by John Boyne
“I haven’t been lying,” I said, desperate for him to tell me that it was all right, that everything would be fine in the end. That he’d fix things. That Alice would understand and life could return to normal.
“Well, what else would you call it?”
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“So you thought you’d wait until today? Until now? When you’re about ten minutes away from marrying my sister? Jesus Christ,” he added, shaking his head. “And I thought that fucker Fergus was bad.”
“I’m nothing like Fergus,” I said.
“No, he’s a fucking saint compared to you.”
“Julian, you can’t hate me because I’m gay. That’s not fair. It’s 1973, for God’s sake.”
“You think I hate you because you’re gay?” he asked, looking at me as if he had never heard anything so stupid in his life. “I don’t give a fuck that you’re gay. I never would have cared. Not for a moment, if you had bothered to tell me. If you had treated me like an actual friend instead of someone you were just lusting over. I hate you because you’ve lied to me all these years, Cyril, and, worse still, you’ve lied to Alice. This is going to break her heart. Have you any idea what it was like for her after Fergus?”
“She’ll understand,” I said quietly.
“She’ll what?”
“She’ll understand,” I repeated. “She’s a very empathetic person.”
Julian laughed in disbelief. “Stand up, Cyril,” he said.
“What?”
“Stand up.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so. And if you love me so much, then you must want to make me happy. And it would make me very happy if you stood up.”
I frowned, uncertain what was going to happen next, but I did as he asked and stood.
“There,” I said. “I’m standing.”
But not for long. A moment later, I was on the floor, sprawled on my back, a little dazed and with a pain so sharp running through my jaw that I wondered whether he’d broken it. I put a hand to my face and could taste blood inside my cheek.
“Julian,” I said, looking up at him, close to tears. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re sorry,” he said. “Do you know something, I’ve never felt more contempt for anyone in my whole life than I do for you right now. I swear to God if it wasn’t for the fact that I have no intention of spending the rest of my life in jail I would break your fucking neck right now.”
I swallowed, feeling pitiful inside. Everything was ruined. When he retreated to one of the side walls, rubbing his chin with one hand as he thought all of this through, I stumbled to my feet and sat down again, nursing my jaw.
“I should go,” I said finally.
“Go?” he said, turning around and frowning. “Go where?”
“Go home,” I said with a shrug. “There’s no point in me staying here, is there? I’ve done enough damage. You’ll have to tell her, though,” I added. “I can’t do it. I can’t face her.”
“Tell her? Tell who? Tell Alice?”
“Of course,” I said.
“You think I’m going to tell her?”
“She loves you,” I reasoned. “She’ll want you with her today, not me.”
“I’m not telling her anything,” said Julian, raising his voice again and advancing on me with such ferocity that I shrank back in the seat. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen here today, you stupid fucking prick, and what’s not going to happen. If you think that I’m going to allow my sister to be humiliated for the second time in front of all her family and friends, you’re completely fucking delusional.”
I stared at him, uncertain what he was getting at. “So what do you want me to do?” I asked him.
“What you promised to do,” he said. “We’re going to go out there together, you and I. We’re going to stand side by side at the altar while Max walks my sister up the aisle. And we’re both going to wear the biggest shit-eating smiles that anyone ever wore in their entire lives, and when the priest tells you to say I do, you’re going to say it as if your entire life depends on it. And afterward, you and Alice are going to walk back down the aisle as husband and wife, and you, my friend, are going to be a good and faithful husband to her and if I ever, if I ever hear of you going off with some queer behind her back, I will come after you and personally cut your balls off with the rustiest penknife I can find. Do I make myself clear, Cyril?”
I stared at him and swallowed hard. It was impossible to believe that he meant any of this.
“I can’t,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. “It’s the rest of my life we’re talking about.”
“And it’s the rest of Alice’s. You’re going to fucking marry her, Cyril, do you understand me?”
“You’re saying that you want your sister to marry me? Knowing what you know?”
“Of course I don’t want her to. And if she walked in here right now and said she didn’t want to marry you, I’d lift her off the ground and carry her out on my shoulders. But she’s come here to get married and that’s what’s going to happen. She fucking loves you, Cyril, if you can believe she would love someone so morally vacuous.”
“And what about us?” I asked, his words hitting me like arrows.
“Us? What us? What are you talking about?”
“You and I. Will we still be friends?”
He stared at me and started laughing. “You’re unbelievable,” he said. “You are absolutely unbe-fucking-lievable. We’re not friends, Cyril. We never have been friends. I never even knew you, that’s the truth of it. The person I thought of as Cyril Avery never even existed. So, no, we won’t be friends ever again. When we see each other at family functions, I’ll be polite to you so no one finds out the truth. But don’t ever think that I feel anything toward you other than total and utter loathing. And if you dropped dead on your honeymoon, I’d cry no tears over you.”
“Don’t say that, Julian,” I said, starting to weep again. “Please, you can’t mean it. I love you.”
He ran at me then, lifting me off the chair and pinning me up against the wall, one hand holding me there by the collar while the other pulled back, clenched into a fist. It was trembling in rage. Had he hit me right at that moment, I know that he would have killed me.
“If you ever say that to me again,” he hissed. “If you ever say anything like that to me again, I swear to God they will be the last words you ever speak. Do you understand me?” I let my body go slack and nodded as he stepped away from me. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?” he asked me. “Why do you have to lie about everything? Hide everything? Why not just tell the truth? What the fuck is wrong with simply being honest with people from the start?”
I laughed bitterly and looked away. “Don’t even try going down that road, Julian,” I said, ready to fight back now if I had to. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. But then people like you never do.”
There was a tap on the door and we both turned as the priest glanced inside, a cheerful smile on his face.
“Your bride awaits you, young man,” he said, his grin fading only a little as he saw my slightly disheveled state. I looked at Julian, pleading with him to set me free, but he looked away and walked toward the door.
“Make sure you comb your hair before you come out here,” he said, the last words he would speak to me for many years. “Remember where you are. And what you’ve come here to do.”
Crazy Naked Man
Three hours later, a respectable married man at last, I found myself standing in the Horseshoe Bar of the Shelbourne Hotel making small talk with the President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera. His presence at the reception was an incredible coup for Max, whose obsession with social climbing had become even more pathological in recent years, although the great man had declined to attend the ceremony itself earlier in the day, citing an unmissable appointment with his chiropodist. The former Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, was there too, kee
ping a careful distance from Charles Haughey, who was standing by the bar giving an uncanny impression of one of those unsettling fairground figures, carved from porcelain, whose bodies remain still while their eyes move slowly around the room. Sport was represented by Tipperary’s Jimmy Doyle, who had won six All-Ireland hurling medals for his county over recent years, literature by Ernest Gébler and J. P. Donleavy, while at a table in the corner my adoptive father’s new wife, Rosalyn, was sucking up to Maureen O’Hara, who smiled politely but kept checking her watch, no doubt wondering when might be a good time to ask the concierge to hail her a taxi.
I found it impossible to concentrate on what Dev was saying, for my attention was focused almost exclusively on Julian, who was standing next to an anxious-looking Archbishop Ryan, while one of the bridesmaids did her best to engage him in conversation. Usually he would have been flirting away—Julian, that is, not the Archbishop—wondering whether he should take her back to his room for a quickie before dinner or wait until afterward when he could put a bit more time and effort into the seduction, but for once he appeared completely uninterested. Whenever I caught his eye, he gave me a look that combined disappointment and murderous intent before turning away and ordering another drink. There was a part of me that wanted to take him aside to explain why I had done the things I had done, or indeed hadn’t done, but I knew there was no point. There was nothing I could say that would make him forgive me, nothing that could possibly excuse my actions. Our friendship, such as it had been, was over.
When I finally managed to escape the President, who was holding forth in quite graphic terms about the state of his bunions, I looked around for a quiet corner where I might find a canapé fork to stick through my heart. Whichever way I turned, however, I found myself being leaped upon by another of our three hundred guests, most of whom were complete strangers to me, each one wanting to shake my hand but let me know that I had condemned myself to fifty years of trying without success to satisfy the little woman.
“Tonight’s the night, eh, boy?” said the old men whose leery smiles I wanted to punch off their wrinkly old faces. “Getting a few pints into you to build up the auld energy, wha’?”
“You’ll be starting a family soon,” said their wives, practically lactating at the idea of my impregnating Alice at regular intervals over the years ahead. “Have three in three years, that’s my advice to you. A boy, a girl and an either/or. A gentleman’s family. And then let that be an end to the whole filthy business.” One even leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “After that, I would suggest separate bedrooms. To keep the Devil at bay.”
I felt surrounded by people and noise, overwhelmed by the stench of perfume and alcohol and suffocated by the haze of cigarette smoke. I was like a child trapped at a carnival, unable to find my way to the exit, my heart starting to beat faster as the crowds closed in around me. Finally, battling forward in the direction of the lobby, I turned to find Alice standing next to me, looking equally dazed and uncomfortable. She smiled but I noticed the shadow of some private anxiety crossing her face.
“We should have kept the numbers down, shouldn’t we?” I said, leaning in and having to shout to make myself heard. “I don’t know who half these people are.”
“Friends of Max’s,” she said, shaking her head. “It didn’t look so bad on paper but I can barely find time to talk to my actual friends. The average age is sixty-plus. There’s a man over there wearing an actual colostomy bag outside his trousers.”
“Not anymore. A child ran into him and burst it.”
“Oh Good Lord. It’s a wedding!”
“We could sound the fire alarm,” I suggested. “And then choose who we let back in afterward. They need to have all their own hair and teeth and a reasonable chance of looking good in the photographs later.”
She gave me a half-smile but didn’t seem pleased.
“I knew I shouldn’t have given him free rein,” she muttered. “I should have learned from—oh God, sorry, Cyril.”
“What?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No, tell me.”
She had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I was going to say that I should have learned from last time,” she said. “Until I realized what an inappropriate thing that was to say, today of all days.”
“Oh trust me,” I said. “It’s tame compared to some of the things I’ve said today.”
“People keep giving me money too,” she added. “In envelopes. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. So I gave them all to him,” she added, nodding toward the bar.
“Charlie Haughey?” I said, raising my voice, appalled. “You gave all our money to him? We’ll never see it again! It’ll all be sent up North to the Provos!”
“Julian,” she said, shaking her head. “I gave it to Julian.”
“Oh. All right. That’s not so bad, I suppose.”
“Actually, I have another one here,” she said, pulling an envelope from one of the mysterious compartments of her dress. “You wouldn’t bring it over to him, would you?”
“No,” I said, quicker than I had intended. There was no chance that I was going anywhere near her brother. “Actually, I was just going out for some air.”
“Are you all right? You look a little red in the face.”
“It’s just too stuffy in here, that’s all. I’ll be back.”
I tried to leave but she put a hand out to stop me. “Wait,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Promise.”
“No, I need to talk to you now.”
“Why?” I asked, surprised by the urgency in her tone. “Is something wrong? What’s he said to you?”
“What’s who said to me?”
“No one.”
“What’s no one said to me? What are you talking about, Cyril?”
I glanced across the room at Julian, who was watching us now while wearing a furious expression, and I started to feel annoyed by his attitude. If you didn’t want me to marry her, I thought, then you could have stopped me. But now that I’ve gone through with it, don’t fucking look at me like that.
She opened her mouth to speak but, before she could reply, her mother Elizabeth appeared arm in arm with a boyfriend young enough to be her grandson and I saw my chance to escape.
“Don’t leave,” Elizabeth purred, taking my hand and holding on to it. “You haven’t met Ryan yet.”
“I haven’t,” I agreed, reaching out and shaking the boy’s hand. He was young, certainly, but if I had to be honest I didn’t think he was all that special. He looked a bit like Mickey Rooney in the Andy Hardy films. Only not quite as tall. Halfway across the room I could see Charles watching the pair of them, perhaps recalling his and Elizabeth’s infamous trysts of 1952 that had led to such trouble.
“Marriage is such an outdated institution, don’t you think?” said Ryan, looking at me and Alice as if he had just been confronted by a pair of turds in human form.
“That’s an odd thing to say,” said Alice. “To a bride on her wedding day, I mean.”
“Ryan is just joking,” said Elizabeth, bursting out laughing. She’d clearly won the award for First Drunk At The Wedding. “He’s from Vermont,” she added, as if this explained everything.
“I was in Vermont once,” said Charles, slipping in between the two of them and using his elbows to separate them. “I spent a few weeks in Newport. On business,” he added, dramatically.
“Newport is in Rhode Island,” said Ryan. “Different state.”
“I’m aware of that,” said Charles, humbled. “I was making a non sequitur. I was in Vermont once. And, in other news, I was in Newport, Rhode Island. On a different occasion.”
“This is Charles Avery,” said Elizabeth, thrilled beyond belief to have the chance to show off her little treasure. “And this is Ryan Wilson.”
“Hey,” said Ryan.
“Good afternoon,” said Charles.
“Cha
rles is Cyril’s father,” said Elizabeth.
“Adoptive father,” said Charles and I in unison.
“He’s not a real Avery,” added Charles after a short pause. “Anyway, what brings you here, young man? Are you engaged in some sort of student exchange?”
“No, I’m Elizabeth’s lover,” he replied without missing a beat and, to give him credit, even Charles was impressed by such un-Irish frankness.
“Fair enough,” he said, for once looking a little deflated. I wasn’t sure why he was bothering, to be honest. It wasn’t as if he had any interest in re-igniting things with Elizabeth. He’d told me once, after all, that he thought it was a mistake for any man to marry a woman old enough to be his wife.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Alice.
“Wait,” she said, turning and gripping my arm. “I need to talk to you.”
“When I’m back!”
“It’s really important. Just give me—”
“Jesus Christ, Alice,” I said irritably, shaking her off, the first time I had ever raised my voice to her.
“Woah, buddy!” said Ryan, and I shot him a contemptuous glance.
“Five minutes,” I said to Alice. “Call of nature.”
As I left the room, I found my head turning, as if independent of my will, toward Julian again but he had his back to me now and was leaning over the bar with his head in his hands. There was something about the way his shoulders were shuddering that made me think he was crying but I dismissed this as an impossibility. I had never seen Julian weep in his entire life, not even when he returned home from the loving embrace of his IRA kidnappers, short a thumb, a toe and an ear.
Once in the lobby I felt able to breathe again but when I saw Dana making her way toward me, arms outstretched for a hug and some form of unspeakable musical congratulation emerging from her ruby lips, I turned on my heels and ran toward the staircase, taking them two at a time and breaking into a run as I ascended to the fifth floor penthouses where the bridal suite held pride of place at the center of the corridor. I fumbled around for my key, then quickly closed the door behind me as I ripped off my tie, making my way to the bedroom, where a cool breeze was blowing through an open window, inhaling and exhaling deeply until I began to feel my heart rate return to normal. I sat down on the corner of the bed but it had been covered with such a delicate throw and handfuls of rose petals that it only served to deepen my despair and so I stood up almost immediately, moving over to the sofa.