Barry Fox’s body was tough and loose. He was built like a chain-link fence. He was, in the words of Father Connelly, ‘One hell of a mighty kicker.’

During their Leaving Cert. mock exams, Barry’s fifth-year English class was asked to write an essay entitled ‘Brookfield’. Barry composed a lyrical description of walking along the avenue to school in the morning, past the blooming beech tree. The essay was graded B minus.

Barry’s mother died of breast cancer when Barry was twelve. Some of the Brookfield first years were taken to the funeral. Barry was missing from school for a lot of that year. When he came back, he seemed not to have changed at all. But there were rumours that he had needed grief counselling to get over the loss.

In the aftermath of Barry’s mother’s death, Stephen O’Brien’s father used to come over to the house to cook meals for Barry and his father. The families had known each other for years.

Barry’s father was a cost accountant and his mother, before she died, had been a dental nurse. They had grown up on the same street in Dun Laoghaire. She had died quickly, Barry’s mother: three months after the first diagnosis. ‘They wanted to send her to Canada,’ Barry said. ‘There was this new treatment there that would bring about remission in, like, 80 per cent of cases. But she was too sick. We brought her home for the last two weeks. We didn’t sleep. Just took care of her. I’d go down to the kitchen at, like, four in the morning and my dad would be there, playing patience with three cups of cold tea in front of him. We both made tea all the time. Fifty cups a day. Never drank any of it, you know. It was just something to do.’

Every now and then, during Barry’s time at Brookfield, Father Connelly brought Barry into his office to see how he was getting on. Father Connelly’s office overlooked the quad, and Barry would sit looking down at the cobblestones and the flowerboxes underneath the window.

‘How are you keeping, Barry? Is everything alright at home?’

‘Yeah, everything’s okay.’

Father Connelly found that he could get very little out of Barry. The boy was reluctant to talk about anything more significant than how the Junior Cup team were doing. Eventually Father Connelly remembered his counsellor’s training and asked Barry about his dreams.

‘What do you dream about?’

Barry shrugged. ‘The usual stuff, I suppose. Nothing bizarre, like. Girls, and things.’

‘Well what did you dream about last night?’

Barry looked at the ceiling. ‘Ducks,’ he said. ‘They flew away. South, like. For the winter.’

‘Were you sad to see them go?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And do you dream often about these ducks?’

‘Yeah, most nights, I think.’

‘Do you think,’ Father Connelly said gently, ‘that these ducks might represent your mother?’

‘Yeah,’ Barry said slowly. ‘I think they do.’

Barry told his friends about the ducks, and it became a running joke on poor Father Connelly. Whenever Barry wanted to get out of a test or some homework, he would go into school early in the morning and slip a note under Father Connelly’s office door that said, DREAMED ABOUT THE DUCKS AGAIN. Father Connelly would rush to the relevant classroom and bring Barry up to his office for tea and biscuits and a chat.