Authors: Kevin Holohan
“Brother, Brother, ye have to come! Mr. McDermott sent me! Quick! Fire!”
“Mother of God! Where?”
“In the attic rubble somewhere.”
“Fierce the way these old buildings go all of a sudden. A cousin of mine moved into a lovely little corporation house up above in Phibsboro near where the railway is. Painted her up like new. Repointed the brick himself, he did. Very handy, so he is. Grand little house. Little yard out the back for the greyhound and all. First thing you know, day after the Annunciation, one of the window sashes goes and nearly takes one of his little boys’ head off and him out the window watching the Sodality parade. Next thing you know the cousin discovers dry rot on the stairs. Before you can say
who stole me hat
, he finds a crack in the supporting wall and the back door won’t close. One thing after another it is. Has a lad out from Dublin Corporation to look at it and he scratches at his clipboard and says the cousin had been neglecting the place and says they could evict him. Strange, though, the way once one thing starts to go and all the others start to follow. Feast or a famine, I suppose.”
Brother Loughlin stopped in his tracks while McRae continued on in front of him across the yard. Against the dark sky he watched aghast as tiny flames started to spring from the collapsed attic roof.
“Will you shut up and get everyone out, you fool!” he shouted at McRae. “Go ring the bell and get them all out of there!”
In the distance Loughlin heard the wail of the approaching fire brigade. He stood helplessly watching the tiny flames grow bolder and more playful as they flitted and danced through the crushed attic. Behind him he heard the rasping and whining of a motor being brought to a halt by inexpert hands and he turned round. There, like a thickening bulge in the darkness, he saw a pristine black Morris Minor pull up. It was ageless, in perfect condition, and reeked of care. It stopped just beside him and through the driver’s window he saw the troubled face of Father Mulvey. Next to him in the passenger seat was a large, imposing figure, presumably Father Sheehan.
As if propelled by some unseen force, McRae was suddenly holding Father Sheehan’s door open like one of the flunkies outside the Shelbourne Hotel.
“Thank you, my good man,” baritoned Sheehan. He stepped out of the car and Brother Loughlin caught his first glimpse of the next step after Mulvey on the long ladder of authority that led all the way to the Vatican.
Father Sheehan stood about six-foot-two and his athletic figure filled his perfectly pressed black suit. His hair was silvery gray and neatly swept back without a parting to show his high forehead. He had aquiline features and deepset eyes that glinted with something that in the dark Loughlin could not clearly identify. It could have been mirth, it could have been anger, or it could have been the reflection of the flames now making merry in the rubble of the attic.
“Brother Loughlin, Father Sheehan; Father Sheehan, Brother Loughlin.”
Loughlin took Sheehan’s outstretched hand and pressed it firmly, hoping thereby to give himself an air of self-confidence. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Father,” he beamed.
Sheehan smiled and ended the handshake with an adroitness that conveyed a perfect mixture of disdain and amity and left Loughlin feeling respected and slighted at the same time. He felt like he had just shaken hands with someone who knew just how the world ran and exactly how long it could be expected to continue doing so.
“So, Brother Loughlin, this is your spot of bother, is it? You would seem to have quite the penchant for the under-statement. Wouldn’t you agree, Father Mulvey?”
“Yes, well, it was, when I rang Father Mulvey, it was,” replied Loughlin brightly, hoping his bonhomie might distract them from the fact that part of his school was currently aflame. He was saved the embarrassment of further dithering by the arrival of the fire brigade.
“I think you might want to move my car out of the firemen’s way now, Father Mulvey,” commented Sheehan with the assurance of one accustomed to never needing the imperative mode to have his bidding done.
Loughlin shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Perhaps we should go to my office while the firemen tackle this,” he suggested, thinking his weight might rest more easily if he put his arse in a chair.
“Yes. I don’t think we can be of much help to the fire brigade by standing here in their way,” said Father Sheehan, deftly stepping aside to avoid the ashen-faced Brother Boland who had just bolted out of the monastery pursued by Brother Moody.
McRae’s brutal tolling of the monastery bell brought out the rest of the Brothers who gathered in an anxious knot in the middle of the yard.
Brother Tobin broke away from the group and ran toward Loughlin. His eyes were rolling in his head and he sweated profusely. “He cradled her ample bosom! Caressed! Embrace! Moist buttocks! Stimulate! Fairness beguiling! Burgeoning aches flamed in her loins! Noisily swiving! Smooth thighs against his! She moaned! Rosy-fingered dawn! Pulsing shaft! Carefully her mouth slid! Bodice! Slowly mounting! Enflamed! Inwardly downwardly! Tangle of limbs! Yes! Again! Again! Yes! Yes!” All the slivers of filth that Tobin had censored and eaten over the years boiled up inside him and spewed out in one shocked flood.
“This way, please, Fathers,” said Loughlin, ignoring Tobin as best he could. He led Sheehan and Mulvey across the yard toward his office.
W
hat the hell is that?”
Finbar looked down at his chest where his father’s horrified finger was pointing.
“It’s what we have to wear at school. It’s a tally stick.”
“I know damn well it’s a tally stick!
Have to
? Have to wear at school?”
Finbar shot a glance at Declan, who shook his head almost imperceptibly and fixed his stare down on his teacup.
“Yeah, they make us wear them,” replied Finbar nervously.
“Who makes you wear them?”
“I don’t know. They sent a note around. Something to do with the miracle and the sins going on and the miracle and—”
“Miracle? What miracle? What are you talking about?”
Finbar looked at his father with alarm. He had never seen him like this. It was as if someone had lit a fuse inside him that no one knew existed. Sweat was beading on his forehead and he was frantically restless as if under attack from some unknown adversary. No sooner did he stand at the kitchen table with his hand resting on the back of a chair than he was off over to the fireplace. After a couple of moments there it seemed like the only safe place in the room was in the doorway to the hall.
“There was some kind of miracle. In the oratory. Statue fell and started bleeding. They said it was a miracle. They—”
“So they’re making you wear tally sticks because of some sort of miracle?”
“I don’t know. That’s what they said.” Finbar was very uncertain as to what exactly was going on. He glanced toward the hall. Maybe his mother would appear and soften whatever it was that he appeared to have done wrong.
“Does everybody have to wear them?”
“Yeah. Well, not the Brothers or the teachers but all of us. Yeah.”
“Jesus wept!”
“What’s going on in here? Ye can be heard all the way down the street?” called Mrs. Sullivan coming in from the scullery.
“Finbar, Declan, take your tea up to your room and finish it there,” ordered Mr. Sullivan.
Knowing better than to question this, Finbar and Declan obediently tromped up the stairs and closed the bedroom door loudly. A moment later they silently reopened the door and Finbar tiptoed back down the stairs until he was level with the hall ceiling. He sat with his knees tucked against his chin in a small listening ball. Declan stood at the head of the stairs and craned to hear as well.
“Get back in your room, you two!” shouted Mrs. Sullivan.
The boys tiptoed back into the bedroom.
“And shut that door!”
Finbar resignedly pushed the door closed.
“So? Jude? What was all that commotion about? Do you want to tell me?”
“A tally stick! They’re making him wear a tally stick! They’re making my son wear a fucking tally stick! Did you know about this?”
With his ear pressed against the bedroom floor, Finbar could hear his mother clear her throat uncertainly. This was not good. Normally when his father got himself worked up about the Black and Tans or the North or the Spanish Civil War, she could smack him down with ease. This was different. He could tell that she did not know what to say, and in her own way was as apoplectic as he was.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Why would they be doing such a thing?” asked Mrs. Sullivan in a plaintive tone.
“Damned if I know, but I’m damn well going to find out. No son of mine is going to be subjected to this. It’s not for the likes of that that my father got shot into an open grave. It’s not for that that—”
“Easy, easy, easy, pet. Don’t go getting yourself all worked up over it. You’ll do yourself a mischief. Why don’t you go down and see Brother Loughlin and he’ll explain it to you? He seems a nice holy man, so he does.”
“To hell with Brother Loughlin! I’ll not talk to the monkey when I can talk to the organ grinder. I’ll write straight to the Department of Education. And I’ll write to Morris Barry, that’s what I’ll do. He was in school with me. He’s a county councilor. I’ll have the president himself down on that Loughlin like a ton of bricks. No son of mine—”
“Jude, pet, for God sake, go easy, won’t you? You don’t want to start any trouble.”
“Trouble? You think we should just take this lying down? Over my dead body! You think writing letters is starting trouble? Can’t you see the madness of this?”
Their voices abruptly dropped below the pitch that Finbar could possibly hear through the floor.
“What are they saying?” whispered Declan.
“I can’t hear. They’ve gone all quiet,” answered Finbar. They heard the rattle of the kitchen doorknob.
“Don’t try to fob me off! Fuck writing letters! I’m sick of it, I tell ye! Tally sticks, for crying out loud! These bloody religious and their maniac carry-on! Haven’t they already done enough to this family? Didn’t we keep quiet and let them put Sheila Barry away? Shameful! I’ll do more than write to some fucking pen-pusher! And you making excuses for them! Have you lost all sense? Is there no fight left in you, woman?”
The hall door opened and shut and Mr. Sullivan’s footsteps receded down the empty street. Finbar could almost hear the slow fuming of his mind in the heavy deliberateness of his footfalls.
“What was all that about?” asked Finbar.
Declan looked squarely at Finbar but did not answer.
“What?” pressed Finbar.
“Nothing.”
“Come on! What?”
“Nothing. I said nothing.”
“No, come on. You know something. What?”
Declan sat down heavily on his bed. “Do you remember years and years ago Dad and Uncle Francie took us out to visit Na-Na Sullivan’s grave out by Four Mile Cross?”
“I don’t know. Sort of. The day the red car broke down and it was all sunny and we walked back and we caught the frog in the stream?”
Declan nodded and almost smiled at the childish images Finbar recalled. He had forgotten about the frog.
“Well?”
Declan shifted his feet under him and turned to face his brother, half sitting, half kneeling on the edge of his bed. “What else to you remember?”
“I don’t know. Dad cut the grass on Na-Na’s grave with the hedge shears and we put some flowers in a jam jar and set it on top.”
“Do you remember going to another grave?”
Finbar thought hard but could recall nothing more. He just remembered it being very sunny and warm and walking in his short wool trousers and the way they chafed his legs. He shook his head.
“You were small. Only four or so. We went over to this other part of the graveyard. There were no stones, just an open bit of the graveyard. Dad and Francie were talking. They were spelling words so I wouldn’t understand, but I got some of it. I asked Uncle Francie about it a couple of years ago at Eileen’s wedding. He hemmed and hawed but I told him I knew there was something. He made me promise never to tell Dad that he told me.”
“What? What?” hissed Finbar impatiently.
“Dad and Francie had a younger brother Joseph. When they were all little, Granda Sullivan died in the troubles. They were sent to an orphanage cos Na-Na didn’t have enough money to keep them. Joseph was only eight and he used to piss his bed and get in trouble for it. The head nun got tired of beating him so she started making him wear a tally stick. Every time he wet the bed or cried or got in trouble she put a notch in his tally stick, and then on Sunday morning she would leather him for all the notches. He got so many notches all the time that she started making him wear a big huge tally stick like a broom handle around his neck, and then she would beat him with it and make him sand down the notches.
“This went on for a couple of years and Joseph started to stutter and got all blinky in the eyes and they used to give him notches for all of it. Francie turned sixteen and was let go because the county wouldn’t pay for him anymore, and the next year Dad left. They were both working on farms when they heard that Joseph was dead. One of the nuns who was a decent woman got word to them. But it was after they had buried Joseph and they never knew exactly where the grave was. So Dad and Francie put some stones down beside the wall near Na-Na’s grave and called it Joseph’s. They never knew what happened, but then one of the other boys in Joseph’s dormitory told Francie one time that Joseph hanged himself with the tally stick.”
Declan let out a sigh and lay back on his bed. Finbar sat on the edge of his bed looking down at his trembling hands.
“I never knew.”
“And you don’t now. You say anything and I’ll beat the shite out of you. Do you hear me?”
Finbar nodded and then shook his head sadly. “Fuck sake,” he whispered.
“Yeah. So that’s why the tally stick set him off. But don’t say anything—not to him, not to Mam. Right?”
“All right.”
Finbar picked up his comic book and started flicking through it. He was not paying any attention to what was in front of him but he needed to do something that felt some way normal. Things like that could not have happened to his family.
Destitute
,
Orphans
, the words rang in Finbar’s ears. His father had been destitute. His father had been in an orphanage. His father had this and how many other stories that Finbar would never know?