The God Squad Read Online Free Page A

was flung open. What little light there was hurt my eyes and I had difficulty in focusing on the black-clad figure standing with arms outstretched, framed by the rotting wood of the doorway. Her voice was sharp and icy as she ordered me to get out of the shed and go straight to the dormitory without supper. I moved as quickly as I could across the yard, through the assembly hall and up the stairs.
    It was quiet, all the other boys were in their beds and the lights had been turned off. Heavy black roller blinds covered the windows ensuring that no light penetrated the vast room containing sixty beds. Twelve in each row, head to foot. A big statue of the Sacred Heart stood imposingly in one corner, the red light at his feet casting an eerie shadow onto the ceiling. I began to undress. I removed my heavy black boots and placed them carefully beneath the bed, taking care not to bang them off the chamber pot. Ifolded the rest of my clothes and left them at the foot of my bed.
    Because of the soreness of my body and hunger, I had great difficulty in getting to sleep, constantly moving in an attempt to find a comfortable position. Just as I was about to fall asleep I heard Mother Paul’s voice beside my bed asking if I had said my night prayers. When I replied that I had not, she immediately ordered me out of bed to kneel on the bare floor with my hands joined. I was not allowed to lean against the bed for support. My flimsy, striped nightshirt was a poor barrier against the cold. I said the prayer I had been taught since the day I arrived in St Michael’s:
‘Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord, my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord, my soul to take.

God bless the nuns who are so good to me.’
     
    I blessed myself and got back into bed.
    It was the practice each night in St Michael’s Industrial School for a nun to walk around the dormitory at eleven o’clock, ringing a large brass bell. The purpose was to awaken the boys and get them out of bed to sit on white enamelled chamber pots. We hunched on the floorboards urging our bladders or bowels to act so that we could return to bed. Many children used to fall asleep, others neglected to position their penises properly, and urinated over the rim, sending a stream of water along the floor. I liked to create a well between my legs by pressing my thighs tightly together thus allowing the urine to gather. It was a warm pleasurable feeling. Any child who wet the floor or whose nightshirt became damp received a clatter on the face fromthe patrolling nun as she checked those of us who had finished and held our pots for her to examine the contents. Often boys cried, as they pushed and strained to ‘do’ something.
    One night the boy in the bed next to mine screamed, and each time he did he was slapped on the bare backside by one of the two nuns attending to him. I turned my head slowly. A ball of blood hung from his anus like a half-inflated scarlet balloon. He screamed as the nuns took it in turn to attempt to push it back up inside his body. Once he had been taken care of he was told he would be punished for what he had done. It was ‘only a prolapsed bowel’, Mother Paul said, as she returned to her own room. I was so terrified by the experience that the unfamiliar words stuck in my mind.

CHAPTER TWO
     
    The children in St Michael’s were divided into two groups, those between six and ten and children under six years of age. I was just over six and so I was regarded as one of the ‘big boys’. As such, I was given charge of a younger child. My ‘charge’ was a small curly-headed blond boy I knew only as Eugene. The day he was put into my ‘care’ Mother Paul told me that I must take good care of him, see that he went to the toilet when he wanted to and ensure that he was kept clean, especially before and after meals. Eugene latched onto me and annoyed me by following me constantly but if I said anything to him he would start crying. I