When I woke, the sun was being a total bollix, pouring through the window and scorching through my eyelids. I hadn’t even bothered to draw the curtains on my return a few hours earlier, collapsing facedown and fully clothed on the sofa, where the combination of a hangover with an awareness of my predicament now made me feel as if my last moments were upon me. I closed my eyes, desperate to return to sleep, but was quickly hauling my sorry carcass toward the bathroom, unsure whether I needed to piss or vomit. In the end I settled for both, concurrently, before making my way nervously to the mirror. Dracula would have felt less fear examining his own reflection.
Of course, I looked terrible, like the victim of some random act of overnight violence, mugged and left for dead before being inexplicably brought back to life by a malevolent physician.
I hoped that a long hot shower might help me to recover but an immediate and permanent end to world hunger would have been more likely. It was a quarter to eleven by now and I was due at the church by twelve. I imagined Alice in Dartmouth Square, putting her dress on, surrounded by bridesmaids, while they each tried not to make inappropriate references to what had happened the last time they’d gathered for such an event.
Suddenly, the realization of how to solve all my problems hit me. It would involve losing all my friends, including Julian—especially Julian—but in time they would see that it had been for the best and they would surely forgive me. Taking a handful of loose change from the bedside table I put on my dressing gown and dragged myself to the payphone in the corridor, dialing the number before I could change my mind. When Max answered, I pressed the A button, heard the coins tumble into the chamber and swallowed, racking my brain for the right words.
“Hello?” he said, sounding as if he’d already had a drink or two, despite the early hour. “Max Woodbead?” In the background I could hear laughter, the sounds of girls’ voices and of glasses clinking together. “Hello?” he repeated. “Who’s there? Speak up, for Christ’s sake, I haven’t got all day.”
But I said nothing, hanging up and returning to my room, knowing that it was no good.
Twenty minutes later, I was making my way toward the church in Ranelagh, growling at anyone who happened to smile in my direction and the lads who shouted from their cars that I was beginning a life sentence. Feeling ill again, I paused and, realizing that I still had a good half hour to spare, took a detour into a teashop at the corner of Charlemont. It was busy but there was an empty table in the corner and I sat there, by the window, ordering a large, strong cup of coffee and two glasses of water, both filled with ice, and began to relax a little as I sipped them, watching the students making their way into town, the businessmen heading for their offices, the housewives wheeling shopping bags toward Quinnsworth, and wondered whether there had ever been a moment when my life might have taken a different turn. How had Jasper Timson, a fucking piano-accordion player for Christ’s sake, ended up living with his boyfriend in Toronto, while I was preparing to marry a woman in whom I had no sexual interest whatsoever? When was the exact moment that I might have found some courage and for once in my life done the right thing?
Right now, I told myself. This is it! This is the moment! There’s still time!
“Give me a sign,” I muttered to the universe. “Just something to give me the courage to walk away.”
I jumped as a hand touched my shoulder and looked around to see a woman and a small child standing next to me, glancing toward the empty seats at my table.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked. “Only there isn’t anywhere else.”
“Be my guest,” I said, although I would have preferred to have been left alone.
The child—a boy of about eight or nine—sat down opposite me and I glared at him as he took in my wedding suit and seemed amused by it. He was very neatly dressed, wearing a white shirt beneath a blue tank-top, and his hair was carefully combed with an immaculate side-parting. He looked like he could have been the kid brother of the young Nazi who sang “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in Cabaret, the last film that Alice and I had gone to together. The boy was carrying four books in his hands and he laid them out on the table before him, apparently deciding which one merited his attentions the most.
“Can I ask you a favor?” asked the woman. “You wouldn’t look after Jonathan for me for a few minutes, would you? I just need to use the facilities, then I have a phone call to make and then I’ll be ordering some tea. Are you getting married today? You’re dressed for it.”
“In about an hour,” I said, certain that I recognized her from somewhere but unable, just at that moment, to place her. “And who’s Jonathan?”
“Naturally, I’m Jonathan,” said the little boy, extending his hand to me. “Jonathan Edward Goggin. And who might you be?”
“Cyril Avery,” I said, staring at the small hand that gave off a slight odor of soap before giving in and shaking it. “It’s fine,” I said to his mother. “I won’t let anyone kidnap him. I know the signs for that.”
It was obvious that she didn’t understand what I meant by that but she turned away regardless and made her way toward the doors at the other corner of the room while I looked back at the boy and he concentrated on his books. “What are you reading?” I asked him eventually.
“Well,” he declared with an enormous sigh, as if the weight of the world was upon his shoulders but he was trying to remain stoical about it. “I haven’t quite decided yet. I was at the library this morning, you see; it’s my regular day, and Mrs. Shipley the librarian recommended these three here, and she’s usually an excellent advocate of good storytelling, so I took her advice. This one seems to be about a rabbit who takes a baby fox as a companion but I can’t see how that could work because no matter how much kindness the rabbit shows the fox, eventually it will just grow up and eat him. This one here is about a group of children, distantly related I suspect, they usually are, who solve crimes on their summer holidays but I flicked through it on the way here and I found the word nigger in there and there’s a black boy in my class at school and he says that word is a very bad word and he’s an extremely good friend of mine, probably my third-best friend, so I might avoid it just to be on the safe side. And this one is some nonsense about the 1916 Rising and the thing is, I’m just not political. I never have been. So I might just go with this one here, which was the one I chose myself.” He held up the book and I glanced at the cover, an image of a boy standing tall, legs parted, holding a cockerel under one arm and a mysterious box under the other while what looked like refugees walked past in the background. The words The Silver Sword were printed in the top right-hand corner.