Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Read online

  Table of Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  “The story of a ten-year-old working-class boy in 1960s Dublin is not only hilarious, it is also poignant, brutal and realistic ... a stream of impressions that powerfully evokes the exhilarations and confusion of childhood. A superb conjurer, this writer never lets the reader glimpse the adult lens filtering his hero’s thoughts.”

  -New York Daily News

  “Magical ... A tour de force ... Paddy is a very ordinary boy going through very ordinary experiences, and that’s exactly what makes Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha so good.... Doyle writes with enormous feeling.”—Los Angeles Times

  “Wise and deeply satisfying ... Doyle does a remarkable job of avoiding sentiment, which makes Paddy’s anxious fears stark and authentic. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is an extraordinarily fine novel. Doyle’s spare, economical prose with its looping sense of child-time conveys the sensitive Paddy’s turmoil with intensity and assurance.” -The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Doyle gives us one of the best English-language novels about childhood ever, one that could sit comfortably with Catcher in the Rye, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Huckleberry Finn.”

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “With unflinching clarity and absolutely no sentiment, Paddy Clarke captures all the charm, playfulness and cruelty of boyhood. Paddy Clarke the character is unforgettable; Paddy Clarke the novel is funny, tragic, and mercilessly on-target.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Brilliant ... original and valuable ... Doyle’s re-creation of Ireland in the mid-1960s is unerringly accurate.... A profound, disturbing, and beautifully crafted novel.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Most compelling ... Doyle’s deft handling of childhood makes his latest book one of his best.”—The Christian Science Monitor

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Roddy Doyle is an internationally bestselling writer. His first three novels—The Commitments, The Snapper, and 1991 Booker Prize finalist The Van—are available both singly and in one volume as The Barrytown Trilogy, published by Penguin. He is also the author of the novels Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993 Booker Prize winner), The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, A Star Called Henry, and Oh, Play That Thing; the short story collection The Deportees; and a nonfiction book about his parents, Rory & Ita. Doyle has also written for the stage and the screen: the plays Brownbread, War, Guess Who’s Coming for the Dinner, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, and The Playboy of the Western World (as cowriter); the film adaptations of The Commitments (as cowriter), The Snapper, and The Van; When Brendan Met Trudy (an original screenplay); the four-part television series Family for the BBC; and the television play Hell for Leather. Roddy Doyle has also written the children’s books The Giggler Treatment, Rover Saves Christmas, and The Meanwhile Adventures; the young adult novel Wilderness; and contributed to a variety of publications including The New Yorker and McSweeney‘s, the anthology Speaking with the Angel (edited by Nick Hornby), the serial novel Yeats Is Dead! (edited by Joseph O’Conner), and the young adult serial novel Click. He lives in Dublin.

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  First published in Great Britain by Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited 1993

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1993

  Published in Penguin Books 1995

  Copyright © Roddy Doyle, 1993

  All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

  of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual

  persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint

  excerpts from the following copyrighted works:

  “Long Gone Lonesome Blues,” by Hank Williams, Sr. © Copyright 1950,

  renewed 1977 Acuff-Rose Music Inc., 65 Music Square West,

  Nashville, TN 37023/o/b/o Warner Chappell Music/Hiriam Music, Inc. © 1950

  (renewed) Hiriam Music & Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. All rights on behalf of

  Hiriam Music administered by Rightsong Music Inc. International rights secured.

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,” by Hank Williams, Sr.,

  and Fred Rose. © Copyright 1952, renewed 1980 Milene Music Inc,

  65 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203/Rightsong Music. © 1952 (renewed)

  Julian J. Aberbach, the Estate of Joachim Jean Aberbach and Milene Music, Inc.

  All rights on behalf of Julian J. Aberbach and the Estate of Joachim Jean Aberbach

  administered by Intersong USA, Inc. International rights secured.

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  “Bachelor Boy,” words and music by Bruce Welch and Cliff Richard. Copyright ©

  1962. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd

  trading as Elstree Music, London WC2H OEA.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-67372-6

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  This book is dedicated to

  Rory

  We were coming down our road. Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with his stick. It was Missis Quigley’s gate; she was always looking out the window but she never did anything.

  —Quigley!

  —Quigley!

  —Quigley Quigley Quigley!

  Liam and Aidan turned down their cul-de-sac. We said nothing; they said nothing. Liam and Aidan had a dead mother. Missis O’Connell was her name.

  —It’d be brilliant, wouldn’t it? I said.

  —Yeah, said Kevin.—Cool.

  We were talking about having a dead ma. Sinbad, my little brother, started crying. Liam was in my class in school. He dirtied his trousers one day - the smell of it rushed at us like the blast of heat when an oven door was opened - and the master did nothing. He didn’t shout or slam his desk with his leather or anything. He told us to fold our arms and go asleep and when we did he carried Liam out of the class. He didn’t come back for ages and Liam didn’t come back at all.

  James O’Keefe whispered,—If I did a gick in me pants he’d kill me!

  —Yeah.

  —It’s not fair, said James O’Keefe.—So it’s not.

  The master, Mister Hennessey, hated James O‘Keefe. He’d be writing something on the board with his back to us and he’d say,—O’Keefe, I know you’re up to
something down there. Don’t let me catch you. He said it one morning and James O’Keefe wasn’t even in. He was at home with the mumps.

  Henno brought Liam to the teachers’ toilet and cleaned him up and then he brought him to the headmaster’s office and the headmaster brought him to his auntie’s in his car because there was no one at home in his own house. Liam’s auntie’s house was in Raheny.

  —He used up two rolls of toilet paper, Liam told us. —And he gave me a shilling.

  —He did not; show us it.

  -There.

  —That’s only threepence.

  —I spent the rest, said Liam.

  He got the remains of a packet of Toffo out of his pocket and showed it to us.

  —There, he said.

  —Give us one.

  —There’s only four left, said Liam; he was putting the packet back in his pocket.

  —Ah, said Kevin.

  He pushed Liam.

  Liam went home.

  Today, we were coming home from the building site. We’d got a load of six-inch nails and a few bits of plank for making boats, and we’d been pushing bricks into a trench full of wet cement when Aidan started running away. We could hear his asthma, and we all ran as well. We were being chased. I had to wait for Sinbad. I looked back and there was no one after us but I didn’t say anything. I grabbed Sinbad’s hand and ran and caught up with the rest of them. We stopped when we got out of the fields onto the end of the road. We laughed. We roared through the gap in the hedge. We got into the gap and looked to see if there was anyone coming to get us. Sinbad’s sleeve was caught in the thorns.

  —The man’s coming! said Kevin, and he slid through the gap.

  We left Sinbad stuck in the hedge and pretended we’d run away. We heard him snivelling. We crouched behind the gate pillars of the last house before the road stopped at the hedge, O’Driscoll’s.

  —Patrick—, Sinbad whinged.

  —Sin-bahhhd——, said Kevin.

  Aidan had his knuckles in his mouth. Liam threw a stone at the hedge.

  —I’m telling Mammy, said Sinbad.

  I gave up. I got Sinbad out of the hedge and made him wipe his nose on my sleeve. We were going home for our dinner; shepherd’s pie on a Tuesday.

  Liam and Aidan’s da howled at the moon. Late at night, in his back garden; not every night, only sometimes. I’d never heard him but Kevin said he had. My ma said that he did it because he missed his wife.

  —Missis O’Connell?

  —That’s right.

  My da agreed with her.

  —He’s grieving, said my mother.—The poor man.

  Kevin’s father said that Mister O‘Connell howled because he was drunk. He never called him Mister O’Connell; he called him the Tinker.

  —Will you look who’s talking, said my mother when I told her that. And then she said,—Don’t listen to him, Patrick; he’s codding you. Sure, where would he get drunk? There’s no pubs in Barrytown.

  —There’s three in Raheny, I said.

  —That’s miles away, she said.—Poor Mister O’Connell. No more talk about it.

  Kevin told Liam that he saw his da looking up at the moon and howling like a werewolf.

  Liam said he was a liar.

  Kevin dared him to say that again but he didn’t.

  Our dinner wasn’t ready and Sinbad had left one of his shoes back in the building site. We’d been told never to play there so he told our ma that he didn’t know where it was. She smacked the back of his legs. She held onto his arm but he still kept ahead of her so she wasn’t really getting him properly. He still cried though, and she stopped.

  Sinbad was a great crier.

  —You’re costing me a blessed fortune, she told Sinbad.

  She was nearly crying as well.

  She said we’d have to go out and find the shoe after dinner, the both of us, because I was supposed to have been looking after him.

  We’d have to go out in the dark, through the gap, over the fields, into the muck and the trenches and the watchmen. She told us to wash our hands. I closed the bathroom door and I got Sinbad back for it; I gave him a dead leg.

  I had to keep an eye on Deirdre in the pram while our ma put clean socks on Sinbad. She wiped his nose and looked at his eyes for ages and pushed the tears away with her knuckle.

  —There, there; good boy.

  I was afraid she’d ask him what was wrong with him and he’d tell her. I rocked the pram the way she always did it.

  We lit fires. We were always lighting fires.

  I took off my jumper so there wouldn’t be a smell of smoke off it. It was cold now but that didn’t matter as much. I looked for somewhere clean to put the jumper. We were at the building site. The building site kept changing, the fenced-in part of it where they kept the diggers and the bricks and the shed the builders sat in and drank tea. There was always a pile of bread crusts outside the shed door, huge batch crusts with jam stains on the edges. We were looking through the wire fence at a seagull trying to pick up one of the crusts—it was too long for the seagull’s beak; he should have grabbed it in the middle - when another crust came flying out the shed door and hit the side of the seagull’s head. We heard the roars of the men’s laughing from inside the shed.

  We’d go down to the building site and it wouldn’t be there any more, just a square patch of muck and broken bricks and tyre marks. There was a new road where there’d been wet cement the last time we were there and the new site was at the end of the road. We went over to where we’d written our names with sticks in the cement, but they’d been smoothed over; they’d gone.

  —Ah gick, said Kevin.

  Our names were all around Barrytown, on the roads and paths. You had to do it at night when they were all gone home, except the watchmen. Then when they saw the names in the morning it was too late, the cement was hard. Only our christian names, just in case the builders ever went from door to door up Barrytown Road looking for the boys who’d been writing their names in their wet cement.

  There wasn’t only one building site; there were loads of them, all different types of houses.

  We wrote Liam’s name and address with a black marker on a new plastered wall inside one of the houses. Nothing happened.

  My ma once smelt the smoke off me. She saw my hands first. She grabbed one of them.

  —Look at your hands, she said.—Your fingernails! My God, Patrick, you must be in mourning for the cat.

  Then she smelt me.

  —What have you been up to?

  —Putting out a fire.

  She killed me. The worst part was waiting to see if she’d tell my da when he came home.

  Kevin had the matches, a box of Swan ones. I loved those boxes. We’d made a small wigwam out of planks and sticks and we’d brought two cardboard boxes with us from behind the shops. The boxes were ripped up and under the wood. Wood by itself took too long to get going. It was still daytime. Kevin lit a match. Me and Liam looked around to see if there was anyone coming. There was no one else with us. Aidan was staying in his auntie’s house. Sinbad was in hospital because he had to get his tonsils out. Kevin put the match under the cardboard, waited for it to grab the flame and let go of the match. We watched the fire eat the cardboard. Then we ran for cover.

  I couldn’t really use matches properly. The match broke or it wouldn’t light or I’d pull it along the wrong side of the box; or it would light and I’d get rid of it too quickly.

  We waited behind one of the houses. When the watchman came we’d run. We were near the hedge, the escape route. Kevin said that they couldn’t do anything to you if they didn’t catch you on the building site. If they grabbed us or hit us out on the road we could bring them to court. We couldn’t see the fire properly. We waited. It wasn’t a house yet, just some of the walls. It was a line of six houses joined together. The Corporation were building the houses here. We waited for a while. I’d forgotten my jumper.

  —Oh, oh.

  —What?
>
  —Oh janey.

  —What?

  —Emergency, emergency.

  We crawled around the side of the house; not all the way because it was taking too long. There was a barrel over near where I’d put my jumper. I ran for cover. I crouched behind 6 the barrel and breathed in and out real hard, getting ready to go. I looked back; Kevin stood up properly, looked around and got back down again.

  -Okay, he hissed.

  I took a last breath and came out from behind the barrel and dashed for the jumper. No one shouted. I made a noise like bombs exploding as I grabbed the jumper off the bricks. I slid back behind the barrel.

  The fire was going well, loads of smoke. I got a stone and threw it at the fire. Kevin stood up again and scouted for a watchman. The coast was clear and he signalled me to come. I charged, crouched down and got to the side of the house. Kevin patted me on the back. So did Liam.

  I tied the jumper around my waist. I put the sleeves in a double knot.

  —Come on, men.

  Kevin ran out from behind our cover; we followed him and danced around the fire.

  —Woo woo woo woo woo—

  We put our hands to our mouths and did the Indian stuff.

  -Hii-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa -

  Kevin kicked the fire at me but the pile just fell. It wasn’t much of a fire now. I stopped dancing. So did Kevin and Liam. Kevin pushed and pulled Liam to the fire.

  —Lay off!

  I helped Kevin. Liam got serious, so we stopped. We were sweating. I had an idea.

  —The watchman is a bas-stard!

  We ran back to behind the house and laughed. We all joined in.

  —The watchman is a bas-stard! The watchman is a bas-stard!

  We heard something; Kevin did.

  We escaped, dashed across the remains of the field. I zigzagged, head down, so no bullets would get me. I fell through the gap into the ditch. We had a fight, just pushing. Liam missed my shoulder and punched my ear and it stung, so he had to let me hit him in the ear back. He put his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t try to stop me.