by J. M. Smyth
They had a night watchman, y’see, who used to go around the dorms with this birch, some old branch he’d broken off a tree. He’d lay into whoever took his fancy. Or whoever had embarrassed his bosses. The beds were laid with their foots at the windows and their heads at the centre aisle. Everybody had to sleep in the same direction: you had to lie on your left side with your back to the door. The watchman used to come in from behind you, and you weren’t allowed to look round, so you never knew he was going to pick on you until you felt the birch. A lot of kids were afraid to go back to sleep again. You were always jumping at the slightest noise, steeling yourself. Corn got that night in, night out, for fuck knows how long. That and the constant digs in the head was how they’d give you the staggers. He was one of the lucky ones – he never went deaf over it. Oh, and the bat and ball. A Brother’d put him against a wall and fire hurling balls at his head. All this stuff went on for months, years sometimes, till they had you going around banging your head against the wall. Some banged their heads that much they lost eyes, smashed bones, all that. It was their way of driving you insane. Then they’d send you off to the nuthouse.
It’s amazing how many people are surprised to learn that Brothers only joined up for a job for life. Bit like joining the army. No sense of vocation or fuck all like that. Funnily enough, I never saw Corn banging his head against the wall. That surprised me. Anyway, they’d stick you in the well as well. That’s where I got to know him better. His voice, in particular, I should say. It was too dark to see his face.
I think I remember him telling me his parents were in a bad car crash, and Corn ended up in with me for a couple of years while they were getting better. Corn wasn’t a long-termer. A lot of kids spent time in those homes because their parents had fallen on hard times for a while and had no one else to turn to for help. Some of them even came from families who could’ve looked after them but wouldn’t – they’d gone to America or whatever – and left them in what they’d thought were good hands, even paid for them to be looked after. Corn’s parents probably thought he was having a great time. Once they were better of course they came and got him.
Funny how things work out.
Though funny isn’t a word that came to mind when I rehung that Sacred Heart. I wasn’t alone in that cottage.
‘Well, this is a surprise.’
‘What?’
I didn’t even see it coming. It was Corn. Complete with spray. He let me have it.
PICASSO
Having questioned Anne Donavan apropos Lucille Kells/Frances Anne Donavan, I had watched the entrance to the stables from a hedge behind the cottage. A man approached. He was walking with a limp. In the light of the kitchen, where he discovered a letter behind a Sacred Heart picture, I found myself recalling an acquaintance from my youth. I have touched on this on a prior occasion and, although I saw no reason to expand at that time, I feel that I should do so now.
I once had the misfortune to experience the inhospitality of a home for boys. An ‘industrial school’ to give it its designated title. I lay one particular night on a bed recovering from a flogging. And that very morning a boy, known to me as Sean Dock, had found himself in the enviable position of being unable to consume his breakfast of bread and dripping. Sean had explained that he was unwell to the Brother in charge, who then administered what he, and others of that institution, referred to as ‘a good kicking’. Or, in the Brother’s case, a good kicking. He has the most irritating habit of emphasising his ‘G’s. Even now it is impossible to hear anyone of that inclination without thinking of that Brother.
Earlier that morning we were awoken, as was the practice, to the command: ‘Up, up, sailors in line.’
Sailors – those who had wet their beds – were required to form a line. As an added disincentive, boys who had brothers were forced to undergo beatings at their hands. Implements were furnished for this purpose, and Sean Dock, a nightly offender, was punished each dawn by his twin, Red. Sean, naked, would bend over, and Red would have to administer the strap.
Red would register his objections, which led to he himself being strapped. This would cease only when he agreed to comply. They would beat him until he agreed to beat his brother. Sean, however, was a sickly boy, and the effect of this rendered him incapable of eating. The nerves in his tummy, I suppose, prevented comfortable digestion. In that sense, Red had unwillingly induced this nausea, its result having invited ‘a good kicking’. The Brother responsible then dragged the unconscious boy to the infirmary.
That night I found myself waking to a conversation. Red was by Sean’s bed. Both were whispering.
‘Robert,’ Sean was saying, ‘how do you prove you’re being good?’
Robert – Red was a nickname because of his hair colouring – did not have an answer. I myself would have been at a loss to provide one. Regardless of conduct, all were treated as offenders, constantly abused into believing that we had been abandoned by our families, who did not want us, because we were no good and never would be. Why this conviction was instilled, that all that had befallen us at the hands of the clergy was our families’ doing, in Red’s case, for sixteen years – from infancy to the time of his release – was never explained.
Sean then referred to their family.
‘You’ll tell them about me, Robert, won’t you?’
‘Sean, you can tell them yourself. You’ll get better.’
Sean seemed of a different opinion. ‘Promise me you’ll tell them about me, Robert.’
‘Sean, for fuck’s sake quit talking like that.’
‘Promise.’
‘Sean, you’ll get better. You’ll be going home.’
‘Promise you’ll take me home and bury me.’
Red simply could not deal with the situation. Sean knew he was dying and the only thing that would console him was the promise. And Red made it.
‘I promise,’ he said, ‘I promise.’
The door opened and Red’s transgressions were discovered. He had crept out of bed and gone to his twin. I heard what happened to him moments later, as did Sean. I did not need to witness his punishment, having had some experience of it myself, to attest to its savagery.
It was their practice to spread malefactors naked on the bottom of a staircase and administer a section of tyre from a pram wheel until the welts satisfied their appetites.
The following morning I was lowered into a well, where I found Red. We spent some forty-eight hours or so huddled together.
In Ireland, besides those found in churchyards, there are three kinds of cemeteries. One, for children born dead: not having been baptised, the original mark of Adam still on their souls, they cannot lie in consecrated ground. Two, the cemetery of the institution: for the religious. Three, an adjoining plot: for boys who have died while in care.
Red absconded and was discovered weeping over Sean’s grave, in which four other boys had also been buried. ‘They even got the date wrong,’ he said. ‘Sean died on the fourteenth. They put the fifteenth.’
He had seen Sean alive after midnight and so was aware of the error. Had they monitored the boy’s condition, they too would have known.
Thereafter, Red, to the religious, remained bright and cocky, a demeanour he maintained, refusing to show the effects of his twin’s death. In private, such privacy as could be obtained within those confines, he became increasingly insular and motivated. He had an infinite number of ideas – get-rich schemes by the mountainload. Where he conjured them from, and to what end, only he knew; he would have made a formidable scholar, an addition to any society. He had also deduced the ways in which the clergy kept their records. One theory was that, in the case of children who had known no other upbringing than the system, by using the first two letters of an inmate’s name – he referred to himself as an inmate – one could ascertain the beginning of one’s birth name, and by applying the same logic to the last letters one’s place of birth. In short, the letters D-O-C-K now suggested to me that Red’s real name began wi
th ‘DO’, for Donavan, ending in ‘CK’, for Clonkeelin, Kildare. Red was a Donavan. Used as a method of decoding, the name Kells did not enter its parameters. Lucille was not a Donavan, Red was.
In light of the unexplained coincidence of having found him in the cottage on the night of Anne’s death, I had decided to bring him back to my rooms for questioning. And now, with Lucille in the next room, I began.
RED DOCK
‘Corn, me old mate, how’s it going? What the fuck’s that rustling noise?’
‘A little interrogation technique of my own design. The rat in the corner is enjoying a piece of raw meat. His colleagues are inside the crate gnawing their way through.’
‘How long will it take them?’
‘Usually several days.’
‘They’ll be famished by then.’
‘They are hoping you fail to answer my questions truthfully.’
‘How many are there?’
‘Three dozen.’
‘Questions?’
‘Rats.’
‘What if you’re called out?’
‘I have furnished a replacement timber, hammer and nails to allow you to shore off the crate temporarily thus prolonging their escape. You could of course always hit them with the hammer.’
‘What if you’re held up?’
‘I would inform those holding me up where to find you. One week later.’
‘They’ll be finding us both, Corn. By tomorrow, I’d say.’ I had his attention. ‘C’mere a minute, Corn.’ I didn’t want Lucille hearing what I had to say. ‘Why don’t we go down to your art gallery and have a little talk?’
‘I think not.’
‘Corn, I’m not likely to be making a run for it with those dogs on the end of my bollocks. Besides, you know what I’ve been up to. Even if I got out of here, I couldn’t turn you in, any more than you could me. So what’s there to be lost? More importantly, what’s there to be gained? By you.’
Greed, y’see. He was always a greedy bastard, even when we were emailing each other he was always after as good a deal as he could get.
‘You have another of your get-rich plans in mind?’
‘When they were dishing out plans, they must’ve mistaken me for an architect – and given me a whole drawerful.’
He thought about it long enough to see that he’d nothing to lose, then opened the door.
‘Good man. C’mon.’ And down we went.
‘I’ve admired your paintings. That Duet has something going for it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m glad you don’t like painting men. I wouldn’t fancy being in one of them. I know all about the flowers. I read about it in your journal.’ Y’shoulda seen the one called January. The girl in it had a face like a shovel – a crooked chin and a twisted nose. Meet her on a dark night and you’d shit yourself.
‘What do you call them? The “Calendar Collection”?’
‘Actually, no, though that is a possibility.’
‘It lacks something.’
‘Oh?’
‘Enigma.’
‘Explain.’
Packing crates were in the centre of the room.
‘You’re sending them away?’
‘To international galleries. Artists do like to display their work.’
‘Most of them don’t exhibit anonymously. You should give them more to ponder over. As it is, they’ll wonder why you didn’t complete the collection by including a December.’
‘An omission to be rectified this evening.’
‘Bad move. Let Duet take its place. Let them wonder why you did that. Complete it and Duet will look out of place. It won’t fit in. Send it as it is, and they’ll have more to talk about.’
It seemed to amuse him. ‘You know, Red, you might just have hit on something there.’
‘So you can forget about December.’
‘What exactly are you leading up to, Red?’
‘Business. Lucille thinks Anne Donavan’s her old dear.’
‘She is not.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I questioned her most persuasively. You did insist that I visit her. She endured my interrogation unnecessarily, when a simple confirmation of that which Lucille’s birth certificate had already proven to me would have granted her an easier passing. Lucille may think she is her mother. I myself am convinced that she is not.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s what Lucille thinks that counts.’
‘A plot which you constructed?’
‘Presentation, Corn. If there’s one thing I learnt from those who put us in that well, it was that. I’ve seen to it the law’ll see Lucille as being behind this. When she’s convicted, I claim what’s mine and Sean rests easy. That’s all I want. I’ve nothing personal against Lucille. Only …’
‘Yes?’
‘They’ll be grabbing you as well.’
‘I see.’
‘Unless we do a deal.’
It was my only way out of there. ‘The computer I used to email you shows you at the Top Towers Hotel. I get out of here, the law don’t find it with your name on it. You keep me here, they do. That’s the deal.’ I was tempting him. He knew as well as I did that if he let me go we could never squeal on each other without landing both of us in it. I’d have nothing to fear from him, and, more importantly, from his end, he’d have nothing to fear from me. ‘And I’ll throw in another dozen of Gemma’s punters for you to practise your waste-bin routine on.’
‘A dozen?’
Think how many scalpels that’d buy. ‘But there’s one proviso – Lucille has to be released.’
‘Impossible.’
‘Corn, all she can give the law is a description of a tall blonde guy with a cellar that could be anywhere in the thirty-two counties. OK, there’s a risk. But there’s always a risk. Steer clear of women’s prisons and she won’t be able to ID you from behind a forty-foot wall and tip them off. Hang on to me and that risk becomes a sure thing: you’ll be spending the rest of your natural in a room not much different from the one you had me in. Decision time, Corn.’
I had him. In his position, I’d’ve run with it. And so would he. What did he have to lose for fuck’s sake?
And the beauty of it was: Greg Swags’d be released. Corn leaving his mark on Anne’d see to that. Winters’d still try to hold Greg of course. No doubt he’d come up with some crap like Corn and Greg were partners. But partners wouldn’t fight it out in a hotel room, leaving one unconscious to identify the other. It’d never stand up. He’d let him go all right.
‘The longer you wait, Corn, the more chance they have of finding that laptop. And only I know where it is.’
‘You are very persuasive, Red.’
‘I just see the angles, Corn.’
‘Tell me, did you manage to fulfil your ambition and become a millionaire?’
‘I’m a success story, Corn. And chew on this: do you think I’d be handing you a deal if I thought it wasn’t straight up? Because if it isn’t, I won’t be at liberty long enough to bring Sean home. And that’s all I care about. No way would I jeopardise that. Done?’
‘Done. But tell me, how have you arranged for Lucille to be apprehended?’
‘Give her a whiff of that spray of yours and you’ll find out. C’mon.’
ELEVEN MONTHS LATER
RED DOCK
Here was the prosecutor – Thomas Frederick Dunne, big-timer in the brief profession, big dorsal-fin snout, avoids floating on his back at the beach in case he starts a panic – ‘Detective Sergeant Winters, the morning you were called to investigate the deaths of Amy and Edna Donavan, you initially considered deaths by misadventure I believe.’ Big smirk. ‘Why was that?’
‘Because farm animals sometimes cause fatal accidents!’
Oops. Touchy. Notice the dash with the dot on the bottom of Chilly’s response. That means Chilly’s pissed off. What the smirk was really saying was, ‘Lucille Kells must be very clever if she can fool a hardened cop like you into
believing death by misadventure with bodies lying all over the place.’ Tom Fred loves getting his neb in the papers with his courtroom antics – and playing to seven men and five women – three fuckable and two old dears – who made up the jury.
‘It had been raining heavily the morning their bodies were discovered – any physical evidence which might have suggested foul play had been washed away. I spoke to Conor Donavan, asked him about the bolt in the bull’s enclosure; had the wasps’ nest been a problem before then; what would have brought Edna Donavan out into the field in the early hours of the morning? He had no answers. Things happen. He saw nothing more to it than that. Short of anything else to go on at that time, except the jarring coincidence of two people dying the same night, misadventure was a possibility!’
Bit of a mouthful there, Chill. Wanted everyone to know he knew a thing or two when it came to doing his Detective Bloggs bit –– not to mention getting that ‘jarring coincidence’ line in so people wouldn’t think he didn’t see it.
‘The Donavans’ vet was called to examine a foal I believe.’
‘Yes.’
‘And what was his diagnosis?’
‘Your Honour’—that was Brady, Lucille’s man – the only thing big time about him is the grandfather clock covering the damp patch in his hall—‘if the prosecution wishes to enter the professional findings of the vet, why doesn’t he call him?’
‘Your Honour, vets have been known to corroborate evidence given to police officers, in my experience. I have no objection to Mr Brady calling a vet, should he feel the need of one.’
‘Yes, sit down, Mr Brady.’ That was the judge – face like a chimp, avoids walking past pet shops in case they drag him in and stick him in the window.
‘The vet said it was blind in one eye, its lungs hadn’t formed, its coat was slack, its left foreleg was crooked, it couldn’t get to its feet to suckle and eight hours or so had passed since birth, so it hadn’t consumed the antibodies only present in the mare’s milk for the first six hours, which foals need against infection.’