Maggie's Breakfast (8 page)

After a few minutes I heard more voices coming from downstairs. Neighbours began to come into the house to offer their sympathies. My mother was crying and blaming his death on the
family’s way of living. The house became very dark that morning. More neighbours came in, talked and had tea. Black dresses were brought up from some charitable society. The flowers and lace
curtains were taken from the windows. The priest came up. He told my mother Nicholas was on his way to Heaven. While everybody downstairs was crying I stayed in bed.

A few days later I stood with the rest of my family at Nicholas’s gravesite in Glasnevin Cemetery and kept telling myself that my brother was not in the coffin that was being lowered into
the grave. Later on the gossip on the street and in my house was that the doctors in Dublin at the time didn’t know what they were doing and experimented with some new form of chemical. My
mother said it was radium and they blasted Nicholas’s young body with an overdose of it.

* * *

Almost every moment I spent in school with Brother Fish Mouth I shook with fear. Added to that was the fact that my parents didn’t have money to purchase textbooks.
Without the textbooks I’d nothing to look at and I couldn’t ever do any homework. It was a sad time altogether. I couldn’t read. The Brother blamed my parents for not taking
advantage of the Free Book scheme that the government and the Saint Vincent de Paul society were involved in. I was afraid to tell him that the books were gone by the time my mother went to get
some.

The man in black put a deep fear into me. I was afraid of his face. I was afraid of his voice. Anytime he was talking about Irish and English History he’d raise his voice as if he was
about to sing a song. “The Penal Laws of 1695 were made by the English to destroy Catholicism in Ireland. England punished Ireland for supporting the Stuarts against the Protestant William of
Orange. Ireland was in favour of anything France did because France was a Catholic country.” Brother Fish Mouth told us about the terrible troubles that began when Catholic King James the
Second was defeated on Irish soil at the Battle of the Boyne on July 1, 1690. This was after Oliver Cromwell’s time and Blessed Oliver Plunkett’s as well.

Every time I looked at the man in black I saw two horns grow out of his forehead and his tongue was a rope of flame. I began to think and even believe that I was going insane. Every day he was
on my mind. Whatever I said, thought or did, I felt his presence. I took him everywhere I went. When I played football he was there. Even when I went to the films at the Tivoli I imagined he was
there as well. When I swam in the canal I could sense his frightening presence and I felt that I might drown.

One morning when he asked me about my father the Brother almost punched a hole in the wooden desk I sat on. I proudly told him that my father had spent time in the English army and it was as if
I had killed his mother or his dog or something. The look of madness in his eyes when he heard that my father was once a British army soldier frightened me more than the priest who stole my
mother’s wedding ring.

The Brother walked away from me and with his back turned to the rest of the class he yelled out, “I can see England rolling in the dust of Babylon! The Chinese will take Hong Kong and the
Spanish, God bless their hot-blooded hearts, will take Gibraltar, which rightfully belongs to them! And Ulster will come back to Ireland!”

When he got to the front of the class he turned around, bamboo cane in hand, and stared back at me again. I thought I was finished. I trembled and regretted telling him about my father’s
time in the British army. As he stared at me a smile crawled over his face. He began to talk as if he was making his First Communion or his Holy Confirmation. For no reason that I could think of or
imagine, he sounded calmer and more peaceful than ever before.

“I’ve often wondered how great England would have been if it didn’t have the Irish and others to fight its wars. If you ask me, the Irish were always too good and kind to the
English. Pity the buggers up there in the North not knowin’ if they’re English or Irish. The poor Protestants marchin’ around on Irish soil with Irish rain fallin’ all over
’em. If ya met an Orangeman in India or England he’d quickly tell ya he was Irish. If ya met the same fella in Ireland he’d tell ya he was English.”

When he finished his political rant he turned his attention to religion.

“Boys oh boys! You may know bits and pieces about the physical body but what do you know about your soul? Or anyone’s soul? Even the souls of the people you love most. Souls? What
are souls? What? What? Souls that are pure and clean and spotless – that’s what we strive for and seek while we live on this earth. And it’s only by having a clean and pure soul
that you can join our Heavenly Father in Heaven. D’ya know we were all pure, spotless and sinless souls in Ireland at one time?”

There was a silence. He started again.

“We’re the ones who put up them big heavy stones in Stonehenge. Everybody’s been wonderin’ for centuries how anyone could lift up such heavy things like that. The doctors
and educated fellas can’t account for that, you know.” He stared right at me again. “How did we put them up?” he asked me.

I didn’t know. I didn’t even know they were up or what they were. I’d never heard of Stonehenge.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Stonehenge?”

“Yes.”

“In England.”

“How did they get lifted up so high?” another boy called from the back of the class.

“Y’want to know?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about and he was getting very excited about what he was saying. He seemed to be enjoying it.

“How?” I asked.

“Spiritual levitation. We were connected to the magnetic forces of the Earth and the Universe. We in Ireland know how to make things rise without touching them. An’ you want to know
somethin’ else? D’ya want to know somethin’ else?” He rattled the money in his pocket and went on talking. “That’s why the English came over here in the first
place. They were in search of their souls.”

I shrugged my shoulders and hoped he was going to stop talking. He didn’t. He kept playing around with the bamboo cane in his hand.

“We were the centre of commerce and trade during the Bronze Age. And most of the gold found in Mycenae came from Ireland. The treasures in our national museum here in Dublin will bear
witness to that. Go to Knocknarea in County Sligo and fascinate your imagination with your heritage. Yes, by Christ, that’s what you can do. Did you know that Ireland was never incorporated
into the Roman Empire?” The man then crashed the bamboo cane against his desk. “Oliver Cromwell was the vilest man who ever lived!”

The class was quiet. Most of us didn’t understand the word ‘vilest’.

Then Brother Fish Mouth asked, “Does anybody know who said, ‘To Hell or to Connaught’?”

Half the class raised their hands and yelled out in unison, “Oliver Cromwell!” Everybody knew Oliver Cromwell said it because Brother Fish Mouth was always telling us. He was always
on about Oliver Cromwell and Oliver Plunkett.

I got the Olivers mixed up one morning when I was asked about a date in Irish history and said Oliver Plunkett instead of Oliver Cromwell.

Brother Fish Mouth jumped up from behind his desk and rushed towards me with his eyes bulging. “Don’t ever mix up their names. Oliver Plunkett is not Oliver Cromwell!” He
slapped me on the back of the head for giving the wrong answer. “Oliver Plunkett was the brave Archbishop of Drogheda who stood up to Oliver Cromwell!” He then turned around and, with
his face to the blackboard, he asked, “Who was Oliver Plunkett?”

Nobody answered.

The Brother turned around, faced all of us and yelled, “Blessed Oliver Plunkett was a Catholic! He was the Bishop of Drogheda who stood up to Oliver Cromwell. In the name of his Protestant
religion Oliver Cromwell pushed the Irish off their land and killed men, women and children, all because they clung to their Catholic faith. Cromwell was a scourge to our country. He was a scourge
to our religion!”

He sat down as if to take a rest from his anger. About five seconds had passed when he got up and quietly addressed the class again.

“When did the barbarian invade our country?” he asked.

He pointed his bamboo cane at Éamon Quinn, the boy sitting in front of me. I was glad I wasn’t asked the question.

Éamon shook with fear. “Nineteen-sixteen,” he answered.

The Brother leaned over towards Éamon and whacked him on the back of the head. “No! No! Sixteen-fifty, you dope!”

Éamon dropped his head onto the wooden desk in front of him and started crying. The brother walked up to Éamon and stood next to him. He looked around the class as if to warn us
about giving the wrong answer to his questions. He then placed his hand on Éamon’s head.

“Did Oliver Plunkett cry when confronted with Oliver Cromwell?” he asked out loud to the class.

“No!” we all said, knowing that was what he wanted to hear.

After a second or two of silence, a boy with a new pair of shoes on his feet put up his hand. “Why was Connaught worse than hell?” he asked.

“It
wasn’t
, you bloody git! Connaught was the West of Ireland. The West of Ireland had no houses or towns or farmland. No livestock, no nothing. Cromwell wanted to herd all
the Catholics who wouldn’t change their religion to the West of Ireland. That way they would all starve to death and he wouldn’t have to kill them off like he was doing in every other
part of Ireland at the time. Oliver Cromwell hated Catholicism more than he hated the Devil himself.”

The Christian Brother urged everybody in class to visit Drogheda where Blessed Oliver Plunkett’s skull was in a glass case for everybody to see. He showed us photographs of the skull. It
was a brownish round bonehead with no eyes or anything. A bit smaller than the sheep’s head my mother often bought to make soup. We were to imagine the brave Bishop of Drogheda before his
flesh wasted away. I couldn’t imagine any kind of face on the skull. It had cracks and a few dents on it.

* * *

After a while I decided I was going to fight back a little bit. I couldn’t bear to be beaten any more. And the next time I was in his class I was determined not to let him
whack me with his cane or leather strap. He started to talk about something in Irish and I had no idea what he was saying.

“Breathnach? Did you hear me?”

“I didn’t understand, sir.”

“Come up. Come up now!” He called me up to the head of the class.

I went.

“Hold out your hand.”

I didn’t. I kept my hands behind my back.

His face and neck began to swell up. “
Hold out your hand!
” he roared like a lion.

I kept my hands behind my back.

“
Give me your hand!
” His eyes were bulging and his mouth was opening like a big fish about to eat a little fish.

I kept my hand away from him.

He grabbed hold of me and started to twist my arm to get at my hands. I still wouldn’t let my hands go in front of me. The more he pulled at my arms to get at my hands the more I kept
turning and turning away from him.

I screamed at him. “Leave me alone! I’ve no money for books! All the free books were gone! My mother told me to tell you that!” At the same time I kicked him on the
shinbone.

He let go of my arms, grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt collar, dragged me out of the classroom and deposited me in the corridor where he slapped me on both ears.

“Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!” I pleaded. I fell to on the floor, crushed with pain and fear.

As the Brother walked back to the classroom he called to me. “It’s the reformatory for you, boyo! You’ll be there before you know it. Daingean will suit ya.”

Daingean, a reformatory school in a town of the same name in County Offaly, was run by the Oblate Fathers, the same order Father Devine came from. Reformatory schools were where the church sent
those who were not adjusting to the programme and discipline of the Christian Brothers. Punishment, torture and abuse were the mainstays of the curriculum in reformatory schools. Originally
Daingean was a prison for convicts. When Daingean was compared with Hell, most people chose Hell. Intimidation and brutality were the commandants of daily life in such institutions.

Reformatory schools were also a heaven of opportunity and motivation for the young men who volunteered to be priests and who majored in teaching Irish and Irish history. The small white collar
around their necks gave them licence and liberty to practise and indulge in any sexual fantasy their infected minds could conjure.

Countless boys my age and younger who were considered ‘difficult’ and ‘hard to manage’ were shipped off to reformatory schools every week. Few ever returned home with any
semblance of innocence or optimism. Most couldn’t adjust to anything or anybody they knew prior to their incarceration and were unrecognisable.

The name and threat of Daingean sent shivers up my spine. I was hoping that the Brother wasn’t serious when he threatened me with incarceration there. I picked myself up from the floor and
walked out of the school. I was afraid to go home and face my mother but I made up my mind that I would never go back to that classroom again. For the next month or so, during every school day, I
stayed away from school and spent most of the day walking around the city or going to the cinema. When I came home every day at four o’clock I told my mother I’d been to school and that
everything was going fine with my schooling. I felt obliged to lie to her because I was terrified of facing the Christian Brother and being sent to Daingean.

Within a few weeks my mother got a notice of delinquency from the Board of Education. The notice outlined my absence record at school and my behaviour towards the Christian Brother. My parents
and I were summoned to go before a school board to explain my behaviour. A panel of men would decide if I was fit to remain in the Christian Brothers’ School or should be sent away to a
reformatory school such as Daingean.

* * *