Evening Class (39 page)

Laddy was eight, he knew things. People went to heaven one by one and everyone wore black and cried.

But it had happened. They had been killed at a level crossing, pulling a cart that had got stuck in the rails, and the train was on top of them before they realised it. Laddy knew that God had wanted them, that it was their time, but all through the years he wondered why God had chosen that way.

It had caused such upset and hurt for everyone. The poor man who had been driving the train was never the same again and went to a mental home. The people who had found Mam and Dad never spoke of it to anyone. Laddy once asked a priest why God couldn’t have given his Mam and Dad heavy winter colds if He had wanted them to die. And the priest had scratched his head and said that it was a mystery, and that if we understood all the things that happened on earth we would be as wise as God Himself, which of course couldn’t happen.

Laddy’s eldest sister Rose was a nurse in the local hospital. She gave up her job and came back to look after the family. It was lonely for her, and the boy who was courting her didn’t continue the romance when it meant a mile and a half walk to see her and a family of children in the house dependent on her.

But Rose made a good home for them. She supervised the homework every night in the kitchen, she washed and mended their clothes, she cooked and cleaned the house, she grew vegetables, kept hens, and she employed Shay Neil as the farm man.

Shay worked with the small herd of cattle, and kept the place ticking over. He went to fairs and markets, he did deals. He lived silently in a converted outhouse separate from the farmhouse. It had to look right when people called. No one would like to think of a man, a working farm-hand, living in the same house as all those girls and a child.

But the Byrne girls did not stay on the little farm. Rose made sure they got their exams and with her encouragement one by one they left. One for nursing, another to be trained as a teacher, one to a job in a shop in Dublin and one to a post in the Civil Service.

They had done well for the Byrne girls, the nuns and Rose. Everyone said that. And she was making a great fist of bringing up young Laddy. A big boy now, sixteen years of age, Laddy had almost forgotten his parents. He could only remember life with Rose, patient and funny and never thinking he was thick.

She would sit for ages with him at his books going over and over a thing until he could remember it, and she was never cross if he sometimes forgot it the next morning. From what he heard from other fellows at school, Rose was better than any mother.

There were two weddings the year that Laddy was sixteen, and Rose did all the cooking and entertaining for her younger sisters. They were great occasions and the photographs hung on the wall, pictures taken outside the house which had been newly painted by Shay for the festivities. Shay was there of course, but in the background. He didn’t really mix, he was the hired man.

And then Laddy’s sister who was working in England said she was having a very quiet wedding, which meant that she was pregnant and it would be in a register office. Rose wrote and said that she and Laddy would be happy to come over if it would help. But the letter back was full of gratitude and underlined words saying that it wouldn’t be at all helpful.

And the sister who was nursing went out to Africa. So that was the Byrne family settled, people said, Rose running the farm until poor Laddy grew up and was able to take over, God bless him if that were ever to happen. Everyone assumed that Laddy was slow. That was, everyone except Rose and Laddy himself.

Now that he was sixteen Laddy should have been right in the middle of all the fuss getting ready for his Intermediate Certificate, but there seemed to be no mention of it at all.

‘Lord, but they take things very easily above in the Brothers,’ Rose said to him one day. ‘You’d think there’d be all sorts of revision and plans and studying going on, but not a squeak out of them.’

‘I don’t think I’m doing it this year,’ Laddy said.

‘Well, of course you are, fourth year. When else would you do it?’

‘Brother Gerald didn’t say a word about it.’ He looked worried now.

‘I’ll sort it out, Laddy.’ Rose had always sorted everything out.

She was nearly thirty now, a handsome dark-haired woman, cheerful and good-natured. Over the years there had been a fair share of interest in her. But she never responded. She had to look after the family. When that was all sorted out she would think of romance… she would say this with a happy laugh, never offending anyone because overtures were turned down at an early stage before they had become serious and before anyone could be offended.

Rose went to see Brother Gerald, a small, kind man who had always been spoken well of by Laddy.

‘Ah Rose, would you not open your eyes, girl,’ he said. ‘Laddy’s the most decent boy that ever wore shoe leather into this school, but the poor divil hasn’t two brains to rattle together.’

Rose felt a flush of annoyance come to her face. ‘I don’t think you understand, Brother,’ she began. ‘He’s so eager and he wants to learn, maybe the class is too big for him.’

‘He can’t read without putting his finger under the words, and only with difficulty then.’

That’s a habit, we can get him out of it.‘

‘I’ve been trying to get him out of it for ten years and I haven’t got anywhere.’

‘Well, that’s not the end of the world. He hasn’t failed any exams. He hasn’t had any tests that he did very badly in, he’ll get the Inter, won’t he?’ Brother Gerald began to speak and then paused as if changing his mind. ‘No, go on, Brother please, we’re not fighting over Laddy. We both want the best for him. Tell me what I should know.’

‘He’s never failed a test, Rose, because he’s never done a test. I wouldn’t put a humiliation like that on Laddy. Why let the boy be last all the time?’

‘And what do you do with Laddy when the others are doing a test?’

‘I ask him to do messages for me, he’s a good-natured reliable lad.’

‘What kind of messages, Brother?’

‘Ah, you know, carrying boxes of books and stoking up the fire in the teachers’ room, and bringing something down to the post office.’

‘So I’m paying fees in this school for my brother to be a skivvy to the Brothers, is this what you’re telling me?’

‘Rose Byrne,’ the man’s eyes were full of tears. ‘Will you stop getting the wrong end of things. And what fees are you talking about? A few pounds a year. Laddy’s happy with us, you know that. Isn’t that the best we can do for him? There isn’t a notion of putting him in for the Inter or any exam, you must know that. The boy is slow, that’s all I’m saying. I wish that was all I had to say about many a boy that went through the school.’

‘What will I do with him, Brother? I thought he might go to an agricultural college, you know, to learn about farming.’

‘It would be over his head, Rose, even, if Joe were to get in which he wouldn’t.’

‘But how will he run the farm?’

‘He won’t run the farm. You’ll run the farm. You’ve always known that.’

She hadn’t known. Not until that minute.

She came home with a heavy heart.

Shay Neil was forking manure into a heap. He nodded his usual dour jerk of the head. Laddy’s old dog Tripper barked a welcome home. Laddy himself came to the door.

‘Did Brother Gerald say anything against me?’ he asked fearfully.

‘He said you were the most helpful lad that ever came into the school.’ Without realising it she had almost started to talk to him as if he were a toddler, speaking down to him in soothing baby talk. She fought to check it.

But Laddy hadn’t noticed. His big face was one huge smile. ‘He did?’

‘Yes, he said you were great to make up a fire and carry the books and do the messages.’ She tried to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

‘Well, he doesn’t trust a lot of them, but he does trust me.’ Laddy was proud.

‘I’ve a bit of a headache, Laddy. Do you know what would be great, could you make me a cup of tea and bring it up to me with a slice of soda bread, and then maybe make Shay’s tea for him?’

‘Will I cut him two bits of ham and a tomato?’

‘That’s right, Laddy, that would be great.’

She went upstairs and lay on her bed. How had she not seen how backward he was? Did parents feel this about children, fiercely overprotective?

Well she’d never know now. She wasn’t going to marry anyone, was she? She was going to live here with her slow brother and the dour hired man. There was no future to look forward to. It would always be just more of the same. The light had gone out of a lot of what she did now.

Every week she wrote a letter to one of her sisters, so they all heard from her once a month. She had been telling the little titbits about the farm and about Laddy. She found the letters hard to write now. Did they realise that their brother was slow? Was all their praise and gratitude because she had given up her life to look after him?

She hadn’t
known
this was what she was doing; she had thought she had taken time out of her youth, cut short her nursing career because of the accident. She felt bitter about her parents. Why were they pulling a bloody cart across, and why didn’t they leave it and run to save themselves?

She had a birthday card for a niece with a ten-shilling note to send, and as she put it in the envelope she realised that the others must think she was well paid for her trouble. She had a farm of land. If they only knew how much she didn’t want it, that she would have handed it to the first person who passed by if she thought they would give Laddy a happy home for the rest of his life.

The carnival came to town every summer. Rose took Laddy and they went on the bumpers and the chair-o-planes. They went in the ghost train and he clung onto her with cries of terror, but then wanted another shilling so that they could do it again. She saw various people from the town, all of them saluting her warmly. Rose Byrne was someone who was admired. Now she saw why. They were praising her for having signed on for life.

Her brother was having a great day.

‘Can we spend the egg money?’ he asked.

‘Some of it, not all of it.’

‘But what would be better to spend it on than a carnival?’ he asked, and she watched him go to the Three Ring stall and win her a statue of the Sacred Heart. He carried it back to her bursting with pride.

A voice beside her said, ‘I’ll take that back to the farm, you won’t want to be carrying it round all day,’ and there was Shay Neil. ‘I can put it in the bicycle bag,’ he said.

It was kind of him, because the big statue, hopelessly wrapped in newspaper, would have been a cumbersome weight to carry.

Rose smiled at him gratefully. ‘Well, Shay, aren’t you the great fellow, always there when you’re wanted?’

‘Thank you, Rose,’ he said.

There was something about his voice, as if he had been drinking. She looked at him sharply. Well, why not? It was his day off, he was allowed to drink if he wanted to. It couldn’t have been a great life for him either, living in that outhouse, forking dung, milking cows. He didn’t have any friends, any family that she knew of. Wasn’t a few whiskies on a day out only a bit of comfort to him? She moved away and directed Laddy towards the fortune teller. ‘Will we give it a try?’ she asked.

He was so pleased that she was staying at the carnival. He had feared she might want to go home. ‘I’d love my fortune told,’ he said. Gypsy Ella looked for a long time at his hand. She saw great successes at games and sport ahead for him, a long life, a job working with people. And travel. There would be travel over the water. Rose sighed. It had been fine so far, why had she mentioned travel? Laddy would never go abroad unless she were to take him. It didn’t look like anything that would happen. ‘Now you, Rose,’ he said. Gypsy Ella looked up, pleased. ‘Ah, but we know my future, Laddy.’

‘Do we?’

‘My future is running the farm with you.’

‘But I’ll be meeting people and going over the water travelling,’ he said.

‘True, true,’ Rose agreed.

‘So have your hand read, go on, Rose.’ He waited eagerly.

Gypsy Ella saw that Rose would marry within a year, that she would have one child and that this would bring her great happiness. ‘And will I be going over the water?’ she asked, more from politeness than anything else.

No, Gypsy Ella saw no travel for Rose. She saw some poor health, but not for a long time. The two half crowns were paid and they got another ice cream before going home. The walk seemed long tonight, she was glad she didn’t have to carry the statue.

Laddy talked on about the great day and how he wasn’t really frightened by the ghost train. Rose looked into the fire and thought about Gypsy Ella, what a strange way to make a living moving on from town to town with the same set of people. Maybe she was married to the man in the bumpers.

Laddy went to bed with the comics she had bought him and Rose wondered what they were all doing in the carnival now. It would be closing soon. The coloured light would be switched off, the people would go to their caravans. Tripper lay beside the fire snoring gently, upstairs Larry would have fallen asleep. Outside it was dark.

Rose thought of the marriage and the one child and the ill health late in life. They should really put a stop to these kind of sideshows. Some people were foolish enough to believe them.

She woke in the dark thinking she was being suffocated. A great weight lay on top of her, she began to struggle and panic. Had the wardrobe fallen over? Had some of the roof fallen down? As she started to move and cry out a hand went across her mouth. She smelled alcohol. She realised in a moment of sick recognition that Shay Neil was in her bed, lying on top of her.

She struggled to free her head from his hand. ‘Please Shay,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Shay, don’t do this.’

‘You’ve been begging for it,’ he said, still pushing at her, trying to get her legs apart.

‘Shay, I haven’t. I don’t want you to do this. Shay, leave now, we’ll say no more about it.’

‘Why are you whispering then?’ He spoke in a whisper too.

‘So as not to wake Laddy, frighten him.’