Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

– Ah, what’s wrong, Francis?

She didn’t say it like What’s wrong this time.

– I’ve a pain in my legs, Sinbad told her.

His rhythm was breaking down: she’d come.

– What sort of a pain?

– A bad one.

– In both your legs?

– Yeah.

– Two pains.

– Yeah.

She was rubbing his face, not his legs.

– Like the last time.

– Yeah.

– That’s terrible; you poor thing.

Sinbad got a whimper out.

– That’s you growing up, you know, she told him. -You’ll be very tall.

I never got pains in my legs.

– Very tall. That’ll be great, won’t it? Great for robbing apples.

That was brilliant. We laughed.

– Is it going now? she asked him.

– I think so.

– Good. Tall and handsome. Very handsome. Ladykillers. Both of you.

When I opened my eyes again she was still there. Sinbad was asleep; I could hear him.

We all baled into the hall; threepence each to Mister Arnold and we were through. All the front seats were taken by the little kids from high babies and low babies and the other classes under us. It didn’t matter cos when they turned the lights off we’d get up on our seats; it was better at the back. Sinbad was in there with his class, wearing his new glasses. One of the eyes was blacked, like Missis Byrne’s on our road. Da said it was to give the other one a chance to catch up because it was lazy. We’d got Golly Bars on the way home from the place in town where Sinbad had got the glasses. We came home in the train. Sinbad told Ma that when he was a man he was going to get the first five pounds he ever earned and bring it in the train and pull the emergency cord and pay the fine.

– What job, Francis?

– Farmer, he told her.

– Farmers don’t go in the train, I said.

– Why don’t they? said Ma. -Of course they do.

Sinbad’s glasses had wire bits that went right around the back of his ears and made them stick out, to stop him from losing them, but he lost them anyway.

Some Fridays we didn’t have proper school after the little break; we went to the pictures instead, in the hall. We were warned on Thursdays to bring in threepence to get in, but Aidan and Liam forgot their threepences once and they still got in; they just had to wait till everyone else had gone in. We said that it was because Mister O’Connell didn’t have sixpence to give them – I thought it up – but they brought in the money on Monday. Aidan cried when we kept saying it.

Henno was in charge of the projector. He thought he was great. He stood beside it like it was a Spitfire or something. The projector was on a table at the back of the hall, in the middle between the rows of seats. For a dare when the lights were turned off, we crawled out into the aisle and got up a bit and made shapes with our hands in the path of light that the projector made; the shape – usually a dog barking -would go up on the screen on the stage at the top of the hall. That was the easy part. The hard bit was getting back to your seat before they turned the lights back on. Everyone would try to stop you, to keep you trapped in the aisle. They’d kick you and stand on your hands when you were crawling under the seats. It was brilliant.

– Take out your English copies, said Henno.

We waited.

– Anois. [10]

We took them out. All my copies were covered in wallpaper that our Auntie Muriel had left over when she was doing her bathroom and she gave my da about ten rolls of it.

– She must have thought she was going to be papering the Taj Mahal, he said.

– Ssh, said Ma.

I’d used a plastic stencil for the names. Patrick Clarke. Mister Hennessey. English. Keep Out.

– These rows, here and here, said Henno. -Bring your copies with you. Seasaígí suas . [11]

When we got to the hall we gave our copies to Henno and he put them under the front legs of the projector so the picture would hit the screen bang on.

The teachers stood at the side and went Shh all through the films. They leaned against the wall in twos and threes and smoked, some of them. Only Miss Watkins patrolled around but she never caught anyone cos we would see her head on the screen when she was coming up the aisle.

– Get out of the way!

– Get out of the way!

If it was a sunny day outside we could see hardly anything on the screen because the curtains on the windows weren’t thick enough. We cheered when a cloud got in the way of the sun and we cheered when the sun came back out. Sometimes we just heard the film. But it was easy to tell what was happening.

It always started with two or three Woody Woodpeckers. I could do Woody Woodpecker’s voice.

– Stop that! a teacher would say.

– Shhh!

But they gave up early. By the time Woody Woodpecker was finished and The Three Stooges came on most of the teachers weren’t in the hall any more, just Henno and Mister Arnold and Miss Watkins. My Woody Woodpecker hurt the back of my throat but it was worth it.

– I know that’s you, Patrick Clarke.

We could see Miss Watkins squinting in at us but she couldn’t see anything.

– Do it again.

I waited till she was looking straight at us, then I did it.

– WAA-CAH-CAH-CAH-CEHHH-CUH -

– Patrick Clarke!

– It wasn’t me, Miss.

– It was the bird in the picture, Miss.

– Your head’s in the way, Miss.

– Hey; you can see Miss’s nits in the light!

She went down to Henno at the projector but he wouldn’t stop it for her.

– WAA-CAH-CAH-CAH-CEHHH-CUH -

I loved The Three Stooges as well. Sometimes it was Laurel and Hardy but I preferred The Three Stooges. Some of the fellas called them The Three Stoogies but I knew it was Stooges because my da told me. We could never tell what the story was about in their films; there was too much noise and, anyway, all they ever did was beat each other up. Larry and Moe and Curly, that was their names. Kevin poked my eyes the way the Stooges did it – we were in the field behind the shops, all of us – and I couldn’t see for ages. I didn’t know about that at first because of the pain; I couldn’t open my eyes. It was like all the headaches I used to get; it was like the headaches you got when you ate ice-cream too fast; it was like being hit with a soft branch across the eyes. I had my hands covering my eyes and I wouldn’t take them down. I was shaking the way my sister, Catherine, did when she’d been crying and bawling for ages. I didn’t want to do it.

I didn’t know I was screaming. They told me later. It had scared them, I could tell. The next time I got hurt, when I cut my shoulder on a nail on a goalpost, I screamed then as well. But, because I’d decided to do it, I thought it sounded stupid. I stopped and rolled on the ground, in the wet. My da went down to Kevin’s house when he came home from work and Ma told him what had happened. I watched him from their bedroom window. When he came back he said nothing. Kevin didn’t know what had happened between my da and his da. He’d expected to be killed, especially when he saw the shape of my da through the hall door glass. But nothing happened him. His da did nothing, and didn’t even say anything to him. I told my da this when he was having his tea the day after; he didn’t look surprised or anything.

I had two bloodshot eyes and one black one.

The best thing about The Three Stooges was that there were no breaks. For the main film Hennessey had to change the reel and spin back the old one. The picture would go white with little coloured explosions and the sound would go; we’d hear the film clacking around, hitting against the empty spool. It took ages to get going again.