While all this was going on, the greatest manhunt in the history of the state was being led by Sergeant Cunnane, and Julian had, within the space of a week, become perhaps the most famous person in Ireland. Gardaí in every county were following leads, checking farmhouses and deserted barns for anything that might give them a clue as to the whereabouts of the kidnappers but without success.
School continued as normal and the priests insisted that we pray for our missing classmate before each lesson, which meant eight prayers a day, not including our regular morning and evening benedictions, but it seemed as if God was either not listening or was on the side of the IRA. Bridget gave an interview to the Evening Press in which she said that she and Julian were on the most intimate terms and that she had never had a boyfriend who was so polite or so respectful as him. Not once did he ever try to take advantage of me, she said between sobs, and I expected her nose to start growing, so outrageous were her lies. I don’t think such impure thoughts ever crossed his mind.
On the nights when I was left alone in our room, one hand behind my head, the other down the front of my pajamas bottoms, as I lay in Julian’s bed staring up at the ceiling, I began to come to terms with who I was. I had known from as far back as I could recall that I was different from other boys. There was something inside me that longed for the intimate friendship and approval of my peers in ways that others never did. It was a disease that the priests referred to from time to time as one of the most venal of all sins and they told us that any boy wicked enough to have lustful thoughts about another boy would surely go straight to hell and spend eternity there, burning in the raging fires as the Devil sat alongside him laughing and poking him with his trident. There were so many times that I had fallen asleep in that room, my mind filled with lurid fantasies about Julian, whose head lay on a pillow not ten feet from my own, his mouth half open as he dreamed, but now my fantasies were not sexual but gruesome. I thought of what his kidnappers might be doing to him at that moment, which body part they would sever next and how awful it must have been for him every time they took a saw or a pair of pliers to his body. I had always known Julian as a brave soul, a happy-go-lucky fellow who never let the world weigh him down, but what fifteen-year-old boy could possibly go through such an ordeal and come out the same person?
After much soul-searching, I decided to go to confession. I thought that perhaps if I prayed for his release and confessed my sins then God might see fit to take pity on my friend. I didn’t go to the church at Belvedere, where the priests would have recognized me and probably broken the seal of the confessional to have me expelled. Instead, I waited until the weekend and made my way into town alone, heading toward Pearse Street and the large church that stood next to the train station.
I had never been there before and was a little overawed by the grandeur of the place. The altar was laid for the following day’s Masses and candles were lit in rows of a dozen or more on brass stands. It cost a penny to light one and I threw two ha’pennies into the box before selecting one and placing it in the front row center, watching as the flame flickered for a few moments before settling. Kneeling on the hard floor, I said a prayer, a thing I had never done with any solemnity before. Please don’t let Julian die, I asked God. And please stop me from being a homosexual. Only when I stood up and walked away did I realize that that had been two prayers, so I went back and lit a second candle, which cost me another penny.
There were a couple of dozen people scattered around the pews and staring into space, all of them old, and I walked past them looking for a confession box with a light on. When I found one, I stepped inside, closing the door behind me, and waited in the darkness for the grille to slide open.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said quietly when it did, a gust of body odor rushing toward me with such force that I reared back and hit my head against the wall. “It has been three weeks since my last confession.”
“What age are you, son?” asked the voice from the other side, which sounded quite elderly.
“Fourteen,” I said. “I’ll be fifteen next month.”
“Fourteen-year-old boys need to go to confession more than once every three weeks,” he said. “I know what you lads are like. Up to no good every minute of the day. Will you promise me that you’ll go more often in the future?”
“I will, Father.”
“Good lad. Now, what sins do you have to confess to the Lord?”
I swallowed hard. I had been going to confession fairly regularly since my first communion seven years earlier but not once had I ever told the truth. Like everyone else, I simply made up a collection of ordinary decent sins and rattled them off with little thought before accepting the obligatory penance of ten Hail Marys and an Our Father afterward. Today, however, I had promised myself that I would be honest. I would confess everything and if God was on my side, if God really existed and forgave people who were truly contrite, then he would recognize my guilt and set Julian free without any further harm.
“Father, over the last month I have stolen sweets from a local shop on six occasions.”
“Holy God,” said the priest, appalled. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I like sweets,” I said. “And I can’t afford them.”
“Well, there’s some logic to that, I suppose. And tell me, how did you do it?”
“There’s an old woman who works behind the counter,” I said. “And all she does is sit and read the newspaper. It’s easy to take things without her noticing.”
“That’s a terrible sin,” said the priest. “You know that’s probably that good woman’s livelihood?”
“I do, Father.”
“Will you promise me never to do such a thing again?”
“I will, Father.”
“All right then. Good lad. Anything else?”
“Yes, Father,” I said. “There’s a priest in our school who I don’t like very much and in my head I call him The Prick.”
“The what?”
“The Prick.”
“And what in God’s name does that mean?”
“Do you not know, Father?” I asked.
“If I knew, would I be asking you?”
I swallowed hard. “It’s another word for a…you know, for a thing.”
“A thing? What do you mean, a thing? What class of a thing?”
“A thing, Father,” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I leaned in and whispered through the grille. “A penis, Father.”
“Holy God,” he repeated. “Did I hear you right?”
“If you thought I said a penis, then, yes, you did, Father.”
“Well, that is what I thought you said. Why in God’s name would you call a priest in your school a penis? How could he possibly be a penis? A man can’t be a penis; he can only be a man. This makes no sense to me at all.”
“I’m sorry, Father. That’s why I’m confessing it.”
“Well, whatever it is, just stop doing it. Call him by his proper name and show a bit of respect to the man. I’m sure he treats all the lads in your school well.”
“He doesn’t, Father. He’s vicious and he’s always beating us up. Last year he put a boy in the hospital for sneezing too loud in class.”