Lamb Read Free

you must you must,’ said Benedict and closed the door in his face.

Two
    â€˜Some day, Brother Sebastian, I’m going to kill you,’ said Owen. The boy sat on the sand opposite Brother Sebastian, staring with narrowed eyes into his face.
    â€˜All I said,’ laughed Brother Sebastian, ‘was that this is all you are good for. Minding the clothes. Provided there is no money in the pockets.’ The boy sat handfulling sand and letting it trickle through his fingers.
    â€˜You don’t trust me,’ he said.
    â€˜You don’t trust me either.’
    The screams and whoops from the rest of the group floated to them from the water’s edge. It was early in the morning and they were having the one bathe they were permitted each day.
    â€˜Just because I’m not allowed to swim . . . ’ said Owen.
    â€˜It’s for your own good. God knows what would happen to you if you went in the water with your condition.’
    The boy began pouring sand from one hand to the other. He had nothing more to say. Brother Sebastian found talking to him difficult.
    He had known Owen since he had first come to the Home about two years ago and, although the boy never told him much at a time, he had managed to build up a picture of what his life had been like before. At the beginning he found it difficult to separate the truth from the lies.
    Owen was from Dublin, from a large housing estate on the east side.
    â€˜It’s like Ballymun – only it’s rough,’ was what he said about it. He had been put away because he had continually mitched school and had run away from home frequently – the Gardai had been informed on four occasions at least. God knows how many times they had not been. Since coming to the Home he had twice absconded.
    Brother Sebastian hadn’t taken to him right away, because he was not that sort of child, with his small furrowed face, but over his time at the Home he had grown to like him. He had attractive qualities of openness and resilience. What was more was that the boy seemed to seek Brother Sebastian out if he wanted anything, which he thought showed the beginnings of a trust. To achieve anything with these boys a trust was necessary.
    He was the last of a family of five boys. The two eldest were in Mountjoy Jail (one of whom Owen had never seen at all), one was in the Merchant Navy and the sixteen-year-old had just joined the Free State Army. His father, if indeed it was his father, had been a lorry driver, away for weeks on end in England. When he came home he would get drunk and whip Owen with whatever came to hand, a length of electrical flex, his belt, a bamboo cane, an old leather his own father used to sharpen his razor on. One night he came home with a piece of rubber hose pipe which he whistled through the air as a warning.
    When he was at home he would inspect Owen’s bed each morning, slipping his ice-cold hand beneath the boy. If Owen had wet the bed during the night he would take him and plunge him into a cold bath, sometimes even forcing his head underneath the water.
    â€˜This’ll toughen you up, ya pissin’ cissy,’ he would shout as he did it.
    Then one day he went away. He went on a driving job to England and never came back. Brother Sebastian asked the boy if he was glad when this happened and he had replied that it made no difference. He was afraid that he would come back any day. The door would just open and he would be there.
    The only person Owen spoke of with anything approaching affection was his grandmother, his mother’s mother. He would go sometimes and stay with her and she would get drunk and give him money and hug him and call him ‘lamb’. He would light the fire for her and do her messages. He always tried to short-change her but she was not to be fooled. Owen demonstrated how she would hold the coins up to the level of her chin and move her lips, then say,
    â€˜You’re 10p short,