Skippy Dies (43 page)

‘You could argue that the Great War was, in historical terms, like the Big Bang – a singular event, for which none of our
explanations is sufficient, but which at the same time our whole civilization is founded on. The
force
of it blew the century apart. From a strictly ordered regime where everyone knew their place, where everything was arranged
in nice harmonious symmetries, the Western world entered a period of great turbulence and discord, what the poet TS Eliot
called “an immense panorama of futility and anarchy”, which, arguably, we are still living in today. At the same time that
Einstein was working on the theories that would
completely overturn classical ideas of what space and time were, how reality worked, the war was reordering our whole concept
of civilization. Empires centuries-old disappeared overnight, people lost faith in institutions they had trusted without even
thinking about it, like a child trusts its parents. The old world fell and our modern world was born, as a direct result of
the war – not so much from the outcome of the fighting, as from the terrible things the soldiers, ordinary men, had seen and
endured.

‘So what was the war like for that ordinary soldier? To even get to the Front, he would have marched twenty miles a day, carrying
equipment weighing anything from forty to a hundred pounds. While in the front line, he might spend an entire day standing
up to his armpits in muddy water. He rarely slept for more than two hours at a time, and exhaustion was one of the major sources
of trauma during the conflict. In fact, almost fifty per cent of the casualties during the war on the Western Front came not
from battle but from the conditions the men were living in. Trench foot. Head lice. Rats. The war was a boom time for rats.
Two of them could produce over eight hundred offspring in a single year, so soon there were tens of millions of them, flocking
to the corpses…’

The boys listen with open mouths. They eat up details like this, the gruesomer the better – but what harm is that? Isn’t the
main thing that they are actually interested? Although admittedly not everyone sees it that way.

‘I’m just wondering if this stuff is going to be in the exam,’ Jeekers Prendergast says in his twangy, nervous voice. ‘I mean,
if it’s not covered in the book.’ The class groans, but Jeekers holds his ground. ‘It’s just that, ah, according to your lesson
plan, we’re supposed to be doing the Easter Rising this week –’

‘Yeah, when are we going to do some Irish history?’ Jeekers finds an unlikely ally in the form of Muiris de Bhaldraithe, piping
up disaffectedly from the back row.

Howard spreads his hands placatingly. ‘I promise, we have time for both –’ his head snaps round involuntarily at the sound
of wheels on the gravel outside: could it be? – but no, it’s just Father
Green, returning from one of his errands. He collects himself and returns to the boys. ‘We’ll get to the Rising in due course,’
he says. ‘The lesson plan isn’t set in stone. And anyway, Muiris, the war is Irish history. Aside from the fact that the Rising
came out of the First World War, many Irishmen fought for the Allies, at the Western Front and elsewhere.’

‘Uh, not according to the textbook, sir,’ Jeekers says, the page of his own carefully laminated copy opened to the box giving
the breakdown of war dead.

‘Well, the textbook is wrong, in that case,’ Howard says.

‘Yeah, my great-grandfather fought in the war,’ Daniel Juster says.

‘There you go,’ Howard says to Muiris. ‘I’m sure that many of you have relatives who fought in the war, even if you don’t
know about it. And those who didn’t fight were still affected. The war transformed everything. So I think it’s worth spending
some extra time on it.’ Also, though he doesn’t say it to Muiris and barely admits it to himself, he feels that keeping himself
and the class immersed in the Great War somehow preserves a connection with Miss McIntyre.

After class he finds Ruprecht Van Doren and Geoff Sproke waiting behind.

‘Yes, gentlemen?’

There is a brief, tacit interchange between them, as if to decide who should pose the question; and then Ruprecht says carefully,
‘We were just wondering if you knew anything about the history of Seabrook – the older part of its history?’

‘Like from days of Yore?’ Geoff Sproke chips in.

‘That depends,’ Howard says. ‘Whenabouts in Yore are you talking about?’

Ruprecht meditates on this a moment, then, once again with some delicacy, ‘When the world was ruled by some kind of goddess?’

‘And they built these mounds?’ Geoff blurts, before he is silenced by a look from Ruprecht.

‘Hmm,’ Howard strokes his chin. ‘Sounds like pre-Christian times. Not really my field, boys, sorry. But what’s this about,
anyway?’

‘Oh, you know,’ Ruprecht says vaguely.

‘It just seemed interesting, to find out more about the place our school is built on top of,’ Geoff adds, inspired.

‘I’ll ask around,’ Howard says. ‘And if I find anything out, I’ll let you know.’

‘Thanks, Mr Fallon.’ They hasten away, deep in discussion. The opacity of the fourteen-year-old mind: Howard smiles to himself
and continues on his way.

Opening the door of the staffroom, he is greeted by an unusual hubbub. Teachers are thronged around the middle of the room,
all talking at once in an uncharacteristically jubilant way. From the periphery the school secretary, Miss Noakes, turns to
Howard. ‘He’s back!’ she says, beaming at him as though under the influence of some wonderful drug. The meaning of this is
obscure to Howard, but it gives him a bad feeling. His own smile wilting like a neglected house plant, he squeezes through
the knot of bodies to find at its heart, enthroned on the sofa, Finian Ó Dálaigh, the geography teacher.

‘Not too hard!’ he exclaims comically to the colleagues clapping his shoulder. ‘I’ve still got stitches!’ In his hand is a
jar containing something roundish and grey and approximately the size of a golf ball, which someone behind him tells Howard
is his gallstone.

‘Howard!’ Ó Dálaigh spots him; he steps forward, hastily re-affixing his smile. ‘What do you make of that, Howard?’ Ó Dálaigh
wiggles the jar under his nose. ‘The doctor said it was the biggest one he’d ever seen.’

‘Really…’ Howard coos feebly.

‘Yes, and he said the gallstone was pretty big too!’ The company laughs indulgently, although this witticism is by now on
its fourth or fifth outing.

‘Fantastic,’ says Howard through clenched teeth and a thickening glaze of unreality. ‘So… does this mean we’ll have you
back at work soon? How long a convalescence are you looking at?’

‘Convalescence be damned,’ Ó Dálaigh declares, thumping his chest. ‘I was bored out my tree lying around there at home, watching
the grass grow. Doctor says I’m fighting fit. Says he’s never seen anything like my powers of recovery. I’m going to convalesce
right here, standing on my own two feet. Teaching geography!’ A raucous sally of approval from his colleagues. ‘Those little
so-and-so’s won’t know what hit ’em!’ Ó Dálaigh, enjoying his moment, adds, to another cheer.

Howard pretends to join in, and when the noise dies down remarks, as if to himself, ‘So I suppose that Miss McIntyre won’t
need to come back after all.’

But the name means nothing to the geography teacher; he shrugs, and then launches into a fresh account of his surgery for
a new arrival. As for the others, few of them seem to hear him, and those who do merely blink at Howard distractedly, as if
he’s mistaken them for his pupils, and started spouting on to them about some phantasmal figure from a textbook.

‘Was your grandfather really in the war, Skip?’

‘He was my great-grandfather. My mum’s grandfather. He got his right hand shot off.’

‘Wow –’ Dennis performs some internal calculation ‘– does that mean you have an ancestor who
wasn’t
a bender?’

‘You know what I am thinking is –’ Mario speaks up here ‘– if you needed to raise an army of zombies, this Western Front would
be a good place to go.’

‘Mario, what the hell do you want an army of zombies for?’

‘
I
don’t want an army of zombies, I’m just saying that if you
did
, a good place to go would be the Western Front, because of all the dead people lying around there from the war?’

‘No, it wouldn’t, you stupid wop, they’d all be missing arms and legs and stuff.’

‘Up yours, Hoey, you are the wop, because FYI if you die and then you are reanimated you can attach your limbs back on.’

‘That’s bollocks.’

‘It’s not bollocks, everyone knows that.’

‘It’s total bollocks.’

‘Well, they could throw the arms and stuff at you,’ Mario continues gamely.

‘With what, Mario? They could throw their arms at you with what? With their mouths? With
Il Duce
?’

But now Skippy’s phone bleeps and the conversation gives way to a charivari of coos and kissy-noises as Skippy, transformed
into one giant goofy grin, reaches for his pocket.

In the end it was all so simple! What happened was, Lori’s dad saw her kissing Skippy outside the gates the night of the Hop
and he freaked – he thinks she’s still too young to be with boys, and he grounded her for two whole weeks, and even confiscated
her phone. That’s why she hadn’t replied to Skippy’s poem, and she was sorry because it was so beautiful! And she had missed
him so much.

At first Skippy couldn’t believe it. When he’d got that first message, sitting in the basement, it was like a wrecking ball
had just crashed through the wall and he suddenly found himself looking out into the airy night. But he replied, and she replied
to his reply, and to the reply to her reply; and though he was sure every message he sent would be the one that brought the
whole magical card-house tumbling back down again, his phone kept buzzing with her responses, each one a little golden hit
that travelled straight to his heart, right through and into today, until it’s like they’ve never been apart!

In class the phone sits on his lap under the desk, set to silent but lighting up as each message arrives, as if it’s just
as excited as he is; he tries to remember to keep half an eye on the teacher, because if he gets caught then
his
phone’ll be confiscated, which’d be a disaster – but somehow he can’t bring himself to worry, the world going on around him
seems so far away, a dim flurry of ghosts, warm, noisy, coloured-in ghosts…

You won’t find the answer staring at your feet.
Mr Juster, je vous en prie
. Wakey-wakey, faggot. Concentrate, Daniel!

But when’s he going to see her? To have her so close and still out of reach is almost worse than the torture of not hearing
from her at all. Isn’t her dad ever going to unground her?

she says, although, arrgh, that doesn’t feel like much of a consolation right now.

And then midway through Science class, after a minor lull, he gets this:

DJ is what she calls him in texts, as in ‘Last Night a DJ Saved My Life’
–

Somewhere a trillion miles away Mr Farley is telling the class about natural incidents of electricity.

Sure, but visit her
house
? With her overprotective dad who hates him? Okay, and then why not go for a picnic on the North Pole? Or swim to Atlantis?

He lingers over these last words.
Everything will be fine.
It’s been so long since he thought this, since he could even imagine himself thinking it. And now here it is. Everything
will be Fine! The Future, the Universe, will be Fine!

And he laughs like she is right there to hear him laughing.

‘You find something funny about the term “ball lightning”, Mr Juster?’ Mr Farley asks him.

‘Uh…’ Skippy, yanked back those trillion miles, flails around helplessly. But Mr Farley just smiles, and carries on; and it’s
like the room is filled with sunlight, too bright to see.

‘Greg? Do you have a minute?’

‘Why, Howard!’ The Automator turns from his window where he’s peering out at the yard. ‘What are you still doing here?’

‘Uh, yes, I had a –’

‘Scared to go home, that it?’

‘No, actually, I was correcting some, uh –’

‘Just pulling your leg, Howard, come on in. Always welcome in these parts. On the pale side there, buddy, you feeling all
right?’

‘Oh yes, absolutely, I just wanted to ask you about some – oh, I’m sorry, has there been some bad news?’

‘News? Oh, you mean this?’ The Automator glances down at the black armband adorning his shirtsleeve. ‘No, no – well, that
is to say, yes, as a matter of fact there has been some news, Howard, and while it’s not as bad as it might have been, it’s
still not what you could call good. Old Man’s taken a turn for the worse. Doctors say he could slip off at any minute. In
fact, they don’t really understand how he’s still alive.’