A Cage of Roots (3 page)

You only ever got to witness this when you were in real trouble – when he would take the bother to look down at you over the rim of his dense brown plastic glasses. This normally preceded an agonising pinch on the shoulder and an hour or two writing out sections of the phone book. Otherwise, he never really felt the need to come out from behind the cloudy lenses. His authority followed him like a shadow.

The other reason he had this nickname was on account of his considerable speed. This fleetness was not an obvious feature to go with such a lanky frame, but Fr Shanlon was insanely quick. His exploits in track and field were
legendary, and there were countless stories about the races he had won and the games he had carried single-handedly: in his youth, whenever that was. He had also had some prowess on the hurling field. All of this combined to make him both respected as a coach on the pitch, and feared unconditionally, as there was very little you could get away with: The Streak would always catch you, eventually.

That day, not uncommonly, Oscar Finnegan had been caught red-handed. Finny, as everyone knew him, had a knack for impersonations, and ‘Doing a Streak’ was one of his better ones. He would crouch behind the teacher’s desk, if said teacher was out or hadn’t arrived yet, and unfurl himself like a giant plant opening to the sun, stepping seamlessly onto the teacher’s chair as he did this, so that when he had stretched out fully he was (nearly) the same height as the dreaded priest. He would have borrowed his classmate Sam Flynn’s ultra-thick glasses in advance, and the laughter would ascend from giggle to holler as Finny, transformed into Fr Shanlon, looked upon the class with exactly the right expression, the marker for the whiteboard held just-so. With perfect mimicry, he would open his mouth and The Streak’s ominous voice would flow out of it. He had just time to utter ‘Get ye out those books’ in the priest’s distinctive lisp, before he noticed that his words were met with total silence instead of bubbling laughter. He was just about to continue when
he heard the real Fr Shanlon tell him: ‘Get off that chair and come with me, Finnegan,’ and the game was up.

Finny had always managed to find trouble wherever he went, at least since his parents separated when he was near the end of third class at St Edna’s. Until then he was a regular kid – maybe a bit of a performer, and prone to make one too many jokes. The place he displayed most of his precociousness was on the pitch. Finny, even at that young age, was a serious talent with a hurley in his hand. He could weave around people like they weren’t there, confusing and confounding the older kids he was encouraged to play with, and frustrating them unceasingly.

Towards the end of the school year, when fourth class beckoned after the promise of endless summer holidays, Finny’s home life had taken a bad turn, as his parents decided they couldn’t live together and be happy. He changed from that point on. What used to pass for cheek in the classroom swung into downright badness. He screamed back at teachers who hushed him. He tore up books and copies and paintings – not just his, but other pupils’ too. Once he purposely blocked all the toilets with Mother’s Day cards that his class had made, and didn’t even make any attempt to distance himself from the act. He just flushed all the cisterns, and stood there in the overflowing water, hands by his side with a scowl on his face, waiting for the grown-ups to come.

On the pitch, he still dazzled occasionally with skill, but for the most part his game now was tainted with a nasty edge – a brutality even – and more often than not he was sent off for injuring an opponent not long after scoring a bewildering point or goal. His parents were called in, over and over. They came separately after the first few joint visits were rendered ‘unproductive’ by their bickering, and always with the threat of his expulsion waved in front of them. But the principal, Mr Brennan, was reluctant to give up on the boy, and knowing that his parents’ split accounted for most of Finny’s bad behaviour, decided to give him chance after chance. By the time Finny had started fifth class – having been held back to repeat fourth class – he had managed to tone down his outright destructiveness. But he had replaced it with a steady stream of minor disruptions, dotted with the occasional act of serious disobedience.

One thing he did have going for him were the friends he made that year. By being held back a year to repeat fourth class, he befriended two children from the Knockbally Estate (known locally as ‘The Posh Place’) and, against type perhaps, they became inseparable. For their part, the teachers and Finny’s parents were delighted with his new gang: Sean Sheridan was beloved of the teachers, being so bright, and the Caddock girl – Benvy – was the perfect foil for Finny’s wantonness, in that she would take
absolutely no guff from any boy, being bigger than most of them. Sean’s thirst for knowledge was infectious, and Finny’s homework (if not his discipline) improved markedly after the little triumvirate was formed.

Then a funny little flame-haired American girl called Ayla had arrived to live with the big fellas. After a settling in period during fifth class, while the pupils of St Edna’s sussed her out, Ayla had gravitated more and more to this motley crew of troubled sports-star, geeky bookworm and punchy tomboy. The gang of three became an indivisible gang of four.

And so their time at St Edna’s came to an end, and secondary school loomed. Finny, despite the improvements in his attitude, was sent to the markedly more strict, all-boys  St Augustin’s School in the neighbouring town of Stradleek. The others, Ayla, Sean and Benvy, went to the ‘normal’ St Vincent’s, at the top of the town.

St Augustin’s prided itself on discipline and sporting excellence, but, despite their best efforts, Finny’s behaviour settled into a disdain for the former and, what appeared to them, a complete lack of appetite for the latter. He missed training most days – usually on account of being in the familiar pickle of kneeling on a hardwood floor and getting a cramped hand from writing out sections of Fr Shanlon’s ancient phone book.

Finny sighed and put down the pen, massaging the
pain from his hand. He looked around to see if Shanlon was about, stood shakily on aching legs and stretched. He went to the window, resting his chin on folded arms, and spat, for no real reason, on the glass. His eyes crossed as he watched his creation dawdle down the window, and then glanced towards the pitches where training was in full session. He reached into his pocket and got out his phone, checking the time and opening up the messages. No unread. He opened a conversation with Ayla and hit ‘New Message’.

What u up to? S is my letter today
. What we doing later?

He scurried back to the floor when he heard the hall doors swing open, and looked like he had never left his task when The Streak appeared, telling him to: ‘Go home and, please God, grow up.’

Taig and Fergus had almost got the last of the gear into the lock-up, and the toolboxes into the back of the jeep, while Lann made his final checks on the site. Lann looked in every room to make sure all the lads had taken their tools, and to switch off the lamps and check the generators weren’t still running. He decided to leave the extension till last, frustrating as it was to look upon something that had been nearly a finished building, and was now practically
just foundations again. He was in no mood to look upon anything that might aggravate him, as the odd feeling that had nipped away at him all day had by now grown to a ball of discomfort in his gut, with a fierce headache gnawing at the front of his skull. Lann still couldn’t decide what it was, but by now it was impossible to ignore. Something was wrong with this day, and it was letting him know in no uncertain terms.

He hadn’t realised he had walked out of the buildings and along the garden path until he found himself by the stone mound in the northeast corner. It lay hunched under the shadow of three tall and ancient birch trees that were covered in ivy, which also draped itself invasively over the rocks. He cast his eyes between the dark-green leaves, following the curving line of a scratch in the boulder’s surface, and had just reached out to touch it when his phone sang out his infuriating ring-tone, with the volume far too loud (all Ayla’s handiwork – so he wouldn’t ignore it when she called), snapping him out of his semi-trance. He grunted and pulled the phone from his breast pocket, and saw the name on the screen: ‘Oscar Finnegan’. He pressed the green answer button.

‘Yes?’ he said brusquely.

‘Hello Lann, it’s Finny here.’

‘Yes, Osca– Finny. Sorry. What’s up? I’m just locking up the site now. About to head home. Is Ayla’s battery dead?’

‘Yeah, I think so. I’ve been texting and ringing, no answer. Bit weird not to reply to texts, so I called to the house, but no one’s home. I thought maybe she was with you? Just wondering if she’s around this evening?’

Lann had turned from the hillock and had been making his way back to the car, but now he stopped, halfway up the path. The feeling in his stomach and the pain in his head seemed to be creeping towards each other.

‘I’d say she’s in her bed, Finny, and her phone’s off or the battery’s dead. You know what she’s like when she wants a snooze. I’ll tell her you were looking for her.’

‘Yeah, but, she always answers a text – even if she’s in a mood …’

Lann cut him off and ran to the car.

On the way home, as the mucky old jeep had broken every speed limit from Dundearg to Rathlevean, Lann had barely been able to tell his brothers what had come over him. Eventually, when they saw the whiteness of his face, and the clamminess of his skin, they looked at each other and guessed, without saying it aloud: Ayla.

The car screeched to a halt halfway through the driveway gate, and the three brothers nearly burst out of it and sprinted to the door. Even as they did so, each thought:
‘We’re going to look like eejits. She will be in her bed. She will wake with a start when the three of us stumble into her room, and fall back into the pillow muttering, “Ah lads …”, because this had happened before.’ And, glancing at his feet, Taig noticed the schoolbag on the floor and he knew they were going to laugh later. And Fergus saw her shoes on the landing and knew she was going to be cross with them for waking her, but they wouldn’t care because she was safe. And Lann, when he thrust open her bedroom door, and saw the sight that had chipped at his skull and churned up his stomach, knew that she was gone. The thing he now realised he had feared the most since talking to Oscar Finnegan, or even since that morning when he woke with an unpleasant instinct about the day, was facing him: an empty bed.