Boy Number 26

by Tommy Rhattigan

  “You’re really good,” he’d smiled at me. “I thought you were going to beat me.”

  I’d offered him double or quits and he’d jumped at the opportunity, the patronising hustler. I lost 20 football cards in two or three minutes, which was about as long it had taken him to put me in checkmate. I should have realised the other goons I’d played against were completely hopeless, leading me in to a false sense of invincibility. It wasn’t fair, I told myself.

  After telling Jarvis his ex-bum-chum Holland had set him up for a bashing, I was taken by surprise when he suddenly burst into tears like a little girl.

  “For feck’s sake, Jarvis! He couldn’t have been much of a mate.”

  “He was more than just a mate to me.”

  Jaysus, the face on the fella. It was bad enough he had two black eyes and a bigger conk than usual, but now he was sobbing and making those strange guttural noises from his throat. It was taking me all my willpower not to laugh.

  “Come on Jarvis,” I encouraged, pretending to care about the big fairy. “It’s not as if it’s the end of the world. There’s plenty of fish in the sea. If yah want ta go fishing that is.”

  I’d heard my uncle Frankie Gavin saying this to his sister, my Aunty Mary, when she’d kicked her husband Jimmy the Gurk out of the house, because (according to Aunty Mary) he was “like a dog on heat, sniffing around the floozies like flies around a lump of shite. Only, a dog would be a lot fussier!”

  I continued to talk Jarvis around. “Anyway, he can’t be much of a mate if he can do that to yah. Can he?” I sat on the edge of the old armchair, throwing a comforting arm around his shoulders, and to my amazement the tears suddenly stopped, like a tap being turned off.

  Wasting no time, I asked him if he could get me a box of pins from the clothing store, where he worked every Saturday, helping Miss Peggy.

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “If the bird sang, the cat would eat it!” I tapped a finger to my nose, though I was sure he wouldn’t have a clue what I meant.

  I’d made the saying up, having listened to Uncle Paddy telling the family one of his many stories when they were all in the house, singing and dancing and laughing as they’d celebrated Grandad’s passing. I remembered how the back room had suddenly gone silent, when my uncle had staggered to his feet and took to the floor.

  “One cold and frosty winter’s day,” he began, “a young sparrow is flying high over the Irish countryside, mindin’ his own business, when his feathers begin to freeze up. Feck this, says the sparrow. I must find meself a place ta land and keep meself warm. Otherwise I’m a dead duck. Spotting the wide-open doors of a barn, he aims himself towards them, miraculously surviving a bumpy landing on the cold stone floor inside the barn.

  “Unfortunately, the barn is completely empty and the bird, almost half frozen ta det, resigns itself ta die. That’s when the cow walked in ta the barn and stood over the sparrow, before dropping its load all over it. Gad the stench! It was terrible. But at least the warm shite began ta warm the bird. And, happy in the knowledge he was going ta survive, it began whistling a merry tune. Along came the farm cat. And on hearing the whistling cowpat, he parted it with his paw, saw the whistling bird and ate it!

  “Now, there’s tree morals ta this story. One: if someone puts yah in the shit, it doesn’t mean ta say he’s yer enemy. Two: if someone gets yah out of the shit, it doesn’t mean ta say he’s yer friend. And lastly. if yah ever find yerself in the shit, sometimes it’s better ta keep yer gob shut.”

  The Best-Laid Plans…

  It was very early Sunday morning. Barring the sounds of heavy breathing, I could hear nothing else. Assuming everyone was asleep, I slipped my feet over the edge of the bed, before quietly tipping back my bedside locker and retrieving the small box of pins that Jarvis had stolen for me from the clothing store. Moving barefoot out of the dormitory, I cautiously made my way down the side stairs to the dimly lit corridor on the ground floor, hurrying past the kitchen and the headmaster’s office in the direction of the small chapel.

  In the semi-darkness, I could hear the large grandfather clock ticking away, its loudness exaggerated by the silence, as it duetted with the sound of my own heart beating loudly in my ears – as it always did when I was up to no good and scared of getting caught.

  Opening the chapel door, I sneaked inside, leaving it just slightly ajar, so I could listen for any sounds that might tell me someone was on the prowl. The chapel was only a small affair, with an altar and eight pews at the front, then a short step up to the back area with a further eight pews, used whenever we had an overspill of worshippers. It was light inside the chapel, with the moonlight shining in through the high windows running the length of the longest wall.

  I could make out the statue of Jesus, with his hands held outwards showing the bloody wounds on the palms of his hands, where the crucifixion nails had gone through them. Yet despite his obvious pain, he could still afford a gentle smile. I genuflected to him, blessing myself with the sign of the cross, before making my way past him to the other end of the first pew, where the Virgin Mary stood on her own plinth smiling down at me. Getting down on my knees, I looked up guiltily at the Holy Mother and recited the Hail Mary in a whisper, “…pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen”. It gave me comfort to know that, while I was in there up to no good, she was praying for my forgiveness.

  The front pew was the only one decked out with individual, thin seat cushions, put there for the benefit of the adults and the two altar boys, Holland and that lanky, walking skeleton, Nigel Bones Cuthbert, who was always allowed to have second helpings, yet never seemed to put on any weight.

  “Tommy.” I heard the faint, ghostly whisper, just as I turned over the end cushion, where Holland always sat.

  Jaysus! I saw Donkey’s ugly mug leering at me from the doorway.

  “What are yah doing down here?” I whispered.

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I followed you. Have you come to play the organ?”

  “Play the organ? Oh yeah, I tiptoed all the way down here, just ta wake the feckin’ dead.” Donkey’s stupidity never failed to amaze me.

  “Can I have a go?” he asked, oblivious to my sarcasm.

  “No yah can’t. Give us a hand, will yah?”

  I watched as Donkey scrambled over the pews and joined me down on his knees. God, he was a sight for sore eyes. The dim light flowing in through the high windows threw shadows across his startling, ever-changing features. And if I hadn’t known him and how soft he really was, I’d have been frightened to death meeting him in the dark.

  “Here.” I tipped the small box of pins out on to the cushion. “Help me stick these in, like this.” I sank a pin into the fabric to demonstrate. “And push them right down to the heads.”

  “Holland sits there,” Donkey informed me.

  “Not for long he won’t.”

  “But they’ll stick in his bum.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Ouch!” Donkey shot up suddenly.

  “Keep the gob down!”

  “A needle stuck in my finger.”

  “Just think how many will be stuck in Holland’s arse tomorrow. Sssh, don’t laugh!” I was forced to stick a hand over Donkey’s hairy gob to stop him from heehawing. “Ye’ll get us murdered.” I was glad to see the last pin, about 30 in all, go in. And we blessed ourselves before slipping out of the chapel and back to our beds.

  I didn’t like any days in St Vincent’s, let alone Sundays, even if it was a day of rest and we didn’t have to scrub and polish the floors. But this was a Sunday I wouldn’t have wanted to miss for anything.

  After breakfast of dried scrambled eggs on toast, we lined up before being marched out of the dining room to the chapel. I could already feel the butterflies in my stomach, as I pushed my way to the third pew from the altar, wh
ere I knew I should be able to get a pretty good view of Holland doing the high jump.

  And there he was, leading the way into chapel, dressed in his red and white altar boy’s cassock and his fake saintly face, surrounded by the white smoke billowing from the incense burner he was swinging to and fro. He was followed by Cuthbert, whose head was lost somewhere in the cloud of smoke, though we could hear him coughing. Father Tierney followed next, with Mr Lilly and Matron following him. And then, following behind them were two nuns I’d not seen before.

  What was going on? Holland and Cuthbert walked past their usual seats and were standing instead beneath the statue of the Virgin Mary, with their backs up against the wall. Mr Lilly was now showing the two nuns to their seats – Cuthbert and Holland’s feckin’ seats! I was conscious of Donkey looking at me from the other end of our pew and when I glanced over, he threw a grotesque grin in my direction before I quickly looked away.

  “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.” Father Tierney blessed the congregation with a lazy wave of his hand. “You may be seated.”

  “Feck!” I was anticipating the loud scream ringing out and around the chapel. The poor nun. She was going to be leaping in the air like a wild banshee. Not that she probably didn’t deserve it. I wondered how high she would jump? And I had already put my best dumbfounded expression on my face, ready to let everyone see I was as shocked as they were.

  It was a miracle. Both nuns had plonked themselves down on the pew and there wasn’t a peep out of them. The one sitting on the pin cushion did a little shimmy to settle her hefty backside in, but not a whimper out of her. She either had the Almighty protecting her from harm’s way, or she was wearing a metal pair of undies.

  Holland was looking in my direction. He had a smirk on his face, and I wondered, was he trying to tell me something? The smirking goon then gave me a knowing nod, as if he had read my thoughts. It seemed to me he knew about the trap beforehand, otherwise that nun should have been jumping as high as a kite. But how could he have known? Then the smirking goon shifted his gaze in the direction of Donkey, who grinned back at him.

  “Yah feckin’ eejit!” I snapped under my breath at the missing link. “Tosser,” I added, shaking my head in despair as the gormless goon gave me the thumbs up.

  “What did yah just call me?” Paddy O’Neil, sitting to the right of me, suddenly threw an elbow out, catching me a hard blow to the funny bone and causing the fingers on my right hand to go into spasm. I’d often wondered why it was called the funny bone. It wasn’t as if I was rolling around on the floor in fits of hysterical laughter as the pain shot straight down my arm, causing my fingers to take a funny turn and momentarily freeze into a claw – perhaps that was the funny bit?

  “I was talking ta that eejit.” I nodded in Donkey’s direction. “Not yea.”

  I flexed my paralysed fingers into a ball, which O’Neil took the wrong way.

  “It’s a fight yer feckin’ looking for, is it?”

  “It’s me fingers. Look at them, they’ve gone all funny after yah accidently knocked in ta me.”

  “Sister Agnes will now take the first reading,” said Father Tierney, turning to the correct page in the large book of Missals. The middle-aged nun (who should have been in agony) made her way to the altar and stood behind the lectern, while the old priest made his way across to the little altar chair, just to the left of Our Lady.

  “The Jews. According to John 10:3-42,” began Sister Agnes. “The Jews fetched stones to stone him, so Jesus said to them –”

  “Ye bastards!” came the sudden cry from Father Tierney, leaping high into the air as if his arse had just been set on fire. “Yer all heathens!”

  We watched him rush out of the chapel with the pin cushion still attached to his backside and him angrily muttering all sorts of extremities to himself. Donkey exploded into fits of hee-haws, which started some of the other lads laughing.

  Mr Lilly and Matron hurried along after the two old nuns, who were chasing after the old priest. On his way out, the headmaster stopped to have a few quiet words in Mr Marron’s ear.

  “Right you lot. Quietly make your way down to the assembly hall, one pew at a time – I said quietly!” barked Mr Marron. “Holland, you and Cuthbert clear all the hymn books away and get changed before making your way down.”

  No number of threats from Mr Lilly was ever going to get anyone to own up to putting the pins in to the cushion. And I suspect he knew this himself. Yet there he was in the assembly hall, spewing his usual rhetoric, his eyes bulging with rage as he held up the cushion.

  “I know who the imbecile is. But I want to give him the opportunity to own up before I name him.”

  What he meant was, he hadn’t a clue who it was. Yes, we may have been imbeciles with nothing going on in our tiny, wasted lives, but we were not falling for his lies. So, it was no surprise that our answer to him was a cold stone wall of silence.

  “Because of the selfish act from one despicable, spiteful individual, you will all suffer the consequences. Is that what you want – is it?” His shifty eyes moved along the sea of indifferent faces staring back at him. He was searching out guilt, which easily put us all in the frame. “This,” he declared, holding up one of the pins in his hand, “is one of 40 pins that I pulled from this.” He held aloft the cushion in his other hand as he performed a slow death-march along the front row of boys, letting each one of them get a good look at the offending objects. “This is a callous, cowardly act on a defenceless man of the cloth. And as painful as it is, infection could be a more serious consequence.”

  Talk about exaggeration. I was sure we’d only stuck 30 pins into that cushion, and I was a little peeved that I wasn’t able to correct the headmaster on that point. Instead, we had to listen to him go on. “No home leave. No pocket money. No swimming. No camping. Library. Beach. Cinema.” He called them out one by one, which was a complete waste of time, considering most of us were placed in the approved school because we were doing nothing constructive in our everyday lives. And so, the loss of privileges wasn’t going to make much difference.

  He kept us standing to attention for another hour, before telling us he was extending the opportunity for the culprit to come along to his office for a chat. In other words, he had given up, like he always did, knowing he had better things to do. I noticed he never mentioned anything about cancelling school or Mass. Or the Christmas show – seeing that his awful magic tricks were the star attraction.

  The Show Must Go On

  There must have been over a hundred people sitting in the assembly hall, waiting for the show to begin. The Mayor had turned up, along with lots of other dignitaries, though Father Tierney, who would usually open the show with a blessing, was noticeably absent. We’d not seen the auld priest for weeks and it was likely we wouldn’t be seeing him again, as we had a new priest, Father Gilmore, who was there to see the show.

  The previous day I’d had a showdown with Brian Walters. Well, it was hardly a showdown. Paddy O’Neil was over by the swings, talking with Walters and a couple of his chums, when he’d looked across and called me over. I’d no problems as such with Paddy, though I did wonder why he was mixing with creeps like Walters.

  “Alright Tommy?” Paddy gave me a big smile and immediately I sensed he was up to something. I’d readied myself to make a quick run for it if anything kicked off.

  “I’m alright, Paddy,” said I.

  “I hear yous two don’t get on?”

  “The truth is Paddy, I don’t like him an’ he doesn’t like me. An’ he can’t fight his own battles unless he’s got his bum-chums with him.” I glared at Walters before scowling at his three grinning mates.

  “I don’t need an army to beat you up, Wall Talker,” snapped Walters. “He talks to walls. Did you know that Paddy?”

  “No, I didn’t. Why d’ya talk ta walls, Tommy?”

 
“So I don’t have to talk with tosspots like them lot.”

  “Get him!” ordered Walters to his gang.

  “Touch him an’ I’ll murder the lot of yah,” warned Paddy.

  I was taken aback by his outburst because I didn’t think Paddy (who could look after himself) would be interested in me, let alone back me up for a fight. But he was. And he did. Turning to Walters, he gave him an ultimatum: “Yea can either fight him, or yea can fight me. What’s it ta be, yah little maggot yah.”

  Two years! That’s how long I had waited to get a fair fight with this evil, bullying bastard. And now I’d been given the chance, I was determined to take it.

  It’s strange how the brain can think things out in seconds. And as I stood facing Walters, I’d already decided I wasn’t going to stand toe-to-toe with him and fight a boxing match. Especially having already faced him in the past, with the gloves on, when he’d given me an idea of what the Milky Way looked like, before kicking me in the mouth.

  “Come on then, Wall Talker,” goaded Walters, as the pair of us circled each other. “You can’t even punch your way out of a paper bag, you girl’s blouse.”

  “You can have the first punch,” I invited, expecting the snide to take up the invitation and come straight for me. But instead, he suddenly bent over and grabbed a small handful of the dried grit around the swings, throwing it at my face before taking a lunge at me.

  But I had been waiting for the sneak to do something like that, and I’d turned sideways on to him, closing my eyes and throwing out the hardest right-handed punch I’d ever mustered in all my life. I felt my fist make contact and watched as the cowardly squirt fell on to his hands and knees.

  “Kick his feckin’ head in!” Paddy shouted.

  “I don’t kick like a coward,” I said. “Get up ya tosser yah.” I’d given a little confident shimmy of the legs as I stood back from Walters, not believing my luck, that I had knocked the fecker down with the one punch. “Up!” I shouted. “So I can knock them teeth down yer neck.” I held up my right fist, ready to give him another one in the gob if he dared to get up. But he wouldn’t. Lifting himself into a sitting position, he stayed on the ground, spitting blood out from his cut lip, looking gormless and dazed. His so-called mates had already walked off, leaving him to it.