A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

  ‘Ah come on now,’ I said. ‘Will you have a bit of manners at least?’

  ‘I’m tired, Odie,’ he said. Odie. No one in my whole life ever called me that except for Aidan. He’d started it as a baby when he first learned to talk and for some reason couldn’t get his mouth around the word Odran. And so it had become Odie and he’d stuck with it ever since. Had anyone else said it, I would have told them to stop, but out of Aidan’s mouth I found it charming. I wondered whether he liked me more than he admitted.

  ‘Do you sleep at night?’ I asked.

  ‘He won’t go to bed until after midnight,’ said Hannah. ‘And then he won’t get up for school. Is it any wonder that he’s tired?’

  ‘How is school?’ I asked him, ignoring the interruption. I wondered whether we might not get along better if his parents left us alone to talk, but didn’t feel that I had the right to ask them.

  ‘Boring,’ said Aidan.

  ‘This is another matter,’ said Kristian, throwing his hands up. ‘Everything is boring these days. He shows no interest in anything.’

  ‘Why is school boring?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t all your friends in there with you?’

  ‘I don’t care about any of them,’ he said. ‘They’re all idiots.’

  ‘Well who do you play with then?’

  ‘Play with?’ he asked, sneering at me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t play with anyone.’

  ‘Do you play with Jonas?’

  ‘Jonas is an idiot. And he’s boring.’

  ‘You see?’ said Kristian, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what to do with him. I suggested that he come with me to Lillehammer to visit his grandmother for a couple of weeks over the summer, but he refuses to go.’

  ‘It’s boring there,’ said Aidan. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, Odie. You’ve never been.’

  ‘I have, actually,’ I said. ‘I was there when your parents got married. And I had a great time.’

  ‘Have you ever gone back?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well I don’t know what to say to you, Aidan,’ I said, already feeling defeated. ‘You’re just a young lad and you’re behaving like some sort of delinquent, and for no reason at all, as far as I can see. When I was your age, I was full of life.’

  ‘I’m not you.’

  ‘No, you’re not. But I’m just saying. And I didn’t even have all the friends that you have or a happy home to live in. Sure I didn’t make a real friend till I was seventeen, when I met Tom Cardle at the seminary.’

  ‘How is Father Tom?’ asked Hannah, but I waved away the question; we were here to talk about Aidan.

  ‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ said Aidan, jumping up as if he was about to be sick, and I wondered whether this was a ruse on his part to put an end to the conversation.

  ‘Go on so,’ I said.

  But he didn’t go to the bathroom. He went out to the back garden, picked up a handful of stones and one by one broke almost every glass in Kristian’s greenhouse, refusing to stop until we ran outside and his father lifted him off the ground and dragged him back in, kicking and screaming. For no reason that I could discern, the boy had suddenly decided to engage in acts of destruction.

  And that was a good day. It was downhill for a long time after that, until finally he got out altogether and went off to the sites in London. At which point he seemed to leave my life entirely.

  After Jonas and I parted, I made my way down Grafton Street towards Brown Thomas, intending to buy a new pair of gloves. It was the middle of the day and despite everything we heard on the radio about a financial crisis the street was filled with shoppers pushing past each other, impatient to get to where they wanted to go. So much for austerity. Two boys and a girl played guitars and sung an old Luke Kelly number outside Burger King; further along, a string quartet had set up outside a mobile-phone shop and were giving a spirited rendition of Mozart to the considerable crowd that had gathered before them. Outside the entrance to Brown Thomas itself stood one of those gold-painted men on a plinth, completely motionless, staring into oblivion, an upturned trilby placed before him with only a few euros inside. These men confused me. The musicians were at least offering a service; it seemed ungenerous not to reward them for their music. But what did men like this offer? Was I supposed to pay him to stand around stock-still? Why exactly? And where did he get dressed into his gaudy outfit, paint his face, gild his hands? Did he travel home on the bus like this or board the Luas in all his finery? If he rubbed up against someone would they turn gold too?

  Another costumed man stood at the entrance to Brown Thomas, but this one opened the door for me with an indifferent ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ despite the presence of my collar. I have noticed over time how people have become less certain how to address a priest, as if they’re embarrassed to say Father or are somehow frightened by the word. Inside the store, a few people glanced in my direction and two of the girls behind the make-up counters exchanged a look and a smirk which made me feel self-conscious.

  It had been an age since I’d last set foot inside Brown Thomas. It was all glass and white staircases, mirrors everywhere. I could remember when it was Switzer’s and Mam would take Hannah and me to see the Christmas window and we would stand in line for the terrifying encounter with Santa Claus in his dark, elf-filled grotto. Now a woman stood provocatively in the centre of an aisle, holding a bottle of perfume in one hand, the other poised over its top as if she was preparing to unleash a grenade, and sure enough, as I watched her, she attacked several unsuspecting shoppers with her spray.

  ‘The men’s department?’ I asked a passing sales assistant.

  ‘Down the stairs over there,’ she said, pointing towards the corner of the floor and marching away without missing a beat. I made my way across and descended the steps only to be confronted by more glass and mirrors, and a floor that was divided into confusing sections, each one wrapped inside others like a Russian doll. The heads of a few young men folding shirts and jeans turned to look at me. I approached one of them cautiously.

  ‘I was looking for a pair of gloves,’ I said.

  ‘Whose?’ he asked me.

  ‘Come again?’ I said.

  ‘Whose gloves?’ he repeated.

  I stared at him. ‘Well, yours at the moment, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Or the store’s. But I want to buy some. So then they’ll be mine.’

  He sighed as if life was simply too much for him. ‘Hugo Boss?’ he said. ‘Calvin Klein? Tom Ford? Ted—?’

  I interrupted; it seemed as if he might go on all day. ‘Just a nice pair of black gloves,’ I told him. ‘No fur on the inside. And nothing too expensive either. I don’t mind who made them.’

  He turned and led me towards the centre of the floor where a range of gloves, clearly priced, were displayed neatly on a table. I saw the ones I wanted immediately and picked them up. ‘These, I think,’ I said, trying them on. A perfect fit. I looked at the price tag. Two hundred and twenty euros. ‘That can’t be right,’ I said, pointing at the ticket.

  ‘It is,’ he said. ‘You’re in luck. They’re on sale.’

  I laughed. ‘Are you joking me? You know there’s a recession, don’t you?’

  ‘Not in Brown Thomas there isn’t, sir.’

  ‘Still,’ I said, shaking my head at the price. Sure who would pay that for a pair of gloves when you’d most likely forget them on the 14 bus some day?

  ‘They’re marked down from three hundred,’ he explained. ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Almost too good to wear.’

  ‘Yes, but I want to wear them, do you see,’ I told him. ‘That’s what gloves are for. You don’t have anything cheaper, do you?’

  ‘Cheaper?’ he asked; it was as if I had just uttered an obscenity in the middle of a funeral. ‘We have some of last season’s,’ he said. ‘They range from one hundred and fifty up.’

  I laughed and shook my head. ‘Would I be better off acros
s the road, do you think?’ I asked. ‘In Marks & Spencer?’

  He smiled; maybe he wasn’t trying to make a laugh of me after all. ‘They do have a more economical range,’ he said. ‘But they won’t last you as long. It might be a … what’s the word?’

  ‘A false economy?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Sure I’ll go across and have a look anyway,’ I told him. ‘And if I don’t see anything I like, I’ll come back to you.’

  He nodded, turning away, disinterested now, and I made my way back up the stairs towards the exit, which is when I saw him. A small boy, no more than about five years of age, standing in the centre of the floor with a frightened expression on his face and no one there to look after him. His lower lip was trembling and I guessed that he was deciding whether or not it was worth his while crying or whether he should give it another minute yet before he gave into his emotions. I looked around, uncertain what to do. I assumed that his mother would appear at any moment, but when she didn’t, the tears began to fall and he put his hands to his cheeks to wipe them away.

  Now I ask you, what could I do but go over to him?

  ‘Are you all right, son?’ I asked, leaning down. ‘You’re not lost, are you?’

  He looked up at me, relieved, but perhaps a little frightened too. He swallowed, then nodded.

  ‘Is your mammy not with you? Or your daddy?’

  ‘I’m with my mum,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘But I can’t find her.’

  ‘Is she here in the shop? Will we take a look for her?’

  He shook his head and pointed out through the glass door of the side exit, the one that looks on to Weir’s the jewellers. ‘She went out,’ he said. ‘She left me here.’

  ‘Ah now she wouldn’t have left you on your own,’ I said. ‘Did she think you were behind her, was that it?’

  He shook his head and pointed out on to the street again. I looked around, baffled, certain that his mother would surely appear at any moment, but no one was running around in desperate search of a child. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

  ‘Kyle,’ he said.

  ‘And what age are you, Kyle?’

  ‘Five,’ he said. Spot on.

  ‘And is it just you and your mammy, or do you have brothers and sisters with you?’

  ‘My sister’s in school,’ he said.

  ‘All right. Sure we’ll take a look around and see if we can find your mam, will we?’

  I reached down to take his hand, but he shook his head and pointed at the door again. ‘She went out,’ he said. He was insistent. ‘She went out on the street.’

  And here’s where I made my mistake, you see. I should have taken him over to one of the girls by the nail-polish counters and asked whether there was someone who might put an announcement out over the loudspeaker, to ask whether there was a woman in the shop who’d lost a little boy. I should have gone over to one of the security guards who were standing around in all their pomposity. I should have asked to speak to the manager. But I did none of these things. I didn’t think as I should have done. I took him at his word, I trusted the word of a confused five-year-old child and decided that perhaps he was right, perhaps his mother really had gone out on to Wicklow Street, believing that the little lad was behind her, and by now she was up along the turn on to Georges Street and looking round in a blind panic, wondering where her son was.

  ‘Well, come on so,’ I said, taking him by the hand – my second mistake – and leading him towards the door. My third: I pushed it open and out we went, hit immediately by the cold of the day as the door to the department store swung closed behind us.

  ‘Which way do you think she went?’ I asked him. ‘Left or right?’

  He looked around – perhaps he didn’t know which was which – and pointed down past the International Bar in the direction of the Central Hotel.

  ‘Come on so,’ I repeated, still keeping a tight hold of his hand as we walked along. ‘We’ll have a wander and see whether we can find her.’

  Up ahead, I could see a Garda standing outside the tea shop and resolved that if I had not found Kyle’s mother before I reached him, then I would surrender the boy to the authorities and wait with them until she was located.

  And so there we were, wandering along Wicklow Street, a middle-aged priest holding the hand of a five-year-old boy as he was taken away from the place where he’d been discovered. Was I stupid or what? Could I not think? Did I not have a brain inside my head?

  ‘Will you have an ice-cream?’ I asked as we passed a newsagent’s shop because the boy’s tears had started again by now. ‘Would that make you feel better?’

  But the little lad didn’t have a chance to answer, because that was when I heard the shouting and a great commotion behind me, and I turned to see every head on the street looking in my direction as a woman ran like an Olympian towards us, screaming at me to take my filthy fuckin’ hands off her son, and before I knew it the boy was snatched from my grip by one man while another pulled me away and punched me in the face, and that was it for the next ten minutes or so – the lights went out.

  When I recovered my senses, I found myself seated in the back of a Garda car driving past the front arch of Trinity College towards Pearse Street, where we stopped opposite what used to be the Metropole cinema.

  In we went and the officers behind the desk barely looked up as my Garda – I shall call him my Garda for he was the one who had picked me up from the street and summoned a car to take me away from the braying mob who were out for my blood – took me into a cold, white-bricked room and said that he’d be back in a moment and did I have a phone on me, and if I did, would I give it over to him.

  ‘I have this old thing,’ I said, handing across a Nokia that I had bought a few years before and which served my purposes well enough, even though Jonas had laughed when he saw it earlier in the day and told me to make sure I left it to the National Museum in my will.

  ‘I’ll take care of it for now,’ he said, pocketing it and leaving the room, and through my upset I found time to wonder what right he had to do that.

  I sat there, alone, and felt a tender swelling beginning to emerge on my cheek where the man had punched me, and considered my situation. Of course I had been foolish. What must it have looked like? And sure didn’t everyone think that we were all the same? Out to steal a child and do terrible things to him. I put my face in my hands, aware that this could turn out very badly indeed.

  The Garda, my Garda, came back in with a notepad and pen and pressed the red button on a tape recorder.

  ‘Name?’ he asked. No introductions. No manners.

  ‘Garda, I need the bathroom,’ I said, for the Heineken was working its way through me. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘Name?’ he repeated.

  ‘This is a misunderstanding,’ I began. ‘I was only—’

  ‘Name?’ he repeated, staring at me with cold eyes.

  ‘Yates,’ I said quietly, looking down at the table top. ‘Father Odran Yates.’

  ‘Spell that, would you?’

  I spelled it.

  ‘Do you need medical attention, Mr Yates?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘And it’s Father Yates.’ I touched my collar. ‘Father Yates.’

  He made a note of something. ‘You know why you’re here?’ he asked.

  ‘The boy was lost,’ I said. ‘He said his mother had gone out on to Wicklow Street. I was trying to help him find her.’

  ‘You abducted him from Brown Thomas, is that right?’

  I stared at him, unable to find words for a moment; I could feel my stomach twisting a little and feared that I might be sick. ‘I didn’t abduct him,’ I said quietly, trying to remain calm in the face of what I knew was an impossible situation. ‘I did no such a thing. I was trying to help him find his mother, that’s all. The poor lad was lost.’

  ‘His mother says that she was only a few feet away, looking at handbags.’

 
‘If she was, I didn’t see her.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to bring the boy to store security?’

  ‘I didn’t. I should have. He was upset. He was crying.’

  ‘Are you known to us, Mr Yates?’

  He hated me. He despised everything about me. He wanted to hurt me.

  ‘Am I known to you?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Do you have any past criminal activity?’

  ‘I do not!’ I cried, appalled.

  ‘Any history with minors?’

  ‘I’ve never done anything wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m a good man.’

  ‘We have records,’ he told me. ‘I can go out right now and look it up. If there’s something you’re not telling me, you’re better off just saying it.’

  ‘Go look up anything you want,’ I snapped, growing angry now at the injustice of it all. ‘I was trying to help the boy, that’s all. I didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ he said with a sigh. ‘You never do, do you?’

  I swallowed. Had something happened to him once and he was taking it out on me?

  ‘Garda, the bathroom, please.’

  ‘Have you been drinking, Mr Yates?’

  ‘I had a Heineken with my lunch. I met my nephew.’

  He looked up quickly. ‘And where is he? How old is he?’

  ‘How should I know where he is? He’s a grown man. He’s twenty-six. He went his way after lunch and I went mine.’

  ‘How many drinks did you have?’

  ‘Just the one.’

  ‘We can check, you know.’

  ‘What was she doing looking at handbags?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think she was doing?’ said the Garda, my Garda. ‘It’s a shop. She was shopping.’

  ‘And why wasn’t she looking after her boy? Kyle is only five.’

  ‘Kyle?’ said the Garda, looking up from his notepad. ‘You got his name then?’

  ‘Of course I got his name,’ I said, wondering what harm there was to that. ‘I asked him his name just as you asked me for mine. The only difference being that I called him by the name he gave me.’

  ‘You told him you would buy him an ice-cream?’ he asked me. ‘Is that right?’