The Brothers' Lot (8 page)

“Can you manage there?” asked Spud.

“Yes sir,” squeaked the boy, and lurched out the door. Spud closed the door behind him and turned to the class. “What kind of ‘indisposed’ was Brian Egan?” he asked levelly.

They all looked at him blankly.

“What happened to him?” Spud asked again.

“Brother Mulligan …”

“Vocations …”

“Put his name down …”

“Cox came …”

“Out in the corridor …”

“Lost the head …”

“Don’t know …”

Spud shook his head sadly. “So what the hell happened? Brian put his name down for a vocation? Was he off his head?” He looked from face to evasive face. The boys avoided making eye contact and exuded silence like waves of heat off a road. “Oh no! Don’t tell me! Did one of ye put his name down? Is that what happened?”

There was an involuntary tightening of the boys’ silence.

“That’s it, isn’t it? One of ye put his bloody name down as a joke! Jesus wept! Have ye no sense? I mean lads, really, what were ye thinking?” He walked to the window and leaned his forehead against the glass.

Scully glanced up at the teacher and then back down at his desk. Bad sweat gathered in his armpits.

Spud pulled away from the window and sat down heavily on the radiator. “What did ye think would happen? Eh? Ye know what they’re like, don’t ye? Did ye really think it would be just a quick joke and then all over with?”

The fog of silence reluctantly admitted that was what they thought would happen but should have known better.

“Did ye have it in for Brian? Did ye want to see them beat the lard out of him for some particular reason? Did he do something to ye? Or was it just plain stupid badness?”

Spud paused and walked to the center of the class. He faced the boys and waited for his own silence to make them look up.

“All right, I know ye’re not bad kids. I know ye like to mess around and have a laugh. There’s no harm in that, but this sort of thing? This is stupid, thoughtless, and if ye think about it, sly and cowardly. If one of ye has something against Brian Egan or anyone else in the class, have it out with him, don’t do this sort of crap. Look, lads, it’s bad enough for ye without ye turning on one another like that and offering the Brothers easy targets. Just think before ye do things, can ye? Everything has consequences. Try to see them before ye act, will ye?”

The boys nodded reluctantly and Spud walked to the cupboard to retrieve and distribute
The Harbingers of the Age of Reason
, which would be their History textbook for the next two years.

When Spud left, Brother Walsh came in and launched straight into dictating his Geography notes from teacher-training college fifteen years before, which the boys had to copy down verbatim. After a double class of that, Larry Skelly arrived to give them their Civics lesson. Skelly had once been a French teacher, until a lot of expensive audio-visual equipment that the Department of Education had forced on the unwilling and suspicious Brothers had found its way into his car. Tenured, unfireable, and a cousin of the secretary of the Department of Education, Skelly was relegated to teaching Civics and giving career guidance.

He was not a bad sort and was fairly easygoing about his annual career assessment of the boys who came to his office one by one and told him they wanted to be brain surgeons, freelance astronauts, messenger boys for grocery shops, firemen, and gang lords. He knew and they knew that most of them would never get anywhere beyond the lowest levels of the Civil Service or the Electricity Supply Board or the rare Gaelic football prodigy who might get slid into a sinecure in the bank.

Skelly sat at his desk with a big tired sigh, dug out his Civics book, and started to read aloud. It was with great relief that the boys realized he was quite happy to let them put their heads on their desks while he did this.

Around the whole school the desultoriness of last class gasped its way toward the final bell.

“Ethanol is a colorless, tasteless liquid with a very low boiling point …”
Scribble, scribble, scribble
. “The common chemical formula for ethanol is …”
Scribble, scribble, scribble
…

“A, ab, absque, coram, de, palam, cum and ex, or e, sine, tenus, pro and prae, super, subter, sub and in, when rest not motion ’tis they mean. Now, these are the prepositions that take the ablative case. There is no other way to learn this except to learn it …”

“Now, the main fishing ports of Portugal are? … Aherne?”

“So taking x squared y and dividing across both sides we get the solution y=3x4 and from that we plot the curve. Any questions?”

“Ye’re nothing but a pack of guttersnipes and I don’t know why I even bother wasting my time trying to teach ye! I’d get better results from a pack of monkeys!”

It was twenty-five past three and there was only one fixed idea in everyone’s mind: in five minutes the bell would ring and it would all be over for another day. That was what mattered. The fishing ports of Portugal and the properties of ethanol could go fuck themselves, along with the dative case in Irish, the poetry of Sebastian Cathach, Venn diagrams, the terrors of Hell reserved for those who touch themselves improperly, and all the other guff that was filling the air as the clock counted down. Two minutes before the bell the surreptitious packing up began. Scully was already completely packed and was sharing the Civics book with the reluctant Leake in the desk beside him.

Five, four, three, two, one … Nothing. The seconds began to crawl by. The boys grew edgy. This was not right. Valuable seconds of their misspendable youth were being stolen from them.

In the yard the clock above the main door sat silent, the seconds whirring away but no sound of release from the bell.

“Ignore question 3 and do questions 4, 5, and 8 on page 13 and also question 12 on page 15,” called Mr. Pollock as he wrote the homework out on the board for his sixth year Geography class. He turned and flicked through his book looking for more questions.

“Sir …” said Molloy tentatively.

“Mr. Molloy?”

“Ehm, the bell didn’t go.”

“Correct, Mr. Molloy.”

“Ehm, but it’s twenty-five to four, sir.”

“Question 11 on page 15 and question 14 on page 16,” continued Mr. Pollock dismissively.

The boys sighed and glowered at Molloy. Now he’d made it worse.

While Mr. Pollock flicked through his book, a slow sound grew from two floors below on the ground floor where Brother Mulligan was taking a free class. “OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT!” The chanting got louder and louder until it could not be ignored anymore. Then it stopped suddenly and was replaced by the cheering rush of boys into the yard. That was it. Someone had let a class out. There was no stopping the domino effect. Bell or no bell, they had to let them out.

Tired, dispirited, and almost numb from the tedium of writing down book lists, class rules, and special prayers to Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly for help in each subject, Finbar stood at his front door and lazily rapped the knocker. Through the knobbed glass pane he saw his mother bustle down the narrow hall, wiping her hands on her apron as she came. She yanked the door open bursting with: “So? How did you get on? How many slaps did you get, pet?”

“Two,” answered Finbar sullenly as he hung his blazer on the hallstand. He knew two was a good answer: neither low enough to arouse the suspicion of lying nor high enough to prompt further investigation.

“Sure, that’s not bad. Were you talking? I know you’re a terrible talker though I don’t know where you get it from at all. You can’t get a word out of your father and Declan is the same. Mind you, your Uncle Francie could talk the hind leg off a donkey. That must be where you get it from. Were the masters nice? That Brother Loughlin seems like a very holy man. I’m sure he’ll look out for you. Was your uniform all right? I’m not certain those trousers are the right gray. Did anyone say anything to you about the trousers?”

Finbar drifted away through the flood of words. None of her questions really required answers. If she really wanted to know anything she would ask him again and again until he answered.

The bus stop incident had really pissed him off. Maybe it was the class with Spud Murphy that had made things worse. It had made him feel there was some warmth there. The way the others behaved with Spud showed they weren’t all bad. When they saw him at the bus stop there was no need for them to throw his bag onto that passing bus. Why did they do that? He’d had to run after it for nearly a hundred yards before it hit a red light, and then he missed his own bus. What was the point of that? Why did they have to do that? He hated them. He really, really hated them.

10

A
fter the evening rosary and the communal ice bath, Brother Tobin retired to his cell and his prayers to Saint Dearbhla of Armagh, to whom he felt a particular devotion. He pulled the book out from under his mattress. It had become harder since they took his public library card away and banned him from even entering the building. This one had taken a lot of work to get in. He had bribed one of the sixth years to bring it to him from England. It was still banned in the Republic as far as he knew. Invoking Saint Dearbhla, he set to work on
Where the Trade Winds Call Love
.

He had fallen behind lately so he was determined to do a bit at lunchtime every day this week. He removed the Saint Dearbhla bookmark and opened to page fifty-four. He read carefully and attentively, evaluating every nuance and innuendo he could capture. “Aha! There’s one!”

Carefully he lifted his ruler from the table. He took the naked razor blade and deftly removed the word
corset
, leaving behind an inoffensive and uncorrupting empty rectangle on the page.

He picked up the sliver of vileness and, with another heartfelt invocation of Saint Dearbhla, popped it in his mouth and chewed it energetically. His eyes teared with pride as he caught sight of Saint Dearbhla on her little altar of already expurgated and purified books. She seemed to glow with approval of his labors.

* * *

Brother Loughlin sat back in his office chair and puffed nervously on a thin cigar. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Noel? How in God’s name are ye? How’s the big fella? How’s the County Council treating you? … Oh, it’s Eamon, Eamon Loughlin at Little Werburgh Street … No, no, Greater Little Werburgh Street,
NORTH
… Yes, yes, fine, fine. I’m sorry to be disturbing you at home … Well, funny you should ask because, come here to me now, but I have a little favor to ask you. There’s been some mix-up about a planning application that has the Brothers here in a bit of an uproar. You didn’t see it in
The Way Forward
, did you? …

“Well, some go-boys by the names of Fionn and Patrick Sweeney put a planning application in the newspaper to build a warehouse on the site of the school here … Yes, yes, I know it sounds mad, but I have the paper here in front of me. I’m sure it’s some mistake but I spent all morning on to the Department of Buildings and I could get no answer out of anyone so I was wondering if you could look into it … No, no, just to be sure it’s a mistake … Sure, sure, that’d be great … Lovely then. Thanks very much, Noel, and give me best to Margaret and the boys. You must drop over and see us some time … Great. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

Brother Loughlin dropped the phone back in its cradle, sat back, and took a deep pull on his cigar. He was feeling very happy with himself. It was good to have friends in high places. That’s why he was Head Brother and not some drone hammering away at Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
all day. If he played his cards right, it wouldn’t be long before he’d be able to insinuate himself into the running for the position on the Interdiocesan Presidium. Brother Butler was not going to last forever. In fact, he looked very shook at Brother Galligan’s funeral in April. No, it wouldn’t be long now.

Brother Loughlin switched off the desk light and sat in the dark smoking his cigar. Had he not been so engrossed in visions of his own grandeur, he might have noticed the squeaking of the gate that led from the monastery to the street. This gate was only ever used by visitors. It was never used at night except for the occasional passing drunk in need of a sheltered spot to relieve himself. Normally Brother Loughlin would have been at the window like a shot to vent his wrath on such a vagrant. But this was no vagrant he would have seen. Instead he would have spotted the porter-barrel shape of Brother Cox with the collar of his plastic raincoat pulled tight about his face sneaking out into the night.

Cox scurried as far as the corner and turned onto the West Circular Road with great relief. He stopped and pressed himself against the wall. His heart pounded in his ears and he listened beyond its clamor for any sound of pursuit or detection. When he was satisfied that he was safely and secretly out, he reached inside his raincoat and pulled off the red collar. He was now effectively wearing a black suit with a curiously red shirt but nothing that could really arouse suspicion.

The patrons of The Limping Gunman thought quite otherwise. In fact, they were already running a little book on what time Cox would arrive. A few of the less experienced had already lost by betting on him coming in on Friday night. Now all were sure he would not hold out for much longer. It had been four days since school began and Cox would have to crack soon.

When the Brother entered the bar he would never have guessed that he himself had only seconds before been the subject of heated discussion for the whole room. He entered, placed himself at a small table, and patted himself on the back for his carefully cultivated anonymity.

He sat stiffly, tensing the muscles in his toes to try to keep still and look calm and casual. He would not go up to the bar. He didn’t want to look like a desperate, thirsty man. He would wait until the barman came over. He could wait.

Already he could taste the warm tingling on the back of his throat. He could feel the golden current pulse through his veins. His forehead began to bead with little droplets of sweaty anticipation. He opened the top button of his plastic raincoat and ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar, then raised his head and tried to catch the barman’s eye.