A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

‘I do, Canon.’

  ‘All right.’ He tapped his fingers on the desk and considered this. ‘Is it right what I heard about Tom and Father Slevin?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘You know exactly what I’ve heard.’

  ‘He gave him a bit of cheek,’ I admitted.

  ‘A bit of cheek? Is that what you’d call it?’

  ‘It wasn’t right,’ I said. ‘Father Slevin is a nice man.’

  ‘You don’t think he deserved to be spoken to like that?’

  I thought about it. The truth was that there were a few of the priests who had a bitter twist to them, a few who could be sharp with us, a few who seemed to like us too little, or too much, but Father Slevin wasn’t one of them. He was kind and I liked him.

  ‘No, Canon,’ I said finally. ‘No, I don’t think he did.’

  Canon Robson nodded and played with a pen on his desk, one of those fancy white numbers with the red, blue, black and green inks split into four cartridges. ‘And what about you, Odran?’ he asked. ‘Are you happy here?’

  ‘I am, Canon,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.’

  He smiled, pleased by my response.

  ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Well look, you get on back to whatever it is you do during your recreation hour. What is it anyway? Are you a hurling man?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘I’m not much good at it. But sometimes.’

  ‘Well take yourself back over there anyway. You have about twenty minutes left before dinner.’

  The talk of the yard was all Tom Cardle. Word of his altercation had spread quickly and it was the only thing that anyone could think about. Most of the lads were in shock about it and there was a feeling of discomfort too, for Tom had introduced an adult element into the classroom that was alien to us, a subject that was not going to play a part in our lives. Some of the older lads said it was all for effect, that he was just trying to play the big man, but I knew there was more to it than that. I took Maurice Macwell aside, the lad with the stutter, and confided in him my worries.

  ‘Tom Cardle is a sex maniac,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not!’ replied Maurice, astonished, wide-eyed.

  ‘He is,’ I said. ‘He thinks about it morning, noon and night.’

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ said Maurice. ‘What will become of him, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Maurice thought about this and stroked his chin. ‘And what about you, Odran?’ he asked.

  ‘What about me?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you think about it?’

  ‘I do not,’ I said, insulted; I did, of course I did, but I knew that I didn’t as much as some of the other boys. ‘Why, do you?’

  ‘Well I’ve kissed a girl,’ he said, standing to his full height and puffing his chest out. ‘So I know a little bit about the world.’

  ‘Ah right,’ said I.

  ‘She was desperate for it,’ he told me. ‘Mam said she was a trollop. Have you never kissed a girl then, Odran?’

  I had, of course. But for whatever reason, I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Would you not like to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is there anything you’re not telling me, Odran?’ he asked.

  I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Ah, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you mean?’

  ‘Does Tom leave you alone?’

  I stared at him. ‘Leave me alone?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Maurice.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t, do you?’ he said quietly. ‘Well, that answers my question so.’

  I felt a sense of frustration growing inside me, as if I was being played for a fool. I was ready to raise my voice to him, but Maurice jumped in before I could.

  ‘Listen, Odran,’ he said. ‘If Tom doesn’t come back, do you think I could take his place in your cell?’

  ‘But sure don’t you have your own? You share with Snuff Winters, don’t you?’

  Snuff Winters. A big, burly monster of a boy from Glenageary; so-called because he had a permanent cold.

  ‘I could do with getting away from him,’ said Maurice.

  ‘Why? Do you not get along?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said, looking away. I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t seem able. We were close to opening up the conversation or shutting it down entirely; we’d have been better off, the two of us, if we’d had the courage to tell each other the truth. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said finally. ‘But look, if Tom doesn’t come back, you’ll keep me in mind for the other bed?’

  ‘But sure Maurice, it’s not up to me. You’d have to ask the Canon. But I’d have no objections.’

  He pursed his lips. I found myself wanting to take a step back in the conversation. ‘Who was she anyway?’ I asked him. ‘The girl you kissed?’

  ‘Sure that’s all behind us now,’ he said, looking down at the ground.

  ‘I’m happy as I am,’ I said finally.

  ‘I am too,’ he agreed.

  And that was that. We were all happy as we were, it seemed. All except Tom Cardle.

  It was a few days after this that he returned to us. During the recreation hour some of the lads had set up stumps in four corners of the yard with our jackets and we were playing a game of rounders. It was a mixed-year game, older lads and younger lads together with Father Dementyev playing umpire, and we were all getting along great guns when a noise from the driveway alerted us to something out of the ordinary and we put down our balls and tennis rackets – we had no cricket bats – and turned to look.

  And there was a sight I’d never forget: coming up the driveway on the passenger seat of a tractor was none other than Tom Cardle, and seated next to him was a man who could only have been his father, dressed in a countryman’s day-suit that had seen better days and with a cap pulled low over his forehead, the exhaust of the tractor pumping its black pollution into the air behind them.

  ‘He’s not driven that thing all the way up from Wexford?’ asked Mick Sirr, a bemused expression on his face.

  ‘That’s how he arrived here in the first place,’ I said.

  ‘But sure they’re not designed for long journeys,’ said Mick, astonished and impressed in equal parts. ‘Has the lad never heard of a train, no?’

  I made my way towards the driveway and when Tom caught my eye he didn’t smile or look sad, he simply put two fingers to the side of his head and gave me that tipping-the-hat gesture to say hello. He was back. He’d been brought back. The poor unfortunate tractor stopped with a defeated rattle of its engine, and father and son climbed down and began to make their way towards the Canon’s office.

  ‘Tom!’ I called out.

  ‘How are you, Odran?’ said he.

  ‘Come along, you wee scut,’ said his father and then they disappeared. But before they vanished through the doors I had the chance to see my friend’s face: the greenish colour around his right eye, the bruises diminishing at last; the nasty-looking cut on his lower lip. And did I mention that one of his arms was in plaster? Here was a boy who had been beaten black and blue. But he had returned all the same, and may God forgive me but I was glad of it, for I had missed him terribly and didn’t want to bunk alone or with Maurice Macwell.

  Years later, they used to show that film The Great Escape on RTÉ around Christmas, and whenever it was on I always tuned in. You could watch that film a thousand times and it would never grow stale. But there’s a lad in it, a Scottish lad named Ives, and he’s the life and soul at the start of the picture, kicking up great gas, and then he tries to escape one day and he’s brought back and from that minute on the smile is wiped off Ives’s face and he’s only a shadow of the man he was before. He does whatever the soldiers tell him, he goes wherever they order him to go. He gives no further trouble. He tells no more jokes. He has suffered in t
he period between escape and return. He has been beaten. He has had the Ives beaten out of him. And then, of course, he climbs the fence when the soldiers are watching, for no other reason than he knows that they will shoot him down and he will suffer no more.

  And every Christmas when I watched that film and got to that part, I thought of Tom Cardle and how he was when he came back to the seminary from Wexford. He’d run off, he’d had who-knew-what kind of experiences for a few days. He’d made his way back down to Wexford, where his father had taken his belt and his boots and his fists to him, and then he’d been thrown on the side of a tractor and hauled back up the Dublin road, and from then on he was ready to submit.

  He never confronted a priest again in the way that he had challenged Father Slevin. He said his prayers, he practised his Gregorian chant, he got up at six and he didn’t complain. The Canon had said there were no gates in this college, either inside or out, but he hadn’t counted on a man from Wexford who had once been county boxing champion and insisted that his youngest son was to be a priest. Tom Cardle, that spirited boy who knew this was not the life for him, was not Tom Cardle any more.

  He’d had the Ives beaten out of him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  2011

  I HAD ARRANGED to meet my nephew Jonas for lunch in a café bar on St Stephen’s Green. I didn’t often venture into the city centre any more. To be among crowds while wearing my collar could be a demoralizing experience. I would inevitably be on the receiving end of the sneering stares of self-important students or puffed-up businessmen. Mothers would pull their children closer to them and occasionally a stranger would approach me with some provocative or insulting remark. Of course, I could always go about in lay clothes, hidden behind their ubiquitous disguise, but no, I would not do that. I would take the brickbats. I would suffer the indignities. I would be myself.

  As the Luas pulled into the station, I saw him standing outside the concave doors of Dandelion next to a young man of about his own age – twenty-six – who was waving his arms in the air dramatically as he talked. It had been a few months since I had last seen Jonas and his appearance surprised me, for he had shaved his shoulder-length blond hair into a tight buzz-cut which accentuated the sharp Nordic definition of his cheekbones and the deep cerulean of his eyes. As he saw me approach, he glanced at his watch and flicked a half-smoked cigarette on to the street, stamping it out underfoot. He was dressed in a manner that suggested he’d simply thrown on whatever he’d found in his wardrobe that morning, but I suspected he spent a long time planning how he presented himself to the world. His jeans clung tightly to his long, thin legs; his boots were chunky and looked as if they weighed more than a small Protestant; his shirt sleeves were rolled up, and something that resembled a scarf was thrown casually around his neck. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and I could see girls glancing at him as they passed; he was a good-looking lad, there was no doubting it. He got that from his father’s side of the family.

  ‘Odran,’ he said as I approached, smiling half-heartedly, extending his hand. He’d long since stopped prefacing my name with the word Uncle. His companion, whose stubble was as artfully designed as my nephew’s although it didn’t suit him anywhere near as well, turned and stared at me as if I was the eighth wonder of the world.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Jonas,’ I said, shaking his hand and smiling. I thought about reaching forward and giving him a hug, but he held himself so stiffly that it seemed as if he wanted to keep me at a distance.

  ‘It’s a bit early in the day for a fancy-dress party, isn’t it?’ said the boy beside him, grinning like a chipmunk. It wasn’t often that I took an immediate dislike to someone, but here was a cheeky wee pup.

  ‘Shut up, Mark,’ said Jonas, turning on him, but without any aggression in his voice, more a tone of boredom. ‘He’s a priest. That’s how he dresses.’

  ‘For real?’

  We both ignored him.

  ‘Are you hungry, Odran?’ asked Jonas.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’ said his companion.

  Jonas hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure whether he could be bothered or not, but finally shrugged his shoulders. ‘Odran, this is Mark,’ he said. ‘Mark, Odran. My uncle.’

  The boy stifled a laugh. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Why would I be?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mark, looking me up and down. ‘You’re really a priest?’

  ‘I am, yes.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a priest in the family,’ he replied, turning to Jonas. ‘That’s so 1950s. You kept that quiet.’

  ‘I keep a lot of things quiet,’ said Jonas. ‘Anyway, when have I ever talked to you about my family?’

  ‘No, I only meant—’

  ‘Look, there’s Bono,’ I said, pointing towards the Fusiliers’ Arch, and sure enough, there was himself – Himself – trotting out in a pair of red wrap-around shades, raising his hand for a taxi as passers-by rooted in their pockets for their cameraphones. The two boys turned and looked across the road, but a moment later Jonas turned away and checked his watch.

  ‘We should go in,’ he said. ‘Busy day ahead.’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied, hoping that Mark wasn’t planning on joining us for lunch. I saw my nephew so infrequently that I didn’t want to share him.

  ‘Don’t you have somewhere to be?’ asked Jonas.

  ‘I do, yeah,’ said Mark, looking disappointed. ‘Can I call you later?’

  ‘You can do anything you want,’ he replied. ‘My phone might be off this afternoon though. And for much of this evening.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ll have it switched off.’

  Poor Mark swallowed – he was crestfallen, God love him – and looked down at his shoes. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll try you anyway. And sure if I don’t get you I’ll leave you a message and maybe we can do something later on?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jonas, non-committally. ‘Not sure what my plans are at the moment.’

  ‘Well I’m fairly free all night.’

  He looked at Jonas with the expression a puppy might have when it’s hoping its master will dig a hand in his pocket and pull out a treat. There were none to be had here though; Jonas had nothing to offer.

  ‘Well, nice to meet you, Uncle Odran,’ said Mark, nodding in my direction.

  ‘I’m not your uncle,’ I said, smiling right back at him. Take that, I thought, as he turned reluctantly on his heels and left. ‘Will we go inside?’

  The venue hadn’t been my choice, it had been Jonas’s. When I phoned him, he suggested it as it was close to Today FM, where he’d been doing an interview with Ray D’Arcy a half-hour before.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked me as we sat down and ordered two salads, a bottle of Heineken and a mineral water; the beer was mine, I felt I needed something to settle me. On the Luas on the way in, two lads had pushed past me deliberately, each boy hitting one of my shoulders with one of their own. As they walked on, unapologetically, one had coughed and muttered ‘Paedophile’ under his breath. I had said nothing, simply found a seat and watched as the stops went by. But it had upset me.

  ‘I’m grand,’ I said.

  ‘Still doing the parish work?’

  ‘For my sins.’

  ‘No chance you’ll get back to your school?’

  I shook my head. ‘I think that’s a lost cause at this point. The man who took over from me, a priest from Nigeria, has shown an aptitude for rugby and just trained the Senior Cup team. And after last week—’

  ‘What happened last week?’

  ‘Well, we won the Senior Cup, did you not read about it in the paper?’

  Jonas shrugged, disinterested. I suppose this meant nothing to him.

  ‘The point is, after a win like that, the job’s his for life. I’ll never get back in.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘There are other schools
.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m a Terenure boy,’ I told him. ‘And anyway, it’s not my choice. I have to go where the Archbishop sends me.’

  He looked doubtful. ‘I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no suppose about it. That’s just the way it is.’

  ‘I used to know a boy who went to Terenure College,’ he said, looking around the room, catching sight of himself in the mirror and staring at his reflection for a moment before turning back to me. ‘Jason Wicks. Did you know him?’

  I nodded. ‘I knew Jason,’ I said.

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not very well, no.’

  ‘And what about the teacher, what was his name again?’

  ‘Donlan,’ I said. ‘Father Miles Donlan.’

  ‘And did you know him well?’

  ‘I knew him well enough. How did you know Jason?’

  ‘We studied English together at Trinity.’

  ‘Are you still in touch with him?’

  ‘No, he’s in prison.’

  I opened my eyes wide. This was news to me. ‘Prison?’ I said. ‘For what?’

  ‘He held up an off-licence.’

  ‘He did not!’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘But why?’

  Jonas shrugged. ‘For the money, I expect.’

  ‘But sure didn’t his family have lots of money? Wasn’t his father something big in the AIB? I remember he used to be at all the rugby matches, screeching like a banshee at his son. He once hit him a slap after we lost a game and Mr Carroll had to pull him off the boy.’

  ‘His father threw him out long ago. He was into drugs and gambling—’

  ‘His father was?’

  ‘No, Jason.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘It’s true. That Donlan guy really fucked him up. Sorry.’ He waved away the word with an apologetic shrug.

  ‘You blame Father Donlan for what Jason did?’ I asked after a moment, trying to take this news in.

  ‘Of course I do. I remember Jason from First Year in Trinity. He was filled up with anger. And then after the trial, Donlan’s trial, he went off the boil.’

  ‘They’re not …’ I hesitated to ask the question in case it sounded facetious. ‘They’re not in the same prison, are they?’