Free The Dead School by Patrick McCabe Page A

looking at women. Women who were never going to mean anything to him because of course he had too much sense for that. Sunny days on the fairgreen with the blue sky
over you and your whole life stretching out like a highway. ‘So – what’s the story?’ his buddy Kevin Connolly from The Terrace would say. ‘Where are we headed
tonight?’ and Malachy’d reply: ‘Let’s go hear Horslips in Carrick!’ Horslips were jigs and reels on speed as you boogied all night long and went half-crazy shaking
your head and Kevin Connolly yelled over at you ‘Shakin’ All Over!’ and man were you shaking all over or what! Then it was out into the warm air and an open field with the dawn
coming up as the Carrick women called, ‘You will come back and see us, won’t you?’ and you both cried, ‘Sure girls – see you next time OK?’ as you roared off
into the morning.
    In many ways it was the Summer of Dreams and when the exams were all over and the call came to teacher-training college you just could not believe it. ‘Can you believe it?’ you said
to Kevin Connolly who flicked the cigarette and said, ‘You gotta be kidding. You a teacher? Man, it’s crazy. Now why would you want to do a thing like that?’ Malachy didn’t
know. And man, did he care. It was just another of those exams he’d done and if they were dumb enough to ask him to join the club, well then who was he to argue. As long as it got him out of
the town once and for all, that was fine by him. He sailed through the interview the following week but man did he feed them some bullshit about being devoted to a career of teaching children.
‘Whee-hoo!’ laughed Kevin Connolly as they fell out of the pub that night, ‘I gotta hand it to you – you sure can bullshit your way into things – Master
Dudgeon!’
    The summer drifted by. In the café Donny Osmond smiled at you from the wall, a row of gleaming teeth. ‘Now why would you want to do a thing like that?’ asked Donny. And did
you know? Of course you didn’t. At seventeen you didn’t know and didn’t care. Why should you? You just wanted to climb the highest peak in town and cry out across the rooftops,
‘It’s over, man! I’m gone!’ and so you would be, a puff of smoke into the future and the past all bundled up and buried, kicked into the grave where it belonged. Kevin
Connolly and you got drunk, man you got so drunk and when you embraced he said, ‘It’s all yours now, man! You’ve got it all!’ and the tears, man, they ran down your
face.
    The last days, maybe they were the saddest when Cissie tried her damnedest to raise it from the ground, what had once been between them. She sat there looking at him, knowing there was nothing
she could do now for she had done everything. She stared at him with her eyes so raw and red and said, ‘Do you remember the way it used to be, just you and me, the pair of us shopping up the
town. Do you ever think of them days now, Malachy?’
    He said nothing.
    The day he left Kevin stood in the town square by the purring bus and handed him a copy of Midnight Cowboy as he said goodbye. Malachy leaned out of the window and said, ‘Looks like
it’s goodbye, kid!’
    Kevin shot him with a gun-finger and said, ‘Yep! You make sure and write me all about those Dublin chicks now – you hear?’
    ‘You better believe it,’ grinned Malachy.
    The bus pulled out and Malachy strained to hear as Kevin called after it, ‘Master Dudgeon – can you believe it!’ and then that was that, goodbye town for ever I’m gone
and that’s the way it’s gonna be as trees and shops and other towns by the score sped past and Midnight Cowboy Joe Buck Malachy Dudgeon sailed on down the freeway of his mind into the
heart of the midday sun with the sound of Harry Nilsson singing ‘Everybody’s Talking’ ringing in his ears.

St Patrick’s Training College
    Way back before Harry Nilsson was a gleam in his father’s eye, on the 5th of October 1930 at the