by Roddy Doyle
I sang the last verse in the yard during the little break at eleven o’clock.
—It’s not dirty, I warned them.
—Sing it anyway; go on.
-Okay, but—
—BRIAN O’LINN—HIS WIFE AND WIFE’S
MOTHER -
They laughed.
—It’s not—
—Shut up and keep singing.
—WERE ALL GOING HOME O‘ER THE BRIDGE
TOGETHER -
THE BRIDGE IT BROKE DOWN AND THEY ALL
TUMBLED IN -
WE’ LL GO HOME BE THE WATER SAYS BRIAN
O’LINN—
—That’s stupid, said Kevin.
—I know, I said.—I told you.
I didn’t think it was stupid at all.
Henno came over and broke us all up because he thought there was a fight. He grabbed me and said that he knew I was one of the ringleaders and he was keeping an eye on me and then he let me go. He didn’t have our class yet - that was the year after—so he didn’t know me.
—You mind yourself, sonny, he said.
—SHE’S A LONG-HONG GOH-HON -
I couldn’t do it; I didn’t even know what Hank Williams was singing.
Da hit me.
On the shoulder; I was looking at him, about to tell him that I didn’t want to sing this one; it was too hard. It was funny; I knew he was going to wallop me from the look on his face a few seconds before he did it. Then he looked as if he’d changed his mind, like he’d controlled himself, and then I heard the thump and felt it, as if he’d forgotten to tell his hand not to keep going towards me.
He hadn’t lifted the needle.
—A MAN NEEDS A WOMAN THAT HE CAN LEAN
ON—
BUT MY LEANING POST IS DONE LE-HEFT AND
GONE
I rubbed my shoulder through my jumper and shirt and vest; it was like it was expanding and shrinking, filling and shrinking. It wasn’t that sore.
I didn’t cry.
—Come on, said Da.
He lifted the needle this time, and we started again.
—I WENT DOWN TO THE RIVER
TO WATCH THE FISH SWIM BY-YY—
He put his hand on my shoulder, the other one. I wanted to squirm it away but after a while I didn’t mind.
The record player was a red box. He’d carried it home from work one day. You could pile six records in it, over the turntable. We only had three; The Black and White Minstrels, South Pacific and Hank Williams The King of Country Music. When he brought the record player home we only had one, South Pacific. He played it all Friday night and all the weekend. He tried to make me learn I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair but my ma stopped him. She said if I ever sang that in school or outside they’d have to sell the house and move somewhere else.
It played 33s and 45s and 78s. 33s were L.P.s like the three we had. Kevin smuggled his brother’s record, I’m A Believer by The Monkees, out of his house. It was a 45. But my da wouldn’t let us play it. He said there was a scratch on it; he didn’t even look at it. He wasn’t even using the record player. It was his. It was in the same room as the television. When he was playing it the television stayed off. He once put on the Black and White Minstrels at the same time they were on the television and he turned the television sound down but it didn’t work. The singer’s mouth, the black fella that sang the serious songs, was opening and shutting when the record was over and the needle was about to go up, but it didn’t. It kept going over the scratch. Da had to lift it.
—Were you messing with this? he said to me.
—No.
—You then; were you?
—No, said Sinbad.
—Somebody was, he said.
—They didn’t touch it, said my ma.
My face burned when I was waiting for something else to happen, for him to say something back to her.
Once, he put on Hank Williams during The News. It was brilliant; it was like Charles Mitchell was singing NOW YOU’RE LOOKING AT A MAN THAT’S GETTING KIND O’ MAD, I’VE HAD A LOT O’ LUCK BUT IT’S ALL BEEN BAD. We all roared. Me and Sinbad were let stay up half an hour later.
When we got the car, a Cortina like Henno‘s, a black one, Da drove it up and down the road, learning how to drive it, teaching himself. He wouldn’t let us into it.
—Not yet, he said.
He went up to the seafront. We followed him; we could keep up with him. He couldn’t turn it to go back down to the house. He saw us looking and called us over. I thought he was going to kill us. There were seven of us. We all baled in the back and we reversed all the way back to the house. Da sang the Batman music; he was mad sometimes, brilliant mad. Aidan had a bleeding nose when we got out. He was whinging. Da got down on his knees and held Aidan’s shoulders. He wiped his nose with his hankie and got him to blow into it, and told him he’d have great crack picking the dried blood out of his nose when he went to bed later and Aidan started laughing.
They all went down to the field behind the shops to find the big boys’ hut and wreck it but I didn’t go; I wanted to stay with Da. I sat beside him up and down the road. We went to Raheny. When he was turning he went right over the road and brushed the ditch.
—Stupid place to put a ditch, he said.
A fella honked at him.
—Bloody eejit, said my da, and he honked back when the fella was gone.
We came back to Barrytown along the main road and Da put the foot down. We rolled down our windows. I stuck my elbow out but he wouldn’t let me. He parked outside on the verge two gates down from our house.
—That’ll do us, he said.
Sinbad was in the back.
We went on a picnic the next day. It was raining but we went anyway; me and Sinbad in the back, my ma beside my da with Catherine on her knee. Deirdre wasn’t born yet then. My ma’s belly was all round, filling up with her. We went to Dollymount.
—Why not the mountains? I wanted to know.
—Stay quiet, Patrick, said my ma.
Da was getting ready to go from Barrytown Road onto the main road. We could have walked to Dollymount. We could see the island from where we were in the car. Da made it across and right. The Cortina jerked a bit and made a noise like when you pressed your lips together and blew. And something scraped when we went right in to the kerb.
—What’s that sound from?
—Shhh, said Ma.
She wasn’t enjoying herself; I could tell. She needed a decent day out.
—There’s the mountains, I said.
I got between her seat and his seat and pointed out the mountains to them, across the bay, not that far.
-Look.
—Sit down!
Sinbad was on the floor.
—There’s forests there.
—Stay quiet, Patrick.
—Sit down, you bloody eejit.
Dollymount was only a mile away. Maybe a bit more, but not much. You had to cross over to the island on a wooden bridge; the rest was boring.
—The toilet, said Sinbad.
—Jesus Christ!
—Pat, my ma said to my da.
—If we go to the mountains, I said,—he can go behind one of the trees.
—I’ll swing you from one of the trees if you don’t sit down out of my light!
—Your father’s nervous—
—I’m not!
He was.
—I just want a bit of peace.
—The mountains are very peaceful.
Sinbad said that. The two of them laughed, Ma and Da in the front, especially Da.
We got there, Dollymount, but he had to drive past the bridge twice before he could slow down enough to turn onto it and not miss it and drive through the sea wall. It was still raining. He parked the car facing the sea. The tide was way out so we couldn’t see it. Anyway, with the engine off the wipers weren’t working. The best thing about it was the noise of the rain on the roof. Ma had an idea; we could go home and have the picnic there.
He held the wheel.
—We’re here now, he said,—so—
He tapped the wheel.
Ma got the straw bag up from between her feet and dished out the picnic.
—Don’t get crumbs and muck all over the place, Da said.
He was talking to me and Sinbad.
We had to eat the sandwiches; there was no place to hide them. They were nice; egg. They’d gone real flat; there were no holes left in the bread. We had a can of Fanta between us, me and Sinbad. Ma wouldn’t let us open it. She had the opener. She hooked it under the rim of the can and pressed once for the triangular hole for drinking out of and again, for the hole on the other side for the air to go into. After a few slugs each I could feel little bits of food in the Fanta; I could feel them when I was swallowing. The Fanta was warm.
Ma and Da said nothing. They had a flask with tea in it. There was the cup off the top of the flask and a real cup that Ma had wrapped in toilet paper. She held out the cups for Da to hold so she could pour but he didn’t take them off her. He was looking straight in front of him at the rain milling down the windscreen. She didn’t say anything. She put one cup down and filled it, over Catherine’s head. She held it out; Da took it. It was the big cup, the one off the flask. He sipped it, then he said Thanks, like he didn’t mean it.
—Can we get out?
—No.
—Why not?
—No.
—It’s too wet, said Ma.—You’d catch your death out in that.
Sinbad put his hand under his arm and slammed his arm shut. It made a fart noise. Margaret, Mister O’Connell’s girlfriend, had taught us how to do it. Sinbad did it again.
—Once more—, said Da.
He didn’t turn around.
—See what happens.
Sinbad put his hand under his arm again. I held his arm up so he couldn’t slam it; I’d get the blame. He smiled at me trying to stop him. He never used to smile at all. Even when Da was taking photographs of us, Sinbad wouldn’t smile. We had to stand side by side in front of our ma - it was always the same - and Da would walk away and turn around and look at us through the camera—it was one of those box ones; my ma bought it with her first wages before she got married, before she met my da - and he’d tell us to move a bit and then he’d take ages looking down into the camera and then up at us, and then he’d notice that Sinbad wasn’t smiling.
—Smile now, he’d say, to all of us first.
Smiling was easy.
—Francis, he’d say, sounding ordinary.
—Head up; come on.
Ma would put her hand on Sinbad’s shoulder and still try to hold one of the babies.
—God damn it; the sun’s gone behind a cloud.
But Sinbad kept his head down. And Da lost his temper. All the photographs were the same, me and Ma smiling like mad and Sinbad looking down at the ground. We held the smile for so long, they weren’t really smiles any more. When Ma swapped so Da could be in the photograph Da looked like he was really smiling and Sinbad’s face disappeared completely he was looking down so much.
There were no photographs this day.
Ma had the biscuits wrapped in tinfoil for each of us. That way we didn’t have to share and there were no fights. I could tell from the shape of the foil what biscuits were inside; four Mariettas, two together like a sandwich with butter in the middle, and the square shape at the bottom was a Polo. I’d keep the Polo till last.
Ma said something to Da. I didn’t hear it. I could tell by the look on the side of her face, she was waiting for him to answer. But it was more than that, her face.
You got the Mariettas and you squeezed them together and the butter came out the holes. We called them botty bickies sometimes, because of the way the butter came out, but Ma wouldn’t let us call them that.
I took the Fanta off Sinbad. He let me. It was empty, and it shouldn’t have been.
I looked at Ma again. She was still looking at Da. Catherine had one of Ma’s fingers in her mouth and she was biting real hard - she had a few teeth - but Ma didn’t do anything about it.
Sinbad was eating his biscuits the way he always did, and I did as well. He was nibbling all around the edge till he went all the way round and the Mariettas were the same shape again, only smaller. He licked where the butter had come out of the holes. When he got to the end of his first lap he stopped. I grabbed the hand the biscuit sandwich was in and I squashed his hand in my hands and made him smash the biscuits into crumbs that were too small to rescue. That was for drinking all the Fanta.
Ma was getting out of the car. It was awkward because of Catherine. I thought we were all getting out, that it had stopped raining.
But it hadn’t. It was lashing.
Something had happened; something.
Ma left the door open; it closed back a bit but it was still open. Me and Sinbad waited for Da to move, to see what we were supposed to do. He leaned over and grabbed the passenger door handle and pulled the door shut. He grunted when he was straightening up.
Sinbad was licking his hand.
—Where’s Ma gone to? I asked.
Da sighed, and turned a bit so I could see some of the side of his face. Then he didn’t say anything. He was looking in the windshield mirror at us. I couldn’t see his eyes. Sinbad had his head down, the way he used to. I rubbed the wet off the inside of the window beside me. I hadn’t been going to touch it until we got home. I couldn’t see anything, miles of the sand but not Ma. I was on the wrong side, behind Da.
—Has she gone for 99s?
I rubbed the window again.
The door clicked open. Ma got in, ducking her head, making sure that Catherine wasn’t bashed against anything. Her hair was stuck down on her. She didn’t have anything; she hadn’t got us anything.
—It was too wet for Cathy, she said after a while, to Da. He started the car.
—You’re getting very tall, she said.
She was trying to get the zip of my trousers to close.
—You’ll soon be the same size as your daddy.
I wanted that, to be the same size as my da. My name was the same as his one. I’d waited till he’d gone to work before I’d shown her that the zip wouldn’t shut properly. He’d have shut it. I hoped she wouldn’t be able to do it. I hated the trousers. They were yellow corduroy. One of my cousins had owned them first. They’d never been mine.
She hitched them up. She tried to hold the two sides together so the zip would go up. I didn’t cheat. I even sucked in my belly.
—No, she said.—No use.
She let go of the trousers.
—They’re finished, she said.—You’re growing too fast, Patrick.
She didn’t mean it.
—We’ll have to use a safety pin, she said.
She saw my face.
—Just for today.
They were checking the B.C.G., that was what everyone said. Henno hadn’t told us anything. He’d just said that we were to queue up and the first two in the queue were always to have their jumpers and shirts and vests off ready when the door opened or there’d be trouble. Only two had gone in and they hadn’t come back out yet. He was supposed to be looking after us but he wasn’t. He’d gone off, upstairs to the teachers’ room for a cup of tea.
—I’ll hear any noise, he said.—Don’t worry.
He stamped his foot on the wooden floor. The noise bounced down the corridor. It took ages to die.
—There, he said.—Whispering is impossible in this school. I’ll hear every little thing.
Then he went.
We heard him at the top of the stairs. He’d stopped.
Ian McEvoy made sure that the wall was guarding him, then he stamped his foot the way Henno had. The laughing was great, waiting to hear Henno coming back down. He didn’t. We all stamped our feet. It must have been his shoes though; we couldn’t get the same noise. But that was all we did; we didn’t shout or mess.
They were
checking the B.C.G. marks.
What’ll they do if you don’t have all of them?
You were supposed to have three of them.
—They’ll give you more.
There was a triangle of them up on your left arm. The skin was funny in the little circles.
—It means you have polio.
—It does not!
—It means you can get polio.
—You don’t have to have it.
David Geraghty, the fella in our class with polio, was in the queue behind us.
—Hey Geraghty, I said.—Did you get your B.C.G.?
—Yeah, he said.
—Then how did you get your polio? Fluke Cassidy asked him.
The queue broke a bit and crowded around David Geraghty.
—I don’t know, he said.—I don’t remember.
—Were you born with it?
David Geraghty looked like he was going to start crying. The queue straightened up again; we all tried to get as far away from him as we could. The first two still hadn’t come out.
—You can get polio from drinking water from out of the toilet.
The door opened. The two fellas came out. Brian Sheridan and James O’Keefe. They were dressed again. They didn’t look pale or scared or anything. There were no tear tracks. The two other fellas went in.
—What did they do to yeh?
—Nothing.
They didn’t know what they were to do now. They couldn’t go back to the classroom because there was no one there and Henno would kill them if they went in on their own. I took my jumper off and dropped it on the floor.
—What did they do?
—Nothing, said Brian Sheridan.—They just looked.
He looked different now. His face had gone stiff. He was messing with his shoe. I stopped taking my shirt off. Kevin grabbed Brian Sheridan.
—Lay off!
—What did they do? Tell us!
—They looked at me.
His face was real red now and he wasn’t really trying to get away from Kevin; he was trying not to let Kevin or the rest of us see his face properly. He’d start crying, for definite.
The other fella, James O’Keefe, wasn’t blushing.
—They looked at our mickeys, he said.
I could hear the rubber knobs on the bottom of David Geraghty’s crutches squeaking on the floor. James O‘Keefe looked right down the queue. He knew he had power. He knew it wouldn’t last long. I was freezing. James O’Keefe’s face was dead serious. He had us.