Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

Roddy Doyle 1993

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

Quigley!

Quigley!

Quigley Quigley Quigley!

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

Itd be brilliant, wouldnt it? I said.

Yeah, said Kevin. -Cool.

We were talking about having a dead ma. Sinbad, my little brother, started crying. Liam was in my class in school. He dirtied his trousers one day the smell of it rushed at us like the blast of heat when an oven door was opened and the master did nothing. He didnt shout or slam his desk with his leather or anything. He told us to fold our arms and go asleep and when we did he carried Liam out of the class. He didnt come back for ages and Liam didnt come back at all.

James OKeefe whispered, -If I did a gick in me pants hed kill me!

Yeah.

Its not fair, said James OKeefe. -So its not.

The master, Mister Hennessey, hated James OKeefe. Hed be writing something on the board with his back to us and hed say, -OKeefe, I know youre up to something down there. Dont let me catch you. He said it one morning and James OKeefe wasnt even in. He was at home with the mumps.

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

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

He did not; show us it.

There.

Thats only threepence.

I spent the rest, said Liam.

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

There, he said.

Give us one.

Theres only four left, said Liam; he was putting the packet back in his pocket.

Ah, said Kevin.

He pushed Liam.

Liam went home.

Today, we were coming home from the building site. Wed got a load of six-inch nails and a few bits of plank for making boats, and wed been pushing bricks into a trench full of wet cement when Aidan started running away. We could hear his asthma, and we all ran as well. We were being chased. I had to wait for Sinbad. I looked back and there was no one after us but I didnt say anything. I grabbed Sinbads hand and ran and caught up with the rest of them. We stopped when we got out of the fields onto the end of the road. We laughed. We roared through the gap in the hedge. We got into the gap and looked to see if there was anyone coming to get us. Sinbads sleeve was caught in the thorns.

The mans coming! said Kevin, and he slid through the gap.

We left Sinbad stuck in the hedge and pretended wed run away. We heard him snivelling. We crouched behind the gate pillars of the last house before the road stopped at the hedge, ODriscolls.

Patrick-, Sinbad whinged.

Sin-bahhhd, said Kevin.

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

Im telling Mammy, said Sinbad.

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

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

Missis OConnell?

Thats right.

My da agreed with her.

Hes grieving, said my mother. -The poor man.

Kevins father said that Mister OConnell howled because he was drunk. He never called him Mister OConnell; he called him the Tinker.

Will you look whos talking, said my mother when I told her that. And then she said, -Dont listen to him, Patrick; hes codding you. Sure, where would he get drunk? Theres no pubs in Barrytown.

Theres three in Raheny, I said.

Thats miles away, she said. -Poor Mister OConnell. No more talk about it.

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

Liam said he was a liar.

Kevin dared him to say that again but he didnt.

Our dinner wasnt ready and Sinbad had left one of his shoes back in the building site. Wed been told never to play there so he told our ma that he didnt know where it was. She smacked the back of his legs. She held onto his arm but he still kept ahead of her so she wasnt really getting him properly. He still cried though, and she stopped.

Sinbad was a great crier.

Youre costing me a blessed fortune, she told Sinbad.

She was nearly crying as well.

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

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

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

There, there; good boy.

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

We lit fires. We were always lighting fires.

I took off my jumper so there wouldnt be a smell of smoke off it. It was cold now but that didnt matter as much. I looked for somewhere clean to put the jumper. We were at the building site. The building site kept changing, the fenced-in part of it where they kept the diggers and the bricks and the shed the builders sat in and drank tea. There was always a pile of bread crusts outside the shed door, huge batch crusts with jam stains on the edges. We were looking through the wire fence at a seagull trying to pick up one of the crusts it was too long for the seagulls beak; he should have grabbed it in the middle when another crust came flying out the shed door and hit the side of the seagulls head. We heard the roars of the mens laughing from inside the shed.

Wed go down to the building site and it wouldnt be there any more, just a square patch of muck and broken bricks and tyre marks. There was a new road where thered been wet cement the last time we were there and the new site was at the end of the road. We went over to where wed written our names with sticks in the cement, but theyd been smoothed over; theyd gone.

Ah gick, said Kevin.

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

There wasnt only one building site; there were loads of them, all different types of houses.

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

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

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

Then she smelt me.

What have you been up to?

Putting out a fire.

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