Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

– You can go and say a prayer by yourselves some other time, said Miss Watkins. -Next Sunday. That would be better.

She’d been crying.

– They just don’t want us to see the coffin going in, said Kevin.

There was no more school. We sat on a flattened cardboard box in the field behind the shops to stop our clothes from getting dirty and to stop us from being killed by our mas. There was only room for three on the box and there were five of us. Aidan had to stand and Ian McEvoy went home.

– He was my cousin, I told them.

– Who was? said Kevin.

They knew who I was going to say.

– Keith Simpson, I said.

I thought of my mother crying. He must have been at least a cousin. I believed myself.

– Hari-kari.

– It’s hari-kiri, I said.

– What’s it mean? Ian McEvoy asked.

– Do you not know? said Kevin. -You’re dense.

– It’s the way Japs kill themselves, I told Ian McEvoy.

– Why? said Aidan.

– Why what?

– Why do they kill themselves?

– Lots of reasons.

It was a thick question. It didn’t matter.

– Cos they got beaten in the war, said Kevin.

– Still? said Aidan. -The war was years ago.

– My uncle was in the war, said Ian McEvoy.

– No, he wasn’t; shut up.

– He was.

– He wasn’t.

Kevin grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. Ian McEvoy didn’t try to stop him.

– He wasn’t in the war, said Kevin. -Sure he wasn’t?

– No, said Ian McEvoy.

He didn’t even leave a gap.

– Why did you say he was, then?

It wasn’t fair; he should have let Ian McEvoy go when he’d said No.

– Why did yeh?

He pulled Ian McEvoy’s wrist closer to the back of his neck. Ian McEvoy had to bend forward. He didn’t answer; he probably couldn’t think of anything, anything that would get Kevin to let go of him.

– Leave him alone, said Liam.

He said it like he was answering in school and he knew he was wrong. He still said it though. He was standing there. He’d said it. I hoped Kevin would get him, because he’d said it and I hadn’t and Kevin getting him would make me right. Kevin pulled Ian McEvoy’s arm up a little bit more till he bent him down – Ian McEvoy roared out – and then Kevin let him go. Ian McEvoy straightened up and pretended they’d been only messing. I waited. So did Liam. Nothing happened. Kevin did nothing. Aidan brought it back to normal.

– Do they have to kill themselves?

– No, I said.

– Why then?

– They only do it when they really have to, I said. -Or when they want to, I said, just in case.

– When do they have to? said Sinbad.

I was going to tell him to shut up and maybe hit him but I didn’t feel like it. He had two snailers coming out of his nose even though it wasn’t all that cold.

– When they lose a war and things like that, I said.

– When they’re sad, said Aidan.

He said it like a question.

– Yeah, I said. -Sometimes.

– Very sad, only.

– Yeah.

– Not just down in the dumps.

– No. Sad that you can’t stop crying. When your ma dies or something. Or your dog.

I remembered too late: Aidan and Liam’s ma was dead. But they didn’t do anything, look at each other or anything. Liam just nodded; he knew what I’d meant.

There were two other families with dead mas or das. The Sullivans had a dead ma and the Rickards had a dead da. Mister Rickard had died in a car crash. Missis Sullivan had just died. The Rickards had moved after Mister Rickard got killed but they came back. They hadn’t been gone that long, not even a year. They didn’t go to our school, the three boys. There was a girl as well, Mary. She was older.

– A bit wild, my ma said.

She’d gone to London, run away. That was where they’d found her. She was a hippy, the only real one in Barrytown. The police in England had found her. They made her go home.

– They get a knife and they stick it in their belly, I told them.

It was impossible; their faces said that. I agreed with them. You couldn’t stick a knife in your own belly. I had no problem thinking about swallowing loads of tablets. It would be easy. I’d get a bottle of something to wash them down, to make it even easier, Coca-Cola or milk. Probably Coca-Cola. Even jumping off a bridge when a train was coming was easy to imagine. I could do it. I’d be jumping, not hitting the train. I’d jumped off high things before. You couldn’t smother yourself on purpose. If you jumped into the deep end of a swimming pool away from the sides and there was no one there to save you you’d drown, if you couldn’t swim or you weren’t a good swimmer. Or if you’d just had your dinner and got cramps. I couldn’t imagine me sticking a knife into myself. I didn’t even bother experimenting.

– Not a bread knife, I said. -Or one like that.

– A butcher’s.

– Yeah.

It was easy to see how you could accidentally stab yourself with a knife. We’d seen the butcher using his one. He’d let us. He let us come round the corner. Missis O’Keefe, James O’Keefe’s ma, was in her hatch where she took in the money and gave out the change, and she yelled at us for robbing the sawdust. We needed it for Ian McEvoy’s guinea-pig. There was loads of sawdust. It was early in the morning so it was clean and fresh. We grabbed handfuls and put them in our pockets. It wasn’t really robbing. Sawdust wasn’t worth anything. And it was for the guinea-pig. She yelled at us; it wasn’t even a word. Then she yelled a name.

– Cyril!

It was the butcher’s name. We didn’t run. It was only sawdust. We didn’t think she was calling him for us. He came out of the big fridge at the back.

– Wha’?

She pointed at us. It was too late to run.

– Them, she said.

He saw the sawdust in our hands. He was colossal. He was the biggest, fattest man in Barrytown. He didn’t live in Barrytown, like the other people who lived in the rooms on top of their shops. He came to work on a Honda 50. He made a face like he was annoyed with Missis O’Keefe. She was wasting his time; he’d been doing something.

– Come here, lads, till I show yis somethin’.

It was me, Kevin and Ian McEvoy and Sinbad. Liam and Aidan were at their auntie’s in Raheny again. We went over to him.

– Stay there.

He went into the fridge and came back out with an animal’s leg. It was over his shoulder. He was wearing a white coat. I thought it was a cow’s, the leg.

– Over here.

We followed him behind the counter to the wooden block. It was clean. I could see scrape marks from the brush. I’d seen him with the brush before. It was the same shape as a brush but instead of bristles there was metal. He got the leg from his back to the block with just barely a flick of his hand. It slapped the wood. He let us feel it.

– Now, lads.

His knife was in a scabbard on a hook above the table. He took it out. It made a swish. He let us look properly at it.

– That cost me hundreds of pounds, lads, he said. -Don’t touch it.

We weren’t going to.

– Now look here, he said.

He slid the knife over the meat’s skin – just slid it – and it came away; a chop. He made no effort; he leaned the edge on the leg, that was all. No noise, no tension. He was sweating though. He broke the chop’s bone with a different knife, a cleaver. He thumped it onto the bone, once, twice, and the chop fell flat on the block.

– Now, he said. -That’s all there is to it. And that’s what I’ll do to you feckers the next time I catch yis robbin’ my sawdust.

He still looked nice and friendly.

– Sprinkle it all back on the floor on your way out. Bye bye, lads.