“Probably,” said Julian, who believed that taking offense at anything a priest said was beneath his dignity. “We’ve had James Dillon over to the house a few times for dinner if that’s what you mean. Nice enough fellow, I suppose. Could do with a little advice on the personal hygiene front, of course.”
Father Squires shook his head in scorn and led the way through the doors, where we were met by an usher who bowed and scraped before the priest before giving us a tour of the ground floor of the House and leading us up a narrow staircase toward the Visitors’ Gallery, where we took our seats in the colonnade. The chamber, that green horseshoe of independence that represented everything that the Irish people had fought for over the years, lay before us and there was the Taoiseach, the great éamon de Valera himself, who we scarcely believed existed outside of newspaper reports and our history lessons, holding forth on some topic to do with taxation and agriculture, and there wasn’t a boy among our number who didn’t feel they were in the presence of greatness. How often had we had read about his role at Boland’s Mill during the Easter Rising of 1916 or how he had raised millions of American dollars to assist in the establishment of an Irish Republic three years later? He was the stuff of legend and there he was, in full sight of us, reading from a sheaf of papers in an uninterested voice as if none of these grand events were anything to do with him at all.
“Keep quiet now, lads,” said Father Squires, his eyes growing moist with adoration. “Listen to the great man speak.”
I did as I was told but it wasn’t long before I grew bored. He may well have been a great man but he didn’t seem to know when he’d made his point and should sit down again. Leaning over the railing, I glanced around at the half-empty seats of the chamber and counted how many of the Teachtaí Dála were asleep. The number was seventeen. I searched for women TDs but there were none to be found. Matthew Willoughby, who had won the history medal, had brought a notebook with him and was busy scribbling down every word that was said and as time went on and Father Squires showed no sign of wanting to leave, my eyes started to close and only when Julian tapped me on the arm and nodded toward the door behind us did I come back to life.
“What?” I said, stifling a yawn.
“Let’s go outside and take a look around,” he said.
“We’ll get in trouble.”
“And what if we do? Does it matter?”
I looked over toward Father Squires. He was seated in the front row, practically dribbling with Republican zeal. The chances of him noticing that we had abandoned our posts were nonexistent.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We stood up and snuck out the same way that we had come in, ignoring the ushers standing on duty at the doors of the gallery lest they challenge us on our departure, and made our way down the staircase where another Garda was sitting on an ornamental chair—the very replica of the one that had once sat on the ground floor of the house on Dartmouth Square—reading a newspaper.
“Where do you lads think you’re going?” he asked, looking as if he didn’t particularly care about the answer but felt duty-bound to ask anyway.
“Toilet,” said Julian, grabbing his crotch with one hand while doing a little dance on the spot as the man rolled his eyes.
“Along down the corridor there,” he said, pointing the way as he dismissed us.
We walked past him and past the toilets too, staring up at the oil portraits of the unknown dignitaries that glared down at us from the walls as if they knew that we were up to no good, and felt the excitement of being young, alive and unsupervised by adults. I had no idea where we were going, neither of us did, but it felt great to be on our own and having an adventure.
“Do you have any money on you, Cyril?” Julian asked after we had run out of corridors to investigate.
“Some,” I said. “Not much. Why?”
“There’s a tearoom over there. We could get something to drink.”
“Right enough,” I said and we made our way inside, holding our heads high as if we had every right to be there. It was a large room, about thirty feet wide and four times as long, and a woman was seated behind a desk on the nearest wall, a cash register next to her, watching people come to and fro as she counted her receipts. To my surprise, a pair of yellow phone boxes, the like of which I had only ever seen on street corners, stood on either side of her desk. One was occupied by a TD whose photograph I had seen in the papers but the other was empty. The tables ran in three long rows and despite the fact that there were plenty of empty seats the men were gathered like moths around the few tables where the flame of seniority burned bright. I recognized a group of junior Fianna Fáil TDs sitting on the floor near a couple of ministers, waiting for a seat at the top table to open up and doing their best not to acknowledge the sheer indignity of their position.
Naturally, Julian and I avoided the occupied tables and made our way to an empty one by a window, where we sat down with all the confidence of a couple of young dauphins until a young waitress, not much older than either of us, noticed us and came over. She was wearing a tight-fitting black and white uniform with the two top buttons of her blouse undone and I could see Julian staring at her in hunger, his pupils dilating as he took her in. She was a looker, there was no denying it, with shoulder-length blonde hair and pale clear skin.
“Let me wipe that clean for you,” she said, leaning over and running a damp dishcloth across the top of the table while she glanced from one of us to the other. I noticed her gaze settle on Julian, who was so much more handsome than me, and envied the ease with which she could take him in and appreciate his beauty. As she turned away to clear some napkins from the table’s previous occupants, he sat up straight, craned his neck forward and it was obvious that he was doing everything he could to look down her open blouse to capture every square inch of breast that was on display, to record it like a still photograph and develop it whenever he felt the urge. “What can I get you?” she asked finally, standing up again.
“Two pints of Guinness,” said Julian, casual as you like. “And do you have any of that walnut cake that you had in here last Tuesday?”
She stared at him with an expression that mingled amusement with attraction. He was only fourteen but behaved in such an adult and confident fashion that I could tell that she didn’t want to dismiss him out of hand.
“We’re out of walnut cake,” she said. “There was a run on it earlier. We have a bit of almond, though, if you’d like that.”
“Oh Christ no,” said Julian, shaking his head. “Almond gives me terrible gas. I have a group of constituents coming in to see me later this afternoon and the last thing I need is to be burping all over them. They’ll never vote for me again and that’ll be me out of a job. I’ll have to go back to teaching. What’s your name anyway, sweetheart?” he asked, and I looked down at my fingers, counting them one by one and wishing that she would just bring a pot of tea to the table and leave us in peace. “I haven’t seen you in here before, have I?”
“Bridget,” said the waitress. “I’m new.”