Skippy Dies: A Novel

In today’s History class, Howard the Coward – who looks like he hasn’t slept much lately, or washed, or shaved – wants to talk about betrayal. ‘That’s what the war was really about. The betrayal of the poor by the rich, the weak by the strong, above all the young by the old. “If any question why we died / Tell them, because our fathers lied” – that’s how Rudyard Kipling put it. Young men were told all kinds of stories in order to get them to go and fight. Not just by their fathers, of course. By their teachers, the government, the press. Everybody lied about the reasons for war and the true nature of the war. Serve your country. Serve the King. Serve Ireland. Do it in the name of honour, in the name of courage, for little Belgium. On the other side of the water, young German men were being told the same thing. When they got to the Front, they were betrayed again, by incompetent generals who sent wave after wave of them into machine-gun fire, by the newspapers who instead of telling the true story of the war churned out this brave-Tommies-death-or-glory stuff, making it seem like a great big adventure, encouraging even more young men to enlist. After the war, the betrayal continued. The jobs the soldiers had been promised would be kept for them had mysteriously disappeared. They could be heroes and wear medals, but no one wanted “war-damaged goods”. Graves’s friend Siegfried Sas-soon called the war “a dirty trick played on me and my generation”…’

‘Did he seem a little off-balance to you?’ Mario asks afterwards.

‘One of these days he’s going to come in with uniforms for us and we’re all going to march off to the Somme,’ Dennis says, and taking out his ledger moves Howard five places up the Nervous Breakdown Leaderboad, so that he’s just behind Brother Jonas and Miss Timony.

‘Betrayal,’ Ruprecht muses to himself, while letting his gaze linger over Dennis.

‘What’s that?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Ruprecht says airily. ‘I just like saying the word. Betrayal. Betrayal.’

‘What’s your problem, asshat?’

‘Betrayal,’ Ruprecht muses. ‘Has kind of a ring to it, doesn’t it? Betrayal.’

‘Get bent, Blowjob, don’t try and blame me for losing your gay pod.’

‘Guys, come on,’ Geoff pleads. ‘The audition’s in two hours.’

It is, and by four o’clock, what looks like a kind of musical zoo has gathered outside the door of the Sports Hall. Folk and rock groups, choirs and quartets, dancers both tap- and break-; here, warbling up and down his scales, is Tiernan Marsh, the fourth-year wheeled out at all official events to share his angelic tenor, although he’s better known among the student population for his propensity to eat his own scabs; here Roland O’Neil, bass wizard of Funkulus, quivers slightly in his tight pink leggings under the baleful stare of John Manlor, hirsute lead singer of MANLOR, definitely the most impressive act the school has in terms of sideburns; here Titch Fitzpatrick, running over his MC routine for the hundredth time, affects not to notice the unmistakeable smirk on the face of his rival for the slot, Gary Toolan, nor to hear Gary Toolan’s not quite sotto enough remarks, such as ‘What’s he going to do, change nappies on stage?’

Just ahead of the Van Doren Quartet in the line is Trevor Hickey, aka ‘The Duke’, who with no visible means of making music is staring into space, mumbling a speech to himself: ‘… since the dawn of time… our oldest and most indefatigable foe…’

Geoff keeps catching snatches of this, and curiosity eventually reels him in. ‘Uh, Trevor, where’s your instrument?’

‘Shock and amaze – oh, I’m not giving a musical performance.’

‘Not musical…?’ Geoff repeats, and then the penny drops. ‘Here, you’re not going to do Diablos, are you?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

Geoff gazes at him with a mixture of awe and concern. ‘It’s just,’ he says, after a moment, ‘you know, the Automator’s in there.’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ Trevor’s ceaseless shifting from foot to foot is only partly to do with nerves; he has eaten five cans of beans on either side of going to bed in order to build up a plentiful supply of trapped wind, or as he calls it, ‘The Power’.

‘I’m just wondering, you know, whether the Christmas concert might not be more of a family-type show?’

‘Your family don’t fart?’ Trevor turns on him.

‘Well, they mostly wouldn’t set them on fire –’

‘That’s the beauty of what I do, you see,’ Trevor interjects, eyes a-glimmer, already lost in his own myth. ‘Turning tedious bodily functions into a magical encounter with the elements – it’s what the whole world dreams of…’

Beside him, Brian ‘Jeekers’ Prendergast listens to this green with anxiety. Thanks to this ridiculous business with the pods and the mounds, the Quartet is severely under-rehearsed; as if that weren’t enough, it seems the old friction between Ruprecht and Dennis has broken out again, worse than ever. Ruprecht has told Jeekers not to worry, that the piece is so easy it can’t possibly go wrong – but he isn’t the one who’ll have to face Jeekers’s parents if they don’t get into the concert.

‘Next!’ The door swings open and Gaspard Delacroix, creator and sole performer of The Little Sparrow: Gaspard Delacroix Sings the Songs of Edith Piaf, flounces out, tugging off his fright-wig and muttering about philistines. Patrick ‘Da Knowledge’ Noonan and Eoin ‘MC Sexecutioner’ Flynn exchange a single nervous glance; then, with a deep breath, they put on their showbiz faces and troop inside.

The gym is totally empty, save for a single classroom-type desk set right in the middle of the floor, behind which sit the Automator and Father Laughton, the concert’s musical director; Trudy, the Acting Principal’s wife, stands to one side with her clipboard.

The boys mount the stage, gold chains clinking, and spend the next few moments slouching back and forth, mumbling mysteriously to themselves. Then, to an enormous, naked drumbeat that explodes from Sexecutioner’s ghettoblaster to rock the entire hall, they begin to bounce around the boards, making inscrutable hand signals, their vast trousers flapping about them like sails, and Knowledge grabs the mike: ‘I got X-ray EYES, but she’s wearin lead PANTS, so I got to get her BOOTY wi–’

‘Next!’ The judgement issues summarily from the review panel before Sexecutioner has even a chance to drop his first motherfucker. For a moment, the boys remain rooted to the spot in ungangsta-like attitudes of woundedness, mocked by the drumbeat that is still thumping around them; then, unplugging the ghettoblaster, they clamber down and make the walk of shame to the exit.

‘What in God’s name was that?’ the Automator says as soon as they have left.

Trudy peers down at her clipboard. ‘ “Original material.” ’

‘Our old friend original material,’ the Automator says grimly. ‘I’ve had some plumbing mishaps that sounded a little like those guys.’

‘It did have a certain rough-hewn vitality,’ Father Laughton moderates.

‘I’ve said it before, Padre, this concert’s not about rough-hewn. It’s not about “doing your best”. I want professionalism. I want pizazz. I want this concert to put the Seabrook name out there, tell the world what we’re all about.’

‘Education?’

‘Quality, damn it. A brand right at the top of the upper end of the market. God knows that’s not going to be easy. I’ve given serious thought to bussing in other kids, talented kids, just so we don’t have to drop the curtain after half an hour –’

‘I’m not sure that would be quite in the, ah, spirit,’ mutters Father Laughton.

‘Just a thought, Padre, just a thought. Speaking of which, though, had a couple of other ideas I wanted to run by you. First one: thought we might stick Brother Jonas in there somewhere – you know, representing Africa, various peoples the Paracletes have helped over there, bright future they can have if everyone rows in, sort of thing.’

‘Mmm, mmm,’ Father Laughton’s bowed head turning from cherry-pink to a florid magenta.

‘Maybe wear traditional dress, say a few words of gratitude in his tribe’s language. I want to remind people of this school’s long and continuing history of charitable work.’

‘Is the, ah, is the money from the concert going to Africa?’

‘Well, we haven’t decided exactly how it’s going to be allocated. That 1865 wing isn’t going to rebuild itself. But anyway that’s one idea. The other one’s this: Father, what comes to mind when you hear this word?’ The Automator pauses dramatically, then with a shimmer of fingers pronounces, ‘DVD.’

Father Laughton blinks. ‘DVD?’

‘Memorial concert’s all about remembering, right? What better way to remember than with a special-edition commemorative DVD? Let me break it down for you. You put on an event like this, you’re going to get parents coming along with their cameras wanting to film it. Psychology of the twenty-first-century crowd: people like to capture the spectacle, own it. Call it a side-effect of late capitalism, call it an attempt to stave off the ineffable transience of life. Point is, at these precious moments they all want to get little Junior down on tape. So what I’m thinking here is, we beat them to the punch. We film the entire thing, and so instead of a shaky hand-held recording complete with Aunt Nelly coughing and rustling sweets beside him, Junior’s dad can have a professionally edited, digitally enhanced DVD, his to own for ev– yes, yes, carry on.’ This last is addressed to Trevor Hickey, who has been hovering on the stage with a glazed expression these past few minutes, and now hurriedly begins his speech: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the feat of daredevilry you are about to see will shock and amaze you. Fire, man’s oldest and most indefatigable foe…’

‘I’ve made a few inquiries, couple of old boys working in the business, they’re telling me we can get the discs printed for about fifty cents a pop. Packaging, probably work something out there too. Main outlay’s going to be the recording – lighting, camera hire, sound desk, labour. But whatever we spend, we’ll make back ten times over. Think about it, DVD like that, it’s the perfect Christmas gift. Every uncle and grandmother and third cousin twice removed’ll be getting a copy of it.’

‘The Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed that the universe was made of fire,’ Trevor says.

‘And they’ll be glad to, because not only will they be getting white-knuckle rock’n’roll by classically trained musicians, French horn playing of the very highest calibre, a patriotic ballad in our national language, Irish, and more, all on the same unique historic bill, but with the proceeds they’ll also be investing in Seabrook’s future – actually, that’s pretty good, make a note of that, Trudy, a piece of history, an investment in the fut– Jesus God, what the hell is that kid doing? What the hell are you doing, God damn it!’

Trevor Hickey’s startled face emerges from behind the eclipse of his rump, which is facing the hall with a match poised at its business end. Showmanship deserting him, he begins to babble out his speech again: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the feat of daredevilry you’re about to witness will shock and amaze you –’

‘The hell it will –’ In what seems a single bound the Automator is on stage, seizing Trevor Hickey bodily and hauling him down the steps. ‘My office, nine o’clock tomorrow morning,’ he bellows after him as he hurls the boy out the door. ‘If you need someone to light a fire under your arse, then by golly you’ve found your man. A week’s detention, let’s see how that shocks and amazes you.’

Brick-coloured, dusting his hands, he returns to the table. ‘See, this is the kind of thing we’re up against. Is that the way we want to commemorate Des Furlong? Is that the way we thank the man for forty-two years serving the Holy Paraclete Fathers? With some joker lighting his farts on stage?’

‘No,’ Father Laughton remonstrates, ‘no, of course not –’

‘You’re darn right it’s not.’ The Automator, simmering, reinstates himself at the desk. ‘This is going to be a night of quality musical entertainment if I have to sing every damn song myself. Now, who’s next? Ah!’ He brightens as the Van Doren Quartet troop through the door. ‘What is it they’re playing again, Father?’

‘Pachelbel’s Canon in D,’ Father Laughton says, adding, after a moment of internal debate, ‘You might recognize it from the current advertisement for the Citroën Osprey.’

The Automator nods. ‘Quality,’ he comments, settling back in his seat.

The Quartet seems a little unsettled at first: some kind of interchange appears to be ongoing between French horn and bassoon, and the viola is looking positively unwell. But a note from the triangle brings them to order, and Ruprecht – after telling the bas-soon quite audibly, ‘Play quietly’ – leads the foursome into the soothing circulations of the Canon. As it unspools, the slow descending harmony repeating and elaborating, a beatific peace invests Father Laughton’s pink, pointy face, and beside him, perhaps unconsciously, the Automator murmurs, ‘Citroën Osprey… mile for mile, that’s one of the top-performing cars in its class.’