The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [41]
Brother Boland shook and quaked and then tried to help Brother Galvin back into his bath chair.
“Take yer hands off me, ye Black and Tan bastard!” shrieked Galvin.
Brother Kennedy scrawled his signature all over Farrelly’s lines and moved on. He was peering suspiciously at Doyle’s lines when McDonagh and Bradshaw came in from the yard. He turned to the door and sneered at them: “Learnt your lesson, have you?”
“Yes, Brother,” they muttered, their teeth chattering with the cold.
“Good! Then I expect you will both be more than happy to show me your lines that I set you yesterday.”
McDonagh and Bradshaw moved to their desks and pulled out their copybooks.
“Bring them up here!” called Brother Kennedy, and bustled back up to the top of the class.
Bradshaw and McDonagh shuffled toward him with their copybooks. A tense silence fell over the class.
“So, my little meneen, feeling proud of yourselves, are you?”
The two boys stood there shivering and said nothing. Wet patches were beginning to show through their pants from their sodden underwear.
“Stand still when I’m talking to you!”
The silence in the class thickened.
“Hold up your copybooks!”
They held out their books in their shivering hands.
“Hold still! How do you expect me to correct this if you can’t hold it still?”
McDonagh managed to steady his hands and Brother Kennedy flicked over the pages in his copybook. Bradshaw’s copybook continued to twitch and jump in his shivering hands. Brother Kennedy’s leather flashed through the air and slapped loudly down on Bradshaw’s open copybook.
“Keep it still, damn you!”
Bradshaw looked up at the Brother. “I-I-I-I c-c-c-c-can’t!”
“Can’t or won’t? Out to the line!”
Bradshaw walked to the line and leaned with relief against the warm radiator.
“Stand away from the wall, Mr. Bradshaw!” shouted Brother Kennedy, then turned back to McDonagh and flicked through the rest of his lines.
“What is this?” he asked in a low, suspicious voice, and pointed at McDonagh’s copybook.
“Ehm, a jam stain, Brother.”
“A jam stain? A jam stain? How dare you ask me to correct this sloppy mess! Do you think I’m going to wade through the filthy leavings of your tea to correct your work? Do you?”
“No, Brother,” McDonagh mumbled.
“Then do it again! And cleanly! Out to the line!”
McDonagh moved over to the line and stood there unsure if he wanted to curl up somewhere and cry or just launch himself at Brother Kennedy and kick him in the bollocks until he blacked out.
Brother Kennedy walked back to Doyle’s desk and picked up his copybook again. He flicked over the pages and then held the copy in front of Doyle’s face: “Where are the rest of them? There are pages missing!”
“Me little brother must’ve tore them out,” explained Doyle matter-of-factly.
“Out to the line!”
“I left me copybook on the bus.”
“Out to the line!”
“There was a power cut and me mother couldn’t find the candles.”
“Out to the line!”
Stealthily the message transmitted itself around the class. They were going for a blackout, as it was known when the whole class deliberately got themselves put out to the line. The boys carefully put away their copybooks and sat waiting for Brother Kennedy to approach.
Finbar noticed this and thought quickly. This was unfair. He had got the translation right and he still had to do the lines. He wasn’t going to get a beating for not doing lines that he had done even though he shouldn’t have had to do them in the first place, so there! He left his copybook sitting open on the desk in front of him and folded his arms.
“The cat ate it.”
“Out to the line!”
“Me sister filled me pen with invisible ink and threw me pencil in the fire.”
“Out to the line!”
“Me da took it to work by mistake.”
“Out to the line!”
“I got the shit kicked out of me in the jakes of a pub.”
By this stage Brother Kennedy was barely even listening.
“I wasn’t in yesterday.”
“Well, you’re in today! Out to the