Páraic Prince of Portaghy Plains

 
My name is Páraic Prince and tomorrow is June 16th 1997 which is my birthday when I’ll be eleven and Liam Brennan will be killed stone dead.

Liam Brennan is in my class and I hate him. And he hates me, but I don’t know why.
 
I live in the parish of Portaghy and I own most of it. Well, I don’t own the parish, but I own nearly all the land in Portaghy village. The village is just one road, but all the important things are on one side of the road - the school, the shop and petrol station and post office, and the pub.

Maggie Dunican owns the shop and the petrol station and the post office and the pub. Mammy says I’m supposed to call her Mrs. Dunican but she told me herself to call her Maggie so whenever I’m in the shop with Mammy I don’t call Maggie anything, I just say hello.

Behind all the important things in the village are six big fields and I own them. Then there’s a road and my house is on that road, and so is my grandad’s house, and Niamh Lawlor’s house, and the Dunnes’ two houses. Further up, there’s a right turn up the boreen where Nigel Gleeson’s house is and Liam Brennan’s house is the next one after that.
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This is a map of Portaghy village.

​My map is not to scale, and if it was the fields would be bigger. There’s a church too, but I didn’t include it. Not because it’s not an important thing, but it is further off my map, and I don’t go to mass. My daddy is a Protestant, but he doesn’t go to mass either and neither does my mammy. I don’t have to do religion in school, so instead I can practise my hand-writing because I’m still not very good at it.

I didn’t make first holy communion and I won’t do confirmation either, but I did go to Niamh Lawlor’s communion party. Liam Brennan said I was a poor eejit because I didn’t get any communion money and he got a hundred and ten pounds and he bought the new Liverpool jersey, and he said he’ll get loads more money for confirmation.

I have been in a church only for my aunty JoJo’s wedding, but she’s not married anymore, and for three funerals. The last one was my grandad’s last year. Maggie said it was the biggest funeral that Portaghy had ever seen.

When we had the wake in our house, we had grandad in the coffin in our sitting room and he was cold and his face felt like wax, but it wasn’t scary because he looked normal. He looked like he looks when he falls asleep in his armchair in our front room after dinner, except his mouth was closed in the coffin and he wasn’t holding a mug of tea.

One time, when I was eight, he fell asleep in the armchair and spilled the tea all over his legs and jumped up and said fuck ya anyway and daddy and mammy burst out laughing. And one day later I spilled my milk on the table at dinner time and I shouted fuck ya anyway because I wanted to make them all laugh but mammy got very angry and sent me to my room without dinner but I heard them all laughing when I was going upstairs.

We had to have the wake in our house because Mammy said grandad’s house was in no state for half the country coming. I didn’t really like being in grandad’s house for too long because the curtains were always closed, even in the daytime because otherwise the sun would shine on half of the telly. And it was kind of messy – not like in my house where everything has its own place and is tidy. Mammy used to tidy in grandad’s, but it never stayed that way for long. Mammy said that grandad was messy because he lived by himself and liked to live in his own way and she called it organised chaos.

Grandad lived by himself because his wife died when she was having my mammy, so mammy never knew her mammy and I never knew my granny, but I have my other granny and grandad. I asked mammy will I get brothers or sisters and she said no because I don’t need any and that she didn’t have any and she turned out fantastically.  

Sometimes I had to sleep in grandad’s house when my parents would go away on dirty weekends and I didn’t like it because the wallpaper in the room was not stuck on properly and if it is stormy outside it sounds like the wind was gushing in behind the wallpaper, even though the window was closed. I said grandad should just sleep in our house to mind me there, but mammy said he likes to sleep in his own bed.

Grandad was a farmer and I used to spend every single morning with him before school helping him on the farm. We have the exact same wellies and overalls. Grandad and me and Taz, his dog, used to bring the cows in for milking every morning and do the mucking out. And once a month I used to get a day off school to go to the mart to buy or sell cattle or lambs and I’d get chips from the chip van and wouldn’t see Liam Brennan for the whole day.  

Taz is dead now too, he died five months before grandad, but we didn’t have a wake or funeral for him and he’s buried now beside grandad’s house. I miss Taz and grandad and I miss the cows and farming, especially driving the Massey Ferguson 4255 C/W with the loader and the Davy Brown 995.

One week after grandad’s funeral I had to go with mammy and daddy to town to the solicitor’s office. I don’t like going to town because it’s far and I always fall asleep in the car, but the good thing about going to town is we always get pizza from Luigi’s. It says on the window that it’s the best pizza in Ireland and daddy says it’s probably better than any pizza in Italy too. They make it in a big stone oven with chunks of wood burning in it and you can watch them put the pizzas in and take them out with a big wooden thing that looks like a shovel or an oar from a boat but with a wider and flatter part at the end and Luigi told me it’s called a peel.

The solicitor’s office was very boring and the woman was very boring too but she had a letter from grandad called a will that he wrote a year before he died and in it he said that I own the farm and all the fields and his house now.

Mammy told me that grandad probably thought he would be a lot older when he died, because he was only sixty-two when he had his heart attack and died, and that I would be a lot older too and able to take on the farm. So now mammy and daddy are the trustees which means when I am eighteen I can decide what I want to do with the farm and fields but I do already own them.
 
I told everyone in school that I own all the fields and Liam Brennan called me a liar. I hate Liam Brennan because he’s a bully and is always at me. He told everyone in school that if they wanted to play soccer at big lunch, they couldn’t be my friend. He is the best soccer player and was always the captain of one team and got to pick who is on his team, so I was always on the other team and was always picked last. And his team always got to play down-hill so it’s way easier to score. But then I gave a little part of my field behind the school to the school so that we could make a new pitch that isn’t on the hill and now it is more fair because it’s a level playing field.

When I donated the pitch to the school, I made a deal with Mrs. Carthy that everyone would take turns to be captains at lunch time and get to pick the teams and we made a rota. Liam Brennan did not like that. I pick him on my team when it’s my turn because he is the best player and then he won’t kick me, but I don’t pass the ball to him. We had a party in school to open the new pitch and got no homework and my picture and my name was in the newspapers – not just the town paper but the county paper too, so I am famous now and other people in school like me now and are my friends but Liam Brennan is still mean to me.

Five weeks ago, I came home from school and there was a pair of wellies I didn’t recognise in the porch and when I went into the kitchen Nigel Gleeson was there. I like Nigel because he is funny and kind. He has long hair and a beard and is younger than mammy. Daddy and Mammy were with him and they were laughing and drinking tea and eating buns that mammy makes. I don’t like them because she puts raisins in them, so she always makes five without raisins for me only.

I said hello to Nigel and checked that none of my buns were in the tin on the table. Sometimes I forget that the USA Biscuit tin is mammy’s bun tin and when I see it in the press I get excited for a split second but then I remember that it’s just raisin buns inside. It’s strange that I don’t like raisins because I love grapes and mammy said raisins are just dried grapes.

Nigel is a farmer too and he rents one of grandad’s fields which is now my field. I said hello Nigel and he said howya Páraic kid, and then Daddy said Nigel came to talk to us about maybe buying the farm and fields. I said that it wasn’t for sale because I still hadn’t decided if I will be a farmer or not when I’m eighteen. And I said that I can rent the farm and fields to Nigel until I was eighteen and then if I didn’t want to be a farmer, he could buy it before anyone else.

Nigel said well I tell ya, the farm is safe in this young man’s hands, that’s for sure. And then he picked up two buns out of the tin and said you’re dead right little man, eat your cake and have it too and then he stuffed one of the buns into his mouth and got lots of crumbs in his beard and made us all laugh and he stuffed the other bun into the front pocket of his overalls. Then Mammy said it’s have your cake and eat it, and then Nigel said no, people think that but it’s actually the other way around and that’s how the Unabomber was caught because he knew the correct way and had it right in his letters. I don’t know what a Unabomber is but I didn’t ask because I was still laughing at Nigel trying to brush the crumbs out of his beard and I forgot to ask later.
 
Then three days after that I went to visit Nigel at his house to ask if I could help him on the farm when he will rent it. He said absolutely, Kid, you know that farm better than anyone, and he said I have to stay well away from the slurry pit but I already knew that.

There were five old cars in Nigel’s yard. He has a Toyota Starlet that his mother won years ago by sending off tokens from boxes of Lyons Teabags. I asked him if any of them still drive and he said they all do except the fiesta but they’re not good enough for the roads. So I told him I’d knock forty pounds off the first month’s rent if I could have the Datsun Sunny and he said you’ll be doing me a favour kid, it’s like a scrapyard around here, and then he spat in his hand and stuck it out so I spat in mine and we shook hands.

Nigel put more air in the tyres with the compressor and he told me the car is a 1971 and that now Datsun is called Nissan and the car is from Japan. And he told me that it was his first car and before that it belonged to a man called Christy Moore who is a famous singer, and I knew that because grandad had records by Christy Moore in his house.
Nigel said when he was seventeen in 1978 he was hitch-hiking to a music festival called Lisdoonvarna and Christy Moore picked him up in the Datsun Sunny and then after three days Nigel had to drive Christy home in the car because he was very tired and Christy told him he could have the car for a hundred pounds.    

Then he drove the Datsun Sunny across into my field and gave me the key. It’s light blue and has some rust spots but nothing too bad.I know how to drive a car and tractors because grandad taught me.
I looked in the glove compartment and there was a green golf ball, one piece of wrigley’s double mint chewing gum, a packet of Major Extra Size cigarettes with one fag inside but it was broken in the middle, and a tape case called Black Sabbath Paranoid. The tape was still inside, so I put the car out of gear and put on the handbrake and I turned the key and put the tape in the radio. It is loud but I like it and my favourite song is the fourth song which is called Iron man and my second favourite is the second song which is called Paranoid and my third favourite is War Pigs which is the first song.

Now every day I drive me, Niamh Lawlor, and James and Michael Dunne to and from school through my fields because it used to take twenty-five minutes to walk on the road or nearly ten minutes on bicycle. Some evenings we drive around the fields for fun and I let them drive too. Niamh is the best driver after me. Mammy and Daddy said I am not to drive higher than second gear and not to go over twenty miles per hour, but when I get over the brow of the hill where I know they can’t see me from the kitchen window I go up through all the gears. The fastest I have driven is fifty miles per hour and I do handbrake turns, but it’s fine because I’m a very good driver.

One day, it was just me and Niamh driving and we parked and Niamh pushed in the lighter and we listened to Paranoid and then she tore the broken bit off of the fag from the glove compartment and we smoked the bottom part, but it was horrible so I don’t think I will smoke when I am older. Then she tore the double mint chewing gum and gave me half. Niamh swallowed hers by accident and was worried that her guts would stick together but I told her that was a myth.

On Friday and Saturday nights I’m allowed to stay up until eleven o’ clock but I have negotiated this to half past now. At eleven o’clock on those nights I collect Declan Lawlor, Carmel and Fiachra Dunne, and Pat Ryan at the back of the pub and drive them home through the fields because the guards have been out trying to catch aul lads drink driving and it isn’t safe to walk the roads at night. One time, a man called Mick Delaney was walking home from the pub at night and he got hit by a car and died and now there is a small wooden cross there. The driver was a man called Kevin Campbell who lived in the village, but I don’t remember him because he moved away after the accident.

I told them that my car used to belong to Christy Moore and we all sing the song Lisdoonvarna when I’m driving them home. They each pay me one pound fifty pence for the journey, or two pounds if I bring them to the pub earlier on too. Maggie lets me put diesel in the car for free because she says I’m good for business in the pub. She let me make a hole in the fence for the diesel pump nozzle to go through to where I park the car in the field behind the pumps.

I used to go to the pub sometimes on Sundays with grandad and sit at the bar with him and the other old lads. I used to like that because I felt grown up and liked to hear them talk about farming and giving out about the teashock John Bruton. But I had to stop going because one Sunday grandad let me have a sup of his Beamish and Maggie got very annoyed with him and she told mammy in the shop the next Wednesday so she stopped me going again, even though before last Christmas she let me drink the last bit of Guinness from the can when she was making porter cake.  
 
Last week I saw two lads in one of my fields with shotguns and I drove over to them and I saw one of them had a dead rabbit. I asked them what they were doing and the other one said shooting rabbits. And I told them they can’t shoot rabbits in my field and they laughed. Then the one with the rabbit said that mister Prince used to let them hunt rabbits and I said that he was my grandad but he’s dead now and I own all the fields. Then the one without the rabbit said sorry and that they didn’t mean to trespass and I asked what trespass meant and he told me it’s when someone illegally comes on your land without asking first.

Then the one with the rabbit said I guess this is your rabbit so young lad, and I said it’s not my rabbit and that rabbits were not anybody’s. Then I heard Liam Brennan kicking the football against the gable end of his house and I asked the one without the rabbit how far his gun can shoot and if someone accidentally shot someone else while hunting rabbits if they would get the jail. He said he didn’t know. I asked if I could have a go shooting his gun, but he said no.

The next day I went into my field opposite Liam Brennan’s house with my hurl and I made a gap in the ditch. Then I snuck into his yard and took his BMX bicycle from outside his shed and left it in my field a little bit from the gap. Then I waited in one of the trees for more than half an hour until Liam Brennan came outside and saw his bike and came into the field to get it. Then I got down and drove home and called 999 and a lady answered. I told her that Liam Brennan did an illegal trespass in my land and that the guards should arrest him. She asked me if he had a weapon or was being threatening and I said no because that was the truth and she told me this was not an emergency and only to phone in an emergency and she hung up.

Last Saturday, Nigel and me put up loads of electric fencing in the fields. Grandad never used electric fences and instead blocked up gaps in the ditches with wooden pallets, but Nigel said he couldn’t be arsed having to put pallets in ditches. We made a design so there was enough space for me to drive the car to the back of the school and pub and shop and all around the sides of the fields.

Then Nigel showed me the energizer in his barn, and it was ticking, and I asked him if the electric fence would hurt the cows or sheep. He said no because the energiser isn’t turned up to the max, so it will just give them enough of a shock that they’d never forget it. Then he said if it was turned up to eleven that it could kill a little whippersnapper like me stone dead and he put his hand on my shoulder and shook me and made a buzzing sound and it scared me for a second and then we laughed.

And then I said it doesn’t go up to eleven and he said it just means the highest level and have you not seen This is Spinal Tap and I said no and he told me to rent it on video from Maggie’s shop and that there’s a lad called Nigel in it. I did not rent it yet. 

Mammy and daddy said the money that Nigel is paying me to rent the fields has to go into a bank account that I can’t go near until I’m eighteen. But I have money from being the pub taxi and I have saved the money grandad gave me for helping on the farm and from my other grandad and my granny and I will use the money for my birthday party tomorrow.

Niamh Lawlor told me the name of the man with the bouncy castle from her communion party. Then I found his phone number in the yellow phone book and called him, and he will come with the bouncy castle tomorrow and put it in the field opposite Liam Brennan’s house. And I have bought lots of different crisps and sweets and Coke and Cidona and Fanta in Maggie’s shop. I have invited everybody from my school except Liam Brennan.

Tomorrow I will sneak into Nigel’s barn and turn the energiser up to eleven and then when we are having the party I will stand near the gap in the ditch opposite Liam Brennan’s house and shout his name until he comes outside and then I will invite him to come to the party and I’ll say don’t worry because the fence is turned off but it will be on and he will touch it and be killed stone dead because he’s a whippersnapper like me. 

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