbad still wanted the sleigh.

– He should bring you what you want, he said.

– He does, love, said my ma.

– Then -

– But he doesn’t want you to be disappointed, she said. -He wants to give the children presents that they’ll be able to play with all the time.

Her voice hadn’t changed; she wasn’t going to bully him.

I went back to the kitchen. I took my letter out of the envelope and put it on the table, well away from the round wet mark that the milk bottle had left. I licked the gummy part of the flap and stuck it down. I pressed hard. The steam was coming out of the kettle spout now. I waited. I wanted the gum to be dry. More steam; it was singing out now. I held the envelope enough into the steam so I wouldn’t scald my fingers. It was too close; the envelope was getting wet. I raised my hand. I brought the envelope over and across the steam. Not for too long; the envelope was beginning to droop, like it was going asleep. I got the chair and pulled the plug out and put it back right beside the tea caddy where it had been before I’d plugged it in. There were Japanese birds on the caddy with their tails all tied together and in their mouths. The envelope was soggy, a bit. I brought it out into the back garden. I got my thumb nail in under the flap. A little bit lifted. I held it up. It had worked. I pressed the gum bit. It was still sticky. It worked. I went back in; it was cold and windy and getting dark. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, only when it was windy as well. I put my letter back in the envelope.

Sinbad was finishing his letter.

– L.e.g.o., my ma was spelling it for him.

He was no good at joining the letters. She let me put his letter into the envelope. I folded it separate and slid it in beside mine.

When my da came home from work he stuck the letter up the chimney. He was crouched over; he was making sure we couldn’t see properly.

– Did you get that letter, Santa?

He yelled it up the chimney.

– Yes, indeed, he said in a deep voice that was supposed to be Santy’s.

I looked at Sinbad. He believed it was Santy talking. He looked at my ma. I didn’t.

– Will you be able to manage all those presents? my da yelled up the chimney.

– We’ll see, he said back. -Most of them. Bye bye now. I’ve other houses to visit. Bye bye.

– Say bye bye to Santa, lads, said my ma.

Sinbad said bye bye and I had to as well. My da got back from the chimney so we could say it properly.

My hot water bottle was red, Manchester United’s colour. Sinbad’s was green. I loved the smell off the bottle. I put hot water in it and emptied it and smelled it; I put my nose to the hole, nearly in it. Lovely. You didn’t just fill it with water – my ma showed me; you had to lie the bottle on its side and slowly pour the water in or else air got trapped and the rubber rotted and burst. I jumped on Sinbad’s bottle. Nothing happened. I didn’t do it again. Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen.

Liam and Aidan’s house was darker than ours, the inside. That was because of the sun, not because it was scruffy dirty. It wasn’t dirty, the way a lot of people said it was; it was just that all the chairs and things were bursting and falling apart. Messing on the sofa was great because it was full of hollows, and nobody ever told us to get off it. We got up on the arm, onto the back and jumped. Two of us would get onto the back and have a duel.

I liked their house. It was better for playing in. All the doors were open; there was nowhere we couldn’t go into. Once, we were playing hide and seek and Mister O’Connell came into the kitchen and opened the press beside the cooker and I was in there. He took out a bag of biscuits and then he closed the door real quietly; he said nothing. Then he opened the door again and whispered did I want a biscuit.

They were broken biscuits, a brown bag of them; there was nothing wrong with them except that they were broken. My ma never bought them.

Some of the boys in school had mothers that worked in Cadbury’s. Mine or Kevin’s didn’t and Aidan and Liam’s ma was dead. Ian McEvoy’s ma did; not all year, before Easter and Christmas. Sometimes Ian McEvoy had an Easter egg for his lunch; the chocolate was perfect, just the egg was the wrong shape. My ma said that Missis McEvoy only worked in Cadbury’s because she had to.

I didn’t understand.

– Your daddy has a better job than Ian’s daddy, she said. Then she said, -Don’t say anything to Ian, sure you won’t.

The McEvoys lived on our road.

– My da has a better job than yours!

– He does not!

– He does so.

– He doesn’t.

– He does.

– Prove it.

– Your ma only works in Cadbury’s because she has to!

He didn’t know what I meant. I didn’t either, not really.

– Because she has to! Because she has to!

I gave him a shove. He shoved me back. I held onto the curtain with one of my hands and pushed him hard with the other one. One leg slipped off the back off the sofa and he fell. I won. I slid down into the sofa.

– Champi-on! Champi-on! Champi-on!

I liked sitting in the hollow, just back away from where the shape of the spring was. The material was great; it was like the designs had been left alone and the rest of the material had been cut with a little lawn mower. The designs, flowers, felt like stiff grass or the back of my head after I got a haircut. The material didn’t have any colour but when the light was on you could see that the flowers used to be coloured. We all sat in it when we watched the television; there was loads of room and brilliant fights. Mister O’Connell never told us to get out or stay quiet.

The kitchen table was the same as ours but that was all. They had all different chairs; ours were all the same, wood with a red seat. Once when I called for Liam they were having their tea when I knocked on the kitchen door. Mister O’Connell shouted for me to come in. He was sitting at the side of the table, where me and Sinbad sat, not the end where my da sat. Aidan was sitting there. He got up and put on the kettle and he sat down again where my ma always sat.

I didn’t like that.

He made the breakfasts and dinners and everything, Mister O’Connell did. They had crisps every lunch; all I ever had was sandwiches. I hardly ever ate them. I put them in the shelf under my desk; banana, ham, cheese, jam. Sometimes I ate one of them but I shoved the rest under the desk. I knew when it was getting too full in there when I saw the inkwell beginning to bob, being lifted by the pile of sandwiches underneath it. I waited till Henno had gone out – he was always going out; he said he knew what we got up to when his back was turned so not to try anything, and we kind of believed him – and I got the bin from beside his desk and brought it down to my desk. I unloaded the packs of sandwiches. Everyone watched. Some of the sandwiches were in tinfoil, but the ones that weren’t, that were just in plastic bags or the cover of the pan, they were brilliant, especially the ones near the back. Stuff was growing all over them, green and blue and yellow. Kevin dared James O’Keefe to eat one of them but he wouldn’t.

– Chicken.

– You eat one.

– Got you first.

– I’ll eat one if you eat one.

– Chicken.

I squeezed a tinfoil pack and it piled into one end and began to break through the foil. It was like in a film. Everyone wanted to look. Dermot Kelly fell off his desk and his head hit the seat. I got the bin back up to Henno’s desk before he started screaming.

The bin was one of those straw ones, and it was full of old sandwiches. The smell of them crept through the room and got stronger and stronger, and it was only eleven o’clock in the morning: three hours to go.

Mister O’Connell made brilliant dinners. Chips and burgers; he didn’t make them, he brought them home. All the way from town in the train, cos there was no chipper in Barrytown then.

– God love them, said my ma when my da told her about the smell of chips and vinegar that Mister O’Connell had brought with him onto the train.

He made them mash. He shovelled out the middle of the mountain till it was like a volcano and then he dropped in a big lump of butter, and covered it up. He did that to every plate. He made them rasher sandwiches. He gave them a can of Ambrosia Creamed Rice each and he let them eat it out of the can. They never got salad.

Sinbad ate nothing. All he ever ate was bread and jam. My ma tried to make him eat his dinner; she said she wouldn’t let him leave the table till he was finished. My da lost his temper and shouted at him.

– Don’t shout at him, Paddy, my ma said to my da, not to us; we weren’t supposed to hear it.

– He’s provoking me, said my da.

– You’ll only make it worse, she said, louder now.

– You have him spoiled; that’s the problem.

He stood up.

– I’m going in now to read my paper. And if that plate isn’t empty when I come back I’ll let you have what for.

Sinbad was scrunched up in his chair looking at the plate, staring at the food to go away.

My ma went after my da to talk to him more. I helped Sinbad eat his dinner. He kept dropping it out of his mouth onto the plate and the table.

He made Sinbad sit there for an hour until he was ready to inspect the plate. It was empty; in me and in the bin.

– That’s more like it, said my da.

Sinbad went to bed.

He was like that, our da. He’d be mean now and again, really mean for no reason. He wouldn’t let us watch the television and the next minute he’d be sitting on the floor beside us watching it with us, never for long though. He was always busy. He said. But he mostly sat in his chair.

I polished everything in the house on Sunday mornings before we went to mass. My ma gave me a cloth, usually part of a pair of old pyjamas. I started upstairs in their bedroom. I polished the dressing table and straightened her brushes. I wiped the top of the headrest. There was always loads of dust up there. It always left a mark on the cloth. I wiped as much of the picture of Jesus with his heart showing as I could reach. Jesus had his head tilted sideways, a bit like a kitten. The picture had my ma and da’s names and the date they got married – the twenty-fifth of July, nineteen fifty-seven – and the dates of all our birthdays, except my youngest sister that my ma was only after having. The names were written in by Father Moloney. My name was the first; Patrick Joseph. Then my sister that had died; Angela Mary. She was dead before she came out of my ma. Then Sinbad; Francis David. Then my sister; Catherine Angela. There was a place left for my new sister. Her name was Deirdre. I was the oldest; the same name as my da. There was room for six more names. I wiped the stairs, all the way down, including the rails. I cleaned all the ornaments in the drawing room. I never broke anything. There was an old music box; you turned a key at the back and it played a song. There was a picture of sailors at the front. The felt material at the back was wearing away. It was my ma’s. I didn’t do the kitchen.

Aidan and Liam’s auntie, the one that lived in Raheny, she cleaned their house. Sometimes they stayed with her. She had three children but they were much older than Aidan and Liam. Her husband cut the grass for the Corporation. He did the verges on our road twice a year. He had a huge red nose like a sponge with little lumps growing all over it. Liam said it looked even better close up.

– Do you remember your ma? I asked him.

– Yeah.

– What?

He said nothing. He just breathed.

His auntie was nice. She walked from side to side. She said God the cold or God the heat, depending on what the weather was like. When she walked across the kitchen she went Tea tea tea tea tea. When she heard the Angelus at six o’clock she’d go into the television and all the way she’d be saying The News the News the News the News. She had big veins like roots curling up the side and the back of her legs. She made biscuits, huge big slabs; they were gorgeous, even when they were stale.

They had another auntie that wasn’t really their auntie. That was what Kevin told us anyway; he heard his ma and da talking about it. She was Mister O’Connell’s girlfriend, although she wasn’t a girl at all; she’d been a woman for ages. Her name was Margaret and Aidan liked her and Liam didn’t. She always gave them a packet of Clarnico Iced Caramels when she came to the house and she made sure that the white and pink ones were divided evenly between them, even though they tasted the same. She made stew and apple crumble. Liam said she farted once when he was sitting beside her, during The Fugitive.

– Ladies can’t fart.

– They can so.

– No, they can’t; prove it.

– My granny always farts, said Ian McEvoy.

– Old ones can; not young ones.

– Margaret’s old, said Liam.

– Beans beans good for the heart!

The more you eat the more you fart!

She fell asleep once in their house. Liam thought she was falling against him – they were watching the television – but she was only leaning. She snored. Mister O’Connell held her nose and she snorted and stopped.

During the holidays, after Christmas Day, Liam and Aidan went to Raheny to their real auntie’s and we didn’t see them for ages. It was because Margaret had moved into the house with Mister O’Connell. They had an empty bedroom in their house. Their house was the exact same shape as ours; Liam and Aidan had the same bedroom and they’d no sisters so there was one room left over. She was in that one.

– No, she isn’t, said Kevin.

Liam and Aidan’s auntie, the real one, had taken them away. She’d gone to their house in the middle of the night. She had a letter from the Guards saying that she could take them, because Margaret was staying in the house and she shouldn’t have been. That was what we all heard. I made up a bit; she’d put Liam and Aidan into the back of their uncle’s Corporation lorry. It was great hearing that after I’d thought it up. I believed the rest of it though.

Their uncle had given us a go on the back of the lorry once. But he made us get off because we kept standing up and he said it was dangerous and he wasn’t insured if one of us fell off and smacked our heads off the road.

We walked to Raheny. It took a long time because there was no one looking after the E.S.B. pylon depot so we climbed in and had a mess. There were all pyramids of poles in there, for the wires, and a smell of tar. We tried to break the lock of the shed but we couldn’t. We didn’t really want to break it; we were just pretending we did, me and Kevin. We were going to Liam and Aidan’s auntie’s.

We got there. She lived in one of the cottages near the police station.

– Are Liam and Aidan coming out? I asked.

She’d answered the door.

– They’re out already, she said. -So they are. Down at the pond. They’re breaking the ice for the ducks.

We went up to St Anne’s. They weren’t at the pond. They were up in a tree. Liam was way up it, up where the wood was bendy; he was shaking it like mad. Aidan couldn’t get up as far as him.

– Hey! said Kevin.

Liam kept swinging the tree.

– Hey!

Liam stopped.

They didn’t come down. We didn’t go up.

– Why are you living with your auntie and not your da? Kevin said.

They said nothing.

– Why are yeh?

We left, across the gaelic pitch. I turned. I could hardly see them in the tree. They were waiting for us not to be there. I looked for stones. There weren’t any.

– We know why!

I said it as well.

– We know why!

– Brendan Brendan look at me!

I have got a hairy gee!

Mister O’Connell’s name was Brendan.

– Brendan Brendan look at me!

I have got a hairy gee!

– Mind you, I heard my da saying to my ma, -when was the last time we heard him howling at the moon?

Margaret was coming up from the shops. We were waiting, behind Kevin’s hedge. We heard her steps; we could see the colour of her coat, bits of it through the hedge.

– Brendan Brendan look at me!

I have got a hairy gee!

Brendan Brendan look at me!

I have got a hairy gee!

I wanted a drink of water. I didn’t want it from the bathroom. I wanted it from the kitchen. It was dark on the landing after the night-light in the bedroom. I felt for the stairs.

I was down three steps before I heard them. People were talking, kind of shouting. I stopped. It was cold.

In the kitchen, that was where they were. Burglars. I’d get my da. He was in bed.

But the television was on.

I sat down for a bit. It was cold.

The television was on; that meant my ma and da weren’t in bed. They were still downstairs. It wasn’t burglars in the kitchen.

The kitchen door wasn’t closed; the light from there was cutting across the stairs just below me. I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

– Stop.

I only whispered it.

For a while I thought it was only Da, shouting in the way people did when they were trying not to, but sometimes forgot; a bit like screamed whispers.

My teeth chattered. I let them. I liked it when they did that.

But Ma was shouting as well. I could feel Da’s voice but I could only hear hers. They were having another of their fights.

– What about you!?

She said that, the only thing I could hear properly.

I did it again.

– Stop.

There was a gap. It had worked; I’d forced them to stop. Da came out and went in to the television. I knew the weight of his steps and the time between them, then I saw him.

They didn’t slam any doors: it was over.

I stayed there for ages.

I heard Ma doing things in the kitchen.

If your pony was healthy his skin was loose and flexible and if he was sick his skin was tight and hard. The television was invented by John Logie Baird in 1926. He was from Scotland. The clouds that had rain in them were usually called nimbostratus. The capital of San Marino was San Marino. Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics and Hitler hated black men and the Olympics were in Berlin that year and Jesse Owens was a black man and Berlin was the capital of Germany. I knew all these things. I read them all. I read under the blankets with my torch, not only after I’d gone to bed; it was more exciting that way, like I was spying and might get caught.

I did my eccer in braille. It took ages, being careful not to rip the page with the needle. There were all little dots on the kitchen table when I was finished. I showed the braille to my da.

– What’s this?

– Braille. Blind people’s writing.

He closed his eyes and felt the bumps on the page.

– What does it say? he asked.

– It’s my English homework, I told him. -Fifteen lines about your favourite pet.

– Is the teacher blind?

– No. I was just doing it. I did it properly as well.

Henno would have killed me if I’d brought in just the braille.

– You don’t have a pet, said my da.

– We could make it up.

– What did you pick?

– Dog.

He held the page up and looked at the light through the holes. I’d done that already.

– Good man, he said.

He felt the bumps again. He closed his eyes.

– I can’t tell the difference, he said. -Can you?

– No.

– When you don’t have your sight your other senses take over; that’s it, I’d say, is it?

– Yes. Braille was invented by Louis Braille in 1836.

– Is that right?

– Yes. He was blinded in a childhood accident and he was from France.

– And he named it after himself.

– Yes.

I tried. I tried to get my fingers to read. I knew what was on the page already. I got in under the blankets and I didn’t turn on the torch. I touched the page lightly: just bumps, pimples. My favourite pet is a dog. That was how my fifteen lines started. But I couldn’t read the braille. I couldn’t separate the dots, where each letter started and ended.

I tried to be blind. I kept opening my eyes. I tied a blindfold around my head but I couldn’t do a good knot and I didn’t want to tell anyone what I was doing. I told myself that I’d put my finger on the bar of the electric heater for every time I opened my eyes, but I knew I wouldn’t so I kept opening my eyes. I’d done that once, because Kevin told me to, put my finger on the bar of the heater. There was a striped mark for weeks after it and I kept smelling my finger burning.

The life expectancy of a mouse is eighteen months.

My ma screamed.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t go and see.

She’d gone into the toilet and found a mouse running round and around inside the toilet bowl. Da was home. He flushed the toilet and the water went over the mouse’s body because it was in close to the rim. He stuck his foot into the bowl and knocked the mouse into the water. I wanted to see now; I knew why she’d screamed. There was no room. The mouse was swimming and trying to get up the side and my da had to wait till the cistern filled up again.

– Oh Jesus, Jesus, said my ma. -Will it die, Paddy?

Da didn’t answer. He was counting the seconds till the water stopped hissing into the cistern; I could see his lips.

– The life expectancy of a mouse is about eighteen months, I told them.

I’d just read it.

– Not in this house, said my da.

My ma nearly laughed; she patted my head.

– Can I see?

She got out of my way, then stopped.

– Let him, said my da.

The mouse would have been a good swimmer but he wasn’t trying to swim properly. He was trying to run out of the water.

– Cheerio, said da, and he flushed the toilet.

– Can I keep him? I said.

I’d just thought of it. My favourite pet.

The mouse went round and further down into the water and he went backwards out of the bowl, down the pipe. Sinbad wanted to see.

– He’ll come out at the seafront, I said.

Sinbad looked at the water.

– He’ll be happier there, said my ma. -It’s more natural.

– Can I get a mouse? I asked.

– No, said Da.

– For my birthday?

– No.

– Christmas?

– No.

– They frighten the reindeer, said Ma. -Come on now.

She was making us get out of the toilet. We were waiting for the mouse to come back up.

– What? said Da.

– Mice, said Ma. -They frighten the reindeer.

She nodded at Sinbad.

– That’s right, said Da.

– Come on, lads, she said.

– I want to go, said Sinbad.

– The mouse’ll get you, I told him.

– Number ones, said Sinbad. -Standing up; so there.

– He’ll bite you in the mickey, I said.

Ma and Da were going down the stairs.

Sinbad stood too far back and he wet the seat and floor.

– Francis didn’t lift the seat! I shouted.

– I did so.

He whacked the seat off the cistern.

– He only did it now, I said, -when I said it.

They didn’t come back up. I kicked Sinbad when he was wiping the seat with his sleeve.

– If the world’s moving why aren’t we moving as well? said Kevin.

We were lying in the long grass on a flattened box, looking up. The grass was real wet. I knew the answer but I didn’t say it. Kevin knew the answer; that was why he’d asked the question. I knew that. I could tell by his voice. I never answered Kevin’s questions. I never rushed with an answer, in school or anywhere; I always gave him a chance to answer first.

The best story I ever read was about Father Damien and the lepers. Father Damien was this man and he was called Joseph de Veuster before he became a priest. He was born in 1840 in a place called Tremeloo in Belgium.

I needed some lepers.

When he was a small boy they all called him Jef and he was chubby. All the grown-ups drank dark Flemish beer. Joseph wanted to become a priest but his father wouldn’t let him. Then he did.

– How much do priests get paid? I asked.

– Too much, said my da.

– Shhhsh, Paddy, said my ma to my da. -They don’t get paid anything, she told me.

– Why not?

– It’s hard to – she started. -It’s very complicated. They have a vocation.

– What’s that?

Joseph joined a bunch of priests called the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The priest that had started them up had had a life filled with narrow escapes and thrilling adventure during the French Revolution. He’d lived under the shadow of the guillotine itself. Joseph had to get a new name and he called himself Damien after a man called Damien who was a martyr when the Church was young. He was Brother Damien before he became Father Damien. He went to Hawaii. On the way there the captain of the ship played a trick on him. He got his telescope and he put a hair across the lens and he got Father Damien to look into it and he told him that it was the Equator. Father Damien believed him but that didn’t make him an eejit because they didn’t know about those kinds of things in those days. Father Damien had to make hosts for Holy Communion out of flour on the ship because they’d run out of paper hosts. He didn’t get seasick. He found his sea legs nearly immediately.

Vienna roll was the best for making hosts, when it was fresh. You didn’t have to wet it. Batch wasn’t bad either but ordinary sliced bread was useless. It kept springing back up. It was hard to tear the hosts into perfect round shapes. I used a penny from my ma’s purse. I told my ma I was taking it in case she saw me. I pressed the penny real hard into the flat bread and sometimes the shape came up with the penny. My hosts tasted nicer than the real ones. I left them on the windowsill for two days and they got hard like the real ones but they didn’t taste nice any more. I wondered was it a sin for me to be making them. I didn’t think so. One of the hosts on the windowsill went mouldy; that was a sin, letting that happen. I said one Hail Mary and four Our Fathers, because I preferred the Our Fathers to the Hail Mary and it was longer and better. I said them to myself in the shed in the dark.

– Corpus Christi.

– Amen, said Sinbad.

– Close your eyes, I said.

He did.

– Corpus Christi.

– Amen.

He lifted his head and stuck out his tongue. I gave him the mouldy one.

– How do the priests make hosts? I asked my ma.

– Flour, said my ma. -It’s just bread until it’s blessed.

– Not real bread.

– A different kind of bread, she said. -It’s unleavened bread.

– What’s that?

– I don’t know.

I didn’t believe her.

The real good part of the story started when Father Damien went to the leper colony. Molokai was the name of it. It was where all the lepers were put so they couldn’t give it to anyone else. Father Damien knew what he was doing; he knew that he was going there forever. A strange expression burned on Father Damien’s face when he told the bishop he wanted to go there. The bishop was pleased and edified by the bravery of his young missionary. The little church on Molokai was run-down and neglected but Father Damien fixed it up. He broke a branch from a tree and used it as a broom and began to sweep the floor of the tiny chapel. He put flowers in it. The lepers that were hanging around watching him just kept watching him for ages. He was a big healthy man and they were only lepers. After the first day the lepers still hadn’t started to help him. When he went to bed he could hear the lepers moaning in the dark and the surf booming on the barren shore. Belgium had never seemed so far away. After a while the lepers started helping him. He became friends with them. They called him Kamiano.

– Are there any lepers in Ireland?

– No.

– Any?

– No.

Father Damien built a better church and houses and did loads of other things – he showed them all how to grow vegetables – and he knew all the time that he was going to catch the leprosy as well, but he didn’t mind. His greatest happiness was to see his children, the boys and girls whom he had taken under his care. Each day he spent several hours with them.

Bits of the lepers fell off. That was what happened them. Did you hear about the leper cowboy? He threw his leg over his horse. Did you hear about the leper gambler? He threw in his hand.

One evening in December 1884 Father Damien put his aching feet into some water to ease the pain. He got red blisters all over his feet; the water was boiling but his feet were numb. He knew he had leprosy. -I can’t bear to tell you but it’s true, said the doctor sadly. But Father Damien didn’t mind. -I have leprosy, he said. -Blessed be the Good God!

– Blessed be the Good God, I said.

My da started laughing.

– Where did you get that from? he said.

– I read it, I told him. -Father Damien said it.

– Which one’s he?

– Father Damien and the lepers.

– Oh, that’s right. He was a good man.

– Were there ever any lepers in Ireland?

– I don’t think so.

– Why not?

– It only happens in hot places. I think.

– It’s hot here sometimes, I said.

– Not that hot.

– Yes it is.

– Not hot enough, said my da. -It has to be very very hot.

– How much hotter than here?

– Fifteen degrees, said my da.

There was no cure for leprosy. He didn’t tell his mother when he was writing to her. But the news got out. People sent money to Father Damien and he built another church with it. It was made of stone. The church is still standing and may be seen by travellers to Molokai today. Father Damien told his children that he was dying and that the nuns would take care of them from then on. They clung to his feet and said, -No, no, Kamiano! We want to stay as long as you are here. The nuns had to go back empty-handed.

– Do it again.

Sinbad grabbed my legs.

– No, no, Kam – Kam -

– Kamiano!

– I can’t remember it.

– Kamiano.

– Can I not just say Patrick?

– No, I said. Do it again and you’d better get it right.

– I don’t want to.

I gave him half a Chinese torture. He grabbed my legs.

– Lower down.

– How?

– Lower.

– You’ll kick me.

– I won’t. I will if you don’t.

Sinbad grabbed me around the ankles. He held me tight so my feet were stuck.

– No, no, Kamiano! We want to stay as long you are here.

– Okay, my children, I said. -You can stay.

– Thanks very much, Kamiano, said Sinbad.

He wouldn’t let go of my feet.

Father Damien died on Palm Sunday. The people sat on the ground beating their breasts in old Hawaiian fashion, swaying back and forth and wailing sadly. The leprosy had gone off him; there were no scabs or anything. He was a saint. I read it twice.

I needed lepers. Sinbad wasn’t enough. He kept running away. He told our ma that I was making him be a leper and he didn’t want to be one. So I needed lepers. I couldn’t tell Kevin because he’d have ended up being Father Damien and I’d have been a leper. It was my story. I got the McCarthy twins and Willy Hancock. They were four, the three of them. They thought it was great being with a big boy, me. I made them come into our back garden. I told them what lepers were. They wanted to be lepers.

– Can lepers swim? said Willy Hancock.

– Yeah, I said.

– We can’t swim, said one of the McCarthys.

– Lepers can swim, said Willy Hancock.

– They don’t have to swim, I said. -You don’t have to swim. You only have to pretend you’re lepers. It’s easy. You just have to be a bit sick and wobble a bit.

They wobbled.

– Can they laugh?

– Yeah, I said. -They only have to lie down sometimes so I can mop their brows and say prayers on them.

– I’m a leper!

– I’m a leper! Wobble wobble wobble!

– Wobble wobble leper!

– Wobble wobble leper!

– Our Father who art in heaven hallowed by thy name -

– Wobble wobble wobble!

– Shut up a sec -

– Wobble wobble wobble.

They had to go home for their dinners. I heard them through the hedge on the path to their houses.

– I’m a leper! Wobble wobble wobble!

– I have a vocation, I told my ma, just in case Missis McCarthy came to the door about the twins, or Missis Hancock.

She was still cooking the dinner and stopping Catherine from climbing into the press under the sink with the polish and brushes in it.

– What’s that, Patrick?

– I have a vocation, I said.

She picked up Catherine.

– Has someone been talking to you? she said.

It wasn’t what I’d expected.

– No, I said. -I want to be a missionary.

– Good boy, she said, but not the way I’d wanted. I wanted her to cry. I wanted my da to shake my hand. I told him when he got home from his work.

– I have a vocation, I said.

– No you don’t, he said. -You’re too young.

– I do, I said. -God has spoken to me.

It was all wrong.

He spoke to my ma.

– I told you, he said.

He sounded angry.

– Encouraging this rubbish, he said.

– I didn’t encourage it, she said.

– Yes, you bloody did, he said.

She looked like she was making her mind up.

– You did!

He roared it.

She went out of the kitchen, beginning to run. She tried to undo the knot of her apron. He went after her. He looked different, like he’d been caught doing something. They left me alone. I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t know what I’d done.

They came back. They didn’t say anything.

Snails and slugs were gastropods; they had stomach feet. I poured salt on a slug. I could see the torture and agony. I picked him up with the trowel and gave him a decent burial. The real name for soccer was association football. Association football was played with a round ball on a rectangular pitch by two sides of eleven people. The object is to score goals, i.e. force the ball into the opponents’ goal, which is formed by two upright posts upon which is mounted a crossbar. I learned this off by heart. I liked it. It didn’t sound like rules; it sounded cheeky. The biggest score ever was Arbroath 36, Bon Accord 0. Joe Payne scored the most goals, ten of them, for Luton in 1936. Geronimo was the last of the renegade Apaches.

I held up the ball. We were on Barrytown Grove. It had good high kerbs for hopping the ball. The ball was a burst one.

– The object, I said, -is to score goals, i.e. force the ball into the opponents’ goal which is – is formed by two upright posts upon which is mounted a crossbar.

They were bursting out laughing.

– Say it again.

I did. I put on a posh accent. They laughed again.

– Ger-on-IMO!

He was the last of the renegade Apaches. The last of the renegades.

– You’re a renegade, Mister Clarke.

Hennessey sometimes called us renegades before he hit us.

– What are you?

– A renegade, Sir.

– Correct.

– Renegade!

– Renegade renegade renegade!

I had a picture of Geronimo. He was kneeling on one knee. His left elbow was resting on his left knee. He had a rifle. He had a scarf around his neck and a shirt with spots on it that I didn’t notice for ages until I was sticking the picture on my wall. He had a bracelet that looked like a watch on his right wrist. Maybe he’d robbed it. Maybe he’d cut someone’s arm off to get it. The rifle looked homemade. The best part was his face. He was looking straight into the camera, straight through it. He wasn’t frightened of it; he didn’t think it would take his soul, like some of them did. His hair was black, parted in the middle, straight down to his shoulders; no feathers or messing. He looked very old, his face, but the rest of him was young.

– Da?

– What?

– What age are you?

– Thirty-three.

– Geronimo was fifty-four, I told him.

– What? he said. -Always?

He was fifty-four when the photograph was taken. He might have been older. He looked fierce and sad. His mouth was upside-down, like a cartoon sad face. His eyes were watery and black. His nose was big. I wondered why he was sad. Maybe he knew what was going to happen to him. The part of his leg in the photograph was like a girl’s, no hair or bumps. He was wearing boots. There were bushes around him. I put my fingers on the hair to cover it. His face was like an old woman’s. A sad old woman. I lifted my fingers. He was Geronimo again. It was only a black-and-white photograph. I coloured in his shirt; blue. It took ages.

I saw another picture in a book. Of Geronimo with his warriors. They were in a big field. Geronimo was in the middle, in a jacket and a stripey scarf. He still looked old and young. His shoulders looked old. His legs looked young.

None of the pictures in books were like the Indians in the films. There was one of the Snake and Sioux Indians on the warpath. The main fella in the picture had a pony tail and the rest of his head was bald, and shiny like an apple. He was riding hunched down sideways on his horse so that the others couldn’t fire their arrows at him. The horse’s eye was looking down at him; the horse looked scared. It was a painting. I liked it. There was another great one of an Indian killing a buffalo. The buffalo had its head in under the horse; the Indian would have to kill it quick or the buffalo would turn the horse over. Something about the way the Indian was on the horse, with his back up and his arm stretched, ready, with his spear, made me know that he was going to win. Anyway, the picture was called The Last of the Buffalo. There were other Indians on the edge of the picture chasing after more buffalo. The field was covered in buffalo skulls and there were dead buffalos lying all around. I couldn’t put this one on my wall because it was from a library book. I went to the library in Baldoyle. I went with my da. One room was the grown-ups’ and there was another room for children.

He was always interfering. He’d come into our part of the library after he’d changed his books and he’d start picking books for me. He never put them back properly.

– I read this one when I was your age.

I didn’t want to know that.

I could take two books. He looked at the covers.

– The American Indians.

He took out the tag and slipped it into my library card. He was always doing that as well. He looked at the other one.

– Daniel Boone, Hero. Good man.

I read in the car. I could do it and not get sick if I didn’t look up. Daniel Boone was one of the greatest of American pioneers. But, like many other pioneers, he was not much of a hand at writing. He carved something on a tree after he’d killed a bear.

– D. Boone killa bar on this tree 1773.

His writing was far worse than mine, than Sinbad’s even. I’d never have spelled Bear wrong. And anyway as well, what was a grown-up doing writing stuff on trees?

– DANIEL BOONE WAS A MAN

WAS A BI-IG MAN

BUT THE BEAR WAS BIGGER

AND HE RAN LIKE A NIGGER

UP A TREE -

There was a picture of him and he looked like a spa. He was stopping an Indian from getting his wife and his son with a hatchet. The Indian had spiky hair and he was wearing pink curtains around his middle and nothing else. He was looking up at Daniel Boone like he’d just got a terrible fright. Daniel Boone was holding his wrist and he had his other arm in a lock. The Indian didn’t even come up to Daniel Boone’s shoulders. Daniel Boone was dressed in a green jacket with a white collar and stringy bits hanging off the sleeves. He had a fur hat with a red bobbin. He looked like one of the women in the cake shop in Raheny. His dog was barking. His wife looked like she was annoyed about the noise they were making. Her dress had come off her shoulders and her hair was black and went down to her bum. The dog had a collar on with a name tag on it. In the middle of the wilderness. I didn’t like the Daniel Boone on the television either. He was too nice.

– Fess Parker, said my da. -What sort of a name is that?

I liked the Indians. I liked their weapons. I made an Apache flop-head club. It was a marble, a gullier, in a sock, and I nailed it to a stick. I stuck a feather in the sock. It whirred when I spun it and the feather fell out. I hit the wall with it and a bit chipped off. I should have thrown away the other sock. My ma gave out when she found the one I didn’t use, by itself.

– It can’t have gone far, she said. -Look under your bed.

I went upstairs and I looked under the bed even though I knew that the sock wasn’t there and my ma hadn’t followed me up. I was by myself and I got down and looked. I climbed in under. I found a soldier. A German World War One one with a spiky helmet.

I read William. I read all of them. There were thirty-four of them. I owned eight of them. The others were in the library. William The Pirate was the best. I say! gasped William. I’ve never seen such a clever dog. I say! he gasped, he’s splendid. Hi, Toby! Toby! Come here, old chap! Toby was nothing loth. He was a jolly, friendly little dog. He ran up to William and played with him and growled at him and pretended to bite him and rolled over and over.

– Can I’ve a dog for my birthday?

– No.

– Christmas?

– No.

– Both together?

– No.

– Christmas and my birthday?

– You want me to hit you, is that it?

– No.

I asked my ma. She said the same. But when I said two Christmases and birthdays she said, -I’ll see.

That was good enough.

William’s gang was the Outlaws; him, Ginger, Douglas and Henry. It was Ginger’s turn to push the pram and he seized it with a new vigour.

– Vigour, I said.

– Vigour!

– Vigour vigour vigour!

For a day we called ourselves the Vigour Tribe. We got one of Sinbad’s markers and did big Vs on our chests, for Vigour. It was cold. The marker tickled. Big black Vs. From our diddies to our tummy buttons.

– Vigour!

Kevin threw the cap of Sinbad’s marker down a shore, an old one on Barrytown Road with goo at the bottom. We went into Tootsie’s shop and showed her our chests.

– One two three -

– Vigour!

She didn’t notice or say anything. We ran out of the shop. Kevin drew a big mickey on Kiernan’s pillar. We ran. We came back for Kevin to draw the drops coming out of the mickey. We ran again.

– Vigour!

The Kiernans were only Mister and Missis Kiernan.

– Did their children die? I asked my ma.

– No, she said. -No. They had no children.

– Why didn’t they?

– Oh, God knows, Patrick.

– That’s stupid, I said.

They weren’t old. They both went to work, in his car. She drove it as well. We got into their back when they were at work. It was a corner house; it was easy. The wall was higher because of the corner so we could stay in there for ages and no one would see us. The biggest risk was climbing out and that was brilliant. It was great being second; first was too scary. Your ma could have been walking by with the pram. You weren’t allowed to look first; that was the rule. You had to climb straight and slide over the wall without looking to see if there was anyone there. We were never caught. Missis Kiernan’s knickers were on the line once. I took the pole away and the line dropped closer to us. We grabbed Aidan. We hadn’t said anything but we knew. We made him, we shoved his face into the knickers. He sounded like he was being sick.

– Lucky they’re not dirty ones.

I put the pole back. We took turns. We ran, jumped and headed the knickers. It was brilliant. We did it for ages. We didn’t take them down off the line.

My ma saw the V when we were having our bath on Saturday after tea. Me and Sinbad were in together. She always gave us five minutes to splash. She saw the V. It was nearly faded. Sinbad had one as well.

– What are they? she asked.

– Vs, I said.

– What are they doing there? she asked.

– We just did them, I said.

She made the face-cloth real soapy. She held my shoulder while she rubbed the V off. It hurt.

I was in Mister Fitz’s shop getting a half block of ice-cream. It was Sunday. Ripple ice-cream. I was to tell Mister Fitz to put it on my ma’s list. That meant she’d pay him on Friday. He wrapped the ice-cream in the paper he wrapped Vienna rolls in. He folded it up. It was already wet.

– There now, he said.

– Thanks very much, I said.

Missis Kiernan was at the door; she was coming in, her shape was in the door. My face went hot. She was going to see my face and catch me. She’d know.

I got past her. She was going to stop me, going to grab my shoulder. There were people; they were talking on the path. They had newspapers and cartons of cream. They were going to see. Kevin’s ma and da were there. And girls. She was going to catch me and shout.

I crossed the road and went home the wrong side. She knew. Someone had told her. She definitely knew. She was waiting. She’d followed me into the shop to see if I’d go red. She’d seen it. My face was still red; I could feel it. Her hair was longer than my ma’s. It was fatter as well, thicker. Brown. She never said Hello. She never walked to the shops. They always drove and their house was only a bit down the road. He was the only grown man in Barrytown with locks, and he had a moustache as well.

I looked back. Safe; she wasn’t following. I crossed back to our side. She was lovely. She was gorgeous. She was wearing jeans on a Sunday. Maybe she was waiting, for the right moment to catch me.

I whisked the ice-cream with my spoon till it was soft. I made mountains on it. The ripple was gone. All the ice-cream had gone pink. I always used a small spoon; it made it last longer. My face went hot again, thinking, not as bad though as earlier. I could hear my blood. I could see me going to the door and Missis Kiernan would be there; she’d want to see my ma and she’d tell her about what I’d done to her knickers, and my da. I could hear the steps. I waited for the bell.

If the bell didn’t ring by the time I’d finished all the icecream she wouldn’t be coming. But I couldn’t rush it. I had to eat it the slow way I always did, always the last one to finish. I was allowed to lick the bowl. The bell didn’t ring at all. I felt like I’d done something; my mission had been accomplished. I waited till my face felt normal again. It was very quiet. I was the only one left at the table with them. I didn’t look at them when I asked.

– Are you allowed to wear jeans on a Sunday?

– No, said my da.

– It depends, said my ma. -Not till after mass anyway.

– No, said my da.

My ma looked at him with a face, like the look she had when she caught us doing something; sadder, though.

– He doesn’t have any jeans, she said. -He’s just asking.

My da said nothing. My ma said nothing.

My ma read books. Mostly at night. She licked her finger when she was coming to the end of her page, then she turned the page; she pulled the corner up with her wet finger. In the mornings I found her book marker, a bit of newspaper, in the book and I counted back the number of pages she’d read the night before. The record was forty-two.

There was a smell of church off the desks in our school. When I folded my arms and put my head in the hollow, when Henno told us to go asleep, I could smell the same smell as you got off the seats in the church. I loved it. It was spicy and like the ground under a tree. I licked the desk but it just tasted horrible.

Ian McEvoy really went to sleep one day when Henno told us all to go to sleep. Henno was having a chat with Mister Arnold at the door and he told us to fold our arms and go to sleep. That was what always happened when Henno was talking to anyone or reading the paper. Mister Arnold had big locks that nearly met under his chin. He was on the Late Late Show once, singing a song and playing the guitar with another man and two ladies. I was allowed to stay up and watch him. One of the ladies played the guitar as well. She and Mister Arnold were on the outside and the other two were in the middle. They all had the same kind of shirts on but the men had cravats and the ladies didn’t.

– He should stick to the day job, said my da.

My ma told him to shush.

James O’Keefe’s foot tapped the seat of my desk. I shifted my arms so I could lift my head, and looked back at him quickly.

– Gee, he said. -Pass it on.

His head went back into his arms.

I slipped down in my seat so I could reach the seat of Ian McEvoy’s desk. I tapped it. He didn’t move. I did it again. I slipped down further and my foot went past the seat and I hit his leg. He didn’t turn. I sat up properly again and waited, and turned to James O’Keefe.

– McEvoy’s gone asleep.

James O’Keefe bit his jumper to stop himself from laughing. Someone in the class was in big trouble, and it wasn’t him.

We all waited. We shushed each other so we wouldn’t wake Ian McEvoy, even though we weren’t making any noise anyway.

Henno closed the door.

– Sit up now.

We did, quickly; we sat up straight. We looked at Hennessey, to see when he’d see Ian.

We were doing spellings, English ones. Henno had his book out on the desk. He put all our scores and marks into the book and added them up on Fridays, and made us change our places. The best marks sat in the desks along the windows and the worst were put down the back beside the coats. I was usually in the middle somewhere, sometimes near the front. The ones at the back got the hardest spellings; instead of asking them, say, eleven threes, he’d ask them eleven elevens or eleven twelves. If you got put into the last row after the marks were added up it was very hard to get out again, and you were never sent on messages.

– Mediterranean.

– M.e.d. -

– The easy part; continue.

– i.t. -

– Go on.

He was going to get it wrong; it was Liam. He usually sat behind me or in the row beside me nearer the coats, but he’d got ten out of ten in sums on Thursday so he was sitting in front of me, in front of Ian McEvoy. I only got six out of ten in the sums test because Richard Shiels wouldn’t let me have a look in his copy, but I gave him a dead leg later for it.

– t.e.r. – a. -

– Wrong. You’re a worm. What are you?

– A worm, Sir.

– Correct, said Henno. -Urr-wronggg! he said when he was marking Liam’s mistake into the book.

He didn’t only make us change our places on Fridays; he biffed us as well. It gave him an appetite for his dinner, he told us. It gave his appetite an edge, and he needed that because he didn’t like fish as a rule. One biff for every mistake. With the leather he soaked in vinegar during the summer holidays.

Kevin was next, then Ian McEvoy.

– M.e.d., said Kevin. -i.t.e.r.r.a.n -

– Yes?

– i.a.n.

– Urr-wrong! – Mister McEvoy.

Ian McEvoy was still fast asleep. Kevin sat in the same desk as him and he told us later that Ian McEvoy was smiling in his sleep.

– Dreaming about a molly, said James O’Keefe.

Henno stood up and stared over Liam at Ian McEvoy.

– He’s gone asleep, Sir, said Kevin. -Will I wake him up?

– No, said Henno.

Henno put his finger to his lips; we were to be quiet.

We giggled and shushed. Henno walked carefully down to Ian McEvoy’s side of the desk; we watched him. He didn’t look like he was joking.

– Mis-ter McEvoy!

It wasn’t funny; we couldn’t laugh. I felt the rush of air when Henno’s hand swept through and smacked Ian McEvoy’s neck. Ian McEvoy shot up and gasped. He groaned. I couldn’t see him. I could see the side of Kevin’s face. It was white; his bottom lip was out further than his top one.

Hennessey warned us about being sick on Fridays. If we weren’t in school on Friday for our punishment he’d get us on Monday, no excuses.

All the desks smelt the same, in all the rooms. Sometimes the wood was lighter because the desk was near a window where the sun could get at it. They weren’t the old-fashioned desks where the top was a lid on hinges that you lifted and there was a place for your books under it. The top was screwed down on our desks; there was a shelf in under it for books and bags. There was a hollow for your pens and a hole for the inkwell. You could roll your pen down the desk. We did it for a dare cos Henno hated the noise when he heard it.

James O’Keefe drank the ink.

When we had to stand up, when we were told to, we had to lift the seat back and we weren’t allowed to make noise doing it. When there was a knock at the door, if it was a master coming in or Mister Finnucane, the headmaster, or Father Moloney, we had to stand up.

– Dia duit, [8] we said.

Henno just raised his hand like he was holding something on his palm and we all said it together.

There were two boys in each desk. When a boy in front of you got up to go to the blackboard or the leithreas [9] you could see a red mark from the seat across the back of his legs.

I had to go down to my parents. Sinbad kept crying, bawling over and over like a train. He wouldn’t stop.

– I’ll burst you if you don’t.

I didn’t know how they hadn’t heard it. The hall light was off. They were supposed to leave it on. I got to the bottom of the stairs. The lino at the hall door was freezing. I checked: Sinbad was still whining.

I loved getting him into trouble. This way was best. I could pretend I was helping.

They were watching a cowboy film. Da wasn’t pretending to read the paper.

– Francis is crying.

Ma looked at Da.

– He won’t stop.

They looked, and Ma stood up. It took her ages to get up straight.

– He’s been doing it all night.

– Go on back up, Patrick; come on.

I went up ahead of her. I waited at the beginning of the real dark to make sure she was coming after me. I stood beside Sinbad’s bed.

– Ma’s coming, I told him.

It would have been better if it had been Da. She wasn’t going to do anything to him. She’d talk to him, that was all, maybe hug him. I wasn’t disappointed though. I didn’t want to get him now. I was cold.

– She’s coming, I told him again.

I’d rescued him.

He made his whining go a bit louder, and Ma pushed the door open. I got into bed. There was still some of the warmth left from earlier.

Da wouldn’t have done anything either; the same as Ma, he’d have done.

– Ah, what’s wrong, Francis?

She didn’t say it like What’s wrong this time.

– I’ve a pain in my legs, Sinbad told her.

His rhythm was breaking down: she’d come.

– What sort of a pain?

– A bad one.

– In both your legs?

– Yeah.

– Two pains.

– Yeah.

She was rubbing his face, not his legs.

– Like the last time.

– Yeah.

– That’s terrible; you poor thing.

Sinbad got a whimper out.

– That’s you growing up, you know, she told him. -You’ll be very tall.

I never got pains in my legs.

– Very tall. That’ll be great, won’t it? Great for robbing apples.

That was brilliant. We laughed.

– Is it going now? she asked him.

– I think so.

– Good. Tall and handsome. Very handsome. Ladykillers. Both of you.

When I opened my eyes again she was still there. Sinbad was asleep; I could hear him.

We all baled into the hall; threepence each to Mister Arnold and we were through. All the front seats were taken by the little kids from high babies and low babies and the other classes under us. It didn’t matter cos when they turned the lights off we’d get up on our seats; it was better at the back. Sinbad was in there with his class, wearing his new glasses. One of the eyes was blacked, like Missis Byrne’s on our road. Da said it was to give the other one a chance to catch up because it was lazy. We’d got Golly Bars on the way home from the place in town where Sinbad had got the glasses. We came home in the train. Sinbad told Ma that when he was a man he was going to get the first five pounds he ever earned and bring it in the train and pull the emergency cord and pay the fine.

– What job, Francis?

– Farmer, he told her.

– Farmers don’t go in the train, I said.

– Why don’t they? said Ma. -Of course they do.

Sinbad’s glasses had wire bits that went right around the back of his ears and made them stick out, to stop him from losing them, but he lost them anyway.

Some Fridays we didn’t have proper school after the little break; we went to the pictures instead, in the hall. We were warned on Thursdays to bring in threepence to get in, but Aidan and Liam forgot their threepences once and they still got in; they just had to wait till everyone else had gone in. We said that it was because Mister O’Connell didn’t have sixpence to give them – I thought it up – but they brought in the money on Monday. Aidan cried when we kept saying it.

Henno was in charge of the projector. He thought he was great. He stood beside it like it was a Spitfire or something. The projector was on a table at the back of the hall, in the middle between the rows of seats. For a dare when the lights were turned off, we crawled out into the aisle and got up a bit and made shapes with our hands in the path of light that the projector made; the shape – usually a dog barking -would go up on the screen on the stage at the top of the hall. That was the easy part. The hard bit was getting back to your seat before they turned the lights back on. Everyone would try to stop you, to keep you trapped in the aisle. They’d kick you and stand on your hands when you were crawling under the seats. It was brilliant.

– Take out your English copies, said Henno.

We waited.

– Anois. [10]

We took them out. All my copies were covered in wallpaper that our Auntie Muriel had left over when she was doing her bathroom and she gave my da about ten rolls of it.

– She must have thought she was going to be papering the Taj Mahal, he said.

– Ssh, said Ma.

I’d used a plastic stencil for the names. Patrick Clarke. Mister Hennessey. English. Keep Out.

– These rows, here and here, said Henno. -Bring your copies with you. Seasaígí suas. [11]

When we got to the hall we gave our copies to Henno and he put them under the front legs of the projector so the picture would hit the screen bang on.

The teachers stood at the side and went Shh all through the films. They leaned against the wall in twos and threes and smoked, some of them. Only Miss Watkins patrolled around but she never caught anyone cos we would see her head on the screen when she was coming up the aisle.

– Get out of the way!

– Get out of the way!

If it was a sunny day outside we could see hardly anything on the screen because the curtains on the windows weren’t thick enough. We cheered when a cloud got in the way of the sun and we cheered when the sun came back out. Sometimes we just heard the film. But it was easy to tell what was happening.

It always started with two or three Woody Woodpeckers. I could do Woody Woodpecker’s voice.

– Stop that! a teacher would say.

– Shhh!

But they gave up early. By the time Woody Woodpecker was finished and The Three Stooges came on most of the teachers weren’t in the hall any more, just Henno and Mister Arnold and Miss Watkins. My Woody Woodpecker hurt the back of my throat but it was worth it.

– I know that’s you, Patrick Clarke.

We could see Miss Watkins squinting in at us but she couldn’t see anything.

– Do it again.

I waited till she was looking straight at us, then I did it.

– WAA-CAH-CAH-CAH-CEHHH-CUH -

– Patrick Clarke!

– It wasn’t me, Miss.

– It was the bird in the picture, Miss.

– Your head’s in the way, Miss.

– Hey; you can see Miss’s nits in the light!

She went down to Henno at the projector but he wouldn’t stop it for her.

– WAA-CAH-CAH-CAH-CEHHH-CUH -

I loved The Three Stooges as well. Sometimes it was Laurel and Hardy but I preferred The Three Stooges. Some of the fellas called them The Three Stoogies but I knew it was Stooges because my da told me. We could never tell what the story was about in their films; there was too much noise and, anyway, all they ever did was beat each other up. Larry and Moe and Curly, that was their names. Kevin poked my eyes the way the Stooges did it – we were in the field behind the shops, all of us – and I couldn’t see for ages. I didn’t know about that at first because of the pain; I couldn’t open my eyes. It was like all the headaches I used to get; it was like the headaches you got when you ate ice-cream too fast; it was like being hit with a soft branch across the eyes. I had my hands covering my eyes and I wouldn’t take them down. I was shaking the way my sister, Catherine, did when she’d been crying and bawling for ages. I didn’t want to do it.

I didn’t know I was screaming. They told me later. It had scared them, I could tell. The next time I got hurt, when I cut my shoulder on a nail on a goalpost, I screamed then as well. But, because I’d decided to do it, I thought it sounded stupid. I stopped and rolled on the ground, in the wet. My da went down to Kevin’s house when he came home from work and Ma told him what had happened. I watched him from their bedroom window. When he came back he said nothing. Kevin didn’t know what had happened between my da and his da. He’d expected to be killed, especially when he saw the shape of my da through the hall door glass. But nothing happened him. His da did nothing, and didn’t even say anything to him. I told my da this when he was having his tea the day after; he didn’t look surprised or anything.

I had two bloodshot eyes and one black one.

The best thing about The Three Stooges was that there were no breaks. For the main film Hennessey had to change the reel and spin back the old one. The picture would go white with little coloured explosions and the sound would go; we’d hear the film clacking around, hitting against the empty spool. It took ages to get going again.

They turned on the lights so Henno could see what he was doing. We got down off the seats in time. We played chicken; first down was a spa.

Once, during the main film, Fluke Cassidy took one of his epileptic fits and no one noticed. It was The Vikings. The sun was covered by the clouds outside so we saw the whole film. Fluke fell off his chair, but that happened all the time. It was a great film, easily the best I’d ever seen. We stamped the floor to make Henno hurry up when the first reel finished. Then we saw Fluke.

– Sir! Luke Cassidy’s having a fit.

We all got far away from him in case we got the blame for it.

Fluke had stopped shaking – he’d knocked over three chairs and Mister Arnold had put his jacket over him.

– Maybe they won’t finish the film, said Liam.

– Why won’t they?

– Cos of Fluke.

Mister Arnold called for coats.

– Coats, lads; come on.

– Let’s look, said Kevin.

We went up two rows, and in, so we could get a proper look at Fluke. He only looked like he was asleep. He was whiter then normal.

– Give him room, lads.

Henno was with Mister Arnold now. They’d put four coats over Fluke. If they put one over his head that meant he was dead.

– Someone to go to Mister Finnucane.

Mister Finnucane was the headmaster.

– Sir!

– Sir!

– Sir, me!

– You. Henno chose Ian McEvoy. -Report what happened to Mister Finnucane. What happened?

– Luke Cassidy took a fit, Sir.

– Correct.

– D’you want us to carry him, Sir?

– OH YOU’RE ALL VERY QUIET IN THE BACK -

YOU’RE ALL VERY QUIET -

– Shut! – Up! Sit – Down -.

– That’s my place -!

– Shut! – Up!

We were all sitting down. I turned to Kevin.

– Not a squeak, Mister Clarke, said Henno. -Face the screen. All of you.

Kevin’s little brother, Simon, put his hand up. He was way up at the front.

– Yes; you with your hand up.

– Malachy O’Leary’s after going toilet.

– Sit down.

– Number twos.

– Sit! – Down!

The music in The Vikings was the best thing about it; it was brilliant. Any time there was a Viking boat coming home a fella on a cliff would see it and he’d blow the music through a huge horn and everyone would come out of their huts and run down to meet the boat. Whenever there was a battle they played the same music. It was brilliant; you remembered it for ever. In the end one of the main fellas was killed – I wasn’t sure which one – and they put him in his boat and covered him in wood; they set fire to it and pushed the boat out. I started humming the music, slower; I knew it was going to happen in the film. And it did.

I killed a rat with a hurley. It was a fluke. I just swung the hurley. I didn’t know for definite that the rat was going to be coming my way. I hoped he wouldn’t. It was great though, the full feeling when the hurley smacked the rat’s side and lifted him way up; perfect.

I whooped.

– D’yeh see that?

It was perfect. The rat lay there in the muck, twitching; there was stuff coming out of his mouth.

– Champi-on! Champi-on! Champi-on!

We crept up to him but I wanted to get there before the rest so I crept fast. He was still twitching.

– He’s still twitching.

– He isn’t. That’s his nerves.

– The nerves die after the rest of him.

– Did you see the way I got him?

– I was waiting for him, said Kevin. -I’d’ve got him.

– I got him.

– What’ll we do with him? said Edward Swanwick.

– Have a funeral.

– Yeahhh!

Edward Swanwick hadn’t seen The Vikings; he didn’t go to our school.

We were in Donnelly’s yard, behind the barn. We’d have to smuggle the rat out.

– Why?

– It’s their rat.

Questions like that spoiled everything.

Uncle Eddie was in front of the house raking the gravel. Missis Donnelly was in the kitchen. Kevin went to the side of the barn and threw a stone in the hedge – a decoy – and looked.

– She’s washing trousers.

– Uncle Eddie’s dirtied his pants.

– Uncle Eddie did a gick and Mister Donnelly put it on his cabbages.

Two routes were blocked. We had to escape over the back wall, the way we’d got in.

No one had picked up the rat yet.

Sinbad was poking the stuff with his spear, the stuff that had come out of the rat’s mouth.

– Pick him up, I told him, and I knew he wouldn’t.

But he did. By the tail. He held him up and he let him twirl slowly.

– Give us him, said Liam, but he didn’t put his hand out or try to take the rat off Sinbad.

He wasn’t that big of a rat; his tail made him look bigger when he was on the ground but not the way Sinbad was holding him. I stood near Sinbad; he was my brother and he was holding a dead rat in his hand.

The tide was going out. That was good; the plank wouldn’t keep coming back in. Sinbad had cleaned the rat. He’d put him on the ground under the pump at the cottages and he’d pumped four loads down on top of him. He wrapped the rat in his jumper with just his head showing.

Kevin was holding the end of the plank, trying to stop it from bobbing.

I started.

– Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee -

It sounded great, five voices together and the wind. Kevin picked the plank out of the water; there was a wave coming.

– now and at the hour of our death amen.

I was the priest because I was useless with matches. My job was done. Edward Swanwick sat on the wet steps and held the plank for Kevin. Kevin turned his back to the sea and the wind and lit the match. He turned and saved the flame by the shield of his hand. I loved the way he could do that.

The flame lasted long enough. It was like a Christmas pudding for a while; I could see the fire but it wasn’t doing anything to the rat. I could smell the paraffin. They pushed the plank out, not too strong like a battleship; we didn’t want the fire to go out. The rat stayed on the plank. The fire was still going but the rat wasn’t changing.

We all made trumpets out of our hands. Edward Swanwick as well even though he didn’t know what was happening.

– Now.

We all did The Vikings music.

– DUH DEEH DUH -

DUH DEEEH DUH -

DUH DEEEH DUH DUH – DUH DUH – DUH DUH DUHHH -

The flame lasted long enough for us to do it twice.

I had a book on top of my head. I had to get up the stairs without it falling off. If it fell off I would die. It was a hardback book, heavy, the best kind for carrying on your head. I couldn’t remember which one it was. I knew all the books in the house. I knew their shapes and smells. I knew what pages would open if I held them with the spine on the ground and let the sides drop. I knew all the books but I couldn’t remember the name of the one on my head. I’d find out when I got to the top, touched my bedroom door and got back down again. Then I could take it off my head – I’d bring my head forward slowly and let it slide off and I’d catch it – and see what it was. I could have seen the corner of the cover if I’d looked up very carefully; I could have got the name from the colour of the corner. But it was too dangerous. I had a mission to complete. Steady was better than too slow. If I went too slow I’d go all unsteady and I’d think I’d never make it and the book would fall off. Death. There was a bomb in the book. Steady was best, steps one two; no rush. Rushing was as bad as too slow. You panicked towards the end. Like Catherine walking across the living room. She walked fine for four or five steps, then you could see her face change because she saw that it was ages to go to the other side; her smile became a stretch, she knew she wouldn’t make it, she tried to get there quicker, she fell. She knew she was going to; her face got ready for it. She cried. Steady. Nearly at the top. The point of no return. Napoleon Solo. When you got to the top you had to get used to not having any more steps to go up; it was nearly like falling over.

The toilet door opened.

My da came out with his paper. He looked at me and past me.

He spoke.

– Monkey see, monkey do.

He was looking down, past me.

I turned my head. The book fell. I caught it. Our Man In Havana. Sinbad was on the stairs behind me with a book on his head. Ivanhoe. My book slid out of its cover and dropped onto the floor. I was dead.

Liam broke his teeth playing Grand National. It was no one’s fault except his own. They were his second teeth, the ones he was supposed to have for the rest of his life. He split his lip as well.

– His lip’s gone!

That was what it looked like when it happened. The blood and the way he was holding his hand up to his mouth made it look like his whole mouth had been cut off. All that stood out was one big front tooth that was made pink by blood. The pink gathered into red at the bottom of the tooth and fell off, into what was behind his hand.

His eyes looked mad. At first – when he came out of the hedge – they’d just looked like he’d been in the dark and the light had been turned on, but they’d changed; mad, scared and sticking out, pushing out over his eyelids.

Then he started howling.

His mouth didn’t move, or his hand. The noise was just there. The eyes told me that it was his.

– Oh mammy -!

– Listen to him.

It was like someone doing a ghost but they weren’t any good at it; they were trying to scare us but we knew; we didn’t even start being scared. But this was scary; this was terrible. This was Liam right in front of us, not behind a curtain. He was making this noise but he wasn’t pretending. His eyes said that; he couldn’t do anything else.

If it had been ordinary, an ordinary accident, we’d have run; we’d have run before we were given the blame for it just because we were there. That always happened. A fella kicked a ball and it broke a window and ten fellas got the blame for it.

– I’m holding you all responsible.

That was what Missis Quigley’d said when Kevin had smashed her toilet window. She’d shouted over her high side wall at us. She couldn’t see us but she knew who we were.

– I know who you are.

Mister Quigley was dead and Missis Quigley wasn’t that old, so she must have done something to him; that was what everyone thought. We decided that she’d ground up a wine glass and put the powder in his omelette – I’d seen that in Hitchcock Presents and it made a lot of sense. Kevin told his da about it and his da said that she’d just bored Mister Quigley to death, but we stuck to our version; it was better. That didn’t make us scared of her, though. She hated it when we sat on her wall. She knocked on her window to make us go, not always from the same window, sometimes upstairs, sometimes downstairs.

– That’s just to let us think she isn’t in the front room looking out all the time.

We weren’t scared of her.

– She can’t make us eat anything.

That was the only way she could get us, by poisoning us. She didn’t know any other way. She wasn’t small and wrinkly enough to be frightening. She was bigger than my ma. Big women – not big, fat ones – big women were normal. Little ones were dangerous; little women and big men.

She had no children.

– She ate them.

– No, she didn’t!

That was going too far.

Kevin’s brother knew why.

– Mister Quigley couldn’t get his mickey to go hard.

We never went over the wall. I told my parents this when Missis Quigley complained to them about me. She’d never done anything before. They did their usual, made me stay in my bedroom till they were good and ready to deal with me. I hated it; it worked. They made me stay in there for hours. I had all my stuff in the room with me, my books and my cars and stuff, but I couldn’t concentrate on the sentences in the books and it was stupid to be playing with my Dinkies when I was about to be hammered by my da – it was Saturday. I didn’t want to be on the floor playing when he came in; I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. I wanted to look right. I wanted it to look like I’d already learnt my lesson. It was getting dark but I didn’t go near the light switch. It was too near the door. I sat on the bed in the corner made by the walls. I shivered. I let my teeth chatter. My jaws went sore.

– Explain yourself.

It was a terrible question, a trap; everything I’d say was wrong.

– Explain yourself I said.

– I didn’t do any -

– I’ll decide that, said my da. -Go on.

– I didn’t do anything.

– You must have.

– I didn’t, I said.

There was a gap. He stared at my left eye, then my right one.

– I didn’t, I said. -Honest.

– Then why did Missis Quigley come all the way down here -

It was only five doors.

– to complain about you?

– I don’t know; it wasn’t me.

– What wasn’t you?

– What she said.

– What did she say?

– I don’t know. I didn’t do anything, I swear, Dad. Dad. Cross my heart and hope to die. Look.

I crossed my heart. I did it all the time; nothing ever happened and I was usually lying.

I wasn’t lying this time, though. I hadn’t done anything. It was Kevin who broke her window.

– She must have had a reason, said my da.

Things were going well. He wasn’t in the right mood, when he wanted to hit me. He was being fair.

– She prob’ly thinks I did something, I said.

– But you didn’t.

– Yeah.

– You say.

– Yeah.

– Say Yes.

– Yes.

That was the only thing my ma said. Say yes.

– I only -

I wasn’t sure if this was right – wise – but it was too late to stop; I could tell from his face. My ma sat up when I started speaking and looked at my da. I thought about changing, and telling him about Missis Quigley poisoning Mister Quigley, but I didn’t. My da wasn’t like that; he didn’t believe things.

– I only sat on the wall, I said.

He could have hit me then. He spoke.

– Well, don’t sit on her wall. Again. Okay?

– Yeah.

– Yes, said my ma.

– Yes.

Nothing else; that was it. He looked around for something to do, to get away. He plugged in the record player. His back was turned; I could go. An innocent man. Wrongly convicted. Trained birds while I was in jail and became an expert on them.

Liam’s howling stuck us to the grass; we couldn’t move. I couldn’t touch him or run away. The howl went into me; I was part of it. I was helpless. I couldn’t even fall.

He was dying.

He had to be.

Somebody had to come.

The hedge he fell out of wasn’t Missis Quigley’s. It had nothing to do with Missis Quigley. It was the only really big hedge on our road. Liam and Aidan’s was bigger and branchier but they didn’t live on our road; they lived off it. This one grew quicker than the others, and it had smaller leaves that weren’t as shiny or as green as normal. The leaves were nearly not green at all; the backs of them were grey. Most of the hedges weren’t that big; the houses weren’t old enough. Only this hedge; it was the last jump, we kept it till last.

The hedge was in the Hanleys’ front garden. It was their hedge. It was Mister Hanley’s. He did everything in the garden. They had a pond in their back, but with nothing in it. There used to be goldfish but they froze to death.

– He just left them in there till they rotted.

I didn’t believe that.

– Floating.

I didn’t believe it. Mister Hanley was always in his garden, picking up things, bits of leaf, slugs – he picked them up with his hand; I saw him. His bare hands. He was always digging, leaning in near the wall. I saw a hand when I was going to the shops, Mister Hanley’s hand, on the wall, holding himself up as he dug; only his hand. I tried to get past before he stood up, but I couldn’t run – I could only walk fast. I wasn’t trying not to let him see me; I wasn’t scared of him; I just did it. He didn’t know I was doing it. I once saw him lying down in the front garden, on his back. His feet were in the flower bed. I waited to see if he was dead; then I was afraid someone was looking at me through the window. When I came back Mister Hanley was gone. He didn’t have a job.

– Why not?

– He’s retired, said my ma.

– Why is he?

That was why he had the best garden in Barrytown and that was why invading the Hanleys’ garden was the biggest dare of all. And that was why the Grand National ended there. Over the hedge, up, through the gate, the winner. Liam hadn’t been winning.

In a way, winning was easiest. The winner was the first out onto the path. Mister Hanley couldn’t get you there, or his sons, Billy and Laurence. It was the ones that came over the hedge last that were in the biggest danger. Mister Hanley just gave out and spits flew out of his mouth; there was always white stuff in the corners. A lot of old people had mouths like that. Billy Hanley and especially Laurence Hanley killed you if they got you.

– It’s about time those two slobs went and got married or something.

– Who’d have them?

Laurence Hanley was fat but he was fast. He grabbed us by the hair. He was the only person I knew who did that. It was weird, a man grabbing people by the hair. He did it because he was fat and he couldn’t fight properly. He was evil as well. His fingers were stiff and like daggers, much worse than a punch. Four stabs on the side of your chest, while he was holding you up straight with your hair.

– Get out of our garden.

One more for good measure, then he let go.

– Now – stay out!

Sometimes he kicked but he couldn’t get his leg up far. He sweated through his trousers.

There were ten fences in the Grand National. All the walls of the front gardens were the same height, the exact same, but the hedges and the trees made them different. And the gardens between the fences, we had to charge across them; pushing was allowed in the gardens, but not pulling or tripping. It was mad; it was brilliant. We started in Ian McEvoy’s garden, a straight line for us. There was no handicapping; no one was allowed to start in front of the rest. No one would have wanted it anyway, because you needed a good run at the first wall and no one was going to stand in the next garden alone, waiting for the race to start. It was Byrne’s. Missis Byrne had a black lens in her glasses. Specky Three Eyes she was called, but that was the only funny thing about her.

It always took ages for the straight line to get really straight. There was always a bit of shoving; it was allowed, as long as the elbows didn’t go up too far, over the neck.

– They’re under starter’s orders -, said Aidan.

We crept forward. Anyone caught behind the group when the race started could never win and would probably be the one caught by Laurence Hanley.

– They’re off!

Aidan didn’t do any more commentating after that.

The first fence was easy. McEvoy’s wall into Byrne’s. There was no hedge. You just had to make sure that you had enough room to swing your legs. Some of us could swing right over without our legs touching the top of the wall – I could – but you needed loads of space for that. Across Byrne’s. Screaming and shouting. That was part of it. Trying to get the ones at the back caught. Off the grass, over the flower bed, across the path, over the wall – a hedge. Jump up on the wall, grip the hedge, stand up straight, jump over, down. Danger, danger. Murphy’s. Loads of flowers. Kick some of them. Around the car. Hedge before the wall. Foot on the bumper, jump. Land on the hedge, roll. Our house. Around the car, no hedge, over the wall. No more screaming; no breath for it. Neck itchy from the hedge. Two more big hedges.

Once, Mister McLoughlin had been cutting the grass when we all came over the hedge, and he nearly had a heart attack.

Up onto Hanley’s wall, hold the hedge. Legs straight; it was harder now, really tired. Jump the hedge, roll, up and out their gate.

Winner.

I looked over their heads.

– I MARRIED A WIFE – OH THEN – OH THEN -

I MARRIED A WIFE – OH THEN

My auntie and my uncle and my four cousins were looking at me. They were sitting on the couch, and two of the cousins on the floor.

– I MARRIED A WIFE -

SHE’S THE PLAGUE OF MY LIFE -

I liked singing. Sometimes I didn’t wait to be asked.

– OH I WISH I WAS SINGLE AGAIN-NNN -

We were in my auntie and uncle’s house, in Cabra, but I didn’t know where that was really. It was Sinbad’s Holy Communion. One of my cousins wanted to see his prayer book but Sinbad wouldn’t let go of it. I sang louder.

– I MARRIED ANOTHER – OH THEN – OH THEN -

My mother was getting ready to clap. Sinbad would get the money off my uncle; his hand was looking around in his pocket. I could see him. He straightened his leg so he could get his hand to the coins at the bottom.

My auntie had a hankie up her sleeve; I could see the bulge where it was. We had two more auntie’s and uncle’s houses to go to. Then we were going to the pictures.

– I MARRIED ANOTHER -

AND SHE’S WORSER THAN THE OTHER -

AND I WISH I WAS SINGLE AGAIN-NNN -

They all clapped. My uncle gave Sinbad two shillings, and we went.

When Indians died – Red ones – they went to the happy hunting ground. Vikings went to Valhalla when they died or they got killed. We went to heaven, unless we went to hell. You went to hell if you had a mortal sin on your soul when you died, even if you were on your way to confession when the lorry hit you. Before you got into heaven you usually had to go to Purgatory for a bit, to get rid of the sins on your soul, usually for a few million years. Purgatory was like hell but it didn’t go on forever.

– There’s a back door, lads.

It was about a million years for every venial sin, depending on the sin and if you’d done it before and promised that you wouldn’t do it again. Telling lies to your parents, cursing, taking the Lord’s name in vain – they were all a million years.

– Jesus.

– A million.

– Jesus.

– Two million.

– Jesus.

– Three million.

– Jesus.

Robbing stuff out of shops was worse; magazines were more serious than sweets. Four million years for Football Monthly, two million for Goal and Football Weekly. If you made a good confession right before you died you didn’t have to go to Purgatory at all; you went straight up to heaven.

– Even if the fella killed loads of people?

– Even.

It wasn’t fair.

– Ah, now; the same rules for everybody.

Heaven was supposed to be a great place but nobody knew much about it. There were many mansions.

– One each?

– Yes.

– Do you have to live by yourself?

Father Moloney didn’t answer quickly enough.

– Can your ma not live with you?

– She can, of course.

Father Moloney came into our class on the first Wednesday of every month. For a chat. We liked him. He was nice. He had a limp and a brother in a showband.

– What happens to her mansion, Father?

Father Moloney raised his hands to hold our questions back. He laughed a lot and we didn’t know why.

– In heaven, lads, he said, and waited. -In heaven you can live wherever and with whoever you like.

James O’Keefe was worried.

– Father, what if your ma doesn’t want to live with you?

Father Moloney roared laughing but it wasn’t funny, not really.

– Then you can go and live with her; it’s quite simple.

– What if she doesn’t want you to?

– She will want you to, said Father Moloney.

– She mightn’t, said James O’Keefe. -If you’re a messer.

– Ah there, you see, said Father Moloney. -There’s your answer. There are no messers in heaven.

The weather was always nice in heaven and it was all grass, and it was always day, never night. But that was all I knew about it. My Granda Clarke was up there.

– Are you sure? I asked my ma.

– Yes, she said.

– Positive?

– Yes.

– Is he out of Purgatory already?

– Yes. He didn’t have to go there because he made a good confession.

– He was lucky, wasn’t he?

– Yes.

I was glad.

My sister was up there as well, the one that died; Angela. She died before she came out of my ma but they’d had time to baptise her, she said; otherwise she’d have ended up in Limbo.

– Are you sure the water hit her before she died? I asked my ma.

– Yes.

– Positive.

– Yes.

I wondered how she managed, a not-even-an-hour-old baby, by herself.

– Granda Clarke looks after her, said my ma.

– Till you go up?

– Yes.

Limbo was for babies that hadn’t been baptised and pets. It was nice, like heaven, only God wasn’t there. Jesus visited there sometimes, and Mary his mother as well. They had a caravan there. Cats and dogs and babies and guinea pigs and goldfish. Animals that weren’t pets didn’t go anywhere. They just rotted and mixed in with the soil and made it better. They didn’t have souls. Pets did. There were no animals in heaven, only horses and zebras and small monkeys.

I was singing again. My da was teaching me a new one.

– I WENT DOWN TO THE RIVER

TO WATCH THE FISH SWIM BY-YY -

I didn’t like it.

– BUT I GOT TO THE RIVER -

SO LONESOME I WANTED TO DIE-EE-IE – OH LORD -

I couldn’t get the DIE-EE-IE bit properly; I couldn’t get my voice to go up and down the way Hank Williams on the record did.

I liked the next bit though.

– THEN I JUMPED INTO THE RIVER

BUT THE DOGGONE RIVER WAS DRY-YY

– Not bad, said my da.

It was Sunday, the afternoon, and he was bored. That was when he always taught me a new song. He came searching for me. The first time it had been Brian O’Linn. There was no record, just the words in a book called Irish Street Ballads. I followed Da’s finger and we sang the words together.

– BRIAN O’LINN – HIS WIFE AND WIFE’S MOTHER -

THEY ALL LAY DOWN IN THE BED TOGETHER -

THE SHEETS THEY WERE OLD AND THE BLANKETS WERE THIN -

LIE CLOSE TO THE WAW-ALL SAYS BRIAN O’LINN -

It was all like that, funny and easy. I sang it in school and Miss Watkins stopped me after the verse about Brian O’Linn going a-courting because she thought it was going to get dirtier. It didn’t but she didn’t believe me.

I sang the last verse in the yard during the little break at eleven o’clock.

– It’s not dirty, I warned them.

– Sing it anyway; go on.

– Okay, but -

– BRIAN O’LINN – HIS WIFE AND WIFE’S MOTHER -

They laughed.

– It’s not -

– Shut up and keep singing.

– WERE ALL GOING HOME O’ER THE BRIDGE TOGETHER-

THE BRIDGE IT BROKE DOWN AND THEY ALL TUMBLED IN -

WE’LL GO HOME BE THE WATER SAYS BRIAN O’LINN -

– That’s stupid, said Kevin.

– I know, I said. -I told you.

I didn’t think it was stupid at all.

Henno came over and broke us all up because he thought there was a fight. He grabbed me and said that he knew I was one of the ringleaders and he was keeping an eye on me and then he let me go. He didn’t have our class yet – that was the year after – so he didn’t know me.

– You mind yourself, sonny, he said.

– SHE’S A LONG-HONG GOH-HON -

I couldn’t do it; I didn’t even know what Hank Williams was singing.

Da hit me.

On the shoulder; I was looking at him, about to tell him that I didn’t want to sing this one; it was too hard. It was funny; I knew he was going to wallop me from the look on his face a few seconds before he did it. Then he looked as if he’d changed his mind, like he’d controlled himself, and then I heard the thump and felt it, as if he’d forgotten to tell his hand not to keep going towards me.

He hadn’t lifted the needle.

– A MAN NEEDS A WOMAN THAT HE CAN LEAN ON -

BUT MY LEANING POST IS DONE LE-HEFT AND GONE

I rubbed my shoulder through my jumper and shirt and vest; it was like it was expanding and shrinking, filling and shrinking. It wasn’t that sore.

I didn’t cry.

– Come on, said Da.

He lifted the needle this time, and we started again.

– I WENT DOWN TO THE RIVER

TO WATCH THE FISH SWIM BY-YY -

He put his hand on my shoulder, the other one. I wanted to squirm it away but after a while I didn’t mind.

The record player was a red box. He’d carried it home from work one day. You could pile six records in it, over the turntable. We only had three; The Black and White Minstrels, South Pacific and Hank Williams The King of Country Music. When he brought the record player home we only had one, South Pacific. He played it all Friday night and all the weekend. He tried to make me learn I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair but my ma stopped him. She said if I ever sang that in school or outside they’d have to sell the house and move somewhere else.

It played 33s and 45s and 78s. 33s were L.P.s like the three we had. Kevin smuggled his brother’s record, I’m A Believer by The Monkees, out of his house. It was a 45. But my da wouldn’t let us play it. He said there was a scratch on it; he didn’t even look at it. He wasn’t even using the record player. It was his. It was in the same room as the television. When he was playing it the television stayed off. He once put on the Black and White Minstrels at the same time they were on the television and he turned the television sound down but it didn’t work. The singer’s mouth, the black fella that sang the serious songs, was opening and shutting when the record was over and the needle was about to go up, but it didn’t. It kept going over the scratch. Da had to lift it.

– Were you messing with this? he said to me.

– No.

– You then; were you?

– No, said Sinbad.

– Somebody was, he said.

– They didn’t touch it, said my ma.

My face burned when I was waiting for something else to happen, for him to say something back to her.

Once, he put on Hank Williams during The News. It was brilliant; it was like Charles Mitchell was singing NOW YOU’RE LOOKING AT A MAN THAT’S GETTING KIND O’ MAD, I’VE HAD A LOT O’ LUCK BUT IT’S ALL BEEN BAD. We all roared. Me and Sinbad were let stay up half an hour later.

When we got the car, a Cortina like Henno’s, a black one, Da drove it up and down the road, learning how to drive it, teaching himself. He wouldn’t let us into it.

– Not yet, he said.

He went up to the seafront. We followed him; we could keep up with him. He couldn’t turn it to go back down to the house. He saw us looking and called us over. I thought he was going to kill us. There were seven of us. We all baled in the back and we reversed all the way back to the house. Da sang the Batman music; he was mad sometimes, brilliant mad. Aidan had a bleeding nose when we got out. He was whinging. Da got down on his knees and held Aidan’s shoulders. He wiped his nose with his hankie and got him to blow into it, and told him he’d have great crack picking the dried blood out of his nose when he went to bed later and Aidan started laughing.

They all went down to the field behind the shops to find the big boys’ hut and wreck it but I didn’t go; I wanted to stay with Da. I sat beside him up and down the road. We went to Raheny. When he was turning he went right over the road and brushed the ditch.

– Stupid place to put a ditch, he said.

A fella honked at him.

– Bloody eejit, said my da, and he honked back when the fella was gone.

We came back to Barrytown along the main road and Da put the foot down. We rolled down our windows. I stuck my elbow out but he wouldn’t let me. He parked outside on the verge two gates down from our house.

– That’ll do us, he said.

Sinbad was in the back.

We went on a picnic the next day. It was raining but we went anyway; me and Sinbad in the back, my ma beside my da with Catherine on her knee. Deirdre wasn’t born yet then. My ma’s belly was all round, filling up with her. We went to Dollymount.

– Why not the mountains? I wanted to know.

– Stay quiet, Patrick, said my ma.

Da was getting ready to go from Barrytown Road onto the main road. We could have walked to Dollymount. We could see the island from where we were in the car. Da made it across and right. The Cortina jerked a bit and made a noise like when you pressed your lips together and blew. And something scraped when we went right in to the kerb.

– What’s that sound from?

– Shhh, said Ma.

She wasn’t enjoying herself; I could tell. She needed a decent day out.

– There’s the mountains, I said.

I got between her seat and his seat and pointed out the mountains to them, across the bay, not that far.

– Look.

– Sit down!

Sinbad was on the floor.

– There’s forests there.

– Stay quiet, Patrick.

– Sit down, you bloody eejit.

Dollymount was only a mile away. Maybe a bit more, but not much. You had to cross over to the island on a wooden bridge; the rest was boring.

– The toilet, said Sinbad.

– Jesus Christ!

– Pat, my ma said to my da.

– If we go to the mountains, I said, -he can go behind one of the trees.

– I’ll swing you from one of the trees if you don’t sit down out of my light!

– Your father’s nervous -

– I’m not!

He was.

– I just want a bit of peace.

– The mountains are very peaceful.

Sinbad said that. The two of them laughed, Ma and Da in the front, especially Da.

We got there, Dollymount, but he had to drive past the bridge twice before he could slow down enough to turn onto it and not miss it and drive through the sea wall. It was still raining. He parked the car facing the sea. The tide was way out so we couldn’t see it. Anyway, with the engine off the wipers weren’t working. The best thing about it was the noise of the rain on the roof. Ma had an idea; we could go home and have the picnic there.

– No, said Da.

He held the wheel.

– We’re here now, he said, -so -

He tapped the wheel.

Ma got the straw bag up from between her feet and dished out the picnic.

– Don’t get crumbs and muck all over the place, Da said.

He was talking to me and Sinbad.

We had to eat the sandwiches; there was no place to hide them. They were nice; egg. They’d gone real flat; there were no holes left in the bread. We had a can of Fanta between us, me and Sinbad. Ma wouldn’t let us open it. She had the opener. She hooked it under the rim of the can and pressed once for the triangular hole for drinking out of and again, for the hole on the other side for the air to go into. After a few slugs each I could feel little bits of food in the Fanta; I could feel them when I was swallowing. The Fanta was warm.

Ma and Da said nothing. They had a flask with tea in it. There was the cup off the top of the flask and a real cup that Ma had wrapped in toilet paper. She held out the cups for Da to hold so she could pour but he didn’t take them off her. He was looking straight in front of him at the rain milling down the windscreen. She didn’t say anything. She put one cup down and filled it, over Catherine’s head. She held it out; Da took it. It was the big cup, the one off the flask. He sipped it, then he said Thanks, like he didn’t mean it.

– Can we get out?

– No.

– Why not?

– No.

– It’s too wet, said Ma. -You’d catch your death out in that.

Sinbad put his hand under his arm and slammed his arm shut. It made a fart noise. Margaret, Mister O’Connell’s girlfriend, had taught us how to do it. Sinbad did it again.

– Once more -, said Da.

He didn’t turn around.

– See what happens.

Sinbad put his hand under his arm again. I held his arm up so he couldn’t slam it; I’d get the blame. He smiled at me trying to stop him. He never used to smile at all. Even when Da was taking photographs of us, Sinbad wouldn’t smile. We had to stand side by side in front of our ma – it was always the same – and Da would walk away and turn around and look at us through the camera – it was one of those box ones; my ma bought it with her first wages before she got married, before she met my da – and he’d tell us to move a bit and then he’d take ages looking down into the camera and then up at us, and then he’d notice that Sinbad wasn’t smiling.

– Smile now, he’d say, to all of us first.

Smiling was easy.

– Francis, he’d say, sounding ordinary.

– Head up; come on.

Ma would put her hand on Sinbad’s shoulder and still try to hold one of the babies.

– God damn it; the sun’s gone behind a cloud.

But Sinbad kept his head down. And Da lost his temper. All the photographs were the same, me and Ma smiling like mad and Sinbad looking down at the ground. We held the smile for so long, they weren’t really smiles any more. When Ma swapped so Da could be in the photograph Da looked like he was really smiling and Sinbad’s face disappeared completely he was looking down so much.

There were no photographs this day.

Ma had the biscuits wrapped in tinfoil for each of us. That way we didn’t have to share and there were no fights. I could tell from the shape of the foil what biscuits were inside; four Mariettas, two together like a sandwich with butter in the middle, and the square shape at the bottom was a Polo. I’d keep the Polo till last.

Ma said something to Da. I didn’t hear it. I could tell by the look on the side of her face, she was waiting for him to answer. But it was more than that, her face.

You got the Mariettas and you squeezed them together and the butter came out the holes. We called them botty bickies sometimes, because of the way the butter came out, but Ma wouldn’t let us call them that.

I took the Fanta off Sinbad. He let me. It was empty, and it shouldn’t have been.

I looked at Ma again. She was still looking at Da. Catherine had one of Ma’s fingers in her mouth and she was biting real hard – she had a few teeth – but Ma didn’t do anything about it.

Sinbad was eating his biscuits the way he always did, and I did as well. He was nibbling all around the edge till he went all the way round and the Mariettas were the same shape again, only smaller. He licked where the butter had come out of the holes. When he got to the end of his first lap he stopped. I grabbed the hand the biscuit sandwich was in and I squashed his hand in my hands and made him smash the biscuits into crumbs that were too small to rescue. That was for drinking all the Fanta.

Ma was getting out of the car. It was awkward because of Catherine. I thought we were all getting out, that it had stopped raining.

But it hadn’t. It was lashing.

Something had happened; something.

Ma left the door open; it closed back a bit but it was still open. Me and Sinbad waited for Da to move, to see what we were supposed to do. He leaned over and grabbed the passenger door handle and pulled the door shut. He grunted when he was straightening up.

Sinbad was licking his hand.

– Where’s Ma gone to? I asked.

Da sighed, and turned a bit so I could see some of the side of his face. Then he didn’t say anything. He was looking in the windshield mirror at us. I couldn’t see his eyes. Sinbad had his head down, the way he used to. I rubbed the wet off the inside of the window beside me. I hadn’t been going to touch it until we got home. I couldn’t see anything, miles of the sand but not Ma. I was on the wrong side, behind Da.

– Has she gone for 99s?

I rubbed the window again.

The door clicked open. Ma got in, ducking her head, making sure that Catherine wasn’t bashed against anything. Her hair was stuck down on her. She didn’t have anything; she hadn’t got us anything.

– It was too wet for Cathy, she said after a while, to Da.

He started the car.

– You’re getting very tall, she said.

She was trying to get the zip of my trousers to close.

– You’ll soon be the same size as your daddy.

I wanted that, to be the same size as my da. My name was the same as his one. I’d waited till he’d gone to work before I’d shown her that the zip wouldn’t shut properly. He’d have shut it. I hoped she wouldn’t be able to do it. I hated the trousers. They were yellow corduroy. One of my cousins had owned them first. They’d never been mine.

She hitched them up. She tried to hold the two sides together so the zip would go up. I didn’t cheat. I even sucked in my belly.

– No, she said. -No use.

She let go of the trousers.

– They’re finished, she said. -You’re growing too fast, Patrick.

She didn’t mean it.

– We’ll have to use a safety pin, she said.

She saw my face.

– Just for today.

They were checking the B.C.G., that was what everyone said. Henno hadn’t told us anything. He’d just said that we were to queue up and the first two in the queue were always to have their jumpers and shirts and vests off ready when the door opened or there’d be trouble. Only two had gone in and they hadn’t come back out yet. He was supposed to be looking after us but he wasn’t. He’d gone off, upstairs to the teachers’ room for a cup of tea.

– I’ll hear any noise, he said. -Don’t worry.

He stamped his foot on the wooden floor. The noise bounced down the corridor. It took ages to die.

– There, he said. -Whispering is impossible in this school. I’ll hear every little thing.

Then he went.

We heard him at the top of the stairs. He’d stopped.

Ian McEvoy made sure that the wall was guarding him, then he stamped his foot the way Henno had. The laughing was great, waiting to hear Henno coming back down. He didn’t. We all stamped our feet. It must have been his shoes though; we couldn’t get the same noise. But that was all we did; we didn’t shout or mess.

They were checking the B.C.G. marks.

What’ll they do if you don’t have all of them?

You were supposed to have three of them.

– They’ll give you more.

There was a triangle of them up on your left arm. The skin was funny in the little circles.

– It means you have polio.

– It does not!

– It means you can get polio.

– You don’t have to have it.

David Geraghty, the fella in our class with polio, was in the queue behind us.

– Hey Geraghty, I said. -Did you get your B.C.G.?

– Yeah, he said.

– Then how did you get your polio? Fluke Cassidy asked him.

The queue broke a bit and crowded around David Geraghty.

– I don’t know, he said. -I don’t remember.

– Were you born with it?

David Geraghty looked like he was going to start crying. The queue straightened up again; we all tried to get as far away from him as we could. The first two still hadn’t come out.

– You can get polio from drinking water from out of the toilet.

The door opened. The two fellas came out. Brian Sheridan and James O’Keefe. They were dressed again. They didn’t look pale or scared or anything. There were no tear tracks. The two other fellas went in.

– What did they do to yeh?

– Nothing.

They didn’t know what they were to do now. They couldn’t go back to the classroom because there was no one there and Henno would kill them if they went in on their own. I took my jumper off and dropped it on the floor.

– What did they do?

– Nothing, said Brian Sheridan. -They just looked.

He looked different now. His face had gone stiff. He was messing with his shoe. I stopped taking my shirt off. Kevin grabbed Brian Sheridan.

– Lay off!

– What did they do? Tell us!

– They looked at me.

His face was real red now and he wasn’t really trying to get away from Kevin; he was trying not to let Kevin or the rest of us see his face properly. He’d start crying, for definite.

The other fella, James O’Keefe, wasn’t blushing.

– They looked at our mickeys, he said.

I could hear the rubber knobs on the bottom of David Geraghty’s crutches squeaking on the floor. James O’Keefe looked right down the queue. He knew he had power. He knew it wouldn’t last long. I was freezing. James O’Keefe’s face was dead serious. He had us.

– Let go o’ me!

Kevin let go of Brian Sheridan.

– Why?

James O’Keefe didn’t answer that one. It wasn’t good enough.

– Why did they?

– Just look?

– Yeah, said James O’Keefe. -She bent down and only had a look. Me. She touched his.

– She didn’t! said Brian Sheridan. -She didn’t.

He was nearly crying again.

– She did so, said James O’Keefe. -You’re a liar, Sherro.

– She didn’t.

– She used an ice-pop stick, said James O’Keefe.

We were all shouting now. To get James O’Keefe to hurry up.

– Not her fingers!

Brian Sheridan yelled it. It was important; his face told us that.

– Not her fingers! Not her hand.

He calmed down after that but his face was still red and very white. Kevin grabbed James O’Keefe. I got my jumper round his neck to choke him. We had to know what she did with the ice-pop stick. We were nearly next.

– Tell us!

I choked James O’Keefe a bit.

– O’Keefe, tell us! Go on.

I loosened the jumper. There was a burn mark on his neck. We weren’t messing.

– She lifted his mickey up with an ice-pop stick.

He turned to me.

– I’m going to get you, he said.

He didn’t say it to Kevin, only to me.

– Why? said Ian McEvoy.

– To see the back of it, said James O’Keefe.

– Why?

– Don’t know.

– To make sure it was normal, maybe.

– Is it? I asked Brian Sheridan.

– Yeah!

– Prove it.

The door opened. The two others came out.

– Did she touch yeh with the ice-pop stick? Did she?

– No. She only looked. Didn’t she?

– Yeah.

– How come you? Kevin asked Brian Sheridan.

Brian Sheridan was crying again.

– She only looked, he said.

We left him alone. I took my shirt off, and my vest. We were next. Then I wondered.

– Why are we to take our stuff off?

James O’Keefe answered.

– They do other things as well.

– What other things?

The two in front of us were very slow. The nurse had to put her hands on their elbows to get them into the room. She closed the door.

– Is that the one? I asked James O’Keefe.

– Yeah, he said.

She was the one with the ice-pop stick. The one down on her knees staring at our mickeys. She didn’t look that way. She looked nice. She’d been smiling when she grabbed the two in front of us. Her hair was up in a big bun with some down the side between her eyes and her ears. She wasn’t wearing a cap. She was young.

– Dirty wagon, said David Geraghty.

We broke ourselves laughing, because it was funny and because David Geraghty had said it.

– Does your mickey have polio? Kevin asked him.

Kevin didn’t get what he’d expected.

– Yeah, said David Geraghty. -She won’t touch it.

Then we remembered.

– What other things?

Brian Sheridan told us. The blotches were gone off his face. He looked normal.

– He listens to your back with a stethoscope, he said. -And your front.

– It’s freezing, said James O’Keefe.

– Yeah, said Brian Sheridan.

– Yeah, said one of the others that had just come out. -It’s the worst bit.

– Did he check your B.C.G.?

– Yeah.

– Told yeh.

I checked mine again. All the marks were there, the three of them. They were very clear, like the top of a coconut. I looked at Kevin’s. His were there as well.

– Any needles? someone asked.

– No, said Brian Sheridan.

– Not us anyway, said James O’Keefe. -Maybe some of youse.

– Shut up, O’Keefe.

David Geraghty spoke again.

– Did they do anything with your bum?

The laughs exploded. I laughed louder than I had to. We all did. We were scared and we’d made David Geraghty nearly cry. It was the first time David Geraghty had been funny out loud, in front of everybody. I liked him.

The two came out. They were smiling. The door was open for us. It was our turn, me and Kevin. I went first. I had to. I was pushed.

– Ask her for a choc-ice, said David Geraghty.

I laughed later. Not then though.

She was waiting. I stopped looking when she looked at me. -Trousers and underpants, lads, she said.

I only remembered the safety pin on the top of my zip, only now. My ma had put it there. My face burned. I turned a bit, away from Kevin. I got it into my pocket. I turned back and I whistled to get rid of the heat in my face. Kevin’s underpants were dirty. Down the middle, a straight brown line that got lighter on the outside. I didn’t look at my own. I just let them fall. I didn’t look anywhere. Not down. Not at Kevin. Not at the doctor at the desk. I waited. I waited for the feel of the stick. She was in front of me. I could tell. I didn’t look. I couldn’t feel my mickey there. There was no feeling there at all. When the ice-pop stick went under I’d scream. And dirty myself. She was still there. Bent down looking at it. Staring. Maybe rubbing her chin. Making her mind up. There was a cobweb in the corner over the doctor, a big dry one. There was a thread of it swinging. There was a breeze up there. She was making her mind up. If it was bad enough to lift to see the other side. If I didn’t look she wouldn’t do it. I was looking for the spider. If she did it I’d be finished forever. The most amazing thing about spiders was the way they made their webs. I’d never be normal again -

– Righto, she said. -Off you go, over to Doctor McKenna.

No touch. No stick. I nearly forgot to pull up my underpants and trousers. I took the first step. I pulled them up. Between my bum was wet. It didn’t matter now. No stick. Three B.C.G. marks.

– Did she touch yours? Kevin asked me.

At the door, going out. He whispered.

– No, I said.

It felt brilliant.

– Me neither, he said.

I didn’t tell him about his underpants.

Under the table was a fort. With the six chairs tucked under it there was still plenty of room; it was better that way, more secret. I’d sit in there for hours. This was the good table in the living room, the one that never got used, except at Christmas. I didn’t have to bend my head. The roof of the table was just above me. I liked it like that. It made me concentrate on the floor and feet. I saw things. Balls of fluff, held together and made round by hair, floated on the lino. The lino had tiny cracks that got bigger if you pressed them. The sun was full of dust, huge chunks of it. It made me want to stop breathing. But I loved watching it. It swayed like snow. When my da was standing up he stood perfectly still. His feet clung to the ground. They only moved when he was going somewhere. My ma’s feet were different. They didn’t settle. They couldn’t make their minds up. I fell asleep in there; I used to. It was always cool in there, never cold, and warm when I wanted it to be. The lino was nice on my face. The air wasn’t alive like outside, beyond the table; it was safe. It had a smell I liked. My da’s socks had diamonds on them. I woke up once and there was a blanket on top of me. I wanted to stay there forever. I was near the window. I could hear the birds outside. My da’s legs were crossed. He was humming. The smell from the kitchen was lovely; I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t need it. Stew. It was Thursday. It must have been. My ma was humming as well. The same song as my da. It wasn’t a proper song, just a hum with a few notes in it. It didn’t sound like they knew they were humming the same thing. The notes had just crept into one of their heads, my da’s probably. My ma did most of the humming. I stretched till my foot pushed a chair leg, and curled up again. The blanket had sand in it, from a picnic.

That was before my mother had Cathy and Deirdre. Sinbad couldn’t walk then; I remembered. He slid along the lino on his bum. I couldn’t do it any more. I could get under the table but my head pressed the top when I sat straight and I couldn’t sit still; it hurt, my legs ached. I was afraid I’d be caught. I tried it a few times but it was stupid.

Most of us could stand up straight in the pipe. Only Liam and Ian McEvoy had to bend a bit so they wouldn’t bash their heads. They thought they were great because of it. Liam knocked his head off the top of the pipe on purpose. We got down into the trench; it was real deep, like in a war. The men that were digging it – we waited till they’d gone home – had wooden ladders to get in and out. They locked them in their hut. We used planks. We lowered the plank into the trench and ran down along it. It was better than a ladder. You ran into the far wall of the trench and shouldered it and got away fast before the next fella came down the plank.

The trench was right outside our gate for a while, for a week about; it seemed like ages because it was coming up to Easter and the days were getting longer and the workmen still stopped at half-five even though there was loads of bright left. It was a huge water pipe, to bring water to all the new estates being built along the road as far as Santry and for all the factories as well, or to bring dirty water away from the houses and factories; we weren’t sure which.

– It’s for sewerage, said Liam.

– What’s sewerage?

– Gick, I said.

I knew what the word meant. Our drain was blocked once and my da had to open the square manhole below the toilet window and climb into it and prod at the pipe down there with a coat hanger. I asked him what the manhole was for, and the pipes, and he said Sewerage when he was telling me, before he roared at me to go away.

– He’d love you to help him, said my ma.

I was still crying but I had it under control.

– It’s dirty, Patrick.

– He-he’s standing in it, I said.

– He has to. To fix it.

– He shouted at me.

– It’s dirty work. Messy.

Later, Da let me put the cover back on the manhole. The smell was terrible. He made me laugh. He pretended he’d dirtied his trousers and that that was the smell.

– Toilet paper as well, I said.

We were standing in the trench. Liam’s wellington was caught in the muck. His foot had come out. Sinbad was up at the side of the trench. He wouldn’t come down.

– And hair, I said.

– Hair isn’t sewerage, said Kevin.

– It is so, I said. -It gets stuck in the pipes.

My da blamed my ma because her hair was the longest. A big ball of it had blocked the pipe.

– My hair isn’t falling out, she said.

– And mine is, is that what you mean?

She smiled.

The pipes were cement. There were pyramids of them at the top of the road for ages before they started digging the trenches. Our part of Barrytown Road, where the houses were, was straight but all the rest of it, after the houses, was windy and crooked, with hedges high enough to stop you from seeing the fields. The county council had stopped trimming the hedges because they were going to be dug up. So the road was getting narrower. The pipes were going to join in a straight line and the new road over them was going to be straight as well. We’d gone down the pipe, a bit further every evening after the men had gone home. It was outside the shops the first time, then outside McEvoys’, outside our house, further down the road every day. The ripped-up hedges lying on their sides looked the same as they did when they were upright; they were wide and full. My mother thought that they were going to put them back.

Running through the pipe was the most frightening brilliant thing I’d ever done. I was the first to do it for a dare, run all the way down, from outside my house down to the seafront, in the pitch black after a few steps. The dark was only broken once all the way by an open manhole over a cement platform built into the pipe; the rest of the way was back to dark, total black. You judged by the sound of your breath and feet – you could tell when you were swerving up the side of the pipe – until the dot of light at the end that got bigger and brighter, out the end of the pipe, roaring into the light, hands up, the winner.

You ran as fast as you could, faster than you normally could, but the others were always there at the end waiting.

Kevin didn’t come out.

We laughed.

– Keva – Keva – Keva – Keva -

Liam did the gang whistle; he was the best at it. I wasn’t able to do it. When I put the four fingers in my mouth there was no room for my tongue. The back of my throat went dry and I nearly got sick.

Kevin was still in there. We began to drop the muck we’d been going to belt at him; Kevin was in there with the blood pumping out of him. I jumped into the trench. The muck was hard and dry at this end.

– Come on! I yelled up at the rest.

I knew they wouldn’t follow me; that was why I’d said it. I was going to rescue Kevin alone; it was great. I went into the pipe. I looked back, like an astronaut getting into his spaceship. I didn’t wave. The others were beginning to climb into the trench. They’d never follow me in, not until it was too late.

I saw Kevin immediately. I couldn’t see him from the entrance, but now I could. He wasn’t far in. He was sitting down. He stood up. I didn’t shout back that I’d found him, or anything. This was me and Kevin together. The two of us went deeper into the pipe so the others wouldn’t see us. I wasn’t disappointed that Kevin wasn’t injured. This was better.

I didn’t like the idea of sitting down in the absolute dark but I did it, the two of us. We made sure we were touching, right beside each other. I could see Kevin’s shape, his head moving. I could see him stretching his legs. I was happy. I could have gone asleep. I was afraid to whisper, to ruin it. We could hear the others shouting, miles away. I knew what we’d do. We’d wait here till the shouting stopped, then we’d come out of the pipe before they told our parents or grownups. They knew we weren’t hurt or anything; they’d do it to get us into trouble, pretending they were saving us.

I wanted to talk now. It was cold. It was darker even though my eyes were comfortable.

Kevin let off a fart. We beat the air with our hands. He tried to get my mouth, to cover it, to stop me from laughing. He was laughing. We were fighting now, just shoving, trying to stop one another from shoving back. We’d be caught soon; the others would hear us and come in. These were the last moments. Me and Kevin.

Next thing, he pruned me.

Pruning was banned in our school. The headmaster, Mister Finnucane, had seen James O’Keefe doing it to Albert Genocci when he was looking out his window at the weather, deciding whether to call us in or let us stay out. He’d been shocked, he said, when he went round to all the classes about it; he’d been shocked to see a boy doing that to another boy. He was sure that the boy who had done it hadn’t meant to seriously hurt the other boy; he certainly hoped that the boy hadn’t meant to hurt the other boy. But -

He let it hang there for a while.

This was great. James O’Keefe was in bigger trouble than he’d ever been in before, than any of us had ever been in. He had James O’Keefe standing up. He kept his head down even though Mister Finnucane kept telling him to hold his head up.

– Always hold your heads high, boys. You’re men.

I didn’t know for certain if I’d heard it when he said it the first time; Pruning.

– what I believe is being called pruning.

That was how he said it. It was like a big hole fell open in front of me – in front of all of us, I could tell from the faces – when Mister Finnucane said that. What else was he going to say? The last time he’d talked to us it was about someone robbing his big ink bottle from where he kept it outside his door. Now he was going to talk about pruning. The shock made me forget to breathe.

– Come on, James, now, he said. -Hold your head up, like I said.

Albert Genocci wasn’t in our class. He was in the thicks’ class. His brother, Patrick Genocci, was in our class.

– I know you’re only playing when you do it, said Mister Finnucane.

Henno was standing behind him. He was blushing as well. He’d been out in the yard looking after us; he should have seen what was happening. There was no escape; James O’Keefe was dead.

– only having a bit of fun. But it’s not funny. Not funny at all. Doing what I saw being done this morning could cause serious injury.

Ah; was that all?

– That part of the body is very delicate.

We knew that.

– You could ruin a boy’s life for the rest of his – life. All for a joke.

The big hole in front of us was filling up. He wasn’t going to say anything wrong or funny. He wasn’t going to say Balls or Mickey or Testicles. It was disappointing, only it had stopped another history test – the life of the Fianna – and now he was going to kill James O’Keefe.

– Sit down, James.

I couldn’t believe it. Neither could James O’Keefe or anybody.

– Sit down.

James O’Keefe got half-way between sitting down and standing up. It was a trick; it had to be.

– I don’t want to see it happening again, said Mister Finnucane.

That was all.

Henno’d get him when Mister Finnucane was gone. But he didn’t. We went straight back to the test.

There was no proper road outside our house for months, up as far as the summer holidays. Da had to park the car down at the shops. Missis Kilmartin, the woman from the shop who spied on the shoplifters, knocked at our door: there was no room for the H.B. man in his lorry to make his delivery because of Da’s car and Kevin’s da’s car and three others. Missis Kilmartin was angry. It was the first time I’d ever really seen an angry woman. It wasn’t a bloody car-park, she said; she paid her rates. She was squinting. That was because she was never out in the daylight; she was always behind the one-way glass door. Ma was stuck; Da was at work – he went in the train – and she couldn’t drive. Missis Kilmartin put her hand out.

– The keys.

– I don’t have them. I -

– For Christ’s sake!

She slammed the gate. She grabbed it so she could slam it.

When I’d opened the door she’d said, -Your mother.

I’d thought I was in for it. I’d been framed. She’d seen me buying something and she thought I was robbing it. The way I’d picked it up, it had looked like I was going to rob it.

I never robbed from that shop.

You only went to jail if you robbed more than ten shillings worth of stuff, at one time. People my age and Kevin’s didn’t go to jail when they were caught. They were sent to a home. You went to Artane if you were caught twice. They shaved your head there.

We had to stop running through the pipe; it was too far. It had gone up past my house, out of Barrytown. We took over the manholes. They stuck out of the ground, like small buildings. They’d become level with the ground when they were surrounded by cement; they’d become just parts of the path. We got Aidan and shoved him down the hole. He had to stay down there on the platform and we lobbed muck in. He could hide because the platform down there was much wider than the hole. If we lobbed the muck low it went through the hole at an angle and hit the platform walls and maybe Aidan. We surrounded him. If it had been me I’d have got down to the pipe and charged down to the next hole and climbed out before the others found out what I was doing. And I’d have pelted them and have used stones as well. Aidan was crying. We looked at Liam because he was his brother. Liam kept throwing the muck into the hole so, so did we.

The new road was straight now, all the way. The edges of Donnelly’s fields were chopped off and you could see all the farm because the hedges were gone; it was like Catherine’s dolls’ house with the door opened. You could see all the being-built houses on the other side of the fields. The farm was being surrounded. The cows were gone, to the new farm. Big lorries took them. The smell was a laugh. One of the cows skidded on the ramp getting up into the lorry. Donnelly hit it with his stick. Uncle Eddie was behind him. He had a stick as well. He hit the cow when Donnelly did. We could see the cows all packed in the lorries, trying to get their noses out between the bars.

Uncle Eddie went in one of the lorries beside the driver. He had his elbow sticking out the window. We waved at him, and cheered when the lorry full of cows went through the knocked-down gates of the farmhouse and turned left onto the new road. It was like Uncle Eddie was going away.

I saw him later, running down to the shops before they shut to get the Evening Press for Donnelly.

The old railway bridge wasn’t big enough any more for the road to get under it. They built a new one, made of huge slabs of concrete, right beside the old one. The road dipped down under the bridge so that big traffic, lorries and buses, could get under it. They cut away the land beside the road so the road could go further down. More concrete slabs stopped the cut-away land from falling onto the road. They said that two men were killed doing this work but we never saw anything. They were killed when some of Donnelly’s field fell on them, after it had been raining and the ground was loose and soggy. They drowned in muck.

I had a dream sometimes that made me wake up. I was eating something. It was dry and gritty and I couldn’t get it wet. It hurt my teeth; I couldn’t close my mouth and I wanted to shout for help and I couldn’t. And I woke up and my mouth was all dry, from being open. I wondered had I been shouting; I hoped I hadn’t but I wanted my ma to come in and ask me was I alright and sit on the bed.

They didn’t blow up the old bridge. We thought they’d have to, but they didn’t.

– If they blew it up they’d blow up the new one as well, said Liam.

– No, they wouldn’t; that’s stupid.

– They would so.

– How would they?

– The explosion.

– They have different explosions for different things, Ian McEvoy told him.

– How do you know, Fatso?

That was Kevin. Ian McEvoy wasn’t all that fat. He just had little diddies, like a woman’s. He never swam now, after we’d seen him.

– I just do, said Ian McEvoy. -They’re able to control the explosion.

We weren’t interested any more.

The old bridge was gone. They just knocked it down; took away the rocks and rubble in lorries. I missed it. It had been a great place for hiding under and shouting. It only fitted one car at a time. Da kept his hand on the horn right through it. The new bridge whistled when it was windy, but that was all.

He let us look in the window, but no further. Only a few got into the house. He pushed the couch away from the window so we could see it properly, his Scalextric. Alan Baxter was the only one in Barrytown that had it. He was a Protestant, a proddy, and he was older than us. He was the same age as Kevin’s brother. He went to secondary school and he played cricket; he had a real bat and the yokes for your legs. When they played rounders, the bigger boys, behind the shops, when he played he kept taking his jumper off and putting it back on again but he wasn’t any better of a player than the others. When he was fielding he put his hands on his knees and bent forward. He was a sap. But he had Scalextric.

It wasn’t as good as the ads, a track the same shape as a train-set track – two tracks joined together like an eight – and the cars never went too far without jamming. But it was brilliant. The controls looked great and easy. The blue car was much better than the red one. Terence Long had the red one; Alan Baxter had the blue. Our breathing and handprints were messing up the window. Terence Long – he was six foot one and still only fourteen – kept having to straighten up the red car; when it started a corner it got stuck. A few times it beat the corner and kept going. But the blue one was way ahead. Kevin’s brother picked up the red one and looked under it but Alan Baxter made him put it back. They were the only ones in the living room, Alan Baxter, Terence Long and Kevin’s brother. The rest of us – we were all much younger – had to watch outside. The worst was when it was dark. It really felt outside then. Kevin got in once, because of his brother. But I didn’t. I was the oldest in my family; I had nobody to get me through the door. They didn’t let Kevin do anything. They just let him watch.

Kevin’s brother got into big trouble once. His name was Martin. He was five years older than us and what he did was, he went to the toilet down a bit of hosepipe through Missis Kilmartin’s car window and he got caught because Terence Long blabbed to his ma because he’d been the one holding the hose and he was afraid he’d get blamed for going to the toilet as well. Terence Long’s ma told Kevin and Martin’s ma.

– Terence Long Terence Long -

Has a mickey three foot long -

He tried to get Kevin’s brother and them to call him Terry or Ter but everybody still called him Terence, especially his ma.

– Terence Long Terence Long -

Wears no socks -

What a pong -

He wore sandals in the summer, big ones like priests’, and no socks. Kevin’s da killed Martin and he made him wash Missis Kilmartin’s car seat with everyone watching. He was crying. Missis Kilmartin didn’t come out. She sent Eric out with the car keys. He was her son and he was mental.

Martin smoked and he was leaving school after the Inter. He drank Coca-Cola with aspirins in it and got sick. He mitched all the time, all day down at the seafront even in the winter. He was an altar boy. But he got thrown out for painting white stripes on his black runners. He got Sinbad – him and Terence Long and even Alan Baxter – and they painted the other lens of his glasses black. They made him walk home wearing the glasses, right up to our house, with a stick they’d painted white. Ma did nothing about it; she sang to Sinbad while he was crying -

– I TOLD MY BROTHER SEAMUS

I’D GO OFF AND BE RIGHT FAMOUS -

– and when he was finished she went into the garage and got a bottle of spirits and started to clean his lens and she showed him how to do it. I said I’d help him but he wouldn’t let me. Da laughed; he was home late and Sinbad was in bed, but I wasn’t. He laughed. So did I. He said that Sinbad would be doing things like that when he was Kevin’s brother’s age. Then he got annoyed because the plate covering the plate that his dinner was on was stuck because the gravy had hardened to it in the cooker. Ma sent me to bed.

Martin wore longers in the summer. He always had his hands in his pockets. He had a comb. I thought he was brilliant. Kevin did too but he hated him as well.

He got Missis Kilmartin back. He gave Eric Kilmartin a box in the face and Eric couldn’t tell who’d done it cos he couldn’t talk properly; he could only make noises.

Martin and them built huts. We did too, from the stuff we got off the building sites – it was one of the first things we did when the summer was coming – but theirs were better, miles better than our ones. There was a field behind the newest of our type of houses – not the one behind the shops – and that was where most of the huts got built. It was full of hills like dunes, only made of muck instead of sand. It used to be part of a farm but that was years before. The wreck of the farmhouse was at the edge of the field. The walls weren’t bricks; they were made of light brown mud full of gravel and bigger stones. They were dead easy to demolish. I found a piece of cup in the nettles against the wall. I took it home and I washed it. I showed it to my da and he said it was probably worth a fortune but he wouldn’t buy it off me. He told me to put it in a safe place. It had flowers on it, two full ones and a half one. I lost it.

This field looked like they had started to get it ready for building on but they’d stopped. There was a wide trench, wider than a lane, down the middle and other trenches grown over. Some of the fields hadn’t been touched. Da said that the building had been stopped because they’d had to wait till the mains pipes were down and finished, with water in them.

I ran through the untouched part of the field – for no reason, just running – and the grass was great, up to way over my knees. I had to lift my legs out of it, like in water. It was the type of grass that could cut you sometimes. It had tops like wheat. I brought loads of it home to my ma once but she said you couldn’t make bread out of it. I said she could but she said you couldn’t, you just couldn’t, it was a pity. My feet made swoosh noises going through the grass and then there was another noise, one in front of me. And the grass moved. I stopped, and a long bird flew out of the grass. And stayed low, flew out in front of me. I could feel its wings beating. It was a pheasant. I turned back.

Kevin’s brother built his huts in the hills. They dug long holes; they got lends of their das’ spades. Terence Long had his own one; he got it for his birthday. They divided the hole into segments, rooms. They covered the hole with planks. They sometimes got hay out of Donnelly’s barn. That was the basement.

When I came out of a hut my hair was full of clay and muck. I could make my hair stand up.

The rest of the hut was made of mostly sods. Wherever you went in Barrytown you found places where sods had been cut out, even in front gardens; patches of bare earth, all straight lined. Kevin’s brother was able to get the spade through the grass into the earth with no effort. I loved the watery crunch of the blade going through the mesh of roots. Terence Long stood up on the spade and rocked, and got down and moved the spade and did it again. They piled the sods like thin bricks and pushed them down. They became a solid wall but they could be pushed over easily. But if you did that you got killed; Kevin’s brother always found out who’d done it. There were more walls inside the main walls, rooms again, planks on top, and a plastic sheet and more sods for the roof. From not too far away the but was like a square hillock. It didn’t look built, not until you were up to it.

Worms came out of the sods.

We made booby traps all around our hut. We buried open paint cans and hid them with grass. If your foot went through the grass into the can usually nothing happened except you fell over. But if you were running your leg could be broken. It was easy to imagine. We buried one with the paint still in it but no one stood in it. We got a milk bottle and broke it. We put the biggest bits of glass standing up in a can right in front of the hut door.

– What if one of us puts our foot in it?

The traps were supposed to be for the enemy.

– We won’t, said Kevin. -We know where it is, stupid.

– Liam doesn’t.

Liam was at his auntie’s.

– Liam’s not in our gang.

I hadn’t known that – Liam had been playing with us the day before – but I didn’t say anything.

We sharpened sticks and stuck them in the ground pointing out towards where the enemy would be sneaking up from. We kept the sticks low. If the enemy was creeping along he’d get a pointy stick in the face.

Ian McEvoy ran into a trip wire and he had to go to hospital for stitches.

– His foot was hanging off him.

It was real wire, not string like we usually used. We didn’t know who’d set it up. It was tied between two trees in the field behind the shops. There was no but near it. We didn’t build huts in that field; it was too flat. They’d been playing relievio, Ian McEvoy and them, in front of the shops and when Kilmartin’s hall door opened Ian McEvoy had thought that it was Missis Kilmartin going to yell at them to go away and he’d run into the field and the trip wire. The wire was a mystery.

– Fellas from the Corpo houses did it.

There were six new families living in the first row of finished Corporation houses. Their gardens were full of hardened half-bags of cement and smashed bricks. Some of the children were the same age as us but that didn’t mean that they could hang around with us.

– Slum scum.

My ma hit me when I said that. She never hit me usually but she did then. She smacked behind my head.

– Never say that again.

– I didn’t make it up, I told her.

– Just never say it again, she said. -It’s a terrible thing to say.

I didn’t even know what it really meant. I knew that the slums were in town.

The road with the six Corporation houses wasn’t joined to any other road. It ended just before the first house. There was a turn-off for the new road off our road, just past the beginning of Donnelly’s first field, but it only went in a few feet, then stopped. Our pitch was on the bit of field between the two roads. We only had one goal. We used jumpers at the other end for the other goal. We usually played three-and-in. You only needed one goal. It was easy to score, especially on the left side cos there was a hill there and you could get the ball way over the keeper’s head, but it was always crowded. There were no teams in three-and-in; it was every man for himself. Twenty players meant twenty teams. Sometimes there were more than twenty players. There were only ever three or four of us really playing, trying to score goals. The rest, mostly little kids smaller than Sinbad, just ran around after the ball but never tried to get it; they just followed it, laughing, especially when they all had to turn back the way they’d come. Elbowing and pushing kids out of the way was allowed. When I had the ball I’d go so there were some kids between me and the nearest real player, Kevin or Liam or Ian McEvoy or one of them. The kids would run beside me, so no one could get at me, like in a film I saw where John Wayne got away from the baddies by riding in the middle of a stampede, low down, hanging on to the side of his horse. Then when he was safe he hooshed himself back up properly into the saddle and looked back to where he’d just come from and grinned and rode on. The only thing about three-and-in, the only bad thing, was that when you won, when you’d scored three goals, you had to go in goal. I was a better player than Kevin but I stopped trying after two goals. I hated being in goal. Aidan was the best player, way easily – he was a brilliant dribbler – but he was still picked last or second-last when we were playing five-a-side; no one wanted him. He was the only one who played for a real club, Raheny Under Elevens, even though he wasn’t even nine.

– Your uncle’s the manager.

– He isn’t, said Liam.

– What is he?

– He isn’t anything. He just watches.

Aidan had a blue jersey with a real number, a stitched one, on it; number 11.

– I’m a winger, he said.

– So what?

It was a real heavy jersey, a real jersey. He didn’t tuck it in. You couldn’t see his nicks.

He was good in goal as well.

Five-a-side games never finished. The team playing into the jumper goal end were always winning.

– Charlton to Best – Great goal!

– It wasn’t a goal! It went over the jumper, it hit the bar.

– It hit the inside of the jumper.

– Yeah; in-off.

– No way.

– Yeah way.

– I’m not playing then.

– Good.

Sometimes we played when we were eating our lunch. I’d scored two goals already. I hit an easy shot for Ian McEvoy to save. He put his sandwich down on the jumper and the ball bounced past him. I’d scored; I’d won. I was in goal now.

– You did that on purpose.

I pushed Ian McEvoy.

– I did not, you.

He pushed me back.

– You just wanted to get out of goal.

I didn’t push him this time. I was thinking of kicking him.

– He should stay in goal for that, I said.

– No way.

– You have to try and save them.

– I’ll go in.

It was one of the boys from the Corporation houses. He was standing behind the jumpers goal.

– I’ll go in, I said.

He was younger than me, and smaller. Safe smaller; he’d never be able to kill me, even if he was a brilliant fighter.

I pushed him away from the goal.

– This is our field, I said.

I’d pushed him hard. He was by himself. He was surprised. He nearly fell over. He slid on the wet grass.

I could tell: he didn’t know whether to go away or stay. He didn’t want to turn his back; he was afraid something would happen him if he did. And he couldn’t go; I’d pushed him and he’d be a coward.

– This is our field, I said again.

I kicked him.

My ma warned us about the mangle, to stay away from it, not to mess with it. The rolls were hard but only rubber. I scratched a mark on the bottom one with the breadknife. I loved it in the kitchen – the steam and the heat – when my ma was putting the sheets through the mangle, and my da’s shirts. The sheets were shiny with huge wet bubbles and my ma put a corner up to the mangle and turned the handle and the sheet rose out of the water like a whale being caught. The water ran down the sheet and the bubbles were crushed as the sheet was pulled through the rolls and came out flat, looking like material again, the shininess all gone. Another sheet, the rubber creaked and groaned, then the rest slid through easily. She wouldn’t let me help. She only let me stand behind the washing machine and guide the sheet into the red basin. The sheet was warm and kind of solid and hard. My fingers were safe on that side. The smaller clothes came through and I caught them and put them on top of the sheets. The basin was full. She had to empty the machine now and fill it again for the nappies. The steam in the kitchen was what I really liked, and the wet on the walls.