Boy in the World. Niall Williams

they used in the country village. All had proceeded with the strange order and precision of a familiar dream.

      Only it was not a dream.

      There was a sudden rustling of movement and now the boys and girls were standing and moving out along the bench to stand in the aisle. One girl with blonde curl-ironed hair, impatient at the immaturity of a boy in front of her who insisted on walking on the narrow kneeler as if it were a pirate’s gangplank, shoved him in the back, and the whole line tottered forward. In the aisle they stopped and waited. Mrs Conway on the organ gathered steam. The Under-Tens Choir stood and battled against the mighty volume, singing as if they were sucking sour-pops. The parents leaned forward anxiously. Some fathers, elbowed that it was now time, stepped shyly into the aisle with video cameras, each one vying for a slightly better angle.

      The line stood and waited. There was a music cue when they were to walk. They were to keep their eyes down. The bishop was to get up and come forward. It was practised a hundred times. One by one they would be confirmed and return to their rows while the video cameras rolled.

      The Master had no camera. He watched the boy get out into the aisle, and tried to wink to him but the boy wasn’t looking.

      The Under-Tens reached the final chorus and the boys and girls heard their music cue to move. The bishop gave two little forward rolls and managed to rise. He moved forward with a kind of majesty, as if he imagined himself a king and the crowd cheering. Down one step, down another and forward towards the altar rails. Behind him, almost unseen, came the small crouched-over and smiling figure of Father Paul.

      One by one the children stepped forward. The boy was thirteenth in the line. Already some were coming back down the aisle.

      Were they confirmed now? Did they look any different?

      Faith full. Faith filled.

      Soldiers. Soul jeers.

      Stoppit. Concentrate. I believe.

       I believe in … NO!

      There was no way the boy could have known beforehand, no way that he could have realized earlier and saved himself and the Master the embarrassment that was soon to follow. And perhaps it was just then, while Mrs Conway played a solo on the organ, her whole upper body swaying back and forth and her glasses slipping ever closer to the end of her nose, that the boy realized he couldn’t continue. Perhaps it was only the motion of the line itself as it got smaller and smaller and he moved nearer and nearer to the bishop.

      All he knew was a heat along his collar. Then a sense that his shoes were full of warm water, that he was finding it hard to take the next step. Then the heat under his collar was rising and his breath was growing shorter and the panic of his drowning was ever more real.

      Then suddenly the bishop was standing directly in front of him.

      He was enormous.

      ‘My son,’ he said, and his fried breath travelled across to the boy. He had a pink palm raised and in its creases the boy could see glistenings of sweat. The bishop’s eyes bulged. His lips he moistened with the tip of his tongue and then opened his mouth to proceed.

      Know. No. I believe. St.

      No.

      ‘No, stop,’ mumbled the boy.

      The bishop ignored him.

      ‘Stop!’ said the boy much louder.

      And then everything did. The bishop froze, his eyeballs huge, his mouth open. Above in the organ loft Mrs Conway stopped playing. There was a groan of sound out of the organ, a gasp, and then nothing. The church breathed in. Candles danced. There was a moment of absolute silence, as though a grave announcement had been made.

      Through the congregation then there began the wave of response in which the Master’s and the boy’s names were whispered. From around the back of the bishop, Father Paul’s small face appeared, his smile loosening in panic.

      ‘I can’t,’ said the boy in a quiet voice. He said it only once, but his two words were repeated over and over as they were murmured back among parents and relatives, making a rustling like leaves in a sudden breeze.

      ‘He can’t.’

      ‘He can’t.’

      ‘Shsh.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘He said he can’t.’

      The bishop was not about to have the Confirmation disturbed. The boy was foolish, or nervous and foolish, or stupid and nervous and foolish, and didn’t know what he was doing or saying. These little hiccups in the ceremony could be overlooked. He could just carry on, he decided, as if nothing had happened. But he needed to do so quickly, because there was whispering in his church now. The rule of his majesty was under threat. He raised the sweat-glistening palm to the boy and placed it on his shoulder. ‘Now my son,’ he said.

      But the boy stepped away from him.

      ‘No!’ he said.

      The bishop made a little grasp as if the unconfirmed child was a slippery thing about to get away, but the boy pushed off the hand. He turned to where all were watching, his face burning brightly, his eyes like coals, and he ran down the centre of the aisle and out of the church.

       THREE

      He walked along the road out of the village. He walked quickly and did not look back. He did not think of the chaos that he had left behind him in the church, how the bishop had called out to him as he was hurrying down the aisle, how Father Paul had thrown his smile about in panic, how without her glasses Mrs Conway had suddenly started into the wedding march on the organ. He did not think of the Master’s face he had glimpsed as he passed by, or those of his family. He did not think of the little cluster of video fathers that had blocked his way. He thought only:

      Get away. Get away.

      Go.

      Go.

      He walked quickly, he watched his polished shoes on the empty road. He was a hundred yards out of the village, then two hundred. It was then that the mild May breeze that was blowing between the hedgerows seemed to calm him a little and his mind began to wonder what had he done.

      Or had he done anything? For a few moments it seemed that perhaps the whole thing had been a dream. Perhaps he was still in the bathroom at home and there was no cream-coloured envelope or journey to the church, no bishop or moment of un-Confirmation. He stopped suddenly in the road and waited to see if the clouds moved and the world turned. Watching the light grass of a meadow darkening under a sweep of cloud, he knew and spoke aloud: ‘It’s true. It happened.’

      And he began to walk again towards home.

      Why had he done it? Why had he not just stood before the bishop and let himself be confirmed? It wasn’t as if he had decided beforehand, it wasn’t as if he had chosen another faith or wanted to make some objection. The best way he could think to describe it was to say there was something that had begun in him. Something that had begun in him the night before when he lay in his bed thinking about the idea of the Confirmation and what it meant, and how before he had been able to sleep he had found himself questioning everything. Questioning why anything was the way it was. Hundreds of questions, thousands of them flying through his mind like bats as the darkness fell over the fields outside. To escape them he had turned over and over in the covers. He had tried to hum the tune of a song, but still the questions came. He was outside a mystery that was in fact himself.

       Childhood. Why is it a hood?

       Childs hood. Hood hiding what beneath?

       What kind of man?

       What kind will I be?

       Will anyone like