by John Boyne
It only took about an hour for someone to identify him. A junior Garda, tasked with bringing cups of tea to the residents of the drunk tank, took one look at the Minister’s fat, sweaty face, recognized him from the evening news and went outside to inform his sergeant who, no fan of the government of the day, made a couple of discreet phone calls to a journalist friend of his. By the time he had been processed, bailed and released, the scrum had formed outside and he emerged into the daylight to a barrage of questions, accusations and the endless click-clack of camera shutters.
When I arrived at the department the following morning, the media were parked outside on Marlborough Street and I made my way up to the office to find Miss Joyce, Miss Ambrosia and Mr. Denby-Denby at the heart of the drama.
“There you are, Mr. Avery,” said Miss Joyce as I put my bag down. “What kept you until this time?”
“It’s only just gone nine,” I said, glancing up at the clock. “Why, what’s happened?”
“Have you not heard?”
I shook my head and Miss Joyce did her best to explain, using every euphemism known to man to avoid saying the necessary words, but the more flustered she grew, the less sense she made and finally Mr. Denby-Denby threw his hands in the air in frustration and stepped in to make things clear.
“The Garda knocked on the window of his car,” he said, raising his voice so there could be no confusion over what had taken place, “and found the pair of them inside with their trousers around their ankles and the boy with the Minister’s cock in his mouth. There’ll be no way out of this one for him. It’s going to make a hell of a splash. No pun intended.”
I opened my mouth wide in a mixture of disbelief and amusement, and perhaps it was unfortunate that it was still open in the shape of an O when the Minister himself walked in, pale, perspiring and petulant. He pointed a finger at me and let out a roar.
“You!” he said. “What’s your name again?”
“Avery,” I told him. “Cyril Avery.”
“Are you trying to be funny, Avery?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry, sir.”
“Because I’ll tell you this, I’ve had enough jokes for one morning and I’m likely to punch the nose off the next man who makes any kind of crack. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, looking down at my shoes and trying not to laugh.
“Miss Joyce,” he said, turning to our supposed leader. “Where are we on this now? Have you put anything out yet? We have to get in front of this thing before it spirals out of control.”
“I’ve drafted something,” she said, reaching for a piece of paper on her desk. “But I wasn’t sure what line you wanted to take. And Miss Ambrosia has finished your wife’s statement.”
“Read it to me,” he said.
Miss Ambrosia stood up and cleared her throat, as if she was preparing for an audition, and read aloud from her notebook.
“The Minister and I have been married for more than thirty years and in all that time I have never had any occasion to question his loyalty, his deeply felt Catholicism or his abiding love for women. The Minister has always been in thrall to the female form.”
“Ah for Christ’s sake,” he said, storming over to the window, noticing the gathered crowd below on the street and stepping away again before they could spot him. “You can’t say that, you stupid bitch. You make me sound like I’m a philanderer. Like I can’t keep it in my pants.”
“Well, you can’t,” said Mr. Denby-Denby. “And don’t call Miss Ambrosia names, do you hear me? I won’t put up with it.”
“Shut up, you,” said the Minister.
“In all that time,” continued Miss Ambrosia, editing herself as she read, “I have never had occasion to question his loyalty or his manhood.”
“Jesus, that’s even worse. Do you even know what a manhood is? I’d say you do by the cut of you.”
“Well, that’s a bit rich,” said Miss Ambrosia, sitting down again. “At least I don’t blow little boys in motorcars.”
“I didn’t blow anyone!” he roared. “If anyone was getting blown it was me. Although, of course, it wasn’t me anyway, as it never happened.”
“That’s a great quote,” said Mr. Denby-Denby. “We should definitely put that into the press release. I don’t blow teenage boys. They blow me.”
“Is there anyone around here who can write?” asked the Minister, looking from one of us to the other and ignoring this last remark. “This is supposed to be the Department of Education, isn’t it? Does anyone in here actually have one?”
“Minister,” said Miss Joyce, using the tone she always employed when she was trying to calm a situation. I suspected it had been used many times over the decades that she had worked there. “Tell us what you want us to do and we will do it. That’s our job, after all. But we need you to provide guidance. That, after all, is your job.”
“Right,” he said, momentarily appeased and sitting down at the table in the center of the room before standing up again like a man with a bad case of piles. “First things first. I want the Garda who arrested me to be arrested and fired immediately from the force. No appeals, no holidays owing, no pension. Get on to Lenihan in Justice and tell him I want it done before lunchtime.”
“But on what charge?” she asked.
“The unlawful detainment of a cabinet minister,” he said, his face red now with fury. “And I want everyone who works in Pearse Street Garda Station to be put on suspension until we find out who leaked it to the press.”
“Minister, the Minister for Justice doesn’t answer to the Minister for Education,” she said quietly. “You can’t tell him to do anything.”
“Brian will do whatever I ask him to do. We go back a long way, the pair of us. He’ll stand by me, no problem.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she said. “In fact, the first communication I received this morning was from my opposite number in Justice who made it clear that Mr. Lenihan would not be available to take any of your calls.”
“That bloody bastard!” he shouted, knocking a file off my desk and sending about three hundred pages of departmental memos flying across the floor. “Then you’re to go over there and do it in person, do you hear me? Tell him that I have enough dirt to bury him if he doesn’t do as I ask.”
“I can’t do that, sir,” she insisted. “It’s against all protocol. And as a member of the civil service I certainly cannot be party to any suggestions of blackmail from one cabinet member to another.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your bloody protocol, do you hear me? You’ll do what I tell you or you’ll be gone by the end of the day too. And this is the line that I want put out there: the boy in the car was simply the son of an old friend who had fallen on some difficult times. I ran into him by chance, offered him a lift home and pulled over onto Winetavern Street to discuss the possibility of his getting a job here as a waiter in Leinster House. While we were talking, he dropped his cigarette, it fell to the floor and he simply bent over to retrieve it before the whole car could go up in flames. If anything, he was performing a heroic action and should be commended for it.”
“And as he did so,” said Mr. Denby-Denby, “your belt fell open, your trousers fell down, his did too, and somehow your cock landed halfway down his throat. Makes perfect sense. I can’t see how anyone would question an explanation like that.”
“You. Out,” said the Minister, pointing at Mr. Denby-Denby and clicking his fingers. “Get out, do you hear me? You’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me,” replied Mr. Denby-Denby, standing up with great dignity and folding his newspaper under his arm. “I’m a civil servant. I’m here for life, God help me. But I’ll go for a cup of tea and a slice and leave you to figure out how to get away with it, because I honestly can’t be bothered to listen to anymore of this nonsense. But let’s face it, lovey, of the two of us I’m the only one who’ll still have a job at the end of the day.”
The Minister watched him leave and I
thought there was a chance that he might leap on top of him and bash his head against the floor but he had been struck speechless. I guessed that it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him in this fashion. Miss Ambrosia and I looked at each other and we couldn’t help it, we bit our lips, trying not to laugh out loud.
“One word from either of you,” said the Minister, pointing at us now, and we scampered back behind our desks and kept our heads down.
“Minister,” said Miss Joyce calmly, ushering him back toward the table at the center of the room. “We can issue any press release that you like, we can say anything that you want us to say, but the key thing right now is that you come across to the electorate as contrite and don’t make yourself seem anymore ridiculous than you already have. It’s your political advisor who should be telling you this anyway, not me.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said, astonished by her impudence.
“You heard me, sir. No one is going to believe the preposterous tale that you just told. No one with any brains in their head anyway, so I suppose some of your colleagues might fall for it. But I promise you the Taoiseach will have you horsewhipped out of the chamber if you even try to take that line in there. And is that what you want? To ruin your political career forever? The public will forgive and forget, in time, but Mr. Lemass never will. If you’re to have any hope of a comeback in the future, then the trick is to go now before you’re pushed. Believe me, you’ll thank me for this in the long run.”
“Listen to you,” he said, his voice filled with contempt. “You think you can say anything you want to me now, don’t you? You think you know it all.”
“I don’t know it all, Minister, no,” she said. “But I know enough not to pay for oral sex with an underage and probably deeply disadvantaged boy on a public street in the middle of the night. I know that much at least.” She stood up and returned to her own desk, looking back at him as if she was surprised that he was still there. “Now, if there’s nothing else, Minister, I suggest you get yourself over to the Taoiseach’s office before another minute has passed. We’re busy here. We have to prepare for the arrival of your successor later today.”
He looked around in dismay, his face white, his nose pulsating red, and perhaps he knew then that the jig was up. Out he went and a few minutes later Mr. Denby-Denby returned with a cream slice and a cup of coffee. “Who do you think we’ll get next?” he asked, the events of the last hour already just a footnote for his memoirs. “It won’t be Haughey, will it? That man gives me the willies. He always looks like he’s just come back from burying bodies up the Dublin mountains.”
“Mr. Avery,” said Miss Joyce, ignoring him and turning to me. “Would you mind going over to Leinster House and keeping an eye on developments for me? If you hear anything, give me a call. I’ll be at my desk all day.”
“Yes, Miss Joyce,” I said, gathering up my coat and bag, happy at first to be able to head over to the Dáil, where the real action would be found. However, after my initial amusement, I found myself in two minds as I made my way down O’Connell Street and around the walls of Trinity College. On one hand I had never liked the Minister, who had always treated me with utter disdain, but on the other, I knew as well as anyone how difficult it must have been for him to keep his true proclivities to himself. How long had he been lying to his wife, to his friends and family, to himself? He was well into his sixties, so that meant an entire lifetime.
In Leinster House, the TDs and their advisors were gathered on every corridor and in every alcove, whispering away, gossiping like fishwives. Everywhere I turned, I could hear people using words like faggot, shirt-lifter and dirty queer. The atmosphere was one of vicious animosity, with each man disassociating themselves from their colleague by making clear that they had never been friends with a pervert like that in the first place and that they had been planning on putting his name forward for deselection at the next election anyway. Making my way down a corridor where portraits of William T. Cosgrave, Éamon de Valera and John Costello looked down at me with sanctimonious contempt, I saw the Taoiseach’s Press Officer marching toward me, incandescent with rage after what had presumably been a morning spent fending off the media. He passed me by before stopping and turning around and looking directly at me.
“You,” he said, snarling at me. “I know you, don’t I?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, even though we’d met on at least a dozen occasions.
“Yes, I do. You’re from the Department of Education, aren’t you? Avery, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, sir,” I said.
“Where’s himself? Is he with you?”
“He’s back at Marlborough Street,” I said, presuming that he meant the Minister.
“With his trousers down around his ankles, I suppose?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “At least they were around his waist when I saw him an hour ago. They could be anywhere now, I suppose.”
“Are you trying to be funny, Avery?” he asked, leaning so close to me that I could smell the stale cigarette smoke and whiskey on his breath and a rancid stink of cheese and onion crisps. A group had gathered to watch us, sensing a potential drama. This is a great day, their expressions read. Lots going on! “Would you look at the cut of you anyway,” he continued. “What kind of coat is that you’re wearing? What color is it, pink?”
“It’s maroon, actually,” I said. “I got it at Clerys. It was half price in the sales.”
“Oh you got it at Clerys, did you?” looking around at the spectators for encouragement as he grinned at them to show me up.
“I did, yes,” I said.
“I suppose he hired you himself, did he? The Minister? An interview on his sofa with the door locked? The pair of you playing hide the sausage?”
“No, sir,” I said, growing red at the insinuation. “I got the job through a contact of mine. My adoptive father’s third and now-estranged wife. She used to work here and—”
“Your what?”
“My adoptive—”
“You’re one too, aren’t you?” he asked. “I can always tell.”
“One of what, sir?” I asked, frowning.
“A dirty queer. Just like your boss.”
I swallowed hard and looked around at the forty or so people watching us now, parliamentary secretaries, TDs, ministers and then, stopping as he passed to see what the commotion was, the Taoiseach himself, Seán Lemass. “No, sir,” I whispered. “Actually, I have a girlfriend. Mary-Margaret Muffet. She works on the foreign exchange desk at the Bank of Ireland, College Green, and goes to Switzer’s café every morning for a cup of tea.”
“Sure even Oscar Wilde had a wife. They all do so no one will suspect. It must be high jinks all the time at the Department of Education, is it? Do you know what I’d do with all the queers if I could catch them? I’d do what Hitler did. You can say what you like about the man but he had a few good ideas. Round them up, arrest them, then gas the lot of them.”
I could feel a mixture of anger and humiliation forming at the pit of my stomach. “That’s a terrible thing to say,” I said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Oh should I?”
“Yes. You should.”
“Ah go fuck yourself.”
“You go fuck yourself,” I shouted, unwilling to take anymore of his abuse. “And clean your teeth, for God’s sake, if you’re going to stand this close to someone, you fat old bollix. I’m about to pass out with the stench of your breath.”
“What did you just say?” asked the Press Officer, staring at me in astonishment.
“I said,” I replied, raising my voice now, encouraged by what I thought was the approval of the crowd. “Clean your teeth if you’re going to—”
I didn’t reach the end of my sentence, having been felled by one swift punch to the head, and years of anger built up inside me as I picked myself up, my right hand clenching into a fist as I swung at him. He moved just in time, however, and rather than c
onnecting with his chin, which had been my intended target, my knuckles smashed against a pillar behind me and I let out a yelp of pain. As I massaged them and spun around for a second try, he hit me again, just above my right eye, and I could see money starting to change hands among the TDs.
“I’ll give you three to one on the young lad,” said one.
“Ten to one would be more fair. Sure look at him, he’s already almost out for the count.”
“Get away from him!” came a voice out of nowhere, a woman’s voice, as the manageress from the tearoom appeared, parting the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. “What’s going on here?” she cried with all the authority of someone who had been there longer than any of them and who knew she’d be there long after they were all voted out of office. “You, Charles Haughey,” she said, pointing to the Minister of Agriculture, who was standing on the sidelines, a pound note hovering in the air that he quickly returned to his wallet. “What are you all doing to this poor boy?”
“Don’t be worrying, Mrs. Goggin,” purred Haughey, stepping forward and placing a hand on her arm that she quickly shook off. “It’s only a bit of high spirits, that’s all.”
“High spirits?” she asked, raising her voice. “Look at him! There’s blood pouring from his eyebrow. And here, in the seat of parliamentary democracy. Have you no shame, any of you?”
“Calm yourself, dear lady,” said Haughey.
“I’ll calm myself when you and your thugs get off this corridor, do you hear me? Go on now or I swear to God that I’ll call the Gardaí on the lot of you.”
I looked up and saw the smile fade from Haughey’s face. He looked as if he wanted to do to her what the Press Officer had done to me but then he closed his eyes for a moment, waited until he had control of his temper, and when he opened them again he was perfectly composed.