Free The Gamal by Ciarán Collins

area. But the father insisted that the competition went ahead. And the competition was this. The first man to climb the castle with a rose and to give the rose to the princess at the top would be allowed to marry the princess. The fella she was in love with anyway was winning hands down and he was about to hand over the rose to his sweetheart at the very top only the dopey bollicks fell to his death. The princess was having none of that so over she went too down down down splat stone dead.
    That Dunronan Castle story was the saddest bastard of a thing to happen in Ballyronan until my friends Sinéad and James came along. That Dunronan story is supposed to be true but my story about Sinéad and James is truer cos I was there and I seen it all happen in front of my own two eyes.
    There was the posh school for Protestants and rich Catholics who wanted to be like them in Four Crosses, but his parents felt it would be nicer for him to know and make friends with the kids of Ballyronan, cos that’s where he lived. He didn’t have to say the Angelus at twelve o’clock. Or any of the other prayers at morning and afternoon but was part of the religion class all right cos that was only about Jesus and being good and the Protestants were all for Jesus and being good as well.
    James was the first Protestant that most of us had come across. His father and mother were Mr and Mrs Kent. They had moved home from Dublin to restore the ruin of Kent Castle which had been handed down to them through the generations.
    There’s a big wood around Kent Castle and ’twas there we all spent many a summer killing Indians and other baddies and making bows and arrows. There was Sinéad, James, me, Dinky and Racey and sometimes Gregory, Master Coughlan’s son who was only let out sometimes cos he was the whole time learning violin and Irish dancing and sailing and elocution lessons and every kind of thing you ever heard of and anyhow he was the whole time falling and cutting his knees and crying. It got even better then when the Kents started doing up the castle. The castle was theirs which meant it was ours for exploring and killing baddies. Mostly the girls were Indian maidens or white girls captured by the Indians that needed to be rescued. Mostly I was just a prisoner. Or a dead body. Or an Indian they captured who couldn’t speak English. Or other times I just climbed up on the scaffolding or up on a tree and watched them all play and fight and play again. Then when the tennis court was made we played that too. And there was a basketball net on one end of it. Sinéad loved the tennis best cos she was quick on her feet. She was as good as Dinky but not as good as James. Racey was not sporty. She wouldn’t ask the score, she’d ask how long more. In doubles matches it was Sinéad and Dinky against James and Racey but James always won and he’d be winking at Sinéad when Dinky would have tears in his eyes and fling his racket at the wire at the end of a match. James wasn’t being mean, it was just to calm Sinéad down cos Dinky’s temper used to frighten her. Dinky used to get so mad at himself you never saw anything like it. You’d see the marks on his leg when he hit himself with the racket sometimes. Sometimes Sinéad would go over and hold the racket to try and stop him.
    —Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, he’d say and he belting himself with the racket every time.
    James’ mother was a Catholic from Dublin and her brother had played football for Dublin but she lost her religion and became a pagan so she married a Protestant. You’d see her in the shop sometimes or out walking with James’ father and she like a hobo with paint all over her. That’s what she did. She painted. Morning noon and blah. She wore baggy trousers that were more like curtains. And she was plump.
    There was a farmer once bought a horse off a tinker and when the farmer got the horse home and let it out of the trailor the horse took off and ran full speed