The Brothers' Lot (10 page)

“Ave Maria, gratia plena,” intoned Brother Kennedy. He paused and turned to the boys to indicate that they should repeat. They shambled out something that sounded like “Have a Maria grassy airplaner.”

“Dominus tecum.”

“Dominoes take ’em.”

“Benedicta tu in mulieribus.”

“Benedict Twohey in the early bus.”

“Et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.”

“Ate Benny dicked us, fucked us, dangerous Twohey jaysus.”

“Sancta Maria, mater Dei.”

“Sank to Maria, matter day.”

“Ora pro nobis peccatoribus.”

“Oh, rat, provo bus peck a Tory bus.”

“Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.”

“New kettle Nora, more tits no stray.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

“In nomine Partii et filii et spiritus sancti.”

“In ammonia Patrick ate filly ate spirits from Santy.”

Brother Kennedy blessed himself and returned to the desk, oblivious to the blasphemy he had just occasioned. From among his books he took a small blue piece of paper. He viciously rubbed Mr. Pollock’s work off the blackboard.

“Copy this down,” he said, and began to write at the top left of the board. From experience, the boys guessed that they were in for a long bout of copying. “I doubt any of you baboons will recognize this but it is the translation text that was on your Inter Cert exam, which I am sure you all made a complete dog’s dinner of.” Brother Kennedy stopped when he had half filled the board. “I think that will be enough for the moment,” he said derisively.

Cum dies hibernorum complures transissent frumentumque eo comportari iussisset, subito per exploratores certior factus est ex ea parte vici, quam Gallis concesserat, omnes noctu discessisse montesque qui impenderent a maxima multitudine Sedunorum et Veragrorum teneri. Id aliquot de causis acciderat, ut subito Galli belli renovandi legionisque opprimendae consilium caperent: primum, quod legionem neque eam plenissimam detractis cohortibus duabus et compluribus singillatim, qui commeatus petendi causa missi erant, absentibus propter paucitatem despiciebant; tum etiam, quod propter iniquitatem loci, cum ipsi ex montibus in vallem decurrerent et tela coicerent, ne primum quidem impetum suum posse sustineri existimabant
stood incomprehensibly on the blackboard in front of the boys.

“Well?” inquired Brother Kennedy.

“Sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir!” pleaded McDonagh, waving his hand frantically in the air.

“Yes, Mr. McDonagh?”

“It’s Latin, Brother,” beamed McDonagh.

It was hard to know exactly what motivated McDonagh sometimes. He knew Brother Kennedy was a psychotic bastard. If born in another place and time, McDonagh might have become a national hero, scaling unscalable mountains with a few bits of sash rope, a sturdy pair of sandals, and a good tweed jacket; or crossing the Atlantic single-handedly on an oversized Saint Bridget’s Cross woven by blind monks. As things stood, however, he would be lucky to make it through fifth year alive for being so foolhardy.

“And?” asked Kennedy with a razor edge in his voice. “You will translate the first sentence as far as
transissent.”

McDonagh peered at the board. Stalling desperately, he pointed at the top line: “Is that
comprures
?”

“Where, boy?”

“The fourth word, Brother.”

“No, that is
complures
.”

“Ah, right,” mused McDonagh.

“Well? We don’t have all day.”

McDonagh peered at the board and the letters danced incomprehensibly in front of him. He thought hard and pointed at some words as if breaking down the phrase into the most translatable units. “Hibernian days came complaining—”

“Out to the line, you clown!” barked Brother Kennedy.

McDonagh put the most hurt expression imaginable on his face and walked, head down, out to the line.

“Mr., ehm, let me see, Mr. Lynch then.”

Lynch stared at the blackboard as if it had just fallen flaming from the sky. “As the god of the Hibernians—”

“Out to the line, you ignorant guttersnipe!”

Lynch strode eagerly out to the line and stood at attention beside McDonagh.

“Mr., ehm, Sullivan.”

Finbar stood up. He knew this; this was easy. He could still picture it on the page with the engraving of those mountains and Declan’s stupid attempts at translation written in the margins. He knew the moment he stood up he was not going to put himself in the way of a beating just to keep company with McDonagh and Lynch. He could see already that Brother Kennedy was heading for bright purple boiling point. The rest of them already had him labeled as a sap, and getting himself leathered in PE hadn’t done him any good.

“When several days had elapsed in winter quarters,” he said slowly and confidently, then sat down.

Without comment Brother Kennedy scribbled the translation below the text. “Copy!” he shouted.

The boys copied down the translation. For all they knew,
complures
meant
winter,
but they at least had a translation.

“Continue, Mr., ehm, Ferrara.”

Ferrara stood up and scratched his head.

“Come on, boy! The language of your forefathers,” sneered Brother Kennedy.

Ferrara scratched his head more vigorously and began to blink repeatedly.

“Iussisset? What is it, Mr. Ferrara? It’s like trying to get blood out of a turnip!”

“Jesus said?” hazarded Ferrara.

“God grant me strength! Out to the line, you uneducated balooba!” Brother Kennedy’s face was bright red and beads of sweat were beginning to twinkle on his scalp.

By the time Brother Kennedy got to
ex ea parte vici,
almost half of the class were out on the line and he himself was approaching apoplectic. Scully had saved himself by having actually recognized a couple of words, Mullen had taken Finbar’s whispered prompt, and Bradshaw, who had repeated his Inter Cert three times, knew the translation by heart and took a good guess at which bit he should regurgitate.

When Brother Kennedy called on O’Connor, the boy stood up, looked at the board, and walked straight out to the line with a hopeless shrug of his shoulders.

The boredom of standing on the line was starting to take its toll on Lynch. “Go on, Macker, faint. Go on!” he whispered.

“Nah, it’s too early,” answered McDonagh.

Just in time, Brother Boland’s bell rang out the end of class and morning break.

“You will all write out that passage ten times for punishment!” shouted Kennedy, and he leathered each boy once on his way out the door.

Finbar fled down the stairs with the throng. He reached the yard and watched all the boys break into little groups like spilled mercury. He moved to the edge of the small yard and looked across the big yard and noticed the seething cluster of bodies beside the grotto of Our Lady of Indefinite Duration.

In the granite wall beside the grotto there was a hatch two feet tall and three feet wide. It was so high off the ground that the smaller boys had to stand on their tiptoes just to get their eyes at the level of the countertop. Larger boys took hold of one the metal bars that ran horizontally across the opening. Behind the bars Brother Boland was selling snacks.

Finbar watched as a bulky third year took stock of the line, stepped back, and then took a run at the hatch. He launched himself, rugby style, up and over the knot of bodies and grabbed on to the uppermost horizontal bar. Using that purchase he hauled himself through the knot to the counter’s edge and began to shout: “Trigger bar and a packidge of salt ’n’ vinegar, Brother! Trigger bar and a packidge of salt ’n’ vinegar, Brother! Trigger bar and a packidge of salt ’n’ vinegar, Brother!”

Finbar took a run and launched himself into the crowd. He grabbed the middle bar and pulled himself to the counter at the expense of three smaller boys, one of whom lost his tentative grip on the bar and fell backward on to the ground.

“Trigger bar and a packet of cheese ’n’ onion, please, Brother! Trigger bar and a packet of cheese ’n’ onion, please, Brother!” Finbar chanted, forcing his voice as much as he could into a resemblance of the Dublin accents around him. “Trigger bar and a packet of cheese ’n’ onion, please, Brother! Trigger bar and a packet of cheese ’n’ onion, please, Brother!” he shouted with increased vigor as he sensed his turn was coming.

Brother Boland acknowledged his order, turned, and grabbed the Trigger bar. Just as he was about to hand it over, he stopped suddenly and looked at his watch. He released the bar in the general direction of the box from which he had taken it, rang his handbell in the boys’ faces, and then lurched forward with sinewy speed, his leather already magically in his other hand. He smacked the countertop and the bars rapidly to drive off the boys’ hands and reached up. Finbar just got his hand away before the heavy wooden shutter slammed down. Instantly the knot of boys around the shop undid itself and drifted back toward the school.

Well that was just fecking great
, thought Finbar bitterly, and sulked back to the yard.

Brother Boland fumbled in the darkness of the shop and switched on the light. Carefully he counted the takings, subtracted the float, and jotted the closing balance in the little black notebook that lived in the lid of the cash box. He locked it with the small key on his key ring and listened carefully at the door. When he was satisfied that the silence outside reflected an acceptable lack of menace, he carefully inserted the big key in the door and turned it as stealthily as he could.

He opened the door a crack and peered out. The yard was deserted. He turned off the light, poked his head out to give him a wider view, then slid through the door. He clutched the cash box under his arm while he locked the door again.

Glancing around him warily as he scurried across the big yard, he noticed a big truck parked at the side of the hall. As he stopped and watched, three men in overalls jumped out of the cab and looked around them in what struck Brother Boland as a very sinister, almost proprietary way. He tightened his grip on the cash box and increased his pace, finally breaking into the closest thing to a run he had achieved in almost twenty years.

Brother Mulligan, Brother Cox, and Brother Tobin were sitting at the big table in the refectory when Brother Boland burst in clutching the cash box as if someone had just tried to wrest it from him with unspeakable force.

“Men! Big truck! Lower yard! They’re here already! Beginning of the end!” he croaked at them through his labored breathing.

“What are you babbling about?” asked Brother Tobin sternly.

Brother Boland staggered to a chair and caught his breath in frantic gulps. “There are men in a big truck in the lower yard. Look like builders. It’s them! They’re here to start building the warehouse!”

Brother Tobin looked at Brother Cox who looked at Brother Mulligan who looked at Brother Boland who in turn continued to stare into Brother Tobin’s face. A tiny web of tension wove itself around the four of them and the more they struggled against it, the more inextricably they became enmeshed in Brother Boland’s contagious panic.

“Show us where!” the panic said as it forced its way out of Cox’s mouth.

Brother Tobin helped Brother Boland up and the four of them shuffled at their combined top speed out of the refectory and down the parquet corridor, just managing to avoid Mrs. McCurtin who was on her hands and knees trying to remove a particularly stubborn stain.

When they reached the double doors that led to the yard, all four tried to go through at the same time and it was this mess of tangled limbs that Brother Loughlin came upon as he returned from his office to have words with Mrs. McCurtin about the rust on the statue of Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly in his office.

“What in the name of God is going on here?” he bellowed.

“Men in the yard with a truck,” explained Cox.

“This is how is starts,” intoned Brother Boland in the ominous voice of some cavern-bound seer.

“Builders!” hissed Brother Mulligan.

“Builders?” guffawed Brother Loughlin. “Don’t you think I would know if there were builders coming to the school?”

“It’s them. The warehouse people,” Brother Boland whispered fearfully.

“Well let’s go see these ‘builders’ then, shall we?” announced Brother Loughlin condescendingly, and assumed a lead position as the rest of them extricated themselves from the doorway.

“Oh-oh. Here comes trouble,” muttered Matt when he saw the group of Brothers approach, their cassocks flapping in the wind.

Lar and Con, his assistants, stood on either side of him and they waited for the Brothers to reach them.

“I bet the fat baldy one is the leader. You can always tell the leaders. They’re fat but they don’t move like fat people. I’ve noticed that,” observed Lar.

“Now, there’s a thing. Mussolini was a bit tubby all right but then Stalin was a skinny little fucker. Mind you, I never saw either of them walk so I couldn’t really say,” said Con.

Matt shook his head in despair. Every day he had this crap to put up with. Every day Con and Lar would muse on the vagaries of how baldness skips a generation or discuss the complexities of the messenger network used by the Incas. All sorts of stuff. He had no idea where they got it. Lunchtimes were the worst.

Brother Loughlin stopped about five feet from the trio of Matt, Con, and Lar. The other Brothers stood behind him and peered suspiciously.

“Is there something we can help you with?” asked Brother Loughlin haughtily.

“There was a load of old radiators and pipes we were supposed to pick up,” answered Matt.

“Well, I’m afraid you are in the wrong place. There are no radiators here. Who sent you?”

“The depot. They said there was sixty radiators and eight hundred foot of pipe to be took away.”

“Well, the depot made a mistake. Now, if you would please take yourselves and your vehicle off the premises before …” menaced Brother Loughlin, emboldened to a more high-handed approach by Matt’s faulty grammar.

“Ah, but you see now, Brother, I’d love to oblige you but I have a docket. I can’t leave until I get the scrap on the list and get the pickup signed for. Once a docket goes out of the depot the contents has to be picked up and signed for. Y’understand?” Matt held up the yellow form as incontrovertible proof that there were indeed radiators and pipes to be taken away. A docket could not lie.