by John Boyne
Maude:
“I really can’t remember. It might have been a Wednesday, if that’s any use to you. Or possibly a Thursday.”
When My Enemies Pursue Me
The relationship between my adoptive parents simply wasn’t engaged enough for them to generate the kind of passion required for an argument, which meant that Dartmouth Square was for the most part a harmonious place to live. In fact, the only serious fight I ever witnessed between them took place on the night the jurors came to dinner, a plan so ill-advised in its conception that it baffles me to this day.
It was one of those rare evenings when Charles returned home early from work. I had just left the kitchen with a glass of milk in my hand and was astonished to see him walking through the door, his tie not loosened around his neck, his hair not disheveled upon his head, his gait not unsteady, a series of nots that suggested something terrible had taken place.
“Charles,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” he replied. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
I glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the hallway and, as if it was in cahoots with me, it struck six o’clock with half a dozen long and echoing chimes. As we waited for it to finish, Charles and I stayed exactly where we were, not saying a word, although we smiled awkwardly and acknowledged each other’s presence with the occasional nod of the head. Finally, the ringing came to an end.
“It’s just that you never come home at this hour,” I said, picking up where I’d left off. “You realize that it’s still daylight out and the pubs are still open?”
“Don’t be cheeky,” he said.
“I’m not being cheeky,” I told him. “I’m concerned, that’s all.”
“Oh. In that case, thank you. Your concern is noted. You know, it’s remarkable how much easier it is to unlock the door when it’s bright outside,” he added. “Usually I’m stuck on the porch for a few minutes at least before I can get in. I always thought it was a problem with the key but perhaps it was me all along.”
“Charles,” I said, putting my glass down on an occasional table and walking toward him. “You’re completely sober, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Cyril,” he replied. “I haven’t had a drink all day.”
“But why? Are you ill?”
“I have been known to get through the day without lubrication, you know. I’m not a complete alcoholic.”
“Not a complete one, no,” I said. “But you are quite good at it.”
He smiled and for a moment I thought I saw something approaching tenderness in his eyes. “It’s kind of you to care,” he said. “But I’m perfectly fine.”
I wasn’t so sure. In recent weeks, his usual exuberance had diminished noticeably and I often passed his study to find him seated behind his desk with a faraway expression on his face, as if he couldn’t quite understand how things had got this far. He had bought a copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Hodges Figgis and could be found engrossed in it at every spare moment, showing more interest in Solzhenitsyn’s novel than he ever had in any of Maude’s, even Like to the Lark, which she had practically disowned when sales figures soared toward triple figures. That he was comparing his own trials to that of a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp says something of his sense of personal injustice. Of course, he’d never expected his case to go all the way to trial, assuming that a man in his position and with his wide network of influential contacts would be able to prevent such an injustice taking place. And even when it became clear that there was nothing he could do to stop the trial going ahead, he was certain that he would be found innocent of any wrongdoing, despite his obvious guilt. Prison, he believed, was something that happened to other people.
Max Woodbead was a regular visitor to Dartmouth Square during those weeks, and Charles and he would veer from drunken caterwauling to the singing of old Belvedere College songs—Only in God is found safety when my enemies pursue me / Only in God is found glory when I am found meek and lowly—to roaring at each other in furious rages, storms that echoed around the house and caused even Maude to open the door of her study and stare out in bewilderment as she escaped the festering twilight of her writing room.
“Is that you, Brenda?” she asked me on one of those occasions when, for some forgotten reason, I was found loitering around the second floor.
“No, it’s me, Cyril,” I said.
“Oh, Cyril, yes,” she said. “Of course, the child. What on earth is going on downstairs? Has there been a break-in?”
“Mr. Woodbead is here,” I said. “He came over to discuss the case with Charles. I think they might be raiding the drinks cabinet.”
“It’s no good, of course. He’s going to jail. Everyone knows it. All the whiskey in the world won’t change that.”
“And what will become of us?” I asked anxiously. I was only seven years old; I wasn’t prepared for a life on the streets.
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “I have a little money of my own.”
“But what about me?” I asked.
“Why must they be so loud?” she asked, ignoring my question. “Really, it’s too much. How is a person supposed to get any work done? By the way, since you’re here, can you think of another word for fluorescent?” she asked.
“Glowing?” I suggested. “Luminous? Incandescent?”
“Incandescent, that’s the one,” she said. “You’re a clever boy for eleven, aren’t you?”
“I’m seven,” I told her, struck once again by the question of whether my adoptive parents even realized that I was a child and not some sort of small adult who had been foisted upon them.
“Well then. Even more impressive,” she said, closing the door behind her and returning to her smoke-filled cave.
The case were the two words that echoed around our home throughout most of 1952. They were never far from any of our minds and always on the tip of Charles’s tongue. He seemed to be genuinely insulted that he was being made to suffer such public indignity and hated seeing his name in the papers for any reason other than a celebratory one. Indeed, when the Evening Press published an article stating that his wealth had been much exaggerated over the years and that should he lose and face not only a period of imprisonment but a hefty pecuniary punishment he would most likely go bankrupt and be forced to sell the house on Dartmouth Square, he spiraled into a blustering hurricano of rage, like King Lear in the badlands, calling forth to the winds and the cataracts and the all-shaking thunder to drench the steeples, drown the cocks and singe his fine head of dark hair until the thick rotundity o’ the world had been struck flat. Max, instructed to issue legal proceedings against the newspaper, wisely ignored the directive.
The dinner party was arranged for a Thursday night, four evenings into a trial that was expected to last two weeks. Max had selected a single juror whom he believed to be particularly susceptible to influence and run into him accidentally on purpose as he walked along Aston Quay one night, inviting him into a pub for a drink. While there, Max informed the man, one Denis Wilbert of Dorset Street, who taught mathematics, Latin and geography at a school near Clanbrassil Street, that the close relationship he had formed with twelve-year-old Conor Llewellyn, his star pupil who received top marks in every examination despite the emptiness of his deeply attractive head, was one that could be misconstrued by both the newspapers and the Gardaí alike and that if he didn’t want this information to appear in the public domain he might want to give serious thought to his verdict in Department of Finance v. Avery.
“And of course,” he added, “anything you can do to persuade the other jurors would be most welcome too.”
With one in his pocket he hired his favorite disgraced Garda to gather dirt on the rest of the panel. To his disappointment, former Superintendent Lavery came back with precious little. Three had secrets, he was told: one man had been accused of exposing himself to a girl on the Milltown Road but the charges had been dismissed as the girl had been a Protestant; one ha
d a subscription with an agency in Paris who sent him a selection of postcards every month featuring naked women wearing jodhpurs; and a third (one of only two female jurors) had given birth to a child outside of marriage and failed to inform her employers, who would undoubtedly have sacked her as they were the supposed guardians of public morality: the parliament of Ireland, Dáil Éireann.
Rather than track each person down and make veiled threats to expose their secrets, Max did something far more gentlemanly: he invited them to dinner. Using Mr. Wilbert, the pedophile teacher, as his middleman, he made it clear that should they refuse the invitation, the information that he had gathered on them would be leaked to the papers. What he didn’t mention, of course, was that he would neither be the host of the dinner nor a guest around the table; instead, that honor would fall to the man in the dock, my adoptive father, Charles Avery.
Charles invited me and Maude into his study that evening, shortly before the guests arrived, and we settled into the wing-backed armchairs that stood opposite his desk while he laid out his plans for the night ahead.
“The most important thing,” he told us, “is that we put on a united front. We need to give the impression that we are a happy, loving family.”
“We are a happy, loving family,” said Maude, sounding offended by any suggestion to the contrary.
“That’s the spirit,” said Charles. “As much as it won’t be in any of their interests to bring in a guilty verdict, we need to soothe their consciences by making them believe that tearing the three of us apart would be a reprehensible act akin to introducing divorce in Ireland.”
“Who are they anyway?” asked Maude, lighting a fresh cigarette as the one she was smoking was coming perilously close to the end. “Are they our sort of people?”
“I’m afraid not,” replied Charles. “A teacher, a dockworker, a bus driver and a woman who works in the tearoom at Dáil Éireann.”
“Good Lord,” she said. “They let anyone on to juries these days, don’t they?”
“I think that’s always been the case, my love.”
“But was it really necessary to invite them into our home?” she asked. “Could we not have simply taken them out for a meal in town? There are any number of restaurants that people of that type would never get the chance to enjoy.”
“Darling,” replied Charles, smiling. “O sweet-natured wife of mine, remember this dinner is a secret. If it were to get out, well, there would naturally be a lot of trouble over it. No one must know.”
“Of course, but they sound so mundane,” said Maude, rubbing her arm as if a cold wind had just entered the room. “Will they have washed?”
“They seem clean in court,” said Charles. “Actually, they make a real effort. Best suits and so on. As if they’re going to Mass.”
Maude opened her mouth in horror. “Are they papists?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” said Charles in exasperation. “Does it matter?”
“As long as they don’t want to pray before we eat,” she muttered, looking around the study, a room in the house that she almost never entered. “Oh look,” she said, pointing at a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations that was lying on a side table. “I have that same edition upstairs. How funny.”
“Now, Cyril,” said my adoptive father, turning to me. “Strict house rules are in play tonight, understand? Only speak when you’re spoken to. Don’t make jokes. Don’t break wind. Look at me with as much adoration in your eyes as you can possibly muster. I left a list of things that we do as father and son on your bed. Did you memorize it?”
“I did,” I said.
“Repeat them back to me.”
“We fish the great lakes of Connemara together. We attend GAA matches in Croke Park. We have an ongoing game of chess where we only make one move per day. We braid each other’s hair.”
“I told you, no jokes.”
“Sorry.”
“And don’t call us ‘Charles’ and ‘Maude,’ all right? For tonight, you must address us as ‘Father’ and ‘Mother.’ It will sound peculiar to our guests if you say anything else.”
I frowned. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to say those words anymore than a different child might be able to bring themselves to call their parents by their Christian names.
“I’ll try my best…Father,” I said.
“You don’t need to start now,” instructed Charles. “Wait until the guests have arrived.”
“Yes, Charles,” I said.
“You’re not a real Avery, after all.”
“What exactly is the point of all this anyway?” asked Maude. “Why must we debase ourselves for these people?”
“So that I can stay out of prison, sweet one,” replied Charles cheerfully. “We must flatter and cajole and if all else fails I will take them in here one by one later in the evening and write them each a check. Either way, I intend to end this evening confident in a verdict of not guilty.”
“Will Mr. Woodbead be coming to dinner?” I asked, and Charles shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If it all goes tits-up, he can’t afford to be seen to have had anything to do with this.”
“Charles, your language, please,” said Maude with a sigh.
“So Julian won’t be coming either?” I asked.
“Who is Julian?” asked Charles.
“Mr. Woodbead’s son.”
“Why on earth would he?”
I looked down at the carpet and felt my heart sink. I had only seen Julian on one other occasion since his initial visit and that was almost a month before, when we had got on even better than we had the first time, although, to my great disappointment, an opportunity had not presented itself for either of us to pull our pants down and expose ourselves to each other. I had been intoxicated by the notion of a friendship with him and the fact that he seemed to enjoy my company too was such a startling concept that it had started to dominate my thoughts. But of course we were not schooled together and therefore we were unlikely to meet again unless Max brought him to Dartmouth Square. It was a source of the deepest frustration to me.
“I just thought he might,” I said.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Charles. “I had thought about inviting a bunch of seven-year-olds to dinner but then I remembered that tonight was really rather important and our future happiness might depend on the outcome.”
“So he’s not coming?” I said, just to clarify.
“No,” said Charles. “He’s not.”
“So Elizabeth won’t be coming either?” asked Maude.
“Elizabeth?” asked Charles, sitting upright as if startled, his face flushing a little.
“Max’s wife.”
“I didn’t know that you knew Elizabeth.”
“I don’t. Not very well anyway. But we’ve met at a couple of charity events. She’s rather lovely in an obvious sort of way.”
“No, Elizabeth won’t be coming,” said Charles, looking down at the desk again and drumming his fingers on his ink blotter.
“Just the working-class people,” said Maude.
“Yes, just them.”
“What fun.”
“It’s only for a few hours, my darling. I’m sure you can get through it.”
“Will they understand which knives and forks to use?” she asked.
“Oh for pity’s sake,” said Charles, shaking his head. “They’re not animals. What do you think they’re going to do? Stab the beef with a toothpick, hold it in the air and start chewing around the sides?”
“Are we having beef?” she asked. “I was rather in the mood for fish tonight.”
“There’s a fish starter,” said Charles.
“Scallops,” I said. “I saw them in the kitchen.”