The Misremembered Man

by Christina McKenna

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes, I think that about covers it. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll think of more interesting things to ask when you’re writing.” Daphne looked at her watch. “Good, I’ve time for dessert.”

  Lydia smiled and returned the letters to her purse. “Do you know, dear, you should have been a sleuth or an agony aunt.” She gave a mock salute.

  “The pleasure is all mine. Now let’s have some ice cream to celebrate, having solved that little problem.”

  Chapter thirteen

  Sister Bernadette strode alongside her charges, through the mist of another murky morning, her habit belling out like a spinnaker in the wind. Her thoughts shut off from any softer refinements, running only the most negative footage in her head. She moved through her day like she moved through her life, keeping well within the narrow confines of her ruthless self. She dished out the cruelty and reveled in the hurt, in the mouths that screamed, the eyes that wept, seeing a small body ball up tight under her wounding lashes.

  They entered a long tunnel, continued down it for a time until they came to a small square. Sister Bernadette blew the whistle once more and they halted. Before them gaped the doors of the chapel, and within its walls stood a priest waiting to say Mass.

  Every day, at 6 A.M., God was served before breakfast.

  They traipsed soundlessly to their appointed seats, at once kneeling down on the prie-dieux, their bony knees on the unyielding wood, their toes curled up on the stone floor. And there they would remain for the hour’s duration; no standing, no sitting, no stirring that might give them a moment’s reprieve. Their lips moved in prayer and their hands moved to cross themselves. No other gestures—smiling, talking, coughing—were permitted. Any sound that broke the silence would annoy the priest, and so it came with a heavy price.

  Eighty-Six was running a fever. He had had little sleep because of a tearing cough, his head ached and his limbs were sore. He wanted desperately to cough now. His ribcage trembled with the pressure of keeping it in. Then a pain welled in his throat, so sharp that his will could fight against it no longer. He put his hand over his mouth and coughed and coughed and coughed.

  In no time he heard the dreaded sounds: the quick, angry, frantic heels upon the tiled floor. Hard hands hauled him from the seat.

  Sister Bernadette frogmarched him outside. The wind whipped at his sodden clothes as the rain lashed and pummeled him.

  “Open your mouth!” she ordered, and shoved in the cake of black soap.

  “Breakfast!” she snarled, and slapped him several times across the face. And he was made to stand in the rain, pondering his sin and suffering the penance it had brought him.

  At 2 P.M., Sister Veronica ordered him to her lesson.

  The schoolroom was a dusty, draughty place, with five long benches for the pupils. It smelled of ancient ink and chalk dust. At the front of the room, on a raised platform, sat a large blackboard on an easel, with the teacher’s desk before it. On the desk was a globe that swiveled on a wooden stand. On the walls, pictures of Jesus and Mary. Pictures of animals and birds, too, and a cracked, glossy map of Ireland weighted with mahogany rods.

  Sister Veronica stood by the blackboard, her cane poised below the first line of verse. This was her room. This was her world. Within its walls she drilled and taught. Where she exercised her rigid control, her commanding of attention and her steadfast refusal to ever give praise when she ought.

  “Now, after the count of three, I want you all to recite the poem in chorus. One, two, three…”

  Leisure

  by William Henry Davies

  What is this life if, full of care,

  We have no time to stand and stare.

  No time to stand beneath the boughs

  And stare as long as sheep or cows.

  No time to see, when woods we pass,

  Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

  “Good. That’s enough for the present. Now take out your slates and copy it down from the board.”

  Something caught her eye.

  “Eighty-One, did you hear me?” She hammered her desk with the cane. “Stand up. What were you doing just now?” She whisked to the back of the room, her black robes flying out behind her.

  “Stand up, Eighty-One! Now, what were you doing under the desk?”

  The boy, gangly, tall for his eight years, stood up awkwardly. His shaved head showed a bruise of mauve and yellow spreading from the left temple. The previous day his head had been banged against the corridor wall, punishment for having dropped his breakfast bowl. He had a cold sore on his lip, and like the rest of the boys, the sickly pallor and soulless eyes of the undernourished and uncared for.

  “I dropped my slate, Sister.” He held it out in his trembling hands as if to prove the point, because he did not know what else to do.

  “And why did you drop it?” she snapped back. The room was hushed. The boy did not know how to answer because he knew that whatever reason he gave would be wrong.

  “Well, we’re all waiting. Aren’t we, class?” She swept an arm in a giant arc to encompass the group.

  “Yes, Sister!” the class chorused back. But Eighty-One remained silent, staring down at the bench.

  “Well, since you are so stupid as to not know why you dropped it, I shall have to tell you. You dropped your slate because you were not paying attention.” Her heartless words struck him like so many sharp stones. She placed the end of the cane under his chin and used it to force his head up. “How many times this month have you dropped your slate in my class, Eighty-One?”

  “Two times, Sister.”

  “Not ‘two times.’ The correct answer is ‘twice.’ Now, can we try that again, using a complete sentence?”

  The boy swallowed hard and began.

  “I have…dro…drop…dropped my slate…twiced, twice this…mon…month, Sister.”

  “Good. And now today will be the third time, won’t it?” She grabbed him by the shoulder as he struggled to get his legs over the bench, and marched him to the front of the room.

  “Hands out!” she ordered.

  She pulled up the sleeve of her habit and, taking careful and calculated aim, brought the cane down again and again, like a door opening and closing on trapped hands. As she thrashed him, she screamed out the words of reprimand.

  “You. Dirty. Filthy. Useless. Boy. You. Will. Not. Drop. Your. Slate. In. My. Class. Again.”

  Fifteen words and fifteen lashes of the cane. The room quivered with her anger and the boy’s fear.

  When she’d finished, she ordered Eighty-One to go and stand in the corner. But, instead of obeying, he swayed, before collapsing at her feet, his bruised head and ashen face hitting the floor with a dull thud. There was a gasp from the class as Sister Veronica leaned over the supine figure.

  “Get up, you lazy wretch!”

  But the boy did not flinch. He was unconscious. There was a trickle of blood coming from his left ear and pooling onto the floor.

  The nun ran to the door and shouted for Bartley, the caretaker. He came presently and removed Eighty-One from the room.

  “Take him to the infirmary,” she ordered.

  Then she turned back to the class. “The rest of you, get the verse copied out now.”

  Twenty heads dropped to the task.

  They had suffered and seen so much violence that their fainting comrade did not upset them unduly. Their only consolation was that, so far, they had escaped the nun’s fury. Their only goal was for the situation to continue so, until they reached the close of the lesson.

  Eighty-Six sat uneasily, changing his weight from one hip to the other, trying not to attract notice. The cake of soap he’d been forced to swallow earlier was exacting a scorching revenge: burning a steady path from the top of his gullet all the way down to his stomach. His whole body ached, his clothes were sodden, and the cough that had brought him so much grief threatened to betray him yet again. He wanted desperately to cry out, wanted despera
tely to die. But never having experienced—even for one minute—freedom from fear, he knew that even the bleakest choices were not his to make. In those agonizing circumstances he did what was demanded of him, and strove, trembling, to twist out the letters with his chalk; for now, his redemption lay in a labor of meaningless words that formed a meaningless verse.

  He was on the fourth line: “And stare as long as sheep or cows.” He did, however, know what sheep and cows looked like. There were pictures of them on the wall under the heading “Old MacDonald’s Farm.” When he grew up he wanted to be a farmer. He pictured himself like Mr. MacDonald, with a cocked hat and a crooked staff, standing out in a green field, a collie dog with muddied paws cavorting about him. He could hear the bleating and mooing animals, and see them run toward him to be fed.

  “You’ve stopped writing, Eighty-Six. You are finished then?” The nun bent over him.

  “No, Sister.” He looked up.

  “Then stop daydreaming and get on with it.” She moved to the next boy, and then turned back to him, prodding him with the cane. “And sit like a Christian on that seat.”

  He sat properly, as instructed, and the pain properly beat through him, and his daydream blurred and ran. At the end of the lesson he was left with the ungraspable meaning of the chalked letters on the slate, the sight of the blood upon the floor and the vision of his comrade toppling.

  None of them knew, as they filed out of the room, that they would never see Eighty-One again.

  Chapter fourteen

  Drinks on the house for me two friends here and your good self, Slope, please!” Jamie slapped a ten-pound note down on the bar counter.

  He was celebrating the decision to straighten himself out, cut down on the booze and the fry-ups, and make a new man of himself. Tomorrow he’d be in purgatory, he reminded himself, so tonight he might as well visit heaven.

  It was Saturday night, though early; O’Shea’s bar was not yet thronged. Beside Jamie sat Paddy McFadden and Matty Dougan. In the back room, out of sight, a few young men were playing darts, among them Minnie Sproule’s wayward son Chuck.

  “Have you won the football pools or something?” Slope pressed two glasses under the Black Bush optics and busied himself with the order.

  “No, I haven’t won nothing but the right to enjoy meself,” said Jamie, a little mournfully, “on this, my last night before I go on a diet and cut down on this stuff.”

  He took the glass, looked longingly into the amber liquid, turning it this way and that with reflective reverence.

  “Christ, you’re mental! Lent’s seven bloody months away.” Slope palmed the note and placed the change at Jamie’s elbow. “But then you wouldn’t know that, since you’ve been missin’ Sunday Mass.” He imitated Maisie Ryan’s accent and glared past Jamie’s ear with mock reproach.

  “Aye, she’s a right oul’ bitch that one.”

  “Who’s that?” Paddy and Matty asked almost in unison.

  “That nosy oul’ whore, Maisie Ryan.” Jamie took a swig of his whiskey.

  “I’d pay no attention to that one,” Paddy said. “Not content unless she’s givin’ out about something. No man or children to look after, that’s the trouble with her.”

  “Well, the next time she tackles me about not goin’ tae Mass,” said Jamie, suddenly emboldened by the booze, “I’ll kick her big arse for her, so a will.”

  Slope was called to the back for an order, and Jamie’s intention to defame Maisie’s character hung in the air like a noxious gas. Matty came to the rescue and changed the subject.

  “And why would you want to be goin’ on a diet, Jamie? Sure there’s nothing much wrong with you the way you are.”

  “Och now, there’s a lot that could be fixed. Dr. Brewster says if I cut back on the fry-ups it’ll help me heart and me back and all.”

  They all three stared at the blue-veined Formica and considered the wisdom of this. Matty was the first to speak.

  “I wouldn’t bother with all that. Sure, none of us is gettin’ no younger and we’re all gonna end up wearin’ the wooden overcoat soon enough.” Matty carried the attitude of the eternal pessimist; a man who felt badly when he felt good for fear he’d feel worse when he felt better.

  He had the appearance and mannerisms of someone who’d never been young at any time. His sharp, pitted face looked as though it had come to life at the hands of a chisel-happy sculptor who’d mislaid his spectacles that day. The cheeks and eye sockets were hollowed to the bone, the nose too long and dangerously pointed; the mouth a single, daring, lopsided hammer-blow that could never be righted through smiles or talk. He was a farmer, like Jamie, unmarried, and spectacularly uninterested in most matters that did not concern the land, the weather and the rising price of things. Unlike Jamie, he had no fat to lose. His clothes hung loose from his mop-shaft frame.

  “Well, there’s another wee reason I want-a sort meself out,” Jamie said. “Paddy here knows what it is, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it at this present moment in time.” He tapped the side of his nose. “If you get my drift, Matty. No offense intended atall, atall.”

  “Oh, none took.”

  “Now, your secret’s safe with me, Jamie, right enough.” Paddy shifted in his seat and stifled a whiskey yawn.

  “Aye, every man has a right to his privacy,” said Matty, wondering deeply what Jamie might be up to, all sorts of ideas and notions flying through his head. For he looked on Jamie as a creature cut from the same cloth as himself. Of similar age, both wifeless and childless, living on inherited land, with dreams shored up in their heads like the sun-cracked peat in the bog.

  “Well said, Matty,” Paddy agreed. “I was just—”

  He didn’t get time to finish because at that moment a loud scuffling was heard outside the door—as if a bull and a sow were having a quarrel up against it. A few seconds later, the door burst open. All three turned on their stools to witness the arrival of Declan Colt & The Silver Bullets. Two of the band members, red-faced and breathless, were wrestling large amplifiers and cased instruments before them. They nodded sidelong at the trio as they passed.

  Taking up the rear was the lead singer himself, his hands swinging leisurely by his sides, a cigarette dipping at the left of his mouth, a stetson on his head. He wore a purple satin shirt, its collar spread flat, like the wingspan of a peregrine falcon, a silver vest edged with gold brocade and a pair of tight white bell-bottoms with corresponding trim. About his hips, a belt of carved silver Indian squaw heads, whose plaits and feathers tinkled as he walked. On his feet a pair of rawhide Mexican boots with pointed toes, red tassels and steel-capped heels. In this garb, Declan saw himself as elegant; imagined himself as an Irish Willie Nelson, minus the braids.

  “How you, boys?” He nodded at the group and strutted toward the back room. He liked the ring of his steel heels on the tiled floor announcing his arrival, and the sound of his fake Texas drawl.

  The boys at the bar responded, but Declan didn’t stop for small talk. His imagined fame was like a peacock’s plumage rising, a waving fan he rarely saw beyond.

  “Oh, Declan!” Jamie shouted after his glittering back, “I brung the wee accordjin with me just in case you want a wee filler later on, like.”

  Declan turned, tinkling, his thumbs stuck in his belt. His own interests were being served.

  “Good man yourself, Jamie. If it gets busy we’ll sure need you for sure.”

  He disappeared.

  A great sense of wellbeing broke out in Jamie. The booze and the thought of his future performance were unleashing a rare happiness, watering his weak courage to produce a plant of some size. He returned, smiling and contented, to his conversation.

  Time passed, with the three friends smoking and drinking, picking over bones of gossip and farm talk. They hardly noticed as the premises began to fill up. The door behind them rarely rested, admitting mostly couples: dedicated fans of Declan Colt and his band. The husbands: shiny-faced, freed from the fields and construction s
ites, eager for the drink and carousing. The wives: smiling thinly, fearful of what mayhem might lie ahead.

  Jamie and his comrades knew most of the Saturday night revelers, and if a stranger appeared they would look at him slyly and speculate as to who he might be, where he might be from, and what he might be doing in those parts—and with whom, if applicable.

  More time passed. More men began to thicken at the bar, some in their Sunday suits, the wifeless ones in their workaday clothes. Smoke smogged the air, voices roared out of blazing faces under the heat of the drink, the rumpus and gathering crowd. Sometimes an imagined slight brought a raised fist or a killer look; ideas and opinions formed in youth and set in stone had made inflexible men of them all.

  Slope’s wife Peggy joined him behind the bar. Known “affectionately” as the Bacon-Slicer, she was a no-nonsense woman, lean as a fence post, with a sharp face and a nose like a bill-hook. Her eyes darted among the crowd to target and evict trouble if she saw it. She hated the pub and the men and the drink, and kept Slope on a short leash with her vicious tongue. She had concluded long ago that he and the business were her combined penance for having slept with him before wedlock, producing a daughter, who hated them both. So she “offered it up” a silver cross from the shrine at Knock dangled at her throat as her work-worn hands sudded and stacked the glasses.

  “How do, Peggy,” Jamie attempted the greeting. He was at that slack-jawed phase of the inebriation process, risking only a few words at a time, lest he might appear completely looped. The accordion sat on the floor by his feet. Jamie was oiling himself toward picking it up, to being the center of attention soon.

  Peggy glanced up from the steaming sink, her pained expression breaking into a reluctant smile. “Keepin’ well, are ye, Jamie?”