“Liam” they call me in school. This is because my name is entered in Irish,
i.e., as “Liam de Poer,” in the roll book, and that’s what the other children
first heard me called. (“Liam de Poer”
is the Irish-language version of “William Power,” the surname coming from the
Norman “de Poer”). At home they call me “Billy,” except for my mam, who always
calls me “William,” the name on my birth cert.
But upstairs in my own room I have a secret name for myself, - “Mister Will
Power.”
There’s this chap (I read about in a comic)
who held his hand over a candle flame until it burned his flesh, to prove he
had the will power to resist pain. I
thought about doing that, but I decided against it. There is no need to
self-harm to prove you have Will Power. You prove it in your interactions with
people.
There was this other chap in China, a
priest, when the Roman Catholic religion was forbidden. He was arrested and they tried to get him to
talk, by torture and everything, but he kept his eyes fixed on one point on the
wall, no matter what they did to him, and all he would say was, “I have nothing
to say.” But his volunteer Sexton was
also arrested, and he spilled the whole story.
So, they locked the priest away and let the
Sexton free, and gave him a new identity in a different city in China.
They kept the priest in jail for years, but
then they let him out because they had him broken, they thought, in mind and
body. But his sister, who was secretly a
nun, nursed him back to health, and he taught himself to walk again and he went
to a gym every day and built up his body.
Then he made inquiries, and eventually
discovered where his old Sexton was living.
He went to visit him and knocked on his door.
“O, Father Yang,” said the Sexton, “I’m
delighted to see you looking so well.” But the priest took a gun out from under
his cloak and shot him dead.
That’s Will Power! That was in a deadly
comic called “Tales of Bloody Revenge.”
I was given a way of testing my Will
Power. I tested it against Norrie every
week. Norrie is our teacher.
Norrie goes wild if he hears us calling him
that. I really don’t know why, because
that is his name – “Norbert Wisling.”
But we have to call him “Sir,” or “Master,” or “Mr Wisling.” If he hears you call him “Norrie,” his eyes bulge
and his face goes bright red. He throws
his jacket onto his chair and rolls up his sleeves and grabs his cane. Sometimes he lines the whole class around the
walls of the classroom and, starting at one end of the line, he canes furiously
until everybody’s left hand is red as Norrie’s face. He prefers to cane on the left hand, except
when he is giving it to you on both hands.
The way it is in our school is like
this: all the kids try to get away with
doing as little as possible, and it’s the master’s job to make us learn. You have to do your work or you’ll get
caned. Of course, we do as little as we
can. It’s like a game to see how much
you can get away with, and whether he will be able to make you learn.
Some of the kids go into the terrors when they
get caned. They bawl out and bend down
over their hand and moan, as the tears stream down their cheeks. Others try to be brave, but can’t control
themselves completely and they let a little yelp when the cane impacts on the
hand, but dry up the tears quickly and put on a show of indifference.
Only I have the Will Power to take it and
show complete and utter indifference, no matter what the pain.
There are ways of defeating Norrie’s
attempt to inflict pain, but these can cause you more trouble if Norrie catches
on. One way is to drop the hand just as
the cane reaches the palm. If you drop
it a little, it can lessen the force of the strike and you can get away with
it. But if you drop it too much, Norrie
will miss the sensation of the impact of the cane against the palm. Then he will catch your hand by the wrist and
give you double or triple punishment. As
well as that, the cane may catch you on the tips of the fingers instead of the
palm, and this can be very painful.
If you are a wimp, and whimper and cry, you
can get off lightly. But if you are only
pretending and making a show, you get double punishment. Similarly, if you show no reaction at all,
like me! This really gets his goat,
because he thinks he has wasted his effort.
He often doubles or trebles the punishment, just to try to break
you. But he won’t break me. Ever! Mister
Will Power! In fact, I broke him. I broke him over the Mars Bar incident that I
am going to tell you about.
Paddy Smith brought a Mars Bar to school
one day, but, when lunch-hour came, his Mars Bar was missing. He is a whimpering, weak-willed wet, (we
often have fun messing him around), and he told the teacher his Mars Bar was
stolen. Then the carnival began.
“Who took Smith’s Mars Bar?”
Nobody said anything. The class was lined up around the room and
Norrie started at the beginning and walloped everyone, but no one owned
up. Then he came around the second time.
I had eaten a Mars Bar at break, but I did
not have a Mars Bar with me when I came to school. They didn’t actually blurt this out, but some
of the guys started looking at me as if to say I should own up. Norrie noticed this, of course, and focused
his attention on me.
Did I take Paddy Smith’s Mars Bar? No!
Did I eat a Mars Bar at break? Where did I get it?
“I plead the fifth amendment.”
This is what chaps say in the crime
comics. A person can’t be made to
incriminate himself, so they say, “I plead the fifth amendment”. But Norrie wasn’t impressed with legalities:
Six of the best on each hand!
“Take that for impudence! Fifth Amendment,
indeed! I’ll give you the fifth
amendment!”
Did I take Paddy Smith’s Mars Bar? I have already answered that question. If he was listening he should remember what
my answer was. I refuse to answer any
further.
Another six of the very best! I show complete and utter, dry-eyed,
determined indifference, despite the pain.
Actually, the pain doesn’t matter after a while and, as the blows rain
down, you just get a feeling of not being there at all, as if it’s happening to
somebody else. Norrie is in a mad,
sweaty, crimson, red-eyed, temper. He
knows that this is a contest to the end.
Either he breaks me, or I have broken him in front of the deadly silent
class.
Down comes the cane again and again. Every bit of my hand is red and raw from the
tips of the fingers right up to the wrists, and still the blows rain down. And still Norrie’s wrath rises and still I
stand there totally obdurate and unbending.
At length Norrie plops exhausted and
defeated into his chair. In fact, he is
sobbing, because he knows himself he got carried away and went too far. The temper has worn itself out and he
realises what a pig he has been.
I
turn straight to the door of the classroom.
My hand is so bruised, it can’t press the door handle down. I put my two hands to it, and with
considerable effort, get the door to open.
Calmly I leave the classroom. I
ignore the voice calling me back. I walk
swiftly out. I know where I am going and
what I am doing. It is all clear as crystal
in my cool, clear brain.
My hands are hot and stinging. Actually, I feel
a bit sick, but ignore this and kept myself going.
Normally, dad would take the teacher’s
side. “Spare the rod and spoil the
child,” is a guiding principle all adults share. But I knew that the teacher had played into
my hands in this case, because the bruising of my hands went beyond anything
that anybody could stand for.
I walked in to where dad was taking a cup
of tea between jobs. I showed him my
hands.
“Christ almighty,” he said, “who did this
to you? Let me get my coat.”
“Dad,” I said, “What we have to do is go to
Slimy Jones. This is a law case.”
I was afraid that dad would go straight
over to the school and have a go at Norrie.
Slimy Jones is a local solicitor well known for taking compensation
cases against doctors, lawyers, hospitals and so on. They call him “Slimy” as a nickname, but not
to his face. He doesn’t charge fees, but
takes a share of the winnings in a case.
“Oh yes,” my dad said. “You’re right! We must make an appointment.”
“No,” I said, “we must go right over there
now.” I knew we must get the evidence
together while the matter was fresh. My
hands were swelling up nicely, a mixture of red and black, and real ugly.
Slimy’s secretary knew the importance of
quick action. When she saw the state of
my hands, she buzzed Slimy immediately, and he came out. He told her to call Doctor Sweeney and a
photographer, and he would see us when this was done.
“Mr Jones,” I said, “It’s important to get
a statement from Crooked Annie today while certain facts are still fresh in her
mind.”
Crooked Annie keeps a little sweet shop
near our school, and it was she that sold me my Mars Bar. I didn’t know her real name. We call her “Crooked Annie” because she is all
bent over. She uses a walking stick to
help her to walk.
“Crooked Annie didn’t do this to you?”
asked Slimy.
“No, but she sold me the Mars Bar I was
accused of stealing,” I said.
I had slipped out of the schoolyard during
“little break” and bought the Mars Bar with the money I had got for doing
messages for Mrs Brown the evening before.
I couldn’t incriminate myself by admitting this, because we were
forbidden to leave the yard during break.
If I said I had done that, I would be letting the whole school down,
because they would lock the schoolyard door.
“O, very good!” said Slimy. “You’ll make an excellent solicitor, one
day. Yes, we must see Annie as soon as
we have done the medical evidence. She
will remember selling the bar to you today, but, if we leave it till tomorrow,
she might not remember exactly when she sold you the bar.”
Well, you know the rest, because you read
about it in the papers. Our court case
was the beginning of the end for corporal punishment in the schools of Ireland.
As well as a doctor giving evidence of my
bruised hands, Slimy hired a psychologist to give evidence about
“trauma-induced personality abnormalities,” “obsessive thought patterns,”
“concrete thinking,” and a lot of other baloney.
I
didn’t set out to ruin Norrie; in fact, I have some regret for how his life
fell to pieces. He wasn’t a bad man,
just a person doing his job with the methods of his day. I always had great respect for him and really
owe him a lot for all he did for me.
One day I mentioned to an older guy how I
regretted having driven Norrie to drink. “You must be joking,” said this guy;
“Norrie was always on the booze, even in my time. He only got worse as time
passed.”
Besides Norrie, of course, the whole
educational system suffered as a result of my case. Teachers lost control of
the classroom, because there was no longer any discipline. Well, if I were a
teacher, even without the cane, the kids would know who was in control!
I didn’t set out to ruin Norrie, or the
educational system. For me it was all an exercise in Will Power. My father, who seemed strong and articulates
in front of the media, championing the abolition of Corporal Punishment, was,
in reality, my puppet. My solicitor was
in it for the money.
- END -
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