The Whipping Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

have to go and die before seeing her graduate from college, she wanted to know. She’d always have the picture in her head of Da lying outside of Murray’s bar, in the alley across from the busy intersection of Parnell and O’Connell Streets, there on the North Side. Thrown out of his taxi into the alley by hooligans, a typically brutal brawl, the guards had said. Hard to control bar fights from getting out of hand, they said, and dismissed the case. He owed some money, his mates whispered to her. The hooligans bullied him, beat him with sticks to his skull. She felt the dried blood, sticky in his hair, and she lay there beside him, rubbing his head, helping him into a calm sleep.
              Down the block, Marian admired Mrs. Parker’s home, her toddlers playing hide-and-seek in their yard. There was nothing more enjoyable than a cigarette and a saunter in this neighborhood. The only thing missing in this pristine setting was perhaps a bit more camaraderie. She had some friends, mothers of Johanna’s school chums. Though if she were honest, they were little more than acquaintances. Nothing went deeper than ordinary talk about their children’s lives. The only one who ever dropped in on her unannounced was her own mother. But this was not a drop-in-on-someone neighborhood, like she was used to. She pretended not to peer into Mrs. Parker’s back garden, fighting an urge to tiptoe across the lawn and sneak a peek into the flower beds hidden behind the wall. No time to look now, anyway. Ben promised he would meet her at the school for the appointment with Principal Hinckley, and Marian didn’t want Ben, who would no doubt be swayed by the principal, to arrive before she did.
              Marian passed through the gothic-style railings around the grounds perimeter of the Muckross Park House School, centuries-old weeping willows wearing their vines like Victorian gowns. A large statue of Saint Michael stared down at her from an archway. She climbed the intimidating front stairs and braced herself.
              Stepping into Mr. Hinckley’s office, she was again amazed that such a dramatic space—the highest of ceilings, crown moldings of naked cherubs, floor to ceiling windows that cried out for dark velvet, a never-used mosaic fireplace—remained a cold, drab setting. Everybody had problems beneath the surface but this man seemed to create problems for himself. Getting his gander up over the antics of a couple of kids in the schoolyard. She’d like to tell him off.
              She moved closer to Hinckley’s desk and received only a cough from the geezer. Some things never changed. Not even the Beatles would be able to shake the dust off this place. There was always some crotchety grouch behind a desk. A nun, a priest, an ordinary man, it didn’t matter where you went to school in dreary Dublin. She was tired of all the dirty whites on the school walls, wanted to paint his office a delicious cranberry and watch the light play off the high ceiling.
              “Received a call from Miss Harpin saying Johanna is stuck in the principal’s office.” Marian raised her eyebrows at Mr. Hinckley. “What seems the trouble this time?”
              “Have a seat, Mrs. Ellis.”
              “I’m fine standing.”
              Johanna slouched in a leather chair, her shins streaked with dirt, her brown knit knee socks round her ankles. The bow that sat prettily in her mahogany hair this morning now dangling from the pocket of her jumper. She sat up, but kept her head down, dark lashes fanning sea-green eyes. Full of dance and trouble, she hid nothing with those eyes. The sullen maroon skirt and striped tie of her uniform did not suit her. A handful of teachers had already remarked that she was “extremely playful,” as if that was a bad thing. Johanna’s exuberance, what Marian would call