“Listen to you,” he said, his voice filled with contempt. “You think you can say anything you want to me now, don’t you? You think you know it all.”
“I don’t know it all, Minister, no,” she said. “But I know enough not to pay for oral sex with an underage and probably deeply disadvantaged boy on a public street in the middle of the night. I know that much at least.” She stood up and returned to her own desk, looking back at him as if she was surprised that he was still there. “Now, if there’s nothing else, Minister, I suggest you get yourself over to the Taoiseach’s office before another minute has passed. We’re busy here. We have to prepare for the arrival of your successor later today.”
He looked around in dismay, his face white, his nose pulsating red, and perhaps he knew then that the jig was up. Out he went and a few minutes later Mr. Denby-Denby returned with a cream slice and a cup of coffee. “Who do you think we’ll get next?” he asked, the events of the last hour already just a footnote for his memoirs. “It won’t be Haughey, will it? That man gives me the willies. He always looks like he’s just come back from burying bodies up the Dublin mountains.”
“Mr. Avery,” said Miss Joyce, ignoring him and turning to me. “Would you mind going over to Leinster House and keeping an eye on developments for me? If you hear anything, give me a call. I’ll be at my desk all day.”
“Yes, Miss Joyce,” I said, gathering up my coat and bag, happy at first to be able to head over to the Dáil, where the real action would be found. However, after my initial amusement, I found myself in two minds as I made my way down O’Connell Street and around the walls of Trinity College. On one hand I had never liked the Minister, who had always treated me with utter disdain, but on the other, I knew as well as anyone how difficult it must have been for him to keep his true proclivities to himself. How long had he been lying to his wife, to his friends and family, to himself? He was well into his sixties, so that meant an entire lifetime.
In Leinster House, the TDs and their advisors were gathered on every corridor and in every alcove, whispering away, gossiping like fishwives. Everywhere I turned, I could hear people using words like faggot, shirt-lifter and dirty queer. The atmosphere was one of vicious animosity, with each man disassociating themselves from their colleague by making clear that they had never been friends with a pervert like that in the first place and that they had been planning on putting his name forward for deselection at the next election anyway. Making my way down a corridor where portraits of William T. Cosgrave, éamon de Valera and John Costello looked down at me with sanctimonious contempt, I saw the Taoiseach’s Press Officer marching toward me, incandescent with rage after what had presumably been a morning spent fending off the media. He passed me by before stopping and turning around and looking directly at me.
“You,” he said, snarling at me. “I know you, don’t I?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, even though we’d met on at least a dozen occasions.
“Yes, I do. You’re from the Department of Education, aren’t you? Avery, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, sir,” I said.
“Where’s himself? Is he with you?”
“He’s back at Marlborough Street,” I said, presuming that he meant the Minister.
“With his trousers down around his ankles, I suppose?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “At least they were around his waist when I saw him an hour ago. They could be anywhere now, I suppose.”
“Are you trying to be funny, Avery?” he asked, leaning so close to me that I could smell the stale cigarette smoke and whiskey on his breath and a rancid stink of cheese and onion crisps. A group had gathered to watch us, sensing a potential drama. This is a great day, their expressions read. Lots going on! “Would you look at the cut of you anyway,” he continued. “What kind of coat is that you’re wearing? What color is it, pink?”
“It’s maroon, actually,” I said. “I got it at Clerys. It was half price in the sales.”
“Oh you got it at Clerys, did you?” looking around at the spectators for encouragement as he grinned at them to show me up.
“I did, yes,” I said.
“I suppose he hired you himself, did he? The Minister? An interview on his sofa with the door locked? The pair of you playing hide the sausage?”
“No, sir,” I said, growing red at the insinuation. “I got the job through a contact of mine. My adoptive father’s third and now-estranged wife. She used to work here and—”
“Your what?”
“My adoptive—”
“You’re one too, aren’t you?” he asked. “I can always tell.”
“One of what, sir?” I asked, frowning.
“A dirty queer. Just like your boss.”
I swallowed hard and looked around at the forty or so people watching us now, parliamentary secretaries, TDs, ministers and then, stopping as he passed to see what the commotion was, the Taoiseach himself, Seán Lemass. “No, sir,” I whispered. “Actually, I have a girlfriend. Mary-Margaret Muffet. She works on the foreign exchange desk at the Bank of Ireland, College Green, and goes to Switzer’s café every morning for a cup of tea.”
“Sure even Oscar Wilde had a wife. They all do so no one will suspect. It must be high jinks all the time at the Department of Education, is it? Do you know what I’d do with all the queers if I could catch them? I’d do what Hitler did. You can say what you like about the man but he had a few good ideas. Round them up, arrest them, then gas the lot of them.”
I could feel a mixture of anger and humiliation forming at the pit of my stomach. “That’s a terrible thing to say,” I said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Oh should I?”
“Yes. You should.”
“Ah go fuck yourself.”
“You go fuck yourself,” I shouted, unwilling to take anymore of his abuse. “And clean your teeth, for God’s sake, if you’re going to stand this close to someone, you fat old bollix. I’m about to pass out with the stench of your breath.”
“What did you just say?” asked the Press Officer, staring at me in astonishment.
“I said,” I replied, raising my voice now, encouraged by what I thought was the approval of the crowd. “Clean your teeth if you’re going to—”
I didn’t reach the end of my sentence, having been felled by one swift punch to the head, and years of anger built up inside me as I picked myself up, my right hand clenching into a fist as I swung at him. He moved just in time, however, and rather than connecting with his chin, which had been my intended target, my knuckles smashed against a pillar behind me and I let out a yelp of pain. As I massaged them and spun around for a second try, he hit me again, just above my right eye, and I could see money starting to change hands among the TDs.
“I’ll give you three to one on the young lad,” said one.