Nora Webster (31 page)

In the morning, which was Sunday, she spoke to Conor before he went to mass. He seemed most concerned that she would not think he had been moved because of anything he had done or failed to do.

“He just moved us,” he said. “And we don’t know anyone in the B-class.”

At mass she could barely concentrate. When a woman in front of the cathedral afterwards admired her suntan, she barely responded and then felt guilty as she walked home. As the day went on she felt more and more resolute, so, early that evening when she rang the bell of the Christian Brothers monastery she was determined that she would have Conor put back into the A-class where he belonged. When the door was finally answered by a young Christian Brother, she asked to speak to Brother Herlihy.

“I am not sure that he’s available,” he said.

“I’ll wait,” she replied.

He did not invite her into the hallway.

“Tell him that I’m Nora Webster, Maurice Webster’s widow, and I need to see him now.”

The young Christian Brother examined her cautiously and invited her in and closed the front door behind her.

As she waited, she noticed more than anything else the silence in the monastery. It was like desolation. She did not know how many brothers lived here but she guessed ten or fifteen. They all had their own cells, she thought, like prisoners, but there was something almost worse than prison about the place, the bare tiles on the floor, the long stained-glass window in the stairwell, everything polished and stark and unwelcoming, a place where every sound and every movement could be noted and heard.

Brother Herlihy seemed very cheerful when he arrived and led her into a reception room on the right.

“Now, Mrs. Webster, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“My son, Conor Webster, has just gone into fifth class. And I was away and when I came back I discovered that he had been moved into the B-class.”

“Ah well, it’s not really a B-class.”

“It’s not the class he was in before.”

“Yes, we’re making some changes, just to try and even things out a bit between the two classes.”

“Well, I’d rather if you moved him back into the A-class.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“The roll-books are all done, and the names have been sent to the Department.”

“That’s not a problem. You can easily make a change to that.”

“Mrs. Webster, I run the school.”

“Brother Herlihy, I’m sure you run it very well. As you know, my husband was a teacher in the secondary school for many years.”

“Yes, he is very much missed.”

“And you would not have moved Conor if my husband were still teaching.”

“Ah, now, Mrs. Webster, many considerations went into the decision.”

“None of them interests me, Brother. I am interested only in Conor’s education.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do anything about it at this late stage.”

“Brother Herlihy, I didn’t come down here to ask you to move Conor back into the A-class.”

“Oh?”

“I came down to tell you to do it.”

“As I said, I run the school.”

“I hope you heard what I said.”

“I did, Mrs. Webster, but it can’t be done.”

He moved to accompany her out of the reception room. In the hall he put his hand on her shoulder.

“How are all the family?”

“That’s none of your business, Brother Herlihy.”

“Ah, now,” he said and smiled, rubbing his hands together.

“You will be hearing from me,” she said, as he opened the door for her. “And you will find that when I am crossed I am very formidable.”

At home, she found notepaper and an envelope and wrote a letter: “Dear Brother Herlihy, If, by next Friday, Conor is not moved back to the A-class, please be advised that I will take action against you.” She signed her name and walked back down to the monastery, rang the bell again and handed the letter to the young Christian Brother who had answered the door to her earlier.

Later that evening, she wrote down the names of all the teachers in the Christian Brothers, both primary and secondary, whom she knew. For a few of them, she could remember their home addresses; for the rest, she would write to them at the school.

To each of them she wrote the same letter:

As you may be aware, my son Conor Webster, who is in fifth class in the primary school, has been moved from the A-class to the B-class without any notice or any justification. As you also must know, this would not have happened were his father still alive and teaching in the school. This is to put you on notice that I will not tolerate what has occurred. If Conor is not back in the A-class by next Friday, then on Monday morning I will put a picket on the school. If you travel to work by car, I will stand in front of your car and prevent it entering the gates of the school. If you travel by foot, I will stand in front of you. I will continue the picket until Conor is returned to the A-class. Yours sincerely,

Nora Webster.

She did not have enough envelopes but resolved that she would buy some on her way home from work and write the addresses on
them at the desk in the post office. Since she had fourteen teachers’ names, she wrote her letter out fourteen times.

In the morning when she woke, she felt a new energy and realised that she did not mind going back to work after her holiday. She chose clothes from the wardrobe that she thought would make her look most dignified. As she walked to work across the town, the idea that the letters were in her handbag gave her pleasure. At work there were several notes on her desk with queries that had arisen while she was away. She dealt with each one briskly and by ten thirty had settled down to a pile of invoices which needed to be entered into a ledger.

“I think you could do my work and your own as well,” Elizabeth Gibney said, “if we just left you to it.”

“Some mornings,” Nora replied, “my mind is clear. Do you find that?”

“Not on Mondays, I don’t,” Elizabeth said.

She posted the letters that afternoon and waited, but nothing happened. Over the following days as she walked home from work, she expected to see one of the teachers she had written to, but she did not. Later in the week she walked downtown as the schoolday ended, but still she saw no one.

On Saturday morning she went to Jim Sheehan’s in Rafter Street and bought a long, thin, flat piece of wood and some nails and then she went to Godfrey’s in the Market Square and bought a black marker, a large piece of cardboard, white paper and thumbtacks. She tried to think what she would put on the placard and concluded that it would be best not to put anything about A-classes and B-classes and not too much detail. She wondered if
I WANT JUSTICE
would be best and then thought
I DEMAND JUSTICE
might be better. She also decided to tell both Donal and Conor not to go to school on Monday and to explain to them as best she could that she was preparing to mount a protest
outside the school and it would be a good idea if they were at home studying on their own while this was happening. She was not sure, however, how they would respond to this and wondered if she might try some other approach. She would wait, she thought, until Sunday evening before telling Fiona what she intended to do.

On Sunday evening at about seven a car pulled up outside the door. Two teachers from the secondary school, Val Dempsey and John Kerrigan, both of whom she had written to, got out of the car. For the first time, she felt afraid, as though all the courage of the previous week had dissolved and there was nothing except her pride and the threats she had made. She opened the front door for the two teachers before they had time to knock and ushered them into the front room.

“We’re very concerned,” Val Dempsey said, “about the letter you sent. You know, we had nothing but respect for Maurice.”

They both remained standing and she did not ask them to sit down. Somehow, Val Dempsey’s tone had restored her determination.

“I can understand that you’re upset,” he continued.

“I’m not upset at all,” she interrupted. “What made you think that?”

“Well, your letter—”

“My letter simply said that if Conor was not put back in the A-class, I would picket the school. So I have the placard upstairs. Would you like to see it? And don’t think I won’t stand in front of you tomorrow morning, because I will.”

“That would be ill-advised,” John Kerrigan said.

“I didn’t look for anyone’s advice. If my husband were alive, Brother Herlihy would not have picked on Conor in this way.”

“Well, the other parents—”

“I have no interest in the other parents.”

“We wondered if you would call off the picket in the morning,” Val Dempsey said. “And then we’ll see what we can do.”

“You’ve had three or four days and you have done nothing.”

“Well, there was a lot of talk about it among the teachers.”

“Talk, I’m sure, is wonderful, but tomorrow morning there will be more than talk, and perhaps if you are talking to any of your colleagues tonight you might mention to them that I will curse any teacher who passes my picket. I think you might have heard of the power of a widow’s curse.”

“Ah, here now,” John Kerrigan said.

“I will curse anyone who passes me.”

The two men looked at each other and then stared at the ground.

“Maybe we’ll go and see Brother Herlihy tonight,” Val Dempsey said.

They stood in silence for a moment and then she opened the door of the room and accompanied them both into the hallway.

“We’ll let you know if there’s any news,” John Kerrigan said.

She did not smile, but looked at him gravely.

Within an hour Val Dempsey and John Kerrigan returned. It would be harder this time, were Fiona or the boys to ask, to think of an excuse for their visit. She would have to tell them that it was about books and notebooks that Maurice used for teaching and that she was going to donate to the school. Both Fiona and Conor came into the hallway to look as Nora led the two teachers into the front room and closed the door.

“We left one sore Christian Brother down in the monastery,” Val Dempsey said.

“He said he wouldn’t be bullied or ordered around,” John Kerrigan said. “We told him how much you were respected in the town, and all your family. But he still wouldn’t budge.”

“Then we had to tell him,” Val Dempsey said, “that he and the other brothers would be on their own in the school, because no teacher would pass the picket. He went mad when he heard about the picket. No one had told him what was in your letter.”

“He said a few things that I wouldn’t repeat,” John Kerrigan said. “A bit surprising coming from a Christian Brother.”

She smiled at the sound of this, and at how earnest the two teachers seemed. But she became serious as Val Dempsey spoke.

“So we sat down and informed him that we weren’t leaving until it was sorted out. God, he was very red in the face. He said it was his school and he would do what he liked. So we just sat there looking at him.”

“I made clear to him eventually,” John Kerrigan said, “that he could settle this simply and easily. And he asked how and I told him fair and square that he could put the young fellow back into the other class and no one would think any the worse of him.”

“He told me he wouldn’t be threatened, but that if we left it with him he would consider what to do.”

“So we told him no, that we needed a decision now. And he walked up and down the room and eventually he stopped and said that he would do nothing tomorrow, he would not be bullied about tomorrow, but some day during the week he would move the lad back into the A-class. And we told him that would be fine and we decided to get out of there while the going was good.”

“So I hope that’s all right with you?” Val Dempsey asked.

“It is better than all right, it is perfect,” she said. “And I am very grateful to the two of you.”

She was almost going to apologise for invoking the curse, but decided not to. It might make it seem as though she had not meant everything else she had said. She accompanied them to the hall and wished them good night then went into the front room and watched
them driving away. She was not sure how to feel. No one would believe her, she thought, if she told them that she had the materials to make a placard upstairs in her bedroom and that she had threatened all the teachers in the Christian Brothers school with a curse.