‘We live in an age of obscenity,’ Father Green announces, quitting his lectern and addressing the class as if this were a new area of French grammar. ‘Profanity of language. Profaning of the divine temple that is the body. Lustful images. We are immersed in it, we learn to love it, like pigs in excrement, is that not so, Mr Juster?’
Skippy stares back at him queasily. One hand grips the desk, as if that’s all that’s propping him up.
‘I’m so piiiiimmmmp it’s ri-dick-i-less,’ the priest repeats, louder now, in an excruciating American drawl. Nobody laughs. ‘Today while driving in my car,’ he explains in a mock-conversational tone, ‘I chanced to turn on the radio, and this is what I heard.’ He pauses, screws up his face and then relays, ‘Oh baby, I like to play rough, and when I’m pumpin’ my stuff you just can’t get enough…’
Heads sink leadenly into arms: they can begin to see what’s coming up next.
‘I confess to finding myself a little confused –’ Father Green scratches his head in a caricature of puzzlement ‘– as to what the fellow meant, and I made a note to myself to ask one of you boys. What stuff is he pumping, Mr Juster?’
Skippy just gulps.
‘Puuuummmmpin’ it,’ the priest hums to himself. ‘Pummmpin’ it real good… Could it be petrol? Is he perhaps a petrol attendant? Or perhaps he is referring to his bicycle? Is that what the song is about, in your opinion, Mr Juster? Is he referring to his bicycle?’
Skippy quails, his nostrils flare in and out, deep breaths –
‘IS HE REFERRING TO HIS BICYCLE?’
Clearing his throat, Skippy replies in a faint high voice, ‘Maybe?’
The priest’s hand slams on ‘Jeekers’ Prendergast’s desk like a thunderclap; everybody jumps in their seats. ‘Liar!’ he roars. The last of his earlier jollity and good humour has fallen away now, and they realize that it was phony all along, or rather a darker manifestation of his ordinary rage, waiting for its inevitable moment.
‘Do you know what happens to sinful boys, Mr Juster?’ Father Green sweeps his blazing eyes about the room. ‘All of you, are you aware of the fate that befalls impure hearts? Of hell, the endless torments of hell that await the lustful?’
Eyes study folded hands, evading his fervid gaze. Father Green pauses a moment, then changes tack. ‘Do you enjoy pumping your stuff, Mr Juster? Do you like pumping it rough?’
A couple of people snicker in spite of themselves. The boy does not reply; he is gazing at the priest open-mouthed as if he can’t believe this is happening. Geoff Sproke puts his hands over his eyes. The priest, enjoying himself, pacing the boards in front of the blackboard like a barrister, says, ‘Are you a virgin, Mr Juster?’
This, class, is what’s called a double-bind. Note the formal perfection of its construction, the work of a real expert. Obviously Skippy’s a virgin – Skippy’s about as virginal as they come, and will probably stay that way till he’s at least thirty-five. But he can’t admit it, not with a classroom of boys looking at him, even if ninety-five per cent of them are virgins also. Neither, though, can he deny it, because the person asking is a priest, who expects all good Catholics to remain virgins until they are married, or at least is pretending to expect this for the purposes of his little game here. So Skippy merely wriggles and shivers and breathes noisily as his interrogator advances a step or two down the aisle.
‘Well?’ Father Green’s eyes twinkle at him merrily.
Through clenched teeth, Skippy says, ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’ Father Green, in performer mode now, repeats incredulously, with a comical wink for his audience. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know.’ Skippy stares back at him, his jaw wobbling, trying not to cry.
‘You don’t know what you mean when you say you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Mr Juster, God hates a liar, and so do I. You are among friends here. Why not tell us the truth? Are you a virgin?’
Skippy’s face is shaking and sore-looking now. Five minutes remaining on the clock. Geoff shoots a desperate look at Ruprecht as if he might know what to do, but the light has fallen to make opaque blanks of his glasses.
‘I don’t know.’
The indulgent smile fades from the priest’s lips, and the thunderclouds regather in the room. ‘Tell me the truth!’
Actual tears roll down Skippy’s cheeks. No one is snickering any more. Why can’t he just give Father Green what he wants? But Skippy keeps saying, ‘I don’t know,’ like a halfwit, turning greener and greener, making the priest angrier and angrier, until he says, ‘Mr Juster, I am giving you one last chance.’ And they see his bony hand curled up into a fist on Jeekers’s desk, and they think of the fifth-year with the stitches and all of the other dark legends that swirl serpentine around the priest, and in their heads they scream at him, ‘SKIPPY, FOR FUCK’S SAKE! JUST TELL HIM WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR!’, but Skippy is clammily, woozily silent and around him the air is full of sparks and the priest’s eyes glitter at him hungrily like wolf eyes, and nobody knows what is going to happen, and then the priest steps forward, and Skippy, who is swaying slightly in place, abruptly straightens, bolt upright, opens his mouth and vomits all over Kevin ‘What’s’ Wong.
The first time Halley set eyes on Howard was at a showing of The Towering Inferno. When she heard about him, her sister had wondered aloud how much of a future you could have with someone you’d met at a disaster movie. But at that point Halley wasn’t feeling picky. She had been in Dublin just over three weeks – not so long that she didn’t still get lost all the time on the infuriating streets that kept changing their names, but enough to disabuse her of most of her illusions about the place; enough too, with the deposit and first month’s rent for her new apartment, to separate her from most of the money she’d brought, and cut the time available for soul-searching and self-finding quite drastically. That afternoon she’d spent in an Internet café, reluctantly updating her résumé; she hadn’t had a conversation since the night before, a stilted exchange with the Chinese pizza delivery boy about his native Yunan province. When she spotted the poster for The Towering Inferno, which she and Zephyr must have watched twenty times together, it was like catching sight of an old friend. She went in and for three hours warmed herself in the familiar blaze of collapsing architecture and suffocating hotel guests; she stayed in her seat until the ushers started sweeping round her feet.
Standing on the kerb outside the cinema she unfolded her map of the city, and was scouring it for any place that might serve to use up the next couple of hours when a taxicab hurtled by and whipped it out of her hands. The map flapped madly up into the air, then swooped back down to spread itself over the chest of a man who’d just come out the cinema door. Halley crimsoned with embarrassment, then noticed that the man – bewilderedly unwrapping himself from the two-dimensional image of the city, so it looked almost as if he’d popped out of the map himself – was kind of cute.
(‘Cute how?’ Zephyr asked her. ‘Irish-looking,’ Halley said, by which she meant a collection of indistinct features – pale skin, mousy hair, general air of ill-health – that combine to mysteriously powerful romantic effect.)
The man looked right and left, then saw her cringing on the far side of the cobbled street. ‘I believe this is yours,’ he said, presenting her with the incorrectly folded map.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Didn’t I see you inside at the film?’