School sports days were a particular kind of torture. In the first few years, when I thought my father might actually turn up, I tried my hardest in the weeks leading up to the event, rising early and doing extra training. If my father would not acknowledge my academic achievement, I thought perhaps he might be impressed by my athletic prowess. In the early days I won medals and trophies every year, but my father never appeared.
The other boys’ families would descend upon the school, the mothers dolled up and reeking of perfume so strong that it would make your eyes water, accompanied by the fathers in their highly polished cars. There would be sulking or boisterous siblings, and small babies swaddled in pastel shades and shrieking and tantrums. Significantly, there would be a great deal of hugging and affectionate ruffling of hair and manly handshakes. And after the sporting events, there would be a grand picnic on the lawns, where the families would sit together in huddled groups. Father Daniel did his best to distract me from my isolation on these days, employing me in tasks of ‘great importance’. Even when I did not win a medal, he would single me out for special mention.
I never gave up hope that my father might one day remember me. In my fantasy, he suddenly realized that he was wrong about me and that I was not a bad boy. He would come to the school and take me home to live with him and tell me that I was a wonderful son.
And then in my penultimate year at St Finian’s, I was overjoyed finally to see my father arrive in a black Mercedes with Judith by his side. They could have walked, but I think the car was a status symbol that needed to be displayed. They parked up in the lower car park and I ran down the lane towards the car, my heart pounding, barely hoping that my fantasy might become reality. My joy turned to bitter dismay when I saw Philip climb out of the car behind them and I remembered that my father was there for him, for Philip. My pace slowed and I stopped in the middle of the lane and did not know whether to turn back or not, but it was too late. My father looked up and saw me. He nodded quickly at me and raised his hand, and I thought for a moment that he was summoning me, but in the same instant he looked over at Judith, who just looked startled, and what could have been a wave of acknowledgement revealed itself to be a gesture of dismissal and I knew I was not welcome in their company. For the rest of the day, I feigned illness and retired to the infirmary until the festivities were over.
The following year, I did not enter any event, pleading exam pressure. I stayed in the study hall for the entire day, trying to block out the sound of the tannoy, the cheering and the laughter. Stanley came in later with a cake his mother had baked especially for me. A giddiness overtook me and I indulged in a food fight with him, tearing the cake apart and flinging fistfuls of jam and sponge at him, at the walls, at the light fittings and the portraits of former masters. We laughed until our sides were sore, but our glee was different. Mine was bordering on hysteria.
Stanley was a friend, a real friend back then. I knew that I was different from the other children by the time I was in the senior school. They talked of holidays and cousins and fights with their sisters and Christmas presents and politics at the family dinner table. I had nothing to offer in these conversations. I was also marked out by my obvious lack of money. My uniforms came from the school’s lost-and-found office, and I had no money for the tuck shop. There was an unspoken agreement that Father Daniel would provide whatever I needed. I do not know if this was instigated by my father or if it was a simple act of kindness on Father Daniel’s part. I suspect the latter. But a teenage boy often has more wants than needs, and I could not ask Father Daniel for stink bombs or plastic catapults or gobstoppers or dirty magazines.
Stanley Connolly shared all these things with me and, indeed, Stanley gave me my first glimpse of home life when I went to stay with his family on their farm in Kilkenny. I was surrounded by women for the first time. Stanley’s mother was a widow and he had three sisters. They terrified me. I had hit puberty and was barely in control of my hormones. I was tall and strong for my age and well able to do the farm work, but in the evenings when the family would gather for dinner, the noise and chattering of the girls unnerved me. I felt somewhat as if I had been mistakenly locked into a cage of exotic animals in the zoo.
They were incredibly kind and generous to me, and I know now that the girls were openly flirting with me. I should have been delighted with the attention, but I felt that the devotion was unwarranted, that any minute they would discover that I was a fraud, that they would realize a boy who did not deserve a mother could not belong in a family, blessed among women. I imagined that, like some unfamiliar species, they might all turn on me. Kill me. Eat me. I do not like cats for the same reason.
Stanley’s mother constantly fussed over me. She wanted to know what my favourite food was, and my uncultured palate betrayed me because I really only knew meals by the days of the week. Mondays: bacon and cabbage; Tuesdays: sausages and mashed potato; and so on. Eating real butter, home-baked bread and fresh meat and vegetables on unscheduled days made me uncomfortable. In school, we had fish on Fridays and that was my preference. ‘What kind of fish?’ she asked, and I could not tell her, but said that it was white, triangular-shaped and usually about four inches long. Mrs Connolly laughed, but I could see that she was sad for me, and from then on she set about awakening my taste buds, which, while sweet and generous, only made me uneasier. I knew my manners and ate everything that was served, but my stomach was so unused to such richness that sometimes, at night, cramps would keep me awake until the small hours. On one of those nights, I resolved that I would learn about food when I was properly grown up and that I would not be embarrassed again.
I did not realize the extent of my institutionalization, but I was self-conscious about being the object of their pity, or admiration, or whatever it was, and when my father ordered me to leave, I was almost relieved to do so. Stanley was a witness to my poverty and my isolation, and I think he knew more about my circumstances than I told him. This embarrassed me, so I did not make much of an effort to keep in touch with him when I left that school, not until I got married and had my first success with a book and had the proof that I was not a failure, but by then years had passed and we had little in common beyond the memory of shared catapults.
Many years ago, I went into town for a meeting with a publicist and I was early. It was a beautiful, warm summer’s day, and I decided to take a walk through St Stephen’s Green. As I passed the children’s playground, I saw Stanley pushing a little boy on a swing. The likeness was extraordinary, though the little boy was not cursed with the facial discolouration of his father. Stanley was older now and there were flecks of grey in his hair, which he still wore in a long fringe in a futile attempt to cover the mark.
Stanley could not take his eyes off his son, as if he could not believe his luck. He and the boy were in their own world, oblivious to this strange man watching. The boy threw his head back and laughed a hearty cackle as he swung ever higher, and I wanted to be him more than anybody else in the world. Just for a moment, to exult in a father’s love and attention. Then the boy stopped the swing, scuffing his little sandals into the gravel to apply the brakes. He jumped off and ran to a red-haired lady sitting on a bench nearby. Her lipsticked mouth grinned at the boy and she scooped him up into her arms and he buried his face into the soft slope of her neck. I felt only envy.