by John Boyne
“He has sex with different people constantly,” I whined a few weeks before the wedding as we sat in Doyle’s on College Green, both of us a little excited from having watched Robert Redford and Paul Newman alternate between T-shirts, tuxedos and slicked-back hair for two hours in The Sting. I was in one of those moods where my resentment at her brother’s sexual prowess and unyielding heterosexuality put me in the mood to belittle him. “He basically does it with anyone he wants, which is really disgusting when you think about it. But is he actually happy?”
“Are you kidding me, Cyril?” Alice replied, amused by the absurdity of my question. “I’d say he’s ecstatic. Wouldn’t you be?”
I knew she was teasing me but I didn’t laugh. Sex hovered around the edges of our lives like an anxious guest at a party. It was obvious that sooner or later one of us would have to bite the bullet and go over to say hello. I just didn’t particularly want it to be me.
“Did I mention,” she said, not quite looking me in the eye, “that Max and Samantha are going to London next weekend?”
“No,” I said. Samantha was Max’s second wife. Much like my own adoptive father, who that year was engaged to the woman who would become, albeit briefly, the fourth Mrs. Avery, Alice’s father had obtained a divorce from Elizabeth in the UK on the grounds of unreasonable behavior. In fairness to him, he had cited his own unreasonable behavior in the suit, not hers, for after all the most unreasonable thing that she’d ever done, aside from her brief affair with Charles, was stay with the bastard. Shortly after the decree nisi had come through, Max had married an aspiring actress who bore an uncanny and deeply disturbing resemblance to Alice herself. This was a subject that was absolutely off limits, although I was often keen to ask Julian whether he noticed the likeness and, if so, what he made of it.
“We should go to London sometime,” she continued.
“I daresay we’ll have plenty of holidays to look forward to after we’re married,” I said. “We could go to Spain someday. That’s very popular. Or Portugal.”
“Portugal?” she said, raising an eyebrow in mock-excitement. “Do you really think so? I never imagined I could be the kind of girl who would grow up and get to go to Portugal!”
“All right then, America,” I said, laughing. “Or Australia. Anything’s possible. We’d have to save for an awfully long time if we wanted to go that far but—”
“It’s hard to believe that I’m twenty-six years old and have never set foot outside Ireland.”
“Well, I’m twenty-eight,” I pointed out, “and neither have I. What are they doing in London anyway?”
“Oh, Samantha has a meeting with Ken Russell.”
“Who’s Ken Russell?”
“Film director. You know, The Devils. Women in Love. Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestling with their bits hanging out.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “It’s all soft porn, isn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose it depends on how old you are,” she said. “For our parents’ generation, yes, it probably is. For us, they’re art films.”
“I wonder what our children will call them,” I said. “Quaint but terribly passé, I suppose.”
“Children?” she said, looking across at me hopefully. “It’s funny we’ve never talked about children, isn’t it? Considering we’re getting married in a few weeks’ time.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I said, and for the first time in my life it occurred to me that I had never given any thought whatsoever to the idea of being a father. I paused to think about it and found that the idea quite appealed to me. Perhaps I had never allowed myself to consider it before because I knew how impossible it would be.
“Would you like to have a family, Cyril?” she asked me.
“Well, yes,” I said. “Yes, I think I probably would. I’d quite like to have a daughter. Or many daughters.”
“Like a gentleman from a Jane Austen novel. You could settle a thousand pounds and a hundred acres in Hertfordshire on each one after your death.”
“And if they quarreled, their punishment would be an afternoon in the company of the local Miss Bates.”
“I think I’d prefer a son,” said Alice, looking away, and I noticed her eyes drift to an incredibly handsome young man who had just walked into the pub. Her eyes lingered over his body as he leaned over the bar, glancing at the beer pumps as he made his choice. She swallowed suddenly and for the first time I saw real lust in her eyes. I didn’t blame her—I would have climbed over the dead bodies of my closest friends to get to him myself—but when she looked back the smile she wore was one of resignation, as if she wanted that but had to settle for this, and this wasn’t even much good to her so far in the department that really mattered. I felt a stab of guilt and found myself locked into pained silence. Suddenly, the Austen jokes seemed absurd and embarrassing.
“What were we talking about?” she asked eventually, her train of thought having not only derailed but jumped the tracks entirely, driven over a cliff and crashed one hundred feet into a ravine below, killing everyone on board.
“Children,” I said. “You’d like a little boy. I’d like a little girl.”
I may not have known much about pregnancies but I knew that you couldn’t have a son or a daughter without actually doing it first. The priests at school had once muttered something to the effect that when a mummy and a daddy loved each other very much, they lay close together and the Holy Spirit descended upon them to create the miracle of new life. (Charles, in his one attempt at a man-to-man talk with me, had put it rather differently. “Get her kit off,” he said. “Play with her tits a bit, because the ladies love that. Then just stick your cock in her pussy and ram it in and out a bit. Don’t hang around too long in there—it’s not a bloody train station. Just do your business and get on with your day.” It’s no wonder he managed to secure so many wives, the old romantic.)
I tried to imagine what it would be like to undress Alice, for her to undress me, for us to be lying in a bed together, naked. For her to look down at my penis and stroke it or suck it and then guide it inside her.
“What’s wrong?” asked Alice.
“Nothing, why?”
“You’ve gone a funny color. You look like you’re about to be sick.”
“Do I?”
“Seriously, Cyril. You’re practically green.”
“I am a little lightheaded, now you mention it,” I said, reaching for my pint.
“Then you probably shouldn’t drink that. Would you like some water?”
“Yes, I’ll get some.”
“No,” she practically shouted, standing up and pushing me back into my seat. “No, I’ll get it.”
She made her way over to the bar and I followed her with my eyes, wondering why she was so keen, and then I saw that the young man was still there and as she took her place at the bar next to him, she began throwing him oblique glances. The barman was busy and they stood patiently, side by side, for a few moments until he leaned over and said something to her and she gave a quick reply. Whatever she had said, he burst out laughing, and I knew that this wasn’t just flirting on his part. Alice had a quick wit; it was one of the things I loved about her the most.
And yes, I did love her. In my way. In my own selfish and cowardly way.
I watched as they talked, and then the barman approached, took their orders and they talked about something else. He must have asked whether she was there alone, because she shook her head and nodded in my direction and when he saw me sitting there, waiting for her to return, he looked disappointed. When he turned back to Alice, I was able to focus on his face, for they were staring so intently at each other that they were utterly oblivious to me. The young man was not only extremely good-looking but there was warmth in his expression too. I knew nothing of him but I believed that he would treat the girl he loved with gentleness and affection. A moment later, she came back with my glass of water, sat down and I pretended that I hadn’t observed anything of their exchange.
“There was something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said suddenly, looking a little irritated now, a flush of color in her cheeks. “And I’m just going to spit it out since it doesn’t feel as if you’re going to take the lead no matter how much I hint. The reason I mentioned that Max and Samantha are going to London next weekend is because the house will therefore be empty. I think you should come over, Cyril. Come for dinner, we’ll drink a couple of Max’s best wines and, you know, go to bed together.”
I said nothing but felt as if a great weight was being wrapped around my entire body, such as the good burghers of Amsterdam were wont to do during the seventeenth century when they tied millstones around the necks of convicted homosexuals before throwing them into the canals and leaving them to drown.
“Right,” I said. “I see. Interesting idea.”
“Look, I know how religious you are,” she said. “But we’re going to be married soon, after all.”
Of course, I wasn’t religious at all. I cared nothing for it and, aside from occasionally thinking that Jesus With Long Hair And A Beard was rather hot, I never gave any thought to an afterlife or the matter of mankind’s creation. This was a deception—yet another—that I had propagated since Alice and I had first started dating and I had used it from our first date as an excuse to stop me from having to go to bed with her. The downside of this arrangement was that in order to appear consistent I had to go to Mass every Sunday morning. Fearing that she might pull a Mary-Margaret and follow me unawares—unlikely, given their very different dispositions, but nevertheless a possibility—I regularly attended eleven-thirty Mass at Westland Row, the same church where fourteen years earlier I had killed a priest by confessing my perversions to him. I never sat on that side of the church, of course. I had done so once, seen the broken tile that hadn’t been mended since his fall, and it still gave me the creeps. Instead, I took my place near the back and generally had a little snooze until some old woman gave me a punch in the arm to wake me up, staring at me as if I alone was responsible for the downfall of Western Civilization.
“I don’t know,” I said after a lengthy pause. “I want to, I really do. But you know what the Pope says—”
“I don’t care what the Pope says,” snapped Alice. “I have no interest in fucking the Pope.”
“Jesus, Alice!” I said, giggling a little at her choice of words. I might not have been religious but that sounded a little iniquitous, even to me.
“No, not him either. Look, Cyril, let’s call a spade a spade. We’re getting married soon. And all going well we’ll have a very happy, very successful marriage over the next fifty years or so. That’s what I want anyway, isn’t it what you want?”
“Yes, of course it is,” I said.
“Because,” she added, lowering her voice a little, “if you have any doubts, any doubts at all, there’s still time for you to say so.”
“But I don’t have any doubts, Alice,” I said.
“The last thing I need is to get another phone call when I’m already in my dress. You understand that, Cyril, don’t you? I don’t know how I survived what Fergus did to me. I’m telling you right now that I couldn’t go through that twice. It would be the end of me.”
I stared at her, uncertain where all this had come from. Had she been thinking this for sometime? Did she suspect something? By the bar, I saw the handsome young man finishing his pint and reaching for his jacket.
Now is your chance, I told myself. Tell her the truth. Trust her to understand, to forgive your deceit, to be your friend, to help you and love you still. And then tell her that we can discuss it some other time but right now she needs to go over to the bar and give that man her phone number before it’s too late.
“Cyril?” said Alice, sounding suddenly concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”
“You’re crying.”
“I’m not crying,” I said, but when I reached a hand to my cheeks, to my astonishment they were wet and the tears were rolling from my eyes. I hadn’t even noticed. I wiped them away with my handkerchief and tried to pull myself together.
“Alice,” I said, looking at her more intently than I had ever looked at anyone in my life as I reached forward to take her hand.
“Why were you crying?”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were!”
“I don’t know. I must have a cold. Alice—”
“What?” she asked nervously. “Tell me, Cyril. Whatever it is, just tell me. I promise that it will be all right.”
“Will it though?” I said, looking directly at her.
“You’re frightening me now.”
“I’m sorry, Alice. This is all my fault.”
“What’s your fault? Cyril, what have you done?”
“It’s what I haven’t done. What I haven’t said.”
“Why, what haven’t you said? Cyril, you can tell me anything, I promise. You look so unhappy right now. Nothing can be that bad, surely?”
I looked down at the table and she remained silent, waiting for me to speak. “If I tell you,” I said eventually, “then you’ll hate me. And I don’t want you to hate me.”
“But I could never hate you! I love you!”
“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I said.
She sat up, her face growing darker now. “Is there someone else?” she asked. “Have you been seeing someone else?”
“No,” I said, even though I had. Just not in public. “It’s not that.”
“Then what? Jesus, Cyril, just tell me!”
“All right,” I said. “The thing is, ever since I was a boy…”
“Yes?”
“Ever since I was a boy, I’ve known that—”
“Excuse me.”
We both looked up and standing over us was the handsome young man from the bar. I thought he’d left but, no, he was simply standing there with a wide smile on his face, looking slightly embarrassed.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said.
“What?” asked Alice, looking up at him irritably. “What is it?”
“It’s just…look, I wouldn’t normally do this type of thing,” he said. “Only I thought there was a bit of a connection between us back there. I wondered whether you might give me your phone number, that’s all. If you didn’t mind. Maybe I could take you out some night?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Are you joking me?” she asked.
“No,” he said, frowning. “Sorry, did I get the wrong idea? Only it seemed as if—”
“I’m sitting here with my fiancé,” she said, turning to me. “Can’t you see that? Do you normally ask girls out when they’re sitting with their fiancés? Are you that sure of yourself?”
“Oh,” he said, turning and looking at me in shock. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t think…actually, I assumed you were brother and sister.”
“Why on earth would you assume that?” asked Alice.
“I don’t know,” he said, completely flustered now. “Something about the way you were both sitting. The way you were looking at each other. I didn’t think you were together together.”
“Well, we are. And that’s an incredibly rude thing to say.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry. I apologize to you both.”
And with that he turned around and made his way out of the bar as Alice watched after him, shaking her head. Go after him, I should have said. Go after him before he disappears forever!
“Can you believe that?” she asked, turning back to me.
“It was a mistake,” I said. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t punch him.”
I stared at her. “Did you want me to? I’m not really the punching type.”
“No, of course not. Only…oh I don’t know what I’m saying. This evening is going all wrong. Let’s forget that ever happened and just tell me whatever you were going to tell me.”
“I can’t even remember
now,” I lied, wishing I could just leave.
“Of course you can. You said that ever since you were a little boy—”
“Ever since I was a little boy I wasn’t sure that I could ever make someone happy,” I said quickly, dismissing the entire thing. “That’s all. It sounds stupid, all right? Can we just leave it at that?”
“But you make me happy all the time,” she said.
“Do I?”
“I wouldn’t be marrying you if you didn’t.”
“Right,” I said.
“But look, while we’re being honest with each other, there’s something I want to tell you too. And I’m just going to spit it out, OK?”
“OK,” I said, feeling utterly miserable.
“The thing is, I think we should have sex. With each other. Before we get married. Just to be sure.”
“Be sure about what?”
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“You can ask me anything.”
“Will you tell me the truth?”
I wondered whether she noticed my hesitation. “Of course,” I said.
“Have you ever been with a woman, Cyril?”
I knew that I could be honest with her about this at least.
“No,” I said, looking down at the table and rubbing my finger against some invisible mark imprinted into the wood. “No, I haven’t.”
“I thought not,” she said, and there was something approaching relief in her tone. “I felt certain that you were a virgin. It’s the Church, you see. They’ve messed all you boys up. Not Julian, of course. Julian is different. Although I suppose he’s got his own problems with his constant need for affirmation. They’ve made you think that sex is something dirty when it’s not. It’s perfectly natural. It’s part of life. It’s how we all got here in the first place. And it can be wonderful if it’s done right. Even when it’s done wrong it’s still better than a poke in the eye with a rusty nail. Oh, I’m not suggesting that everyone should be going out and doing it left, right and center like Julian does but if you really like someone—”