Boy Number 26

by Tommy Rhattigan

  Safely back in our own dormitory, I disposed of the two knuckledusters out of the window, throwing them into the thick shrubbery below. Back in my bed, I felt an overpowering sense of relief that I had come out unscathed from the night’s events. I don’t remember closing my eyes or drifting off to sleep. But in my mind was the knowledge that, for many of us, tomorrow would be a new dawn.

  Woods never spoke to me after that day, though oddly enough he did seem to be on much better terms with the two older boys, McGuire and King who, I was told later, had bummed Woods into submission. His cocky swagger and aura of self-assurance were no longer his trademark.

  Victorian Values

  Several months had passed since the new regime had taken over the approved school and it pained me to admit that I was missing the nuns. Given the choice, I’d have had them back. At least they ignored most of the things we got up to, unlike the staff we now had, who watched our every move.

  There had been many changes to our lives since the nuns had left St Vincent’s. Not least, the reinstatement of those great Victorian Values, which, the headmaster constantly reminded us, helped to shape our Great British Empire. This was a bit of a liberty coming from an Austrian!“Privileges are no longer an automatic right and will be earned from now on!” he’d announced, when he brought in his new house-points system. 30 house points was the equivalent to 30 pennies or two shillings and sixpence, which was our weekly pocket-money allowance. Lose a point, lose a penny. Lose 12 points, lose one shilling. Lose anything over 20 points and you also lost privileges for the week. This didn’t amount to much anyhow – swimming, walks, cinema every six months, and our annual summer camping trip to the Lake District.

  And while we had once rolled out of our beds at 7.30am, throwing our piss-stained sheets into the laundry baskets before sauntering off to the bathhouse to change out of our wet pyjamas, we were now woken at precisely 6am on the dot (save Sundays) by the loud clanging of the old brass A.R.P. bell. It was usually rung by Mr Sweet, moving from dorm to dorm and shouting like a Town Crier, “Wakey-wakey rise and shine! All the wet beds in a line!” or “Hands off cocks and on with socks!”

  The only way to stamp out bedwetting was to embarrass the bed-wetter: this seemed to be the philosophy of our despot headmaster. So the bedwetters were made to form a long line in the corridor and throw their wet sheets and pyjamas into two separate laundry baskets, before having to march in single file, like a battalion of naked infantrymen, to the bathhouse, in full view of the non-bedwetters, who would take great delight in taunting us.

  I was usually able to hold on through the night, sometimes having to force myself to do so. But if I couldn’t, then I would consciously pee my own bed, rather than risk a meeting with the ghost of Sister Agnes, who’d apparently worked there when it had been a lunatic asylum. Rumoured to haunt the nearest toilet block to my dorm, she’d apparently fallen head over heels in love with the gardener and the pair of them were caught up to no good in the potting shed. The young gardener lost his job and she’d lost her life, drowning herself in one of the baths. No one knew which of the seven baths it might have been.

  I remember, just a few days after my arrival, suddenly waking up one night with painful stomach cramps and needed to get to the toilet urgently. I’d scampered off along the corridors in the direction of the bathhouse, squeezing my cheeks firmly together. I just managed to get myself over the toilet seat before my bowels erupted.

  I’d been on my eighth sheet of the small square pieces of hard toilet paper (shiny side down), when I’d been sure I’d heard someone, or something, scurry past my toilet door. I held my breath, sitting quietly and straining my ears for the slightest sound, hearing nothing but the distant drip of a toilet cistern. Exhaling deeply, I felt annoyed with myself for having let my imagination almost get the better of me. But just as I was on my last piece of bog paper, I heard a distinct low, ghostly murmur further down from me. It made the hairs on my head, and the odd one here or there, stand on end.

  “Arrgh! Arrgh!” (or words to that affect) was the ghostly moan.

  Throwing caution to the wind, I was out of the bathhouse, almost falling over myself as I hurried back along the corridor to my dormitory, where I’d hidden down under the covers of my bed, imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios that could befall me should the spook have followed me.

  Children in general are quick learners. But children growing up in institutions such as ours inevitably had to be much quicker. We had to be on the ball all the time, trusting our instincts and learning to sense whenever trouble was around the corner. Just as importantly, we had to learn ways of avoiding it at all costs. Simplicity was the key factor to our survival and the simplest survival techniques I’d learnt were to wait, watch, listen and then act.

  With none of us particularly keen to run the degrading gauntlet of the wet beds, we simply stopped wetting them. This had put a gloating smile on the headmaster’s face, as I’m sure it did on the laundryman’s. But then Carl Williams came up with the simplest solution: pee out of the dormitory window. We all followed suit and everyone was happy – until the day the gardener reported the sudden stench coming from the thick evergreen shrubs at the front of the building, which mysteriously seemed to be dying off.

  Making preliminary investigations with his nose, Mr Lilly initially pointed to the possibility of a broken sewer pipe somewhere in the vicinity. A more thorough investigation from the water company, helped by the discovery of the untold number of poo-parcels, gave the game away. Faced with a ban on relieving ourselves out of the windows, some bright spark came up with another simple, but brilliant, idea. And peeing in someone else’s bed became the next fad.

  Bedwetting wasn’t the only habit we had to change under the new regime. At 7am prompt, we would be scrubbed up, dressed and standing to attention by our made beds, waiting for Mr Lilly to come along on his routine morning inspection. Where once we had quickly made our beds before hurrying down to the dining room for our breakfast, leaving the fart-filled, urine-smelling stale air to eventually dissipate throughout the day, we were now under orders to have all the dormitory windows wide open to let in the fresh air, regardless of the weather.

  Each of us had a bedside locker containing a second set of daily clothing, including a pair of socks and underpants, which we would change into every Wednesday. We kept our non-important odds and sods in the drawer and our more personal possessions on us, otherwise they would easily have become someone else’s personal possessions.

  Every morning we would hear Mr Lilly’s squeaky shoes moving along the corridor to our bedroom, where he’d march into the dorm, sniffing at the air, before throwing his usual dismissive scowl around the room. He would instruct Mr Sweet to dock two points (that was tuppence) if our lockers were not straight or not exactly following the edge of the join between the floorboards.

  “Morning sir.” I gave him my usual insincere greeting, which he ignored sincerely, as always. He hardly looked at me. It was as if I was invisible as I stood to attention in front of him, reading his beady eyes for the first sign that he was not happy.

  “Why is a button missing from your shirt?”

  He found me wanting for a good answer to that tricky question and I sensed he knew that.

  “It must have fallen off,” was the most obvious answer. But the chances were that he would only see that as insubordination and dock me points. So I was going to have to come up with something special. “It isn’t missing sir. I have it in me pocket.” My turn to look smug.

  “Three points, for insubordination,” raged Lilly, slapping my pile of neatly folded clothing off my bed and onto the floor, “and two points for untidy clothes.” He walked off, with Mr Sweet diligently following behind him, holding the large black register and calling out each name, along with the number of house points deducted, as he passed by each bed.

  “Rhattigan, five points. Mullins, one point.
Carey, one point. O’Connell, your pillow is out of line, one point.”

  I spent a while refolding my clothes to get them into a perfect pile on the bed, with my red tie snaking in and out between the front of each garment – just to give it that extra wow. But this didn’t impress the headmaster. Having finished his inspection, he walked back over to me and pulled my pile of clothes off the bed again.

  “Sir…” I wanted to ask the fat miserable pig to give us all a demonstration on how to fold our clothes properly. But Mr Sweet intervened with a quick knee to my thigh, giving me a dead leg.

  I was unable to fathom what made Mr Sweet tick, or even what he wanted from me. Sometimes, he came across as a very sensitive and understanding person, while at others he seemed insensitive, frustrated and very angry towards me. I tried to keep on his good side and was rewarded occasionally with kind words of encouragement, along with a pat on the back. But most times he would either be bawling me out for the smallest of indiscretions, or he’d completely ignore me out of hand.

  With his mood swings changing from day to day, it was almost impossible to second-guess his state of mind. If I had to liken him to anybody, then it would have to be both Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde: one moment considerate and sympathetic, then in the next breath, a violent, vicious thug. He hit me around the head quite often or kneed me in the thighs. I admit, at times I could be difficult to deal with, especially if I was in a bad mood myself. And I probably deserved the odd slap now and again. My father was always beating me for one reason or another, which I’d never dared to question. And although Mr Sweet wasn’t as consistent with the violence as my father, he did seem to have a need to take his frustrations out on something or someone. Unfortunately for me, I was one of his targets.

  At 7.30am we were all in the dining room ready for breakfast. This was another opportunity for Mrs Lilly (Matron) to get in on the act of pretending she cared about the children in her charge. Strutting around like a spring chicken in her high black stilettos, she gave an automatic “Good morning” as she passed each table, without so much as a glance in our direction.

  We replied in our usual don’t-give-a-toss incoherent murmurs, with some of us calling her uncouth names under our breath. Standing alongside her pint-sized, pot-bellied husband, she was a few inches shorter than him. I always smiled as I imagined how the pair would look if she’d stood alongside him without her towering high heels. He’d probably not even notice she was beside him, unless he looked downwards!

  “Hands together,” she called out. “For what we are about to receive.”

  “May the Lord make us truly thankful.” Some of us would follow with the correct prayer, while others added their own words, such as “may the Lord have mercy upon us,” or “the pigs have just refused”.

  We were divided into eight tables, with six to each one. Our usual cook, Mrs Collins, had been run over by her own car the previous week. Her husband was reversing out of the garage when he’d hit the accelerator instead of the brake as she’d been waiting for him. The news wasn’t good. She wouldn’t be back for a long while, if ever. She was a great cook and we’d always looked forward to every meal she made. But until she returned, or they found another cook, we had no choice but to make do with the food dished up by Miss Peggy, the wispy-haired Irish seamstress-cum-part-time-cook of sorts.

  It was no coincidence the staff no longer tucked into breakfast or dinner with us, as they used to do before Mrs Collins’ accident. And who could blame them, with the slops Miss Peggy was dishing up: burnt sausages, dried, oven-baked eggs on burnt toast, or on greasy fried bread. Not to mention the unwelcome garnish of curly silver hairs in the cabbage.

  For the life of me, I just couldn’t figure out how she was able to produce mashed potatoes as a watery substance with solid lumps, and the odd trouser button. And her waterlogged boiled potatoes were just as bad, having so many eyes in them, it was no wonder we all suffered from acute paranoia!

  A strange-looking woman by any standards, Miss Peggy, or Piggy, as she was fondly known to us, was a rather large, lump of a lady. She was taller than Matron and unlike her, she hadn’t a need to smother herself in make-up because she already had ruddy cheeks and the most wonderful, watery, bright blue eyes peering out from a thick set of dark brows. She’d suffered with polio from birth, which had resulted in a deformed left hand and knees that turned inwards, causing them to knock together as she waddled along, making every effort to squeeze her enormous, lopsided backside through open doorways. Other than that, she seemed perfectly normal.

  That morning’s breakfast was cheese on toast. Miss Peggy called it Welsh Rarebit, a sauce made up from dried cheese powder, which reminded me of yellow bile. Not mixed properly, it had lots of lumps in it, which we would have to break down with our forks and mix back in to the watery sauce before eating it. Admittedly it did have a slight, though very weak, cheesy flavour to it.

  “Hands up for seconds.” Doing his usual slow military march up and down the centre of the dining room’s highly polished green lino floor, Mr Lilly peered from side to side, as 48 hands suddenly shot into the air.

  “Please, sir.”

  “It’s my birthday today, sir.”

  “It’s your birthday every week, Hutchinson.”

  “I’ve been good all week, sir.”

  “It’s only Monday, Gavin!”

  Our frantic pleading fell on deaf ears, which wasn’t that much of a surprise, considering he had his favourites. But we still attempted to get a second helping. Even if the food did look like puke, it was better than no puke at all.

  A turn-up for the books for once – I was picked to have second helpings. Well, I thought I saw Matron point her finger straight at me, but I could have been mistaken. Hence my hesitancy. Could it have been for real? Or was my imagination running riot?

  “Well, get on then!” The headmaster’s wife pointed straight at me again, gesturing for me to hurry up. I was out of my chair like a greyhound after a hare, in case she suddenly realised she’d made a mistake and changed her mind. I made a wide detour past Mr Lilly in case this was a ruse enabling him to smack me around the head in front of everyone for something I’d forgotten I’d done. As I was passing him, I saw his arm come up so I took evasive action, flinching and ducking as I hurried past him – just as he looked at his watch. Glancing back, I saw him staring at me, shaking his head in wonderment.

  An Unfair Fight

  By 8am we were going about our assigned daily cleaning duties, spending the next hour washing and polishing the floors of the long corridors, the dormitories, bathrooms and toilets, the games room and TV room. Our work was then inspected by the deputy head, Mr Alston, who wasn’t as fanatical as Mr Lilly when it came to Victorian values, usually turning a blind eye to most minor indiscretions.

  The ARP bell always rang out at 8.55am on the dot, telling us we had five minutes to quickly pack away our mops, buckets and long-handled floor polishers, before forming a long line outside the entrance leading through to the school block. There were four classrooms and the office of head teacher Mr Keenan. We were divided into two main classrooms, with 24 of us in each room. We also had a woodwork room, used twice weekly, on a Wednesday and Friday afternoon, plus an art room that doubled as a music room.

  Mr Keenan taught art and science. He didn’t usually have any involvement with the day-to-day running of St Vincent’s outside normal school hours. He did, however, come out on some outings, plus the summer camping trips, as well as organising the annual Christmas show, which we performed for the local community.

  Short, though slightly taller than Mr Lilly, Keenan had unusually large, bushy eyebrows, which he liked to move up and down one at a time. And although I was impressed by this, I disliked him from the moment I’d set eyes upon him.

  His greasy black hair had an unusual white streak running through the front, which, he told us, was a special birthmark passed
down through his Scottish ancestors, who had once lived up in the treacherous mountainous ranges of the Scottish Highlands. These ancestors were, apparently, known among the Scottish clans as the fiercest of all the Highland warriors.

  I only begged the question, “Did skunks come from the Highlands too, sir?” when I felt his warrior wrath as a hard slap across my face. But however superior or special he thought his streak of white hair made him, all I ever saw was the bullying streak inside him. Like most of the male staff at St Vincent’s, Keenan, Marron and Sweet were always quick to throw their weight around to show us who was in charge. It didn’t take much for them to lose their scant patience and lay into one of the kids with a cane, a few slaps and, on occasions, their fists and knees.

  Mr Marron taught English, History and PE. Unlike Mr Keenan, Mr Marron played an active role in the running of St Vincent’s and we saw him almost every day until the early evenings when we went off to bed. Standing at over 6ft tall, he was a slim, muscular man with short, curly fair hair and smelly breath (like Billy Smart but stinky). I guessed he was aged around 30, and always seemed keen to jump in and separate the many fights between the kids, throwing his own punches in whenever the opportunity arose.

  Once a week, he would have the lot of us out on the football pitch, forming a tight circle around him. And there, amid the baying mob of boys calling out the names of the other boys they wanted to be paired off with, he would throw the boxing gloves across to two boys of his own choosing. Timing the seconds on his stopwatch, he gave them one minute to beat the hell out of each other.