Roddy Doyle: Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

– Nach bhfuil sé go h’álainn, [1] lads? she kept saying after every couple of boys went past.

– Tá , [2]we said back.

I looked at the names at the bottom. Thomas J. Clarke was the first one. Clarke, like my name.

Miss Watkins got her bata [3] and read the proclamation out for us and pointed at each word.

– In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called. Signed on behalf of the provisional government, Thomas J. Clarke, Seán MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett.

Miss Watkins started clapping, so we did as well. We started laughing. She stared at us and we stopped but we kept clapping.

I turned back to James O’Keefe.

– Thomas Clarke is my granda. Pass it on.

Miss Watkins rapped the blackboard with the bata.

– Seasaígí suas. [4]

She made us march in step beside our desks.

– Clé – deas – clé deas – clé – [5]

The walls of the prefab wobbled. The prefabs were behind the school. You could crawl under them. The varnish at the front of them was all flaky because of the sun; you could peel it off. We didn’t get a room in the proper school, the cement one, until a year after this, when we got changed to Henno. We loved marching. We could feel the boards hopping under us. We put so much effort into slamming our feet down that we couldn’t keep in time. She made us do this a couple of times a day, when she said we were looking lazy.

While we marched this time Miss Watkins read the proclamation.

– Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

She had to stop. It wasn’t proper marching any more. She hit the blackboard.

– Suígí síos. [6]

She looked annoyed and disappointed.

Kevin put his hand up.

– Miss?

– Sea ? [7]

– Paddy Clarke said his granda’s Thomas Clarke on the tea-towel, Miss.

– Did he now?

– Yes, Miss.

– Patrick Clarke.

– Yes, Miss.

– Stand up till we see you.

It took ages for me to get out of my desk.

– Your grandfather is Thomas Clarke?

I smiled.

– Is he?

– Yes, Miss.

– This man here?

She pointed at Thomas Clarke in one of the corners of the tea-towel. He looked like a granda.

– Yes, Miss.

– Where does he live, tell us?

– Clontarf, Miss.

– Where?

– Clontarf, Miss.

– Come up here to me, Patrick Clarke.

The only noise was me on the floorboards.

She pointed to a bit of writing under Thomas Clarke’s head.

– Read that for us, Patrick Clarke.

– Ex – eh – executed by the British on 3 May, 1916.

– What does Executed mean, Dermot Grimes who’s picking his nose and doesn’t think I can see him?

– Kilt, Miss.

– That’s right. And this is your grandfather who lives in Clontarf, is it, Patrick Clarke?

– Yes, Miss.

I pretended to look at the picture again.

– I’ll ask you again, Patrick Clarke. Is this man your grandfather?

– No, Miss.

She gave me three on each hand.

When I got back to the desk I couldn’t put the seat down; my hands couldn’t do anything. James O’Keefe pushed the seat down for me with his foot. It made a bang; I thought she’d get me again. I put my hands under my legs. I didn’t crouch: she wouldn’t let us. The pain was like my hands had dropped off; it would soon become more of a wet sting. The palms were beginning to sweat like mad. There was no noise. I looked over at Kevin. I grinned but my teeth chattered. I saw Liam turn round at the front of the row, waiting for Kevin to look his way, waiting to grin for him.

I liked my Granda Clarke, much more than Granda Finnegan. Granda Clarke’s wife, my Grandma, wasn’t alive any more.

– She’s up in heaven, he said, -having a great time.

He gave me half a crown when we went to see him or when he came to see us. He once came on a bike.

I was messing through the drawers in the sideboard one night when Mart and Market was on the television. The bottom drawer was so full of photographs that when I was sliding the drawer back in some of the photographs on the top of the pile fell out the back onto the floor under the sideboard. I got them out from under there. One of them was of Granda and Grandma Clarke. We hadn’t been to his house in ages.

– Dad?

– Yes, son?

– When are we going to Granda Clarke’s?

My da looked like he’d lost something, then found it, but it wasn’t what he’d wanted.

He sat up. He looked at me for a while.

– Granda Clarke’s dead, he said. -Do you not remember?

– No.

I couldn’t.

He picked me up.

My da’s hands were big. The fingers were long. They weren’t fat. I could make out the bone under the skin and the flesh. He had one of his hands dangling over the chair. He was holding his book with his other hand. His nails were clean -except for one – and the white bits at the top were longer than mine. The wrinkles at his knuckles were a bit like the design of a wall, the cement between the bricks up and across. There weren’t many other wrinkles but the pores were like hollows, with a hair for every pore. Dark hair. Hair came out from under his cuff.

The Naked and the Dead. That was what the book was called. There was a soldier on the cover with his uniform on. His face was dirty. He was American.

– What’s it about?

He looked at the cover.

– War, he said.

– Is it any good? I said.

– Yes, it is, he said. -It’s very good.

I nodded at the cover.

– Is he in it?

– Yes.

– What’s he like?

– I haven’t got to him. I’ll let you know.

World War Three Looms Near.

I got the paper every day for my da when he’d get home from work, and at the same time on Saturdays. Ma gave me the money; the Evening Press.

World War Three Looms Near.

– Does Looms mean Coming? I asked my ma.

– I think so, she said. -Why?

– World War Three’s coming near, I told her. -Look.

She looked at the headline.

– Oh dear, she said. -That’s just newspapers. They exaggerate things.

– Will we be in the war? I asked her.

– No, she said.

– Why not?

– Because there won’t be one, she said.

– Were you alive in World War Two? I asked her.

– Yes, she said. -Indeed I was.

She was making the dinner; she put on her busy look.

– What was it like?

– It wasn’t too bad, she said. -You’d have been disappointed, Patrick. Ireland wasn’t really in the war.

– Why not?

– Oh, it’s complicated; we just weren’t. Your daddy will tell you.

I was waiting for him. He came in the back door.

– Look. World War Three Looms Near.

He read it.

– World War Three looms near, he said. -Looms, no less.

He didn’t seem fussed.

– Have you your gun ready, Patrick? he said.

– Ma said there won’t be a war, I said.

– She’s right.

– Why?

He sometimes liked these questions, and sometimes he didn’t. When he did he folded his legs if he was sitting down and leaned a bit to the side into his chair. That was what he did now, leaned nearer to me. I couldn’t hear him for the first bit because it had been what I’d hoped he’d do – fold his legs and lean over – and it had happened the way I’d wanted it to.