The Big School

Mister Moynihan was too old to be a teacher. There was no doubt about that. Even at seven years and eight months of age I was sure of that. 

It was the first Wednesday of July and I, like all the boys in First Class in the convent in Weaver Square, had been marched in rows of twos the less than ten minute walk to Scoil Treasa in Donore Avenue.

The fear of the unknown is a very powerful fear indeed and its shadow hung over us like a thunder cloud as we made our silent way to the 'Big School'. All the nervous excitement of the previous days had evaporated and had been replaced with stomach tightening apprehension. This feeling was further  ratcheted up when we were met at the high iron gates of the school by one of the senior boys, neat as a pin in his crisp school uniform and with his brylcreemed hair plastered to his head. Smirking gleefully, and looking us up and down with cold black eyes, he led us to a line of about twenty boys already assembled at the lower door of the large grey two-storied school building.

Standing, thumbs in waistwoat pockets, was a man of about one hundred years of age. Coldly he peered at us through small round rimless glasses which perched perilously close to the end of his large bulbous nose.

"Moynihan", breathed my best friend Paddy Farrell through lips that scarcely moved. "That's Mister Moynihan", he explained. "My brother had him last year." 

We stood in line a further ten minutes though it felt much longer. We were joined by a dozen other boys. They arrived, not as we had in a long herded line from the convent, but in small clutches with mothers, grannies and what I assumed were in some cases Big Sisters. 

As the line in front of Mister Moynihan grew and we shifted from foot to foot to relieve both the tension and the stiffness in our legs, the old man lifted his head and in an accent I had never heard before barked, "Ciúnas!"

The line fell silent.

Mister Moynihan dipped two tobacco stained fingers into his right hand waistcoat pocket and slowly withdrew a large silver pocket watch. With a sharp flick of his wrist he sprung it open. He held it lovingly in his hand for a moment, peering at it over his glasses before replacing it in his pocket which he tapped twice in a very satisfied way. Turning on the spot where he stood and glancing over his left shoulder he again barked, "Siúlaigí!" In deathly silence his flock followed him through the heavy green double doors and into the "Big School".