The Whipping Club (30 page)

             
Brother Ryder shook his head. “You’re a miserable article, Cracker Jack. Not fit for the boots we give ya. Imagine, stealing from Our Lord.” He landed his belt right across Adrian’s face, the sting and the bleeding powerful. “You try living through the worst war in history and having barely enough food.”

             
Getting the okay, a monitor punched Adrian in the face.

             
“We hand food to you every damn day of your wasteful lives without so much as a thank you, you spoiled bastards. Work for our Lord—don’t steal from Him, for God’s sake. We’ll learn ya.”

             
The flogging felt like electrical shocks from his feet to his head. Distant screams from seagulls circling overhead cried out to him, and he called back like a madman.

             
“That’ll do,” Brother Ryder said. “Untie them.” Both boys collapsed to the ground and lay there, unable to rise.

             
“Both of you queers go to bed without tea.”

             
After the others had headed for the refectory, Adrian helped Peter to his feet, and they climbed the stairs slowly to get into their beds.

             
“I’m sorry, Peter. It was my fault. Here.” Adrian managed to reach under his bed for his chamber pot before he lay himself down and listened to his poor friend heave.

             
Adrian fell into a hazy sleep, listening to Peter shaking and whimpering. He felt frozen and pulled his knees high into his chest, wrapped his blanket tight over his head, wishing he could crawl into Peter’s bed for warmth. He was in the midst of a pleasant daydream about lying beside his ma, when Peter let out another near silent scream. Cracking an eye open, Adrian could see the desperate look on Peter’s face, and he reached over and tightened the blanket around Peter’s shoulders, whispering that they were brothers, would stick together, no matter what.

             
The next morning, he swore to himself, he would go to the head superior and rat on the monitors and Brother Ryder. He would stop the sickness in Surtane and get them out of there for good.

After breakfast, Adrian walked to the main building, slowly climbed the two flights of stairs and stood for a reluctant moment at the Head Superior’s chambers. The Head Superior leaned back into his chair and, listening to Adrian’s creaking shoes, urged him to enter the large converted classroom. There was no furniture other than the man’s messy desk and some file cabinets behind where he sat, with large windows overlooking the playing fields.

             
“What is it, my child? Speak up.”

             
“Yesterday, sir, I thought you would like to know, some of the older boys—monitors—sir, harassed and hit Peter and me at Brother Ryder’s request, sir. As he has on several occasions, sir.”

             
The Head Superior put down his pen, took off his glasses and studied him. He got up and walked around his desk.

             
“That’s it?”

             
“That’s it, sir, I suppose.”

             
The Head Superior hit Adrian in the jaw.

             
Stunned, Adrian held his face as the Head Superior bent to look at the damage he’d done and then walked back around to his chair.

             
“Thanks for tattling to me. Feel free to come back and tell me anything. Anytime.”

             
“Yes, sir,” Adrian said, and marched down the stairs, wondering if he, too, should try to become one of Brother Ryder’s monitors, though he knew his chances of Brother Ryder’s favor were slim.

             
“What happened to you?” mocked an older jerk, O’Reilly from Dormo Six, as he came out the door.

             
Adrian felt desperate, knowing O’Reilly and his friends could smell fear. He spit a dangling tooth onto the cement playground. He tried to be strong but was close to tears. The older gang began circling around him. He looked over at Brother Mack who was too far away to see what was happening.

             
“Buzz off,” Adrian managed.

             
O’Reilly pushed him to the ground, and the crowd grew. “Get up, you little maggot.”

             
Adrian rose but felt faint.

             
“The little babby needs his bottle,” another taunted, kicking him. He was pushed back to the ground, his hands covering his head, waiting for the hobnail boots to slam into his stomach, his neck, his back. It was always worse anticipating the thing to come, not half as bad once the boots dug into him, once he began drifting away.

             
“Break it up, lads.” He heard Brother Mack’s voice at last. “Move off to classes.” The Brother lifted him up with his strong arms and led him off to the toilet. Janey Mack! The infirmary toilet, the place he’d been dying to get into since his arrival. Brother Mack wiped him off with a cold, wet towel, clearing his head. The room was sparse and old, a faded beige color on the walls, not at all as white and clean as he’d pictured.

             
“Are there nurses about?”

             
“There’s the one that comes on the odd occasion. You must have seen her.”

             
“I thought she worked with the bakers.”

             
“We all pitch in here. You have to keep to yourself, Ellis.”

             
“I know, sir.” He felt like crying. He wanted like hell to tell Brother Mack all that happened during the previous day, and also about this morning with the Head Superior, but there was no trusting any of them now.

             
Brother Mack cupped Adrian’s chin in his hand and examined his jaw. “God love you,” he whispered.

             
“Thank you, sir.” Adrian bowed, which seemed to please Brother Mack.

             
“You’re good with numbers, I’ve been told. What about reading?”

             
“My sister would read to me, sir.”

             
“Ah.” Brother Mack smiled at him. “We’ll have to hear more about your family. They’ll be coming for the Easter picnic?”

             
“Of course, sir.”

             
Just the mention of his sister, and knowing he’d have to wait an endless eight more days until Easter and until he’d see Jo, made him cry in front of Brother Mack.

             
“Would you like to read with me?” Brother Mack pretended not to notice Adrian’s tears as he wiped his eyes.

             
“Yes, sir. Very much, sir.”
I’m ashamed when I read with my sister,
he wanted to say.

             
“You know, Adrian,” Brother Mack said, wiping his brow with a fresh, wet washrag. “Is it all right to call you Adrian?”

             
Adrian nodded.

             
“Like anyone else, there are good Christian Brothers and bad Christian Brothers, good nuns, bad nuns, good parents, bad parents, good kids, bad kids. We can’t judge, really, can we?”

             
“No, sir.”

             
“There’s a reason. There’s a reason, yes. Do you know why you’re here?”

             
“I’m being punished.”

             
Brother Mack straightened out the cotton pads that he placed on the medicine chest. “Ah, no. The stronger the wind, the stronger the tree—all right now, you’ll be,” he said, and then chuckled.

             
Adrian nodded, as if to acknowledge Brother Mack’s wisdom.

Father Brennan and Gran were on their way over to check on the family, as they often did on a temperate Sunday after Mass. Marian was in the kitchen preparing a steak and kidney pie for their dinner. Johanna was complaining. And Ben was hung over, bored out of his mind writing an article about Jewish triplets born to a famous singer in Dublin. He read the newspaper and sipped his coffee, bit the eraser off the top of his pencil.

             
He seemed less committed to his causes, and Marian had to admit, less physically attractive to her. His intensity now, more often than not, took the form of brooding. His leg, constantly shaking, let her know when he was worrying. She wondered if he was thinking about his mother’s welfare, or about his family’s pressures.

             
She studied Ben, dazed as he was. Since February, he had kept his distance from her, his mind and emotions elsewhere. She noticed that his shoulders were slightly rounded, perhaps to shield himself from the pain he still felt in his arm. Certainly, they both noticed the weight gain.

             
She came out of the kitchen and walked over to him, put her hand on his jerking knee. “What is the matter with you, bouncing up and down like that?”

             
“Just stress,” he said, taking off his glasses, “common for men in their early thirties. The
Times
ran a story about it. The kids, the wife, the job, the money.” She knew he was alluding to the fact that they recently had to sell their car to cover solicitor costs.

             
“The bicycle will keep you fit, and Adrian’s worth every penny.”

             
“Ah, he is, of course. Did I say he wasn’t? Jo’s worth every penny, too, and it’s she should be riding a bicycle.” He was angry now; she could hear in his strident tone.

             
“Sure, why don’t we buy Jo another something?” Marian retorted.

             
“Look, I’m tired,” he responded, taking little note of her dusting the photograph of Jo she’d put back on the mantel.

             
“So am I,” she said, emptying a
n ashtray brimming with butts.
She went back into the kitchen, to halve the beef and freeze the second portion for another meal, to compensate with more cucumbers from the garden, a small hot potato salad as well. Ben brought most of the garlic she grew to a homeless shelter; the remaining garlic and scallions she froze. The bread and butter would be saved for their late evening cocoa.

             
Marian stared out the back window at the brown bush that desperately needed a trim. She wondered for a brief moment if Ben were having an affair. She knew from her reading of
Ladies Home Journal
that often, in pursuit of the children’s happiness, a couple can lose each other and the marriage suffers. And of course the one thing can lead to the other. She opened the junk drawer she had filled with bags of penny candy. “Need something to sink your teeth into?”

she called to him.

             
Thinking about that girl with the bulbous eyes, she grabbed bunches of the shit from the drawer and marched into the library. “Did you hear me or are you lost in your daydreaming?” she said, and raised her hands in the air and watched the hard candies rain all over his paperwork. “Want some
penny
sweets, dear?” She gave him the evil eye.

             
“What’s all this?” he said.

             
“Oh, don’t bullshit me, Ben. You’re not the only one who can do a bit of research, Mr. Reporter. I found out her name. It wasn’t hard. I just asked your mother to describe your ‘friends,’” she said. Her fingers drew the quotation marks in the air.

             
He shook his head and began sweeping penny candy into the trash.

             
Marian began to calm down as she watched him tidy her mess. “You have a choice to make, Ben. I’ve made mine. I’m getting Adrian back, and you’re either with me or you’re not.”

             
He stood and began to laugh at her, put his arms around her waist.

             
“I’m with you. I’m not going anywhere, Marian. Not when I have you,” he said, but with effort. “Marian the librarian, you’re not,” he whispered and kissed her neck.

             
“Not funny.”

             
Ben laughed and sat back down.

             
She leaned over his desk and threw the remaining pieces of candy into his trash bin and then stared at him until she felt she had his attention. “I will tell you this, Ben. I’m not kidding. If you’re fooling around, if you ever leave again, that’s it. The door won’t be opened for you to return. That’s my word,” she said.

             
“You’re mad,” he said as she left for the kitchen.

             
Communication is everything, that’s what she read in her
Ladies Home Journal
. They never had it out about that girl and the time he stayed away, and because of it a quiet anger seethed inside her, and a fear that he might at any time walk away and abandon her and the children. She did, though, believe that nothing happened with that Penny character,
though the Journal did say that the wife is often too gullible
. What Ben didn’t realize was that he was not alone in his misery. She’d been so preoccupied with getting Adrian back home that she’d lost her amorous feelings, or her wifely duties as Father Brennan would have called them. But she dared not talk with Father Brennan of such matters. He’d always been a sad man. Never been easy to talk with, God no. Yet interestingly, he and Ben spent more and more hours talking together. During Father’s last visit, she observed an anguished look on the priest’s face, as well as Ben’s. They talked about God knows what until the wee hours. God—yes, that was the subject of their conversation. Before she excused herself and went to bed, the two of them wondered aloud if God ever wanted faith to circumvent love.