And big louts of young constables would be jumping off high bicycles and calling in the evenings.... This was at the instigation of Mrs. McGoldrick, but they made no impression whatsoever upon Rebecca, even when they arrived in mufti.
In school the ugly, discolored walls which had been so badly distempered by Ned Brennan; the monotony of the maps and desks; the constant sameness of the children's faces. All this was infinitely wearying, but a more subtle and powerful torment arose beyond the hum of the children learning by heart. Rebecca always became aware of it through a burning feeling at the back of her neck. Glancing around she would see that, although presumably intent upon their lessons, many eyes were upon her, peering furtively from behind their books, observing her, forming opinions of her, and concocting stories to tell their parents when they went home. For this was considered an essential part of their training—the proper satisfaction of their elders' curiosity. It was one of the reasons why the bigger girls were sent to school. They escaped the drudgery of house and farm because they were able to return with fresh stories from the school every evening. Thus were their faculties for lying and invention brought into play. They feared Mrs. Wyse, and so these faculties came to be trained in full strength upon Rebecca. As she moved about the school-room, she was made the constant object of their scrutiny. They would stare at her with their mean, impudent eyes above the top edges of their books. Then they would withdraw them behind the opened pages and sneer and concoct. And it was thus the forenoon would pass until the half-hour allowed for recreation, when she would be thrown back upon the company of Mrs. Wyse and Monica McKeon. No great pleasure was in store for her here, for their conversation was always sure to turn upon the small affairs of the valley.
There was something so ingenuous about the relations of Rebecca and Ulick Shannon that neither of the two women had the courage to comment upon the matter openly. But the method they substituted was a greater torture. In the course of half an hour they would suggest a thousand hateful things.
"I heard Ulick Shannon was drunk last night, and having arguments with people in Garradrimna," Miss McKeon would say.
Mrs. Wyse would snatch up the words hastily. "Is that so? Oh, he's going to the bad. He'll never pass his exams, never!"
"Isn't it funny how his uncle does not keep better control of him. Why he lets him do what he likes?"
"Control, is it? It doesn't look much like control indeed to see him encouraging his dead brother's son to keep the company he favors. Indeed and indeed it gives me a kind of a turn when I see him going about with Nan Byrne's son, young John Brennan, who's going on to be a priest. Well, I may tell you that it is 'going on' he is, for his mother as sure as you're there'll never see him saying his first Mass. Now I suppose the poor rector of the college in England where he is hasn't a notion of his antecedents. The cheek of it indeed! But what else could you expect from the likes of Nan Byrne? Indeed I have a good mind to let the ecclesiastical authorities know all, and if nothing turns up from the Hand of God to right the matter, sure I'll have to do it myself. Bedad then I will!"
"Musha, the same John Brennan doesn't look up to much, and they say Ulick Shannon can wind him around his little finger. He'll maybe make a lad of him before the end of the summer holidays."
"I can't understand Myles Shannon letting them go about together so openly unless he's enjoying the whole thing as a sneer. But it would be more to his credit indeed to have found other material for his fun than a blood relation. I'm surprised at him indeed, and he knowing what he knows about Nan Byrne and his brother Henry."
With slight variations of this theme falling on her ears endlessly Rebecca was compelled to endure the torture of this half hour every day. No matter what took place in the valley Monica would manage, somehow, to drag the name of Ulick into it. If it merely happened to be a copy of the Irish Independent they were looking at, and if they came upon some extraordinary piece of news, Monica would say: