The Heart's Invisible Furies

Cyril is invited to the parliament building after winning a prize for his essay. Julian is invited as well after being given an award for improvement (despite his recent arrival); Cyril suspects that Max paid the school off. On the bus ride, Julian talks about girls, as he does often, and this frustrates Cyril. In hindsight, he remarks on how he did not understand his feelings of attraction for Julian, especially given the repression of being gay in Ireland. Father Squires ushers the boys into the building, gloating about all the amazing people who have walked its halls. Cyril notices none of the Teachta Dála (members of parliament) are women.

While Father Squires is “practically dribbling with Republican zeal” (121), Cyril and Julian sneak off and find a tearoom. Julian flirts with the waitress, pretending to be much older so she will serve them Guinness. She doesn’t believe him, but brings the drinks anyway, mentioning how she is worried that her manager Mrs. Goggin (Cyril’s mother) might find out. Julian mentions wanting to get a “blowie” (126) from the waitress, then realizes Cyril doesn’t know what that is. Finding out fills Cyril with thrill and a new fantasy of Julian. Catherine appears and is enraged that the naïve waitress served the boys Guinness. Father Squires arrives next, and Catherine embarrasses him by blaming his lack of attention for the boys’ misbehavior. Cyril is amazed to see someone talking to a priest in such a way. Cyril tells Catherine any punishment will be worth seeing her dressing down of the priest, and Catherine ruffles Cyril’s hair good-naturedly.

Max Woodbead writes a controversial piece for the Irish Times detailing his disdain for the Irish government and its separation from the United Kingdom. In the article, Max suggests executing everyone who supports Irish independence. After days of media attention, someone attempts to kill Max. They miss and shoot his ear off. Cyril foreshadows an even worse punishment to come.

After their first taste of freedom, Cyril and Julian begin escaping the school grounds on a regular basis. On one such day, Cyril feels particularly full of zest; his friendship with Julian has blossomed quickly. Julian goes to an underground washroom and is approached by a man who tries to watch him urinate. Julian picks up a prescription for a rash he refuses to detail. Afterward, Cyril wants to go see the ducks, but Julian insists they try their luck at a pub. Shortly after arriving, the girl from the tearoom, Bridget, and a friend of hers, Mary-Margaret, arrive. Cyril realizes he is on a double-date and feels affronted. Mary-Margaret is unpleasant and negative. Julian makes a comment implying that he and Bridget are sexually involved, and Cyril feels a pang of jealousy. When they emerge onto the street hours later, Julian is kidnapped by three men and put in a trunk. Cyril tries to process what he just saw.

The people who kidnap Julian are opposed to his father’s political opinions and send a ransom note demanding £100,000. The media picks up the story and a search begins to find Julian. Cyril is with the others from the pub at the Gardai station (police station), shaken from the incident. Surprisingly, Charles shows up to be present while Cyril is questioned. He talks through most of it, but an officer asks Cyril a few questions about the case before revealing that the Gardai had to search their bedroom for evidence. They found a series of unsigned letters detailing erotic fantasies about Julian. Charles reveals he is getting married again, but that Cyril will not be invited to the wedding.

The kidnappers do not receive their ransom, and in response cut off Julian’s toe and mail it to his younger sister Alice. A few days later, they send one of his thumbs. Next, it’s Julian’s right ear, and this is their final warning. Max refuses to pay the ransom. While Julian is gone, Cyril spends his nights fantasizing, but these fantasies soon turn to thoughts of Julian being tortured. Cyril believes he has always known he was different and craved more from other boys than usual, but it was not until he met Julian that he knew what these feelings meant.

Cyril feels ashamed of his fantasies and feelings and decides to confess to a priest in an attempt to gain God’s favor and Julian. He asks God to stop him from being gay, then goes to the confessional. Cyril admits to stealing candies and insulting his teacher in his mind, both of which shock the priest. When Cyril confesses his fantasies about Julian and other boys in detail, the priest has a heart attack. He falls out of the confessional onto the floor as Cyril asks, “Am I forgiven, Father?” (171). The priest dies on the spot, but Cyril feels relieved regardless. He goes home to continue fantasizing about Julian and soon hears that Julian was found by a special operations team at a farm.

Cyril has been working for the Department of Education for three years. The department is led by Miss Joyce, who has been in the position for decades. His other co-workers are Miss Ambrosia, a woman who pays more attention to her male coworkers than her work, and Mr. Denby-Denby, who dresses and acts flamboyantly and who Cyril is fairly certain is gay. When Cyril hears that he has nine children, Cyril wonders if he, too, can someday have a successful marriage with a woman.

One day, Mr. Denby-Denby lectures Cyril for not enjoying his youth and bragging about how much women loved him when he was younger. Cyril goes into the washroom to examine a recent STI he acquired, and Mr. Denby-Denby follows him, inquiring about seeing Cyril at a pub for gay men a few nights before. Cyril denies it, but Mr. Denby-Denby corners Cyril and warns him that he could be arrested if he is caught at that pub.

Cyril meets up with Mary-Margaret and they discuss the death of their mutual acquaintance (Julian’s old girlfriend) and Julian’s kidnapping. Mary-Margaret recounts a story of her work at the bank in which she proudly denied a transgender woman service. The woman cried and protested, saying she was “sick of being treated like some second-class citizen” (194), but Mary-Margaret feels no sympathy. At the end of their discussion, Mary-Margaret hands Cyril her phone number, hoping to set up a date for a movie. Cyril is shocked and dumbfoundedly agrees. He hopes it might mean he is finally becoming a heterosexual man, and the two become an official couple. After a month, Cyril decides to kiss Mary-Margaret and see if it arouses anything in him, but instead experiences what he calls “A Great Shriveling” (199).

Cyril is a young, gay man in 1960s Ireland and finds that he constantly has to lie and hide who he is. The despair and loneliness of it often leads him to consider suicide. He has no family that he knows of, and his friendship with Julian is largely one-sided. Cyril is also romantically lonely, finding that he can only get intimacy from encounters in parks or movie theatres where he won’t be seen. These acts leave him feeling an even greater sense of shame in himself. He is often approached by desperate men and occasionally offered money.

One night, Cyril brings a man home to his apartment. The man looks strikingly like Julian and Cyril becomes enamored with him immediately. It’s the first time Cyril has sex in a bed, and the experience leaves him feeling close to the man. The man turns out to be married, however, and leaves without much concern.

Cyril makes an appointment with a doctor named Dr. Dourish. Cyril is intimidated by the man’s age and religion but confesses that he has sexual attraction to men. The doctor says, “Perverts, degenerates, and sickos have existed since the dawn of time, so don’t for a minute think you’re anything special” (209), and that “there are no homosexuals in Ireland” (209). He tells Cyril he cannot possibly be gay and must never act on his urges. He instructs Cyril to take off his pants and sit on the table and begins listing off names of famous men. When he reaches a name that he senses Cyril finds attractive, he stabs Cyril’s testicles with a syringe. Cyril jumps up, screaming. The doctor insists it’s the only way to prevent him from being an outcast, and Cyril reluctantly undergoes another 30 minutes of the procedure. He stumbles out, crying.

The Minister of Education is caught receiving oral sex from a 16-year-old boy in his car, and it becomes a full-blown scandal. The next day, the Minister bursts into the office and concocts a story in which the boy simply bent over to pick up a dropped cigarette that he believes will save his reputation. Mr. Denby-Denby calls out his foolishness and leaves the room. Miss Ambrosia notes that he needs to seek political advice and come up with something better. They’re all certain he will lose his position by the end of the day.

Cyril is conflicted; he does not like the Minister personally, but he empathizes with the situation. He goes for a walk through the corridors and is confronted by a press officer who accuses him of being queer and getting the job through sexual favors. The man states he would “do what Hitler did” (221) to every gay man he can find if allowed. Cyril tells the man off, and the man punches him in the face. A fist match begins between them as men around begin placing bets. Just then, Catherine comes charging out and scolds the men, taking Cyril aside and away to the quiet tearoom. There, she cleans him up, and because he feels comfortable with Catherine, he tells her that he is gay. She briefly recognizes his eyes, but the moment passes quickly. Catherine bursts into tears knowing that Cyril could easily have died.

After the altercation, Cyril loses his position at the Department of Education. He refrains from telling Mary-Margaret, who instead has something of her own to share: Her sister is pregnant out of wedlock. Mary-Margaret goes on a rant about how awful and shameful it is. Cyril assumes his own mother may easily have been in the same situation, and questions why Mary-Margaret cannot show empathy. Mary-Margaret senses that something is going on with Cyril.

When Cyril’s flatmate gets engaged and spends the night having sex, Cyril goes in search of an encounter of his own. After a couple of unsettling experiences (one in which he overhears two men talking about being caught), he reluctantly wanders down into the public washrooms. He finds a teenager of about 18 inside, frightened but clearly there for the same reason. Cyril feels bad for the boy, seeing himself in him, and admits that he often feels suicidal; the boy admits the same.

Cyril asks the boy if he wants to go for a walk and just talk, and the boy agrees, but then a Garda (police officer) comes down the stairs and confronts them. Mary-Margaret appears behind, and the boy runs past them and disappears as Cyril is arrested. Mary-Margaret asks the officer to hit Cyril, who does so hard enough to knock a tooth out. As he succumbs to being arrested, they go out into the street and a statue of Admiral Lord Nelson suddenly explodes before them. Both the officer and Mary-Margaret are caught in the blast and die, allowing Cyril to escape. Cyril decides his life must change: “I would be normal if it killed me” (237).

Cyril is 28, and Julian is back in town after another eventful set of travels. Disappointed with what Cyril is wearing for a night out, Julian goes into his room and starts looking for something else. Instead, he finds one of Cyril’s semi-pornographic body-building magazines. Cyril tries to play it off as a recent attempt to gain muscle, but Julian says it’s a magazine for gay men and mentions a boy from their school who moved to Canada to live with his boyfriend. The boy once kissed Julian, who kissed him back, but felt nothing. Julian warns Cyril to get rid of the magazine before someone gets the wrong idea and moves back to the subject of clothing.

Cyril now works for the RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) as a researcher for farming and religious programming. A stag party is being held for Cyril (who is marrying Alice, Julian’s sister) and several of his colleagues are attending. Cyril invites Julian to the pub and is horrified to see a man named Nick is there. Nick once rejected Cyril; this was a first for Cyril, and the moment was embarrassing. Julian holds the group’s attention for most of the evening, discussing various memories that embarrass Cyril before giving a cheer to Cyril’s future.

Alice has Julian’s same beautiful eyes and face. Unlike Julian, however, she does not emulate Julian’s promiscuity. Cyril met Alice at a going-away party for Julian, where she sat alone reading when Cyril approached her. Alice works as a researcher and writer for UCD (University College Dublin), and Cyril finds himself drawn to her personality. They share a similar view of the world and a similar disconnect from it, and they both adore Julian.

They talk for a while before Alice mentions that Cyril seems unhappy. Alice was left at her own wedding and relates to Cyril’s loneliness and frustration. She was comforted by Maude’s novels after the fact and decided to write her PhD on their themes of loneliness. Alice pities what happened to Maude, how she lost her home and writing sanctuary to a man who cheated on her. Alice confesses that when she was little, she came to the house at Dartmouth Square with her father and was petrified by Maude’s ghostly appearance and manner. Maude seemed to think that Alice was her deceased child, Lucy. Cyril remembers the day that a small girl ran running out of the house screaming and is amused to find out the reason behind it all. A few days later Alice calls Cyril for a date. Cyril is shocked but agrees; on the date, he lies to Alice and tells her he is more than interested.

Cyril laments that he has never known true intimacy or love, and that for him, sex is something to be done in hiding to fulfill a momentary pleasure. A few weeks before he is due to marry Alice, she suggests they have sex. When Cyril reacts in a way that suggests he does not want to, Alice reminds him of how she was previously left at the altar and warns him to be honest before it’s too late. Cyril begins to cry and says he has something to confess, but still cannot bring himself to be honest. On the night that they make love, Cyril insists on having the lights off (to avoid too much shock), and although he finds himself not exactly sexually attracted to Alice, he is emotionally close with her and manages to perform to a standard he describes as “perfectly adequate” (280).

Cyril awakes on his wedding day desperate for a sign to tell him to leave Alice and tell the truth. When Cyril sits down on a bench outside, he is approached by a woman and her son. The woman asks Cyril to watch her son, who is named Jonathan Edward Goggin, for a few minutes. Jonathan has some books with him, and one about children who flee the Nazis particularly interests him. Jonathan is about eight but starts talking about sex and how his mother educated him on the topic so he had a more respectable view of women. They each talk about their “girlfriends” and Cyril quotes the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” When the mother finally returns, she recognizes Cyril. Before leaving, Catherine feels a strange shiver, and when she is gone, Cyril ironically thinks to himself about how disappointed he is that God couldn’t present him a sign.

Cyril arrives at the church hungover and finds Julian. Julian puts his arm around Cyril to console him, and Cyril admits he wishes his real mother was there. When Cyril admits he does not love Alice but someone else, Julian becomes confused and upset. Cyril kisses him then, but Julian withdraws, wondering what’s going on. Cyril confesses he has slept with over two hundred men and is absolutely certain he is gay, and Julian becomes enraged. Julian’s anger is targeted not toward Cyril’s sexuality, but toward his lies. Julian punches Cyril, knocking him down, and Cyril tries to apologize to no avail. Julian threatens Cyril and demands he marry Alice to avoid humiliating her and breaking her heart. He says he will never be friends with Cyril again. Cyril tries to tell Julian he loves him, and Julian grabs Cyril and pins him against the wall, telling him he will kill him if he ever says that again.

Cyril is married and the after-party of the wedding takes place at a hotel bar nearby. Alice approaches Cyril and says she needs to talk to him, but Cyril is desperate to get away. All the while, Julian watches in anger. Cyril gets irritated with Alice and shouts at her, and when he looks back at Julian, he appears to be crying. Cyril goes up to his hotel room and takes his clothes off. He stares out over Dublin, knowing that all the events and people of his life are all around him. He feels a sense of freedom as the wind hits his body until he realizes that, for his entire life, he was “blind and deaf and mute and ignorant, devoid of any senses save the one that governed [his] sexual compulsions” (304) and that resulted in the state of his life now. He climbs over the railing and lets go, but in that moment a boy from below spots him and shouts out. Cyril grips the railing in shock and clambers back inside. Cyril decides to leave town before Alice can reach him.