by John Boyne
“The thing is, I never have talked about it,” she said. “Not to anyone. Not to Seán or to Jack. Not even to Jonathan. He knew nothing about you or what had taken place in Goleen in 1945. That’s a regret now. I don’t know why I never told him. I should have. He wouldn’t have cared; I know he wouldn’t. And he would have wanted to find you.”
“I must admit,” I said tentatively, “I am interested. I’d like to know what led you from there to here.”
“Of course you would,” she said. “There’d be something wrong with you if you didn’t.” She took a long pause and another sip from her pint. “I suppose,” she said finally. “I suppose I should start with my Uncle Kenneth.”
“All right.”
“And now this is going back a long way, so you’ll have to bear with me. I was brought up in a small village in West Cork called Goleen. Born in 1929, so I was only sixteen when these events took place. And I had a family, of course. I had a mammy and daddy like everyone has. And a gaggle of brothers, each one more feather-brained than the last except for the youngest one, Eddie, who was a nice fella but probably a bit too timid for his own good.”
“I’ve never even heard of Goleen,” I said.
“No one has,” she told me. “Except those of us who come from there or lived there. Like me. And my family. And my Uncle Kenneth.”
“Were you close with him?” I asked.
“I was,” she said. “He was barely ten years older than me and always took a special interest in me because we had similar senses of humor and I was just crazy about him. Oh, he was so handsome, Cyril! He was the only man I ever truly fell in love with. Now, you must understand, he wasn’t actually my blood uncle. He was married to my Auntie Jean, who was my mammy’s sister. Kenneth himself was from Tipperary, if I remember right, but of course we didn’t mind. Everyone loved him, you see. He was tall and funny; he looked a bit like Errol Flynn. And he could tell jokes and do wonderful impressions. He was a demon on the piano accordion and when he sang one of the old songs there was never a dry eye in the place. And I was only a child at the time, really. Sixteen years old, just a silly girl with notions in my head. I was mad for him and I saw to it that he was mad for me too.”
“How?” I asked.
“Well, I led him on, I suppose,” she told me. “I flirted with him constantly and sought any opportunity to get him on his own. I didn’t even really know what I was doing but it felt good, I knew that much. I would cycle my bike up to his farm and talk to him over the fence, my skirt hiked up shamelessly. And I was pretty, do you see, Cyril? I was a very pretty girl at that age. Half the lads in the village were always trying to get me to go to dances with them. But I only had eyes for Kenneth. There was a lake on the outskirts of the village and I saw him there one time with my Auntie Jean. It was late at night and they’d gone for a dip. And the pair of them without a stitch on them. It was an awakening for me. I saw the way he held her and the things he did to her. And I wanted him to hold me like that, to do those things to me too.”
“And did you tell him?”
“Not for a while. You see, Kenneth and my Auntie Jean were a great match, everyone said so. They walked around the village hand in hand, which in those days was considered a bit brazen, even for a married couple. I think Father Monroe had a word with them about it. He said it promoted immorality in the young, that if they weren’t careful, young boys and girls would be following their example and getting up to all sorts. I remember Kenneth saying this to me and laughing his head off. Can you imagine, Catherine, he said. Jean and I holding each other’s hands and suddenly Goleen turns into Sodom and Gomorrah!
“And what did I do, only slip my hand inside his own and say that maybe he should hold my hand instead for a while, and I can see the look on his face even to this day. The shock and the desire. Oh, I loved the power I had over him! The power I could sense in myself! You won’t understand this but it’s something that every girl realizes at some point in her life, usually when she’s around fifteen or sixteen. Maybe it’s even younger now. That she has more power than every man in the room combined, because men are weak and governed by their desires and their desperate need for women but women are strong. I’ve always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they’d rule the world. But they don’t. I don’t know why. And for all their weakness and stupidity, men are smart enough to know that being in charge counts for a lot. They have that over us at least.”
“It’s hard for me to relate to,” I said. “I never had any power at all. I was always the wanter, not the wanted. I was always the one filled with desire, but in my whole life I think Bastiaan was the only man who ever desired me in return. All those boys when I was young, it wasn’t me they wanted. It was just a body, it was just someone to touch and to hold. I might have been anyone to them, but Bastiaan was different.”
“Because he loved you.”
“Because he loved me.”
“Well, you might have been better off. Girls can cause a lot of trouble and other men will forgive them for it if they have a chance themselves. I certainly didn’t understand the trouble that I was causing. But, as I said, I liked how it made me feel and so I kept at it, making that man want me more than he’d ever wanted anyone before, and when I’d just about driven him to distraction and he could take no more he came up to me one day when I was on his farm and grabbed me to him, pressing his lips against mine, and of course I kissed him back. I kissed him like I’d never kissed anyone before or since. And then one thing led to another and before I knew it we were in the middle of what I suppose people would call an affair. I would call over to the farm after school and he would take me to the hayshed and off we’d go, rolling around, a pair of mad things.”
“So he was the one?” I asked. “My father?”
“Yes. And the poor man was tortured about the whole thing,” she said. “Because the truth is, he loved my Auntie Jean and felt terrible about the things he’d done. Every time we finished, he started to cry, and sometimes I felt bad for him and sometimes I just thought he was trying to have his cake and eat it. The only time I got frightened was when he said he’d leave Jean and we could run off together.”
“You didn’t want that?”
“No, that was too much for me. I wanted what we had and I knew full well that even if we did, he’d be bored with me within a month. It was the start of me feeling guilty about what I’d done.”
“Yes, but you were still a child,” I said. “He was a grown man. How old was he, twenty-five? Twenty-six?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Then he was responsible for his own actions.”
“He was, of course. But I don’t think it would ever have crossed his mind to start something with me if I hadn’t pushed and pushed and pushed. He wasn’t the type. He was a good man; I believe that now. And eventually, once the excitement of what we were doing began to calm down, he broke it off with me and begged me not to tell a soul, and of course, young as I was and foolish as I was, I took the greatest umbrage and said I was having none of it, that I was not going to be dropped by him, not after he’d had his fun. But he was adamant and one day he just started crying in front of me again, saying that the person he was turning into was not the person he had ever wanted to be. He said that he’d taken advantage of me, of my youth, because he was weak and he wished that he could go back and change it all. He begged me to forget everything, wanting everything to go back to the way it had been before, and I don’t know, but something about his upset told me that I had done a terrible thing. And I cried too and we hugged each other and we parted as friends and we swore that we would never speak of what had taken place between us and that it would never happen again. It was over, that was what we agreed. And I think, if events hadn’t conspired against us, then we both would have stood by that. It would have ended. And in time, it would all have been forgotten. Just a terrible mistake that we’d made years ago.”
“So what ha
ppened?” I asked.
“Well, you happened, of course,” she said. “I found that I was going to have a child. And back then, in the country, there was no greater disgrace than this. I didn’t know what to do or who to confide in and in the end my mother found out and she told my father and he told the priest and the next day that bastard stood on the pulpit of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, and denounced me to my family and all our neighbors as a whore.”
“He used that word?”
“He did, of course. Sure the priests ran the country back then and they hated women. Oh my God, they hated women and anything that had to do with women and anything to do with women’s bodies or ideas or desires, and any chance that they had to humiliate a woman or bring her down, they would take full advantage of it. I think it was because they all wanted women so badly and they couldn’t have one. Except when they did, of course, on the quiet. Which was going on too. Oh, Cyril, he said some terrible things about me that morning! And he hurt me. If he could have, he would have kicked me to death, I believe that. And he made me leave the church in front of the whole parish and he threw me out and disgraced me, and me only sixteen years of age and not a penny piece in my pocket.”
“And Kenneth?” I asked. “Did he not help you out?”
“He tried, in his way,” she said. “He came out of the church and tried to give me money and I ripped it up in his face. I should have taken it! And in my childishness I blamed him for what had happened, but it wasn’t all his fault, I see that now. I have my share of blame to take. Poor Kenneth was terrified that someone would find out that he was the father and of course he would have been ruined if anyone had. The scandal would have killed him. Anyway, I took the bus to Dublin that same day and found myself living with Seán and Jack until the night when Seán’s father came up to kill the pair of them and he nearly managed it too. How Jack Smoot survived I will never know. And that was the night that you were born. Seán was lying in the living room, his body growing cold, and Jack was lying next to me in a pool of his blood that intermingled with my own as you came screaming into the world. But I had a plan, you see. I’d arranged the plan months in advance with the little hunchbacked Redemptorist nun who helped girls like me. Fallen girls. The plan was that she was going to take the baby away from me when it was born and give it to a family who wanted a child of their own but for whatever reason couldn’t have one.”
I looked down at the table and closed my eyes. That was my birth. That was how I had come to Dartmouth Square, to Charles and Maude.
“The truth is,” she continued, “I was just a child myself. I could never have taken care of a baby. We wouldn’t have survived, either of us, if I’d held on to you. And so I did what I thought was right. And I still think I was right. So I suppose if we’re going to have any future together, Cyril, you and I, then that’s what I have to ask you. Do you believe that I did the right thing?”
Goleen
The Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, was bathed in sunlight that afternoon as we arrived. We walked slowly and silently up the path together, making our way toward the graveyard, and I stood back as she began to walk around the stones, reading the names of the dead.
“William Hobbs,” she said, stopping at one and shaking her head. “I remember him. He was in school with me in the early forties. He was always trying to put his hands up girls’ skirts. The master used to beat him black and blue for it. Look, it says he died in 1970. I wonder what happened to him?” She stepped away and looked at a few others. “And this is my cousin Tadhg,” she said. “And what must have been his wife, Eileen. I knew an Eileen Ní Breathnach back in the day. I wonder did he marry her?” And then, stopping at a particularly ornate stone, she stopped and put a hand to her mouth in fright. “Oh Good Lord,” she said. “It’s Father Monroe! Father Monroe is buried here too!”
I came over and looked down at the inscription on the marble. Father James Monroe, it said. 1890–1968. Beloved parish priest. A kind and saintly man.
“No mention of his children on the headstone, of course,” she said, shaking her head. “I bet the parishioners denounced the women who bore them as they lowered him down. The women are always the whores; the priests are always the good men who were led astray.”
To my surprise, she knelt down by the side of the grave. “Do you remember me, Father Monroe?” she asked quietly. “Catherine Goggin. You threw me out of the parish in 1945 because I was going to have a child. You tried to destroy me but you didn’t. You were a terrible monster of a man and wherever you are you should feel shame for the way you lived your life.”
She looked as if she wanted to rip the stone out of the ground with her bare hands and break it over her knee but finally, breathing heavily, she stood up and moved on. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened to her if the priest had shown her compassion instead of cruelty, had he intervened with my grandfather and helped him realize that we all make mistakes. If the parish had rallied behind my mother instead of casting her out.
I wandered off and looked around the gravestones myself and stopped short when I saw one for Kenneth O’Ríafa. There was no particular reason that I should have noticed it except for the fact that beneath his name were the words: And his wife Jean. I checked the dates. He was born in 1919, which would have been exactly right. And dead in 1994, the same year I had sat by Charles’s bed as he passed away. Who, I wondered, had sat by Kenneth’s? Not Jean, for she had passed five years earlier in 1989.
“Well now,” said my mother, appearing before me and looking down at the inscription. “There he is. But do you see what they did?”
“What?” I asked.
“Auntie Jean died first,” she said. “She would have had her own gravestone. Jean O’Ríafa, it would have said. 1921–1989. But when he died they must have taken her stone away and made it all about him. Kenneth O’Ríafa. And his wife Jean. The afterthought. The men just get it all, don’t they? It must be great for them all the same.”
“No children on the headstone,” I said.
“I see that.”
“And that’s my father,” I added, more to myself than anyone else, the words low and quiet. I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. I had never known the man. But the way my mother told it, he wasn’t necessarily the villain of the piece. Maybe there were no villains in my mother’s story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.
“All these people,” she said sorrowfully. “And all of that trouble. And look, they’re all dead now. So what did it all matter in the end?”
When I looked around, Catherine was gone. I turned my head toward the doors of the church and caught sight of her as she disappeared inside. I didn’t follow for a while but continued to wander around the graves, reading the names and the dates, thinking about the children who had passed away at such young ages and wondering what had happened to them. I found myself lost in thought for a long time and then finally I turned around and stared up at the mountains that surrounded me, at the village that I could see down the road. This was Goleen. This was where my mother and father were from. My grandparents. This was where I had been conceived and where, in a different world, I might have grown up.
“You’re praying,” I said a few minutes later as I entered the church to find my mother on her knees on the padded rest before one of the pews, her head bowed to the back of the seat in front of her.
“I’m not praying,” she said. “I’m remembering. Sometimes the two things look alike, that’s all. This was it, Cyril, you see. This was where I was sitting.”
“When?” I asked.
“The day I was sent away. We’d come to Mass together, all of us, and Father Monroe dragged me up onto the altar. I was sitting right here in this very seat. The rest of my family were lined up next to me. It’s so long ago and yet I can see them, Cyril. I can see them all as if it was yesterday. Still alive. Still sitting here. Still looking at me with humil
iation and disgust in their eyes. Why did they abandon me? Why do we abandon each other? Why did I abandon you?”
A sound from the side of the altar startled us, and a young man of about thirty appeared from the sacristy door. A priest. He turned to us and smiled, leaving something on the altar itself before walking over.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello, Father,” I said, as my mother stayed silent.
“Are you just visiting?” he asked. “It’s a beautiful day for it.”
“Visiting and returning,” said Catherine. “It’s a long time since I last set foot inside this church. Sixty-three years, if you can believe it. I wanted to see it one last time.”
“Are your people from here?” he asked.
“They are,” she said. “The Goggins. Do you know them?”
He frowned, thought about it and shook his head. “Goggin,” he said. “It rings a bell. I think I’ve heard some parishioners mention a Goggin family from back in the old days. But as far as I know now, there’s none left here. They scattered, I suppose. To the winds and to America.”
“Most likely,” said my mother. “I’m not looking for any of them anyway.”
“And will you be staying with us for long?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “We go back to Cork City tonight. And then the train back to Dublin in the morning.”
“Well, enjoy,” he said, smiling as he turned away. “We welcome everyone in the parish of Goleen. It’s a wonderful place.”
My mother snorted a little and shook her head. And as the priest returned to the altar, she stood up, turned her back on him and walked out of the church for the last time, her head held high.
EPILOGUE
