The Anatomy School

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘Only if I can have one taken with a skull,’ said Blaise. ‘Like Hamlet. We’re in the right place for a skull.’

  ‘Even the right room,’ said Martin. He opened the filing cabinet beside him and produced a creamy white skull which he handed to Blaise.

  ‘Yes, ya beauty. Is it real?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s not plastic or anything?’

  ‘No.’ There was a cut around the forehead and the top of the skull could be lifted like a lid. But now it was held in place by little brass hooks and eyes. Blaise opened it and looked in. He spoke in a sepulchral voice into the cavity:

  ‘Where is your soul?’

  Martin went out and came back with a sheet, a tripod and a camera. He rigged up the sheet over one of the bookcases as a background and positioned Blaise in front of it. He didn’t bother with the tripod. Blaise held the skull up and he stared into its empty orbits, profile to profile. The bib of his dungarees creased in such a way as to bare his chest from the side.

  ‘Put that fucking thing back in,’ said Martin.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your nipple.’ Blaise adjusted the bib and shoulder strap.

  ‘I know who this is,’ he said. ‘I knew there was something familiar about the face.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Kavanagh was grinning in anticipation.

  ‘Mary Anne McCracken. Henry Joy’s sister.’

  ‘That only works once,’ said Kavanagh. Martin told them both to shut up and took some readings with a light meter. There was quite a bit of daylight coming from the window. He adjusted the aperture and depth of field.

  ‘He’s trying to blind us with science,’ Blaise said to the skull. ‘Stop grinning — it’s not funny.’ Martin began to snap away. Quickly advancing the lever with his thumb after each shot. Clicking the shutter, hearing the camera mechanism make the satisfying noise. Taking some landscape, some portrait.

  ‘How did you get the gold stuff on your cheeks?’ he asked.

  ‘I put it there before I went out last night.’

  ‘Pardon me for asking,’ Martin said. ‘Did you hear about Sharkey?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You remember who Sharkey was?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Blaise still staring at the skull, ‘he was in our so-called religious class. The Republican bastard. Gifted with stupidity.’

  ‘He was also the one who led the charge to give you the kicking,’ said Kavanagh.

  ‘That’s all a total blank to me. Days that disappeared.’

  ‘Well, he’s no longer with us,’ said Martin.

  ‘Shame!’

  ‘He was shot dead about a year ago by an army marksman.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘It was at night. How would you know? He was probably trying to kill the army marksman.’

  ‘Men who shoot straight in the cause of crooked thinking.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘So it should be. It’s Louis MacNeice.’

  ‘Oh.’ Martin imitated Blaise’s sepulchral voice of earlier as he circled round him clicking away. ‘Where is your soul, Mr Foley?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘Leave Yorick out of it now.’ Martin took the skull and put it on the table. He continued to snap Blaise. Looking this way and that. His hat tilted. His hat off.

  ‘You’ve learned a thing or two in here, Martin?’

  ‘I know how to empty a big bottle.’

  ‘Aye, drink it.’

  ‘Naw — there’s more to emptying a bottle than you’d think. If you just upend it, it takes ages. It goes ker-plunk, ker-plunk, kerplunk into the sink.’ He was crouching, still taking pictures. ‘But if you swirl the liquid it creates a vortex then it just gushes out. Speeds the whole process up.’

  ‘That’s really useful to know,’ said Kavanagh.

  ‘That’s why I told you.’

  ‘Why don’t you write a book about it?’ said Blaise. He took another sip from his cup. ‘ “Bottle Emptying for Beginners.” It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Wittgenstein was a laboratory assistant in Guy’s during the war.’

  Kavanagh elbowed his way into several of the pictures beside Blaise and tried to look mad.

  ‘Now all three of us,’ he said, beckoning to Martin, ‘with a bottle of abs alc.’

  He was getting really drunk now. Saying stupid things. Slurring his words. Martin mounted the camera on the tripod and switched it to self-timer. He used what remained of the film to take pictures of the three of them with their arms round each other. Pulling faces in much the same way as they did the last time. Squinting and eye rolling. Kavanagh pretending to pull Blaise’s goatee beard. And Blaise letting him. He was getting every bit as drunk as Kavanagh.

  ‘To pluck the beard of a Russian is the supreme insult. It’s worse than spitting in his face.’

  Martin rewound the film.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for prints until the boss takes a day off. He doesn’t like us doing homers.’

  Blaise moved and slumped on to a different chair. He pointed to the skull on the table. ‘I know. I know what would be nice. We could have a drink from this skull.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Martin. ‘It would only run out the holes.’

  ‘Not if you’re clever,’ said Blaise.

  ‘Why on earth would you want to?’ said Kavanagh. ‘When we’ve got cups.’

  Blaise flicked back the tiny brass hooks and lifted the lid of the skull. Kavanagh pointed down inside, spoke in a pretend dumbfuck voice, ‘The foramen magnum. Big hole for spine. Alcohol dribble out.’

  Blaise flipped over the top of the skull he held in his hands so that it became a small dish. He held it out like an inverted skullcap.

  ‘Hit me,’ he said. Kavanagh didn’t move.

  ‘Oliver fuckin Twisted, right enough,’ said Kavanagh.

  ‘Just a splash.’

  ‘Hey that’s going a bit far,’ said Martin. ‘That was somebody.’ Blaise laughed and mimicked Martin.

  ‘That was somebody. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘Why would you want to?’

  ‘For the sheer fucking hell of it.’

  ‘You’ll have to do it yourself,’ said Kavanagh. But Blaise couldn’t be bothered to get up off his seat. He replaced the top of the skull and fastened the brass hooks.

  ‘This would look great on my mantelpiece,’ he said. ‘Would it be missed?’

  ‘Too fuckin right it would. It’s Dr Cowie’s demonstration model.’ Martin lifted the skull and replaced it in the filing cabinet drawer. ‘And if they found out I’d get the fucking heave-ho.’ He was about to turn away, then he thought better of it and locked the drawer. He pocketed his keys and sat down and yawned. His act of yawning made him want to yawn again. He leaned back on his chair. He angled the chair so that it was propped against the wall at a steep angle. That meant his head could lean against the wall.

  ‘I’m bate to the ropes,’ he said. His eyelids, the top and the bottom, came slowly together. It happened simultaneously in the left eye and the right eye or at least he was not conscious of it happening therefore he assumed that it happened simultaneously. The voice of Blaise seemed to fill the room, then to fill Martin’s head. Occasionally Kavanagh spoke. He had a deeper voice. They sounded like music together. And at the same time Martin knew that he should not be falling asleep when the two people he liked best were in the same room as himself and they were drinking and talking. His chair was balanced on its back legs like a fulcrum. Show me a fulcrum and I will move the earth. Who said that? Martin made out what the two others were saying but could not respond to it.

  ‘Look at your man.’ Kavanagh’s voice.

  ‘Sound asleep.’ Blaise’s voice.

  ‘He’s been up all night.’

  ‘But, sure, so have we.’

  ‘No staying power.’

  ‘Drink is fuel for getting you through.’

  Martin felt as if he was hypnotised. Aware but unable to act.

>   ‘We got away with it, didn’t we? The exam papers.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No one ever knew.’ Blaise smiled. ‘Who left them back?’

  ‘Me. Martin got rid of your pictures. Says he burned them. Condor never knew.’

  ‘Oh yes he did. That fucker stood the Thomas à Becket thing on its head: it was the priest saying, “will no one rid me of this troublesome pupil”?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He said it to me — not in so many words. The day of the inquisition. Martin should have sold the photos. Shouldn’t you?’ Blaise shouted. ‘Eh Mr Brennan? Wittgenstein says about conversation that it’s like a custom where you throw someone a ball and he is supposed to throw it back to you. But certain people don’t understand and put the ball in their pocket. End of conversation. ISN’T THAT RIGHT, MARTIN?’ Why was he always falling asleep? Was he suffering from sleeping sickness? Why were there other times when he couldn’t sleep at all? He heard Blaise get up and heard his voice getting nearer. He was paralysed with exhaustion. Kavanagh’s voice said:

  ‘Naw — naw, that isn’t fair.’ Blaise kicked the chair leg outwards and Martin fell. He woke with a start and a roar. And was conscious that both Kavanagh and Blaise had caught him before he reached the ground. The wooden chair clattered loudly away from beneath him. They laughed and their hands cushioned his fall.

  ‘For fuck sake, lads, what are you doing?’

  ‘Saving your life.’

  They lowered him on to the lino and he lay there stunned. After a minute or so he got to his feet.

  ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I have been away from home too long.’

  Blaise hugged him. Martin was again conscious of the touch of his beard. He felt uncoordinated with tiredness. Blundering. He could hardly speak.

  ‘Where’s home for you these days?’

  ‘A flat in Cambridge.’

  ‘It’s a squat,’ said Kavanagh.

  ‘See you some time,’ said Martin. ‘Sorry, I’m fucked. But that’s another story.’

  ‘See you.’ Kavanagh patted Martin on the shoulder on his way out the door. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘The future is only the past waiting to happen,’ said Blaise.

  ‘A Blaise phrase, if ever I heard one.’

  Blaise waggled his fingers to say goodbye in much the same fashion as Cindy had done. Kavanagh slumped back heavily on to his chair and put his head in his hands.

  The big door slammed behind him and he walked away from the department out into the day, pushing his bike. The cold helped waken him. In the quad the early morning sun was bright and hard. There wasn’t much warmth in it yet. The light made dark shadows of every university building. Birds were singing, going at it hell for leather. The cherry tree bark shone like dark brass. The yellow of the laburnum hung utterly still. Two pigeons were flying in and out of the quad, making a noise with the flapping of their wings. They flew above the roofs and toppled out of the blue sky and, just in time, saved themselves from falling by spreading wings — gliding with a flash of blue-grey and white feathers. When they settled they cooed and cuk-cooed. There were several sets of steps to negotiate so he didn’t immediately get on his bike. He liked pushing it by the saddle. A fractional lean to the left or to the right and the handlebars tilted and the bike went in the direction he wanted it to go. Leading from behind. It was a fine balancing act totally within his control. Coming to the steps he bounced it and helped the bike rear up like a horse.

  Cycling on the road was a strange feeling, seeing people who had spent the night sleeping, coming hunched and puffy eyed from their houses, lighting up their first cigarettes. He saw himself, all those years ago, white faced from sleep, waiting around outside the paper shop for Kavanagh so’s they could walk to school. The big fella laughing, throwing his head back. For a while a thing of the past but now there was hope it could go back to that — with Pius Pippa giving him the bum’s rush. Martin would have to work hard if he wanted the situation to stay that way. It was for Kavanagh’s own good. For him to become ‘saved’ for the sake of a woman was the height of nonsense. He hoped he wouldn’t get too depressed or be hurt too badly. He would hate that to happen. To anybody.

  He pedalled slowly, taking it easy, his hands at the centre of the handlebars. Meeting Blaise again was amazing. He was definitely homo — or gay, as they were now calling it. But, for some reason, it didn’t worry Martin — it was just so typical of Blaise to go a different way. It was the way he was. He remembered the weird poem by St John of the Cross — of the man pursuing Christ and kissing him, getting a love bite. ‘My neck he wounded’. He accepted the poem and what happened in it, the way he now accepted what Blaise was. Martin had not the slightest desire to be like him, but he had no desire to stop him either. Just as he didn’t want to be gay he didn’t want to be wild either. Blaise was an intelligent, thrawn, mad bastard. Martin was not. He felt that once Blaise was on the scene there was an air of danger, of unpredictability in everything — as dangerous as a sharpened blade, not in its box. In a way he loved that, and in another way he didn’t. He, Martin, was a ‘Do I dare to eat a peach?’ guy, whereas Blaise would eat them stones and all. Watching Blaise was like watching a movie: you enjoyed it but you were glad you were not in it. This morning, Martin was glad he was able to cycle away from Blaise, leaving Kavanagh to tidy up.

  There were lots of policemen about, looking uneasy. He wondered if there had been an explosion and he hadn’t heard it. If anybody had been killed. Sometimes, if the wind was in the wrong direction, you didn’t hear a thing. These fucking Troubles had gone on for years now. Hundreds had been killed. How long was it going to go on? How many more would die? Recently in the parlour they had talked endlessly of the situation.

  ‘Tell me this and tell me no more,’ said Mrs Brennan, ‘what is it all about?’

  ‘Ask the Other Crowd,’ said Nurse Gilliland. ‘Wasn’t it them started the whole thing?’

  ‘You might be right.’

  ‘Wasn’t it your man up the Ravenhill Road who started the riots in ‘64 goading the police into it — all for the sake of a tricolour in a shop window.’

  ‘Don’t tell me it was Catholics jumped out of a car and stabbed that poor man on the Falls Road.’

  ‘And wasn’t it the Other Side who murdered that barman — shot him stone dead — for nothing other than his Catholic religion. And wasn’t it the Prods who let off the first bombs, blowing up water mains …’

  ‘Wasn’t it them that killed the first policeman.’

  ‘It wasn’t the Legion of Mary who burned out Bombay Street.’

  ‘What were they thinking of?’

  ‘They were retaliating before the event.’

  ‘And they were in the driver’s seat, too. They had no grievances. It was us didn’t have the jobs or the houses.’

  ‘You never spoke a truer word.’

  Martin was no longer obliged to carry in the trays for the supper evenings but if he was in the house he would always contrive to be in the room when the food was handed out. Nothing much had changed — except that Father Farquharson had been given a different parish at the other side of town. It meant he came less frequently, it being dangerous some nights even to ‘venture out’.

  ‘You’ll have done Macbeth, Martin,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘I think our country sinks beneath the yoke; it weeps, it bleeds and each new day a gash is added to her wounds. How’s that for memory? Forty-two years since I looked at it.’

  ‘They could teach in those days. Father,’ said Mrs Brennan. ‘Not the faffing about they go on with nowadays. Leaving it up to the pupils.’

  ‘They say we’re the world’s experts here at putting the body back together again,’ said Nurse Gilliland.

  ‘Humpty Dumpty land,’ said Mary Lawless.

  ‘The land where nobody is safe.’ Mrs Brennan was almost in an anxiety state about what was happening.

  ‘Steel pins for
joints,’ said Nurse Gilliland, ‘titanium plates for bone that’s disappeared.’

  ‘What can a body do nowadays?’

  ‘If they run out of materials, Mrs Brennan, they could use your tart plates,’ said Father Farquharson. ‘The best of tin.’

  ‘And welcome. If my oul tin plates could save a life …’

  ‘Beaten into shape of course.’

  ‘The boy from Belfast with the titanium cranium …’ said Nurse Gilliland.

  ‘Rhubarb or apple, sir? Which would suit you best?’ said Mary Lawless. ‘Protestant or Catholic?’

  There was a slight decline towards Shaftesbury Square, which meant he could almost freewheel. He imagined himself as Billy Graham — hiring football grounds for pagan rallies — preaching to the converted. ‘There is no God. We’re in this by ourselves. Nobody else. Sinn Fein — ourselves alone. If you don’t believe — stand up — go out the nearest exit. And if you still want to believe listen to the testimony of my friend Mr Foley. And if you don’t believe him lend an ear to my other — recently reformed — mate, Mr Kavanagh.’

  The night was over. Fuck, and what a night. The night of the bad apples. Cindy letting him. Blaise walking back into their lives. His thing still felt raw red. From usage. But it was now pleasant — an after-glow. Like the absolute alcohol. He had been bursting to tell Kavanagh and Blaise about Cindy. However, Kavanagh would have twigged that precious little attention would have been paid to accuracy in his experiment. But Kavanagh had been fairly drunk. Martin might be able to blame him for the mistakes. He mightn’t remember too much about it. Maybe some day he could tell him. Whether it was before or after the BSc thesis, he had still to decide.

  The best thing about the sex was that it was all over. He wouldn’t have to worry about it any more. He could raise a superior eyebrow like Kavanagh and say, ‘Thee most important day in the life of a young man is the day he first gets it.’ But it wasn’t as simple as that. The actual event, the getting of it, had been awful. What he had liked was the lead up to it. But maybe he would improve. Who plays basketball well his first time on court?