–t.e.r.—a.—

–Wrong. You’re a worm. What are you?

–A worm, Sir.

–Correct, said Henno.—Urrwronggg! he said when he was marking Liam’s mistake into the book.

He didn’t only make us change our places on Fridays; he biffed us as well. It gave him an appetite for his dinner, he told us. It gave his appetite an edge, and he needed that because he didn’t like fish as a rule. One biff for every mistake. With the leather he soaked in vinegar during the summer holidays.

Kevin was next, then Ian McEvoy.

–M.e.d., said Kevin.—i.t.e.r.r.a.n—

–Yes?

–i.a.n.

–Urrwrong!—Mister McEvoy.

Ian McEvoy was still fast asleep. Kevin sat in the same desk as him and he told us later that Ian McEvoy was smiling in his sleep.

–Dreaming about a molly, said James O’Keefe.

Henno stood up and stared over Liam at Ian McEvoy.

–He’s gone asleep, Sir, said Kevin.—Will I wake him up?

–No, said Henno.

Henno put his finger to his lips; we were to be quiet.

We giggled and shushed. Henno walked carefully down to Ian McEvoy’s side of the desk; we watched him. He didn’t look like he was joking.

–Mister McEvoy!

It wasn’t funny; we couldn’t laugh. I felt the rush of air when Henno’s hand swept through and smacked Ian McEvoy’s neck. Ian McEvoy shot up and gasped. He groaned. I couldn’t see him. I could see the side of Kevin’s face. It was white; his bottom lip was out further than his top one.

Hennessey warned us about being sick on Fridays. If we weren’t in school on Friday for our punishment he’d get us on Monday, no excuses.

All the desks smelt the same, in all the rooms. Sometimes the wood was lighter because the desk was near a window where the sun could get at it. They weren’t the oldfashioned desks where the top was a lid on hinges that you lifted and there was a place for your books under it. The top was screwed down on our desks; there was a shelf in under it for books and bags. There was a hollow for your pens and a hole for the inkwell. You could roll your pen down the desk. We did it for a dare cos Henno hated the noise when he heard it.

James O’Keefe drank the ink.

When we had to stand up, when we were told to, we had to lift the seat back and we weren’t allowed to make noise doing it. When there was a knock at the door, if it was a master coming in or Mister Finnucane, the headmaster, or Father Moloney, we had to stand up.

–Dia duit, 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 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. Ladykillers. 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 didn’t have sixpence to give them—I thought it up—but they brought in the money on Monday. Aidan cried when we kept saying it.

Henno was in charge of the projector. He thought he was great. He stood beside it like it was a Spitfire or something. The projector was on a table at the back of the hall, in the middle between the rows of seats. For a dare when the lights were turned off, we crawled out into the aisle and got up a bit and made shapes with our hands in the path of light that the projector made; the shape—usually a dog barking—would go up on the screen on the stage at the top of the hall. That was the easy part. The hard bit was getting back to your seat before they turned the lights back on. Everyone would try to stop you, to keep you trapped in the aisle. They’d kick you and stand on your hands when you were crawling under the seats. It was brilliant.

–Take out your English copies, said Henno.

We waited.

–Anois.

We took them out. All my copies were covered in wallpaper that our Auntie Muriel had left over when she was doing her bathroom and she gave my da about ten rolls of it.

–She must have thought she was going to be papering the Taj Mahal, he said.

–Ssh, said Ma.

I’d used a plastic stencil for the names. Patrick Clarke. Mister Hennessey. English. Keep Out.

–These rows, here and here, said Henno.—Bring your copies with you. Seasaígí suas.[11]