The Empty Family (12 page)

‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake,’ she said.

‘Hold on. Did you?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Sex? Actual sex?’

‘Yes, actual sex.’

‘When?’

‘Sometimes before those little prayer meetings we had, and sometimes after.’

‘You were often there with one of your friends.’

‘On those days I doubled back and went to his room later.’

‘And on the other days?’

‘I got there early.’

I tried to think, to remember evenings when I had come from the study hall to find Gráinne and Father Moorehouse alone in that room. I realized that there was nothing, not a single detail, not a blush, for example, on either of their faces, not a thing unusually out of place, that I had noticed or could now recall.

‘What has this got to do with me?’

‘I need a witness.’

‘To what?’

‘That we were in that room, that we knew him, and we were vulnerable.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘I was vulnerable. That is me speaking for myself. And you were vulnerable too, just in case you don’t remember.’

‘You were vulnerable enough to arrive early and double back?’

‘He had us in his thrall.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘I repeat – he had us in his thrall. Are you denying that?’

‘I didn’t have sex with him.’

‘That is hardly the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘Keep your voice down. The point is that I was taken full advantage of, aged sixteen.’

‘And you want to talk to Joe Duffy on his radio show about it? Is that right? Talk to Joe!’

‘I’ve written a book.’

‘And you want my imprimatur and the archbishop’s
nihil obstat
?’

‘She already has the archbishop’s
nihil obstat
,’ Donnacha said drily.

‘Is it a long book?’ I asked.

‘It’s as long as it needs to be.’

I realized that I wanted to ask her how much was in the book about me, how much about that room where we said prayers, and then it struck me that I did not actually care what she put in her book.

‘I am going to tell the story of my life,’ she said. ‘And it is going to be the truth.’

‘I thought you said you’d already written it.’

‘I have.’

‘When does it start?’

‘It opens on the night I met Donnacha.’

‘When was that?’

‘You were there too. Do you remember that awful opera they let us go to in Wexford one year? I checked back the year and then we both remembered. It was called
The Pearl Fishers
. My book starts that night.’

She smiled at Donnacha. I put my knife and fork down and poured another glass of wine for each of us.

‘I vaguely remember it,’ I said.

‘That was the first night for us,’ she said. ‘I mean the first time I knew I fancied him. And vice versa.’

As she went on I pretended for some time more that I barely remembered the night, and then I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I hoped that neither of them had noticed I had been telling lies and trying to change the subject. I hoped I could soon get away from the high drama of Gráinne’s life, which was now on display for me and Donnacha as a sort of preparatory gesture to the world, a piece of recitative for a great diva who would go on to sing many great arias. This supper was merely a way of warming up her voice, letting her know how wonderful she herself sounded, especially in the upper register.

In those first months when Donnacha and I began to have sex whenever we could in the school, it was announced that any pupil in the senior years could attend a dress rehearsal of
The Pearl Fishers
, which was running as part of the opera festival, as long as he came to the rehearsal room every afternoon and listened to the opera on record and attended a lecture on its form and its meaning from one of the priests who was also a music teacher. Since I was still sulking about being turfed off the bus to the hurling match and refusing even to tog out between class and Rosary in the afternoon, this seemed an opportunity for revenge on the hurling coach and the captain of our team. I could tell them that I was busy in the rehearsal room listening to an opera. I convinced Donnacha to come too. We were informed on the first day that anyone who missed one of the five sessions could not attend the dress rehearsal. By the last day, because the music and the explanation of the plot and the motifs in the opera had bored the majority so badly, there were only seven or eight of us left.

I stayed because the music took me over, especially one of the duets by the baritone and the tenor. I was also interested in the idea of a motif, a set of notes that played, say, on a harp could remind you of the same set of notes as sung by the soprano, or by the baritone and the tenor in the duet. The men’s duet was about eternal friendship sworn between them as they knew they were in love with the same woman. By the end of the opera that same melody would be sung as a duet by the tenor and the woman, who had found love, thus leaving the baritone alone and miserable.

I found this beautiful and compelling. Donnacha liked it too, or maybe he just tolerated it; he was never very enthusiastic about anything much. He came along perhaps because I did. It might have mattered to us both that the room, where the music teacher’s personal stereo had been specially set up for us, was just beside the smaller room where we had gone that first night. I never for a second thought anything as banal as that I was the tenor or the baritone and Donnacha was the other singer in the duet. But the music lifted me, and the aria they sang haunted me. It made me feel happy that I was close to Donnacha while I listened to it, and afterwards back in the study hall I composed some poems in response to it, and, I am almost ashamed to say, some prayers that I later showed to Father Moorehouse.

Students from St Aidan’s and from the convent in the town filled two rows of seats at the dress rehearsal. Because there were only eight of us, we had been allowed to walk down to the opera house without supervision but with instructions to come straight back to the school once the opera was over. Walking to the opera house that evening was like being an adult. I had never been to an opera before; I think I may have heard a live orchestra once or twice, but only a chamber orchestra. I was surprised by the lighting and the costumes and the set, how yellow and stylized everything was, and how rich the sound coming from the orchestra and the chorus. But I was overwhelmed when the two men began to sing. When we were told about the difference between a baritone and a tenor I had understood it but it had not meant much to me. Now the tenor’s voice seemed vulnerable and plaintive, and the other voice masculine and strong. I was surprised too at the real difference between the voices, much greater here than on the recording. You could hear each voice clearly when it came to the duet and when the voices finally merged in harmony I was almost in tears. I could not take my eyes off the two men. What they had done together in that aria was the beginning of a new life for me, not only because I would follow music and singing from then on, but because it had given me a glittering hint of something beyond the life I knew or had been told about. That made all the difference to me, and I presumed that it had made a difference to those around me as well, who applauded warmly when the aria was over.

When the interval came and we got outside, however, I found Gráinne Roche laughing and gathering her friends around, delighted that she would not be going back in to the second half. Instead, she was going to lead a posse, she said, down to Cafolla’s for a hamburger and chips. No one would notice our departure, she said, and we would even be able to smoke there in freedom. I stood apart and remained silent. I watched other people standing outside who appeared, like me, to have loved the first half. I waited for Donnacha to come over and join me, but he was busy talking to Gráinne and her friends so I left him there.

It was a strange feeling, looking up at the tall buildings in the narrow street, and at the night sky, knowing that backstage here the singers were in dressing rooms preparing for the second half. And that over the next two or three weeks people would come from all over the world to see
The Pearl Fishers
, people who lived their lives in a way which seemed to me that night glamorous and exotic. People rich enough or free enough to travel a distance to be beguiled by music. I wondered what it would be like to be among such people.

Donnacha walked over to me looking happy.

‘Are you coming?’ he asked.

‘Where?’

‘To Cafolla’s. We’re all going.’

‘Are you going to miss the second half?’

‘I’m starving.’

He was, I could tell, utterly impervious to how I felt and that came as a shock. I thought he surely must have realized from my response to the music as I sat beside him that the idea of going to Cafolla’s to eat chips and hamburgers instead of going back into the opera would be pure dull madness. I saw that that did not occur to him. I saw that the music had meant nothing to him. I saw that he did not notice how much it had meant to me.

‘No, I’m going back in.’

By that time Gráinne was standing beside us. She had a packet of cigarettes in her hand. She was chewing gum.

‘Listen to goody-two-shoes,’ she said.

‘It won’t be noticed,’ Donnacha said.

‘I’m going back in,’ I repeated.

When his eyes caught mine I knew that he sensed there was something wrong.

‘I’ll be waiting outside when it’s over,’ he said.

‘Let us know if there’s any more screeching,’ Gráinne added. ‘God, that woman did more screeching! My nerves are in bits from her.’

Gráinne did a loud, jarring imitation of a soprano hitting a high note until a few people turned around to glare at her.

‘We’re off,’ she said. ‘See you.’

‘I’ll be waiting outside when it’s over,’ Donnacha said again. I did not reply but turned and walked back into the opera house.

Afterwards he was lurking in the shadows and slowly we walked back to the school together.

‘How was the second half?’ he asked.

‘It was great. How were the chips?’

‘They were great.’

I enjoyed the idea of us walking together through the empty streets of the town. Neither of us spoke much; we had different things to think about. Donnacha could not have known or even suspected that ten years ahead, when he was working as an accountant in one of the midland towns, Gráinne Roche would be the star journalist on one of the regional papers, covering sport and local court cases, and they would meet again and within a year they would marry. I could not have suspected that the music that had lifted me out of myself that night, that had seemed like a great new beginning, would within a decade seem sweet and silly to me, not Germanic or hard enough. The future is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Once we got in the back gate to the school that night and were in the dark we held hands as we walked across the playing fields. It was cold. We made our way silently to the room beside the rehearsal room and started to make love. It was only when Donnacha began to ejaculate that I noticed the line of light under the door and knew that if there was anyone in the next room they would hear him now. His orgasm took time, the slow moan he made grew louder and, while he did everything to control it, it was accompanied by a set of gasps. As I felt his hot jets of sperm hitting the skin of my belly I heard footsteps and then a voice in the other room, something like ‘What the hell?’ In that second Donnacha, who had not finished coming, unlocked the door leading to the corridor and ran out. I moved quickly to the door between our room and the rehearsal room. I put my foot against the door, preventing whoever was there from entering. It became a battle between the force of my foot and my shoulder and his force. I knew I had one second before he began to push harder, one second to let the door free and dart across the small room and out the same door through which Donnacha had departed. The voice I heard as I ran was the voice of the music teacher. I raced down a dark corridor and then along another, illuminated corridor, and then through the narrow doorway that led to the dormitory. I knew that the music teacher could easily have seen me from behind in the second of these corridors if he was following closely enough. The trick now was to take my shoes off and get straight into bed, cover myself with blankets and pretend to be asleep.

It was not long before I heard footsteps in the dormitory. All he had to do was use his sense of smell and he would smell semen or stand silently watching me until I turned to check that he was gone. I was careful to lie still, to do a perfect imitation of someone sleeping for at least half an hour, before quietly undressing, tasting what sperm was still caked on my skin and then getting into my pyjamas and going to sleep.

In the morning I felt drained and guilty – the sounds Donnacha made would have been unmistakable – but I knew there was nothing the music teacher could do. After breakfast when I looked over I saw that Donnacha must have slipped out of the refectory. It was a few days before he began to speak to me again, and when he did he was guarded and I knew he did not want to talk about how close we had come to being discovered.

I took my time drying my hands in the toilets of the Clarence before returning to the table. When I got there I found that Seamus Fox was sitting in my chair having an animated discussion with Gráinne Roche. I knew Seamus because we had served together a number of years earlier on a jury at a film festival in Galway. I found him friendly and funny, which was surprising since the columns he wrote were notable for their sourness and a level of support for rural and traditional values that at times made Gráinne Roche seem radical and cosmopolitan. I tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Get up,’ I said.

He turned and grinned.

‘I now declare this meeting of the Catholic cranks of Ireland suspended,’ I said. ‘Go back to your own table.’

‘What are you doing together?’ he asked. ‘How do you know each other?’

‘We are the only two people who have read your book
Reading the Bible with Bono
, and we often meet to discuss it,’ I replied.