The Dead School (25 page)

‘The Six Million Dollar Man,’ the boy said.

Mr Bell lowered his head until his face was level with the boy’s. He spoke calmly and firmly. ‘Don’t ever bring it in here again,’ he said.

The boy did not reply. He just stared at him with lifeless, stone-dead eyes.

What happened next was practically impossible to believe. The following day what did he do – brought it in again! And there he was standing in exactly the same place, playing it. Raphael
was beginning to wonder was he hallucinating. He half-expected that when he touched the boy on the shoulder he would simply turn to dust and vanish or something. He didn’t however. ‘Oh
no,’ Raphael said, smiling to himself, ‘we couldn’t have a Thompson boy doing that now could we? That would be showing too much intelligence.’

Raphael decided to remain perfectly calm about the situation. Drumming a silent little tune on the lapel of his jacket, he cleared his throat.

‘What did I tell you yesterday?’ he snapped. ‘Don’t know,’ the boy replied and stuck his tongue into his cheek. Raphael smiled. ‘You don’t know?’
The boy shook his head. ‘No.’

Suddenly Raphael felt his cheeks burn. Not that he cared what burned. If Thompson thought he was going to somehow make him lose his temper, then he was sorely mistaken. Oh yes. He knew only too
well that there were certain people who would be more than delighted to witness such a spectacle. Yes, a little display of temper would go down well with that lot. With a certain Evans for example.
Oh ho, she would like that all right. That would be just what she was waiting for. But she wouldn’t get it, you see. No, sir. I’m afraid you’ll be waiting a long time for that,
friends.

He smiled down at the boy. ‘No – what?’ he said.

Thompson tugged at the belt of his trousers and, unbelievably, looked him in the eye as he replied, ‘No nothing.’

Which was a very good answer. A wonderful answer. Or so Thompson thought. No doubt because it started all the little juniors laughing. ‘Did you hear what the boy said to the
headmaster?’ one of them whispered. No wonder Thompson was pleased with himself. Grinning away. It probably came as quite a surprise to him when he saw that Mr Bell was grinning too. He
didn’t expect that, any more than he expected the flat of the headmaster’s hand to catch him across the face – not once, not twice, but three times. Then he began to bawl like one
of the infants in Mrs Corry’s class. Which he continued doing all the way across the playground to the office. As far as Raphael was concerned, this was a lesson which had been coming to
Thompson for a long time. He was going to see to it that the likes of this never happened again. He gave him the hiding of a lifetime. Thompson pleaded and pleaded but he was wasting his time.
Raphael had been teaching much too long to be manipulated by these pitiful pleas. He had embarked upon a certain course and was going to see it through. It would be quite a long time before Mr
Thompson attempted any of his insubordination again. ‘Give me the game! Give it to me!’ Raphael snapped as the boy sobbed in the chair.

With a trembling hand, Thompson proffered the game. Raphael stared impassively at the bionic man leaping into the air on the plastic bagatelle. He sucked his teeth distastefully, then placed it
on his desk, and raising a heavy marble paperweight he brought it down and broke the game into a thousand pieces. The once-insolent Thompson now began to howl pathetically. The headmaster folded
his arms. He was content. It would be quite some time before Mr Thompson said ‘No nothing’ to him again.

He thought the whispering would stop. That sooner or later they would see sense and stop listening to the likes of Evans. That they would remember all he had done for them in
the past and put the death of Pat Hourican, the one thing that had gone wrong in over forty years, out of their minds and start afresh.

But they wouldn’t. It even got to the stage where the flower-sellers in Grafton Street were talking about him. He was going past the woman who sold the roses outside the newsagents one day
and heard her saying, ‘That’s him – that’s Bell. He let a young boy die.’ This saddened him. Of course it did. But he understood. He didn’t blame her, or any of
the other women who were talking about him. He knew they would have stood by him if Stokes had shown some leadership.

‘By Christ, she wouldn’t have tried that carry-on with the pair of us in the old days, Father, I can tell you!’ he said to himself one night as he pulled off his socks.
‘We’d have been more than a match for the likes of her!’

Raphael was delighted with himself. This time she had gone too far. This time he would shut her up once and for all. What did she think he was – mad? That he would allow
her to get away with the like of this!

As soon as he heard about it, he summoned Father Stokes to the office. He paced the floor with his hands behind his back and tried his best to remain calm. Then he turned to the priest and said,
‘What I have to say I will keep brief and to the point. There will be no change in school policy. The children will continue to attend Friday evening sodality as they have always done.
Rosaries and prayer books as before. I reiterate – there will be no change.’ He coughed politely and looked away as he said softly, ‘I take it I can rely on your support,
Father.’

Father Stokes ran his countryman’s weathered fingers through his shock of white hair and screwed up his face as if in pain. He faltered as he spoke, then began anew. ‘It may be
unnecessary in this day and age,’ he said. ‘The children don’t have the same interest now, I mean. In any case, a majority on the Parents’ Committee have voted against it,
so in all honesty, Raphael, there isn’t really an awful lot we could do even if we wanted to. I see your point of course, and I’m all for it – but sometimes maybe it’s
better to just let sleeping dogs lie. And after all, the Parents’ Committee have done an awful lot for the school—’

Raphael stared at the face of his old friend and in the silence that ensued thought of the Phoenix Park on that day when a million people fell to their knees, of a summer garden where a young
priest laughed with a scone in his hand and as the words came to his lips, knew in his heart in that instant that this was the last effort he was ever going to make. ‘Please, Father . .
.’ he pleaded.

‘I’m sorry,’ replied the elderly clergyman as he lowered his head.

If you can single out a specific day upon which the school Raphael loved so much, and to which he had devoted most of the forty-three years of his teaching career, drew its last breath, then it
was indeed this particular day in May 1976, exactly two months after the death of Pat Hourican, as he knew now only too well, his hand trembling on the wheel as he drove all the way across the city
to the Harcourt Hotel to spend the day with the barman who was a former pupil, drinking himself once more into a giddy, explosive stupor.

Not that there’s anything wrong with drink, mind you, for there is no better way of enjoying oneself than having a few glasses of an evening but it can’t be denied
that over-indulgence does have its drawbacks, particularly if you are prone to hearing the odd few whispers, because what it tends to do is make them louder. And louder. It does nothing for your
ability to judge a situation either, as was the case with Raphael one day when he was on his way home to Madeira Gardens and happened to catch a glimpse of Father Stokes leaving by the back door.
Thanks to the cumulative effect of God knows how many whiskies over God knows how long, he went and got it into his head that the purpose of the clergyman’s visit had been to talk about him,
indeed not only that but to plot and scheme about him with his wife Nessa. Once something like that starts, it doesn’t take long for it to gather steam, and by the time he had turned the key
in the door, he was more than convinced that they too were both in league against him. The more he thought about it, the more he came to realize just how dire his predicament now was.

Only a couple of days earlier, Stokes had called to the school and started stuttering and stammering about the Thompson boy, going on about his parents being up in arms and how they had to take
him to the hospital. Raphael had felt like laughing in his face there and then. He felt like laughing and saying to him, ‘What – his parents are up in arms, are they? I’m afraid
you must be mistaken, Father! The parents in this school would never cause a fuss! Oh, no! Not in a million years! It must be someplace else you’re thinking of!’ Indeed, he was on the
verge of saying this, or something very similiar, when would you believe it, Stokes started to mutter something behind his hand.

At first, Raphael didn’t know what he was saying and to be honest with you, cared less, but then he heard it all right. Stokes was mumbling about ‘early retirement’. At the age
of sixty-three, Raphael was due to retire in two years anyway and here was this idiot of a priest blathering on about ‘early retirement’! Was he mad in the head or what? Did he really
think he would agree to that? He couldn’t even begin to think what it would be like to be retired, much less two years before your time! The more he thought about it, the more infuriated he
became. The cheek of him to even dare suggest such a thing. Because of the likes of Thompson! Tick tick tick went the right eye nerve. ‘Get out!’ snapped Raphael. He slapped his open
hand down on the desk. ‘Get out of my office!’ Stokes was nearly bent double as he crept out of the office! You should have seen the look on his face!

But sneaking out of the house behind his back – that was a much more serious development. He couldn’t believe that he would stoop to this level. Trying to turn a man’s wife
against him – it was unbelievable!

What was even more unbelievable however was that he appeared to have succeeded because when he confronted Nessa she denied everything. She was not in league with Stokes, she said. She
didn’t know what he was talking about. She was just worried, she said. That was all – worried. Raphael looked at her and for a split second wondered who she was. ‘You’re
telling lies,’ he said through thin lips. When she began to cry, he was on the verge of melting when it dawned on him that what he was witnessing was another ploy. He had seen such behaviour
in the classroom hundreds of times. To think he had almost fallen for it! ‘It will be a long time before you or any of your duplicitous colleagues ever force me to do anything against my
will!’ he said tersely. Before he left the room to go to his study, he turned and said, ‘I deeply regret what you have done here today, Nessa. I want you to know that.’

If Nessa and Raphael had spent many happy days together, then they seemed a long time ago, now. A long time ago because he had discovered that his wife was no different to the rest of them and
because he knew that the disease, now that it had one day rotted, would soon begin to spread rapidly to all the other days they had ever known.

Not that he cared. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He could face his maker with a clear conscience – which was more than most of them could do. Isn’t that right, Stokes? Do you
hear me, Evans? Isn’t that right – mm? Oh but it is, you see! Early retirement! Oh Stokes you fool! You silly silly fool!

Which in all honesty now is not the best of behaviour for a man who is supposed to be guiding little children through life but bad as it was, it was nothing to what old
Bubblehead was getting up to, sitting on his big backside in a busted armchair in Shepherd’s Bush, London, and sucking huge drags out of a telegraph pole of a joint. Of course it’s hard
to believe, but let me tell you this, if it’s hard for us it was twice as hard for him! I mean, one minute there you are, Mr Bollocks-Face Frogspawn
Wouldn’t-Say-Boo-To-A-Goose-Couldn’t-Keep-His-Girlfriend Dudgeon, off every morning with your head down to St Anthony’s School for crazy baldy bastards and the next there you are
in a squat full of loopers and headbangers who wouldn’t know a day’s work if it kicked them in the goolies. There was Chico the Head and Mad Peter from Kerry with his head nodding like
a cloth donkey in the back of a car. In the fire, half the furniture, and over the mantelpiece a great big painted eye with the words, ‘You are the You’, whatever the fuck that was
supposed to mean. Not that Bubblehead cared, he was too busy puffing and shouting, ‘Fuck frogspawn!’

Thanks to his old buddy Kevin Connolly he had wound up here. ‘It’s a cool place,’ he had said. ‘They’ll look after you there.’

And, man, could you say that again as off they went, cruising the tube all the way to Piccadilly where they were going to get out of their heads, man, out of their brains and that’s a fact
because Chico’s just gotten lucky, waving thirty quid OK you assholes so what are we gonna do lie around here blowing this shit I mean you call this dope this is bull-shit man, we’re
gonna get ourselves something that’s worth smoking so come on you guys get your ass in gear and move it cos you know why by tonight we are going to be gone, man, and I mean fucking gone! And
were they, or what? Chico and Malachy and the Prince of Tangier all the way from Cork, heating Red Leb in a chillum pipe as the beer went streaming down and Philip Lynott blasted ‘The Boys
Are Back In Town’. Yeah they were back in town all right and that was where Malachy Dudgeon was going to stay forever man, right here in London Town, smelling of patchouli with his bomber
jacket zippered up and his hair so wild and curly bouncing on his shoulders. Already Dublin seemed like a million years ago, since the Prince stood in the doorway and stuck out his hand then
dragged him in. ‘They call me the Prince,’ he said. ‘I’m the Prince of Tangier, man, I know things. You wanna know some things, friend of Kevin Connolly’s? The Irish
pipers, man, way back. You know what they used to do? Like what I’m saying is, they used to bind their pipes with hemp and like when they’re playing, when they’re playing right,
they’re taking in all these fumes, man, so they’re playing right and half the time they’re out of their fucking heads! Out of their heads, man – it’s true! Hey,
Malachy, you want to know something? You’re OK. You used to be a teacher, right? They fuck up your head. Their heads are so fucked up, they want to fuck up yours, right?’
‘Right,’ says Malachy, ‘you got it!’ ‘I know I got it, man, I’m the Prince,’ says the Prince. ‘The Prince – you hear me? They busted me there
you know – tried to do my head in. But it’s their own heads they’re doing in. They don’t know that but it is. Oh yeah. Their own heads, man.’