Cushla intervenes to stop Slattery intimidating pupils

Cushla intervenes to stop Father Slattery intimidating pupils in two linked encounters involving Davy McGeown. In the classroom, she breaks up the priest’s sectarian lesson when he singles out Davy and makes the child’s home estate a reason he should listen. Later, she removes Davy from Slattery’s approach at the car and tells him he does not have to attend private catechism. The episodes show her using the authority she has as a teacher to protect a pupil, while exposing the reach of the priest’s influence beyond the classroom.

The Classroom and Slattery’s Authority

At St Dallan’s School, Slattery can enter classrooms without warning, moving through the school and its corridors to deliver religious instruction. The school stands on parish land shared with the church and parochial house, a setting that makes his presence part of the institution’s everyday order. Cushla has already complained to Bradley that these visits unsettle the pupils, but the response she receives is that Slattery is the priest. The explanation treats his religious office as sufficient justification for his access, leaving Cushla to confront the effects of his conduct herself.

Her unease is not confined to the classroom. When her father, Eamonn Lavery, was in hospital and delirious with morphine, Slattery prayed with him and persuaded him to write a cheque for a colour television. That earlier encounter gives Cushla a personal reason to distrust the priest’s use of authority, even as the school’s arrangement places Slattery in a position of influence over children. The incident does not itself establish what Slattery intends in his dealings with Davy, but it helps explain why Cushla watches his conduct with particular concern.

The classroom encounter begins after Davy has hit Jonathan. Cushla orders Davy to apologize, and he offers his hand; Jonathan barely touches it, so the attempted reconciliation carries little warmth. She sends the boys to opposite corners of the room. When Bradley enters with Slattery, Davy looks pleadingly toward Cushla, while Jonathan watches the leather strap protruding from Bradley’s pocket. Cushla turns toward Bradley, hoping he will intervene, but he backs out of the doorway. The adults’ positions leave the children exposed to Slattery’s next move.

A Sectarian Lesson Directed at Davy

Slattery tests the pupils on Catholic prayers and the Mysteries of the Rosary. When no one answers, he recites the mysteries himself in a slow, mournful manner. He then approaches Davy, asks his age, and turns the lesson into a story about a young girl attacked by a group of men and marked with an Ulster Volunteer Force inscription. The account is presented to the class as a warning about sectarian hostility. Rather than remaining a general tale, it becomes a means of addressing Davy personally.

Davy asks whether the girl in the story was seven, the age he has just given. Slattery dismisses the question and declares that the important point is Protestant hatred of Catholics. He places his hands flat on Davy’s desk, making the child jump, and identifies him as one of the McGeowns. Slattery then says that, because Davy lives in that estate, he has more reason than the other pupils to listen. The sequence makes the child’s age, family, and place of residence instruments of pressure: Davy is not simply being taught doctrine but singled out through the dangers attached to his community.

Cushla Ends the Encounter

The bell rings for break, but the pupils remain seated as Slattery continues. Cushla goes to the door and orders the class outside. When the children do not move at first, she repeats the command, and they hurry past her. Her intervention is direct and practical: she does not debate Slattery’s claims in front of the pupils or try to answer his religious authority on its own terms. She ends his access to the class by getting the children out of the room.

Slattery asks Cushla how her mother is. She replies that she is fine, then leaves the priest alone in the empty classroom and walks along the dim corridor. The exchange does not resolve the conflict between them; it shows instead that Cushla will not let his attention to a pupil go unchallenged. Her response changes the immediate situation, even though the parish setting and Slattery’s clerical standing remain in place.

The Later Encounter and Its Consequence

A later meeting brings the same concern into a more private setting. After school, Cushla helps Davy put his pencils into a camouflage-patterned canvas case, marked by red ink in one corner. She has come to collect him after learning that his father has left Intensive Care and that the children have been allowed to visit him. Davy has been quiet; he has said his father is sleeping and covered in bandages. These circumstances place the school encounter within a period of strain for the child and his family, without making Davy’s vulnerability a reason to presume what he thinks or feels.

As Cushla approaches the car, she sees Slattery leaning through the passenger window and walks faster. He says he was speaking with Davy. Cushla gets into the driver’s seat, tells Davy to close his window, and says she needs to take him home. Davy then asks whether he has to go to Slattery for private catechism, adding that he does not know what catechism is. Cushla answers that he certainly does not have to go, hands him a comic, and drives away. In the rear-view mirror, she sees Slattery standing on the pavement watching the car leave.

The refusal is a second, distinct form of intervention. In the classroom, Cushla interrupts a public lesson aimed at making Davy fearful; at the car, she makes clear that private religious instruction is not an obligation he must accept. Her answer offers no elaborate explanation and does not claim to settle the larger dispute over Slattery’s role. Its force lies in giving Davy a choice and removing him from the immediate encounter. Together, the scenes contrast institutional deference to the priest with Cushla’s attention to what the child is being asked to endure.