The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

  “Come along, men,” he said, turning to the scrum, who seemed willing to take their orders from him. “Leave the lad alone. We’ll leave the bitch from the tearoom to clean up the mess. And the next time you see me, sweetheart,” he added, reaching out and taking Mrs. Goggin’s chin in his hand and holding it tightly, spitting a little as he spoke to her, “you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head. I’m a patient man but I don’t put up with backchat from whores. I know who you are and I know what you’re like.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she said as she pulled away from him, trying to sound brave but I could hear the anxiety in her voice.

  “I know everything about everyone,” he said, smiling. “That’s my job. Good day to you now. Have a pleasant afternoon.”

  I sat up slowly, my back against the wall as they moved away, and put a hand to my mouth where I could taste blood. When I took it away again, my palm was red, the result of a cut on my upper lip.

  “Come along with me,” said Mrs. Goggin, helping me to my feet. “Come into the tearoom till I get you sorted out. You’ve no need to worry. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Cyril,” I said.

  “Well, don’t be worrying, Cyril. We’ll have the place to ourselves, so no one will be looking at you. Everyone’s going to the chamber to hear the Minister’s speech.”

  I nodded and followed her inside as I remembered the afternoon that Julian and I had walked through these same doors seven years earlier during our school trip, drinking pints of Guinness while he passed himself off as a TD for whichever Dublin constituency he was pretending to represent at the time. And I was certain that this was the same woman who had come over to chastise us for underage drinking but ended up attacking Father Squires for leaving us with the run of the place instead. Fearless in the face of authority, she had proved her worth to me twice now.

  I sat down at a table by the window and she returned a moment later with a glass of brandy, a bowl of water and a damp facecloth that she used to wipe the blood off my face. “You’ve no need to worry,” she said, smiling at me. “It’s just a scratch.”

  “No one has ever hit me before,” I said.

  “Drink that down now. It’ll do you the power of good.” As she took the cloth away, she looked into my eyes and frowned for a moment, sitting back as if she saw some expression there that she recognized, before shaking her head and dipping the cloth into the bowl again. “How did it start anyway?”

  “It’s this business with the Minister for Education,” I told her. “The Press Officer has probably had a rotten morning and was looking for someone to take it out on. He thought I was one of them, you know.”

  “One of who?”

  “A queer.”

  “And are you?” she asked in so casual a tone that she might have been asking me what the weather was like outside.

  “Yes,” I said, the first time I had ever admitted this aloud to another person, the word out of my mouth before I could even try to drag it back.

  “Well, it happens,” she said.

  “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

  “Really? So why did you tell me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just felt like I could, that’s all. That you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Why would I mind?” she asked. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “Why do they hate us so much anyway?” I asked after a lengthy pause. “If they’re not queer themselves, then what does it matter to them if someone else is?”

  “I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,” she said with a shrug. “Perhaps that has something to do with it.”

  I said nothing and sipped on my brandy, wondering whether it was even worth my while returning to the office that afternoon. It probably wouldn’t be long before news of what had taken place reached Miss Joyce and although no member of the government could technically fire a member of the civil service, there were ways around these things and my position was probably even more tenuous than either Mr. Denby-Denby’s or the Minister’s. When I looked up, I saw that Mrs. Goggin’s eyes had filled with tears and she had taken her handkerchief from her pocket to wipe them away.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said, attempting a smile. “It’s just that I find this kind of violence very upsetting. I’ve seen it before and I know where it can lead.”

  “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” I asked.

  “Tell them what?”

  “What I just told you. That I’m not normal.”

  “Ah Jesus,” she said, laughing as she stood up. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re none of us normal. Not in this fucking country.”

  The Muffets

  I didn’t tell Mary-Margaret that I had lost my job—that wouldn’t have been her standard at all—but with so little money in my bank account, I began to worry how I would pay my rent when the first of the month came around. Not wanting Albert to ask me any awkward questions or for either of the Hogans to wonder why I was still at home during daylight hours, I left the Chatham Street flat at the usual time every morning and wandered aimlessly around the city until the cinemas opened. A few pence could gain me access to an early show and if I hid in the toilets afterward, I could go back in once the lights went down and stay for the rest of the afternoon.

  “There’s something not quite right with you at the moment, Cyril,” said Mary-Margaret on the night of her birthday, when I used what little funds I had to take her out to dinner. I had brought her to a new Italian restaurant on Merrion Square that had got excellent reviews but after examining the menu she said that she had more respect for her stomach than to eat foreign food and stuck to pork chops, potatoes and a glass of tap water. “Are you not feeling yourself?”

  “I am,” I said. “Quite regularly, actually.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I’m fine. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  “But sure what kind of person would I be if I didn’t worry?” she asked in a rare moment of empathy. “I’m very fond of you, Cyril. You should know that by now.”

  “I do,” I said. “And I’m very fond of you too.”

  “You’re supposed to say that you love me.”

  “All right,” I replied. “I love you. How are your chops?”

  “Undercooked. And the potatoes are very salty.”

  “You put the salt on yourself. I saw you.”

  “I know, but still. I’d say something to the waiter but, as you know, I don’t like to cause a fuss.” She put her knife and fork down and looked around, lowering her voice. “Actually, there’s something that I want to discuss with you. I hate to bring it up when we’re having such a lovely night out but you’re going to find out sooner or later anyway.”

  “I’m listening,” I said. To my surprise, I could see that she was close to tears, a condition to which she never succumbed, and something in me softened as I reached across to take her hand.

  “Don’t, Cyril,” she said, pulling away from me. “Have a little decorum.”

  “What did you want to say?” I asked with a sigh.

  “I’m a bit upset,” she told me. “But if I tell you, you have to promise that nothing will change between us.”

  “I’m pretty certain that nothing will ever change between us,” I said.

  “Good. Well, you know my cousin Sarah-Anne?”

  “Not personally,” I said, wondering why her family felt the need to double-barrel all their daughters’ names. “I think you’ve mentioned her once or twice but I’m not sure if we’ve ever met. Is she the one who wants to be a nun?”

  “No, of course not, Cyril,” she said. “That’s Josephine-Shauna. Do you know what your problem is?”

  “That I never listen?”

  “Yes.”

  “So which one is Sarah-Anne?” I asked.

  “The one who lives out in Foxrock. She’s a primary-school teacher, which always str
uck me as a bit odd as she can’t do long division and is practically illiterate.”

  “Oh yes,” I said, recalling a girl I’d encountered at a garden party once who had flirted shamelessly with me. “A very pretty girl, am I right?”

  “Pretty is as pretty does,” said Mary-Margaret with a sniff.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked. “I’ve never understood the phrase.”

  “It means what it means,” she said.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Well, we’ve had a bit of bad news about Sarah-Anne,” she continued.

  She had my attention now. This wasn’t the type of conversation that Mary-Margaret usually entertained over dinner. She generally preferred to discuss how little decorum the young people had in their standards of dress or how that loud rock ’n’ roll music was like the Devil screaming in her ears.

  “Go on,” I said.

  She looked around again to make sure that she couldn’t be overheard and then leaned in. “Sarah-Anne has fallen,” she said.

  “Fallen?”

  “Fallen,” she confirmed, nodding her head.

  “Did she hurt herself?”

  “What?”

  “When she fell? Did she break something? Was someone not there to help her up?”

  She looked at me as if I had gone mad. “Are you trying to be funny, Cyril?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, baffled. “I just don’t know what you mean, that’s all.”

  “She’s fallen!”

  “Yes, you said, but—”

  “Oh for pity’s sake,” she hissed. “She’s going to have a baby.”

  “A baby?”

  “Yes. Five months from now.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I asked, returning to my lasagne.

  “What do you mean, is that all? Is that not enough?”

  “But sure lots of people have babies,” I said. “If there weren’t any babies, there wouldn’t be any adults.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Cyril.”

  “I’m not being ridiculous.”

  “You are. Sarah-Anne isn’t married.”

  “Ah, right,” I said. “I suppose that puts a different complexion on things.”

  “Of course it does,” said Mary-Margaret. “Her poor parents are beside themselves. Auntie Mary is under twenty-four-hour supervision because she threatened to stick a carving knife into her head.”

  “Into whose head? Hers or Sarah-Anne’s?”

  “Both, probably.”

  “Well, does she know who the father is?”

  Her mouth fell open in disgust. “Of course she does,” she said. “What kind of girl do you think she is anyway? You must have a very low opinion of the Muffet family.”

  “I don’t even know her,” I protested. “I don’t have any opinion on her at all.”

  “The father is some buck from Rathmines, if you please. Works in a linen factory, which wouldn’t be my standard at all. Of course, he’s agreed to marry her, so that’s one thing, but they can’t get a church date for another six weeks and by then she’ll be showing.”

  “Well, at least he’s doing the right thing,” I said.

  “After he did the wrong thing. Poor Sarah-Anne, she was always such a good girl. I don’t know what got into her. I hope you don’t get any ideas, Cyril. You better not think that I’m going to indulge in that level of behavior.”

  “Believe me, I don’t,” I said, setting my knife and fork aside now, my appetite slipping away at the very idea. “The last thing in the world I want to do is seduce you.”

  “Well, you can put the seventeenth of next month into your diary. That’s the wedding day.”

  “Right so,” I said. “What are you going to give her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As a wedding present. I suppose something for the baby would be useful.”

  “Ha!” she said, shaking her head. “I will not be giving her a present.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “What kind of person shows up to someone’s wedding and doesn’t bring a gift?”

  “If it was a normal wedding, then of course I’d get them something,” she told me. “But it isn’t, is it? I don’t want to signal my approval. No, they made their bed. They may lie in it now.”

  I rolled my eyes and felt a prickle of perspiration at the back of my neck. “Do you always have to be so judgmental?” I asked.

  She looked at me as if I’d just slapped her. “What did you just say to me, Cyril Avery?”

  “I asked if you always have to be so judgmental. It’s bad enough living in this country with the way people carry on and the hypocrisy we see all around us but isn’t that kind of attitude for old people who don’t realize that it’s a new world we’re living in? We’re still young, Mary-Margaret. Can you not try to have a little sympathy for someone who’s going through a difficult time?”

  “Oh, you’re fierce modern, aren’t you, Cyril?” she said, sitting back and pursing her lips. “Is this your way of telling me that you want to have your way with me too, is that it? That you want to take me back to your flat and drag me into your bedroom, get your lad out, stick it in me and pump away until you’ve given me a good seeing-to?”

  Now it was my turn to look astonished. I could scarcely believe that she would say something like this, let alone have the words for it.

  “Because if that’s what you think, Cyril,” she continued, “you have another thing coming. I don’t do that with anyone. And after we’re married, don’t expect it on any night other than a Saturday, with the lights off. I was brought up properly, you know.”

  I made a mental note to have plans for every Saturday night after we were married and then panicked at the idea of marrying at all. When had this been decided? We’d never even discussed such a thing. Had I proposed and forgotten all about it?

  “I’m just saying that this is 1966,” I told her. “It’s not the 1930s. Girls get pregnant all the time. Sure I don’t even know what the story was with my own mother, do I?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, pulling a face. “You know exactly what the story was with your mother. The whole country does. Sure don’t they study her books in the university now?”

  “My birth mother,” I said, correcting myself.

  “Your what?”

  My mouth fell open in surprise as I realized that in all the time that we’d been together I had never mentioned the fact that I was adopted. I told her now and she paled visibly.

  “You’re what?” she asked.

  “Adopted,” I said. “Well, I mean I was adopted. A long time ago. When I was a child.”

  “And why have you never told me this before?”

  “I didn’t think it was particularly important,” I said. “Believe me, there’s worse things I could tell you.”

  “Not particularly important? So who are your real mother and father?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” I said.

  “And are you not interested? Do you not want to find out?”

  I shrugged. “Not really,” I said. “Charles and Maude were my parents for all intents and purposes.”

  “Saints alive,” she said. “So your mother might have been fallen too?”

  I stared at her and felt a burst of anger within my chest. “Realistically speaking,” I said, “almost certainly.”

  “Oh my God. Wait till I tell Daddy. No, I won’t tell Daddy. And you’re not to tell him either, do you hear me?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it,” I said.

  “He’d be shocked. It could bring on one of his hearts.”

  “I won’t say a thing,” I told her. “Although I really don’t think it’s all that important. There’s lots of people who are adopted.”

  “Yes, but to come from stock like that. It’s a bad strain in the family.”

  “The same thing that’s happened to your cousin,” I said.

  “That’s different,” she snapped. “Sarah-Anne made a mistake, that’s all.”

/>   “Well, maybe my mother just made a mistake too,” I pointed out. “Would you not consider that?”

  She shook her head, entirely dissatisfied. “There’s something going on with you, Cyril Avery,” she insisted. “Something you’re not telling me. But I’ll get to the bottom of it. I promise I will.”

  The Fall of Horatio

  My flatmate Albert became engaged to be married to his girlfriend Dolores on a Monday night in early March and I joined him, his fiancée and an assortment of their hard-drinking brothers and sisters in Neary’s pub to celebrate. A few hours later, unable to sleep as his headboard banged rhythmically against my wall, it was all that I could do to stop myself from marching in and throwing a bucket of water over the pair of them. The sound of their relentless passion had an unsettling effect on me, however, making me desperate for human contact, and, giving in to my frustrations, I threw on the same clothes that I’d been wearing earlier in the day and made my way down the stairs to emerge into the darkness of Chatham Street, already half-aroused by the excitement of what I hoped was to come. Stepping outside, I heard what I thought was the sound of footsteps behind me and looked around nervously but to my relief the street appeared to be empty.

  Sometimes a few boys my own age could be found around the narrow, cobblestoned streets by the Stag’s Head and I went there only to find them deserted. Crossing Dame Street and turning right for Crown Alley, I saw two young men standing by a wall, their heads held close in conversation, and I hid in a doorway, prepared to be a voyeur if that was all that was available to me. But instead of the sound of zips and anxious kissing, they were speaking to each other in Northern accents, and such was the urgency of their tone that I wished I had walked on instead of staying to eavesdrop.

  “I just want to watch,” said the taller of the two, a young man who sounded excitable and dangerous. “How often in our lives will we get to see something like this?”

  “I don’t care,” said the other. “If we’re too close when it happens, we could get caught.”