‘I have a piano lesson,’ Niall mumbles sheepishly.
‘What about you, Victor?’
‘No way,’ Victor says. ‘I’m not getting expelled.’
‘Looks like we’ll have to put it off till another night,’ Mario says to Ruprecht.
‘We can’t put it off till another night,’ Ruprecht replies through gritted teeth. ‘Tonight’s the end of the Cygnus X-3’s radiation burst. It has to be tonight.’
But a condor can’t fly on one wing, everyone knows that. The Operation is in serious trouble, and it must be said that the Team Commander’s reaction to the crisis leaves something to be desired: stamping about the room like a giant, bellicose toddler, kicking the wastepaper basket, slippers, anything else that crosses his path, while the rest of the team bow their heads plaintively, something in the manner of humble banana farmers in the midst of a tropical storm. And then fate intervenes, in the form of Mario’s room-mate Odysseas Antopopopolous arriving at the door looking to borrow some anti-fungal cream.
Five machinating pairs of eyes fix on him.
‘Well, I don’t know if it’s a fungus,’ Odysseas says. ‘It might be a reaction to rayon.’
The situation is explained to him in double-quick time. It isn’t clear, at the end of it, whether Odysseas has any real idea what he’s getting himself into, but after months of listening to Mario’s fantasies on the subject, he is keen to see the interior of St Brigid’s for himself. The Condor is aloft again! Odysseas, furthermore, has a whole wardrobe of black fencing gear, custom-made for covert operations, which he invites the Team to make use of.
As the hour strikes on the school clock – with Geoff Sproke gone on ahead to buttonhole the security guard – the three others jostle at the door, synchronizing their phones, resembling, in their dusky regalia, not so much condors as fugitive punctuation marks: two brackets and one overfed full stop. ‘So long, Victor! So long, Niall! We’ll send you a postcard from the next dimension!’
With that they run out the door and down the stairs, and into history.
Five minutes later, as Skippy is sitting down to eat with Lori’s family, they are straddled on the partition wall. From somewhere in the darkness beyond, the theme to Bunnington Village may be heard, as Geoff thrashes through dock leaves with the St Brigid’s gatekeeper. Directly below, staring up intently and wagging its stumpy tail in a decidedly foreboding manner, is a small brown-and-white beagle.
‘Maybe it just wants to play,’ Odysseas suggests.
‘Ha,’ Mario says. The dog’s eyes gleam at them through the darkness; its long tongue palpitates over smiling rows of teeth.
‘In a glade in a forest,’ Geoff Sproke’s voice wafts over faintly, ‘where there’s magic in the air…’
A cold, rain-laced wind plays over their cheeks.
‘This is some plan,’ Mario says sarcastically to Ruprecht’s ignominious silence. ‘Oh yes, clearly the work of a mastermind.’
It appears that at some point during the lead-in to the mission, Operation Condor’s Team Commander and Scientific Director ate the biscuits intended for the neutralization of Nipper.
‘Here comes William Bunnington,’ sings Geoff anxiously, ‘with his friend Owl – he’s the Mayor…’
‘Dog biscuits! You draw up this big complicated plan, with the bells and the whistles, and then before we even leave you eat the dog biscuits!’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ Ruprecht replies miserably. ‘When I’m nervous I get hungry.’
‘They were dog biscuits!’
‘Well, we can’t stay up here for ever,’ Odysseas says.
‘I’m not going down there to get my family jewels chewed off,’ Mario states, then scratches his ear. ‘This damn rayon, it’s making me itchy!’
‘Bunnington Village,’ Geoff, with mounting urgency, ‘where the squirrels make Nut Soup…’
‘Lad, why in God’s name do you keep making that infernal racket?’ comes the rough voice of Brody the janitor.
‘It helps me concentrate,’ they hear Geoff reply. ‘When I’m looking for things?’
‘Are you sure your ball even came in here?’
‘I think so,’ Geoff says.
Below, the dog flexes itself in a settling-in sort of way.
‘Maybe we should just abort the mission,’ Mario says.
‘Never!’ comes the defiant reply from his left.
‘Well, what are we going to do, just stay up here all night?’
Ruprecht does not answer.
‘Isn’t that a football right there?’ they hear the guard say.
‘Where?’ Geoff’s voice says.
‘There, right there, you’re looking right at it.’
‘Oh yes – hmm, I’m not sure that’s my football…’
‘Well, it’ll do ye –’
‘A bunny place, a funny place…’ desperately –
‘Ah for Jesus’ sake –’
‘… an always bright and sunny place, Bunnington will keep a space for you…’
‘Stop it! Go home now! I don’t want to see you in here again!’ the guard starts clapping his hands and calling the dog. The dog, without taking its eye off the top of the wall, barks. ‘Hold on, sounds like Nipper’s found something…’
‘Wait!’ Geoff implores. ‘I have to tell you something! Something of the utmost importance!’
‘Well, commandante?’ Mario inquires acidly. ‘May we please go home now?’
But before Ruprecht can reply, Odysseas has peeled off his black sweater, leapt off the wall into the yard and thrown it over the dog. ‘Quickly!’ he urges the other two, as the sweater charges blindly left and right, emitting muffled barks of ever-growing anger. Mario and Ruprecht land painfully on the wet asphalt, just as the dog’s vengeful snout pokes into view. ‘Go!’ Odysseas exhorts, stepping protectively before them; and they take to their heels and run to the shadow of the school. Snarls and the sound of tearing fabric echo across the empty yard. But there is no time to wonder or grieve, nor is there any way back. The guard’s feet thump over the ground, his torch-beam flashing in every direction. Without stopping to think, they scurry around to the back of the school and up the rickety metal staircase, wrestling open the window sash and hurling themselves through it –
It’s only as they pick themselves up from the moth-eaten carpet that they realize where they are. Inside St Brigid’s: inside the grey walls that have stared back at them for so long, teasing them with the mysteries they conceal. Not yet ready to speak or move, every breath seeming like a thousand-decibel explosion, the boys roll their eyes at each other in mute incredulity.
One aspect of the plan has panned out – there doesn’t seem to be anybody around. Silently, warily, Ruprecht and Mario tread away from the window, leaving the dark crenellations of Seabrook behind. The deserted hallway is both alien and familiar, like the landscape of a dream. There is a chipped dado rail and a picture of Jesus, dewy-eyed and rosy-cheeked as a boy-band singer; passing into the girls’ dorms, they see through the open doors rumpled bedcovers, balled-up foolscap, posters of footballers and pop stars, homework timetables, bottles of spot cream – uncannily like the dorms in Seabrook, except in some unplaceable but totally fundamental way completely different.
As they descend the stairs to negotiate the ground floor, this creepy schizoid feeling only grows. Everywhere they look, there are analogues of their own school – classrooms with cramped benches and scrawled blackboards, printouts on the noticeboards, trophy cabinets and art-room posters – almost identical, but at the same time, somehow, not, the discrepancy too subtle for the naked eye and yet omnipresent, as though they’ve entered a parallel universe before the portal has been opened at all, where instead of atoms everything is composed of some mysterious other entity, quarks of hitherto unseen colours… It is quite different from how Mario imagined breaking into a girls’ school would be, and the idea that this place has been here, existing, the whole time he’s been around is one that he finds deeply unsettling.