The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [82]
Scully’s mind drifted through the blur of words around him and down the front of Sharon McGoldrick’s blue bank clerk’s uniform. There it dwelt on the alluring bulges of her soft, heavy-looking breasts. For two weeks now he had been dawdling on his way home to run into her. She wore lipstick and high heels when she went out on Saturday nights, clattering down their grim little street and away into the mysterious world that her three years of seniority over Scully and a job entitled her to. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Scully still harbored the fantasy that, with a little persistence, he could get her to go down to the canal with him.
Lynch was busy picturing himself in front of Stone’s lumberyard. The gate was wide open and there was no one in sight. The box of matches in his pocket sang with promise and joy. His mouth watered at the imagined smell of burning resin. He could almost taste the sweet wood smoke already.
Brian Egan sat tight-lipped and pushed hard with his stomach muscles. This was something he had become good at. The panic and the shouting would well up inside him and he would push it back down with his diaphragm. Smalley Mullen counted the three warm pennies in his palm over and over, and McDonagh wondered if God was listening and, if so, did he speak Irish. Through all the activity, the closest thing to prayer was Finbar’s fervent wish that none of it was really happening. Finally the decade of the rosary was over.
Just when the boys were ready to get up and go, Pollock announced: “We will now pause in silence and pay our respects to our dear departed Brother in Christ.”
He moved toward the back of the room. Craftily he pulled up his jacket sleeve: ten-fifteen. If he could drag this out for a few more minutes he could avoid that awful too-short-to-actually-teach-anything-too-long-to-just-kill-time period back in the classroom.
“I will be outside on the landing, I wish to have a word with Brother Cox. Let there be no carry-on or you will know all about it.”
He stepped out onto the empty landing, leaving the oratory door ajar behind him. Brother Cox was nowhere to be seen. Fifteen little squeaks of his brothel-creepers took him out onto the fire escape overlooking the empty cloistered the garden. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, rejoicing in the brisk early-spring air and the mournful calling of crows in the nearby trees.
Scully lay on the floor and peered through the crack in the door. “Gone for a smoke,” he whispered to the others.
This was not exactly the ideal set-up for mischief. What could you get up to in an oratory with a dead body lying out in state? That was what Finbar thought, anyway. Lynch, however, would not have agreed. Mischief might not have been the exact word in Lynch’s head, but like every other time he had been left unsupervised something cloudy was humming in his head. Solemnly he approached the coffin. He stood at its head and joined his hands in front of himself in prayerful attitude. The low buzz of conversation that had begun just after Mr. Pollock’s departure dwindled and died into silence.
“And pray tell us what you might be doing, Mr. Lynch, sor? It is not often we see your hands joined except to wield a crowbar.” Finbar couldn’t help it. The impression of Pollock just spilled out of him in a nervous overflow. A couple of boys laughed and Finbar felt a tiny satisfying glow inside.
Lynch turned and Finbar caught the tiniest hint of an approving smile in his look. The boys fell silent again. Then Lynch turned, bowed his head reverently, and began to speak: “Kennedy, ye aul dead bastard, ye’re dead aren’t ye?”
The silence darkened a little. How far would Lynch go with this?
“And we