Beneath the Earth

by John Boyne

  ‘He’d never give her his address,’ I said, for I didn’t want to believe this story, which seemed to diminish Tadhg a little in my mind. ‘And sure why would Tadhg Muldowney ever have to pay for it anyway? He’s a really good-looking guy.’

  ‘Listen to you, ya big puff,’ said William, punching me in the arm, and I blushed scarlet as I told him to fuck off, for I realized that it would only take a few more throwaway comments like this to give myself away.

  ‘I didn’t say I thought he was good-looking,’ I told him, feeling the rush of blood along my neck moving through my cheeks and up my ears. ‘But that’s what all the girls say.’

  ‘Sure you’ve never spoken to a girl in your life. Unless you’re talking about your sister and everyone knows that sisters don’t count.’

  What age was I when all this happened? My father had been dead a year already and Kathleen was preparing for her Leaving Cert, so I suppose that puts me at around fifteen. A rotten age or a brilliant age, depending on your character.

  One rumour about Tadhg that I knew to be true was that he had been discovered drunk inside the church grounds late one Saturday night and when Father Kilburn came out of the presbytery and found him pissing on the gravestones, he told him that if he didn’t stop immediately he would go straight to his parents and tell them what a scoundrel they had for a son. Tadhg had simply turned around, his mickey in his hand, and asked him how anyone could stop the flow when it had already begun. He’d kept going and pissed right on the priest’s shoes. There was war over it.

  There were other things too. He’d introduced graffiti to the town and took great delight in taking aerosol cans out of his schoolbag and shaking them hard so the spring inside rattled like a cobra. There was something erotic – to me anyway – about the way he shook them. He’d fallen asleep in Mass and slipped off the bench, landing with a crash on the marble floor in the middle of the Hail Holy Queen and shouted Fuck out loud, the word roaring its way through the congregation and causing me to put a hand to my mouth to stifle my laughter. But it was the scooter that marked him out for pure danger, the little black Vespa that his uncle from America had bought him for Christmas and that he drove around town without a helmet, revving the engine so everyone noticed him, bipping the little horn every time a pretty girl crossed his path. No one had ever seen such a thing before and we were all envious.

  Tadhg, like Kathleen, had two years on me but I plucked up the courage one day to ask him about the bike when I saw him leaning on it outside Crofty’s Tea Shop, arms folded, wearing a pair of blue jeans with tears in the knees and a white T-shirt. All he needed was a black leather jacket and he would have been a ringer for your man out of Grease.

  ‘I’d say she fairly guzzles the old petrol, does she?’ I asked him, a line I’d been practising for weeks, trying different inflections as I recorded the phrase into a Casio C-90 tape and played it back to myself over and over.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, turning to look at me as if he was surprised that someone so small and insignificant could speak at all.

  ‘The bike,’ I said. ‘The Vespa. Does she cost a lot to run?’

  ‘She’s not too bad,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders and checking his watch. A crow landed on a nearby electricity pole and I watched Tadhg’s pale-blue eyes as he stared at it, his head not turning away until the bird flew off again.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, the stomach churning inside me. I got ready for the next part of my script, patting the pockets of my duffel coat and pulling a frustrated expression. This part I had practised in the mirror until I had it down. ‘Do you have a smoke on you at all?’ I asked. ‘I’m only gasping.’

  ‘You’re Kathleen Carson’s little brother, aren’t you?’ he asked, turning back to me.

  ‘I’m her younger brother, yeah.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Seán.’

  ‘And you’re a smoker, are you Seán?’ he asked dubiously.

  ‘Trying not to be,’ I said in a world-weary way. ‘Doing my best to cut down. Today’s been a bitch though.’

  He gave a small laugh and reached into his pocket, taking out a packet of Marlboro Lights and tossing them across to me. ‘Go ahead so,’ he said. ‘But you didn’t get it from me.’

  I opened the pack and took one out, tapping the filter against the box like I’d seen the lads do on the television. Not an ounce of sense in my head.

  ‘You’ll be needing a light there, will you Seán?’ he asked.

  I nodded and he handed me a lighter. I got the thing lit on the fourth attempt. I didn’t cough though, for all of that. I held it down.

  ‘I’m saving up for one of them myself,’ I said after a moment.

  ‘A lighter? They’re cheap enough to be fair.’

  ‘A Vespa. I thought I might drive one over to Galway. The pubs there are meant to be great. There’s loads of girls in them, like. And they’re all mad for it.’

  ‘Mad for what?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said, kicking the stones at my feet. ‘That’s just what I heard.’

  His eyes narrowed as he stared at me; he was trying to figure me out I think, and then he raised a hand to greet someone. When I looked around, there was my sister Kathleen walking towards us, staring at me like I was something from a primordial swamp that had somehow managed to crawl out on to dry land to bother the locals.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked when she got closer. ‘And what’s that in your mouth, a cigarette?’

  ‘I’m just talking,’ I said. ‘And yeah. Ten out of ten for observation.’ I looked at Tadhg, hoping he’d take my side and laugh, but his face was stony.

  ‘Did you give him that thing?’ she asked, turning to him now.

  ‘He asked for it.’

  ‘And are you going to be there later when he’s got his head stuck down the toilet, puking his guts up?’

  Tadhg shrugged, as if he didn’t much care.

  ‘Don’t be such a buzzkill,’ I said, a word I’d heard on Fame the week before and had been employing to good effect ever since. This time Tadhg did laugh and I felt the heart jump inside me in excitement.

  ‘Stop acting the big man,’ said Kathleen, shaking her head. ‘And good luck getting the smell of smoke out of your duffel coat. Mam’ll kill you when you get home.’

  ‘Shut up, you,’ I said, wishing she’d just leave me alone and stop talking down to me. I’d been planning this conversation for so long and was heartsick that she was spoiling it on me. I still had at least four topics of conversation that I wanted to bring up: football, alcohol, my French teacher and the IRA. I had lines ready about all of them, each one more provocative than the last. The plan was that we’d strike up an easy friendship and I could ask him to take me for a spin on the Vespa and let me sit behind him as we drove out the back roads, the only chance I might ever get to wrap my arms around him.

  ‘You’re lucky you don’t have a brother,’ said Kathleen to Tadhg, and I noticed his expression change a little, his eyes looking down at the ground, his confidence muted for a moment. I stared at her in horror, for did she not know that Tadhg did have a brother and that he’d been killed in a car crash a few years earlier? The story was that he’d been high at the time and was being chased by drug dealers for non-payment of his accounts. If she’d forgotten it, she made no sign of remembering now, for she showed no shame about what she’d just said. Tadhg gritted his teeth and I wondered whether, when I was his age, I would be able to grow that neat line of stubble that peeped out from his chin and whispered its way across his cheeks. He reached up to scratch it now with dirty fingernails and as he did so I saw the bicep curl on his arm, just below where the white cotton T-shirt ended, and the pale-blue vein that ran through it. How did he get it to stand out like that, I wondered. My arms were like twigs.

  ‘So are we going or what?’ said Kathleen, and I turned to look at her in confusion.

  ‘Going where?’ I asked, dragging my eyes away from him.
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  ‘Not you,’ she said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Tadhg. ‘I’m here, amn’t I? I’ve been waiting long enough.’

  ‘Right. Well come on so.’

  She moved over to the Vespa and I realized with dismay that she and Tadhg had made a plan to go somewhere together, probably to the woods outside the town so they could go mad for each other without anyone seeing them.

  ‘You’re not getting on that thing,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

  ‘What’s it to you if I am? Go along home and do your homework.’

  ‘Mam’ll kill you.’

  ‘Then that’ll be two deaths in the family today ’cos if you say a word to her I’ll stick a bread knife through your ear.’

  I opened my mouth, hoping to come up with a suitable response, but there was nothing there, and when she threw one leg over the back seat Tadhg slapped her arse gently and winked at her and she grinned back, no longer bothered by the fact that he had given me a cigarette, it seemed.

  ‘I’ll tell,’ I said, hoping to scare her away. It was me who was supposed to be climbing on the back of the Vespa, my face nuzzling into the back of Tadhg’s head, not her.

  ‘Do what you like, you little shit,’ said Kathleen. ‘Are we right, Tadhg?’

  He stepped on now too and as he tossed his half-smoked cigarette into the bushes, something made me jump forward and grab the keys from his other hand. I took a step back and stared at my prize, as surprised as either of them by what I’d just done.

  ‘What the fuck?’ asked Tadhg.

  ‘You can’t go off with her,’ I said. ‘She’s my sister.’

  ‘Give me the keys, little boy,’ he said with a sigh, as if this was simply too much drama for him at this time of the day, and those last two words stung through me.

  ‘I’m fifteen,’ I said, clutching them tightly in my fist. ‘So don’t call me that. And that thing is a death-trap, there’s no way I’m letting you take my sister anywhere on it.’

  The words were like alien sounds coming out of my mouth and I could scarcely believe that I was saying them. I wanted to be his friend, that was all. I wanted him to like me. And somehow I had found myself with the keys of his Vespa in my hand, telling him what he could and couldn’t do.

  He stepped off the bike now and moved slowly towards me but I held my position on the pavement, looking up at him, feeling the heart pounding fast in my chest. Without flinching, he lifted his left hand and gave me a belt across the face with the back of it, and as I stumbled backwards and fell to the ground, I dropped the keys and he reached down to retrieve them before climbing back on to the saddle. I looked up, the tears forming in my eyes as I held one hand to my reddened cheek, and saw Kathleen looking at me with a mixture of regret and annoyance on her face.

  ‘Tadhg, I’m sorry,’ I said, the words coming out with such desperate longing that I felt embarrassed by the sound of them, but he didn’t say a word or even look back at me now, simply slipping the keys into the ignition, turning it on and pulling out on to the street. From where I stood, I watched as they disappeared down past the statue of the Virgin Mary that stood at the fork of the road, her hands raised to heaven, the expression on her face suggesting that she had had enough misfortune visited upon her for one lifetime and could take no more.

  I stood up, looking down at my left hand which had a red scratch down the palm from where I had landed clumsily, and turned around, hoping that no one had observed what had just taken place, but the street was quiet and if anyone inside the shops had seen, then they didn’t care, for what was it, only a couple of local lads having a scrap on the street. To them, it was just a moment like any other. Quickly forgotten. Barely worth even commenting upon.

  A Good Man

  I had a little job to do over in Paris, a quick in-and-out number, no frills, no fuss, but Gloria lost the head altogether when I told her where I was going.

  ‘Paris?’ she said, one hand on her hip, the other pulling the fag out of her mouth and pressing it tip-down into a flower pot. Her lower lip was drooping in the same way her mother’s does whenever she’s annoyed about something. It’s a terrible turn-off for me because I can see exactly what she’s going to look like fourteen years from now when she’s her mother’s age. ‘I hope you don’t think you’re going to Paris without me, Toastie?’

  ‘It’s work,’ I said, turning away so I wouldn’t have to stare at the mammy’s lip. ‘I get in Tuesday afternoon and I’m out again first thing Thursday morning. It’s not like I’ll be climbing the bleedin’ Eiffel Tower or kissin’ up to the Mona Lisa.’

  ‘Are you fuckin’ some young one?’ she asked, marching over and spinning me around, and I gave her my innocent/wounded expression – one that I’ve had cause to use many times over the years of our marriage.

  ‘You know full well that I’m not,’ I said. ‘So maybe lay off the dramatics for a few minutes, love, yeah?’

  She glared at me and walked back to the kitchen where she poured half a bottle of white wine into a pint glass and threw in a bit of Britvic 55 to give it a lift. She knew that I wasn’t doing anything like that, of course, it wasn’t my style at all, but she wasn’t ready to let it go just yet.

  ‘If I ever catch you with some young one, I’ll cut your bleedin’ balls off,’ she said.

  ‘I better make sure you never catch me then, better’nt I?’ I said, grinning away like a mad thing.

  ‘Shut up, you,’ she said, a half-smile on her face now as she looked out the window into the garden where the three dogs were all staring at each other in some mad Mexican stand-off. ‘I never get to go anywhere,’ she added, guzzling down the vino.

  ‘Are you joking me?’ I asked. ‘What about when you took off with your sister to the Canaries for ten days in January? And then over to London with that Sharon one for a long weekend in April.’

  ‘I never get to go anywhere with you, Toastie,’ she said, mooching up to me now and setting the glass down on the counter so she could wrap her arms around my waist. She ran her hands down my sides and I could feel the way they pressed into the fat above my hips. I deffo need to lose a bit of weight. I keep telling myself that I’ll get one of those personal trainers but I never do anything about it. You get all these young ones doing it now in the gyms and they’re only gorgeous in their Lycra and their little bra-tops.

  ‘We’ll get a break before the end of the year,’ I told her.

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘Anywhere you like,’ I said. ‘Within reason. Wexford, maybe.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said. ‘I’ve always wanted to see Venice.’

  ‘Right so,’ I told her. ‘We’ll go to Venice. I’ll take the car.’

  ‘We can leave Charlie with me mam. He’d enjoy that.’

  ‘Or we could take him with us,’ I said, because I knew rightly that the young lad would go mental if he was left behind. Whenever he stays with his granny she forces him out to Mass in the morning and makes him kneel and say his prayers when the Angelus comes on the telly.

  ‘Ah Toastie, he’d only ruin it on us,’ said Gloria, which made me give her a look. Maternal love, wha’? ‘We wouldn’t be able to go out at nights. We’d need a baby-sitter. And I wouldn’t trust a foreign bird to look after him, would you? Most kids that go off to the Continent get kidnapped and sold on to the sex traffickers.’

  We left it at that for now and I got my bags packed and headed off to the airport a few days later. Mary-Lou had booked me on RyanAir – on RyanFuckin’Air when I have made it clear on any number of occasions in the past that I don’t do RyanFuckin’Air – so I was already in a bad mood when I squashed myself into the seat, fifty euros lighter for wearing the wrong colour shirt on a Tuesday or whatever it was they found a way to charge me for. And then there was the bus into the city from Beauvais, which takes about a hundred and twenty hours. A child behind me kept kicking the seat all the way there and I turned around to give him t
he daggers before asking his mother would she not do something about him.

  ‘He’s only five,’ she said, as if this excused everything. She was all done up to the nines, acting dead posh. If she was all that posh, she’d have been getting off the plane in Charles de Gaulle and not in fuckin’ Beauvais.

  ‘I don’t care if he’s still a foetus,’ I told her. ‘He’s giving me a sore back with the kicking. Would you put a stop to it, please?’

  ‘Jasper, there’s a good boy,’ she said, patting his knee while playing some game designed for five-year-olds on her phone. He kept kicking and I couldn’t be arsed starting an argument, so I got up and moved. I found an empty seat next to a quiet little nun. She was wearing some gorgeous perfume and I kept trying to get a sniff of her. She gave me some quare looks, so she did. She wasn’t bad-looking either for a nun.

  Thankfully the hotel was more than up to scratch. A good big room with one of those massive showers in the bathroom with a huge head on it and a narrow yoke you can pull out of the wall to wash the crack of your arse. I gave myself a great wash, scrubbing all of RyanAir’s scum from my skin, and came out of it feeling like a million euros. Taking the laptop out I said a silent prayer like I always do in hotel rooms that the Wi-Fi would work. God must have heard me because it connected without a bother. I checked my regular emails. Nothing special there. The usual shite. The ma looking for a cost-of-living increase in her allowance. Sky wanting to sell me the football channels. Then I checked my work emails and the details I needed for the next day were all there in a single message.

  I went out for a bit of lunch and afterwards took the 6 metro to the 7th arrondissement and strolled down the Avenue Charles Floquet, counting off the numbers on the doors till I found the one I wanted. A woman answered. She would have been gorgeous about ten years before, I’d say, but now her best days were behind her. She looked me up and down like she was deciding whether or not to eat me. I didn’t know what she was expecting. It wasn’t a shag, that’s for sure. I’m gone to seed long since. She said something in French and beckoned me upstairs where she gave me the case, and I said, ‘Au revoir, chérie,’ and left.