Beneath the Earth by John Boyne Page B

the screen, shouting ‘Get in!’ over and over at the top of his voice.
    â€˜In her will, she asked that you say a few words over her grave. Nothing too … elaborate, mind you. Or lengthy.’
    â€˜Did she specify that?’
    â€˜No, that was me. But I think it’s what she meant.’
    â€˜I would be honoured,’ he said, bowing his head slowly. ‘When does the dreadful event take place?’
    â€˜Tuesday morning.’
    He finished off the rest of his drink and nodded. ‘Email me the details and I’ll be there. Until then, mon semblable, mon frère, I bid you adieu.’ And with that, he was gone, sweeping through the door, his black cloak flaring out behind him like Dracula off on a night-hunt.
    â€˜Tosser,’ I muttered under my breath.
    Naturally, my sister was appalled at the idea of Arthur even attending the funeral, let alone speaking at it. ‘I heard him on the radio a couple of weeks ago,’ she told me, ‘saying how he’d spent years trying
not
to write because he knew how painful it would be. And I don’t think he meant for readers. I’d never heard such nonsense.’
    â€˜Have you read his novel?’ I asked.
    â€˜Yes,’ she said.
    â€˜And what did you think?’
    â€˜Oh, it’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Absolutely ghastly. So wildly overwritten that it’s almost a parody of itself. It never simply rains; the clouds dissolve in the glaucous firmament, weeping their lachrymosity upon the heads of the aberrant populace. No one is ever happy, instead they feel a warmth building inside their coccyx and rising through their alimentary canal as a sensation of well-being extends its octopus-like tentacles through the capillaries producing a sensation close to orgasm.’
    â€˜Thank you, Audrey,’ I said. ‘I’d rather not hear you use that word.’
    â€˜Does the idea of my having orgasms frighten you, Pierce?’
    â€˜It does if I’m in the room. Now can we move on, please? There’s nothing to be done. I’ve asked Arthur, and more importantly Mother asked Arthur, so we should do what she wanted.’
    â€˜Can we give him a time limit at least?’
    â€˜I’ve told him to keep it short.’ I took a sip from my coffee and recalled something, a bad memory rising from the mausoleum. ‘Didn’t you take Arthur to your Debs?’ I asked after a moment. ‘This person you so despise. Didn’t you go out with each other for a while?’
    â€˜We did not go out with each other,’ she said, turning on me. ‘We did nothing of the sort. Yes, I invited him to my Debs but only because Steven Slipton broke his leg the previous week and couldn’t come.’
    â€˜Slipton,’ I said, recalling a tall, rather handsome young man who looked a little like Richard Harris in his prime. ‘I always thought that was a funny name.’
    â€˜Ironically, he broke his leg after he—’
    â€˜Slipped somewhere, yes. I guessed. Still, you asked Arthur. Of the other two million or so penis-enabled humans in Ireland, you went after him.’
    â€˜I’m not proud of it,’ she admitted, sitting down and offering the closest thing to a smile I had seen since she’d discovered Mother dead in her bed, a copy of
Fifty Shades of Grey
clutched in her stiffening hands. She would never discover how it turned out now.
    â€˜You loved him,’ I said. ‘You loved Arthur. You wanted to undress him and do dirty things with his naked body.’
    â€˜Actually, I did,’ she said. ‘After the Debs. Out the back of the Burlington car park.’
    â€˜Oh Christ,’ I said, putting my cup down. ‘I was kidding. You don’t mean that you actually had sex with him?’
    â€˜Of course I had sex with him,’ she said. ‘It was my Debs. It would have been rude not to. And you can say whatever you like, you and he were