The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [95]
“To hell with Brother Loughlin! I’ll not talk to the monkey when I can talk to the organ grinder. I’ll write straight to the Department of Education. And I’ll write to Morris Barry, that’s what I’ll do. He was in school with me. He’s a county councilor. I’ll have the president himself down on that Loughlin like a ton of bricks. No son of mine—”
“Jude, pet, for God sake, go easy, won’t you? You don’t want to start any trouble.”
“Trouble? You think we should just take this lying down? Over my dead body! You think writing letters is starting trouble? Can’t you see the madness of this?”
Their voices abruptly dropped below the pitch that Finbar could possibly hear through the floor.
“What are they saying?” whispered Declan.
“I can’t hear. They’ve gone all quiet,” answered Finbar. They heard the rattle of the kitchen doorknob.
“Don’t try to fob me off! Fuck writing letters! I’m sick of it, I tell ye! Tally sticks, for crying out loud! These bloody religious and their maniac carry-on! Haven’t they already done enough to this family? Didn’t we keep quiet and let them put Sheila Barry away? Shameful! I’ll do more than write to some fucking pen-pusher! And you making excuses for them! Have you lost all sense? Is there no fight left in you, woman?”
The hall door opened and shut and Mr. Sullivan’s footsteps receded down the empty street. Finbar could almost hear the slow fuming of his mind in the heavy deliberateness of his footfalls.
“What was all that about?” asked Finbar.
Declan looked squarely at Finbar but did not answer.
“What?” pressed Finbar.
“Nothing.”
“Come on! What?”
“Nothing. I said nothing.”
“No, come on. You know something. What?”
Declan sat down heavily on his bed. “Do you remember years and years ago Dad and Uncle Francie took us out to visit Na-Na Sullivan’s grave out by Four Mile Cross?”
“I don’t know. Sort of. The day the red car broke down and it was all sunny and we walked back and we caught the frog in the stream?”
Declan nodded and almost smiled at the childish images Finbar recalled. He had forgotten about the frog.
“Well?”
Declan shifted his feet under him and turned to face his brother, half sitting, half kneeling on the edge of his bed. “What else to you remember?”
“I don’t know. Dad cut the grass on Na-Na’s grave with the hedge shears and we put some flowers in a jam jar and set it on top.”
“Do you remember going to another grave?”
Finbar thought hard but could recall nothing more. He just remembered it being very sunny and warm and walking in his short wool trousers and the way they chafed his legs. He shook his head.
“You were small. Only four or so. We went over to this other part of the graveyard. There were no stones, just an open bit of the graveyard. Dad and Francie were talking. They were spelling words so I wouldn’t understand, but I got some of it. I asked Uncle Francie about it a couple of years ago at Eileen’s wedding. He hemmed and hawed but I told him I knew there was something. He made me promise never to tell Dad that he told me.”
“What? What?” hissed Finbar impatiently.
“Dad and Francie had a younger brother Joseph. When they were all little, Granda Sullivan died in the troubles. They were sent to an orphanage cos Na-Na didn’t have enough money to keep them. Joseph was only eight and he used to piss his bed and get in trouble for it. The head nun got tired of beating him so she started making him wear a tally stick. Every time he wet the bed or cried or got in trouble she put a notch in his tally stick, and then on Sunday morning she would leather him for all the notches. He got so many notches all the time that she started making him wear a big huge tally stick like a broom handle around his neck, and then she would beat him with it and make him sand down the notches.
“This went on for a couple of years and Joseph started to stutter and got all blinky in the eyes and they used to give him notches for all of it. Francie turned sixteen and was let go