by John Boyne
“He’s not my father,” I would point out, unable to look any of them in the eye and clenching and unclenching my fists in anger. “He’s my adoptive father.” I had been trained well.
Intrigued by the things that were being said about him, however, I began to scour the newspapers for information and, although they were careful not to publish a libel, it was clear that Charles, like the Archbishop of Dublin, was a man much feared, much admired and much hated. And, of course, there was no shortage of rumors. He was regularly to be found in the company of both the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the ne’er-do-wells of the city. On any given night, he could be discovered throwing ten-pound notes down on the tables of illicit gambling halls. He had murdered his first wife, Emily. (Was there a first wife? I asked once of Maude. Oh yes, now that you mention it, I think there was, she replied.) He had made and lost his fortune thrice over. He was an alcoholic and had cigars sent on a cargo ship from Cuba by Fidel Castro himself. He had six toes on his left foot. He had once had an affair with Princess Margaret. There was an endless supply of stories regarding Charles and there may even have been truth to some of them.
So perhaps it was inevitable that one day the services of Max Woodbead would be required. Things had to be in a bad way for that to happen and even Maude had begun to emerge from her study occasionally to wander around the house muttering dark asides about The Man from the Revenue as if he might be found hiding under the stairs or stealing her emergency supply of cigarettes from the bread bin in the kitchen. On the day that Max showed up, I hadn’t spoken to a single person in eight days. I’d kept note of it in a diary. I hadn’t raised my hand in class, hadn’t said a word to anyone in school, had eaten my meals in perfect silence, which was how Maude preferred it anyway, and generally hid away in my bedroom, wondering what was wrong with me, for even at that tender age I knew that there was something about me that was different and that would be impossible ever to put right.
I would have stayed in my bedroom that day—I was reading Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson—had it not been for the scream. It came from the second floor, where Maude’s study was located, and echoed around the house in such a fashion that I assumed someone was dead. Running out to the landing, I peered over the bannister and saw a little girl of about five in a pale-pink coat standing on the floor below me, her hands pressed to her cheeks as the most horrific sound emerged from her mouth. I had never seen her before and within a few seconds she turned on her heel and ran like an Olympic athlete down the stairs toward the first floor, down once again to the ground floor, along the hallway and out onto the street beyond, slamming the heavy wooden door behind her so hard that the knocker rattled against the plate several times. I went back into my room and looked out the window and there she was, charging into the heart of Dartmouth Square, at which point I lost sight of her. My heart was beating wildly in my chest and I went back out to the landing, hoping for an explanation, but there was no one there and the house had returned to silence.
Disturbed now from my reading, I realized that I was thirsty and made my way downstairs in search of something to drink and to my surprise found another child—a boy of my own age—sitting in a chair in our hallway, a chair that existed for ornamental reasons and was not supposed to be used, turning the pages of a comic.
“Hello,” I said, and he glanced up at me and smiled. He had blond hair and piercing blue eyes that captivated me immediately. Perhaps it was because I had been silent for more than a week that my words tumbled out of me like water overflowing a neglected bath. “My name’s Cyril Avery and I’m seven years old. Charles and Maude are my parents, although they’re not my real parents, they’re my adoptive parents, I’m not sure who my real parents are, but I’ve lived here forever and I have a room on the top floor. No one ever goes up there, except the maid to clean it, so I have things just as I like them. What’s your name anyway?”
“Julian Woodbead,” said Julian. And a moment later I realized that I didn’t feel shy around him at all. And that my stutter had gone.
Julian
There is no denying the privilege in which Julian and I were brought up. Our families had money and status. They moved in elegant circles, with friends who held important positions in government or the arts. We lived in large houses where the menial work was undertaken by middle-aged women who arrived on early-morning buses, making their way from room to room under the weight of dusters, mops and brooms, and who were discouraged from speaking to us.
Our housekeeper was named Brenda, and Maude insisted that she wear slippers around the house as the sound of Brenda’s shoes on the wooden floors disturbed her writing. Her study was the only room in the house that the housekeeper was not permitted to clean, which accounted for the fact that there were always dust mites floating in the air alongside the cigarette smoke, creating a heavy atmosphere that was at its most overpowering in the late afternoon when the sun poured through the windows as it continued its journey westward. While Brenda was a constant of my childhood, Julian’s family employed a series of maids, none of whom lasted more than a year, and whether it was the difficulty of the work or the unkindness of the Woodbeads that drove them away I never knew. But for all that we had, for all the luxury to which we were accustomed, we were both denied love, and this deficiency would be scorched into our future lives like an ill-considered tattoo inscribed on the buttocks after a drunken night out, leading each of us inevitably toward isolation and disaster.
We attended different schools. I walked down to Ranelagh every morning, where I had a place at a small junior preparatory, while Julian was in a similar establishment a few miles north on a quiet street close to St. Stephen’s Green. Neither of us knew where we would be going after sixth class but as Charles and Max had both been Belvedere College boys in their youth—this was where they had met, in fact, becoming friends as stalwarts of the rugby team that had lost to Castleknock College in the final of the 1931 Leinster Schools Cup—we assumed that there was a good chance that we would end up there too. Julian was not as unhappy in the education system as I was but then he was much more of an extrovert by nature and found it easier to fit in with others.
On the afternoon that we met we exchanged only a few pleasantries in the hallway before I invited him upstairs, as children do, to see my room, and he followed me cheerfully and without question to the top of the house. As he stood beside my unmade bed, examining the books on my shelves and the toys that lay scattered on the floor, it occurred to me that he was the first child, other than myself, ever to set foot in there.
“You’re lucky to have so much space,” he said, balancing on the tips of his toes as he looked out the window into the square beyond. “And you have it all to yourself?”
“Yes,” I said, for my domain consisted of three rooms: a bedroom, a small bathroom and a living area, which, I suppose, made it more of a self-contained apartment than anything else, not something that most seven-year-olds could lay claim to. “Charles has the first floor, Maude has the second and we all share the ground.”
“You mean your parents don’t sleep together?” he asked.
“Oh no,” I said. “Why, do yours?”
“Of course they do.”
“But why? Don’t you have enough bedrooms?”
“We have four,” he said. “My bedroom is next door to my sister’s,” he added, pulling a face.
“Was that the little girl who ran screaming from here earlier?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why was she screaming? What upset her?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” said Julian with a shrug. “She’s always becoming hysterical over something. Girls are strange creatures, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know any,” I admitted.
“I know lots. I love girls, even though they’re crazy and mentally unbalanced, according to my father. Have you ever seen a pair of breasts?”
I stared at him in surprise. I was only seven years old; such thoughts had no
t yet occurred to me but even then Julian’s sexually precocious mind was already turning toward women. “No,” I said.
“I have,” he told me proudly. “At a beach on the Algarve last summer. All the girls were going around topless. I got sunburned I stayed out so long. Second-degree burns! I can’t wait to have sex with a girl, can you?”
I frowned. The word was a new one to me. “What’s sex?” I asked.
“You really don’t know?” he asked.
“No,” I said, and he took great delight in describing in detail actions that to me seemed not just unpleasant and unsanitary but possibly criminal.
“Oh that,” I said when he was finished, pretending that I had known all along, for I didn’t want him to look down on me and think me too innocent for his friendship. “I thought you were talking about something else. I know all about that.”
“Do you have any dirty magazines?” he asked me then.
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“I have. I found one in my father’s study. It was full of naked girls. It was an American magazine, of course, because naked girls are still illegal in Ireland.”
“Are they?” I asked, wondering how they bathed if that was the case.
“Yes, the Church doesn’t let girls be naked until they’re married. But the Americans do and they take their clothes off all the time and let their pictures go into magazines and then men go into shops and buy them with copies of History Today or Stamps Monthly so they don’t look like perverts.”
“What’s a pervert?” I asked.
“It’s someone who’s a sex maniac,” he explained.
“Oh.”
“I’m going to be a pervert when I grow up,” he continued.
“So am I,” I said, eager to please. “Perhaps we could be perverts together.”
Even as the words came out of my mouth I could tell there was something not quite right about them and the expression on his face, one of disdain combined with mistrust, embarrassed me.
“I don’t think so,” he said quickly. “That’s not how it works at all. Boys can only be perverts with girls.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed.
“Do you have a big thing?” he asked a few moments later, after picking up all the keepsakes on my desk, examining them and putting them back down again in the wrong places.
“Do I what?” I asked.
“A big thing,” he repeated. “You need a big thing if you want to be a pervert. Shall we see whose is the biggest? I bet mine is.”
My mouth dropped open in surprise and I felt a curious stirring at the pit of my stomach, an entirely new sensation that I couldn’t quite understand but that I felt happy to encourage.
“All right,” I said.
“You first,” said Julian.
“Why me first?”
“Because I said so, that’s why.”
I hesitated but, not wanting him to change his mind and move on to a different game, I undid my belt buckle and pulled my trousers and underwear down to my knees and he leaned forward, an interested expression on his face as he stared at it. “I think that’s what they call average,” he said after a moment. “Although even that might be generous of me.”
“I’m only seven,” I said, feeling offended as I pulled my pants back up.
“I’m only seven too but I’m bigger,” he said, pulling his trousers down now in order to show me, and this time I could feel the room spin a little as I stared at it. I knew there was danger to this, that to be caught would be to invite trouble and disgrace, but the risk excited me. His was definitely bigger and it fascinated me, for it was the first penis outside of my own that I had ever seen and, as he was circumcised and I was not, it intrigued me.
“Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he said, pulling his pants up and refastening his belt without an ounce of self-consciousness.
“The rest of your thing,” I said.
“They cut it off,” he said. “When I was a baby.”
I felt a stab of pain run through me. “Why did they do that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It happens to lots of boys when they’re young. It’s a Jewish thing.”
“Are you Jewish?”
“No, why? Are you?”
“No.”
“Well then.”
“It won’t happen to me,” I said, horrified by the notion of anyone coming at my nether regions with a knife.
“It might. Anyway, have you ever been to France?”
“To France?” I asked, uncertain why he was asking. “No. Why?”
“We’re going there on our summer holidays this year, that’s all.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed that we had moved away from talking about sex, perverts and things, as I would have liked to continue discussing them for a little while longer but he seemed to have grown bored with them now. I wondered if I brought the conversation back to girls whether he might indulge me a little longer.
“Do you just have one sister?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Alice. She’s five.”
“Any brothers?”
He shook his head. “No. You?”
“I’m an only child.” At that age, of course, it didn’t even occur to me that my birth mother might have gone on to have more children. Or that my natural father had most likely sired a brood of them before or since my conception.
“Why do you call your parents Charles and Maude?” he asked.
“They prefer it that way,” I said. “I’m adopted, you see, and it’s to show that I’m not a real Avery.”
He laughed and shook his head and said something that made me laugh: “Bizarro.”
A tap on the door disturbed us and I turned around cautiously, like a character in a scary film that thinks there’s a murderer waiting outside. No one ever visited the top floor except Brenda and even she only dared to enter when I was at school.
“What’s the matter?” asked Julian.
“Nothing.”
“You look nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“I said you look nervous.”
“It’s just that no one ever comes up here,” I said.
I watched as the door handle slowly turned, then took a step back and Julian, infected by my anxiety, moved toward the window. A moment later, a cloud of smoke entered the room followed, inevitably, by Maude. I hadn’t seen her in days and was surprised that her hair was not quite as blonde as usual and she was looking painfully thin. Her recent illness had left her with a weak appetite and she rarely ate anymore. “I can’t keep anything down,” she had told me on the last occasion that we had spoken. “Anything except nicotine, that is.”
“Maude,” I said, surprised to see her there.
“Cyril,” she replied, glancing around, surprised to see another boy in my room. “There you are. But who is this?”
“Julian Woodbead,” said Julian in a confident tone. “My father is Max Woodbead, the famous solicitor.”
He extended a hand and she stared at it for a moment as if baffled by its appearance. “What do you want?” she asked. “Money?”
“No,” said Julian, starting to laugh. “My father says it’s good manners to shake hands upon making a new acquaintance.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, leaning over and examining his fingers. “Is it clean? Have you been to the bathroom lately? Did you wash your hands afterward?”
“It’s perfectly clean, Mrs. Avery,” said Julian.
She sighed, reached out her own hand and shook his for about a tenth of a second. “You have very soft skin,” she said, purring a little. “Little boys generally do, of course. They’re not used to hard work. How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’m seven,” said Julian.
“No, Cyril is seven,” she replied, shaking her head. “I was asking how old you are.”
“Well, I’m seven too,” he said. “We both are.”
> “Both seven,” she said almost in a whisper. “Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence?”
“I don’t think it is really,” he said, considering it. “Everyone in my class at school is seven. And everyone in Cyril’s too, I imagine. There’s probably the same number of seven-year-olds in Dublin as there are people of any age.”
“Perhaps,” replied Maude, unconvinced. “Might I ask what you’re doing in Cyril’s bedroom? Did he know that you were coming? You’re not being unpleasant to him, are you? He does seem to attract bullies.”
“Julian was sitting in the hallway,” I told her. “On the ornamental chair that isn’t supposed to be used.”
“Oh no,” said Maude, appalled. “That was my mother’s.”
“I didn’t damage it,” said Julian.
“My mother was Eveline Hartford,” said Maude, as if this would mean something to one or the other of us. “So as you know, she simply adored chairs.”
“They are terribly useful,” replied Julian, catching my eye and winking at me. “If one wants to sit down, I mean.”
“Well, yes,” said Maude in a distant tone. “I mean that’s what they’re for, isn’t it?”
“But not the ornamental chair,” I pointed out. “You told me never to sit on that one.”
“That’s because you have a habit of collecting dirt,” she said. “Julian, on the other hand, looks rather clean. Did you have a bath this morning?”
“I did, actually,” said Julian. “But then I have a bath most mornings.”
“Good for you. I find it almost impossible to persuade Cyril to wash.”
“That’s not true,” I said, insulted, in part because I was meticulous about my personal hygiene but also because even at that age I hated when people attributed characteristics to me that had no basis in truth.
“I would, however, ask you not to sit in it again if you don’t mind,” continued Maude, ignoring my interruption.