Catherine O’Flynn - Mr Lynch’s Holiday

He looked across at his father now and imagined what he would have done in similar circumstances. He pictured Dermot advancing towards the trees, unflinching as the stones bounced off him like bullets off a tank, shouting, ‘Come here, you little devils!’ as he chased the kids away. He had put up with far worse on the buses.

The meeting dragged on for another hour and a half, snagged for most of that time on some impenetrable point of Spanish law relevant to the planned legal proceedings against the local council and the developers. Eamonn looked around the room and felt almost overwhelmed by hopelessness.

Because Lomaverde was not in decline, because it had rather simply failed to take off, its death was more difficult to perceive. Awareness of its failure to thrive was slow and incremental, similar to Eamonn and Laura’s own gradual realization, four months after arriving, that the pool was emptying. For the first few days neither of them mentioned it, each assuming that they were imagining it. But as the water level continued to sink there was no room for doubt. When they phoned Nieves they were assured the cause would be investigated and the problem fixed. It took an age for the pool to empty completely, the water seeping slowly through a tiny crack. It was peculiarly painful to watch.

It was after midday when Dermot and Eamonn were finally released from the meeting. They set off up the hill at a brisk pace as if trying to make up for the lost hours in captivity.

‘Sorry. I don’t know why I made you endure that.’

‘You wanted me to suffer.’

‘It seemed funny, fleetingly.’

‘I suppose I’ve had worse.’

‘When, for example?’

‘Oh God, I remember some awful thing I had to sit through with your mother. Went on for hours.’

‘At church?’

‘No, some kids’ show. Song after song after song.’

‘Was I there?’

‘You were in it.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’d hardly have gone otherwise. Something about Noah.’

Eamonn looked at him. ‘That was a school production! I’m sorry if it was dull for you, seeing your only child perform.’

‘It’s no good getting huffy about it now. The fact was I didn’t see you once. You spent the whole time lurking at the back.’

‘Well, I didn’t want to be in it. It was rubbish.’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

‘I don’t know why Mom dragged you along.’

Dermot was quiet for a while before saying, ‘I think it was the other way around. That was the worst of it.’

At the start of term Mrs O’Dwyer had given everyone in the class a folder to be used for the special instruction they would receive in preparation for the holy sacrament. Eamonn’s folder was green. Mrs O’Dwyer had originally given him a pink one, but the moment she’d moved away from the table, he and Bernadette Keenan had swapped by mutual and wordless consent. On the front of the folder he had written ‘My First Holy Communion’, and decorated this, as Mrs O’Dwyer had said they could, with drawings of chalices, hosts, crosses and doves. Other pupils had struggled with the doves. He could see Mark Hurley’s effort — some kind of winged dog — and Bernadette Keenan’s flying fish. He had carefully copied his dove from the poster on the wall and Mrs O’Dwyer had said it was beautifully done.

He filled in that day’s worksheet. A line had to be drawn to link matching words. He was carefully connecting ‘Eucharistic Prayer’ with ‘A special prayer said during mass’. He had a suspicion about the worksheets, a feeling that they weren’t quite right. The questions weren’t like real questions, they didn’t require him to be clever or to understand something complicated, they just required him to use and repeat certain words, like a baby learning to speak.

Bernadette nudged him, making the line wobble, and whispered, ‘David Brennan thinks the bread and wine are Jesus’s body and blood!’

Eamonn carefully rubbed out the crooked line. ‘They are, aren’t they?’

‘No, I mean, actually the body and blood.’

‘What? Real blood?’

‘Yes!’

Eamonn looked in David Brennan’s direction and pulled a face popular among his classmates, sticking his tongue under his lower lip and flapping his hands, implying an unspecified handicap.

‘Is the priest Dracula, then, drinking blood?’

Bernadette grinned and said, ‘Or a cannibal, eating a body?’ She lowered her voice further: ‘Mmmmm, could I have a nice piece of Jesus’s arm, please?’

Eamonn twitched his eyebrows in Mrs O’Dwyer’s direction: ‘She likes the taste of his bottom best.’

To his distress, Bernadette emitted a high-pitched whoop and Mrs O’Dwyer swooped like a bat.

‘Is there something amusing on the worksheet? Something funny about Our Lord Jesus’s sacrifice?’

‘No, miss.’

‘You, Bernadette Keenan, are exactly the kind of washerwoman who would have happily watched Jesus drag his crucifix up the steep slopes of Calvary, laughing gaily at the spectacle. Madame Defarge, no less, knitting at the guillotine.’

Bernadette looked uneasily at the paper guillotine in the corner of the classroom, trying and failing to fathom its sinister role in Mrs O’Dwyer’s anger.

‘And you, Eamonn Lynch,’ the teacher hesitated, seeing his worksheet neatly completed, ‘you should know better than to get involved in her nonsense.’

Lunch was a bitter-sweet affair. The canteen staff had once again attempted to pass parsnips off as chips, and there was the gruesome matter of some cabbage to be disposed of, but this was followed by the premium combination of chocolate concrete and custard.

Mark Houlihan plonked himself next to Eamonn: ‘You gonna watch me batter David Brennan after school?’

‘Can’t. I’m doing the whole of the Inner Circle.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The 8.’

Mark still looked blank.

‘The bus. The Inner Circle.’

Mark pulled a face. ‘Oh yeah. The Inner Circle. I’ve done that loads of times.’

‘Where does it go, then?’

‘London.’

Crumbs of concrete flew from Eamonn’s mouth. ‘London? What are you talking about? It goes around the inner circle of Birmingham. It goes up Newtown, Five Ways, Sparkbrook …’

‘Sounds boring.’

‘No. It’s not boring. It’s wicked and tonight I’ll be the first ever person, ever, to do the entire route who isn’t a bus driver. Plus I’ll be stood up at the front the whole time, cos my dad will be driving. Once, at the garage, he let me sit in the driver’s seat and steer the wheel.’

‘So. I’ve driven loads of buses. And lorries. And motorbikes.’

‘No you haven’t.’

‘Yes I have. Anyway, bus driving’s a wog’s job.’

‘No it’s not.’

‘Yes it is. Your dad must be a wog. Are you a wog?’

‘No.’

‘You must be a Paki, then. They’re the only other people who drive buses. Are you a Paki?’

‘No.’

Mark was doing some kind of accent now. ‘Oh bloody hell! Where’s my turban! Oh bloody hell!’

Eamonn started to clear his tray. He didn’t want to look as if he were running away, but he wanted to run away.

‘Yeah, piss off, Paki, before I batter you too.’

In the afternoon Father Maguire paid one of his regular visits to the class. He had been talking for some time about something. Eamonn wasn’t sure what. He remembered the priest had started by saying that God loved all little children, but that had been a long time ago and Eamonn didn’t know what had happened since. Father Maguire had a sing-song voice, travelling up and down in pitch at perfectly regular intervals regardless of what he was saying or to whom he was saying it. The effect was similar to that of a hypnotist’s swinging watch, the modulated to and fro sending listeners into a trance.