S
hortly after that the summer holidays ended and it was time for me to move up into the Juniors. Davie and Jimmy were to start in the Infants.
As we walked to school, I suddenly saw how much my little brother had changed. Where once he had been round, now he was thin. His shoulder blades pressed against the fabric of his coarse shirt. His neck, once ringed with little rolls of puppy fat, was now so slender it hardly looked strong enough to hold up his head. Even his legs had lost their roundness and looked almost stick-like, with blue veins showing through almost translucent skin.
As well as looking different on the outside there were differences on the inside. Whereas before the accident he was often demanding and unhappy, now it seemed that the Davie I knew, both the irritating and the lovable sides, had completely gone.
There was a lack of connection. If I tickled him he didn’t squirm or chortle with laughter. Instead he would just lie limply, his eyes looking at me with complete indifference. He never laughed, and the constant tears that had once annoyed me so much seemed to have dried up completely. A blank passiveness had replaced the emotions of grief, rage and occasional amusement that used to chase across his little face. He still had a deep connection with his friend Jimmy but I hardly ever heard them talking to each other.
When we arrived at school that first day back, Sister Claire took the little boys in the direction of the Infants and pushed me gently towards the more imposing doors that led to the Juniors.
‘You go in there now, Robbie,’ she instructed, ‘and I’ll see you at four o’clock.’
My new teacher, Mr Douglas, looked impatient at my lateness when I entered his classroom. I recognised my fellow classmates from the last term in the Infants, but they ignored me as usual. I saw Mr Douglas’s gaze sweep over me and I felt a sinking sensation. I recognised that look. It spoke more loudly to me than if he had said it out loud: ‘Bastard! I don’t like bastards in my class.’
I knew that the relative safety of the Infants had come to an end. This tall, thin man with sparse, greying hair and a thin little mouth obviously had no sympathy for the boys from Sacre Coeur.
My eyesight was very poor. In the Infants I had always managed to sit near the front of the class, but here all the other children had arrived early to claim their desk places so I was seated at the back. The blackboard and the writing on it was just a blur and classes that I had once enjoyed when sitting at the front now almost reduced me to tears.
‘You, Garner!’ Mr Douglas would demand at the beginning of the arithmetic class. ‘What’s the answer to that sum?’
However much I squinted at the board, the figures were indistinguishable. The first time it happened I tried to tell him that I couldn’t see what was on the board.
‘Oh, for goodness sake, boy,’ was his response. ‘If you don’t know the answer, don’t waste my time – just say so.’ And for greater emphasis he slapped a ruler into the unturned palm of his hand.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ I would reply unhappily, my eyes cast down. He walked up the aisle, still smacking his ruler repeatedly into his hand, until he stood next to me. I could feel the warmth of him right next to my elbow.
‘Don’t know much, do you, Garner? Well, you had better start learning. There will be no dunces in my class.’
I wanted to tell him that the reason I couldn’t give him the answers was that I couldn’t see the board, but after one look at his scowling face I held my tongue. Taking my silence as further proof of my uselessness (although if I had spoken up he would have labelled me as impertinent), he flicked the ruler viciously across my knuckles and walked away.
We orphans were still fed separately and were very seldom allowed into the playground to mix with the other children. On the nuns’ insistence we were sent to do our homework during the breaks. I am sure this was just another way of making sure that we remained separated from the temptations of the outside world.
The other children jeered at us when we passed them in the corridor. I heard words like ‘bastard’ many times, and by quizzing the older boys at the home I quickly learnt what it meant. I noticed that the teachers who overheard these jeers seldom stopped or reprimanded the boys responsible.
Boys can be cruel. They love tormenting those who are different, and we were undoubtedly different. Itching powder was brought into school hidden in the pockets of satchels and stealthily removed during class. It was sprinkled down the back of a victim’s shirt or, even worse, trousers, then the perpetrator and his cronies would chortle with glee. The first time it happened to me I let out a small shriek as I felt the stinging itch. It was as though I had stepped into a clump of nettles, and I jumped up trying to scratch the inflamed part of my body. The class was in an uproar. Boys doubled over laughing and Mr Douglas turned from the board and marched down the aisle.
‘It’s you, isn’t it, Garner? Not content with being stupid you want to play the fool and disrupt my class completely. I suppose you were never taught manners, not where you must have come from.’ His hand shot out, caught my ear and forcibly pulled me from my seat. My ear hurt, my back was stinging unbearably and I could hear the sniggers of my classmates as he marched me to the front.
‘Bend over,’ he barked.
His hand pushed me hard until my chest was flat on his desk and my toes were just scraping the floor. He held me there for a few seconds swishing his cane in the air and allowing my fear to build. I heard his clothes rustle as he raised it, the whoosh it made as he brought it down and then felt searing pain. ‘Six of the best, Garner,’ he said with satisfaction, as he brought the cane down again and again.
The class had gone quiet. Everyone there knew that, although he liked the orphans least, none of them was immune from his rage. That first time he caned me I wept as I walked back to my desk. This hurt more than when Sister Freda had whipped me with her strap and it was made even worse by being humiliated in front of my peers.
Being the only boy in the class from the orphanage seemed to make me Mr Douglas’s favourite target. He knew there was no one to listen to my complaints. The nuns didn’t care and I had no parents to stick up for me.
I had to work out my own ways of getting by. Homework questions were always written on the board for us to copy down. I would wait till the other children had left before I came forward to write down the details. My homework was almost always correct because I was terrified of being punished again. Mr Douglas would return my dog-eared exercise book grudgingly, saying, ‘Did you get help, Garner?’ ‘No, sir,’ I’d whisper in reply, wondering where he thought I could possibly get help from.
I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. I worked hard and memorised my times tables and I learnt simple addition so that I could get my sums right, but this only seemed to infuriate him more.
‘Garner, are you paying attention?’ he would call out when I was peering short-sightedly at the board. ‘Yes, sir,’ I would answer, praying that reply would satisfy him.
‘What’s the answer to that sum, then?’ I would fall silent. I could hear my classmates sniggering and my ears would start to burn.
I remain convinced that he knew I had bad eyesight and knew that unless he called the figures out I couldn’t possibly know the answers.
‘Cat got that tongue of yours, has it?’ he would say in false tones of disgust and, if in a good mood, he would content himself with giving me a whack round the head. If in a bad one, it would be a vice-like grip on my ear, a wrench, followed by the hiss of the cane as it descended. All the time I could hear him chanting, ‘Lazy, stupid boy. What are you, Garner? Tell me, what are you?’
‘I’m a lazy, stupid boy,’ I would repeat.
At that age that’s what I believed I was.
F
or some time I had not had to work with Neville because of the long hours I worked in the laundry with Brian. Eventually Sister Freda noticed our friendship, and she disapproved.
‘Seeing you two seem to get on so well together you can both go and work with Neville on Saturday,’ she announced.
She had a hatred of seeing any Sacre Coeur boys enjoying themselves. When the visitors came and we had to present a happy front I would often catch her looking at us with her mouth tucked firmly in and a look of bitter discontent on her face. She would stand close to a boy and put her arm across his shoulder, in an apparently affectionate gesture, then her fingers would swiftly nip the soft underside of his upper arm. Whatever love she was capable of feeling for her religion it certainly didn’t extend to the little boys who were in her care.
I sighed. I knew that Sister Freda was fully aware of how much I hated it there, even though I did my best to hide my horror of that room from her.
‘Both of you come to me as soon as you have finished your breakfast, and don’t dawdle on the way.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ was all I said meekly.
Brian and I followed as she marched purposefully down corridors and across the playground to the chicken-killing rooms. There was no time for me to warn Brian what awaited him.
‘We’ve got you a new boy today, Neville,’ she said, standing in the doorway.
I realised for the first time that she never crossed the threshold. Maybe even she got squeamish when faced with the reality of how the chickens that ended up on her dinner plate were killed.
‘I know you need the help,’ she said as she pushed us firmly through the door. I heard the rustling of her habit as she moved away and then the sound of Neville’s breathing.
‘Robbie,’ he said, a note of excitement in his voice, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ I shuddered and tried to avoid looking at him. He stretched his fat arm out and patted my wrist. ‘Come, you’re going to like it. Bring your friend as well.’
What had he got planned for this week? What new method of torment had he conjured up for us? But this time he surprised me. He opened a door that had always been locked when I’d been there before.
‘Go on, go in,’ he said.
The sight that met my eyes when I looked in instantly dispersed my fear. A score or more of spindly-legged, tiny yellow chicks were running round the brightly lit room.
‘They’ve only just hatched,’ Neville said with a note of pride in his voice. ‘Look!’ In the middle of the room I saw what looked like a large tray with a glass top fixed to it. The inside was packed with chicken eggs.
‘It’s an incubator. That’s where the eggs go until the baby chickens are ready to come out. They started hatching this morning.’
Open-mouthed, Brian and I watched as black cracks gradually appeared on egg after egg. I heard Brian give a little gasp as the shells fell apart, releasing creamy yellow chicks. To us it seemed that they entered the world cheeping with the same excitement we felt watching them. Some were already dipping minute beaks into the food that was waiting for them.
‘There will be a hundred of them soon,’ Neville told us, still with that note of pride in his voice. ‘They’re nice and warm in here. When they’ve grown a little bit I’ll take them to another home. Got to keep them separate from the bigger birds for a while.’
He scooped one up in his huge hands and gently stroked the downy feathers. ‘They’re like us, Robbie – no mum or dad to look after them.’ Then, with an abrupt change of mood and subject, he said, ‘Your Davie – he’s just like me now.’
What did he mean? Davie wasn’t horrible and cruel like him. I knew what he was implying, though; the change in Davie was obvious. He still had the puzzled look he’d had the week after the accident. He was slow to respond to questions and I never heard him laugh any more. But whatever Davie had become, he was not like Neville and never would be, I told myself fiercely.
‘Yes, he’s like me now. But he’s not ugly like me. Not pretty little Davie,’ Neville continued as though he had read my mind. An expression flashed across his face, an expression I had never seen before: maybe a sad awareness of who he really was. I met his eyes and saw it just for that fleeting moment and then it was gone, leaving the mixture of spite and glee I was used to.
Maybe if I had been older I might have seen the boy he still was, condemned to a life imprisoned in a fat man’s body; might have recognised the isolation that his ugliness and lack of intelligence had enforced upon him. Maybe I would have accepted his temper tantrums more readily, as one tolerates a two-year-old’s frustrated outburst when thwarted. Maybe I would have seen his sexual groping as being a sad attempt to satisfy a desire that he was incapable of expressing or fulfilling in an adult way. But at seven years of age, all I saw was a fat, ugly man with an adult’s power over us, who both frightened and repelled me.
We left that room with the chirping, pretty little chicks and Neville led us back into the chicken-killing rooms. Everything in there was the same as it was most Saturdays. Bunches of squirming chickens hung from hooks, the tin bath was on the floor and the bowl for collecting blood to sprinkle on the gardens was standing ready.
‘Basin needs filling,’ Neville said curtly, pointing to the tin bath.
Brian kept sneaking questioning glances at me, his eyes wide with surprise, as he helped me to fill the large basin with boiling water from the geyser.
Neville smiled at Brian, a smile I recognised all too well. He was pleased to have a new audience who he could disgust and frighten.
‘Watch this, Brian,’ he said, and out came the knife; off came the first head, blood spurted, the wings flapped frantically even in death, and Brian visibly blanched.
Neville giggled with excitement and cut one bunch of chickens down. The birds raced round the room in the mistaken belief that they were free. That was a game Neville loved. He laughed out loud before catching one bird and slitting its throat. There was a look of such gloating pleasure on his face as he watched the headless bird flap its wings and totter for a few steps before it fell that I felt sick. I saw the horror on Brian’s face suddenly change and be replaced by one of fury.
‘Stop that!’ he yelled, and ran over to Neville. His arms swung back and, because he couldn’t reach any higher, he punched Neville in the stomach. ‘You bleeding loony,’ he shrieked. ‘You bleeding wicked bastard! I’ll tell the nuns on you.’
For a few moments Neville’s face wore a shocked expression, one that changed swiftly to outrage. For all his size he moved fast. He stepped sideways to avoid the next punch, caught Brian’s arm as it swung and, with a quick twist, wrenched it high behind the boy’s back. His fat knee came up and connected with Brian’s bottom, propelling him forward. Neville picked him up, shook him so hard that Brian’s head was bobbing from side to side, then, using Brian’s jumper as a loop, he hung him on a hook.
‘Now you can hang with the chickens,’ Neville said, and giggled.
I wanted to help but knew that anything I did would only make the situation worse.
Brian’s face was scarlet with rage, and he was flailing with his arms and legs in an attempt to reach some part of Neville. When he realised Neville was too far back he twisted in the air, then wriggled and bucked, trying to release himself. Finally the struggling stopped when he realised he was completely trapped.
The expression on Neville’s face changed to one I recognised and I knew that Brian’s utter helplessness had aroused him. His meaty hand snaked up the leg of Brian’s trousers. I could see the outline of his hands as they inched round and knew that he had my friend’s tiny penis in his hand. Neville’s other arm wrapped itself around the boy’s small body, drawing him closer and, without being able to see, I knew that his fat pudgy fingers had slipped up the back of Brian’s trousers to stroke and knead his small buttocks. I felt shame that I hadn’t managed to warn Brian about this, but I don’t think I could have put it into words. It was all too disgusting.
Unlike me, Brian fought back. His face contorted with anger, he shouted, struggled and swore. Neville giggled and moved his fleshy hands faster. I think it was the giggle that did it for Brian. He made a coughing sound at the back of his throat, sucked in his cheeks then spat a gob of spit and phlegm as hard as he could into Neville’s fat face.
‘You bleeding ugly queer,’ he screamed. ‘Get your bloody hands off me, you fat stupid bastard.’ His foot kicked out hard and caught Neville in the chest. ‘My mum warned me about men like you.’
That was when Neville completely lost control. Bellow after bellow of such primal fury left his saliva-flecked mouth that I shrank against the wall. Nearly indistinguishable words were mixed in with his shouts and I could only vaguely hear snatches of what he said. ‘Bastard, bastard’, ‘A lesson you’ll not forget’ and again ‘bastard’. He was utterly consumed with rage; his huge, sweating body seemed to become even more swollen.
The colour drained from Brian’s face as he watched Neville look round the room for some instrument he could use to inflict pain. I saw where his gaze landed and with a terrible shock I suddenly knew what he was going to do. I wanted to do something, anything to stop him, but I was rooted to the spot with my own fear.
Neville spun round with a demonic look on his face and I watched as he knelt down and picked up the bath of still steaming, almost boiling water.
Every last vestige of colour drained from Brian’s face, his head jerked from side to side and his eyes bulged with terror. His mouth opened and whimpering pleas left it. ‘Please, please,’ he begged. ‘Don’t.’
Neville laughed at him, a high-pitched shrill giggle that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
‘No!’ I shouted, with a voice that roared within but came out puny and high-pitched from terror.
The water left the bath in a silvery arc. It drenched Brian’s stomach and shoulders. There was a dreadful scream that seemed to go on and on and was followed by an appalling silence. I closed my eyes but not before I had seen clouds of steam rising from Brian’s body; a body that was hanging limply from the hook, with water running off it and forming a pool under his twitching, dangling legs.
The silence that followed frightened me even more than the screaming had; I found I was huddled on the floor, my knees drawn into my body and my hands protecting my ears. I don’t know how long I was there before the door burst open. Suddenly there were grown-up voices, hands touched me and they took me to another room where I sat, very still, very scared.
After a while Sister Bernadette came. She told me that Neville had been taken away. She said that Brian was being looked after. She gave me a slice of cake to eat and a glass of milk to drink. She said I must forget what I had seen. Her being nice scared me more than anything else.
I waited anxiously for Brian to reappear, worried about the burns he must have suffered. I kept trying to ask the nuns where he was, but even Sister Claire didn’t give me an answer. After a while I stopped asking but although I never spoke of it again I didn’t stop wondering.