Boy in the World. Niall Williams

long distances alone with his thoughts, he would still not be able to say exactly how what happened next had come about. As though the decisions then were taken for him and it was not he himself taking the steps. Propelled. He was once again propelled. Within minutes he was in his jeans and a red hooded jumper. He was putting on the trainers he always wore, taking from his wardrobe his schoolbag and emptying out all the schoolbooks on to the floor. He was taking his journal and a pen, the small case that held his wooden flute, and the copy of David Copperfield inside which he placed carefully the burnt letter. Then he was writing a quick note to the Master and leaving it on his bed, picking up the Confirmation envelopes and stuffing them in the bag, slipping down the stairs and going to the drawer where he found his passport. Within another minute he was at the back door turning the key. Then, with a last look back, he stepped outside into the night and was gone.

       FOUR

      The dark he plunged into was thick and blinding. Clouds obscured the stars. He walked with one hand held in front of him as if feeling a passageway between walls. Like this he came out into the road. There were no streetlights between here and the village and the way he had walked home earlier that day was now nothing but blackness. The boy stood absolutely still for some moments and closed his eyes. He had read that this was the quickest way to become accustomed to darkness, to keep your eyes shut tight until all the light inside had drained away. Then you could open them and find that the dark was in fact full of minute lights and shades and shadows, and by these you could make your way forward. He shut his eyes and waited in the road. He heard his heart racing louder, and felt a pulsing up along his neck, his breath rising and falling. He tried to calm himself but gave up almost at once, opened his eyes and found he could in fact see where the ditch on both sides of the road began, and where the road itself had a kind of bow shape slightly risen in the middle. He hurried away along it. He passed down by the sleeping farmhouse of the Ryans, their nearest neighbours, and had to shush-shush old Blackie as he lay against the front door and raised an eyebrow at him as if he were a ghost passing.

      On he went. Shapes of black upon blackness were cattle in the fields standing. Some, hearing his footsteps along the road, started and turned about and a few bucked their hind legs and took off down the field as though escaping harm. Just so then did the boy disturb the stillness of the night as he travelled through it. It was yet hours before dawn, hours before the Master would go up the stairs to wake him and discover the note he had left.

      I will be back soon. I could not tell you because I know you would want to stop me. But I have to do this. I have to do this on my own. Don’t worry.

      The boy hurried. He had to get through the village and out on to the main road where he might catch a lift in the early hours of the morning. That was his plan.

      Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly a plan, he thought to himself. Rather, what he had was a purpose. Yes. He had a purpose. His purpose was that he was going to find his father. That was it. That was the mystery that he had suddenly become aware of in the last twenty-four hours.

      That was it.

      Find him. End of story.

       Find him because

      Because of the letter. Because she wrote it. Because there’s a piece missing, like a jigsaw.

      Because I am a jigsaw.

      ‘That’s it,’ said the boy to the darkness as he walked. That seemed right. He couldn’t see the whole picture until the missing part was found. It was perfectly logical. And although he knew that with the minuscule pieces of information in the letter finding the missing part would be difficult, he did not think it would be impossible. He applied the same reasoning to this as to everything else in his life. Things could be figured out if you followed a procedure, if you followed one step at a time. And for a short while as he walked along the road this occupied his mind. But in the quiet and the dark, moments of the day gone by returned to him. He saw the scene of the Confirmation play back like a silent movie with the church pews, the organ music, the large figure of the bishop, and he felt suddenly uneasy about how he had behaved. Right then he stopped short on the road.

      ‘Look,’ he said to the night sky, ‘If You exist, I’m sorry. If You were expecting me to be confirmed as one of Your soldiers and I turned my back on You and walked out it wasn’t because I believed something else or in somebody else, all right? It wasn’t personal. If You exist then …’

      The boy looked about him on the road. In the dark he could make out nothing. Above him pinholes of stars uncovered glinted in the deep blue.

      ‘Then …’ He caught his lower lip in his top teeth and held it.

      ‘Then You can prove it by helping me find my father,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll believe in You, that’ll be my confirmation.’

      The boy hesitated briefly then, as if expecting an answer out of the dark, a sign to tell him it was agreed, that everything would be all right and that he could carry on and would be back home again soon. But there was no response, no sign, only the emptiness of the night and the light wind whispering in the bushes.

      ‘Talking to yourself in the dark,’ said the boy and shrugged his shoulders, ‘so much for being intelligent.’

      He hurried on. He passed in beneath the streetlights of the village where the small banner flags for the bishop fluttered overhead. The shops and the pubs and the church seemed ghostly now. There lingered a strange sadness in the street, a sense of aftermath. In no window was there light. The boy could walk down the centre of the village. Strangely he felt more alone than he had on the country road. He hurried out beyond the streetlights and into the dark once more. He was on the main road facing eastward where in a few hours the sun would rise. The road was broad and once he was used to it he could make out the faint trace of the yellow line that ran along its edge.

      An hour passed, and then another. He was walking hastily, eyes downward on the yellow line, when he fell over the man.

      ‘Hey!’ a voice cried out. ‘What the hell?’

      The boy went tumbling face-forward, a jumble of dark over dark, and hit his shoulder hard against the road and the pain shot through him, and he was rolling over, crashing into the ditch. There was cold water and wet grass and a tangle of briars that dragged their thorns along the back of his jumper. There was a moment in which everything was upside-down, his feet in the air and his face in the ground. Then there was only the pain in his shoulder.

      ‘Hey, what the blazes?’ snarled the man’s voice again. He was sitting on the edge of the road where he had been for some time.

      The boy let out a groan and held his shoulder and then got himself up out of the cold ditch-water.

      ‘Are you the devil or a ghost or what?’ growled the man.

      ‘I am a boy.’

      In the dark the man was a low shape. The boy could not make out his features and at first thought he had no legs.

      ‘A boy-devil or a boy-ghost or what?’

      ‘Just a boy.’

      ‘On the road?’

      ‘Yes.’

      There was a moment of nothing but the man’s breathing and the dark full of shadows.

      ‘Is it still the month of May?’ asked the man.

      ‘Yes.’

      The man seemed to consider this for a short time and the boy stood and held his shoulder, and then the man named the village and asked him if it was a few miles west. The boy was not sure if this was a trick question or if the man himself did not know the answer. He told him the village was not very far.

      ‘In which direction?’ asked the man.

      ‘That way.’ The boy pointed.

      ‘I can’t see, come closer.’