Read Online A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle - Free Book Online Page A

Alexander and I was the oldest. The little man of the house. I smelt milk that should have been mine, and went mad.
    Alexander this, Susie that, name-dropping all day long, the only thing my mother and father had left in common, the odd time he remembered who he was and came home. They patted me when they could catch me, but would they drop my name? One word, two syllables, so easy to remember. What about meeee! Then there were no names at all. She was closing down, packing up to join the stars. He was off, away knocking heads for Dolly Oblong, wearing his big thick heart on the sleeve of his bloodstained coat. He wasn’t with us any more. There was no tap tap outside on the street when Alexander and Susie were being born. He was on important business, delivering love letters from Dolly to Alfie. He’d come home now and again, wherever the latest home was. He never took the leg off; he didn’t have the time and he knew I’d have my teeth into it the second he put it down. So he got up on the bed with the leg, made his noises, filled my mother, and went. To his new life. And, sometimes, he’d look my way and recognise me. He’d smile, and go.
    I broke free of the room, pulled the door from its hinges, and attacked the house. I dug my heels into the stairs, smashed the banisters. I rolled down the stairs and steps, out onto the street. I screamed at the sky.
    —Where are you off to, Sonny Jim?
    —UCK OFF! I roared.
    And I invaded Dublin. Out under the horses and the wheels I went, through the puddles and hawkers, dung and carters, the noise and the soot, in bare feet that became as hard as the stone under them.
    —Seven plums a penny! Seven for a penny!
    I hit the bad streets of Dublin, a three-year-old earthquake, a bomb going off, a complete and utter brat.
    —Cheaper the apples! Even cheaper the apples!
    Infested, hungry and unloved, I fell in with the crowd. I wandered up and down outside the house, a wolf in a rusting cage. I slid under big legs and climbed along the railings. I looked up at women’s faces, passing women and women on the other steps. Remember me? The Glowing Baby. The baby who made you smile. They looked at me and saw the screaming get from the top back in No. 7, the little get who made his poor mammy’s life a red hot purgatory long before her due. Or else they didn’t look at all. They’d enough on their plates, screaming gets of their own.
    But I loved the street, from the second I landed on it. The action, the noise and smells - I gobbled them all up, I was starving for more. I was looking at misery that matched my own. I was at home in the rags and scarcity, dirt and weakness. And there were new things too, colour, laughter, chaos and escape. It was glorious. It was my world and it could be as big and as small as I wanted it to be. There was a corner and, beyond that, more corners. There were doorways, and more doors inside. There were carts and cabs and the music of tram bells coming from beyond the packed houses, somewhere I couldn’t yet see, but near, around more corners and off. There were hawkers’ shouts and foreign accents, and new smells spilling over the old ones. I heard a foghorn and it told me that there were places far away.
    —Where’s your mammy, little man?
    —UCK OFF.
    —Holy God. What’s your name?
    —HEN’Y.
    I was there, at home, an instant street arab, welcome and ignored. I fought my corner. I looked and learned. A police whistle, an ice-cream seller’s bugle, wheels going over stone, women shouting for their children, a woman fighting the price of a brush—
    —D’you call them things bristles?
    —Good bristles, yes. Feel, please.
    —I can see them from here, sure. It’s hardly a brush at all. It’s only a piece of oul’ wood that needs a shave. If I gave you a penny for it, it would be only to give it a home.
    —Is good brush. I use it myself.
    —I can see that. Sure, the poor thing’s nearly worn away.
    A milkman filled a jug from a churn on