The Brothers' Lot (7 page)

“Yes. Yes. There’s no trouble, Brian. We just want to have a little chat.”

Egan stood rooted to the spot. Brian? What the fuck? They never, ever called you by your first name. Then a jolt of understanding smacked him in the face. Some stupid shithead had put his name down for a vocation. He peered around the class, searching the faces for the telltale signs of having set him up. Scully met his eyes and smiled mischievously.

Bastard!
mouthed Egan at him.

Scully gave him an ironic thumbs-up.

“Brian, we’ll step outside where we can chat in peace,” murmured Brother Cox. Brother Mulligan beamed broadly in a way that made Egan feel very uncomfortable. Dazed, he followed them out the door.

“In strict confidence. That’s a laugh!” muttered Mr. Laverty to himself. “Youse have five minutes to finish your essays,” he informed the class, and went back to embellishing his résumé in the hope of wrangling his way onto the junior staff at Southwell. Anywhere, anywhere but here.

“Sir, how do you say ‘My brother found a gas mask in the canal’ in French?”

“Just use something else.” Christ on a crutch, would this class never end?

A slight commotion outside the door caught Mr. Laverty’s eye. Evidently Brother Mulligan and Brother Cox had lost all interest in using Egan’s first name because they were now hitting him with all their limited strength and pushing him toward the stairs.

“A joke? A joke? I’ll show you a joke!” shouted Brother Mulligan as he ineffectually flailed at Egan with his leather. “Get down those stairs in front of me!”

“Settle down,” snapped Mr. Laverty as a ripple of murmurs made its way round the class. He folded up his job application and put it in his bag. He glanced at the clock and the Angelus bell rang out from the yard below. “Pass your essays up to the top of the row, the angel of the Lord declared unto Mary …” he said, waving his right hand in front of his face in a barely discernible blessing motion.

“And she conceived of the Holy Ghost,” mumbled the boys as they stood up and passed their tatty essays to the front.

Outside, Egan’s receding voice echoed up the stairs: “But, but, but, but …”

“I’ll but you! Into the monastery!” shouted Brother Cox.

“Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is …” continued Mr. Laverty as the lunchtime bell ground out its promise of temporary relief as soon as the praying was over.

In the ground floor Chemistry lab Mr. Barry thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his once-white lab coat and sighed heavily. He regarded the rows of confused first year faces in front of him and felt a hot, withering flush of despair at the thought that he would have to teach these dim-witted boys three times a week for the next nine months.

“We’ll try it once again: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. You there with the greasy hair, repeat.”

“Ehm, energy can either be created or …” struggled You There with the Greasy Hair.

“Destroyed …” prompted Mr. Barry impatiently.

“Destroyed …” repeated You There hopefully, and fell silent again.

“Enough!” sighed Mr. Barry. “Copy this down and write it out fifty times for homework. Let’s see if some of it sticks in those empty heads of yours.”

He turned to the two-tiered blackboard and rolled it to a blank spot. He had deliberately left some fifth year notes on photosynthesis there to show these puny first years what a wonderful, arcane, and difficult subject he was master of. Just as he put the chalk to the blackboard there was a heaving creak from the back of the class.

The wall supporting the huge periodic table gave way and the whole thing collapsed onto the workbench below. Mr. Barry spun around to watch glass fly all over the place as the wooden bars from the top and bottom of the chart smashed retorts, beakers, alembics, test tubes, and glass piping that had been sitting on the bench.

As suddenly as there had been noise there was silence again, and Mr. Barry looked at the crumpled mess of masonry, canvas, wood, and glass at the back of the lab. So many years of his career had been put into that periodic table and making the stupider boys polish the glassware instead of doing experiments. He remembered all the times he had climbed up with his red paint to add new elements to the table as they were discovered. It was what photo albums were to other people. This was the chart of his career and now it was a crumpled, seething heap being eaten away by the acids carelessly left sitting in the beakers. Heartlessly oblivious to the tragedy, the lunch bell rang. Mr. Barry hastily galloped through the Angelus and, deciding that there might be some harmful fumes from the concoction that had formed on the bench, he instructed the boys to leave quietly by the door that led into the monastery.

In the high-ceilinged refectory the Brothers sat around the long pine table, each in his appointed arse-shined chair. The paltry light that struggled through the high stained-glass windows cast an unhealthy green pall over the room. “It’s a miracle, that’s what it is!” beamed Brother Tobin to wide indifference.

“It’s those yahoos we let in from the flats, I tell you. We should never have let the Department of Education foist them on us,” whispered Brother Kennedy.

“They wouldn’t dare!” hissed Brother Boland, appalled that anyone in the school would attempt such an outrage as sabotage.

“Well, the laboratory wall didn’t collapse by itself. And what about the slates off the roof on the first day back? Answer me that!” countered Brother Kennedy.

Brother Boland opened his mouth to speak but allowed nothing more than a glottal stop to emerge when he saw Widower Frawley enter the refectory with the soup trolley. It was not right to speak of brotherly affairs in front of civilians.

Widower Frawley pushed the trolley around the long narrow table and ladled soup into the bowls whether there was anyone sitting in front of them or not. It wasn’t for the likes of him to wonder whether particular Brothers were late or if they were not coming to lunch. If they didn’t turn up he would just put it back in the pot, skin and all, and Mrs. McCurtin could use it as the base for the next day’s soup.

When the squeaking of the trolley wheels and the clumsy scuffing of Widower Frawley’s slippers receded into the kitchen, Brother Boland resumed. “It’s not the boys. It’s something else. Something other,” he whispered darkly. He had no words for the tension he could sense in the walls, in the doorways. He could hear it in the creak of the stairs. He could almost smell it in the corridors. There was a tiredness, a sadness vibrating inside things. It was humming to him alone. He could not explain it to them. He shook his head in frustration, set his dentures on his side plate, and began slurping at his soup.

“Are you sure it isn’t a miracle? Imagine! BLESSED Saorseach O’Rahilly!” enthused Brother Tobin. He, like so many of the Brothers, yearned for a miracle to push O’Rahilly along the road to sainthood.

“Go away with you now, you and your miracles!” scoffed Brother Kennedy.

Brother Boland glanced nervously around the table. He noted with curiosity the empty places of Brothers Cox, Loughlin, and Mulligan. He did not know that they were otherwise engaged in trying to beat a vocation out of Brian Egan.

Brother Tobin gobbled down his stew, took a couple of mouthfuls of warm custard, and ran upstairs for a very hurried Grace After Meals.

“Calm down, child, can’t you?” hissed Brother Loughlin, his voice choked to creepy strangeness by the attempt to sound concerned.

Still sobbing and trembling and on the edge of hyper-ventilation, Egan sat on the chair in front of the Brother’s desk.

“You’ve had a fall, a bit of a fright,” said Brother Cox softly.

“You pushed me!” choked Egan. “You tried to feel me balls!”

“I don’t know what you think happened on the stairs, Mr. Egan, but I don’t think that is the type of talk you want going around the school about you now, is it?” asked Brother Loughlin.

Egan looked up at him through his red eyes.

“And I certainly don’t think you want to discuss this filthy talk with your mother and father, do you?”

“But … but …”

Sensing that he had Egan on the back foot, Brother Loughlin pressed home: “And you know what the other boys will say, don’t you? They’ll say you were asking for it. They’ll say you started it. They’ll say that it was wishful thinking on your part. They’ll say that it is you who are a little suspect. I think you would find things here very difficult if such rumors were to get out.”

Egan half heard Brother Loughlin’s words as if from the bottom of a dusty well shaft. Clearer to him were the images they conjured up: the sly comments in the toilets, the graffiti that would begin to appear in the bicycle sheds and the handball alleys and slowly creep through the whole school. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. Cox had a reputation and he was forever patting his favorites on the arse. But if anything got out about him and Cox in any way, it was sure that everyone would think the worst. He’d be branded.

“So why don’t you take a little half day for yourself and we’ll have no more of this silly talk?” coaxed Brother Loughlin. “I’ll send someone for your bags and we’ll have Brother Walsh drive you home.”

“No!” shrieked Egan. He’d take the bus. He’d walk. Anything but have one of the Brothers drive him home. Even if no one was home, everyone on the street would see and they’d say something when his ma came in from work. Then he’d have to explain. “I’ll get the bus.”

“Very well then. Brothers, if I could have a word with Brian alone?” concluded Brother Loughlin.

Brothers Mulligan and Cox shuffled out and closed the door carefully behind them.

“Now, Brian, why don’t you show me exactly what you think Brother Cox tried to do to you …”

9

A
fter lunch Scully, Lynch, and McDonagh trudged up the stairs, Lynch pushing his way through a bunch of sixth years who had one look at him and thought the better of taking issue with it. That was the way with Lynch. Even as a first year he had been going around in-timidating third years. It wasn’t that he was particularly big or strong looking. He just had that crazed broken-glass glint in his eye of someone who really didn’t give a shit. Few things are scarier than people who are so perfectly un-touched by any sense of caution or consequence. One of the few reasons Lynch was in school at all was that it was a condition of his da’s parole. It was not a great setup but it did keep his da off his back.

Mr. Murphy was already in the class pulling things from his bag when they arrived. Known to a lot of the boys as Spud, Mr. Murphy was one of the only soft places in the rocky barren landscape of the teaching staff. He was supposedly the History teacher, but even those who really liked him had to admit that he was a hopeless instructor in any conventional sense of getting the crap that you needed for exams into your head. He was, however, generally regarded as a good sort.

Spud had a mischievous twinkle of light in his eye and a ready smile that set him apart. The Brothers just about tolerated him, knowing from their last attempt that he kept a thorough diary and they could not fire him without some very solid pretext. The other lay teachers resented him and his easy way with the boys which they felt undermined their authority. He could not have cared less.

Spud closed the classroom door and the atmosphere was unlike anything Finbar had so far experienced. Gone was the boys’ wary, watchful belligerence. Instead it felt like a bright airy space where laughter might erupt at any second. Everyone relaxed in the knowledge that you had to really piss Spud off before anything nasty would happen.

“Having a good return to school, genitalmen?” asked Spud.

“Are you?” called McDonagh.

Spud grinned. He had taught most of these boys since first year. Even though many had failed History in their Inter Cert, they would persist with it, knowing that under Spud’s tutelage they would probably fail it in the Leaving Cert too. The important thing was to have three classes a week where they came in contact with someone who seemed to be from the same planet as them.

“Oh yeah, delighted to be back,” he droned in a pained tone.

The boys laughed. Finbar was at first shocked by this sound, so alien to the school. It felt like he was temporarily inside some charmed circle.

“Well, anyway. It looks like I will have you lot in my nightmares for another two years then. Anyone new?” Spud peered around the class.

Finbar could feel himself going red again. Should he put his hand up or just hope the question would go away? Smalley Mullen was having none of it. “Bogman is new!” he called out. Finbar reluctantly raised his hand.

“I assume that is not your real name.”

“No sir. Finbar Sullivan, sir.”

“And where did you come from, Finbar?”

“Eh, Cork City, sir.”

There were a few giggles and echoes of Finbar’s accent and Spud raised his eyebrows in tired admonishment. He nodded and, as he pulled another piece of paper from his bag, added: “That’s nice. My mother was from Cork. Well, Finbar, welcome to the stately pleasure dome of Little Werburgh Street. They’re not as bad as they seem. That’s the boys, I mean. The staff are another kettle of different-colored horses that you’ll have to make up your own mind about.”

A furtive mole-faced first year knocked at the door and Spud waved him in.

“Brother Loughlin sent …” He glanced at the note he clutched in his hand, then passed it to the teacher and bit his lip.

The note was in Irish and informed Spud that Brian Egan was indisposed and would be going home for the rest of the day, and that the bearer of the note was to be allowed to remove his things from class. Spud smiled wryly. For all the effort and beating that seemed to go into teaching the boys Irish, it was ironic that the Brothers still felt certain it was an impenetrable code for confidential messages.

“Where does Brian Egan sit?” he asked.

A chill silence fell over the class and Halloran, who sat beside Egan, raised his hand. Scully stared straight ahead of him into some unfocused distance that he wished was about four hours ago. Spud packed Egan’s things into the large bag and gave it to the first year.