‘The fact is that, after the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, the Irishmen who’d fought in the Great War didn’t fit the new way the country imagined itself. If the British were our sworn enemies, why had two hundred thousand Irishmen gone off to fight alongside them? If our history was the struggle to escape from British oppression, what were we doing helping Britain out, fighting and dying on her behalf? The existence of these soldiers seemed to argue against this new thing called Ireland. And so, first of all, they were turned into traitors. Then, in a quite systematic way, they were forgotten.’
The boys listen palely, the lucent grass-green of the empty park shimmering around them.
‘It’s a good example of how history works,’ Howard says. ‘We tend to think of it as something solid and unchanging, appearing out of nowhere etched in stone like the Ten Commandments. But history, in the end, is only another kind of story, and stories are different from the truth. The truth is messy and chaotic and all over the place. Often it just doesn’t make sense. Stories make things make sense, but the way they do that is to leave out anything that doesn’t fit. And often that is quite a lot.
‘The men of “D” Company, like the other men who fought, found this out the hard way. They were told all kinds of stories to get them to join up, stories about duty and morality and defending freedom. Most of all, they were told what a great adventure it would be. When they arrived they discovered that none of these stories was true. Instead they had been lied to and plunged into the most brutal and barbarous mess in the world’s history to that point. And the history that was told of that mess was as dishonest as the stories that helped create it.
‘When they left Dublin in 1914, with crowds cheering them on, the Pals must have thought that the very least they could hope for was to be remembered. Then again, after so much betrayal, maybe the ones that were left alive afterwards weren’t all that surprised it went the other way. And maybe they were wise enough not to let it get to them. They had joined up as friends, and when they got out to the Front, when the grand words evaporated, that bond between them remained. That they stayed friends, that they looked out for each other, most agreed, was what kept them from cracking up altogether. And in the end was the only thing, was the one true thing, that was genuinely worth fighting for.’
He smiles summatively at the boys; they gaze mutely back at him, in their grey uniforms for all the world like an incorporeal platoon, materialized out of the winter clouds to scour the bare park for someone who has not forgotten them.
That night, for the first time in months, the construction work has stopped. The silence is so pristine as to be almost uncanny: Howard feels a light-headedness as he opens his books.
The boys had been quiet on their way back to the station. At first he was afraid he had depressed them, but as the train led them out of the city back along the coast, they emerged from their private reveries with questions:
‘So, like, Seabrook students back then, would all of them have been fighting in the war?’
‘Well, like you they had parents who were paying a lot of money for their education. So I’d guess that most would have graduated before they joined up. But plenty volunteered after that, I’m sure.’
‘And did they get shot?’
‘In some cases, I imagine.’
‘Wow, I wonder if their ghosts haunt the school.’
‘Duh, their ghosts haunt the battlefield, you spasmo.’
‘Oh sorry, I forgot to consult the world-renowned ghost expert, who knows everything about where ghosts go to haunt people.’
‘If you were interested –’ Howard intervening gently ‘– I’m sure you could find out who joined up and what happened to them.’
‘How?’
‘Why don’t I look into it, and we can talk about it next class.’
He had shepherded them to Seabrook’s double-doors and then done a swift volte-face, not yet ready to confront his fate – imagining, as he walked to his car, a hooked finger tugging down a louvre of Venetian blind in an upstairs window… Tonight, though, spirits lifted by the boys’ interest, he wonders if the situation is as bleak as all that. Isn’t it possible that, with the right spin, the story of William Molloy might snag the Automator too? A tale of Seabrook spirit elaborated onto the world stage; a former great, let slip by history, rediscovered by his schoolmates of a century later – wouldn’t that be perfect material for, say, a 140th anniversary celebration? Perfect enough for the Acting Principal to overlook Howard’s unorthodox (brilliantly unorthodox?) methodology, and allow him to continue, with his formerly recalcitrant class, his groundbreaking work?
The car park the following morning is crowded with company cars. Today is the first day of the annual milk round, in which representatives of various strands of Big Business – Seabrook fathers and old boys, for the most part – come in and speak one-to-one with final-year students. It was just such an interview, a decade earlier, that had set Howard on the road to London. He can still see Ryan Connolly’s dad leaned back in his chair, expanding at length on the futures market and the fortunes to be made there, while on the other side of the table the young Howard thought deeply about Ryan Connolly’s car, Ryan Connolly’s enormous house with swimming pool, the exotic-sounding holidays to Disney World, St Tropez, Antibes, which Ryan Connolly and Ryan Connolly’s dad and Ryan Connolly’s incredibly hot mum went on every year.
He’s in the staffroom, boiling the kettle for tea, when he realizes that Brother Jonas has materialized beside him. ‘You gave me a fright,’ he jokes, clutching his chest. The little man does not return his smile, merely gazes at Howard a moment with those infinitely deep, melting-chocolate eyes. Then he chants, in his soft musical voice, ‘Greg would like to see you now.’ With that, like a spirit guide, he glides away, not looking back to see if Howard is following.
A group of sixth-years loiter by the entrance to the Senior Rec Room, where tables and chairs have been set out for the milk round interviews. They are wearing suits – the school encourages a professional approach to the proceedings – of the same tastefully muted tones as the expensive marques in the car park. The change of wardrobe emboldens them; they lean against the door jamb, pronouncing on various topics with careless waves of the hand, the future that has been laid out for them at last being revealed. Howard nods cursorily as he passes them, and they nod back, looking him up and down, perhaps noticing for the first time the less than fresh cut of his own attire.
Howard enters the office to find the Automator behind his desk, staring intensely at a framed photograph of his boys. Following Howard in and closing the door, Brother Jonas installs himself in the corner, from which he shimmers discreetly like a piece of corporate art. The aquarium bubbles gently.
‘You wanted to see me, Greg?’ Howard says at last.