Winter had done its worst. At last, spring had made her appearance on the high windswept plateau. The very earth showed signs of warming. Early morning frosts evaporated with the growing strength of the morning sun. With just a few weeks remaining of the final school term a sense of freedom lightened the air.
The young teacher chaperoned the children, from the convent school, to confession. The parish church stood in its grounds, on the opposite side of the main street. The children, giddy having been released skipped and hopped along, behind her. Taking care to avoid the freshly deposited cow pats, which lay along the centre of the street.
The teacher was lost in thoughts of the scene they had just left behind. She dearly wished the elderly nun wouldn’t go on so. It was a monthly tirade in which she frightened the wits out of the younger children. Her gruelling account of the Lord’s passion and death was not for the sensitive or faint hearted. After nearly sixty years in exile in north Kilkenny, her strong Kerry accent was still intact. With the power to instil a sense of personal responsibility for the ill treatment of the Lord into the minds of the impressionable. The teacher suspected that some of the older children found the whole melodramatic charade amusing. They’d heard it monthly for a number of years and could possibly take up were she to drop off her perch.
Sister Boniface, her rotund body perched precariously, on a high legged stool would gesticulate wildly while expounding on the suffering of the Saviour. It was the stuff of nightmares. Who could calculate what psychological damage she was storing up for the future, the young teacher wondered?
She should really say something. She should speak out. But to whom could she complain. Jobs were hard to come by, especially in rural Ireland. She’d kept quiet and willed the end to come, before her own head exploded.
The children lined up in the pews, contemplating their sins as instructed. While they waited their turn to go into the confessional, the various types of sin circulated in their brains as they tried to formulate a suitable list. “Bless me father for I have sinned,” was mouthed as the dreaded grill slid back.
As confessions were heard and penances doled out a barefooted gangly boy knelt beside the confession box, waiting his own turn. Matters were proceeding as usual when suddenly the air was rent with a pitiful screech. All heads turned towards the source of the commotion as the Canon burst forth, demanding. “Have ye no respect. Who’s making this terrible racket in the house of God?” Sam holding his wounded foot and hopping on the other answered. “Father, that oul wan that told you she stole the ducks, stamped on me toe.”
© Copyright Berna Boran / Brennan
Berna Boran 