It’s amazing how many people are surprised to learn that Brothers only joined up for a job for life. Bit like joining the army. No sense of vocation or fuck all like that. Funnily enough, I never saw Corn banging his head against the wall. That surprised me. Anyway, they’d stick you in the well as well. That’s where I got to know him better. His voice, in particular, I should say. It was too dark to see his face.
I think I remember him telling me his parents were in a bad car crash, and Corn ended up in with me for a couple of years while they were getting better. Corn wasn’t a long-termer. A lot of kids spent time in those homes because their parents had fallen on hard times for a while and had no one else to turn to for help. Some of them even came from families who could’ve looked after them but wouldn’t – they’d gone to America or whatever – and left them in what they’d thought were good hands, even paid for them to be looked after. Corn’s parents probably thought he was having a great time. Once they were better of course they came and got him.
Funny how things work out.
Though funny isn’t a word that came to mind when I rehung that Sacred Heart. I wasn’t alone in that cottage.
‘Well, this is a surprise.’
‘What?’
I didn’t even see it coming. It was Corn. Complete with spray. He let me have it.
PICASSO
Having questioned Anne Donavan apropos Lucille Kells/Frances Anne Donavan, I had watched the entrance to the stables from a hedge behind the cottage. A man approached. He was walking with a limp. In the light of the kitchen, where he discovered a letter behind a Sacred Heart picture, I found myself recalling an acquaintance from my youth. I have touched on this on a prior occasion and, although I saw no reason to expand at that time, I feel that I should do so now.
I once had the misfortune to experience the inhospitality of a home for boys. An ‘industrial school’ to give it its designated title. I lay one particular night on a bed recovering from a flogging. And that very morning a boy, known to me as Sean Dock, had found himself in the enviable position of being unable to consume his breakfast of bread and dripping. Sean had explained that he was unwell to the Brother in charge, who then administered what he, and others of that institution, referred to as ‘a good kicking’. Or, in the Brother’s case, a good kicking. He has the most irritating habit of emphasising his ‘G’s. Even now it is impossible to hear anyone of that inclination without thinking of that Brother.
Earlier that morning we were awoken, as was the practice, to the command: ‘Up, up, sailors in line.’
Sailors – those who had wet their beds – were required to form a line. As an added disincentive, boys who had brothers were forced to undergo beatings at their hands. Implements were furnished for this purpose, and Sean Dock, a nightly offender, was punished each dawn by his twin, Red. Sean, naked, would bend over, and Red would have to administer the strap.
Red would register his objections, which led to he himself being strapped. This would cease only when he agreed to comply. They would beat him until he agreed to beat his brother. Sean, however, was a sickly boy, and the effect of this rendered him incapable of eating. The nerves in his tummy, I suppose, prevented comfortable digestion. In that sense, Red had unwillingly induced this nausea, its result having invited ‘a good kicking’. The Brother responsible then dragged the unconscious boy to the infirmary.
That night I found myself waking to a conversation. Red was by Sean’s bed. Both were whispering.
‘Robert,’ Sean was saying, ‘how do you prove you’re being good?’
Robert – Red was a nickname because of his hair colouring – did not have an answer. I myself would have been at a loss to provide one. Regardless of conduct, all were treated as offenders, constantly abused into believing that we had been abandoned by our families, who did not want us, because we were no good and never would be. Why this conviction was instilled, that all that had befallen us at the hands of the clergy was our families’ doing, in Red’s case, for sixteen years – from infancy to the time of his release – was never explained.
Sean then referred to their family.
‘You’ll tell them about me, Robert, won’t you?’
‘Sean, you can tell them yourself. You’ll get better.’
Sean seemed of a different opinion. ‘Promise me you’ll tell them about me, Robert.’
‘Sean, for fuck’s sake quit talking like that.’
‘Promise.’
‘Sean, you’ll get better. You’ll be going home.’
‘Promise you’ll take me home and bury me.’
Red simply could not deal with the situation. Sean knew he was dying and the only thing that would console him was the promise. And Red made it.
‘I promise,’ he said, ‘I promise.’
The door opened and Red’s transgressions were discovered. He had crept out of bed and gone to his twin. I heard what happened to him moments later, as did Sean. I did not need to witness his punishment, having had some experience of it myself, to attest to its savagery.
It was their practice to spread malefactors naked on the bottom of a staircase and administer a section of tyre from a pram wheel until the welts satisfied their appetites.
The following morning I was lowered into a well, where I found Red. We spent some forty-eight hours or so huddled together.
In Ireland, besides those found in churchyards, there are three kinds of cemeteries. One, for children born dead: not having been baptised, the original mark of Adam still on their souls, they cannot lie in consecrated ground. Two, the cemetery of the institution: for the religious. Three, an adjoining plot: for boys
