Every morning at exactly 8.55 a.m., his boys filed in one by one without so much as a word, with their white shirts and red ties, which was a strict stipulation made clear by Raphael to the mammies and daddies at the beginning of each school year, with their little heads held high and their fingers to their lips. Then they would stand in their desks, ramrod stiff and not move a muscle until their Master was finished speaking. Then they would be allowed to sit and at 9.05 on the dot begin the lessons of the day.
‘Today we are doing the Battle of Kinsale and the subsequent Flight of the Earls,’ Raphael would say as he paced the room like a colossus. ‘Would you like to begin reading, Michael Noonan?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy would reply and take up his book. ‘Chin up, chest out!’ Raphael would caution and young Noonan would smile and redden just a little, then continue reading as the Master paced and the boys listened and through the windows the sun streamed in and everything seemed possible.
A Visit From the Monsignor
The days passed into months and the months into years and Raphael might well have remained in St Anne’s until the day he died, so contented was he with both pupils and colleagues, and most likely would have done had not a knock come upon his door in the month of September 1937 and the principal of the school, apologizing profusely for the intrusion as he introduced him to the clergyman who accompanied him, said, ‘Raphael – I’d like you to meet Monsignor Cassidy. The Monsignor is in charge of things below in St Anthony’s. Do you think maybe we could have a word?’
Raphel nodded and silenced the class with a click of his fingers.
‘The first boy who talks while I am out of the room . . .’ he intoned darkly. He had to say no more.
The door closed behind him and he stood in the corridor facing the two older men, saying, ‘So then, gentlemen – what can I do for you?’
The Interview
Raphael could not believe his ears. He stared at the three men sitting before him and wondered was he hearing things. But he wasn’t. What he had indeed heard Monsignor say was, ‘I am prepared to offer you the position of principal here at St Anthony’s, Mr Bell.’ This seemed ridiculous. He had of course been flattered to be invited along for the interview at all and had been glad to attend because it would give him experience. But he had never seriously considered the possibility that he might actually be offered the position. To begin with he was much too young for such an offer. An older man, perhaps an existing member of staff, must surely be in line for the job. Directly above the Monsignor’s head was a picture of the Holy Family. On the wall opposite, the framed proclamation of Irish independence. Beside that a St Bridget’s cross fashioned from bullrushes. Raphael was so taken aback by the offer which had just been made to him that he spent a ludicrously long time staring at it. The cross had long since turned yellow thanks to the sunlight and the passing of the years. He realized that he ought not to be giving all his attention to it for such abstraction was hardly appropriate in the circumstances considering he had just been offered the principalship but try as he might he simply could not help himself, oscillating as he was between euphoria and utter disbelief and would probably have meekly accepted it if the Monsignor had lost his temper and slapped the desk crying, ‘What are you staring at, boy? You’ve wasted enough of my time! Now get out of my office before I take the strap to you and really give you something to think about!’
What he did instead was clear his throat and say again, ‘Well, Raphael – do you think you might be prepared to accept the position? I can’t tell you what it would mean to have you as head of our staff. I have heard so much about you and your excellent work in St Anne’s from Father Curran. I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that you are the man for us. Well, Raphael – what do you say?’
For no explicable reason, a ball went sailing high over a bar in his mind. There were cheers from vague, unformed crowds. A tall-hatted cardinal in full livery extended a solemn hand. A little boy whispered, ‘That’s our Master.’ Raphael felt himself flush with pride and embarrassment. The words shrunk in his dried-up throat. Only with a great struggle did he manage to free them at all. ‘Yes, Monsignor,’ he replied. ‘May I say how grateful I am.’
‘No,’ said the Monsignor, as he rose from his desk, ‘May I say how grateful I am’, a warm smile illuminating his face. ‘Am I right, gentlemen?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Cunningham, the outgoing principal, and, ‘Yes,’ said the young fresh-faced priest whose name was Desmond Stokes, and who would one day be almost insanely loathed by the man whose hand he now shook, and whose heart would eventually also break.
Brothers
Not that it seemed like that back in those days of course, oh no. Back then there was nobody like good old Father Stokes who in a couple of years would be taking over from the Monsignor as boss of the school and who just could not do enough for Raphael to help him get settled in. ‘Have you enough of this?’ and ‘Have you enough of that?’ was all you ever heard out of old Stokes, tearing up and down the corridors like a blue-arsed fly with boxes of chalk and maps and kettles to make Raphael cups of tea during his break. Raphael of course was as bad. If you didn’t know better you’d have said the pair of them were having an affair. But of course they weren’t. They were just the best of pals, that was all. In fact they were more than that. It would be more accurate in fact to say they were like brothers. There simply was nothing Raphael wouldn’t do for Father Des and nothing Father Des wouldn’t do for Raphael.
Rarely a day went by but the classroom door would open and in the young priest would come – ‘Ah howareye Raphael and how are things, did you see where Cork won again yesterday by God do you know I think they’re going to take the Munster Final!’ or some similar observation.
Pacing the playground together each and every lunchtime, if there was a subject they didn’t get around to discussing then you could be sure it wasn’t worth wasting your breath on. One minute it would be the horrific events in war-torn Europe and the next it would be the latest antics of the Gurrier Clarke, the rapscallion in fourth class who had poor Mrs Galligan driven astray in the head. Raphael shook his head and chuckled softly.
Boys, she says to them, why did St Peter say Thou shalt never wash thy feet? Why did he say that now, boys, do you think? And what does the Gurrier do, sticks the hand up and nothing will do him but he gets to answer it. Well, Clarke, says Mrs Galligan, why do you think now St Peter might have said that? Because, Mrs, because he says – his feet were clane!
Tears came into Raphael’s eyes – ‘Because, he says, his feet were clane!’
It took them nearly five minutes to get over that and was it any wonder the young lads in third class were looking at them and whispering, ‘Look – the Master and Father Stokes is laughing!’
Raphael shook his head as he handed the brass bell to the young Kelly boy from fifth class – ‘Well, I swear to God, Father,’ he said, ‘if I hear any more of that Clarke fellow’s spakes I’ll be carted off. I’ll be carted off now and that’s a fact!’, then went off smiling across the playground to his boys who were already lining up in single file, straightening their red ties and fixing up their white shirts after the boisterousness of their play just in case the Master might decide to do an on-the-spot inspection. Which he didn’t. Not today. He was just too busy thinking about that bloody rascal Clarke and the carry-on of him!
Sundays
Nearly every Sunday Raphael would call to the presbytery and together they would listen to the wireless. There was nearly always a good match on and afterwards, a bit of a play or something to keep you amused. Father Stokes was a great man for the plays. His room was filled with books and plays. One day he handed Raphael a copy of Charles Kickham’s novel Knocknagow – The Homes of Tipperary.
‘Do you know Kickham?’ the priest asked.
‘Know him?’ replied Raphael with a tinge of sadness in his voice. ‘Wasn’t his masterpiece “She Lived Beside the Anner” my father’s favourite song, God res
t him?’
‘Do you know,’ said Father Stokes, ‘there’s songs would break your heart.’
Songs like ‘Panis Angelicus’ and ‘Macushla’ to which they listened sometimes in the evenings and Raphael would recall fondly the day he had heard that very same Count John McCormack sing it in the Phoenix Park, the pure notes trembling in the air as the Sacred Host was elevated and you thought you would faint such was the love you felt for Jesus Christ the Son of God and for all those about you.
‘As long as I live I will never forget that day, Raphael,’ said Father Stokes, ‘for I was there too.’
The cries of children echoed in the failing light of a Sunday evening as the haunting strains of ‘Macushla’ filled the parlour and Raphael cradled a small Jameson whiskey in his lap and said, not realizing that Father Stokes was out of the room, ‘I wonder will I ever see him again – Paschal. My old friend Paschal O’Dowd.’
The Souls of New-born Babes
There were trips to the Abbey Theatre to see the plays of Yeats and Teresa Deevy and Paul Vincent Carroll. To marvel at the abilities of the great F.J. McCormick. To see Jimmy O’Dea in pantomime at the Royal Theatre. There were outings too to the countryside with the Ballsbridge Literary and Historical Society. There was even a trip to the lakes of County Cavan where the pair of them stood together on the lakeshore, two silhouettes by the bending reeds in the autumn twilight. Was it any wonder the mammies said, ‘Inseparable, Mrs Inseparable the pair of them. Whenever you see one, you can be sure the other’s not far away.’
Not that they minded one bit, the mammies, as indeed why should they, for by now they realized that their sons were under the care of one of the most respected headmasters in Dublin. Only two years after his appointment, with the Monsignor retired and Father Stokes now at the helm, St Anthony’s had a general inspection of the whole school, the results of which were their wildest dreams. As were the Inspector’s comments on the wonderful work being done in the school as regards training in good habits, the formation of character, and the pride clearly being taken in all things Gaelic and Irish, the evidence of which was visible no matter where you went in the school, from the neat displays of handwritten poems by the executed insurgents of 1916 to the framed photographs of balladeers and martyrs long since passed away and on every wall, the Mother of God, Mary of the Gael, looking down upon each and every little boy who passed through St Anthony’s as if he was hers and hers alone.
And so it was a proud Raphael Bell who stood at the door of St Anthony’s Boys’ National School the following day and watched his boys filing in with their heads down and their rosaries twined about their fingers, without a doubt their young souls unblemished as those of new-born babes.
Headless
All of which doesn’t mean of course that there weren’t occasional difficulties which Raphael had to face, as any headmaster must in the day-to-day running of a school. One such being the incident with Donnellan the bully who, despite repeated warnings, had continued to tease and torment young Matthews whose mother had been recently widowed and who had quite enough on her plate without having to come up to Raphael’s office every five minutes to complain about the likes of Mr Donnellan. Standing there in his office, a fragile, stick-like thing practically wasted away by sorrow since her husband’s death, she reminded him so much of his own dear mother, Evelyn, now sadly confined to a nursing home in Cork city, her mind no longer her own. Mrs Matthews fiddled with the strap of her handbag and stared at the floor. ‘He wets the bed at nights, Mr Bell and I don’t know what to do.’
‘You can put your mind at rest, Mrs Matthews,’ said Raphael, ‘for you’ll have no worries after today, I promise you.’
‘God bless you, Mr Bell,’ she said, adding, ‘He loves you, you know, my little Martin.’
Raphael smiled as he put his arm around her narrow shoulders and escorted her to the door.
Donnellan denied it, of course. Raphael knew he might as well be talking to the wall. ‘Did you take his marble?’ he shouted at him again, their noses almost touching. ‘Did you?’
The brat denied it again. And then would you believe it – again. There were beads of sweat on Raphael’s brow.
‘I’m going to ask you one last time,’ he said. ‘Did you?’
‘No,’ muttered Donnellan sullenly.
Raphael was having no more of that. He opened the cupboard and took out his stick and gave the insolent wretch three slaps that were so hard that the tears leaped instantly to his eyes.
‘Did you?’ he snapped, and a vein started ticking just above his right eye.
‘No!’ he cried defiantly.
It took another eight slaps to get the truth out of him. Raphael himself was exhausted. But it was worth it.
‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ he said. ‘And if you go near that boy again by God I can tell you it will be God help you. Do you hear me?’
The boy said nothing. Blood rushed to Raphael’s face. He bawled, ‘Do you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ the brat squeaked. For that’s what he was. A brat.
Raphael glared at the smirking upstart clutching its raw hands.
‘Get out of my sight before I really lose my temper!’ he snapped and Donnellan slunk off.
The instant he closed the door behind him, Raphael felt as if his head was lifting off his body, lightweight drifting into air. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. For just a second it terrified him. He clung on to his desk. Far away in the world there were tiny sounds that had somehow become stars, glittering like lights in a night city as they tried to send him some kind of signal but knowing they never could because he was lost to them now. He was on the verge of crying out to them, but then the moment passed and he realized it was the sound of the children laughing and playing directly outside his window.
A Phantasmagorical Galleon
Then there were the choral competitions. Every evening now you could hear the boys beavering away after school, with Raphael walking up and down past the window, mouthing the words along with them and every so often spinning on his heel to cry, ‘No! No! No! For the love and honour of God how many times do I have to tell you! Right – from the beginning again!’
It was Father Stokes who had first suggested the idea of a school choir. Much as he adored music, Raphael had never considered himself much of a practitioner, but Father Stokes’ confidence in him gave him all the encouragement he needed. ‘You wait and see, Raphael,’ the young priest said one day. ‘Between the pair of us we’ll knock a few notes into these crows,’ as Raphael grinned mischievously and reached in his top pocket. He held up the brand-new tuning fork which he had purchased that day in Walton’s music shop in North Frederick Street, ‘Just what I was thinking myself, Father,’ he said.
They could not believe it when they were awarded the prize in Belfast the following year. ‘As beautiful a rendition of “The Lark in the Clear Air” as I have ever had the privilege to listen to,’ the adjudicator had said.
St Anthony’s Boys’ National School had been somehow transformed from a drab old battleship ready for the breaking yard into a phantasmagorical galleon soaring towards the future at full sail across the skies.
The Scaredy Cat
Now, if you had said to any of the boys in sixth class, or indeed any of the classes in St Anthony’s, ‘Boys, I’m sorry to have to tell you but I’m afraid your teacher is a scaredy cat,’ it would have been as if you had cracked just about the funniest joke that was ever invented in the world. The idea of Mr Bell ever being afraid of anything was enough to bring tears to your eyes. What – the man who had stood up to the docker Byrne when he came down, as he said himself, ‘To bait the Master’ for what he had said to his son? Not only stood up to him but sent him off home with his tail between his legs after getting a promise out of him that he would never darken the school door again until he was prepared to show a little bit of manners. Yeah sure, Mr Bell a scaredy cat. You’d have had your work cut out for you if you tried to put that one ove
r on the loyal warriors of St Anthony’s School, I’m afraid. They’d have made a laughing stock of you, for God’s sake! Which was even funnier again because the laugh of it all was that it was in fact true. The bold Raphael was a scaredy cat. Oh, he wasn’t scared of boys who squared up to him and snapped ‘I won’t do it!’ or ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’ or for that matter, whiskey-swilling dockers or irate mothers or anyone else. But he was a scaredy cat when it came to women. Oh he was a silly old scaredy cat then all right.
One day a young woman had called to the office to inquire as to whether there might be a place for her son in his school and when she crossed her legs, Raphael flushed to the roots. When he heard the swish of her stockings his eyes went everywhere but in her direction. He looked at the map of Ireland on the back of the door, at the Pope conferring his blessing on the multitude in St Peter’s Square, at Maura and Sean who were playing ball with Nip the dog. Nip has the ball. Maura has the ball. Sean has the ball. Woof, woof, says Nip. Eventually there was nowhere else to look. He knew his face was the colour of a tomato, but there was nothing he could do about it because the more he thought, ‘My face is the colour of a tomato. I must look ridiculous. I must do something about it,’ the worse it got.
That was exactly what happened the very first day he met Nessa Conroy at a meeting of the Legion of Mary in a hall in Mountjoy Square. When the meeting was over there was tea and sandwiches for everybody. Raphael was chatting away to another teacher from the south side of the city when Father Stokes took his arm and said, ‘This is Nessa, Raphael. She’s only just joined us recently.’ He smiled as he introduced them. ‘Nessa’s from the wee north,’ he said and as the blood rushed once more to his head, Raphael tried not to spill his tea all over himself.