by John Boyne
I looked down and, sure enough, one of the buttons was undone, the two sides of my shirt falling open like the mouth of a tiny hatchling, exposing the pale skin beneath. How had I missed that during my rigorous preparations? “Sorry,” I said, fastening it quickly.
“Cyril Avery,” he said, frowning a little. “Why do I know that name?”
“We’ve met before,” I told him.
“When?”
“When we were children. At my adoptive father’s house on Dartmouth Square.”
“Oh,” he said. “Are we neighbors? My father owns a house on Dartmouth Square too.”
“Actually, it’s the same house,” I said. “He bought it from mine.”
“I see.” Some memory trickled down into his consciousness and he clicked his fingers as he remembered, pointing at me once again. “Didn’t your father go to prison?” he asked.
“He did,” I admitted. “But only for a couple of years. He’s out now.”
“Where was he?”
“The ’Joy.”
“Exciting. Did you visit?”
“Not often, no. It’s no place for a child, or at least that’s what he always said.”
“I was there myself once,” he said. “When I was a boy. My father was representing a man who murdered his wife. The place smelled of—”
“Toilets,” I said. “I remember. You told me before.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“And you remembered? Even all these years later?”
“Well,” I said, feeling my face begin to redden slightly, not wanting my fascination with him to reveal itself too quickly. “I have been there myself since, as I said, and I thought the same thing.”
“Great minds and all that. So what happened when he got out, did he leave the country?”
“No, the bank took him back.”
“Really?” he said, bursting out laughing.
“Yes. Actually, he’s doing very well again. But they changed his job title. He used to be Director of Investments and Client Portfolios.”
“And what is he now?”
“Director of Client Investments and Portfolios.”
“Forgiving sort, aren’t they? Still, a spell in prison is probably a badge of honor for people in that field.”
I looked down at his feet and noticed that he was wearing runners, a fashion statement that was new to Ireland at the time.
“My father brought them back from London,” he said, following the direction of my eyes. “They’re my second pair, actually. I had them in a six but my feet grew. I’m an eight now.”
“Don’t let the priests see them,” I said. “They say runners are only worn by Protestants and socialists. They’ll confiscate them.”
“They’d have a hard job,” he said, but all the same he used the tip of his right foot to kick the left shoe off at the heel before using his stockinged toes to remove the right and kick the pair under his bed. “Not a snorer, are you?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” I said.
“Good. I am, I’m told. Hope I don’t keep you awake.”
“I don’t mind. I’m a heavy sleeper. I probably won’t hear you.”
“You might. My sister says that when I get started I’m like a foghorn.”
I smiled; already, I longed for bedtime. I wondered whether he was one of those boys who went to a toilet cubicle to change or whether he would simply strip off in the room. I suspected the latter. I doubted he had any self-consciousness at all.
“What’s it like here anyway?” he asked. “Is there any fun to be had?”
“It’s all right,” I said. “The boys are fine, the priests are vicious, of course, but—”
“Well, that’s to be expected. Have you ever met a priest who didn’t want to beat six shades of shit out of you? They get off on it, of course.”
My eyes and mouth opened wide in scandalized delight. “No,” I admitted. “Not so far anyway. I think it’s something they teach them in the seminary.”
“It’s because they’re all so sexually frustrated, of course,” he told me. “They can’t have sex, you see, so they beat up little boys and it gives them stiffies when they do it. It’s the closest they get to orgasms during the day. It’s ridiculous, really. I mean I’m sexually frustrated but I don’t think beating up children will solve the problem.”
“What would?” I asked.
“Well, fucking, of course,” he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Right,” I said.
“Haven’t you ever noticed, though? The next time one of the priests hits you, take a look downstairs and you’ll see that he’s flying at full mast. And afterward they go back to their rooms and wank themselves silly thinking about us. Do they come into the shower rooms here?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “To make sure that everyone is washing themselves correctly.”
“Bless your pure heart,” he said, looking at me as if I was an innocent child. “It’s not our personal hygiene that they’re interested in, Cyril. In my last school, there was a priest named Father Cremins who tried to kiss me and I punched him in the nose. It broke. There was blood everywhere. But of course there was nothing he could do about it because he could hardly report me in case I said what had provoked the attack. He told everyone that he’d walked into a door instead.”
“Boys kissing boys!” I said, laughing nervously and scratching my head. “I didn’t know that…I mean it seems strange that…after all, when there are—”
“Are you all right, Cyril?” he asked. “Your face has gone all red and you’re waffling.”
“I think I’m getting a cold,” I said, my voice choosing that exact moment to slip between registers. “I think I’m getting a cold,” I repeated, adopting my deepest tone now.
“Well, don’t give it to me,” he said, turning away to place his toothbrush and facecloth on his bedside table along with a copy of Howards End. “I can’t stand being ill.”
“Where were you before here anyway?” I asked after a lengthy pause, when it seemed as if he’d forgotten that I was even in the room.
“Blackrock College.”
“I thought your father was a Belvedere boy.”
“He is,” he replied. “But he’s one of those past pupils who likes to revel in memories of his glory days on the rugby field but probably remembers enough bad things about the place to make him send his own son somewhere else. He took me out of Blackrock when he found out that my Irish-language teacher had written a poem and published it in the Irish Times, casting doubt on the virtue of Princess Margaret. He won’t hear a word said against the Royal Family, you see. Although they do say that Princess Margaret is a bit of a slut. Apparently she puts it about with half the men in London and some of the women too. I wouldn’t say no, though, would you? She’s a looker. A lot more fun than the Queen, I imagine. Can you imagine the Queen going down on Prince Philip’s cock? It’s the kind of image that would give you nightmares.”
“I remember your father,” I told him, startled by the frankness of his conversation and wishing to steer it back to safer territory. “He interrupted a dinner party in my house once and had a fight with my adoptive father.”
“Did your old man fight back?”
“He did. But it didn’t do him any good. He took a pasting.”
“Well, old Max was a prizefighter when he was younger,” said Julian proudly. “He’s still pretty handy with his fists, actually,” he added. “I should know.”
“Do you remember meeting me back then?” I asked.
“There’s a tiny bell ringing somewhere in my head,” said Julian. “Maybe I remember you slightly.”
“My room was the one on the top floor of the house.”
“My sister Alice uses that room now. I never go up there. It reeks of perfume.”
“Well, what about you?” I asked, feeling a little sad that he didn’t use my old room; I rather liked the idea of us having that in common. �
�Where do you sleep?”
“A room on the second floor. Why, does it matter?”
“Is it the room overlooking the square or the garden at the rear of the house?”
“The square.”
“That was my adoptive mother’s study. Charles had the first floor and Maude had the second.”
“Of course,” he said, brightening up now. “Your mother was Maude Avery, wasn’t she?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Well, my adoptive mother.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“It’s the way I was brought up,” I told him. “I’m not a real Avery, you see.”
“What an odd thing to say.”
“My adoptive father insists that I make it clear to people.”
“So I’m sleeping in the room where Maude Avery wrote all her books?”
“If you have the room that overlooks the square, then yes.”
“Gosh,” he said, impressed. “Now, that is something. A real claim to fame, wouldn’t you say?”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Of course it is. It was Maude Avery’s writing room! The Maude Avery! Your father must be rolling in it now,” he added. “Wasn’t there a point last year where she had six books in the top-ten-bestsellers chart at the same time? I read that it was the first time this had ever happened.”
“I think it was seven, actually,” I said. “But, yes, I suppose he is. He makes more money from her work than he does from his own.”
“And how many languages is she translated into now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “A lot. It seems to grow all the time.”
“It’s a pity she died before she knew real success,” said Julian. “She would have been gratified to know how respected she’s become. There are so many artists who have to wait until they’re dead to be fully appreciated. You know Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime? And that Herman Melville was an absolute unknown while he was alive and was only discovered, so to speak, when he was already in the ground? He was worm food before anyone even took a second glance at Moby-Dick. He idolized Hawthorne, of course, and was always popping over there for his tea but who can name one of Hawthorne’s novels now?”
“The Scarlet Letter,” I said.
“Oh yes. The one about the girl who puts it about while her husband’s at sea. I haven’t read it. Is it dirty? I love dirty books. Have you read Lady Chatterley’s Lover? My father got a copy in England and I snuck it out of his library to read it. It’s pure filth. There’s a wonderful bit where—”
“I don’t think fame was what Maude was looking for,” I said, interrupting him. “Actually, I think the idea of literary approbation would have appalled her.”
“Why? What’s the point of writing if no one reads you?”
“Well, if the work has some value, then there’s merit in that alone, surely?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s like having a wonderful voice but only singing to an audience of deaf people.”
“I don’t think that’s the way she viewed art,” I said. “Popularity didn’t interest her. She had no desire for her novels to be read. She loved language, you see. She loved words. I think she only felt truly happy when she was staring at a paragraph for hours at a time and trying to refine it into a thing of beauty. She only published her books because she didn’t like the idea of all that hard work going to waste.”
“What a load of old nonsense,” he said, dismissing what I had said as if it was scarcely worth his consideration. “If I was a writer, I would want people to read my books. And if they didn’t, I would feel that I had failed.”
“I’m not sure that I would agree,” I said, surprised to find myself contradicting him but I wanted to defend Maude’s beliefs. “To be honest, I think there’s more to literature than that.”
“Have you read any of them?” he asked me. “Your mother’s novels, I mean?”
“My adoptive mother,” I said. “And, no, I haven’t. Not yet.”
“None of them?”
“No.”
He laughed and shook his head. “But that’s appalling. She was your mother, after all.”
“My adoptive mother.”
“Stop saying that. You should try Like to the Lark. It’s wonderful. Or The Codicil of Agnès Fontaine. There’s an extraordinary scene in that book where two girls bathe together in a lake and they’re totally naked and there’s so much sexual tension between them that I guarantee you won’t get to the end of the chapter without pulling Percy out for the old five-finger shuffle. I adore lesbians, don’t you? If I were a woman, I would absolutely be a lesbian. London is full of lesbians, or so I hear. And New York. When I’m older, I’m going to go over there, become friends with a few of them and ask can I watch them when they’re doing it. What do you suppose they do exactly? I’ve never been quite sure.”
I stared at him and felt myself growing a little unsteady on my feet. I had no answer to any of this and, truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sure that I knew what a lesbian was. As excited as I had been about Julian’s arrival at Belvedere, I began to think that perhaps we were operating on completely different levels of consciousness. The last book I had read was a Secret Seven.
“Do you miss her?” he asked me, closing his emptied suitcase now and pushing it under the bed next to his runners.
“What’s that?” I asked, my mind on other things.
“Your mother. Your adoptive mother. Do you miss her?”
“A little, I suppose,” I admitted. “We weren’t very close, to be honest. And she died only a few weeks before Charles got out of prison, which was almost five years ago now. I don’t think about her very much anymore.”
“And what about your real mother?”
“I don’t know anything about her,” I said. “Charles and Maude said they had no idea who she was. They got me from a little hunchbacked Redemptorist nun when I was only a few days old.”
“What killed her? Maude, I mean.”
“Cancer,” I said. “She’d had it a few years before in her ear canal. But then it started again in her throat and tongue. She smoked like a chimney. I almost never saw her without a cigarette in her hand.”
“Well, that might do it. Do you smoke, Cyril?”
“No.”
“I don’t like the idea of smoking. Have you ever kissed a girl who smoked?”
I opened my mouth to reply but language escaped me and to my horror I could feel the blood rushing toward my penis in response to such candid conversation. I let my hands drop before my crotch, hoping that Julian wouldn’t be as conscious of my excitement as he was of the priests who had beaten him in Blackrock.
“No,” I said.
“It’s awful,” he said, pulling a disgusted face. “You don’t get the taste of the girl at all, just that foul nicotine.” He paused for a moment and stared at me, half-amused. “You have kissed a girl, though, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” I said, laughing with the insouciance of one who’s been asked whether he has ever seen the ocean or traveled on an airplane. “Dozens of them.”
“Dozens?” he said, frowning. “Well, that’s a lot. I’ve only kissed three so far. But one of them let me put my hand down her brassiere to touch her breast. Dozens, you say! Really?”
“Well, maybe not dozens,” I said, looking away.
“You haven’t kissed anyone at all, have you?”
“I have,” I said.
“No, you haven’t. But that’s all right. We’re only fourteen, after all. It’s all in front of us. I intend to live a long and healthy life and fuck as many girls as I can. I’d like to die in my bed, aged one hundred and five, with a twenty-two-year-old bouncing up and down on top of me. And what are the chances of kissing anyone in here anyway? It’s all boys. I’d rather kiss my granny and she’s been dead for nine years. But look, do you want to help me unload my books? They’re in that box over there. Can I mix them in with yours or would you rather I put them on a s
eparate shelf?”
“Let’s mix them in together,” I said.
“All right.” He stood back and looked me up and down again and I wondered whether perhaps another button had come undone. “Do you know, I think I do remember you now,” he said. “Didn’t you ask me whether you could see my thing?”
“No!” I said, appalled by the accusation, which, after all, was entirely false considering it was him who had asked to see mine. “No, I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure,” I said. “Why would I want to see your thing? I have one of my own, after all. I can see it whenever I want.”
“Well, there was definitely a boy who asked me around that time. I’m sure it was you. I remember the room and it’s Alice’s room now.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong,” I insisted. “I have absolutely no interest in your thing and never have had.”
“If you say so. It’s a very nice thing anyway. I can’t wait to start using it in the way that God intended, can you? You’ve gone quite red, Cyril,” he added. “Not frightened of girls, are you?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. If anything, they should be frightened of me. Because I want to, you know…have lots of sex with them. And stuff.”
“Good. Because I suppose we’ll have to be friends, you and I, since we’re sharing a room. We could go on the hunt together sometimes. You’re not a bad-looking fellow, after all. There might be a few girls who could be persuaded to let you do it with them. And of course, they’re all crazy about me.”
The TD from Dublin Central
The teachers were crazy about him too and awarded him the gold medal for Most Improved Pupil at the Easter prize-giving ceremony, which was greeted with derision by those students who did not hold Julian in the same high esteem as I did. Since he hadn’t even been enrolled at Belvedere College during the previous term, it was a mystery to them how he had managed to improve at all and the rumor went around that Max had granted a scholarship to the school on the condition that his son’s résumé would be padded with glory over the coming years. I was delighted, of course, for it meant that as part of his reward he would be joining me and four others—the gold-medal winners in English, Irish, mathematics, history and art—on a trip to Dáil Éireann to witness the workings of the Irish parliament.
