The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [89]
“Get to your classes! Don’t you know the time? Get up to your classes!”
“But Brother, the bell …” protested Finbar.
Boland felt his blood boil and a powerful urge to throttle the boy surged up within him. Instead he turned on his heel and ran through the downstairs lab and into the monastery. “Bell? I’ll give them bell!” he screeched as he ran.
“I told ye. He’s completely off his head,” said Finbar.
In the musty custard-nuanced postprandial gloom of the monastery stairwell, Brother Boland grabbed the bell rope. “I’ll put an end to your lunchtime of acting the blackguard and sinning all over my miracle!”
He pulled on the rope sharply and it was only when he heard the muted hurt inside the bell’s peal did he realize what he had done. Powerless to stop what he had started, Boland dropped the bellrope as if burned, clasped his hands over his ears, and held his breath. He could not bear to listen to the wrongness inside the bell’s tones. Gradually its peals grew weaker and further apart and the Brother could breathe again. He listened to the dying echoes and sensed them penetrate the walls, the glass of the windows, every crevice and crack of the building.
Behind him he heard a gentle tapping from the refectory. He moved toward it, drawn by some irresistible need to bear witness. From the doorway he stared at the high center window and listened to its labored creaking. There was a sudden snap as the sash ropes gave way inside the casement. The top half of the window slammed down under its own weight and splattered the floor with shards of stained glass.
Brother Boland stared at the mess. What had once been a carefully executed resurrection scene now covered the floor in a chaos of colored splinters.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” he exclaimed, and ran off to find Brother Loughlin.
32
Mr. Laverty, we’re here to check the tally sticks,” announced Mr. Pollock as he strode into the class just after lunch. Behind him followed a flushed and sweaty Brother Moody, who had his sleeves rolled and his leather warmed up and at the ready. Clearly they couldn’t wait until the end of the day.
Laverty sighed and sat on the windowsill staring down into the yard while Pollock walked through the class inspecting the sticks.
“Outside.”
“But sir, there’s no mark,” whined Smalley Mullen.
“Outside, sor! I know a counterfeit tally stick when I see one! You’re in right trouble now, me bucko!” Mr. Pollock grabbed the boy by the shirt collar and pulled him out of his chair.
“Don’t drag your feet like that, you little gurrier!” snapped Brother Moody as Smalley shuffled out the door.
“Where’s your stick, boy?”
“It must’ve fallen off,” answered Bradshaw as he searched frantically on the floor under his desk.
“Outside!”
“Mr. Scully, outside!”
“But sir, there’s no mark. It’s the real stick.”
“Mr. Scully, you are a guttersnipe, a bowsie, and an incorrigible miscreant, and I am sure you deserve a beating. Outside! Now! And that goes for your cohorts too: McDonagh, Lynch, Sullivan! Outside!”
Finbar could not believe his ears. “But sir …”
“At least one of you sinned at lunchtime and the others were there so you are all guilty of collusion. Guilty one, guilty all! Outside, the lot of ye!”
Finbar followed McDonagh out the door and smelt Brother Moody’s acrid sweat as he passed him.
“Thank you, Mr. Laverty. You may continue with your lesson,” said Mr. Pollock, and swept out of the classroom with the eager Brother Moody in tow.
Mr. Laverty looked at the dozen or so who were left out of the thirty.
“Youse can do yizer homework or go to sleep. I don’t care,” he said tiredly over the sounds of beating and chastisement from the corridor outside.
“Ring that bell properly, damn you! They’ll never hear that!” scolded Brother Loughlin.
He stood behind Brother Boland and waited. Boland turned around and stared emptily. He bit his lip and trembled but otherwise refused to move.