The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

  “But why? Why didn’t he want me with him? And Liam? They were so close.”

  “Because he was ashamed,” I said. “He had no reason to be, but he was ashamed of the disease that he’d developed.”

  “Of AIDS?”

  “Yes, of AIDS. For someone like Julian, who had practically been defined by his heterosexuality, it was an insult to mind and body. It’s not how he wanted you or Liam to remember him.”

  “You said in your letter that you were with him on that last night.”

  “I was, yes.”

  “Was he in pain?”

  I shook my head. “Not by then,” I said. “He was drifting away, that was all. He was on a lot of morphine. I don’t think he suffered at the end. I held him as he died.”

  She looked across at me, startled, and put a hand to her mouth.

  “He said your name, Alice. Your name was the last word he spoke.”

  “I loved him so much,” she said quietly, looking away. “From the time we were children, he always looked out for me. He was the best friend I ever had. And I don’t say this to be cruel, Cyril, but he was so good with Liam. Our son couldn’t have wished for a better father figure. He’s still not over it, you know. Well, neither am I, really. I never will be. But Liam is suffering very badly.”

  “Can we…” I began, unsure what was the best way to phrase this. “Can we talk about Liam?”

  “I suppose we have to. That’s why we’re here after all.”

  “Not the only reason,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Do you have a picture of him?”

  She thought about it for a moment and reached into her handbag, taking a photograph from one of the side pockets and handing it across to me.

  “He looks like him, doesn’t he?” she asked quietly, and I nodded.

  “He looks like how he looked when we were teenagers. They’re very alike. But there’s someone else there too.”

  “Who?”

  I frowned, shaking my head. “I’m not sure,” I said. “There’s something in his expression that reminds me of someone, but for the life of me I can’t think who.”

  “He isn’t like Julian in temperament, though. Liam is much more quiet. More reserved. Almost shy.”

  “Do you think he’d be interested in meeting me? Would you allow it?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “At least, not until he’s eighteen. And I’d ask you to respect my wishes. He has his exams coming up and I don’t want anymore trauma in his life right now. He’ll be eighteen in a year’s time and you can see him then.”

  “But—”

  “Please don’t argue with me, Cyril.”

  “But I want to see him.”

  “And you can. When he’s eighteen. But not a day before. Tell me you won’t go behind my back on this. You owe me that much at least.”

  I took a deep breath. She was right, of course. “All right,” I said.

  “And there’s one other thing,” she said.

  “Go on.”

  “When you meet him, from the first day that the two of you talk, you have to be completely honest with him. No lies. You have to tell him who you are. You have to tell him everything about yourself.”

  Which is what I did. One year later, ten days after his eighteenth birthday, when Alice introduced us for the first time and we went for a walk along Dun Laoghaire pier together and I told him the story of my life from the day that I had come downstairs in the house on Dartmouth Square, the house in which he now lived, to find his Uncle Julian sitting in the hallway, through to the world that had slowly unfolded for me and the realizations I had had about myself. I talked to him about why I had married his mother, why I had left her and how badly I felt about what I had done. I talked about my life in Amsterdam and New York, about Ignac and Bastiaan. About how he had been killed by a group of thugs who had seen us embracing in Central Park and how nothing had ever seemed quite as bright for me since. And through it all he listened and barely spoke and seemed shocked at times, embarrassed at others, and finally, when we parted, I went to shake his hand, but he refused it and walked off to catch the DART back into town.

  In the two years between then and now he had thawed a little toward me and we saw each other occasionally, but there was still nothing like the affection or love that I imagined should exist between a father and son, and while he didn’t seem to want me to leave his life—he never picked a fight, for example, or attacked me for not being a part of his childhood—he seemed unwilling at the same time to allow me to involve myself in it either, appearing distrustful of me on the occasions that we met, which were few and far between.

  But then this, I told myself, was the bed that I had made for myself. There was no one else that I could blame.

  “Goal!” roared Jimmy and Liam together in the eleventh minute as Ray Houghton hit a shot past the head of Pagliuca and the ball landed in the top right corner of the net. The whole of Doheny & Nesbitt’s exploded in cheers, pints were knocked over left, right and center and there was much hugging and dancing around. The two boys embraced each other, jumping up and down in delight, but I stayed where I was, smiling and applauding, feeling unable to rise to my feet and behave as others were doing and not just because I would have looked ridiculous with my crutch.

  “We’re going to win this,” said Jimmy, practically hovering off the stool in delight. “The Italians are too cocky by half.”

  “Will you be going on celebrating somewhere if we do?” I asked, and Liam turned to look at me.

  “We will,” he said. “But you can’t come with us. We’ll be out with our uni friends.”

  “I never asked to come with you,” I said. “I was only asking, that’s all.”

  “And I was only saying.”

  “All right.”

  And we left it at that and turned our attention back to the screen. The players were coming to the sidelines now and asking for bottles of water. The heat was too much for them. There was war on the pitch, Jack Charlton running on and complaining to the referee, substitutes pacing up and down in frustration. It looked as if the thing was going to end badly for everyone.

  Date Night

  I had given no thought to romance since Bastiaan’s death and so it came as something of a surprise to me when I got asked out on a date. The man in question—fifteen years younger than me and quite attractive, which did my ego no harm whatsoever—was a TD in Dáil Éireann and a regular user of the library, unlike most of his colleagues, who generally sent their assistants down to do their donkey work for them. He’d always been quite talkative and friendly but I had put this down to an affable temperament on his part until the afternoon when he inquired whether I was doing anything that Thursday night.

  “Nothing that I know of,” I said. “Why, do you need to use the library late?”

  “Oh Christ, no,” he said, shaking his head and looking at me as if I was half mad. “Nothing like that. I just wondered whether I could tempt you out for a drink, that’s all.”

  “A drink?” I asked, unsure whether I had heard him correctly. “How do you mean?”

  “You know. Two people sitting down in a bar. Having a couple of pints and a chat. You do drink, don’t you?”

  “I do, yes,” I said. “I mean, not to excess but—”

  “So how about it?”

  “Do you mean just the two of us?”

  “Jesus, Cyril. I feel like I’m negotiating an EEC treaty here. Yes, just the two of us.”

  “Oh. All right then. Where were you thinking of?”

  “Somewhere discreet,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, and perhaps that should have been my first clue that our night out together would not end well.

  “Do you know the Yellow House in Rathfarnham?” he asked.

  “I do,” I said. “I haven’t been there in years. Would somewhere in the city center not be easier?”

  “Let’s go to the Yellow House,” he said. “Thursday night. Eigh
t o’clock.”

  “No, that’s the night of Mrs. Goggin’s retirement party.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Mrs. Goggin from the tearoom. She’s retiring after almost fifty years here.”

  He looked a little blank. “So what?” he said. “You’re not planning on going along, are you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, like I just told you, she’s retiring after almost—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He thought about it. “Do you think I should go too?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, would it mean a lot to her if I showed my face?”

  I stared at him, trying to decipher his meaning. “Because you’re a TD?” I asked. “Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head. “I honestly don’t think she’ll care one way or the other.”

  “I’d say she would,” he said, looking half-offended.

  “Well, I’m going anyway, so Thursday’s out.”

  “Fine,” he said with a dramatic sigh, as if he was a frustrated teenager and not a grown man. “Friday night then. No, wait, I can’t do Friday night. Constituency dinner. And weekends are out for obvious reasons. How’s Monday?”

  “Monday’s good,” I said, unsure what the obvious reasons were. “Will we just go from here? When I lock up the library?”

  “No. Let’s meet there.”

  “What, at the Yellow House?”

  “Yes.”

  “But if we’re both going to be in the Dáil, wouldn’t it be easier if we—”

  “I don’t know what Monday might have in store,” he said. “It’ll be easier if we just meet there.”

  “All right.”

  In the intervening days, I gave a lot of thought to what I might wear. The truth was that I had no real idea what I was letting myself in for. I had long guessed that the man was gay but he was so much younger than me that I couldn’t quite believe that he would be interested in someone my age. At the retirement party, I confided my dilemma to Mrs. Goggin, who seemed delighted by my quandary.

  “Good for you,” she said. “I’m delighted for you, Cyril. You’re far too young to be giving up on meeting someone new.”

  “I don’t really see it like that,” I told her. “And I’m not lonely. I know that’s what lonely people generally say but I’m really not. I’m happy with my life just the way it is.”

  “Who was it anyway?” she asked. “Which TD?”

  I told her his name.

  “Oh,” she said, her face falling a little.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, go on, tell me.”

  “I don’t want to put you off him.”

  “I’m not particularly on him. It’s just a date.”

  “Well, he just seems like a sneaky sort to me,” she said. “He strolls in here as if he owns the place and tries to sit at the tables with the ministers without going through me first. The swagger on him and him only in the place a wet weekend! I’ve thought about putting him out a few times. I learned long ago from Mrs. Hennessy—she was the woman who hired me back in the forties—that if I didn’t put my foot down with the TDs from the start, they’d use their country boots to walk all over me. And I’ve put that advice to good use ever since.”

  “You ran a tight ship here, that’s for sure.”

  “I had to. You’d see less bad behavior in a kindergarten.”

  “So you don’t think I should go?”

  “I didn’t say that. Just be careful of him, that’s my advice to you. I remember you told me that you lost your…your friend some years ago.”

  “I did, yes,” I said. “Bastiaan. And to be honest, in the seven years since then I’ve never had any great longing for sex or a partner. Sorry, you don’t mind me being so blunt, do you?”

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Remember, I brought tea up to Charlie Haughey’s office for thirty years, so I’ve seen and heard a lot worse.”

  “I suppose I’ve felt for a long time that that side of my life is over,” I said.

  “And do you want it to be?”

  I had to think about it. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s never brought me anything but torment. Well, at least until I met Bastiaan anyway. I don’t think I can start over with someone new. But maybe there’s a little fire still inside me somewhere. Which is why I’m fretting about the whole thing. But anyway, I shouldn’t be talking about this tonight. It’s your night. You have a great turnout all the same.”

  Our heads turned in unison to look around the room. Practically everyone who worked in the Dáil had shown up and the Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, had given a good speech earlier. My TD friend had popped his head in for twenty minutes but, despite standing quite close to me at one point, had completely ignored me, even when I said hello.

  “I do,” she said, sounding pleased. “I’ll miss the place. Would you believe I haven’t had a single sick day in forty-nine years?”

  “Albert said that earlier. I thought he was making it up.”

  “It’s as true as I’m sitting here.”

  “So what will you do?” I asked. “Is there a Mr. Goggin somewhere who’ll be happy to have you at home for a change?”

  She shook her head. “There isn’t,” she said. “There was never a Mr. Goggin. A long time ago, a priest stood on the altar of a church in West Cork and told me that I’d never find a husband. I thought he was just being a sanctimonious old prig, but as it turns out he was right. Sure I even had to pretend that I was a widow to get the job here.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Different times,” she said. She took a deep breath and looked around to make sure we weren’t being overheard. “I was about to have a baby, you see. So I said my husband had been killed in the war. Mrs. Hennessy knew the truth but if anyone else had found out I’d have been out the door in a flash.”

  “Bunch of charmers, aren’t they?” I said. “The priests.”

  “I’ve never set any store by them,” she told me. “Not since that day. Anyway, I’ve done well enough all these years without a husband.”

  “And your son?” I asked. “How is he doing?”

  “My son?” she asked, her smile fading a little.

  “Jonathan, isn’t it?”

  “Oh Jonathan. Sorry, I…Yes, he’s grand. Well, he was a little sick over the last year or so, but he’s better now. He has a couple of kids of his own, so I’ll be able to help out a little more there now that my time will be my own. I’m looking forward to that at least.”

  Before she could say anymore, one of the girls from the tearoom came over and interrupted us, asking Mrs. Goggin whether she would come over and join them all for a photograph.

  “Oh, I take a terrible photograph,” she said. “I always end up looking angry in them.”

  “We need one for the wall,” insisted the girl. “After all your years of service. Come on, Mrs. Goggin, we’ll all be in it with you.”

  She sighed and stood up, nodding her head. “All right,” she said. “One last duty before I’m set free. And look, you should go on that date, Cyril,” she added, turning back to me. “But just be careful of that fella. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I will,” I said. “And good luck to you in your retirement if I don’t see you later.”

  To my surprise, she reached down and kissed me on the cheek and gave me a curious look before the young girl dragged her away.

  A few days later, I arrived as planned in the Yellow House and found my date sitting in a corner with his back to the room as if he didn’t want anyone to notice him.

  “Andrew,” I said, taking the seat opposite him with a full view of the room. “I almost missed you there. It’s like you’re hiding away from the world.”

  “Not at all,” he replied, laughing and ordering me a drink from one of the lads passing by. “How are you, Cyril? How was work today?”

  “Gra
nd,” I said, which led to the usual exchange of pleasantries for twenty minutes or so before I decided to get to the heart of things.

  “Can I just ask?” I said. “And forgive me if this sounds ridiculous, but I was a little surprised when you invited me out in the first place. Is this just a friendship thing or is it something else?”

  “It can be anything we want it to be,” he replied with a shrug. “We’re grown men, after all. And we’ve always got along, haven’t we?”

  “That’s true,” I said. “You do know that I’m gay, right?”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “I wouldn’t have asked you out otherwise.”

  “Oh right,” I said. “So you’re gay too then? I wasn’t sure. I assumed but—”

  “Here’s the thing, Cyril,” he said, leaning in a little. “I’m not really comfortable with labels, you know? They’re so defining.”

  “Well, yes,” I agreed. “I mean, that is what labels do, by their nature. They define things.”

  “Exactly. And it’s 1994, not the fifties. I feel like we should be past all that type of thing by now.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “Sorry, what do you mean? What type of thing?”

  “Labels.”

  “Oh right. OK.”

  “Anyway, tell me about you,” he said. “Are you married or anything?”

  “No,” I said, deciding not to get into the technicalities of the completely honest answer. “Why would I be married? I just told you, I’m gay.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean anything. You work in the Dáil, for Christ’s sake. Throw a stick, as they say.”

  “I suppose I’ve heard the odd rumor,” I admitted.

  “So if you’re not married, are you seeing anyone right now?”

  “No one special.”

  “Anyone who isn’t special?”

  “Actually, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not seeing anyone at all. And I haven’t in a long time. I was with someone for many years, but he died in 1987.”

  “Oh right,” he said, pulling back a little. “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you mind if I ask how he died?”

  “We were both attacked in Central Park,” I explained. “I survived. He didn’t. The crutch is what I was left with.”