Authors: Paul Murray
‘Why don’t you just
go
then,’ Dennis says, ‘if everything’s so whoop-de-doo over there?’
‘My dear Dennis,’ Ruprecht chortles, ‘one does not just “go” to somewhere like Stanford.’
Instead, it seems, you need something called an
academic résumé
, something that shows the
Dean of Admissions
that you are just that fraction smarter than all the other smart people applying there. Hence Ruprecht’s various investigations,
experiments and inventions – even the ones, his detractors, principally Dennis, argue, purportedly undertaken for the Future
of Humanity.
‘That tub of guts doesn’t give two hoots about humanity,’ Dennis says. ‘All he wants is to ponce off to America and meet other
dweebs who’ll play Yahtzee with him and not make fun of his weight.’
‘I suppose it must be hard for him,’ Skippy says. ‘You know, being a genius and everything, and being stuck here with us.’
‘But he’s not a genius!’ Dennis rails. ‘He’s a total fraud!’
‘Come on, Dennis, what about his equations?’ Skippy says.
‘Yeah, and his inventions?’ adds Geoff.
‘His
inventions
? The time machine, a tinfoil-lined wardrobe attached to an alarm clock? The X-ray glasses, that are just regular glasses
glued onto the inside of a toaster? How could anyone take these for the work of a serious scientist?’
Dennis and Ruprecht don’t get on. It’s not hard to see why: two more different boys would be hard to imagine. Ruprecht is
eternally fascinated by the world around him, loves to take part in class and throws himself into extra-curricular activities;
Dennis, an arch-cynic whose very dreams are sarcastic, hates the world and everything in it, especially Ruprecht, and has
never thrown himself into anything, with the exception of a largely successful
campaign last summer to efface the first letter from every manifestation of the word ‘canal’ in the Greater Dublin Area, viz.
the myriad street signs proclaiming
ROYAL ANAL, WARNING! ANAL, GRAND ANAL HOTEL
. As far as Dennis is concerned, the entire persona of Ruprecht Van Doren is nothing more than a grandiloquent concoction
of foolish Internet theories and fancy talk lifted from the Discovery Channel.
‘But Dennis, why would he want to make up stuff like that?’
‘Why does anyone do anything in this shithole? To make himself look like he’s better than us. I’m telling you, he’s no more
a genius than I am. And if you ask me, this stuff about him being an orphan, that’s a crock too.’
Well, that’s where Dennis and his audience part company. Yes, it’s true that details of Ruprecht’s ex-parents remain vague,
apart from an occasional passing reference to his father’s skills as a horseman, ‘famed the length of the Rhine’, or a fleeting
mention of his mother, ‘a delicate woman with aesthetic hands’. And it’s true that although Ruprecht’s present line is that
they were botanists, drowned while kayaking up the Amazon in search of a rare medicinal plant, Martin Fennessy claims that
Ruprecht, shortly after his arrival, told him that they were professional kayakers, drowned while competing in a round-the-world
kayaking race. But nobody believes he or anyone else, with the possible exception of Dennis himself, would do something as
karmically perilous as lie about the death of his parents.
That’s not to say Ruprecht isn’t annoying, or that he’s not poison to a body’s street-cred. There are definite drawbacks to
a public association with Ruprecht. But the bottom line is that for some inexplicable reason Skippy actually
likes
him, and so the way it’s panned out is that if you’re friends with Skippy you now get Ruprecht into the bargain, like a two-hundred-pound
booby prize.
And by now some of the others have become quite fond of him. Maybe Dennis is right, and he is talking non-stop bollocks –
it still makes a change from everything else they’re hearing these
days. You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will
one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone ‘Give
me the gun’, etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone’s asking you about your
career plans
and your
long-term goals
, and by goals they don’t mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that
Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg – that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you’d imagined, that the
world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore
to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of ‘life’. Now, with every day that passes, another
door seems to close, the one marked
PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN
, or
FIGHT EVIL ROBOT
, until as the weeks go by and the doors –
GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE
– keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn’t necessarily
need to be closed…
At the onset of this process – looking down the barrel of this grim de-dreamification, which, even more than hyperactive glands
and the discovery of girls, seems to be the actual stuff of growing up – to have Ruprecht telling you his crackpot theories
comes to be oddly comforting.
‘Imagine it,’ he says, gazing out the window while the rest of you huddle around the Nintendo, ‘everything that
is
, everything that has
ever been
– every grain of sand, every drop of water, every star, every planet, space and time themselves – all crammed into one dimensionless
point where no rules or laws apply, waiting to fly out and become the future. When you think about it, the Big Bang’s a bit
like school, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Ruprecht, what the hell are you talking about?’
‘Well, I mean to say, one day we’ll all leave here and become scientists and bank clerks and diving instructors and hotel
managers –
the fabric of society, so to speak. But in the meantime, that fabric, that is to say, us, the
future
, is crowded into one tiny little point where none of the laws of society applies, viz., this school.’
Uncomprehending silence; and then, ‘I tell you one difference between this school and the Big Bang, and that is in the Big
Bang there is no particle quite like Mario. But you can be sure that if there is, he is the great stud particle, and he is
boning the lucky lady particles all night long.’
‘Yes,’ Ruprecht responds, a little sadly; and he will fall silent, there at his window, eating a doughnut, contemplating the
stars.
Howard the Coward: yes, that’s what they call him.
Howard the Coward
. Feathers; eggs left on his seat; a yellow streak, executed in chalk, on his teacher’s cape; once a whole frozen chicken
there on the desk, trussed, dimpled, humiliated.
‘It’s because it rhymes with Howard, that’s all,’ Halley tells him. ‘Like if your name was Ray, they’d call you Gay Ray. Or
if it was Mary, they’d call you Scary Mary. It’s just the way their brains work. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘It means they
know
.’
‘Oh God, Howard, one little bump, and it was years and years ago. How could they possibly know about that?’
‘They just do.’
‘Well, even if they do.
I
know you’re not a coward. They’re just kids, they can’t see into your soul.’
But she is wrong. That is exactly what they can do. Old enough to have a decent mechanical understanding of how the world
works, but young enough for their judgements to remain unfogged by anything like mercy or compassion or the realization that
all this will one day happen to them, the boys – his students – are machines for seeing through the apparatus of worldliness
that adulthood, as figured by their teachers, surrounds itself with, to the grinding emptiness at its heart. They find it
hilarious. And the names they give the other teachers seem so unerringly
right
. Malco the Alco? Big Fat Johnson? Lurch?
Howard the Coward. Fuck! Who told her?
The car starts on the third try and putters past slow droves of boys babbling and throwing conkers at each other till it reaches
the gate, where it joins a tailback waiting for a space to open up
on the road. Years ago, on their very last day of school, Howard and his friends had paused beneath this same gate –
SEABROOK COLLEGE
arching above them in reversed gold letters – and turned to give what was now their alma mater the finger, before passing
through and out into the exhilarating panorama of passion and adventure that would be the setting for their adult lives. Sometimes
– often – he wonders if by that small gesture, in a life otherwise bare of gestures or dissent, he had doomed himself to return
here, to spend the rest of his days scrubbing away at that solitary mark of rebellion. God loves these broad ironies.
He reaches the top of the line, indicating right. There’s the ragged beginnings of a sunset visible over the city, a lush
melange of magentas and crimsons; he sits there as witty responses crash belatedly into his mind, one after another.
Never say never
.
That’s what you think
.
Better join the queue
.
The car behind honks as a gap opens up. At the last second, Howard switches the indicator and turns left instead.
Halley is on the phone when he gets home; she swivels her chair around to him, rolling her eyes and making a
blah blah
shape with her hand. The air is dense with a day’s smoke, and the ashtray piled high with crushed butts and frazzled matchsticks.
He mouths
Hi
to her and goes into the bathroom. His own phone starts to ring as he’s washing his hands. ‘Farley?’ he whispers.
‘Howard?’
‘I called you three times, where have you been?’
‘I had to do some work with my third-years for the Science Fair. What’s wrong? Is everything okay? I can’t hear you very well.’
‘Hold on’ – Howard reaches in and turns on the shower. In his natural voice he says, ‘Listen, something very –’
‘Are you in the shower?’
‘No, I’m standing outside it.’
‘Maybe I should call you back.’
‘No – listen, I wanted to – something very strange has just
happened. I was talking to the new girl, the substitute, you know, who teaches Geography –’
‘Aurelie?’
‘What?’
‘Aurelie. It’s her name.’
‘How do you know?’
‘What do you mean, how do I know?’
‘I mean’ – he feels his cheeks go crimson – ‘I meant, what kind of name is Aurelie?’
‘It’s French. She’s part-French.’ Farley chuckles lasciviously. ‘I wonder which part. Are you all right, Howard? You sound
a bit off.’
‘Well, okay, the point is, I was talking to her in the car park just now – just having a nice, normal conversation about work
and how she’s getting on, and then out of the blue she says to me –’ he goes to the door and opens it a sliver. In the next
room Halley is still nodding and making mm-hmm noises, the phone cradled between her jawbone and shoulder ‘– she tells me
she isn’t going to sleep with me!’ He waits, and when no response is forthcoming, adds, ‘What do you think of that?’
‘That is strange,’ Farley admits.
‘It’s
very
strange,’ Howard affirms.
‘And what did you say?’
‘I didn’t say anything. I was too surprised.’
‘You hadn’t been rubbing her thigh or anything like that?’
‘That’s just it, it was completely unprompted. We were standing there talking about schoolwork, and then out of nowhere she
goes, “You know, I’m not going to sleep with you.” What do you think it could mean?’
‘Well, off hand I’d say it means she isn’t going to sleep with you.’
‘You don’t just
say
to someone that you’re not going to sleep with them, Farley. You don’t introduce sex into the conversation, out of a clear
blue sky, and then just banish it. Unless sex is what you really want to talk about.’
‘Wait – you’re suggesting that when she told you, “I’m not
going to sleep with you,” what she actually meant was, “I
am
going to sleep with you”?’
‘Doesn’t it sound like she’s laying down a challenge? Like she’s saying, “I’m not going to sleep with you
now
, but I
might
sleep with you if certain circumstances change.” ’
Farley hums, then says reluctantly, ‘I don’t know, Howard.’
‘Okay, I see, she’s just trying to save me a little time and embarrassment, is that it? She’s just trying to help me out?
There couldn’t possibly be any sexual element.’
‘I don’t know what she meant. But isn’t this entirely academic? Don’t you already have a girlfriend? And a mortgage? Howard?’
‘Well obviously,’ Howard says, simmering. ‘I just thought it was a strange thing to say, that’s all.’
‘If I were you I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. She sounds like one of those flirty types. She’s probably that way with
everybody.’
‘Right.’ Howard agrees curtly. ‘Here, I’d better go. See you tomorrow.’ He hangs up the phone.
‘Were you talking to someone in there?’ Halley asks him when he comes out.
‘Singing,’ Howard mutters.
‘Singing?’ Her eyes narrow. ‘Did you actually
have
a shower?’
‘Hmm?’ Howard realizes he’s neglected a key element of his cover story. ‘Oh yeah, I just didn’t wash my hair. The water’s
cold.’
‘It’s cold? How come? It shouldn’t be cold.’
‘I was cold, I mean. In the shower. So I got out. It’s not important.’
‘Are you coming down with something?’
‘I’m fine.’ He sits down at the breakfast bar. Halley stands over him, examines him carefully. ‘You do look a bit flushed.’
‘I’m fine,’ he repeats, more vehemently.
‘All right, all right…’ She walks away, puts on the kettle. He turns to the window, silently trying out the name
Aurelie
.