“I asked if you always have to be so judgmental. It’s bad enough living in this country with the way people carry on and the hypocrisy we see all around us but isn’t that kind of attitude for old people who don’t realize that it’s a new world we’re living in? We’re still young, Mary-Margaret. Can you not try to have a little sympathy for someone who’s going through a difficult time?”
“Oh, you’re fierce modern, aren’t you, Cyril?” she said, sitting back and pursing her lips. “Is this your way of telling me that you want to have your way with me too, is that it? That you want to take me back to your flat and drag me into your bedroom, get your lad out, stick it in me and pump away until you’ve given me a good seeing-to?”
Now it was my turn to look astonished. I could scarcely believe that she would say something like this, let alone have the words for it.
“Because if that’s what you think, Cyril,” she continued, “you have another thing coming. I don’t do that with anyone. And after we’re married, don’t expect it on any night other than a Saturday, with the lights off. I was brought up properly, you know.”
I made a mental note to have plans for every Saturday night after we were married and then panicked at the idea of marrying at all. When had this been decided? We’d never even discussed such a thing. Had I proposed and forgotten all about it?
“I’m just saying that this is 1966,” I told her. “It’s not the 1930s. Girls get pregnant all the time. Sure I don’t even know what the story was with my own mother, do I?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, pulling a face. “You know exactly what the story was with your mother. The whole country does. Sure don’t they study her books in the university now?”
“My birth mother,” I said, correcting myself.
“Your what?”
My mouth fell open in surprise as I realized that in all the time that we’d been together I had never mentioned the fact that I was adopted. I told her now and she paled visibly.
“You’re what?” she asked.
“Adopted,” I said. “Well, I mean I was adopted. A long time ago. When I was a child.”
“And why have you never told me this before?”
“I didn’t think it was particularly important,” I said. “Believe me, there’s worse things I could tell you.”
“Not particularly important? So who are your real mother and father?”
“I haven’t a clue,” I said.
“And are you not interested? Do you not want to find out?”
I shrugged. “Not really,” I said. “Charles and Maude were my parents for all intents and purposes.”
“Saints alive,” she said. “So your mother might have been fallen too?”
I stared at her and felt a burst of anger within my chest. “Realistically speaking,” I said, “almost certainly.”
“Oh my God. Wait till I tell Daddy. No, I won’t tell Daddy. And you’re not to tell him either, do you hear me?”
“I hadn’t planned on it,” I said.
“He’d be shocked. It could bring on one of his hearts.”
“I won’t say a thing,” I told her. “Although I really don’t think it’s all that important. There’s lots of people who are adopted.”
“Yes, but to come from stock like that. It’s a bad strain in the family.”
“The same thing that’s happened to your cousin,” I said.
“That’s different,” she snapped. “Sarah-Anne made a mistake, that’s all.”
“Well, maybe my mother just made a mistake too,” I pointed out. “Would you not consider that?”
She shook her head, entirely dissatisfied. “There’s something going on with you, Cyril Avery,” she insisted. “Something you’re not telling me. But I’ll get to the bottom of it. I promise I will.”
The Fall of Horatio
My flatmate Albert became engaged to be married to his girlfriend Dolores on a Monday night in early March and I joined him, his fiancée and an assortment of their hard-drinking brothers and sisters in Neary’s pub to celebrate. A few hours later, unable to sleep as his headboard banged rhythmically against my wall, it was all that I could do to stop myself from marching in and throwing a bucket of water over the pair of them. The sound of their relentless passion had an unsettling effect on me, however, making me desperate for human contact, and, giving in to my frustrations, I threw on the same clothes that I’d been wearing earlier in the day and made my way down the stairs to emerge into the darkness of Chatham Street, already half-aroused by the excitement of what I hoped was to come. Stepping outside, I heard what I thought was the sound of footsteps behind me and looked around nervously but to my relief the street appeared to be empty.
Sometimes a few boys my own age could be found around the narrow, cobblestoned streets by the Stag’s Head and I went there only to find them deserted. Crossing Dame Street and turning right for Crown Alley, I saw two young men standing by a wall, their heads held close in conversation, and I hid in a doorway, prepared to be a voyeur if that was all that was available to me. But instead of the sound of zips and anxious kissing, they were speaking to each other in Northern accents, and such was the urgency of their tone that I wished I had walked on instead of staying to eavesdrop.
“I just want to watch,” said the taller of the two, a young man who sounded excitable and dangerous. “How often in our lives will we get to see something like this?”
“I don’t care,” said the other. “If we’re too close when it happens, we could get caught.”
“We won’t get caught.”
“How do you know that? And do you want to be the one explaining it to the boss if we do?”
My shoe slipped a little on the pavement and they turned in my direction, leaving me with no choice but to step out of the doorway and stride past them, hoping that they would not turn aggressive.
“What were you doing there?” asked the younger man, marching over. “Were you listening to us?”