Thaddeus Matthews Character Analysis

And if the nuns didn’t know, they must have been blind, dead, and dumb. Because he did it to a dozen girls, over the years, how many I couldn’t say. Oh, and always so nice to him, Father Thaddy this, and Father Thaddy that, they worshipped him, and baking three cakes for him every now and then, [...] and one time he tore me, you know, in the backside, and the doctor had to come, and he said, hmm, hmm, yes, yes, she has colitis, saying it clearly for the nun, the poor little thing, that’s very sore, [...] —yes, Sister Brenda was there, while he was fucking scoping my bits, Tom, and all the tut-tutting of her, and the hands of her going like a butterfly, dear me, dear me, how on earth does that happen.

This is for June, he kept repeating, muttering, muttering, like a Buddhist mantra, this is for June. And that fucker there, whose head I can see bobbing about as he drives that stupid little car, he looks like the black dot in a bubble of frogspawn, that creature there, indicating right, and left, and right, little flashing lights, on stalks springing open, retracted, heading to the back of the city now and up onto higher ground, motoring towards the mountains seemingly, is the lousy, filthy, fucking cruel, vicious shite of a man that well-nigh destroyed her, tore through her, a little girl without defences, week after week, his possession and his plaything.

He was genuinely shocked when June took their humble bread knife from her gansey. She took it from her gansey, and then she went in under his coat like a bone-collapsing rat, trying to get in in a manner no human ever could. And she wriggled herself up onto his back, using his spine as a great brace, and she flattened herself like a huge plaster, not a human creature at all. He had clearly married a Trickster.

No crime more dark, more fucking pessimum, more beyond human mercy. To do this with the mote of June in your eye, her essence floating on the Irish wind. All the children gravely assailed. All the children in filthy Irish history, with no bugle blowing to announce their rescue, no arms of love to envelop them, no hand of kindness to wash their wounds. Priests! The boyos themselves, peddling piety and goodness. As pious and good as—but there was no entity, no animal, no thing, to compare to them. A shark was vicious, but it was all beyond the shark.

Possible court appearance. If the DPP thought there was evidence. What of the blood sample? Would that be enough? The word of an evil man, himself under scrutiny, judgement, sentence. But what did Tom care? He didn’t. He had served the only soul he cared about, not his own soul, or the souls even of his children, but the girl he had met in the Wimpy café, who had laughed at Billy Drury’s taste on the jukebox, and in laughing, with her bright face, fished out his deathless love.

Without her. The children in their childhood beds. Her in the summer-cold graveyard. Her remains in the execrable coffin. Her heart not beating. Her mind not thinking. Her face not brightening, darkening. No more her thousand different moods, her modes of mind, her enthusiasms, her hated things. And in the kitchen, on the breadboard, chill and dark, the sacred bread knife. Which in killing had not killed. In exacting punishment had not punished. In seeking to be the instrument of redemption had not redeemed.

And if the nuns didn’t know, they must have been blind, dead, and dumb. Because he did it to a dozen girls, over the years, how many I couldn’t say. Oh, and always so nice to him, Father Thaddy this, and Father Thaddy that, they worshipped him, and baking three cakes for him every now and then, [...] and one time he tore me, you know, in the backside, and the doctor had to come, and he said, hmm, hmm, yes, yes, she has colitis, saying it clearly for the nun, the poor little thing, that’s very sore, [...] —yes, Sister Brenda was there, while he was fucking scoping my bits, Tom, and all the tut-tutting of her, and the hands of her going like a butterfly, dear me, dear me, how on earth does that happen.

This is for June, he kept repeating, muttering, muttering, like a Buddhist mantra, this is for June. And that fucker there, whose head I can see bobbing about as he drives that stupid little car, he looks like the black dot in a bubble of frogspawn, that creature there, indicating right, and left, and right, little flashing lights, on stalks springing open, retracted, heading to the back of the city now and up onto higher ground, motoring towards the mountains seemingly, is the lousy, filthy, fucking cruel, vicious shite of a man that well-nigh destroyed her, tore through her, a little girl without defences, week after week, his possession and his plaything.

He was genuinely shocked when June took their humble bread knife from her gansey. She took it from her gansey, and then she went in under his coat like a bone-collapsing rat, trying to get in in a manner no human ever could. And she wriggled herself up onto his back, using his spine as a great brace, and she flattened herself like a huge plaster, not a human creature at all. He had clearly married a Trickster.

No crime more dark, more fucking pessimum, more beyond human mercy. To do this with the mote of June in your eye, her essence floating on the Irish wind. All the children gravely assailed. All the children in filthy Irish history, with no bugle blowing to announce their rescue, no arms of love to envelop them, no hand of kindness to wash their wounds. Priests! The boyos themselves, peddling piety and goodness. As pious and good as—but there was no entity, no animal, no thing, to compare to them. A shark was vicious, but it was all beyond the shark.

Possible court appearance. If the DPP thought there was evidence. What of the blood sample? Would that be enough? The word of an evil man, himself under scrutiny, judgement, sentence. But what did Tom care? He didn’t. He had served the only soul he cared about, not his own soul, or the souls even of his children, but the girl he had met in the Wimpy café, who had laughed at Billy Drury’s taste on the jukebox, and in laughing, with her bright face, fished out his deathless love.

Without her. The children in their childhood beds. Her in the summer-cold graveyard. Her remains in the execrable coffin. Her heart not beating. Her mind not thinking. Her face not brightening, darkening. No more her thousand different moods, her modes of mind, her enthusiasms, her hated things. And in the kitchen, on the breadboard, chill and dark, the sacred bread knife. Which in killing had not killed. In exacting punishment had not punished. In seeking to be the instrument of redemption had not redeemed.