The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [9]
“But Brother, I could be sanctioned for crossing over demarcation lines. Brannigan Brothers could blackball me. You know they run the whole shebang. I’d love to fix the roof for you but I’m a janitor. I can’t be doing that. Imagine if there were roofers wandering in here off the streets to mop out the toilets or lock the gates or—”
“The roof, Mr. McDermott!”
“All right. All right. I’ll take a look at it.”
“Good, and don’t be too long about it.”
Before McDermott could say anything else his kettle started hissing and spitting, threatening to extinguish his kerosene stove.
“I didn’t know you had a stove in here, Mr. McDermott,” said Brother Loughlin archly, every syllable implying that there probably shouldn’t be one in the janitor’s shed.
“I said I’ll go and look at it now.”
“Well be quick about it then!” replied Brother Loughlin and strode away.
“Ah, go ask me arse, ye big fat fucker!” muttered McDermott, then turned off the stove.
“Ah, for fuck sake!” exclaimed McDermott when he finally made it on to the roof. While sitting in his shed bloody-mindedly finishing his tea, he had convinced himself that the roof would be a minor matter of a few loose slates. A couple of nails and a couple of bits of plywood to patch the holes and he would be off home.
Now, as he stood unsteadily on the steeply pitched roof, he saw that the slates had not all slid from the same part of the roof. With almost mathematical precision the slates had fallen from roughly fifty different spots and the area of damage spread over the whole west side of the roof.
“I’ll be here all fucking day!” McDermott moaned aloud and turned to make his way back down to collect the necessary tools. As he moved he noticed the roof joist in one of the nearby holes was almost completely rotted through. “No way I’m fixing that as well.” He made his way carefully back to the gable end and climbed down.
4
Whatever tiny bit of excitement Finbar might have had about going to a new school had been severely damaged by Saturday’s encounter at the corner shop. He had spent all day Sunday just moping around the house, refusing to go out after mass while his father tried to unpack and brighten the tiny cement backyard with fuchsias and geraniums he had brought from their garden in Cork.
Redneck, Culchie, Bogman, Muck Savage, they had shouted at him in bad Cork accents and then followed him down the street imitating his walk.
“Finbar! Come on! I won’t tell you again. You don’t want to be late,” yelled Mrs. Sullivan from the bottom of the stairs.
From the other bed Declan glowered groggily at him: “Get up before I split you, you little prick!” Declan was unemployed and seemingly unemployable. The army had already turned him down in eight different counties.
“Ah, go feck off. Get up yourself and get a job, ye lazy shite,” muttered Finbar. This was awful. On top of everything else he had to share a room with Declan now. In Cork he’d had his own room. Dublin was just bloody perfect.
“Finnnnbarr!” called his mother again.
“I’m up! I’m up!” he snapped.
“Well get up and get the fuck out then,” mumbled Declan from under the covers. Finbar scowled at the hump in the other bed but said nothing. He braced himself and then whipped back the covers and leapt onto the cold floor. He shivered and dressed hurriedly. He put on the scratchy gray nylon shirt, the itchy gray pants, and the stupid clip-on tie. He grabbed the sweater and looked at it: gray. Just like the rest of the stupid uniform. Just like this stupid house and this stupid street and this stupid city.
“Ah, Finbar, did you comb your hair at all? You look like you were dragged backward through a bush,” fussed his mother when he walked into the small dining room. They had still not unpacked much and the room was lit by a bare forty-watt bulb that seemed to create its own special kind of gloom. His father stood by the kitchen sink hastily munching on some toast.
“Do you want an egg, Finbar? Will I boil you an egg?