The Brothers' Lot (29 page)

“Promise you won’t say anything,” repeated Declan quietly.

“Promise,” whispered Finbar, and listened hard for some meaningful break in his mother’s heavy silence downstairs.

34

G
o in peace to love and serve the Lord.” Father Flynn hastily concluded the morning mass. By now he was used to saying mass in the refectory, but the oppressive air that hung over the school this morning was almost unbearable. During the mass the Brothers had barely responded, each one seemingly locked in his own cocoon of all-consuming trepidation. The air smelt of charred wood and dampness.

Father Flynn quietly closed his missal and left. The Brothers sat on as if unsure what was supposed to happen next. None of them had seen Brother Loughlin since the previous night and each to some extent now felt the same directionless fretful uncertainty. How could they just treat this day like any other? They had spent the night sleeping on gym mats on the refectory floor.

“Our Lady of Indefinite Duration …” called Brother Boland hollowly.

“Pray for us!” responded a few of the Brothers.

“Saint Loman of Perpetual Paucity …” called another reedy voice.

“Pray for us!” chorused the Brothers, this time with added voices.

“Saint Drommod of the Holy Undershirt …”

“Pray for us!”

“Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly …”

“Pray for us!”

“Blessed Vincent of Edenderry …”

“Pray for us!

“Blessed Conor of the Tattered Shroud …”

“Pray for us!”

“Blessed Imelda of Immoderate Mystery …”

“Pray for us!”

The Brothers slowly began to look at one another in the ensuing silence with dazed, puzzled expressions.

The fire inspector said there would have to be a safety inspection of the upper floors of the monastery before any of them would be allowed back to their cells.

How could this have happened? What did any of it mean? One by one they got up from their chairs and moved like sleepwalkers in search of someone who would gently wake them up and point them in the right direction of where the day should go.

Mrs. Broderick was surprised to find Brother Loughlin’s office unlocked, and even more so to find him behind his desk already on the telephone.

“Is everything all right, Brother?” she asked, her usual acid tone softened by the sense of something out of the ordinary taking place.

“Everything is fine, Mrs. Broderick. Just fine,” said Loughlin sternly. He stood up, gently ushered her back out of his office, and closed the door on her.

He sat down and picked up the phone again. “I’m sorry about that, Mr. DePaor. Yes, I understand the department’s point of view but I just thought … I see.” Brother Loughlin replaced the phone in its cradle. An inspection! That was all he needed. He got up and yanked the door open: “Mrs. Broderick, get Brother Moody! I want to see him immediately.”

* * *

“Stupid fucking PE class!” muttered Lynch.

“The bastards could’ve given us the day off for the fire,” complained Scully.

The boys stood in front of the stage in their white T-shirts and shorts, arms folded and jumping up and down trying to keep warm. The hall was cold and they had to try to distract themselves from the fact that even here indoors their breath steamed in front of them. Finbar stood quietly to one side. His father had still not come home.

The dispirited near silence was abruptly shattered by a loud bang from the back of the hall. They turned to see Brother Moody standing there with two sacks of hurling sticks at his feet.

“Right now! One hurley each! Get them now and line up over there against the wall! Don’t crowd, there’s one for everyone!”

Brother Moody’s warning was a needless caution to the sluggish group that traipsed down to the end of the hall and reluctantly took one heavy ash stick each.

“Right then! There will be no more pointless PE. Take the base of the hurley in your right hand and rest the handle against your right shoulder like this.”

Moody stood to attention and demonstrated how to hold the hurley like a soldier ready to march with his rifle on his shoulder. He moved along the row of boys correcting and adjusting until he had what he desired: a line of young men ready to charge into the future to bring about one Holy United Catholic Ireland. He stomped his feet and shouted in time: “Left! Right! Left! Right! Lift those feet!”

The boys marched in approximate time to Brother Moody’s exhortations.

“What have we suffered? Eight hundred years of oppression! When is the time? The time is now! The time for what? One Holy United Catholic Ireland! What do we do with Planters? Drive them back to Scotland!” Brother Moody stopped in front of Bradshaw. “What have we suffered?” he barked.

“Eh, eight hundred years of depression?” ventured Bradshaw.

“
Oppression
, you fool, do you know nothing?” He drew his hurley back and went to hit Bradshaw with it. Clumsily Bradshaw drew his hurley down but failed to block the swing. He fell to the floor clutching his knee.

Moody moved on down the line: “What have we suffered?” he barked at Lynch

“Six hundred years of impressions,” mumbled Lynch.

Brother Moody walked on and suddenly turned and swung at Lynch. The boy moved in a flash and not only deflected the swing but also drew back ready to strike. Moody deftly shifted to block Lynch’s swing. He leaned into the boy and stared at him hard. “Try it, you little thug, and you know where you’ll end up,” he hissed.

The boy very slowly lowered his hurley without taking his eyes from Moody’s face.

“Good! That’s what I like to see! A bit of fight,” crowed Brother Moody, and moved on down the line of marching boys. “Mind your legs!” he shouted at McDonagh a split second before he swung his hurley.

McDonagh turned awkwardly and mostly blocked Brother Moody’s swing, but took a sharp blow to the ankle.

“You must be ever vigilant! You must be ready to act! The heroes of Ireland did not lay down their lives so that you could laze around like corner boys. There is still work to be done! There is still Ireland’s work to be done!”

“Brother Loughlin wants to see you,” came a small voice at Moody’s back.

The Brother swung around and almost skulled Anthony with his hurley. The boy ducked and handed Moody the note.

“Right, twenty laps of the yard and ten decades of the rosary! Consecutive, not concurrent. I’ll be back,” promised Moody, and left the hall.

35

F
ather Sheehan slowly relit his pipe and turned over another page of the sheaf that lay before him on his immaculately polished walnut desk. He read by the pale midafternoon light that did its best to fill the room through the two tall arched windows overlooking the well-tended gardens of Loyola House.

Aside from the soft sucking noise of Sheehan’s pipe, the only other sound in the office was the precise metronomic tennis match of the pendulum clock that stood beside the door. Father Mulvey was too busy holding his breath to add anything to the soundscape.

Sheehan quietly cleared his throat and Father Mulvey drew in another sharp breath to add to the chestful of anxious air he was already harboring. He could not read this ambiguous sound from Sheehan. Was it a chuckle, a sound of disapproval, of approbation? He uncrossed and recrossed his legs and fixed his eyes on the fingers of Sheehan’s left hand where they drummed lightly and soundlessly on the small pile of pages he had already read.

Sheehan stopped suddenly and looked up. He took his pipe from his mouth, noted with indifference that it had gone out again, and laid it softly in the purple tin ashtray to his right. “Mr. Madden seems to be working prolifically,” he said softly.

“Oh yes, Father, he is,” blurted Father Mulvey, glad for the long-awaited opportunity to exhale. “He is most enthusiastic about this undertaking. I believe he is afire with the light of faith. Almost inspired, you might say!”

“So how much longer do you think it will take Mr. Madden to finish the revised
Life of O’Rahilly
?” asked Father Sheehan casually. He took out his pocket watch and checked it against the pendulum clock.

“Well, at the back there you have the drafts he brought me this morning for the chapters that bring the story up to date, including the collapse of the oratory and the bleeding statue.”

“I must say, this is fascinating, truly fascinating,” said Father Sheehan as he flipped through the pages.

Mulvey felt his unease take wing and soar away into a huge blue yonder of future prestige.

From under the sheaf of papers Sheehan took that morning’s
The Way Forward
. It was opened to an inside page. He glanced at it distractedly and shook his head sadly. “Tragic. Shocking,” he said, almost in an undertone.

“What’s that, Father?” inquired Mulvey brightly.

“Chap found hanged this morning.”

“Oh, the Lord bless us and save us,” hushed Mulvey, and quickly crossed himself.

“Would you listen to this:
Citizens of Howth were shocked and saddened by the discovery this morning of a hanged man on the channel marker at the southeast entrance to the harbor. The man was found at 5:15 this morning by Mr. Fergus Stokes who was taking his boat out. The county coroner was immediately called to the scene.
”

Sheehan paused and looked carefully at Mulvey, who shook his head ruefully: “One has to feel sorry for someone who will go to such terrible lengths as to take his own life. Surely the poor man couldn’t have been in full possession of his wits.”

Sheehan selected another illuminating tidbit from the article:
“‘He was fond of a pint, but no, I don’t think that was anything to do with it really, though he had seemed to be a little down of late,’ said Patrick Iveagh, an acquaintance of the deceased.”

“Oh, the drink is a curse upon this troubled, benighted nation,” said Mulvey vehemently.

“It is, Father Mulvey, it is,” concurred Sheehan softly. “But you know what puzzles me most about this case?” He read again in the same measured, mildly curious tone as before:
“The deceased, Marcus Madden, B.A., was best known for his
Life of Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly,
the founder of the Brothers of Godly Coercion. He had in recent years fallen on hard times and was believed to have taken to the drink.”

Mulvey’s apprehension swooped back out of the wide blue future and collapsed around him like a wet tarp thrown from a third-floor window.

“I believe you have a little bit of explaining to do, Father Mulvey,” Sheehan said softly, and held the newspaper across the desk, lest Mulvey should for a moment doubt the veracity of Marcus Madden’s sudden, brief, and surprising resurgence into the public eye.

“Well, Father Sheehan. This is an unexpected pleasure, I have to say. Tea, Father? No? Fine. You can leave us, Mrs. Broderick.”

The woman pointedly sniffed her distaste for Loughlin’s haughty tone and left the office.

“Please, Father, have a seat. What can I do for you? Father Mulvey is not joining us?”

“Father Mulvey has some urgent internal administrative matters to attend to.”

Sheehan sat down in front of Brother Loughlin’s desk without taking off his coat. He placed his black felt hat carefully on his right knee and listened carefully to the ticking of the clock on the wall, and to Loughlin’s silence.

“Brother Loughlin, it has come to my attention that Father Mulvey’s researches with Mr. Madden were somewhat unorthodox, to say the least. I trust you saw today’s
The Way Forward
?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t really get a chance to look at it.”

“Then it might interest you to know that it carried the grim story of Mr. Marcus Madden’s demise. The unfortunate man apparently hanged himself from a channel marker in Howth Harbor last night.”

“God bless us and save us, but that’s terrible. The poor man!”

“It is a sad event. It may also interest you to know that Father Mulvey delivered to me some pages of the revised
Life of the Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly
which Mr. Madden had given him only this morning. A curious occurrence given that Mr. Madden hanged himself at least twelve hours before allegedly giving these pages to Father Mulvey. One would imagine that receiving written pages from a corpse at the end of a rope would be the type of thing one would comment on to one’s superior, would one not?” Sheehan smiled mirthlessly.

Loughlin stared straight into the priest’s small, intelligent eyes. They gave no indication of how much or how little he actually knew, but the overall impression was one of deep wells of information and knowledge that he would share or not according to his wider purposes. The Brother’s armpits grew hot and sticky under his cassock.

“I’m sure you would agree, Brother Loughlin, that this is a disquieting development in the preparation of a disposition for a miracle. It is, how could one put it, suspicious at best, would you not agree?”

Loughlin scurried through the twisted half-lit passageways of his mind hoping to find some appropriate response. Indignation? Angry shock? Hurt and shock at being deceived by Mulvey? He turned briefly into a dead end of dissimulated righteous rage and helplessly backed out of it.

“Uhm, yes indeed, Father,” he managed.

Sheehan nodded solemnly. He picked an invisible piece of lint from the band of his hat and dropped it to the floor. “Did you know that Mr. Madden had turned into a disreputable drunkard and Father Mulvey himself had taken on rewriting
The Life of Venerable Saorseach
, Brother?”

“I had no idea!” rued Brother Loughlin, delighted with the chance to say something truthful that could only damage someone else.

Again Sheehan nodded. “Did you know that Brother Boland cut his hand on the night of the oratory incident?”

Loughlin detected a derisory italicizing of the words
oratory incident
that made him very uneasy. He looked carefully at the figure of Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly on his desk as if trying to remind himself of exactly how he had broken the statuette and smeared it with his own blood. He wanted to be clear on exactly what he was concealing from Sheehan.