The Brothers' Lot (4 page)

4

W
hatever tiny bit of excitement Finbar might have had about going to a new school had been severely damaged by Saturday’s encounter at the corner shop. He had spent all day Sunday just moping around the house, refusing to go out after mass while his father tried to unpack and brighten the tiny cement backyard with fuchsias and geraniums he had brought from their garden in Cork.

Redneck, Culchie, Bogman, Muck Savage
, they had shouted at him in bad Cork accents and then followed him down the street imitating his walk.

“Finbar! Come on! I won’t tell you again. You don’t want to be late,” yelled Mrs. Sullivan from the bottom of the stairs.

From the other bed Declan glowered groggily at him: “Get up before I split you, you little prick!” Declan was unemployed and seemingly unemployable. The army had already turned him down in eight different counties.

“Ah, go feck off. Get up yourself and get a job, ye lazy shite,” muttered Finbar. This was awful. On top of everything else he had to share a room with Declan now. In Cork he’d had his own room. Dublin was just bloody perfect.

“Finnnnbarr!” called his mother again.

“I’m up! I’m up!” he snapped.

“Well get up and get the fuck out then,” mumbled Declan from under the covers. Finbar scowled at the hump in the other bed but said nothing. He braced himself and then whipped back the covers and leapt onto the cold floor. He shivered and dressed hurriedly. He put on the scratchy gray nylon shirt, the itchy gray pants, and the stupid clip-on tie. He grabbed the sweater and looked at it: gray. Just like the rest of the stupid uniform. Just like this stupid house and this stupid street and this stupid city.

“Ah, Finbar, did you comb your hair at all? You look like you were dragged backward through a bush,” fussed his mother when he walked into the small dining room. They had still not unpacked much and the room was lit by a bare forty-watt bulb that seemed to create its own special kind of gloom. His father stood by the kitchen sink hastily munching on some toast.

“Do you want an egg, Finbar? Will I boil you an egg? It won’t take a minute. It’ll be done by the time you’re finished your porridge.”

Finbar shook his head and ground his teeth. He moved the porridge around in the bowl and took a couple of mouthfuls. It tasted like dust. He took a bite of toast and slurped down some tea. More dust.

“Do you want another cup of tea, Jude?”

“No, I’m fine. Will you stop fussing? I don’t have time. It’s me first day, I can’t be late,” replied Mr. Sullivan as he grabbed his overcoat from the back of the kitchen door.

“Well, good luck.”

Mr. Sullivan nodded and walked slowly out of the kitchen. “Be good at school, Finbar,” he said softly as he left.

Finbar ran upstairs and collected his schoolbag from the bedroom. He slammed the door hard on his way out. That’ll help Declan’s lie-in, ha!

A jagged blade of pure horror drove itself into his chest when he saw his mother standing at the bottom of the stairs in her coat and headscarf and holding her good handbag. Suffering Jesus! She was coming with him!

Singly or in small groups of two or three, gray-clad boys slouched down the West Circular Road toward The Brothers of Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meager Means on Greater Little Werburgh Street, North. Muted drums and horses wearing black crepe drawing gun carriages would not have seemed out of place, such was the pall of gloom and despair that hung heavy over the road. The first fully fledged Monday of a new school year.

In the IRA shop (so named for the riot of Irish Republican Army paraphernalia that covered the walls) Scully counted out his change. He pocketed two of the loose Woodbines and put one behind his ear.

“You going in today?” asked Malachy from behind the counter.

Scully looked carefully at the man. It was rare that Malachy ever said anything so it was a safe bet this was not a casual question. Last March when Scully had skipped school, he had spent the day with Malachy packing Easter lily badges to be shipped to Chicago. He received ten Woodbines and a sick note for his troubles. Scully had wondered about the wisdom of getting tangled up with Malachy. Still, it was good to be in with someone in the Ra, even a very minor someone. Also, Malachy had a wonderful repertoire of parent-shaped handwriting.

“Yeah. It’s only the first week. See how it goes,” replied Scully.

“Suit yourself,” said Malachy mysteriously.

“Good luck,” called Scully as he dashed out the door.

“Take it handy. Tiocfaidh ár lá!” muttered Malachy, and went back to restocking the Banana Cola Taste Blasters, one of the more glamorous of his fundraising activities in the struggle to reunify Ireland and end British occupation of the North.

“Ah, go ask me arse!” Scully shouted at a honking motorist as he dodged through the traffic. He could see Greater Little Werburgh Street ahead. Judging by the pace of the gray bodies turning into it, it was still only about ten to nine. Plenty of time for a smoke.

“Now stop dawdling, Finbar, we’ll be late!” chided a shrill country voice behind Scully. He felt himself involuntarily cower at the words, so expertly laden were they with that artful mixture of love, exasperation, self-sacrifice, and guilt-inducing sadness. He vaguely remembered how his own mother had used this tone on him before she went astray in the head and stopped talking to anyone in the house.

“We won’t be late! Will you stop rushing? I can go the rest of the way on me own!” protested a boy’s voice. To Scully’s ears this voice was redolent of turf smoke, bogs, tractors, parish priests with hawthorn sticks and no front teeth, céilí dancing, mucky Wellington boots, and all other things backward and primitive that he associated with life beyond the confines of Dublin city.

“Excuse us,” the shrill mothering voice instructed him. Scully moved closer to the wall and let them pass.

“That boy is going to be late,” Mrs. Sullivan observed to Finbar as they bustled past him. “You wouldn’t want to be late on your first day now, love, would you?”

Scully could see the boy in front of him shrink at his mother’s words. He lit his smoke and saw Mrs. Sullivan’s shoulders stiffen—he could sense that she was about take him to task for this filthy habit. But just as she slowed to turn around, a harsh, nasal Dublin accent came crashing into her tidy headscarf-and-overcoat world and successfully distracted her from the evils of smoking.

“Yeauw, Scully, ye manky shite!”

Scully, Mrs. Sullivan, and Finbar all looked up to see the maniacally grinning Lynch hanging off the back of a truck as it hurtled toward the docks—
scutting,
as it was known in the parlance, a much-frowned-on mode of transport punishable by automatic expulsion.

“Oh, look at that boy, Finbar! Isn’t that disgraceful behavior? He must be one of the boys from the Technical School,” pronounced Mrs. Sullivan.

Finbar made no reply. Scully didn’t bother to shout back; Lynch had already turned his attention to some girls from Windsor Street Convent in a passing bus.

“Vulgar boy! Should be ashamed of himself! I’m surprised even the Technical School will have him!” huffed Mrs. Sullivan, instinctively reaching for her son’s hand.

Finbar awkwardly twisted away but she caught him by the collar of his blazer.

“Don’t you ever let me catch you carrying on like that, do you hear me?” she scolded as they moved further ahead of Scully and turned onto Werburgh Street.

A moment later when Scully rounded the corner, he watched them: instead of heading down to the end of the street and turning into the school, they went in the main entrance to the monastery.
She’ll probably offer him up as an apprentice Brother,
thought Scully.

“Fuck sake! Missed the light! Nearly ended up on the docks! Give us a drag, ye bollix!” shouted Lynch as he ran up behind Scully. His round, impish face and tiny eyes were afire with mischief.

Scully handed him the almost done butt and the bell ground out hollowly from the yard inside.

“You goin’ in?” asked Lynch.

Scully nodded matter-of-factly. Lynch took one last drag, shrugged, spat, and the two of them walked slowly through the heavy lead-colored gates.

5

M
r. Scully, sor, you can stay standing. I think we will have a change of environment for you, eh? Keep you close to hand, out of the way of pernicious influences, where you can come to no harm, ha?”

Mr. Pollock’s face belied any levity that might have been deduced from the words coming out of his mouth. He had obviously seen Scully’s encounter with Brother Loughlin at the mass.

“Mr. Farrelly, take your bags, chattels, and belongings and change places with Mr. Scully.”

“But sir, I can’t—”

“No ifs, buts, or wherefores, Mr. Farrelly. Move yourself!” Pollock cut in.

Farrelly, who had chosen to be near the front because of his weak eyes, reluctantly took his things and moved to the back where Scully had been sitting. The desk beside Smalley Mullen remained empty.

“McDonagh?”

“Here. I mean, anseo.”

“Mullen?”

“Anseo.”

“O’Connor?”

“Anseo.”

“Rutledge?”

“Here. Eh, anseo.”

“Scully?”

“Anseo.”

“Sullivan?”

“Still no sign of the elusive Mr. Sullivan.”

Mr. Pollock finished the roll and then went to the large cupboard. He opened it wide to reveal stacks and stacks of tattered books. A gentle tapping on the glass of the door caught his attention. He tilted back his head in acknowledgment and strode to the door. He opened it and, turning to raise his eyebrows in preemptive warning to the class, stepped outside into the corridor.

After a few moments Finbar Sullivan walked in, followed closely by Mr. Pollock.

“Bye now, love, be good!” came Mrs. Sullivan’s voice from the corridor. Finbar’s guts turned to dust in embarrassment. He glanced cautiously at the icily scrutinizing sea of faces in front of him.

“It appears we have found the mysterious Fionnbarr Ó Súilleabháin,” announced Mr. Pollock and moved to his desk. He sat himself on his high stool and tucked his black gown around him like some balding ginger-haired bat. He reopened the roll book and started to make some notes in it. Finbar stood at the top of the class feeling very exposed. There was not one welcoming chink of light as his eyes darted from one face to the next.

A new boy presented all sorts of possibilities. Even the most picked-on and bullied boys in the class could entertain the hope that here was someone weaker than them, with a limp or a worse stutter or bigger ears; anything that might put him at the bottom of the totem pole and move them up a notch. Finbar felt himself begin to go red under the intensity of this scrutiny.

From outside in the corridor his mother’s voice echoed around mercilessly: “He’s a very good boy, Brother, very bright and always has good reports. A lovely hurler, a fine footballer, and very well-behaved and mannerly. Brother Morrissey in Cork was very sorry to lose him. He was a well-liked boy. Indeed he was. I’m very sorry that Finbar missed the first day of school. I hear there was mass. It’s a pity Finbar missed that. He was an altar boy, you know.”

“Indeed. I’m sure he will fit in very well here, Mrs. Sullivan. I’m afraid I must leave you now and attend to pressing school matters. Good day to you now,” concluded Brother Loughlin emphatically. Finbar breathed a sigh of relief and went back to trying to suppress his beetroot blushing.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw two of the boys in the front near the windows point to the door and laugh. Silently, almost telepathically, the signal passed through the class and more boys began to look toward the door. With a horrid dread in the depths of his spirit, Finbar turned to see his mother grinning and waving enthusiastically at him like she was at a parade. He made an odd movement combining a reluctant return of her wave and a gesture of barely suppressed fury shooing her away.

“Mr. Sullivan, you will take a pew at the back there beside Mr. Mullen,” said Mr. Pollock without looking up from the roll book.

With huge relief Finbar hurried to the desk and sat down. Mullen did not even look at him. Finbar was now far enough down the class to be spared the sight of his mother at the door. There was little doubt that she was still there, and when Mr. Pollock finally looked up from the roll book he was compelled to wave farewell before she would leave.

“Fionnbarr Ó Súilleabháin?” he called.

“Anseo, a mháistir!” answered Finbar.

Mr. Pollock made a tick in the roll book with an extravagant flourish. The respectful and fluent-sounding “a mháistir,” equivalent to a gratuitous “here, master,” when a bare “here” was all that was required, brought an approving glance from Mr. Pollock. Perhaps there might be a pearl among these swine, he thought. Unsolicited and unaided use of the vocative case showed promise.

In direct and pointed contrast to Pollock’s approval, Finbar could feel the air around him bristle with hostility and suspicion from the boys in the class. He put his head down and stared hard at the top of his desk. He felt his ears burn and a prickling feeling in his eyes assured him that he was indeed feeling miserable.

“Now, back to the matter of books,” said Mr. Pollock from his perch on the high stool behind his desk. Before he could begin to distribute the books there was another knock at the door. Mr. Pollock beckoned the caller in.

A first year of diminutive size with outlandishly large ears entered bearing a note. He wore a uniform that he was obviously expected to grow into sometime in the next decade. A perceptible ripple of derision ran around the class. Finbar, glad for a moment to have someone else be the focus of malign attention, joined in the feeling of superiority to this hapless first year.

“Well, what is it?” clipped Mr. Pollock.

“Ehm, ehm, ehm, a note, sir,” stammered the poor unfortunate.

“From whom?” pursued Mr. Pollock.

“From the Head Brudder, sir.”

“And who is the Head Brother?”

“Ehm, ehm, ehm, I don’t know, sir.”

“And what is your name, Mr. Ehm, Ehm, Ehm, I Don’t Know, Sir?”