Edna O'Brien

by In the Forest (epub)

  Out in the yard, boys cuffing and roughing each other. He stood apart with a group of boys studying him, making a ring around him. Where’s he from. Ask him. Ask ’im. Down the country. Where’s that. Where’s down the country. Ha. Ha. Ha. A Bogger. Has he got a cigarette? Hey, Rambo, got a fag. He doesn’t smoke. Eejit. Bogger. Give him a hook. Test his mettle. Show your mettle, Bogger. Clinging to his mammy’s knee. By the time the bell went they had him down on the ground kicking him until a boy called Bertie pulled them off. The tea was in mugs and the thick slices of bread were streaked with lard. Brother Finbar stood at the head of the table like he was an iron figure with iron rosary beads and an iron beard.

  ‘Eat your tea, boy.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘The boot is on the other foot now . . . there’s no guns here to scare people.’

  ‘I want to go home . . .’

  ‘You’ll go home when the boldness is gone out of you, however long that takes.’

  For two weeks he was assessed so as to be sent off to the other place. The Castle it was called, and it was run by the same order of Brothers and was miles from anywhere. The woman that assessed him sat him at a table and asked him questions, asked him if he had three wishes what they would be. He said he wanted to go home. Other boys told him he’d better get rid of the notion of going home. They said that once a person went to the Castle over yonder, they never got home. No use hoping. No use.

  The Castle had the same big gates and the same rules and the same cabbagy smell. The boys were older, rougher. On the first evening he was late being brought over in the van and he had his tea alone with a young Brother. He couldn’t swallow.

  ‘I have stomach cramps,’ he told the young Brother.

  ‘Drink a drop of hot tea, ’twill help you,’ the Brother said. He was a nice Brother and one side of his face was a raw red and he said that was called a strawberry face. He took different pieces of cutlery to draw a map of the country and then he put the sugar bowl down to show where he came from, a scenic place with mountains and a famous lake. He missed it. He said he was very young when he joined the order but they were a family of fourteen and with his face and everything there were no other chances for him.

  ‘How long will I be here?’

  ‘Years.’

  Brother Anthony ran off then, saying he had something for him. He thought it was a slice of cake but it wasn’t. It was a prayer that Brother Anthony had copied and that he read out to him - ‘Jesus said to them, when you make the two one and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner you shall enter the Kingdom '

  ‘A child and his mother are one.’

  ‘Ah, yes . . . but that’s secular and I am talking of being with God.’

  ‘Will I not be going home for Christmas?’

  ‘It’s not for me to say. Who’s at home?’

  ‘My sister and my pet fox ... I didn’t get to say goodbye to it.’

  ‘No use crying over these things . . . these losses.’ The rain was sliding down the window and plopping onto the flat roof.

  He tried. He tried to keep awake so as not to wet the bed, but he always fell asleep and he always wet the bed and he wakened with the smell of ugly wet and Brother Jude putting his hand in under the blanket and dragging him out by his mickey. You dirty thing, you dirty thing you. He brought him to a room that led off the dormitory. The strap was kept in a refrigerator there, to keep it cold and hard. It was a leather strap with studs down both sides of it. He was beaten on both cheeks of his bottom and on his legs and on his arms, but not his face. He was just punched on his face. When he got back to the dormitory boys came around his bed to know what happened, asking if Jude did any bit of flyfishing, or fiddled with his yoke. Lazlo led the interrogation. Lazlo was leader and they were all afraid of him because he was a schizophrenic. A schizophrenic meant that he heard voices and he could attack any boy if the voices told him to. Lazlo said that Jude was a wiggledy wiggledy wanker. Lazlo trained boys to be tough. He took them into the lavatory and made cuts on their wrists with a flick knife so they’d get used to the pain. Lazlo said a boy had to teach himself one thing, to hate them with a worse hate than they had for him. The flick knife had a wooden handle with a picture of a labrador on it.

  In the morning he got another beating from the prefect on account of the plastic sheet being wet and smelly. That beating was with the back of a lavatory brush. At Christmas his granny would come for him and bring him home and he would tell her everything and he would never have to come back. In the letters to his granny he had to say that he was a good boy and learning his lessons and getting a star for his subjects. The Brothers made them say that, made all the boys say it. He would not tell her about the beatings in the car when she came to fetch him, he would tell her at night when she tucked him up in bed.

  A psychiatrist saw him twice a week and asked him what he was afraid of. He said that he was afraid his grandmother would die because he had dreamt it. He had dreamt that his mother would die and she did. He didn’t say that he was afraid of Brother Jude or Lazlo because that would get him into a big mess. He was given the same three pretend wishes. He wished that his mother didn’t die and that he could go home and that he would never use a gun again. Other times he wouldn’t talk at all. Or he’d say funny things. He said, ‘Big fish eat little fish and little fish eat littler fish. Kangaroos have their own courts.’ Out in the fields where he and other boys worked digging potatoes, or pitting potatoes he ate them raw to show how tough he was.

  One morning it was a priest that rang a bell for breakfast. Father Damien. Boys said that Jude had gone crackers, had gone into the fields and stripped himself naked and ran off. His brown habit was found in the field and his beads and his sandals.

  Father Damien was home from Africa and had a tan from all the sunshine. He was not cross over the wet bed and called him Child - ‘What is it, Child, what is it, Child?’ Father Damien gave him a toffee. It was a white toffee with ground nuts in it. Lazlo and the other boys made fun of him. ‘Lick arse’ they called him for playing up to the priest.

  Father Damien told him one day that he was a lucky boy, he was going to be let help in the sacristy. He wouldn’t be an altar boy yet but he would train to be. He would fill the glass cruets with wine and with water and get the vases ready for the flowers. They were the first flowers he smelt in months. They were white with bits of yellow, the colour of egg yolk, and they grew wild at home. At home they were called bog-lilies.

  One evening after Benediction they were in the sacristy and Father Damien was wearing a white garment, like a gown, with big pockets in it. ‘Put your hand in my pocket, Child.’ There was a sweet in the pocket. Father Damien told him to keep his hand there until he was told not to. He felt the swellings, his own and the Father’s, and his cheeks got very red and he was hot and damp between his legs and Father Damien clung to him until he was finished. Then he said, ‘Good Child, good Child,’ and warned him not to tell.

  *

  Davey was his new friend. Davey was older but not like Lazlo. Davey was fourteen, nearly fifteen. He ran the disco. They had discos one Saturday a month and Davey danced with the best-looking girls, ‘motts’ he called them, and he steered them down to the back of the hall where it was dark. The girls were delinquents like them, they came in a bus from a convent ten miles away and two nuns stood up on the platform next to the player so as to keep an eye on what went on. They couldn’t see into the back of the hall where Davey and the big boys were lifting up girls’ jumpers and blouses. He danced with the small girls. Boys danced with girls their own age. The girls knew the steps better than he did. The big girls were motts and they had lipstick and fishnet stockings. Davey went in for the slow dancing and said he went through the girls like butter. ‘This is me new mott,’ he’d say of whatever girl he was dancing with. Once Davey had kissed a girl it was on to the next, because the more girls a lad had the greater his status. Status was a new word. Davey was his mento
r. He said that. Davey said learning in class was only a small part of a man’s education, fiddlesticks. The other thing Davey said was to drop a girl like a hot cake once she showed interest, got clingy. Hot cakes and hot crumpets were two different things, all part of girls’ pussies.

  The night of the Hallowe’en dance he got his first drink, cider. A lot of the boys were dead drunk and gassing outside in the yard. Two boys broke into a factory not far from the school and siphoned cider from vats into lemonade bottles. It tasted of apples. Davey called him aside, he had a plan and it was thus. Davey said that every Saturday there were games in the grounds, hurley and football and handball, priests and brothers and boys, all running in all directions, pandemonium. Davey said that young Mich would go into the chapel the next Saturday and open the back door that led out into a field and on down to the river. He wouldn’t be playing hurley that particular day because he would have a nose bleed. Davey would pay a rough Jackeen with a cigarette to give him a few punches and a humping nose bleed, dead easy. Davey said that they would probably find a boat or a canoe down by the river and they would drift out for miles and miles until they came to the city. Then they could be stowaways in a ship or go into town, whichever. He seemed to favour the town on account of having mates there, criminally minded like himself. He said it was brilliant crashing a car, either doing it alone or with a crowd, it gave a great buzz. Best of all was doing it with girls in a car because they lost their marbles on account of having such a big fright.

  He left the games field with a handkerchief to his nose and went into the chapel and no one paid any attention to him. He unbolted the back door and then hid in a confessional box until Davey came.

  Once out that door they ran helter skelter, down the fields to the river and along the river and over gates and fences and across fields, all the time hoping there’d be a boat moored at the next bend or the next but there wasn’t. He was proud of how fast he ran in the nailed boots. By the time it was dark they had come to an estate with a whole lot of houses and ponies in a paddock. There was a bonfire with kids around it. Davey said that they’d best chat up the kids. They were smoking and having a sing song. They were enjoying themselves and then a boy said ‘Jesus. Look.’ A car was coming into the field, the headlights full on. Someone

  had grassed. It was the white van from the Castle. The head Brother and two other Brothers and Lazlo and a boy jumped out. He ran to the river and jumped in clothes and all and he could feel the current pulling him along and he was happy because he was going to drown and he would never be going back to the Castle again. The boy that caught him was Lazlo, who got his own back on him for having dropped out of his gang and joined Davey’s. Lazlo held him under the water until he nearly drowned and brought him up and shook the water off him. Then he put him down again and held him and he was smothering and his head and his brain were all water and Lazlo wouldn’t let him up until he nearly died. ‘Lick arse, lick arse.’

  He was put in solitary and had to write down how bad he was. He had to write it hundreds of times. Christmas would be soon but he would not be going home. He didn’t cry much any more. And he could take the beatings. He stoppered the tears up, like putting a cork in a bottle. It got that it was just as bad between the beatings, waiting for the beatings. He never knew when they were coming for him. He was due a hundred lashes. He only cried when it came to Christmas because he was not let home. Most of the boys were let home, even Lazlo. His sister sent him a card with silver salt on it and he licked it and it tasted gritty. She said the family hoped he was well and that they missed him. They had been told about his running away and his aggressive behaviour and they were all praying that he would turn over a new leaf. She put kisses at the end. He cried at midnight mass because of the singing. A woman sang but he couldn’t see her because it was on tape. It was like hearing his mother singing in the kitchen, hearing her, but not seeing her. Father Damien called him aside after mass and asked him what he would like for Christmas. He said he would like a guitar. Father Damien gave him a teeny box of chocolates and a holy picture. He ate the chocolates on a garden seat and wondered if it would snow. The plants were all lying down, like someone had beaten them and they had no strength to get up.

  He was put working in the fields, after school, as a punishment. He and other boys were taking potatoes out of pits and putting them into sacks. Lazlo was in charge. When they’d finished they told him that they had some business with him and they went to the opposite end of the field away from the school where there was an old plough with a car cushion on it. They knew what he’d done with Father Damien and they said they were going to cut it off. He screamed and held onto it and begged and Lazlo said, ‘OK OK, off with a caution.’ They put him face down on the cushion and pulled his overalls off and they took turns.

  He could hardly walk back because he was so sore. And he was bleeding.

  He dreamt about running away because if he dreamt it it would happen. Himself and another boy were sent to the top gate every other morning to collect the milk. One morning, the other boy was sick so he went down alone. The routine was always the same; the driver got out the full crates, took the empty ones, and set off. When he was found out in the next big town, the driver said, ‘Holy heck.’ He told the driver that he’d been kept prisoner there and his grandmother and himself made a pact that he would run away when the opportunity came up. The driver didn’t believe him, but he knew the bastards they were, so he let him go.

  He ran towards home but he was not going home. Three nights on, soaked and scared, he was knocking on the door of Mr Cleary, a man he knew. The man couldn’t believe it, but he let him in and they dried him and gave him hot cocoa and he slept in the room with two of their sons, who were afraid of him. He knew they were afraid because when one went to the toilet the other went as well, so as not to be alone with him. The man had gone to the guards because there was a warrant out for him to go back to the place he ran away from. He got a reprieve for seven days. Then he got sick and the doctor came and he was going to be allowed fourteen days in all. He helped the man bring in the cows and do odd jobs in the fields.

  One evening the man was milking the cows and he stood beside him in the cow house and he told him the things that happened to him in the place and the man asked him several times if it was true. ‘God’s honour,’ he said, and the man hugged him and stopped milking and the dribbles of milk went over the floor. The man said he would talk to his wife and that they would take it up with the authorities. He was in their house then, part of their family. They had their dinner in the evening and the woman ladled out meat and vegetables into soup plates. They had apple pie or jelly after. Then the man opened the door and made some sort of cluck sound and his pet rabbits came out of their hutch and into the kitchen and ran around. The favourite, Dustin, climbed onto the man, onto his knee and then up onto his shoulders and nibbled at his ears. The others perched on the tiled kerb around the fire. Everyone laughed. He laughed too. This was home, a dinner, apple cake, a calendar on the wall, and a record put on for the rabbits to waltz to. In bed, the sons would try to get him to talk, to tell what it was like in the Castle, but he wouldn’t. He knew things that they didn’t know. Then one night he boasted about getting a blade and slitting his wrist and being in the ambulance, hopping along the dark road to Casualty and the twenty stitches he had. He told them how he bit the stitches and spat them out. He told them he was a head case and that Lazlo and the gang were scared to death of him. They knew he was sent away because of trying to shoot his father and the sergeant, everyone knew it. There was a hole in the panel of the door for everyone to see, for proof.

  One day after planting cabbages the man sat him down on a wooden seat in the front garden, to have a talk with him. He thought it was about going back, but it wasn’t. The man asked him if he would like to be part of their family, one of them, a son. He said he didn’t know.

  ‘Would you like me to adopt you,’ the man asked.

  ‘I don’t
know.’

  ‘Legally adopt you.’

  ‘Can you?’

  The man said it would take time, that he would have to go through all the correct channels, but he felt confident. His father had given the permission. His father didn’t want him back and his sister was gone away. She was gone to live with her granny. He’d seen her on a bus; she’d waved to him from the bus window and he waved back but the bus was moving. It was evening. The man asked him if he’d like a different name and he said he would, he would like to be called Caoilte, the name of the forest.

  It was about a month later that it came over him. He began to hate the rabbits and the attention they got, the fussing over them, the cluck cluck and oats put down on the kitchen floor for them, their supper. He hated other things too, the sons, pretending he was their brother when he wasn’t. He knew the movement of the rabbits, the time of evening they came out and frisked around the fields and nibbled at grass, same time as when the crows cawed and then the cluck cluck cluck and their trooping in to be petted. He went out to the field that bit earlier and took oats in a bit of cardboard and funnelled it out in little heaps. Several came across but there was one in particular that he decided he would like to kill. A namby pamby. A weakling. He struck the shovel down on the nape of its furry neck and it fell sideways like a glove. No one saw him. Next morning the dog brought the carcass and flung it on the steps. No one said anything.