Chapter Two
I’d been principal of the Star of the Sea girls’ primary for the last five years. Every day as I drove in to work, I couldn’t believe that I was leading the school where I had been a pupil – as had Rosie and even my own mother.
Every single day our pupils made me proud, from hearing them sing in assembly, to just seeing them dressed in their uniforms, eager to please and to learn.The school had seen many changes since I played skipping games and wrestled with my times tables to when, years later, I was made school principal. So far, we were doing well. We retained our 100% approval rating from the local authority year on year and had several commendations, including those for our anti-bullying attitude and the green school scheme.
We did, however, have one problem. Well,two, if you counted the fact that Sixth class didn’t actually have a teacher, since Ms Samuels had disappeared after winning €50,000 on the lottery and was last seen heading for Departures with a copy ofLet’s Go South East Asia.
But the other big, equally pressing, problem occupying my waking thoughts was cash flow. Or rather the lack of. We weren’t a private school and relied on the local authority,whose budget seemed to decrease every year. Instead, we were encouraged to do as much fundraising as possible. But however many cake sales, bring-and-buys, raffles or parents’ cheese and wine evenings we enthusiastically held, we never had enough money to fix the things that we really needed. The other local school, Willow Grove had recently presented each child with their own iPad. WillowGrove was a private school and the fact that the fees had recently been upped by a whopping €2000 a year might partly explain where the extra dosh had come for to pay for all this. Our parents’ committee had even held a whole meeting on this very subject, and the result had been retuned that we had to provide our children with the very same. We just had to keep on fundraising. More cake sales wereprescribed, along with sponsored walks and swims and no school uniform days. Anything sponsorable was in. Except for the human pyramid idea suggested by one pupil which would definitely end in tears, broken bones and probably a barring order from never running a school again.
We just couldn’t stand there and allow Willow Grove kids to become the world’s future software billionaires. But also,as well as the new iPads, we needed money for our leaky roof and for resurfacing the playground … My wish list of improvements was long and constantly growing and each sponsored event inched us forward. What we needed was a leap. We needed someone to invest in us.
With the school teetering on the edge of sponsor fatigue, one idea was gathering enthusiasm from me. It had been proposed by one ofour board of governors, Brian Crowley. It was always a struggle to find a parent with enthusiasm coupled with spare evenings to join our not-particularly merry throng, but Brian, when he joined in January, seemed very eager. Very eager indeed. He had come up with a cunning plan and it didn’t involve sponsor forms or baking cakes or reading piles of books or sitting in a bath of baked beans. He wantedus to sell a slice of school land, the Copse, a wooded area, at the far end of the school, beyond the hockey pitch.
When I was a pupil at the school, I remembered playing there, but now it was overgrown with brambles, the trees covered with ivy, the odd squirrel darting from branch to branch. It was part of the school grounds that I admit I didn’t give much thought to. It wasn’t out of boundsto the children, but neither did we encourage them to play there. So selling it, went Brian’s logic, made perfect sense. The tricky part, he said, was finding someone who would take it off our hands. The land was a worthless, odd-shaped site, and it would be difficult to find a buyer, but he had to try. And he’d succeeded. He’d found someone.
*
At his very first board of governors meeting duringthe winter, Brian Crowley had spotted Sister Kennedy was the one to butter up. There were only five of us: Me, Sister Kennedy, (nun and former school principal), retired teachers Noleen Norris and Brendan Doherty, Mary Hooley (school secretary and friend) and Brian Crowley, spokesperson for the parents.
Sister Kennedy’s faith tended to dominate her conversation as she found God to be a reliablesource of talk, both small and large, and introduced Him into most conversations, how He alwaysfound a wayandworked in mysterious ways.
At that meeting, Brian first raised the idea of selling the Copse. He waited - impatiently (drumming fingers, looking around the room, reading the small print on the wall posters, checking his phone for messages) - until I had run through points of interest,the relative success of a recent tombola raffle to the trialling of a new healthy eating campaign.
‘God,’ said Sister Kennedy in approval, ‘has found His way again.’
‘We are edging closer to our €20,000 target,’ I said. ‘Mary, what are we up to now?’
She glanced down at her notes. ‘More than €3,156 is in the kitty. Some of that could be used to buy a complete set of Harry Potters for the librarybut, yes, Tabitha, you could say we are edging closer. But, I should say, at a rather subdued pace.’
Finally, Brian saw his opening. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that brings us to my rather interesting - though I may say so myself - proposal. Plan. Plot. Call it what you will but it’s big, it’s bold… and it’s beaut-i-ful.’ He beamed at us all, confident in our imminent excitement. ‘Sister Kennedy, if Imay be so bold, I think God may have found a way. He may well be the source of my inspiration.’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s the scrubland. Over yonder. At the back of the school.’
‘You mean the Copse?’
He nodded. ‘Is that what you call it? I call it the waste ground, the patch of trees. Whatever it’s called. It is the answer to our little problemmo re financing.’
I quickly translated forthe sake of Sister Kennedy who had been rootling around in her bag for her glasses. ‘Mr Crowley thinks he might be able to help us with the plan to buy computers,’ I explained.
‘God willing,’ she said, smiling back at him, putting her large spectacles on her face and pulling back as though startled by him in close up.
‘Ah, but Sister Kennedy,’ he said. ‘It’s not God that’s going to solve thisproblem but me, with your blessing. Anyway, I’ve had the thinking cap on, the old brain box in gear. We can’t produce rabbits out of hats, we’ve got to be creative, think outside of our boxes, throw potatoes in the air.’
‘Try something new,’ I translated.
‘God will advise,’ said Sister Kennedy confidently. ‘He always knows exactly what to do.’
‘We will ask Him most certainly,’ assured Brian,‘but first we must come up with a plan and then we will see if God will bless it. We are, after all, talking about a pointless, meaningless piece of land. Something that has no use. But could have real and long-lasting value and change the lives of the youngsters. We need to find a fella, someone who will take it off our hands. Now, I don’t know if such a person exists. We need a charitable sortof person, someone who would do it not for his own gain but for that of the school.’
Sister Kennedy, Noleen and Brendan nodded enthusiastically. Beside me, Mary paused from taking the minutes, shuffled uncomfortably.
‘Now doesn’t that sound like a lovely plan?’ said Sister Kennedy. ‘The kindness of strangers is a beautiful notion. Reminds me of the Good Samaritan. Are you suggesting Mr Crowleythat you have found a Good Samaritan, someone who will be able to provide our children with computers?’
Brian made deep and meaningful eye contact with her. ‘I’m going to try,’ he said, in a quiet, intense voice. ‘I don’t know if I’ll succeed. But it’s a good plan, I think. If I may be so immodest, it’s even a great one…’
‘Then I’ll pray for you,’ she said. ‘And you’ll do it, I know you will.’She looked at us around room. ‘We’ll all pray for you. We’ll pray that this Good Samaritan turns up. Won’t we?’ She eyeballed us beadily and urgently. ‘Won’t we?’
