My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress Read Online Free PDF

began. In the Master’s room I learned so much about fear and terror that no space was left for anything else.
    Master Bradley was a tall, thin man, bald with a lick of crowning hair that stood up in the wind as he marched around the playground. His gaunt face, pale eyes and mean, striated mouth rarely softened into a smile, but frequently quivered into a rictus of joy when he beat us. He smoked lavishly and often; his sickly pallor and ochreous fingers bore the evidence. From the safety of my desk I’d watch him light up an endless succession of Gallaher Greens, steadying the flaming match in a cupped claw and sucking greedily – giving life to the fag while shortening his own.
    Every child who sat before him was in the line of fire – we were the collateral damage of his insidious temper and frustration. It didn’t take much to set him off. We could be beaten for the most harmless errors: scraping back our chairs accidentally, forgetting to address him as ‘sir’, not coming up quick enough to his desk when summoned. The list was as varied as his moods, and the more erratic the mood the more vicious would be the blows he’d rain down on innocent heads and hands and legs.
    I got beaten for not answering loudly enough, for bungling a line of my nine-times table; for stumbling over the eleventh stanza of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – yes the eleventh – for missing one spelling in a list of 20; for neglecting to stand up when spoken to; for dropping my books, for crying, for talking, for fidgeting. In other words: I was punished for being my cowardly, helpless, fear-driven self. In hindsight I understand the tactics of the bully. He’ll flog what he despises most in others, to stymie those same qualities in himself. But the fury is rarely quenched; the fire rages on.
    Sometimes he’d be late, and Miss – never one to neglect an opportunity for piety – would step over the threshold and lead the juniors and us in morning prayers. Oh, how I wished I could have gone back with her! And how well I remember the egg-beater churnings in my stomach as I prayed earnestly and fervently that Master Bradley would not show. Occasionally my prayers would be answered, but those days were rare indeed. No, like as not we’d hear the engine die, the car door slam and his head would appear at the farthest window, the wisp of hair waving in nasty reproach as he marched down the slope, his profile sinking lower at each successive window as if the very ground were swallowing him up. How we wished it would!
    He’d stride into the room, bringing all his rancour with him: our judge, jury and ‘executioner’.
    Well had the boding tremblers learn’d to trace
    The day’s disasters in his morning face.
    The register was taken first. He would open a tall, red bound ledger and, with a splayed hand and cocked pen, run down the list, flinging out our surnames. If you didn’t respond loudly enough he repeated your name inan amplified roar, glaring up maniacally from the page. The bullets of invective would fly.
    â€˜Get out of the wrong side of the bed, McKenna?’ he asked me one cold, November morning.
    â€˜No, sir.’
    â€˜Asleep, are you?’
    â€˜No, sir.’
    â€˜What was that?’ And he cocked a hand to his ear and strained his head to one side in mock deference.
    â€˜No, sir – sorry, sir.’
    â€˜I didn’t hear that.’
    â€˜No, sir.’ I tried to respond more loudly, my voice rising to a faltering whine.
    â€˜No sir what ?’ he roared.
    â€˜No, sir … I’m not asleep … I … I … didn’t get out … of … of the side of the b-b-b-b-bed … this morning … (I heard the ripple of low laughter now from my nervous audience) … I … I … I mean the wrong side …’
    I trailed off, mumbling and stumbling over words as the room began to blur.
    â€˜Stop