The Dead School (33 page)

Maybe he had, in his own mind. But what the boys would have heard, if they had been there, wouldn’t have been anything remotely like Wee Hughie. What it sounded like to normal ears was
‘Blub blub blub blub’ as the famous master-raconteur struggled to get to his feet and went crash back down on the seat of his threadbare cavalry twills again.

O, yes, Malachy took it bad. I’m afraid he took it very bad indeed about Cissie, which might explain why he is raving now, out of his mind on the demon drink! O, but he
is, kiddies, drunk as a Lord in Dublin city and there is no getting away from it. Lying against the smoke-stained wallpaper and laughing away if you don’t mind. So what you reckon, he says to
nobody in particular, you think maybe I should take a walk down Burgerland way and see if I can find myself some skinheads? Ha ha. Well you just go right on thinking that my friend but you see that
is where you are wrong, that is one thing I am not gonna do no sir and you know why? Because them days are gone, friend. Long gone. You hear what I’m saying? I hope you do. I hope you are
listening, you guys out there, you and anyone else who wants to know what’s going down. Excuse me but do you know my name? My name’s Malachy Dudgeon. Yes, that’s correct –
Malachy Dudgeon whose father fell off the fishing stand. No – I’m not from Dublin. I only came here after I saw my mother. Perhaps you know her, do you? My mother I mean. Cissie is her
name. She’s quite a girl. She’s had the last laugh on all of us, hasn’t she? Ladies and gentlemen!
Night of the Living Dead
! It’s funny, isn’t it? Of course it
is. But then everything about me is funny. I’m a funny fellow. I’m a funny little fellow. I am a funny – little – fellow! Funny funny funny. If you want to have yourself a
laugh you can always rely on old Bubblehead. Look – here he comes! Hello, Bubblehead! Hello, Son of Stallion! Hello, Malachy, son of Cissie who fucked the cowman crooked!

Yes, the night is young in Martin Coyningham’s Bar where the strobelights swirl and the soft bodies squeeze and the music hits your head over and over with a huge big hammer:
‘Ain’t Gonna Bump No More No Big Fat Woman’. Malachy is having the time of his life. Having the time of his life in the Disco of Dreams. He is chatting up the girls. He knows how
to handle the women, our Malachy. ‘Hi, gals – the name’s Mal. Like me to do a JJ Gittes impression, maybe?’ They marvel as he lays it on the line. He is so cool – so
assured. He lets them know just what it is he is gonna do to a certain person. To a motherfucker who has had it coming for a long time. ‘No, sir,’ he says, because he has nothing to
lose any more. ‘That’s why I’m gonna do it,’ he says. ‘I am gonna make him crawl!’ And the girls laugh. They say they have never met anyone like him before.
‘You’re from London, aren’t you?’ one of them said. ‘You better believe it, lady!’ he said. ‘Ask for me any night in the George bar, Stoke Newington
– awright?’

As he reels past the blurred Rathmines moon, his fist defies the inky sky and he cries, ‘
Did you hear me, Bell? Are you listening to me? I’m coming for you! I’m coming for
you, motherfucker!
’

And so, tonight’s story is called, ‘Falling Across Dublin City Because You Are Out of Your Mind on Drink’. It is quite a nice night for a story. Everyone is
out having some fun – particularly Malachy. He is off on his travels. Making his way through the happy, night-time streets to see his old friend Mr Bell once more. Mr Bell – it’s
been quite a long time, hasn’t it? It certainly has, Mr Dudgeon. Do you know something – I almost wouldn’t recognize you. Is that a fact, Mr Bell? Is that because I have long hair
now and an old tattered army coat a tramp wouldn’t be caught dead wearing? No – I don’t think it’s so much that, Mr Dudgeon, I think it’s more those mad eyes of yours.
They are like something you’d see on a drug addict. Oh, those? Don’t mind those old eyes of mine, Mr Bell – every psycho has eyes like that. What? You’re telling me
you’re a psycho now are you, Mr Dudgeon? Well well well I’ve heard a lot of jokes in my time but that just has to be the best yet. Sure we all know you wouldn’t say boo to a
goose. You used to shite yourself every time I came near your classroom. Oh, yes, that might be true, Mr Bell, but that was a long time ago. It’s not today or yesterday, oh, no. And while I
might not have been a psycho then, I certainly am now. That is why I am going to make you pay. Mr Bell – you’re a motherfucker. Did you know that? Well, in case you didn’t,
I’m telling you now – that’s what you are. Mr Bell – do you know what I’m going to do tonight? I’m going to make you sorry. Of course you can laugh. You can
laugh until the cows come home. But I’m still going to make you pay. Make no mistake about it.

Malachy stood on O’Connell Bridge outside the Film Centre. That had been a favourite haunt of his too in the long-ago days of his wide-eyed Dublin ramblings. Showing tonight:
The Female
Bunch
and
Sex in the Classroom
. Malachy would have liked nothing better right now than to go inside and sit alone in the urine-smelling dark watching Sergio losing his virginity to his
mother-in-law or the lesbian boss of the outlaw women sticking a pitchfork in the groin of the little Mehico farmer just because he is a man. It would be just like old times, stumbling off home
then to Rathmines, stopping for barbecued spare ribs and sauce to smear all over his face before he fell asleep in the fireplace, the happiest man in Dublin.

Which is what he is now, as he waves his vodka bottle, cheering. He wants all his friends to know he is back home. Which is why he stands on O’Connell Bridge and cries out to the
shimmering lights of the city, ‘Hey, Dublin – you listening? Fuck you!’ He feels good saying that. That is why he says it over and over and over and over again. Then he gets the
fuck on outa there.

The pubs were spewing them out. A fight started at a bus stop. A woman was weeping bitterly but Malachy was so busy skidding on a slippery patch of vomit that he had no time to help. Another
woman in a ballgown was climbing into a limo outside The Gresham Hotel. He fell against the wall and laughed. The doorman told him to move on but Malachy explained how he had got it wrong.
‘No, friend,’ he said. ‘Uh-uh. I don’t move on. It’s you that moves on, friend. It’s you that moves on.’ In the flats there was nothing, only the smell of
piss and couples fucking like dogs in doorways. At last he came upon a bunch of likely looking chaps loitering outside McDowell’s – the Happy Ring House, the very place he had planned
to buy Marion’s engagement ring – well well! By the looks of things all the skinheads had long since passed away. These were nothing more than half-assed street urchins. They asked him
for a light as he went past and he said, ‘Sure I have a light. I sure have, my friend. But I don’t give my lights to cunts.’ Unfortunately they proved worse than useless. There
were a few so-called witty remarks – such as ‘Get your fucking hair cut, hippy!’ and ‘Queer’ and ‘Kick the fuck out of him’. But it was just a waste of
time. A complete waste of time. All they did was stand there looking at him. No matter what he did it was no use. Even when he screamed, ‘Did you hear me? Did you hear me fuckers you stupid
fucking scumbags! I don’t give lights to cunts – don’t give lights to cunts like you!’

It is hard to believe what they did then. They left him there. Just went off and left him. He lay against the railings and hung his head laughing. What else could he do? What could he do only
lie there like a fly in a sound-web of sirens and cries and screeches and laugh as words dribbled out of his mouth, down his coat and onto the street:
I like my nose, Mrs Mulwray – I like
breathing through the fucking thing, you know what I’m saying? You know what I’m saying, cunts? You want me to take your fucking head off? Is that what you want? Is that what you
fucking want – you fuckers, you screwheads! Are you listening to me! You listen to me – listen or you’re fucking history – got that? You got that, fucks?

After that, he felt like a million dollars. He felt like a million dollars and it was time to do what he had come to do once and for all. ‘
Once and for all, Bell –
motherfucker!
’ he cried. Laughing aloud, he wiped the sick off his mouth. And then he was off again. A one-man killing machine, cutting through the city with hate behind his eyes.

Across the bay the twin towers of Poolbeg power station rose into the black sky.

Malachy climbed into the back of the taxi. ‘Drive!’ he said, as the car tore off into the night.

Malachy could see the headlines now. The headlines and the cops on the TV advising the public under no circumstances to approach this man. Only venture out if it is absolutely
necessary. There may be more killings. It is unlikely that the psychopath will confine himself solely to the terrorizing of old retired schoolmasters. Be under no illusions about that, a police
spokesman insisted. Sightings have been reported all over the city, says Mr Policeman. Oh, yes. Of course they have. Look – it’s me! Yoo hoo! Die, motherfucker!

The lights of the taxi swung back onto the coast road as Malachy fell through the gate of number 53 Madeira Gardens with his vodka bottle stuck in his pocket.

‘Whee-hoo!’ he shouted as he pounded on the door. ‘Open up! Open the door, man – it’s the Night Stalker!’ he shouted as he swigged the vodka. ‘Open it
up or you’re history!’

John McCormack was singing away at the top of his voice and it was a wonder Raphael heard the hammering at all. He was trying to get the boys to make up their minds which it
was going to be once and for all, hanging or carbon monoxide, when he heard it. Yes, he definitely heard it. Someone battering the front door. He froze, considering this was his first visitor in
almost three years, apart from the nosey-parker neighbours, who wouldn’t be calling at this hour anyway. He put his finger to his lips and whispered,
‘Ciúnas, a
bhuachaillí! Ná bí ag caint anois. Carry on with your work and don’t make a sound!’

He winced as he heard it again. Muffled by the music but definitely there. Then – nothing. He was about to relax and tell the boys that it was all over when he heard the clatter of the bin
around the back. Every muscle in his body tightened. He grabbed the tongs, turned the gramophone up even louder and told the boys not to move. Then he left the classroom and went out into the
kitchen, standing in the doorway with his breath caught in his chest and the nerve ticking over his eye. The shadow moved across the window and his knuckles whitened around the tongs.

Malachy couldn’t see what the fuck he was doing. First he went flying over a dustbin full of potato skins and the next thing a yowling cat appeared out of nowhere.
‘Fuck you!’ he shouted. ‘Fuck you!’ But there was no going back now. He managed to put his elbow through a pane of glass and pulled himself through but then he went and
stuck his foot in a pile of gooey muck beneath the window. What was that but poor old Setanta, or what was left of him, now a sticky mess on the bottom of the Night Stalker’s shoe as he
hopped around on one leg with the sweat rolling off him and the maggots all over his hand, which was bad enough without looking up and seeing a pair of eyes glaring out of the darkness. And not
just an ordinary pair of eyes either but the eyes of Raphael Bell who was running at him with the tongs, flailing like a madman. ‘You! After all you’ve done you come back here to my
house! You come back here to my house!’ he screamed. ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll destroy you like you destroyed me!’, which he did his best to do as he sent poor Malachy
flying across the room with a belt of the heavy iron tongs and brought them down on top of him again and again. ‘You made me lose my wife!’ he screamed. ‘You made me lose her and
you ruined my life!’

‘No! No, you fucker! You ruined mine!’ were the words that Malachy, more than anything, wanted to utter, but as another blow thudded into his ribs, they left him and there was
nothing but silence and the giant shape that swayed above him far away.

And far away he too was bound, to an old familar place where Nobby Caslin was standing by the garden gate puffing away on his trusty pipe. There wasn’t so much as a hint
of a breeze and inside the little brown bowl a glow began to pulse straight away. The sun was shining in the cloudless sky. The fledglings were huddled close together in their nests with their
eager mouths wide open. Their mothers were close by them singing. Then came the sound of voices. It was Alec and the lads. ‘Hello there, Nobby,’ they said as they passed. They said they
were on their way out to the boatshed to see what was going on. Then they burst out laughing and said that they were only fooling around. Or ‘acting the jinnet’ as Packie used to say.
‘Not at all, Nobby,’ they said. ‘That’s all over and done with. The boatshed? Sure we haven’t been out there for years!’

‘Well, there you are,’ said Nobby as a cloud of sweet-smelling blue smoke floated past his face. ‘All over now at last.’ When Malachy looked again, they were gone,
swallowed up by the blue sky. He walked up the garden path to where Mrs McAdoo and her little son Thomas were sitting at a picnic table, with a bright beautiful birthday cake. Thomas was beside
himself with excitement because of course it was his birthday. He could not wait to get blowing out the candles. His mother was as excited as he was but every time he ballooned his cheeks and got
ready to blow, she laid her hand gently on his arm and said, ‘Now, now, little Thomas – it isn’t time yet!’ and he blushed and she laughed. The windows of the town were
thrown open and through them the ecstatic bleat of Michael O’Hehir carried up and out and into the faraway clouds. ‘
Yes and a fine sunny day it is here in Dublin. The Artane Boys
Band is now leaving the field and what excitement there is here today for this match, which must surely be a meeting of the giants
!’ Nobby waved to the boys on their way back to the
boats. ‘Who are you for, men?’ he cried. ‘Armagh!’ they called and he laughed. ‘Armagh every time,’ he said. They laughed too, dragging on their Woodbine
cigarettes. Mrs McAdoo tweaked Thomas’s cheek. She said to him, ‘Who’s my little man? Who’s my little chubbies?’ Thomas got all embarrassed. But he soon forgot all
about it when he looked up and saw Father Pat and the Canon coming chugging along in the old black Morris. The Canon rolled down the window and said, ‘Have youse forgot all about the Dummy?
Or what the hell is wrong with youse? Jesus Mary and Joseph only youse have me to look after youse I think you’d forget to put your trousers on in the morning.’