The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna

stopped, wiped his eyes with the over-stretched cuff of his jersey and resigned himself to his fate. He was guilty of the crime. But he’d been hungry and the turnip had simply been there, about to fall from the sack.
    “A turnip, a whole turnip this time, you greedy pig!” The voice rose on the last two words and lashed about the child like a savage wave.
    “Come over here, now .”
    He went quickly to the final peacock, a mere foot now from his accuser, but remained staring down, the tears still tightening on his cheeks. The man’s breath smelled of sour milk and fish heads; he could feel the rotten gusts waft across his face. He thought that if he looked up he might faint.
    “Anything to say for yourself, boy?”
    He attempted to raise his head but it was painful. He’d discovered that keeping his head bowed was the safest way to protect himself from the stinging stares, and the slaps that an upturned face could bring. So far the orphanage, with its flagged floors, its gravel-strewn yards and grassy gardens, had afforded him some safety, but not so the aging carpet with its faded birds. He knew he was in deep trouble when he was staring down at it.
    “I was hungry, sir,” he blurted out in his defense, at last lifting his tear-stained face, and meeting the blood-veined eyes of his tormentor. He knew the lines of the face well; it was a practical lesson in the bogeymen of his nightmares.
    The nose was pointed, and porous like a wedge of stone; a crooked mouth of ruined teeth half-grinned like a rip in a grain sack. The pallid, lumpy flesh called to mind the skin on his breakfast gruel. It fell away from his cheekbones, to crouch in a series of slack folds at the man’s neck. The white hair was surprisingly lush, yellowed and oiled back, showing the tooth tracks of a recent combing; his large withered ears stuck out like the waxy handles of a toby jug.
    “You don’t deny it then, Eighty-Six?”
    “No, sir.”
    The boy was trembling. Fear tore at his insides, flinging everything this way and that. The black cane leered at him from the far corner. He prayed that the ordeal would be quick.
    But then there came a sudden rapping on the door: loud, ominous, urgent. The room thrummed in its aftermath. The boy caught his breath.
    “Yes? What is it?” The man hurled the words at the door. The sideboard silver shivered. The door opened.
    “Master Keaney, can you come? We have an incident in the yard. Thirty-Two again.”
    Mother Vincent stood in the doorway, bristling in her black robes, her stern face like the queen of spades, framed in its starched casing. She looked from Keaney to the boy, then back to Keaney again. Something cold and cruel reared up and twisted between them, then slumped and fell low.
    Keaney rose.
    The woman had spoiled his game, had flipped over a card she was not supposed to see. The boy thanked God, and the master cursed Him.
    “I’ll be there presently, Mother Superior. Meanwhile, can you see that Eighty-Six here scrubs the refectory floor after supper—for the next five evenings.”
    He shot out a fist and punched Eighty-Six full in the face. The boy doubled up as blood poured from his nose. Keaney pushed him toward the nun.
    “Get out, you useless beggar!”
    Eighty-six could not believe he’d been saved from the savagery of the cane; he wanted to scrub a hundred floors for a hundred nights in thanksgiving.

Chapter seven
     
    A week after his visit to the doctor, Jamie bought the latest issue of the Mid-Ulster Vindicator . Last week’s had already gone up in smoke as fire kindling, the “Lonely Hearts” column having yielded a succession of candidates that were either too young (twenty-five to thirty), too experienced (widowed or separated), too eager (willing to travel any distance), or too righteous (Christian, teetotal, non-smokers).
    Jamie, for the first time since his uncle’s death, was becoming excited at the great new vista that was opening up for him. Life was bearable