The Dead School (16 page)

Well, well, isn’t it a wonder Terry doesn’t give them a medal, thought Raphael, he’s so excited. ‘Good girls!’ cried Terry. ‘You certainly got a groovy way of
thinking!’

One day Raphael picked up the paper. By all accounts they were having good fun in the midlands. There was a big festival on down there. A motorbike had been thrown through a window. And what was
this? An old lady assaulted and beaten? All her money taken? Hmm. And what’s this? The offender gets off with a caution. Raphael knew what he’d have done with him. What he did with
Lally all those years before. Then by God we’d see how many old ladies he’d rob. And the same with the murderers who were slaughtering and maiming in the name of Ireland. He knew what
he’d do with them too. ‘I’d horsewhip them, Nessa!’ he cried. ‘For that’s all they deserve. Murderers – for that’s what they are, Nessa!’

Nessa smiled and said they weren’t worth bothering about. When he relaxed he realized that she was right. Then he said, ‘That bloody pain in my head, I can’t seem to shift
it.’ Nessa stroked his forehead. ‘Whereabouts is it?’ she asked. He showed her the spot. Just over his eye. She kissed it softly. ‘Oh, Nessa,’ he said and touched her
on the arm.

Raphael getting pains in the head was all very well but if he thought that was going to stop Terry Krash and all his buddies then he had another think coming. When he came home
for his lunch one day, he switched on the wireless to hear them all laughing about
The Walton Programme
. They were saying that the songs on it were a load of rubbish. ‘Who wants to
hear a bunch of old songs about bogmen sitting by turf fires?’ said one young whippersnapper. ‘What would be your favourite programme then?’ asked Terry. ‘Oh –
Pick
of the Pops
!’ said the whippersnapper. ‘It’s just terrific!’ ‘Indeed it is,’ cried Terry. ‘And now we have our own pick of the pops with the fabulous
Roy Wood and Wizzard – take it away, Roy!’

When he went back to school that afternoon, he told Father Stokes and they decided there and then to act. It wasn’t as if they were furious or anything. They just didn’t see why
someone should be allowed to insult the programme over the airwaves. And not only that but be encouraged to do so, which they plainly were. After the school-children had gone the two of them spent
well over an hour writing a letter of complaint to RTE radio, which Raphael himself posted on the way home.

They expected some sort of acknowledgement but none ever came. They might as well have thrown the letter into the river for all the difference it made. This upset Raphael. He had wanted some
sort of reply. Someone to say that maybe it had been a bit insulting or at the very least, insensitive. But I’m afraid he’d be waiting a long time if he was expecting a few words of
apology from Terry. In fact, not only did they receive no apology but the following week he made another scurrilous remark about the programme. Referring to some outdated appliance, he said that it
had, ‘Gone out with the ark – like
The Walton Programme
!’ Everyone in the studio thought this was the funniest thing out.

Which I’m afraid Raphael didn’t, as you can imagine. In fact he got quite depressed. Nessa noticed. For quite a while afterwards he was gloomy and withdrawn. He remained in his study
much longer than usual – two hours at a stretch was as much as he had ever spent in there and Nessa knew well that he wasn’t correcting homework or preparing lessons all that time. This
state of affairs caused her some concern and that was why she mentioned it to Father Stokes. ‘Let me talk to him,’ said the priest, ‘worrying his head about the likes of those
people.’ They were pacing the playground together some days later when Father Des said, ‘If you let them annoy you, Raphael, sure what are you doing only playing into their
hands?’

When Raphael had given it some thought, he could see that the priest was indeed right and he began to cheer up considerably. He had more to do with his time than worry about the likes of them.
Hadn’t he a school to run, for God’s sake, a school full of boys whose futures he had to mould and whose characters he had to build, a school which was, and acknowledged as such, a
light on the hill, a fortress buffeted by the winds of change and caprice and modish fancy, against which it had, no more than if it had been fortified by walls of concrete three feet thick, always
remained firm and resolute, and would have continued doing so until the day the Good Lord decided to call Raphael Bell to his eternal reward, but for the arrival not so very long afterwards of
Evans the abortionist and Dudgeon the incompetent who between them took everything he had and with the same callous dedication of a torch-bearing saboteur who had once visited the midnight stables
of a dream, burnt all to the ground.

The ridiculous thing is that Malachy fully intended to do what Raphael said. He really did. He knew that things had been getting on top of him a bit in the class and if
dickeying himself up and coming the heavy a bit would do the trick well so be it. It was just a pity that Marion couldn’t seem to understand what he was up to at all, practically laughing her
head off when she saw him in the new suit. She thought he was joking. She said he had to be. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she said. ‘Joe Buck goes straight – it’s
just too much.’ Then she went off into the kitchen laughing away to herself. But then of course, it was easy enough for her to laugh seeing as she had been lucky enough to land herself a job
in a great school with a staff who had a ball and kids a monkey could discipline. Which was a lot more than you could say for Class Three I’m afraid, especially Kyle Collins and Stephen Webb
and Pat Hourican who went out of their way to get Malachy going. One day he even heard Pat saying, ‘Let’s make trouble for Dudgy.’ Dudgy – that was what they called him.
‘Here comes Dudgy,’ they said. When he was writing on the blackboard, he often heard Pat sniggering. He knew it was him beyond all shadow of doubt. But he was very hard to catch. When
you’d turn around and shout ‘Hourican!’ he’d just go on sitting there as sweet as pie, writing away. Then he’d smile and say, ‘Me, sir?’

Hard to believe that you could wake up in the middle of the night with sweat all over you, thinking about something like that. If someone in the college had told him that six months before, he
would have laughed at them. He would have laughed his head off. He would have said it could never happen. He would have gone further, in fact. He would have said, ‘You’re out of your
tiny mind, my friend’, or worse. But it did happen. Oh yes. And not just once or twice either. Realistically, of course, it would have been far better in the long run if he had been straight
with Marion and told her what was happening to him, that the class was getting out of hand and the place was on his mind all the time. But he didn’t. Mainly because he was afraid she might
say, ‘You must be kidding. Joe Buck’s worrying about a bunch of kids? You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?’ So just kept his mouth shut about the palpitations and
night sweats and went on grinning like it was a great old joke every time she said he was turning into a right old fuddy-duddy schoolmaster.

So what if that’s the way it looked – just so long as he could get things back on an even keel. Sort out the class and keep the parents and Bell off his back so that everything could
be the way it was before. When he was cool as a breeze and didn’t give a shit, when the sun shone down as he lay on the grass and Marion laughed at some stupid thing he’d done
somewhere, her head tilted back and her eyes twinkling the way they did, his fingers running through her soft strawberry blonde hair as they both laughed until they just weren’t fit to laugh
any more.

Unfortunately however, as time went on, laughing came into the picture less and less I’m afraid, for the son of Mr and Mrs Bell as much as Malachy. I mean if someone in
training college in 1931 or ’32 had said to Raphael, ‘You’re going to work your back off for the children of Ireland and it’s all going to be destroyed on you by a woman who
had an abortion’, he would have laughed himself sick. If he had even known what an abortion was, that is, which he didn’t. If there were such things as abortions in 1932, then Raphael
Bell didn’t know about them. He was too busy saying the rosary with Paschal O’Dowd and running around the place visiting the sick. But he’d find out soon enough what it was.
He’d find out soon enough surely, like on the day when Evans came breezing into his office swinging a bag if you don’t mind, and tossing her hair and going ‘Hi-yah!’ to him,
like he was some kind of a go-boy she might meet at a dance. The minute he saw her he disliked her. You couldn’t blame him. She made him! What did she think – she owned the school or
something?

Once she started talking, you couldn’t stop her. Plans and schemes and ideas came spewing right out of her mouth like mad tickertape. It was unbelievable! By the time she’d finished,
Raphael was drained. ‘Well, what do you think?’ she said, and tossed her hair again. Raphael’s mouth dried up as he stared at the woman in front of him. She was wearing huge
golden hoop earrings and flared blue jeans. In her lap, a leather handbag. With native Indian markings on it. Raphael felt sick all of a sudden. It was bad enough a Parents’ Committee being
set up in the first place, thanks to ridiculous, new-fangled Department of Education regulations, but to send this . . .
This
as their representative – he quite simply couldn’t
believe it. He felt dizzy. ‘Some of the parents at the meeting thought it would be a good idea,’ she said. She was talking about non-competitive sport. She wanted it introduced to his
school. She wanted compulsory games banned. That was what she was saying to Raphael. Out of nowhere he heard the cheer as the referee blew his whistle and the boys of St Anthony’s lifted
their captain up on high in the All-Ireland Junior Schools’ Championships of 1955. That was what came into his head as she sat across from him, smiling, the smell of her patchouli perfume
filling the office. And as she sat there in silence with her big inquisitive eyes looking him up and down as she waited for his answer, he realized that her smell, and what she had just said, upset
him so much he felt like punching her in the face.

What was Malachy doing now for God’s sake, Marion wanted to know. He said he was doing the life cycle of the frog. Kneeling on the floor colouring in little dots in the
middle of circles. Frogspawn – lots and lots of it on a big chart for all the kiddies in Class Three. Who can tell me how long a tadpole stays a tadpole? What about you, Michael? Come on now
– good boy! And you, Thomas – can you tell me anything about our little friend the tadpole? What about his legs for instance? How many has he? Good boy, Thomas – you can do it
when you want to. Up with you now to the top of the class like a good boy!

‘You’ve been at it for the last two hours,’ Marion said. ‘I know,’ said Malachy, ‘but if I haven’t it prepared he’ll be down on me like a ton of
bricks.’ ‘Who will,’ she wanted to know. ‘Bell,’ said Malachy. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she said – ‘Bell. Come on, Malachy, wise up.
You’re overdoing it.’ ‘You don’t know what he’s like,’ he said. ‘Oh I do,’ said Marion, ‘or I should at any rate, considering he’s all
you ever go on about these days. Him and that school of his and that bloody class.’

He didn’t like it when she said that, and grunted. She didn’t like his grunt much either and snapped at him. ‘It’s only a job, Malachy,’ she said. ‘I mean
it’s not the end of the world if they don’t know where the tadpole eats and shits, you know what I mean?’ Malachy knew what she meant. He wasn’t stupid. And she was right
– of course she was. But then she didn’t have Bell coming in and out of her classroom every minute of the bloody day hoping to catch her on the hop. Which was all he did now, ever since
he had decided that there had been no sign of real improvement since their office meeting. You never knew when the tap would come on the door and you’d look up and there he’d be again,
shining up his specs and glaring at you like you were handicapped or something.

Maybe if Bell had left him alone for a while and let him get on with it, he might actually have been able to turn the situation around, or at the very least, stopped everything from going down
the fucking drain. Sadly however, he didn’t, and that was exactly what happened. Half the time, Malachy didn’t realize he was shouting at the kids at all. But he was. He was shouting
all right. At times, you could hear him roaring away like a man possessed. ‘Sit down!’ he’d bawl, and ‘Shut up!’ or, ‘For the last time do you hear
me!’

Not that the kids objected, mind you. They didn’t object at all. They thought it was great fun. Or ‘crack’ as they called it. In the playground, they said to their pals,
‘All you have to do to drive Dudgy mad is go “psst! psst!”. If you do that he goes all red and starts shouting at you.’

All the kids were jealous of Class Three. They were jealous because they wanted a master like that too. They wanted one who would go mad every time you did something, not like Mr Bell or Mr
Boylan or any of the other teachers who could scare the life out of you with just one look. They were no good. Dudgy was the best. One day Class Three came in and some boy had written ‘Dudgy
is stupid’ on the blackboard. You should have heard the laughs of everyone! It was fantastic! Dudgy didn’t know what to do. He got all red and wiped it off – then told everyone to
take out their sums. This was the best ever because you could see everyone laughing in behind their desk lids and Kyle Collins making the words ‘Dudgy is stupid’ with his lips and then
chuckling away into his hands.

Yes – perhaps if Marion had been forced to spend a couple of weeks with that kind of behaviour, she might have started to see things a bit more clearly. Why barely six months before
Malachy was one kind of person and now he was another. Why it wasn’t so easy to go out on the town every bloody night of the week drinking vodka when you were going to wake up with a hangover
and then have to go in and face all that bullshit. He tried his best to explain it to her but it was no use. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Malachy, I’m working hard all day – I
don’t want to stay cooped up in this bloody place!’ she said.