by John Boyne
When I came back upstairs, Behan was back on his barstool and Bridget was rubbing Mary-Magdalen’s arm while she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“It’s just such a vulgar question,” she was saying. “What kind of a woman would do such a thing?”
“Don’t upset yourself, Mary-Margaret,” said Bridget. “It’s an American thing, that’s all. He probably heard about it over there.”
“Cyril, your round I think,” said Julian, nodding in the direction of the girls and rolling his eyes.
“We’re not going to stay here all night, are we?” asked Bridget.
“I’m not staying another minute,” said Mary-Margaret. “To be spoken to like that in public by a man such as him. My private parts are my own business and no one else’s.” She swung around and, showing a bit of life for the first time since she’d arrived, roared over toward the bar-stool, “They should send you back to Borstal and let you rot there, you filthy article!”
Behan’s shoulders heaved with laughter and he raised his pint in salute while the rest of the men hooted and shouted lines like That’s you told now, Brendan and Fair fucks to the little bitch and Mary-Margaret looked like she might burst out crying again or simply go on a rampage and tear the Palace Bar apart brick by brick.
“Dublin’s a big place,” said Julian, trying to hold the evening together. “We could go sit out on the grass at Trinity College and watch all the queers play cricket.”
“Let’s do that,” said Bridget. “It’s a nice evening out after all. And they always look so handsome in their all-whites.”
“If the grass gets too cold, you can rely on me to keep you warm,” he said, and she giggled again as we all stood up.
Finishing our drinks and making our way toward the door, I pushed ahead, trying to get closer to Julian, anxious to ask him whether we might be able to go somewhere, just the two of us, but as I did so I brushed Mary-Margaret’s arm by mistake.
“Do you mind?” she snapped. “Manners cost nothing.”
“Sorry,” I said, frightened of looking at her in case she turned me to stone.
We stood on the street, Mary-Margaret and myself weighed down with our miserable faces while Julian and Bridget practically used each other as scaffolding.
“What was that you said, Cyril?” asked Julian, looking over at me while Bridget buried herself deep in his neck and, inexplicably as far as I could see, appeared to be biting him like some sort of drunken vampire.
“I said nothing.”
“Oh right. I thought you said you were going to walk Mary-Margaret to her bus stop and then take the bus back to school yourself and you’d see me tomorrow.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in bewilderment. “I didn’t even open my mouth.”
“I think you’re trying to lead me into temptation,” said Bridget, winking at him, and she pressed even closer to his body as I turned away and caught sight of a car streaking its way around the corner of Dame Street at an unnatural speed before turning in our direction, racing along Westmoreland Street and pulling in next to us with a screech of its brakes as the back doors were flung open.
“What the hell?” asked Julian, as two men in balaclavas leaped from the backseat, grabbed him roughly and dragged him to the rear of the car, where a third man had already opened the boot. Before anyone could protest, they pushed him inside, slammed it shut and jumped back into the car before speeding off again. The whole thing had taken no more than half a minute and as the car raced down O’Connell Street out of sight, all I could do was stand there and stare at it as it disappeared into the distance, uncertain what madness had just taken place before my eyes. It was only quickness of thought on my part that made me grab Mary-Margaret as she bent over and started vomiting on the pavement, half a dozen Snowballs making their way back into the world, but then she dragged me to the ground on top of her where we lay in a suspicious position until an old woman passing by hit me with her umbrella, saying that we weren’t animals and if we didn’t stop what we were doing that moment, she’d call the Gardaí and have us both locked up for public indecency.
Ransom
While the number of spelling and punctuation errors in the ransom note suggested a degree of illiteracy on the part of Julian’s kidnappers, it was to their credit that it was unfailingly polite:
Hello. We have the boy. And we know his daddies a rich man and a traytor to the cause of a united Ireland so we want £100,000 or well put a bullet in his head.
Await further instructions.
Thank you & best wishes.
Within hours, every news report in the country was leading with the kidnap, and a terrible photograph of Julian, looking angelic in his school uniform, was circulating throughout the media. Upon the instructions of the Garda Commissioner, little information was given out other than to confirm the identity of the fifteen-year-old boy, to admit that he was the son of one of Ireland’s most prominent solicitors, and to confirm that he had been abducted in broad daylight in the middle of the city center. At a hastily arranged press conference, the Commissioner avoided any questions referring to the Irish Republican Army or the Border Campaign and simply said that no member of the Gardaí would rest until the boy was found, although as it was quite late in the day already they wouldn’t start the search in earnest until the following morning at nine o’clock.
Bridget, Mary-Margaret and I were brought to Pearse Street Garda Station and when I asked why they were left sitting in the corridor while I was brought into a private room, I was told that this was to ensure that I didn’t molest either of them on Garda premises. I’m not sure what it was about my appearance that made me seem like a pubescent rapist but for some peculiar reason I took this as a compliment. They gave me a cup of warm tea, heavily sweetened, and half a packet of Marietta biscuits, and only as my trembling began to diminish did I realize that I’d been shaking ever since the car had pulled away from Westmoreland Street with Julian in the boot. I was left alone for the best part of an hour and when the door finally opened, to my astonishment, my adoptive father marched in.
“Charles,” I said, standing up and offering him my hand, which was his preferred form of greeting. I had tried to hug him only once, at Maude’s funeral, and he had recoiled from me as if I had leprosy. It had been several months since I had seen him and his complexion was darker than before, as if he had just come back from a foreign holiday. Also, his hair, which had been turning a rather dignified shade of gray, had undergone a volte-face, for it was entirely black again. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m not quite sure,” he said, looking round the room with the curiosity of someone who had never been in a police cell before, despite the fact that he had spent a couple of years brooding over his fraudulent tax activities in the ’Joy. “I was in the bank when the Gardaí arrived and, I must admit, when they walked into my office I got a bit of a fright. I thought I was in trouble again! But, no, it was just to tell me that you were being held here and they needed a parent or guardian to be present while they questioned you and I suppose I’m the closest thing to either one of those. How are you anyway, Cyril?”
“Not very good,” I told him. “My best friend got kidnapped by the IRA a few hours ago and bundled away to God knows where. I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.”
“That’s desperate,” he said, shaking his head. “And did you hear that Seán Lemass is the new Taoiseach? What do you make of him anyway? I don’t like the amount of oil he puts in his hair. It gives him an air of malevolence.” He turned around as the door opened and an older Garda stepped inside, carrying a folder and a cup of tea, and introduced himself as Sergeant Cunnane.
“You’re the boy’s father?” he asked Charles as we all sat down.
“His adoptive father,” he replied. “Cyril isn’t a real Avery, as you can probably tell just by looking at him. My wife and I took him into our home when he was just a baby in an act of Christian charity.”
“And is your wi
fe on her way in to us too?”
“I’d be shocked if she was,” he said. “Maude died a few years ago. Cancer. She beat it when it was in the ear canal but once it spread to her throat and tongue that was it. Curtains.”
“I’m very sorry,” said the sergeant, but Charles waved his sympathy away.
“Don’t be, don’t be,” he said. “Time has been a great healer. And it’s not as if I didn’t have other options. Now, tell me, Sergeant, what’s going on here exactly? I heard a little bit on the radio on the way in but I’m mostly in the dark.”
“It seems that your son—”
“Adoptive son.”
“It seems that Cyril here and his friend Julian left the grounds of Belvedere College earlier today in contravention of school rules for a rendezvous with two older girls in the Palace Bar, Westmoreland Street.”
“Are those the two girls I saw sitting out there in the corridor? One of them was in floods of tears and the other looked bored out of her tits.”
“Yes, that was them,” said Sergeant Cunnane as I looked away in embarrassment.
“Which one was yours, Cyril?” he asked, turning to me. “Tears or tits?”
I bit my lip, unsure how to answer. Strictly speaking, neither of them was mine but if we had to be paired in any specific way, there could only be one accurate answer.
“Tears,” I said.
He made a tsk sound and his face registered his disappointment. “Do you know,” he said, turning to the sergeant again, “if I’d had to put money on it, I would have guessed that he’d say tears, but I really hoped for his own sake that he would say tits. Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong. It’s not as if I brought him up to respect women.”
“Mr. Avery,” said the sergeant, doing well to keep his composure. “We have to ask your son…your Cyril…Cyril, a few questions. Can you just remain quiet while we get through this?”
“Of course, of course,” he said. “Terrible business all the same. Who’s this Julian fellow anyway? The one who got kidnapped?”
“My roommate,” I told him. “Julian Woodbead.”
He shot forward in his seat like a bullet. “Not Max Woodbead’s young lad?”
“That’s right, sir,” said the sergeant.
“Ha!” he cried, bursting into an unexpected round of applause. “Funny story, Sergeant. So this fellow, Max Woodbead, was my solicitor a few years back. He wasn’t as well known then as he is now, of course. He made his name off me, you might say. There was a time when we were the best of friends but I hold my hands up and admit that I made a few wrong decisions on the marital front and let’s just say that I laid the old garden hose down on someone else’s front lawn, Max’s front lawn to be precise, and when he found out he gave me a right seeing-to.” Charles slammed his fist down on the table, making us both jump and causing the sergeant’s tea to spill over the side of his cup. “And do you know something, I never held it against him. Not for a moment. He was quite within his rights. But then after I went to prison, he bought my house at a knock-down price and threw my wife and adoptive son out on the street, and Maude was not a well woman. That was a terrible thing to do and I’ll never forgive him for it. But having said that, it’s an awful thing to lose a son. A parent should never have to bury a child. I had a daughter once but she only lived a few days and—”
“Mr. Avery, please,” insisted the sergeant, rubbing his temples as if he had a headache coming on. “No one has lost anyone yet.”
“Well, misplaced a son then, if you prefer. There’s a quote coming back to me. Oscar Wilde, I think. Do you know it?”
“If you could just remain silent, sir, while I talk to Cyril?”
Charles looked baffled, as if he couldn’t quite understand what the problem was. “But sure he’s sitting right there,” he said, pointing at me. “Ask him anything you like; I’m not stopping you.”
“Thank you,” said Sergeant Cunnane. “Now, Cyril, you’re not in any trouble. But I need you to be honest with me, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, anxious to please. “But can I just ask you, do you think Julian is dead?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “It’s early days and we haven’t even received details of where the kidnappers want the money to be sent. They’ll hold on to him for a bit yet. He’s their collateral, you see. There’s no reason for them to harm him.”
I exhaled in relief. The idea of Julian being murdered made me dizzy with terror; I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to survive such an outcome.
“Now, Cyril, tell me why you went into town this afternoon?”
“It was Julian’s idea,” I said. “I thought we were going in to look at the shops or maybe go to the pictures but really he’d arranged to meet Bridget and wanted me with him because she was bringing another girl to make up a foursome. I would have been happy to have gone to Stephen’s Green to feed the ducks.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” said Charles, rolling his eyes.
The sergeant ignored him as he wrote all this down. “And how did he know Miss Simpson?” he asked me.
“Who’s Miss Simpson?”
“Bridget.”
“Oh.”
“Where did they meet?”
“In the tearoom at Leinster House,” I said. “We went there on a school trip a couple of weeks ago.”
“And they hit it off, did they?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure how to answer this.
“Did this Bridget creature ever come to your school?” he asked. “Did she stay with Julian in your room at all?”
“She did not,” I said, blushing. “I didn’t even know that Julian had stayed in touch with her. They must have been writing to each other but he never said a word about it to me.”
“We’ll know about that soon enough,” said Sergeant Cunnane. “We have an officer over there now doing a search. He should be back any time now.”
I opened my eyes wide in panic and felt my stomach drop. “A search of what?” I asked.
“Of your room. In case there’s anything there that might help us find Julian.”
“Will you just be searching his side of the room?” I asked.
“No,” he said, frowning. “Sure we don’t know which side is his, do we? And things can get mixed up anyway. Sorry, Cyril, but we’ll be looking through your things too. You’ve nothing to hide, have you?”
I glanced around for a bin; there was a possibility that I might be sick.
“Are you all right?” he asked me. “You’ve gone a bit pale.”
“I’m grand,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. “I’m just worried about him, that’s all. He’s my best friend.”
“Ah Jesus, Cyril,” said Charles, looking a bit disgusted. “Would you stop talking like that? It makes you sound like a right Nancy-boy.”
“Have you ever seen Julian associating with strangers?” the sergeant asked me, ignoring my adoptive father’s latest interruption.
“No,” I said.
“Any strange men on the school grounds at all?”
“Only the priests.”
“You mustn’t lie to me, Cyril,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “Because I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“If that’s true, then you must know that I’m not,” I said. “I haven’t seen anyone.”
“All right. The thing is we have reason to believe that the men who seized Julian have been planning this for sometime. His father received death threats from the IRA after the piece he wrote in the Sunday Press a couple of months ago, saying that the supreme musical composition of all time is ‘God Save the Queen.’ ”
“I have something to admit,” said Charles, leaning forward, a serious expression on his face now.
“What’s that, Mr. Avery?” asked Sergeant Cunnane, turning to him doubtfully.
“It’s not something I’ve ever told anyone before but in this room, which is a sort of confessional I suppose, I feel I can say it, particularly since I’m among friends. The thing
is, I think the Queen is a very attractive woman. I mean she’s thirty-three now, I think, and that’s about five years older than I usually go for but I would make an exception in her case. There’s something quite frisky about her, don’t you think? I’d say she takes a bit of warming up but once you’ve loosened the corsets—”
“Mr. Avery,” said the sergeant. “This is a serious business. Could I ask you to stop talking, please?”
“Oh be my guest,” said Charles, sitting back again and folding his arms. “Cyril, answer the man before he has us all locked up.”
“But he hasn’t asked me anything,” I protested.
“I don’t care. Answer him.”
I turned to the sergeant with a bewildered look on my face.
“Cyril, has anyone ever approached you to ask you where you and Julian might be discovered at any particular time?”
“No, Sergeant,” I said.
“And who would have known that you were going to the Palace Bar today?”
“I didn’t even know myself until we got there.”
“But Julian knew?”
“Yes, he had it planned.”
“Maybe he tipped off the IRA,” suggested Charles.
“Why would he do that?” asked Sergeant Cunnane, staring at him as if he was a complete moron.
“You’re right. Makes no sense. Move on.”
“And Miss Simpson, Bridget,” continued the sergeant. “She must have known too?”
“I presume so.”
“And what about her friend, Miss Muffet?”
“Miss Muffet?” I said, staring at him. “Mary-Margaret’s surname is Muffet?”
“Yes.”
