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 of our 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 wanted us 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 bounds to 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 during the 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 reliable source of talk, both small and large, and introduced Him into most conversations, how He always found a way and worked 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 library but, 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 I may 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 for the 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 this problem 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 sort of 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 Crowley that 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?’
‘Yes, Sister Kennedy,’ we all said.
Brian promised us all he would do his best, for the good of the school, for the good of our children. He would do it for Ireland, for our proud benighted nation. He would do it for love. By the time he finished, Sister Kennedy, Noleen and Brendan were moist around the eyes, swept up by his words. Mary rolled her eyes at me.
‘Protocol states that any proposals regarding anything that would affect the school must first be approved by the board,’ I said, ‘but that the current principal of the school has the final say. So, Brian, it’s an interesting proposal but the ultimate blessing must come from me.’
‘Indeed it does,’ said Sister Kennedy. ‘But God moves in mysterious ways. I find that when one asks Him for guidance He bestows wisdom on those who must make the decision.’
‘Most mysteriously,’ said Brian, nodding with the humility and wisdom of a living saint. ‘I ask God for His guidance when I am making all my decisions. And He never fails to show me the way. Just this morning, I was ordering a breakfast roll in the Spar, two rashers, and two sausages, my usual. I asked God, if that was the right choice. And He answered me. Today, He guided me to ask for black pudding as well. And I must say, it was a revelation.’ He winked at me.
Noleen smiled slightly uncertainly. Brendan looked utterly confused. Only Sister Kennedy smiled. ‘That’s exactly right, Brian,’ she said. ‘God is everywhere, even at the hot food counter of Spar.’
*
Mary Hooley, my school secretary, was a beacon of good-sense and intelligence. And although I sensed that she wasn’t sure about Brian’s Great Idea, I was determined that I could talk her round. After all, it would mean a break from raffles and bring and buys and bric a brac stalls. Our great economic leap forward.
‘Morning, Mary!’ I said. ‘How are we doing? Are we millionaires yet?’
Mary was counting the takings from the sponsored readathon from the previous week. ‘Morning, Tabitha,’ she said, eyes on the change. ‘We’re up on last year. So that’s good news.’
‘Have we broken the €100 yet?’
‘Not yet, but look there’s another ice cream tub of coppers to go.’ She gave it a good shake, the sound of no more than a fiver’s worth of coins.