by Paul Murray
With posters for the Christmas concert everywhere, Audition Fever has swept the school. At lunch break, after class, the halls are filled with parps, twangs, thumps of varying degrees of musicality, the rec rooms clotted with knots of boys dreaming up routines that range from opera to gangsta to a new form of Wagnerian tropicalia invented by second year’s Caetano Diaz, which he has dubbed ‘apocalypso’. The Seabrook Christmas concert may be small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but as any modern student of fame knows, there is no platform so low that it does not make you look slightly bigger than the next guy. Competition is fierce, and the lowest common denominator does not go unplumbed. Among the rehearsing voices, a surprising number can be heard performing more saccharine versions of already toxically gloopy ballads – ‘Flying Without Wings’, ‘I Believe I Can Fly’, ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ and others, flying-related and not. Credibility is not the issue for these boys that it might have been for previous generations. A lot of contentious arguments have been resolved in the last decade, a lot of old ideas swept away; it is now universally acknowledged that celebrity is the one goal truly worth pursuing. Magazine covers, marketing deals, artificially whitened smiles, waving from behind barriers at the raving anonymous multitude – this is the zenith of a world now uncluttered by spirituality, and anything you do to get there is considered legitimate.
The concert’s musical director is Father Constance ‘Connie’ Laughton, a kindly, epicene man with white hair and a candy-pink complexion whose burning desire to instil a love of classical music in the hearts of his teenage charges, combined with a softly-softly approach to discipline, sees him occupying a regular spot near the top of Dennis’s Nervous Breakdown Leaderboard. While he recognizes the populist leanings of the boys, his own tastes are strictly canonical; in particular he is a fan of the French horn, and has already taken Ruprecht aside for a word in his ear regarding perhaps a performance? No orchestra exists in the school at present, after some past event Father Laughton never talks about, but maybe Ruprecht has some chums, the priest suggests, who might like to accompany him. Dennis laughs long and hard when he hears of this plan. ‘Pity the poor suckers who get roped into that,’ he says. ‘It’s like having the world’s biggest kick-me sign stuck to your back.’
Hot ticket for this year’s concert are the rock group Shadowfax, who, in Wallace Willis and Louis O’Brien, boast not one but two classically trained guitar wizards: actual girls pay actual money to hear the band’s immaculate covers of the Eagles and other giants of adult-orientated rock. Even the Automator is a fan, following the band’s performance of Toto’s ‘Rain in Africa’ at a benefit for victims of the Ethiopian drought organized by Father Green last summer. Not every aspiring performance is musical, however. Down in a shady corner of the basement, at this very moment, a small crowd is gathered around Trevor Hickey, bent over with his bottom in the air and a lit match in his hand that, with the solemnity of the magician stepping into the cage of swords, he slowly extends backwards…
Diablos: the name given to the igniting of, and ignited, farts. Trevor Hickey is the undisputed master of this arcane and perilous art. The stakes could not be higher. Get the timing even slightly wrong and there will be consequences far more serious than singed trousers; the word backdraught clamours unspoken at the back of every spectator’s mind. Total silence now as, with an almost imperceptible tremble (entirely artificial, ‘just part of the show’ as Trevor puts it) his hand brings the match between his legs and – foom! a sound like the fabric of the universe being ripped in two, counterpointed by its opposite, a collective intake of breath, as from Trevor’s bottom proceeds a magnificent plume of flame – jetting out it’s got to be nearly three feet, they tell each other afterwards, a cold and beautiful purple-blue enchantment that for an instant bathes the locker room in unearthly light.
No one knows quite what Trevor Hickey’s diet is, or his exercise regime; if you ask him about it, he will simply say that he has a gift, and having witnessed it, you would be hard-pressed to argue, although why God should have given him this gift in particular is less easy to say. But then, strange talents abound in the fourteen-year-old confraternity. As well as Trevor Hickey, ‘The Duke of Diablos’, you have people like Rory ‘Pins’ Moran, who on one occasion had fifty-eight pins piercing the epidermis of his left hand; GP O’Sullivan, able to simulate the noises of cans opening, mobile phones bleeping, pneumatic doors, etc., at least as well as the guy in Police Academy; Henry Lafayette, who is double-jointed and famously escaped from a box of jockstraps after being locked inside it by Lionel. These boys’ abilities are regarded quite as highly by their peers as the more conventional athletic and sporting kinds, as is any claim to physical freakishness, such as waggling ears (Mitchell Gogan), unusually high mucous production (Hector ‘Hectoplasm’ O’Looney), notable ugliness (Damien Lawlor) and inexplicably slimy, greenish hair (Vince Bailey). Fame in the second year is a surprisingly broad church; among the two-hundred-plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or idiosyncrasy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated.
As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to the shift in attitudes is, without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence; now – overnight, almost – it is paramount; and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most of of them, consider mastery of Diablos to be a feather in your cap – even when you explain to them how dangerous it is, even when you offer to teach them how to do it themselves, an offer you have never extended to any of your classmates, who would actually pay big money for this expertise, or you could even call it lore – wait, come back!
As the juggernaut of puberty gathers momentum, quirks and oddities and singularities turn from badges of honour to liabilities to be concealed, and the same realpolitik that moves boys to forsake long-nurtured dreams of, say, becoming a ninja for a more concerted attention to the here and now, forces others, who once were worshipped as gods, to reinvent themselves as ordinary Joe Blows. Rory Moran will put away his pins, Vince Bailey find some product that de-greens his hair; in five years’ time, as they prepare to leave school, how many of the crowd who applaud him now while he takes his bows (‘I thank you. I thank you.’) will remember that Trevor Hickey was once known as ‘The Duke’?
‘Hey, Blowjob, you fat moron,’ Dennis charges as Ruprecht emerges blinkingly from his basement. ‘You’ve crossed the line this time, you fuckwad!’
‘What?’ Ruprecht is mystified.
‘Did you tell Father Laughton I played the bassoon?’ Dennis’s bassoon, a present from his stepmother, is a tightly guarded secret kept permanently underneath his bed.
‘Oh, that,’ Ruprecht says.
‘You idiot, now he wants me to play with you in the crappy Christmas concert.’
‘Yes!’ Ruprecht’s chubby face lights up. ‘Won’t it be fun?’
‘I’ll saw my hands off before I appear on stage with you and your Orchestra of Gays!’ Dennis bellows. ‘Do you hear me? I’ll saw my hands off!’
But it is already too late for that: his stepmother has caught wind of his participation via her vast network of religious, and is right behind it. ‘Music has wonderful healing power,’ she tells him that morning, adding sadly, ‘you are such an angry boy.’
Other boys have been more adroit, however, and the priest, faced with a mass vanishing act on the part of the school’s musical community, has been forced to scale back his original concept. Instead of a full symphony, the Christmas concert orchestra will now be a quartet, with Ruprecht and Dennis joined by Brian ‘Jeekers’ Prendergast on viola and Geoff Sproke on triangle. ‘It’s quite unconventional,
’ Father Laughton, ever the optimist, pronounces. ‘It’s terribly exciting.’
The participation of Jeekers, while doing little for the Quartet’s street-cred, comes as no great surprise: Jeekers’s parents are obsessed with Ruprecht and with making their son more Ruprecht-like. It is, in its small way, a tragic story. In any other school, in any other year, Jeekers – academically gifted, diligent to a fault – would have been undisputed top dog. The caprices of fate, however, have consigned him to the same class as Ruprecht, in which Ruprecht, in every exam, in every test, in every Friday just-for-fun quiz, reigns supreme. This drives Jeekers’s parents – his mother, a pinch-faced dwarf with the permanent appearance of sucking sulphuric acid through a straw; his father, a wound-up solicitor who makes Pol Pot look like the Fonz – into paroxysms. ‘We didn’t raise our son to come in second place,’ they shriek. ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you even trying? Don’t you want to be an actuary?’ ‘I do, I do,’ Jeekers pleads, and so it’s back into the study, surrounded by homework timetables, performance-tracking graphs, brain-boosting fish oils and vitamins. His extra-curricular activities, meanwhile, largely revolve around shadowing Ruprecht, doing whatever he’s doing, be it the Quartet or Chess Club, in the hope of discovering whatever it is that gives him that edge.
The choice of music for the performance has been left to Ruprecht, who has gone for Pachelbel’s Canon in D, explaining to Jeekers that the Canon is the piece favoured by Professor Tamashi for his METI broadcasts into space.
‘I really like that song,’ Geoff says. Then his brow puckers. ‘Although it really reminds me of something.’
‘But, ah,’ Jeekers feels he has to point out, ‘we won’t be broadcasting into space. We’ll just be playing to our parents.’
‘Perhaps,’ twinkles Ruprecht. ‘But you never know who might be listening in.’
‘I’m in hell,’ Dennis whispers to himself.
‘What’s going on with the girl, Skip?’ Geoff asks as they make their way back to class after break. ‘Has she texted you back yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Hmm.’ Geoff strokes his chin. ‘Well, I suppose it’s only been a couple of days.’
A couple of endless days. He knows she is alive: yesterday morning, he saw her through the telescope, emerging from a silver Saab and tripping, with a shake of her hair, the few steps to the door of St Brigid’s. But maybe she lost her phone? Maybe she has no credit? Maybe she never got the message? Maybes surround her in a fog, like Ruprecht’s theory that doesn’t explain anything, just hangs a question mark over everything it touches; and the phone remains smug and mute in his pocket, like someone with a secret they will not tell.
‘Maybe you should send her another haiku,’ Niall suggests.
‘Send another message and you might as well paint a big L-for-loser right there on your forehead,’ Mario says. ‘Right now, your strategy is to sit tight and play it cool.’
‘Yeah,’ Skippy agrees glumly, but then: ‘Are you sure that was the right number you gave me?’
‘Sure I’m sure. I don’t make a mistake about something like that.’
‘Like you’re sure it’s her number?’
Mario clicks his teeth. ‘I’m telling you, that’s her number. Go and check for yourself, if you don’t believe me.’
‘Go and check for myself?’ This does not sound right to Skippy. ‘What do you mean, go and check for myself?’
‘The toilet,’ Mario replies blithely. ‘In Ed’s Doughnut House.’
Skippy stops in his tracks. ‘You got her number from a toilet?’
‘Yes, it is on the door of the middle cubicle.’
At first Skippy is too dumbstruck even to respond.
‘Holy smoke, Mario,’ Geoff says, ‘a toilet door…?’
‘What’s the problem? It’s not like someone’s going to put up a fake number. We can go back and look if you want – it is in the middle cubicle beneath a drawing of a joint that is also an ejaculating penis.’
Skippy has now recovered his power of speech, and uses it; Mario retaliates, the others join in, and they become so engrossed in the argument that none of them notices the figure coming towards them out of the crowd – not until the last second when, moving with a facility and speed surprising in someone of his build, he looms up behind Skippy like a shadow, seizes either side of his head and quickly, deftly, dashes it against the wall.
Skippy drops to the ground like a swatted fly, and for several moments he remains there, sprawled beneath the noticeboard, diverting the flow of his schoolmates. Then, with Geoff’s help, he drags himself into a sitting position, and gingerly touches his bleeding temple. Dennis watches Carl shoulder his way back through the pullulating hall. ‘I suppose that means it must have been the right number,’ he says.
That night Halley dreams of old loves; she wakes, flushed and guilty, some hours before dawn. ‘Howard?’ she calls his name gently, as if somehow he might know. In the velvet darkness her voice sounds thin, careful, concealing. But he does not respond; beside her, the drowsing bulk of his away-turned body rises and falls, placid and oblivious, a gigantic unicellular organism sharing her bed.
She closes her eyes but can’t fall back to sleep, and so instead she conjures up again the substance of the dream, a flame of hers from years ago, in a sun-flooded apartment on Mulberry Street. Awake it doesn’t take, though; it feels like someone else’s life and she like a voyeur, watching from outside.
By the time she’s showered, the sun has come up. It has been raining during the night, and the day is drenched and quivering and singing with colour.
‘Morning, morning.’ Howard bustles into the room with his jacket already on and kisses her on the cheek before opening the refrigerator. He sets the toaster, pours some coffee, and sits down at the table, studying his lesson plan. For the last two weeks he has tried not to look at her; she does not know why. Has she changed somehow? In the mirror her face does not seem different. ‘So what’s going on today?’ he says.
She shrugs. ‘Write about technology. How about you?’
‘Teach kids history.’ Now he looks up, smiles at her, flat and false as a cereal commercial.
‘You know what, though, I’m going to need the car this afternoon.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah, I have to go see this Science Fair.’
‘At the RDS? Farley’s going to be there, you should say hello.’
‘I will. But the car. Can I come into school lunchtime and pick it up?’
‘Why not just take it now? I can get the bus in.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure, makes more sense than you having to – whoops, in that case I’d better skedaddle though –’ He looks at his watch and is grabbing a kiss in the next instant: then in the same flurry of movement he has closed the door behind him.
This is the way they live now, like two actors in the final performances of a show no one comes to see any more.
The morning is a quagmire of e-mails and missed calls, voice-mails promising more e-mails, more calls. Still, the prospect of an afternoon in the outside world makes it easier to bear. People are always telling Halley how lucky she is to be able to work at home. No commute! No boss in your face! You don’t even have to get dressed! She herself used to write up the housebound life, or fully networked society as it was called then, as the great promise of the digital revolution. Now here she is, thrilled to be going to a science fair for teenagers because it gives her an excuse to put on make-up. Be careful what you wish for, she supposes.
In Ballsbridge she parks the car and leaves the bright afternoon for the darkness of the exhibition hall. Inside it is murky and frenetic with activity, like a juvenile ant colony. Everywhere she looks, arcane contraptions hum, spark, crackle, splash; animals dutifully nose electrodes and spin wheels; computers encrypt, decrypt, configure. For all the commotion, though, science is palpably of secondary importance to the teenaged exhibitors; between the stalls, stares ar
e being swapped so nakedly lustful that even to pass through them is to feel vaguely violated.
She does the rounds of the exhibits, speaks to their breathless or monosyllabic progenitors, while around her their peers, obviously attending under duress, shuffle by with the hopeless expressions of prisoners on a death march – pasty, raw-boned kids in dreary uniforms, fidgeting, slapping each other, repeating unfunny jokes. Seeing Howard’s friend Farley looming in the distance, she makes her way to the Seabrook stalls, where a study of the heat-release system in reptiles has been thrown into jeopardy by a gecko gone AWOL. A couple of boys are crawling around in the space behind the stall in search of it, proffering little pieces of Mars Bar; the other two members of the team appear more concerned with looking cool in front of the Loreto girls with the wind generator on the other side of the aisle. ‘I knew we should have brought a reserve gecko.’ Beside her, Farley shakes his head. ‘That guy’s not coming back.’
‘How is everything? Gecko aside.’
‘Everything’s fine. Counting down to Christmas, I suppose, like everybody else.’
She wants to ask him about Howard, try to discover what might be on his mind, what she can do; but she hesitates, and a moment later two boys arrive from another Seabrook exhibit – one swarthy with a daunting single eyebrow, the other with pale, ginger features strafed with acne, both of that slightly dysmorphic cast common to teenage boys, as though their faces have been copied out of a catalogue by someone working in an unfamiliar medium – to tell Farley that someone spilled Coke on their laptop.