Mr Lynch’s Holiday

13

At the start of term Mrs O’Dwyer had given everyone in the class a folder to be used for the special instruction they would receive in preparation for the holy sacrament. Eamonn’s folder was green. Mrs O’Dwyer had originally given him a pink one, but the moment she’d moved away from the table, he and Bernadette Keenan had swapped by mutual and wordless consent. On the front of the folder he had written ‘My First Holy Communion’, and decorated this, as Mrs O’Dwyer had said they could, with drawings of chalices, hosts, crosses and doves. Other pupils had struggled with the doves. He could see Mark Hurley’s effort — some kind of winged dog — and Bernadette Keenan’s flying fish. He had carefully copied his dove from the poster on the wall and Mrs O’Dwyer had said it was beautifully done.

He filled in that day’s worksheet. A line had to be drawn to link matching words. He was carefully connecting ‘Eucharistic Prayer’ with ‘A special prayer said during mass’. He had a suspicion about the worksheets, a feeling that they weren’t quite right. The questions weren’t like real questions, they didn’t require him to be clever or to understand something complicated, they just required him to use and repeat certain words, like a baby learning to speak.

Bernadette nudged him, making the line wobble, and whispered, ‘David Brennan thinks the bread and wine are Jesus’s body and blood!’

Eamonn carefully rubbed out the crooked line. ‘They are, aren’t they?’

‘No, I mean, actually the body and blood.’

‘What? Real blood?’

‘Yes!’

Eamonn looked in David Brennan’s direction and pulled a face popular among his classmates, sticking his tongue under his lower lip and flapping his hands, implying an unspecified handicap.

‘Is the priest Dracula, then, drinking blood?’

Bernadette grinned and said, ‘Or a cannibal, eating a body?’ She lowered her voice further: ‘Mmmmm, could I have a nice piece of Jesus’s arm, please?’

Eamonn twitched his eyebrows in Mrs O’Dwyer’s direction: ‘She likes the taste of his bottom best.’

To his distress, Bernadette emitted a high-pitched whoop and Mrs O’Dwyer swooped like a bat.

‘Is there something amusing on the worksheet? Something funny about Our Lord Jesus’s sacrifice?’

‘No, miss.’

‘You, Bernadette Keenan, are exactly the kind of washerwoman who would have happily watched Jesus drag his crucifix up the steep slopes of Calvary, laughing gaily at the spectacle. Madame Defarge, no less, knitting at the guillotine.’

Bernadette looked uneasily at the paper guillotine in the corner of the classroom, trying and failing to fathom its sinister role in Mrs O’Dwyer’s anger.

‘And you, Eamonn Lynch,’ the teacher hesitated, seeing his worksheet neatly completed, ‘you should know better than to get involved in her nonsense.’

Lunch was a bitter-sweet affair. The canteen staff had once again attempted to pass parsnips off as chips, and there was the gruesome matter of some cabbage to be disposed of, but this was followed by the premium combination of chocolate concrete and custard.

Mark Houlihan plonked himself next to Eamonn: ‘You gonna watch me batter David Brennan after school?’

‘Can’t. I’m doing the whole of the Inner Circle.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The 8.’

Mark still looked blank.

‘The bus. The Inner Circle.’

Mark pulled a face. ‘Oh yeah. The Inner Circle. I’ve done that loads of times.’

‘Where does it go, then?’

‘London.’

Crumbs of concrete flew from Eamonn’s mouth. ‘London? What are you talking about? It goes around the inner circle of Birmingham. It goes up Newtown, Five Ways, Sparkbrook …’

‘Sounds boring.’

‘No. It’s not boring. It’s wicked and tonight I’ll be the first ever person, ever, to do the entire route who isn’t a bus driver. Plus I’ll be stood up at the front the whole time, cos my dad will be driving. Once, at the garage, he let me sit in the driver’s seat and steer the wheel.’

‘So. I’ve driven loads of buses. And lorries. And motorbikes.’

‘No you haven’t.’

‘Yes I have. Anyway, bus driving’s a wog’s job.’

‘No it’s not.’

‘Yes it is. Your dad must be a wog. Are you a wog?’

‘No.’

‘You must be a Paki, then. They’re the only other people who drive buses. Are you a Paki?’

‘No.’

Mark was doing some kind of accent now. ‘Oh bloody hell! Where’s my turban! Oh bloody hell!’

Eamonn started to clear his tray. He didn’t want to look as if he were running away, but he wanted to run away.

‘Yeah, piss off, Paki, before I batter you too.’

In the afternoon Father Maguire paid one of his regular visits to the class. He had been talking for some time about something. Eamonn wasn’t sure what. He remembered the priest had started by saying that God loved all little children, but that had been a long time ago and Eamonn didn’t know what had happened since. Father Maguire had a sing-song voice, travelling up and down in pitch at perfectly regular intervals regardless of what he was saying or to whom he was saying it. The effect was similar to that of a hypnotist’s swinging watch, the modulated to and fro sending listeners into a trance.

As the priest spoke, Eamonn sat upright, looking straight at him, while all the time reciting in his head the fare stages of the Inner Circle route. He glanced at Mrs O’Dwyer and could see she was doing something similar, embellishing her performance with the occasional vigorous nod and smile. A few others in the class had a comparable mastery of their own outward appearance. For many, though, the deceit was entirely beyond them. Patrick Wall was rocking on his chair, his neck stretched backwards, head resting on the desk behind him, staring up at the ceiling, mouth open, features slack. Mark Houlihan was assiduously mining his nose, his face a picture of profound loss. Marie Murphy was absent-mindedly jabbing a compass into her own arm over and over again and Bernadette Keenan was lightly napping on the desk beside him.

Eamonn detected a change in classroom pressure, a falling-away or dip. He switched his attention back to Father Maguire in time to hear him say: ‘Well, we’ll try again, shall we? How did God show his love to us? Hmmm? Anybody? How did God prove that he loved us?’

Marie Murphy tentatively raised her hand: ‘He invented rainbows, Father.’

Father Maguire smiled with his mouth. ‘Yes, well, that’s right enough. We say “created”, not “invented”: God created rainbows. That’s true, dear, but he showed his love for each and every one of us in a much more powerful and meaningful way.’

Silence.

‘Come on, now. I’ve been talking about it for the last twenty minutes.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I just said it! Come on.’

With perfect timing the bell rang for home time and the sound of thirty chairs scraping on lino filled the air before stopping abruptly as a suddenly red-faced Father Maguire bellowed: ‘No one is going anywhere until I have a satisfactory answer to my question! Do you think I just come here to talk to myself? Do you think I can’t tell the ones among you who choose not to listen to God’s word? I tell you now there are some of you here who are a very long way from God’s grace and a very long way from being ready for communion, so you can forget any ideas you might have about pretty dresses and fancy bow ties, and presents no doubt from all the family. I want an answer.’

Mrs O’Dwyer looked panicked, as taken aback by Father Maguire’s turn as everyone else.

‘Come on now, children. Don’t let me down. Who can answer Father’s question?’ It was clear that she herself had no idea what the question had even been. She smiled nervously at the priest. ‘I think they’re tired at the end of a long day, Father.’

‘I’m sure they are. I know I’m tired, very tired indeed, but I have plenty of work still to do today and I hope I won’t be delayed any longer waiting for this answer.’

Mrs O’Dwyer put her head to one side. ‘Father, please …’

Father Maguire turned away from her and pointed directly at Eamonn.

‘You, boy. You were paying attention. Not fidgeting and thinking about Scooby Doo. Tell the rest of them. Tell the rest of them, or we shall go through it all again.’

Eamonn looked back at the priest with a blank expression. He felt the eyes of his classmates burning through his head. He saw Mrs O’Dwyer with her head down, her hand over her eyes. He licked his lips and spoke in a quiet voice. ‘How did God show his love to us?’

‘Yes. Yes. That’s the question. No points for just repeating it back to me.’

There was silence. Eamonn felt a strange buoyancy. He thought of his Bronze swimming test. Treading water while he inflated his pyjamas. He watched the second hand of the clock climb step by shuddering step. He noticed the smell of plasticine lingering in the air. He watched as something seemed to drain from Father Maguire’s face and then said, ‘God showed his love for us by sacrificing his only son Jesus to wash away our sins.’

They didn’t say much to each other. Eamonn stood up next to the driver’s cab. He liked to help his dad by telling him the number of people at each approaching stop. His dad had never asked him to do this, but Eamonn was sure it was useful information:

‘Three coming up, Dad.’

‘Oh, three is it? Well, I think we can manage that.’

Eamonn liked listening to the way his dad spoke to the passengers, the kinds of things he said. He thought he was very good at this. Friendly but in charge. Sometimes at home, when he was sure no one could hear him, Eamonn would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and pretend to be his dad:

‘A filthy day, isn’t it now?’

‘I’d say we’d have rain before the afternoon’s over.’

‘Move along the bus, please.’

‘I’m afraid that pass is out of date, son.’

Lots of the passengers were regulars well known to his dad, shift workers knocking on and off, men and women with whom he’d exchange complicated banter that Eamonn couldn’t follow. His dad had told him that the number 8 was known as the Workers’ Special as it serviced so many big factories. He said the city would grind to a halt without the Inner Circle. Many of the passengers were Afro-Caribbean and Asian. Eamonn leaned into the cab at one point and said in a low voice: ‘Are there many other drivers like you, Dad?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like you. Not coloured or Indian.’

‘What? Do you mean Irish?’

‘Yeah. Irish. Or … just white.’

Dermot moved his eyes from the road for a moment to glance at him. ‘That’s a funny question. There are a fair few Irish fellas. You know that yourself, you’ve met the people I work with.’

‘So it’s not a job only for coloured people?’

‘Has someone been saying something to you?’

‘It was just something I heard.’

‘It’s a job for anyone who’s willing to do it. As long as they have the patience of a saint. Some of the lads are West Indian, some from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Poland, Ireland, a few Brummies. The lot. It’s a real mishmash.’

Eamonn liked that. He’d be sure to say it if Mark Houlihan ever said anything again. He’d look at him and say: ‘For your information, it’s a real mishmash.’

When he’d finished his shift, Dermot and Eamonn walked home together. They walked in silence, until they passed the church and Eamonn asked: ‘Dad, why didn’t he die himself?’

‘Who’s that?’

‘God. Why did he let Jesus die instead of him?’

‘I think you’d be better off asking your mother that.’

‘But the priest was going on about it today. Why do you think?’

Dermot sighed. ‘Well. I suppose they’d say it was a sacrifice. That he loved his son most in the world, so he was making a big sacrifice to let him die.’

‘That is what they say, Dad. I don’t think it was nice for Jesus though. It wasn’t really fair on him.’

‘No. I don’t suppose it was.’

‘It’d be like you letting me cross the road in front of a car, just because it would make you sad.’

‘I’d never do that, son.’

Eamonn shook his head. The priest hadn’t explained it at all.