Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not commit adultery what?
Thou shalt not commit adultery, sir.
And what is adultery, Clohessy?
Impure thoughts, impure words, impure deeds, sir.
Good,Clohessy.Youre a good boy.You may be slow and forgetful in
the sir department and you may not have a shoe to your foot but youre
powerful with the Sixth Commandment and that will keep you pure.
Paddy Clohessy has no shoe to his foot, his mother shaves his head to
keep the lice away, his eyes are red, his nose always snotty.The sores on
his kneecaps never heal because he picks at the scabs and puts them in
his mouth. His clothes are rags he has to share with his six brothers and
a sister and when he comes to school with a bloody nose or a black eye
you know he had a fight over the clothes that morning. He hates
school.Hes seven going on eight,the biggest and oldest boy in the class,
and he cant wait to grow up and be fourteen so that he can run away
and pass for seventeen and join the English army and go to India where
its nice and warm and hell live in a tent with a dark girl with the red
dot on her forehead and hell be lying there eating figs, thats what they
eat in India, figs, and shell cook the curry day and night and plonk on
a ukulele and when he has enough money hell send for the whole fam-
ily and theyll all live in the tent especially his poor father whos at home
coughing up great gobs of blood because of the consumption. When
my mother sees Paddy on the street she says,Wisha, look at that poor
child.Hes a skeleton with rags and if they were making a film about the
famine hed surely be put in the middle of it.
I think Paddy likes me because of the raisin and I feel a bit guilty
because I wasnt that generous in the first place.The master, Mr. Ben-
son, said the government was going to give us the free lunch so we
wouldnt have to be going home in the freezing weather. He led us
down to a cold room in the dungeons of Leamys School where the
charwoman, Nellie Ahearn, was handing out the half pint of milk and
the raisin bun.The milk was frozen in the bottles and we had to melt it
between our thighs.The boys joked and said the bottles would freeze
our things off and the master roared,Any more of that talk and Ill warm
the bottles on the backs of yeer heads.We all searched our raisin buns
for a raisin but Nellie said they must have forgotten to put them in and
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