The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [87]
“You, boy! You with the limp! Where’s your tally stick?” Cox moved across the yard with surprising speed in search of more retribution. He had been hoping to slip out to the Limping Gunman or one of the shady pubs on the docks for a quick one at lunchtime. Now that tally stick duty had ruined his plans, someone was going to pay.
In the small shed Mr. Hourican was busy checking for sins of thought, deed, or omission, committed alone or with others, and on the far side of the yard stood Brother Walsh with what looked like a small pair of binoculars.
“Come on, let’s go down to Hutton’s. They’re on the warpath here,” said Scully.
Scully, McDonagh, and Lynch got up off the windowsill they had been sitting on and started toward the gate. Finbar, who had just come downstairs with his bag of sandwiches, moved to sit on the vacated sill.
“You coming or what?” asked McDonagh.
“Oh yeah, right,” said Finbar, surprised.
“What’s in your sandwiches?” asked Scully.
“Meat paste.”
“Jaysus! Hate that!” said McDonagh.
“Giz one,” said Lynch unconditionally.
Finbar opened the bag and handed Lynch a sandwich. He watched in wonder as Lynch crammed the whole thing into his mouth and seemed to swallow without chewing.
At the gate Larry Skelly stopped them and checked for tally sticks. “Ye’ll be searched coming back,” he needlessly informed them.
“Fuck sake! It’s like fucking Colditz,” muttered Scully as they walked up the lane to Werburgh Street.
Lynch grabbed a passing first year, pulled out his pen-knife, and in a flash left a neat little notch on the unfortunate boy’s tally stick.
“Ye big bastard!” shouted the boy, running away and straight into Larry Skelly who gave him another notch for swearing. Scully and the others hurried round the corner out of sight before the boy could point them out.
They stopped in their tracks about twenty yards from Fanny Hutton’s and stared in disbelief. Mr. Pollock was standing outside it marshalling boys into an orderly line.
“For fuck sake! They’re gone mad—” Scully stopped abruptly when Finbar elbowed him in the ribs.
“Moody!” whispered Finbar urgently, indicating with a move of his eyes the sinister figure of Brother Moody on the other side of the street walking back toward the school.
“IRA shop!” said Scully decisively, and picked up the pace.
They passed by Hutton’s and gaped in at the lack of mayhem as if it were something sacrilegious and unnatural, an affront to their collective sense of right.
At the IRA shop they found Brother Tobin presiding over the same sickening lack of chaos.
“Ah, bollix! Mary’s then,” said Lynch.
They crossed the West Circular Road and headed down Stanhope Gardens. Mary’s fish-and-chip shop sat uneasily between the burnt-out shell of the bookies and the boarded-up Dundalk Dairy. Brother Mulligan stood at the door admitting boys in twos and threes, eliminating the usual life-threatening crush that was the main challenge and attraction of buying chips at Mary’s. Certainly no one went there for the quality of the food. Disgustedly they got on the back of the line and waited their turn to go in.
Like sharks to blood on the sea, Mr. Pollock and Brother Moody were drawn toward Brother Cox where he was haranguing a group of four second years who had been trying to get their penny ball off the roof of the small shed.
“Who told you you could get up on that roof?” bellowed Brother Cox.
Before the boys had any chance to muster up an answer, he repeated the question even louder. He was stalling while he racked his brains to find a way to make thinking about climbing on the shed into a sin.
“What this? What’s this then?” snapped Mr. Pollock, drawing up behind Cox.
“About to climb up on the shed,” Cox informed him.
“They were now, were they?” dissembled Mr. Pollock. He too found difficulty pinpointing the actual sinful content of this transgression.
Within seconds Brother Moody sidled up beside Pollock. Moody could smell a kindred