The Dead School (18 page)

Young Reilly’s hand was up like a shot.

‘Yes, Martin. How many do you think?’ said Malachy.

‘Twelve,’ replied Martin excitedly.

‘Correct!’ Malachy said and wrote it on the blackboard – Twelve.

Then he told Martin to sit down and tried not to look down at Webb because if he did he wouldn’t be able to keep in the laughing, the stupid-looking brat sitting there with the
pretend-snowflakes all over his head and his big eyes looking up, why me sir I did nothing sir oh would you just shut up Webb you stupid little bollocks for that’s all you are you see ha ha
ha!

Meanwhile Evans carried on with her plan to destabilize the school. Which, as far as Raphael was concerned, was what she was hell bent on doing. Whether she was or not
didn’t matter. As far as Raphael was concerned, that was what she was doing and that was that. She had wangled her way onto the Parent’s Committee for one reason and one reason alone
– to manoeuvre herself into a position of power whereby she could tell people what to do and advance her own foul and dirty-minded ambitions because that was all they were, just like her,
foul and dirty-minded. How could anyone do what she did – take a little baby and murder it, kill it stone dead and then go on television and boast about it? Because that was what she had
done. He saw it with his own two eyes. He had been sitting there in the parlour reading when Nessa turned on the television to watch – would you believe it –
The Terry Krash Show
for which she had lately confessed to having an affection. This depressed him but it came as no surprise. He knew the day she had insisted on his purchasing the infernal machine that it would all
come to a bad end. The programme was devoted entirely to International Women’s Year, which, apparently, 1975 was.

It was only when he looked up from his book a second time that Raphael saw, to his astonishment, that one of the panellists, representing some group or other, was Evans. When he saw her, he
nearly had a heart attack. The same woman who had been haunting his office since the beginning of the year with her takeover schemes and plans now spewing her dirt out on a television screen in
front of the whole country. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I had an abortion. I had an abortion when I was seventeen years old and I see no reason why, as a citizen of this country, I should
be villified for that. As far as I am concerned what I do with my own body is my business.’ And that wasn’t all she had to say. Oh no. Mrs Evans had a lot more to say than that. She was
only getting warmed up. Herself and her cronies had smuggled condoms into the Irish Republic, she said. ‘The Holy Catholic Irish Republic!’ she said sneering. Then she opened her bag
and took out a handful of them and she threw them into the audience. Laughing. Laughing! That was only the start, she said. The next plan was to open a family planning clinic in Dublin. Any woman
who wanted to would from now on be able to take control of her own body. As he listened to her going on and on, Raphael felt sick. He hated the way her lips moved. He hated the way she waved her
hands. He hated her eyes. The more he looked at her the more he got a pain in his head, directly over his right eye – throb throb throb, thanks to her. Why did she not bother Nessa? he asked
himself. Was it just him?

When he asked her, Nessa said the soul of Mrs Evans, like everyone else’s, was her own responsibility. She would, please God, eventually see the error of her ways and repent, she said. The
nerve over Raphael’s eye started throbbing twice as much. ‘She won’t!’ he cried. ‘You don’t know her! She won’t stop! Not until she has destroyed
everything! Don’t you see that, Nessa! Why can’t you see it?’

Far away, Terry laughed and clapped along as Evans and her buddies sang a song of solidarity. They invited all women everywhere to join them at the Reclaim The Night march against rape to be
held in Dublin. Raphael had to go to the toilet. He thought he was going to vomit. But he didn’t. He just stood there over the bowl with his eyes glazed.

Raphael’s worst fears came true on what was probably the most traumatic day of his life – the 25th of November, 1975. Evans had been telephoning to organize an
appointment with him all week and had been so insistent that in the end he had to capitulate. When she swanned into his office swinging the bag and sat herself down with her diary and her fancy
accent, to his amazement he found himself stammering. He tried to look her in the eye but again to his astonishment found that he couldn’t. Before he knew it, she was talking away nineteen to
the dozen about how this could be done and that could be done. He hardly heard the half of what she said. It was as if nothing but a crackling fizz was coming out of her mouth, seemingly with no
end. Every so often she’d get up and walk around with her hands in the back pockets of her blue jeans. Snippets came to him all right – ‘We, the parents’ and
‘Child-centred curriculum’. But for the most part she made no sense at all. Not until the end anyway, when she dropped what might be called the ‘bombshell’.

The Parents’ Committee had decided that it was no longer appropriate for the students to bring rosary beads to school. Neither did they feel it was realistic for them to be asked to wear
starched white shirts and red ties. Was it, they had wondered, entirely necessary for them to line up in the military-style formation to which they had become accustomed – after all, it was
1975. What did Mr Bell think, she inquired.

What did he think? What did he think? He couldn’t think. He was speechless.

When she said, swinging her bag over her shoulder as she did so, ‘I’ll leave it with you’, he still hadn’t replied. He watched her stomping out the gates like she owned
the world and straight away dialled the number of the presbytery. Fortunately Father Stokes was at home. As he spoke to him, Raphael tried to disguise the tremor in his voice. At first he thought
he was hearing things. Then he thought maybe he had got through to someone else. ‘This old thing has come up again and again,’ said the voice. ‘Sure maybe it’ll be for the
best, Raphael.’

Raphael could feel himself going cold all over, having realized by now of course that he hadn’t dialled the wrong number and that he was indeed talking to his old friend. ‘These
people,’ went on Father Stokes, ‘sure they’re desperate altogether. They know so much about their legal entitlements they’d tie you up in knots. Sure if that’s what
they want, let them. Anything for a quiet life, Raphael. It’s changed times since you and me started out, that’s all I can say. By the way, are you for the match in Croke Park
Sunday?’

Raphael didn’t answer the question. He had no intention of answering it and hung up the phone at once. He didn’t want to talk about football. What would he want to talk about
football for? What he wanted to know was – what was going on? Had everybody taken leave of their senses? He felt like screaming. What was wrong with Father Stokes? He thought for a minute he
could hear Evans laughing.

He was on the verge of running off out the door and going up to the presbytery and tackling the priest head on. ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ he would yell at him.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Which he might have done had a knock not come to the door and the postman handed him an official brown Department of Education envelope, the contents of
which informed him that the inspector who had recently visited the school had been deeply disappointed by the standard he had found there, particularly with regard to the work of one teacher, in
whose case it was, he felt he had to say, ‘appalling’. It was hoped that this state of affairs would be rectified and the reputation of St Anthony’s Boys’ N.S., once
considered among the top five Dublin schools, be restored.

That night, or rather that morning, in the wee small hours between four and five o’clock, a little baby came floating in the door, in through the parlour, out into the
hall, all along the carpet, up the big stairs one by one into the room of Raphael Bell, Raphael Bell and his wife Nessa née Conroy the woman he loved so true, hovered about then floated away
and came back again to smile at the Master, give him a great big gummy grin, a lovely slurpy babby smile that would warm the cockles of your heart and then pull its lips right back behind its ears
before the blood started to pour and its legs collapsed and its fingers fell off and all the flesh went into clay as the words that came out woke the poor old schoolteacher squealing
‘I’m Maolseachlainn! I’m Maolseachlainn! And you’re my Daddy! Hello, Daddy! Hello, Daddy!’ as bombs blew far away and Daddy cried because all the horses were dead and
because he knew that he himself had perished in a lonely field and had gone to his grave to lie cold and alone not for Jesus not for Mary not for Evelyn not for Ireland not for Nessa not for
Raphael not for the teeming unborn sons and daughters like constellations of stars that streamed into infinity but for that which young Brennan got for his sums each and every Monday morning, a
great big royal duckegg, a bloated circle gawping blindly from a blackboard, a shameful zero. Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

When you’re in love you think it can never end. You think the idea of love ever going into the ground is ridiculous. You say to yourself, ‘Imagine a time when
we’re not together. It can’t be done. When you are as much in love as we are, it can’t happen. It just can’t happen, my friend.’

It can, of course. It happens all the time. Exactly when it starts is always hard to say but once it does before you know it, you’re standing looking at a tombstone with that old familiar
word on it. Funny how it happens really. It’s not as if the one you love comes up to you and says, ‘Darling, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you. You remember
– that love business between us – it’s all over I’m afraid.’ That’s not the way it happens at all. It’s much more banal than that. Ask Packie Dudgeon. She
doesn’t look at you the same way any more. Smile when you say certain things. You tell yourself nothing’s wrong, but you know there is – oh, yes. You know all right. It’s
hard to say exactly how but you do. Just as Packie did all those years ago as he sat in the half-light of the kitchen with the shine in his eye, dreaming of a love he’d once known, now buried
deep in a grave his poor stupid old son Malachy swore he’d never stand over.

With the nerve going tick tick tick, Raphael read the report for the seventh time:

Raphael was walking around in circles now. What was he expected to do? What was he supposed to do for God’s sake! Write back a scorching letter to the inspector explaining
to him just what was going on and what he had to put up with? That would look good, wouldn’t it, having to admit the like of that! Dear inspector, I am sorry to have to tell you that the
teacher I employed some six months ago to take charge of Class Three is completely and utterly hopeless and, to be perfectly honest with you, if I had the choice I would not put him in charge of
the school toilets.

That would look good, wouldn’t it? That would really send St Anthony’s reputation soaring. That would look well sitting on the divisional inspector’s desk in the Department of
Education!

Raphael slammed his open hand down on the desk and the more he thought about the position Dudgeon had put him in, the fiercer his rage became. How dare he! he snapped. If he was to send a
response the like of that into the department, the inspector would laugh in his face. What respect would he have then? A lifetime’s respect come to nothing – because of this! Because of
Dudgeon! It wasn’t good enough! It simply wasn’t good enough!

That was what was going through Raphael’s mind, which explained why he left the office looking he was about to burst a blood vessel, indeed a series of blood vessels, and stormed off down
the corridor into the classroom. This time he had really had enough. This time it had gone as far as it was going to go.

It is time for art and this week in art we are doing collage said Malachy, busy as a bee talking away to himself. Now I must be extra careful because unless you know exactly
what you are doing things can go wrong in art class. Very wrong indeed and we don’t want that now do we, we most certainly do not. Of course you can make all the preparations in the world,
you could be up from now to doomsday getting this ready and that ready but no matter what you do you can always be sure that in the end something will go wrong – that is one sure thing with
art class. No matter what you do.
Teacher, I got paint all over my jumper. Teacher, I did. My mammy will kill me
. Then you have to spend the morning cleaning him don’t you in case
little old Mammy will come down complaining to Mr Bell who of course would be on top of us like a ton of bricks. However, there was going to be none of that this morning. None of it at all –
Malachy couldn’t believe it! He really couldn’t. The class tidied up beautifully and when they were all settled he said, ‘Now we will go on to our essay which this week is called
Gathering Blackberries.’

He had never seen Stephen so quiet. He was as good as gold, sitting up straight at his desk with his lips together and not so much as a sound out of him. There was a shaft of sunlight in the
centre of the room and steam rising up past the window. This was a wonderful school. The best school in the world. Everything had worked out fine. Marion and him were having a few problems here and
there – so what! Everyone had those from time to time for God’s sake! Especially when you moved in together for the first time, not to mention both starting new jobs. Problems were only
natural. If you were to get yourself into a state every time you ran into a bit of a difficulty with the person you were living with – well I mean you might as well forget it! He hadn’t
a thing to worry about.