The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [78]
Brother Kennedy turned on his four victims: “Oh no, you couldn’t just show a little respect. You couldn’t use a free class for some useful purpose. You had to start acting the blackguard and draw attention to yourselves, didn’t you? I’m still supposed to be resting, you know. I’ll learn you manners!”
He leathered each of them twice on each hand and sent them back to their places.
“Copy that fifty times before the end of this class and no messing! If you’re not finished, you will stay back after school to finish.”
Brother Kennedy started pacing round the lab. He stopped behind Brian Egan and stared over his shoulder. The boy sensed Kennedy behind him and shrank down into his shoulders. He continued to write nervously under the scrutiny.
“Perhaps you can tell me what that is supposed to be,” he said, pointing at Egan’s copybook.
“Fortunate,” answered Egan, his voice hesitant against the coagulating resentful silence that was emanating from the rest of the class.
“Spell it.”
“F-O-R-T-U-N-E-A-T-E.”
“Is that so? Look at the board! How many E’s in fortunate?”
“One, Brother.”
“Yes. One, Brother. For God sake, you can’t even copy down from the board! What sort of eejit are you?” Brother Kennedy leathered Egan twice on his writing hand.
From the other side of the lab there came the sudden metallic crash of a Geometry set hitting the floor.
“What clumsy fool did that?” barked Brother Kennedy.
“I did,” called Scully, much to the relief of Shorthall, whose Geometry set he had just deliberately pushed onto the floor.
“Get out to the line!”
“Which line?” asked Scully.
“Over there by the door!” snarled Brother Kennedy.
Scully nodded solemnly to himself and bounded out to the line, satisfied that Kennedy’s fuse was now lit. Picking on Egan like that was not on. There was something broken inside Egan that made Scully weirdly protective.
“You expect me to correct that tiny handwriting, do you, Mr. Sullivan?”
Finbar froze in his seat. He’d read Scully’s signal. Was there a perfect wrong answer to this question? He could feel Mullen tense beside him as if waiting for the blow. He was trapped. Now that he actually wanted to annoy Brother Kennedy, he couldn’t think of the right wrong thing to say.
“Brother, can I bring me lines out to the line?” bellowed Scully suddenly.
Kennedy spun around and stared carefully at Scully, checking for any sign of disrespect or slyness. Finding none, he gruffly nodded his assent and returned to baiting Finbar.
“Start that one again! Make it legible!”
Scully grabbed his jotter and returned to the line. There he made an awkward show of trying to lean on the window-sill and write, the exaggerated eagerness of his movements conveying its message to the rest. They were going out of their way to provoke Kennedy. This was another blackout.
The Brother stood over Finbar and watched carefully as he rewrote the line in unnaturally large letters. Kennedy gently tapped his leather against his cassock in anticipation of the slightest mistake. Finbar let the pen take over and suddenly there it was in large block letters: IF I HAD GIVEN THE SHITEST BIT OF THOUGHT—
“Out to the line!” rasped Brother Kennedy, and snapped his knuckles hard across the back of Finbar’s head.
“An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leabharlann?” (May I go to the library?)
Brother Kennedy turned and saw McDonagh standing at the end of the workbench.
“What?” asked Brother Kennedy, bewildered.
“An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leabharlann?” repeated McDonagh more urgently.
Kennedy continued to stare at him.
McDonagh started to make little jigging movements and tried again: “An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an liathróid?” he tried hopefully. (May I go to the ball?)
In time, with Brother Kennedy’s gradual understanding that