Roddy Doyle: Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

– 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.