The barn became surrounded by skeleton houses. The road outside was being widened and there were pyramids of huge pipes at the top of the road, up at the seafront. The road was going to be a main road to the airport. Kevin’s sister, Philomena, said that the barn looked like the houses’ mother looking after them. We said she was a spa, but it did; it did look like the houses’ ma.
Three fire brigades came out from town to put the fire out but they weren’t able to. The whole road was flooded from all the water. It happened during the night. The fire was gone when we got up the next morning and our ma said we couldn’t go near the barn and she kept an eye on us to make sure we didn’t. I got up into the apple tree but I couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t much of a tree and it was full of leaves. It only ever grew scabby apples.
They found a box of matches outside the barn; that was what we heard. Missis Parker from the cottages told our ma. Mister Parker worked for Donnelly; drove the tractor and went to the pictures with Uncle Eddie every Saturday afternoon.
—They’ll dust them for fingerprints, I told my ma.
—Yes. That’s right.
—They’ll dust them for fingerprints, I told Sinbad.—And if they find your fingerprints on the matches they’ll come and arrest you and put you in the Artane Boys Band.
Sinbad didn’t believe me but he did believe me as well.
—They’ll make you play the triangle because of your lips, I told him.
His eyes went all wet; I hated him.
Uncle Eddie was burnt to death in the fire; we heard that as well. Missis Byrne from two houses up told my ma. She whispered it and they blessed themselves.
—Maybe it’s for the best, said Missis Byrne.
—Yes, said my ma.
I was dying to get down to the barn to see Uncle Eddie, if they hadn’t taken him away. My ma made us have a picnic in the garden. My da came home from work. He went to work in the train. My ma got up out of the picnic so she could talk to him without us hearing. I knew what she was telling him, about Uncle Eddie.
—Was he? said my da.
My ma nodded.
—He never told me that when he came up the road with me there. All he said was Grand grand.
There was a gap and then they burst out laughing, the two of them.
He wasn’t dead at all. He wasn’t even hurt.
The barn was never green again. It was bent and buckled. The roof was crooked like the lid of a can. It swung and creaked. The big door was put leaning against the yard wall. It was all black. One of the walls was gone. The black on the walls fell off and the whole thing became brown and rusty.
Everyone said that someone from the new Corporation houses had done it. Later, about a year after, Kevin said he’d done it. But he didn’t. He was in Courtown in a caravan on his holidays when it happened. I didn’t say anything.
On a nice day we could see the specks of dust in the air under the roof. Sometimes I’d go home and it was in my hair. On windy days big dead chunks fell off. The ground under the roof was red. The barn was nibbled away.
Sinbad promised.
My ma pushed his hair back from his forehead and combed her fingers through it to keep it on top of his head. She was nearly crying as well.
—I’ve tried everything, she told him.—Now, promise again.
—I promise, said Sinbad.
My ma started to untie his hands. I was crying as well.
She tied his hands to the chair to stop him from picking the scabs on his lips. He’d screamed. His face had gone red, then purple, and one of the screams went on for ever; he didn’t breathe in. Sinbad’s lips were covered in scabs because of the lighter fuel. For two weeks it had looked like he had no lips.
She held his hands at his sides but she let him stand up.
—Let’s see your tongue, she said.
She was checking to see that he wasn’t telling a lie.
-Okay, Francis, she said.—No spots.
Francis was Sinbad. He put his tongue back in.
She let go of his hands but he didn’t go anywhere. I went over to where they were.
You ran down the jetty and jumped and shouted Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, and whoever got the most words out before they hit the water won. No one ever won. I once got as far as the second The but Kevin, the ref, said that my bum had gone into the water before I got to Of. We threw stones at each other, to miss.
I hid behind the sideboard when the Seaview was being swallowed by a giant jellyfish; it was terrible. I didn’t mind it at first and I put my fingers in my ears when my da told my ma that it was ridiculous. But when the jellyfish kind of surrounded the submarine I crawled over to the sideboard. I’d been lying on my tummy in front of the telly. I didn’t cry. My ma said that the jellyfish had gone but I didn’t come back out till I heard the ads. She brought me to bed after it and stayed with me for a while. Sinbad was asleep. I got up for a drink of water. She said she wouldn’t let me watch it next week but she forgot. Anyway, the next week it was back to normal again, about a mad scientist who’d invented a new torpedo. Admiral Nelson gave him a box that sent him bashing into the periscope.
—That’s the stuff, said my da.
He didn’t see it; he just heard it. He didn’t look up from his book. I didn’t like that; he was jeering me. My ma was knitting. I was the only one let up to watch it. I told Sinbad it was brilliant but I wouldn’t tell him why.
I was in the water down at the seafront, with Edward Swanwick. He didn’t go to the same school as most of us. He went to Belvedere in town.
—Nothing but the best for the Swanwicks, said my da when my ma told him that she’d seen Missis Swanwick buying margarine instead of butter in the shop.
She laughed.
Edward Swanwick had to wear a blazer and tie and he had to play rugby. He said he hated it but he came home on his own in the train every day so it wasn’t too bad.
We were flinging water at each other. We’d stopped laughing cos we’d been doing it for ages. The tide was going out so we’d be getting out in a minute. Edward Swanwick pushed his hands out and sent a wave towards me and there was a jellyfish in it. A huge see-through one with pink veins and a purple middle. I lifted my arms way up and started to move but it still rubbed my side. I screamed. I pushed through the water to the steps. I felt the jellyfish hit my back; I thought I did. I yelled again; I couldn’t help it. It was rocky and uneven down at the seafront, not like the beach. I got to the steps and grabbed the bar.
—It’s a Portuguese man of war, said Edward Swanwick.
He was coming back to the steps a long way, around the jellyfish.
I got onto the second step. I looked for marks. Jellyfish stings didn’t hurt until you got out of the water. There was a pink lash on the side of my belly; I could see it. I was out of the water.
—I’m going to get you, I told Edward Swanwick.
—It’s a Portuguese man of war, said Edward Swanwick.
—Look at it.
I showed him my wound.
He was up on the platform now, looking over the railing at the jellyfish.
I took my togs off without bothering with the towel. There was no one else. The jellyfish was still floating there, like a runny umbrella. Edward Swanwick was hunting for stones. He went down some of the steps to reach for some but he wouldn’t get back into the water. I couldn’t get my T-shirt down over my back and chest because I was wet. It was stuck on my shoulders.
—Their stings are poisonous, said Edward Swanwick.
I had my T-shirt on now. I lifted it to make sure the mark was still there. I thought it was beginning to get sore. I wrung out my togs over the railing. Edward Swanwick was plopping stones near the jellyfish.
—Hit it.
He missed.
—You’re a big spa, I told him.
I wrapped my togs in my towel. It was a big soft bath one. I shouldn’t have had it.
I ran all the way, up Barrytown Road, all the way, past the cottages where there was a ghost and an old woman with a smell and no teeth, past the shops; I started to cry when I was three gates away from our house; around the back, in the kitchen door.
Ma was feeding the baby.
—What’s wrong with you, Patrick?
She looked down for a cut on my leg. I got my T-shirt out to show her. I was really crying now. I wanted a hug and ointment and a bandage.
—A jelly—a Portuguese man of war got me, I told her. She touched my side.
—There?
—Ouch! No, look; the mark across. It’s highly poisonous.
—I can’t see - . Oh, now I do.
I pulled my T-shirt down. I tucked it into my pants.
—What should we do? she asked me.—Will I go next door and phone for an ambulance?
—No; ointment—
—Okay, so. That’ll mend it. Have I time for me to finish feeding Deirdre and Cathy before we put it on?
—Yeah.
—Great.
I pressed my hand hard into my side to keep the mark there.
The seafront was a pumping station. There was a platform behind it with loads of steps down to it. When there was a spring tide the water spread over the platform. There were more steps down to the water. There were steps on the other side of the pumping station as well but it was always cold over there and the rocks were bigger and sharper. It was hard to get past them to the water. The jetty wasn’t really a jetty. It was a pipe covered in cement. The cement wasn’t smooth. There were bits of stone and rock sticking out of it. You couldn’t dash along to the end. You had to watch your step and not put your foot down too hard. It was hard to play properly down at the seafront. There was too much seaweed, slime and rocks; you always had to keep your eyes down searching under the water. All you could really do was swim.
I was good at swimming.
Sinbad wouldn’t get in unless our ma was with him.
Kevin once dived off the jetty and split his head. He had to go into Jervis Street for stitches. He went in a taxi with his ma and his sister.
Some of us weren’t allowed to swim down at the seafront. If you cut your toe on a rock you’d get polio. A boy from Barrytown Drive, Seán Rickard, died and it was supposed to have been because he’d swallowed a mouthful of the seafront water. Someone else said he’d swallowed a gobstopper and it got caught in his windpipe.
—He was by himself in his bedroom, said Aidan.—And he couldn’t slap his back to get it up.
—Why didn’t he go down to the kitchen?
—He couldn’t breathe.
—I can slap mine, look it.
We looked at Kevin thumping his back.
—Not hard enough, said Aidan.
We all tried it.
—It’s a load of rubbish, said my ma.—Don’t mind them.
She spoke softer.
—The poor little lad had leukaemia.
—What’s leukaemia?
—A disease.
—Can you get it from swallowing water?
—No.
—How?
—Not from water.
—Sea water?
—No kind of water.
The seafront water was grand, my da said. The Corporation experts had tested it and it was perfect.
—There, said my mother.
My Granda Finnegan, her father, worked in the Corporation.
The teacher we had before Henno, Miss Watkins, brought in a tea-towel with the Proclamation of Independence on it because it was fifty years after 1916. It had the writing part in the middle and the seven men who’d signed it around the sides. She stuck it up over the blackboard and let us up to see it one by one. Some of the boys blessed themselves in front of it.
—
Nach bhfuil sé go h’alainn,
1
lads? she kept saying after every couple of boys went past.
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 Mac-Diarmada, 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.
She made us march in step beside our desks.
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.
She looked annoyed and disappointed.