The Dead School by Patrick McCabe Page B

night-time hoping they would go away. But they never did. They just sat there, people cut out of the dark, waiting.
    Once, Our Lady came to you and sat there with you as the sweat glistened on your forehead and your heart beat so fast, laying her soft hand on your forehead as she told you that it would soon be
all right because good boys who loved their mothers were always rewarded and to put your trust in Jesus Christ Our Lord. When you looked again she was gone, nothing but the night moths tapping at
the window and the ghosts of her kind words still hanging in the air.
    You would be standing by the river when the cherry blossom in full bloom sent out its intoxicating fragrance, where the children on the bank tossed a ball with frantic cries and cabbage-whites
described great figure eights in the weighted air above the sparkling silver waters which slowly but surely started to turn red once again and the limp dead dummy of your father would go floating
past again, downstream in the smoky haze of a dreamy summer.
    And there were other dreams, too, of the Black and Tan who had so cruelly done him to death, now swinging from a tree in that same field, pleading for mercy like the British coward he was, as
Raphael in his rebel green gave the order for his men to ‘Execute!’ as he slapped his wrist with the leather gloves and the Tan’s eyes bulged as his neck snapped and somewhere
Mattie smiled a wistful smile, now that he knew old Ireland would be free. All night long those dreams would go on, of a building aflame in Dublin, as it had been during the fateful week of 1916
seven years before, when the first blow was struck against the Saxon tyrant, perfidious Albion, the Commandant-in-Chief Patrick Pearse now calling out to Volunteer Raphael Bell, ‘More
ammunition! Over here, Raphael! Immediately! We’re coming under fire from the Foresters!’ But sadly, despite their valiant efforts, it was only a matter of time and when they were
finally overrun, Raphael, on behalf of his father, defied them to the last and when the judge snapped impatiently, ‘Do you realize your part in this foul rebellion has seen to it that you
will most surely die?’ Raphael clenched his fist and thumped the air, crying ‘God Save Ireland!’ and felt the soul of his dead father enter his body as the bullets of the firing
squad ripped it to shreds.

Tripping Over Himself With Brains
    Tower of Ivory
    House of Gold
    Ark of the Covenant
    Gate of Heaven
    Morning Star
    Those were the names. The names of Our Lady the Mother of God. The Cedar of Lebanon whose pearl-white foot crushed the head of the serpent. A crown of golden stars adorned her
head. At her feet in his surplice and soutane, Raphael each day intoned the words:
    To thee do we cry poor banished
    children of Eve
    To thee do we send up our sighs
    Mourning and weeping in this
    valley of tears.
    The air was heavy with the scent of candle-smoke and incense. He prayed for his mother, that the sadness might leave her.
    That the flickering fire would once more return to dance in her eyes.
    That the words which he knew she wanted to speak to him would not wither on her lips and her eyes turn again to glass. He prayed that even one old day would return. The day of the reaping race!
Oh! If only it could be!
    The Lord works in mysterious ways, the priest whispered to him, proud of him as he watched him pray. ‘Your father would have been a happy man had he lived to see this. His young boy
growing to be a man and the country he loved soon no more to be a province but a nation once again!’ There were tears in the priest’s eyes as he spoke the words.
    When in the year 1925, at the age of twelve, Raphael was awarded a scholarship to St Martin’s College, he was sad because he knew his mother would be all alone.
‘Now,’ said Uncle Joe, ‘I have to ask you to be stronger than ever before. You pass up this opportunity, my son, and your father would turn in his grave. Never fear.