“Why on earth would he?”
I looked down at the carpet and felt my heart sink. I had only seen Julian on one other occasion since his initial visit and that was almost a month before, when we had got on even better than we had the first time, although, to my great disappointment, an opportunity had not presented itself for either of us to pull our pants down and expose ourselves to each other. I had been intoxicated by the notion of a friendship with him and the fact that he seemed to enjoy my company too was such a startling concept that it had started to dominate my thoughts. But of course we were not schooled together and therefore we were unlikely to meet again unless Max brought him to Dartmouth Square. It was a source of the deepest frustration to me.
“I just thought he might,” I said.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Charles. “I had thought about inviting a bunch of seven-year-olds to dinner but then I remembered that tonight was really rather important and our future happiness might depend on the outcome.”
“So he’s not coming?” I said, just to clarify.
“No,” said Charles. “He’s not.”
“So Elizabeth won’t be coming either?” asked Maude.
“Elizabeth?” asked Charles, sitting upright as if startled, his face flushing a little.
“Max’s wife.”
“I didn’t know that you knew Elizabeth.”
“I don’t. Not very well anyway. But we’ve met at a couple of charity events. She’s rather lovely in an obvious sort of way.”
“No, Elizabeth won’t be coming,” said Charles, looking down at the desk again and drumming his fingers on his ink blotter.
“Just the working-class people,” said Maude.
“Yes, just them.”
“What fun.”
“It’s only for a few hours, my darling. I’m sure you can get through it.”
“Will they understand which knives and forks to use?” she asked.
“Oh for pity’s sake,” said Charles, shaking his head. “They’re not animals. What do you think they’re going to do? Stab the beef with a toothpick, hold it in the air and start chewing around the sides?”
“Are we having beef?” she asked. “I was rather in the mood for fish tonight.”
“There’s a fish starter,” said Charles.
“Scallops,” I said. “I saw them in the kitchen.”
“I’m not being a snob,” insisted Maude. “I only ask because if these people are unaccustomed to fine dining they might feel intimidated by the prospect. Faced with competing sets of cutlery they might think that we’re mocking them and react to their humiliation by despising you even more. You forget that I’m a novelist, Charles. I have a keen understanding of human nature.”
My adoptive father’s tongue bulged in his cheek as he considered this. She had a point. “Well, what do you suggest I do?” he asked eventually. “It’s a five-course meal. There’s a dozen pieces of cutlery at each table setting. I can hardly stick labels on each one, saying, this is the fish knife, this is the bread knife, this is the pudding fork, can I?”
“No,” said Maude. “And it would be impossible to find labels that small anyway. Particularly at such short notice. We’d need to order them in.”
Charles stared at her and seemed on the verge of laughing, which would surely have shocked both of us, as it was a sound with which we were entirely unfamiliar.
“Is there anything else we need to know?” asked Maude, glancing at her watch. “Or can we leave now?”
“Am I holding you up?” asked Charles. “Is there some place you need to be? Is the local tobacconist having a one-hour sale on cigarettes, perhaps?”
“You know I don’t care for jokes,” she said, standing up and smoothing down her skirt. I glanced at Charles and was surprised to see how he stared at her, his eyes looking her up and down with unfiltered desire, for she was still a very beautiful woman. Also, she knew how to dress. “What time are they arriving anyway? I haven’t put my face on yet.”
“Another half hour,” said Charles, and she nodded and slipped out of the room.
“Wouldn’t the judge mind if he found out?” I asked a few moments later, after Charles had returned to his papers and seemed to have forgotten that I was still there. In fact, he jumped a little in the seat when I spoke.
“Wouldn’t the judge mind what?” he asked.
“The fact that you’re inviting four of the jurors to dinner. Wouldn’t he think there was something dishonest about that?”
Charles smiled and looked at me with something approaching tenderness in his eyes. “Oh, my dear boy,” he said. “You really aren’t an Avery, are you? It was the judge’s idea.”
The Perfect Family
“Might I say, Mr. Avery—”
“Please, let’s not stand on ceremony. Call me Charles.”
“Might I say, Charles, that I’ve long maintained an interest in the law,” said Denis Wilbert, the pedophile schoolteacher from Dorset Street, who had shaken my hand upon arriving and held on to it, sandwiched between his two sweaty paws, for much longer than necessary, causing me to run to the bathroom immediately to wash it. “I follow it in the papers, you see. The work of An Garda Síochána. The various trials, the barristers, the solicitors and what have you. The High Court appeals and the constitutional challenges. I actually considered reading law in university until I realized that my true calling lay with children. I’m never truly happy unless I’m in the company of a little boy. As many little boys as possible, in fact! But I’m ashamed to say that there have been times when I’ve believed that if a man stands accused in the dock, then he’s probably guilty of the crime—”
“Or the woman,” interrupted Jacob Turpin, the pervert dockworker who liked to spend his evenings lurking around the Milltown Road, waiting for little girls to cross his path so that he could treat them to a quick flash of his shortcomings.
“Please, Mr. Turpin,” said Wilbert, who seemed to consider himself a cut above due to his superior education. “If you don’t mind, I might just finish what I was saying to Charles and then, if you have something pertinent to add, you can—”
“I only meant that you find women in the dock too,” said Turpin, whose bright-red hair, almost luminous in its hue, was strangely hypnotic. “There was this lassie who worked in the offices at CIé and she was running a scam with the invoices and got five years for it. Sure you wouldn’t be up to them, would you? The women, I mean.”