You had to grind to do well in June. It could only be done a night at a time. You didn’t know what you wanted to do with your life even if you did do well in June. June was as blank and distant as your death, with hot days perhaps. The only way to get release was to work. You’d not go down or stand aside, you’d ride on top of the others if you could, whatever security that’d give. It was too grisly to think, it was easier to work than to think. Death was all that mattered, it gave quickness, that was one accent you’d never lose. You didn’t have to say it out loud. Life was the attraction, every instinct straining its way, and it was whether to be blind and follow, and work was a way out. Pass the exam. Learn the formula. Things would come out that way.
One-two-three-four the reasons Napoleon failed at Waterloo. Get by heart passages of prose to support an answer to Addison’s style when you knew every characteristic of style except that it was simply the inexplicable way a man who usually donned britches in the mornings had of writing. Learn how to praise the sensuous mysticism, the haunting lyricism of Ode to the Nightingale if they asked for an appreciation: how Keats’s imagination was befogged by too much heavy sensuousness if a criticism was the order of the day. On and on, further rubbish by the ton, cram it into the skull, get a high place in the Exam, play up and play the game well, ride down the slowcoaches.
You’d rise hot and tired from it all at ten, worn out. Pleasant to gather slowly then the books for the morning and quench the lamp, go down and look at the scrubbed raw boards of the table and linger over a cup of tea. The mind was drained, it wanted no more than to look at the solidity of things in tiredness and contentment. It had worked well. It could do no more. That was a kind of satisfaction that was hard to lose before sleep.
“Did you open the window before you came down? Not to have the room stinkin’ with bad air.”
“I did,” the aggression couldn’t even grate.
“How long were you up there tonight?”
“Four hours.”
“It’s alright till we’ll have a doctor’s bill on our hands, then we’ll see. Then we’ll see.”
“That’s the time the Superior says we should do.”
“What does he care, what does he care? He’ll not have to worry if you get sick.”
What use was there answering, you were at peace. Let him continue, let him come to his own stop, let him rave till he choked.
“It’s me has to do everything while you’re at the school all day and up there with a fire at your arse all night. Will the turf last out to the summer at that going? That’s the question. Do you think we can afford to get coal from Arigna?”
“It doesn’t burn that much. I can pay you back,” the resolution to stay clear of conflict didn’t last long.
“You’ll pay me back. I’d like to see that. Where’s the money coming outa? Nineteen damned near and not a round copper earned yet.”
“I’ll be finished in a few months.”
“We’ll be all finished in a few months be the look of things or in the poor-house or somewhere. What’ll you do when you’re finished — walk round with your hands in your pockets like the other gents about that went to college.”
“I can get a job.”
“Ye’ll not all get jobs, that’s certain shooting. Only the ones with the pull will get the jobs.”
“If you’re good enough you’ll get a job.”
“There seems an awful lot about not good enough then. You’ll be the outstanding one, of course.”
“I can go to England and pay you back from there.”
“Anyone can go to England. You don’t have to waste years at school to go to England. If you’ve a fiver in your pocket and the boat fare you can go to England, that’s all that’s wanting. And I don’t want any dirty money from England. What do I want your money for? I got on before I ever saw sight or light of you, and I’ll get on after. Who wants your cursed money?”
Violence had grown, steady eye on his throat and talking face, urge to smash him. Hate gave such strength that you felt you could break him, you didn’t care about anything any more, there was only this doghouse of the teeth at the throat.
“Can you not shut up? Can you not even leave me alone for these few months?” you cried violently into his face and Mahoney was taken back, he could not meet it with his own old violence.
“Look. Look at you now, the eyes gone mad. In the lunatic asylum you’ll wind up, that’s what your study will do,” he mocked when he recovered. “No one’s doing anything to you. Of course as usual make a mountain out of a molehill. You can have as much peace as’ll burst you in this house.”
“Alright, will you just, just leave me alone?” you shouted and went hurrying outside before he had time to answer. You heard him turn in sudden fury on some of the others as you closed the door.
You were crying. No one else in the class had to put up with such as this. They’d be helped and encouraged to study, not this mess, with that bastard of a madman shouting and hammering and abusing away, and why had you to be given such a dog’s chance.
Your feet were on the mould of the rhubarb bed going for the lavatory with its Jeyes Fluid and solitary airhole when you stopped. You couldn’t do it, go in and smother yourself with sympathy and cursing.
What happened didn’t matter, you had to go on, that was all. You had to look it in the face. That was the way your life was happening, that was the way you were. There was no time for sadness or self-pity. The show of your life would be always moving on to the next moment. The best was to dress up and bow to it and smile or just look on but it was easier to say than do.
The night was cold. Away towards Oakport, above the Limekiln Wood, you began to watch the clouds cross the face of the three-quarter moon.
19
THE NEXT NIGHT YOU DIDN’T GIVE UP, YOU’D GO THROUGH IN the face of set teeth before you’d give up now or be crushed by some other force outside your own will. You forced yourself down to Stamp’s account of the Black Earth belt of Russia, underlining as you went, pausing to go back over. When it was finished you shut the book and with savage gloating whispered the account point by point into the night of the bedroom. A grim smile over Virgil. This was the slow night of struggle, night after night till June, and the strain couldn’t be much worse in life afterwards. You’d the satisfaction of staggering away from it downstairs at ten, completely worn, the swaying contentment after the football pitch or alley, only more so, diabolical pride of drawing the mind to the boundaries of what it could take, the shiver of the nerves as it trembled back from the edges.
Violence often came: frustrated abuse of the books on the table till your hand hurt or you got afraid the noise might carry downstairs; or desire to smash the lamp would end with you going to the bed, loosening your clothes. A newspaper down on the floor, pull up the draped eiderdown, press your flesh on the bed’s edge. Black hair and lips on the yellow coverlet; soft white of the breast, pink nipple, lower. Pump your nakedness into the bed’s belly, hot flush rushing to the face as it goes down to the lips opening and closing on the yellow coverlet, the raw tongue seeking past the teeth, fit of trembling before the seed pumps rustling down on the already positioned newspaper. Heavy breathing and sweat hampers the dressing again. Crumple the newspaper and put it to burn, the wet centre hissing. You are quiet and moping, the body dead as ashes: as you go back to the table and books a vicious musing about how many conceptions the rationed distribution of all that seed hissing in the centre of the newspaper, how many could it cause, the passing eggs touched to life.
The house exam was held at Christmas, trial run before the summer. It’d decide who’d continue in the honours course, who’d leave off to concentrate on passing, and passing was no good to you. You had to get high in the honours to stand a chance in the cut-throat competition for the Scholarships or E.S.B. or Training College or anything. Passing was only good if you had your own money to go to the University and few at the school had that. Most came from small farms in the country on their bicycles, stacked downstairs where they ate their lunches out of paper bags and horseplayed on wet days. They knew too it was get high honours or go to England. The air was tense with this fear through the exam, the folding doors that separated the classrooms drawn back to make an examination hall.