“Ouch! Yah bastard!” he suddenly yelped in pain before dropping the cane, stung on his whipping hand. We were in stitches as we watched him frantically flailing his hands and feet about, while a few wasps chased him in a circle. Then the gormless idiot accidentally kicked one of the boxes housing the wasps’ nest.
“R-r-r-run!’ Collins stuttered the warning as a swarm of wasps flew out of the smoke like a squadron of Spitfires coming out of the clouds. I didn’t wait for a second warning, taking flight up along the old pathway in the direction of the football pitch, with Collins just a few yards behind me.
We lay down, hiding behind the trunk of a large tree, waiting for Donkey to appear. But when there was no sign of him after a couple of minutes, we decided to go back and see what had happened to him. Probably killed by the shock of being stung all over again, was my first thought.
“W-w-what’s that sm-sm-smell?” asked Collins.
“It smells like petrol. Shit! Donkey, yah dopy eejit yah! Don’t strike a match! Ah feck!”
We saw the yellow flame flash out of the open doors, before Donkey came rushing out and up along the path towards us. “I set them alight,” he laughed gleefully. “I got them all!”
“Jaysus, yer hair! We’d better get away from here before someone catches us,” And, for the life of me, I couldn’t get the picture of an orang-utan out of my head, as Donkey, with all his hair singed and now a lighter shade of ginger, hurried alongside me. We made our way up along the length of the boundary wall, which, fortunately for us, was hidden by the trees and high undergrowth.
Once we had made it nearer to the school block, I told Collins to sneak out of the undergrowth and join some of the other lads playing in that area, before taking Donkey further along. And once we’d moved past the classroom block, we slipped out unnoticed from the cover of the trees and started kicking around a discarded football.
“Jaysus Donkey, yea’ll have ta get rid of them singed hairs, otherwise you’re going to get sussed. Keep yer head down and follow me,” I ordered.
With Donkey almost tripping over my heels, I made my way into the building and hurried along the narrow corridor to the nearest stairway, heading straight up them. “Will yah stop the laughin’ for feck’s sake! If yer caught ye’ll probably be jailed for the rest of yer life,” I warned him. “Go to the bathhouse and I’ll meet yah there in a minute.”
I stood watching as he lurched off like an excited ape, probably with no thoughts at all as to the seriousness of his situation. And why should he? He hadn’t the capacity in his brain to know the difference between wrong and right. Most people treated him as a bad person, when all I saw was a sad, kind and gentle lunatic.
Off in the distance I could hear the sirens getting closer and guessed it must have been the fire brigade, which could only have meant the fire must have taken a good hold of the wooden boxes piled up inside. With little time to spare, I rushed into the night watchman’s room and grabbed his shaving kit, before heading back along the corridor to the bathhouse.
“There’s loads of smoke,” said Donkey, pointing out through the small window at the large plume of black smoke streaking across the damp sky.
“That must be the old oil from the machinery. Here, stick this around your neck.” I handed him the towel and then turned on the hot water, rubbing the shaving brush into the soap before slopping the foam I’d made all over his face. It took me a matter of a minute to run the shaver up, down and around his face, shaving off all his facial hair, with him only giving out the once, when I slightly nicked his top lip and he thought he was going to bleed to death.
“Close yer eyes.”
“Why?”
“I need ta shave them brows off.”
“Why?”
“Cos they’re singed is why.”
A sight for sore eyes would be an understatement. With his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his lips pouting, if I’d had to guess what the missing link might have looked like, I wouldn’t have had to look much further than Donkey. The poor fella. He had nothing going for him. And yet he was funny and warm, and very rarely had a bad word to say about anybody. It seemed most of the people at the school scorned his simplicity. But if the whole world had been as simple as him, what a wonderful world it could be.
“Let’s get a look at yah!” I’d trimmed his hair with the razor, perhaps overdoing it a little. “If anyone asks about the patches, just say your hair fell out, okay?” Jaysus! The sight of him! Well, they could accuse him of being an ugly fecker, but not for starting any fire – now there was no evidence. “Come on. We’d better get outside before we’re missed. You go, while I put this lot back where they came from.” I swilled and dried off the shaving kit before returning it back on the sink unit inside the night watchman’s room.
Mr Lilly wasn’t impressed with us, as we stood to attention in the assembly hall the following Monday morning. As far as he was concerned, we were going to stand there for a long while, and in silence, until the culprit or culprits owned up to setting the stable block alight. So, it looked as if we were going to be standing on parade forever.
Granted, the majority of the lads in the approved school looked a bunch of complete idiots, but Lilly treating us like the idiots we may have looked like, by telling us he was already aware who the culprits were and how he was just giving them an opportunity to own up before he named them, was even more idiotic. And if he seriously thought we were idiotic enough to believe him, then he was a bigger idiot.
His squinty eyes scanned the sea of nonchalant-looking faces staring back at him and then paused on mine for the briefest of moments, causing my heart to almost jump up into my mouth. I was sure he was about to say something to me, but instead his gaze moved past me to settle on Donkey.
“He’s looking at me,” whispered Donkey from the side of his mouth.
“Just ignore him,” I whispered.
Jaysus, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Donkey had stuck his head right out from his shoulders and was gawking at the headmaster in such a peculiar way, with his dark eyes staring out from beneath his hairless, furrowed brows. I was on the point of bursting out laughing and wanted to avert my gaze, but I just couldn’t help looking at the expression on Mr Lilly’s face.
“Who is that creature?” he asked Mr Marron.
“Carey, sir,” said Marron, recognising Donkey without any difficulty.
Mr Lilly shook his head in bewilderment, before letting his gaze continue along the line. “Right!” he clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on the heels of his shoes. “All privileges are lost for two whole weeks.”
“Ooh!” was the communal shocked response.
“Never mind, ooh. You can blame the culprit or culprits, who obviously believe they are man enough to set fire to buildings, but not man enough to own up to it. Now, I am willing to accept this could have been an accident. After all, accidents can and often do happen. So, come on! If it was an accident we can deal with it right now and get it over and done with, without further ado.” The biggest non-believer in accidents ever happening now wanted us to own up to one.
I recalled how he’d once given me six of the best when I’d hit the large glass lightshade above the snooker table with the snooker cue and the whole unit came crashing down, splintering into hundreds of tiny pieces all over the show. “I didn’t mean to do it, sir.” I’d told him it had been a complete accident, explaining how I’d only raised the cue to hit Brian Walters on the head with it because he was making fun of me.
“How can you not mean to do something you did?” he bellowed, before whipping me with the cane and stopping my pocket money for two weeks.
“Sir.” My arm shot up in the air and all eyes, including Donkey’s, suddenly fixed on me.
“I might have guessed you were behind this.” The headmaster glared at me.“Behind what, sir.”
“The fire, lad.�
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“I didn’t start any fire sir.”
“You’ve just admitted it.”
“No, I didn’t sir.”
“Don’t answer the headmaster back,” snapped Marron.
“But I only wanted ta ask a question sir.”
“About what?”
“Well, sir. Why do we all have ta be punished, sir?”
“Because you’re all tarred with the same brush, that’s why!” Lilly went red in the face.
“But what if it wasn’t any of us, sir?”
“Are you suggesting the stable block set fire to itself?”
“No sir. I meant, it could have been any of them boys from the village, sir. They’re always climbing up on the wall and calling us names and threatening to set the school alight. It could only have been them, sir.”
“I’ve seen them, sir!” Johnny Priestley suddenly threw his hand in the air and backed up my lie. This seemed to be the cue for lots of the other boys to stick up their hands and swear blind they’d also seen, at one time or another, these imaginary boys of mine. On the wall. Climbing over the wall. Stealing our vegetables from the garden nursery. Stealing our footballs, and so on.
“And they are always smoking fags, sir,” I added for good measure.
“Shut up!” Incensed, the headmaster stormed out of the assembly hall without playing one of his classical records. A first for us.
Heaven and Hell
As we lined up for classes, Mr Marron went about picking the boys he was going to take to Southport for swimming lessons.
“Me sir! Please sir!” We raised our hands and jostled each other in the hope he would notice us. But I missed out again. I’d already won a certificate for swimming 25 metres some months back, and I’d been looking forward to pushing on for the 50 metres, as well as the life-saving certificate. But it didn’t look as if it was going to happen any time soon.
“Rhattigan, Cuthbert and… O’Connor, you’re on today’s work-party,” Mr Sweet suddenly informed us. And although I was disappointed not to be going swimming, I was happy to escape woodwork lessons. Not that I minded doing woodwork. And we all got on well with Mr Palmer, the woodwork teacher. But given the choice, I’d rather have been outside sweeping up dead leaves, or tending to the rabbits and the chickens in the pets’ corner, instead of making sorry-looking wooden fruit bowls and tiny wooden stools with seats made from coloured canvas strips to take home to our Mammies and Daddies. Sure, you couldn’t even sit on them without your knees touching your ears! The stools were a complete waste of time, unless you were a midget. And I’m sure most of us hadn’t seen a bowl of fruit in our lives.
While the lads not going swimming or on outside work duties marched off to the woodwork class, Cuthbert and O’Connor were sent to the front of the school to sweep up the falling leaves from the long driveways. I followed Mr Sweet out through the side door of the school block and across the yard, to the pets’ corner, where I began the task of cleaning out the hens and feeding them, before moving on to the three rabbits.
We had eight large hens, a huge, sex-mad cockerel called Dick, and three tiny bantam hens and a small cockerel called Buster. They all shared the same space and, unlike us, got on well together. There was the occasional fight between the two cockerels when Dick, who strutted around the place like he owned the whole show, attempted to hump the bantams. Not that he could stay perched on their tiny backs for more than a second before they would collapse under his weight.
The moment anyone climbed into their pen, Dick would charge, flapping his wings and pecking at your feet and legs. I had tried to make friends with him, attempting to hand-feed the vicious sod while he did his usual war dance around me or whoever else dared to trespass onto his land. But the ungrateful bird was having none of it and would peck at my fingers. I’d usually give him the odd boot up the backside and he’d run off for a good think about it, before charging in for another go.
“You like looking after the animals, don’t you?” I’d not been aware of Mr Sweet, who was leaning on the large wooden gate, watching me.
“I love them.”
“It’s a good thing to be loved, isn’t it?” he said, giving me a rare smile.
“Don’t know,” I shrugged.
“What about your parents? I see you haven’t been home to visit them, why?”
“Don’t know.” I shrugged again. “Because they don’t want me, I suppose. I’m not bothered though.”
“Why not?”
What a stupid question to ask. For starters, why would I want to go back home to a mammy and daddy who couldn’t care less about me? Why would I want to go back to a squalid, dark damp dump of a house, where the only sounds of laughter and songs came from the drunks who sang and laughed, and pissed themselves to their hearts’ content to escape from the reality they didn’t want to be living in? Why would I want to walk back into that life, not knowing where the next meal was coming from or when it would come? Or the next set of clothing? Or the next beating, or worse? What I missed about home – my brothers and sisters – had very little to do with my parents.
“Don’t know.”
“Here.” He offered me a small pack of Spangles. And without questioning why he was giving them to me, I took them out of his outstretched hand and quickly shoved the pack of fruit sweets into my trouser pocket.
“Have you spoken to anyone about that Saturday?”
“No sir. You said it was a secret.”
“It is.” He smiled again. “Our secret. So, it seems nobody loves little Tommy Rhattigan, then?”
“Jesus and Mary love me.”
“Come on, I want to show you something. It’ll only take a couple of minutes, you can finish what you’re doing later.”
I followed Mr Sweet through into the small room at the side of the pets’ corner, where we stored our work shoes and football boots. He unlocked another door leading into a narrow corridor, before re-locking it.
I had a feeling he was going to do to me what he’d done a few Saturdays before and I wasn’t looking forward to it. The first time was horrible and had me retching. I didn’t want to do it, but what could I do if he wanted me to? He’d been a lot better towards me for a while and I’d rather it stayed that way. Before we had our little secret, the vicious bully, a right bastard to all of us, used to always single me out. Therefore, I was prepared to do whatever it took to stop things going back to how it had been before.
I was so weary of my life there. I hated having to wake up every morning to be bossed and pushed around by the tough-nuts of the school, who basically ran the whole show and would think nothing of giving you a good beating merely for saying the wrong word or looking the wrong way at them. I was tired of having to put an arm around my plate to protect my food in case some greedy fecker decided he wanted it. I was tired of not being able to trust anyone who approached me with their friendship. Or those offering me their protection – so long as I did something for them, which was usually for their sexual pleasure, “just the once”.
And then there was the name-calling. Sticks ’n’ stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you, goes the saying.
Well they feckin’ can! And they did. Piss the Bed. Wall Talker. Homo. Ugly bastard. The doctor slapped your mother when you were born. Your Granny is on the game. Day after day after day. Someone would always attempt to bring you down, one way or another. There was always someone wanting to prove he was bigger, tougher and better than you. And while I could always admit that I was weaker than a lot of the boys there, I was fortunate that I had my group of so-called friends (weaklings admittedly), who helped to keep one another relatively safe.
I had often wondered what it would be like to be dead. Father Tierney said when we die we would either go to heaven or hell, depending on how we have lived our lives whilst on this earth. Helping others, being obedient, and giving ou
r lives up to God were just a few examples of how God would like us to be. That didn’t bode well for the nuns!
“Heaven, as opposed to the burning flames of Hell, is a tranquil paradise, with no wars, or famine, or pain, nor want for anything,” he’d preached to us. “It’s a place where the spirits of the faithful departed can roam freely at their leisure. And if any of you manage to make it up there, you will find those dearly departed members of your families who glorified in the name of Our Glorious Redeemer waiting at the gates of Heaven with open arms to greet you.” This, in effect, ruled out a big family reunion for me. And if Hell was as he described it, a good few of them would certainly be feeling the heat.
I wished I could be in heaven. Even though I hadn’t always seen eye to eye with God, especially when he never answered my prayers, I was sure I’d be much happier there. But to be there would mean I’d have to be dead. How could I die? I couldn’t kill myself. Father-bloody-Tierney put paid to that!
“It is an original sin to commit suicide,” he told us. “And anyone that does won’t be going to Heaven, for sure.”
So, it looked as if I’d just have to wait patiently until the Almighty decided when he wanted to give me the call-up. There was always a catch!
I followed Mr Sweet into a small room full of old gym equipment. Closing the door behind us, he turned the small brass catch to lock it.
“Here, come and stand on this.” He pointed to the long wooden bench running alongside a couple of the wooden horses and I did what he asked without any hesitation. I wasn’t afraid or nervous as I stood, almost level with him, and he suddenly started rubbing his podgy hand on the inside of my bare leg and underneath the trouser leg to my groin area.
“You like that. Don’t you?”
I felt slightly embarrassed as I nodded, because he could obviously feel my mickey was going stiff, like last time. I hadn’t wanted it to happen, it just happened of its own accord.
Boy Number 26 Page 14
