and when they come back Paddy says, I have to go home. Me motherll
kill me. Ill wait for you outside, Frankie.
Now I have to go to the lavatory and Fintan leads me to the back-
yard. He says, I have to go, too, and when I unbutton my fly I cant pee
because hes looking at me and he says,You were fooling.You dont have
to go at all. I like to look at you, Francis.Thats all. I wouldnt want to
commit any class of a sin with our Confirmation coming next year.
Paddy and I leave together. Im bursting and run behind a garage to
pee. Paddy is waiting for me and as we walk along Hartstonge Street he
says,That was a powerful sangwidge, Frankie, an him an his mother is
very holy but I wouldnt want to go to Fintans flat anymore because
hes very odd, isnt he, Frankie?
He is, Paddy.
The way he looks at it when you take it out, thats odd, isnt it,
Frankie?
Tis, Paddy.
A few days later Paddy whispers,Fintan Slattery said we could come
to his flat at lunchtime. His mother wont be there and she leaves his
lunch for him. He might give us some too and he has lovely milk.Will
we go?
Fintan sits two rows from us. He knows what Paddy is saying to me
and he moves his eyebrows up and down as if to say,Will you come? I
whisper yes to Paddy and he nods to Fintan and the master barks at us
to stop waggling our eyebrows and our lips or the ash plant will sing
across our backsides.
Boys in the schoolyard see the three of us walk out and they pass
remarks. Oh, Gawd, look at Fintan and his ingles. Paddy says, Fintan,
whats an ingle? and Fintan says its just a boy from olden times who sits
in a corner, thats all. He tells us sit at the table in his kitchen and we can
read his comic books if we like, Film Fun, the Beano, the Dandy, or the
religious magazines or his mothers romance magazines, the Miracle and
the Oracle, which always have stories about factory girls who are poor
but beautiful in love with sons of earls and vice versa and the factory
girl ends up throwing herself into the Thames with the hopelessness
only to be rescued by a passing carpenter who is poor but honest and
will love the factory girl for her own humble self though it turns out
the passing carpenter is really the son of a duke, which is much higher
than an earl, so that now the poor factory girl is a duchess and can look
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