Desperate Measures

by R. B. Baxter

  Chapter 7 - The Aftermath

  At lunchtime I was pleased to hear from Nicky that my response to the Archbishop’s question had not slowed proceedings at all. He assured me I had answered just as quickly as everyone else even though at the time I felt a year had passed between His Grace asking the question and my actually getting round to answering it.

  I smiled. This was great news. What had I been worrying about? The whole thing had been a total doddle. No problem at all. In fact, now that I thought about it, my whole morning had been pretty much perfect. I had answered His Grace’s question quickly and correctly; Mrs Payne had accepted my apology for laughing at her misfortune; I had not heard a single peep from anyone about the unfortunate ‘naked-in-the-window’ thingy from the night before. Life just couldn’t get any better.

  My smile broadened into a full-fledged grin. I had worked myself into a state for nothing. But now it was all over and the relief was enormous. I felt so happy I laughed out loud causing Nicky to look up from his fishpaste sandwich and ask me what was up.

  “Oh, nothing much. I was just thinking about how things never really seem to go as badly as you think they might. Whenever you expect the worst it often turns out to be completely fine.”

  Nicky looked at me in silence for a few seconds and then smiled sardonically.

  “What you mean is, you were lucky enough to get away with a simple apology to Mrs Payne and no-one has teased you yet about your nature-boy shenanigans from last night?”

  I started to protest but Nicky put his hand up, palm outward, and continued.

  “Don’t you think it’s possible that everybody was just a wee bit too caught up in all the hoopla surrounding the Archbishop’s visit this morning? Too busy in fact, to worry about paying out on some silly bugger that likes to half drown himself and then stick his todger out a window?”

  I began to splutter another protest but again he held up his hand and stopped me.

  “And in case you’re thinking that not many people have heard about this little episode of yours last night then you’d better think again because believe me matey, it’s all over town.”

  Finally, he dropped his hand and let me speak.

  “Are you finished?”

  He frowned, stuck out his bottom lip and stared skywards pretending to think hard for a second. Then he looked back at me and nodded.

  “Yep! I reckon that about does it.”

  “Well you can go to buggery,” I said. “No-one has teased me about last night and I don’t think anyone is going to and on top of that, Mrs Payne has forgiven me for laughing at her. I’m feeling good about how things have worked out and I’m not gonna let you ruin it.”

  Nicky shrugged and laughed. “Suit yourself.”

  We bolted the rest of our lunch and then hurried across to the area on the edge of the quadrangle where we liked to play marbles. Over the half-hour or so we had to play before traipsing back into class again I managed to win back the marbles I had lost to Nicky that morning and win a couple of brand-new shooters as well.

  Then suddenly the bell was ringing and we lined up with the rest of the sixth-class students. This post-lunch assembly was normal procedure and was simply a means of controlling the way the tidal-wave of kids entered the large building that housed all the classrooms. Announcements were not normally made at this assembly. The only verbal utterances were restricted to Sister Vincent screaming at the top of her lungs such orders as: “ATTENTION! AS YOU WERE! AT EASE! RIGHT TURN! LEFT TURN! ABOUT FACE!”

  But regardless of what she roared out her orders always culminated in: “BY THE CLASS—KINDYS FIRST—MOVING OFF ON THE LEFT ...”

  All of this shouting was something Sister Vincent clearly enjoyed and I expected to see her standing there at the head of the stairs limbering up for a really good bellow. Instead it was our principal, Sister Francis, who stood there glowering down at the churning sea of students as they hurried to line up in the orderly ranks she expected of them. I guessed that in light of a successful visit from the Archbishop, the principal wanted to address the school and tell everyone just how wonderful they had been. The Archbishop had left just prior to lunch and so this would be the most obvious point in the day to do this.

  Sister Francis stood there unmoving, waiting as she always did for the absolute silence she expected before beginning to speak. Since the high church wall cast a shadow right across the quadrangle dropping the already cold winter temperature a further few degrees, everyone present wanted to get the proceedings over and done with and move inside to the relative warmth and comfort of their classrooms. Because of this, silence descended quickly.

  Even so, a full minute later Sister Francis had still not begun speaking. You could almost hear the time passing and I was beginning to wonder just how much quieter it could possibly get when she finally began.

  Starting with a general acknowledgment of all those involved today, Sister Francis asked for a show of appreciation for all the work put in by the teachers and prefects in preparation for His Grace’s visit. A boisterous round of applause echoed across the quadrangle punctuated by the occasional cheer.

  Sister Francis then went on to thank the students in general saying that almost to a person, everyone had been excellent in their behaviour in the lead up to today’s very important event.

  As a murmur of approval and self-congratulation rippled through the ranks of students, a slight feeling of uneasiness began prickling at my spine and creeping across my scalp. Unlike most of the other kids there, I had not missed the emphasis she had placed on part of what she had said: “Almost to a person,” What could she mean by that?

  The principal continued, throwing her head back and speaking loudly:

  “As always, at times like this, things never go completely as you wish and small things happen that threaten to send all of your best-laid plans awry. These things are inevitable and most of what happened over the last day or so with the potential to mar this very important visit by His Grace, the Archbishop, to our school today, was easily dealt with. Even so, there are some things that have happened that bring the name of our school into disrepute and in so doing, damage the reputation of every single person fortunate enough to be able to attend this wonderful institution every day. When these events are caused by the actions of a single selfish individual, I will not tolerate it.”

  By now I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. My scalp was prickling like crazy and despite the coolness of the air, rivulets of sweat began to seep out of the top of my head and snake their way through my hair threatening to track their way down my forehead. I did not know why but I was certain she was talking about me.

  When I had made the horrendous mistake of snickering at Mrs Payne’s misfortune, Sister Francis had turned and glared at me. Perhaps she really had marked me for extermination there and then. Never mind the fact that afterwards I had apologised to Mrs Payne and that apology had been accepted. Perhaps that wasn’t good enough for the principal. Maybe she wanted her pound of flesh regardless.

  I knew that Sister Francis was enormously proud of this school and viewed even the slightest misdemeanour as a personal slap in the face. I also knew how serious she was when it came to dishing out punishment. Of course she was talking about me, I was certain of it, and she had decided she was not going to let me off.

  A second later my worst fears were realised.

  “Owen Finnegan, come up here now.”

  The sweat from my scalp fairly gushed and my heart rate doubled. Its pounding was like a bass drum sounding deep in the back of my skull.

  I stepped out of line and began to walk, head lowered, through the ranks of students. The silence already blanketing the quadrangle, thickened considerably. The only sound now was the steady scrunch-scrunch-scrunch of my footfalls on the white gravel as I made my way to the front of the assembly. The sound resonated through the quadrangle, bouncing off walls and windows and coming back to me about a half-second after my foot hit the ground so that t
o me there was a disconcerting offset between the sound and its cause. It was as though my whole world had suddenly become weirdly off-kilter. My head began to swim and for a second I feared—I hoped—I was going to faint.

  I stepped onto the concrete path and without looking up at the principal, made my way to the foot of the stairs. Only when I mounted the bottom of the ten or so steps I had to climb did Sister Francis continue addressing the assembly.

  “You all know the high regard I have for this school and for all of its students and teachers. I have never made a secret of it and I am not about to start now.”

  I had climbed about a half-dozen steps and now for the first time I looked up. Sister Francis was standing ramrod straight with all the other teachers lined up behind her. She stood in that curious way that the nuns had of standing; with their arms crossed in front of their bodies and with each hand tucked reverse-ways into the opposing arm’s sleeve. They did this even in the hottest of weather. She was looking out over a pale sea of upturned faces that were hanging on her every word as she continued on about personal honour and respect for others.

  Sister Francis did not look at me and I was grateful. A withering glare from her at this point would have turned my legs to rubber and I would either drop like a rock or turn and run screaming for the playground gate. The urge to bolt is strong in me at the best of times and it took all of my reserves to keep on going.

  I stole a quick look at Mrs Payne. She was watching me come up the stairs from the corner of her eye and I could see that she was just as perplexed as I was.

  I came to a stop at the top of the stairs right beside Sister Francis who carried on addressing the assembly as though I wasn’t there. It was as if I didn’t even exist and for a mad-minute I was seriously thinking that I had misheard her and that she had not called me up. In fact now that I thought it through, I was certain I had made a mistake and since that was the case, what could I possibly do to get myself out of the dangerous position I had just recklessly dropped myself into?

  I began sifting through the myriad of possibilities that began coursing through my brain. Each involved various fantastic manoeuvres that only a person of my incredible skill and dexterity could employ to extricate myself from the potentially life threatening position I suddenly found myself in. I needed something good; something well thought out. Something that was completely unexpected.

  I was just settling on a particular manoeuvre that involved a quick leap to the left followed by a shoulder-roll between the Sisters Vincent and Mary. That would carry me into the hallway of the main building whereupon a lightening fast commando-crawl straight down the hallway would take me to the doorway at the other end of the corridor.

  There lay my salvation.

  I played out the scenario in my head, the image culminating nicely in the group of teachers gasping theatrically in shock at my sudden disappearance.

  I smiled to myself as in my imagination I moved skilfully, completely unseen, across the playground towards the school gate and freedom, while a bevy of nuns cast around futilely searching for ‘the boy who was no longer there.’

  Oh, this plan was flawless! I was sure I could pull it off with no-one noticing anything and I was just about to leap into action when the principal finally turned and impaled me with a needle-sharp glare.

  “I’m pleased to see that you find this funny Mr Finnegan.”

  My blood froze. I quickly erased the remnant of the smile that had lingered from the pleasure that came from playing out my dramatic escape in my head. Oh bugger! I was dead now, that was for sure. If Sister Francis thought I was laughing at her and at what she had been saying, Mum would be collecting my remains from the morgue later on this afternoon.

  I began to stammer out an excuse. “Ohh n-n-no, s-sister. I wasn’t laughing. R-r-really I wasn’t.”

  “You were so, Finnegan. You were standing there with a grin the size of a small country on your face.”

  She leaned in putting her face so close to mine I could smell the coffee she had drunk at lunchtime on her breath.

  “You find everything I say funny, don’t you, Finnegan? You find it absolutely hilarious. Don’t you?”

  We were entering dangerous territory now; I could tell by the way she was talking. She was speaking airily and with very little volume and I knew from firsthand experience that when nuns talked to you like that, they were only seconds away from becoming completely homicidal. A caning in the very least was now inevitable and there was little I could do but pray it would all be over quickly.

  I was growing desperate and as I repeated my stammering denials the panic squeezed my vocal chords to such a degree the words came out as high-pitched squeaks.

  “N-n-no sister, n-no I w-wasn’t.”

  Again, I toyed with the idea of making a sudden break for it. Bugger the quick leap to the left followed by the shoulder-roll into the hallway and the quick commando-crawl to freedom. I decided instead on simply turning and running like hell for the nearest street-exit screaming my head off the whole way.

  But there was something in the way that Sister Francis glared at me that fixed me in place and regardless of how hard I tried I could not get my legs to move. I was frozen!

  My panic, which until now had been threatening to spill over into uncontrolled hysteria, suddenly began abating and a curious sense of acceptance and inevitability was growing in its place.

  I remembered an article I had read in my beloved ‘Junior Encyclopaedia of Knowledge and Understanding’ about how mice and rabbits and other furry members of nature’s food bin often froze under the cold, malevolent stare of certain snakes. They would sit there unmoving as the snake simply glided up and began to eat them. Suddenly I knew exactly how they felt.

  Sister Francis straightened up and as if by magic produced her favourite cane. My blood chilled when I saw it. It was a long rod of bamboo-type material which screamed as it cut through the air. The playground was thick with stories of this legendary cane and it saw regular duty with some of the high-school boys. But until now it had never been used to punish a primary-school student simply because it was doubtful they would live through it. Obviously Sister Francis was so near the end of her tether she no longer cared if I lived or died.

  I swallowed hard as I looked at the metre and a half of pain and anguish the principal brandished before me and at the edge of panic, I played a desperate card.

  “B-but Mrs P-P-Payne accepted my apology.”

  For a second I thought I had made an impression. Her face clouded with confusion and she began opening her mouth to speak. But then she snapped it closed again and shook her head.

  “You stupid boy,” she hissed. “This has nothing to do with the rude and selfish behaviour you exhibited when you snickered at Mrs Payne’s misfortune.”

  She swished the air a few times with the cane revelling in the sound it made and enjoying the effect the noise had on me.

  “This has to do with the shame you have brought upon this school.”

  At this she turned back to address the rest of the students still standing there quietly before her, their faces upturned, determined not to miss a thing, the blood-thirsty little savages.

  “As I have said on many occasions, I will not tolerate anyone bringing shame to the good name of this school. If you are out and about after school hours, you must always be aware that you are identifiable by your school uniform and that your actions reflect on every single individual in this school, teacher and student alike. Remember, I long only to hear good reports about my students—never, ever bad.”

  At this point she gestured towards me with her cane.

  “This boy has brought shame on this school by his selfish and despicable actions and because of this he will be punished. The rest of you would do well to learn from his mistake.”

  She turned back to me. “Hold out your right hand.”

  I raised my hand slowly and using the tip of the cane, she fine-tuned it into the position she wanted.
<
br />   “Two on each hand should do I think,” she said matter-of-factly. She was just raising the cane to the top of its arc and preparing to bring it down when I spoke:

  “But s-s-sister. What did I do?”

  She stared at me open mouthed, then after a second or two lowered the cane.

  “I thought by now that would be abundantly obvious. You have brought shame and degradation to this fine school.”

  I was confused. She had just said that if you brought shame on the school and were identifiable by your uniform then you could expect to be in strife. But I had absolutely no recollection of being out and about in my school uniform and then doing something that the principal would take a dim view of.

  “Sister I haven’t done anything. I p-p-promise.”

  She leaned back clutching at her throat and gasping loudly. Her face began to redden and her eyes became a couple of icy bullets.

  “How dare you stand there and tell me such an evil and barefaced lie.”

  I knew I was making it worse for myself but I was desperate. I couldn’t stop. Judging by what she had said, I’d been identified by my uniform and reported for doing something. But I had no idea just what it was she was accusing me of. I honestly could not think of any time when I might have done something that she would disapprove of.

  “But sister,” I pleaded, “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.”

  Sister Francis’ eyes widened and she stepped back, her mouth opening and closing silently as she wrestled with the rage that coursed through her. She was so red in the face by now that I thought she was going to pop. She leaned close once again and the anger in her voice was awful as she hissed at me in a savage whisper that was meant for my ears only.

  “Do you deny parading naked in the front window of your house last night, exposing yourself to the good, Christian ladies of your neighbourhood in a most vile and disgusting manner?”

  It felt as if ice water was gushing through me as I suddenly realised the depth of Mrs Simpson’s network of rumour and innuendo. The woman was so completely thorough in her spreading around of the juicy bits that even a nun, the principal of the local Catholic school for God’s sake, was part of her network. I knew now that all was lost. Even as I played my last, weak card, I knew it would do no good.

  “But Sister, I wasn’t in school uniform at the time.”

  Sister Francis’s eyes widened to such an alarming degree that for a minute I thought they were going to fall out of her head. Then suddenly she sucked a huge quantity of air noisily through her teeth and screamed point blank into my face:

  “THAT IS PRECISELY THE POINT YOU STUPID BOY!”

  Over the next few seconds it was touch and go as to whether or not she would throw the cane aside and simply beat me to death with her bare hands. Judging by her facial contortions the internal struggle was enormous but eventually she straightened and in a quiet, steel-tipped voice, ordered me once again to put out my hand. And again she teased it into the optimum position with the tip of her cane.

  “A slight change is called for I think.” She said staring fixedly at me with her shark-like eyes. “Six of the best is more in order I think. Wouldn’t you agree Mr. Finnegan?”

  The question was rhetorical in the purest sense of the word and I knew that if I so much as opened my mouth to respond my school days would be over. I nodded almost imperceptibly and watched in terror as she raised the cane high above her head. It hovered there for a brief period before she brought it screaming down.

  The pain was white hot. It shot up my arm and into my body with such force that the shock of it ripped the air from my lungs. I squeezed my eyes shut and willing the tears not to come, began to recite in my mind the line-up of the Australian cricket team which was currently contesting the Ashes in England.

  “Bill Lawry; Ian Redpath; Bob Cowper; Ian Chappell; Dougie Walters; Paul Sheahan; Brian Taber . . .”

  I was working on the premise that putting my brain to such a test would take my mind off the other five cuts to come. It didn’t work, although I became aware of a sort of disembodiment by about the fourth cut and became so fascinated by how quiet the sea of school kids looking on had become that I hardly felt the fifth and the sixth.

  Sister Francis dismissed me with a curt order to return to my place in line. I felt vastly relieved to be scrunching my way back across the gravel once again. I was also quite pleased with myself, not only for having survived the best the principal could throw at me, but by doing so completely dry-eyed. I had not cracked and while the opportunity to go down in school folklore as ‘the boy who wasn’t there’ had been snatched away from me, resuming my place in line as ‘the one who’d been to the brink and survived’ was just as good.

  I stepped back into line and as Sister Vincent began to scream for everyone to stand at attention I stood there steely-jawed and heroic, frowning manfully as I stared determinedly straight ahead. It was obvious to anyone looking my way that here stood a man of steel. You could tell by the heroic determination in the set of his shoulders; the devil-may-care casualness of his stance; the no-nonsense tint in the cold, grey eyes. Here was one who would not crack; one who could take anything they threw at him; one who was in short, just too damn good for them.

  The respectful stares and nods of approval began and I knew it was only a matter of time before someone hissed the inevitable question.

  “Did it hurt?”

  Of course it bloody-well hurt but I wasn’t going to tell them that.