A Cage of Roots Read Free Page B

and the games he had carried single-handedly: in his youth, whenever that was. He had also had some prowess on the hurling field. All of this combined to make him both respected as a coach on the pitch, and feared unconditionally, as there was very little you could get away with: The Streak would always catch you, eventually.
    That day, not uncommonly, Oscar Finnegan had been caught red-handed. Finny, as everyone knew him, had a knack for impersonations, and ‘Doing a Streak’ was one of his better ones. He would crouch behind the teacher’s desk, if said teacher was out or hadn’t arrived yet, and unfurl himself like a giant plant opening to the sun, stepping seamlessly onto the teacher’s chair as he did this, so that when he had stretched out fully he was (nearly) the same height as the dreaded priest. He would have borrowed his classmate Sam Flynn’s ultra-thick glasses in advance, and the laughter would ascend from giggle to holler as Finny, transformed into Fr Shanlon, looked upon the class with exactly the right expression, the marker for the whiteboard held just-so. With perfect mimicry, he would open his mouth and The Streak’s ominous voice would flow out of it. He had just time to utter ‘Get ye out those books’ in the priest’s distinctive lisp, before he noticed that his words were met with total silence instead of bubbling laughter. He was just about to continue whenhe heard the real Fr Shanlon tell him: ‘Get off that chair and come with me, Finnegan,’ and the game was up.
    Finny had always managed to find trouble wherever he went, at least since his parents separated when he was near the end of third class at St Edna’s. Until then he was a regular kid – maybe a bit of a performer, and prone to make one too many jokes. The place he displayed most of his precociousness was on the pitch. Finny, even at that young age, was a serious talent with a hurley in his hand. He could weave around people like they weren’t there, confusing and confounding the older kids he was encouraged to play with, and frustrating them unceasingly.
    Towards the end of the school year, when fourth class beckoned after the promise of endless summer holidays, Finny’s home life had taken a bad turn, as his parents decided they couldn’t live together and be happy. He changed from that point on. What used to pass for cheek in the classroom swung into downright badness. He screamed back at teachers who hushed him. He tore up books and copies and paintings – not just his, but other pupils’ too. Once he purposely blocked all the toilets with Mother’s Day cards that his class had made, and didn’t even make any attempt to distance himself from the act. He just flushed all the cisterns, and stood there in the overflowing water, hands by his side with a scowl on his face, waiting for the grown-ups to come.
    On the pitch, he still dazzled occasionally with skill, but for the most part his game now was tainted with a nasty edge – a brutality even – and more often than not he was sent off for injuring an opponent not long after scoring a bewildering point or goal. His parents were called in, over and over. They came separately after the first few joint visits were rendered ‘unproductive’ by their bickering, and always with the threat of his expulsion waved in front of them. But the principal, Mr Brennan, was reluctant to give up on the boy, and knowing that his parents’ split accounted for most of Finny’s bad behaviour, decided to give him chance after chance. By the time Finny had started fifth class – having been held back to repeat fourth class – he had managed to tone down his outright destructiveness. But he had replaced it with a steady stream of minor disruptions, dotted with the occasional act of serious disobedience.
    One thing he did have going for him were the friends he made that year. By being held back a year to repeat fourth class, he befriended two children from the Knockbally Estate (known