The Anatomy School

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘To prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins. I confess to almighty God …’

  The boys raggedly joined in but their voices were too quiet. Too shy. Martin turned and walked as quickly as he dared to the corridor entrance of the sacristy. He opened the door and it gave a long unoiled screech. Up two steps and into the robing room. His heart was pounding. The door of the robing room was open. He knew about adrenalin from biology. The effect it had on you. But it was all in the mind. So far, he still could come up with an excuse. I’m just looking around. I left something in here yesterday. He put his head in first. Nobody. There was a smell of daffodils but he couldn’t see where it was coming from. Condor’s deep voice boomed from the altar beyond the door.

  ‘Lord have mercy.’ It was followed by the mumbling which he knew was the boys’ version of the response. ‘Lord have mercy.’

  ‘Christ have mercy,’ said Condor.

  ‘Christ have mercy,’ said Martin to himself. Condor must be hammering on. That was the Kyrie over. There were fast priests and slow priests and there were those who could finish exactly on the half-hour. It was a favourite subject of conversation when his mother had people in. Father Blaney was a flyer, Father White could be fast one day and take his time the next. But if you were in a hurry it was always great to see Father ‘Twenty Minutes’ Toomey coming out on to the altar.

  Maybe the flowers decorating the altar were daffodils. Martin looked at the top of the vestment chest of drawers. The discarded pile was there. He’d better get a move on. The pipe implements thing, the box of Swan matches, the pens, the coins, some copper some silver. And the keys. Two long silvery ones, a VW car key with a black pretend tyre around it, three Yale keys, each with a different-coloured plastic cover, like a little shoulder cape. There was a yellow one which was Condor’s room. He took a deep breath and lifted the bunch. I cannot believe I am doing this. His rubber-soled shoes squidged and squeaked on the polished boards. He stepped on to a runner of sage green carpet and stayed on it until he was out of the room. The door into the corridor screeched closed with too heavy a clunk as he pulled it after him. Holy Jesus, what am I doing? Whatever it was, he had better do it like fucking greased lightning. If he was stopped and searched now … There was no excuse he could give. If you’d like to come down to the police barracks with us, sir, and explain why you are carrying a set of keys belonging to Father O’Malley? But that would never happen — Condor would never call in the police. He hated them so much. The keys clinked in the pocket of his blazer at each step. But who would stop and search him? He looked perfectly innocent. It was all in the mind. He was now in the staff corridor overlooking the driveway. Still nobody — in either driveway or corridor. Distantly he heard the Sanctus bell. Fuck — it’s getting late. Condor must be going like the clappers. And it was only about ten past. Things were going too fucking fast. The corridor windows looked like they had just been cleaned — everything outside was crystal sharp. The early light slanted in and squared the cream walls with brightness. A bird was singing but he couldn’t see where it was perched and he certainly wasn’t going to stop and look. He could see down on the bald crown of the willow tree in the quad. His right hand was in his pocket to dampen the noise of the keys. With his fingers he sought out the Yale — glanced down and saw it was the one with the yellow plastic. He held it poised, horizontal — ready to go in the lock, but still inside his pocket. Round the corner, past the glass trophy cupboard. Still, not a soul about the place. Then he heard a noise — a kind of rattle. Joe Boggs came from the far end of the corridor carrying a mop and bucket. Martin kept walking and staring out the windows. No matter what was happening in the school Joe Boggs never interfered. He was kind of a zombie. They nodded to each other as they passed. You could tell the mop bucket was empty by the way he carried it, tilted. The shaft of the mop leaned lightly against his shoulder. Martin continued past Condor’s room listening to Joe Boggs’s feet. He heard them turn the corner and he spun round and retraced his steps. He stopped at Condor’s door and raised his hand as if to knock. But from his hand produced the keys, like a magician. The key fitted smoothly: its little serrations rippled into the centre of the circular lock. Then he glanced both ways. His hand turned and the door swung open. Oh, so simple. And he was inside. He realised he hadn’t breathed for some time and now with the door shut he exhaled.

  ‘Jesus.’

  The room was as he’d remembered it. There was a large, almost black, oil painting of St Ignatius of Loyola above the fireplace. The mouth of the fireplace was blocked with hardboard. To one side of the door above a bookcase was a black and white picture of Christ, the Saviour of the World. He had a staff in one hand and a ball surmounted by a cross in the other. His eyes were turned to heaven in a kind of who’s making that noise upstairs look. He had seen pictures of Christ where his eyes followed you round the room. That was from first-year Art: if the eyes were dead centre then that was the illusion. Stupid bastards were impressed by this. They thought it was what art was about. The room smelled heavily of pipe smoke, aniseed and dust. On the mantelpiece half a dozen pipes stood in a rack with their mouthpieces in the air. The rack was supposed to be a rustic five-barred gate. Several dark green packets of tobacco labelled CONDOR were stacked behind. There were papers and files everywhere. On the windowsill were a couple of unwatered terracotta pots each containing a dead, pale brown, feathery plant. One hung on to a length of thin bamboo. It was so strange — the emptiness. The silence. He went to the desk and bent over to see the paper pinned to the wall above it. The letters and numbers seemed to jump about before his eyes. Because his head was tilted he couldn’t trace the line across the page. He tried to follow it with his finger. It was shaking badly. Christ, what a state he was in. There was an ashtray beneath his face. It was reeking of half-smoked tobacco, scraped from the pipe bowl, like soggy blackened straw. Just the same smell as the day he’d been thumped for smoking. There could be no excuse whatsoever now, if he was caught. This was burglary. Of the Dean of Discipline’s room. Instant expulsion. Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear the very stones prate of my whereabout. His mother weeping — at the foot of the cross. A life destroyed. Two lives destroyed. Fuck — stop thinking. Start doing. And get outa there. He wasn’t sure … couldn’t be sure that the number was the correct one. A clear plastic ruler stood up in a tin of pencils and pens. He lifted it and held it firmly and as horizontally as he could against the page beneath Cleaners Store without the apostrophe:

  Cleaners Store 109 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .M7.

  He went to the glass-fronted cupboard. He was speaking to himself, ‘M seven, M seven.’ The cupboard was locked with a small baby-like key which was left in the lock. Martin turned it. The cupboard door swung open. The glass was old, and looking through it towards the window everything became wibbled and wavy. On the cup hook marked M7 hung a ring of half a dozen keys. Martin checked that the saw teeth were the same on the shank of each key by holding them together so that the mountains and valleys matched. He slipped one key off the ring and substituted his own key, the one he had rummaged out of the button box.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Holy fuck. His heart pounded. He nearly dropped all the keys. In the name of Jesus, who was it? What should he do? He silenced the bunch of keys by holding them tightly. There was a thin strip of light beneath the door. Someone’s shadow interrupted it. Two shadows, two feet. Martin breathed through his mouth so’s he wouldn’t make the slightest sound. He looked around slowly as if the noise of moving might give him away. He wanted to pray — but how could you pray on such a mission. How could he ask for help when he was up to no good? Please God help me — I have just stolen a key so’s we can steal another key so’s we can steal exam papers and undermine society as we know it. Whoever was outside knocked again. Everything seemed to be happening in the slow motion of extreme danger. Three raps of the knuckle. Knock �
� knock — knock. Here’s a knocking indeed. The same sound pattern as the first knock. Vivace, almost. Like the metronome. A metronome registered time unscientifically: instead of milliseconds and seconds it used stupid Italian words. The door shuddered a little in its frame. Then — suddenly — Martin realised he was going to shite himself. He had to tighten his sphincter, pinch the muscles and hold on as tight as he could. Once, in bed he had pissed himself — but he had been a kid, a wee child. It had been during a dream — he’d been dreaming that he was actually at the toilet. So it wasn’t his fault in a way. He had an excuse. That was nothing in terms of awfulness compared to the possibility of him shiting himself in Condor’s room. He held on. It was as if his arse-hole had sucked a lemon. He daren’t move until the shadows at the door gave up and went away. Whoever it was stood on and on. Martin looked up at the ceiling and when he looked back again the strip of light beneath the door was clear and uninterrupted. They had given up and gone. If Condor lived here, there must be a toilet. Martin looked around the room. There were three doors. Still he held on. He held on and walked and tried the first door. It was a wall cupboard filled with shelves of glasses and bottles —green gin bottles, whiskey bottles. The next door was a bedroom. Off the bedroom, reflected in a mirror, he could see a lavatory through an open door. He put his hand to his bum, pressed hard and walked carefully. He dropped his trousers and sat down and let go. Fuck, what a noise. It sounded like he was having a piss, it was so watery. He gave a loud groan and put his head in his hands. That’s where the word had come from. Shit scared. He was shit scared. He looked over his shoulder into the bedroom. Condor hadn’t made his bed. On the floor of the lavatory were piles of Golfer’s Weekly and Time magazine. There was a small wooden bookshelf filled with books and the first spine was an Enid Blyton adventure. She knows nothing about it. Nobody shits themselves in her books. And why in under God had Condor got a book like that on his shelves? That was a question that had to be asked. From where he was he could see the alarm clock on Condor’s bedside table. Sixteen minutes past. Maybe he kept it fast all the time so’s he would be punctual — have time in hand. For thumping those pupils who were actually late. His mother did that — always kept her alarm clock fast. He whacked off a spool of paper and folded it over and over again and wiped himself. And repeated the process. The stink was something awful. That kind of sick-arse smell. Not at all like an ordinary crap. Condor would know, the minute he came back, that somebody had been in his toilet. Martin jumped to his feet and did himself up, looking over his shoulder. The liquid at the bottom of the bowl was a dreadful colour. He flushed the toilet — a chain pull with a delf handle. He opened the lavatory window, pushed it out as far as it would go and latched it there on the last notch. He took a towel from a rail and gave it a couple of flaps in the direction of the open window. He glanced at the clock on his way out of the bedroom. Almost twenty fucking past. He was cutting it fine. A glimpse of himself in a full-length mirror startled him. He’d forgotten he was in school uniform. Then he noticed something else. There was a white Roman collar, half in, half out of the neck of a priest’s black vest on a bedside chair. Martin noticed some coloured writing on the inside of the collar. There was something very familiar about it. Then he knew. The remnants of the familiar script of the words Fairy Liquid. Condor’s white collar was white plastic cut from a Fairy Liquid bottle. Jesus — how cheap could you get? It was hard to believe. He closed the glass key cupboard door and locked it. There was a noise at the door. Not a knock. A swishing noise. He looked at the strip of light. Something was moving outside. Rhythmically. To and fro. Again he was reminded of the metronome. It stopped and he listened so much he could hear white noise in his ears. Then the gurgling of water. Then the rhythmic swishing again. It was fucking Joe Boggs. Mopping the corridor. He heard the clank of the mop bucket handle. Joe Boggs might be a fucking zombie but if he saw Martin coming strolling out of Condor’s room … So Martin waited. There was nothing else he could do. And as he waited he trembled. His knees were actually shaking. The backwards and forwards swish of the mop was like the sound of somebody breathing in and out. How long did it take to do a corridor? He moved to where he could see into the bedroom again. A minute had passed. No shadow was moving outside the door but he could still hear the mopping. What he didn’t know was whether Joe Boggs was mopping up to or away from the door. If he opened the door quietly and Joe had his back to him that’d be OK. He could slip out and never be noticed. But if he opened the door and Joe was facing him … It was too much of a risk. All or none. If it matters at all it must matter completely. Martin knelt and put his head to the board floor to try and see under the door. He could sense movement but that was no help: people mopped backwards — nobody mopped forwards and walked on the floor they had just cleaned. He could see the shine of wet but had no idea which direction the janitor would be facing.

  The black phone on the desk rang. The fucking phone rang — scaring the shite out of him. Again. It went on ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing. He had a great temptation to lift it — to silence it. Lift it and say nothing. Just stop the fucking thing ringing, just stop it driving him mad. Pairs of rings. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. It was physical. In his temples. Belling in his eyes. In his empty stomach. Then — thanks be to Jesus — it stopped. He got up off his knees. Then he heard a clank of the mop bucket handle and it sounded like it was very far away. Go. Go for it now. He moved quickly towards the door. Fuck it — the bathroom window. He ran in through the bedroom and closed the window — left it as he’d found it. Some of his stink was still in the air but it wasn’t as bad. Then back through the bedroom — twenty-five past — and he was out to the door. He tapped his pocket to check that he had Condor’s bunch of keys. He opened the door and put his head out. Nobody. He stepped out of the room and closed the door. Joe must have gone to change his water. But the floor was wet. He only noticed it was wet underfoot when he had taken about five steps. He looked back. There was actual evidence — his footprints coming out of Condor’s room. And the soles of the shoes he was wearing had such a distinctive pattern, full of weaving and zigzags. Aw fuck. It was as plain as a burglar’s footprints in the snow. He would have to confuse the issue. So he walked back and overlapped his own prints, walked down the hall to where the floor had dried or partially dried. The surface was drying unevenly, revealing swathes and sweeps of the mop. Then he walked back up the corridor again, criss-crossing over his own prints. When he turned the corner into the unwashed part of the corridor he left wet footprints on the dry lino. Christ, what a mess. What a fucking dunderhead he was. A dumbfuck, a complete and utter dumbfuck. He was cutting it very fine. He had to have Condor’s keys back before the end of mass, before he came off the altar. Now he could see the clock at the end of the corridor. It was twenty-five past. Condor did keep his fucking clock fast. He might have known — how else did he get down to the head of the drive every morning on the dot of nine? Martin wanted to run, but he walked. Because just as soon as he started to run some teacher would step out from nowhere — you boy, stop running — and he’d want to know why you were running and where were you running to and had you never heard of self-discipline and how easily accidents can happen and whether or not he had ever considered the possibility of bowling someone over and fuckin crap and more fuckin crap. So he walked. He could be into the sacristy and have the keys returned before Condor had even finished communion.

  Then the Reverend Head walked round the corner.

  ‘The early bird,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘What particular worm are you out to catch this morning, Martin?’

  ‘None, Father.’

  ‘So tell me — how is your repeat year going?’

  ‘Good. Good enough.’

  ‘And the exams. How are the preparations going?’

  ‘Good.’ But he had already said ‘good’ twice. He had better add something to sound like an intelligent human being. ‘Well. They’re
going well.’

  ‘Are you putting in the hours at home?’ Martin didn’t want to sound like it was all plain sailing — didn’t want it to seem that he was dying to get away from him.

  ‘It’s hard to concentrate.’

  ‘I know. I know. But it’ll come. What subjects are you doing?’

  ‘English. Chemistry and Physics. And O grade Latin.’

  ‘Slightly strange combination.’

  ‘It’s what you said I should do.’

  ‘Did I indeed? I must have been thinking ahead to the job market. Any signs there, Martin? Any indications? Made up your mind yet?’

  ‘No, Father.’ Inside his pocket Martin held the bunch of keys tightly in his hand. The big chrome ones dug into him. The sharp jaggedy part, the part that turned in the lock. So much so that he thought they were going to cut him, to produce blood. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? Also he could still sense that his knees were shaking inside his trousers. If the Reverend Head noticed, he’d be sure to ask about it. You’re not afraid of me, Martin, are you?

  ‘You’ve thought about a vocation?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Reverend Head raised one eyebrow. ‘I mean, Father, I’ve thought about it. But I don’t think …’ Martin tried to position his legs inside his trousers so that his trembling would not touch the grey material and broadcast his state to the outside world, in particular the Reverend Head.

  ‘What? Finish your sentences.’

  ‘I don’t think I have a vocation.’

  ‘Did you go to the Retreat in Ardglass this year?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And how did you find that?’

  ‘It was good. I mean it stretched you. Made you think.’

  ‘If you want to talk about it any further, feel free to come and see me. It’s what I’m here for.’ He talked on about his faith in young men, about how they could be trusted to do the right thing. Some people were dismissive of the younger generation, but not him. No, sir-ee. The young ones came up trumps every time. The Reverend Head questioned him further about his mother and about Father Farquharson. Martin wanted to be dead. The clock in the distance now said 8.30. His guts had gone to water again and he was having to tighten and pinch the muscles of his arse. He felt he badly wanted to go again. Then in the distance above his head he heard the rumbling of people rising and the clattering of feet and raised voices as the boys poured out of the chapel.