by Roddy Doyle
I declared war, a guerrilla war. I declared, but no one heard me. I always carried my excuse - the mop or a spanner - and I patrolled. Quietly, lightly - I went easy on the limp. I roamed the corridors, upstairs and ground floor, and the three extra rooms hidden away at the back. I stood among the hanging coats. And I waited. All the training came back; I’d never lost it. Boys and staff went past but they didn’t see or hear me. I could stand still for hours. I could withstand the pain that ate its way all through my leg; I could even ignore it.
I listened, and heard the slaps. I counted them. Four, five, then the sixth. Six was as many as I’d tolerate. Six of the famous best. Three whacks on each open hand with the leather strap. The limit: I’d allow no more. But then I heard the seventh, and the eighth. The ninth, the tenth. I heard the objections, killed in the throats of fifty-four witnesses, the silent outrage. And the terror. I was outside. The boys were inside, watching a brute lose control of himself. Living it, and being destroyed by it.
The three o’clock bell - go home, go home. I stepped out from the coats as the door opened and the boys came out, in a long, slow line. Still pale and scared but ready to laugh and pretend it had been nothing. It was hard to tell which of them had been the victim. But I saw him. And I’d remember him.
I made my move.
I filled the door before the teacher could get out. This was Mister Mulhare. I didn’t know his first name. The job was easier without it.
He spoke first - I wasn’t going to.
—Henry, he said.—I’ll leave you to it.
He had his bag, the mála scoile, under his arm. He tried to walk around me.
I didn’t move.
He was young, still in his twenties.
—The latch on the window beyond needs looking at, he said.—Good man.
I still didn’t move. Then I stepped straight into him and shut the door with my heel, just rightly weighted, no big bang or ricochet. He stepped back, nearly fell, to get out from under me. His bag slipped from under the arm; he held it now in both hands.
—Fuck the latch on the window, I said.
He was short and broad. He came from a line of mountain men. But he was scared. He tried to look outraged but nothing came out of him.
—If, I said.
I stepped on his foot and brought the rest of me forward to meet it. I was a tall man again.
—If I ever hear you slapping any of the boys again, I said.
I stayed still now, hung right over him.
—I’ll kill you, I told him.—Slowly. D’you hear me, Mister Mulhare?
—What do you mean?
I hit him.
I back-handed the cunt, sent the slap bouncing around the walls and maps.
—You know what I mean, I said.—If a kid misbehaves, you can slap him.
He was still clutching the schoolbag. He hadn’t touched his face, where I’d whacked him. It was turning red, and his eyes were catching up.
I stepped a bit closer. He was backed up to his desk now.
—To a maximum of six, I said.—Three on each hand. But only for the mortal sins. Once in a blue fuckin’ moon. D’you understand me, Mister Mulhare?
I laid off the sarcasm. I threw no extra weight into his name or the Mister.
He nodded.
—Good, I said.—I’ll be outside. Always. Counting. If I hear more than six, you’re dead.
A sharp dig to his gut; my fingers reminded me that they’d been broken before.
He dropped the bag.
—Or you’ll wish you were dead.
I stepped back.
—If anyone else hears about this, I said.—Do I have to say more?
He shook his head.
—I know, I said.—It’s a bit of a shock. I’m the caretaker. Yeah?
He nodded. He wasn’t ready to talk.
—Your daddy told you all about the War of Independence. Yeah?
He nodded.
—And I bet he told you he was in the thick of it, I said.
He nodded.
—Yes, he said, as he picked up his bag.
—And I bet you never really believed him.
—He has a medal.
—They all have fuckin’ medals.
I didn’t hit him.
—I was there, Mister Mulhare, I told him.—And I never got a medal. And I didn’t have a fuckin’ farm to go home to.
I hadn’t planned this, but it was coming from somewhere sore right behind my ribs. I moved in close again - I parked right up against him. The schoolbag was back on the floor. I shoved it aside with the wooden foot, no twinge or protest from the knee.
—If your da was ever in the thick of it, it was because I ordered him to be in the thick of it. Where are you from, Mister Mulhare?
—Kilkenny.
—I know every inch of it, I told him.—Every ditch and hiding place. Is your da still alive?
—Yes.
—That’s because of me.
—Thanks.
—No problem. You understand me.
—Yes.
—Your da and his brothers and cousins took their orders from me. And so do you.
—Yes.
—Remember that, I told him.—All those stories your da told you, I’m in every one of them. I was there. And now I’m back.
I stepped away.
I was tired now. I’d gone too far. I was a gobshite. But the teacher didn’t think so. He was shaking. Trying to gather himself and stay whole.
I opened the door.
—I’ll be listening, I told him.
I left him there and went up to the roof, to do some shaking of my own. I watched Mulhare walk across the yard, to the gate and the bus stop up on the Main Road. I shook till I stopped, and got down off the roof. I locked up and went home.
I passed him the next morning. I made sure I did.
—Morning, Mister Mulhare.
—Good morning, Henry.
—I fixed that latch for you, I said.
—Oh. Thank you.
—No problem at all, I said.—It’s why I’m here.
I watched him stand at the door of his room. He smiled at the boys who walked past him. He smiled big at every one of them. He looked at me and closed the door. I did the bits of business that made my job, and listened. Mulhare didn’t use the leather strap at all.
I didn’t overdo it. I left him alone, and the others too. I knew they had a few pints on Friday, the younger ones, after they’d emptied the school and cleaned their blackboards. I saw them gathering around the cars, giddy for drink, boys again, laughing much louder than they had to. They all pushed in - there were three cars, and seventeen of them. They didn’t drink local. They wisely kept going, on into town. I wished them well and I knew: Mulhare would eventually yap. He’d move on to the small ones one Friday night, and it would all come out. In one of the culchie pubs, on the shoulder of a fat nurse from home. He’d tell them what had happened. Or he’d tell her - he’d whisper it wet, into her ear. And she’d pass it on, when he’d gone into the jacks to vomit; she’d whisper into the ear of her off-duty pal, who was sitting beside, or on the knee of, another of the teachers, or his cousin, the Guard. It would be all around the pub and out the back door by the time he’d finished puking and cleaned himself. The band in the corner would be putting it to music.
I slowed down and let the job go at my new pace. I made more of my limp; I did less work. No one complained. The place didn’t collapse. The emergencies were rare and easily conquered - a leaking pipe, blocked jacks, the odd broken window.
I was standing in the yard, under my fedora, and shoving a brush handle down into a drain that was blocked with the pebbles that were the props in a game the boys had been playing for months. It was raining, and warm. The yard sloped very slightly on all sides, to the shore and the drain at the centre. The rain was heavy, the first of the new summer - this was early June - and the yard was starting to flood. I’d been down on my knees, and I’d scooped handfuls of the
pebbles out of the hole, along with sweet papers and cigarette butts and old bits of bread crust, and woodlice and long worms. But there were still enough of the pebbles down there, a dry-stone wall of the fuckin’ things, enough to keep damming the rainwater. I was pounding them into wet dust with the butt of the brush. I wasn’t enjoying it; each bash was a boy’s soft head.
I saw bubbles, and more bubbles - I’d dislodged enough stones, and the rainwater rushed for the hole. My working day was more or less over. I started to walk across the yard to my office.The fedora was low on my head. So I didn’t see the man. But I saw the feet, the sudden change of direction - the skid - to avoid me. I looked up and saw O’Naughton, the teacher in charge of the High Babies. He smiled back, terrified.
It was out. Mulhare had cried into his pint and told them. The caretaker was one of the men who’d mattered. Young Mulhare would have recovered as he told them the story; he’d have enjoyed the attention. The girls from home, the nurses and clerical officers, would have been there too, with their fizzy minerals. He’d have wiped his nose on the shoulder of one of the nurses. He’d probably got his hole later, in her digs, a quick, mad ride, still in his shoes and socks, before she had to get him out and let in the rest of the girls who were waiting outside in the rain.
So, the lads in the staffroom were scared and impressed. They were careful. They’d learnt Mulhare’s lesson. But there was also the luck I’d brought; they’d seen that as well. Mulhare had got the ride from a fine girl because of me, because of my presence in the story he’d been blubbering that Friday night, in one of the new lounge bars where country girls with jobs could sit and stay. He’d have told the lads about that too - proudly, secretly, over the biscuits on Monday morning in the staffroom. It had worked for him; it could work for them. The word from old Henry, the benediction. They just needed something to bring with them the next Friday, a story of their own. Not even a story; a greeting or nod, or the rub of shoulders as we passed in the corridor. That would get them sorted. I saw it, after the early shock of Mulhare’s story had faded. His big eyes had told them that, as he leaned closer to them and whispered the muck through the steam that rose from their tea.
I became their leprechaun and pimp. I set them up with birds I never met. I was a very busy man on Friday afternoons. I patrolled the corridors after the break; I kept that fear in the air. I’d got a cobbler in Killester to add nails to one of my boots. They’d hear me coming at them over the wood tiles - tap, tap. The old I.R.A. man who’d lost his leg for his country - their country. It didn’t matter that the hobnails were on the good foot. The noise was what mattered; the nails kept the peace.
Some of them got brave and they’d start to shout when they heard the extra nails approaching. They’d fill their rooms with sudden, badly acted rage and sometimes the real stuff too, kept in all week till now.
—Do you call that a straight line!
A duster hit the blackboard.
—No, no, no! You amadán!
Sometimes I’d take their bait - just to let them know that the school’s flying column was still active. I stood at the doors of their emptied rooms and I waited till they knew I was there. More often than not they’d be waiting for me, trying hard not to look too delighted.
—I heard you shouting there, I told him.
I was talking to McCauley, the man in charge of the top sixth class, all forty-two of the scholarship boys.
—Did you? he said back.
—Yeah.
—And? he said.
He was a bit older than the others, and under pressure. It was in his eyes, even in the way he walked. He was given the same class, the scholarship lads, every year, because he was good enough and frightening enough to drag results from boys whose parents couldn’t read. He was on his own, under a unique pressure - even his room was away from the others, up its own short stairs - pushing these kids out to secondary school, creating a middle class on the Northside of Dublin, for his own good name and the school’s. It was relentless. And he’d been under even more pressure since I’d whacked Mulhare, because I wouldn’t let him be as frightening as he’d always needed to be. He hadn’t biffed a kid in weeks.
—I don’t mind the odd shout, I said.—But amadán. That means eejit, doesn’t it?
—Broadly speaking, yes.
I hit him. I punched the side of his face, enough for a bruise, but not hard enough to break or squash anything. His glasses went up over his hair, but they stayed on his head.
I stepped right up to him. He was wiping the blackboard with the back of his jumper.
—You’ve your job to do, I told him.—But no kid is an eejit, in any language.
He nodded.
—You agree with me.
—Yes, he said.
—Good man.
I watched his face - the terror, delight. He couldn’t wait for the bell and his turn to drop a story onto the lounge bar table. He was an ugly cunt but it wasn’t going to matter.
—Look, I said.—I understand what you’re doing here. But this isn’t a war and those kids aren’t the British. You understand me.
—Yes.
—I’m on your side.
He was salivating - he was.
—Both of us are in this thing together, I told him.
Mulhare and the boys would be outside, waiting for him. One of the cars was his.
—Enjoy your weekend, I told him.
He didn’t have weekends. He brought the boys in on Saturdays - he had his own keys - and he did all his corrections on Sundays. But he had his Friday nights.
I walked out.
For fifteen years the boys’ national school in Ratheen was the most civilised place in the country. No child was slapped, except on the days when I stayed at home. I’d made my own republic, inside the railings of the school.
It was a good life.
—Howyeh, Hoppy.
I was tempted to ban subtraction. Addition and multiplication were grand - Two and two? - but there’d be no place for taking away in my republic. But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t ban reality, the hard knocks and grief that were waiting beyond the railings. Two and two was four, two from two was fuck-all - it was the complete package. I didn’t want to mould them; they’d be well able to do that by themselves. They eventually left, for secondary school, or the tech, or the building sites - and the poor little fuckers didn’t know what happened, as the Christian Brothers and other outside forces got their maulers on them. But the years in my school were enough. There was another way and they went through their lives knowing that.
I lived in my country and liked it. I woke up beside a woman, once a week. An old woman, older than me, but she was the first woman I’d touched in more than twenty years. I cleaned up her garden on Saturday afternoons, for two quid and my dinner.
Nothing was said, and there was no kissing or awkwardness. I just didn’t go home the second Saturday. She went out and hid the bike. She came back in, turned off all the lights and I followed her up the stairs. I wasn’t excited; I didn’t give a shite. She filled a bath and left me at it. I took off the leg and climbed in.
She said nothing. When I followed her into the bedroom, when I sat on the bed and put the leg beside me on the rug. When I put on the pyjamas she’d left there. When I lay back beside her and grunted, and covered myself with the sheet and blankets and eiderdown. When I looked to the side and tried to see her. I could see her sharp nose, aimed at the ceiling. I could hear her breath.
She spoke.
—You’ll have to be out early.
—Grand.
—Very early.
—Grand.
—And the bicycle with you.
—No problem; grand.
—Quietly. Carry the bike till you’re down the road.
—I’m ahead of you, don’t worry.
—I’m too old for romance or any silliness.
—I’m still ahead of you.
—Do you need the alarm clock?
—No.<
br />
—Sure?
—Yeah. I’ll be grand.
That was it. We listened to each other breathing, and we slept. I woke in the dark. I got out of the house, got the bike from the shed, carried the thing on my back to the front of the house - there were no lights in the neighbouring houses, or across the road. I walked a bit further. Then I put the bike down and pushed it the rest of the way home.
The following Saturday I brought the bike straight to the shed. I left it there and took out the lawnmower.
—You don’t cycle the bike, she said.
She always came out for a chat when she saw that I was there. She chatted outside, never really in the house. She chatted to Henry the gardener.
—I can’t, I said.
—Your leg.
—That’s right, I said.—Too tricky.
She never asked where the leg had gone. I never asked her about the woman in the Cumann na mBan uniform, in the photograph on the wall. It wasn’t a good picture, and the photographer had parked the camera too far from the subject. She caught me staring at it, when she was coming down the stairs. She said nothing. I walked back into the kitchen. I dried the dishes she’d already washed. She turned off the lights. She lay on her side, and put her arm across my chest. We slept.
Some months in, I asked a question.
—Do you have any children?
—Yes, she said.—I’ve one. A girl. And you?
—A girl too, I said.—And a boy. We were in the bed, in the dark. We said no more.
Mister Strickland stepped out of his office just as I was limping past. He grabbed my arm and held it.
—Listen to that, he said.
I knew what he meant but I pretended he’d have to give me more.
—Listen to what? I said.
—Just listen, he said.—What do you hear?
—Nothing.
—Exactly, he said.
He still held my arm. I hadn’t tried to free it.
—I haven’t heard the leather being used in months, he said.
—That’s good, I said.—Is it?
—Oh, yes, he said.—I hate the things.
He carried a leather in his jacket pocket. It gave weight on his right side, like a gun. And he’d once sent me into town to buy a box of the things, in a shop on a street off Marlborough Street that sold clerical outfits and straps. I’d brought them back on the bus, on my lap.