by Doyle, Paddy
‘Lick that spoon clean and swallow,’ she demanded. I hated the stuff and made no secret of that. I used to hold it in my mouth hoping the nun would go away so that I could spit it out. She stayed, watching, until my mouth was empty. Everyone got a spoonful of syrup of figs once a week. As I was washing my mug and plate she asked me to take a message up the town for her. She didn’t wait for an answer, just rushed back into the kitchen and emerged a few moments later carrying a canework basket, with a live chicken inside.
‘You know where the other convent is?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ I hesitated before adding, ‘Mother.’ My eyes were riveted on the basket. She held it up for me to take from her and when I didn’t take it immediately she left it on the floor. The top was held closed with two leather straps and buckles. The chicken poked its head out through a grille on one side. Then it began to flutter about, frightened. I lifted the basket, holding the grille section towards my legs, thus allowing the chicken to take a peck at me. I jumped, and quickly turned it the other way round.
‘Give that message to Mother Immaculate,’ she said.
I walked out of the dining hall, through the assembly hall into the yard where I was immediately surrounded by inquisitive children.
‘What’s in the basket? Where are you going?’ Some laughed at the difficulty I was having in holding the basket steady. It was heavy and I had to stop repeatedly in order to change it from one hand to the other.
The street near the school was quiet, and the houses on each side of it basked in the sun. At one of the houses two old men leaned over their half-door, both smoking pipes and wearing hats. They took it in turns to spit out onto the street or greet people going by. I had often heard the older boys talk about these men. They were brothers, known as the two Toms. Tom Dee and Tom Tee. I had heard more than once that they had a big hole in the floor just inside the door of their house and that one of their ‘tricks’ was to try and lure children in, so they would fall into it. Once dead, the children were fed to the greyhounds they kept in the backyard. I believed the story and shivered as I walked by, even though I was on the opposite side of the street. Out of the corner of my eye I watched, just in case one of them chased me.
An inquisitive dog sniffed at the basket. As he barked the bird became frightened and fluttered furiously. I was still terrified of dogs.
‘Go away,’ I said.
My heartbeat quickened and my breath became uneven and hurried. I became very frightened. The barking dog attracted more dogs and as they followed me I began to run. They ran too, snapping at the chicken. I held the basket high in the air and screamed. Some of the dogs jumped, bared their teeth and growled viciously again. People rushed to their front doors, some said that none of the dogs would bite, others told me to stop running. One man tried to stop me by saying that it was the chicken they were after. Nothing they said eased my fear. I continued running.
Ahead of me I could see the green gate leading into the convent. When I reached it I grabbed the latch and quickly pushed the gate open. I kicked out at the dogs to get them away from me before banging the gate shut. I stood with my back to the wooden gate listening to the barking animals. I was perspiring heavily and as I looked at the basket now lying on the gravel path I began to cry uncontrollably, sobbing hysterically, fighting for each breath.
I badly needed to go to the toilet. I undid the braces holding the buttons at the back of my trousers. In this hunched position, I defecated on the gravel. There was never toilet paper supplied in the school, but out there in the open I instinctively wanted to wipe my backside and looked around for something I could use, there was nothing. I pulled my trousers back on and stuffed my shirt inside them before using my foot to shift some stones into a pile to cover the stool. Just as I was finishing off the gravel mound I heard footsteps coming towards me from around a bend on the walkway to the convent.
I grabbed the basket and took a quick glance at the pile of stones, pressed lightly on it with my foot, picked up the basket, and was just about to move off when a tall nun asked me what I was doing.
‘It’s a message for Mother Immaculate,’ I answered nervously.
‘I am Mother Immaculate,’ she said and reached out to take the basket. It was then she noticed the pile of stones.
‘What is this?’ she said, pointing. I told her about being chased by the dogs, that I was tired, and had sat down to play with the stones. Then she asked me to leave the basket down, before walking towards the heaped stones.
She kicked them. I watched as her shoe became embedded in the mixture of gravel and excrement. Her anger at me was obvious from the expression on her face.
‘You filthy dirty little pup,’ she said, ‘you will be severely punished for this.’
I tried to speak but she wouldn’t allow me to. I wanted to explain how frightened I had been, and how I couldn’t help doing what I had done, but she wouldn’t listen. I offered an apology but she ignored me.
She rushed over to a patch of grass and dragged her shoe back and forth through it trying to clean it. ‘You will pay for this, you dirty brat. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, you’ll pay for this.’ The idea of running did occur to me but I realized that such a move would make my situation worse. Mother Immaculate strode forward and grabbed me by the ear lobe.
‘If I had a dog’s lead I’d put it around your neck,’ she said, ‘because it’s only dogs that do what you have done.’
The basket remained on the ground as she opened the gate, and began walking me back down the town while holding me by the ear.
Inside St Michael’s I was pushed towards the part of the yard where Mother Paul was sitting.
‘What has the pup done now, Mother Immaculate?’ she enquired.
The two nuns discussed what had happened and I could see Mother Paul become more and more annoyed. They both looked down at Mother Immaculate’s shoe and then at me. Mother Paul grabbed me as the other nun left.
‘Why didn’t you go to the toilet before you left?’ she asked.
‘Because I didn’t want to, Mother,’ I answered.
‘But you should have gone,’ she yelled, as she hit me across the face, ‘instead of behaving like a wild animal.’
I remained silent. I saw the cane slide down from under her sleeve and it swished across my legs.
‘That hurts,’ I shouted.
‘It will hurt a lot more I promise before I’m finished with you. You’re no better than a dog.’ She hit me with the cane again before ordering me to go to the dormitory and wait for her. As I walked away from her she shouted, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, an altar boy. You’re a disgrace. And you better start walking properly or you’ll get more of this cane than you bargained for.’ Nothing had ever been said to me before about my manner of walking. I bowed my head and watched my feet. I could see nothing wrong, yet somehow I had become conscious of every step I was taking, and was aware that unless I changed the way I walked, Mother Paul would be even more severe in her punishment of me.
As I slowly made my way up the long wooden stairs to the dormitory I was followed by another boy.
‘Mother Paul said you’re not to lie on your bed, or sit on it. You’re to stand beside it until she has time to deal with you.’
The dormitory was cold and dark even though the sun was shining. I stood by my bed as I had been told, too frightened to do anything else. From the dining room, I could smell food and hear the sounds of the other boys having dinner. I was hungry. When dinner was finished I could hear them playing ‘tig’. I knew that others would be playing priests and altar boys. I wondered who was acting as priest, since it was usually me who played that role.
I began to cry remembering the last time I had been beaten, the stinging of the cane and the nun’s taunting as she delighted in my terror. Without warning the image returned of a man’s body trembling violently as it hung from a short length of rope tied to an alder tree. It became so real that I was certain I could touch it. I shi
fted uneasily from one foot to the other, trying desperately to block out the vision. I trembled violently and then screamed, a high-pitched, piercing cry that echoed through the stillness of the dormitory down to the assembly hall. As I yelled at the image to ‘get away’, Mother Paul grabbed me tightly by the shoulders and slapped me across the face.
‘What in the name of God,’ she shouted, ‘is the matter with you?’
‘I saw the man hanging.’
‘What man?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, Mother, just a man.’
She hit me again. ‘This nonsense will have to stop, it’s distressing the other children. What you are seeing is just in your imagination. People don’t hang themselves. You’re here for us to look after because your parents are dead. You’ll see them again when you die, provided you get to heaven and that is where they are.’
I remained silent. She told me to get undressed and prepare to take the punishment I deserved. I trembled, taking my clothes off, from both the cold and the knowledge of what I knew I was going to have to endure. Mother Paul walked towards the dormitory door, took a large key from the pocket of her habit and locked it. I hadn’t finished undressing by the time she returned to my bedside. She became agitated and shouted at me to hurry.
‘The sooner we get this over,’ she said, ‘the sooner I can be getting on with my work.’
Once undressed, I lay on my side. Mother Paul told me to lie face down. I noticed a tremor in her voice, a nervous excitement.
‘I’m only going to give you a light spanking,’ she said, ‘as long as you promise not to tell anyone I let you off with the punishment you should be getting.’
I didn’t answer her. I tensed my body and waited for the cane to strike, but it didn’t. Her hand slapped me gently on the bare backside, then with the other hand she rubbed the area she had just hit. I was nervous, desperately anxious, and unsure. I could hear her breath, deep and rushing through her nostrils. She ran her fingers down the centre of my back and out towards my shoulder-blades. Then she eased them along the full length of my body in long, gentle, sweeping movements.
‘Lie over on your back,’ she said.
I turned slowly and looked into her flushed face. She held my limp penis in her hand and drew back the foreskin. It hurt slightly but I was too frightened to say anything.
‘You must make sure that you do this every time you are washing yourself, it’s very important to keep that part of your body clean.’ She moved the skin backwards and forwards until I had an erection. A sensation I had never experienced swept through my body causing me to squirm and writhe involuntarily. When it had passed I sobbed uncontrollably, frightened at what had happened.
She explained that what I had experienced sometimes happened to boys and men when they are washing their ‘private parts’ and added that it was not a sin.
‘Sometimes boys and men play with themselves for pleasure. Not only is that a sin, it is a mortal sin which can only be forgiven by a Bishop in confession. It is up to him to decide whether to give absolution or not. If he doesn’t, then that black stain will remain on your soul for ever. If that happened you certainly would never see your father or mother again with God in Heaven. Now get dressed, and remember, nobody is to be told I let you off so lightly.’ She unlocked the dormitory door and watched as I dressed.
Downstairs, in the assembly hall, I could hear the other children playing, and when I had my clothes on I walked towards the door leading to the stairs. As I passed her, Mother Paul hit me across the back of the head with the full force of her hand and, losing my footing, I fell down the stairs. I tried to break my fall as I tumbled but could not. I landed on my back in the hall. She rushed down the stairs after me shouting, ‘You filthy dirty pup.’
I got to my feet and ran.
‘Stop, stop,’ she screamed, ‘before I have to deal with you again.’ Her tenderness in the dormitory had evaporated and was now replaced by a rage I had not seen in her before. When she eventually caught me she hit me across the face and I ran away from her. She shouted at some of the other boys to catch me. One grabbed my jumper and held it until she took over.
‘How many times am I going to have to ask you to stop dragging that foot after you?’ She struck me again, this time on the right side of my face.
‘If you don’t stop dragging it then as sure as God is in Heaven, I’ll ensure that you don’t serve Mass again.’
The idea of not being allowed to serve Mass hurt more than the physical punishment. Walking away, I looked down at my feet and wondered what I was doing wrong.
Mother Paul brushed past me and indicated with her finger that I was to follow. She walked towards the boiler room, opened the doors and pushed me inside. I tripped and fell. She didn’t wait to see if I was all right. The doors closed and I heard her putting a brush across the two handles so that I could not open them. I remained on the floor crying for a few minutes before realizing the torture was finished.
The boiler room was dark except for a weary yellow flame trying to ignite the coals which had been stacked in the grate of the black range. Through the iron bars of the door I watched the flame leaping and bobbing. Slowly the coals lit and the room warmed, I was content in the heat and happy to remain where I was for a long time. I thought of hell as I watched the coals redden and once again I wished Mother Paul would go straight there and burn.
As the heat of the fire intensified, so did the noise. An eerie howl as the hot air was drawn up the chimney. I found a piece of old newspaper on the floor and began to tear it into little pieces which I tossed into the fire. It burned quickly, before its blackened remains rose on the hot air currents and disappeared.
The peace of the boiler room was broken by the sound of the brush being removed from the door. Mother Paul pushed the doors open, allowing the colder air of the outside to sweep through the room and chill the warmth I had been so comfortable in.
She told me to go to the dining room and have my supper. When I was finished, the boots belonging to the other boys had to be polished and shone. One of the other boys would help me.
I took my place at the table, waiting for the big jug of cocoa to come around to fill my tin mug. The bread was coated in lard that stuck to the roof of my mouth as I ate it, allowing the weak, watery cocoa to take the greasy feeling from my mouth.
Like every meal, it was taken in silence. After supper as I walked out of the dining room, Mother Paul grabbed me by the arm and asked me if there was something wrong with my boots.
I told her they were a bit tight and that they were hurting my toes. They were not hurting me at all but I felt I had to offer some excuse in order to avoid further punishment.
‘Go to Mr O’Rourke in the morning and see if he can do anything about them for you,’ she said.
‘Yes, Mother,’ I replied.
When all the other boys were gone to the dormitory, John Cleary and I began the twice weekly task of polishing and shining their boots. On this occasion he did the polishing and I the shining. One by one, pair by pair, until all sixty pairs were finished. Then they had to be put into boxes on the wall, each box with its number corresponding to a tag on the back of every pair. It was a tedious and tiring process, but to relieve the boredom we chatted quietly to each other. Cleary asked why Mother Paul had called me a dirty little pup.
‘Because of the big gick I did under the stones up in the other convent.’
‘What gick?’ he laughed.
‘The one that Mother Immaculate stuck her foot in,’ I said.
John laughed hysterically. ‘Shut up,’ I said, knowing we would get into trouble if caught laughing or talking when we were supposed to be doing something. Invariably, when we were laughing, one or other of the nuns would accuse us of laughing or jeering at them, or talking about something dirty. Once we had finished and tidied away the tins of polish and brushes, we went to bed. It was late and most of the other boys were asleep. With a fleeting ‘good night’ we parted, he to one end o
f the big room and I to the other. At the sound of a nun approaching I took my hands from under the bedcovers and folded them prayer-like across my chest. She reminded me to include in my prayers all those who were so good to me, particularly the nuns who looked after me. Because of the fear of dying that had been instilled from my first days in the school, the prayer I said most fervently each night was: ‘If I should die before I wake . . .’ Mother Paul frequently reminded us that we could never tell the day, or the hour, when God would call.
Mr O’Rourke was the convent handyman. He did everything from farming the few acres of land the nuns had, to weeding the flowerbeds at the front of the convent. I went looking for him to see if he could do anything about my boots. He was an elderly man with wrinkled pock-marked skin and an almost bald head on which he wore a cap with the peak to one side. He was a quiet, soft-spoken, shy man. The first place I went to look for him was the farm. In the distance I saw him leading two horses as he steered a plough. The smell of freshly-turned earth was evident. Overhead a flock of birds swooped and dived to pick the succulent worms unearthed by the plough. I stood at the edge of the field watching man and animals move in unison. I watched birds fighting over juicy worms and waved to him but he didn’t notice. He was puffing contentedly at his pipe and concentrating on the furrow he was ploughing. When he eventually noticed me he took the pipe from his mouth, held it in his hand and spat onto the ploughed clay before waving back. Once finished, the horses were freed to roam an adjoining field. He walked towards me. The crests and troughs in the field exaggerated his limp, giving his body a deformed appearance. He greeted me with an affectionate toothless smile, enquiring what the nuns wanted this time. I told him that Mother Paul had sent me to him to see if he could do anything about my boots because they were too tight.
‘What I like about the ploughing is this,’ he said. ‘It’s grand to be out there on your own with the smell of the clay. I get away from the nuns for a while and I can smoke me ould pipe without a bother. Mind now, I wouldn’t say that to them, but I know you won’t say a word to anyone.’ He lifted his cap and wiped his head with the back of his right arm. Both of us stood there for a while looking out over the field he had just finished working on. The birds continued to land, grab at a worm and resume their flight, pursued by a more aggressive flyer anxious to have everything his way.
