Skippy Dies (69 page)

Contrast this effort with the young man on the other side of the desk. Here we have a lad who clearly does not care a jot
about impressions. His posture is slovenly, he is grossly overweight and, to top it off, he will not speak! Not one word!
Father Foley struggled for several minutes to ‘get through’ to him; now he addresses his comments solely to the parents, leaving
the boy out of it. See how he likes it.

‘There are five stages of bereavement,’ he tells them. ‘Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.’ He has just
been reading about this on the Internet, it’s actually very interesting. ‘Obviously young Ruprecht here is presently going
through the Anger stage. Now, that is perfectly natural, indeed it is a vital part of the grieving process. Nevertheless,
we are getting to a point at which Ruprecht’s grief is having a negative effect on the orderly running of the school. So what
the Acting Principal and I are hoping is that if we all put our heads together, we might be able to find some way of getting
Ruprecht to the Acceptance stage sooner rather than later, so to speak, or at least to one of the other, less disruptive stages
that would enable him to participate constructively in normal school activities, such as the 140th Anniversary Concert.’

The boy’s father, a man of few words, nods sombrely. The woman in the hat claps her hands very quietly and mouths, ‘A concert!’

Father Foley is pleased to give her some details about the event. Some of the priests tend to look down on the whole thing,
but from his studies in psychology Father Foley knows the importance of letting the lads express themselves. Indeed, in his
younger days, wasn’t a certain Father Ignatius Foley known to strap on the guitar and strum out a few ‘hits’ for the entertainment
of long-term and terminally sick children in hospital? The way those
youngsters had looked at him! He was quite the ‘pop star’!

‘And the touching thing,’ he continues, ‘is that a portion of the proceeds have been dedicated to refurbishing the swimming
pool, in memory of the unfortunate boy, Daniel Juster.’

The boy’s mother, who some might call quite an attractive person, coos at this approvingly. Father Foley returns an avuncular
smile. ‘It seemed to us to be the most appropriate way of marking the event,’ he says. ‘Here at Seabrook we don’t believe
in brushing things under the carpet. It is a way for us, for the boys and the faculty alike, to say, Daniel, you will always
have a place in our hearts, in spite of, that is to say, the, ah, circumstances of your passing.’

Sweeping a loose strand of golden hair back over his brow, he turns to Ruprecht, who is staring back at him with undisguised
hatred. Can he really be her son? Perhaps she is a second wife, she does seem considerably younger – but no, only a mother
could dote on a repellent being like this. ‘There are two words I should like you to keep in mind during this difficult time,
Ruprecht. The first of them is “love”. You are lucky to be loved by many people. By your father and your –’ he can’t resist
it ‘– very charming mother’ (a twinkling, effervescent little smile!) ‘by your Acting Principal, by myself and the rest of
the faculty, and by your many friends here in Seabrook College. And most of all, by God. God loves you, Ruprecht. God loves
all of His Creation, down to the very lowliest, and He never takes His eyes from you, even when you think you are alone in
the world. Daniel is, hopefully, with Him in Heaven now, and he is happy there, happy in God’s love. So let us not be selfish.
Let us not let our grief interfere with the good, honest work of our peers. Yes, we have suffered a tremendous loss. But let
us mourn Daniel’s passing in the correct way, the loving way, such as by participating in the upcoming Christmas concert,
and making it a really special occasion he would be proud of.’

The boy’s mother is rapt – so, indeed, is the father. Father Foley is rather pleased with this little homily himself. ‘The
second word,
or actually two words,’ he says, ‘is, or are, “team sports”. In the days of the Roman Empire…’

Afterwards, he waits outside the Automator’s office while his parents have a private interview inside. Darren Boyce and Jason
Rycroft come along and stand across the hallway, just staring at him. When his parents come out he walks them down to the
van. They would like to stay longer, but Father is terribly busy. In the car park, Mother cups Ruprecht’s face in her hands.
‘Dearest Ruprecht, we love you very much. Promise me you will remember that one thing, that whatever happens, Mama and Papa
will always love you.’

‘Let’s have no more of this silliness, Ruprecht,’ Father says. He wipes his mouth with a paper tissue.

Ruprecht returns to his room alone. On his pillow has been laid, neatly, a toilet brush. He removes it and lies down.

Mother loves Ruprecht. Lori loves Skippy. God loves everybody. To hear people talk, you would think no one ever did anything
but love each other. But when you look for it, when you search out this love everyone is always talking about, it is nowhere
to be found; and when someone looks for love from you, you find you are not able to give it, you are not able to hold the
trust and dreams they want you to hold, any more than you could cradle water in your arms. Proposition: love, if it exists
at all, does so primarily as an
organizing myth
, of a similar nature to God. Or: love is analogous to gravity, as postulated in recent theories, that is to say, what we
experience faintly, sporadically, as love is in actuality the distant emanation of another world, the faraway glow of a love-universe
that by the time it gets to us has almost no warmth left.

When he gets up he spends an hour kicking and stamping on his French horn so he will not have to play it again. Music, maths,
these are things that no longer make any sense to him. They are too perfect, they do not belong here. He does not know how
he ever believed this universe could be a symphony played on super-strings, when it sounds like shit, played on shit.

With the revelation of his true origins the last vestiges of
Ruprecht’s dignity are torn away. Wherever he goes now, a wave of plumbing-related ridicule pursues him; his head is forced
so often down the U-bends of Seabrook commodes – ‘It’s a gateway to another dimension, Ruprecht!’ (flush) – that it never
fully dries. The worse it gets, the worse it gets, because in school your enemy is anyone you can’t fight off, so the more
enemies you have, the more you’ll find queuing up to join the fun. Ruprecht lumbers through it like some elephantine Golem.
He does not cry out when someone flicks his ear with a rubber band or slices his arse with a ruler or jabs it with a compass
point or mushes wet tissue in his ears or spits on his back or leaves a dump in his shoe. He does not complain when Noddy
boards up the door of his laboratory; he does not protest when he is given detention after several of his non-water-resistant
possessions are found blocking one of the dorm toilets; he does not show any signs of caring when his room is festooned yet
again with toilet roll. Instead he merely withdraws further into himself – into the ever-expanding cellulite fortress he buttresses
daily with doughnuts and a new Ed’s milk-shake called SweetDreamz, which contains no milk and more calories, somehow, than
pure sugar.

‘I’m just concerned that the school’s attitude might come across as somewhat confrontational…’

‘Van Doren’s the one who’s being confrontational, Howard. Firm but fair, that’s what we’re being. Am I right, Brother?’ A
svelte ebony nod from the sentinel in the corner.

‘But the boys – there does seem to be some evidence that the boys may be ganging up on him.’

‘The boys know the rules, Howard, and if they’re caught breaking the rules they’ll be punished for it. At the same time, they’ve
all put a lot of time and effort into this concert, and if one person is spoiling it for everyone on a whim, then I can understand
why they’d be angry. And I can understand that they need to express that anger.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘No one’s bigger than this school, Howard.’ The Automator’s
attaché case snaps closed like the jaws of a crocodile. ‘Van Doren’s going to find that out sooner or later. I just hope for
his sake that it’s sooner.’

And so Howard merely looks on, as by the day the glutinous orb of Van Doren’s face grows wider, paler, converging on a dinner-plate
blankness, his yearning to take him aside – to comfort him, simply to speak to him – cancelled out by an equally agonizing
guilt. For what could Howard possibly say to him that wouldn’t be a barefaced lie? And if he told him the truth, how would
that help him?

So he says nothing, instead goes in the opposite direction, burying himself in his history books just as Van Doren cocoons
himself in hydrogenated fats. He delivers his lessons mechanically, not caring whether the boys are listening or not, quietly
loathing them for being so predictably what they are, young, self-absorbed, insensate; he waits for the bell just as they
do, so that he can dive once more into the trenches of the past, the endless accounts of men sent to their deaths in their
tens of thousands, like so many towers of coloured chips pushed by fat hands across the green baize of the casino table –
stories that seem, in their regimented wastage, their relentless, pointless destruction, more than ever to
make sense
, to present an archetype of which the schoolday in its asperity and boredom is the dim, fuddled shadow. Womanless worlds.

Outside, meanwhile, the winter turns sadistic, cold rain flaying him whenever he steps through the door; he wakes each morning
with a mouth full of gravel, like he’s just coming off a three-day bender. He remembers Halley’s magical camera, which can
turn anywhere into California. Every night he hopes that she will call, but she does not.

And then one day a package arrives for him at the school. Inside is a letter, written in a neat, crimped hand. It is from
Daniel Juster’s mother.

Inside, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, is a khaki military uniform. Howard holds it up to the light of the staffroom windows.
The rough cloth is spotlessly clean, and smells gently musty; he passes it through his hands like bolts of pure time.

‘What you got there, Howard?’ Finian Ó Dálaigh asks him.

‘Nothing, nothing…’ Howard flashes him a cursory smile, refolds the uniform and stows it rapidly in his locker.

Later, when they have the room to themselves, he shows it to Jim Slattery. The older man studies the coarse fabric intently,
as if the story of the campaign were inscribed there in the twill. ‘Seventh Battalion,’ he says. ‘There’s a story. You haven’t
come across them before? “D” Company? Gallipoli? Suvla Bay?’

Howard is vaguely aware of Gallipoli as an infamous disaster in which thousands of Australians were killed, but no more than
that. ‘It wasn’t just the ANZACs,’ Slattery tells him. ‘I have some books, if you’re interested.’

That evening – having been granted a special dispensation from his wife – Slattery meets Howard in the snug of the Ferry,
and proceeds to relate the tragic history of ‘D’ Company, from their assembly in Dublin at the outbreak of the war to their
near-annihilation on an obscure mountain on the Gallipoli peninsula. Howard, without knowing quite why, has brought Molloy’s
uniform in his bag, and as the story unreels he becomes increasingly aware of it as a presence, an olive-drab ghost attending
their conversation.

‘They were volunteers, among the first, who joined up from
rugby clubs around the country. Most were professionals, who’d gone to well-known schools, Seabrook included, and worked now
as businessmen, bankers, solicitors, clerks. They actually became quite famous in Ireland, even before they went off to fight,
because they could have been officers if they’d wanted, but they preferred to stick with their friends. They were known as
the “Dublin Pals”, and the day they set sail for England huge crowds turned out to watch them march through the city.

‘Now, they’d joined up expecting to be sent to the Western Front, and it wasn’t until their ship sailed that they discovered
they were en route to Turkey instead. Churchill had this plan to force a passage through the Dardanelles, create a new supply
route to Russia and draw the Germans away from the Front. The previous attempt to land, at Gallipoli, had been a total catastrophe.
They’d tried a Trojan horse trick – packed up a division in an old collier that was to run right up onto the beach and catch
the Turks by surprise. But the Turks were waiting, with machine-guns. Supposedly the whole bay turned red with blood. This
time round, the commanding officers were so paranoid that they kept their plan completely to themselves – to the point that
nobody else knew what they were supposed to be doing. “D” Company and the rest of the Dublins were landed in the wrong place,
with no maps and no orders. Temperatures were in the hundreds, the Turks had poisoned the wells, it was raining shrapnel.
They waited there on the beach while their general tried to work out what to do…’

On the dismal story goes. From this distance, the bloody ending seems inevitable, and the Pals’ adventure – voluntarily leaving
good jobs, easy lives, wives and children, in pursuit of some tally-ho vision of honour and glory – painfully naive; as if
they’d imagined the war to be no more than an extension of their clashes on the rugby pitch, the heightened danger merely
guaranteeing the glory there to be won.

‘But the worst of it was what happened afterwards,’ Slattery says, turning his glass about on the table. ‘I mean, they came
home and were forgotten about. Not just forgotten about, banished from history. After the Rising, the War of Independence,
suddenly they found they were traitors. The struggles they endured, the horror, the hardships, all for nothing. That must
have been a real knife in the back.’ He looks over at Howard. ‘Hard to believe that something that big could simply be buried
away like that, as if it had never happened. But it can, that’s the tragedy of it. There’s a terrible cost, but it can.’