Bend for Home, The (20 page)

Square glancing into the room.

Stepping along the tiles. The seniors smoking fags in the dark ambulatory at 7 before morning Mass. The football pitches in the early light. The skivvies looking out from the kitchen. A walk around the Half before class begins.

Studying very well.

This big fucker McDonald, who is in first year though he’s over 17 and plays on the senior football team, stopped me in the study and said, You’re next Healy. He’s the chief bully in the school.

Last night stood by the window looking out at a storm. Everyone else was asleep in the dorm. There was the odd light over the trees from the town, a rosy light, and a light, that I could see through the glass portal over the door, still on in the corridor. It shone onto the black face of the Indian lad sleeping just beside me. The rest were turned this way and that, dreaming and breathing, a hand thrown across the eyes, knees tucked up, one foot out. A small shrill whisper. Then came this distant thunder that was really wind. Rain lashed against the windows and the trees were waving and waving. Then the wind, slapping like sheets, thumped against the black college. Three stories below the shining cars of the priests rocked over and back. The outside world howled. Branches swept across the lawn. The storm felt holy. The sounds pounded by, the next stronger than the last, gaining on something, something that was nearly out of control, and then would come a pause, the trees steadied, the black clouds raced to a stop. A grey space opened in the sky so that you could see the white lip of the moon. A bed creaked in the dorm. Someone called out. The
stern breathing from the asthmatic lad from Gowna increased, he held his breath and turned another way. His scapular hung over the edge of the bed. A few moments later the storm came up the avenue and I looked down from another place. I lost my bearings. The window grew huge. I stood there in my pyjamas for maybe half an hour, then got into bed, but every few minutes I was out again to look, and there was the storm still going on, making faces in the trees, and the wind barking. The rain curved against the window panes. The boys asleep.

Today wrote a letter to Sheila breaking it off for clean soul reasons in terms of marriage, and then made a promise to myself to stop wanking.

Free day. Spent it in the alley with Brady from Mullahoran. We tossed balls for hours till it got so dark we couldn’t see a hate.

The boys made me play football for Class 5. Got the first goal of my life. A cheer went up round the Half.

You jammy fucker, said Big Eye.

In town today. Supposed to get a tooth filled but don’t. Instead tried to move Christine Keeler. No go. Got lift back to college on Ballsy’s bike.

Did you get your hole recently, Healy? he asked.

Stop that auld dirty talk, Ballsy, I said.

There was the college again. I sat in the study hall among the other hundred odd. The dean of study was late down so everyone was talking. Then the back door opened. You could not hear a mouse. After a while I tucked my hand round my ear, and with my arm hiding it, began to read
The Vicar of Wakefield
that I placed over my science book.

Suddenly Hurley’s hand came down onto the open book. I shot into the air with fright.

Aw, I shouted. Aw God, Father!

He started laughing, the lads laughed because I got such a shock. He read the title of the book, shook his head, closed the book and strode on. I started maths but couldn’t concentrate. The numbers just went off into infinity, so I tried history. I had to go back and back again over what I’d read and still it was not the same as it had been before. The blur sort of bloomed. I tried to think of something happy, then, I searched for the place, and with the point of a biro I pierced a certain spot in my cheek bone and then my cheek, and as I did so this coldness spread over the side of my face.

Andy and Timmy came out to the college with cakes and lemonade for me. I went to meet them outside the locker rooms. Then this crowd of fourth years gathered.

Fuck off back to the Half Acre, one of them shouted.

They began to mill round.

Stand back, said Andy.

Steady, said Timmy.

Go back to where you came from, another shouted.

We’ll see you Dermot, said the lads, mad at me because I could do nothing and they backed off down the avenue while the others hurled abuse. I stood with the gifts they’d brought me and didn’t know what to do. Then one fellow poked his finger in my face and said: Don’t be bringing the tramps of the town round this college, Healy.

A prefect came and marched me through the crowd and back to the locker room. When I went up to the study there was these remarks passed. Then McDonald decided to strike. He came on up the study to
my seat smiling. I could see he was coming for me, all of 6 foot 2, and he was working his hands.

It’s time, Healy, he said.

I stood my ground. He put out his arms to grab me and I let him. Then as his full weight came on top of me I fell back and brought my two feet clean up into his stomach and threw him over my head. He sailed through the air and knocked himself out on a desk. He went white and just lay there with a splutter on his lips. I was frightened.

Then his eyes opened.

Are you all right? I asked him.

Yes, he said.

Do you want to go to the surgery?

No, he said. He sat there in a daze. Then got up and walked away without bothering with me.

Mutt says that the retreat might do Class 5 some good.

Here we have, he said quietly, a group of assorted dunces. Why do I do it? I ask myself. Oh dear, oh dear. What am I to do? he whinged to himself.

Got six off Hurley for racket in dorm last night. Then as I left his room I passed by Soc’s. I’d often heard that he listened to radio stations from abroad. So I put my ear to his door and heard these voices speaking in a foreign language.

Then his door opened and the radio exploded into the corridor.

What are you doing, sir? Socrates asked, with marvelling big-bushed eyes.

I was listening to your radio, Father, I said.

It is a miracle to me, Mr Healy, that you, who can’t speak Greek, though we labour to teach you, he said, can understand German which is not on our itinerary.

I could see past his huge rounded figure, with the collar undone, into the scholarly room. The walls were book-lined. Books were stacked on the floor. A little bed sat in a corner like a book itself.

Well sir, explain yourself.

I was passing, I said, and I heard the radio and I was trying to figure out what language it was, Father.

What curiosity, sir. What innate curiosity.

I’m sorry, Father.

If only such curiosity could abound in your normal studies.

Yes, Father.

He folded his hands on his stomach.

Knowledge, sir, is not learnt through a keyhole.

No, Father.

But we must be grateful, mustn’t we, for even this meagre effort. Come, sir, be off from my door.

Yes, Father.

The Vicar of Wakefield,
Socrates said. He stood looking after me with a pleased grin on his face then the door closed and the German voices dropped to a low hum.

Square comes in. I have Curry against wall. We’re play-acting.

Lie up there till I see if you’re any good, I’m saying.

I can see Curry looking over my shoulder.

C’mon, I say, till we see if you’re all talk.

Curry bares his teeth.

What’s wrong with you? I say. Come here to me till I give you a dose of the clatters.

Curry stares straight past me.

Put them up, I said.

As I turn Square gave me a quick sharp knock with his knuckles on the side of the head. Bed! he said. Later, when the lights went off, Curry said in the dark, Well I tried to tell you. I know, I said. That was a good knock he gave you. ’Twas, I agreed. He’s nifty is Square. He is. You want to see the look on your face, said Curry, that was great. I enjoyed that, he added. Fuck off, I say. Oh that was great, chuckled Curry.

At 8 o’clock this evening we go on retreat.

There is a long spiff in the chapel from a monk.

Then silence. Afterwards, we head off round the Whole and the Half by ourselves, a few single fellows cross the football pitch, some stand alone among the pillars in the ambulatory, others pass in the corridors with averted eyes. Priests suddenly emerge from the woods. Speaking in sign language we climb into bed and hear the squeak of Square’s soft shoes as he comes along the corridor and stands a moment by the door of No. 10, then goes on, across through the college to the connors’ dorm.

In the morning we wash and shave without a word. The monks sing the Mass, answering each other over great distances. In the refectory, the sucks eye the seniors fearfully. In silence we eat dry toast for breakfast while a brown-eyed monk swinging a huge wooden rosary parades by.

When a skivvy shouts in the kitchen he wheels round angrily on his sandals and whisks through the door.

Throughout the day we step into the chapel and sit apart from each other, staring at the altar and praying. When the door closes or opens we all look round. It’s only someone else. Some other soul like ourselves. The presence grows. I do 15 minutes at a time, then move on to half-an-hour. And once one whole hour. It left me light in the head. We walked the corridors, making certain journeys that brought you back to where you started from, then you started again.

Then there was a very hairy spiff at 8 o’clock. All about sex. I think I have
vocation
. That night in No. 10 we move about greatly troubled in ourselves, me more than most. And Square didn’t even bother to look in.

A cheer went up, as if we had won the McRory Cup, just after breakfast.

Got 60% off Cullen for my comp.

Hurley came up to me in the study and said I was wanted at the front door. Una is there in a car. She says, Aunty Gerty, Mammy’s sister, is dead.

Bob came into Benny’s class and drove me into town. I sat into the funeral car in my new suit. We drive to Finea. The hearse stops a moment outside our old house. Tom Keogh and Mrs Flynn are at the door of the church. Charlie Clavin puts his hand in mine and says, Can that be you Dermot?

It is, I said.

Bedad. Dermot Healy?

That’s right.

He shakes his head.

I was told it but I didn’t believe it. He gripped my hand firmly. I’m sorry, he says, for your trouble.

I follow the funeral from the church. Mammy, Aunty Maisie, Aunty Bridgie and Aunty Nancy wearing black veils walk behind their sister. Behind them come the sons and daughters. Every few yards the tall O’Neill brothers halt. Uncle Seamus takes a wing.

Let the young fellow in, says Tony.

On the bog road Vincent steps aside to let me carry the coffin of his mother. Pop O’Neill, her husband, with rheumy eyes and small feet, perches like a tiny bird by the grave. The grave diggers stand by with their shovels tucked under their chins.

Slept in my own bed, listened to Luxembourg and up to the alley first thing in the morning. Great feed of chicken in the house and Sean O’Neill gave me 10 shillings. I had a good argument with him. Smoke 30 fags, and although I could have stayed in Cavan town another night, I decided, in the middle of the funeral party, to take Flood’s taxi back in the dark to the college after lights out. Went in through the
front door that someone had left open, past the priests’ rooms without meeting anyone, up the stairs the same, knowing I shouldn’t be doing this I wandered with my bag along the strange celibate world of a corridor that I’d never been through alone at night before: warm lights under doors, coughs, a floorboard giving way, friendly radios on low, the rattle of a coal shuttle, the clink of a glass, a door to a priest’s lavatory standing ajar and looking somehow sinful, classical music, dark shoes on a doorstep, a rifle resting against a wall beside a wet pair of wellingtons, intimacies, a loud laugh that for the moment I couldn’t recognize, the smell of pipe smoke.

I undressed in number 10 by the light from the corridor, got in and lay there, trying to remember Aunty Gerty’s face but all that came back was a fur stole, a trap flying the road from Gorey in Co. Wexford and the sense of a big woman in a wide hat. I try to concentrate on her face. She’s wearing lipstick I think. She’s laughing at the good of Pop. Then suddenly I lose her face and instead it is the face of my father I see. I try to arrange the features as they once were, but they keep slipping away from each other, but I know it’s him from the gaze.

Are you back? whispered Square, suddenly in the darkness, and his torch swept over my face.

Yes, Father.

How did you get in?

The door was open.

And why did you not report to me?

It was too late.

You should have reported to me.

I was too tired.

All right.

He pulled the door quietly to. For the first time in years I travel up towards Finea before sleeping, past the barracks, on by Fitzsimon’s, take the bend over the seven-arched bridge, up the village and past Myles the Slasher’s Memorial, there’s a light in our window, I’m nearly there.