A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

  I felt an inexplicable burst of sadness for a boy I had only known for a few days thirty years ago. ‘That’s awful,’ I said. ‘He couldn’t have been very old.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. He was only in his early forties.’

  ‘Did he ever marry?’

  ‘Twice. Badly, both times.’

  I sighed. ‘And your children,’ I said. ‘Morten and Astrid.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Nothing. It was nice to meet them, that’s all.’

  He nodded and took a long swallow from his pint before glancing up at a television screen in the corner of the bar that was showing a football match. He watched for a moment before frowning and looking back down at the table, running a fingernail along a groove at the side.

  ‘I suppose I should have written,’ I said finally. ‘Maybe that would have been a better way to go about things.’

  ‘I expected you months ago,’ he replied, surprising me.

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Jonas told me that you asked for my address. I expected you that same week.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d welcome me,’ I said. ‘It’s been years since we saw each other, after all. And so much has happened in the meantime.’

  ‘To me, yes. I’d say your life hasn’t changed at all, has it?’

  I looked away. Was this a deliberate cruelty on his part? Or merely a statement with no hidden meaning? He was right though. With the exception of the fact that I was in parish work now and not in Terenure, my life had hardly altered since he was a child.

  ‘I’m going to order another one,’ I said, catching the waiter’s eye, who pulled two more pints and brought them over.

  ‘Steady on now,’ said Aidan. ‘We only just got here.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve eaten. And tonight I feel like I need a few drinks.’

  We clinked glasses.

  ‘Sláinte,’ I said.

  ‘Skål,’ he replied.

  A silence descended on us then and for a time I thought we might never break it.

  ‘Did you see the Grand Hotel?’ he asked me eventually.

  ‘On the square?’ I asked. ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize stays there every December for the ceremony,’ he said. ‘Marthe and I always come for the weekend and stay there too. It’s where we met, you see. In the bar of that hotel. Mohamed ElBaradei from the International Atomic Energy Association won that year. It was the day after the ceremony and he was just relaxing, I suppose, having a drink, but Marthe asked me would I use her camera to take a picture of the two of them together and I did, and then I asked her to do the same for me, and ElBaradei was in such good form that he bought us both a drink and Marthe and I were so delighted that we just kept talking after he left. We’ve been together ever since.’

  ‘And you go every year?’

  He looked down at his fingers and started ticking off names and I imagined that this was a game that he and Marthe played together every December, the difficulty increasing every year as another name was added to the list. ‘It was Yunus the following year,’ he said. ‘Then Al Gore, then a Finnish guy whose name I can never remember, then Barack Obama, but we weren’t allowed into the hotel then because of all the security, then—’

  ‘Aidan,’ I said quietly, placing a hand down flat on the table and closing my eyes.

  He stopped speaking and shook his head. ‘There’s no point getting into it,’ he said.

  ‘There is, of course. That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘Did you know all along?’ he asked, looking me directly in the eyes.

  ‘You won’t believe me if I tell you. You’ll think I’m lying.’

  ‘If you tell me, then I’ll believe you.’

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘As God is my witness, it never crossed my mind. It was only a couple of months ago when I understood what had happened. I was watching The Late Late Show and there was a woman on with her son, a lawyer who works with the victims of abuse. They were talking about his childhood and about the man who hurt him, the things that he’d done. It made for terrible listening, Aidan, terrible listening. But then your man, the host, turns to the mother and asks her did she never notice any changes in her son, was there never a point when she thought there might be something wrong? And she said that she had, but that she had put it down to his age. She said that he’d always been a happy-go-lucky sort of lad, one of those boys who lit up a room with his energy, that he’d been like that since he could first talk. And then one day, she said, he just changed. In the blink of an eye. He went from being full of beans to being full of anger. And I was sitting there watching her, Aidan, and I remember that I was drinking a mug of tea at the time because I dropped it, it was still nearly full and scalding hot, and I felt a surge inside me and the room began to spin and I thought that I was dying. Honestly, I thought I was having a heart attack or a stroke. I dragged myself off the seat and pulled at my collar but I couldn’t loosen it. It was tied fast around my neck. And I could hear myself struggling for breath and when it didn’t come I fell on to the sofa and I suppose I must have passed out for a few minutes, but then one of the other priests in the presbytery came running in and he whipped the collar off me and gave me some water. He wanted me to go to the doctor, but I said no, I’d be grand in a while, and I went to my room instead. And I sat there on the side of my bed and I thought of you, Aidan, I thought of how you had been as a little lad, with your singing and your tap-dancing and all the jokes you used to tell, and then I thought of how you changed, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and I remembered that night, the night of my mother’s funeral—’

  ‘Stop. Please. Stop,’ he said. I looked across at him. His eyes were closed and his face was pale. I took my handkerchief out, for I could feel the tears streaming down my face.

  ‘It was then, wasn’t it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Was it just the once?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you tell me about it?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘I didn’t know, Aidan,’ I said, leaning forward. ‘I swear on all that I hold sacred that I didn’t know. If I had known that Tom was like that I never would have—’

  ‘Please don’t say his name,’ said Aidan. ‘I don’t say his name.’

  I felt my stomach convulse inside me, a disgust for everything that I had spent my life believing in. And hatred, pure hatred, for my oldest friend. ‘I am overwhelmed by guilt and shame,’ I told him finally and he looked across at me now, an expression of near-forgiveness on his face.

  ‘You don’t have to be,’ he said. ‘You didn’t do anything.’

  ‘I left him there alone with you.’

  ‘You weren’t to know what he would do.’

  ‘But I was your uncle,’ I said, feeling the weight of all that this poor boy had borne. ‘I should have looked out for you. I should have protected you.’

  He shrugged. ‘Did you never guess?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  He shook his head. ‘Did you never guess?’ he repeated.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe. I’m not attacking you, Odran, but I have to be honest with you. I find that really hard to believe.’

  ‘Do you think that if I’d guessed what he was like I would have left him alone with you?’

  ‘You might have been afraid to challenge him.’

  ‘This is why you’ve hated me for so long, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘Why you keep yourself so distant from me? You blame me for what happened.’

  ‘No, I blame him,’ he said. ‘But yes, you brought him into our house. You left him alone with me. I understand that you feel guilt about that and that you can’t be held responsible for another man’s actions, but this has been a long road for me, a twenty-year road. The damage that man did to me in one night is damage that I will take to the grave with me. So it’s not easy to forget your part in it.’<
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  I nodded. I put both hands to my cheeks and slowly wiped them dry. ‘I can’t blame you for feeling that way,’ I said. ‘And you’re right in what you say. I did bring him into your house. And I did leave him alone with you. You were my nephew and I should never have let anything bad happen to you. I have nothing to say to you, Aidan, other than that I am sorry and that it is the greatest regret of my life. I’m sorry,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know you are.’

  A look passed between us then, a moment of tenderness, and I knew then that he did not want to be angry with me any longer, but that it would be impossible for him to bury the pain entirely or to forgive me completely. But there was hope for us, perhaps.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said after a moment.

  ‘You can ask.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you testify in the trial?’

  He shrugged. ‘No one ever asked me.’

  ‘But you must have read about it. You must have been aware that it was going on. Or were you? And if you were, why didn’t you go to the Gardaí too?’

  He considered this. ‘I heard about it, yes,’ he admitted. ‘And perhaps I should have. It’s difficult to explain. I’ve learned to deal with this in my own way. I’ve seen counsellors, on and off. They don’t do much for me, to be honest. But there’s Marthe, she helps. I’ve found my own way to move past it. Did I want to come back to Ireland and re-live it in a courtroom? No. Perhaps that was wrong of me, but no, I didn’t. I knew there were enough people testifying to ensure that he would go to jail, but I also knew that I could not stand in a courtroom with that person. If I did, we wouldn’t both leave it alive. I have a son, Odran. I have a daughter. I made a choice. On the days when the trial was taking place I was in Lillehammer with them. I took some time off. I spent my days with them, just the three of us. I took them out on a boat. I walked them around the Maihaugen until they complained about how tired they were. Marthe and I took them on a train journey to Stockholm and had the best four days of our lives. To go back to Dublin and immerse myself in that cauldron, or to be here with my family and to love and to be loved? There was no contest.’

  I nodded. ‘And you wouldn’t come back now that it’s all over?’

  ‘To live, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shook his head. ‘I would never live in that country again,’ he said. ‘Ireland is rotten. Rotten to the core. I’m sorry, but you priests destroyed it.’

  I had no response to this. Could I tell him that he was wrong? Was I even sure that he was?

  ‘Jonas knows all about this, doesn’t he?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I told him a long time ago.’

  ‘But nothing happened to him that night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about your mother? Did you ever tell her?’

  He shook his head. ‘I never did. But I think she knew.’

  ‘I think she did too,’ I said, recalling something she had said on the day that Jonas and I had driven her to the Chartwell.

  ‘Will you let me back in your life?’ I asked him, afraid of the answer. And at that moment, the team on the television must have scored a winning goal for a great roar went up from the crowd. Aidan looked around and joined in the cheers.

  ‘Aidan,’ I said when he turned back. ‘Will you let me back in your life?’ I repeated.

  He swallowed and took a deep breath before closing his eyes. I said nothing; I waited. It felt like an eternity. Finally he opened them and stopped a passing waitress.

  ‘I’ll have another beer,’ he told her.

  ‘And your friend?’ she asked.

  ‘Actually, he’s my uncle,’ he said. ‘And yes, he’ll have one too. And you might bring us a menu while you’re at it. We’re going to have dinner together.’

  She nodded and I looked down at the table; it was a little while before I felt able to look up again.

  ‘Tell me about your children,’ I said finally. ‘Tell me everything about them.’

  And with that his face lit up and I saw again the boy that he had once been, the boy so full of life and joy and love. He was still in there somewhere, hidden behind the pain. And all it took to reveal himself again was the mention of that little boy and girl who were north in Lillehammer, probably curled up on the sofa as their mother read them a book and the dogs snorted in their sleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  2013

  I HEARD A rumour that Father Mouki Ngezo was returning to Nigeria and made an appointment to see the Archbishop – the new Archbishop – to ask whether I might finally be allowed to return to Terenure College.

  It was my first trip to the Episcopal Palace since his appointment and quite a few changes had been made in the intervening time. Gone were the symbols of old-world luxury, all replaced by a business-like modernity. The drinks cabinet had been taken away; in its place was a table that looked as if it belonged in a modern art gallery, with a widescreen computer monitor on top. Father Lomas, who used to sit in the outside office waiting on Archbishop Cordington hand and foot, had vanished altogether. Now there were two desks on either side of the room, complete with a communications system that wouldn’t have looked out of place in NASA. At one sat a young man in a suit with a shaved head and stubble who introduced himself as the Archbishop’s personal assistant. At the other was a woman who might have stepped right off a catwalk; the diocese’s new media adviser, I was told.

  ‘What happened to Father Lomas?’ I asked her.

  ‘James has been reassigned,’ she told me. ‘We’re trying to mobilize our resources more productively.’

  ‘Right so,’ I said.

  I was told to wait in a chair that didn’t seem to be a chair at all and she forced a cappuccino on me. As I waited, she took part in occasional calls through an earpiece while waving her hands in the air as if she was conducting an orchestra.

  ‘Are you on Twitter?’ she asked me.

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Are you on Twitter?’ she repeated. ‘I can’t find your name. Or are you using a different one?’

  ‘I’m not, no,’ I told her, trying not to laugh. ‘Sure what would I have to be twittering about? No one’s interested in what I ate for breakfast.’

  ‘It’s a common misconception that that’s what Twitter is for,’ she replied, rolling her eyes.

  ‘My nephew told me to make a Facebook page, but I never got around to it.’

  ‘Well why would you?’ she asked. ‘It’s not 2010.’

  Fortunately for me, one of the lights on her desk flashed on before she could quiz me any further and she nodded towards the door. ‘He’s ready for you,’ she said. ‘Ten minutes, all right? I need him for Today FM at half past.’

  I said nothing; sure I wasn’t the man’s secretary. This would take as long as it took.

  ‘Father Yates,’ said the Archbishop when I entered, shaking my hand and pointing to a chair on the left-hand side of his desk, its back to the room but positioned so whoever was sitting there was at a right-angle to him. I’d seen this somewhere before but couldn’t think where. It seemed awkward somehow. ‘Good of you to make the time to come to see me.’

  We exchanged a few pleasantries but, aware that herself would be in to evict me in eight and a half minutes’ time, I cut to the chase and told him why I was there. I wanted to go home, I said. I wanted to go back to my school.

  ‘I think you’re exactly where we need you,’ he replied, shaking his head and smiling at me in a way that suggested he couldn’t think why I was asking such a thing. ‘From all accounts you’re doing a great job in that parish. Father Burton speaks very highly of you. Why would you want to go back to that school anyway? All those kids? They’d wear you out, I’d say. I had to attend an event at Blackrock not so long ago and I thought I’d pass out with the stink of all those lads. Do they never wash, no? Teenagers, I suppose.’

  ‘Attendance at Sunday Mass is down,’ I told him, prepared to condem
n myself if it meant that I could get what I wanted. ‘The collection plates are half empty. We have no altar boys any more, although of course that was a decision that was taken from this office.’

  ‘It’s safer without,’ he said quietly.

  ‘All told, Your Grace, I don’t think I’ve done an exemplary job.’

  ‘You can’t be blamed for most of that,’ he said. ‘We live in difficult times, do we not? Very difficult times. This last decade has been an awful one for the Church. But it’s up to men like you and I to rebuild things. Going forward,’ he added with a smile.

  The Oval Office. That’s where I’d seen chairs placed like this. The president put his visitors at this ridiculous angle. I suppose it reminded them where the real power lay.

  ‘When Cardinal Cordington first asked me to take over the parish,’ I said, ‘he promised that it would only be a temporary thing.’

  ‘Promised, did he?’ he asked, looking at me with a peeved expression, as if my level of disrespect was not something that he would be willing to tolerate for too long.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, staring right back at him. ‘He promised.’

  ‘Well, sometimes we cannot stick to our promises.’

  ‘Sure don’t I know that well enough. Vows are broken left, right and centre, as far as I can see. Only the thing is that I’ve been out there for six years now and I’ve had enough of it. Father Ngezo is going back to Nigeria, or so I’ve heard anyway, which means there’s an opening for a chaplain at the school and I’d like to take it.’ I tried a more conciliatory tone. ‘Look, Your Grace, I’m not getting any younger. I’m nearly sixty. I want to live out my days there. It suits me, do you see? I put a lot of work into that library. And I always got on well with the lads.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father Yates,’ he said – none of this Odran or Father Odran nonsense for him – ‘only I have a very able young man in mind to take over from Father Ngezo when he leaves. I’ve promised that he can start in the autumn and he’s looking forward to it. He’s good friends with Colin Farrell, the actor, apparently. They went to school together. We might be able to get him in to give a talk to the boys.’