Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (24 page)

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 198 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.