Boy Who Made It Rain

by Brian Conaghan

  I am afraid we did not actually operate on a personal level. We kept our meetings cordial but businesslike. To my knowledge they had a good standing in the community and were well liked. They weren’t philanthropic or anything of that nature, my belief is that they were charitable with their time. My opinion of them was that they were decent, honest folk.

  I think it is practically impossible to evade gossip mongering after the event. On the other hand, it is natural to speculate and feast on a diet of conjecture when something like this occurs. What I do not concur with is fabrication and untruths. For my own part I have taken a vow of silence in the sense that I refuse to participate in the idle tittle-tattle that tends to encase these things. The facts must surface before the indulgence of fiction and supposition.

  Clem informed us, his teachers, after only the first week of the summer term, that he was leaving. I agree it was rather an abrupt end to his school career with us. When he enlightened us to the fact that he was heading for Glasgow, well, it did strike me as somewhat incongruous. This was a vital year for him, in terms of exam success, future considerations and employment prospects and given the value that his parents placed on his education here, I found it odd that they were willing to fracture the continuity of it all. To be perfectly honest with you I thought that something untoward was afoot. No, I did not share that view with any of my colleagues. I carried out my professional duty and supported Clem in any way possible, especially in a time that could have been perceived as transitionally turbulent. I offered my services to him if he had any academic queries or concerns. In this modern technological age it is not too difficult to track one down, is it? Within the legal parameters that is. It is not the job of the school to question parents in these matters. It was presumed, and correctly so, that Mr Curran had either taken up a position in Scotland with a new company, or had been offered a transfer with his existing one. These are precarious times, gone are the days when the workforce can pick and choose. Our politicians and bankers have seen to that. Clem was simply an additional victim of the credit crunch. There are many victims in all this, are there not? Least of all the boy himself. That’s the waste. The destruction of young lives. With this in mind, blame doesn’t come into it for me at this moment. In many ways we are all to blame.

  Cora Kelly’s Isolation

  I had a pure red neck for Miss Croal by the way. Everyone was talking about how she only took that swotty nerd group coz Clem was going to it. Some wee guy in third-year said that she gave him…well, you know…under the desk, but you can take that with a pinch of salt. Or a sack of salt if it came from the third-years. They’re just full of wee numpties who talk mince all the time. I know. I felt a bit sorry for Rosie coz folk were saying that Croal fancied her bf. See, I thought she did at the beginning, right? But after a few months I could tell that she just liked him coz he was the brainiest in the class and she thought all the rest of us were pure thickos. She used to stand there and say in that posh West End voice of hers:

  ‘I can’t believe how limited a vocabulary you have, Cora Kelly.’

  ‘Aye right ye are Miss, nae hassle,’ I’d say.

  She was a bit round the twist. I think that’s why Rosie hated her. I dunno. What’s the difference between hate and dislike. Anyway, she didn’t like her, case closed. Loads of pupils hated certain teachers. It’s not a sin. She used to go berserk if you had your moby out, or if it went off in your bag or you got caught sending a text message. I got nabbed in loads of classes. Got loads of punnies for an all. Nightmare.

  Erm…Punishment exercises, punny for short.

  I couldn’t be bothered with her, she was too posh for me, and I hated the way she wore tight clothes to impress the guys. All boobs and smiles. I could just imagine her when she was at school herself. Miss Prim n Proper. I bet she was like one of the lassies off of the The Sound Of Music. Then she comes in here and thinks she’s down with what goes on in this area. “I’m a homegirl like you lot. I understand your plight.” No way man, she’s no getting away with that.

  Of course I was happy for Rosie. I knew from day one that she fancied Clem so I was down with it when she started going out with him. He was alright. I quite liked him, but after speaking to him I knew that I’d never fancy him. Too swotty for my liking. Anyway I didn’t have a Scooby what he was going on about half the time. The important thing was that she liked him and he liked her. Well that happens when your pal gets a bf. What did you want me to do? Pure stand about like a gooseberry? It’s not as if I was, like, pure wandering the streets on my own. Who do you think I am, Mrs Bean or something? I was seeing this guy anyway. He’s no from this school, he’s at college or uni or something. Conor Duffy was hanging around like a baby’s nappy as well. But he soon got the bum’s rush. He thought he could just snap his fingers and I’d come running like some wee lapdog. He thought he was pure God’s gift…he was alright but I think he was raging a bit when Clem came coz Clem was better looking than him and all the attention moved from Conor to Clem.

  That’s none of anybody’s business by the way. I don’t see how that’s got anything to do with anything. Everybody has always got an opinion about me and making up pure porkies, they should just ask me outright and I’ll tell them straight... You can do anything you want, I’m still no telling you about any of that stuff. All this has got nothing to do with me by the way, so I can walk if I want.

  They spent all the time with each other, even at lunchtime. Me and Rosie used to go up to the chippy at lunchtime, buy a roll n chips, smoke a fag, drink a can of Irn Bru. Everyday without fail, even when it was pure lashing down. Then Clem came on the scene and all of a sudden she was into going to that salad place down the precinct instead. It was up to her if she wanted to eat that Hollywood size-zero scran, it’s not as if I was going to fall out with her coz of it. What was I going to do about it? You just have to accept that that’s part of life. She was in mad love. So was he. At least, I think he was. If he wasn’t he was a brilliant liar then, wasn’t he? And the thing is all this stuff makes me think that’s exactly what he was, a brilliant liar. Rosie was my friend for yonks and I can’t remember one lie she told me.

  Confide? What does that mean? Aye, me and Rosie used to talk about everything. I’d tell her all my news and she’d tell me all hers. No, I didn’t tell her all the details, some things you don’t need to know, right? Aye, I’m sure she did the same. But that’s not lying, is it? They are totally different. I asked her if she loved Clem and she told me all this guff about love being hard to define and that it was too abstract to even try to understand it. I had to ask her what abstract meant. Anyway the fact is she was talking utter mince. So I asked her again, ‘do you love him, or not?’ Then she said that she did. When I asked her if Clem loved her she prattled on about love being abstract again, but eventually she said that, even though he hadn’t said it to her face, she thought that he did. If that was good enough for Rosie…it was good enough for me too. Rosie had her head screwed on about all that stuff. I mean you should hear some of the girls in our year talking about how they’re pure in love with some guys after just one snog. They haven’t a Scooby what love’s all about. I’m not saying I do either, but I don’t go about saying, ‘oh, I’m pure in love with so and so’ or ‘I pure love so and so to death’ after one conversation on Bebo.

  Friends stick together, don’t they? I knew that he was going to go back down to where he was from after his exams. Rosie told me he wanted to go to some uni down there, in some place I’d never heard of. I’m not great with my geography. I didn’t know what he wanted to study, probably law or doctoring. I knew that when he went back down south that’s when Rosie would need me around again, wouldn’t it? That’s when she’d need me more. And I’d be there for her coz that’s what friends are for. I’d be there for her always.

  When they were together it’s not as if she pure blanked me or anything, it’s just that I didn’t see her as much as I used to. Only at school and the odd time when she stay
ed back to do some extra art. We still had a howl though. I’d no idea that she was thinking of going to England to study. She didn’t tell me that. I always thought that she wanted to go to uni up here and study art or design, or something creative like that. That’s what she told me anyway. But she didn’t tell me that she’d applied to some uni down there. Where was it again? That’s right, Brighton. Sounds alright actually. Couldn’t be doing with that accent though. Can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want to be around that twenty-four seven. Do your absolute nut in, so it would. The funny thing is, see if it was a guy at our school, you know, just one of the normal guys, Conor’s mates or something, there’s no way in hell she would have followed him around the country. No way. What’s that word when you’re mad for someone and you can’t let them out of your sight? Infatuate, that’s it. She was infatuate with him. She’d have done anything for him. Well, she did. But I’m no that stupid, there’s no chance that I’d be running around after some pure mad guy like a wee lap dog just because he was, like, dead cool and mad different from the rest of the guys. Life’s too short for all that. And, anyway, it’s much better if they’re doing all the running than that oh-I’m-so-in-love-I-want-to-die crap.

  Mr Cunningham’s Inclination

  No teacher in their right mind wants to remain after the bell, unless they have no option. Parents’ night, for example. What I’m talking about is the extra-curricular activities, or other altruistic things teachers get themselves involved in. I’ve said it time and time again, they get no reward, financially or otherwise, for the work they do. Yes, periodically I have questioned the motives of certain members of staff. Having said that, it’s vital in any school environment that they have things like a football team, music clubs and drama clubs to participate in. Sometimes the school environment is the only solace these kids get. I ran a creative-writing class years ago, or tried to. It’s a thankless task. In this job you’re constantly being let down by students. In my experience, you’ll be disappointed somewhere down the line.

  When the possibility of special study evenings was first muted there weren’t many teachers queuing up to put themselves forward, even though it was paid work. A pittance for what they expected of you to be honest: stay behind on a Tuesday and Thursday night. Babysitting. Naturally it was hard to fill the position. Yes, it was down to me to help fill the study evenings. It’s not something I would normally ask a probationer teacher to do; well, for one, they don’t have the experience, and two, they have enough on their plate trying to settle into a new profession, a demanding profession. I didn’t ask them for those reasons alone. Pauline Croal approached me with the suggestion herself. I consulted a colleague and it was agreed that we would give her the responsibility of running the evening classes. They weren’t compulsory classes for the students so in that sense the heat was off. Nevertheless, it did demonstrate her eagerness to assimilate with the students and the demands of the job. You have to be careful of an over abundance of enthusiasm, it can be misplaced and misconstrued, especially by colleagues. Teachers can be a sensitive breed; they don’t like being down the pecking order when it comes to popularity, so while you can be extremely popular with the students, you can find yourself ostracised in the staff room. It’s a balancing act. My initial worry concerning Pauline Croal was that she would find herself isolated very quickly, if she didn’t change her ways a bit. By that I mean she’d have to try and curb her eagerness to please and be accepted; also, and this is a prickly subject, I thought she’d have to alter the way she dressed somewhat. It was a touch suggestive, but more than that, it was inappropriate for a school environment. The way she dressed, in my view, was a major misjudgement on her part and misread the male, and female, students’ mentality. She was laying herself open to an enormous amount of criticism both inside and outside the classroom. I wouldn’t say that I reluctantly agreed that she could oversee the evening classes, nevertheless I did accept her willingness to do it with some degree of caution.

  It became apparent very quickly that something inappropriate was going on. In this job you learn to filter the yarns from the bona fide. Bad news, or in this case inflammatory news, can act as a fire’s oxygen in a school. Tongues wagged. But I have seen events of this nature play themselves out before. This could have been the catalyst for the boy’s problems with his peers. And, let’s be honest, the subsequent event. As head of department, I had to approach the issue with prudence. It was no time for charging in like a gang of disgruntled NEDs. There were no facts on the table and without facts hearsay doesn’t help us advance things. I had an inclination, but like everyone else I heard it through the students. Some sixth-year lads I taught, good lads. Interested in their football and music, not much energy saved for their schoolwork, I have to say, but trustworthy fellows. They weren’t part of the NED culture in the school, which was a relief, so their inference had some weight and validity. Who better than sixth-year boys to know what the goings on in a school were…sixth-year girls, indeed. Quite right. Quite right.

  No, I didn’t investigate as such. How do you propose approaching such a thing? Instead I kept my eyes and ears open and endeavoured to observe Pauline Croal more closely. The lad in question I didn’t teach, but I was aware that he was a gifted student. It’s always difficult coming to a new school, but he had fitted in rather well by all accounts. Yes I was aware that he and Rosie Farrell were an item. I taught her in third- and fourth-year, a nice girl. Unusual, but nice. Her idiosyncrasies were certainly poles apart from her peers. I’d have never thought she’d have been implicated in this. By proxy or whatever. Never. My experience informs me that you can never be one hundred percent sure, can you?

  Of course, we, as a school, have to hold our hands up and accept our share of responsibility. Perhaps some of the staff could have made more valued judgements and acted before the situation got out of hand, which quite clearly it did. Obviously I am talking about colleagues such as Pauline Croal here, who was close to the boy, if you believed the school’s rumour mill. In this instance I hold my hands up and say that I did believe it initially. I am not saying that their dalliance had a direct effect in the event in question, but, I have to say, it could have been intrinsically linked in some perverse way. Everything has a cause and effect after all.

  Conor Duffy’s Brainwave

  It wiz Cora who first attracted ma attention tae it. So did big Liam iz well, coz he wiz in her English class. The thing iz, big Liam wiznay the sharpest tool in the box so she wouldnay’ve givin him any attention at all. But big Liam said she used tae swoon over him in class. That’s just him bein jealous a suppose. Then he told me that she wiz all over him in the swots class after school…his wee sister goes tae the class sometimes, and she said that she felt that she wiz intrudin on two people hivin a date. I wiz like that, get in there my son! Wit guy wouldnay’ve wanted tae sha…erm…kiss Miss Croal? Am tellin ye he wiz the talk ay the common room fur a while. Come tae think of it, he’s still the talk ay the common room. Then wee Cora said that she suspected somethin and if it wiz true that she wiz goin tae scud him full force on the bawz…erm…penis… an then tell Rosie. An I thought she wouldiv as well.

  Clem knew all the rumours iz well coz when any ay us tried tae ask him aboot it, he always said somethin we didnay understand an then storm aff. He got that mad look in his eye an you were like, nae danger man, A’m no goin there. Am no gettin involved in any that caper. A’ll tell you wit though, if it wiz true he wiz some liar coz he an Rosie were still like Velcro knickers kickin aboot the school…aye she heard. She must’ve. You cannay keep anthin quiet at this school, we even know wit girls are…erm...on their period. Wit I meant iz that you cannay keep anythin a secret, the world is too small man, walls have ears an all that. Rosie must’ve known. But the funny thing about it wiz that Cora didnay tell her, now that wiz dead weird coz if that’d been ma best mate I’d’ve told him there an then, but Cora said nothin. Maybe she knew somethin we didnay. Some folk still think Rosi
e got wind ay somethin coz she’s no that stupid. Rosie Farrell may be loads of things but she’s no thick. If she did, it just shows you how much she wiz intae yer man. Maybe he wiz threatenin her or somethin an that’s why she didnay dae anythin. A dunno, it’s pure mental man. A still cannay get ma heed roon it.

  A just think he hated it here, that he hated all the teachers, apart fae Miss Croal, an all the students. The NEDs used tae give him a hard time aboot his accent, slaggin him all the time, doin bad impressions an all that. They slaughtered him aboot his clothes as well, which wiz a pure joke considerin they’re all sittin there wey their Primark trackies an white trainers on. A actually thought Clem’s clothes were cool as. He looked a wee bit like a singer, but no one who looks like they’ve been dragged through H an M. Cooler than that. Anyway, it wiz a sin fur him coz you couldnay even say anythin back tae them in case he’d git leathered after school. A cannay blame him. That’s why a thought he went tae those classes after school, tae get away fae the NEDs. It wiz a sin for him man, am tellin you. A felt dead sorry fur the guy, coz he wiznay that bad so a had a wee brainwave, a approached one of the NEDs who played in the football team an ask them tae lay aff a bit. Bad move man. Bad move. A just said, give the guy a break, man. An he turned roon an said, ‘A’ll fuckin break yer jaw if you speak tae me like that again, ya cheeky cunt’. Aye, it wiz Fran McEvoy. A thought a wiz in for it; that the squad would be waitin after school. For about two weeks a wiz terrified of them. At the end of the day a had tae let Clem fight his own battles on that front. Look after number one. But, dude man, the guy wiz getting a hard time fae all angles, the Croal stuff an the NEDs. He wiz one brave boy though, no doubt about that. One brave mother. A’d defy anyone tae do nothin in that situation.