Of course, I knew more than my classmates about Max Woodbead but I told no one of our past encounters. My interest in Julian meant that I had followed his father’s career and growing celebrity closely over the seven years since Charles’s trial and watched as his practice had grown considerably, to the point where only the very wealthiest defendants could afford to hire him. There were reports that he was worth over a million pounds, an enormous amount of money in those days. He owned a country home on the Dingle Peninsula, a flat in Knightsbridge where his lover, a famous actress, lived, but his main residence was a house on Dartmouth Square in Dublin that he shared with his wife Elizabeth and their children Julian and Alice, the same house that had once belonged to Charles and Maude and which he had purchased in an act of revenge within six months of my adoptive father’s incarceration in Mountjoy Prison. Moving his family in and forcing Elizabeth to sleep next to him in the room that had once been Charles’s was his idea of punishment.
Max’s other claim to fame was his growing public profile. He appeared regularly in the newspapers and on the radio criticizing the government, every government regardless of its colors, and pining for a restoration of Ireland’s place within the Empire. He was engaged in a rhapsodic love affair with the young Queen, whom he adored, and considered Harold Macmillan to be simply the finest politician who had ever lived. He longed for a return to the days of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy with a governor-general on Kildare Street and Prince Philip roaming the Phoenix Park, shooting every unfortunate animal that had the temerity to cross his path. Of course, he engendered the animosity of an entire nation for his anti-Republican views but that only made him more popular with the media, who broadcast his every wild utterance and sat back rubbing their collective hands in glee as they waited for the outrage to begin. Max was living proof that it doesn’t matter if people love you or loathe you; as long as they know who you are, you can make a good living.
And so when I returned from Latin class the following afternoon and saw the door to my room standing ajar and heard the sound of someone shuffling around inside, I felt a mixture of excitement and queasiness, guessing that Julian had arrived. I turned around and ran back along the corridor toward the bathroom, where a full-length mirror was pinned to one of the walls with the express intention of intimidating us after our morning showers, and examined myself quickly, taking a comb from my pocket and running it through my hair before checking there were no lunch remnants stuck between my teeth. I was desperate to make a good first impression but felt so sick with nerves that I worried I would end up embarrassing myself.
I knocked on the door and when no answer came pushed it open and stepped inside. Julian was standing by Dennis’s old bed, removing his clothes from his suitcase and placing them in the lower section of our shared chest of drawers. Turning around, he looked at me without any particular interest and although it had been a long time since we’d last seen each other I would have known him anywhere. He was around the same height as me but had a more muscular frame, with blond hair that fell over his forehead with as much languor as it had when he was a child. And he was ridiculously handsome, with clear blue eyes and skin that, unlike most of our classmates, had not been tarnished by acne.
“Hello,” he said, unfolding a coat and brushing it carefully with a clothes brush before hanging it in the wardrobe. “And who might you be?”
“Cyril Avery,” I said, extending my hand, which he stared at for a moment before shaking it. “This is my room. Well, our room now, I suppose. It was Dennis Caine’s and mine until a few weeks ago. But he got sacked for cheating in an exam even though everyone knows he didn’t do it. Now it’s our room. Yours and mine.”
“If this is your room,” he said, “then why did you knock?”
“I didn’t want to startle you,” I replied.
“I don’t startle easily.” He closed the drawers and looked me up and down before raising his right hand in simulation of a pistol and using his index finger to point to a spot just to the right of my heart. “You’ve missed a button on your shirt,” he said.
I looked down and, sure enough, one of the buttons was undone, the two sides of my shirt falling open like the mouth of a tiny hatchling, exposing the pale skin beneath. How had I missed that during my rigorous preparations? “Sorry,” I said, fastening it quickly.
“Cyril Avery,” he said, frowning a little. “Why do I know that name?”
“We’ve met before,” I told him.
“When?”
“When we were children. At my adoptive father’s house on Dartmouth Square.”
“Oh,” he said. “Are we neighbors? My father owns a house on Dartmouth Square too.”
“Actually, it’s the same house,” I said. “He bought it from mine.”
“I see.” Some memory trickled down into his consciousness and he clicked his fingers as he remembered, pointing at me once again. “Didn’t your father go to prison?” he asked.
“He did,” I admitted. “But only for a couple of years. He’s out now.”
“Where was he?”
“The ’Joy.”
“Exciting. Did you visit?”
“Not often, no. It’s no place for a child, or at least that’s what he always said.”
“I was there myself once,” he said. “When I was a boy. My father was representing a man who murdered his wife. The place smelled of—”
“Toilets,” I said. “I remember. You told me before.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“And you remembered? Even all these years later?”
“Well,” I said, feeling my face begin to redden slightly, not wanting my fascination with him to reveal itself too quickly. “I have been there myself since, as I said, and I thought the same thing.”
“Great minds and all that. So what happened when he got out, did he leave the country?”
“No, the bank took him back.”
“Really?” he said, bursting out laughing.
“Yes. Actually, he’s doing very well again. But they changed his job title. He used to be Director of Investments and Client Portfolios.”
“And what is he now?”
“Director of Client Investments and Portfolios.”
“Forgiving sort, aren’t they? Still, a spell in prison is probably a badge of honor for people in that field.”
I looked down at his feet and noticed that he was wearing runners, a fashion statement that was new to Ireland at the time.
“My father brought them back from London,” he said, following the direction of my eyes. “They’re my second pair, actually. I had them in a six but my feet grew. I’m an eight now.”
“Don’t let the priests see them,” I said. “They say runners are only worn by Protestants and socialists. They’ll confiscate them.”
“They’d have a hard job,” he said, but all the same he used the tip of his right foot to kick the left shoe off at the heel before using his stockinged toes to remove the right and kick the pair under his bed. “Not a snorer, are you?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” I said.
“Good. I am, I’m told. Hope I don’t keep you awake.”
“I don’t mind. I’m a heavy sleeper. I probably won’t hear you.”
“You might. My sister says that when I get started I’m like a foghorn.”
I smiled; already, I longed for bedtime. I wondered whether he was one of those boys who went to a toilet cubicle to change or whether he would simply strip off in the room. I suspected the latter. I doubted he had any self-consciousness at all.
“What’s it like here anyway?” he asked. “Is there any fun to be had?”
“It’s all right,” I said. “The boys are fine, the priests are vicious, of course, but—”
“Well, that’s to be expected. Have you ever met a priest who didn’t want to beat six shades of shit out of you? They get off on it, of course.”