The Dead School (9 page)

Conker men were little people made out of matchsticks and chestnuts. As the lecturer said, kiddies loved them and they were easy to make and of course very economical. All you needed to get your
little conker family going were half a dozen chestnuts and an ordinary box of household matches. That was all you needed and you were away. You used the bigger conker for the body, the little one
then for the head, you put in your matchsticks and hey presto – Daddy Conker. The lecturer beamed with pride as he held him up. ‘Doesn’t he look good?’ he said. Everyone
agreed that he did and the lecturer moved on to Mammy Conker. When they were all finished, he put the whole family up on the window sill along with all the other little people they had made this
term so far. Then he adjusted his spectacles and said, ‘I’m sure you’ll find that a great activity, particularly those of you who will be taking infants and the younger classes
for teaching practice. The little ones always get great enjoyment out of it. Anyway, that’s our Conker Men more or less finished with. Now let’s see. Yes – I think now we’ll
move on to the Bead People.’

What next, thought Malachy, as he wrote ‘Bead People’ in his folder, and started that old dreaming again, wondering where it was he was gonna be headed tonight.

As if he didn’t know of course, considering they’d spent the last thirteen nights in the pub across the road where all the first year women hung out. By the time
eleven o’clock came, Malachy’s head had just about gone AWOL and all he could think was, ‘If only Alec and those assholes could see me now!’ He was completely gone, man. He
could do anything. Any woman in the bar, he could have had her. He knew that. They were there for the taking. They were as far gone as he was. What were they on about now? Music? ‘I’ll
tell you about music, man!’ shouted Malachy as he took off his shades. ‘You want to know something about music?’ They told him to shut the fuck up or the barman would throw them
out. ‘So – he throws us out – he throws us out!’ shouted Malachy in Pacinospeak as he nearly fell off the seat. ‘No – the best single ever!’ someone was
saying, ‘What was it?’ ‘Maggie May,’ someone said. ‘Don’t talk bullshit!’ said somebody else. ‘Brown Sugar’ was the next suggestion. It got the
thumbs down too. After that they came thick and fast. It was going hot and heavy when could you believe it, what do they hear then only this voice saying, ‘No – it was Chirpy Chirpy
Cheep Cheep!’ Well, when they heard that, they just about went and exploded right there on the spot. ‘You have got to be kidding, man!’ someone laughed. ‘I mean you really
have got to be kidding!’ The laugh was that she wasn’t kidding at all. ‘No – I’m not!’ she said. ‘I really do like it.’ They all stared at her in
amazement. She was small with blue eyes and short strawberry blonde hair. ‘No – I really do!’ she had to insist as they kept on staring at her, waiting for her to retract. But she
didn’t and in the end they got fed up waiting and started laughing and talking about something else. Someone told Malachy her name was Marion. Not that he was pushed one way or another what
her name was, as he lit a rollup and said, ‘Where are we headed after this then? Into town?’ and then hit the bar for the last drinks of the evening. It was fantastic. It was the best
night yet and that was saying something! He was on top of the world!

He met her a few times after that by accident, at lectures and stuff and always said the same thing to her, ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep–huh?’ and so what if he
reddened, what difference did it make, it wasn’t as if he was going to ask her out or something, even if he had been thinking about her ever since the night in the pub for some reason. I mean
it wasn’t as if he was going to fall in love with her or something Miss Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, she’d be waiting a long time if that was what she was expecting, which explained why
when he overheard her saying she was going to the first-year dance in the hall in Parnell Square that he happened to be standing where he would be able to see her. She was wearing a stripy tank top
and a shirt with blue flowers on it. The band was playing ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ when he finally plucked up the courage to ask her to dance. As he was crossing the floor he
could hear ‘What? Dance with you? A son of Packie Dudgeon – that humpy cunt! Whose wife made a cod of him in front of the whole town!’ and was about to turn back when he heard her
say, ‘Sure.’ There wasn’t much room to dance so they just more or less stood there. He could smell her perfume as he held her hand. He felt like he was going to drop down dead on
the spot. Her hair lightly brushed his cheek as she said, ‘How are you enjoying the college so far?’ He was so busy thinking about the feel of her hair that he nearly said, ‘What
college?’ But he managed to get it together just in time. ‘Oh – it’s fine,’ he said, ‘It’s cool’, as he tried to figure out just when would be the
best time to ask her would she like a drink or something like that.

The first night he kissed her he didn’t know what to do with himself. He thought the top of his head was going to come off. He ran his fingers through her hair and whispered, ‘Oh
Marion!’ He really couldn’t believe it was happening. She said she would meet him in the canteen after English. They drank coffee and argued about Hedda Gabler. Marion said that Hedda
was right to do what she did. Malachy said she wasn’t. But he didn’t give two fucks whether she was or not. He just wanted to keep the argument going so he could sneak looks at
Marion’s eyes. Blue eyes. Blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair and small hands.

The first night they made love he thought he was finished altogether. How many explosions were going on inside him, he did not know. It was the night they went to the end-of-term party in
Phibsoboro. They went mental, dancing to the twelve-bar boogie of Status Quo and twice as mental hugging one another to the slow blues of Eric Clapton. He wanted to kiss the mouth off her.

They were half-drunk as they came up Drumcondra Road. They went into the Perki Chick for chips and the notorious gang leader Philly Fuckface, head of the Drumcondra skinheads, laid it on the
line for Malachy. ‘You tell those country fucks up in that college that I’m on to them. You hear what I’m saying? You better because you want to know about those assholes –
they’re history. You got that, Mulch-Head with the glasses?’

Malachy took off the shades and gave Philly the thumbs-up. ‘I got it,’ he said. Philly flipped a chip into his mouth. ‘Bleedin’ right you got it,’ he said.
‘And don’t you forget it.’

He loved kissing her stomach and then her breasts and then her arms. Then it was off up to her mouth which he could kiss till he died. Running his fingers through her hair and
hugging her like a madman. By the time they were finished it was dawn. That was the end of lectures for that day I’m afraid.

Occasionally a tiny voice would whisper at the back of his mind, ‘But what about your promise? What you said about love?’ He heard it all right but each time it came it grew fainter
and fainter until he could no longer hear it at all.

There was a double bill of
The Graduate
and
Midnight Cowboy
on at the Adelphi. Marion had her head stuck in a big box of popcorn as she said, ‘When you said
it was your favourite movie you didn’t tell me you knew the whole thing off by heart.’ But he did, he knew it all right. And just like Joe Buck in the movie he did not give a shit as
Ratso Rizzo slapped the bonnet of the car and tossed a cigarette butt at the windscreen shouting ‘I’m walking here! I’m walking here!’ Man it was crazy. Then who does Joe
Buck meet, only this prostitute with a poodle. He’s got it all worked out – she’s worth at least fifty dollars sure as hell. Yeah sure she is until he’s standing there
shaking her perfume into his boots and she’s gone apeshit shouting, ‘You thought I was gonna pay you?’ Like a bat out of hell that Joe Buck gets on out of the apartment and
doesn’t stop running till he reaches Times Square. Malachy reckoned the prostitute’s outburst was just about the funniest thing he had ever heard. He was still saying it when they were
coming out of the cinema – ‘You thought
I
was gonna pay
you
. You big Texas longhorn bull!’ Marion hugged his arm. ‘I love the way you do that –
it’s amazing!’ she said. ‘Do it again. Do some more.’

‘Can you tell me where the Statue of Liberty is please, Ma’am?’ he said then twisted up his face and said, ‘Sure. It’s up in Central Park taking a leak. If you
hurry you might catch the supper show.’

He did most of the movie and still she wanted to hear more. ‘How about
The Graduate
? Can you do any of that?’ ‘I’ve had it,’ said Malachy. They went to the
Shakespeare Bar in Parnell Street. There were a few of the other heads from the college there but Marion and him stayed on their own. They sat in the corner and didn’t say much after that.
What would you want to say anything for?

Sister Ken the Yank had eyes like a hawk. ‘What you gotta do is make your own choices, your own decisions in life – that’s what it’s all about buddy
– believe you me!’ She said that every week in her Yankee accent. That was why they called her the Yank. In fact she had never been anywhere near America in her life. She had been
drafted over from a convent in England for a term or two and put in charge of religion for the whole college. As well as being Sister Hip. Yep, as far as she was concerned, she was just about the
hippest thing on the planet. You wouldn’t catch her wearing a dowdy old nun’s habit. Not at all. She was too busy hanging out and discussing sex before marriage. Yep, the church is
going through some mighty big changes, she said, and we gotta ride along with them. That was why she had brought in the Dutch Catechism. She reckoned everyone in the seminar group should read it.
‘Some people tell me they find it difficult,’ she said. That was when Marion chipped in with her ‘psst psst’ to Malachy. Now if Ken the Yank was pretty cool when it came to
matters religious, things weren’t quite the same when it came to interrupting seminars. Which was why she was staring over at Marion with mad eyes and every blood vessel in her head about to
burst. It was no use Malachy even beginning to try – he just couldn’t keep in the laughing and that was that. It might have been OK until Marion lost it as well. ‘May I ask what
you find so amusing?’ the Yank said. ‘Perhaps you might be so kind as to share the joke with the rest of the group?’ Marion wiped the tears from her eyes and tried her best to get
herself together. A few of the mature-moustaches pulled their cardigans about them and glared at her with glacier-eyes. ‘I’m not surprised they find it hard, really,’ she
chortled. ‘If it’s written in Dutch, I mean.’ That was enough for Malachy, whose essay on the Dead Sea Scrolls went flying all over the floor. ‘Some students have a rather
idiosyncratic sense of humour,’ said Sister Ken as Malachy’s glazed eyes welded themselves to the pages of his catechetical masterpieces for which he was now without a doubt destined to
get O marks.

All the way down the corridor, they couldn’t stop laughing. ‘The big mad eyes of her,’ said Marion.

‘Shee-it, that Sister Ken,’ said Malachy. ‘She is gonna blow us right outta the water, pardner.’

‘I guess there’s nothing for it now only the poob,’ Marion said.

‘What are you talking about – poob?’ he said.

‘It’s Dutch for pub,’ she shouted, and then tore off across the grass as he ran after after her, with at the very least half a dozen pages of meticulously annotated biblical
Hebrew fluttering in the breeze behind him.

They hung out in the park behind the college. The day the snow came they were supposed to have a Philosophy of Education seminar but the way they were feeling they
couldn’t have cared less if every Philosophy of Education lecturer in the place had been rounded up and shot. They were off to make snowmen. They rolled a huge big ball down the hill and
stuck a tiny little head on it. ‘It’s Mr Conker’s Snowman Brother,’ Marion said. She knew it was stupid to say that. But she didn’t care. Neither did he. They stuck a
stick in its face for a pipe. The park was an unbroken blanket of snow. She was sitting on a swing listening to Neil Young on her portable cassette player wearing a black knitted woollen cap and a
duffle coat. There were flakes of melting snow in her hair. Neil was singing, ‘Out On the Weekend’. He sang away as Malachy gave her a few pushes on the swing. ‘What do you think
of our snowman?’ she asked. ‘He’s good,’ Malachy said. ‘I love him,’ she said. ‘I love our snowman. His little head.’ They were supposed to go back
for tea but they didn’t bother. They stayed there for hours. Then they started firing snowballs. One burst on her back and she roared, ‘I’ll get you for that!’ Unfortunately
he fell against the snowman and knocked off his head. ‘Now look what you did – look what you did to our snowman!’ She tore after him again. By the time they had done all that,
they were completely exhausted.

Malachy sat on a bench as she just stood by the frozen river, staring at something far away. He was drawing in the snow with a stick when he looked up and saw her turning towards him. He
didn’t know what she was going to say. But then she looked into his eyes and her lips parted as she smoothed back her hair and said, ‘I love you.’

Not long after that came teaching practice and Malachy was steeped in luck. They gave him just about the easiest class imaginable and he sailed through it. Marion was well on
top of it too and to celebrate they went to a club called Zero’s. She was wearing a cheesecloth blouse with a big knot tied in it, a brown corduroy skirt and knee-length boots. She had some
eye shadow on but not much. Not that he minded. Eye shadow looked lovely on her. She could wear all she liked as far as he was concerned. She had earrings with little golden shoes hanging from them
and a necklace with her name in silver letters. Her cheek touched his as they danced. He held her tight and as her hair brushed lightly against his cheek he smiled at her and said, ‘You
don’t really like “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” do you?’ She didn’t say anything. Just hit him a pretend punch as they went on dancing in the same spot for over an hour
as Jimi Slevin and Peggy’s Leg tried their best to blow every amplifier they had.