Maggie's Breakfast (7 page)

For me leaving Goldenbridge Convent and going to the Christian Brothers in Inchicore was as close to being dropped into the fires of Purgatory as I could imagine. When I was transferred I was
still seeing Sister Charlotte in my dreams and thought about her almost every day. I had images of her swinging through the trees in Africa with Tarzan. And I knew if Tarzan ever met Sister
Charlotte he’d fall madly in love with her. She’d even get him a cake for his birthday and give him other presents as well. She might even encourage him to go to school at Saint
Michael’s.

Before I transferred to Saint Michael’s, the Mother Superior at the convent told all the boys that it was time to go on a weekend religious ‘Retreat’. She told us it was a time
of transition. I didn’t know what transition meant. The Saturday morning before enrolment at Saint Michael’s about thirty of us arrived at the far end of the convent grounds. Inside the
old church an altar boy was standing in front of the altar, shaking an incense silver bowl attached to two chains. The smoke and smell of the incense was making everybody cough. The smell reminded
me of the foundry. Jamie Coombs, the boy kneeling next to me, said the incense was to remind everyone how Heaven smelled. Jamie Coombs was from Keogh Square and it was strange to hear him mention
the word ‘Heaven’ because where he lived was known by most people in the area as
hell
.

Keogh Square was the place where the nuns and some priests earned their seats in Heaven. It was once a military fortification where English soldiers were billeted when England occupied Ireland.
There were six barracks surrounding a large parade ground where for centuries the Union Jack flew and military parades and drills were held on the grassy field. When the English left Ireland the
barracks were turned into a public housing project. Originally its fortress walls kept out the enemies of Britannia. Now, word had it that the walls were used to keep the residents in. The poorest
of the poorest in Dublin were housed there. Bus drivers sometimes broke the speed limit just to get by the place. Pedestrians walking by often got hit with stones, bottles and empty food cans and
other objects thrown over the wall. Nuns and priests competed to sacrifice their time on earth by going there and administering to the poor inhabitants. Large families of ten, eleven and twelve
children lived in single rooms without electricity or running water. The long barrack corridors had community baths and lavatories. Where infantry soldiers once revelled and bathed,
tenement-dwellers – men, women and children – shared the amenities without the luxury of soap or hot water. Thirty years or so after independence, stray horses and abandoned dogs as
well as a few homeless men lived among broken bottles and tin cans. The residents lived mostly off food and clothing dockets supplied by Catholic charities. The hallways and stairways were so
dangerous at night that when the men from the Saint Vincent de Paul’s Society came they had to be escorted by other men who kept an eye out for danger. Families constantly fought and beat
each other up. Then sometimes they married each other. One half of the place was related to the other half. Residents of Keogh Square, it is safe to say, saw as much combat as did any of the
English soldiers who were once stationed in the place.

Two boys kneeling behind me were arguing about what it took to get into Heaven. I sat at the back of the chapel waiting for the priest to arrive and serve Communion. The boy next to me was
hoping he’d die just after the priest put the wafer in his mouth.

Two nuns were walking up and down the aisle and tapping some of the boys on the head to keep them awake. Then the church organ gave out a loud blast. The door of the church swung open and the
priest entered. A hush fell over the church. Two nuns instantly blessed themselves as the priest passed them on his way to the altar. In seconds he was standing in front of the assembly and smiling
at everyone. The church organ blasted out again and the nuns in the aisle encouraged us all to join in singing the hymn.

“
O salutaris hostia, quae caeli pandis ostium!”
I sang as loud as I could.

The organ stopped and everyone fell silent.

The priest blessed himself. “
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
” He then took a deep breath and announced, “There will be no Communion
because the Communion wafers are still at the factory.”

A sigh of relief reverberated throughout the chapel.

With a much louder voice the priest called out: “Boys, I want you all to pay special attention. I want you to listen and heed what I’m about to say. What I want to talk about is the
time you’ll be feeling urges of the flesh. The images of young girls will be there to tempt you. When these urges come to you and you know what part of the body makes you aware, turn your
mind to the Holy Word of the Church. And if your mind gets stuck with the devil in your trousers, touch nothing. Find your rosary beads and get a firm grip on them. Any thoughts of fondling
anything or any part of you should give way to saying a quick decade of the rosary. I remind you that only with Our Lord can you find the strength to turn away from such temptations. Boys,
we’ll have the Devotions and Benediction after dinner.”

He stepped from the altar and walked down the aisle towards the door. The nuns signalled for us to march in an orderly fashion out of the church.

As we walked along the path that led to the dining hall, I walked in another direction and departed from the grounds and the Retreat.

* * *

My brother Nicholas had some kind of problem with his throat that made him cough all the time. One night while we were all in bed my mother took him to the hospital. Sitting in
semi-darkness downstairs two of my older sisters, Rita and Carmel, kept mumbling prayers and blessing themselves. The rest of us who were younger listened and waited for my mother to come home.
While waiting one of my sisters mentioned the word “tuberculosis”. Tuberculosis was what everybody dreaded in Dublin. My mother often prayed for people in the neighbourhood who had it.
She also prayed for them when they died of it. My father, knowing his oldest son was in hospital, got out of bed, walked downstairs, sat by the fire and said nothing. It wasn’t long till my
mother came in the front door crying. She told my father that Nicholas had to stay in the hospital.

“God has punished the whole family!” she cried. “God is not happy with the life we’re living. We don’t say the rosary enough and half the sacraments are not
bothered with. Our Heavenly Father is not happy with what goes on in this house. Look at me daughters! Look at them!”

She felt that God had paid her back because of her daughters. They wanted to wear lipstick and powder their faces. They painted their legs with make-up to substitute for nylons and, before they
went out, my mother would lash at their legs with a wet dishcloth hoping to wipe away some of the paint. Also the way they dressed invited sin, according to Molly. Her own sense of glamour was
based on how the nuns dressed. Going to dances at the local nightspots, The Crystal and The Four Courts, was also not condoned. When the girls came home late they often found the front door closed.
My mother believed they were out committing sin and deserved to be shut out to teach them a lesson. My father was obliged to get out of bed and open the hall door. My sisters were still met with a
barrage of doomsday warnings from my mother who’d be standing at the top of the stairs in her nightgown.

For my first day in class the Christian Brother talked about Oliver Cromwell as if the man was still alive and living next door to him. He said he was the Devil himself who
murdered thousands of women and children in Drogheda and drove all the true Irish out of their homes and westwards to Connaught, behind the Shannon River, shouting “To Hell or to
Connaught!”

To me the Brother was like bad weather, cold, damp and the flu all rolled into one. He was a young man who looked old. Like a fish monster that had been thrown up out of the ocean. His face was
easier to bear when he spoke, because his eyes didn’t stay in the same place. Sometimes he put his hand up to his face and covered his mouth. When he was talking he even looked more like a
fish.

He’d call out: “
Thógáil amach do leabhair Ghaeilge anois.
” Take out your Irish books now.

I hated Irish. Irish frightened me.

“Breathnach!” He called me by the Irish name for Walsh. “Breathnach! Tell me about the Gaelic Renaissance!”

I knew nothing about Gaelic or the Renaissance or whatever the word was or meant. The Christian Brother was obsessed with the Irish language. He spoke as much as he could in Irish and wrote
everything on the blackboard in Irish. Few of us knew anything about Irish. The government wanted everybody in Ireland to learn it because de Valera, the Taoiseach, said we shouldn’t use
anything English. “Burn everything English except its coal,” he said, except it was someone else who said that first in the old days, not Dev. De Valera wanted every Irish person to
know Irish. It made people less English, he said. Hardly anybody in Dublin spoke it. For half the school day the Christian Brother would read to us in Irish even though we didn’t understand a
word of it. At the end of the week we got tested in Irish and almost everyone failed. The Brother then called out the names of those who had failed and had us line up in a row to await his
punishment. One by one he lashed out at us with his cane as if he was defending Drogheda from Oliver Cromwell. He prayed in Irish at the same time. All of us would have preferred Hell or Connaught
to the unleashed temper of Brother Fish Mouth. He whipped us on the palm of our hands and on our bottoms. It was six slaps with the cane and if his temper reached the boiling point he’d add
three more slaps with the leather strap. The more we cried, the harder the leather strap came down. When the palms of our hands bled we wiped the blood off on the sides of our trousers.

After I retreated to my seat with swollen and bleeding hands I heard my name being called out again.

“Breathnach! You didn’t hand in any home exercise work. You did nothing since you were here yesterday. Where’s your homework? Did you do any?”

“No, sir,” I responded.

“And why not, Breathnach?”

“My mother had her rheumatic pains last night and the whole house was kept up half of the night. I couldn’t read anything with my mother screamin’ and cryin’ with her
pain. Her legs and arms and the back of her neck were driving her mad. She made me and my sisters say the rosary loads of times but the pain didn’t go away. My father boiled water and even
put a hot cloth on her neck.”

“What pains?” the Brother queried me again.

“Rheumatic pains! That’s why I couldn’t do my homework.”

“Your mother has been suffering for three weeks now with those pains. When is she going to get better?”

“I think she’s better now. She said she was going to Communion at the early Mass this morning, and when she does that I know she’s better. She offered her prayers up to the
Infant of Prague. She said the rosary again this morning.”

“How many times did you say it?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“I didn’t say it this morning.”

“Why not?”

“My mother was screamin’ and prayin’. I couldn’t join in on it. Neither could my brothers and sisters.”

“So you didn’t say it this morning?”

“No.”

“No?”

He didn’t believe my story about the rheumatic pains. He made his way up to my bench and saw “
FUCK EVERYTHING GAELIC
” carved into the bench. His eyes began to roll and I
thought he was going to faint. The carvings had been there since I first sat there and probably had been there since nineteen-sixteen.

“Who did that?” he asked.

“It was done a long time ago. It was here before I came to Saint Michael’s,” I said in defence of myself.

The Brother wasn’t in the mood to believe anything I had to say even if it was the truth.

“Hold out your hand.”

Out I held my hand and down fell the weight and force of the hot leather again. The class fell into its usual silence.
Smack! Slap! Smack! Slap!
When it reached the sixth slap he stopped.
My hand was more swollen than before. He yelled at me again. This time I thought he was really losing his mind. He seemed not to be able to control himself.

“You’ll learn to study at night before I’m through with you!”

“I’ll do my exercises tonight!” My hands were bleeding even more and I believed that I had slipped or fallen into Hell.

* * *

A week later while I was lying in bed I heard my sister Rita coming into the house. She had been to the hospital to visit Nicholas.

She was crying and calling out. “Nicholas is dead! Oh God help me! Nicholas, poor Nicholas!”

My mother rushed in from the kitchen and let out a scream. “Sacred Heart of Jesus, be good to his soul! Sacred Heart of Jesus, keep him at your side in Heaven!” Her overwhelming pain
was now challenging her overwhelming belief.

Nicholas was dead. My brother was dead. I lay back in bed and was afraid to get up and face what I had just heard. I knew now that I was really alone. I was always calling after Nicholas and
telling him my brother Michael was beating me up. Nicholas would defend me and protect me from the bullies on the street. What would I do without him? If he was really dead I’d be lost and
have no one to go to when I was frightened. Nicholas was the person I loved the most in my entire life. I wanted to burst out crying but some part of me wouldn’t accept that he was dead and
the tears wouldn’t come out of my eyes. I kept telling myself that he wasn’t dead and that he’d be coming out of the hospital and we’d go running around again, playing games
and having fun.