The Dead School

by Patrick McCabe

  He came running down the stairs and by the time he got to the back door he was out of breath. He couldn’t turn the key, why couldn’t he turn the key? ‘Turn key – turn!’ he cried. He pulled the door open and shouted at them, ‘You needn’t think you’ll do that in here! You’ll get away with it everywhere else! But not in my place – do you hear me? Not in my place!’

  His voice was shaking when he said it. He expected them to turn on him and abuse him, that was what you would expect, that was what they all did nowadays. But they didn’t in fact and when he looked again they were gone. There was no writhing white flesh, no gleaming sweat. The lights of a car rose up along the coast road, then dipped again and were gone. Then a dog barked in a distant garden. But apart from that – nothing. Raphael clasped his head in his hands because he really did think it was going to crack in two. Then he went inside and sat in the dark, shivering.

  Security Man

  Meanwhile back in Bubble-Land, after half a dozen ounces of Lebanese Red and a few thousand or so cans of McEwan’s Export, Malachy was now beginning to give some thought to the notion of securing regular employment. The Prince handed him a number and said, ‘Give them a call. You’ll walk right in there, man. No problem at all. All you gotta do is say you know me. Say you know the Prince – got that?’ Malachy had it all right and off he went with the hair flying behind him. The building site was in south London and would you believe it, all he had to do was sit there in this gammy uniform, keeping an eye out for any bastard who might be inclined to do a bit of robbing. It was a breeze. An absolute breeze, man. Or would have been until Head Asshole came round and started asking questions. ‘Were you smoking drugs on duty here last night?’ he says. ‘I had a report that you were smoking cannabis. I don’t want any bullshit now – OK? Just tell me – is it true or is it not?’

  Malachy didn’t know where to look. He had just had a joint five minutes before and he was afraid he’d burst out laughing in the asshole’s face right there on the spot!

  ‘Well – were you?’ he says, and was he pissed off or what.

  ‘Yes – I was as a matter of fact,’ says Malachy – and man did fuckhead like that!

  ‘Oh, babe – if only you’d been there! If only you’d been there, Marion!’ he said to himself as he came cruising down the road with a big fat jay in his hand. ‘It was unbelievable – fucking unbelievable, man!’

  As indeed it was, of course – but it put an end to Malachy Dudgeon’s burgeoning career in the high glittering world of nighttime security, I’m afraid!

  Still-room Assistant

  Malachy was a proud man. And why wouldn’t he be? He had just been appointed head of the still room! It was a very important position in a very important gentlemen’s club in central London. They had given him an apron and everything. His job was to make French toast, ordinary toast and Melba toast. But he didn’t make any toast. He just stood there eating it or else letting it burn. The head waiter wasn’t pleased. He said if things didn’t improve, Malachy would be fired. Malachy pleaded. Please give me one last chance, he said. OK then, said the head waiter, just one. You stop your daydreaming and letting toast burn, I’ll give you a last chance. How’s that? That’s fine, said Malachy and let more toast burn. He didn’t mean to do it of course. He just kept daydreaming, that’s all, thanks to all these drugs he was taking. The head waiter said OK one last chance – you do the sandwiches. That was the best job of the lot. You had to go and get the ham or the tongue out of the kitchen and put it in the sandwiches. What you didn’t do was get the munchies and eat it all on the way back to the still room. Because if you did, then a gouty colonel with a handlebar moustache would come storming in with two bits of bread, shouting ‘Who’s the comedian!’ and get you fired.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ the waiter bawled at Malachy. Colonel Blimp looked like every blood vessel in his face was about to burst. Malachy looked at him. ‘Huh?’ he said, hoping that there weren’t too many ham or tongue crumbs around his mouth.

  High Dudgeon

  All in all, Malachy had twenty-seven jobs but in the end he decided that he would have to give them all up. This was because Chico had offered him a better position as assistant sales manager with his company Lebanese Red Incorporated. Like he said, ‘Ten bob a week and all the draw you can smoke.’ Not that they were an international organization or anything. ‘We serve mostly local retail outlets,’ said Chico as he chopped up the dope into little nuggets and put them in cellophane bags. ‘How about free gifts? Beach balls maybe?’ asked the Prince from the armchair. ‘No,’ said Chico. ‘No gimmicks.’ Then it was off to the hostelries of north London with any amount of five pound and ten pound deals for the needy. They were happy days in London town with the sun burning down and pigeons flapping in Trafalgar Square and Malachy Bubblehead the dopiest doped-out hippy in town, off down the street in his army surplus coat and the hair halfway down his back.

  And so on it went – a hard day’s work and then home to the squat to blow what was left and listen to the latest albums. ‘I wonder what Marion and Paddy are listening to right now,’ said Malachy out of the blue as he took the joint off Chico.

  ‘Paddy and Marion who?’ said Chico and they both burst out laughing, flying high somewhere over Shepherd’s Bush Green.

  Picnic

  We like picnics don’t we children oh yes we do we like them the best of all because you get boiled eggs and cakes and sweets and buns and lots of yummy orange and you can sit out in the field with the bees buzzing and the birds singing and the farmer doesn’t say get off my land because at picnics everybody is happy at least they are supposed to be and who knows, maybe if Malachy hadn’t gone and freaked out, they would have been. Still, you can’t blame him – how was he to know it was going to happen. As far as he was concerned, dropping three – not one, not two, but three tabs of acid was the best idea ever. And for a while it was. All the way down to Wales, all you could hear out of him was ‘We like yummy orange!’ and then, big snorts of laughter. Chico got something into his head about being ‘in charge of the picnic’ and fell off his seat with the tears running down his face. The Prince said he didn’t care who was in charge. ‘As long as I get my cut of the boiled egg suss, that’s OK by me,’ he said. In all seriousness, it was the very last thing you would have expected to turn out bad. If anyone had mentioned boatsheds or Mrs McAdoo or Bell or Pat Hourican or your father throwing himself in the water or any of that stuff, you would have laughed at them. You would have said, ‘I’m sorry, man, but it’s just not that kind of a day. You’ve got your facts wrong!’ Which wouldn’t be true either because it’s always that kind of day, whether you know it or not. As Malachy discovered when he went away off climbing hills on his own. He could hear Chico shouting after him but he just laughed. He had had it with the picnic, he said. He was off into the mountains where the warm wind stroked your face with long silky fingers. He could see them all down below. They looked like little blobs of paint. ‘Hello there, blobs of paint. Can you hear me? Having a good picnic, blobs?’ he cried. He waited a while for them to answer but then he forgot all about them. His whole body was a crackle of tingles. All the tingles in the world were having a meeting in him. The Annual General Meeting of the Tingle Association. He was Mr Tingle. Hello, I’d like to introduce you to Malachy Tingle. How do you do? I’m fine, thank you. Tingling a little bit but fine apart from that. Ha ha. And you? Who are you anyway? Stomp stomp stomp up the mountainside in your seven league boots full of tingle feet. You could go on stomping for ever in these boots if for some reason out of nowhere the word ‘Marion’ hadn’t come into your head. Well maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad but followed by the words ‘I don’t love you’ in Marion’s voice – well that was bad. Very bad indeed, I’m afraid. Because that’s the trouble with acid, although Malachy didn’t know it. All it takes is one thing to go wrong and then – well, everything else decides to follow suit I’m afraid. Mr Sun, who a minute before was saying ‘Hello! I’m M
r Sun! I’m your friend on this happy picnic day!’ is opening up a big sunny mouth full of razor teeth. Then, just when you’re getting used to that, a great big tear comes rolling out of Mr Sun’s eye for no reason. It gets to the stage where you don’t know where you are at all. There is probably some way you can say to yourself, ‘Oh this is a lot of nonsense! Suns with tears coming out of their eyes and teeth that look like razors – oh for heaven’s sake it’s a lot of old rubbish, that’s what it is!’ In fact, just when everything was starting to go wrong, Malachy tried that particular strategy. But if it worked for other people, it didn’t work for him. The sun just laughed at him. So did the grass. It sounds ridiculous I know – grass laughing. But the grass did. It laughed right into his face. Not only that in fact – it talked to him. It said, ‘You poor stupid bollocks! You’ve really fucked it now!’ He hadn’t however. Not yet. The big fuck-up was yet to come. The big fuck-up came when he thought of Pat.

  He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have thought of Pat at all. Thinking about Pat was a bad thing to do, because then he thought about Collins and Webb. And not just Collins and Webb but bad, awful Collins and Webb. With voices that said, ‘You let Pat fall in the water. You did. We saw you.’ Then he did an even worse thing. He tried to reason with them. That was a really fucking stupid thing to do. I mean, you don’t reason with the likes of Collins and Webb. They’ll only laugh at you and worse, they’ll start singing, ‘Pat fell in the water, Pat fell in the water’ and you won’t like that will you? No, that will drive you mad.

  But bad and all as it was, it was nothing compared to the wasp. What the hell did it have to come along for? Going bzzz. Go away wasp, Malachy said. But it hadn’t the slightest intention of going away. At least, not before it had done what it came to do in the first place which was sting Malachy. Now that’s something which is not very nice on an acid trip – a big ugly wasp sting going into you like a hot wire. And Malachy knew that. Go away wasp, he pleaded, but it wouldn’t. It gave a great big waspy grin. A grin that said ‘Me sting you! Me sting you!’

  ‘No! Please!’ was what Malachy said back.

  ‘No yes! Me sting you!’

  In went its big wiry sting as far as it could go. Then what did he do but start running. He was running all over the place. Up, down and around the mountain. Next thing he ran straight into someone. Oops! It was Mrs McAdoo. ‘Look – my face is all worms.’ That was all she said and so it was. Then who pulled up in an accordion-pleated Morris but the bold Father Pat with blood streaks all over his face. ‘There youse are,’ he said as he chucked the brake and pulled up beside him. ‘Hop in!’ But Malachy didn’t hear him because he was transfixed by the face of his father in the back window. He looked so sad. ‘I loved your mother,’ was all he said. ‘Don’t ever think I didn’t. She just didn’t love me, that’s all.’ It might have been all right if Marion hadn’t decided to get in on the action. Well it wouldn’t have been all right but it mightn’t have been as bad as it was. She was standing by the frozen river with her back to him, with the snow all about her as she clutched her folder to her chest and stared at something far away. He had been watching her for a long time before she turned to him and smoothed her hair back behind her ears as her lips slowly parted. She was going to say it. He begged her not to say it. Marion please oh please don’t say those words. ‘I love you,’ she said and that really was the end. It was like his head caving in, a bomb bursting ever so silently and after that he didn’t care any more, which was why he was in such a state when Chico and the Prince found him, gibbering away to himself, raving all kinds of rubbish nobody could understand.

  They managed to get him to the cops who took him to the nearest general hospital. Three days later he arrived at Friern Barnet mental institution. Not that it made much difference, for as far as Malachy was concerned, he might as well have been on the moon.

  The Dummy

  Through the haze came the Dummy smiling. His voice was soft and soothing. ‘Don’t worry, Malachy,’ he said, ‘I’ll look after you. Put your trust in me and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  ‘It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, Dummy,’ Malachy said. ‘Tell me what has happened. Why am I in this place where everything is a fog around me? Please tell me what has happened to me.’ ‘Of course I will,’ said the Dummy. ‘You know I will. The Dummy is always there when you need him – isn’t that right, Malachy?’

  And Malachy knew it was. The Dummy was the happiest man in town and always had been for as far back as anyone could remember. Whenever his name came up, someone was always sure to say, ‘I met the Dummy this morning coming across the square and do you know what, I don’t think there’s a happier man alive in this town.’ To which the response was likely to be, ‘Or any town.’ And how true it was, as Malachy knew so well. No matter what hour of the day or night you happened to meet him, he would have a grin on his face the like of which you wouldn’t see on someone unless perhaps they had won the sweepstakes maybe. The wonderful thing about it all was the fact that the Dummy’s not speaking didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. Everyone found this very impressive because they felt that if, God forbid, they themselves were suddenly struck dumb through some dreadful accident or something, that far from going about the place with a great big happy smile it would be much more likely they would be found sitting inside in the hotel bar drinking a bottle of whiskey a day if not more, looking at everybody with dead eyes and a sad face that said, ‘Do you see me? I can’t speak. I used to be able to but not any more. Why should things be like that? It’s not fair. Everyone else is able to speak and I’m not. I have been struck dumb. Dumb for the rest of my days! What do you think about that? I will tell you what you think. You don’t care. You don’t care just so long as it’s not you. Of course you are going to deny it. Well, deny it all you like, my friend but it’s true! You’re glad aren’t you? You’re glad that you can talk and I can’t. And never will again until they shovel me into the ground! To hell with you! Damn you! Damn you for not caring!’

  They knew perfectly well that was probably what they would do. Which was why they were so impressed by the Dummy and never let an opportunity go by without praising him. There he would be, smiling and laughing away with all the kiddies who loved to play with the broken pump, a giant umbrella of water skitting all over the place. Sometimes it got all over the Dummy and dripped down his face and on to his clothes. Any other adult would have said, ‘You stupid children! Look what you’ve gone and done – my good clothes are ruined!’ The children might even have got a clip on the ear for themselves into the bargain. But not on this occasion. Not from good old Dummy. In fact what he did was laugh his head off. If you could call it laughing. Laughing without any sound perhaps. Whatever you called it, he was having the time of his life with the kiddies dancing rings around him and the water dribbling down his cheeks and making a big puddle at his feet. As people went by they said, ‘There you are, Dummy. Good man yourself!’ and he touched his forelock and away off with him then into another bout of no-sound laughing. Another thing about the Dummy was that he never seemed to sleep. By all accounts he didn’t need to. Whenever he did he did so in an old hayloft in a farmyard. But most times he didn’t bother. He was too busy going off around the streets laughing and joking and being the happiest man in town. Rarely a day went past but Malachy would meet him up the street and say to him, ‘There you are, Dummy! That’s not a bad day now,’ and would receive in return an enormous melon-slice grin. What cheered Malachy up was that at least there was someone happy about the place. It certainly beat Nobby Caslin and his baby counts and body counts and all the rest of it. As far as Malachy was concerned it knocked all that into a cocked hat. Which was exactly what he was feeling the day he met the Dummy after he left the church. Not that it had been bad in the church, for indeed it had not. In fact it had been quite wonderful in there. The organist played away and Father Pat and the sacristan were dickeying up the altar with the most beautiful flowers M
alachy had ever seen. There was a beautiful smell. It took Malachy off to a distant land of shining suns and mysterious perfumes. Then Father Pat came down and started chatting to him. He wanted to tell him about the goal he had scored in the last minute of a needle match in 1949. No, he didn’t, he just wanted to chat to him about his mother and his poor poor dead father. When that particular part of the conversation was over, Father Pat went on to talk about the christening, which of course was due to take place that afternoon, hence the riot of blooms. ‘Yes,’ said Father Pat, ‘another little baba comes into the world! And a lovely little fellow he is too. Do you know the Cunninghams at all, young Dudgeon?’ He nodded and said yes he did. The priest squeezed his shoulder and said, ‘Mammy Cunningham is the proud woman this day!’ The organ swelled as Malachy thought of the little crying baby and all the women in headscarves going through boxes of Kleenex. After which they would all go off down to the hotel and have the party of a lifetime and say we are the best family in the world and we all get on together don’t we, we love each other yes we do. Which, Malachy thought, was probably true but then he really wouldn’t be the one to ask as all he knew about that was what he had picked up in a certain boatshed one sunny day. But as he sat there with the sun streaming in through the stained-glass windows and the organist soaring away off like there was no tomorrow with ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’, he had to admit that there wasn’t very much wrong with the world. At least for that moment or so it was beginning to look like a pretty good place indeed.