Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  In the Ireland of those days, our people were browbeaten and the parents were conditioned into believing that it was normal and expected that their children would get a few flakes at school, but not so my mother. However, she never knew about our beatings until years later when Kyrle ‘spilled the beans’ and refused to return to Pad’s school.

  Early on, Pad laid down the rules and we went from the odd flake to an almost daily ritual of beatings and insults of all kinds. Pad taught me math’s, Irish, Latin, and later on science. Those were my terror subjects, especially algebra and (God help me) calculus: the scariest of them all. He should never have been a teacher of students of my IQ, as we just were not good enough for him to teach. I believe Pad understood math’s like I later understood electronics. In my opinion he instinctively grasped the concepts and simply could not understand why we couldn’t grasp them as well. The philosophy of fear kicked in and he tried to make us learn from fear of his stick, or his fist. Of course this had the opposite effect completely, and the more scared we became the less we could possibly learn. I remember being dragged up to the blackboard one day to explain Tan, Cosine, and Sine and getting beaten across the head for each one I got wrong, which was all three of them. In the end I resorted to playing the odds, and started guessing the answers. I guessed very wrong most of the time, with painful consequences. That beating gave me an everlasting terror of algebra and especially calculus. I get very angry now when I think of what happened to me that day because later on, when I had to do my electronic engineering exams, I had to teach myself math’s all over again. Then I had to face down the fears of those memories and learn calculus all by myself. I discovered that it was a beautiful science, used in surveying, engineering astronomy and architecture, and that it was very old indeed. I discovered the most amazing thing, which was that I could measure the height of a tree without climbing it, and all I needed was a square of cardboard, a ruler and a basic knowledge of geometry. Had Pad been kind enough to give me that simple example, I know I would have loved that subject instead of having nightmares about it for years.

  Pad’s school was an ‘all Irish’ school as well. Basically whatever subjects that could be taught through the medium of the Irish language were taught through it. This meant that I initially hated the Irish language but eventually lost my fear of it, though having the grammar beaten into me didn’t help. Ma taught us geography, history and French, and I can’t remember what else. I know that she loved to teach history and was a real expert on it, especially European history, and she gave me a love for it that has remained with me today. To be fair to her, she was a far better teacher than her husband Pad, and you could tell she loved what she did. The one time she did beat me, which sticks out in my memory, was for the geography of Spain. I just could not get the names of the Spanish rivers right. The Guadalquiver was my downfall. No matter how I tried I could not remember its name. She gave me such a hiding for that failure that, even though only sixteen then, I promised myself that not alone would I never forget it again, but one day I would stand over it and spit into it. Many years later on a trip to Spain I kept my promise. I went to Seville, walked out to the middle of the main bridge and spat in the river saying, “I won today, and I‘ll never be beaten for you again”. That day too I fell in love with Seville, so there was a good end to my ignorance and the hiding I got. I was a total dead loss at French though. It seemed to me to be a sissy’s language. All that pronouncing and polished accents just didn’t appeal to me at all. I was killed on a regular basis for this language too; so much so that I think in the end she just accepted that I could not learn it and gave up on me finally.

  Monday morning was usually our worst day with Pad. He would arrive into the classroom singing, and if he had his old gown on, we knew we were really in for it. It’s also a fair bet that the man might be sick with a hangover, but he never showed it. He would say, “Ceimseata,” and, “Amach ar an line,” the most dreaded words possible. ‘Ceimseata’ was the Irish word for ‘geometry’ and ‘amach ar an line’ meant ‘out on the line’. It felt like we were waiting to die as we all formed a line heading for the executioner’s examination of our work. Prior to this I would have arrived early at the classroom looking for a ‘cog’ from anyone better than me, which was easy. Unusually the better guys would arrive later though, and so the few boys who would even allow a cog were like gold. The way it worked was like so: the two of us needing the cog would sit on either side of the good student’s workbook. This worked best for geometry as one would copy the drawing and the other boy would write the explanation of the drawing. Then we would swap sides and reverse the process. That way two students could do a cog at the same time with one of them holding the page up between them. This was of course totally forbidden by Pad, but he knew we were doing it and was always trying to catch us out.

  One day Noellie Ryan from Knockbarry and I were sitting at either side of a copybook cogging away, when Pad arrived in early. It became a scene of utter confusion as the coggers scrambled to shut books and dash for their correct seats. “Cheimseata, agus amach air on line”, and so it began. The line moved slowly along towards Pad who sat in a chair in front of the blackboard. I had been doing the proving part or the text part while Noellie had been doing the drawing, but neither of us had been finished when Pad made his surprise entrance. Now it was too late and we were both in big trouble, so we kept trying to sneak back along the line.

  By the time Noellie got to Pad he had no text, just the drawing; the opposite of me. Pad asks him to explain the drawing, which should have had the text with it. Noellie has no idea and gets thumped around at the blackboard for a long time. Pad of course knew a cogger had been at work and became determined to make an example of the coggers that day. He called Noellie a Dunk and a Foolah and beat him around as he tried to explain his triangular drawing on the blackboard with no success.

  Joe Hurley was next in line, as I had managed to scoot behind him in the confusion of Noellie’s clattering. Hurley had got his cogging so wrong that he had only half of either side done. Pad was really furious by then, figuring that there were at least two obvious ‘coggers’ at work and he laid into Hurey. Joe got a real good hiding that day, but he was used to it by then, being useless at almost all things and swearing that he was immune to pain. And then it was my turn. I had been working on a plausible lie for Pad, getting ready to say that I had done the drawing out roughly at home and was meaning to add it later to my page, but I never got a chance to tell it.

  Pad sees my perfect explanation of the theorem without any drawing at all: the most vital part, and knows of the third cogger. He holds up my copybook for the whole class to see. “Here we have the genius Cahill…. Cahill’s such a genius that he’s even better than the great Pythagoras, because our Cahill needs no drawing at all, isn’t that so boys”. The class confirms my skills with one voice. “Yes sir”.

  “Yes Cahill, you’re the boyo alright. You can prove this teoragan without any drawing at all, isn’t that so, you Dunk?” The word Dunk was his shortened version of donkey. I was trying to remain out of reach of his fist when suddenly I saw stars appear inside my brain. He had given me such a box across the head that I actually did literally see white stars flashing around inside my head. The force of the clatter was so strong that it also knocked one of the lenses out of my glasses, and that lens flew across the floor rolling under a desk. Pad then laid into me too, and I never forgot it. While he was beating me with his fist and his stick, I had just one lens in my glasses. These glasses were being held together by a ‘band aid’ across the nose, one of the legs was soldered permanently to the frame, and now a lens was gone too. I felt so poor, so vulnerable as the whole class looked on, glad it was me and not them. After the eternity of pain and humiliation, he threw my copybook at me and says, “Get out of my sight you Foolah, you’ll only ever have a shovel boy, a shovel I tell you”. Then I had to try and find my lost lens. I clearly remember going down on my knees in front of the class
and creeping along the floor searching under the nearby desks, while Pad looked on. Typical of Hurley, who was by then sitting down at his desk in the front row and game for a laugh, he had put his foot over my lens hiding it from me. My friend Denis the Menace told me of this and I angrily jerked Hurley’s leg from over it. The whole class, including Pad, laughed and my temper boiled up inside me. Then I needed to get my lens back in the glasses while Pad moved on to his next victim, giving me the odd sidelong look as he did so. As I struggled with the lens, the burning rage inside me grew more and more, and without warning I caught my copybook, held it up in front of me, and tore out the blank drawing page from it. This act of defiance I did right in front of Pad and the whole class. Then I balled it up and stuffed it into my bag. Pad stopped his examination of the latest victim and glared down at me. Standing defiantly, I glared back at him, as if taunting him to do his worst. He looked puzzled and then said sternly, “Cahill, sit down you Foolah, you’ll have a shovel yet boy, I’m telling you so”. I sat down and swore I would have revenge on him for that day.

  It was not all black at that school though, but I could count on one hand the good days. One such time happened when Pad decided we should go on a school trip to beautiful Connemara. Connemara was the home of James Joyce and Padraig Pearse. These were people we learned about at school and Pad figured that it would be very educational if we went to their homeland and also had a day out for a change. The journey was by train to Galway and then on by bus to Salthill where we stopped to look around and have a walk by the sea. I have no idea how Nannie got the money for this trip and I can’t remember Kyrle being there either, but Joe Hurley was for sure. Me and Hurley snuck off around the little town and in a lane we found a shop selling water pistols. I do know that I had some money because I suppose I had been collecting from all as usual, so Joe and I bought a gun each and headed back to the meeting place and the bus. We filled the guns somehow and began to squirt all the lads. Pretty soon these pistols became all the rage and we told them where to get them, which was not far up the street. Even though the bus was about to leave, there was an immediate exodus back to the shop and soon almost the whole class had these guns, all loaded and ready for action. We had delayed the bus and Pad was raging. No sooner were we in the bus than the war began. Joe and I were near the back and squirted the rows up ahead. Pad and Ma and another teacher I believe sat at the very front of the bus. To their credit they ignored the usual shouting and laughing that went on during such a trip, but this was getting out of hand. Pad came back and of course all the pistols vanished. He gave the usual orders in Gaelic, “Ciuineas buachailli ciuineas,” meaning ‘quiet now boys’. After a time the shooting began again, though somewhat reduced to sniggering and the odd outburst, as each boy fired then ducked and weaved behind the seats. Within a short time we had run out of water and I suppose Pad guessed that would happen, so he was ignoring the laughter again. True to form, Hurley says to me, “I’m gonna piss in mine, you up for it Cahill?” Of course I was, as we were being drowned by the Knockbarry gang at that point. We unscrewed the corks in the guns, got out our mickeys and tried to piss into the small hole: a very difficult job on a moving bus, and on the bad roads of Connemara. I think we lost as much on the floor and over our hands as we got into the guns. As we are both pissing and hiding down behind the seats, we both looked across at each other and burst out laughing at the badness of what we were at. Then loaded and ready again, we see two of the boys’ heads cautiously peer over the seat in front of us, both gawking in amazement as we try to stuff our mickeys back inside our pants. Joe fired immediately straight into the nearest boy’s mouth and I missed my man. The stream of piss arched up over his head, drowning the guys farther up the bus. Someone shouts out loud, “Hey hey they’re pissin in the guns lads,” and he shouted this out so loud that Pad heard it and came tearing down the bus.

  “Gimme, gimme those guns now….” No Gaelic this time. We surrender our weapons and he drew a swipe at Hurley who ducked and he missed him. Then Pad went to a vacant window and threw our guns right out into beautiful Connemara. No worries about littering in those days. The day went on and we saw an incredible seascape as the bus drove the coast road. An Spiddal was awesome and I tried to cheer Hurley up. All he would say was, “Fuck the scenery, I want my gun. Fucking Keely is a right ould bollix”. Poor Joe just wasted the whole day sulking. We went on to the Gaeltacht and spoke Irish in the little village of Carraroe, then on to Maam Cross and the area of the ‘Quiet Man’ and my cowboy hero John Wayne. Huck Finn had by then almost disappeared from my mind, as the Wild West and Monument Valley had overtaken him. Later still we ended up back in Galway city where I bought my first and only chemistry set with the remainder of my money. It is as clear as day to me still how it looked. The box was red and had a great picture of glass tubes, a Bunsen burner with a flask, and some glass pipes with steam coming out of them. The box was sealed and when I got home it did not have any Bunsen burner or a flask either, but it did have a line of little glass tubes full of chemicals. Copper sulphate, iron filings, and some kind of red cobalt stuff which I never used because it looked like it would be too expensive to waste. I took this box around with me for the rest of the journey and Pad sees it and asks me “Cad e thu a Shean?” meaning ‘what’s that John’. I told him “It’s a chemistry set sir”, knowing no Irish for that stuff. He took the box and studied it carefully and seemed genuinely interested, giving it back to me with a look of disbelief. I think he felt it was wasted on a donkey or road worker with only a shovel, but he didn’t say any more. That chemistry set began a love of science that remains with me to this day.

  Pad too took up science a little while later. He built a science room in a shed at the back of the school. I believe my little chemistry set sowed the seed in his mind. This was my favourite place in the whole school. He had all kinds of gear in his lab and I loved it. Pad was more into physics than chemistry though, which was bad for me, as despite Pad’s hidings, I was still poor at the physics math’s but brilliant at chemistry. I loved the way mixing two dangerous substances such as chlorine and sodium could give you a bit of harmless table salt. I loved making hydrogen using a battery and some water and watching it pop as it burned. Everything about the subject fascinated me and I knew it was not Pad’s strong point, so he taught physics more often than chemistry. He gave me a great hiding one day for getting the math’s wrong on a ‘latent heat’ experiment. I almost developed a fear for physics after that carry on, but that fear is now long gone, replaced by a love for all things scientific.

  Joe Hurley, as usual, got up to devilment in this science room. He managed to set fire to the lab and almost gassed us all in the process.

  During one of these rare chemistry classes, Pad was showing us a jar of phosphorus or potassium, I am not sure which now. It was either kept under water or oil, but I know it would burn fiercely in air. Pad took a tiny piece of it out of its jar with a metal tongs and showed it to us. It suddenly burst into flame, creating an acrid choking white smoke. Pad railed on about how dangerous this chemical was. Of course the word danger was an automatic ‘file to be used later’ signal in Joe’s head. Joe, who was sitting near me, says, “Hey lad that’s some stuff isn’t it”. Pad is glaring at us and shouts out, “Shut up ye Foolahs. Look below at the two Dunks, knowing it all”. Hurley puts his head down and pretends to be writing, but gives me this sidelong look which he knew would make me laugh; it always did. I had to look away quickly or we would both get killed. Pad then left the room for some reason and seemed gone for a long time. Hurley decided he would teach the class in Pad’s absence and mock Pad at the same time. Up he goes to the front of the class where he starts calling us all ‘Foolahs’ and ‘Dunks’ and ‘Street Urchins’. “Get down off the tree boy, and get a shovel you Dunk”. All were well used phrases of Pad Keely. Joe soon began marching up and down in front of the class, imitating the great man so well that I hoped he would never stop. The whole class collapsed laughing as hi
s imitation was so good. He shouts out, “Cahill, come up here you Dunk, and show us this phosphorus stuff”. I say, “No way, I’m not going near it, no way”. “Get up here you stupid Foolah or I’ll tan your arse so bad you won’t shit for a week.” This was Joe’s original saying, and he’s then playing the part of our teacher to perfection. It was hilarious. He had the face of Pad, the glare of Pad, the correct wording of Pad and then he made a drive down to my seat, and pulled me out by the ear. We could see if Pad was coming back as he had to cross a yard, and I saw Joe give a cursory glance out the window as he was dragging me up to the front. I’m shouting, “No sir, no sir, you’re hurting my ear sir”. “Stand there you half eegit. I’ll get the phosphorus and you’ll demonstrate it to the class, isn’t that right boys”. “Yes sir,” they all shout out. I had a bad feeling about all of this as Joe was by then laughing, and he had his ‘evil’ look on his face. When he got that ‘evil’ look I knew it always meant trouble. In a big show of ‘Padism’ he grabs the phosphorus jar from the shelf, but just as he did so he spotted Pad returning across the yard. He shouts out, “Pad’s back,” and tries to put the jar back on the shelf as I make a run for our desk. In so doing I knocked Hurley aside. The inevitable happened and the bloody jar fell on the floor and exploded. It’s then like the Fourth of July in the science room just as Pad comes in the door. We are all choking and coughing and trying to get out, and he starts shouting, “Out, out, get out, get out”. He pushed his way in towards the fire, and just as fast he rushed back out again. The smoke or the fire beat him back. He is shouting for us to get water, but we don’t lift a finger. Everyone just looked at each other. We didn’t give a damn if the whole lab burned down, with all of us quite happy at Pad’s misery. Total confusion reigns, as by then the whole room has filled with the acrid white smoke which began pouring out the door. The room was either on fire or filling with gas. We always felt it was on fire, but I suppose in truth it was not so bad, and just looked worse than it was. In any case we were quite happy with the events that were transpiring before us. While all this was going on and the class was standing around in the yard (or hiding in the sheds like me and Hurley), Hurley sees a big mound of potatoes over to one side. He says to me, “Hey lad, look at Pad’s spuds. I’d love to piss on em. Can’t do it now though, he’d see me for sure, but I’ll do it tomorrow”. This was Joe at his very best. Not alone had he almost burned down the lab, but he saw yet another opportunity for fun, and was already planning it. I think he was still out for revenge for his water pistol on the Galway trip. The excitement was soon over in about twenty minutes, and Pad then began the inevitable post mortem. He lined us all up in the yard and marched up and down the line. “Who did this?” he shouted. No one made a sound. Hurley began fidgeting and looking around and Pad spotted him. He made a drive for Joe, who then felt it was all over, and he took off running straight out the main gate with Pad on his heels. He never returned to Pad’s school. It was the talk of the school for ages and Joe became everyone’s hero; fame at last. Expulsion was automatic. Nannie was right once again and I was warned to stay away from Joe Hurley as the Devil was stuck inside of him.