A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

  She shook her head as if she could make no sense of what he was telling her.

  ‘Odran, do you remember when we used to go into the pictures?’ she asked after a long silence as we drove through town, past where the old Adelphi cinema used to be on Abbey Street. So many of the cinemas of our teenage years were gone now. The Adelphi, the Carlton at the top of O’Connell Street, the Screen on the Bridge, which was a terrible filthy place at the best of times. You couldn’t move for the squelch of dried Coke and the crunch of dropped popcorn on the floor. Even the new Lighthouse cinema, where they showed the foreign films, was gone.

  ‘I do,’ I said. As a young priest in Dublin in the early 1980s, we used to have a standing appointment for a Wednesday-night picture and a bite to eat in Captain America’s afterwards. ‘They were great nights.’

  ‘We would go for a meal, Jonas,’ she said, sitting forward in the seat and tapping him on the shoulder as I drove. ‘Even though we’d be full from all the popcorn and the Fanta at the picture. We saw everything in those days, didn’t we, Odran?’

  ‘We saw a fair bit of it anyway, yes.’

  ‘What was the one with the monkey in it?’

  ‘The monkey?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, you know it,’ she said. ‘The monkey. And himself. Clint Eastwood.’

  ‘Any Which Way You Can,’ said I.

  ‘Every Which Way But Loose,’ said Jonas, correcting me.

  ‘Similar titles,’ I said.

  ‘Simian titles,’ said Hannah, and for a moment I wondered whether we were doing the right thing at all bringing her up to the Chartwell when she could make a joke as bad as that.

  ‘Do you remember On Golden Pond?’ I asked her.

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Katharine Hepburn, wasn’t it? Shaking away like she’d just got off a merry-go-round. And Henry Fonda. He died shortly before that film was made, didn’t he?’

  ‘If he died before it was made, sure he wouldn’t have been in it.’

  ‘After then. He died after.’

  ‘He did,’ I said, casting my mind back. ‘Didn’t he win an Oscar but he couldn’t show up because he was so sick?’

  ‘What was his daughter’s name again?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘Jane,’ I said. ‘Jane Fonda.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head and frowning. ‘Kristian, Henry Fonda’s daughter. Do you remember her name? She did all the exercises. She loved to keep fit.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s Jane Fonda, Mam,’ said Jonas, as we turned on to Parnell Square for Dorset Street. ‘And I’m Jonas, not Kristian.’

  ‘No, not her,’ insisted Hannah. ‘I know who Jane Fonda is and she had nothing to do with Henry Fonda. Wait now, it’ll come back to me in a minute.’

  We drove on in silence for a while.

  ‘Will I be allowed out again?’ asked Hannah after a while. ‘Or do I have to stay?’

  ‘It’s not a prison, Mam,’ said Jonas. ‘It’s a nursing home. They’ll take care of you. But I’ll be able to take you out for a day-trip now and again. And Odran might, too.’

  ‘I will, of course,’ I said.

  ‘And where will we go?’ she asked. ‘It won’t be anywhere dangerous, will it?’

  ‘We could go for a walk along Dun Laoghaire pier,’ I suggested.

  ‘And over to Teddy’s for an ice-cream,’ she said, clapping her hands together in delight. ‘The best ice-creams in Dublin.’

  ‘They are,’ said Jonas and I in unison.

  ‘And you with your discount there,’ she added. ‘We’ll be able to get them cheaper.’

  I looked back at her in the rearview mirror. ‘My discount?’ I asked.

  ‘On account of working there,’ she replied. ‘They have to give you a discount, don’t they? We could have a 99. They still do 99s, don’t they?’

  ‘Sure they’d never stop doing a 99,’ I said; there was no point getting into the issue of whether or not I worked or had ever worked as an ice-cream salesman. ‘And a bit of strawberry sauce poured over the top.’

  ‘No, I never cared for that,’ said Hannah. ‘Just the flake. That’s enough for me. We’ll go, just the three of us.’

  ‘Great,’ said Jonas.

  ‘Not you,’ she snapped furiously. ‘You’re not allowed to come. Odran, tell him he can’t come. It’s just to be the three of us.’

  Should I leave it or should I ask, I wondered. Was it easier left alone? ‘The three of us?’ I said. ‘The three of us here, do you mean?’

  ‘You and me, Odran. And little Cathal, of course. He’ll go mad if he finds out that we’ve gone for ice-creams and not brought him along.’

  I breathed in deeply and blinked away the sudden rush of tears that were threatening to make a show of me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Jonas quietly, turning to look at me, and I nodded but said nothing.

  We were all silent for a few minutes after that, and finally I felt that I should speak again. I couldn’t leave things on that note.

  ‘We could take a spin up to Howth Head too,’ I suggested. ‘On a fine day, that would be great fun, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Do you remember the time you got lost up on Howth Head?’ she asked, tapping Jonas on the shoulder.

  ‘No, that was Aidan,’ said Jonas.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Aidan,’ I said, raising my voice, but I don’t know why, there was nothing wrong with her hearing, after all. I was speaking to her like the Brits speak to the foreigners on the continent, pronouncing their words slowly, very, very slowly, syllable by syllable, as if it’s the volume and speed that’s the problem.

  ‘Who’s Aidan?’ she asked.

  ‘Aidan!’ I repeated, as if that would make things any clearer.

  She thought about it for a moment. ‘I don’t know any Aidan.’

  ‘You do, of course,’ I said. ‘He’s your eldest.’

  ‘Ah, poor Aidan,’ she said quietly. ‘He’ll never forgive me, will he?’

  ‘Forgive you for what?’ I asked.

  ‘Aidan loves you, Mam,’ said Jonas, turning around to her. ‘He loves you. You know that.’

  ‘He’ll never forgive me. But sure he’d been drinking, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have driven home with drink on him.’

  ‘When did Aidan try to drive with drink on him?’ I asked.

  ‘Not Aidan,’ said Jonas quietly. ‘She doesn’t mean him.’

  ‘Who then?’

  Jonas shook his head.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Leave it, Odran.’

  ‘I was up Howth Head many’s the time,’ said Hannah. ‘Do you remember when Jonas went missing, the day he was out collecting the blackberries?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I was there that day.’

  ‘You weren’t, don’t be telling lies. He was collecting blackberries, that’s how it started. We were all there for a picnic, Mam and Dad, and Aidan of course – this is long before you were born, Odran.’ She thought about it and I said nothing. I hated hearing her rambling like this, especially when a portion of the story was based in reality; it was simply the details and the characters that she was getting wrong. ‘And I gave Jonas a margarine box to collect the blackberries in, one of those big old square ones, do you remember them? Yellow plastic. So off he goes and the next thing you know, hasn’t he gone missing, and we’re all up looking for him and calling out his name. And then we found the margarine box at the side of the cliff and I thought I was going to lose my reason, thinking that he’d gone over the side. I was hysterical. But then he came back, Lazarus returned from the dead. He’d only wandered off somewhere and lost track of the time. The margarine box must have belonged to someone else. I was never so frightened in all my life.’

  I smiled. Some of the story was true anyway.

  ‘Until now,’ she added after a moment.

  ‘You’re not frightened, Hannah,’ I said, more of a statement, to make her believe this, than a question. ‘You’re not, are you? Sure it’ll be grand. They’ll take goo
d care of you.’

  ‘Most of those nurses steal,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘And will there be black ones there, do you think?’

  ‘Ah now,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll be in to see you all the time,’ said Jonas, as we drew closer to the Chartwell. ‘You’ll be sick of the sight of us. And anything you need, you only have to ask and we’ll get it for you.’

  ‘You say that now,’ she said, turned away. ‘Let’s see where things stand in six months’ time.’ She looked at her nails, holding her hands out flat before her. ‘When I was a girl, shortly after I was married, they used to ask me whether I was related to W. B. Yeats,’ she said. ‘I used to tell them that our names were spelled differently. Were you ever in the Abbey, Odran?’

  ‘I was,’ I said. ‘Many’s the time. Sure I was there with you, do you not remember it?’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No, I was never there. I wouldn’t have been let. They put Daddy off the stage on account of his bad manners.’

  ‘This turn,’ said Jonas, pointing at the building coming up on the left.

  ‘I know.’

  I pulled into the car park and turned off the engine and sat there for a moment with closed eyes. It was hard on me, this move, but I could tell that it was even harder on my nephew. His life was taking off, he was a young man the world was taking notice of, but he was worried about leaving his mother in this place, whether it would ultimately damage him in some way, as if he felt that he was committing an act of treachery upon a person who had never treated him with anything other than kindness. He didn’t want to abandon her, didn’t want to be seen to be abandoning her either, but what else could he do?

  ‘Is this it?’ she asked from the back seat.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Mam?’ he asked, turning around, tears in his eyes.

  ‘I am, son,’ she said. ‘Sure I can’t be sitting in the front room going doolally, can I? We all know this is for the best.’

  He nodded. I thought this was the cruellest part of it. The degree of her coherence when the disease was taking a breather. It was as if nothing was wrong at all. But it would change, of course. In an instant. In a heartbeat.

  We got out of the car and Hannah looked into her purse. ‘I want to keep a hold of my money,’ she said. ‘Will they have the Herald in here or will I have to go out to get one?’

  ‘They’re sure to have it,’ I said. ‘If they don’t, we can place a standing order.’

  ‘I can’t live without my Herald of an evening.’

  ‘Will you take this bag, Odran?’

  ‘I will.’

  A middle-aged woman, Mrs Winter, emerged from the front door of the hospital; we had met before. She seemed capable and efficient, the no-nonsense sort. Emma Thompson would play her in the film. ‘Hello, Hannah,’ she said in a friendly voice, reaching out and taking both my sister’s hands in hers. ‘We’re so glad to see you.’

  Hannah nodded; she looked a little frightened. She leaned forward and whispered in the woman’s ear, ‘Who are those two men?’, pointing at Jonas and me. Appearing through the door a moment later was a much younger nurse – Maggie was her name; she’d shown us around twice already and told Hannah what the routine would be and I was glad to see that my sister recognized her, for her face lit up.

  ‘There’s the girl I like,’ she said, marching over to her and giving her a hug as if she was her long-lost daughter. ‘You’re a fine young one,’ she said. ‘Are you married at all?’

  The nurse laughed. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ she said.

  ‘Do you have a fella?’

  ‘I had one,’ said Nurse Maggie. ‘I threw him away.’

  ‘You did right. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. This one’s going begging if you want him.’ She nodded in Jonas’s direction, who rolled his eyes but smiled. Nurse Maggie looked him up and down; she had a filthy look in her eye that made me laugh but made Jonas blush scarlet. Maybe some of the adolescent was still in there somewhere, after all.

  ‘Can I have him on approval?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah Kristian, you remember,’ said Hannah, turning to me. ‘Like the old stamps. You bought them on approval. You held on to them for a while and if you liked them, you bought them and stuck them in your book, and if you didn’t, you sent them back again and didn’t have to pay.’

  ‘Shall we get you inside, Hannah?’ asked Mrs Winter, who did not seem to like the direction this conversation was taking. ‘It’s getting a bit chilly out here.’

  ‘All right,’ said Hannah in a resigned tone.

  ‘Will you be here tonight, Maggie?’ I asked. ‘To look after her?’

  ‘Not all night, no,’ she replied. ‘I’m on days all this week and next. Nine to five.’

  ‘That was another one that we saw,’ I said immediately. ‘Who was in that?’

  ‘Lily Tomlin,’ said Mrs Winter.

  ‘Dolly Parton,’ said Jonas.

  ‘Jane Fonda!’ cried Hannah, clapping her hands in delight. ‘Henry’s daughter!’

  In Waterstone’s bookshop at the end of Dawson Street, I ran into one of my old pupils, Conor MacAleevy. He’d been going into fifth year when I last laid eyes on him and was studying for his Leaving Certificate now, but working weekends to make a bit of pocket money for a summer abroad when the exams were over. I’d dropped in to have a browse and found myself examining the E. M. Forsters for old time’s sake. I’d read them all before, of course, but here they were with shiny new covers. I picked up A Room with a View, remembering the Café Bennizi in the Piazza Pasquale Paoli, where I had sat for so many afternoons pretending to read this same book while the woman behind the counter brought espressos out to her customers. I closed my eyes when I remembered how she had humiliated me in the end. And then, to counter this, I thought of my old friend, the Patriarch of Venice, and wondered whether there might be a book in the shop about his life, or had he not lasted long enough as Pope to warrant his story being told?

  I put the Forster back where I found it and made my way past the fiction shelves, pausing at the Rs, where all of Jonas’s books were gathered together. Spiegeltent, of course. About ten copies of it. And Callomania, his second, a novel about a man who believed himself to be possessed of extraordinary physical beauty but was capable of showing nothing but anger and violence towards the world. A pile of hardbacks on the table. I picked up a copy of each – I had them both already, of course, but I often bought more to give to friends – before heading up the central staircase in search of the biography section. I made my way along the shelves, but couldn’t find what I was looking for; I was not to be deterred though, so approached the counter, where a teenager was tapping something into a computer.

  ‘Father Yates,’ he said, looking up, a slightly startled expression on his face, the type you get when you meet someone completely out of context.

  ‘Conor MacAleevy,’ I said. ‘Is it yourself?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I work here. Part-time,’ he added. ‘Saturdays and Sundays.’

  ‘Fair play to you.’

  ‘How are you, Father?’

  ‘I’m all right, I suppose. I don’t imagine you want to hear about a recurring pain I’ve been getting in my knee?’ He looked at me blankly. ‘It was a joke, Conor. A joke.’

  ‘Ah right,’ he said. ‘Are they for you?’ he asked, looking down at the two novels that I was carrying with my nephew’s name branded across the top.

  ‘They are,’ I said. ‘Have you read them?’

  ‘I have,’ he said.

  ‘Did you like them?’

  ‘I thought they were a bit shite, to be honest.’

  ‘Ah right,’ I said.

  ‘Pseudo-intellectual crap. He comes in here all the time and he thinks he’s the man, you know. The stupid hair on him too.’

  ‘Well sure I thought I’d give him a go anyway. On account
of him being one of ours.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Irish.’

  ‘He only plays that card, Father. He’s Norwegian really.’

  ‘Did he not grow up here?’ I asked innocently. ‘Did I not hear something about that?’

  ‘I think he spent a summer here when he was a boy. His father was Irish. He only pretends to be Irish because, let’s face it, how many famous Norwegian writers can you name?’

  ‘None,’ I said.

  ‘Well then.’

  I nodded and looked down at the books. ‘I heard they were great,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take them anyway.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  I couldn’t help but laugh. They did a great job training the staff here, it had to be said. The manager ought to be proud of himself, whoever he was. ‘Anyway, Conor,’ I said a moment later, ‘you wouldn’t happen to have a book on Pope John Paul I, would you?’

  ‘Pope John Paul II, you mean?’ he asked and I stared at the young pup, correcting me like that.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean Pope John Paul I.’

  ‘Was there a Pope John Paul I?’ he asked and it was hard not to laugh. Could he possibly be that stupid?

  ‘Conor,’ I said patiently, ‘think about it for a moment. Do you think there could have been a Pope John Paul II if there hadn’t been a Pope John Paul I? Would that make any sense at all?’

  ‘You make a valid point, Father,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘I know I do. I suppose it’s not worth my while asking you if you have anything then?’

  ‘We could take a look, if you like,’ he said and we took a wander down the shelves together, but could find nothing. I resolved to leave well alone and look it up myself on the internet. Someone must have written something about the poor man, surely? He’d been the Pope, for pity’s sake. Even if it was for only thirty-three days.

  ‘So how are things back in Terenure, Conor?’ I asked. ‘How are all the lads?’

  ‘Ah, we need you back, Father,’ he said cheerfully and something in his tone told me that he meant it. ‘The fella we have teaching us now is only brutal. And the library’s in a state. Is there any chance of a triumphant return?’