keep my stammer under control. Sean Kelly could do imitations and make jokes and barbed comments about the opposition. We left Donnacha to do the quiet summing up. By the end of January we had won the internal competition in the school, and this meant we could now represent the school in debates all over the county, mainly against girls’ schools. Sometimes we got the topic a week in advance and were allowed time together to prepare, but there were some debates in which the subject was not released until an hour or two before and these were the hardest and the most exciting.
This was how we met Gráinne Roche, who at sixteen was the most fiery debater in the county, with a skill at insulting her opponents that thrilled the audience. Donnacha never rose to her bait. Nothing she said or did made the slightest difference to his style, and he could take a sentence of hers, or a point she had made, and dissect it coldly to make her seem like a fool.
Later, everybody who took part in those debates must have read the evidence against Father O’Neill, the science teacher who organized them within the school, and presumed that we, who travelled with him so many times, must have known about him or even suffered because of him. I suppose we knew that he took an interest in us that was more intense than normal, and that he was often very nosy. And of course he liked Donnacha and loved quizzing him about the smallest details of his life, almost blushing with pleasure the more diffident and remote Donnacha grew. I watched this and it meant that I knew about Father O’Neill. According to the evidence given, it was only after our time at St Aidan’s that he brought boys to his room and fucked them. But maybe there was other evidence that would have implicated him much earlier, and maybe it all happened in front of our noses. The idea of a priest wanting to get naked with one of the boys at St Aidan’s and stuff his penis up the boy’s bottom was so unimaginable that it might have happened while I was in the next room and I might have mistaken the grunts and yelps they made for a sound coming from the television. Or I might have mistaken the silence they maintained for real silence.
On a night driving back to the school from Bunclody, where Donnacha’s incisive and quiet arguments had seemed oddly powerless and flat, Sean Kelly sat in the front passenger seat while Father O’Neill drove and Donnacha and I sat in the back. I don’t remember how we began to move closer to each other than we needed to be. It might have been because one of us wanted to be heard and thus sat over towards the middle to be within earshot of Father O’Neill and Sean Kelly. We did nothing obvious. But we moved close to each other so that our legs were touching and maybe, in the heat of the car, we had our jackets off and our shoulders were touching too and our arms. I eased off, I remember, in case this was a mistake, but it soon became obvious that Donnacha was deliberately moving towards me and that a few times, as though by accident, he touched my thigh with his hand. We continued talking as normal but by the time we arrived back to the school Donnacha and I were on fire. It was a question of what we could do now. It was late and all the dormitory lights were off. No one would miss us, as everyone knew that we were in Bunclody at the debate.
Donnacha and I were on fire, but as I was to learn, there was a great deal of difference between us. If I did not make a plan, or insist in some way, Donnacha’s fire would happily go out. It would not cost him a thought to go to his bed on his own on a night like this. But if I said nothing, merely led him to a place that was not too risky, then he would follow, and in the dark especially and with no words being spoken or whispered between us he would be passionate in a way that I could never manage. It would be clear that he wanted this all along, planned it maybe, but always with the proviso that he could, if
This was how we met Gráinne Roche, who at sixteen was the most fiery debater in the county, with a skill at insulting her opponents that thrilled the audience. Donnacha never rose to her bait. Nothing she said or did made the slightest difference to his style, and he could take a sentence of hers, or a point she had made, and dissect it coldly to make her seem like a fool.
Later, everybody who took part in those debates must have read the evidence against Father O’Neill, the science teacher who organized them within the school, and presumed that we, who travelled with him so many times, must have known about him or even suffered because of him. I suppose we knew that he took an interest in us that was more intense than normal, and that he was often very nosy. And of course he liked Donnacha and loved quizzing him about the smallest details of his life, almost blushing with pleasure the more diffident and remote Donnacha grew. I watched this and it meant that I knew about Father O’Neill. According to the evidence given, it was only after our time at St Aidan’s that he brought boys to his room and fucked them. But maybe there was other evidence that would have implicated him much earlier, and maybe it all happened in front of our noses. The idea of a priest wanting to get naked with one of the boys at St Aidan’s and stuff his penis up the boy’s bottom was so unimaginable that it might have happened while I was in the next room and I might have mistaken the grunts and yelps they made for a sound coming from the television. Or I might have mistaken the silence they maintained for real silence.
On a night driving back to the school from Bunclody, where Donnacha’s incisive and quiet arguments had seemed oddly powerless and flat, Sean Kelly sat in the front passenger seat while Father O’Neill drove and Donnacha and I sat in the back. I don’t remember how we began to move closer to each other than we needed to be. It might have been because one of us wanted to be heard and thus sat over towards the middle to be within earshot of Father O’Neill and Sean Kelly. We did nothing obvious. But we moved close to each other so that our legs were touching and maybe, in the heat of the car, we had our jackets off and our shoulders were touching too and our arms. I eased off, I remember, in case this was a mistake, but it soon became obvious that Donnacha was deliberately moving towards me and that a few times, as though by accident, he touched my thigh with his hand. We continued talking as normal but by the time we arrived back to the school Donnacha and I were on fire. It was a question of what we could do now. It was late and all the dormitory lights were off. No one would miss us, as everyone knew that we were in Bunclody at the debate.
Donnacha and I were on fire, but as I was to learn, there was a great deal of difference between us. If I did not make a plan, or insist in some way, Donnacha’s fire would happily go out. It would not cost him a thought to go to his bed on his own on a night like this. But if I said nothing, merely led him to a place that was not too risky, then he would follow, and in the dark especially and with no words being spoken or whispered between us he would be passionate in a way that I could never manage. It would be clear that he wanted this all along, planned it maybe, but always with the proviso that he could, if
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