You may think that being expelled for the vandalism was quite
wrong, especially as I had nothing to do with it. Apart from watch it happen. Of
course it was quite wrong, but at least I was free. Unfortunately after the psychologist pronounced
me sane, I was allowed to return to Violent Hell but as a day pupil. I was living with the O Hare family in Warrenpoint. This was a new experience for me, travelling
to and from school every day on a bus.
The school didn’t change. I think
that the secret cabal who organised my training to become the world’s leading
Master Candle Maker told Violent Hell to be even more vicious towards me. Perhaps they thought that my hand to hand
combat skills, which were learned on the streets of Belfast and honed on the prep
hand ball alley, had softened.
I walked into Violent Hell for my first time as a day
pupil. I turned right, as I got to the
main corridor, so that I could go to the senior corridor. The Wee Scut was waiting for me. I can’t remember the exact conversation but
he appeared to take great delight in telling me that as I had not passed any
exams at the end of the previous year, I could not become a senior. I would have to take my third year again. I didn’t pass any exams because I wasn’t there. I’d been expelled. They certainly knew how to torture a fellow,
but not just was I being put back a year, up until then I had been in the ‘A’ stream,
now I was in the ‘C’ stream. The stream
where all the prospective social workers and teachers were.
There were one or two decent teachers at Violent Hell and
these would have been the lay staff. Sean
Hollywood would perhaps have been the nicest and it’s good to see certain
public buildings in Newry named after him.
The English teacher came to me and said that he would like me to cover
the senior English syllabus in one year.
I was interested. The mathematics
teacher asked me to being studying applied mathematics, which I did and which I
really enjoyed.
Eventually I began to get bored with the whole thing. My parents had bought a house in Warrenpoint and
I had left the o Hare house and moved in with my parents. My father was now retired and decided to put
his teacher experience to good use and allow me to have private tuition at
home. He told me that I could either become
an airline pilot for Aer Lingus or I could become a dentist. Neither occupation meant anything to me. In fact I didn’t really know what I was
interested in.
Every evening I had one hour’s tuition from my dad. It was either an hour of handwriting, mathematics
or English. Sometimes I wished that I could
be back at Violent Hell. Now that I was
walking from our house to the bus stop each morning I would sometimes get
lost. I know it was almost a direct
route and took no more than five minutes and it was all downhill, but as I
walked along I would think about interesting stuff to do rather than go to
boring Violent Hell. Now it was easy to,
as we called it, bunk off. I would hide
behind the toilets in Warrenpoint square and wait for all the school buses to
go, then continue to wait perhaps anther ten minutes and then the day was my
own. I would go to the docks and watch the
ships.
Later I began to work as a barman and waiter in various pubs
and clubs in Warrenpoint and would go there and work rather than mess about on
the beach. But Violent Hell and I were
not finished. Not after everything that they
had put me through. There would have to
be a suitably fitting end to my time at Violet Hell. Not just because I deserved it, but because
when I would take my place as the best Master Candle Maker in the world, be declared
the Chief of the clan O Neill and revealed as the true King of Ireland I wanted
all those priests to hang their heads in shame.
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