“It wouldn’t have anything to do with trying to get a fight going, would it?”
“No way.”
“I’m glad to hear it, because I’d be exceptionally disappointed if it did.”
As Mickey turned his head with a defiant jerk, a vein in his bull neck stood out. He stared sullenly at Finbar, just long enough to show defiance but not arouse anger. He strutted down the bus, pushing back his shoulders to show the other boys what a hard man he was because he’d stood his ground.
“Don’t let him get to you,” said Finbar.
My eyes rested on the apricot prefect’s badge the size of a thumbnail on his lapel. Shaped like a shield, it had the word “Prefect” embossed in gold on its shiny face. The quiet power of that sweet apricot badge!
“How many more points have you won for our house since I last spoke to you?” Finbar asked me.
“Thirty.”
“Naw, Harkin’s a fucking yellowbelly,” Mickey said aloud. “He’s too fucking scared to fight.”
“Well, keep it up,” said Finbar, and he winked. “I want to go on another trip before I leave school.”
Fourteen
As I fell to the ground, I tried to protect myself with my hands. But I didn’t succeed and landed hard on my arse. The senior boy was to blame. He’d emerged from the doorway next to the school oratory at high speed, saw I was in his way, and shoved me aside. Some of the seniors were behaving more boisterously than normal. There were only a few weeks to the end of the school year and I think they sensed the teachers’ grips on authority slackening. It certainly seemed that way: exams were over and teachers arrived later in the classrooms after lunchtime because many of them had strolled into town on account of the beautiful weather.
“Ugly pig,” I said.
“What did you say?” the senior boy replied. “I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget.”
He seized the lapels of my blazer, spun me around, kicked my arse, and finally sent me slamming into the rough plaster façade of the building. He put his face near mine, until our noses touched. I smelled his fetid breath. Sharp pains radiated from the bones of my arse like shunting railway carriages.
“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry,” I said.
He flung me away from him. I doubled over in pain for a moment before composing myself under the inquisitive stares of boys crossing the paved yard between the old school building and the salmon-colored brick extension.
Later, after I’d explained to the gang what the senior boy did to me, Pani said, “Some sort of punishment’s in order. Enough is enough.” As he shook his head to underscore his contempt, Pani’s curtain of long hair swept away from his face and exposed unruly sideburns and too large ears.
It was lunchtime and we were all in the art room, except Martin who’d gone to brush his teeth. We’d been trying for ten minutes to come up with a good means of revenge, but couldn’t settle on anything decent.
“He’s a fifth-year,” said Niall. His upper lip quivered as he pondered. “Let’s watch and see if he leaves the school grounds at lunchtime. Only sixth-formers have permission to do that, but we know others do it, too. If he tries to leave, we’ll locate the teacher on duty and report him.”
“That’s chicken-brained, that is,” said Pani. He put a piece of driftwood back on the table among the rest of the still-life objects the boys used to practice drawing. “Teachers are animals. They hate snitches as much as they hate boys who give them trouble. It’s us who’ll get our heads knocked about.” He rolled his eyes at Niall. “Wise up, for Christ’s sake.”
Niall’s eyes fell to his hands. He was very self-conscious about the warts there and was forever picking at them. He was also the most thoughtful member of the gang and this had been his first suggestion. Pani was out of line, but I didn’t say so because, I knew he loved to act the boss when Martin wasn’t present.
The door opened and my cousin entered. Once I’d told him what had happened, Martin said, “I’ve got the perfect plan. We’ll give him a scare. We’ll tell him to report to Father Rafferty for kicking you.”
“That’s bloody brilliant,” said Pani. “Let’s find the arsehole and tell him.” He rolled up his blazer sleeves in preparation for our strut around the school to look for the senior boy. “That’ll scare him shiteless.”
We didn’t find the fifth-former until next day. He was playing football in the all-weather pitch during the lunch break. David accompanied me while Martin, Pani, and Niall watched intently from a corner of the school building.
“Hey, you,” I said, as I drew up to him with my chest out and shoulders pushed back so much they ached.
The fellow looked at David and I before nudging his friend.
“How’s your arse?” he said. “First-years have to show respect for their betters.” He glanced at David. “So do second-years, for that matter. And if you don’t, well then, you have to be taught the hard way. Simple as that.” A smart-arse grin painted his face.
“You can tell that to Father Rafferty at three o’clock tomorrow in his office,” I said.
“Yes, he’ll tell you if he thinks your plans to teach juniors respect are sound or not,” David added.
The fellow’s smart-arse grin disappeared and his pink cheeks went pale. “Ach, you chaps are joking me, aren’t you?”
“Do I look like the type who’d joke about a thing like that?” I asked. “He told us to tell you he needs a word.”
Our plan executed, David and I walked away, leaving the two boys conferring in the middle of the pitch as the two teams continued the game and the ball moved back and forth. The next stage of Martin’s plan required me to find the boy before three o’clock next day and inform him I had indeed been joking. However, as gloating knows no limits, I decided to keep him in suspense until the two-fifteen bell rang for change of classes. This was my last opportunity to see him before three o’clock.
I’d even done my homework and found out 5B, his class, would be assembling in Room 12 at that time. As the bell rang, I stood in front of Mr. Kelly’s desk while he explained to Barry Shaw and me why our crystal-growing experiment had been a miserable failure. With one eye on the teacher and the other on the door, I watched the rest of the physics class leave.
“Sir, may I be excused? We have German next and Miss Devine asked me to see her before class begins.”
“This’ll only take a few more minutes.”
I didn’t hear another word about how to successfully grow crystals. Five minutes later, I hurtled along the empty corridor, the only noise the grating screech of my rubber soles as I negotiated corners. I arrived at Room 12 with a roaring stitch in my side. Peering discreetly through the side window, I scanned inside. He wasn’t there. I loitered for as long as I dared, hoping he was perhaps late for class, but he didn’t arrive.
Throughout German, I shifted about in my wooden chair so much, it irritated my arse and made it itch like mad. I dashed out at the first peal of the three o’clock bell. My class had taken place in the salmon-colored extension while the headmaster’s office lay in the older section of the school. The corridors teemed with boys whose faces I scoured as I threaded my way through. As I reached the gymnasium doors, I saw the fellow enter the headmaster’s office.
Throughout geography and the following class, I watched the door, waiting for Father Rafferty to peer through the side window as he always did before entering a room. He didn’t come.
On Friday morning, just as I was beginning to relax, someone tapped the door during religious education. The headmaster’s birdlike secretary entered and I was told to present myself at Father Rafferty’s office at lunchtime on Monday.
As the gang decided moral support was in order, they accompanied me along the corridor at the appointed hour, then melted into the shadow of the trophy cabinet in the vestibule adjacent to Father Rafferty’s office. I walked the final five yards to his door. Pani, owing to his unlawful long curtain of hair, opted to view from an even more discreet d
istance and planted himself by the gymnasium doors some twenty-five feet away.
The headmaster was an expert in torture. He kept me squirming for exactly seven minutes before I heard, “Enter.”
He looked me up and down as I closed the door and then he inquired as to the reason for my visit. He knew exactly why I was here; he was torturing me further by obliging me to explain it to him. After I’d finished, he ordered me to stand with clasped hands before his desk. He read a letter while I waited to prolong my discomfort and then rose and left the office without saying a word. He returned a minute later with the Burgundy Book.
“I note you’ve made some good progress since the Christmas term examinations.” The priest pushed his shiny spectacles up his nose. “I expect your summer exam results are also reflecting this.”
“So far, Father.”
“Young man, look at me when I’m addressing you. Saint Malachy’s boys exhibit leadership qualities. They do not glance at the floor like beggars receiving alms when addressed.”
“Yes, Father.”
I looked at the priest and had to admit that, while he had an overall cold demeanor, now that I was really close, I saw a flicker of kindness in his crinkly face. As his attention returned to the Burgundy Book, the chicken scratch words, “Only a mediocre student,” thundered in my mind. This thought was followed swiftly by another: where, exactly, did he kept his leather tickler with its piece of sandwiched cold steel?
“Young man, do you hope to be successful here?”
“I do.”
“Pardon?” His salt and pepper eyebrows arched behind his gold-rimmed glasses.
“I do, Father.”
“What might success constitute in your mind, exactly?”
“That I will do excellently in all my examinations, Father.”
His eyebrows went higher. “Is that all, young man?”
The way he said “young man” was most off-putting.
“And to be consistently good at sports, too.”
His right brow lifted,
“And to be consistently good at sports, too, Father.”
“And that is all success means to you?”
I couldn’t think what else he needed me to say. The silence grew excruciatingly.
“What about character and integrity?”
“Character and integrity are very important.”
“And they’re lacking in your case, are they not?”
There ensued a lecture about liars and lying and the virtues he expected Saint Malachy’s boys to consistently demonstrate. I only half heard, because my mind was still preoccupied with the tickler. A few minutes later, he came around to my side of his boxy desk, slipped his hand into a slit in his soutane and pulled out a limp piece of ancient leather. Within the space of sixty seconds, he’d administered three powerful whacks on each palm, their echoes chasing the little silences between each slap as they bounced off his varnished pine door. I was then curtly dismissed.
As I started toward the gymnasium where the gang now stood, Pani propelled himself out from within the shadow of its recessed doors.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
Martin’s and Niall’s eyes focused on my hands. Before I could reply, Father Rafferty’s door opened again. Pani streaked across the vestibule in three gigantic leaps and barged out the main door, the rest of us following in his wake. I emerged into the brilliant sunlight feeling very dark.
“The pain will pass quickly,” Martin said.
The ultimate authority had punished me. No one in our gang had been punished by him. Not even Pani with his illegal hair. My cousin laid an arm gently around my shoulder, but the lump in my throat would brook no acknowledgment of his kindness.
Fifteen
The rest of the summer holidays passed quickly. In the middle of August, Martin and I spent a week touring towns in Donegal with Uncle Tommy, Auntie Bernie, and their two children. They wanted to investigate renting a summer holiday cottage near the seaside. On our first day at the beach, Philip, my five-year-old cousin, begged Uncle Tommy to swing him ’round and ’round, to relive a carousel ride that he’d been on the day before. While pretending to read my book, I listened to Philip’s joyful screams as he was swung in the air ever faster and it reminded me of my own pleasure when Uncle Tommy had swung me this way so long ago.
Shortly before my return to school, my mother summoned my siblings and I to the kitchen table for a family discussion, a most peculiar event as she’d never before done such a thing. As we settled around the table, Daddy came in and sat opposite us. My mother stood behind him and laid her hand upon his shoulder. The scene reminded me of those sepia photographs that I’d seen of wanly smiling husbands and wives dressed up in their Sunday best, except my father was the one who was sitting.
“Children, your father and I have made a decision that is going to affect all our lives forever. It will involve a great deal of sacrifice. There will be a lot of hardship for a time. We won’t have a lot of meat on our dinner table, not even stewing steak on Sundays. We’ll also have to go without new clothes for a while.”
The stewing steak I wouldn’t miss. It was tasteless and felt like I was chewing string.
“Your father’s leaving his job,” Mammy continued. “He’s buying a digger and starting up a business. We have some money saved, but it isn’t enough and we’ll need to borrow more from the bank. That means we’ll need to cut back on our expenses.”
“What sort of digger, Daddy?” asked James, his voice lilting with anticipation.
“A JCB.”
“Can I drive it?”
“We’ll see.” My father glanced at me and smiled, but I looked away.
He outlined his plan to work for the local farmers, saying he’d apply to do government jobs, too, when he had enough money to purchase newer equipment. He finished by stating we’d be millionaires in a very short time. Mammy scoffed at that, though it was clear she was delighted.
The digger, a rusty, tractor-like machine with a cab and wide front bucket, the uneven edge of which glinted in the sunlight, arrived two months after the start of my new school term. Daddy was proud, so proud that when I arrived home from school the next day I found he’d even repainted the digger. He’d done a brilliant job. It gleamed like it was brand new in the low autumn sun.
It didn’t stay that way for long. He began working the thing mercilessly. He worked for hours enlarging the farmers’ tiny fields, removing trees, stone fences, hedges, and ditches so they could use hay balers and combine harvesters instead of doing the harvest manually.
In my second year at school, I’d been put into class 2B and Miss Brown was still our form mistress. Connor moved from the A stream to join my class. Saint Malachy’s required boys to choose a second European language in addition to German in year two and, choosing French over Spanish, he ended up in 2B. Throughout that year, I continued to excel at track and field and my schoolwork, even finishing first in my class after the Christmas examinations.
I had to endure taunts from the other boys on the bus ride home for my successes. Mickey and Pearse continued to gang up on me, in addition to a few other boys, but they earmarked me for the elephant’s share. It didn’t happen every day. Some days they forgot about me, or they got caught up in other mischief. There were also days when they had to stay late for sports training and I could breathe easy. But on the other days, when Mickey appeared to be in a bad mood as he boarded the bus, I’d sink down in my seat so that even the top of my head wouldn’t be visible to provoke him. The ploy usually didn’t work and there was no one to protect me anymore—Finbar had left for Oxford and the new bus prefect was as useful as a spare head. He was just as frightened of Mickey as I was, so he turned a blind eye to his bullying.
One afternoon, toward the end of that year, I was summoned to the back of the bus, where Mickey sat. I was immediately suspicious and didn’t want to obey until Paddy came up to me, crossed his heart, and swore it wasn’t for anything bad.
“He needs to ask you a question,” he said, “and if I were you, I wouldn’t risk annoying the senior boys by refusing to come.”
No sooner was I before them than Pearse and two other boys grabbed my arms and legs and held me while Mickey poured something on my clothes. Instantly, the bus stank to Zeus’s throne. People pinched their noses and thrust the upper windows of the bus wide open.
“HARKIN’S SHIT HIMSELF,” a voice roared, above the furor.
The driver stopped the vehicle and stomped down the aisle, demanding to know who’d released the stink bomb. No one owned up and he was at a loss about what to do. Finally, he ordered me to come with him and made me stand by the open door for the rest of the ride to Ballynure.
“The boys got you good,” Fergal said, as we started up the road.
“You call that animal behavior ‘good’?”
“Don’t take it so seriously.”
“How would you like it?”
“All the same, you have to admit it’s amazing how Mickey was able to concoct a stink bomb in chemistry class.”
“Remind me to check and see if he passes his chemistry exam at the end of the year.”
Fergal laughed. “You’re too touchy.”
“How would you like to be picked on constantly?”
He didn’t reply.
After that incident, I began to sit in the front seat of the bus. I did for the rest of that year and throughout my third year, also. I didn’t care if a bunch of first-years surrounded me. My bus friend, Aidan, and a few other boys who liked me sat beside me sometimes; so did Paddy, but only when he needed to copy homework from me.
In my third year, sixth-formers like Jim Hegarty, who’d teased me about my large school bag, left for university. But it didn’t help my situation. The teasing continued—though a new group of boys became sixth-formers, they were either scared of or friendly with Mickey and Pearse, who were sixteen and even more powerful now.
“They threw bricks through Brennan’s pub windows the other night and it serves them right, Ruth,” someone said at the delicatessen, which lay on the other side of the high supermarket shelving.
A Son Called Gabriel Page 15