Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Read Online Free PDF Page B

disappointed, she said.—He wants to give the children presents that they’ll be able to play with all the time.
    Her voice hadn’t changed; she wasn’t going to bully him.
    I went back to the kitchen. I took my letter out of the envelope and put it on the table, well away from the round wet mark that the milk bottle had left. I licked the gummy part of the flap and stuck it down. I pressed hard. The steam was coming out of the kettle spout now. I waited. I wanted the gum to be dry. More steam; it was singing out now. I held the envelope enough into the steam so I wouldn’t scald my fingers. It was too close; the envelope was getting wet. I raised my hand. I brought the envelope over and across the steam. Not for too long; the envelope was beginning to droop, like it was going asleep. I got the chair and pulled the plug out and put it back right beside the tea caddy where it had been before I’d plugged it in. There were Japanese birds on the caddy with their tails all tied together and in their mouths. The envelope was soggy, a bit. I brought it out into the back garden. I got my thumb nail in under the flap. A little bit lifted. I held it up. It had worked. I pressed the gum bit. It was still sticky. It worked. I went back in; it was cold and windy and getting dark. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, only when it was windy as well. I put my letter back in the envelope.
    Sinbad was finishing his letter.
    -L.e.g.o., my ma was spelling it for him.
    He was no good at joining the letters. She let me put his letter into the envelope. I folded it separate and slid it in beside mine.
    When my da came home from work he stuck the letter up the chimney. He was crouched over; he was making sure we couldn’t see properly.
    —Did you get that letter, Santa?
    He yelled it up the chimney.
    —Yes, indeed, he said in a deep voice that was supposed to be Santy’s.
    I looked at Sinbad. He believed it was Santy talking. He looked at my ma. I didn’t.
    —Will you be able to manage all those presents? my da yelled up the chimney.
    —We’ll see, he said back.—Most of them. Bye bye now. I’ve other houses to visit. Bye bye.
    —Say bye bye to Santa, lads, said my ma.
    Sinbad said bye bye and I had to as well. My da got back from the chimney so we could say it properly.
     
    My hot water bottle was red, Manchester United’s colour. Sinbad’s was green. I loved the smell off the bottle. I put hot water in it and emptied it and smelled it; I put my nose to the hole, nearly in it. Lovely. You didn’t just fill it with water—my ma showed me; you had to lie the bottle on its side and slowly pour the water in or else air got trapped and the rubber rotted and burst. I jumped on Sinbad’s bottle. Nothing happened. I didn’t do it again. Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen.

    Liam and Aidan’s house was darker than ours, the inside. That was because of the sun, not because it was scruffy dirty. It wasn’t dirty, the way a lot of people said it was; it was just that all the chairs and things were bursting and falling apart. Messing on the sofa was great because it was full of hollows, and nobody ever told us to get off it. We got up on the arm, onto the back and jumped. Two of us would get onto the back and have a duel.
    I liked their house. It was better for playing in. All the doors were open; there was nowhere we couldn’t go into. Once, we were playing hide and seek and Mister O’Connell came into the kitchen and opened the press beside the cooker and I was in there. He took out a bag of biscuits and then he closed the door real quietly; he said nothing. Then he opened the door again and whispered did I want a biscuit.
    They were broken biscuits, a brown bag of them; there was nothing wrong with them except that they were broken. My ma never bought them.
    Some of the boys in school had mothers that worked in Cadbury’s. Mine or Kevin’s didn’t and Aidan and Liam’s ma was dead. Ian McEvoy’s