The Dead School (34 page)

As soon as he heard that, Nobby started to fall over himself with apologies. ‘God forgive us, Canon, do you know what it is we were having such a good time yarning here and having
ourselves a bit of a laugh that we clean went and forgot all about our old friend the Dummy.’

The Canon shook his head and chuckled. ‘Ah never mind – I’m only acting the jinnet. Look – stay where you are and don’t be worrying your head and let me look after
the Dummy. I’ll go on out to the lake and get him and I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. How’s that?’

As far as Nobby was concerned that just simply could not have been better.

‘Do you know what it is, Canon?’ he said. ‘That’s topping. That is what I would call topping now. Make sure and bring him in now for we’ll not be able for all this
lemonade ourselves!’

‘Don’t you worry,’ laughed the Canon as he nudged the Morris forward. ‘I’m not going to go home without a drop of it myself!’ He rapped on the side of the
Morris and drove off out the road. Malachy hadn’t realized that he was there himself all along but sure enough there he was over by the gable end of the house, standing beside Cissie and
Packie. They were chatting away to beat the band. She was holding on to his father’s arm. They were talking about something that happened a long time ago, before he was born. Malachy
didn’t realize the cowman had been standing beside him at all until he heard him say ‘Ssh’ and felt the cold coin being pressed into his hand. He looked down. It was a half crown.
The cowman beamed. ‘For the best lad that ever lived in this town,’ he said.

The Canon stood at the edge of the lake and cupped his hands over his mouth. He shouted, ‘Will you get up to hell out of that, Dummy! I have confessions at seven and then
Benediction after that, so come on now – no more of this codding!’ The Dummy had more sense than to argue with the Canon and the next thing you know there’s this great splash and
right up out of the middle of the silver water erupts an umbrella shower of diamonds and over to the shore with him as quick as he could for he had more sense than to keep the Canon waiting. The
clergyman gave him a playful belt with his gloves. ‘Will you get in to hell out of that or they’ll have all the lemonade drunk!’ he said. Then the Canon grinned and put his arm
around the Dummy and off they chugged towards town and the party that was being celebrated for Thomas Little Chubbies McAdoo.

Which is all very well until you wake up of course and boy when you do are you in some shape. That old Malachy, his ribs were just about fucked and right down the side of his
face there’s this big talon of dried blood. He was a right-looking sketch and no mistake, clambering to his feet and shouting, ‘Mr Bell, Mr Bell – I’ve got to talk to
you!’ Some fucking Night Stalker all right, after all that wanting to talk to the big lug who had just gone and battered him senseless!

But Raphael was far too busy to talk to anybody. By now he was nearly hoarse cheering his Daddy who had long since left each and every one of them far behind as he cut through
the swaying field of corn like a clockwork machine, the blade of his sickle hook glinting in the sun. Evelyn was going mental, jumping up and down, shouting, ‘Come on, our Daddy! Come on, our
Daddy!’ Uncle Joe puffed on his pipe and tapped it against his knee. ‘I think he’s going to take it!’ he said. And yes indeed it was looking good all right as his arms shot
into the air and he cried to the open skies ‘Evelyn!’ and she ran to him before they hoisted him aloft and bore him through the village, shouting their hearts out, ‘He won the
race! He won the reaping race!’ As indeed he did and such a singsong there was in the pub, with Uncle Joe getting up to do his party piece and them all starting into Raphael, ‘You
needn’t think you’ll get away without giving us Wee Hughie, young Raphael! Come on now – get up on the table out of that and give us a couple of verses!’ And whatever
shyness there might have been in him, what could he do only take the floor and, with his chest out, proudly recite, ‘He’s gone to school Wee Hughie and him not four,’ as he had
been doing for his boys for the past forty-three years, before they spoiled it, before she spoiled it, before they took his school and burnt it to the ground. Oh you can deny it. You can deny it
all you like, my friends. You needn’t think it’ll worry me. I’m past worrying about things like that I’m afraid. I have more important things to do with my time I can tell
you, for a start I’m going back to our house with Mammy and Daddy and all our neighbours and we’re going to have a singsong because my daddy won the reaping race which is more than your
daddy ever did and I’ll tell you something else, my smart friends, it will be a long time before you spoil this, it will be a long time before you spoil anything again. Your spoiling days are
over.

And so off through the village once more they trooped, Evelyn and Mattie Bell at the head of the throng, everyone with a soda cake or a bottle of whiskey or just a few rashers to throw on the
pan, as Uncle Joe slapped the kitchen table and rose to his feet, calling, ‘Order! Order here!’ and cleared his throat as he raised his glass and proposed a toast to ‘The best
family in the whole world!’ The cheers lifted the roof and then Pony Brennan took the floor to sing ‘God Save Ireland’ and it was sad because it made Raphael think of a man all
alone in an open field with the blood pouring out of his chest and the words he was trying to utter with his last breath weren’t ‘God Save Ireland’ or anything to do with Ireland
but, ‘Where is Raphael? Where is my little Raphael? Where is Evelyn? Where is my Evelyn?’ and it nearly broke Raphael’s heart as he looked down upon his father kneeling there all
alone because it made him think of someone else too, it made him think of Nessa, his Macushla whose white arms would reach out one last time to touch him but they wouldn’t would they, they
wouldn’t you see because that was when it happened, that was when he saw her sitting there. Not Nessa, not his one and only true love, but Evans. Evans with that sneer on her face, her eyes
saying touch me go on touch me you know you can’t, you can do nothing. Ask Father Stokes. Go on ask him. He’s sitting over there or can’t you see him? Are you blind as well?
Don’t tell me you’re blind as well, you silly old man. And when Raphael saw Father Stokes sitting there fiddling with his fingers and looking at him with eyes that said I’m sorry,
Raphael, it was more than he could bear and that was why his fingers closed about her throat and why, for every unborn baby ripped from her and thousands like her, he squeezed her flesh and shook
her like a broken doll, shook and shook and shook, crying, ‘You destroyed me!’ And such was his rage that he would have followed her to that pitch-black pit but for a soft voice that
came to whisper, ‘I’m down here, Raphael.’ And he looked far down into the valley, across the field of stubbled corn to where she was standing, a speck waving to him, his one and
only Nessa, calling to him as she came towards him up the mountainside that they would be together again. Then her white arms reached out and he left Evans far behind, felt them touch him as once
they had touched him in a Dublin boarding house in the long ago, her soft, perfumed skin close to his as she whispered his name over and over and at last he was free.

Which was more than could be said for Malachy Dudgeon as he came bursting through the door with a big bright hopeful face on him like he’d just won the sweepstakes.
‘I have to talk to you! I have to talk to you!’ he gasped as to his amazement he found his former headmaster half-naked swinging from the ceiling with his baldy lad up like Jemmy
Brady’s on a Sunday morning and a neat pile of excrement steaming on the floor behind him. Now whatever approach Jack Nicholson aka JJ Gittes might have taken to the situation, vomiting all
over himself and falling about the place going oh no and oh no oh Jesus Christ is hardly likely to have been one of them. None of this bothered Count John in the slightest of course and off he went
again, full steam ahead, as the needle found its mark once more.

So there you are. That’s Madeira Gardens for you, on the night of the 15th of September 1979. Whatever might have been said about it in the past, what with its stupid bin
liners and its garden of nettles and its daft muttering old principal who was half-sodden with whiskey and should have been put away long ago now, with the stench so unbearable as to almost make
you faint and the sight of what had once been Raphael Bell swinging away from side to side with its fat tongue sticking out, not to mention the boxes of books and pencils and ink bottles and papers
and charts and chalk and letters and roll books and sums copies and all the other junk and rubbish from St Anthony’s thrown around the place, it looked like the Dead School was, at long last,
beginning to live up to its name. Creak creak and sob sob. That was all you could hear. It was a sad state of affairs. A sad state of affairs now and no mistake.

Small wonder the cop who came to investigate the report of a break-in nearly shit himself when he saw what he’d landed into.

Across from him the old tramp bared a mouthful of broken teeth and handed him the bottle. ‘Have a drink,’ he said. ‘It takes the pain away.’ Malachy
took it and put it to his lips. ‘What happened to you, pal,’ asked the tramp. ‘You’re in a bad fuckin’ way. You’re worse than me. Have the lot. I don’t
need it no more.’ Malachy swigged and slipped away.

Standing in the doorway of the bungalow, Marion still looked as beautiful as ever. ‘Can you come in and look after this lot for just a second, Malachy?’ she called
to him. He smiled back and nodded as she went back inside. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and left the lawn mower back in the shed. Seamus, the guy next door, leaned over the garden fence and
said, ‘Well – there you are. The holidays over now another year. I suppose you can’t wait to get back to the little terriers?’

Malachy laughed. ‘Oh, now,’ he said. ‘They’re not the worst. I have a great class coming into me this year by all accounts.’

Seamus nodded. ‘I hear very good reports about this young fellow Pat Hourican. I hear you’ve been doing powerful things with him altogether.’

Malachy ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that now,’ he said. ‘The way it is with Pat he needs no help from me. I’ll tell you this – if
they were all like him I’d be the lucky man.’

‘Do you know what it is,’ he went on. ‘Between yourself and myself I wouldn’t have that job of yours for a pension. I’m telling you, it would drive me astray in the
head. As for the old post office now – it’s not so bad at all. But teaching? Not on your life, Malachy, and that’s not a word of a lie!’

Malachy smiled and went inside. Sorcha, Jason and Emer were sitting cross-legged on the carpet. When they saw him coming in they smiled. ‘Well – what’s going on here, you
little bunch of gangsters – what’s on?’ he said.

The three of them pulled eagerly at his trouser leg. ‘Daddy, Daddy – it’s Bugs Bunny!’

He sat down and got stuck into Bugs along with them. On the wall there was a framed portrait of Marion and himself on their wedding day. On the mantelpiece a souvenir of Torremolinos where they
had spent their first holiday after Marion had Sorcha. A pile of copybooks rested on the table, waiting to be corrected. Marion came in from the bathroom wearing a white towelling dressing gown.
She unwrapped the turban around her head and her hair fell free. Behind the rapt children she caught his eye and her lips moved silently.

‘I love you,’ she said and such was the depth of his happiness he almost wept.

Everyone had expected a good attendance but this surpassed all expectations. It looked like just about every single child in Ireland had turned up. Hundreds and hundreds of
kids of all shapes and sizes. There were kiddies from Cork and Kerry, kiddies from the slums of Dublin and kiddies from the mountains of Donegal. And did they look fantastic! Absolutely fantastic!
As one woman said, with a tear in her eye, ‘They’re a picture, God love them!’

All the convent girls wore white dresses and flowing veils and the boys starched white shirts and red ties. They carried Papal bannerettes. Each boy had his own set of rosary beads because, as
they all knew, that was one of Mr Bell’s special rules – St Anthony’s boys must have them with them at all times, no matter where it was they might find themselves. In their lace
veils and white socks, with their hands joined and eyes closed, the little girls seemed as angels come down from heaven. It was indeed a sight to behold.

What worried the organizers of the funeral was where on earth they were going to put them all. The big question of the day was – were there enough hotels in Dublin city to hold all these
kiddies? Not to mention their teachers and their mammies and daddies and all the nuns and priests and past pupils and all the rest of them. As one old priest said to another in the foyer of the
North Star Hotel when they were all getting ready for the big trip to Glasnevin where Raphael was to be buried, ‘Do you know what I’m going to tell you – I haven’t seen a
crowd as big as this since the day of the Eucharistic Congress and that’s a fact!’

Yes indeed, the City of Dublin was on the march and by the holy if Raphael Bell was going into the ground then, as Paschal O’Dowd observed, walking along behind the hearse, there was one
sure thing and that was that all his old buddies and pals from years gone by were going to give him one father and mother of a send-off. As the cortège made its way to the cemetery there was
no end to the amount of stories that were to be told about the headmaster who was, as one man put it, ‘A legend.’ Everyone agreed. ‘That’s what he was,’ they said.
‘A bloody legend.’ There was the story about the time he had to chase the goat out of the playground. ‘Didn’t one of the tinkers bring a bloody goat to school!’ they
laughed. Then there was the time Nelligan got locked in the school over the weekend! It was priceless. The stories went on and on. Then of course there were the more serious stories. About how his
class had got the highest marks in the Diocesan Catechetical inspections for twenty years running, and the day the All-Ireland Football Trophy was brought into the school by the victorious captain,
a former pupil. Not to mention of course the number of times the choir had been on Radio Eireann. ‘Oh, now,’ they said, ‘you would travel the length and breadth of Ireland a fair
while before you would come across a man the like of Mr Bell now, eh?’ That was for sure.