The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [80]
In the silence before the response there was a worse one, the no-sound-at-all from Brother Kennedy.
The moment froze and hung in the air like the screeching, rending second before a thunderclap. Kennedy retched and choked and his right hand flailed in the air.
“What’s that, Brother? You’ll have to speak up, you miserable bastard,” said Egan, and stood up. This was not just badness. Egan had gone somewhere beyond reach. He wanted only vengeance. “Are ye all right there, Brother? Can we get ye anything? A kick in the head maybe?” Egan’s voice carried through the unbreathing silence around him like a scream.
Brother Kennedy struggled to speak and turned purple. The spittle rolled from his lips and down his chin.
“Are ye dead yet, ye bastard?” asked Egan. He was oblivious to the others who now watched in open-mouthed horror.
Brother Kennedy choked and gasped in a twitching heap on the floor. He stopped moving and then shuddered once more and was still.
A new layer of silence fell over the class. It was momentous, irreversible, and frightening. Boys moved forward to look at the inert heap of the Brother on the floor. He was done.
“Fucking bastard,” said Egan quietly.
Steeled by this response, the others sat back down in their places. Egan moved to the door, then turned and faced the rest of the class, his eyes two stony points of purpose that glinted with unholy energy in his weirdly calm face. His was the dreadful energy of someone with nothing left to lose. He started rubbing Kennedy’s lines off the blackboard and addressed the rest of them.
“Mr. Devlin didn’t come in. We were waiting for him when Brother Kennedy came in,” he began, his voice catching with invented upset and shock. “He was asking us questions about photosynthesis and suddenly he started coughing. We didn’t know what was happening. Then he started choking.” Egan’s voice was taut with emotion. He moved to the workbench and casually filled a beaker with water. “Brother Kennedy asked me to give him some water but before I gave it to him he just kind of collapsed.” The boy calmly poured a little water on the floor in demonstration and dropped the beaker beside Kennedy’s inert shape. His voice was now strained with suppressed hysteria and tears expertly welled up in his eyes.
Instantly some switch in Egan seemed to click and he looked fiercely at the rest of the class. “That’s how it happened. Right? Right, Scully? Right, Lynch? Cos we’re all in it now,” he said in a low voice.
“Right then. Turn on the waterworks and go for help,” he added brightly, then ran out the door and down the corridor. “Help! Help! Quick! Help!” His footsteps and the tears in his voice echoed through the monastery and covered the shriek of twisting wood as the stairs in the bell tower writhed and torqued.
28
The bowels of the earth,” intoned Mr. Pollock, hefting the hunk of rock in his palm. He walked distractedly to the window and looked out into the haze. “On a clear day you can see Moscow from here.” This was his token gesture to what was supposed to be Geography class. “What did I say, Mr. Leake?”
There was silence. Mr. Pollock spun around on his crepe-heel with a squeak and glowered at where Leake was all too obviously not sitting.
“And where might our friend Mr. Leake be today? Some snooker hall? Police custody?”
“His ma died last night,” said McDonagh from the back of the class.
“Ah, I see,” murmured Mr. Pollock as if this was all part of some childish plot to make him look stupid. “Well then, Mr. McDonagh, perhaps you would like to tell us what I said?”
“And where might our friend Mr. Leake be today? Some snooker hall? Police custody?” repeated McDonagh.
“No, Mr. McDonagh, sor, before that.”
McDonagh looked blankly at the teacher. He had not been paying the slightest attention.
“Hmmmm,” mused Mr. Pollock, giving the signal for a free-for-all.
“Sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir,” hissed the boys in counterfeit eagerness