–She said I’d’ve smothered it, he said.
–I’d prefer to be smothered than die from the cold, said Liam.
–It was subzero last night, I told them.
The life expectancy of a guineapig 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 highpriest 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 guineapig 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 twothirds 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.