We got out of the ditch cos the midgeys were landing on our faces.
Sinbad wouldn’t put the lighter fuel in his mouth.
—It’s halibut oil, I told him.
—It isn’t, he said.
He squirmed but I held onto him. We were in the school yard, in the shed.
I liked halibut oil. When you cracked the plastic with your teeth the oil spread over the inside of your mouth, like ink through blotting paper. It was warm; I liked it. The plastic was nice as well.
It was Monday; Henno was in charge of the yard, but he always stayed over at the far side watching whoever was playing handball. He was mad; if he’d come over to our side, the shed, he’d have caught loads of us in the act. If a teacher caught five fellas smoking or doing serious messing he got a bonus in his wages; that was what Fluke Cassidy said and his uncle was a teacher. But Henno only watched handball and sometimes he took his jacket and his jumper off and played it as well. He was brilliant. When he hit the ball you couldn’t see it till it hit the wall; it was like a bullet. He had a sticker in his car: Live Longer, Play Handball.
Sinbad’s lips had disappeared because he was pressing them shut so hard; we couldn’t get his mouth open. Kevin pressed the fuel capsule against his mouth but it wouldn’t go in. I pinched Sinbad’s arm; no good. This was terrible; in front of the others, I couldn’t sort out my little brother. I got the hair above his ear and pulled it up; I lifted him: I just wanted to hurt him. His eyes were closed now as well but the tears were getting out. I held his nose. He gasped and Kevin shoved the capsule half-way into his mouth. Then Liam lit it with the match.
We said we’d get Liam to light it, me and Kevin, just in case we got caught.
It went like a dragon.
I preferred magnifying glasses to matches. We spent afternoons burning little piles of cut grass. I loved watching the grass change colour. I loved it when the flame began to race through the grass. You had more control with a magnifying glass. It was easier but it took more skill. If the sun stayed out long enough you could saw through a sheet of paper and not have to touch it, just put down a stone in each corner to stop it from blowing away. We’d have a race; burn, blow it out, burn, blow it out. Last to burn the paper completely in half had to let the other fella burn his hand. We’d draw a man on the paper and burn holes in him; in his hands and his feet, like Jesus. We drew long hair on him. We left his mickey till last.
We cut roads through the nettles. My ma wanted to know what I was doing going out wearing my duffel coat and mittens on a lovely nice day.
—We’re doing the nettles, I told her.
The nettles were huge; giant ones. The hives from their stings were colossal, and they itched for ages after they’d stopped stinging. They took up a big corner of the field behind the shops. Nothing else grew there, just the nettles. After we hacked them over with a sideways swing of our sticks and hurleys we had to mash them down. Juice from the nettles flew up. We built roads right through the nettles, a road each because of the swinging sticks and hurleys. When we were going home the roads had met and there were no nettles left. The hurleys were green and I had two stings on my face; I’d taken off my balaclava because my head was itchy.
I was looking at crumbs. My da put his hand on the magnifying glass and I let him take it. He looked at the hairs on his hand.
—Who gave you this? he said.
-You.
—Oh, that’s right; I did.
He handed it back.
—Good man.
He pressed his thumb down hard on the kitchen table.
—See if you can see the print, he said.
I wasn’t sure.
—The fingerprint, he said.—The thumb.
I shifted my chair over closer to him and held the glass over where his thumb had been. We both looked through the glass. All I could see was the yellow and red dots of the tabletop, bigger.
—See anything? he said.
—No.
—Come on, he said.
I followed him into the living room.
—Where are you two going when your dinner’s just ready? said my ma.
—Back in a sec, said my da.
He put his hand on my shoulder. We went to the window.
—Get up there till we see.
He dragged the armchair over for me to stand on.
—Now.
He hauled up the venetian blinds. He spoke to them.
—Out of the way and let the duck see the rabbit.
He locked the cord and held it for a while to make sure that both sides of the blinds stayed up.
He pressed his thumb on the glass.
—Now, look.
The smudge became lines, curved tracks.
—Do yours now, he said.
I pressed my thumb on the glass, hard. He held me so I didn’t fall off the chair.
I looked.
—Are they the same? he said.
—Yours is bigger.
—Besides that.
I said nothing; I wasn’t sure.
—They’re all different, he said.—No one’s fingerprints are the same as someone else’s. Did you know that?
—No.
—Well, now you do.
A few days later Napoleon Solo found fingerprints on his briefcase.
I looked up at my father.
—Told you, he said.
We didn’t do the barn. We didn’t put it on fire.
The barn had been left behind. When the Corporation bought Donnelly’s farm he bought a new one near Swords. He moved everything out there except his house and the barn, and the smell. The smell was really bad on wet days. The rain freshened up the pigshite that had been lying there for years. The barn was huge and green, and great when it was full of hay. We crept in from the back before the new houses were built. It was dangerous. Donnelly had a gun and a one-eyed dog. Cecil, the dog’s name was. Donnelly had a mad brother as well, Uncle Eddie. He was in charge of the chickens and the pigs. He raked the stones and pebbles of the driveway in front of the house every time a car or a tractor went over them and messed them up. Uncle Eddie walked by our house one day when my ma was painting the gate.
—God love him, she said to herself but loud enough for me to hear her.
My ma mentioned Uncle Eddie when we were having our dinner one day.
—God love him, I said, and my da smacked my shoulder.
Uncle Eddie had two eyes but he was a bit like Cecil because one of them was closed over. My da said that it went that way because it got caught in a draught when Uncle Eddie was looking through a keyhole.
When you were doing a funny face or pretending you had a stammer and the wind changed or someone thumped your back you stayed that way for ever. Declan Fanning - he was fourteen and his parents were thinking of sending him off to boarding school because he smoked—he had a stammer and he got it because he was jeering someone with a stammer and someone else thumped him in the back.
Uncle Eddie didn’t have a stammer but he could only say two words, Grand, grand.
We were at mass and the Donnellys were behind us and Father Moloney said,—You may be seated.
We were getting up from our knees and Uncle Eddie went, —Grand, grand.
Sinbad burst out laughing. I looked at my da to make sure that he didn’t think it was me.
You could climb up the bales of hay, right up into the barn. We dived down from one level to another level of bales. We never hurt ourselves; it was brilliant. Liam and Aidan said that their Uncle Mick, their ma’s brother, had a barn like Donnelly’s barn.
—Where? I said.
They didn’t know.
—Where is it?
—The country.
We saw mice. I never saw any, but I heard them. I said I saw them. Kevin saw loads of them. I saw a squashed rat. The marks of the tyre were on it. We tried to light it but it wouldn’t go.
We were up in the top of the barn. Uncle Eddie came in. He didn’t know we were there. We
held our breaths. Uncle Eddie walked around in a circle twice and went back out. There was a block of sunlight at the door. It was one of those big corrugated-iron doors that slid across. The whole barn was corrugated iron. We were so high up we could touch the roof.
The barn became surrounded by skeleton houses. The road outside was being widened and there were pyramids of huge pipes at the top of the road, up at the seafront. The road was going to be a main road to the airport. Kevin’s sister, Philomena, said that the barn looked like the houses’ mother looking after them. We said she was a spa, but it did; it did look like the houses’ ma.
Three fire brigades came out from town to put the fire out but they weren’t able to. The whole road was flooded from all the water. It happened during the night. The fire was gone when we got up the next morning and our ma said we couldn’t go near the barn and she kept an eye on us to make sure we didn’t. I got up into the apple tree but I couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t much of a tree and it was full of leaves. It only ever grew scabby apples.
They found a box of matches outside the barn; that was what we heard. Missis Parker from the cottages told our ma. Mister Parker worked for Donnelly; drove the tractor and went to the pictures with Uncle Eddie every Saturday afternoon.
—They’ll dust them for fingerprints, I told my ma.
—Yes. That’s right.
—They’ll dust them for fingerprints, I told Sinbad.—And if they find your fingerprints on the matches they’ll come and arrest you and put you in the Artane Boys Band.
Sinbad didn’t believe me but he did believe me as well.
—They’ll make you play the triangle because of your lips, I told him.
His eyes went all wet; I hated him.
Uncle Eddie was burnt to death in the fire; we heard that as well. Missis Byrne from two houses up told my ma. She whispered it and they blessed themselves.
—Maybe it’s for the best, said Missis Byrne.
—Yes, said my ma.
I was dying to get down to the barn to see Uncle Eddie, if they hadn’t taken him away. My ma made us have a picnic in the garden. My da came home from work. He went to work in the train. My ma got up out of the picnic so she could talk to him without us hearing. I knew what she was telling him, about Uncle Eddie.
—Was he? said my da.
My ma nodded.
—He never told me that when he came up the road with me there. All he said was Grand grand.
There was a gap and then they burst out laughing, the two of them.
He wasn’t dead at all. He wasn’t even hurt.
The barn was never green again. It was bent and buckled. The roof was crooked like the lid of a can. It swung and creaked. The big door was put leaning against the yard wall. It was all black. One of the walls was gone. The black on the walls fell off and the whole thing became brown and rusty.
Everyone said that someone from the new Corporation houses had done it. Later, about a year after, Kevin said he’d done it. But he didn’t. He was in Courtown in a caravan on his holidays when it happened. I didn’t say anything.
On a nice day we could see the specks of dust in the air under the roof. Sometimes I’d go home and it was in my hair. On windy days big dead chunks fell off. The ground under the roof was red. The barn was nibbled away.
Sinbad promised.
My ma pushed his hair back from his forehead and combed her fingers through it to keep it on top of his head. She was nearly crying as well.
—I’ve tried everything, she told him.—Now, promise again.
—I promise, said Sinbad.
My ma started to untie his hands. I was crying as well.
She tied his hands to the chair to stop him from picking the scabs on his lips. He’d screamed. His face had gone red, then purple, and one of the screams went on for ever; he didn’t breathe in. Sinbad’s lips were covered in scabs because of the lighter fuel. For two weeks it had looked like he had no lips.
She held his hands at his sides but she let him stand up.
—Let’s see your tongue, she said.
She was checking to see that he wasn’t telling a lie.
-Okay, Francis, she said.—No spots.
Francis was Sinbad. He put his tongue back in.
She let go of his hands but he didn’t go anywhere. I went over to where they were.
You ran down the jetty and jumped and shouted Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, and whoever got the most words out before they hit the water won. No one ever won. I once got as far as the second The but Kevin, the ref, said that my bum had gone into the water before I got to Of. We threw stones at each other, to miss.
I hid behind the sideboard when the Seaview was being swallowed by a giant jellyfish; it was terrible. I didn’t mind it at first and I put my fingers in my ears when my da told my ma that it was ridiculous. But when the jellyfish kind of surrounded the submarine I crawled over to the sideboard. I’d been lying on my tummy in front of the telly. I didn’t cry. My ma said that the jellyfish had gone but I didn’t come back out till I heard the ads. She brought me to bed after it and stayed with me for a while. Sinbad was asleep. I got up for a drink of water. She said she wouldn’t let me watch it next week but she forgot. Anyway, the next week it was back to normal again, about a mad scientist who’d invented a new torpedo. Admiral Nelson gave him a box that sent him bashing into the periscope.
—That’s the stuff, said my da.
He didn’t see it; he just heard it. He didn’t look up from his book. I didn’t like that; he was jeering me. My ma was knitting. I was the only one let up to watch it. I told Sinbad it was brilliant but I wouldn’t tell him why.
I was in the water down at the seafront, with Edward Swanwick. He didn’t go to the same school as most of us. He went to Belvedere in town.
—Nothing but the best for the Swanwicks, said my da when my ma told him that she’d seen Missis Swanwick buying margarine instead of butter in the shop.
She laughed.
Edward Swanwick had to wear a blazer and tie and he had to play rugby. He said he hated it but he came home on his own in the train every day so it wasn’t too bad.
We were flinging water at each other. We’d stopped laughing cos we’d been doing it for ages. The tide was going out so we’d be getting out in a minute. Edward Swanwick pushed his hands out and sent a wave towards me and there was a jellyfish in it. A huge see-through one with pink veins and a purple middle. I lifted my arms way up and started to move but it still rubbed my side. I screamed. I pushed through the water to the steps. I felt the jellyfish hit my back; I thought I did. I yelled again; I couldn’t help it. It was rocky and uneven down at the seafront, not like the beach. I got to the steps and grabbed the bar.
—It’s a Portuguese man of war, said Edward Swanwick.
He was coming back to the steps a long way, around the jellyfish.
I got onto the second step. I looked for marks. Jellyfish stings didn’t hurt until you got out of the water. There was a pink lash on the side of my belly; I could see it. I was out of the water.
—I’m going to get you, I told Edward Swanwick.
—It’s a Portuguese man of war, said Edward Swanwick.
—Look at it.
I showed him my wound.
He was up on the platform now, looking over the railing at the jellyfish.
I took my togs off without bothering with the towel. There was no one else. The jellyfish was still floating there, like a runny umbrella. Edward Swanwick was hunting for stones. He went down some of the steps to reach for some but he wouldn’t get back into the water. I couldn’t get my T-shirt down over my back and chest because I was wet. It was stuck on my shoulders.
—Their stings are poisonous, said Edward Swanwick.
I had my T-shirt on now. I lifted it to make sure the mark was still there. I thought it was beginning to get sore. I wrung out my togs over the railing. Edward Swanwick was plopping stones near the jellyfish.
—Hit it.
&
nbsp; He missed.
—You’re a big spa, I told him.
I wrapped my togs in my towel. It was a big soft bath one. I shouldn’t have had it.
I ran all the way, up Barrytown Road, all the way, past the cottages where there was a ghost and an old woman with a smell and no teeth, past the shops; I started to cry when I was three gates away from our house; around the back, in the kitchen door.
Ma was feeding the baby.
—What’s wrong with you, Patrick?
She looked down for a cut on my leg. I got my T-shirt out to show her. I was really crying now. I wanted a hug and ointment and a bandage.
—A jelly—a Portuguese man of war got me, I told her. She touched my side.
—There?
—Ouch! No, look; the mark across. It’s highly poisonous.
—I can’t see - . Oh, now I do.
I pulled my T-shirt down. I tucked it into my pants.
—What should we do? she asked me.—Will I go next door and phone for an ambulance?
—No; ointment—
—Okay, so. That’ll mend it. Have I time for me to finish feeding Deirdre and Cathy before we put it on?
—Yeah.
—Great.
I pressed my hand hard into my side to keep the mark there.
The seafront was a pumping station. There was a platform behind it with loads of steps down to it. When there was a spring tide the water spread over the platform. There were more steps down to the water. There were steps on the other side of the pumping station as well but it was always cold over there and the rocks were bigger and sharper. It was hard to get past them to the water. The jetty wasn’t really a jetty. It was a pipe covered in cement. The cement wasn’t smooth. There were bits of stone and rock sticking out of it. You couldn’t dash along to the end. You had to watch your step and not put your foot down too hard. It was hard to play properly down at the seafront. There was too much seaweed, slime and rocks; you always had to keep your eyes down searching under the water. All you could really do was swim.