The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [20]
“In strict confidence. That’s a laugh!” muttered Mr. Laverty to himself. “Youse have five minutes to finish your essays,” he informed the class, and went back to embellishing his résumé in the hope of wrangling his way onto the junior staff at Southwell. Anywhere, anywhere but here.
“Sir, how do you say ‘My brother found a gas mask in the canal’ in French?”
“Just use something else.” Christ on a crutch, would this class never end?
A slight commotion outside the door caught Mr. Laverty’s eye. Evidently Brother Mulligan and Brother Cox had lost all interest in using Egan’s first name because they were now hitting him with all their limited strength and pushing him toward the stairs.
“A joke? A joke? I’ll show you a joke!” shouted Brother Mulligan as he ineffectually flailed at Egan with his leather. “Get down those stairs in front of me!”
“Settle down,” snapped Mr. Laverty as a ripple of murmurs made its way round the class. He folded up his job application and put it in his bag. He glanced at the clock and the Angelus bell rang out from the yard below. “Pass your essays up to the top of the row, the angel of the Lord declared unto Mary …” he said, waving his right hand in front of his face in a barely discernible blessing motion.
“And she conceived of the Holy Ghost,” mumbled the boys as they stood up and passed their tatty essays to the front.
Outside, Egan’s receding voice echoed up the stairs: “But, but, but, but …”
“I’ll but you! Into the monastery!” shouted Brother Cox.
“Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is …” continued Mr. Laverty as the lunchtime bell ground out its promise of temporary relief as soon as the praying was over.
In the ground floor Chemistry lab Mr. Barry thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his once-white lab coat and sighed heavily. He regarded the rows of confused first year faces in front of him and felt a hot, withering flush of despair at the thought that he would have to teach these dim-witted boys three times a week for the next nine months.
“We’ll try it once again: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. You there with the greasy hair, repeat.”
“Ehm, energy can either be created or …” struggled You There with the Greasy Hair.
“Destroyed …” prompted Mr. Barry impatiently.
“Destroyed …” repeated You There hopefully, and fell silent again.
“Enough!” sighed Mr. Barry. “Copy this down and write it out fifty times for homework. Let’s see if some of it sticks in those empty heads of yours.”
He turned to the two-tiered blackboard and rolled it to a blank spot. He had deliberately left some fifth year notes on photosynthesis there to show these puny first years what a wonderful, arcane, and difficult subject he was master of. Just as he put the chalk to the blackboard there was a heaving creak from the back of the class.
The wall supporting the huge periodic table gave way and the whole thing collapsed onto the workbench below. Mr. Barry spun around to watch glass fly all over the place as the wooden bars from the top and bottom of the chart smashed retorts, beakers, alembics, test tubes, and glass piping that had been sitting on the bench.
As suddenly as there had been noise there was silence again, and Mr. Barry looked at the crumpled mess of masonry, canvas, wood, and glass at the back of the lab. So many years of his career had been put into that periodic table and making the stupider boys polish the glassware instead of doing experiments. He remembered all the times he had climbed up with his red paint to add new elements to the table as they were discovered. It was what photo albums were to other people. This was the chart of his career and now it was a crumpled, seething heap being eaten away by the acids carelessly left sitting in the beakers. Heartlessly oblivious to the tragedy, the lunch bell rang. Mr. Barry hastily galloped through the Angelus and, deciding that there might be some harmful fumes from the concoction that had formed on the bench, he instructed the boys to leave quietly by the door that led into the