Free The Dead School by Patrick McCabe Page B

age of seventeen, Raphael Bell climbed out of the hired car that had
taken him from the station and, waving goodbye to the driver, turned and took his first look at the grounds of the training college which was to be his home for the next two years. As he walked up
the avenue listening to the birds singing in the sycamore trees, he felt he would faint with excitement. He could not believe that it was actually happening and he was at last embarking upon the
career that he knew now without doubt to be his true vocation. He registered at the main desk and was shown to St Brigid’s Dormitory, not unlike the one in which he had spent five years in St
Martin’s. When he found himself alone, he slipped to his knees and said a silent prayer to Our Lady. He felt like weeping he was so happy.
    Outside the birds twittered in the twilight as bicycles sped homeward all along Drumcondra Road.

The Philosophy of Education
    Malachy had arrived there too of course. But what he was looking at in the year of Our Lord 1973 was not exactly what had met Raphael’s eyes way back in those good old
days. He would have had a heart attack if he had seen what was going on; the place was swarming with women and all you could hear was rock music blaring out of the canteen. If the bursar who had
been in charge in Raphael’s time had seen them at the like of that, he wouldn’t have been long putting an end to it. He’d have run the lot of them out of the college, the whole
bloody lot, for if they weren’t prepared to dress and act like people who were in charge of children, and to attend to their Euclid and Ovid, then they weren’t worth having. That was
what he would have said. But there wasn’t anyone saying that now. As a matter of fact, there didn’t seem to be anybody saying anything about anything. By the looks of things, the place
had gone like everywhere else in Ireland these days. You could do what you bloodywell liked. Which indeed appeared to be the attitude of one Malachy Dudgeon who right now was doing exactly that,
sitting in the lecture hall chewing a pencil and staring off out the window watching the world as it made its way on by. The lecturer paced up and down with his clipboard and fixed his glasses on
his nose once more as he tilted his head to one side and said, frowning, ‘Rousseau says that children are not vessels to be filled.’ Malachy didn’t care what Rousseau said.
Outside two girls with folders and their hair tied back with flowery scarves sat on the steps. Their sweaters were knotted about their waists and they were laughing. The mature student sitting next
to Malachy took a dim view. ‘Drug addicts,’ she said, ‘for that’s all they are.’
    Then they went back to their scribbling and Malachy took a look out at the adddicts. They were leaning against the flower beds, clutching their folders to their chests, still laughing away. The
taller addict’s skirt swished about her heels as addict number two nodded in agreement. The way she nodded said, ‘I’m cool. I’m just about as cool as you can get. Not
because I’m on drugs. I’m just cool – you know?’ Of course she was. She was a second year. Part of the cool bunch who draped themselves around the record player and looked
around the canteen at everybody else as if to say, ‘We’re second years – OK? We’ve done just about everything there is to do. All you got to do is make sure and remember
that. You just remember that and you’ll be fine. Meanwhile let me get on with smoking my drugs if you don’t mind.’ All day long they kept that record player going, just sitting
there and listening and looking cool. It wasn’t that easy looking cool you know. It wasn’t just any old bollocks who could do it. You didn’t jump up and shout ‘This is a
fantastic song!’ or ‘This is the best song this year!’ Oh, no – you couldn’t be seen doing that. What you did was hide in behind a big pile of hair and emerge every so
often