close to retirement age – perhaps sixty or more. The black cassock beneath the heavy overcoat made him look more substantial than he was.
They skirted an outer fence of wooden stakes and barbed wire which had been thrown up to provide some security. One of the fenceposts had taken root, a tree now the height of two men.
‘Good God,’ said Dryden, stopping and running a finger along the sapling’s bark, regardless of the blasphemy.
‘Yes,’ said Martin, the face brightening for the first time, the birthmark less visible now the priest’s skin had reddened with the cold. ‘A poplar. The posts must have been very green; it’s taken root. A little miracle…’
Dryden returned the gaze and the smile vanished.
They were in the shadow of the building now and, out of the blinding low-slung rays of the sun, Dryden could see it clearly for the first time. The floorplan was a letter H, and only the forward two wings were, in fact, in ruin. The rest of the house had been secured with corrugated iron over the downstairs windows and doors. It looked like a workhouse: functional architecture with the single flourish of the grand doorway over which stood a marble canopy on two pillars, one of which was bending outwards alarmingly. Ivy, now white with ice, had colonized the facade.
‘I didn’t realize it was so big,’ said Dryden. ‘How many boys?’
Martin crunched out a cigarette on the flagstoned courtyard. ‘Twisted words, Mr Dryden – our lawyers were quite specific. I should say nothing.’
Dryden held up his hands. ‘No notebook. I’m just trying to understand.’
Martin nodded. ‘I’ve read your stories, Mr Dryden. I detect a marked sympathy with the alleged victims.’
‘A Catholic education, I’m afraid. It leaves scars,’ said Dryden, struggling to keep the conversation uncharged.
The priest nodded, classing himself effortlessly as a victim too. He retrieved another cigarette and Dryden recalled the priests of his childhood and the acrid stench of nicotine; the jaundiced fingers.
‘Just over two hundred in 1970,’ said Martin. ‘That was the centenary. It had been there, or thereabouts, for years. There was a great need, you see – especially amongst the urban poor. Our boys came from many places, sent by their churches.’
‘And the priests?’
‘Numbers? It varied. When I was principal we never managed more than a dozen. Class sizes were on the large side – but then the education was on the poor side.’
They laughed, and the space echoed like an empty room.
‘I will deny this conversation, Mr Dryden – if anything ever appears.’
Dryden nodded. ‘It won’t.’
Martin stiffened, a palm at the base of his spine. ‘There was never any sexual abuse – you do know that? The allegations all refer to what – these days – can only be described as inappropriate attempts at imposing discipline.’
‘That’s a plus point, is it? A badge of honour? It’s certainly a novel brand image. St Vincent’s – we beat them but we never fuck them.’
Dryden was pleased he’d said it. Martin coloured, the birthmark almost disappearing, the hand holding the cigarette vibrating slightly. Dryden felt he’d reclaimed a little bit of his own childhood, if nobody else’s.
The priest produced a set of keys and wrestled briefly with a large padlock on the corrugated-iron sheet covering the front door. He swung it back, almost violently, as if airing the place, and then unlocked the door behind, which was studded with nails in mock medieval grandeur. Then he was gone, swallowed by the shadows, without looking back.
By the time Dryden had edged over the threshold the priest had thrown open a shutter, the light revealing in the gloom of the entrance hall an ugly ironwork candelabra suffocated in cobwebs.
‘I was thirty-one when I arrived here as principal in 1970,’ said Martin, shivering despite himself. ‘I think the diocese knew something was wrong and I was supposed to put things straight. The outsider. And that’s how they treated me.’
Dryden climbed halfway up the stairs to look back down on the priest, noticing the neat natural tonsure of scalp surrounded by the short, oiled hair. The floor was cold stone in a chessboard black and white design. Despite the dereliction two smells still tussled for supremacy, both remembered from Dryden’s childhood: beeswax polish and rotting carpet. The walls too were horribly reminiscent: split by a dado rail between purple below and lemon yellow above.
‘The winter of 1970,’ said Martin, lost now in his own memories.
Dryden nodded, climbing further despite the creaking wood. A bird fluttered somewhere in a loft and some leaves around an open fireplace blew themselves into a tiny whirlwind. On the landing a threadbare carpet ran off into the darkness in both directions: ahead a large stained-glass window looked out into the rear courtyard. Martin overtook him, turned left, and opened a door into one of the rear wings. It was a dormitory, and here the windows were without curtains or blinds and largely intact, bathing the long gallery in a flat, institutional light. Bedsteads had stood here in two lines against both walls, the linoleum still bearing faded stripes where the sunlight had fallen between them.
Martin stood, his large frame twisted slightly. ‘I didn’t know,’ he bowed his head. ‘Not for many years. The teachers had mostly been here for a lifetime – the youngest for twenty years. Several had been boys here. It had been a brutal place, and I often think the only real mark of their guilt was that they felt they had to hide it from me.’
‘You don’t mind if I find that hard to believe,’ said Dryden, walking the length of the empty room to a shoulder- height wooden partition. Beyond was another bare room, the floor tiled this time, and the walls showing the scars of a row of urinals. ‘It’s medieval,’ he said to no one.
‘Yes,’ said Martin. ‘Yes, it was. There were four dormitories – each a separate school house. Leo, Pius, John,
