The Brothers' Lot (11 page)

Con and Lar nodded in solemn agreement with this sentiment. They were not fly-by-nights who went around grabbing stray bits of scrap. They were serious professionals who had a depot that issued dockets that had to be signed and put into files.

“May I see that?” Brother Loughlin held out his hand.

Matt handed over the docket. “You see, Brother, there it is in black and white.”

Brother Loughlin looked carefully at the paper.
Brannigan Brothers, Purveyors of Fine Scrap Metals
, it declared across the top in bold print. Granted, the rest of it was all in a scrawl, but it was clear enough: sixty radiators and eight hundred feet of pipe to be removed for scrap from the Brothers School at Greater Little Werburgh Street, North.

“Wait one moment!” snapped Brother Loughlin suddenly. “This is the wrong date! This is dated next June!”

Matt snatched the docket back and glared at it. “I’ll have to go back to the depot and get this looked into. This isn’t right,” he said glumly, and climbed back into the truck.

Con and Lar shrugged at one another and climbed up into the passenger side of the cab. The motor hawked and retched into life and the heavy truck lumbered away, leaving the Brothers staring after them in a cloud of filthy smoke.

Brother Loughlin watched the truck pass out the gate and turn up Greater Little Werburgh Street, North, with smug satisfaction. “I think that puts an end to that.”

“But why were they here at all?” asked Brother Boland. “What depot did they come from? Who sent them?”

“Matter a damn! They’re gone now and that’s all there is to it! There’s no big mystery in it,” snapped Brother Loughlin impatiently. He strode away toward the yard.

“Maybe he’s right,” said Brother Tobin.

“Yes. Just a silly mistake,” concurred Cox.

“No! No! No! They are part of it! Don’t you see? Any outsiders could be part of it! How can we be safe?”

“I think you need a little lie-down, Brother,” said Tobin, and glanced meaningfully at Cox and Mulligan.

“Yes, Brother. It’s been a trying episode. You should take a little rest for yourself,” the latter murmured, trying unsuccessfully to keep the condescension out of his voice.

“Blackguards! They’re all blackguards! Good God! Where did I leave my cash box?” Brother Boland glanced around and then hurried off toward the monastery.

13

A
fter tea, alone in the dark, Brother Boland listened carefully to the oratory. It breathed its silence into his own. It seemed to be waiting. It was ready for his prayers.

He rubbed the beads of his rosary together and opened and closed his lips rapidly. He was not entirely aware of what prayers he was reciting. They were coming more from his fingers and his lips than his mind. His mind was flinging unclear worry and anxiousness in the direction of the Lord in the hope of remedying whatever was lurking in the silence. It was indeed a great gesture of faith in the Creator’s omniscience that Brother Boland expected Him to understand any of the inchoate rattle his mind was putting forth.

Brother Tobin sat on the edge of his cot and regarded Saint Dearbhla while he tried to move a stubborn piece of the word “breast” from between his teeth. On his knees lay
Where the Trade Winds Call Love
. He had already given himself heartburn by eating the buxom hussy draped shamelessly across the pirate captain on the cover. He vowed to burn covers in future and concentrate on eating only the words.

He had to get this sliver out of his teeth. That was what she wanted, all those shameful words consumed by the bile of his innards and shat out to the sewers where they belonged. It was at moments like this that Tobin wondered what had ever happened to the letter he’d sent to the Pope detailing his devotions to Saint Dearbhla and requesting permission to start his own Brotherhood, Holy Hoplites of Saint Dearbhla.

“Get away out of that and leave me alone!”

Brother Cox brushed another half-glimpsed imp off his shoulder. He shivered. He was cold, chilled to the marrow. That was it, he thought, ignoring as best he could the creature that seemed to be forming itself out of the shadows. All he needed was a little something to warm himself up. Then he’d be fine. He didn’t necessarily
need
a drink; he just felt like one.

When the high-pitched squealing started, Brother Cox had no idea what to make of it. Then he started to wonder if it was coming from the thing in the corner. He looked to see that the shadowy homunculus was halfway up the wall, hanging on in an unnatural, sticky, viscous way that put a little catch of disgust at the back of his throat.

He wrenched his cell door open and hurried down the corridor, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the redemptive point of light at the top of the stairs. He would not turn around and make eye contact with whatever was leering off the walls at him. Just down the stairs, out through the monastery, and a hot whiskey or two— and he’d be fine. Then he’d be able to sleep.

“Where the hell were you until this hour? We were worried sick! You could have been down a lane with a knife in your back for all we knew! Didn’t you think we had enough to worry about with Declan running away like that?” shouted Mr. Sullivan. Finbar had barely closed the hall door behind him when his father had rushed out of the kitchen to grab him by the collar and shake him.

“I got lost,” answered Finbar quietly.

“Got lost? How the hell did you get lost?”

“I walked back from games. I couldn’t get a bus.”

“Walked back from games? What games?”

“They have a games field away from the school near the power station.”

“Are you gone soft in the head? What do you think we gave you the bus fare for? Is it simple you’ve gone on us? Did you even think for a second about what you were at? Did you? Did you?”

Finbar made no reply. Slowly his father’s anger subsided and was tempered by the relief that Finbar was not in fact Down A Lane With A Knife In His Back.

“Your dinner’s on the cooker,” said Mr. Sullivan gruffly but not without affection.

Finbar put down his bags and hung his blazer on the hallstand. He walked carefully into the kitchen, braced for another barrage from his mother. There was no sign of her. He heard his father rustling the evening paper in the sitting room and decided it was best not to ask him anything. He could guess.

The stew was on low heat and showed all signs of having been there for about three hours. He put as much of it as looked remotely edible on a plate and sat at the table. The tablecloth was gone. He took a newspaper from the pile beside the door and put it under his plate. He knew the signals. His dinner could have been turned off and heated up when he got home. The tablecloth could have been left on the table until he’d had his dinner. But no, these ritual, guilt-inducing symbols, combined with his mother’s withdrawal to the bedroom, were part of the slow punishment of disapproval, disappointment, and hurt that lasted so much longer and cut so much deeper than any beating or shouting. He took one mouthful of the burnt martyr—flavored stew and threw the rest out into the backyard for the pigeons.

As he bolted the back door he sensed someone behind him. He turned to see his father standing against the sink. He looked incredibly tired. Finbar had never seen his father look this way before: tired, worried, and just a little bit lost.

“He took all the money out of the tea caddy,” Mr. Sullivan said softly.

Finbar nodded.

“He could be anywhere.”

Finbar nodded helplessly. He had no idea what to say to this. His father was generally a silent man of decision and action, not a man who asked for advice or help.

“Well, you lock up, like a good lad. I’m going to bed. I have to go to that stupid job at half past six. Don’t stay up late, you have school in the morning,” Mr. Sullivan murmured almost absently before drifting into the hall and up the stairs.

Finbar poured himself a glass of milk and stood at the sink. He shrugged at the pale stars that peeked out of the sliver of sky behind the coal shed. He noticed two new geraniums in pots outside on the windowsill, his father’s latest attempt to brighten the cement-covered yard. He decided it was not the time to tell his parents that games day at his new school was a washout and consisted of picking stones off a newly dug field to refurbish the grotto of Our Lady of Indefinite Duration. But then there was never likely to be a good time to tell them that.

14

H
i! You there, me lad.”

The burly man with the ladder stopped his slow progress across the yard and turned. He stared levelly at Brother Loughlin: “The name’s Matthews, Matt Matthews.”

“Oh! So you’re the electrician?”

“That’s what it says on the side of me van.” Matt gestured to the gate where his two assistants were unloading toolboxes from a battered van bearing the sign
Brannigan Brothers, Electrical Contractors
.

Brother Loughlin peered at the two other men and furrowed his brow. There was something disconcertingly familiar about Matthews and the men. He turned to question Matt, who was already up on the ladder inspecting the clock.

“So? Can you fix it?” asked Brother Loughlin.

“I might if I could get a moment’s peace to have a look at it.”

Brother Loughlin bridled at the workman’s sharp tone but bit his lip. Things had completely gone to the dogs. God be with the days when a tradesman would have been only too happy to come to his school to fix his bell. And would have kept a civil tongue in his head too! He was interrupted by two soft, wheedling voices behind him.

“There ye are now, Brother.”

“Morning, Brother, soft day now, thank God.”

Brother Loughlin turned and found himself being nodded to by Lar and Con. Each carried a small toolbox and tipped his tweed cap respectfully at him.

“You look very familiar. Don’t I know you?” asked Brother Loughlin.

“Don’t think so. You must have us confused with someone else.”

“This clock has had it. It’s all broke, completely banjaxed,” declared Matt, and handed the big clock down to Lar.

“It takes three of you to change a clock?” asked Brother Loughlin archly.

“Oh no, Matt does all that. I’m here in case there’s any socket work. Con here does meters and relays. From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs,” explained Lar.

“Where’s the fuse box for this?” asked Matt.

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. McDermott, the janitor.”

“I’ll find it meself, thanks all the same. I don’t need to have any truck with some jumped-up janitor,” said Matt as climbed down the ladder. He walked off in search of the fuse box leaving Brother Loughlin standing with Con and Lar.

“Is it fixed?” asked Brother Boland, suddenly appearing in the doorway.

“Not yet, Brother. You are still on bell duty until I tell you otherwise.”

Brother Loughlin flinched a little when he saw the look of maniacal glee that momentarily possessed Boland’s face, before it and its bearer disappeared back into the school.

Lar peered inside the discarded clock. “Looks like one of the differentiators fused,” he said sagely.

“I don’t think that model has a differentiator. It’s a Volta 5-20, isn’t it?” ventured Con.

“You know your models all right, but I think you’ll find it has two differentiators.”

“Ah no, the differentiators didn’t come in until the 5-80.”

“You might have a point there. Still, it’s a Volta all right.”

“Ah yeah, the Volta is yer only man for the regularity.”

“You never said a truer word.”

“Still and all, mind you, I always thought the Merrifield was a grand make of clock too.”

“Them’s the ones made in Sheffield, is it?”

“Oh yeah. Sheffield. The Toledo of the North.”

“I never heard that one before.”

“Oh yeah, famous for swords it used to be.”

“Isn’t that a gas thing now all the same?”

“Used to be the capital of Spain at one point.”

“Sheffield? Are ye mad?”

“No, Toledo.”

Brother Loughlin glanced from Lar to Con and back again as this tennis match of nonsequitors started to make the ends of his nerves itch.

“Would you two just shut up!” snarled Matt as he returned. He shook his head despairingly and then fixed his attention on Brother Loughlin: “I’m surprised this place didn’t all go up in flames years ago. The wiring is a caution, so it is. Jerry-built the whole bloody place! Eh, I think you can put the clock down there Larkin. It can’t get any more broken than it already is.”

“Right so.” Lar rested the inert clock against the wall.

Back up the ladder Matt fiddled with the wires. “Would you go in there and screw the fuse back in? It’s just in behind that door.”

For a split second Brother Loughlin was actually on his way to do it. “I beg your pardon?!?”

“All right, I’ll do it meself.”

Matt set down his tools and strolled off into the school again.

Brother Loughlin was furious with this encounter. He took out a cigarette and lit it.

Matt soon returned and thrust a spent and blackened fuse into Con’s hand before climbing back up the ladder. He fiddled some more with the wires and attached a small meter. “Right, we have a current.”

Brother Loughlin cleared his throat impatiently and flicked his ash: “The new clock?”

“All right. All right. It’s coming. Keep yer hair on. Conway, get me a 5-50 out of the van.”

“A 5-50?” echoed Con, somewhat incredulously.

“Yeah. Is it deaf or just thick ye are?”

“Fair enough. I just thought—”

“Don’t! Just get it!”

Brother Loughlin paced a little circle of impatience around the fallen ash from his cigarette until Con returned from the van bearing a brand-new clock. The Brother eyed the clock suspiciously: “And what is that going to set us back, might I ask?”

“The 5-50? Seventy pounds, but you’d pay at least a hundred for it in a shop,” Matt replied.

“Get on with it,” Brother Loughlin sighed. He watched carefully as Matt wired up the clock, set it for two minutes before nine, and hung it back in its place.

The four of them stood and watched the second hand sweep through its course and begin again.