‘Maybe he wants to score some E’s.’
Howard watches the old man grip the boy by the shoulders, lean into his slack face, speak to him softly and briefly, then spin him 180 degrees and send him on his way.
‘Good thing the Automator didn’t see him,’ Vince Bailey says. ‘He’d get another week’s suspension.’
‘Oh yeah, I’m sure Carl really cares about being suspended,’ Conor O’Malley mocks.
‘Oh right, I forgot you’re his best friend, that knows everything about him.’
‘Fuck yourself, shithead.’
‘All right, all right.’ Howard raps on the lectern. ‘We’ve got work to do here. Now let’s see what this uniform can tell us.’
He holds it up, as if it had some Grail-like power to penetrate the fog of the day. But in the morning light, in the intermittent, corrosive adolescent gaze, the uniform no longer appears to tell them very much. It no longer feels charged with history, nor with anything else, save for the smell of mothballs; and when Howard tries to recall that epiphany of last night, the catharsis he was going to bring about in them – he sees only that little scene in the staffroom: the joy on Tom’s face as he is handed his escape route; the affection and pride, real, genuine affection and pride on the Automator’s; the staff gathering round to pass on their congratulations, Howard himself shaking the coach’s hand.
Somebody twangs a rubber band with his teeth, somebody yawns.
Why should they care about the doings of ‘D’ Company? Why should they believe a single thing he tells them, or anything they’re told within the walls of this school? They know how it goes, they know how it works in places like this – even if they don’t know they know.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he says.
The boys look back at him desultorily, and suddenly Howard feels like he’s suffocating, like there is nothing breathable left in the room. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Everybody go and get your coats. We’re getting out of here.’
Nothing happens. Howard claps his hands. ‘Come on, I mean it. Let’s get moving.’ He doesn’t know what he means; he only knows that he can’t stay in this room a moment longer. Now the general apathy gives way to a nascent stirring of interest, as the boys realize that, whatever has happened to him, he is serious about this. Bags are lifted, books hastily put away before he can change his mind.
Jeekers raises his hand. ‘Are we going on a class trip, sir?’
‘Sure,’ Howard says. ‘Exactly.’
‘But don’t we need permission from our parents?’
‘We’ll clear it with them afterwards. If anyone doesn’t want to come, that’s fine. You can proceed to the Study Hall for the remainder of the class.’
‘So long, loser.’ Simon Mooney twists Jeekers’s ear on his way to the door. The thin boy wavers; then, clambering out from behind his desk, he grabs his bag and hurries after the others.
It takes mere seconds for the boys to reappear from the locker room with their coats. Bringing a finger to his lips – ‘Let’s be sure not to disturb the other classes’ – Howard leads them up Our Lady’s Hall, past the oratory and the Study Hall, towards the daylight framed in the double-doors – and then they are outside, clipping down the winding avenue between the rugby pitches and chestnut trees.
He walks them down to the station and they take a train into the city. He still hasn’t decided where they’re going, but as they pass Lansdowne Road, the site of internationals and schools rugby finals, ‘Seabrook’s second home’, he finds himself telling the boys how within weeks of the outbreak of war, Juster’s great-grandfather and hundreds of other professional men were going to the stadium every night after work for military training, among them many who would join ‘D’ Company. Disembarking, he leads them up Pearse Street, around College Green, along Dame Street, the same route, he tells them, the ‘Pals’ had taken on their triumphant leave-taking of the city.
Cutting through Temple Bar toward the river, they pass the cinema outside which Howard met Halley for the first time: this nugget of history he does not pass on to the boys. He remembers walking with her down to the riverside, but it’s only as they are crossing Ha’penny Bridge – the elderly construction seeming to sway beneath their impatient feet, the quays of the city stretching away on either side – that he remembers the museum was where she had been headed that day too, was where he had promised to take her, but never did, instead falling in love with her, leading her away into the backstreets of his life. Now he’s finally on his way there, but with twenty-six hormonal teenage boys instead of her. Nice job, Howard.
The boys climb the hill through the gates of the museum grounds. Gerry Coveney and Kevin Wong shout, ‘Echo!’ at the walls of the vast courtyard. Here and there, groups of tourists make their way over the cobblestones: huge Americans like sides of beef, prim Japanese ladies in black, all with cameras dangling at the ready from their necks. By the entrance, a horde of children from primary school are clustered around a besieged-looking man in a red sweater. ‘Now a museum,’ he is telling them, ‘is a place with lots of objects from the past. By studying these objects, we find out about things that happened long ago…’
The children nod seriously. They can’t be much older than six or seven; everything to them is long ago. From a safe distance their teacher looks on with a mixture of fondness and gratitude for a moment’s peace.
Howard brings the boys inside and approaches the man at the reception desk. ‘I wanted to take my class for a look around…’
‘We can probably arrange a tour, if you like,’ the receptionist says. ‘Is there a particular area you’re interested in?’
‘We’re studying the First World War,’ Howard says.
The receptionist’s face clouds. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘we don’t really have anything about the war at the moment.’
Behind Howard, the man in the red sweater, with a hounded look, leads the children into the bowels of the museum. ‘Objects! Objects!’ they cry deliriously as they go.
‘Anything at all?’ Howard says, when the noise has passed. ‘Uniforms from the Irish regiments? Rifles, bayonets, medals, maps?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the man repeats sheepishly. ‘It’s not something there’s much demand for at the moment. Though we’re hoping to feature it in a forthcoming exhibition?’
‘Forthcoming when?’
The receptionist calculates. ‘Three years?’ Seeing Howard’s face fall, he says, ‘You might take them to the Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge. It’s really just a park. But I’m afraid that’s about all there is.’
Howard thanks him and steps back outside, the class billowing behind him like a murmurous cloak; on the cobblestones they congregate around him expectantly. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s my fault, I should have called ahead. I’m sorry.’
He knows they are only disappointed because they fear this means the end of their outing. Still, as they hang there in the weak, cloud-filtered light, shuffling a little, waiting for him to tell them what to do, they appear different to their everyday school selves – younger, less cynical, lighter even, as if Seabrook were a weight that they carried, and set free of it they might just float off into the air…
Traffic pants on the quays in a shimmer of monoxides. The park does not sound terribly inspiring; Howard is debating whether to cut his losses when his phone rings. It’s Farley. ‘Where the hell are you, Howard?’
‘In town,’ Howard says. ‘On a class trip.’
‘A class trip? What, without telling anybody?’
‘It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing,’ Howard replies, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
‘Greg is going ballistic, Howard, we just about talked him out of calling the guards. For God’s sake, have you gone mad? I mean, what are you doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ Howard says, after a moment’s consideration.