Demons Read online

  However I’d often thought about the priest-playing days and, just lately, I’d made a connection between the game I used to play and Michelangelo’s painting The creation of Adam, which Gran and I had long ago looked at together. When the mysterious, magical transformation in the Mass took place it somehow sealed the tiny but, at the same time significant, gap between God and Adam. It made everything right. That fingertip touch, I decided, allowed for the possibility of a Happy-Forever-After

  place. Without it, Forever would be impossible.

  Schoolwork wasn’t easy but it wasn’t too difficult either. Truthfully, not much of it held any great interest. Most of it seemed pointless, except history because we were studying Ireland and the 1916 Easter Uprising, something Gran had always gone on about, had in fact lived through as a baby, if babies can be said to live through events like those - and classical studies, because of the fact that Chris turned up to that class.

  Our classical studies teacher, Ms Shapiro, was an enthusiast. She’d once worked at an archaeological dig in Athens and really knew her stuff. More importantly, she was good at enthusing other people even if they’d chosen her class thinking classics was going to be an easy option. It wasn’t.

  The class was tiny to begin with. The first morning only five girls turned up and we wondered if it might be scrapped altogether. Then, a few minutes later, three boys, this time from the private school just up the road, came in and immediately they seemed to fill it with their largeness.

  Only one was any good looking (an opinion shared by all) and he didn’t seem to notice or care less that all the girls instantly fell for him. I remember he gave me a lingering stare (yes, I know, but sometime you have to fall back on one of the literary clichés. They make the most sense) when he first walked through the door.

  The boys bagged desks at the back and by the time they’d settled down another five minutes had passed.

  Ms Shapiro took everything in her stride. She began by outlining the year’s course.

  ‘We’ll start with an overview of Greek history, take a look at some masterpieces of Greek building - ’

  ‘The Acropolis?’ said Becs.

  ‘Without a doubt,’ Ms Shapiro said, ‘but others as well. For our Greek drama we’ll study a play by Euripides called The Bacchae before moving onto Roman history, art, architecture and engineering. If I think you’re up to it and if you’re keen to do a bit of extra work’ - we all groaned on cue - ‘then maybe we’ll enter the University’s Classics Competition at the end of the year. Sound all right?’

  We nodded and murmured non-committedly. All except the guy who’d looked at me.

  ‘What about Greek engineering?’ he asked, sounding more enthusiastic than the rest of us put together.

  Ms Shapiro raised an eyebrow. ‘Anything in mind . . um?’ she said, looking down at her class roll.

  ‘Chris Stuart,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Ms Shapiro.

  ‘I was thinking of the Horologium,’ Chris said.

  One of the other boys sniggered like a year nine. ‘Whore a what?’ he whispered to the third boy beside him, loudly enough for us girls to hear. It was pathetic.

  ‘Ah,’ said Ms Shapiro again. If it was a trick to catch her out - almost but not quite as babyish as the whispered innuendo - she was up to it. ‘The famous work of Andronikos of Kyrrhos,’ she said. ‘We’ll meet it when we come to look at the Agora. You might like to make it the focus of your first term essay Chris.’

  Chris wasn’t at all deflated by this suggestion. ‘I’d love to,’ he said, completely genuinely.

  ‘Good,’ said Ms Shapiro.

  ‘What’s the Classics Competition?’ asked Roxy, as usual a few steps behind.

  ‘It’s an inter-school competition,’ Ms Shapiro said, ‘run by the university’s Classics Department. Good fun but not for the faint-hearted.’

  She offered it as a challenge, one that I expected Chris would have accepted straightaway, except he clammed up when he clicked that the rest of us were, indeed, a faint-hearted lot.

  Ms Shapiro picked up a pile of books from her desk. ‘And here are copies of The Bacchae. Although we probably won’t get to it until the beginning of term two, it wouldn’t do you any harm to start reading it now. It’s not particularly long but it may be different from the sort of plays you’re used to.’

  ‘If we can handle Shakespeare we can cope with anything.’ said Becs.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Chris, refusing his copy. ‘I’ve got my own at home.’

  I turned quickly to look at him and found he was staring right back at me.

  Later on, after class, Becs said she thought Chris looked like a Greek god. ‘Pity about the name,’ she said.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked.

  ‘Stuart? It’s just so plain. So ordinary.’

  ‘Which god does he remind you of?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Dionysus?’ suggested Roxy who, flicking through The Bacchae, had come across a picture of a cool looking Greek god.

  ‘Priapus of course,’ Becs cackled.

  ‘Who?’ said Sarah.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No. Does anyone?’

  We shook our heads as I’m sure Becs expected

  us to.

  ‘Priapus. God of fertility. The one with the great big dick.’

  Predictably, everyone cracked up. Becs had been all the way to Greece with her parents during the summer holidays. That was why she had mentioned the Acropolis as if no one else would ever have heard of it. Apparently she’d also bought herself a souvenir statuette of this Priapus without letting on to her parents.

  ‘I’ll bring it to school tomorrow,’ she said.

  Clearly she’d been hoping for just this opportunity. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d enrolled in classical studies just to savour the moment. She was as bad as the boys.

  And the next day she did bring it. She showed us ahead of Ms Shapiro and the boys arriving. Knowing Becs, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d decided to wait for them. It was a small statue of Priapus, hands aggressively on his hips with, as Becs had so slangily said, a dick out of all proportion to the rest of him.

  ‘Gross!’ said Di.

  ‘Imagine!’ shuddered Roxy, without feeling the need to elaborate.

  ‘Is that what all the tourists buy these days?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Not just today,’ said Becs. ‘They sold them way back when. I saw one in a museum. I reckon . . .’ she started to say when sharp-eyed Ms Shapiro walked in unexpectedly and spotted it. She wasn’t easily shocked. ‘Mass produced,’ she commented. ‘I

  thought you would have had better taste, Rebecca, and perhaps bought one in marble.’

  Becs sneered at Ms Shapiro behind her back. ‘Lesso,’ she mouthed at us.

  ‘Yeah, like how big do you reckon he is?’ Becs asked, continuing the conversation after class. ‘Our Greek god.’

  ‘You’ll have to find that out,’ said Liz, ‘and tell us later on.’ They all shrieked again.

  ‘What do you think of Chris?’ Becs asked me. Maybe she was more perceptive than she let on.

  ‘Can’t say I really noticed him particularly,’ I lied.

  She shook her head. What else should I have expected, was what her look seemed to say.

  Maybe she, and the others, had decided to put me into the same camp as Ms Shapiro. I could have been lesbian for all they knew, except I wasn’t. My one and only experience with Robbie hadn’t put me off

  boys in general, just delayed my interest in them. I was certainly never going to admit to them that I’d started fretting about Chris the moment I’d laid eyes on him. Was it my turn at last?

  Getting to know Chris

  I wanted it to happen. I wouldn’t have minded initiating things to make it happen if I’d known how to go about it but I was unexpectedly shy, and inexperienced.

  However, it seemed to happen quite naturally, if that’s the right word. Maybe the sort of hints that
the other girls threw at Chris frightened him so much that he defaulted to talking to me. That was my first thought. Afterwards, of course, I knew that hadn’t

  been the case at all.

  The seating arrangements in Ms Shapiro’s class continued pretty fluidly. With the numbers being so small it didn’t matter much where anyone sat. The boys moved up from the back row mixing and matching it with the girls, trying us out for size, just as Becs, Liz, Sarah and Roxy weighed them up. It was all a game really.

  Chris showed he wasn’t interested in trying. He came to sit beside me on day two and refused to give up his place to anyone. Mind you, neither of the other two boys tried very hard to displace him. They sensed I didn’t want to know them and kept their distance. Chris didn’t say much to his friends either. I soon clicked that they weren’t really his friends.

  We were sitting together before class on day three, unsure of where to go from here, when he came out with the sentence, ‘They’re only here to check out the menu.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘To see what’s on offer. Amazingly for a private school we don’t have classical studies at Year 13 level. Not enough takers, would you believe? So it’s an opportunity, one of the few things we can join in with you guys. That and French.’

  ‘So are you here to “check out the menu”?’ I asked, turning cold.

  ‘No. I’m here for the classics.’

  I nodded, wanting to believe him.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m interested in history,’ I said. ‘Not ancient history especially but I’d rather do that than a science subject.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Chris said.

  ‘What about you then?’

  ‘Me? What about me?’

  ‘Well, do you like classics, really like classics or just like it?’

  Chris grinned. ‘I’m a complete social misfit,’ he said. ‘I love it. I’m a classics geek.’

  ‘Yeah? Don’t put yourself down.’

  ‘If I don’t someone else will. It’s inevitable.’

  ‘Why?’

  Chris shrugged. ‘Not very manly is it, classics, unless you’re after the women?’

  I looked at him. ‘You know, you’re something different,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind that. I went out once, and I mean once, exceptionally briefly, like thirty minutes, with a ‘manly’ guy. Can’t say I enjoyed

  the experience.’

  ‘So, you’re different too,’ he said. Not a question but a statement.

  ‘Me? I’m ordinary.’

  ‘I don’t think you are.’

  He said that so sincerely that I felt myself turning red. Because of my pale skin he was sure to notice. It made me feel momentarily irritated, with him as well as with myself.

  I came out with ‘Is that your regular chat up line?’ before I knew I was going to.

  ‘I don’t have one of those. Honestly. I just say what I mean.’

  ‘OK,’ I relented equally quickly. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But let’s change the subject,’ I suggested.

  ‘Fine with me. You going to uni after this year?’

  Until he mentioned it I hadn’t given it a proper thought. Still too far off. And, as I’ve said, I felt I was drifting a bit, just treading water, marking time.

  ‘You should,’ he said. ‘You’d be good.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I should do,’ I said

  snappishly, again surprising myself as much as him. ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Forget it.’ He rummaged in his bag for his books. ‘Told you I was a social misfit.’

  And I felt instantly sorry for him and ashamed of myself. It was probably true. Like me, he found fitting in hard.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered as the rest of the class came in, shepherded along by Ms Shapiro.

  ‘No worries.’

  Then we had to escape the present to travel back in time. But before we did, Chris turned to me with the most surprising question. ‘Are you a Catholic?’ he said.

  An extract from Chris’s notebook

  Dear Andrea,

  You asked me why I asked you that question.

  Well, I couldn’t believe I had. I came out with it just like that. I’d been wondering how I’d broach the subject but I decided you were a pretty upfront sort of girl. Might as well be upfront with her, I thought. So I asked.

  I could have explained, told you the truth then, but I didn’t. I would, later on, I reassured myself, when I knew you better. If I’d said I’d seen you, three years ago, coming out of St Brigid’s church, you might have thought I was some sort of spying pervert and tossed me back onto the reject pile then and there.

  So I fudged it and told you it was just a random notion. Something about your name, your look, suggested it.

  You looked at me as if you were trying to read my mind. I felt on edge, wondering what your reply

  was going to be. Yes. No. Maybe. Mind your own business.

  But what you said in response was another question, not a statement. You asked me if it would make any difference to me, what your answer would be?

  It put me onto the back foot.

  ‘No,’ was the first thing that came out of my mouth. ‘ It wouldn’t.’

  Then I asked: “Difference to what?’

  You turned red for the second time that morning. ‘I don’t know,’ you said. ‘I’m not sure why I asked that.’

  At least we blundered on equal terms.

  It was a good day.

  Blunders

  Why did I say that? God! It implied all sorts of things. I’d been annoyed with him for telling me what I should do and here I was telling him, suggesting, that I . . . that we . . . I don’t know what made me say it. Avoiding a direct answer I suppose was what got me into that embarrassing situation.

  His question about me being a Catholic certainly threw me. I could have, should have, been honest about where I stood on that but I wasn’t.

  Not until later did I realise I’d reacted the way I did because, in asking me if I was ‘a Catholic,’ Chris had been trying to attach a label to me and I didn’t want to be ‘a’ anything. I’d left the Church because I wanted, for once, to be me, whoever I was or was becoming.

  An extract from Chris’s notebook

  I believed at that moment that I was telling the truth,

  that it wouldn’t have made a difference. OK, like Dad I’m not religious, I can’t help that, it’s part and parcel of my makeup, I’m a disciple of rationality as exemplified by some of the ancient Greeks but I’m no

  bigot. A non-believer yes, but anti, no. People are entitled to their beliefs, hare-brained and irrational though they are. In any case, she didn’t say she was Catholic. Maybe she’s reserving judgement. Maybe she’s got too old to believe in fairy tales. I hope so, I surely do.

  Dark horse

  The other girls quickly got pissed off.

  Liz: ‘You’re a dark horse.’

  Roxy: ‘Yeah, you said you weren’t interested but now you’re all over him.’

  Sarah: ‘He’s all over you.’

  Becs: ‘When’re you going to find out if he’s stud material?’

  I went ballistic. ‘We’re not all as crude as you Becs. Besides, I don’t control who he talks to.’

  ‘You could share him around a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘Maybe you lot frighten him.’

  ‘Frighten him. Are you kidding?’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t own him. I don’t control him. He can sit where he likes, talk to whoever he likes. If he wanted to talk to you, I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Trouble is he doesn’t,’ said Roxy

  ‘And who are you kidding?’ asked Becs. ‘You wouldn’t mind? Really?’

  Yeah, who was I kidding?

  Going out

  Chris asked me out. I hesitated. His question about

  whether or not I was a Catholic kept beeping

  intermittently in my head, like a nea
rly flat battery in a smoke alarm. I didn’t know what its noise was alerting me to only that I would, in some vague, indefinable way, be taking a risk by going out with him. On the other hand I already knew I liked him a lot.

  I’d thought I didn’t want to be like everybody else. Like Becs, Roxy, Sarah and Liz. Boy mad. Sex crazy. But this time . . . well, things were working out differently. Which was fine by me.

  I decided at last. Everything’s a risk one way or another I told myself. Going out with Chris was definitely what I wanted to do.

  ‘OK,’ I said, when he asked me a second time.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.

  So soon!

  ‘What’s tomorrow?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘It is too. When tomorrow?

  ‘I thought maybe we could spend the day together?’

  ‘The whole day?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t you like that idea?’

  I had imagined a movie maybe. Something at night.

  ‘It’s a little different, that’s all,’ I said.

  ‘We are different, remember?’ said Chris. ‘That’s what we like about each other, isn’t it? Besides, I’m not into nightclubs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You’re not into Trance?’

  ‘No. Are you?’

  ‘I could have been, once,’ I said. ‘But these days I just go for wild Irish parties that last into the wee small hours.’

  ‘Do you? Really?’

  ‘No,’ I grinned. ‘Well, not normally anyway. Just once a year, on my birthday.’

  ‘I don’t know when that is.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Well, what about my suggestion? Fancy a day out?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  ‘I can borrow Dad’s car,’ said Chris. ‘I can pick you up.’

  I almost said, I can borrow my Mum and Dad’s car. I could pick you up, now I’ve got my licence. But I resisted. I’d done enough asserting myself for now. Go with the flow instead.