“We’re not going to stay here all night, are we?” asked Bridget.
“I’m not staying another minute,” said Mary-Margaret. “To be spoken to like that in public by a man such as him. My private parts are my own business and no one else’s.” She swung around and, showing a bit of life for the first time since she’d arrived, roared over toward the barstool, “They should send you back to Borstal and let you rot there, you filthy article!”
Behan’s shoulders heaved with laughter and he raised his pint in salute while the rest of the men hooted and shouted lines like That’s you told now, Brendan and Fair fucks to the little bitch and Mary-Margaret looked like she might burst out crying again or simply go on a rampage and tear the Palace Bar apart brick by brick.
“Dublin’s a big place,” said Julian, trying to hold the evening together. “We could go sit out on the grass at Trinity College and watch all the queers play cricket.”
“Let’s do that,” said Bridget. “It’s a nice evening out after all. And they always look so handsome in their all-whites.”
“If the grass gets too cold, you can rely on me to keep you warm,” he said, and she giggled again as we all stood up.
Finishing our drinks and making our way toward the door, I pushed ahead, trying to get closer to Julian, anxious to ask him whether we might be able to go somewhere, just the two of us, but as I did so I brushed Mary-Margaret’s arm by mistake.
“Do you mind?” she snapped. “Manners cost nothing.”
“Sorry,” I said, frightened of looking at her in case she turned me to stone.
We stood on the street, Mary-Margaret and myself weighed down with our miserable faces while Julian and Bridget practically used each other as scaffolding.
“What was that you said, Cyril?” asked Julian, looking over at me while Bridget buried herself deep in his neck and, inexplicably as far as I could see, appeared to be biting him like some sort of drunken vampire.
“I said nothing.”
“Oh right. I thought you said you were going to walk Mary-Margaret to her bus stop and then take the bus back to school yourself and you’d see me tomorrow.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in bewilderment. “I didn’t even open my mouth.”
“I think you’re trying to lead me into temptation,” said Bridget, winking at him, and she pressed even closer to his body as I turned away and caught sight of a car streaking its way around the corner of Dame Street at an unnatural speed before turning in our direction, racing along Westmoreland Street and pulling in next to us with a screech of its brakes as the back doors were flung open.
“What the hell?” asked Julian, as two men in balaclavas leaped from the backseat, grabbed him roughly and dragged him to the rear of the car, where a third man had already opened the boot. Before anyone could protest, they pushed him inside, slammed it shut and jumped back into the car before speeding off again. The whole thing had taken no more than half a minute and as the car raced down O’Connell Street out of sight, all I could do was stand there and stare at it as it disappeared into the distance, uncertain what madness had just taken place before my eyes. It was only quickness of thought on my part that made me grab Mary-Margaret as she bent over and started vomiting on the pavement, half a dozen Snowballs making their way back into the world, but then she dragged me to the ground on top of her where we lay in a suspicious position until an old woman passing by hit me with her umbrella, saying that we weren’t animals and if we didn’t stop what we were doing that moment, she’d call the Gardaí and have us both locked up for public indecency.
Ransom
While the number of spelling and punctuation errors in the ransom note suggested a degree of illiteracy on the part of Julian’s kidnappers, it was to their credit that it was unfailingly polite:
Hello. We have the boy. And we know his daddies a rich man and a traytor to the cause of a united Ireland so we want ￡100,000 or well put a bullet in his head.
Await further instructions.
Thank you & best wishes.
Within hours, every news report in the country was leading with the kidnap, and a terrible photograph of Julian, looking angelic in his school uniform, was circulating throughout the media. Upon the instructions of the Garda Commissioner, little information was given out other than to confirm the identity of the fifteen-year-old boy, to admit that he was the son of one of Ireland’s most prominent solicitors, and to confirm that he had been abducted in broad daylight in the middle of the city center. At a hastily arranged press conference, the Commissioner avoided any questions referring to the Irish Republican Army or the Border Campaign and simply said that no member of the Gardaí would rest until the boy was found, although as it was quite late in the day already they wouldn’t start the search in earnest until the following morning at nine o’clock.
Bridget, Mary-Margaret and I were brought to Pearse Street Garda Station and when I asked why they were left sitting in the corridor while I was brought into a private room, I was told that this was to ensure that I didn’t molest either of them on Garda premises. I’m not sure what it was about my appearance that made me seem like a pubescent rapist but for some peculiar reason I took this as a compliment. They gave me a cup of warm tea, heavily sweetened, and half a packet of Marietta biscuits, and only as my trembling began to diminish did I realize that I’d been shaking ever since the car had pulled away from Westmoreland Street with Julian in the boot. I was left alone for the best part of an hour and when the door finally opened, to my astonishment, my adoptive father marched in.
“Charles,” I said, standing up and offering him my hand, which was his preferred form of greeting. I had tried to hug him only once, at Maude’s funeral, and he had recoiled from me as if I had leprosy. It had been several months since I had seen him and his complexion was darker than before, as if he had just come back from a foreign holiday. Also, his hair, which had been turning a rather dignified shade of gray, had undergone a volte-face, for it was entirely black again. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m not quite sure,” he said, looking round the room with the curiosity of someone who had never been in a police cell before, despite the fact that he had spent a couple of years brooding over his fraudulent tax activities in the ’Joy. “I was in the bank when the Gardaí arrived and, I must admit, when they walked into my office I got a bit of a fright. I thought I was in trouble again! But, no, it was just to tell me that you were being held here and they needed a parent or guardian to be present while they questioned you and I suppose I’m the closest thing to either one of those. How are you anyway, Cyril?”