Chapter Seventeen

Willie groaned as he tried to make himself comfortable in bed that evening. He was alone and he could afford that consolation, but his buttocks were raw red and sore and his pride more so as he considered the day’s fray with old Finnecan, the wanker ...Strange though it seemed to him, he actually felt a sorrow and a pity for the Teacher. He was a weird old spud he concluded and so bitter about life. He surely couldn’t be very happy. He wasn’t married ... No wonder! who would put up with that bloody nonsense. Wonder how he gets his kicks? Wonder what turns him on? Can’t imagine him smiling he’d break his jaw if he did ... Can’t imagine him enjoying anything ... Poor old Sod. What a life!

At that moment, Charlie threw himself across the bed and Willie winced.

“Ooooh”

Charlie looked at his brother in surprise.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked but Willie pretended to be asleep until Charlie tickled him.

“Ouch! Don’t do that.”

Charlie paused as Willie rolled over onto his stomach, groaning as he moved. He pulled the sheets back and Willie tried to move again, but it was too late, as Charlie could see the tell-tale marks on Willie’s behind.

“What the hell’s happened here, laddie ... You’re arse is raw red.” Willie could not think of an answer immediately as Charlie continued. “You’ve been got at ... haven’t you? It’s the school, isn’t it? It’s that Finnecan bastard. I know it is.” Charlie had his own knowledge of the thin little sadist from his own school days, but where it was one thing to take a beating yourself, it was quite another to see your brother in the state in which he found him.. “I’m coming up to that bloody school in the morning, I am before I go to work. I’m coming up there and I’ll sort that little bugger out, once and for all.”

“Don’t, Charlie ... Please don’t. I can take care of myself and besides it was my fault.”

“Bollocks! No human being should have to put up wi’ ... wi’ that,” Charlie screamed as he studied Willie’s bruises more carefully. “I’ll get some cream to put on it, Willie. That should help,” he said as he threw back the bedclothes and rushed out of the room to return with the jar of Fuller’s Earth, from the bathroom; the remedy for most of the cuts and rashes in the Blair household. “Lie still and it won’t hurt. Oh Christ, my hands are cold. Wait a minute while I rub them a bit.”

Willie winced as Charlie applied the cooling cream, even if he knew that his brother was trying to be as careful and as caring as a student nurse and he continued to moan softly as the ointment was rubbed in gently.

“What a state to be in, eh Charlie?” Willie laughed through his tears. Never had ma bum rubbed before. We should do this more often sweetheart ...”

Charlie giggled softly. He was tempted to smack his brother affectionately, but he refrained as they both settled down for the night, but not before Charlie had the last word.

“I’ll get that wee bastard. You see if I don’t.”

***

After much persuasion by Willie, Charlie reluctantly agreed not to come to St. Bonaventure’s the following morning, but Mr. Finnecan was on the war path again when the boys arrived and as usual for the duration he was scheduled as a teacher there, however, every cloud has a silver lining and there came a day of respite and reward for the patient pupils of St. Bon’s. A new gym mistress arrived from London; a large lady ... a very large lady indeed, but her presence was to change the entire atmosphere of the Secondary school, from the moment she set her large, firm foot in the place.

Miss Honora Golding-Potts called herself simply ‘Potts’ as she abhorred the hyphenated name. It was her mother who saddled her with the handle and she hated it, however, for the school authorities, she had to use it in its fullest glory, but she needn’t have worried greatly at St. Bon’s for she trotted everywhere she went, despite her size and the students lovingly nick-named her ‘Trottie”

Trottie had more than ample proportions although she was no older than twenty-six or seven. She was large from top to bottom, from side to side and roundabout, despite the fact that she was as nimble as a fairy when she danced, with a light foot that would have made Isodora Duncan raise a jealous eyebrow. She took the girls for hockey on Tuesdays and Fridays and the boys for gymnasium and sports on Thursday. She loved football and adored rugby, where she was known to get into many a scrum on the muddy fields and never made a whisper of a complaint about the knocks and bruises she took regularly from the team. She never walked .She trotted everywhere and addressed the boys only as ‘gentlemen’ or ‘squire’ and the girls were known as her ‘ladies ‘ ... Trottie smiled her way through life at all times and her round pink, shiny face was enshrined with a halo of peace and contentment, above her two chins. She always had a nice smell about her not so much the aroma of perfume as the pong of soap and good nature. Nothing interfered with Trottie’s equilibrium. She praised achievement and sympathized with failure and she would have been a first rate candidate for canonisation if the Pope had ever been a student at St. Bon’s. The gym was transformed, with music playing during gymnastic activities. Waltzes were accorded for the slower movements, such as the lazy arm swings and Marches and livelier tunes for the faster knee and ankle twists the more energetic activities. Trottie, full-weighted though she was, enjoyed a waltz ... She would glide around the well polished floor of the gymnasium like a well trained ballet dancer and with the same light-footed expertise of a nymph in adoration her ankles were amazingly slim and her movements, graceful .and she would wave her arms in the air as she went, humming softly to the accompanying music and with her eyes closed in blissful serenity. Trottie was in an ecstasy in that gymnasium. A dancing queen and her pupils were her admiring courtiers. She dressed in a dark red gym slip that hugged her curvaceous figure and the boys marvelled how she got the knickers to match the colour of her waist band. She insisted in wearing sandshoes in varying colours of pink or plimsolls, if need be, and her stockings were always black. Her sandshoes matched the chiffon scarf with which she always tied back her flowing blonde hair and she was a character soon to be loved by all at St. Bonaventure’s Secondary School.

“High knee rising begin. One, two, three and again ...one, two, three ...”

The commands came in breathless grunts from the lady in charge and the boys went frantic to keep up with her movements. “One, two, three UP... Right up boys ...and repeat ... one, two, three DOWN.” Trottie called out in her lovely English accent and she smiled through it all. She was thrilled when the boys began to sing to the music; something that had never been heard before at St. Bon’s. She had never known such culture and she loved the Scottish accent. The boys were in fine voice and ‘Colonel Bogey’ resounded mightily around the spacious gym as Miss Carson passed and her eye twitched, thinking what wonderful, full voices she was hearing, but old Finnecan advised against the tradesmen joining in the chorus as they passed in the street outside. He rushed out waving his arms in the air to stop them singing the ‘Tarara’ song, but the intelligent young choristers took up where the tradesmen had left off.

“Tarara tarara ..Aint it a pity ... she’s only one titty ...to feed the baby on.”Tarara tarara ...

Miss Carson’s eye twitched again and her nostrils looked larger than ever, but she had a pleasant smile on her face, as Trottie kept dancing and smiling smiling and dancing until the perspiration flowed freely but she still smiled. She would speak in winded spurts, but she still smiled. Exhaustion was a word unknown to her as her thighs shook and her belly heaved and the floor was well-pummeled with the vigorous stamping of a pink sandshoe but still the lady smiled.

“When will it ever stop?” wheezed Wattie as he wiped the end of his nose, happily. Their alacrity was her reward as she would clap her podgy hands together and call out ‘Gentlemen, please’ like the last call of a pub, but the boys were thrilled to have the gorgeous, gregarious Trottie as their instructress.