Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

They were all standing around me. Liam had found the scaffolding joint. He held it in front of my face. I could tell it was heavy, the way he was holding it. It was big and impressive. There’d be loads of blood.

– What is it? said Sinbad.

– A scaffold thing.

– Thick eejit.

I wanted to take my shoe off. I held the heel and groaned. They watched. I pulled slowly, slowly. I thought about getting Kevin to pull it off, like in a film. But it would have hurt. It didn’t feel as wet in there now, just warm. And sore. Still sore. Enough for a limp. I lifted my foot out. No blood. The sock was down at the back, under the heel. I took it off, hoping. They watched. I groaned again and took the sock away. They gasped and yeuched.

It was brilliant. The toenail had come off my big toe. It looked cruel. It was real. It was painful. I lifted the nail a little bit. They all looked. I sucked in breath.

– Aaah -!

I tried to put the nail into its proper position but it really hurt. The sock wasn’t going to go back on. They’d all seen it. I wanted to go home now.

Liam carried my shoe. I leaned on Kevin all the way home. Sinbad ran ahead.

– She’ll put your foot in Dettol, said Aidan.

– Shut up, you, I said.

There were no farms left. Our pitch was gone, first sliced in half for pipes, then made into eight houses. The field behind the shops was still ours and we went there more often. Over at the Corporation houses, that end, wasn’t ours any more. There was another tribe there now, tougher than us, though none of us said it. Our territory was being taken from us but we were fighting back. We played Indians and Cowboys now, not Cowboys and Indians.

– Ger-on-IMO!

We built a wigwam in the field behind the shops. Liam and Aidan’s da called it an igloo by mistake. He came into the field to look at us building it. He was walking back from the shops.

– That’s a grand igloo, boys, he said.

– It’s a wigwam, I said.

– It’s a tepee, said Kevin.

Liam and Aidan said nothing. They wanted their da to go away.

– Oh, that’s right, said Mister O’Connell.

He had a net bag for his messages. He took a brown bag out of it. I knew what was in it.

– D’yis want a biscuit, boys?

We queued up. We let Liam and Aidan go first. He was their da.

– Did you see his handbag? said Kevin when Mister O’Connell was gone.

– It wasn’t a handbag, said Aidan.

– It was so, said Kevin.

No one joined in.

There were fields past the Corporation houses but they were too far away now. Past the Corporation houses. Somewhere else.

We’d done the compass points in school the day we got the summer holidays.

– Which way am I pointing – NOW.

– East.

– One of you at a time. – YOU.

– East, Sir.

– Just to make sure you didn’t say that just because Mister Bradshaw got there before you. – NOW.

– West, Sir.

The Corporation houses were west. The seafront was east. Raheny was south. The north was interesting.

– The last frontier, said my da.

First there were more new houses. There was no one in them yet because they’d all flooded before they were finished. Past the houses was the field with the hills, the one that had been dug up and stopped and grown over, where we built our huts. And over the hills was Bayside.

Bayside wasn’t finished yet but it wasn’t the building sites we were after this time. It was the shape of the place. It was mad. The roads were crooked. The garages weren’t in the proper place. They were in blocks away from the houses. Down a path, into a yard, a fort made of garages. The place made no sense. We went there to get lost.

– It’s a labyrinth.

– Labyrinth!

– Labyrinth labyrinth labyrinth!

We charged through on our bikes. Bikes became important, our horses. We galloped through the garage yards and made it to the other side. I tied a rope to the handlebars and hitched my bike to a pole whenever I got off it. We parked our bikes on verges so they could graze. The rope got caught between the spokes of the front wheel; I went over the handlebars, straight over. It was over before I knew. The bike was on top of me. I was alone. I was okay. I wasn’t even cut. We charged into the garages -

– Woo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo!

and the garages captured our noise and made it bigger and grown-up. We escaped out the other end, out onto the street and back for a second attack.

We got material from our houses and made headbands. Mine was a tartan one, with a seagull’s feather. We took off our jumpers and shirts and vests. James O’Keefe took off his trousers and rode through Bayside in his underpants. His skin was stuck to the saddle when he was getting off, from the sweat; you could hear the skin clinging to the plastic. We threw his trousers onto the roof of a garage, and his shirt and his vest. We put his jumper down a shore.

The garage roofs were easy to get up onto. We climbed up on our saddles and onto the roofs when we’d conquered the forts.

– Woo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo!

A woman looked out of a bedroom window and made a face and moved her hands, telling us to get down. We did the first time. We got on our bikes and hightailed it out of Bayside. She’d called the police; her husband was a Guard; she was a witch. I got straight from the roof onto the bike without touching the ground. I pushed off from the wall. There was a wobble but then I was gone. I circled the garages to make sure that the others had time to escape.

I’d got the bike for Christmas, two Christmases before. I woke up. I thought I did. The bedroom door was closing. The bike was leaning against the end of my bed. I was confused. And afraid. The door clicked shut. I stayed in the bed. I heard no steps outside in the hall. I didn’t try to ride the bike for months after. We didn’t need them. We were better on foot through the fields and sites. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know who’d given it to me. It should never have been in my bedroom. It was a Raleigh, a gold one. It was the right size for me and I didn’t like that either. I wanted a grown-up one, with straight handlebars and brakes that fit properly into my hands with the bars, like Kevin had. My brakes stuck down under the bars. I had to gather them into my hands. When I held the bar and the brake together the bike stopped; I couldn’t do it. The only thing I did like was a Manchester United sticker that was in my stocking when I woke up again in the morning. I stuck it on the bar under the saddle.

We didn’t need bikes then. We walked; we ran. We ran away. That was the best, running away. We shouted at watchmen, we threw stones at windows, we played knickknack – and ran away. We owned Barrytown, the whole lot of it. It went on forever. It was a country.

Bayside was for bikes.

I couldn’t cycle it. I could get my leg over the saddle and onto the pedal and push but that was all. I couldn’t go; I couldn’t stay up. I didn’t know how. I was doing everything right. I ran the bike, got onto it and fell over. I was frightened. I knew I was going to fall before I started. I gave up. I put the bike in the shed. My da got angry. I didn’t care.

– Santy got you that bike, he said. -The least you can do is learn how to cycle the bloody thing.

I said nothing.

– It comes natural, he said. -It’s as natural as walking.

I could walk.

I asked him to show me.

– About time, he said.

I got up on the bike; he held the back of the saddle and I pedalled. Up the garden. Down the garden. He thought I was enjoying it; I hated it. I knew: he let go: I fell over.

– Keep pedalling keep pedalling keep pedalling -

I fell over. I got off the bike. I wasn’t really falling. I was putting my left foot down. That made him more annoyed.