The Tour by Jean Grainger

Dagenham, and had a family there, but the gossip never really affected him. At the age of eight and a bit, he assumed the role of man of the house. His mother, Lily, was a quiet kind of woman, slight and dark, good looking in an understated way. Everyone said his brother Gerry was the image of his mother, whereas Conor was tall and broad with reddish brown hair, just like his father.
    Lily was inoffensive in every way. He supposed she had to be, because even though it was not in any way her fault that that her husband upped and left one day, it was regarded with shame in the area. She looked after her two boys, went to mass, kept her house clean, and lived out what must have been a lonely kind of existence, Conor thought. For women in her position, remarriage or even a friendship with another man was utterly out of the question – a fact that had made Conor sad for her, since he would have really liked his Mam to have met someone nice.
    Passage West was his father’s home place and despite the fact that his Mam came from a village nine miles away, she was always considered a blow-in. She died as she lived, quietly and without fuss, when Conor was fifteen and Gerry was twelve. It was decided by the all-powerful village triumvirate – the headmaster, parish priest and the local sergeant – that Conor should get an apprenticeship as a mechanic and Gerry should go into care, as there were no relatives willing to take the boys on, and all attempts to contact their father in England had failed.
    The word “care” Conor knew, had very little to do with how children who ended up in industrial schools were actually treated in the Ireland of the 1970’s, and he was determined to keep his brother out of one of these institutions. With the help of his mother’s only real friend and neighbour, Mary Harrington, he fought long and hard to win a reprieve. Eventually, it was agreed that Conor could continue to live in his mother’s house, get a job and look after Gerry.
    As he parked the coach, memories of his past came flooding back. Gerry had always been spoiled. He had no recollection of his father, and by way of compensation or something, he had been indulged throughout his childhood by his endlessly uncritical mother. Conor remembered the last time he saw him: dark hair combed back in a Teddy Boy style, trousers so tight Conor wondered how he could manage to walk in them. His feet clad in a pair of winklepickers on his little finger a gold ring.
    Gerry left school at the age of 16, the year after he spectacularly failed his Intermediate Certificate. What he lacked in academic prowess he equally lacked in ambition and the desire to work. Conor managed to talk Matt Sheehan, the owner of the local hardware shop, into giving Gerry a job. Matt had great time for Conor, so it was with a heavy heart he came into the garage where Conor was working as a mechanic one day two months later to say he would have to let Gerry go. He had caught him stealing from the till, and, he told a horrified Conor, Gerry had only laughed when confronted with the accusation. Matt assured him that there would be no question of involving the guards or anything like that, but under no circumstances was Gerry to show his face in Sheehan’s Hardware ever again.
    Conor arrived home that evening to find Gerry lying on the sofa watching cartoons. Gerry wore the same smug expression he always wore – as if he was laughing at the world. He did not acknowledge his brother’s presence: he might as well have been invisible. Conor flipped.
    ‘Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to stop them taking you to that industrial school? And then you do this to me?’
    He remained motionless, glued to the television, unfazed by his brother’s outburst. Incensed at his attitude, Conor pounced on him, dragged him outside to the back yard and punched him into the face. As blood began to pour out of his mouth, Conor stopped and stared in horror, imagining his Mam looking