Boy Number 26

by Tommy Rhattigan

  Brute Force

  We remained standing like planks while the enraged headmaster turned to the retained staff and questioned them about the missing boy. None of them had a clue about him. And why should they? We were only numbers to them. I was number 26, which had been stamped into every article of clothing I possessed. The same went for my toothbrush, small round tin of pink, powdered toothpaste and my shoes.

  Turning back to us, Mr Lilly walked up and down each line. Searching out each individual face in turn, he demanded to know who the missing boy was – more importantly, where the boy was. “You’ve all suddenly lost your ability to speak, have you? Well, we will just have to stand here and wait until one of you decides to talk. We’ll stand here all day and night if necessary,” he threatened. But his threat was always going to fall on deaf ears, and we remained silent.

  We weren’t particularly bothered if we had to stand on parade all night. In fact, it sounded like a novel idea, serving to break up the monotony of our daily lives. It wasn’t as if we’d other plans, like going out for the evening to the cinema or the boy scouts’ club. And as intelligent as he wanted to make us believe he was, he should have known better than to ask us to snitch on one of our own. Not because we weren’t snitchers – we were. But the idea of snitching right in front of your own peers was out of the question and asking for big trouble.

  As it turned out, we all snitched in unison, as our innately guilty consciences forced our eyes to automatically look up in the direction of the tall sycamore tree next to the toilet block, where Paul Lyons could be seen sitting on the large overhanging branch, a sour look on his face.

  When I say our innately guilty consciences had forced us to give Lyons away, that is only half the truth. The other half is that none of us could stand the little shit-bag. He was a thief of the worst kind. Yes, we were all thieves in our own right, granted. But Lyons was worse than a normal thief in the ordinary sense of the word. He stole the most valuable thing from right under our very noses: the limelight. Our Limelight.

  “What in heaven’s name is he doing up there?” Mr Lilly had turned to look behind, following our gazes.

  “Sir!” My hand shot into the air.

  “Well?”

  “He’s sitting up there, sir,” I volunteered, which immediately got a chorus of laughter from the other boys. Their reaction to my answer confused me a little, since that was precisely what Lyons was doing.

  Paul O’Brien, who was standing directly across from me in the next row, shook his head at me and mouthed the word “Wanker” while simulating the motion with his hand. But I ignored the moron, because he had no room to talk. He’d been caught red-handed (so to speak) on so many occasions, it prompted Sister Ignatius to broach the subject at morning assembly, when she’d informed us all about the consequences of masturbating and going blind. In a completely spontaneous reaction, we had all looked in the direction of 70-year-old Sister Margaret, who’d been almost blind for years.

  It seemed I had an ally in Mr Lilly who, like me, obviously didn’t see what was funny about the information I’d just given him. Hurrying along the line, he eyed me up and down for the briefest of moments.

  “One of the smart boys in the school, are we?” He pulled out his little black book and pen from his jacket pocket.

  I smiled modestly, glad he’d noticed some of us were not complete imbeciles.

  “Name?”

  “Paul Lyons, sir,” I replied.

  “And the boy up the tree?”

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  “The name of the boy up the tree is how I mean!”

  “Paul Lyons, sir.” Jaysus, I’d only just told him.

  “Not your name, you blithering idiot. I meant the boy up the tree!”

  “That is his name, sir.”

  “Comedian, are we?”

  “Sorry?”

  I didn’t see his fist until it made contact with my chin, knocking me senseless. I was stunned by the power and nastiness of his attack, and the laughing boys were no longer laughing, stunned into silence. Corporal punishment had, as far as I knew, been an acceptable part of the system, as was a clip around the ear from time to time. But this! It was nothing short of physical brutality, something I had grown accustomed to, having a father who could dish it out, but I hadn’t expected it from a headmaster. And for what? The fat bastard had asked me a straight question and I’d given him a straight answer. All I wanted to do was to make a good impression. Surely, he must have seen me clapping when Sister Ignatius had announced her departure?

  My face hurt. I could see the small throbbing lump just below my right eye. Lilly was staring straight into my eyes, with his smug smile stretched across his nasty Nazi face, waiting, I assumed, for the tears he usually saw from the likes of me. Well, he was in for the longest wait of his life – for eternity, for all I cared. He needed to understand, time was of no consequence to me. Time was meaningless. I got plenty of practice waiting for time, as the mundane days rolled by, from one boring week to another, and so on. An eternity was how long he would have to wait if he wanted to see one small teardrop spill from my eyes, caused by the consequence of any action made by him upon me. I’m not talking about the tears caused by someone giving me a poke in the eye, or when the cold wind blows into them. I’m talking about real, emotional tears caused by an assault from him or any of his thugs.

  I ignored the pain and stared defiantly back into his evil eyes, which told me nothing more about him than his actions had already revealed. I just wanted him to look into my dry eyes for a little while longer, so he could see there were no tears.

  Small as I was, my tears were my only weapon against the likes of him, Sister Ignatius and all the other child beaters. The lack of tears diminished their superiority, perhaps even questioned it. And if I had been older and stronger, I’d have certainly fancied my chances against this pot-bellied pig. I’d have bitten his podgy nose right off his face. I’d have gouged his squinty little brown eyes out of their sockets and played a game of marbles with them! I’d have torn off his Nazi moustache and shoved it down his gutless Austrian throat, followed by his trilby hat and feathers. It was safe to say I hated the bastard already.

  “Your name.”

  “Rhattigan.”

  “Ah yes. The Mother Superior made mention of you.” I watched him jot down my name in his little black book.

  I really must have had a big impact on Sister Ignatius for her to have mentioned me in dispatches. She’d obviously lost her own battle of wits against me and wanted it to continue, in one form or another. No wonder she’d looked at me for the last time with that knowing gloat in her swollen gobstopper eyes. I wondered what she’d told this bully about me. Insubordinate, mischievous, non-compliant, has a good whipping arse.

  “Yea’ve spelt me name wrong.” I point out the mistake to the Führer. “It’s spelt Rhattigan with an H after the R.’’

  “What?” The incensed headmaster suddenly raised his hand as if to strike me again, and I stared back into his angry eyes, waiting for the pain. But I was saved by the intervention of the shocked gasps from the two female domestic staff, who were obviously unaccustomed to witnessing this level of physical violence.

  “It doesn’t matter how it’s spelt,” hissed Lilly. “I know who you are. And I’ll be watching you.” He eyeballed me back and, no longer holding out on any hope for jelly and sponge cake, I lowered my gaze, which he might have assumed was an act of surrender. But in truth, my survival instincts had kicked in.

  The Boy with the Swagger

  As a true believer in using any strategy that will give me an advantage, the Element of Surprise will always come second to the Don’t Get Caught By the Enemy strategy. Both are among the most useful tactics I learned when being led into battle during the long, hot, summer holidays in Formby, when we had too much time on our hands and little all else to
do except play games.

  A veteran of many campaigns in the pine forests and on the sandy dunes of Formby beach, I always planned my defensive tactics for any eventuality, so that I was fully prepared in the event of the enemy throwing a surprise attack at me and my platoon. And when I say enemy, I don’t use the term lightly. They might have been war games to an outsider looking in, and of course no one got seriously maimed or killed, but if we were taken prisoner we were totally at the mercy of our enemy.

  Torture was an acceptable part of the game, especially when attempting to extract information from a prisoner. Some of the gentler forms of persuasion included being stripped naked and tied to a pine tree, before being whipped with a thin branch, or having stinging nettles rubbed up your legs and around your balls, or newts forced into your mouth. But on occasions I’d witnessed other forms of torture that had gone beyond the call of duty, which were usually carried out for the sexual gratification of the captors. This was as good a reason as any not to get captured – unless, of course, you wanted to.

  There was an unspoken code of honour amongst us, so whatever happened on the battlefield stayed on the battlefield. Silence was another tactic we used for our own survival, as was knowing your enemy and what that enemy could do to you, then looking for the best strategy to either avoid them or put them out of action.

  Although we were young, we were knowledgeable enough to know that everything and everybody has a weak link. Find the weak link and you find the best way to get at that person. And that had been a significant factor a few months earlier, when new boy Johnny Woods had swaggered into St Vincent’s. He wasn’t tall or muscular or of a real size to have any of us shaking in our boots, but there was something different about 13-year-old Woods which we had all sensed. Besides the large indent and tissue scarring to the left side of his forehead, he seemed very confident and too self-assured for my liking. Looking at him, I didn’t think his confidence was just a front, yet it certainly wasn’t normal – not for a new boy coming into a place like St Vincent’s for the first time.

  Petty thieves, robbers and arsonists we were, but we were certainly not overly confident or as self-assured as the new boy seemed to be. Why was he so cocksure? That was the question on my mind, which was answered on the evening following his arrival.

  During that early evening, Donkey was having a bath, while Cruickshank, Butler, Collins and I were hanging around outside the cubicle. As usual, we were taking it in turns to have our bath, while the rest of us kept an eye out. Safety in numbers was another good tactic to stop the likelihood of becoming prey to the older boys looking for a gobble or a bum, which we’d managed to avoid up to this point. To be fair, I don’t know if any of them would have tried anything on Donkey. He was such an ugly fella, I had wondered if God had completely run out of ideas when he’d made him. With his copper-coloured skin, rounded shoulders, a slight hump in the middle of his back and a thin layer of fine hair covering most of his body (including his face), he looked uncannily like the large picture of Neanderthal Man hanging up on the classroom wall.

  We went quiet when Woods strutted into the bathhouse and walked past us towards the showers without acknowledging our presence. Not long afterwards, Dave Banana-Knob McGuire, one of the hard nuts and longest-serving resident in the school, walked in and told us to “Fuck off”. We did so without hesitation, leaving Donkey to scramble out of the bath and follow us, stark naked, back up the corridor to the dormitory. Apparently McGuire had taken a shine to the gold St Christopher hanging around Johnny Woods’s neck and decided he wanted it. And when McGuire wanted something, he usually got it.

  So it had been as much of a shock to us, peering out from the doorway of our dormitory, as it must have been for McGuire, when he staggered back out of the bathhouse a minute or two later, with a pained expression on his face and tears welling up in his eyes, whilst clutching his groin area. For us, this was an indication that his usual tactic of threatening to bum his victim senseless unless he got what he wanted hadn’t worked on Woods.

  “I slipped on a bar of fuckin’ soap,” growled McGuire, feeling it necessary to threaten to do to us what I assumed he’d threatened to do to Woods if we so much as breathed a word about his mishap.

  A little while later, Woods emerged from the bathhouse. He threw a smug glance in our direction as he walked past us with his nose stuck up in the air, as if he were sniffing out a fart. And that’s when we saw the source of his swaggering self-assurance. A pair of brass knuckledusters! No wonder he was so full of it, with confidence boosters like those.

  Not one to miss out on an opportunity and knowing how devastating such weapons could be against our enemies, I followed Woods to his dormitory to see if I could somehow persuade him to befriend us. But my attempt at friendly persuasion was greeted by a persuasive thump in the pit of my stomach.

  “Get knotted,” said Woods, turning his back on me as he slipped on his clean shirt.

  Knowing I stood no chance of parting Woods from his knuckledusters, I walked off, winded and feeling a right prat for even trying. But I had every intention of finding a way to get my own back on him.

  Understandably, most of the boys kept their distance from Woods, the older boys letting him do whatever he liked, provided he didn’t step on their toes, leaving Woods to go unhindered on his bullying rampages against the younger and more vulnerable of the boys who were forced to answer to his every whim.

  Having already had a small taster of the damage he could do, I made it my goal to avoid him at all costs. Not that he’d ever bothered me since our first point of contact. But in such a close environment, avoidance was a very difficult thing to maintain and I was sure our paths would inevitably cross. And that is precisely what happened a few weeks later, when I heard from one of his goons that Woods was looking to have words with me.

  I hadn’t a clue as to whether those words were going to be in the form of an amicable sit-down chat, or whether I had annoyed him in some way, and he was looking to introduce me properly to his knuckledusters. The thought had even crossed my mind that he might have become tired of the same old clique around him and, against all the odds, he wanted to initiate some new blood into his gang. This wouldn’t have been of any interest to me, as I preferred to keep myself to myself and avoid the same old trap, where one favour deserved an even bigger favour in return. But having said that, I was always willing to get to know the Devil a little more…

  I suppose, in some way, I was already in my own gang with Donkey, David Cruickshank, William Barnes, Norman Butler and Peter Collins. We were a complete bunch of misfits with nothing in common, other than the fact we seemed to get on well with one another. I don’t recall how we’d banded together but, bearing in mind the old saying “there’s safety in numbers”, our survival instincts might have played a big part in this. In any event, it was evident we were going to be stuck with each other for a long while to come.

  One Sunday afternoon, I came to a decision. Rather than wait for Woods to come along unexpectedly and catch me off my guard, it was in my best interest to make the first move and pay him a visit. He wasn’t too difficult to locate, because wherever 12-year-old Jimmy Clarke was to be found, Woods probably wasn’t too far away.

  My search took me to a small parcel of land known as the grotto. Just slightly smaller than our football pitch, it had been sectioned off into separate plots for the more green-fingered boys, who would buy their own packs of flower seeds to grow there. This was the place I loved the most. It was my escape from the real world, especially at the height of the hot summer months, when the area was carpeted in a sea of coloured blooms – pansies, wallflowers, carnations and gladioli – with their fragrance filling the air.

  I hated the reality of my life. There was nothing in it that captivated me, so I was forced to use my imagination to escape from the box I found myself living in. Within the boundaries of the grotto, it was easy for me to find peace and tr
anquillity. I would lie deep amongst the flowers and watch the gliders from the local Royal Airforce base dancing across the deep-blue, cloudless skies, allowing me to dissociate myself briefly from my past and present.

  Even in such a peaceful place, there was still fierce competition amongst us to see who could grow the tallest sunflower. For a while, those majestic golden giants were left to grow tall, until some sly, jealous little fecker came along and hacked down the tallest ones until eventually there were none left.

  “What you want, Rat-e-gun?” Clarke and his mate Robinson were standing guard outside the door of the run-down stone potting shed, which stored the old rusty gardening tools that were no longer used. Tucked away in the far corner of the allotments with wild ivy covering most of it, the shed was completely hidden from prying eyes.

  “Yeah, what do you want, Wall Talker?” Robinson chipped in as I ambled up along the cinder path.

  The name Wall Talker came about after I had been deliberately kicked in the face by a lad called Brian Walters while I was lying on the grass one afternoon talking with another lad. I’ve no idea, even to this day, why he’d decided to hurt me. I’d never had anything to do with him up to that point.

  In one corner of the grotto was a small man-made cave, just three or four feet in depth, with a weathered grey stone statue of the Virgin Mary at the entrance. Shortly after the attack, I’d gone there and had begged Our Lady to give me the power to be able to deal with this sly 12-year-old bully, who was too afraid to put his dukes up in a fair fight, preferring instead to attack someone when they least expected it. And from that day, he became my nemesis. I loathed and despised him with a vengeance, but despite my regular curses and prayers for him to drop dead on the spot, he remained alive – and kicking.

  It was Clarke and his other mate who’d spread the rumour they’d seen me talking to the grotto wall. And when my own explanation, that I’d been praying, was met with derision and hoots of laughter, I was formally christened Wall Talker. And at the same time I’d learned a valuable lesson: it was best not to defend myself against the name-calling and the lies told about me.