Benny and Omar by Eoin Colfer

Author:Eoin Colfer [Eoin Colfer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141939551
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2011-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Corpzublicked

Over the following weeks the two lads mooched around the general vicinity, not trying too hard to stay out of mischief. Da Shaw swallowed the old ‘son of a guard’ story, so Omar was even welcome in the house. Then again, ‘welcome’ might be a bit strong. Not actually ejected would be closer to the mark.

Whenever Benny reminisced about this period, he saw it as a time of great learning; two boys selflessly giving of their cultures so that both might become more cosmopolitan. Jessica, on the other hand, remembered them as two mucky hooligans who could scarcely look at a window without breaking it. Benny often thought that his parents were secretly pleased when he fouled up because it gave them a legitimate excuse to practise their sarcasm. So, in a way, whenever he misbehaved he was doing Ma and Da a favour.

In fact, Pat and Jessica Shaw were over the moon that their son had a new crony. But it wouldn’t do to let Benny see that or he might decide not to pal

around with the little guard’s son any more. Rule five of the ‘almost a teenager’ handbook: Whatever pleases your parents is, by definition, evil. So Jessica treated young Omar to the same dirty looks that any of Benny’s old Wexford buddies got. This kept her son happy and it gave her a chance to practise her Juno face.

Of course, Omar wasn’t always available. He had to go about the boring activity of keeping himself alive. Omar was a kind of Tunisian Arthur Daley. He would buy or sell anything that could earn him a profit. To the untrained eye, most of his merchandise resembled a heap of junk, but to Omar there was a market for almost anything. You just had to know where that market was. And the boy seemed to have a natural gift for that sort of thing.

The village was a treasure trove. The building site yielded blocks, timber, nails, screws and steel rods. Those rods were a lot of work though. You had to transport them by dragging them behind the mobylette. One to three inches could be lost off the length, depending on how far you had to drag the merchandise.

Day-to-day questions were answered too. Omar didn’t have a loo as such, or maybe it was fairer to say that he had hundreds of them scattered all over the place. He also used the vacant bachelor chalet, sneaking in for midnight baths or a quick blast of

his gear in the washing machine. It was a weird sort of existence. But Omar seemed happy and healthy enough, or whatever, about being clean.

The Shaws’ shipment arrived, and with it Benny’s spare hurley and hurling gear. He set about teaching Omar how to play, and in a month they were having reasonable puck-abouts in the olive grove. Benny enjoyed roaring abuse at his friend. He was of the Father Barty school of coaching, where nothing good ever came of encouragement. Fear of the consequences was the only way to make a young chap learn.

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