by John Boyne
“Well, I liked it,” said Mrs. Hennessy. “But you’re the author and if you say it’s terrible, then I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it. I must have misunderstood it.”
“You should dismiss the girl who gave it to you,” remarked Maude. “She obviously has very poor taste.”
“Oh no, she’s my right-hand woman,” replied Mrs. Hennessy. “I’d be lost without her. She’s been with me seven years now. In fact, she’s due to take over the management of the tearoom when, as Mr. Avery so rightly pointed out, I retire later in the year.”
“Well, better a tearoom than a library, I suppose,” said Maude. “Now look, are we going to sit here all evening making small talk or are we going to get to the heart of the matter?”
We all looked at her in surprise and I could see Charles open his eyes anxiously, hoping that she wasn’t going to destroy his plans by saying something untoward.
“The heart of the matter being what exactly?” asked Wilbert.
Maude put her cigarette out despite not having another one ready to go, took a long drink from her glass of wine and looked around the table at her guests before settling her expression into one of pure sorrow. “I know I shouldn’t say this,” she began, using a tone I had never heard her employ before, “I know I shouldn’t speak of this issue while we are gathered here enjoying this wonderful meal and this fantastically spirited conversation but I must speak. I must! I need to let you know, lady and gentlemen of the jury, that my husband Charles is entirely innocent of all the things of which he has been accused and—”
“Maude, dear,” said Charles, but she held up a hand to silence him.
“No, Charles, I will have my say. He has been accused in the wrong and I worry that he will be found guilty and taken off to prison and what is to become of us then? My every day, my every moment, is enriched by the love that we share, and as for our son, as for our poor dear Cyril—”
I looked up and swallowed, wishing for all the world that she wouldn’t drag me into this.
“Cyril has taken to coming into our bed every night, bereft, weeping inconsolably, dreading the fate that might lie in store for his beloved father. Twice now he’s soiled the sheets but we don’t hold him accountable, although it’s costing us a fortune in dry-cleaning bills. It’s heartbreaking for a mother to witness such pain in one so young. Particularly now, when he’s so ill.”
All heads turned to me now and my eyebrows raised. Was I ill? I hadn’t realized that I was. It was true that I’d had a bit of a runny nose lately but it was nothing to knock me off my feet.
“I know this is neither here nor there,” continued Maude, “and you all have your own families to think about, but I am just in awe of how brave Cyril has been, dealing with his cancer in such a brave and uncomplaining way while all this unpleasantness has been building around us.”
“Good Lord,” cried Mrs. Hennessy.
“Cancer, is it?” asked Turpin, turning to me in delight.
“Oh,” said Wilbert, sitting back in his seat as if it might be catching.
“Terminal, I’m afraid,” said Maude. “He’ll be lucky if he’s still here by Christmas. Realistically, I think he’s more likely to be gone by Halloween. And if Cyril were to die without his beloved father by his side and I were to be left alone in this house without the two people I cherish the most in the world…” She shook her head and the tears started to flow down her cheeks, drawing pathways through her makeup. Her left hand began to shake but that might have been because it was unaccustomed to going this long without a cigarette resting between the second and third fingers. “Well, I already know what I would do in that eventuality,” she said quietly. “However, I will not say the words aloud for the act itself is a mortal sin but I believe it would be the only recourse open to me.”
There was absolute silence in the room. Charles was a loving family man, Maude was making plans for her own suicide and I only had a few months to live. All of this was news to me. For a moment, I wondered whether any of it might actually be true but then I recalled that I hadn’t been near a doctor in a long time and it was unlikely that such a fatal diagnosis would be made without someone at least taking my temperature or checking my blood pressure.
“No one should be left in such solitude,” said Turpin.
“A man needs to be with his family at such a painful time,” said Masterson.
“Do you need a hug, Cyril?” asked Wilbert.
“What type of cancer do you have?” asked Mrs. Hennessy, turning to me. “Because I have to say you look as if you’re bristling with good health.”
I opened my mouth, trying to conceive an answer. I didn’t know anything about cancer, other than it was a scare word that adults employed to suggest the imminent deaths of friends and enemies alike, and I racked my brain for what might be the best response. Cancer of the fingernails? Of the eyelashes? Of the feet? Was foot cancer even a thing? Or maybe I could appropriate Maude’s own recent illness and claim that I had cancer of the ear canal? Fortunately, I didn’t have to say anything, for before I could select a tumor-ridden body part the doorbell rang and we heard Brenda walking through the hallway to answer it, followed by a roar from whoever was standing on the doorstep and the sound of our housekeeper trying to keep him out of the living room, and then the door burst open and there stood Max Woodbead, his hair askew, his face purple with anger, looking from one of us to the other until his eyes landed on Charles. He glared at him, his eyes wide with fury, but chose not to speak, leaping across the room, toppling him from his chair and punching him with a ferocity that would have made a man half his age proud. And even in the chaos of the moment, I couldn’t help but glance out into the hallway, hoping that Julian might have accompanied him, but there was no one there except Brenda, who was watching the beating taking place with something akin to pleasure on her face.
The Island of Lesbos
“Of all the women in Ireland, you had to fuck the wife of the one man who’s trying to keep you out of prison,” said Maude after the guests had left. She was drinking whiskey with Charles in the front parlor while I eavesdropped from the staircase in the hallway, a toxic fusion of anger, disbelief and exasperation evident in her tone. From my vantage point, I could see my adoptive father pressing a fingertip tenderly to the developing bruise on his cheek, his tongue occasionally flicking out, lizard-like, to investigate the split lip and broken front tooth that had caused the bloodlines on his chin. Clouds of smoke moved aggressively toward him and as he turned his head away he noticed me sitting outside and offered an apologetic wave, four of his fingers dancing despondently in the air like an imprisoned pianist forced to play one of Chopin’s more depressing sonatas from memory. He didn’t seem perturbed by my presence nor did he seem unduly upset by the farcical events of the evening. “Max might have saved you,” continued Maude, raising her voice now. “And more importantly, he might have saved this house. What’s going to happen to us now?”
“There’s really nothing to worry about,” said Charles. “My barrister will take care of everything. If you ignore the spectacular floor show, I felt that the night went rather well.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
“Let’s not descend into name-calling.”
“If we lose Dartmouth Square—”
“That will never happen,” insisted Charles. “Just leave it to Godfrey, all right? You haven’t seen him in action. The jury laps up every word he says.”
“He might have a very different view of you when he hears that you seduced Elizabeth Woodbead. Aren’t he and Max close friends after all?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maude. Whoever heard of a barrister and a solicitor who felt any emotion other than mutual loathing? And Elizabeth didn’t need seducing. If anything, she was the predator when it came to our little affaire de coeur. She pursued me like a lion on the trail of an impala.”
“I find that hard to believe,” said Maude.
“I’m a handsome, powerful man,
with a well-earned reputation in this town as a formidable lover. Women love that sort of thing.”
“What you know about women,” replied Maude, “could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer. For all your great flirtations and seductions, for all your tarts, whores, girlfriends and wives, you’ve really learned nothing about us over the years, have you?”
“What is there to learn?” he asked, possibly just trying to annoy her now that she was pouring scorn on his masculinity. “It’s not as if these are particularly complex creatures that we’re talking about. Unlike dolphins, for example. Or St. Bernard dogs.”
“My God, you’re insufferable.”
“And yet you married me and have remained my steadfast companion and helpmeet throughout the years,” he replied, a rare touch of irritation in his voice. Usually he laughed off any slights that came his way, so assured was he in his superior status, but not tonight. Perhaps he too was becoming nervous about what lay ahead. “The qualities that you claim to find insufferable are the very ones that have kept you with me for ten years.”
“Max will be around at Godfrey’s right now,” she said, choosing to ignore this observation, “telling him the whole story. And if he has a wife of his own, he will most likely take Max’s side.”
“Godfrey doesn’t have a wife,” said Charles, shaking his head. “He’s not the marrying kind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s one of them, isn’t he?” he replied. “A queer. A Nancy-boy. But he’s damn good at his job all the same, despite all that. One thinks that these fellows can only be useful as hairdressers or flower arrangers but I’ve never seen a more dedicated or hard-nosed advocate than Godfrey. He almost never loses, which is why I hired him.”
There was a long silence before Maude spoke again. “Does anyone know?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“About Godfrey. That he’s a friend of Mrs. King’s?”
“It’s an open secret around the law library. Obviously he can’t do anything about it, poor fellow. It is a criminal offense after all.”
“Disgusting,” said Maude.
“What’s disgusting?”
“The idea of it.”
Charles laughed. “Don’t be such a prude,” he said.
“It’s not prudish to know what’s natural and what isn’t.”
“Natural?” asked Charles. “Didn’t you tell me once that you’d developed similar feelings for some girl you knew from one of your literary societies?”
“Nonsense,” said Maude. “You’re fantasizing now.”
“No, I’m not. I remember it distinctly. You told me that you’d had a dream about her where you were picnicking together by a river and the sun was out and she suggested that you both take your clothes off and go for a swim and afterward, as you lay naked on the bank together, you turned to her and—”
“Oh do shut up, Charles,” she snapped.
“Sapphic love,” he said cheerfully.
“Absolutely ridiculous.”
“A trip across the water to the island of Lesbos.”
“You’re making this up,” she said, raising her voice.
“I am not,” he replied. “And you know very well that I’m not.”
“What do dreams mean anyway? They’re just a lot of silly nonsense.”
“Or wish fulfillment. The subconscious representation of our true desires.”
“You’re a fool to say that.”
“I didn’t say it. Sigmund Freud did.”
“Yes, well he also said that the Irish were the one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever. So please don’t try to uncover my inner thoughts. You won’t be able. What are you trying to suggest anyway?”
“Nothing at all, my dear. Only that if I have gone looking for physical affection elsewhere, you can’t really blame me for it, can you? It’s not as if it’s something you’ve shown much interest in since that afternoon at the Gresham all those years ago.”
“If I haven’t, perhaps it’s because I know the kind of man you are. You’ve always had an affinity for deviants, haven’t you? And for peculiar sexual practices. I mean that thing you wanted to do with the tires and the garden hose that time. I still shudder when I think of it.”
“You might have enjoyed it if you’d given it a go. Anyway, I think it’s a little hypocritical of Max to be so outraged. It’s not as if he’s been faithful to Elizabeth himself. The man is even worse than I am. The only difference is that he can’t help but feel jealous, whereas that’s an emotion that holds no interest for me at all. He can stick it wherever he likes, as far as he’s concerned, but God forbid that Elizabeth should seek a little variety.”
“That’s hardly the point,” said Maude. “Elizabeth’s a friend of mine.”
“My dear, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have any friends.”
“An acquaintance then.”
“You’re worrying over nothing, I promise you. Max will wake up tomorrow and feel like an ass for behaving in such a boorish fashion. He’ll be over here first thing in the morning, apologizing before court is even in session.”
“If you think that, then you’re more of a fool than I took you for.”
I couldn’t listen to anymore of the argument and went up to my bedroom at the top of the house, closing the door behind me, and opened my mouth wide as I looked in the mirror, shining a torch into my throat to assure myself that I didn’t actually have cancer. Nothing in there seemed any different from usual.
It was hard to know how the four jurors would respond to the scene they had witnessed. Once the fight had begun, Masterson and Turpin had jumped to their feet to cheer Charles and Max on, like children excited by a playground brawl, shouting advice to the combatants regarding how they should take their man down. Wilbert had taken his glasses off and made a half-hearted attempt to separate the two men, receiving a bloody nose for his troubles that caused him to burst into tears and retire to a corner of the room where he sat with his head in his hands declaring that his mother would not be happy when he returned home. Mrs. Hennessy had risen from the table and left the room with quiet dignity. I had run out after her, wondering whether she was going to call the police, but instead she had simply reached for her hat and coat from the hallstand before turning around and noticing me standing there.
“You shouldn’t have to witness a scene like that, Cyril,” she said, her face filled with concern. From beyond the door, I could hear the sound of chairs being knocked over and Maude asking everyone to be careful of an ornamental cigarette stand that had come all the way from St. Petersburg. “It’s disgraceful that grown men should carry on in that way in front of you.”
“Is Charles going to go to prison?” I asked, and she glanced toward the dining room to ensure that the fight was not about to spill out into the hallway.
“That’s not something that’s been decided yet,” she said, kneeling down before me and brushing the hair away from my forehead, the way adults often do with children. “There are twelve of us on the jury. We need to hear all the evidence before reaching a verdict. I have no idea why Mr. Woodbead invited us here tonight for this elaborate deception. It’s bad enough having to listen to those jackasses every day in the Four Courts without having to dine with them too. The truth is, I only came because he implied that…well, it doesn’t matter what he implied. I’m sure he won’t go through with his threat. I should have simply told him to go ahead and do his worst. Now go on up to bed, there’s a good boy.” She tilted her head a little to the side and smiled, her expression thoughtful now. “It’s the strangest thing,” she said. “You remind me of someone but I can’t think who.” She pondered for a few moments and shrugged. “No,” she said. “It’s gone. Anyway, I better be going. I have to be back in court by nine o’clock in the morning. Goodnight, Cyril.”
And with that she shook my hand, put a sixpence into my palm, and slipped
out into the darkness of Dartmouth Square where, by a stroke of good luck, a taxi happened to be passing. It pulled up and she disappeared into the night while I stood on the doorstep, looked out toward the city and wondered whether anyone would even notice if I went missing.
The Man from the Revenue
The days that followed were a whirlwind of activity and perhaps there was an inevitability to how the case would be concluded. My adoptive father, with the optimism of an author working on the sixth volume of a series that no one seems to be reading, believed that his friendship with Max Woodbead would survive their little contretemps but he could scarcely have been more wrong, and when Max took his revenge some months later, it was swift and directly on target. In the meantime, however, he continued to act as Charles’s solicitor while making it clear that he would behave in a professional manner until the trial was over but after that their relationship would be terminated forever.
Maude and I traveled to the Four Courts together on the final day to hear the verdict and, as I had not been allowed to attend during the trial itself, I was fascinated and a little frightened by the majesty of the Round Hall, where the families of victims and criminals alike mixed in a curious mélange of quarry and miscreant while barristers marched to and fro in black gowns and white wigs, laden down with folders and trailed by anxious-looking juniors. My adoptive mother was seething with rage, for the case had received so much publicity over recent weeks that her latest novel, Amongst Angels, had found its way to the front table of the Hodges Figgis Bookshop on Dawson Street, a location that none of her previous work had ever come close to troubling in the past. Alerted to the fact that morning over breakfast by our housekeeper, Brenda, who had been shopping in town the afternoon before, she extinguished her cigarette in the center of an egg yolk and started to tremble in fury, her face pale with humiliation.
“The vulgarity of it all,” she said. “Popularity. Readers. I can’t bear it. I knew Charles would destroy my career in the end.”
Worse was to come, however, when, shortly after we sat down, a lady seated a few rows behind us approached with a copy of that same book and hovered beside our pew, smiling eagerly as she waited to be acknowledged.