The Brothers' Lot (6 page)

Finbar glanced down the dim corridor toward the end, where there seemed to be some kind of atrium presided over by an altar to Our Lady of Indefinite Duration, a sort of theological by-product of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and much beloved of the Brotherhood. He had no idea where he was going but the atrium seemed to promise more light than any of the other options and certainly the stairs to his left did not seem at all inviting.

He tiptoed down the corridor to minimize the squeaking of his shoes. He froze when he heard the soft sounds behind him. It sounded like a small bird trapped in a cardboard box. He pressed himself against the wall; his mind blanked. The weird fluttering stopped. The subsequent silence was if anything more eerie. Almost on the edge of hearing, Finbar noticed a light rustling sound. He slid back along the corridor toward the bottom of the stairs. Through the banisters he saw a shape on the stairs hugging the wall.

Finbar watched aghast as Brother Boland whispered and cooed to the wall while he ran his hands lovingly over the mortar between the large granite stones. He inched back from the stairs as quietly as he could.

“You, boy! What are you doing there?”

Finbar spun round to see Loughlin striding down the corridor toward him. Behind him he heard Brother Boland flutter back up the stairs on his feet of ashes.

“Brother Kennedy sent me for the extra leather.”

Loughlin slowed his pace to a menacing stalk and it was then that Finbar saw Father Fury coming out of what was presumably the refectory and fidgeting down the corridor toward Brother Loughlin. Father Fury moved in short, angular motions with more energy than seemed necessary. He had the wiry build of a lightweight boxer and his thin lips pursed at regular intervals, the only animation in his narrow, suspicious face. He looked like a bad-tempered, constipated ferret.

“Ah, Father Fury. You finished your tea. Good. Just in time. I have here before me one of our specimens who seems to be hell-bent on ending up in a reformatory. Brother Kennedy sent him for the extra leather.”

Father Fury nodded solemnly at this news: “I saw many of his ilk when I was chaplain here, Brother Loughlin.”

“You did indeed, but you stood for no nonsense. And how are the boys at Saint Bodhrán’s?”

“No better, no worse. Deaf or blind or both.”

“I’m sure that keeps them out of trouble.”

“You’d think it would. They find their own ways of devilment.”

Brother Loughlin nodded understandingly and returned his attention to Finbar: “Well … Mr… . uhm …”

“Sullivan,” Finbar volunteered.

“Ah yes, the new boy. Seems you’re already contagioned by the blackguardism abroad within these walls. Falling in with the wrong crowd already, I’ll bet!”

Slowly Loughlin took the extra leather from the side pocket of his cassock.

“Let me warn you, my young bucko, that if you start out this way here, it will be a very short trip to the Industrial School for you. Do you understand?” spat Loughlin as he gave Finbar two rapid stinging belts on each hand. “Mind your step, or I’ll mind it for you.” Loughlin held the leather out to Finbar. “Now take that to Brother Kennedy with my compliments.”

Finbar took the leather and felt its weight in his hot, throbbing hands. He left the monastery and walked back toward the hall feeling with each step more humiliated by carrying the leather that would soon be used to beat him.

Finbar walked back into the hall and Brother Kennedy sent him to the end of the line. “We shall save the best for last,” he taunted, taking the extra leather from him. “White vest!”
Whap
! “White shorts!”
Whap!
“White socks!”
Whap!
“White running shoes!”
Whap!
“Next week!”
Whap!

Brother Kennedy went along the line and gave each boy five stinging tastes of the leather on the right hand and reminded them of the correct attire to bring along for Physical Education class the following week. Twice he had to pause to catch his breath. Finbar got an extra final belt called “Ingrate” for his supposed betrayal of his noble rural heritage for the pernicious influence of soccer.

“Tell him you only play soccer and he’ll put you on the special line,” whispered Lynch to the bunch of third years who entered the hall as they were leaving.

“You’re a bastard, Lynch,” said McDonagh.

“Yeah, and you’re a farty little bollix,” answered Lynch.

“What time is it?” asked Scully.

“Twenty-five past,” answered McDonagh. “What’s next?” asked Lynch.

“French, with Laverty,” interjected Finbar, who was walking out behind them.

Scully turned and stared coldly at him. He shook his head and turned away again. Finbar was not worth a confrontation.

8

B
awn jourz mayzsewerz!” drawled Mr. Laverty as the boys bundled in the door. “Veuwz ets arreevayz trays tard. Poor kwoh?” His best qualification for being a French teacher seemed to be that he cycled a lot and his wife was French. He spoke the language with his own drawling nasal Dublin accent, pronouncing all the letters in a way that one is not really supposed to do. As far as anyone in the school was concerned, that was the way French was spoken. Of course, the Brothers would have much preferred that the language be taught with a nice Galway or Kerry accent, but they had to take what they could get.

“Brother Kennedy kept us back,” ventured McDonagh, guessing at what Mr. Laverty was talking at them about.

“Oh, did he now?”

The boys nodded.

“Sit down.”

The boys moved to their seats.

“Hey yew?”

Finbar stopped in his tracks and turned around.

“Me, sir?”

“Yeah, yew, sur. Commont sappellaayze vouze?”

“Je m’appelle Finbar Sullivan, monsieur professeur.”

Even Mr. Laverty could not fail to notice that out of this exchange Finbar sounded more like the one capable of speaking French. “Right, Meester Sullivan. Sit down then,” he said sharply and eyed Finbar suspiciously.

Mr. Laverty stood awkwardly in front of the class. It was useless for him to even attempt to cut an imposing figure. He had a big chalk stain on his nose and wore the jacket and pants of two different cheap blue pinstriped suits. Both were tatty and ingrained with years of chalk dust and shiny grime. He distributed the French books from the cupboard and had the boys sign for them.

“Right, now, you’re going to write a short essay entitled ‘Mon ay tay,’ my summer.” He looked at the clock. “Youse have thirty minutes.”

With that he sat back at the desk and started to write in some important-looking papers. He was filling out a job application for Southwell, the Jesuit school. It was something at least, something to attempt to quell the lung-hardening sense of dejection and purposelessness that took over the moment he set foot in Werburgh Street. It only got worse when he found himself standing in front of these reluctant faces with no interest in Maupassant beyond, at best, writing English translations between the lines.

“Sir, sir, sir!” implored McDonagh.

Mr. Laverty glanced up wearily. “What is it, McDonagh?”

“How do you say ‘The woman from the dole with the broken briefcase came to see me da’?”

“Use something else simpler,” sighed Mr. Laverty.

McDonagh nodded enthusiastically and then drew an exaggerated look of puzzlement across his face.

“What is it now, McDonagh?”

“How do you say ‘woman,’ sir?”

“Get outside the door, McDonagh.”

That was sometimes Mr. Laverty’s thing. If he was feeling sporting, he didn’t actually send you to Brother Loughlin. He just put you outside the door, and if you happened to get caught then you got a hiding. It was a game of roulette and gave the boys, Mr. Laverty felt, a fair chance and took all responsibility away from him. McDonagh closed the door softly behind him and pushed himself into the alcove where coats were supposed to hang.

Mr. Laverty opened the door. “Out against the wall where I can see you,” he hissed into the reverberating emptiness of the corridor. McDonagh reluctantly moved to the other side of the corridor where he knew he would be visible from either end, thus increasing his chances of being caught. “Ye pays yer money and ye takes yer chances,” observed Mr. Laverty and returned to his class.

The hands on the clock crawled round their course as the boys flipped through their French books looking for sentences they could use. There seemed to be no lessons in this course that concerned scutting on the back of speeding trucks or smoking loose cigarettes in laneways or inventing lies about feeling up girls or any of the other activities that had occupied them over the summer.

A perfunctory knock at the door announced the intrusion of a Brother into the class of a lay teacher. This was always done with the minimum of ceremony or apology, as if to remind the lay teachers that they were only there on sufferance until the inevitable upsurge in vocations to the Brotherhood.

“Mr. Laverty, a moment of your time,” announced Brother Mulligan imperiously as he entered.

Mr. Laverty smiled coldly and went to sit on the windowsill.

Brother Mulligan was by all conservative estimates in his late nineties. He was only recently retired from teaching and now spent his time collecting pennies for the Missions, selling scapulars, medals, and rosary beads, and conducting other minor evangelical tasks. He wobbled and shimmered like someone who was not quite real; you could not look at him for too long without feeling that the film you were watching had stuck in the projector and was about to burn to bits.

“Mr. Laverty, I think it would be helpful if that boy outside the door was returned to the class so he could hear this with the rest of them.”

Mr. Laverty slouched over to the door and yanked it open: “McDonagh, get in here and stand in the corner and listen to what the Brother has to say.”

Brother Mulligan placed himself under the crucifix that hung above the blackboard and cleared his throat theatrically. “Now, you boys are approaching a point in your lives when you must begin to make decisions for yourselves. This can be a difficult and frightening time. Do I join the Electricity Supply Board? Do I try for junior clerical assistant in the Department of Fisheries? Do I acknowledge who I really am, abandon notions of uppitiness, and leave school to get an apprenticeship in one of the trades or a delivery job with a prosperous grocer? These are all important questions. But there is another question that it is time for you boys to ask yourselves: Do I hear a call? Do I feel the need to give something back in gratitude for what I have received?

“Do I think that with the help of the Holy Ghost, Our Lady of Indefinite Duration, and Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly, I could make the commitment to the Brotherhood? Do I think I am ready for such a challenge?

“Look deep inside. Sit for a few moments and see if you hear a calling. Close your eyes and picture the Holy Ghost. You, boy! You, boy, there, with the big ears! Close your eyes now! I will tell you when to open them again! Now, repeat after me: Oh Lord, if it be Your will that I waste my life in penury and uselessness, then send not the Holy Ghost to guide me to the Brotherhood where I can atone for the sins, original, venal, and mortal, that damn my soul to the fires of Hell.

“We will now sit in silence and wait for an answer to our prayers for a vocation.”

The silence that followed was punctuated by sporadic giggling, two operatic farts, a couple of warning hisses from Mr. Laverty, and one brief two-stroke leathering that Brother Mulligan administered to Bradshaw for no discernible reason. As leatherings went, those meted out by Brother Mulligan were hardly vicious but they did not really create an atmosphere conducive to a visitation by the Holy Ghost or any other supernatural entity.

“Now open your eyes, you boys!”

Mr. Laverty threw a piece of chalk at Scully to wake him up.

“Now, every boy will take a small piece of paper. If you think you may have a calling you will write your name on that piece of paper. Every boy will hand one up. If you are not interested, leave the paper blank. This will be conducted in strict confidence and writing down your name does not bind you into anything final. No one else will know if you have a vocation or not. Is that clear?”

The boys nodded and started rummaging for paper.

“Brother, what size paper should we use?”

“Any size, you fool!”

“Brother, if the Holy Ghost came to me but about something different, should I write my name down?”

“Only if you think you might have a vocation.”

“Brother, will the Holy Ghost be able to read my name in Irish?”

“The pieces of paper are not for the Holy Ghost, you stupid amadhán!”

“Brother, does it matter what color pen you use if you aren’t writing your name?” asked Lynch, eager to outdo.

“God help me!” gasped Brother Mulligan.

“Get out and join McDonagh in the corner, Lynch,” drawled Mr. Laverty.

Lynch stood up with a look of total innocence comically plastered across his face. He stood beside McDonagh in the corner and looked hard at the floor.

“The Holy Ghost is color blind, ye sap!” whispered McDonagh. Lynch looked even harder at the floor. They could easily get a fatal attack of the giggles at this stage.

“Now then, fold the papers twice and pass them to the front. If I see anyone looking at them there’ll be trouble, I can tell you. Ha, Mr. Laverty?” babbled Brother Mulligan.

“Oh yeah, trouble, Brother,” agreed the teacher tonelessly.

Brother Mulligan gathered up the papers and counted them to make sure that everyone had given him one and then shuffled out, leaving the door wide open behind him.

Mr. Laverty turned to Lynch and McDonagh. “What’re we going to do with these two eejits? Sit down, yiz pair o’ goms,” he commanded, and shut the door with a crack.

Hardly had Mr. Laverty started back into his application form when Brother Mulligan was back at the door, this time accompanied by Brother Cox. “Brian Egan!” announced Brother Cox.

Egan stood up, dumbfounded. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t do anything! I swear, Brother, I didn’t! It couldn’t have been me! I wasn’t there! I didn’t do it!” he pleaded.