A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

  ‘Actually, it was him who suggested you.’

  ‘This was his idea?’

  ‘It was my idea, Father Yates,’ he said sternly. ‘But Tom was there when all the options were considered.’

  I found this hard to believe. ‘I only saw him on Friday afternoon,’ I said. ‘And he never mentioned a word about any of this.’

  ‘Well I saw him on Saturday morning,’ replied the Archbishop. ‘He popped in here for a chat. He thought you might fancy a change. I thought it myself.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I found it hard to understand why Tom would discuss this with Jim Cordington without mentioning it to me first. After all, we had known each other for so long and were such close friends.

  Tom Cardle and I had arrived at the seminary on the same day in 1973 and found ourselves sitting next to each other as the Canon explained how our daily lives would be organized over the next few months. Tom was up from the country, a Wexford lad a few months older than me, having turned seventeen the previous week. He was unhappy to be at Clonliffe, I could see that from the start. He gave off an air of utter despair and I was drawn to him immediately, not because I shared that emotion but because I was afraid of loneliness and had resolved to make a friend as quickly as possible. I was already missing Hannah and somehow, even at that young age, I knew that I might need a confidant of sorts and so I chose Tom, or rather we chose each other. We became friends.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him as we unpacked our bags in the small cell we were to share – we’d been put in together since we were sitting beside each other in the orientation – trying out a bit of Christian charity to see whether it suited me. The room was not much to look at: two single beds pressed against either wall, a gap wide enough for both of us to stand between them, a single wardrobe to store all our belongings, a bowl and a jug on a side-table and a bucket on the floor. ‘You look a bit white about the gills.’

  ‘I’m not feeling the best,’ he said in a thick accent that pleased me, for I hadn’t wanted to be stuck with another Dub. When he told me that he was from Wexford, however, I felt a wound inside me opening once again, for I could never hear that county’s name without an accompanying burst of grief.

  ‘Was it the drive up?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye, maybe,’ he said. ‘Those roads are a killer. And I came up on the daddy’s tractor.’

  I stared at him. ‘You drove all the way from Wexford to Dublin on a tractor?’ I asked in disbelief.

  ‘I did.’

  I sucked in the air and shook my head. ‘Is that even possible?’ I asked.

  ‘We went slow,’ he said. ‘We broke down a lot.’

  ‘Rather you than me, boy,’ I said. ‘What’s your name anyway?’

  ‘Tom Cardle.’

  ‘Odran Yates,’ I said, offering my hand, and he shook it, looking directly at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to burst into tears. ‘Are you glad to be here?’ I asked and he snorted something unintelligible under his breath. ‘Sure it’ll be grand. There’s nothing to worry about. A lad I knew came here a couple of years ago and he said it was great fun altogether. It’s not just praying and that. There’s games and sports and sing-songs all the time. It’ll be mighty, just watch.’

  He nodded but didn’t seem convinced. He opened his suitcase and there was precious little in there, just a few shirts and pants and a couple of pairs of underwear and socks. Sitting on top of all that was an expensive-looking Bible and I picked it up to examine it.

  ‘My mam and dad gave it to me,’ he said. ‘When I was leaving, like.’

  ‘Must have cost a few quid,’ I said, handing it back to him.

  ‘You can have it if you want. I’ve no use for it.’

  I laughed, wondering whether he was joking, but his expression told me otherwise. ‘Ah no, it’s yours,’ I said and he shrugged, took it from me and threw it on the side-table without much consideration. In the years that followed I would rarely see him open that book.

  ‘Tom’s only been in that parish a couple of years,’ I told Archbishop Cordington, surprised, for this was a quick transfer and Tom had already been subjected to so many over the last twenty-five years. I used to say that he kept a suitcase on standby at all times.

  ‘Eighteen months. It’s a fair run.’

  ‘Sure he’s only settled in.’

  ‘He needs a change.’

  ‘It’s not my place to say, of course,’ I ventured, wondering whether I might get myself off the hook with a little debate, ‘but hasn’t poor Tom been moved around enough as it is? Would it not be fair to leave him alone for a while?’

  ‘What is it that Shakespeare says?’ asked the Archbishop with a wide smile. ‘Ours is not to question why?’

  ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die,’ I said, correcting him. ‘Tennyson.’

  ‘Not Shakespeare?’

  ‘No, Your Grace.’

  ‘I could have sworn it was Shakespeare.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘But my point stands,’ he said coldly. ‘Tom Cardle’s is not to reason why. And nor is Odran Yates’s,’ he added, taking another sip from his glass.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I only meant—’

  ‘Don’t be worrying,’ he said, slapping a hand down firmly on the side of his chair and smiling again; the man could turn on a penny. ‘It’ll take you a bit of getting used to, of course. All those parishioners in your ear every day. And you’ll be afloat in tea for the first couple of months as all the old biddies invite you over to size you up.’ He paused and glanced at his nails, which were finely manicured. ‘And sure you might as well take charge of the altar boys too, while you’re at it. You’re used to the young lads.’

  I groaned. The boys I was accustomed to were fifteen and sixteen years of age and I knew how to handle them. I had little knowledge or experience of lads of seven or eight. If I am honest, I have always found them a little noisy and irritating. They never sit still at Mass and parents nowadays have no control over them.

  ‘Might not one of the other priests look after them?’ I asked. ‘Those little lads can be terrible boisterous. I don’t know if I’d have the patience for them.’

  ‘Then develop it,’ he replied, the smile fading quickly again. ‘Develop it, Odran. Anyway, Tom has them all tamed, so there’ll be nothing for you to worry about.’ He started to laugh a little. ‘Do you know what I heard they call him, those altar boys of his? Satan! God forgive me, but it’s funny all the same, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s awful,’ I said, appalled.

  ‘Ah sure, boys will be boys. There’s no harm in any of them – the ones who don’t tell lies anyway. They always have nicknames. Sure didn’t we have nicknames ourselves for all the priests back in the seminary?’

  ‘We did, Jim,’ I agreed. ‘But nothing as bad as Satan.’

  A silence fell on us; the Archbishop seemed as if he had something more he wanted to say.

  ‘There’s something else,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s a bit delicate. Not for public consumption.’

  ‘All right.’

  He thought about it and shook his head. ‘Ah no, it’ll keep,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you another time.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and I wondered whether he was going to sleep, but then he opened them suddenly, surprising me. ‘I meant to ask you,’ he said. ‘Am I right in thinking that nephew of yours is the writer fella, yes?’

  I nodded, surprised and a little unnerved by the abrupt change of topic.

  ‘Yes, Jonas,’ I said.

  ‘Jonas Ramsfjeld,’ he said. ‘Such a name. Where was his father from? Sweden?’

  ‘Norway.’

  ‘He’s never out of the papers at the minute, is he? I saw him on the nine o’clock news the other night talking about his book. It’s been made into a film now, they say.’

  ‘It has, yes,’ I said.

  ‘The boy knows his stuff all the same, doesn’t he? Talks
very well. And sure he’s only a young fella. How old is he anyway?’

  ‘Twenty-one,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what they call a prodigy,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s good for him at such a young age.’

  ‘Ah sure, good luck to him. I haven’t read any of his books myself, of course.’

  ‘There’s only two,’ I said.

  ‘Well I haven’t read either of them then. I suppose you have?’

  ‘I have, yes.’

  ‘And are they any good at all? I hear they’re full of effing and blinding. And all this stuff about young fellas and young ones getting up to all sorts together. What kind of books are they anyway? Are they dirty books?’

  I smiled. ‘They’re not as bad as all that,’ I said. ‘I suppose he’d say that the way he writes is the way that people speak. And that he’s not writing for old men like us.’

  ‘But the young people like that stuff, do they? It’s not writing though, is it? It’s not literature. I don’t recall W. B. Yeats sailing away to fucking Byzantium or Paddy Kavanagh talking about the shitty grey soil of Monaghan.’

  I stared at him, taken aback by the coarseness of his words.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ready to jump to Jonas’s defence, ‘like you say, you haven’t read either of his books.’

  ‘I don’t have to eat a cat to know I wouldn’t like the taste of one,’ he said. ‘Actually, while we’re on the subject, you might keep that quiet anyway. I don’t think people need to know that you’re related to him. It wouldn’t look good.’

  I felt a hundred responses going through my head, but I held my tongue.

  ‘Look, Odran,’ said the Archbishop, leaning forward, reverting to a subject that I thought was closed but seemed to be still preying on his mind, ‘I know this is a bit of a bolt out of the blue to you. But I’ve talked it through with Tom and he feels you’re the man for the job. He has every confidence in you. And so do I. Will you trust me on this, Odran?’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace,’ I said. ‘I’m just surprised that Tom recommended me, that’s all. Without talking to me about it first.’

  ‘But sure why wouldn’t he?’ he asked, sitting back and smiling, extending his hands in a magnanimous gesture. ‘Aren’t you the best of pals, after all, you and old Satan?’

  The idea of Tom Cardle as a man who the boys would either fear or hate was a strange one to me, particularly when I thought back to who he had been at seventeen.

  That first night, after we unpacked, we went down to the Wide Hall together and ate our dinner side by side. I can remember it still. A bit of plaice with a leaky batter hanging off it, a plate full of chips and a pot of beans in the centre of the table. Fourteen hungry lads passing that pot around and pouring it all over their food to mask the taste. Everyone got stuck in except Tom, whose colouring had returned to normal but who still looked angry and afraid in equal measure. None of us knew each other from Adam, we were strangers still. Our mammies had sat us all down one day and told us that we had vocations and so there we were, ready to dedicate our lives to God. It was a great thing, that’s what we thought anyway. Only Tom looked miserable about it.

  We were shy of each other when we got back to our cell later. We turned our backs when we undressed to get into our pyjamas and the lights were off by nine o’clock, the sun still peeping through the thin pale curtains. I lay there, my hands under my head, staring up at the ceiling, thinking that this was the beginning of my new life and was I ready for it, I asked myself. And yes, I replied silently. For there was a faith inside me, one that I found difficult to comprehend at times. But it was there.

  ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’ I asked across the room when the quiet became too much for me.

  ‘Nine of them,’ said Tom.

  ‘That’s a lot. Where do you come in the rankings?’

  ‘Last,’ he said, and I thought I could hear a choked note in his tone. ‘I’m the youngest. So I’m to be the priest. Two of my sisters are nuns already. What about you?’

  ‘There’s just me and my sister,’ I said. ‘I had a brother, but he died.’

  ‘And do you want to be here?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I have a vocation.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Mam.’

  ‘And how does she know?’

  ‘She had an epiphany one night while she was watching The Late Late Show’.

  I heard a strange sound come from the other side of the room. It was a sort of snort, a half-laugh. ‘Jesus, Odran,’ he said and I opened my eyes wide. A lad I knew in school had said Jesus once in the middle of a geography class and he’d got the leather for it, ten times on each hand. He’d not said it again. ‘You’re some langer.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry,’ I said eventually. ‘It’ll be all right here. I’m sure it will.’

  ‘You keep saying that. Who are you trying to convince anyway, me or you?’

  ‘I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘You’re a great optimist, I’d say, are you?’

  ‘Don’t you think you’ll be happy here?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, a bitter tone to his voice. ‘I don’t belong here. I have no business being in this place.’

  ‘Then why did you come?’

  ‘Because I’m safer here,’ he said quietly after a lengthy pause.

  And those were his last words for the night. He rolled over in one direction and I rolled over in the other, and since I lay awake for another hour or more out of excitement and apprehension, I heard him as he started to cry, a low muffled weeping into his pillow, and I thought about going over to him and sitting on the corner of his bed and telling him not to worry, that everything would be all right, but in the end, of course, I did nothing.

  ‘Are we agreed then?’ asked Archbishop Cordington. ‘You’ll give it a go?’

  I sighed, resigned to it now. ‘If that’s what you want,’ I said.

  ‘Good man,’ he said, bringing a heavy hand down on my knee. ‘And look, it won’t be for ever, you don’t need to worry about that. Just a few years. And then I’ll send you back to your school, I promise.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘You have my word of honour,’ he said, smiling. ‘It might not even take that long. Just until everything gets cleared up.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ I said. ‘Until what gets cleared up?’

  He hesitated. ‘The whole problem with the applications,’ he said. ‘There’ll be new lads coming down the line soon enough, as sure as eggs is eggs. And then we’ll get you back to Terenure, Odran. You do this for me, you keep an eye on Tom’s parish, and before you know it we’ll have you back where you belong. Right,’ he said, pulling himself to his feet, ‘I have to throw you out now unless you want to be here when eight nuns arrive to complain about their facilities.’

  I laughed. ‘I’m grand, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘You can thank Tom Cardle,’ he said, turning his back on me as he made his way over to his desk. ‘This is all down to him. Oh, by the way,’ he added before I could leave. ‘How’s that sister of yours doing? He told me she wasn’t well.’

  ‘She hasn’t been well for a few years now,’ I said. ‘We’ve done our best for her at home but it looks like she’ll have to go into a facility soon. Somewhere they can take care of her.’

  ‘And what’s the matter with her, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Early-onset dementia,’ I said. ‘We have one of those home-helps in there to take care of her, but it’s getting beyond that now. She knows me sometimes when I visit. Other times she doesn’t.’

  ‘She’s probably better off not knowing about that son of hers anyway,’ he said gruffly. ‘What with all his effing and blinding. He’s a queer too, isn’t he? Did I read that somewhere?’

  I felt rattled by this, as if he had suddenly spat in my face, but he wasn’t looking at me and didn’t seem to expect an answer; he wa
s already searching through papers on his desk for whatever he needed for his next appointment. I said nothing, simply took my leave, closing the door behind me, and made my way down the corridor as eight nuns came towards me, parting in the centre like the Red Sea and standing still as I passed them, a choir of voices saying, ‘Good afternoon, Father,’ in perfect harmony.

  So that was that. And I heard no more from the Archbishop for a long time; once the decision was made, it was made, and I was supposed to just get on with things, even though more than a quarter-century of my life was being pulled from under my feet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1964

  WE BEGAN AS three, then became four, then five, and one day without warning we were three again.

  I was the eldest, alone in the house with Mam and Dad for three years but too young to appreciate fully the luxury of that position. By all accounts I was not a difficult baby, sleeping when I was told to sleep and eating whatever was put in front of me. There was a problem with my sight in my infancy which provoked fears that I might become blind in later life and I was brought to see a specialist in Holles Street hospital, but whatever the issue was it must have righted itself in time, for I never developed any difficulties as I grew older.

  Hannah arrived in 1958, a mewling, shrieking presence, given to explosions of temper that led to arguments between our parents, Mam saying that she couldn’t cope and Dad clearing off to the pub. The baby refused to eat and there were visits to a second doctor, who said that she must eat or she would die.

  ‘Sure don’t I know that?’ said Mam, looking around the surgery with the air of one who had come here for help but realized that there would be little of that on offer. I sat in the corner, watching her frustration grow. ‘I’m not a complete imbecile.’

  ‘Have you tried cajoling her, Mrs Yates?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘In what way exactly?’

  ‘I know that my own wife often cajoled our children to get them to eat. It worked wonders.’

  ‘Could you explain the meaning of the word cajole to me, Doctor? And tell me how it might help?’

  ‘Well, it’s from the French, isn’t it?’ he replied, smiling at her. ‘Cajoler. To persuade a person to do something that they are reluctant to do.’