Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

Vince drew a breath, that chilling smile still on his lips. ‘I used to wet the bed at nights, I even had thoughts of suicide. I know this all sounds melodramatic, but there you are. That is the cruelty of childhood. I offer you my experience as a counter to that noxious ignorant lie that childhood is innocent.’

‘Did your mother do anything?’

Vince seemed taken aback at Serena’s question. He gave a curt shrug. ‘I said nothing to my mother. To tell her would have increased my torments tenfold.’ Vince’s smile was now a smirk. ‘Of course, it might have been different for you at a private school, Serena. I’m sure all your schools were much more civilised.’

I blushed. I tried to catch Vince’s eye but he was deliberately avoiding my gaze.

‘One teacher did attempt to intervene. I still remember his name: Mr Clifford. He took me aside, told me that I needed to become more resilient.’

‘That’s a fucking stupid thing to say to a child who’s being bullied,’ said Ingrid.

Vince seemed genuinely surprised. ‘On the contrary, it was good advice. To survive I had to become more resilient.’ He butted out his cigarette. Madeline’s hand reached for his but he moved away from her. I’m ashamed to admit that I felt a stab of pleasure at this.

‘It lasted a year. Those three boys were ignorant and dumb and are, I presume, still in Westmeadows, breeding further dumb and ignorant children. I went to the local high school until I sat an exam in year nine and won a scholarship to University High. And here I am, very far from the Omets, Hussans and Serkans of this world. But I won’t ever forget the agony and humiliation of that year.’

I was concentrating so intently on what Vince was saying that Marie’s snort of exasperation took me by surprise. ‘Really, Vince,’ she said, ‘we’ve all been bullied at school. You surely can’t still be wanting revenge on three primary school boys, can you? My God, after all these years?’

There were very few occasions when Vince was lost for words, or betrayed any weakness, but this was one. But, almost immediately, he regained his composure. His lips formed a tight snarl as he turned to her.

‘You’re so the model of the university-educated left-wing feminist, Marie.’ He tilted his head then, in mock deference. ‘Compassion and forgiveness for the nameless and the stateless, righteous piety and judgemental moralism for everyone else.’ He turned to face Ingrid. ‘I’m sure Marie here would have agreed with Mr Clifford that all I needed was resilience.’

Marie seemed to want to interject at this moment but Vince spoke right over her. ‘No, I bear Omet, Hussan and Serkan no ill will. That would be churlish. Those cunts mean nothing in this world.’

‘So what’s all this got to do with revenge?’

‘Ah!’ Vince looked delighted. ‘Now we can get to the nitty and the gritty. Now I have described to you the world I lived in, the world dominated by Omet and Hussan and Serkan. I got the scholarship and left that pathetic world behind.’

His voice had returned to its usual sardonic tone but I was not at all fooled by the casualness of his speech. There was real pride in him now; he sat with his legs apart, his white shirt open at the collar, his dark tie loosened. He possessed the sofa as he possessed the room, and I wanted to kiss his neck and his handsome, serious face.

‘I think it was the happiest day of my mother’s life, even more so than when I graduated from university. By then she already knew that I had escaped the working class. Her mantra throughout my school years, from the earliest age, was that I should study, read, better myself.’ He turned to Marie. ‘I’m sure you’d deconstruct her aspirations as insufferably phallocentric and bourgeois, but she didn’t want her child to be condemned to the same monotony that characterised her working life. The day I got accepted into Uni High was the happiest day of her life.’

‘I don’t condemn your mother’s aspirations.’

Vince hardly seemed to notice Marie’s objection; he continued, his voice still infused with pride. ‘She wanted to take me to dinner. There were two cousins I was close to and she also asked that I invite friends from school. My closest friend was called George, another Greek and another bookworm.’ Vince glanced casually at me, then looked away. ‘I think, looking back on it, he was gay.’ He shrugged. ‘That doesn’t matter. The person I most wanted to be there was Nazin. She was a Turkish girl in my class, the only other student who came close to equalling me scholastically.’

There would have been a few catcalls at this unself-conscious vanity — from Ingrid or Antony — but Vince would not have cared. He had no idea why conceit would be considered a negative quality.

‘Nazin once received a better mark in a maths test than I did and I was gutted for days, just gutted. From then on I resolved to do better than her. I do believe that this competition spurred me on to be an even better student, and I thought that even though we rarely talked to one another she too understood and enjoyed the thrill of our intellectual combat. Because of it I became obsessed by Nazin — I believed I loved her. I dreamt about her, created conversations between us as I walked to and from school. In my fantasies we both had brilliant futures in the arts or the sciences or in politics, we would get married and we would have many, many kids, we would travel the world, we would be famous.’ Vince’s eyes were closed and I doubt that any of us had ever seen him so transfixed. He had never once in all the years I had known him talked about love, of that experience and of that emotion. But it was clear as he spoke that night that he did indeed know something about love. It hurt me, I am ashamed to say. Even without looking at her, I knew it hurt Madeline as well.

Vince opened his eyes. They were cold, hard, unyielding. ‘Your typical self-obsessed teenage fantasies, of course. But this was how I felt and I was convinced Nazin had to be there at dinner, to celebrate with me. I mustered all my courage and one day after class I invited her. It was awful. I stammered and I blushed and I could hardly get the words out. In the end she took mercy on me and explained that she could not come to a dinner with me, that her father would never allow it. But it’s okay, it’s okay , I told her. My mother will be there, I’ll get her to phone your dad and he’ll know there’s nothing to worry about .’ His voice calmed again. ‘But this seemed to agitate her and I said nothing more.’ He turned towards Hande. ‘I put it down to another example of Turkish girls being enslaved by their fathers. It didn’t once occur to me that Nazin would not want to celebrate with me. But a few days afterwards I was in the locker corridor talking with George about the dinner. An Omet or a Hussan or a Serkat overheard us and started teasing me. I didn’t care, I was soon to be out of there — what harm could their words do me? Noticing that his abuse was having no effect, he called out down the corridor.’

Vince leapt to his feet and began baying. He held us captive, an actor on a stage. I could see the claustrophobic narrow corridor, feel the rush of bodies around the lockers. ‘ Hey, Nazin, didn’t this poofter Vince invite you to dinner? I wanted to die, not because of what he had said about me, but I would never have wanted to humiliate Nazin. I think at that moment I was prepared to punch him: I would have been beaten but I would have been defending her. So idiotically romantic were my fantasies. Except he went on, shouting, laughing: As if Nazin would ever accept a dinner paid by a whore’s wages, as if. As if! Those last two words he literally sprayed across my face.’