Free Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

to stand up.
    -Dia duit, 8 we said.
    Henno just raised his hand like he was holding something on his palm and we all said it together.
    There were two boys in each desk. When a boy in front of you got up to go to the blackboard or the leithreas 9 you could see a red mark from the seat across the back of his legs.
     
    I had to go down to my parents. Sinbad kept crying, bawling over and over like a train. He wouldn’t stop.
    —I’ll burst you if you don’t.
    I didn’t know how they hadn’t heard it. The hall light was off. They were supposed to leave it on. I got to the bottom of the stairs. The lino at the hall door was freezing. I checked: Sinbad was still whining.
    I loved getting him into trouble. This way was best. I could pretend I was helping.
    They were watching a cowboy film. Da wasn’t pretending to read the paper.
    —Francis is crying.
    Ma looked at Da.
    —He won’t stop.
    They looked, and Ma stood up. It took her ages to get up straight.
    —He’s been doing it all night.
    —Go on back up, Patrick; come on.
    I went up ahead of her. I waited at the beginning of the real dark to make sure she was coming after me. I stood beside Sinbad’s bed.
    —Ma’s coming, I told him.
    It would have been better if it had been Da. She wasn’t going to do anything to him. She’d talk to him, that was all, maybe hug him. I wasn’t disappointed though. I didn’t want to get him now. I was cold.
    —She’s coming, I told him again.
    I’d rescued him.
    He made his whining go a bit louder, and Ma pushed the door open. I got into bed. There was still some of the warmth left from earlier.
    Da wouldn’t have done anything either; the same as Ma, he’d have done.
    —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. Lady-killers. 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