A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

  Our school was a rugby school, one of those elite establishments on Dublin’s Southside populated by boys with wealthy fathers – property developers, bankers, businessmen who thought their good times would never come to a halt – and although I knew next to nothing about the sport I did my best to develop an interest, for there was no way to survive at Terenure if you did not. In general I got on well with the boys, for I neither bullied them nor tried to be their friend – the twin mistakes that many of my colleagues made – and somehow this stood to me and I found myself as popular as it was possible to be among the quicksand of arriving and graduating students. They were often an arrogant lot, and could be hateful and wicked in their attitude towards those who had not been born into similar privilege, but I did my best to humanize them.

  The phone call from Archbishop Cordington’s secretary came on a Saturday afternoon, and if it made me anxious, it was only because I misunderstood the reason for the summons.

  ‘Is it just me?’ I asked Father Lomas, his secretary, on the other end of the line. ‘Or is there a gang of us being called over?’

  ‘It’s just you,’ he replied in the driest tone you could imagine. Some of those lads at the Archbishop’s residence could be fierce full of themselves.

  ‘Will it keep, do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘His Grace will receive you at two o’clock on Tuesday,’ he replied, which I supposed meant no, before hanging up the phone. And so I drove out to Drumcondra that day with a heavy heart; what would I say, I wondered, if he asked me whether I had ever had any suspicions about Miles Donlan, and if so why I had never reported them to him? How could I answer him when I had asked myself this very question time and again and been met with only silence?

  ‘Father Yates,’ said the Archbishop, looking up and smiling as I entered his private office, trying my best not to betray in my expression how uncomfortable the luxury of his surroundings made me. There were paintings on the walls that wouldn’t have been out of place in the National Gallery. Indeed, they had probably been selected from the National Gallery; it was one of the perks of the job, after all. The carpet beneath my feet was so thick that I thought I could have lain down on it and got a good night’s sleep. Everything about the place screamed prosperity and profligacy, concepts that stood in stark contrast to the vows we had both taken. The opulence of the Episcopal Palace reminded me a little of the Vatican, albeit on a far smaller scale, and my mind turned as it so often did to 1978, when I had served three masters over the course of a single year, filling my mornings and nights with servitude, my days with study, and my evenings with standing beneath an open window on the Vicolo della Campana, racked with longing and confused desire.

  How can something still feel so painful after twenty-eight years, I asked myself. Is there no recovery from the traumas of our youth?

  ‘Hello, Your Grace,’ I said, kneeling down and allowing my lips briefly to make contact with the heavy gold ring he wore on the fourth finger of his right hand, before he led me towards a pair of armchairs next to the fireplace.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Odran,’ he said, falling into his chair. Jim Cordington, two years ahead of me at Clonliffe College Seminary and once the best midfielder that the Dublin hurling team had ever lost to the priesthood, had grown fat from indulgence and a lack of exercise. I could remember him sweeping up the fields at Holy Cross with the wind behind him and not one of us could have stopped him in his stride. What had happened to him in the years since then, I wondered. His once sharply defined features were now flabby and scarlet-speckled, his nose thickly veined with blood-red capillaries. When he smiled and tucked his face downwards in that curious manner he had, a series of chins made themselves visible, one atop the other like folds of whipped meringue.

  ‘And you, Your Grace,’ I replied.

  ‘Ah here,’ he said, waving his hands in the air and dismissing this. ‘Would you stop now with the Your Grace, Odran. It’s Jim, you know that. There’s no one else in here. We can leave the formalities for another time. How are you anyway? Are you keeping well?’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘Busy, as always.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you this long time.’

  ‘I think it was the conference in Maynooth last year,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, probably. But look, that’s a grand little school you’re in, isn’t it?’ he asked, scratching his cheeks, his nails making a slight sweeping sound against his early-afternoon stubble. ‘Did you know that I went to Terenure myself?’

  ‘I did, Your Grace,’ I said. ‘Jim.’

  ‘Different now than when I was a lad, I’d say.’

  I nodded. Everything was different now, of course it was.

  ‘Did you ever hear of a priest called Richard Camwell?’ he asked me, leaning forward. ‘He was a terrible man altogether. Used to lift a lad out of his seat by the ear and while he was holding him there he’d give him an almighty clatter across the cheek and send him sprawling across the tables. Once, he held a boy by his ankles out the window of the sixth-floor corridor while the lads in the yard below called up Father, Father, don’t drop him!’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘We were afraid of the priests in those days, of course. There were some right terrors among them.’ He frowned then and looked directly at me. ‘But fierce holy men,’ he added, pointing a finger. ‘Fierce holy men all the same.’

  ‘If you tried something like that now, sure the boys would fight back,’ I said. ‘And they’d be right too.’

  ‘Well I don’t know about that,’ he said, sitting back again and looking away.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Boys are terrible creatures. They need discipline. But who am I telling, aren’t you there in their company five days a week during the school year? When I think of some of the beatings I took in that school it’s a wonder I ever got out of the place alive. Happy days though. Terrible happy days.’

  I nodded, biting my lip. There were many things I wanted to say, but fear stopped me from saying them. There had been a teacher at Terenure only the year before, a layman, not a priest, who had cuffed a fourteen-year-old boy across the ear for a piece of back-chat, and hadn’t the lad only leaped up and punched him in the face, breaking the poor man’s nose. He was a strong wee pup, that boy, and arrogant with it. His father ran a branch of an international bank and the boy was forever talking about how many air miles he’d racked up. In my day, he would have been expelled, but now, of course, things were different. The teacher, a nice man but completely unsuited to the job, was fired and brought up on assault charges by the boy’s parents while the lad himself was given four thousand euros by the school in compensation for ‘emotional trauma’.

  ‘My granny lived down the road from Terenure, you see,’ continued the Archbishop. ‘Near the Dodder Bridge. We were closer in towards Harold’s Cross but sure didn’t I spend half my life in my granny’s? She could cook, that woman. She was never out of the kitchen. She had fourteen children over sixteen years, can you believe that? And never complained about it. Brought them up in a house with two bedrooms. You’d wonder now how that’s even possible. Fourteen children, a husband and wife in two rooms. Sardines, what?’

  ‘You must have a fair run of cousins then,’ I said.

  ‘More than I can count. I have one cousin who works in the Formula One,’ he said. ‘In the pit stops, you know? He changes the tyres when the drivers pull in. He told me once that they have to get the car in and out again in forty seconds flat or they lose their jobs. Can you imagine? I’d still be looking for the monkey wrench. Not that I get to see my family very often. There’s so many demands in this job, you wouldn’t believe it. You should think yourself lucky, Odran, that you were never elevated.’

  There was nothing that I could say to this. At Clonliffe College, I had excelled in my exams and been selected for the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, where I had been offered an unexpected position during 1978 that was both a blessing and a curse. Had I completed the year successfully, I would ha
ve been all but assured of a quick rise through the ranks, but of course my job was taken off me before the year was up and a black mark put against my name that was impossible to wipe clean.

  Other lads in the seminary were very ambitious about their careers, a word which never sat well with me, and perhaps I was too at first, but I don’t recall any great longing, even as a young man, for advancement. It seemed clear from the start who was destined for an Archbishopric or, in one case with a fellow only a year ahead of us, the scarlet zucchetto of a cardinal. All I ever wanted was to be a good priest, to help people somehow. That seemed ambition enough for me.

  ‘Are you happy out there anyway?’ the Archbishop asked me and I nodded.

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘They’re good boys for the most part. I’ve tried to do my best by them.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t doubt it, Odran, I wouldn’t doubt it. I hear nothing but good reports of you from everyone.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘Is it that time already? Will you have a wee dram with me?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m grand,’ I said.

  ‘Go on, you will. Sure I’m having a small one myself. You won’t see me a lonely drinker.’

  ‘I have the car, Your Grace,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t do.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, waving his hand to dismiss the concept of sober driving as some sort of new-age fad. He dragged himself up and made his way over to a cabinet which supported a fine bronze statue of John Charles McQuaid, whose funeral at the Pro Cathedral I had attended along with all the other seminarians in 1973. He opened it – I’d seen less alcohol behind the bar of Slattery’s on the Rathmines Road – and extracted a bottle from the corner, pouring a healthy glass for himself, topping it up with some water and then re-joining me, crashing down into his seat with another loud groan.

  ‘Gets me through the rest of the afternoon,’ he said with a wink as he took his first sip. ‘I have a delegation of nuns coming in here after you, for my sins. Something about new bathrooms for their convent. Sure I haven’t the money to be spending on them when there’s priests calling every day about getting broadband installed in their homes. And that doesn’t come cheap.’

  ‘You could always divide the money,’ I suggested. ‘Half for the priests and half for the nuns.’

  He let out a great roar of a laugh at that, and I smiled along to be sociable. ‘Very good, Odran, very good,’ he said. ‘You were always quick with a joke, weren’t you? But listen to me now, how would you feel about a bit of a change?’

  My heart sank a little inside my chest. I thought I was here for one conversation, but no, it seemed I was here for another. Was I to be moved? After all these years? I liked the walls that surrounded the rugby fields, the long driveway to the main building, the peace of my corridor, the silence of my own small room, the security of the classroom. I had dreaded the conversation that I thought I was here to have, but this was worse. This was far worse.

  ‘I wouldn’t be looking for a change,’ I said. It was worth trying, after all. Maybe he’d take pity on me. ‘I feel I still have work to do. There’s a lot of lads who need help.’

  ‘Well, the work never ends,’ he replied. ‘It just gets picked up by the next man. No, I’ve got a grand young lad that I want to send over to Terenure, I think it’ll do him the world of good. Father Mouki Ngezo. Have you come across him at all?’

  I shook my head. I didn’t know too many of the younger fellows. Not that there were that many to know.

  ‘Black fella,’ said the Archbishop. ‘You must have seen him about.’

  I stared at him, uncertain whether the description was a purely factual one or whether there was something derogatory in the way he said it. Could you even say black these days or did that make you a racist? ‘I don’t …’ I began, unsure how to finish my sentence.

  ‘He’s a grand lad,’ he repeated. ‘Came to us from Nigeria a few years back. But look, isn’t it a terrible thing all the same, the way we used to send our young lads out to the missions and now the missions are sending their young lads back here to us?’

  ‘Doesn’t that make us the missions?’ I said, and he thought about this for a moment before nodding his head.

  ‘Do you know, I’ve never thought about it like that,’ he said. ‘I suppose it does. That’s a queer pass, isn’t it? Do you know how many applications I’ve had this year to be a priest from the Dublin diocese?’ I shook my head. ‘One,’ he said. ‘One! Can you believe it? And I met up with the lad and he wasn’t right for us at all. Something a bit simple about him, I thought. He kept laughing while I was trying to talk to him and biting his nails. It was like holding a conversation with a coyote.’

  ‘A hyena,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, a hyena. That’s what I said. Anyway I told him that he should go away and reflect on whether or not he had a vocation and then we could talk again, and he started crying and I practically had to carry him back outside. His mammy was out in the waiting room and she was pushing him into it, I could tell that.’

  ‘Sure the mammies pushed us all into it,’ I said, the words out of my mouth before I could even think about them.

  ‘Ah now, Odran,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think we need to go down that road, do you?’

  ‘I only meant—’

  ‘Don’t be worrying, don’t be worrying.’ He took another drink from his glass, a longer drink this time, and he closed his eyes for a few moments, savouring the taste. ‘Miles Donlan,’ he said after a moment and I glanced down at the floor. This was the conversation I had expected.

  ‘Miles Donlan,’ I repeated quietly.

  ‘You’ve read the papers, I suppose? Seen the news?’

  ‘I have, Your Grace.’

  ‘Six years,’ he said, whistling through his teeth. ‘Do you think he’ll survive it?’

  ‘He’s not a young man,’ I said. ‘And they say that prisoners can be fierce rough on …’ I had the word, of course, but couldn’t say it.

  ‘You never heard any whispers, did you, Odran?’

  I swallowed. Of course I had heard whispers. Father Donlan and I had worked side by side in Terenure for years. I’d never liked him, to be honest; he had a bitter air about him and spoke about the boys as if they both fascinated and disgusted him at the same time. But yes, I had heard whispers.

  ‘I didn’t know him very well,’ I said, avoiding his question.

  ‘You didn’t know him very well,’ he repeated quietly and he stared at me until I could only look away. ‘But if you had heard whispers, Odran, or if you were to hear whispers about someone else, tell me what would you do?’

  Nothing was the honest answer. ‘I suppose I’d talk to the man.’

  ‘You’d talk to the man. I see. Would you talk to me about it?’

  ‘I might, yes.’

  ‘Would you go to the Gardaí?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Not at first, anyway.’

  ‘Not at first. When might you?’

  I shook my head, trying to decide what he wanted to hear. ‘Honestly, Jim,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what I’d do or who I’d tell or when I’d say a word at all. I’d have to judge it at the time.’

  ‘You’d tell me, is what you’d do,’ he said in an aggressive tone. ‘And you’d tell no one else. The papers are all out to get us, you can see that, can’t you? We’ve lost control. And we must regain it. We must bring the media to heel.’ He glanced across at the drinks cabinet and the statue of Archbishop McQuaid. ‘Do you think he would have put up with any of this nonsense?’ he asked me. ‘He’d have had the printing presses shut down. He’d have taken over the lease at Montrose and evicted the lot of them.’

  ‘Times are different now,’ I said.

  ‘Times are worse, is what they are. But look, I’m getting sidetracked. What was I saying before all of this?’

  ‘The Nigerian priest,’ I told him, relieved to change the subject.

  ‘Oh yes, Father Ngezo. Actually he’s a grand fella all the same. Black as the
ace of spades, but there we are. He’s not the only one, of course. We have three lads from Mali, two Kenyans and a fella from Chad across there in Donnybrook. And next month a boy from Burkina Faso is coming over to be a curate in Thurles, I’m told. Did you ever even hear of Burkina Faso? I never did, but apparently it exists.’

  ‘Is it somewhere above Ghana?’ I asked, examining a map of the world in my mind.

  ‘I have no idea. And even less interest. It could be one of the moons of Saturn for all I care. But look, we take what we can get these days. And I want to give young Ngezo a try out there in Terenure. He needs a change and he’s a great supporter of the rugby. You were never much interested in that, were you, Odran?’

  ‘I rarely miss a cup match,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Is that so? I didn’t think it was your thing at all. But he’ll be great with the boys and it’ll do them the world of good to experience other cultures. Would you mind making room for him?’

  ‘I’ve been there twenty-seven years, Your Grace.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s home to me.’

  He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, half-smiling. ‘We have no homes,’ he said. ‘No homes of our own, that is. You know that.’

  Easy for you to say, I thought, glancing around at the crushed-velvet seat covers and the lace curtains.

  ‘I’d miss it,’ I said.

  ‘But it might do you good to get out of teaching for a while and back to parish work. Just for a while.’

  ‘You realize that I’ve never actually done any parish work, Your Grace?’ I asked.

  ‘Jim, Jim,’ he said in a bored voice.

  ‘I’m not even sure I’d know where to start. Where were you thinking of anyway?’

  He smiled and looked down at the carpet, breathing heavily through his nose; he wore a slightly embarrassed expression on his face. ‘You can probably guess,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be permanent, of course. Only I need someone to take Tom’s place.’

  ‘Tom who?’ I asked.

  ‘Tom who-do-you-think?’

  My eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘Tom Cardle?’ I asked.