Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

We needed ice-pop sticks for it; the tar in the road was bubbling. It was the first time this year, so we’d no sticks ready. There was me and Kevin, and Liam and Aidan – just the four of us because Ian McEvoy wasn’t coming out. He had pains in his legs. Great spurts of growing pain, his ma said when we’d called for him, around the back. We never went to the front doors, unless it was for knick-knacking at night. The front porches on my side of the road were always nice and cool, especially on hot days. The sun never got in there. Our porch had great corners of dust: Dinkies bounced over the grit and sometimes crashed. There were three small round holes under the door, for air for under the floorboards, to stop them from rotting. If one of your soldiers fell in one of the holes you could never get him back and the mice got in that way. The ice-pop sticks were for bursting the bubbles; they were definitely the best. You could manage the bubble with an ice-pop stick, flatten it, get all the air in one part, that kind of thing.

Great spurts of growing pain. Ian McEvoy was strapped to the bed. He had a bit of leather in his mouth to stop him from screaming, like John Wayne getting a bullet out of his leg. They poured whiskey over the hole in his leg. I poured whiskey on Sinbad’s scab, just a tiny drop. He was squirming before I even did it so I couldn’t tell if it was really sore or not, as sore as John Wayne made it look, or if it cured it.

Kevin and me took one side, Liam and Aidan the other one. We had the shops side; there’d be loads more sticks. Sinbad wasn’t with us either. He was sick again. If he wasn’t better by the night my ma was going to get the doctor. She always believed we were sick when the holidays were on. It was the Easter holidays. The sky was all blue. It was Good Friday.

The roads were cement, all the roads round our way, the parts that hadn’t been dug up. The roads were cement and the tar went between the slabs of cement. It was hard and you didn’t notice it for most of the time but when it softened and bubbled it was great. The top was old and grey looking, like an elephant’s skin around its eyes, but under that, when you got your ice-pop stick in, there was new tar, black and soft, a bit like toffee that had been in your mouth. You burst the bubble and the clean soft tar was under there; the top was gone off the bubble – it was a volcano. Pebbles went in; they died screaming.

– No no, please -! – don’t -! Aaaaaaaahaaah-

Bees if we could get them. We shook the jar to make sure that the bee was stunned, nearly dead, then turned it over before it could wake up. We aimed for it to fall on the new tar hole. We pushed it closer with the ice-pop stick. We shoved it down a bit so it stuck to the tar. We watched. It was hard to tell the pain. The bee made no noise, no buzz or anything. We broke it in half and buried it in the tar. I always left a bit showing, as an example to others. Sometimes the bee got away. It wasn’t dopey enough when we turned over the jar. It flew off before it hit the ground properly. It didn’t matter. We didn’t try to stop it. Bees could kill you; they didn’t want to, only if they had no choice. Not like wasps. Wasps got you on purpose. A fella in Raheny swallowed a bee by accident and it stung him in the throat and he died. He choked. He was running with his mouth open and the bee flew in. When he was dying he opened his mouth to say his last words and the bee flew out. That was how they knew. We put flowers and leaves in the jars to make the bees feel more at home. We had nothing against them. They made honey.

I had seven sticks now and Kevin had six. Liam and Aidan were way ahead of us because they didn’t have the shops and we wouldn’t let them cross the road to our side. We’d batter them if they tried. Chinese torture. Whoever ended up with the smallest number of sticks was going to have to eat a lump of tar. It was going to be Aidan. We’d make sure he swallowed it. We’d let him eat a clean bit. I got another stick, a real clean one. Kevin ran to the next one, and I saw one and ran and grabbed it before he did and he got two while I was getting that one. It was a race now. Next it would be a fight. A mess one. I bent over to pick one out of the gutter – we were past the shops – and Kevin shoved me. I went flying but I had the stick; I laughed. Out onto the road.

– Stop messing.

He went for a stick; it was my turn. I didn’t shove him too hard. I let him get a hold of the stick first. We both saw one, and ran. I was faster; he tripped me. I hadn’t planned for it. I was going to fall. I couldn’t control it, I was too fast. My knees, my palms, chin. The skin was off them. My knuckles where I’d been holding the sticks. I still held them. I sat up. There was dirt in the redness of my palm. Spots of blood were getting bigger. Becoming drops.

I put the sticks in my pocket. The pain was starting.

An earwig flew into my mouth once. I was charging, it was in front of me – then gone. There was a taste, that was all. I swallowed. It was far back, too far to cough out. My eyes went watery but it wasn’t crying. It was in the school yard. There was still a horrible taste. Like petrol. I went to the toilet and got my head under the tap. I drank for ages. I wanted the taste to go and I wanted to drown the earwig. It had gone down whole. Straight down.

I didn’t tell anyone.

This fella went to Africa on his holidays -

– You don’t go to Africa on your holidays.

– Shut up.

When he was in Africa he had a salad for his tea and when he came back from his holidays he started getting pains in his stomach and they brought him into Jervis Street because he was screaming in agony – they brought him in in a taxi – and the doctor couldn’t tell what was wrong with him and the boy couldn’t say anything because he couldn’t stop screaming because of the pain, so they did an operation on him and they found lizards inside him, in his stomach, twenty of them; they’d made a nest. They were eating the stomach out of him.

– You’re still to eat your lettuce, said my ma.

– He died, I told her. -The boy did.

– Eat it up; go on. It’s washed.

– So was the stuff he ate.

– That’s just rubbish someone told you, she said. -You shouldn’t listen to it.

I hoped I’d die. I hoped I’d just last till my da got home, then I’d tell him what had happened and I’d die.

The lizards were in a jar in Jervis Street, in a fridge, for them all to look at when they were training to be doctors. They were all in one jar. Floating in liquid for keeping them fresh.

There was tar in my trousers, the knees.

– Not again.

That was what my ma was going to say. It was what she always said.

She did say it.

– Ah, Patrick, not again; for God’s sake.

She made me take them off. She made me take them off in the kitchen. She wouldn’t let me go upstairs. She pointed at my legs and clicked her fingers. I took them off.

– Your shoes first, she said. -Hang on a minute.

She checked that there was no tar on the soles.

– There isn’t any, I told her. -I checked them.

She made me lift my other foot. My trousers were halfway down. She slapped the side of my leg and opened and closed and opened her hand. I put my foot into it. She looked at the sole.

– I told you, I said.

She let go of my leg. She always said nothing when she was being annoyed. She clicked and pointed.

Confucius he say, go to bed with itchy hole, wake up in morning with smelly finger.

He made his hand open and close like a beak, the fingers stiff, right into her face.

– Nag nag nag.

She looked around and then at him.

– Paddy, she said.

– The minute I get in the door.

– Paddy -

I knew what Paddy meant, what she meant the way she’d said Paddy. So did Sinbad. So did Catherine, the way she stared up at my ma and then, sometimes, my da.

He stopped. He took two deep breaths. He sat down. He looked at us, like he used to know us, then properly.

– How was school?

Sinbad laughed, and made himself laugh more.

I knew why.

– Great, said Sinbad.

I knew why Sinbad had laughed but he was too late. He thought it was over. Da sitting down, asking us how school was – that meant the fight was over.

He’d learn.

– Why was it great? said Da.

That wasn’t a fair question. He’d said it to catch out Sinbad, like he was in the fight as well.

– It just was, I said.

– Well? Da said to Sinbad.

– A fella got sick in his class, I said.

Sinbad looked at me.

– Is that right? said Da.

– Yeah, I said.

Da looked at Sinbad.

Sinbad stopped looking at me.

– Yeah, he said.

Da changed. It had worked. His foot was bouncing at the end of his crossed leg; that was the sign. I’d won. I’d saved Sinbad.

– What fella?

I’d beaten Da. It had been easy.

– Fergus Sweeney, I said.

Sinbad looked at me again. Fergus Sweeney wasn’t in his class.

Da loved these kind of stories.

– Poor Fergus, said Da. -How did he get sick?

Sinbad was ready.

– It came out of his mouth, he said.

– Is that right? said Da. -Janey mack.

He thought he was smart, making a mock of us: we were doing it to him.

– Lumps, said Sinbad.

– Lumps, said Da.

– Yellow bits, I said.

– All over his copy, said Da.

– Yeah, said Sinbad.

– All over his eccer, said Da.

– Yeah, said Sinbad.

– And the fella’s beside him, I said.

– Yeah, said Sinbad.

We were all in a circle. Kevin was the only one outside it. We had a fire. We had to look into the fire. It wasn’t dark yet. We had to hold hands. That meant that we had to lean forward nearly into the fire. My eyes were burning. It was forbidden to rub them. This was the third time we’d done it.

It was my turn.

– Banjaxed.

– Banjaxed! we all went; no laughing.

– Banjaxed banjaxed banjaxed!

We’d started this bit the second time, the chanting. It was better, more organised than what we’d had before, just shouting and Indian calls. Especially when it wasn’t even dark.

Liam was next to me, on my left. The ground was damp. Kevin tapped Liam’s shoulder with his poker. It was Liam’s turn.

– Trellis.

– Trellis!

– Trellis trellis trellis!

We were in the field behind the shops, in away from the road. We hadn’t as many places any more. Our territory was getting smaller. In the story Henno had read to us that afternoon, a stupid mystery one, there’d been a woman at the trellis pruning her roses. Then she died and the story was about finding out who did it. We didn’t care though. We just waited for Henno to say Pruning again. He didn’t, but Trellis was in every second sentence. None of us knew what Trellis was.

– Bucko.

– Bucko!

– Bucko bucko bucko!

– Ignoramus.

– Ignoramus!

– Ignoramus ignoramus ignoramus!

I could never guess what word was going to be next. I always tried; I looked at all the faces in the class when a new word or a good one got said. Liam and Kevin and Ian McEvoy were the same, doing what I was doing, storing the words.

It was my turn again.

– Substandard.

– Substandard!

– Substandard substandard substandard!

That part was over now. My eyes were killing me. The wind was blowing it all my way, the smoke, last week’s ashes as well. It would be good later though; I loved picking dry stuff out of my hair.

The names part was next. The real ceremony. Kevin walked around behind us. We weren’t allowed to look. I could only go by his voice and his feet in the grass if he stepped off the muck fire circle. I heard a swish from near. It was the poker. It was great and terrible, not knowing. The excitement was brilliant when we remembered it later.

– I am Zentoga, said Kevin.

Swish.

Behind me.

– I am Zentoga, the high priest of the great god, Ciúnas. [12]

Swish.

Over the other side. I had to keep my eyes shut. I hoped I’d be first but I was glad that Kevin was over there.

– Ciúnas the Great gives all his people names! The word was made flesh.

Swish.

– Aaah!

He’d got Aidan, right across the back.

– Shite! said Aidan.

– From henceforth thou will be called Shite, said Kevin. -Ciúnas the Mighty has spoken.

– Shite! we shouted.

We were a safe bit away from the shops.

– The word made flesh!

Swish.

Close.

Ian McEvoy.

– Tits!

Beside me; I felt the pain through him to me.

– From henceforth thou will be called Tits. Ciúnas the Mighty has spoken.

– Tits!

It had to be a bad word. That was the rule. If it wasn’t bad enough you got another belt of the poker.

– The word was made flesh!

– Diddies!

My turn was coming up. My head was in my lap. My hands were wet and kept slipping out of Liam and Ian McEvoy’s grips. Someone was crying. More than one.

His voice was behind me.

– The word was made flesh!

– Aaah!

Liam.

Again. Swish. The second thump sounded worse; it sounded unfair and shocking.

– That wasn’t a word, said Liam, out of a gasp.

Kevin had hit him again because he hadn’t said a bad word the first time. Liam’s agony and protest made his voice shimmer.

– The followers of Ciúnas feel no pain, said Kevin.

Liam was crying.

– The followers of Ciúnas do not cry! said Kevin.

He was going to hit him again. I could feel it, the poker going back. But Liam’s hand slid out of mine. He was standing up.

– I don’t care, he said. -It’s stupid.

Kevin was going to hit him anyway. But Liam got in too close. I watched. We all watched. I rubbed my face. It felt stretched and raw.

– A curse on your family, Kevin said to Liam, but he let Liam get past him.

Smiffy O’Rourke had walked out the week before after Kevin had hit his back five times because Bloody wasn’t a bad enough word and Smiffy O’Rourke wouldn’t say anything worse. Missis O’Rourke had gone to the Guards about it – that was what Kevin’d said – but she’d had no evidence, only Smiffy’s back. We’d laughed then, when we’d watched Smiffy running away like he was ducking bullets because he couldn’t straighten his back. No one laughed now though. Liam walked away towards the gap in the new wire fence. It was getting dark now. Liam walked carefully. We could hear him snuffling. I wanted to go with him.

– Ciúnas the Mighty killed your mother!

Kevin had both arms stretched up. I looked over at Aidan; she was his mother as well. He stayed where he was. He was looking at the fire. I watched. He stayed that way. I’d take my punishment now, for the same reason that Aidan was staying. It was good being in the circle, better than where Liam was going.

I was next. There were two others left but I’d be next. I knew it: Kevin was going to take it out on me. We joined the circle again. It was even tighter now without Liam. If I’d pulled quickly someone would have been tipped into the fire. We nudged in closer on our bums.

It took him ages. I heard him over the other side. It was dark now. I could hear the wind. I had to close my eyes again. My legs were hot, too close to the fire. He’d gone; I couldn’t place him. I listened. He was nowhere.

– The word was made flesh!

My back was ripped. The bones exploded.

– Fuck!

– From henceforth thou will be called Fuck.

It was over.

– Ciúnas the Mighty has spoken!

I’d done it.

– Fuck!

The best word. It wasn’t as loud as it should have been. They were afraid. They pillowed the shout. I didn’t though. I’d paid for it. He’d hit me right on one of the knobs of my spine. I couldn’t straighten. I couldn’t relax yet. It was over though. I’d made it. I unclenched my eyes.

– The word was made flesh!

I enjoyed the crunch of someone else’s pain.

Fuck was the best word. The most dangerous word. You couldn’t whisper it.

– Gee!

Fuck was always too loud, too late to stop it, it burst in the air above you and fell slowly right over your head. There was total silence, nothing but Fuck floating down. For a few seconds you were dead, waiting for Henno to look up and see Fuck landing on top of you. They were thrilling seconds – when he didn’t look up. It was the word you couldn’t say anywhere. It wouldn’t come out unless you pushed it. It made you feel caught and grabbed the minute you said it. When it escaped it was like an electric laugh, a soundless gasp followed by the kind of laughing that only forbidden things could make, an inside tickle that became a brilliant pain, bashing at your mouth to be let out. It was agony. We didn’t waste it.

– The word was made flesh!

Swish.

The forbidden word. I’d shouted it.

– From henceforth thou will be called Mickey.

The last one.

– Ciúnas the Mighty has spoken!

– Mickey!

It was all over now, we could get up from the fire; till next week. I straightened my back. It had been worth it. I was the real hero, not Liam.

– Ciúnas the Mighty will give you all new names next Friday, said Kevin.

But no one was really listening. He was just Kevin again. I was hungry. Fish on a Friday. We were supposed to use our names all week but we could never remember who was Gee and who was Shite. I was Fuck though. They all remembered that.

There wasn’t another Friday. We were all sick of being hit on the back with a poker by Kevin. He wouldn’t take his turn. He had to be the high priest all the time. Ciúnas had said, he said. It would have gone on longer if we’d all had a go with the poker, probably forever. But Kevin wouldn’t allow it and it was his poker. I still called him Zentoga after the others had stopped but even I was happy when it didn’t happen the next Friday. Kevin went off by himself and I went with him and pretended that I’d been up for him. We went to the seafront. We threw stones at the sea.

I ran out into the garden. The house wasn’t big enough. I couldn’t stay still. I did two laps; I must have gone real fast because I was back in the living room in time to see the action replay. I had to stay standing up.

George Best -

George Best -

George Best had just scored in the European Cup Final. I watched him running away, back to the centre circle; he was grinning but he didn’t look that surprised.

My da put his arm around my shoulders. He’d stood up to do it.

– Wonderful, he said.

He supported United as well, not as much as me though.

– Bloody wonderful.

Pat Crerand, Frank McLintock and George Best were up in the air. The ball was nearly on top of Frank McLintock’s head but it was hard to say who’d headed it. Probably George Best, because his fringe was flying out like he’d just swung his head to meet the ball and the ball looked like it was going away from him, not towards him. Frank McLintock looked like he was smiling and Pat Crerand looked like he was bawling crying but George Best looked just right, like he’d headed the ball and he was watching it going towards the net. He was ready to land.

There were hundreds of pictures in the book but I kept going back to this one, the first one. Crerand and McLintock looked like they were jumping in the air but George Best looked like he was standing, except for his hair. His legs were straight and a bit apart, like at ease in the army. It was as if they’d cut out a photograph of George Best and stuck it onto another one of McLintock and Crerand and the thousands of little heads and black coats in the stand behind them. There was no effort on his face. His mouth was only a little bit open. His hands were closed but not clenched. His neck looked relaxed, not like Frank McLintock’s; it looked like there were pieces of rope growing under the skin.

There was something else I’d just found out. There was an Introduction on page eleven, beside the page with the George Best photograph. I read it, and then the last bit, the last paragraph, again.

– When I was first shown the manuscript of this book, I was especially pleased to see how the records and statistics had been integrated with the general narrative -

I didn’t really know what that meant but it didn’t matter.

– The book certainly represents the happiest marriage of education and entertainment I can ever recall. You will enjoy it.

And under all that was George Best’s autograph.

George Best had signed my book.

My da hadn’t said anything about the autograph. He’d just given it to me and said Happy Birthday and kissed me. He’d left me to find it for myself.

George Best.

Not Georgie. I never called him Georgie. I hated it when I heard people calling him Georgie.

George Best.

His jersey was outside his nicks in the photograph. The other two had theirs tucked in. No one I knew tucked theirs in, even the ones that said that George Best was useless; they all wore their jerseys outside.

I brought the book in to my da to let him know I’d found the autograph and it was brilliant, easily the best thing I’d ever got for a present. It was called A Pictorial History of Soccer. It was huge, much fatter than an annual, real heavy. It was a grown-up’s sort of book. There were pictures, but loads of writing too; small writing. I was going to read all of it.

– I found it, I told him.

My finger was in the book, where George Best’s autograph was.

My da was sitting in his chair.

– Did you? he said. -Good man. What?

– What?

– What did you find?

– The autograph, I told him.

He was messing.

– Let’s see it, he said.

I put the book and opened it on his knees.

– There.

My da rubbed his finger across the autograph.

George Best had great handwriting. It slanted to the right; it was long and the holes were narrow. There was a deadstraight line under the name, joining the G and the B, all the way to the T at the end and a bit further. It finished with a swerve, like a diagram of a shot going past a wall.

– Was he in the shop? I asked my da.

– Who?

– George Best, I said.

Worry began a ball in my stomach but he answered too quickly for it to grow.

– Yes, he said.

– Was he?

– Yes.

– Was he; really?

– I said he was, didn’t I?

That was all I needed, for certain. He didn’t get annoyed when he said it, just calm like he’d said everything else, looking right at me.

– What was he like?

I wasn’t trying to catch him out. He knew that.

– Exactly like you’d expect, he said.

– In his gear?

That was exactly what I’d have expected. I didn’t know how else George Best would have dressed. I’d seen a colour picture of him once in a green Northern Ireland jersey, not his usual red one, and it had shocked me.

– No, said Da.

– He-, a tracksuit.

– What did he say?

– Just -

– Why didn’t you ask him to put my name on it?

I pointed to George Best’s name.

– As well.

– He was very busy, said my da.

– Was there a huge queue?

– A huge one.

That was good; that was right and proper.

– Was he in the shop just for the day only? I asked.

– That’s right, said my da. -He had to go back to Manchester.

– For training, I told him.

– That’s right.

A year after that I knew that it wasn’t George Best’s real autograph at all; it was only printing and my da was a liar.

The front room was not for going into. It was the drawing room. Nobody else had a drawing room although all the houses were the same, all the houses before the Corporation ones. Our drawing room was Kevin’s ma’s and da’s living room, and Ian McEvoy’s television room. Ours was the drawing room because my ma said it was.

– What does it mean? I asked her.

I’d known it was the drawing room since I could remember but today the name seemed funny for the first time. We were outside. Whenever there was even a bit of blue in the sky my ma opened the back door and brought the whole house out. She thought about the answer but with a nice look on her face. The babies were asleep. Sinbad was putting grass in a jar.

– The good room, she said.

– Does Drawing mean Good?

– Yes, she said. -Only when you put it with Room.

That was fair enough; I understood.

– Why don’t we call it just the good room? I asked. -People prob’ly think we draw in it, or paint pictures.

– No, they don’t.

– They might, I said.

I wasn’t just saying it for the sake of saying it, like I said some things.

– Especially if they’re stupid, I said.

– They’d want to be very stupid.

– There’s lots of stupid people, I told her. -There’s a whole class of them in our school.

– Stop that, she said.

– A class in every year, I said.

– That’s not nice, she said.

– Stop it.

– Why not just the good room? I said.

– It doesn’t sound right, she said. That made no sense: it sounded exactly right. We were never allowed into that room so it would stay good.

– Why doesn’t it? I asked.

– It sounds cheap, she said.

She started smiling.

– It – I don’t know – Drawing room is a nicer name than good room. It sounds nicer. Unusual.

– Are unusual names nice?

– Yes.

– Then why am I called Patrick?

She laughed but only for a little bit. She smiled at me, I think to make sure that I knew she wasn’t laughing at me.

– Because your daddy’s called Patrick, she said.

I liked that, being called after my da.

– There are five Patricks in our class, I said.

– Is that right?

– Patrick Clarke. That’s me. Patrick O’Neill. Patrick Redmond. Patrick Genocci. Patrick Flynn.

– That’s a lot, she said. -It’s a nice name. Very dignified.

– Three of them are called Paddy, I told her. -One Pat and one Patrick.

– Is that right? she said. -Which are you?

I stopped for a minute.

– Paddy, I said.

She didn’t mind. I was Patrick at home.

– Which one’s Patrick? she asked.

– Patrick Genocci.

– His grandad’s from Italy, she said.

– I know, I said. -But he’s never gone there, Patrick Genocci.

– He will sometime.

– When he’s big, I said. -I’m going to Africa.

– Are you? Why?

– I just am, I said. -I have my reasons.

– To convert the black babies?

– No. I didn’t care about the black babies; I was supposed to feel sorry for them, because they were pagans and because they were hungry, but I didn’t care. They frightened me, the idea of them, all of them, millions of them, with stick-out bellies and grown-up eyes.

– Why then? she asked.

– To see the animals, I said.

– That’ll be nice, she said.

– Not to stay, I said.

She wasn’t to give my bed away.

– What animals? she said.

– All of them.

– Especially.

– Zebras and monkeys.

– Would you like to be a vet?

– No.

– Why not?

– There’s no zebras and monkeys in Ireland.

– Why do you like zebras?

– I just do.

– They’re nice.

– Yeah.

– We’ll go to the zoo again; would you like that?

– No.

Phoenix Park was brilliant – the Hollow and the deers; I wanted to go back there again. The bus, where you could see over the wall into the park when you were upstairs. We went there on my Holy Communion after we were finished with my aunties and uncles; on buses all morning, before my da got his car. But not the zoo, I didn’t want to.go there.

– Why not? said my ma.

– The smell, I said.

It wasn’t just the smell. It was more than the smell; it was what the smell had meant, the smell of the animals and the fur on the wire. I’d liked it then, the animals. Pets’ Corner – the rabbits – the shop; I’d loads of money – they’d made me buy sweets for Sinbad, Refreshers. But I remembered the smell and I couldn’t remember the animals much. Wallabies, little kangaroos that didn’t hop. Monkeys’ fingers gripping the wire.

I was going to explain it to my ma, I wanted to; I was going to try. She remembered the smell; I could tell by her smile and the way she stopped it from getting too big because I hadn’t said it for a joke. I was going to tell her.

Then Sinbad came over and ruined it.

– What are fish-fingers made of?

– Fish.

– What kind of fish?

– All kinds.

– Cod, said my ma. -White fish.

– Why do they -

– No more questions till you’re finished.

That was my da.

– Everything on the plate, he said. -Then you can ask your questions.

There were twenty-seven dogs in Barrytown, our part, and fifteen of them had had their tails docked.

– Docked off.

– There’s no Off. Docked, by itself.

They got their tails docked to stop them from falling over. When they wagged their tails they couldn’t balance properly and they fell over, so they had to have most of their tails cut off.

– Only when they’re pups.

– Yeah.

They only fell over when they were pups.

– Why don’t they wait? said Sinbad.

– Thick, I said, though I didn’t know what he meant.

– Who? Liam said to Sinbad.

– The vet, said Sinbad.

– For what?

– They only fall over when they’re puppies, said Sinbad. -Why do they cut their tails just for that? They’re only puppies for a little while.

– Puppies, I said. -Listen to him. They’re pups, right.

He made sense though. None of us knew why. Liam shrugged.

– They just do.

– It must be good for them. Vets are like doctors.

The McEvoys had a Jack Russell. His name was Benson.

– That’s a thick name for a dog.

Ian McEvoy said it was his but it was really his ma’s. Benson was older than Ian McEvoy.

– They don’t dock the ones with long legs, I said.

Benson hardly had any legs. His belly touched the grass. It was easy to catch him. The only problem was having to wait till Missis McEvoy had gone to the shops.

– She likes him, Ian McEvoy told us. -She prefers him to me.

He was stronger than he looked. I could feel his muscles trying to get away. We only wanted to have a look at his tail. I held his back half. He tried to get his mouth back to my hand.

Kevin kicked him.

– Watch it.

Ian McEvoy was worried; if his ma caught us. So worried, he pushed Kevin away.

Kevin let him get away with it.

All we wanted to do was look at his tail, that was all. It was sticking up in the air. It was the healthiest-looking part of Benson. Dogs were supposed to wag their tails when they were happy but Benson definitely wasn’t happy and his tail was wagging like mad.

My da wouldn’t let us have a dog. He had his reasons, he said. My ma agreed with him.

Kevin held Benson where I’d been holding him and I grabbed his tail to stop it. The tail was a bone, a hairy bone, no fleshiness at all. I closed my fist and the tail wasn’t there. We laughed. Benson yelped, like he was joining in. I fisted just my top two fingers so we could see the top of his tail. I made sure that my free fingers didn’t touch his bum. It was hard for them not to, the way I was holding him, but I made sure that they didn’t rub across his hole.

Ma always sent us to wash our hands before our dinner. Only before our dinner, never before our breakfast or our tea. I sometimes didn’t bother; I just went up the stairs, turned the tap on and off, and came back down.

I pushed the hair out of the way. It was white and bristly. Benson tried to charge away in front of me. He hadn’t a hope. Me touching his tail hair made him panic; we could feel it in him. Now we could see the butt of his tail. It didn’t look like it had been cut – his hair kept springing back – it looked normal, like it was supposed to be that way. There was nothing else to do.

We were disappointed.

– No marks there.

– Press your finger down on it.

We didn’t want to let him go yet. We’d expected more, scars or redness or something; bone.

Ian McEvoy was really worried now. He thought we were going to do something to Benson because his tail hadn’t been worth looking at.

– My ma’s coming; I think she’s coming.

– She’s not.

– Chicken.

We were definitely going to do something now.

– One -

– Two -

– Three!

We got our hands away and, just when Benson thought he was free, we kicked him, me and Kevin; hollow thumps, one boot each, nearly together on each side. Benson staggered when he was getting away. I thought he was going to fall over on his side; a terror screamed through me, up through me. Blood would come out of his mouth, he’d pant, and stop. But he stayed on his legs and straightened and ran to the side of the house, to the front.

– Why can’t we? I asked my da.

– Will you feed it? he said.

– Yeah, I said.

– Will you pay for his food?

– Yeah.

– With what?

– Money.

– What money?

– My money, I said. -My pocket money, I said before he could get anything in.

– Mine as well, said Sinbad.

I’d take Sinbad’s money but it was still going to be my dog. I got sixpence on Sundays and Sinbad got threepence. We were getting more after our next birthdays.

– Okay, said my da.

I could tell: he didn’t mean Okay you can have a dog; he meant Okay I’ll get you some other way.

– They cost nothing, I told him. -You just have to go down to the cats and dogs’ home and pick one and they give him to you.

– The dirt, he said.

– We’ll make him wipe his paws, I said.

– Not that dirt.

– We’ll wash him; I will.

– His number twos, said my da.

He stared. He had us.

– We’ll bring him for walks and he’ll be able -

– Stop, said my da.

He didn’t say it like he was angry; he just said it.

– Listen, he said. -We can’t have a dog -

We.

– and I’ll tell you why not and that’ll be the end of it and you’re not to go pestering your mammy. Catherine’s asthma.

He waited a bit.

– The dog hair, he said. -She couldn’t cope with it.

I hardly knew Catherine; I didn’t really know her. She was my sister but she was only a baby, a bit bigger. I never spoke to her. She was useless; she slept a lot. Her cheeks were huge. She walked around showing us what was in her potty; she thought it was great.

– Look!

She followed me.

– Pat’ick! Look!

She had asthma. I didn’t know what asthma was, only that she had it and it was noisy and it worried my ma. Catherine had been in the hospital twice because of it, never in an ambulance though. I didn’t know why dog hairs had anything to do with her asthma. He was just using it as an excuse for not getting a dog, my da; he just didn’t want one. He was just saying about Catherine’s asthma because he knew that we couldn’t say anything about it. We’d never complain to our ma about Catherine’s asthma.

Sinbad spoke. I jumped.

– We can get a dog with no hair.

My da started laughing. He thought it was a great joke. He messed up our hair – Sinbad started smiling – and that killed it. We’d never get a dog.

Marrowfat peas sat in the gravy and soaked it up into themselves. I ate them one at a time. I loved them. I loved the hard feel of their skin, and the inside soft and messy and watery.

They came in a net in the packet, with a big white tablet as well. They had to be soaked in water, starting on Saturday night. I did it, slid them into the bowl of water. My ma stopped me from putting my tongue on the tablet.

– No, love.

– What’s it for? I asked.

– To keep them fresh, she said. -And to soften them.

Sunday peas.

My da spoke.

– Where was Moses when the lights went out?

I answered.

– Under the bed looking for matches.

– Good man, he said.

I didn’t understand it but it made me laugh.

Sinbad and me knocked on their bedroom door. I did the knocking.

– What?

– Is it morning yet?

– Morning not to get up.

That meant we had to go back to our bedroom.

It was hard to tell in the summer when you woke up and it was bright.

Our territory was getting smaller. The fields were patches among the different houses and bits left over where the roads didn’t meet properly. They’d become dumps for all the waste stuff, bits of wood and brick and solidified bags of cement and milk bottles. They were good for exploring but bad for running in.

I heard the crack, felt it through my foot and I knew there was going to be pain before it came. I had time and control to decide where to fall. I fell onto a clean piece of grass and rolled. My cry of pain was good. The pain was real though, and rising. I’d hit a scaffolding joint hidden in the grass. The pain grew quickly. The whimper surprised me. My foot was wet. My shoe was full of blood. It was like water, creamier. It was warm and cold. My sock was wringing.

They were all standing around me. Liam had found the scaffolding joint. He held it in front of my face. I could tell it was heavy, the way he was holding it. It was big and impressive. There’d be loads of blood.

– What is it? said Sinbad.

– A scaffold thing.

– Thick eejit.

I wanted to take my shoe off. I held the heel and groaned. They watched. I pulled slowly, slowly. I thought about getting Kevin to pull it off, like in a film. But it would have hurt. It didn’t feel as wet in there now, just warm. And sore. Still sore. Enough for a limp. I lifted my foot out. No blood. The sock was down at the back, under the heel. I took it off, hoping. They watched. I groaned again and took the sock away. They gasped and yeuched.

It was brilliant. The toenail had come off my big toe. It looked cruel. It was real. It was painful. I lifted the nail a little bit. They all looked. I sucked in breath.

– Aaah -!

I tried to put the nail into its proper position but it really hurt. The sock wasn’t going to go back on. They’d all seen it. I wanted to go home now.

Liam carried my shoe. I leaned on Kevin all the way home. Sinbad ran ahead.

– She’ll put your foot in Dettol, said Aidan.

– Shut up, you, I said.

There were no farms left. Our pitch was gone, first sliced in half for pipes, then made into eight houses. The field behind the shops was still ours and we went there more often. Over at the Corporation houses, that end, wasn’t ours any more. There was another tribe there now, tougher than us, though none of us said it. Our territory was being taken from us but we were fighting back. We played Indians and Cowboys now, not Cowboys and Indians.

– Ger-on-IMO!

We built a wigwam in the field behind the shops. Liam and Aidan’s da called it an igloo by mistake. He came into the field to look at us building it. He was walking back from the shops.

– That’s a grand igloo, boys, he said.

– It’s a wigwam, I said.

– It’s a tepee, said Kevin.

Liam and Aidan said nothing. They wanted their da to go away.

– Oh, that’s right, said Mister O’Connell.

He had a net bag for his messages. He took a brown bag out of it. I knew what was in it.

– D’yis want a biscuit, boys?

We queued up. We let Liam and Aidan go first. He was their da.

– Did you see his handbag? said Kevin when Mister O’Connell was gone.

– It wasn’t a handbag, said Aidan.

– It was so, said Kevin.

No one joined in.

There were fields past the Corporation houses but they were too far away now. Past the Corporation houses. Somewhere else.

We’d done the compass points in school the day we got the summer holidays.

– Which way am I pointing – NOW.

– East.

– One of you at a time. – YOU.

– East, Sir.

– Just to make sure you didn’t say that just because Mister Bradshaw got there before you. – NOW.

– West, Sir.

The Corporation houses were west. The seafront was east. Raheny was south. The north was interesting.

– The last frontier, said my da.

First there were more new houses. There was no one in them yet because they’d all flooded before they were finished. Past the houses was the field with the hills, the one that had been dug up and stopped and grown over, where we built our huts. And over the hills was Bayside.

Bayside wasn’t finished yet but it wasn’t the building sites we were after this time. It was the shape of the place. It was mad. The roads were crooked. The garages weren’t in the proper place. They were in blocks away from the houses. Down a path, into a yard, a fort made of garages. The place made no sense. We went there to get lost.

– It’s a labyrinth.

– Labyrinth!

– Labyrinth labyrinth labyrinth!

We charged through on our bikes. Bikes became important, our horses. We galloped through the garage yards and made it to the other side. I tied a rope to the handlebars and hitched my bike to a pole whenever I got off it. We parked our bikes on verges so they could graze. The rope got caught between the spokes of the front wheel; I went over the handlebars, straight over. It was over before I knew. The bike was on top of me. I was alone. I was okay. I wasn’t even cut. We charged into the garages -

– Woo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo!

and the garages captured our noise and made it bigger and grown-up. We escaped out the other end, out onto the street and back for a second attack.

We got material from our houses and made headbands. Mine was a tartan one, with a seagull’s feather. We took off our jumpers and shirts and vests. James O’Keefe took off his trousers and rode through Bayside in his underpants. His skin was stuck to the saddle when he was getting off, from the sweat; you could hear the skin clinging to the plastic. We threw his trousers onto the roof of a garage, and his shirt and his vest. We put his jumper down a shore.

The garage roofs were easy to get up onto. We climbed up on our saddles and onto the roofs when we’d conquered the forts.

– Woo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo!

A woman looked out of a bedroom window and made a face and moved her hands, telling us to get down. We did the first time. We got on our bikes and hightailed it out of Bayside. She’d called the police; her husband was a Guard; she was a witch. I got straight from the roof onto the bike without touching the ground. I pushed off from the wall. There was a wobble but then I was gone. I circled the garages to make sure that the others had time to escape.

I’d got the bike for Christmas, two Christmases before. I woke up. I thought I did. The bedroom door was closing. The bike was leaning against the end of my bed. I was confused. And afraid. The door clicked shut. I stayed in the bed. I heard no steps outside in the hall. I didn’t try to ride the bike for months after. We didn’t need them. We were better on foot through the fields and sites. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know who’d given it to me. It should never have been in my bedroom. It was a Raleigh, a gold one. It was the right size for me and I didn’t like that either. I wanted a grown-up one, with straight handlebars and brakes that fit properly into my hands with the bars, like Kevin had. My brakes stuck down under the bars. I had to gather them into my hands. When I held the bar and the brake together the bike stopped; I couldn’t do it. The only thing I did like was a Manchester United sticker that was in my stocking when I woke up again in the morning. I stuck it on the bar under the saddle.

We didn’t need bikes then. We walked; we ran. We ran away. That was the best, running away. We shouted at watchmen, we threw stones at windows, we played knickknack – and ran away. We owned Barrytown, the whole lot of it. It went on forever. It was a country.

Bayside was for bikes.

I couldn’t cycle it. I could get my leg over the saddle and onto the pedal and push but that was all. I couldn’t go; I couldn’t stay up. I didn’t know how. I was doing everything right. I ran the bike, got onto it and fell over. I was frightened. I knew I was going to fall before I started. I gave up. I put the bike in the shed. My da got angry. I didn’t care.

– Santy got you that bike, he said. -The least you can do is learn how to cycle the bloody thing.

I said nothing.

– It comes natural, he said. -It’s as natural as walking.

I could walk.

I asked him to show me.

– About time, he said.

I got up on the bike; he held the back of the saddle and I pedalled. Up the garden. Down the garden. He thought I was enjoying it; I hated it. I knew: he let go: I fell over.

– Keep pedalling keep pedalling keep pedalling -

I fell over. I got off the bike. I wasn’t really falling. I was putting my left foot down. That made him more annoyed.

– You’re not trying.

He pulled the bike away from me.

– Come on; get up.

I couldn’t. He had the bike. He realised this. He gave it back. I got up. He held the back. He said nothing. I pedalled. We went down the garden. I went faster. I stayed up; he was still holding. I looked back. He wasn’t there. I fell over. But I’d done it; I’d gone a bit without him. I could do it. I didn’t need him now. I didn’t want him.

He was gone anyway. Back into the house.

– You’ll be grand now, he said.

He was just lazy.

I stayed on. I turned at the top of the garden instead of getting off and turning the bike and getting back on. I stayed on. Around the garden three times. Nearly into the hedge. I stayed on.

We ruled Bayside. We camped up on the garage roofs. We lit a fire. We could see in all directions. We were ready for any attack. There were boys in Bayside but they were mostly smaller and saps. The ones our age were saps too. We got one of the small ones; we held him hostage. We made him climb up on the saddle, onto the roof. We surrounded him. We held him over the side of the roof. We kicked him. I gave him a dead leg.

– If we get attacked you’re dead, Kevin told him.

We held him for ten minutes. We made him jump off the roof. He landed the right way. Nothing ever happened. No one came after us.

Bayside was great for knick-knacking. In the night. There were no walls or hedges, no real gardens. A straight row of bells. It was easy. There was a path or a lane at the end of each row. Escaping was nothing. The really great bit was doubling back and doing it all over again. Our record was seventeen. Seventeen times we rang the five bells in the row and escaped. One of the houses didn’t have a bell so I knocked on the glass. We were dizzy by the time we’d finished. We did it in a relay. Me first, then Kevin, Liam, Aidan, me again. The thrill was coming round to start again, not knowing if there’d be a door open waiting to catch you.

– Maybe they’re all out.

– No way, said Kevin. -They’re all in.

– How?

– They are, I said. -I saw them.

It was getting cold. I put my shirt and jumper back on.

– Is it morning yet?

– Morning not to get up.

I was good at waiting for the scab to be ready. I never rushed. I waited until I was sure it was hollow, sure that the crust had lifted off my knee. It came off neat and tidy and there was no blood underneath, just a red mark; that was the knee being fixed. Scabs were made by things in your blood called corpuscles. There were thirty-five billion corpuscles in your blood. They made the scabs to stop you from bleeding to death.

I was the same way with sticky eyes. I let them stay sticky and they got hard. In the mornings this happened sometimes. One eye was sticky where I’d had my head on the pillow. My ma said a draught caused it. I turned on my back. I concentrated on the eye; I kept it shut. Sleepy eyes, my ma called them. She’d cleared them out with the facecloth when I’d shown her them the first time, both of them sticky. I didn’t tell her any more. I kept them for myself. I waited. When my ma shouted up at us to hurry up for our breakfast I got up and got dressed. I tested the eye. I pulled the lids as if I was going to open them. They were nice and stuck, and dry. I finished dressing. I sat on the bed and touched the eye carefully, around the outside and the corners. The outside corner first, I scooped the crust away on the top of my finger and looked. There was never as much on the finger as it felt there’d be, only a tiny bit of flake. They’d pop open and I could feel the air on my eyeball. Then I’d rub the eye and it was normal again. There was nothing when I looked in the mirror in the bathroom. Just two eyes the same.

Sinbad didn’t notice the way I did. There had to be shouts and screams and big gaps between them before he knew anything. When it was quiet it was fine; that was the way he thought. He wouldn’t agree with me, even when I got him on the ground.

I was alone, the only one who knew. I knew better than they did. They were in it: all I could do was watch. I paid more attention than they did, because they kept saying the same things over and over.

– I do not.

– You do.

– I do not.

You do, I’m afraid.

I waited for one of them to say something different, wanting it – they’d go forward again and it would end for a while. Their fights were like a train that kept getting stuck at the corner tracks and you had to lean over and push it or straighten it. Only now, all I could do was listen and wish. I didn’t pray; there were no prayers for this. The Our Father didn’t fit, or the Hail Mary. But I rocked the same way I sometimes did when I was saying prayers. Backwards and forwards, the rhythm of the prayer. Grace Before Meals was the fastest, probably because we were all starving just before lunch, just after the bell.

I rocked.

– Stop stop stop stop -

On the stairs. On the step outside the back door. In bed. Sitting beside my da. At the table in the kitchen.

– I hate them this way.

– They’re the same as last Sunday.

Da only had a fry on Sunday mornings. We had a sausage each and black pudding if we wanted it, as well as what we always had. At least an hour before mass.

– Gollop it down now, Ma warned me, -or you won’t be able to go up for communion.

I looked at the clock. There were nine minutes before half-eleven and we were going to half-twelve mass. I divided my sausage in nine.

– I told you before, I hate them runny.

– They were runny last week.

– I hate them this way; I won’t -

I rocked.

– Do you need to go to the toilet?

– No.

– What’s wrong with you then?

– Nothing.

– Well, stop squirming there like a half-wit. Eat your breakfast.

He said nothing else. He ate everything, the runny egg as well. I liked them runny. He got it all up with about half a slice of bread: I could never do that properly. The egg just ran ahead in front of the bread when I did it. He cleaned his plate. He didn’t say anything. He knew I was watching; he’d caught me rocking and he knew why.

He said the tea was nice.

He was still chewing at half-eleven. I watched for the minute hand to click, up past the six; I watched him. I heard the click from behind the clock. He didn’t swallow for thirty-six seconds after that.

I kept it to myself. If he went up for communion I’d see what happened. I knew and God knew.

I loved twirling the dial on the radio. I turned it on and put it on its back on the kitchen table. I was never allowed to bring it out of the kitchen. I got the dial and turned it as much as my wrist would let me, as quick as I could. I loved the high-pitched scratch and then the voice and the scratching again, different, and a voice, maybe a woman; I wouldn’t stop to find out. Around and back, around and back; music and bloops, voices, nothing. There was dirt in the lines of the plastic front, where the sound came out, like the dirt under your nails, and in the letters of the gold BUSH stuck on the bottom corner. My ma listened to The Kennedys of Castleross. I stayed in the kitchen with her when it was on during the holidays, but I didn’t listen to it. I sat on a chair and waited till it was over and watched her listening.

I opened the box of Persil and sprinkled some of it on the sea. Nothing happened really; it just spotted the water and disappeared. I did it again. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.

– Give us it, said Kevin.

I did.

He grabbed Edward Swanwick. We grabbed him as well when we saw what he was doing. Edward Swanwick wasn’t really a friend of ours. He was on the edge. I’d never called for him. I’d never been in his kitchen. At Halloween, when we knocked at his house, they never gave us sweets or money – always fruit. And Missis Swanwick warned us to eat it.

– What did she mean?

– It’s none of her business what we do with it, said Liam.

We got Edward Swanwick onto the ground and tried to get his mouth open. It was easy; there were ways of doing it. Keeping it open was the problem. Kevin started pouring the Persil onto his face; Liam held Edward Swanwick’s head by the ears so he couldn’t get his face away; I held his nose and pinched his diddy. Some of the Persil got in. Edward Swanwick was gagging and shuddering, trying to shake us off. It was in his eyes as well. The box was empty. Kevin shoved it up Edward Swanwick’s jumper and we let him up. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t; if he didn’t pretend he’d enjoyed himself he was gone, out of the gang. He got sick; not much, mostly the Persil.

That was the type of thing we robbed, mostly. Sweets were hard, up at the counter, hard to get at because of the glass and the women. They guarded the sweets because they thought that no one would be bothered robbing the other stuff. They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that robbing had nothing to do with what we wanted; it was the dare, the terror, the getting away with it.

It was always women. There were about six shops between Raheny and Baldoyle that we raided. There were no supermarkets yet, just grocers and shops that sold everything. Once, when we were out on a walk, Ma asked for the Evening Press, four Choc-pops, a packet of Lyons Green Label and a mouse trap and the woman was able to get them all without stretching. I was a bit nervous: I’d robbed a box of Shredded Wheat out of there a few days before and I was afraid she’d recognise me. I minded the pram while my ma talked to her, about the weather and the new houses.

We only robbed when the weather was nice. We never robbed in Barrytown. That would have been stupid. There was Missis Kilmartin’s one-way glass, but that wasn’t all; the people in the shops were friends with our parents. They’d all got married and moved to Barrytown at the same time. They were all pioneers, my da said. I didn’t know what he meant but he liked saying it; he loved going down to the shops and meeting and talking to the owners, except Missis Kilmartin. He told me that Mister Kilmartin was locked up in the attic.

– Don’t listen to him, said my ma. -He’s in the British Navy.

– In a ship?

– I think so.

– Anywhere except at home, said my da.

He’d just fixed the wonky kitchen chair so he was feeling a bit proud of himself; you could tell by the way he kept sitting on it and looking down at the legs and trying to rock it.

– That’s grand now, he said. -Isn’t it?

– Smashing, said my ma.

The grocer in Barrytown was a man, a nice one, Mister Fitzpatrick. He gave you more broken biscuits than you were entitled to. He was huge. He leaned over you. I remembered when I was small, he stepped over me. We’d never have robbed off Mister Fitz. He’d have known what we were up to, and everyone loved him. Our parents would have killed us. Missis Fitz sat on a chair in the front door when the weather was nice, like an ad for the shop. She was lovely looking. They had a daughter, Naomi; she was in secondary school. She was as nice looking as her mother. She worked in the shop on Saturdays, after school; filled the cardboard boxes, the weekend orders for all the houses in Barrytown. Kevin’s brother did the deliveries on a colossal black bike with a basket in the front. He got seven and six for it. He said Naomi could open bottles of Fanta with her gee. I wanted to kill him when he said that. I wanted to save Naomi.

Get the biggest box. It was Kevin’s idea. It was great. Whoever got the thing in the biggest box out of the shop, he won. It had to be a full box; that was one of the first rules, after Liam came out of a shop with an empty one, a huge one that had had boxes of Cornflakes inside it. You couldn’t do this in any shop. You had to be careful. Most of the shops had their own specialities, although the women behind the counter didn’t know this. The one in Raheny was great for robbing magazines; the comics were up on the counter, too near the noses of the three ancient women that patrolled the counter. The magazines, though, were much easier. The women were saps: they thought that we wouldn’t be interested in women’s magazines and knitting magazines, so they put them on a rack right beside the door so they’d look nice in the window. Another thing, they served grown-ups first, always. I waited for the right moment. I was outside, tying my lace. A woman went in; the three old women dashed to serve her and I leaned in and grabbed five Women’s Weeklys. I brought them down the lane beside the new library and we tore them up. I once got a Football Monthly out of the window rack. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it there. They must have run out of room on the counter. I thought for a sec that they might have put it there as bait. I thought about it; I looked around. I took it. There was another shop that invited you to rob their biscuits. It was in Baldoyle. The tins of biscuits – the loose ones – were on a ledge that ran along the counter, just under it. You could fill your pockets while the woman counted your aniseed balls. One box had Milk-choc Goldgrain in it, the only chocolate ones. We’d queue up in front of that box, waiting our turn. She thought we were being polite. It was dark in the shop; she must never have seen the crumbs.

For boxes, we went to Tootsie’s.

– A quarter of jelly babies, Tootsie; all boys.

Tootsie was in charge of this big manky shop up a bit from where we swam at the seafront. The windows were wasps’ graveyards; they dried and cracked in the sun. We added some. We collected them, and bees, in jars, watched them dying and milling each other, then went up to Tootsie’s and poured them all over the stuff in the window when Tootsie wasn’t looking. We’d have done it even if she was looking; she looked at you and didn’t see anything; it took ages for her face to catch up. Tootsie didn’t own the shop. She minded it for someone. She did everything in slow motion, everything. Sometimes there was even an action replay; she’d pick up something again, dead slow-ow-owly, to check the price again. She wrote the price of everything on a paper bag, real neat; she used a ruler to do the line under the numbers. Then she did the sum, but she stopped and started again all the way, like she was climbing down a ladder with wobbly rungs. That was when you could have walked out of the shop with anything. We robbed her steps, the ones she used for the top shelves. I took one end and Kevin took the other. The woman Tootsie was serving wasn’t from our place. We didn’t know her. We made it look like we were helping Tootsie, kept our faces serious. We threw the steps into the sea. It made a good noise but not much of a splash. We stood on them when the tide was half-in to make it look like we were walking on the water. You could ask Tootsie anything.

– D’you sell cars, Tootsie?

– No.

She thought about it first.

– Why not?

She just looked.

– D’you sell rhinoceroses, Tootsie?

– No.

You could see the track-marks of Tootsie’s fingers in the cream in the cakes on the tray on the fridge behind the counter. The cream was yellow, the tracks hard and permanent. The fridge was small and fat, for ice-pops and blocks of ice-cream. I crept behind the counter and pulled out the plug.

There was a bakery in Raheny guarded by two women. It had the best smell of any shop. It wasn’t bread; it wasn’t a rushing smell, like steam surrounding you. It was quieter, part of the air, not warm and smothering and upsetting. The smell made me feel good. The cakes were on shelves inside the all-glass counter, not stacks of them, a few of each on plates two feet apart down the shelves; small cakes, not huge things exploding with cream. The cakes were bright, hard in a nice way – biscuits that were too good to be called biscuits. Like cakes in a fairy tale; you could have built things out of them. I didn’t know where the baking got done. There was a door at the back but the women always closed it when they were coming and going, never together – there was always one of them behind the counter, knitting. They both knitted. They might have been having a race. They were very fast. We couldn’t go in there to look around; we couldn’t pretend we were looking for something. There was just the counter, and the shelves under it. We looked in the window. Sometimes I’d have enough money for a cake. They weren’t as nice as they looked. And I’d have to share. You had to hold the cake so that most of it was behind your fingers, safe, so the others could only get a small bite.

We got caught.

My ma saw us and she blabbed to my da. She was out on a walk with the girls and she saw us grabbing a pile of Woman’s Ways. I saw her before I went down the lane. I pretended I didn’t. My legs weren’t there for a few seconds; my stomach felt empty and full; I had to stop a moan from getting out. What was she doing in Raheny? She never went to Raheny. It was miles from Barrytown. I had to go to the toilet, immediately. The others kept watch. I’d told them about my ma. They were in trouble too. I wiped myself with Sinbad’s hankie. He wanted to run after Ma; he was crying. Kevin gave him a Chinese torture. He looked over at me to make sure it was alright. But Sinbad was crying already; he didn’t seem to notice the pain, so Kevin stopped. We looked at my gick. It was like a plastic one, perfect. None of them jeered at me when they saw it.

There was only one way out of the lane, back the way we’d run in. I hated my ma. She’d be waiting behind the wall, waiting. She’d smack me, and give me Sinbad’s share as well, in front of the others.

Kevin had done it. I’d only been with him.

I tested it.

I was still in trouble.

Ian McEvoy went out onto the path first. I could tell from his face that my ma wasn’t there. We cheered and ran out onto the path. She hadn’t seen us.

She’d seen us.

She hadn’t seen us. She’d have come after us and made us bring the Woman’s Ways back and say Sorry to the women. She’d been too far away to recognise us. She hadn’t seen what we’d done, just us running away. We hadn’t been running away, we’d only been running – having a chase. We’d paid for the Woman’s Ways; they were old ones and the women had said that we could take them, they’d asked us to. She’d been too far away. I looked like two of my cousins. I took my jumper off. I’d hide it and go into the house in just my shirt. It couldn’t have been me if it had been a boy in a blue jumper like mine cos I wasn’t wearing it. She’d been looking at Cathy in the pram. She’d been too busy.

She’d seen us.

She told my da and I got killed. He didn’t give me a chance to deny it. It was just as well. I would have denied it and I’d have got into even bigger trouble. He used his belt. He didn’t wear a belt. He kept it just for this. The back of my legs. The outside of my hand that was trying to cover my legs. The arm that he held onto was sore for days after. Round in a circle in the living room. Trying to get well in front of the sweep of the belt so it wouldn’t hurt as much. I should have done it the other way, backed into the belt, given him less room to swing. Everyone else in the house was crying, not just me. The whistle of the belt; he was trying to get in a good shot. Messing, playing with me, that was what he was doing. Then he stopped. I kept moving, jerking ahead; I didn’t know he’d stopped for good. He let go of my arm, and I noticed the pain there. Up where it joined the shoulder, it was very sore there. I was heading into uncontrollable sobs. I didn’t want that; I didn’t enjoy it any more. I held my breath. It was over. It was over. Nothing more would happen. It had been worth it.

He was sweating.

– Go up to your room now. Go on.

He didn’t sound as hard as he’d wanted to.

I looked at my ma. She was white. Her lips had disappeared. It served her right.

Sinbad was already up there. He’d only got a few belts; it had all been my fault. He was lying face-down on his bed. He was crying. When he saw it was me he slowed down.

– Look.

I showed him the backs of my legs.

– Show me yours.

He didn’t have half as many marks. I didn’t say anything. He could see for himself; some of them should have been his. I could see that that was what he was thinking, and that was enough for me.

– He’s a big bastard, I said. -Isn’t he?

– Yeah.

– He’s a big bastard, I said again.

– He’s a big bastard, said Sinbad.

We got under our blankets and had a war. I liked the dark under the blankets. You could get rid of it easily when you wanted to. And it was nice the way the blankets pressed me down; I could feel it in my head. It was warm. Light came in. The blanket had been lifted up. It was Sinbad. He climbed in.

Our venetian blinds were different colours. One day – it was raining – I realised that there was a pattern. The bottom one was yellow, the one next was light blue, then pink, then red. Then yellow again. The top one was blue. The frame at the top was white. So was the cord. I lay on the floor with my feet towards the window and counted the slats, faster and faster.

There were lots of venetian blinds in Barrytown but we were the only ones I knew that had them in the back of the house as well as the front. Me and Kevin went around all the houses and there were seventeen blinds in the front windows that were crooked. There were fifty-four houses in Barrytown, not counting the new Corporation ones and the other ones that were just finished and had no one in them yet. We went around again; eleven of the seventeen were crooked on the left side. The blinds came down to the window ledge on the right but were stuck about five slats up on the left. Worst was the Kellys’ with ten slats. We could see Missis Kelly in the front room doing nothing. O’Connell’s weren’t only crooked, they were buckled; not Mister O’Connell’s bedroom ones upstairs – they were perfect, and closed – the front-room ones, the room we played in. Only twenty houses didn’t have blinds.

– Useless.

Kevin’s house had coloured ones as well.

– Multi-coloured are best.

– Yeah.

My ma filled the bath with water when she was washing them. She only ever did it once. I wanted to help but there wasn’t room; I wanted to make sure that she put them back in the right order. She pulled the cord out of all the holes in the slats and put each slat in the bath, one at a time. I looked at a new washed yellow one and a dirty yellow one while she was feeding the babies; I put them beside each other. They were different colours now. I pulled my finger through the dirt; the new yellow was underneath it.

I asked her not to wash one of each colour.

– Will you not? I asked again.

– Why?

She always stopped and listened; she always wanted to know.

– Just -

I couldn’t explain it; it was kind of a secret.

– To compare.

– But they’re filthy dirty, love.

I knew when I was going to bed that I’d never lie on the floor and look up at the colours again. She came in to turn off the light. She put her hand on my forehead and hair. Her hand smelt of water and the dirt behind the fridge. I got my head from under her hand; I shifted to the corner.

– Is it because of the blinds?

– No.

– What is it?

– I’m hot.

– D’you want one of the blankets off?

– No.

She spent ages tucking me in; I wanted her to go but I didn’t as well.

Sinbad was asleep. He’d once got his head caught in the bars of his cot and he’d cried all night, till daylight when I saw him. That was years ago. He slept in a bed now. My Uncle Raymond had brought it on the roof of his car. The mattress was wet because it had started raining when he was half-way between his house and our house. We said it was because of all our cousins’ wee-wees, me and Sinbad. We didn’t know till two days later, when the mattress was dry, that it was Sinbad’s bed. Then Uncle Frank took Sinbad’s cot away on the roof of his car.

– They were dirty, Patrick, she said. -You have to wash things when they’re dirty. Specially with babies. D’you understand?

If I said Yes that would mean more than I just understood. I said nothing, the way Sinbad always did.

– Patrick?

I said nothing.

– Have you any tickles?

I tried like mad not to laugh.

Aidan was the commentator. He was brilliant at it. We had to tell him our names before the match. We were playing across the road. Our pitch was gone. The gates on each side were the goals. There were eight of us, just right, four a side. Whoever had the ball when a car was coming got a throw-in when the car had gone. If you decided to risk it but the driver blasted the horn before you took your shot the goal was disallowed, if it was a goal. You couldn’t use the kerb for shielding the ball. Anything higher than the top of the pillar was over the bar.

I had to fight for George Best.

Kevin didn’t follow Manchester United. He followed Leeds. He’d once followed United but then he’d changed because of his brother; his brother followed Leeds.

It was Kevin’s turn to pick.

– Eddie Gray, he said.

No one else wanted to be Eddie Gray. Ian McEvoy followed Leeds as well but he was always Johnny Giles. Kevin was sick once, and Ian McEvoy picked Eddie Gray.

– Why not Johnny Giles?

– Just -

I’d caught him.

Four of us followed Manchester United. All of us wanted to be George Best. We always made Sinbad be Nobby Stiles so he stopped following United and started following Liverpool, although he didn’t really follow anyone. For a while I nearly changed to Leeds as well, but I couldn’t. They’d have said that it was just because of Kevin but, mostly, it was because of George Best.

What we did was, Kevin got four ice-pop sticks and broke one of them and each United supporter picked a stick and whoever got the broken stick got to choose first.

Aidan picked the small stick.

– Bobby Charlton, he said.

He picked Bobby Charlton because he knew what would happen to him if he picked George Best. I’d do him. There was no ref. You could do what you wanted, even tackle one of your own team. I could beat Aidan. He was a good fighter but he didn’t like it. He always let you up before you surrendered properly; then you could get him back.

Kevin threw away one of the big sticks. I picked the small one this time.

– George Best.

Liam was Denis Law. If he’d picked the small stick he’d have been George Best. I wouldn’t have stopped him. He was different. I’d never had a fight with him. There was something; he’d have won. He wasn’t that much bigger. There was something. It hadn’t always been like that. He’d been very small once. He wasn’t that big now. His eyes. There was no shine on them. When the brothers were together, standing beside each other, it was easy to see them the way we saw them; little, jokes, sad, nice. They were our friends because we hated them; it was good to have them around. I was cleaner than them, brainier than them. I was better than them. Separate, it was different. Aidan got smaller, unfinished looking. Liam became dangerous. They looked the same together. They were nothing alike when you met one of them alone. That nearly never happened. They weren’t twins. Liam was older than Aidan. They both followed United.

– It’s cheaper, said Ian McEvoy when they weren’t there.

– The game’s about to commence, said Aidan.

Me, Aidan, Ian McEvoy and Sinbad versus Kevin, Liam, Edward Swanwick and James O’Keefe. We were given a two-goal lead because we had Sinbad. He was much smaller than everyone else. Teams with Sinbad in them usually won. We all thought it was because of the automatic two-goal lead but it wasn’t. (The score in one match was seventy-three, sixty-seven.) It was because Sinbad was a good player. But none of us knew this; he was a twirp; we were stuck with him because he was my little brother. He was a brilliant dribbler. I didn’t know until Mister O’Keefe, James O’Keefe’s da, told me.

– He has the perfect centre of gravity for a soccer player, said Mister O’Keefe.

I looked at Sinbad. He was just my little brother. I hated him. He never wiped his nose. He cried. He wet the bed. He got away with not eating his dinner. He had to wear specs with one black lens. He ran to get the ball. No one else did that. They all waited for it to come to them. He went through them all, no bother. He was brilliant. He wasn’t selfish like most fellas who could dribble. It was weird, looking at him. It was great, and I wanted to kill him. You couldn’t be proud of your little brother.

We were two-nil up before we started.

– The captains shake hands.

I shook hands with Kevin. We squeezed real hard. We were Northern Ireland. Kevin was Scotland. Bobby Charlton was playing for Northern Ireland because he was on his holidays there.

– Scotland to kick off.

These games were fast. It was nothing like being on grass. The road wasn’t wide. We were packed in together. The gates were closed. The smack of the ball against the gate was a goal. Goalkeepers scored about half the goals. We tried to change the rules but the goalkeepers objected; they wouldn’t go in goal if they weren’t allowed score goals. The useless players went in goal but we still needed them. Once, James O’Keefe, the worst player of us all, kicked out from goal. He scored a goal but the ball whacked off the gate and back across the road, into his own goal. He’d scored a goal and an O.G. with the one shot.

– My word, said the commentator. -Extraordinary.

Scotland kicked off.

– Denis Law taps to Eddie Gray -

I got a foot in; the ball hit the gate.

– Yessss!

– My word, said the commentator. -A goal by Best. One-nil to Northern Ireland.

– Hey! I reminded him. -Sinbad’s goals.

– Three-nil to Northern Ireland. What a start. What can Scotland do now?

Scotland scored three.

It made you dizzy. The ball bombed over the road, and over. It was a bit burst. It hurt when it got you in the leg.

– I can’t recall a game quite as exciting as this one, said the commentator. -My word.

He’d just scored a goal.

It always slowed down after a while. If it hadn’t we’d never have played it. It would have been just stupid. Your feet got sore blemming a burst ball.

– Seventeen, sixteen to Northern Ireland.

– It’s seventeen-all!

– It isn’t. I’ve been counting.

– What is it? Kevin asked Edward Swanwick.

– Seventeen-all.

– There, said Kevin.

– He’s on your team, I said. -He’s just saying it cos you said it.

– He’s on your team, he said.

He was pointing at the commentator.

– Really, the referee will have to take control of the situation.

– Shut up, you.

– I’m supposed to talk. It’s my job.

– Shut up; your da’s an alco.

This always happened as well.

– Okay, I said. -Seventeen-all. We’ll win anyway.

– We’ll see about that.

Kevin turned to his team.

– Come on! Wake up! Wake up!

Liam and Aidan never did anything when we said things about their da.

The game had slowed down. Aidan didn’t commentate for a while. It was getting dark. The game ended at teatime. If James O’Keefe was late for his tea his ma gave it to the cat. That was what she’d shouted one day when he’d been hiding behind a hedge when she’d called him in.

– James O’Keefe! I’m going to give your fish-fingers to the cat!

He went in. He said later that he’d been hiding cos he thought they’d be having mince and turnips for their tea, not fish-fingers. But he was always lying. He was the biggest liar in Barrytown.

Twenty-seven, twenty-three; we were winning again.

– My word, said Aidan. -Roger Hunt is posing problems for the Scotland defence.

Roger Hunt was Sinbad. They couldn’t cope with him. It was because he was small and he was able to hide the ball behind himself. Kevin was good at sliding tackles but we were playing on the road so Sinbad was safe. It was much easier to foul someone the same size as you. Another thing about Sinbad, he didn’t score the goals himself. He passed the ball to someone who couldn’t miss – mostly me – and they all marked me instead of Sinbad because I was scoring the goals. I’d scored twenty-one of our goals. Seven hat-tricks.

– Why are they called hat-tricks?

– Cos you get given a hat if you score one.

If you played for Ireland you got a cap. It was like a school cap or a cub’s cap, with a badge on it. England caps had a thing on the top of them, like the cord on my da’s dressing gown. You’d never have worn one if you got one. You were supposed to put them in one of those presses with glass doors and people could look at them when they came to your house, and your medals. When I was sick I was let wear my da’s dressing gown.

Mister O’Keefe invented Barrytown United. I liked Mister O’Keefe. His first name was Tommy and he let us call him that. It was weird at first. James O’Keefe didn’t call him Tommy and none of us called him Tommy either when Missis O’Keefe was around but that wasn’t because Tommy told us not to. We just didn’t. James O’Keefe didn’t know what his ma’s first name was.

– Agnes.

That was Ian McEvoy’s one.

– Gertie, said Liam.

That was his and Aidan’s ma’s name.

– Does it say that on the grave?

– Yeah.

It was James O’Keefe’s turn.

– Don’t know.

I didn’t believe him, but then I did. I’d thought he wasn’t telling us because it was a name we’d laugh at, but we were laughing at them all, except Gertie. We tortured him, a Chinese burn on each arm at the same time, and he still didn’t know his ma’s name.

– Find out, said Kevin, when we let him up cos he was coughing.

– How?

– Just find out, said Kevin. -That’s your mission.

James O’Keefe looked panicky.

– Ask her, I said.

– Don’t give him hints, said Kevin. -You’d better know by after dinner, he told James O’Keefe.

But then we forgot all about it.

Missis O’Keefe wasn’t that bad.

– George Best elbows Alan Gilzean in the face.

– I didn’t touch him, I said.

I kicked the ball away to stop the game.

– I didn’t touch him. He ran into me.

It was only Edward Swanwick. He was holding his nose so we wouldn’t see that he wasn’t bleeding. His eyes were wet.

– He’s crying, said Ian McEvoy. -Look it.

I wouldn’t have done it if it had been any of the others. They knew that, they didn’t care; it was only Edward Swanwick.

– And, really, said the commentator. -Alan Gilzean seems to be making a bit of a meal of his little knock.

The funny thing was, Aidan was never like that – that funny – when he was just himself, when he wasn’t commentating. Forty-two, thirty-eight to Northern Ireland. Kevin’s neck was getting red; he was going to lose. It was great. It was getting dark. Missis O’Keefe was the final whistle. Any minute now.

– Barrytown United.

– Barrytown Rovers.

We were thinking of names.

– Barrytown Celtic.

– Barrytown United’s best.

I said that. It had to be United. We were sitting in O’Keefe’s back garden. Mister O’Keefe was sitting on a brick. He was smoking a cigarette.

– Barrytown Forest, said Liam.

Mister O’Keefe laughed but none of us did.

– United.

– Nev-er.

– Let’s have a vote for it, said Ian McEvoy.

Mister O’Keefe rubbed his hands.

– That sounds the best way alright, he said.

– It’ll be United.

– No, it won’t!

– Shhhh, said Mister O’Keefe. -Shhhh, now. Right, okay; hands up who wants Barrytown Forest.

Liam lifted his hand a little bit, then put it back. No hands. We cheered.

– Barrytown Rovers?

No hands.

– Barrytown – United.

The Manchester United and Leeds United fellas put all their hands up. There was no one left, except Sinbad.

– Barrytown United it is, said Mister O’Keefe. -By a handsome majority. Which one did you want? he asked Sinbad.

– Liverpool, said Sinbad.

It was so brilliant being in a team called United that we didn’t bother getting Sinbad for saying that.

– Une-eye-ted!

Une-eye-ted!

I’d hold my arms out straight till they ached and I’d spin. I could feel the air against my arms, trying to stop them from going so fast, like dragging them through water. I kept going. Eyes open, little steps in a circle; my heels cut into the grass, made it juicy; really fast – the house, the kitchen, the hedge, the back, the other hedge, the apple tree, the house, the kitchen, the hedge, the back – waiting to stop my feet. I never warned myself. It just happened – the other hedge, the apple tree, the house, the kitchen – stop – onto the ground, on my back, sweating, gasping, everything still spinning. The sky – round and round – nearly wanting to get sick. Wet from sweating, cold and hot. Belch. I had to lie there till it was over. Round and round; it was better with my eyes open, trying to get my eyes to hang onto one thing and stop it from turning. Snot, sweat, round, round and round. I didn’t know why I did it; it was terrible – maybe that was why. It was good getting there – spinning. Stopping was the bad bit, and after. It had to come; I couldn’t spin forever. Recovering. Stuck to the ground. I could feel the world turning. Gravity sticking me down, holding me, my shoulders; my shins sore. The world was round and Ireland was stuck on the side; I knew that when I was spinning – falling off the world. The worst was when there was nothing in the sky, nothing to grab, blue blue blue.

I only ever got sick once.

It was dangerous to do things straight after your dinner. You could drown if you went swimming. I went up to my belly button to see if anything would happen – I wasn’t going to go any further – just to check. Nothing did. The water was the same; the suck wasn’t any stronger. That didn’t mean much though. Standing in a bit of water wasn’t the same as swimming. You weren’t swimming until your feet weren’t touching the sand for at least five seconds. That was swimming; that was when you drowned if you were full of your dinner. Your belly was too full and too heavy. Your legs and arms couldn’t hold you up. You swallowed water. It got into your lungs. It took ages for you to die. Spinning was the same, only you didn’t die, unless you were lying on your back when you were getting sick and you didn’t turn over on your side because you’d fainted or something, or you’d walloped your head and you were unconscious with your mouth full of vomit. Then you suffocated, unless someone saw you in time and saved you; they turned you over and thumped your back to make room in your throat for some air to get through. You gasped and coughed; then they gave you the kiss of life to be on the safe side. Their lips would be touching your lips and your lips would be covered in vomit. They might get sick themselves on you. They might be a man, a man kissing me – or a woman.

Kissing was stupid. It was alright for kissing your ma when you were going to school or something, but kissing someone because you liked them – you thought they were lovely – that was just stupid. It didn’t make sense. The man on top of the woman when they were on the ground or in a bed.

– Bed. Pass it on.

We snuck into Kevin’s ma’s and da’s bedroom and looked at their bed. We laughed. Kevin pushed me onto the bed and he wouldn’t let me out; he held the handle on the other side.

When I got sick from spinning I didn’t faint or anything. I just knew I was going to get sick when I was lying on the grass after I’d stopped – the grass was warm and stiff – so I tried to stand up but I fell back on one knee and then the sick came; not real vomit – food from the top of the heap in my stomach. My ma said that you should chew the food well before you swallowed it. I never did; it was a waste of time and boring. Sometimes my throat hurt after I’d swallowed something big; I knew it was going to be sore but it was too late to stop, it was too far down, there was nothing I could do. Boiled potatoes, big bits of bacon with fat on it, cabbage – that was what came out. Angel Delight, strawberry. Milk. I could name every bit of it. I felt better, sturdier. I stood up. It was in the back garden. My head moved a little bit – house, kitchen – but then it stopped. I looked at my clothes. They hadn’t been hit. My runners were clean too. And my legs. It was all on the ground. Like stew off a plate. Did I have to clean it up? It wasn’t on a floor or a path. But it was in the garden, not a field or someone-else-we-didn’t-know’s garden. I wasn’t sure. I walked down to the kitchen door. I turned and looked. I couldn’t make up my mind if I could see it there or not. I was looking there because I knew it was there. I could see it, but I knew it was there. I went around to the front and messed with the flowers. Then I went back down the side again and came around the kitchen and looked and I couldn’t really make out anything. I left it there. I looked at it every day. It got harder and darker. I threw the bacon into the garden that backed onto ours, Corrigan’s. I let it drop over the fence so they wouldn’t see anything flying in the air if they were looking out. I waited for shouts. Nothing. I washed my hands. The rest of the sick disappeared. It was slimy and real looking after rain. Then it was gone. It took about two weeks.

– Is it morning not to get up?

– Yes, it is.

– Go back to bed, lads.

The table was still dirty. The dishes were still on it, from dinner the night before. Ma put my cornflakes bowl on top of a dirty plate.

I didn’t like it. The table should have been clean in the morning. With nothing on it except the salt and pepper in the middle, and the ketchup bottle with not too much dried ketchup up at the lid – I hated that – and the place mats, with a spoon on mine and Sinbad’s. That was the way it always was.

I ate without letting any of my body touch the table. I swapped my spoon for Sinbad’s. He was in the toilet. He’d probably wet the floor again. He was always doing that. He was afraid that the seat would fall down on him. It was only plastic, and not heavy, but it still frightened him. I was much bigger than him, so I could go into the bowl with only lifting up the hatch part of the seat. I never wet it much and I always dried it. Always. Diseases grew in toilets. If a rat ever got into your house it would go straight for the toilet.

Ma was humming.

It was stupid, not doing the dishes in the night. The food was still soft then and easy to get off; it came off in the water. Now, though, she was going to have to rub real hard. Loads of elbow grease. Blood, sweat and tears. She’d have her work cut out for her. It served her right. She should have done them the night before; that was the proper time to do them.

Morning was the start of a new day; everything should have been clean and tidy. I used to have to get up on a chair when I wanted to play at the sink – I remembered pushing the chair in front of me and the noise it made, like it was trying to stop me. I didn’t need the chair any more. I didn’t even have to stretch much to reach the taps. If the sink was too full my jumper got wet when I leaned over. With jumpers you didn’t know you were wet for a while, unless you got really soaked. I didn’t mess at the sink much any more. It was stupid. The neighbours could see you from the window and you couldn’t pull the curtains over in the daytime. I was supposed to do the dishes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I’d shown my ma how I could reach the taps and that was what happened; she said she’d let me do the dishes on those three days. Sometimes she let me off, sometimes without asking. I washed. Sinbad dried, but he was useless. He was as slow as anything. It took him years even to hold a plate when he was holding the tea-towel as well. He didn’t trust his hands through the cloth. The only bit he liked was the cups, because they were hard to drop. He covered his fist with the tea-towel and put the cup upside-down on his fist and turned the cup round on his fist. I made sure that he got all the suds out of the bottom. Suds weren’t supposed to be drunk; they tasted like poison.

He didn’t want to let me see.

– Show.

– No.

– Show me.

– No.

– I’ll get you.

– It’s my job.

– I’m in charge.

– Who says?

– Ma.

– I don’t want to do this.

– I’ll tell her you said that. I’m the oldest.

He held the cup up for me to look into.

– Okay, I said. -Pass.

He always gave in when I told him I was the oldest. He made sure the cup was flat on the table before he let go of it and he jumped back when he took his hand away, so he wouldn’t get the blame if it fell. When I was let do something and he wasn’t all Ma and Da had to do was remind him that I was older than him and he stopped complaining. He got smaller Christmas presents as well sometimes and less money on Sundays and it didn’t matter much to him.

– I’m glad I’m not you, I told him.

– I’m glad I’m not you, he said back.

I didn’t believe him.

He held up the cup for me, without me asking him.

– Suds, I said.

– Where?

– There.

And I flicked them into his eyes. Ma came in when she heard him.

– I didn’t mean to get his eyes, I told her. -He kept them open.

She stopped him crying; she was great at it. She could make him go from cry to laugh in a few seconds.

It was Thursday morning now. Wednesday wasn’t our dishes night. She should have done them. I asked her.

– Why did you not do the dishes?

Something happened when I was asking it; it was in my voice, a difference between the beginning and the end. The reason – it fell into me. The reason she hadn’t done the dishes. I’d been in a lift once – twice – up, then down. This was like going down. I nearly didn’t finish: I knew the answer. It unwrapped while I was talking. The reason.

She answered.

– I didn’t have the time.

She wasn’t telling a lie but that wasn’t the right answer.

– Sorry, she said.

She was smiling at me. It wasn’t a real smile though, not a full one.

They’d had a fight again.

– You’ll have your work cut out for you, I said.

One of their quiet ones.

She laughed.

Where they whispered their screams and roaring.

She laughed at me.

And she was always the first one to cry and he kept stabbing at her with his face and his words.

– I know I will, she said.

The first one hadn’t been like that. She’d cried, and they’d stopped. It had been nice after that one.

– You’ll have to use plenty of elbow grease.

She laughed again.

– You’re a gas man, Patrick, she said.

It had been nice. We didn’t have to creep, pretend we weren’t hearing. Sinbad was no good at pretending. He had to look to listen. Like everything was television. I had to get him away.

– What’s happening?

– They’re having a fight.

– They’re not.

– They are.

– Why are they?

– They just are.

And then when it was over Sinbad always said that nothing had happened; he wouldn’t remember.

– Blood, sweat and tears, I told her.

She laughed again, not as good as the time before.

The first fight had ended. My da won because my ma cried; he made her. It ended; back to normal, but better. The fight was over, no more fights. I made the plates into a pile, all the knives and forks on the top plate, all of them pointing the same way. The fights didn’t end now. There were breaks, long ones sometimes, but I didn’t believe in them any more. They were only gaps. I pushed the plates slowly over to the edge until the slope part of the bottom plate and the ones on top of it were out past the end of the table. I wondered was my brain strong enough to get my arms to push them the rest of the way.

– They should be put in the thicks’ class.

Kevin was right. We hated them. It was September, the first day back, and two of the boys from the Corporation houses got put into our class. Charles Leavy and Seán Whelan were their names. Henno was putting them into the roll-book.

– Tell him, I said.

I whispered it.

– What? said Kevin.

– Tell him there’s room in the thicks’ class for them.

– Okay.

Kevin put his hand up. I couldn’t believe it. I’d only been messing; we’d be killed if Kevin said it. I tried to grab Kevin’s arm without making noise.

Henno was looking down at the roll-book, writing real slowly. Kevin clicked his fingers.

– Sea? [13] said Henno.

He didn’t look up.

Kevin spoke.

– An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas? [14]

– Níl, [15] said Henno.

– Fooled you, Kevin whispered.

We were having Henno for the second year, fourth class. I was ten. Most of the others were ten. Ian McEvoy was only nine but he was nearly ten and he was the tallest. Charles Leavy was two months younger than me; they had to call out their ages and Henno put them in the book. Seán Whelan was nearly the exact same age as me. He had to stop when he was telling Henno his date of birth; he knew the day and the month but he had to think before he said the year. I could tell.

– Thick.

He was put sitting beside David Geraghty. He nearly tripped over David Geraghty’s crutches. We laughed.

– What’s so funny now? said Henno, but he was busy; he didn’t care.

Seán Whelan knew that the laughing was against him. His face was hurt but he tried to join in, but he was too late.

– D’you see him, laughing at himself?

Charles Leavy was next. Henno had to put him in a place. Henno stood up.

– Right.

Two of the boys were sitting by themselves. Liam was one of them. No one had sat beside him when he’d grabbed the seat at the back beside the window, the best desk. He’d looked delighted; he’d expected me or Kevin to charge over to him. He was by himself and so was Fluke Cassidy.

– Right, Mister Leavy. Let’s see what we have for you.

Fluke tried to sneak over to Liam’s desk.

– Stay where you are, Mister Cassidy.

He was going to put Charles Leavy beside Fluke for definite after that.

– Over there, Henno pointed to Liam’s desk.

We laughed. Henno knew why.

– Qui-etttt.

It was great. Liam was finished now; Kevin and me wouldn’t even talk to him any more. I was delighted. I didn’t know why. I liked Liam. It seemed important though. If you were going to be best friends with anyone – Kevin – you had to hate a lot of other people, the two of you, together. It made you better friends. And now Liam was sitting beside Charles Leavy. There was just me and Kevin now, no one else.

David Geraghty was the fella with the polio. That was why there’d been no one sitting beside him. You had to help him with his school bag and there was a smell of medicine off him. I’d had to sit beside him one week after I’d done well in a spelling test and David Geraghty had done badly. It had been brilliant. I’d sat right at the edge of the desk, nearly off it, one half of my bum hanging over the ground. Then David Geraghty had started talking. And he never shut up. All day, out of the side of his mouth like the other side was paralysed. You could hardly hear it but it wasn’t a whisper. Henno could hear it, I was sure he could, but he never did anything about it, probably because David Geraghty had to go around on crutches and was easily the best in the class.

– You can see the hairs in his nose, you can count them. Five in one hole and seven in the other.

Like that all day. When I realised that David Geraghty was never going to get into any trouble and that I wasn’t going to get into trouble because I was sitting beside him I sat into the desk properly and started to enjoy myself.

– He has seventeen hairs on his arse. Divided by three equals five and two over. His wife combs them for him gach maidin. [16]

All day.

He gave me a go on his crutches. My arms wobbled. I couldn’t hold them straight for very long. They weren’t like the metal crutches you got when you broke your leg. They were old fashioned, wood and leather, like the ones the boy on the polio poor-box had; you couldn’t adjust them. David Geraghty’s arms were as strong as legs. I sometimes hoped that I’d be put beside David Geraghty again but I was always glad when I wasn’t.

Seán Whelan wore glasses. They were in a black case that he put at the top of the desk above the hollow for pens and pencils. Whenever Henno went near the blackboard Seán Whelan would pick up the case and when Henno wrote on the board he took the glasses out and put them on. Every time Henno stopped he took them off, and put them back on when Henno started again. I stopped looking at Henno for a while and just looked at Seán Whelan. I could tell where Henno was by looking at Seán Whelan’s hand. It would creep towards the case, stop and go back to his side; up to the case again, pick up the case, open it and put on the glasses. He took them off and put both his hands to his sides. I waited for him to start moving again. Henno stopped talking. I kept my eyes on Seán Whelan, waiting for a signal. Seán Whelan just kept staring straight at the back of Thomas Bradshaw’s head. He looked slightly towards me. And that was when Henno hit me, a hard slap on the back of the head. Seán Whelan jumped, I saw him just as I ducked and shut my eyes for more.

– Wakey wakey, Mister Clarke!

The class laughed and stopped.

Henno had held his open hand stiff; it was as hard as a plank. I was going to get Seán Whelan back for that. It was his fault. I was going to get his glasses case and do something with it, and the glasses. He had brown crinkly hair. It grew up straight but someone, probably his ma, was trying to make it grow to the side. It looked like half a hill on top of his head. He’d be easy to get. He wouldn’t hit back. I’d get him. He wasn’t rough looking.

Like Charles Leavy.

Charles Leavy wore plastic sandals, blue ones. We laughed at them but we were careful. He brought nothing into school the first day. When Henno asked why not he said nothing, he just looked at his sleeves on the desk. He didn’t squirm. There was nearly a hole in one of his elbows. You could see lots of his shirt through it. His hair was very short, the same all over his head. Now and again he stretched his neck and sort of shot his head out to the side, like he was heading a ball but not bothering to look at it. He looked, and I looked away. I felt hot, scared.

– Irish books. Leabhair Gaeilge. [17] Page – What page would you say, Mister Grimes?

– One, sir.

– Correct.

– A h-aon, [18] sir.

– Thank you, Mister Grimes. – Sambo san Afraic. [19] There he is in his canoe.

We laughed quietly; the way he’d said Canoe. The picture under the name of the story was black and red on top of the white of the page, a black boy with no shirt on in a red canoe under black trees, the jungle. I looked across. Liam was sharing his book with Charles Leavy. He was pressing his hand up the middle of the book so it would stay open. Charles Leavy waited till Liam was finished, then leaned forward to read the book. The other way: Seán Whelan had his own book, covered in wallpaper. He didn’t wear his glasses for reading.

During little break, the eleven o’clock one, I pushed up against Seán Whelan when we were lining up to go back in.

– Watch it.

Seán Whelan didn’t do anything or say anything. He just looked like he was very determined not to look at me, and I was happy with that. I shoved so I could be beside Kevin.

– I’m going to get Whelan, I told Kevin.

– Sure you are, said Kevin.

I was surprised, nearly upset.

– I am, I said. -For definite. He pushed me.

I’d have to get him now. I looked back at Seán Whelan. He had a way of looking past you, looking ahead but around a corner.

He was dead.

The fight took me by surprise. I was going to wait for a good excuse but Kevin pushed me into Seán Whelan – this was outside the gate, across the road in the field that was being dug up – and Seán Whelan elbowed me or his elbow was just there and I was thumping him and being thumped and that surprised me as well. I swung my fists stiff-armed; I hadn’t the time to ready myself, to remember to punch properly, and it was too late now. Seán Whelan’s head got my chin; my teeth banged. I stepped back out of Seán Whelan’s arms, and kicked. I drew back my left foot and kicked again. Seán Whelan tried to hold onto my foot, to knock me over. I got my foot back away from him and I didn’t fall. Seán Whelan was going backwards, the boys behind him were letting him, because I was going to kick him again. I ran and kicked. I’d got him hard. A good bit over his knee. He skipped back like his legs had gone from under him. He grunted. I had him; I was winning. I was going to get his hair now, and knee his face. I’d never done it before. I’d nearly done it to Sinbad but pulling his head down had been enough; he’d screamed and I couldn’t get my leg to go up hard; I could lift it but not to smash him. Seán Whelan wasn’t Sinbad though. I’d grab a tuft of his stupid hair -

The pain knocked me sideways, buckled me for a second.

I’d just been kicked, just under my left hip and the tips of two fingers. Seán Whelan was in front of me. It took me a while to -

Charles Leavy had kicked me.

There was no cheering now. This was serious. I wanted to go to the toilet. My fingers stung like freezing cold. Seán Whelan was in the crowd now, looking in. I tried to pretend that I was still fighting him.

The same place. Charles Leavy kicked me again.

No one jumped in. No one said anything. No one moved. They knew. They were going to see fighting they’d never seen before. Blood and teeth, torn clothes. Things broken. No rules.

I couldn’t pretend any more. I wished I hadn’t kicked Seán Whelan. I couldn’t kick Charles Leavy back. I couldn’t do anything. I had to do nothing; it was the only way.

He kicked me.

– Here! None o’ that!

It was one of the workmen. He was up on a wall. He was building it. Some of them ran when they heard him and stopped to see what was going to happen.

– No kicking, said the workman. -That’s not the way to fight.

He had a huge belly. I remembered now: we’d shouted things at him and he’d chased us earlier in the summer.

– No kicking, he said again.

Kevin was further away from him than me.

– Mind your own business, Fatso.

We ran. It was brilliant. I was nearly crying. I could hear my books and copies shaking in my school bag, a noise like galloping horse feet. I’d escaped. The pain of the laughing was great. We stopped when we got to the new road.

No one had jumped in for me when Charles Leavy had been going to kill me; it took me a while to get used to that, to make it make sense. To make it alright. The quiet, the waiting. All of them looking. Kevin standing beside Seán Whelan. Looking.

There was a huge brown suitcase under our parents’ bed. It was like leather but it made a noise like wood. There were creases on it. When I rubbed it hard a brown stain came off on my hand. There was nothing in it. Sinbad got in. He lay down like he did in bed. I closed it over.

– What’s it like?

– Nice.

I got the clasp on one side and shoved it in; it made a big click. I waited for Sinbad to do something. I did the other one as well.

– What’s it like now?

– Still nice.

I went away. I stamped my feet on the floor, bang bang on the lino, and I got the door and I swung it so there’d be a whoosh and closed it with just less than a slam. My da went mad when we slammed doors. I waited. I wanted to hear Sinbad kicking, crying, scratching his hands on the lid. Then I’d let him out.

I waited.

I sang as I went down the stairs.

– SON YOU ARE A BACHELOR BOY -

AND THAT’S THE WAY TO STAY-EE-AY -

I crept back up; I got over the creaks. I slid to the door. It was brilliant. But suddenly I was up on my feet, through the door; I was scared.

– Sinbad?

I pushed down the lock thing to release the clasp. It sprang out and hurt my hand.

– Francis.

The other one wouldn’t come up, the lock thing. I pulled up a corner of the lid but it only came up a small bit; I couldn’t see anything. I got about two fingers in but I couldn’t feel anything and I scraped the skin. I kept the fingers there so air would get in, but then I felt teeth on them, I thought I did.

I heard a whimper. It was me.

I closed the door after me, so nothing could follow. I held onto the banister all the way. It was dark in the hall. My da was in the living room but the television wasn’t on.

I told him.

He just got up; he didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell him I’d locked it, just that I couldn’t unlock it. When he got into the hall he waited for me.

– Show me, he said.

He followed me up the stairs. He could have easily gone quicker than me but he didn’t. Sinbad would be alright.

– Alright in there, Francis?

– He might be asleep, I said.

My da pushed and the lock clicked out. He lifted the lid back and Sinbad was still in there, wide awake; his eyes were open. He turned on his stomach, pushed up, stood up and stepped out. He didn’t say anything. He stood there. He didn’t look at us or anything.

Da thought he was great because he could sit in the same room as the television and never look at it. He only looked at The News, that was all. He read the paper or a book or he dozed. I watched the cigarette burning nearer and nearer to his fingers but he always woke up on time. He had a chair of his own. We had to get out of it when he came home from work. Me and Sinbad and our ma with the babies on her lap could fit into it. There was one day it was raining out, lashing; we all sat in the chair for ages just listening to the rain. The room got darker. There was a nice smell off my ma, food and soap.

When I called Sinbad Sinbad he wouldn’t answer. Me and Kevin got him and gave him a dead leg on each side for not doing what we told him. He was crying but he didn’t make any noises. I had to look at his face to see that he was crying.

– Sinbad.

He closed his eyes.

– Sinbad.

I had to stop calling him Sinbad. He didn’t look like Sinbad the Sailor now any more; his cheeks were flatter. I was still way bigger than him but it didn’t matter as much. I could kill him in fights but the way he went scared me. He let me give him a hiding and then he just went away.

He didn’t want the night-light on any more. When my ma turned it on before she turned off the main light he got up and turned it off. The light had been for him. He’d picked it. It was a rabbit that went red when the bulb inside him was on. The room was completely dark now. I wanted to turn the night-light back on but I couldn’t; it was Sinbad’s. I’d never needed it. I’d said it was stupid. I’d given out about it, said I couldn’t sleep with it on. For a week my ma turned on the light and Sinbad turned it off. He turned off the light and I was trapped in the full dark.

Da had Sinbad. He was holding one of his arms, standing way over him. He hadn’t hit him yet. Sinbad’s head was down. He wasn’t pushing or pulling to get away.

– Christ almighty, said my da.

Sinbad had put sugar in Mister Hanley’s petrol tank.

– Why do you do these things? Why are you doing them?

Sinbad answered him.

– The devil tempts me.

I saw da’s fingers open their grip on Sinbad’s arm. He held Sinbad’s face.

– Stop crying now; come on. There’s no need for tears.

I started singing.

– I’LL TELL MY MA WHEN I GO HOME -

THE BOYS WON’T LEAVE THE GIRLS ALONE -

Da joined in. He picked up Sinbad and spun him. Then it was my turn.

The first time I heard it I recognised it but I didn’t know what it was. I knew the sound. It came from the kitchen. I was in the hall by myself. I was lying on my stomach. I was charging a Rolls-Royce into the skirting board. There was a chip in the paint and it was getting bigger every time. It made a great thump. My ma and da were talking.

Then I heard the smack. The talking stopped. I grabbed the Rolls-Royce away from the skirting board. The kitchen door whooshed open. Ma came out. She turned quick at the stairs so I didn’t have to get out of her way, and went upstairs, going quicker towards the top.

I recognised it now. I knew what the smack had been, and the bedroom door closed.

Da was alone in the kitchen. He didn’t come out. Deirdre was crying in the pram; she’d woken up. The back door opened and closed. I heard Da’s steps on the path. I heard him going from the back to the front. I saw his shape through the mountainy glass of the front door. The shape broke into just colours before he got to the gate and the colours disappeared. I couldn’t tell which way he’d gone. I stayed where I was. Ma would come back down. Deirdre was crying.

He’d hit her. Across the face; smack. I tried to imagine it. It didn’t make sense. I’d heard it; he’d hit her. She’d come out of the kitchen, straight up to their bedroom.

Across the face.

I watched. I listened. I stayed in. I guarded her.

Nothing happened.

I didn’t know what I’d do. If I was there he wouldn’t do it again, that was all. I stayed awake. I listened. I went to the bathroom and put cold water on my pyjamas. To keep myself awake. To stop me from getting cozy and warm and slipping asleep. I left the door a bit open. I listened. Nothing happened. I spent ages doing my homework so I could stay up longer. I wrote out pages from my English book and pretended I had to do it. I learnt spellings I hadn’t been given. I got her to check me on them, never him.

– S.u.b.m.a.r.i.n.e.

– Good boy. Substandard?

– S.u.b.s.t.a.n.d.a.r.d.

– Good boy. Great. Have you more to do?

– Yes.

– What? Show me.

– Writing out.

She looked at the pages in the book I showed her, two pages with no pictures on them, and at the pages I’d done already.

– Why are you doing all these?

– Handwriting.

– Oh good.

I did it at the kitchen table, then followed her into the living room. When she was putting the girls to bed he was in the room with me, so it was alright. I enjoyed the writing out; I liked doing it.

He smiled at me.

I loved him. He was my da. It didn’t make sense. She was my ma.

I went into the kitchen. I was alone. The noises were all upstairs. I slapped the table. Not too loud. I slapped it again. It was the right type of sound. It was duller though, hollow. Maybe it would be different from outside. In the hall where I’d been. Maybe he’d done that, smacked the table. When he was in a temper. That was alright. I did it again. I couldn’t make my mind up. I was tempted. I used the side of my hand. She’d come out of the kitchen, straight up to their bedroom. She’d said nothing. She hadn’t let me see her face. She’d started going faster before she got to the landing. Not because he’d slapped the table. I did it again. I tried to lose my temper and then do it. Maybe because he’d lost his temper. Maybe that was why she’d gone past me up the stairs, hiding. Maybe.

I didn’t know.

I went back into the living room. He wanted to check my spellings. I let him. I got one wrong, deliberately. I didn’t know why I did it. I just did it when I was doing it; I left out the r in Submarine.

I listened. I watched. I did my homework.

I came home at Friday lunchtime.

– I’m in the best desk.

It was true. I’d made no mistakes all week. All my sums had been right. I’d got through the twelve-times table inside thirty seconds. My handwriting was

– Much improved.

I’d put my stuff in my bag and walked up to the front of the room and across to the top desk. Henno shook my hand.

– See how long you can stay there now, he said. -Good man, Mister Clarke.

I was beside David Geraghty.

– Howdy-doody.

– I’m in the best desk, I told my da later.

– Is that right? he said. -That’s terrific.

He shook my hand.

– Put it there. Submarine?

– S.u.b.m.a.r.i.n.e.

– Good man.

The grass was wet though it hadn’t been raining. The day was too short to dry it. School was over; it was going to be dark soon. There was a new trench. It was really huge, really deep. The bottom was gooey, no crumbly muck; everything was wet.

– Quicksand.

– No, it isn’t.

– Why isn’t it?

– It’s only muck.

Aidan was in it.

Liam and Aidan sometimes didn’t go to school. Their da let them stay at home sometimes if they were good. We saw the new white sticks sticking up over the grass. We knew they were markers and we went over to see what they were marking, and Aidan was in the trench. And he couldn’t get out. He had nothing to cling to.

– He’s sinking.

I watched.

One of his boots was under the goo, up to his knee. I looked at that leg; I counted to twenty. It didn’t go down any further. Liam had gone for a ladder or a rope. I hoped it would be a rope.

– How did he get down?

That was a stupid question. It had happened to us all. Getting down was never a problem. It was too easy, always. You never thought about getting back up.

I checked Aidan’s leg. His knee was covered now. He was sinking. He was trying to hold onto the side, trying not to fall, trying not to cry. He’d been crying earlier; you could tell from his face. I thought about throwing stones at him, but there was no need.

We sat on our school bags.

– Can you drown in mud? Ian McEvoy asked.

– Yeah.

– No.

– Say it louder, I whispered. -So he can hear.

Ian McEvoy thought about it.

– Can you drown in mud?

– Sometimes.

– If your boots are full and you can’t get up.

We pretended Aidan wasn’t there to listen. He was trying to lift a leg and keep the boot on it. We could hear the suck. Kevin made the noise with his mouth. We all did. Aidan slipped but he didn’t go down.

Then I started worrying. He really could drown. We’d watch him; we’d have to. Suddenly the grass felt very wet. It would be like in my dream, the one I sometimes had, when my mouth was full of muck, dry summer muck; I couldn’t wet it and swallow it. I couldn’t close my mouth round it. It took over my mouth, deeper and deeper. My jaws really hurt, fighting it, and knowing I was losing and my mouth was going to get fuller, and I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t shout, I couldn’t breathe. Liam brought a ladder and his da and they saved him. Liam’s da complained to the builders but he wouldn’t let us come with him.

Keith Simpson didn’t drown in the trench. He drowned in a pond. The pond was way across six or seven fields where the building hadn’t started yet. It was great for frogspawn and ice. It wasn’t deep but it was slimy; you’d never have put your bare feet into it. The ice growled when you leaned on it. It was too small for a lake.

Keith Simpson was found in it. He was just found. Nobody knew how he got there.

My ma cried. She didn’t know Keith Simpson. Neither did I. He was from the Corporation houses. I knew what he’d looked like. Small and freckles. She snuffled and I knew she was crying. The whole of Barrytown went quiet, like the news had spread without anyone telling it. He’d slipped in face-first and his coat and jumper and his trousers got so wet and heavy he couldn’t get up; that was what they said. The water soaked his clothes. I could see it. I put my sock in the sink, hanging into the water. The water crept up the sock. Half the water went into the sock.

I looked at the house. I knew which one. It was a corner one. I’d once seen a man – it must have been Keith Simpson’s father – up on the roof putting up the aerial. The curtains were closed. I went closer. I touched the gate.

Da hugged Ma when he came home. He went up and shook hands with Keith Simpson’s ma and da at the funeral. I saw him. I was with the school; everyone in the school was there, in our good clothes. Henno made each of us say the first half of the Hail Mary and the rest joined in for the second half, and that took up the time before we were brought to the church. Ma stayed in her seat. There was a huge queue for shaking hands, down the side and around the back of the church, along the stations of the cross. The coffin was white. Some of the mass cards fell off during the Offertory. They slapped the floor. The sound was huge. The only other sounds were someone at the front sobbing and the priest’s stiff clothes, then the altar boy’s bell. And there was more sobbing.

We weren’t let go to the graveyard.

– You can go and say a prayer by yourselves some other time, said Miss Watkins. -Next Sunday. That would be better.

She’d been crying.

– They just don’t want us to see the coffin going in, said Kevin.

There was no more school. We sat on a flattened cardboard box in the field behind the shops to stop our clothes from getting dirty and to stop us from being killed by our mas. There was only room for three on the box and there were five of us. Aidan had to stand and Ian McEvoy went home.

– He was my cousin, I told them.

– Who was? said Kevin.

They knew who I was going to say.

– Keith Simpson, I said.

I thought of my mother crying. He must have been at least a cousin. I believed myself.

– Hari-kari.

– It’s hari-kiri, I said.

– What’s it mean? Ian McEvoy asked.

– Do you not know? said Kevin. -You’re dense.

– It’s the way Japs kill themselves, I told Ian McEvoy.

– Why? said Aidan.

– Why what?

– Why do they kill themselves?

– Lots of reasons.

It was a thick question. It didn’t matter.

– Cos they got beaten in the war, said Kevin.

– Still? said Aidan. -The war was years ago.

– My uncle was in the war, said Ian McEvoy.

– No, he wasn’t; shut up.

– He was.

– He wasn’t.

Kevin grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. Ian McEvoy didn’t try to stop him.

– He wasn’t in the war, said Kevin. -Sure he wasn’t?

– No, said Ian McEvoy.

He didn’t even leave a gap.

– Why did you say he was, then?

It wasn’t fair; he should have let Ian McEvoy go when he’d said No.

– Why did yeh?

He pulled Ian McEvoy’s wrist closer to the back of his neck. Ian McEvoy had to bend forward. He didn’t answer; he probably couldn’t think of anything, anything that would get Kevin to let go of him.

– Leave him alone, said Liam.

He said it like he was answering in school and he knew he was wrong. He still said it though. He was standing there. He’d said it. I hoped Kevin would get him, because he’d said it and I hadn’t and Kevin getting him would make me right. Kevin pulled Ian McEvoy’s arm up a little bit more till he bent him down – Ian McEvoy roared out – and then Kevin let him go. Ian McEvoy straightened up and pretended they’d been only messing. I waited. So did Liam. Nothing happened. Kevin did nothing. Aidan brought it back to normal.

– Do they have to kill themselves?

– No, I said.

– Why then?

– They only do it when they really have to, I said. -Or when they want to, I said, just in case.

– When do they have to? said Sinbad.

I was going to tell him to shut up and maybe hit him but I didn’t feel like it. He had two snailers coming out of his nose even though it wasn’t all that cold.

– When they lose a war and things like that, I said.

– When they’re sad, said Aidan.

He said it like a question.

– Yeah, I said. -Sometimes.

– Very sad, only.

– Yeah.

– Not just down in the dumps.

– No. Sad that you can’t stop crying. When your ma dies or something. Or your dog.

I remembered too late: Aidan and Liam’s ma was dead. But they didn’t do anything, look at each other or anything. Liam just nodded; he knew what I’d meant.

There were two other families with dead mas or das. The Sullivans had a dead ma and the Rickards had a dead da. Mister Rickard had died in a car crash. Missis Sullivan had just died. The Rickards had moved after Mister Rickard got killed but they came back. They hadn’t been gone that long, not even a year. They didn’t go to our school, the three boys. There was a girl as well, Mary. She was older.

– A bit wild, my ma said.

She’d gone to London, run away. That was where they’d found her. She was a hippy, the only real one in Barrytown. The police in England had found her. They made her go home.

– They get a knife and they stick it in their belly, I told them.

It was impossible; their faces said that. I agreed with them. You couldn’t stick a knife in your own belly. I had no problem thinking about swallowing loads of tablets. It would be easy. I’d get a bottle of something to wash them down, to make it even easier, Coca-Cola or milk. Probably Coca-Cola. Even jumping off a bridge when a train was coming was easy to imagine. I could do it. I’d be jumping, not hitting the train. I’d jumped off high things before. You couldn’t smother yourself on purpose. If you jumped into the deep end of a swimming pool away from the sides and there was no one there to save you you’d drown, if you couldn’t swim or you weren’t a good swimmer. Or if you’d just had your dinner and got cramps. I couldn’t imagine me sticking a knife into myself. I didn’t even bother experimenting.

– Not a bread knife, I said. -Or one like that.

– A butcher’s.

– Yeah.

It was easy to see how you could accidentally stab yourself with a knife. We’d seen the butcher using his one. He’d let us. He let us come round the corner. Missis O’Keefe, James O’Keefe’s ma, was in her hatch where she took in the money and gave out the change, and she yelled at us for robbing the sawdust. We needed it for Ian McEvoy’s guinea-pig. There was loads of sawdust. It was early in the morning so it was clean and fresh. We grabbed handfuls and put them in our pockets. It wasn’t really robbing. Sawdust wasn’t worth anything. And it was for the guinea-pig. She yelled at us; it wasn’t even a word. Then she yelled a name.

– Cyril!

It was the butcher’s name. We didn’t run. It was only sawdust. We didn’t think she was calling him for us. He came out of the big fridge at the back.

– Wha’?

She pointed at us. It was too late to run.

– Them, she said.

He saw the sawdust in our hands. He was colossal. He was the biggest, fattest man in Barrytown. He didn’t live in Barrytown, like the other people who lived in the rooms on top of their shops. He came to work on a Honda 50. He made a face like he was annoyed with Missis O’Keefe. She was wasting his time; he’d been doing something.

– Come here, lads, till I show yis somethin’.

It was me, Kevin and Ian McEvoy and Sinbad. Liam and Aidan were at their auntie’s in Raheny again. We went over to him.

– Stay there.

He went into the fridge and came back out with an animal’s leg. It was over his shoulder. He was wearing a white coat. I thought it was a cow’s, the leg.

– Over here.

We followed him behind the counter to the wooden block. It was clean. I could see scrape marks from the brush. I’d seen him with the brush before. It was the same shape as a brush but instead of bristles there was metal. He got the leg from his back to the block with just barely a flick of his hand. It slapped the wood. He let us feel it.

– Now, lads.

His knife was in a scabbard on a hook above the table. He took it out. It made a swish. He let us look properly at it.

– That cost me hundreds of pounds, lads, he said. -Don’t touch it.

We weren’t going to.

– Now look here, he said.

He slid the knife over the meat’s skin – just slid it – and it came away; a chop. He made no effort; he leaned the edge on the leg, that was all. No noise, no tension. He was sweating though. He broke the chop’s bone with a different knife, a cleaver. He thumped it onto the bone, once, twice, and the chop fell flat on the block.

– Now, he said. -That’s all there is to it. And that’s what I’ll do to you feckers the next time I catch yis robbin’ my sawdust.

He still looked nice and friendly.

– Sprinkle it all back on the floor on your way out. Bye bye, lads.

He went back into the fridge. I made sure that all my sawdust was even all over the floor. Sinbad ran away after he’d flung his sawdust out of his pockets.

– He did a jobby, I told them all. -Down his leg.

– IT’S ALL DOWN YOUR LEG -

GICK GICK – LA LA

– Down as far as his shoes, I said.

– IT’S ALL DOWN YOUR LEG -

GICK GICK – LA LA

Ian McEvoy’s guinea-pig died because of a cold night. He came out to have a look at it before school and it was in a corner of its box covered in frost. He blamed his ma for not letting him bring it to bed with him.

– She said I’d’ve smothered it, he said.

– I’d prefer to be smothered than die from the cold, said Liam.

– It was sub-zero last night, I told them.

The life expectancy of a guinea-pig was seven years if you changed its water every day and gave it hot bran mash for its dinner every day in the winter. Ian McEvoy only had his one for three days. He didn’t even have a name for it. He asked his ma but she wouldn’t tell him what hot bran mash was; she said she didn’t know.

– Grass will do him, Ian McEvoy said she said.

His da was no help either.

– Buy him an anorak, he said.

He thought he was funny.

We got his sister’s doll and a pin. We brought them down to the field; we smuggled them down. The doll didn’t look enough like Missis McEvoy.

– Doesn’t matter, said Kevin.

– She doesn’t have white hair like that, I said.

– Doesn’t matter, said Kevin, -so long as we’re thinking about her when the pins go in.

We were going to use Action Man for Mister McEvoy but Edward Swanwick wouldn’t let us have his one and he was the only one that had one.

– Doesn’t matter, said Kevin. -He’ll be all in bits when Missis McEvoy dies and that’s enough.

– He doesn’t like her much, said Ian McEvoy. -I don’t think.

– He’ll still miss her, said Kevin.

We beat up Edward Swanwick anyway, but not in the face.

Kevin was the high-priest again but he let Ian McEvoy stick in the pin first because she was his ma and it was his sister’s doll.

– Missis McEvoy!

Kevin held his hands up into the air.

– Missis McEvoy!

We held an arm and a leg each, like the doll was going to get away.

– You must die!

Ian McEvoy put the pin in her tummy, through her dress. I wondered was there a girl somewhere with white hair and big eyes screaming in agony.

– You must die!

I got her in the brain. Kevin got her in the gee. Liam got her in the bum and Aidan got one of her eyes. The pin marks were hardly there; we didn’t do anything else to the doll. Ian McEvoy wouldn’t let us. He brought it home. He went in to see. We waited for him outside. He came out.

– She’s making the dinner.

– Damn.

– Stew.

It was Wednesday.

We weren’t too disappointed but we pretended we were. We squashed the guinea-pig through Kilmartin’s letter box and Missis Kilmartin never found out who’d done it. We wiped our fingerprints off it first.

She listened to him much more than he listened to her. Her answers were much longer than his. She did two-thirds of the talking, easily that much. She wasn’t a bigmouth though, not nearly; she was just more interested than he was even though he was the one that read the paper and watched The News and made us stay quiet when it was on, even when we weren’t making any noise. I knew she was better at talking than him; I’d always known that. He was good sometimes and useless others and sometimes you could tell that you couldn’t go near him to ask him or tell him anything. He didn’t like being distracted; he said that word a lot, but I knew what it meant, Distracted, and I didn’t know how he was being distracted because he wasn’t doing anything anyway. I didn’t mind, only sometimes. Fathers were like that, all the fathers I knew, except Mr O’Connell and I didn’t want a da like him, only maybe for the holidays. Broken biscuits were lovely but you needed vegetables and meat as well even if you didn’t like some of them. All das sat in a corner of a room and didn’t want to be disturbed. They had to rest. They put the food on the table. My da came home on Friday with food, in a big huge canvas bag that he balanced on top of his shoulder. There was a cord at the top of the bag for tying it shut. It was the type of rope that hurt your hands. Tiny little bits of rope got into the skin of your fingers if you grabbed the rope too fast. Ma always emptied the bag. It was full of vegetables. He bought them all in Moore Street. My da paid for all the other food we got as well, everything. He had to get his energy back at the weekend. Sometimes I didn’t believe that that was the only reason for not being able to go near him, for the way he got into his corner and wouldn’t come out. Sometimes he was just being mean.

I won a medal. I came second in the hundred yards except it wasn’t nearly a hundred yards; it wasn’t even fifty. It was a Saturday, the school sports, the first one the school ever had. There were twenty in the race, right across the field. Henno was in charge of the start. He had a whistle. He had a flag as well but he didn’t use it. The field was real uneven. It was hard to go straight, and the grass was longer in some places. I saw Fluke Cassidy falling. He’d been a bit ahead of me but I was catching up on him. I saw his leg going crooked. I went past. I heard the air rushing out of him. I threw my hands up at the finish, the way they did it. I thought I’d won; there was no tape and there was no one near me when I ran over the line. But Richard Shiels had won, over at the end of the field. I came second, out of twenty – better than eighteen. Henno had something to say.

– Well done, Mister Clarke. If only you were as quick with your answers in class.

I was quick in class; I knew more about some things than Henno did. Henno was a bastard. A bastard was someone whose parents weren’t married, or a child of illegitimate birth. Henno wasn’t a child any more but he was still a bastard. He couldn’t just give me my medal, he had to make a laugh out of it. Illegitimate wasn’t in my dictionary but Legitimate meant In accordance with the laws or rules so Illegitimate meant the complete opposite of that. Hirsute meant hairy.

– His mickey is very hirsute.

– Hirsute!

– Hirsute hirsute hirsute!

The medal had a runner on it, no name or writing. The runner had on a white vest and red shorts and no runners. His skin was the same colour as the medal. I walked home; I didn’t want to run. I went to my da first.

– Get out; not now.

He didn’t look up. He was reading the paper. He always talked about Backbencher on Saturdays, telling my ma what Backbencher’d said, so he might have been reading Backbencher. He clicked the paper, straightened it up. He wasn’t angry or anything.

I felt thick. I should have gone to my ma first; it would have been easier then, what had happened. I went to the door; the bones in my legs were rubbery. He was in the drawing room. Peace and quiet, that was what he got in there, the only place in the house. I didn’t mind waiting, not really, but he hadn’t even looked up. I was going to shut the door quietly.

He looked.

– Patrick?

– Sorry.

– No; come in.

The paper fell forward, folded over; he let it.

I let go of the handle. It needed oiling. I came back in. I was scared and pleased, bits of each. I wanted to go to the toilet; I thought I did, that kind of feeling. I asked him something.

– Are you reading Backbencher?

He smiled.

– What have you got there?

– A medal.

– Show us; you should have told me. You won.

– Second.

– Nearly first.

– Yeah.

– Good man.

– I thought I won.

– Next time. Second’s good though. Put it there.

He held out his hand.

I wished he’d done it the first time. It wasn’t fair the way he made you nearly cry before he changed and did what you wanted him to. It didn’t always happen that way but it happened enough for him to have parts of the rooms to himself, for the house to be different at the weekends. I could never run to him; I had to check first. I blamed the paper. Newspapers were stupid, with their World War Three Looms Near when all that was happening was the Israelis milling the Arabs. I hated that. If someone said they’d kill you then they should have done it.

– I’ll hurt you.

That were better.

Papers were boring. Da sometimes read out to my ma what Backbencher said and it was stupid. Ma listened but only because my da was reading it and he was her husband.

– Very good.

That was what she usually said but it never sounded like she meant it; she said it the same way she said Go to sleep.

– The word was made flesh!

Swish.

– Backbencher!

They were big and the writing was tiny and they took all day to read, especially on Saturday and Sunday. I read a thing about a high-cross that was damaged by vandals. It was on the front page of the Evening Press, and it took me eight minutes. There was a picture of a high-cross but there wasn’t any damage on it. I could always tell, when I was going down to the shops to get the paper, if it was a real nice day in the summer, sunny all day, there’d be a picture of girls or children at the beach on the front, usually three of them in a row; the children always had a bucket and spade in front of them. That was what happened my da: he started to read the paper and then he had to finish it – he thought he was being good doing it – and it took him all day. He became grouchy and dangerous; he was running out of time. The writing was small so he couldn’t be distracted. Saturday afternoon: Ma was nervous, we hated him and all he’d done was read Backbencher.

I’ll crucify you.

James O’Keefe’s ma always said that to James O’Keefe and his brothers and sister. All she meant was Do what you’re told. I’ll leather you. I’ll skin you alive. I’ll break every bone in your body. I’ll tear you limb from limb. I’ll maim you.

They were all stupid.

I’ll swing for you. I didn’t know what that one meant. Missis Kilmartin roared it at Eric her mentler son. He’d opened up all the bags in six boxes of crisps.

My ma explained.

– It means that she’ll murder him and then she’ll be condemned to hang for it but she doesn’t really mean it.

– Why doesn’t she say what she does mean?

– It’s just the way people talk.

It must have been great being mental. You could do anything you wanted and you never really got into proper trouble for it. You couldn’t pretend you were mental though; you had to be that way all the time. No homework either and you could slobber your dinner as much as you wanted.

Agnes, the woman that worked in Missis Kilmartin’s shop because Missis Kilmartin was busying spying behind the door, she spent ages every day with a scissors cutting bits off the front pages of the newspapers, the bit with the name of the paper and the date under it, only that.

– Why?

– To send them back.

– Why? I asked.

– Because they don’t want the whole paper.

– Why not?

– They just don’t. They don’t need them. They’re out of date, useless.

– Can I have them?

– You can not.

I didn’t want them. I just said it because I knew she was going to say that and I was checking.

– Missis Kilmartin wipes her bum with them, I said.

Not loud.

Sinbad was there. He stared at the window door: she was behind it. Agnes spoke back quietly.

– Get out now, yeh pup, or I’ll tell her.

She lived in the same house as her ma; she wasn’t really a woman at all. They lived in a cottage that was stuck in the middle of the new houses. The grass in their garden was always perfect.

Da’s face was different when he was reading the paper. It was pushed forward, his eyebrows were pushed up. Sometimes his lips were open but his teeth were closed. I heard him grinding his teeth and I didn’t know what it was. I looked all around the room. I stood up. I’d been sitting on the floor beside him waiting for him to finish. I couldn’t see anything. I looked at my ma. She was reading Woman; not really reading, turning the pages, still looking at the page when she was turning, her hand going with it, the exact same amount of time for each page. I looked at my da, to see if he was hearing what I was, strong things going to break, and I saw his mouth moving – I watched: it moved at the same time as the noise; it was the noise. I waited for the snap. I wanted to warn him. I hated him for doing it. Newspapers were bastards.

– I was thinking of getting pork for a change.

He said nothing; he didn’t look.

– It might be nice.

His face was stuck to the page. His eyes weren’t moving down. He wasn’t reading. He made her say it.

– What do you think?

He cracked the paper. He folded it. He concentrated hard on it. He spoke but it was hardly like he was speaking; it was like the words came out with a sigh – not even a whisper.

– Do what you want.

Face on the paper, legs crossed and stiff, no rhythm.

– Whatever you want.

I didn’t look back at my ma yet; not yet.

– You always do.

I still didn’t look.

She didn’t say anything.

I listened.

He was the only one I could hear breathing. He was pushing the air out, of his nose. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Plants did it the other way round. I heard hers now, her breathing.

– Can I turn on the telly? I said.

I wanted to remind him that I was there. There was a fight coming and I could stop it by being there.

– Television, she said, corrected me.

There was nothing wrong. She’d never have said that if there had been. Ma hated half-words and bits of words and words that weren’t real ones. Only full, proper words.

– Television, I said.

She didn’t mind Don’t and Amn’t and shortened words like that. They were different. -It’s a television, she’d say, not really giving out. -It’s a wellington. It’s a toilet.

Her voice was normal.

– Television, I said. -Can I?

– What’s on? she asked.

I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The sound would fill the room. He’d look up.

– Something, I said. -There might be, maybe a programme about politics. Something of interest.

– Like what?

– Fianna Fail versus Fine Gael, I said.

That made Da look at me.

– What’s on? he said.

– There might be, I said. -Not for definite.

– A match between them?

– No, I said. -Talking.

The only programmes he didn’t pretend he wasn’t watching were ones with people talking in them, and The Virginian.

– You want the television on? he said.

– Yeah.

– Why didn’t you say just that?

– I did say it, I said.

– Fire away, he said.

His leg was moving, the one on top of the one on the ground, up and down. He sometimes put Catherine and Deirdre on his foot and carried them up and down. He did it to Sinbad as well once – I could remember it – so he must have done it to me as well. I got up.

– Is your homework done?

– Yes.

– All of it?

– Yes.

– The learning?

– Yes.

– What did you get?

– Ten spellings.

– Ten of them; give us one?

– Sediment. Do you want me to do it?

– There’s no point, but yeah.

– S.e.d.i.m.e.n.t.

– Sediment.

– C.e.n.t.e.n.a.r.y.

– Centenary.

– Yeah. That’s the name for a hundredth anniversary.

– Like your mother’s birthday.

I’d done it. It was alright. Normal again. He’d cracked a joke. Ma had laughed. I’d laughed. He’d laughed. Mine lasted the longest. During it, I thought it was going to change into a cry. But it didn’t. My eyes blinked like mad but then it was okay.

– Sediment has three syllables, I told them.

– Very good, said my ma.

– Sed-i-ment.

– How many has Centenary?

I was ready; I’d done that one for homework.

– Cen-ten-ar-y. Four.

– Ver-y good. How many has Bed?

I got the joke just before I said the answer; my mouth was nearly open.

I stood up quick.

– Okay.

I wanted to go while it was nice. I’d made it like that.

There were two teachers not in because they were sick so Henno had to mind another class. He left us with a load of sums on the board. He left the door open. There wasn’t much messing or noise. I liked long division. I used my ruler to make sure that my lines were absolutely straight. I liked guessing if I’d have the answer before I got to the end of the page. There was a screech and laughing. Kevin had leaned over and drawn a squiggly line all over Fergus Shevlin’s copy, only he’d used the wrong end of the pen so there was no mark but Fergus Shevlin got a fright. I didn’t see it. I was at the top of the second row that week and Kevin was in the middle of the third row.

You could always tell when Henno came back. Everything in the room went really still for a few seconds. He was in the room; I could tell. I didn’t look up. I was near the end of a sum.

He was standing beside me.

He put a copy under my eyes. It was open. It wasn’t mine. There were wet streaks in the ink all the way down the pages. They’d made the ink a lighter blue; there were bars of light blue across the page where someone had tried to rub the tears away.

I expected to be hit.

I looked up.

Henno had Sinbad with him. They were Sinbad’s tears; I could tell from his face and the way his breath jumped.

– Look at that, Henno said to me.

He meant the copy. I did what I was told.

– Isn’t it disgraceful?

I didn’t say.

All that was wrong was the tears. They’d ruined the writing, nothing else. Sinbad’s writing wasn’t bad. It was big and the lines of his letters swerved a bit like rivers because he wrote very slowly. Some of the turns missed the copy line but not by much. It was just the tears.

I waited.

– You’re damn lucky you’re not in this class, Mister Clarke Junior, Henno said to Sinbad. -Ask your brother.

I still didn’t know what was wrong, why I was supposed to be looking at the copy, why my brother was standing there. He wasn’t crying now; his face was the proper way.

It was a new feeling: something really unfair was happening; something nearly mad. He’d only cried. Henno didn’t know him; he’d just picked on him.

He spoke to me.

– You’re to put that copy in your bag and you’re to show it to your mother the minute you get home. Let her see what a specimen she has on her hands. Is that clear?

I wasn’t going to do it but I had to say it.

– Yes, Sir.

I wanted to look at Sinbad, to let him know. I wanted to look around at everyone.

– In your bag now.

I closed the copy gently. The pages were still a bit wet.

– Get out of my sight, Henno told Sinbad.

Sinbad went. Henno called him back to close the door after him; he asked him was he born in a barn. Then Henno went over and opened the door again, to listen for noise from the other class.

I gave the copy to Sinbad.

– I’m not going to show the copy to Ma, I told him.

He said nothing.

– I won’t tell her what happened, I said.

I needed him to know.

She didn’t get up one morning. Da was going down to Mrs McEvoy to get her to take the babies for the day. Me and Sinbad still had to go to school.

– Get your breakfasts here, he said.

He unlocked the back door.

– Are you washed yet?

He’d gone before I could tell him that I always washed myself before I had my breakfast. I always made my own cornflakes, got the bowl and put in the flakes – never spilt them – put in the milk. Then the sugar. I used to flick my fingernail under the spoon so the sugar would be sprinkled evenly all over. But I didn’t know what to do this morning; I was all mixed up. There was no bowl. I knew where she kept them. I put them away sometimes. There was no milk. It was probably still on the front step. There was only the sugar. I went over to it. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to think about my ma up in their bedroom. About her sick. I didn’t want to see her. I was afraid.

Sinbad followed me.

If she wasn’t sick, if she was just up in the bed, I’d have to know why she hadn’t got up. I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t go up there. I didn’t want to know. It would be back to normal when we came home from school later.

I had a spoon of sugar. I didn’t keep it long enough in my mouth for it to become nice. I wasn’t hungry. I wouldn’t bother having any breakfast. I’d make toast. I liked the gas.

– What’s wrong with Mam?

I didn’t want to know.

– Shut up.

– What’s wrong with her?

– Shut up.

– Is she sick?

– She’s sick of you; shut up.

– Is she not well?

I liked the hiss the gas made and the smell for a little bit. I grabbed Sinbad. I made his face go close to the gas. He pushed back. He wasn’t as easy to control as he used to be. His arms were strong. He couldn’t beat me though. He’d never be able to do that. I’d always be bigger than him. He got away.

– I’m telling.

– Who?

– Da.

– What’re you goin’ to tell him? I said, moving towards him.

– You were messin’ with the gas, he said.

– So what?

– We’re not allowed.

He ran into the hall.

– You’ll wake Ma, I said. -Then she’ll never get better and you’ll be to blame.

He wouldn’t tell anything.

– There must have been the pair of you in it.

That was what Da nearly always said.

I opened the back door to get rid of the smell of the gas.

If Ma wasn’t really sick; if they’d had another fight -. I hadn’t heard anything. They’d laughed before I went to bed. They’d talked to each other.

I closed the door.

Da was coming back. I could hear his feet. He opened the door and came in, both steps at once. He left the door open.

– Nice day out, he said. -Have your breakfast?

– Yes, I said.

– Francis as well?

– Yes.

– Good lads. Good man. Missis McEvoy is going to look after Cathy and Deirdre. She’s very good.

I watched his face. It wasn’t tight or white; I couldn’t see veins in his neck. He looked nice and calm: nothing bad had happened. Ma was sick.

– It’ll give your mammy a chance to get better, he said.

I wanted to see her now; it was alright. She was only sick.

– I’ll hardly have time for breakfast myself, he said, but he seemed kind of delighted. -No rest for the wicked.

– Can I go up to her? I said.

– She’ll be asleep.

– Just to look.

– Better not; you might wake her. Better not. D’you mind?

– No.

He didn’t want me to. There was something.

– What about your lunch? he said. -You’ll have to stay in.

– Sandwiches, I said.

– Can you manage? I can get the girls ready.

– Yeah.

– Good man, he said. -Francis’s as well, right?

– Okay.

The butter was hard. I’d seen my ma doing it, scraping the top with the knife. I couldn’t do it though. I just put pats of butter in each corner of the bread. There was nothing in the fridge to put in the sandwiches, not that I could see, except cheese, and I hated that. So I just made bread sandwiches. I made Sinbad’s as well, just in case Da checked. There was nothing wrong with my ma. If he was smiling when he came back down I’d ask him for money for crisps for the sandwiches.

He smiled.

– Can we get crisps for the sandwiches?

– Good idea, he said.

He knew I was asking for the money to buy them. He had the girls in his arms; he had them laughing. Crisp sandwiches. I’d have to sneak out of the school at break because we weren’t supposed to leave the yard, unless we were going on a message for one of the masters. There was definitely nothing wrong with her. Except she was a bit sick; I could tell for definite now. She had a tummy or a headache, that was all, or a bad cold. Da put Catherine down so he could get money from his pocket. Nothing that would stop her from being downstairs when we came home.

– Now.

He’d found the money.

– There now.

Two shillings.

– One each, he said. -Make sure now.

– Thanks, Da.

Sinbad had come back.

– Da gave us a shilling for each of us, I told him.

– Will Mam be better when we come home? he said.

– Probably, said Da. -Maybe not; probably.

– Crisp sandwiches, I told Sinbad.

I showed him the two shillings. I got out my hankie, put the two shillings in and stuffed the hankie right down, down into a corner of my pocket, the two shillings locked under it.

I took my time getting home, on purpose. I put my bag between Aidan and Liam’s hedge and the wall and we went looking for the Weirdy Fella. The Weirdy Fella lived in the fields. There were hardly any fields left but he was still out there. I’d seen him once. He jumped into a ditch just when I was looking. He had a big black coat on him and a cap. He was all dirty and his back was crooked. He had no teeth, just two black stumps, like Tootsie’s. I didn’t see his teeth – he was too far away – but that was what they were like. I just saw his shape. We’d all seen him that day. We ran after him but he got away. We were going to kill him for all the things he did. He ate birds and rats and anything good he could get out of bins. My da always put the bin outside our gate on Wednesday night because the binmen came round on Thursday morning and he was in too much of a hurry in the mornings. One Thursday the lid was off the bin and there was stuff all over the path, bags and bones and tins and all the things that had been in the top half of the bin, the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday stuff. I went back in and told my ma about it.

– Cats, she said. -Fizz it.

I went out again; I was going to school. I looked. There was a bit missing off a piece of bread. It was round, heel-shaped. I kicked the bread away; the shape stayed stuck to the ground. The weirdy Fella.

No one owned him. A girl in Baldoyle had had to be brought into hospital in Jervis Street after she fainted when she got home after the Weirdy Fella’d jumped up in front of her out from behind a pillar and had shown her his mickey. The guards never found him. He knew when you were on your own.

– He was in the army during the war, said Aidan.

There was just me and Aidan and Liam. Kevin had had to go somewhere with his ma and da; his granny was sick and he had to wear his good clothes. He had a note to let him out of school early. I was glad that Kevin wasn’t coming, but I didn’t say anything.

– How d’you know? I said.

I didn’t say it the way I would’ve if Kevin had been with us.

– He got shot in the head and they couldn’t get the bullet out properly so that’s why he’s mad.

– We should still kill him.

– Yeah.

– I’d say Kevin’s granny is dying, said Liam. -We had to wear our good clothes when Ma died. D’you remember?

– No, said Aidan. -Yeah. There was a party after.

– A party?

– Yeah, said Aidan.

– Yeah, said Liam as well. -Kind of. Sandwiches and the grown-ups had drinks.

– So did we.

– Some of them sang songs.

I wanted to go home.

– I don’t think we’ll find him, I said. -It’s too bright.

They agreed. No Chicken or Scaredy cat or anything like that. I got my bag and slowed myself, made myself walk normal. I got a leaf off Hanley’s tree and folded and watched the crease getting darker and where the leaf broke. I got to the gate.

She was still in her dressing gown. That was all.

– Hello, she said.

– Hi, I said.

Sinbad was already home with his shoes off. There was nothing wrong with her to see.

– Are you still sick?

– Not really, she said. -I’m fine.

– Do you want me to go to the shops?

– I don’t think so, she said. -Francis was singing his new song for me.

– We had crisp sandwiches for our lunch, I told her.

– So I believe, she said. -Will you finish it for me, love?

– TALLY-HO HOUNDS AWAY -

Sinbad looked sideways at the lino.

– TALLY-HO HOUNDS AWAY -

TALLY-HO HOUNDS AWAY

ME BOYS AWAY- -

Ma started clapping.

She was in her dressing gown the next day as well but that was only because she hadn’t got dressed yet. She was better. She looked straighter. She moved quicker.

I’d stayed awake all night, as long as I could, most of the night. There was nothing. I woke up early – half bright. I got out of bed. I didn’t make noise when my feet got to the floor. I got to their door, over the creak just on front of it. I listened. Nothing. Asleep. My da’s noise. My ma’s noise under it. I went back. Bed was nice when you got back in after you got out for a bit when it was still warm. I kept my feet up near me. I didn’t mind being awake. I was the only one. I looked across at Sinbad. His head was where his legs were supposed to be. His feet were somewhere. I could see the back of his head. I looked. I saw his breathing. There were birds outside, loads of them; three different kinds. I knew: they were getting at the milk. There used to be a bit of a roof slate beside the step for the milkman to put on top of the bottles to stop the birds from getting at them but it was gone now. Then there was a biscuit tin lid and a big stone to put on top of it but they were gone as well; the lid was, I didn’t look for the stone. I didn’t know why everyone tried to stop the birds from drinking the milk. They only took the top bit, hardly any. I heard the alarm going off in their bedroom. I could hear the clock on the wood of the cabinet on my da’s side. I heard the alarm being stopped. I waited. I heard her coming to the door. I’d shut it properly after me. I pretended I was asleep.

– Good morning, boys.

I still pretended. I didn’t have to look; I knew it from her voice. She was better.

– Wakey wakey!

Sinbad laughed. She was tickling him. He was whinging as well, funny and annoyed. I waited for my turn.

That didn’t mean that there was nothing wrong, that nothing had happened. All it meant was that if something had happened between them, if they’d had a fight, she was better now. It was the first time she hadn’t got up, except for two days after she came home from the hospital after having Deirdre. She was in bed when we got home from our auntie’s; that was where we’d been when she was in the hospital. Our Auntie Nuala. She was my ma’s big sister. I didn’t like it there. I knew what was happening but Sinbad didn’t really, not really.

– My main’s in the hop-sital.

He didn’t talk like that now. He was better at it.

She was in bed when we came home. We came home on the bus, two buses, with our uncle.

I kept watch. I listened.

– They had a party, I told Kevin. -After the funeral. In the house. Singing and all.

I went to the shops for Henno to get him two cakes for his lunch.

– A packet of Mikado if she’s no cakes left.

He said I could have a ha’penny out of the change for doing the message so I got a gobstopper with it. I showed it to Kevin under the desk. I wished I’d bought something different now, something I could have shared with Kevin.

When Henno told us to go asleep Kevin dared me to eat the gobstopper without being caught. If I took it out of my mouth because Henno could hear noises or he was coming down to check our copies, if I chickened, I’d have to give the rest of the gobstopper to Kevin. All he’d have to do was run cold water from the tap over it.

Henno went out to talk to James O’Keefe’s ma just after I put the gobstopper into my mouth. Missis O’Keefe was shouting. Henno warned us and shut the door. We could still hear her. James O’Keefe wasn’t in school. I sucked like mad. She said that Henno was always picking on James O’Keefe. I made the gobstopper go round and round, rubbing it off my cheeks but mostly the roof of my mouth and my tongue. It got smoother. I couldn’t take it out of my mouth. I got Ian McEvoy to look; I opened my mouth: the gobstopper was white. I’d licked the outside off it. He was every bit as intelligent as the other boys, she told Henno. She knew some of them and they were nothing to write home about. Henno opened the door and warned us again. Calm down now, Missis O’Keefe, we heard him saying. Then he was gone. There were no more voices outside. He’d gone somewhere with Missis O’Keefe. We started laughing because everybody was watching me trying to eat the gobstopper. They kept saying He’s coming and pretending that he was but I didn’t fall for it. He was gone for ages. When he opened the door the gobstopper was small enough to swallow if I had to. I’d won. I looked at Henno’s face and swallowed it. I had to push hard; my throat was sore for ages after it. Henno was real nice for the rest of the day. He brought us out to the pitch and showed us how to solo the ball. My tongue was pink.

They were fighting all the time now. They said nothing but it was a fight. The way he folded his paper and snapped it, he was saying something. The way she got up when one of the girls was crying upstairs, sighed and stooped, wanting him to see that she was tired. It was happening. They probably thought they were hiding it.

I didn’t understand. She was lovely. He was nice. They had four children. I was one of them, the oldest. The man of the house when my da wasn’t there. She held onto us for longer, gripped us and looked over us at the floor or the ceiling. She didn’t notice me trying to push away; I was too old for that. In front of Sinbad. I still loved her smell. But she wasn’t cuddling us; she was hanging on to us.

He waited before he answered, always he did, pretended he hadn’t heard anything. She was always the one that tried to make them talk. He’d answer just when I thought she’d have to ask again, to change her voice, make it sound angry. It was agony waiting for him.

– Paddy?

– What?

– Did you not hear me?

– Hear what?

– You heard me.

– Heard what?

She stopped. We were listening; she saw us. He thought he’d won; I thought he did.

– Sinbad?

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t asleep though; I knew the breathing.

– Sinbad.

I could hear him listening. I didn’t move. I didn’t want him to think that I was going to get him.

– Sinbad? -Francis.

– What?

I thought of something.

– Do you not like being called Sinbad?

– No.

– Okay.

I said nothing for a bit. I heard him change, move nearer the wall.

– Francis?

– What?

– Can you hear them?

He didn’t give an answer.

– Can you hear them? Francis?

– Yeah.

That was all. I knew he wouldn’t say any more. We listened to the sharp mumbles coming up from downstairs. We did, not just me. We listened for a long time. The silences were worst, waiting for it to start again, or louder. A door sort of slammed; the back door – I heard the glass shake.

– Francis?

– What?

– That’s what it’s like every night.

He said nothing.

– It’s like that every night, I said.

Breath came out sharp between his lips. He did that a lot since his lips had been burnt.

– It’s only talking, he said.

– It’s not.

– It is.

– It’s not; they’re shouting.

– No, they aren’t.

– They are, I said. -Quietly.

I listened for proof. There was nothing.

– They’ve stopped, he said. -They weren’t.

He sounded happy and nervous.

– They’ll do it again tomorrow.

– No, they won’t, he said. -They were only talking, about things.

I watched him putting on his trousers. He always brought the zip up before he did the button at the top and it took him ages, but his face never changed. He stared down at his hands and made two chins. And he forgot about his shirt and his vest, so he had to do it all over again. I wanted to go over and help him, but I didn’t. One move and he’d change; he’d back away, turn sideways and moan.

– The button should be first, I told him. -At the top. Do it first.

I just said it in a normal voice.

He kept doing what he’d been doing. The radio downstairs sounded nice; the voices.

– Francis, I said.

He had to look at me. I was going to look after him.

– Francis.

He held the two sides of the front of his trousers.

– Why are you calling me Francis? he said.

– Cos Francis is your name, I said.

His face said nothing.

– It’s your real name, I said. -You don’t like being called Sinbad.

He put the sides into one of his hands and did the zip with the other, still the old way. It annoyed me. It was just stupid.

– Sure you don’t? I said.

My voice was still just normal.

– Leave me alone, he said.

– Why? I said.

He said nothing.

I tried a different way.

– Do you not want me to call you Francis?

– Leave me alone, he said.

I gave up.

– Sinnnn-badd -!

– I’ll tell Ma.

– She won’t care, I said.

He said nothing.

– She won’t care, I said again.

I waited for him to say Why not. I was going to get him. He didn’t. He said nothing. He turned sideways and got his trousers done.

I didn’t hit him.

– She won’t care, I said when I was opening the bedroom door.

I tried again.

– Francis.

He wouldn’t look at me. He hid himself in his jumper when he was putting it on.

– I kneed you, I said, and I gave him a dead leg.

He collapsed before he understood the pain, straight down like something heavy. I’d done it and seen it done so often it wasn’t funny any more. It was just an excuse; pretending that hurting someone was for a joke. I didn’t even know his name. He was too small to have one. His scream died out once he knew there was nothing else going to happen.

The other one was getting your finger and digging it into someone’s ribs real hard, like a knife, twisting it and saying, Am I boring you? It was new, in school on Monday after the weekend. You couldn’t relax. Your best friend could get you: it was a joke. Or grabbing one of your diddies and saying, Whistle. Some fellas tried to whistle. Sinbad got a pulled diddy and a dead leg at the same time. Everyone got it done to them, except Charles Leavy.

Charles Leavy didn’t do it to anybody. That was weird. Charles Leavy could have made us all line up, like Henno on a Friday morning, and kneed all our legs dead. You wanted to show off in front of Charles Leavy. You wanted to say bad words. You wanted him to look at you the proper way.

They said nothing for long bits but that wasn’t bad; they were watching the television or reading, or my ma was doing a hard bit of knitting. It didn’t make me nervous; their faces were okay.

My ma said a thing during The Virginian.

– What did we see him in before?

My da liked The Virginian. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t watching.

– I think, he said, -I’m not sure; something though.

Sinbad couldn’t say Virginian properly. He didn’t know what it meant either, why they called him the Virginian. I did.

– He comes from Virginia.

– That’s right, said my da. -Where do The Dubliners come from, Francis?

– Dublin, said Sinbad.

– Good man.

Da nudged me. I did it back, with my knee against his leg. I was sitting on the floor beside his chair. Ma asked him did he want any tea during the ads. He said No, then he changed his mind and shouted in Yes.

They always talked during The News; they talked about the news. Sometimes it wasn’t really talk, not conversation, just comments.

– Bloody eejit.

– Yes.

I was able to tell when my da was going to call someone a bloody eejit; his chair creaked. It was always a man and he was always saying something to an interviewer.

– Who asked him?

The interviewer had asked him but I knew what my da meant. Sometimes I got there before him.

– Bloody eejit.

– Good man, Patrick.

My ma didn’t mind me saying Bloody when The News was on. The News was boring but sometimes I watched it properly, all of it. I thought that the Americans were fighting gorillas in Vietnam; that was what it sounded like. But it didn’t make any other kind of sense. The Israelis were always fighting the Arabs and the Americans were fighting the gorillas. It was nice that the gorillas had a country of their own, not like the zoo, and the Americans were killing them for it. There were Americans getting killed as well. They were surrounded and the war was nearly over. They had helicopters. Mekong Delta. Demilitarised zone. Tet Offensive. The gorillas in the zoo didn’t look like they’d be hard to beat in a war. They were nice and old looking, brainy looking, and their hair was dirty. Their arms were brilliant; I’d have loved arms like that. I’d never been on the roof. Kevin had, and his da had killed him when he found out about it when he got home, and he’d only been on the kitchen roof, the flat bit. I was up for the gorillas even though two of my uncles and aunties lived in America. I’d never seen them. They sent us ten dollars, me and Sinbad, one Christmas. I couldn’t remember what I got with my five dollars.

– I should get seven cos I’m the oldest.

And I couldn’t remember the names of the uncle and auntie who’d sent it, which ones; Brendan and Rita or Sam and Boo. I had seven cousins in America as well. Two of them were called the same as me. I didn’t care though; I was still up for the gorillas. Until I asked.

– Why are the yankees fighting the gorillas?

– What’s that?

– Why are the yankees fighting the gorillas?

– D’you hear this, Mary? Patrick wants to know why the yanks are fighting gorillas.

They didn’t laugh but it was funny, I could tell. I wanted to cry; I’d given something away. I was stupid. I hated being caught, more than anything. I hated it. That was what school was all about, not being caught and watching others getting caught instead. It was alright now though; it wasn’t school. He told me what a guerrilla was. It made sense now.

– Impossible to beat, he said.

I was still up for them, the guerrillas.

It went back to the man in the studio. Charles Mitchell.

– His tie’s crooked, look.

Then it was Richard Nixon.

– There’s a nose, said my da. -Look.

– He’s a better-looking man than some of them.

It didn’t last long. He just shook a few people’s hands. When Charles Mitchell came back his tie was straight. They laughed. I did too. There wasn’t much else; two dead cows and a farmer talking about them. He was angry. I heard the creak.

– Bloody eejit.

There was nothing in any of that, no hints, no edges, no hard voices. It was normal.

– Bedtime, sonny jim.

I didn’t mind. I wanted to go. I wanted to lie awake for a while. I kissed them. He tried to tickle me with his chin. I got away. I let him grab me without him having to get out of his chair. I got away again.

– Do your ma and da have fights?

– No.

– Not fights like thumping and kicking, I said. -Shouting. Giving out to each other.

– Yeah then, said Kevin. -They have them all the time.

– Do they?

– Yeah.

I was glad I’d asked. It had taken me all day to get to it. We’d walked to Dollymount, had a mess – it was freezing – and come home and I hadn’t asked till we were back on Barrytown Road, nearly at the shops.

– Do yours? said Kevin.

– Have fights?

– Yeah.

– No.

– What did you ask for then? They must.

– They don’t, I said. -They have arguments, that’s all; like yours.

– What did you ask me for then?

– My uncle and auntie, I said. -My ma was talking about it to my da. My uncle hit my auntie and she hit him back and she called the guards.

– What did they do?

– They arrested him, I said. -They came for him in a car with a siren.

– Is he in jail?

– No; they let him out. He had to promise that he’d never do it again. On paper. He had to write it down and sign his name under it. And if he ever does it again he has to go to jail for ten years and my boy cousins get sent to Artane and my auntie keeps my girl cousins cos she wouldn’t be able to afford to keep them all.

– What does your uncle look like?

– Big.

– Ten years, said Kevin.

That was as old as us.

– That’s ages for just hitting someone. And what about her? he remembered. -She hit him as well.

– Not hard, I said.

I loved making up stuff; I loved the way the next bit came into my head, it made sense and expanded and I could keep going till I came to the end; it was like being in a race. I always won. I told it the second I made it up, but I believed it, I really did. This was different though. I shouldn’t have asked Kevin in the first place; he was the wrong one. I should have asked Liam. I’d escaped, but Kevin would probably tell his ma now about my uncle and auntie and she’d tell my ma, although they didn’t like each other much; you could tell from the way they kept moving when they met each other on the street or outside the shops, like they were too busy to stop for long, they were in a hurry. She’d tell my ma and then she’d ask me what I’d said to Kevin about my uncle and auntie and I didn’t think I was good enough to get out of that one.

– But why were you talking about mams and dads fighting anyway?

I’d have to run away from home.

I hadn’t named the uncle and auntie. I’d done that, hadn’t named them, on purpose.

– I was only messing with him.

I was thinking of running away anyway.

– Having him on.

I’d spent ages – Henno had gone off to have a chat with another teacher – looking at the map of Ireland.

– Leading him up the garden path.

She’d laugh. She always did when I said things like that. She thought I was brainy because of it.

– I’m leaving you for a few minutes, gentlemen, said Henno.

We loved it when he said that; I could nearly hear it, backs relaxing. Getting ready.

– A few minutes only, said Henno. -I’ll be leaving the door open. And you know all about my famous ears.

– Yes, Sir, said Fluke Cassidy.

He wasn’t messing. If anyone else had said that he’d have got walloped.

Henno went out the door. We waited. He came back to the door and waited. We stayed looking at our books, not looking up to see if he was there. We heard his shoes. They stopped. We heard them again, going away.

– Fuck your famous ears.

We tried not to laugh too loud. It was better that way, trying not to. I laughed more than I usually did; I couldn’t help it. I had to wipe my face. I got my atlas out of my bag. We hadn’t used it much, only for learning the counties of Ireland so far. Offaly was the easiest one to remember because it was the hardest. Dublin was okay just as long as you didn’t mix it up with Louth. With Fermanagh and Tyrone it was hard to remember which was which. I stared at the map of Ireland from the top to the bottom. There was nowhere I wanted to run away to, except maybe some of the islands. I was still going to do it though. You couldn’t run away to an island; you had to sail or swim part of the way. It wasn’t like a game though; there were no rules that you had to stick to. An uncle of mine had run away to Australia.

I opened up the map of the world in the middle of the atlas. There were places right in the middle that I couldn’t read properly because the pages wouldn’t flatten fully for me. There were plenty of other places though.

I was serious.

Henno had said that my eyes were red. He said I hadn’t got enough sleep. Right in front of everybody. He’d given out to me, said he was going to phone my mother and tell her to make sure I was in bed by half-eight every night. Right in front. I was being allowed to watch too much television.

He bent down closer to my face.

– Were you drunk last night, Mister Clarke?

For a laugh.

We didn’t have a phone but I didn’t tell him that.

My uncle had gone to Australia, by himself. He hadn’t run away, but he’d been very young, still not eighteen. He was still there. He had his own business and a boat.

I’d stayed awake all night. That was why my ma’d said that my face was white and Henno’d said that my eyes were red. I’d kept myself awake; I’d done it, right through.

I didn’t know what was happening when it started to get more grey than dark; it was more frightening than the dark. It was dawn. Then the birds started. I was on guard. I was making sure that they didn’t start again; all I had to do was stay awake. Like St Peter when Jesus was in the Garden. St Peter kept falling asleep but I didn’t, not even once. I made a corner in the bed, and sat up in the dark. I stopped myself from slipping under the blankets. I hit my head off the wall. I pinched myself; I concentrated on how hard I could go. I went to the bathroom and threw wet on my pyjamas so I’d be cold. I stayed awake.

The cock crew.

There was no more fighting. I went up to my parents’ door and listened without breathing. I could hear my da’s sleep breathing and my ma’s – his noisy, hers trying to keep up. I got away and took a breath, and then I started crying.

Mission accomplished.

A cock really did crow; I wasn’t making it up. It did go Cock-a-doodle-do, but the four sounds were joined together more. It was in Donnelly’s farm, down the road, the bit of the farm that was left. I’d never heard it before. But I’d seen the cock loads of times, in among the chickens behind the wire. I’d never known that it was a cock, until now; I’d just thought that it was a big chicken, the king chicken. We’d put grass through the wire to get him to come nearer.

– He’s dangerous.

– Chickens aren’t dangerous.

– This one is.

– Look at his eyes.

– His eggs are bigger. They’re blue.

He wouldn’t come near us. We couldn’t throw stones properly at him through the wire.

She’d screamed, words I couldn’t make out. She’d broken something; I think it was her because it came just after the scream, like the end of it. He laughed in a way that meant nothing funny. Then sobs. I got up to shut the door but when I got there I opened it more.

– Patrick.

It was Sinbad.

– It’s just talking.

– Get lost, I said.

He was asleep before he’d time to start crying again.

It was up to me.

They’d stopped. Nothing. They went to bed, one after the other, him first. He didn’t go to the bathroom; his breath would smell dirty and meaty in the morning. I heard the bed creaking, his side. Then she came. I didn’t know the television was on until she turned it off. Then her on the stairs, in to the side to miss the creak. She went to the bathroom. The tap. The swush of the toothbrush; she used a blue, him a red, me and Sinbad smaller green and red ones, me the red. She turned the tap off, and the empty bubble hopped back up the pipes into the attic. Then she went across to their room. She pushed open the door as far as it would go, bang into the bed – his side – and flapped it shut with a flick of her hand. Quiet on the stairs, noisy going into the room.

I stayed there, standing. I had to stay still. If I moved it would start again. I was allowed to breathe, that was all. It was like after Catherine or the other baby stopped crying; forty-five seconds, my ma said – if they didn’t cry out inside forty-five seconds they’d go back asleep. I stood. I didn’t count; this wasn’t a game or babies. I didn’t know how long. Long enough to be cold. No voices, just shuffling and creaks, getting comfy; everyone except me.

I was in charge. They didn’t know. I could move now; the worst bit was over: I’d done it. But I had to stay awake all night; I had to keep an all-night vigil.

Rhodesia. It was near the equator, the imaginary line around the middle of the world. There’d be elephants there, and monkeys and poor black people. Elephants never forgot. When they were dying they walked all the way to the elephants’ graveyard and then they lay down and just died. On top of the ground. It was too far away. I’d go there when I was bigger. I knew something else about Rhodesia. It was named after Cecil Rhodes, but I didn’t know why; I couldn’t remember why. He might have conquered it or discovered it. There were no more countries left to be discovered; they all had colours in them. I looked at the other pink countries. Canada was huge, forty, fifty times bigger than Ireland. Canadian Mounted Police. Mounties. Policemen on horses. Thin men on fast horses. None of them wore glasses. Red jackets. Trousers that stuck out at the sides. Guns in holsters with a cover on them that clicked open and shut. So the gun wouldn’t fall out when they were going fast. After rustlers. Not rustlers in Canada; smugglers. Eskimos that wouldn’t obey the law. Killing bears. Mushing their huskies. Whipping dogs. Curly tails. Goggles.

– Come on; good man.

The map was right in my face. I could smell the paper and the desk.

Henno was there.

I didn’t know what had happened, what was happening.

– Up; come on.

It didn’t sound like Henno. There were hands at my sides, man’s hands, under my arms. I was lifted. I stood beside the desk. I could only see the floor. It was dirty. Hands on my shoulders. Pushing me forward, holding me up. Up to the front. I saw no one. No noise. Out the door. The door closed. Mister Hennessey’s face.

Looking up at me.

– Alright?

A nod, only one.

– Tired?

A nod.

– Okay; happens us all.

Hands on my side.

Up.

Rough material.

Too tired to move my face, too heavy.

A smell.

Nice.

I woke up. I didn’t move. I wasn’t in bed. The smell was different, leather. I saw the arm of a chair. I was lying in the chair. Two chairs, front to front to make a bed. I was in it. Two leather armchairs. I still didn’t move. There was a blanket over me and something else, a coat. The blanket was grey and hard. I knew the coat. I knew the ceiling, the colour of it, the cracks like a map. The window over the door that had to be opened with a window pole. I knew the smoke rising up out of the ashtray, thin and flattening at the top. It took a while: I was in the headmaster’s office.

– Awake?

– Yes, Sir.

– Maith thú. [20]

He separated the two chairs to let me sit up. He took his coat and put it back on its hanger with his hat.

– What came over you at all?

– I don’t know, Sir.

– You fell asleep.

– Yes, Sir.

– In class.

– Yes, Sir. I don’t remember.

– Did you sleep properly last night?

– Yes, Sir. I woke up early.

– Early.

– Yes, Sir. I heard the cock crow.

– That’s early.

– Yes, Sir.

– Toothache?

– No, Sir. Pains in my legs.

– Tell your mother.

– Yes, Sir.

– Back to class now. Find out what you missed.

– Yes, Sir.

I didn’t want to go back. I was scared. I’d been caught. They’d be waiting for me. I’d been caught. I was alone. I still felt tired. And stupid. There were bits missing.

Nothing happened. I knocked at the door first. Henno wasn’t at the front when I opened the door. I saw Liam over at the window, Fluke Cassidy. Henno walked up the aisle. He said nothing. He nodded to my desk. I went down. No one looked at me hard. No one smiled or nudged. No notes landed on my desk. They all thought I was sick; there was something really wrong with me, the way Henno hadn’t battered me but had nearly carried me out. They looked at me when I came back into the class as if they were waiting for something, for me to do it all over again. They said nothing, not even Kevin.

I still felt stupid.

I wanted to go asleep again. At home. I wanted to sleep awake, to know I was asleep.

For the rest of the day Henno only asked me questions when I put my hand up. He didn’t try to catch anyone out. He hit no one. They knew it was because of me.

– Which of the tropics is north of the equator?

I knew. I put my hand up. I used my other hand to hold it up.

– Sir Sir.

– Patrick Clarke.

– The Tropic of Cancer, Sir.

– Good.

The bell went.

– Stay seated -! – Stand – First row…

They were waiting for me outside, not in a gang or a circle. They were pretending they weren’t. They wanted to be with me.

I didn’t like it much.

– Mister Clarke?

Henno was standing at the door.

– Yes, Sir?

– Come here.

I went. I wasn’t nervous.

– Go home, the rest of you.

He moved back and let me in. He didn’t shut the door. He stepped back and sat on the top of one of the desks.

He tried to smile and look serious.

– How are you feeling now?

I didn’t know how to answer.

– Feeling better?

– Yes, Sir.

– What happened you?

– I fell asleep, Sir; I don’t know.

– Tired?

– Yes, Sir.

– No sleep last night?

– Some, Sir. I woke up early.

He put his hands on his knees and leaned towards me a bit.

– Is everything alright?

– Yes, Sir.

– At home?

– Yes, Sir.

– Good. Go on.

– Yes, Sir. Thanks, Sir.

– Find out the homework you missed and do it for tomorrow.

– Yes, Sir. Will I close the door?

– Yes. Good man.

The door was bigger than the space for it. The damp had expanded it. I pulled the handle and the door scraped into its place.

They were outside the gate, pretending they weren’t waiting for me. They all wanted to be with me; I knew. It didn’t make me feel good. It should have. But it didn’t. They didn’t want to leave me alone, and I knew why: they didn’t want to miss anything – they wanted to be the ones to run for help. They all wanted to save my life. They hadn’t a clue.

– What eccer did I miss?

There was a race to get their school bags off their backs the first.

They were saps. Charles Leavy wasn’t there. David Geraghty wasn’t there either. He’d probably had to go straight home for tablets for his legs or something. All the rest of them had their homework diaries out. I got mine out and sat down against the wall. I let the railing touch my head. I let Kevin give me his diary.

Charles Leavy didn’t care. He was the only one that knew what had happened: I’d fallen asleep. He stayed up all night all the time. Listening to his ma and da. Not caring. Saying cunt and fuck. Heading his ball.

They watched me filling in the day. I let my hand wobble a little bit, then gave up. I wasn’t enjoying it. They were all there, and I didn’t like them. I was alone.

We hadn’t got that much eccer.

I realised something funny; I wanted to be with Sinbad.

– Francis. D’you want this?

It was a biscuit, only a biscuit. I wanted it as well but I wanted him to take it. I was giving it to him. He wouldn’t even look at it.

I grabbed him.

– Open your mouth!

His lips vanished as he closed down his mouth. He got ready to be pulled around, stiff and dead.

– Open your mouth!

I held it in front of his eyes.

– See.

He shut them, crammed shut. I got the biscuit and I got his head and I pushed the biscuit at his mouth, and I pushed until it fell apart and I couldn’t hold it. It was a fig roll.

– See! It was only a biscuit! A biscuit.

His face was still shut.

– A fig roll.

I got bits off the ground.

– I’m eating it; look.

I loved the fig bit, soft with little stones that broke. The biscuity outsides had all got crumbled. There were none left big enough to pick up.

His mouth and eyes stayed shut. He hadn’t put his hands up to cover his ears but they were closed as well, I could tell.

– I’m finished, I said. -And I’m not poisoned, look.

I held my arms up in front of him.

– Look.

I danced.

– Look.

I stopped.

– I’m still alive, Francis.

I wasn’t sure if he was breathing. Parts of his face were very pink and others, under his eyes were white. He wouldn’t come out for me. I thought about giving him a dead leg – he deserved it – but I didn’t bother; I just kicked him. Bang on the shin. My foot bounced back. He caught the noise; I saw his mouth bulge. I went to get him again, but I didn’t.

He frightened me.

He could stop everything happening, and I couldn’t.

– Francis -

Still, stiff.

– Francis.

I touched the top of his head, brushed his hair with my fingers. He didn’t feel anything.

– I’m sorry for kicking you.

Nothing.

I went out and closed the door. I shut it hard enough for him to hear the click; I didn’t slam it. I waited. I got down and looked through the keyhole. I couldn’t see the space where he was. Keyholes were never any good. I counted to ten. I opened the door, the ordinary way.

He was still there, the same. The exact same.

I wanted to kill him. I was going to; it wasn’t fair. All I wanted to do was help him and he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t even let me be in the room, and I was. And he was going to find out.

I closed his nose. I shut his nostrils with my fingers, not to hurt, not hard.

Now.

His nose was dry. It made it easier, holding on. The only air he had was the stuff already in him.

Now.

He’d have to die or do something.

– Francis.

He’d have to inhale oxygen and exhale the carbon dioxide, sooner or later. I watched the two colours on his face shifting. Something was happening.

His mouth opened – nothing else – real quick with a pop, and shut again, quick as a goldfish. He couldn’t have breathed, not enough. He was bluffing.

– Francis, you’re dying.

His nose still wasn’t sweating.

– You’ll die unless you inhale oxygen, I said. -Within a matter of minutes. Francis. It’s for your own good.

He did it again. Open, pop, shut again.

Something happened: I started crying. I went to thump him and before I had a fist made I was crying. I hung on to his nose for a while longer, just to be holding him. I didn’t know why I was crying; it shocked me. I let go of his nose. I put my arms around him. My hands touched around the back. He stayed hard and closed. I thought my arms would soften him. They’d have to.

I was hugging a statue. I couldn’t even smell him because my nose was full of snot and I couldn’t get rid of it. I stayed that way because I didn’t want to give up. My arms got sore. My crying turned into a hum; no tears. I wondered did Sinbad – Francis – know that I’d been crying? Because of him, mostly.

I couldn’t stop myself from crying these days.

I let go of him.

– Francis?

I wiped my face but most of the wet had gone. It had evaporated.

– I won’t hit you again, okay; ever.

I didn’t expect an answer or anything. I waited a bit. Then I kicked him. And I thumped him. Twice. Then I felt my back go freezing: someone was looking. I turned. No one. I couldn’t hit him again though.

I left the door open.

I wanted to help him. He had to know; he had to get ready like me. I wanted to be able to stand beside him. He was warm. I wanted to get him ready. I was ahead of him; I knew more than he did. I wanted to get into bed beside him so we could listen together. I couldn’t help it. When he wouldn’t do what I wanted him to I couldn’t help going back to annoying him, frightening him, hitting him. Hating him. It was easier. He wouldn’t listen to me. He wouldn’t let me do anything.

He ate his dinner like nothing had happened. So did I. Shepherd’s pie. The Christmas cake potato top was perfect; the peaks were brown and crispy, the cover was like a skin. Ma’s dinners nearly made me think that there was nothing wrong; they never got any worse. I ate it all. It was lovely.

I went over to the fridge.

K.E.L.V.I.N.A.T.O.R.

She’d taught me those letters. I remembered it.

I liked the way the handle tried to stop me from opening it and I always won. There were four pints, one opened. I carried the opened one, two handed – glass made me nervous – to the table. I filled my mug to an inch before the top. I hated spilling.