The Art of Breathing Underwater

Chapter 1

1994 was turning out to be some year already. Mandela got elected South Africa's first black president. Clinton and Yeltsin, laughing like old drinking buddies, set off on the path to nuclear disarmament. Accompanied by a picture of balaclava-wearing gunmen, the IRA announced that the war was over. Not very John Lennonish, but after twenty-five years of bombs and bloodshed, it was an early Xmas present for us. On our TVs, newscasters introduced bulletins with a smile, reports peppered with words like peace, change and hope. People were optimistic about the future, except in Hollywood; they had lost their go-to bad guys, and spy-thrillers were about to become as unfashionable as flared trousers.

World peace was the furthest thing from my mind as I trudged through the heart of Dublin city-centre that dreary Monday morning, diesel fumes cloying my nostrils. I had way more pressing concerns, such as what my new school would be like. And trying to keep my tie from sawing my neck off. Constant tugging had reduced the Windsor knot to the size of a chestnut, either side flaring out like a Bolo tie.

Caught myself doing that weird thing of avoiding treading on the cracks in the pavement. It's this strange ritual I have to ward off bad luck. I've got more superstitions than a hopeless gambler. Worse thing is, I don't believe in any of them. Yet, you won't catch me walking under ladders, and I'd sooner dash across a busy motorway than cross paths with a black cat. Absurd, I know, and annoying as hell, but they are so ingrained in me, I feel obliged to act.

All around me, swathes of people pushed, rushed, and hustled for space on the crowded city footpath. Crowds don't bother me. I relish the anonymity. Another face submerged in a sea of faces, where differences blurred into indistinction, a moving member of this amorphous body, merging as one. Surrounded by serious city faces worrying about getting to work on time, or, judging by the glances cast at the blanket of inky clouds smothering the sky above us, if it might rain. Without thinking I quickened my pace, checking upward at regular intervals.

I stepped out onto the street.

"Look at where you're going yeh dozy little gobshite," the florid-faced driver roared out the window of the white work-van streaking past, horn honking, inches from my face. Recovered control of my faculties in time to launch a rigid digit salute before the dirt-smeared back doors disappeared around the corner.

And there it stood, my new school. A four-storey, Georgian townhouse, reminiscent of brownstones in Brooklyn or Harlem. Nothing to indicate it functioned as a school, save for the battalion of boisterous boys pushing through the Tuscan columns flanking the blue open panelled doors.

Mary's College. Which struck me as weird on two counts. One, it was a secondary school, not a college. Two; being a boys school, you'd think they might have named it after a male saint. Patrick. Francis. Brendan. Ireland has loads more but I can't think of them. Thanks to a Catholic educational system that favoured corporeal punishment as a learning tool, my parents can list them all.

"This time will be different," I assured myself, making my way up the granite stoop. But it would be different this time. A stranger to the natives, I could reinvent myself as anything I wanted to be. Shape my narrative.

Time to write a new chapter.

Locating my class proved trickier than expected. The first person I asked, a gangly six-footer with Caesar-cut, and shark eyes glared at me. "Don't be annoying me." The second said, "Wha'?" By the time I had repeated the question, he was already bounding up the stair, two steps at a time. A third grunted face stuck in a Gameboy. A panicked first-year told me he didn't even know where his class was.