‘Please stop,’ Geoff Sproke begs him.
‘Stop what?’ Ruprecht asks blandly.
‘Just… just be yourself again?’
Ruprecht merely blinks like he doesn’t know what Geoff means. And he is not the only one. The whole of the second year is undergoing some dark psychic metamorphosis whereby each of them is less and less himself. Test results are plummeting, indiscipline soars – boys talking among themselves, turning their backs, telling the teachers if they object to fuck off, fuck themselves, get fucked. Every day brings some new outrage. Neville Nelligan, previously unassuming middle-of-the-roader, asks Ms Ni Riain how she’d like to smoke his cock. Kevin Wong pulls a punch on Mr Fletcher in Science class. Barton Trelawney kills Odysseas Antopopopolous’s pet hamster, Achilles, by lifting it out of its cage and squeezing it into pulp with his bare hands. Bus stops are vandalized, chippers defaced with flung punnets of curry sauce. One morning Carl Cullen gets up in the middle of his Remedial Maths class, lifts his chair and puts it right through the classroom window.
For a time the Automator explains away the growing anomie as a process of ‘resettling’. But soon the malaise begins to spread through the school. When the senior rugby team are defeated in the first round of the Paraclete Cup by traditional whipping boys Whitecastle Wood, the Acting Principal finds himself under the cosh. The senior team is Seabrook; this humiliation seems to articulate something deeply amiss at the very heart of the school. There are whisperings among parents and the higher echelons of the alumni organization; those priests who do not approve of the Automator’s plans for modernization, who have grave doubts about the very idea of a lay principal, become more vocal about their misgivings – especially since the word from the hospital is that Father Furlong is out of danger and on the road to recovery.
‘Des Furlong’s not coming back, they can get that through their heads for a start. Man’s heart’s like a puff-pastry, how do they think he’d be up to running a school?’ A whole new vein has appeared in recent days to throb in the Automator’s forehead. ‘I’ve got teachers moaning at me because they can’t control their classes, I’ve got parents whining down the phone because their kids flunk a test, I’ve got the rugby coach telling me the team’s got no morale, everyone expects me to have the answer, I feel – God damn it, I feel like I’m carrying this place on my own! On my own!’
‘Tea?’ a low voice at his elbow causes Howard to start. He keeps forgetting Brother Jonas is there: he has an eerie capacity to melt into the background. Trudy is on sick-leave; the absence of her feminizing touch heightens the militaristic feel of the Acting Principal’s office.
The Automator turns to Howard with his newly characteristic expression, a blend of brow-beating and entreaty. ‘I want your professional opinion, Howard. What the hell is wrong with these kids?’
‘I don’t know, Greg.’
‘Well, Jesus, give me something. You’re out there on the ground. You must have some idea what’s bugging them.’
Howard draws a long breath. ‘The only reason I can think of is Juster. This all started after Juster’s… after what happened. Maybe they’re reacting to it somehow.’
The Automator dismisses this summarily. ‘With all due respect, Howard, what the hell’s Juster got to do with the senior Cup team? He wasn’t even a blip on their radar! Why in God’s name should they care what happened to him?’
Howard stares with loathing at the Automator’s gleaming white collar. This is not the first of these impromptu meetings; apparently the contract he signed had a hidden rider, making him the Automator’s confidant and confessor. He takes another calming breath, gathers his words. ‘Well, I don’t know, Greg. I don’t know why they should care.’
‘I mean it’s not as if – you haven’t told anyone what we discussed up here, have you?’ His eyes narrow on Howard, a hunter drawing a bead.
‘I haven’t said anything,’ Howard says.
‘Well then!’ the Automator ejaculates, as though the object of the exercise were to make Howard look a dunce. ‘You’re on the wrong track, Howard. This has nothing to do with Juster. These kids have short memories, they’ve moved on.’
The Automator is right of course: the boys don’t know what happened, they have no reason to be reacting. And yet it seems to Howard that while the full facts of the Juster episode may have remained within these four walls, the spirit of those facts did not; instead it escaped to roil like poison gas down the stairs and through the corridors, slowly infiltrating every corner, every mind. It makes no rational sense, he knows; still, he can taste it in the classroom every morning, the same darkness he encountered that day in the office.
He knows better than to offer this to the Automator. Instead he says, ‘There’s a rumour going around that Father Green… that he had some involvement in the boy’s death.’
The Automator sets his mouth, half-turns away. ‘I’m aware of that,’ he says.
‘In which case what it must look like is that we’re sitting here allowing –’
‘Damn it, Howard, I said I’m aware of it!’ He goes to the aquarium, to which three new fish have been added – ‘Seabrook Specials’ the Automator calls them, big blue-and-gold fellows imported from Japan. ‘Jerome Green didn’t do us any favours, quitting out of the blue like that. I know what it looks like. But obviously I can’t say anything without making it worse. And I can’t get rid of Jerome, no matter how much I might like to.’
‘Maybe it would help if the school could be seen to be more mindful of Juster’s… of his death.’
‘Mindful?’ the Automator repeats, as if Howard has broken into Swahili.
‘Just show, you know, that we care about it. That we’re not just sweeping it under the carpet.’
‘Obviously we care, Howard. That’s obvious to anyone. What are you saying, we should all go into the forest in our boxer shorts and sit in a circle and cry? We should build a monument to Juster in the quadrangle, is that it? Jesus Christ, it’s not enough that this kid ruins what should have been a milestone year? That he sends our 140th Anniversary Concert down the crapper? Now we all have to stay depressed till June?’
Howard reflects his gaze primly. ‘It’s perhaps a question of ethos,’ he pronounces deadpan.
The Automator glares at him then turns away to shuffle some papers on his desk. ‘That’s all well and good, Howard, but I’ve got a school to run. We need to find some way to boost morale, get the show back on the…’ He tails off; a new light flickers at the back of his eyes. ‘Wait a second. Wait just one second.’
That afternoon, at a special assembly for second-years, the Automator announces that the 140th Anniversary Concert – in limbo after the recent tragedy – will go ahead after all. As a mark of respect, however, and in a spirit of commemoration, a percentage of the proceeds from the event will now be going towards the refurbishment of Daniel Juster’s beloved swimming pool.