Skippy Dies: A Novel

He had gone there for an explanation. Ruprecht has always believed in explanations; he has always seen the universe as a series of questions posed to its inhabitants, with the answers waiting like prizes for the boy lucky and diligent enough to find them. To believe in explanations is good, because it means you may believe also that beneath the chaotic, mindless jumble of everything, beneath the horrible disjunction you feel at every moment between you and all you are not, there dwells in the universe a secret harmony, a coherence and rightness like a balanced equation that’s out of reach for now but someday will reveal itself in its entirety. He knew the horror of what had happened could not be undone. Still, an explanation might fix it in time, seal it in, silence it. He imagined her breaking down and confessing, like people did on TV, spilling out answers like tears, he sitting in judgement until he finally understood.

But that is not what happened. Instead, like a theory that promises everything and delivers nothing, that spreads like a virus to nullify what you thought you already knew, she had left him only with questions, terrible questions. Why didn’t he tell Ruprecht about his mum? Why did he want to quit the swimming team? In Ruprecht’s dreams every night now he is back in the Doughnut House – back amid the shouts, the lights, people crying, doughnuts scattering the floor, and Skippy, rapidly becoming a figure from the past, sprawled drowning on the tiles beneath him, while the sea beats away in the distance, unheard under the traffic, a dark blue line lost in the greater darkness of the night – Why? Ruprecht yells at him in these dreams. Why, why, why? But Skippy doesn’t answer, he is going, going, slipping away through his fingers, even while Ruprecht is holding him, even though he holds on as tight as he can.

The days that follow see an exponential increase in Ruprecht’s doughnut intake. He eats them constantly, at every hour of the day and night, as though in an endless race with some invisible, inexorable competitor. The other boys find this creepy, given what’s happened, but for Ruprecht it’s like the more he eats, the less they mean, and the less they mean, the more of them it seems he can eat, as if they are genuinely becoming zeros that take up no space, crowding into his stomach, a bellyful of nothings. His skin becomes pocked with angry-looking hives, and he is no longer able to do up the top button of his trousers – Dennis jokes that it’s a good thing he didn’t go ahead with that new portal idea or he might have got stuck halfway into a parallel universe, but Niall, for once, doesn’t laugh.

In the classroom he ceases to be a moribund non-participant, but although his hand goes up all the time, the answers he gives are never the right ones. Eight colours in a rainbow? The capital of Sweden is Oslo? Erosion, a process of gradual wearing away, from the Greek word eros meaning love? No one has ever witnessed Ruprecht getting a question wrong before; there is, initially, a certain level of Schadenfreude at this lapse in perfection, even among his teachers. But from straightforward wrongness it soon degenerates into something much more unsettling. A hydrogen atom has two dads, the main export of Russia is C sharp, Jesus instructs us to diff ract sunlight; every time the teacher asks a question, often before they’ve finished asking, there is Ruprecht with some dizzyingly untrue response, and when they ignore him, he shouts things out, completing their sentences for them, turning whole lessons into gibberish, snowdrifts of nonsense so deep and bewildering the teachers often have no choice but to abandon the class and start again from the very beginning. They give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping he’ll snap out of it; but time goes by and Ruprecht’s behaviour only gets worse, his grades lower, his homework more obscene, until finally, feeling as if they are banishing their firstborn, they start asking him to leave the classroom. Soon he’s spending the greater part of his day out on the corridor, or in Study Hall – or in the infirmary getting an icepack on his nose, because the forces of darkness do not like this new rebellious Ruprecht either, do not welcome his deviation from his ordained role in the hierarchy. The messages posted on his back become more virulent, and the blows intensify too, slaps becoming punches, shin-kicks heading groinward; every time he takes a piss someone will push him into the urinal. Ruprecht carries on like none of it is happening.

‘Please stop,’ Geoff Sproke begs him.

‘Stop what?’ Ruprecht asks blandly.

‘Just… just be yourself again?’

Ruprecht merely blinks like he doesn’t know what Geoff means. And he is not the only one. The whole of the second year is undergoing some dark psychic metamorphosis whereby each of them is less and less himself. Test results are plummeting, indiscipline soars – boys talking among themselves, turning their backs, telling the teachers if they object to fuck off, fuck themselves, get fucked. Every day brings some new outrage. Neville Nelligan, previously unassuming middle-of-the-roader, asks Ms Ni Riain how she’d like to smoke his cock. Kevin Wong pulls a punch on Mr Fletcher in Science class. Barton Trelawney kills Odysseas Antopopopolous’s pet hamster, Achilles, by lifting it out of its cage and squeezing it into pulp with his bare hands. Bus stops are vandalized, chippers defaced with flung punnets of curry sauce. One morning Carl Cullen gets up in the middle of his Remedial Maths class, lifts his chair and puts it right through the classroom window.

For a time the Automator explains away the growing anomie as a process of ‘resettling’. But soon the malaise begins to spread through the school. When the senior rugby team are defeated in the first round of the Paraclete Cup by traditional whipping boys Whitecastle Wood, the Acting Principal finds himself under the cosh. The senior team is Seabrook; this humiliation seems to articulate something deeply amiss at the very heart of the school. There are whisperings among parents and the higher echelons of the alumni organization; those priests who do not approve of the Automator’s plans for modernization, who have grave doubts about the very idea of a lay principal, become more vocal about their misgivings – especially since the word from the hospital is that Father Furlong is out of danger and on the road to recovery.

‘Des Furlong’s not coming back, they can get that through their heads for a start. Man’s heart’s like a puff-pastry, how do they think he’d be up to running a school?’ A whole new vein has appeared in recent days to throb in the Automator’s forehead. ‘I’ve got teachers moaning at me because they can’t control their classes, I’ve got parents whining down the phone because their kids flunk a test, I’ve got the rugby coach telling me the team’s got no morale, everyone expects me to have the answer, I feel – God damn it, I feel like I’m carrying this place on my own! On my own!’

‘Tea?’ a low voice at his elbow causes Howard to start. He keeps forgetting Brother Jonas is there: he has an eerie capacity to melt into the background. Trudy is on sick-leave; the absence of her feminizing touch heightens the militaristic feel of the Acting Principal’s office.

The Automator turns to Howard with his newly characteristic expression, a blend of brow-beating and entreaty. ‘I want your professional opinion, Howard. What the hell is wrong with these kids?’

‘I don’t know, Greg.’

‘Well, Jesus, give me something. You’re out there on the ground. You must have some idea what’s bugging them.’

Howard draws a long breath. ‘The only reason I can think of is Juster. This all started after Juster’s… after what happened. Maybe they’re reacting to it somehow.’

The Automator dismisses this summarily. ‘With all due respect, Howard, what the hell’s Juster got to do with the senior Cup team? He wasn’t even a blip on their radar! Why in God’s name should they care what happened to him?’

Howard stares with loathing at the Automator’s gleaming white collar. This is not the first of these impromptu meetings; apparently the contract he signed had a hidden rider, making him the Automator’s confidant and confessor. He takes another calming breath, gathers his words. ‘Well, I don’t know, Greg. I don’t know why they should care.’

‘I mean it’s not as if – you haven’t told anyone what we discussed up here, have you?’ His eyes narrow on Howard, a hunter drawing a bead.

‘I haven’t said anything,’ Howard says.

‘Well then!’ the Automator ejaculates, as though the object of the exercise were to make Howard look a dunce. ‘You’re on the wrong track, Howard. This has nothing to do with Juster. These kids have short memories, they’ve moved on.’

The Automator is right of course: the boys don’t know what happened, they have no reason to be reacting. And yet it seems to Howard that while the full facts of the Juster episode may have remained within these four walls, the spirit of those facts did not; instead it escaped to roil like poison gas down the stairs and through the corridors, slowly infiltrating every corner, every mind. It makes no rational sense, he knows; still, he can taste it in the classroom every morning, the same darkness he encountered that day in the office.

He knows better than to offer this to the Automator. Instead he says, ‘There’s a rumour going around that Father Green… that he had some involvement in the boy’s death.’

The Automator sets his mouth, half-turns away. ‘I’m aware of that,’ he says.

‘In which case what it must look like is that we’re sitting here allowing –’

‘Damn it, Howard, I said I’m aware of it!’ He goes to the aquarium, to which three new fish have been added – ‘Seabrook Specials’ the Automator calls them, big blue-and-gold fellows imported from Japan. ‘Jerome Green didn’t do us any favours, quitting out of the blue like that. I know what it looks like. But obviously I can’t say anything without making it worse. And I can’t get rid of Jerome, no matter how much I might like to.’

‘Maybe it would help if the school could be seen to be more mindful of Juster’s… of his death.’

‘Mindful?’ the Automator repeats, as if Howard has broken into Swahili.

‘Just show, you know, that we care about it. That we’re not just sweeping it under the carpet.’

‘Obviously we care, Howard. That’s obvious to anyone. What are you saying, we should all go into the forest in our boxer shorts and sit in a circle and cry? We should build a monument to Juster in the quadrangle, is that it? Jesus Christ, it’s not enough that this kid ruins what should have been a milestone year? That he sends our 140th Anniversary Concert down the crapper? Now we all have to stay depressed till June?’

Howard reflects his gaze primly. ‘It’s perhaps a question of ethos,’ he pronounces deadpan.

The Automator glares at him then turns away to shuffle some papers on his desk. ‘That’s all well and good, Howard, but I’ve got a school to run. We need to find some way to boost morale, get the show back on the…’ He tails off; a new light flickers at the back of his eyes. ‘Wait a second. Wait just one second.’

That afternoon, at a special assembly for second-years, the Automator announces that the 140th Anniversary Concert – in limbo after the recent tragedy – will go ahead after all. As a mark of respect, however, and in a spirit of commemoration, a percentage of the proceeds from the event will now be going towards the refurbishment of Daniel Juster’s beloved swimming pool.

‘It was really Howard’s idea,’ the Automator explains afterwards. ‘And you know it makes sense whatever way you look at it.’ On the one hand, it gives the boys a chance to do something for their friend; on the other, it gets the concert up and running again, and also lends it that extra touch of gravitas, which it can definitely use now that it appears Father Furlong is going to pull through, in fact in some ways they were quite fortunate to have had Juster in the wings, so to speak, not to be crass about it but you take his meaning. The Automator’s hope is that the revamped concert will revitalize the moribund student body. ‘Give them something to get excited about. Take their minds off all this gloom.’

It seems to Howard that it will take a lot more than a Christmas concert to rouse the boys out of their present despond; he is surely not the only one hoping that Greg has bitten off more than he can chew. But the Acting Principal has a plan. He spends the day after the announcement sequestered in his office, making phone calls; the day after that, at a second special assembly, he delivers the news that RTÉ has agreed to broadcast live radio coverage of the event.

‘Historic occasion like that in the country’s most prestigious school, why wouldn’t they want to broadcast us?’ the Automator jokes afterwards, as his staff congratulate him on this coup. ‘Course, it didn’t hurt to have a couple of alums out there in Montrose, ready to twist the right arms.’

It appears the Automator knows the boys better than Howard gave him credit for. News of the concert – or, more specifically, the live radio coverage of it – creates a buzz on the corridors that hasn’t been heard for months. Any grievances the boys had are forgotten, the air of introversion and menace dissipates as quickly and mysteriously as it arrived; even students with no stake in the event (an ever-dwindling number, as the Automator invents a phalanx of new positions in Concert PR (stuffing envelopes) and Concert Tech Assist (sweeping the floor of the Sports Hall)) get caught up in the excitement. ‘A rising tide lifts all boats, Howard,’ the Automator comments approvingly. ‘That’s simple economics.’ The halls resound once more with rehearsing instruments, and it begins to look like ‘the Show’, as the Automator has taken to calling it, will not only turn the school’s annus horribilis around, but silence the Acting Principal’s enemies for good.

And then, with eight days remaining until the curtain rises, the concert’s musical director, Father Connie Laughton, arrives at the Automator’s door in tears.

A dainty man of a nervous disposition, Father Laughton detests discord above all things. He always climbs down before seriously disagreeing with anyone; he can’t dismiss the most disruptive student from his class without feeling sorry twenty seconds later and racing down the corridor to summon him back. As a result, his music appreciation courses are notoriously anarchic – in fact they make anarchy look like a slow day at the library – and yet, at the same time, they are marked by a kind of goodwill, and the priest always seems happy there, in the midst of the melee, humming along to a Field larghetto or a Chopin mazurka while paper planes, pencil cases, books and larger objects fly through the air around him.

Discord, though: that he cannot abide.

As musical director of Seabrook events for a number of years, Father Laughton is by now largely immune to bad playing. But what he was subjected to at this morning’s Quartet rehearsal – the egregious timbre, the proliferation of atonalities, the disregard for even the rudiments of timing – this was something else, this was something, it seemed to his ears, deliberate, a calculated and mindful assault on music itself; just to recall it now sets the teacup trembling in his hand. And when he realized that the perpetrator was none other than Ruprecht Van Doren! Ruprecht, his star student! Ruprecht, the one boy who actually seemed to understand music as he did, to recognize in its symmetry and plentitude a unique interpolation of perfection in our inconstant world! Well! Knowing the boy had had some difficulties lately, he withheld from comment as long as he could, but eventually – he was sorry, but he could not bear it, he simply could not bear it. He asked Ruprecht quite politely if he would mind sticking to the score as Pachelbel had written it.

‘And what did he say?’

‘He told me –’ the priest crimsons at the memory ‘– he told me to sit on it.’

‘He told you to sit on it? Those were his exact words?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Father Laughton dabs at his forehead fretfully. ‘I don’t see how I can – I can’t work with someone with that attitude, I simply can’t.’

‘Of course, Father, I quite understand,’ the Automator concurs. ‘Don’t you worry about it, I’ll take it in hand.’

The Automator has been aware, of course, of the staffroom chatter regarding the former favourite’s sudden decline. Until now, though, he has stayed his hand. Van Doren’s projected performance in next year’s state exams is calculated to lift the year’s average by four per cent; he, or his genius, must be allowed a certain leeway.

He invites Ruprecht to his office later that day and over tea and biscuits reminds him just how important the Quartet’s recital is to the concert. He reflects on the concert itself, a uniquely prestigious and historic event which is, let us not forget, to be broadcast live on national radio. He attempts bribery, offering to allow Ruprecht to keep his dorm room to himself, and then threats, ruminating on the positive effects it might have on one of the more troubled students, e.g. Lionel, to be roomed with one of the very gifted, e.g. Ruprecht. Finally he loses his temper and yells at him for five minutes straight. This meets with the same response as every other tactic.

‘He wouldn’t even speak! Kid sits there like a, like a blancmange –’ The Automator slumps, huffing and puffing over his desk, much as Dr Jekyll might have while metamorphosing into his fiendish alter ego.

Howard adjusts his collar. ‘Can’t they just play without him?’

‘It’s a quartet, for God’s sake, who ever heard of a quartet with only three musicians? And Van Doren’s the only one with any talent. Send out the other three as a trio – you’d be better off pumping the audience with sarin gas! Or just whacking them on the ears with a lump hammer!’ He kicks over his wastebasket, sending paper and apple cores across the floor; Brother Jonas scuttles from a corner instantly, like a domesticated spider, to tidy them up. ‘We need Van Doren, Howard. He’s what this whole concert is about – high-quality, timeless entertainment. And damn it –’ the bloodthirsty eye staring sightlessly at Brother Jonas, who is winkling stray staples from the fibrous turquoise carpet ‘– I’m damned if I’m going to let some little blimp defy me on a whim. No sir – if he wants a war, I’ll give him a war.’