by Paul Murray
‘H-bomb.’ Farley materializes at his elbow. ‘Why didn’t you come over?’
‘You were talking to…’ Howard nods clandestinely over his glass at Tom, waiting at the bar with his back to them.
‘So?’ Farley says. ‘He’s not going to bite you, is he?’
Howard stares at him. ‘How do you know? Don’t you realize what day it is?’
‘Friday?’
‘It’s the anniversary, you clown, the anniversary of the accident. Eleven years.’
‘Oh, for –’ Farley swats his hand at the idea. ‘Howard, I swear, no one in the world is aware of that except you. Forget about it, for God’s sake. You’ve got enough to worry about.’ He drains his glass and sets it down on a nearby ledge. ‘Aha, perfect timing,’ as Tom appears beside them and hands him a drink.
‘Sorry, Howard,’ he says, ‘are you all right for a pint?’
‘I’m still on this one,’ Howard mutters.
‘It’s nearly gone – excuse me.’ Tom grabs the lounge girl and orders another beer. This is the first drink he has ever bought for him; Howard raises his eyebrows in bewilderment. Farley shrugs back at him. Well, perhaps he is right, Howard thinks, perhaps it is only himself who keeps clutching on to the past, who’s been obsessively watching the calendar. Tom is certainly in better form tonight than he has been lately – relaxed and jovial, if not what you could call sober. It’s Howard who remains stiff and diffident, unable to settle; he can’t help feeling thankful when Jim Slattery ambles up.
‘Found myself thinking of you the other day, doing ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ with the fourth-years. You remember it, I’m sure, Wilfred Owen…?’ He tilts his head back oracularly: ‘Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning… Gives Graves a run for his money there, eh? Drowning on dry land. Such a striking image. Mustard gas,’ he explains to the others. ‘What did for Hitler in the First World War, though it didn’t kill the scut.’
‘Ah,’ says Farley.
‘Dedicated it to a teacher, as a matter of fact, Owen did. Woman called Jessie Pope wrote this jingoistic doggerel, prodding youngsters to go off and get themselves shot to pieces. “Who’s for the Game?”, other such rubbish.’ He sighs over his ginger ale. ‘No wonder boys learned to stop listening to their teachers.’
‘It’d never happen now,’ Howard agrees mordantly.
‘That reminds me. You were saying something the other day about one of your boys turning up an ancestor who’d fought in the war. It struck me that that could make a very interesting project for them – discovering their own forebears’ actions during the war, I mean.’
‘Yeah,’ Howard says non-committally.
‘Need a fair bit of spadework, of course, if they wanted to unearth anything significant, war record wasn’t popular in Ireland, as you know yourself. But this is probably the first generation that would even be able to research it – so you’d be breaking new ground in all kinds of ways.’
‘That would certainly be interesting,’ Howard says. And it probably would; but over the last few days, in his double-loneliness, he’s found it hard to muster enthusiasm about anything, even the classes he was enjoying so much.
‘Well, just a thought,’ the older man says. ‘I’m sure you have plenty to be going on with yourself.’ He checks his watch. ‘Hell’s bells – I’d better be getting home, or it’ll be the firing squad for me. Good luck, Howard.’ Tapping the handle of his satchel at the other two: ‘Till Monday, gentlemen.’
Howard turns lugubriously back to Farley and Tom, who are immersed in a discussion about the junior swimming team’s prospects in the meet in Ballinasloe tomorrow. Tom is getting drunker by the minute, gesturing so expansively that at one point he knocks the glass clean out of Peter Fletcher’s hand behind him, although somehow it doesn’t break and Tom continues his monologue without even noticing, as Fletcher decamps stoically to the bar. Howard decides to follow suit, not wanting to be left with Tom if Farley should get called away.
He forges through the glistening Friday faces, the circular, alcohol-infused conversations. It’s not just Tom; since Halley left, all these exchanges, the countless minor social transactions that make up the fabric of the day, have come to seem impossibly difficult. He keeps saying the wrong thing, taking people up wrong; it’s as if the world has been fractionally recalibrated, leaving him chronically misaligned. In this kind of form, maybe his empty house would be better after all. He buys drinks for Farley and Tom and extricates himself from the proceedings with the excuse that he is driving, although at two drinks he’s already well over the limit.
Outside the crowded pub the night is clear, and walking back through the school he feels more himself again. The dark frost-spangled pitches, overhung by the laurel trees, glister all around him, and the silhouette of the Tower looms up over the null expanse of the yard as though rearing out of the past. He opens the car door and spends a moment in the austere radiance of the moonlit campus, before turning the key in the ignition.
And then all of a sudden there’s a kid in front of his car. He appears out of nowhere to flare up phosphorescent in the headlights – Howard swerves frantically, misses him by an inch, jolts up the kerb and onto the manicured lawn surrounding the priests’ residence, where he sits tilted in the cold interior, blood hissing in his ears, unsure what just happened. Then, switching off the engine, he climbs out of the car. To his disbelief – to his fury – the boy is continuing blithely down the avenue.
‘Hey!’
The figure turns.
‘Yes, you! Get back here!’
Reluctantly the boy makes his way back. As he draws nearer, a white slip of face discloses itself. ‘Juster?’ Howard says incredulously. ‘Jesus Christ, Juster, what the hell were you doing? I nearly drove right into you.’
The boy looks at him uncertainly, then at the car mounted on the grass, like he’s being asked to solve a puzzle.
‘I missed knocking you down by this much,’ Howard shouts, demonstrating with finger and thumb. ‘Are you trying to get killed?’
‘Sorry,’ the boy says mechanically.
Howard clenches his teeth, trapping an expletive. ‘If I’d hit you, you really would have been sorry. Where the hell are you coming from, anyway? Why aren’t you in Study Hall?’
‘It’s Friday,’ the boy says, in that maddening monotone.
‘Have you got permission to be out?’ Howard says, and then sees that in his hand the boy is holding, surreally, a white frisbee. ‘And what are you doing with that?’
The boy looks blank, then follows Howard’s finger to the plastic disc in his own hand, apparently surprised to find it there. ‘Oh – uh, I was going to play frisbee.’
‘Who with?’
‘Um…’ the boy scours the asphalt, bringing a hand to his head. ‘Just me.’
‘Just you,’ Howard repeats sardonically. Greg was right, there is something seriously awry with this boy. Someone needs to tell him a few home truths. ‘Nothing strikes you as odd about playing frisbee in the dark, on your own?’
The boy does not reply.
‘Don’t you understand –’ Howard feeling his temper beginning to fray ‘– that there’s a right way and a wrong way of doing things? You exist in a society, in the society of this school, you’re not an island who can just, you know, do what he wants. Although I’ll tell you what, if you want to be an island, if you want to be some isolated weirdo out on the margins of things, you’re right on course. Just keep going as you’re going, mister, and before long people will be crossing the street to avoid you. Is that what you want?’
The boy still does not speak, merely huddles into himself, continuing to stare at the ground as if he can see his reflection in the tarmac; his breathing, however, has taken on the snuffling quality that presages tears. Howard rolls his eyes. Say a word to these kids and they just dissolve. It’s impossible, impossible. Suddenly he feels emptied out, as if all the exhaustion of the rollercoaste
r week has hit him in a single wave.
‘All right, Juster,’ he surrenders. ‘Get inside. Have a good weekend. And for God’s sake, if you’re going to play frisbee, find another human being to play with. Seriously, you’re giving people the willies.’ He returns to his car, opens the door. Juster, however, stays where he is, head bowed, passing the disc through his fingers like a vaudevillian’s hat. Howard feels a twinge of guilt. Was he too hard on him? Half in and half out of the car, he casts about in his mind for some neutral remark to take his leave with. ‘And good luck with your swim meet tomorrow! How are you set for it? Confident?’
The boy mumbles something Howard does not hear.
‘Attaboy,’ Howard says. ‘Well, see you Monday!’
Nodding agreement with himself, in the absence of any reaction from Juster, he climbs into his car.
At the gate he checks his mirror. It seems at first that the boy has gone; but then he sees the frisbee, a dim double of the moon, hovering a couple of feet from the ground, in the same spot Howard left him. He purses his lips. These kids, they want you to live their whole lives for them. Teach me! Entertain me! Solve my problems! Sooner or later you have to step back. There’s only so much a teacher can do. Good thing he got those brakes fixed, though. A dead student, that’s all he needs.
Ed’s Doughnut House is always half-empty on a Friday night, when anybody with a life and a fake ID heads somewhere that serves alcohol. But KellyAnn is going to die if she doesn’t get a Double-Chocolate Wonderwheel. So here they are.
‘It’s like I totally crave them all the time,’ she says, licking chocolate off her fingers. ‘I can’t explain it, it’s like this weird craving?’ After allowing a moment for suggestions that do not arrive, KellyAnn makes the connection for herself. ‘It must be because I’m pregnant,’ she says thoughtfully.
Janine rolls her eyes.
‘Oh my God, these are so… gorgeous,’ KellyAnn pronounces, through a mouthful of caramel gunk. ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’
‘I want to get out of here,’ Janine says. ‘This place is like Loser HQ.’
‘Okay,’ KellyAnn says. She has noticed that Janine is a little snippy this evening? But she’s not going to make a big thing out of it. ‘So where’s Lori tonight?’ she says, sucking her thumbs clean.
‘Beats me,’ Janine shrugs.
‘Is she seeing that boy Daniel?’
‘I have no idea,’ Janine declares theatrically.
KellyAnn unwraps another doughnut. ‘He sounds really sweet – are you sure you don’t want one?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘I’m always hungry these days. I’m going to be the size of a house!’ She chortles to herself, then remembers, ‘Yeah, Titch knows him. He doesn’t sound like Lori’s type exactly? Like he’s slightly a dweeb? But he sounds nice. And anyone’s going to be better than that psycho Carl. Like, oh my God. He’s totally going to wind up on like America’s Most Wanted.’
Janine’s eyes narrow and bore into her, and her voice is like a knife: ‘This is Ireland, KellyAnn. Not America.’
‘Yeah, but you know what I mean.’ KellyAnn reaches for a napkin and wipes her fingers one by one. ‘Like, I don’t understand how she could even be attracted to someone like that, who’s on drugs and hangs around with scumbags from the flats and cuts his own arm? I mean, hello? Probably not Mr Right?’
Janine doesn’t answer, grinds the waxy doughnut paper into a little tiny ball.
‘My mom says girls who like those kinds of boys have problems with their self-esteem,’ KellyAnn says. ‘But why would Lori have problems with her self-esteem? Every boy in South Dublin is completely in love with her.’
Now Janine mashes the paper through the slit cut for a straw in the lid of her empty beaker.
‘Like, she’s so beautiful,’ KellyAnn continues. ‘She could have any guy she wants.’
Janine doesn’t say anything to this either.
‘Anyway, I’m glad she’s found someone she can be happy with. Now all we have to do is find a nice boy for you!’
‘Don’t bother,’ Janine says.
‘Oh, Janine, don’t give up!’ KellyAnn reaches over to stroke her arm. ‘I know there’s someone out there for you!’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ Janine turns at the sound of the door opening, then quickly turns back again as four more shaggy-haired losers come in through it. ‘Men are such assholes,’ she says.
‘Titch isn’t an asshole,’ KellyAnn says emphatically. ‘He cares about me.’
‘They’re all the same,’ Janine comments sweetly. ‘Now, can we please get out of here? And maybe go somewhere something might actually happen?’
Now you’re deep in the forest, searching for the final Demon’s castle. The sun is going down, the tree trunks glow pale silver, wrapped root-upwards with spiderweb. You left your horse down in the valley, there was no way to take it along. Where will it go? Someone kind will take it in and afterwards you can come and collect it.
Afterwards.
When you came back from Lori’s, Ruprecht was still out on his mission. You put the frisbee in the wardrobe and got the tube of pills from under the mattress. Through the dorm window the sky is the same dead black as the empty schoolyard, as if they’ve tarmacked over it, and on the desk, like a yellow leaf, the note you found stuck to the door: BUS LEAVES FOR BALLINASLOE 8 A.M. SEE YOU THERE!
No one knows much about the Third Demon, even on the Internet it’s hard to find any information. You’ve crossed the Realm three times hunting for this Castle. You leave the woods for the wetlands now, in blazing moonlight heading north. You run until there’s no further you can go and you hit the border of the Realm, the invisible wall where though the grass and water continue into the distance your legs move without taking you anywhere. Okay, try going west instead.
According to one solution of M-theory our universe is a HYPERSPHERE, which is to say it’s shaped like a bubble. That means that if you were to run as far as you could go, i.e. for fifteen trillion light years, which is the size of the universe, you would eventually end up right back where you started. So how would you end up somewhere else? Ah, well, from inside the bubble, that is to say hyperspace, you could go wherever you wanted. Like back in time? Backwards, forwards, any point in space, not to mention the other universes, an infinity of them maybe. So how do you get into the bubble? Well, that’s where it gets tricky. Because we’re too big and heavy for the dimensions? You could put it like that.
Djed running and running, west and west, through the predawn gloom. Now you come to a fork in the path you don’t remember being there before. Both ways look identical, lined with trees and mist. You pick one at random and start walking. Before long you notice the mist getting thicker, soon it has spread to cover everything, leaving only ghosts of trees, ghosts of a path. Still, if you keep going the same direction you’re bound to get somewhere eventually. So you keep going.
Sleep pulls at your eyelids. The clock ticks, pushing you closer and closer to tomorrow.
BUS LEAVES FOR BALLINASLOE 8 A.M.
Flu epidemic, ebola, plague. Bus explosion, revolution, dinosaur skeletons in the museum coming to life and wreaking havoc. Alien invasion. Death.
SEE YOU THERE!
The mist goes on and on. As you walk things come up out of your thoughts, frazzles of memories swirling around you and binding together, gathering like ghosts out of the dark. The swim meet, the last one, in Thurles. Grown-ups squeezed into plastic bleachers: country parents in frilly blouses and jumpers with diamond patterns, Seabrook parents in sunglasses, jewellery, fake tan. The other teams had bogger accents and broad shoulders, in the changing rooms they called you ‘townie ponces’, you were huddled in a corner not talking, with your goggles you looked like scared insects. Then Coach pulled you in together. You can do it, guys! They’re already afraid of you! Because you’re better than them! Then the whistle blew.
On and on, deeper into the mist.
As soon as you hit the water you stopped being scared. Water is the same everywhere! Your body moved without even thinking, you realized all the times before in training were just shadows of this time and the realness made you fly. The cheers from the bleachers were crashes of sound like the breaths of a monster that hit you whenever you came up for air. Your arms burned, they ploughed and dug like you were travelling right through the Earth. You didn’t know what was happening around you, just kept hurling yourself forward till your fingers touched the wall. Then you saw Coach jump up with his fist in the air.
The metal trophy Made in Korea in the fat fingers of the judge. Coach’s blue shirt black from carrying you on his shoulders. The space in the crowd where Mum and Dad would have been, that’s where you kept looking. She can’t come to the phone right now, sport. Okay, Dad, maybe later. A black hole is a region where the rules break down, where we don’t know why what happens happens. Likewise, the word ‘cancer’ does not designate a specific disease, instead you should think of it as the name we give to a huge hole in our knowledge, a blank space on the map so to speak.
Who wants hamburgers?!! McDonald’s in Thurles tasted different to home. Then back to the hotel, it was green like mint ice cream that had been left in the rain for years and years. In the next bed Antony Taylor fell asleep straight away. The others were in Siddartha’s room watching Dunston Checks In. Is she awake now? She’s just gone to bed, sport. But she’s so proud of you, Danny, she wanted me to tell you.
You lay there in the dark. Antony’s snoring was like a cement mixer. You just wanted to talk to her! You just wanted them to tell you what was happening! And then your leg felt like it was twisting up inside, you couldn’t lie still. It was twisting you right up out of the bed! You got up, you hopped around. Then you opened the door, the wallpaper in the hotel was green too, it looked like you were underwater, the gold numbers on the doors counting down, you raised your hand to knock – and then –