He drove into town and sat in his usual spot. He drank half a bottle of whiskey and that put him in good humour. The barman wiped the table and said, ‘You seem to be in good form, Mr Bell. Laughing away there!’ ‘Am I laughing?’ Raphael replied. The barman said ‘You’re an awful man! Don’t you know well you are!’ and Raphael told him to have a whiskey. ‘Ah sure I will,’ said the barman. And it wasn’t long before the pair of them were laughing away just like Raphael had been earlier on, even if he didn’t realize it.
The following day, when he was buying the paper, he heard the flower-seller at her mouthing again, only this time worse than ever. ‘There he goes,’ she whispered to the woman beside her, ‘the child-killer. Young Hourican wasn’t enough for him of course. He had to go and batter young Thompson to a pulp. All I can say is the Department of Education must be stuck, Mrs. That’s all I can say. Get your roses here! Lovely fresh roses!’
Dust and the way things turn to it was still on his mind when he got home from the Harcourt a few nights later. Nessa was sitting in the parlour waiting up for him. She said his dinner was still warm if he wanted it. It didn’t matter to him if his dinner was warm or not. He didn’t care. All he cared about was getting at the truth, which was why he caught her by the wrists and looked deep into her eyes and said, ‘Please tell me the truth. That is all I ask. Nessa, my love, that is all I ask.’ Now Nessa was crying. She started to answer, then stopped and started again. ‘Please tell me!’ cried Raphael. ‘Tell me – can’t you! Tell me Nessa! Tell me!’ ‘Father Des was worried about you, Raphael,’ she blurted out finally. ‘That was why he was here. He was worried about you – can’t you see? You’re overwrought! Since that dreadful accident you’re not yourself! Can’t you see that? Please, Raphael – can’t you see that!’
There were tears in her eyes as she reached out to him but he recoiled. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he cried. ‘Don’t touch me, liar! For that’s all you are!’
Then he pulled away and ran off out of the room and upstairs.
Resignation
If Raphael had slipped a lump hammer out from under his jacket and hit Father Stokes a few times across the face with it, the effect could not have been better. He thought Raphael was playing some kind of joke on him. At least, that’s what he thought in the beginning. But when the headmaster’s face didn’t move a muscle, he soon realized that it was far from being a joke. He started to stutter and fumble around for something to say. But ‘I don’t understand, Raphael!’ was all he could manage. Raphael didn’t bother to reply. His words had been perfectly clear. As well they ought to have been, considering he had been up most of the night preparing them, the most important words of his life, and he wanted to get them right. He wanted to show Evans and Stokes and all the rest of the turncoats once and for all. He wanted to show them once and for all! He wanted to assemble them all in the school playground and shout the words out right across the city, ‘You want me to slip quietly out the back of the school to which I’ve given my entire life! You want to put me out to grass like an old horse – is that what you want? I’m an embarrassment to you all am I? I’m an embarrassment to Evans! That’s it, isn’t it? You’re afraid of her! You’re afraid of her and her takeover friends! It will be all right once you get rid of me won’t it no more trouble no more Thompson but I’m not doing it – that’s where you’ve all got it wrong! I’m just not doing it and now you see I’ve gone and spoiled your little plot, haven’t I? Oh yes, you had it all worked out. Mr Bell isn’t with us any more. He’s taken early retirement. But I haven’t you see! And I won’t! I won’t – because I’m resigning! Go on – take my beloved school! Destroy it! Murder it! Kill it like all the little babies you’ve burnt! Kill it, Evans! Throttle it until it dies at your feet for that’s all you’re good for! And you, Father! You help her! Go ahead – help her! Hold its head under the water. But not with me! Not with me, my old friend!’
That was the image and those were the words floating around in his mind as he entered the presbytery reception room to make his speech to the blanched priest. He read from the sheet of vellum paper:
Reverend Father, I have considered your suggestion re. early retirement. I regret very deeply that you feel it is necessary to make such a suggestion. In the light of this I have given the matter much thought. Consequently, I feel it is incumbent upon me to tender my resignation. May I take this opportunity to thank you for all the kindness and consideration you have shown toward me in the past. Yours respectfully, Raphael Bell N.T.
When he had finished, he folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. That was really all he had to say, so before Stokes could open his mouth to say yes, aye or no, he turned on his heel and walked out the door. As he strode across the school playground, the blood was still crashing in his head and it was only after the little fellow had said it three times that he realized he was asking could he go to the toilet. Yes, yes, of course, he replied as he curled the toes of his right foot inside his shoe, to help keep him on the ground like an anchor because he really did feel like he was about to lift off and go sailing away right over the school.
A Baldy Old Scarecrow
When Nessa heard the news, of course she tried to dissuade him, saying that it wasn’t what he really wanted to do and that it was all because of Pat’s death and all the other business that had happened after it with young Thompson and so on and what was the point of falling out with everyone, he could retire early and everyone would be happy and he could do this and he could do that and they could forget all that had happened. Oh could we he said. Yes we could she said. And when she said that, that was enough. Shut up he said, would you mind please shutting up. He wanted her to shut up because if she had all these things to say, why didn’t she say them before Stokes started coming to the house to help her say them, why couldn’t she say them then? He looked at her to see if she had an answer. She hadn’t of course so he said if you’ll excuse me I have business to do. Harcourt Hotel business in other words, with himself and the barman laughing away to their heart’s content. ‘Will you ever forget the time McGinley broke all the ink bottles in the corridor?’ says the barman. ‘Oh, now,’ says Raphael, ‘will I ever forget it?’
‘An awful character,’ says the barman.
‘Oh, now – who are you telling!’ says Raphael.
Then home to find Nessa sobbing in bed, not that he cared what she did, after what she’d done on him. Her and Stokes and company, for God knows who else she had had in the house, plotting behind his back. ‘To hell with them!’ he roared as he fell across the bedside cupboard. ‘I fixed Lally in the handball alley and I’ll fix them! My father died for Ireland! Stand up when I’m talking to you! Where’s your rosary beads, boy! Open your books at page sixteen!’
Then he’d fall on the floor or into an armchair and sleep there for the night.
He did that every day after school now and was going to go on doing it until he left for good. Why shouldn’t he? He didn’t care. He didn’t care if he looked like a baldy old scarecrow in front of his boys. Why should he? They weren’t his boys.
Not any more.
Flowers for Nessa
They could say what they liked to him. They could say absolutely anything. Raphael didn’t care. He had trumped them all – Evans, McCaffrey and the whole whispering tribe of them. The flower-seller in Grafton Street wasn’t so smart now, was she? It wasn’t quite the same thing saying, ‘There’s Mr Bell. He made a fool of Father Stokes,’ as, ‘There’s Mr Bell. He made a boy drown.’
Which was why he turned to her with a triumphant smirk on his face. Not so much as a murmur out of her. And why? Because he had had the last laugh, that’s why. Nobody had been expecting Raphael to go to the bad so they hadn’t the foggiest notion what to do about it when it happened. There were meetings and suggestions and all sorts of things but they came to nothing. For a while Father Stokes called to the house to see Nessa but it got so nerve-wrecking wondering would Raphael be in or out that the visit
s became less and less frequent and after a while began to peter out altogether.
Of course Raphael was distressed at the way she was behaving. What did she expect of him? Had she not considered the effect her actions might have had? He simply ignored her and went up to his room. He felt sad of course that their once-spotless home was becoming little more than a midden now that she had evidently decided to suspend her domestic duties, for some reason best known to herself. Some form of protest, perhaps. As if it mattered now. The sheets in their bed were flea-ridden. Stinking dishes piled up in the sink. He didn’t care. Why should he? He ate his dinner in the Harcourt Hotel. It might, indeed most likely would, have gone on like that indefinitely had it not been for the barman. On hearing the whole sad story from start to finish, he had scratched his neck and said, ‘Ah God, Master – you wouldn’t do that on her? You wouldn’t treat the poor woman like that!’ It was the gentle way that he said it, and because he was such a good old stick that it occurred to Raphael for the first time that perhaps he had been, after all, a trifle harsh. ‘Would you not think of going a wee bit easier on her – would you not, Master?’ As he stared at the barman’s kind face, all of a sudden a little thought came to him and he found himself smiling. ‘Yes!’ he said to the barman. ‘I will! After all – she’s not the worst of them!’
‘Now you’re talking!’ said the barman as he poured him another Jameson.
No doubt the flower-seller was more puzzled than ever when he bought the big bunch of flowers. But then, that just went to prove it, didn’t it – they would have to get up early in the morning before they would begin to understand Raphael Bell! He smiled at her as he took his change. She didn’t know what to say as he beamed at her. He was feeling tremendous now, he had to admit. It was just a pity the barman hadn’t made his suggestion sooner. But no matter. Better late than never.
And so, having paid the taximan, off he strode up the avenue and into the house calling his wife’s name, not exactly saying darling but feeling for some strange inexplicable reason like doing so, not that it made an awful lot of difference what he felt because she didn’t hear a word.
Of course, like any human being, when he saw her sitting there with her mouth open, the furthest thing from Raphael’s mind was that she was dead. Indeed it wasn’t until he touched her on the forehead which turned out to be as cold as ice that he realized what in fact he’d done was make one of the biggest mistakes of his life, one of those mistakes which would unfortunately, no matter what he did, be with him until the day he died.
The Dead School Opens
The Dead School was first opened on the 21st of July 1976, the day they blew up the British Ambassador. Raphael walked into Pat McNulty’s hardware shop in Clontarf and said, ‘Could I have two dozen black bin liners please?’ As Pat was taking down the bin liners from the top shelf he said, ‘Wasn’t that terrible about the British Ambassador, Mr Bell? Or what the hell is wrong with these people? What do they hope to achieve?’ He shook his head then went ‘Tsk, tsk’ as he put the bin liners into a big brown paper bag. ‘What do I care about the British Ambassador?’ Raphael said. Then what did he do, without another word, paid for the bin liners and walked off out into the street. Pat McNulty looked after him and felt his cheeks redden. ‘I wonder what the hell’s eating him?’ he said to himself.
That was the day after they buried Nessa. Raphael was standing outside the cemetery repeating to himself, ‘Nessa’s gone. She’s gone, you see,’ when Father Stokes came over to him and laid a leather-gloved hand on his shoulder. ‘Let me take you home, Raphael. And maybe we can stop for a bite to eat on the way. What do you say to that?’
Raphael looked blankly at him. Then, before the clergyman could say anything, he pushed past him and started walking off down the road in the direction of Dublin City.
Some people reckoned it was the hottest day for fifty years. T-shirts and shorts and sunshades were everywhere. Lawn mowers whirring away to beat the band. Cars whizzed along the coast road with the kids all yelping, ‘We’re going to the seaside! We’re going to the seaside!’ Which indeed they all were, with the result that Madeira Gardens was practically empty. A warm suburban ghost town. Except of course for Raphael who was busy as a beaver in his shirt sleeves, tacking up his bin liners. He had all the back windows done and now he was starting on the front ones. He dumped all the curtains in the bin. When he had that done, he gathered up all Nessa’s clothes, her lovely womanly perfumey clothes, and packed them all into a trunk and dragged it upstairs. Then he locked it in a storeroom. So that was the end of that. Now what was there to do? I have a hundred and one things to do here in the Dead School, he laughed. Then he sat down and said, ‘Ah to hell with it, I’ll have a rest!’ He opened a bottle of whiskey and took a swig out of it. Once he had heard a fellow in the pub saying, ‘He was as black as the riding boots of the Earl of Hell!’ Raphael thought that was a good one. It certainly was a good way of describing what had once been the parlour of 53 Madeira Gardens! But anyway, that was enough of that! He couldn’t sit there all day drinking whiskey – there was work to be done! He opened his briefcase and took out his books. A New English Primer. Catechism for Boys and Girls. Hall and Knights Algebra. JC Beckett’s History Of Ireland. My Friend Our Lady. A pamphlet called ‘May I Keep Company?’ Lots and lots of books. Homework books. Sums copies. Jotters. Books by the hundred. And pens. And bottles of ink. What a lot of things Raphael had in his briefcase! He flicked on the table lamp and started to read what JC Beckett had to say about Mr Parnell and his carry-on with Mrs O’Shea the dirty trollop. ‘Now where are we,’ he said, ‘Parnell is off to visit her at her home for the weekend.’ ‘Is he now,’ said Raphael, ‘well you needn’t think I’m going to waste my time reading rubbish the like of that, no I think I’ll skip back here to the eleventh century and see how Brian Boru is getting on at the Battle of Clontarf’ but he couldn’t see how Brian was getting on because the words started floating in front of his eyes, swimming off here there and everywhere so that he couldn’t read anything. Not a stitch! Off they went into the air like big spidery insects. He tried to stop them but they wouldn’t listen to him. ‘Stop it!’ he cried. ‘Get into your lines at once!’ Fortunately this time they listened to him and kicked their heels as they got back into line. ‘At last!’ said Raphael. ‘You’re showing a bit of manners!’ He didn’t mind so much now after the way it had all worked out. But unfortunately just as he was about to start reading again the words went and swooshed away off the page and round the room like wordy tornadoes curling all about him and trying to tease and make a cod of him. He tried to get a hold of them, shake some sense into them, but it was like trying to wrestle smoke and anyway there was no point because the more he tried the more they tickled him and laughed at him and called him names, singing, ‘Belly can’t catch the words! Belly can’t catch the words!’
It was at times like that Raphael didn’t want to be in the Dead School. He didn’t want to be anywhere near it. He wished it would collapse and fall to bits. He wished it would burn down. He felt like crying out to the statue of Our Lady looking over at him from the mantelpiece, ‘Why can’t you help me like you used to do, Our Lady? Why can’t you help me like you used to do when I was small and me and Mammy and Daddy used to be so happy? Why do you just stand there and look at me with no feeling in your eyes?’
But he didn’t do that. He didn’t because he was too tired and that was why he just let the book fall out of his hands and onto the floor and felt his lips and his eyes go dry as he saw them again, standing waving to him in a field of golden corn, his mammy and his daddy who were so proud of him and had been ever since the day he was born sixty-three years before.
Days
Sometimes now he thought of days and would they ever come back to him. He stood before his boys and, hiding the quiver in his voice as best he could, asked them will I boys please tell me will you. Days that once could never end all of them now dead. Why boys? Why are they? He tried to steady his ha
nd as he wrote on his makeshift blackboard: Today we are doing: DAYS. He wiped away the thin watery mucus under his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. He had done that so often now the whole sleeve was almost silver. Anyway, he licked the chalk and wrote:
He stared at the chalk on the floor. ‘Why did you fall, chalk? Why did you have to?’ he wanted to cry to it. But he couldn’t. He was too tired. The pain in his head was starting up again and there was someone talking at the back of the class that was why he could write no more why would they not stop talking didn’t they know their baby died? He knew they did he knew and that was why he shouted. That was why! ‘Stop it!’ he cried, ‘Will you for the last time stop it! Our little boy died! Do you hear me! Do you hear me, Rogers, do you hear me talking to you do you want me to go down to you by God if I go down to you you’ll be the sorry boy I can tell you what are you doing Mulhern do you hear me Mulhern you brat you! Listen to me – put that pencil down!’ He waited to see what Mulhern would do but then all of a sudden it didn’t matter any more he just went down on his hunkers, trying not to let any more tears come into his eyes in front of the boys.
Two Naked People
Raphael was doing the nine counties of Ulster when he heard the noise. ‘Now come on, lads,’ he said. ‘Put your thinking caps on. Which one of you can stand up there and name the nine counties of Ulster for me. What about yourself, young McQuillan? You look like you might be able for them. Come on now – I’ll give you a hand. Donegal, Derry, Antrim, Down . . . up you get now like a good lad!’ But young McQuillan never got a chance, did he, because the noise came then. If you could call it a noise – more a grunt, like a pig would make. Raphael went cold all over. ‘Don’t move, boys!’ he cried. ‘Don’t move now till I get back!’
The Dead School Page 21