You see he wasn’t a girl, was he? If he was a girl, he might have remained calm and silent in the afterglow of that first kiss. Or brushed his lips on the back of his new master’s neck. The aftertaste of first love still on the tongue. But he wasn’t a girl. Was he? No. Of course not. Birdie was a girl. Is. Yes. Is a girl. She would have known what to do. But boys! You can’t be up to them. And you can’t rely on them. And when there’s music in the air, they walk on your toes.

Gussie didn’t do any of the things he ought to have done if he was a girl, or if Birdie was him, or if everybody was somebody else. He didn’t do all the things he saw later in films on solitary visits to London. He didn’t even lie still. No. Couldn’t even do that. Had to be the circus clown. Had to make a show of himself. Had to be the gobdaw.

A convent girl might have stayed still, and learned a thing or two and if she didn’t like it she might just have spilled the beans on the bastards later. Then of course a convent girl wouldn’t be in a room with four boys. So there’s no point in thinking that.

Who knows? It’s late in the night. Gussie is dead. He has no more chances. And all Birdie knows is that, far from being the victim, because he was the youngest, the one they took advantage of, Gussie managed to turn himself into the ringleader.

By the end of the day it certainly looked like that. He danced and pranced around the room. He jumped up and down on the floor. He made a mighty entertainment for the other kids as they lay on their wet, steamy bellies reeking of childish sweat and sex. Gussie was the star. The eejit. The gobdaw. And they applauded him with the enthusiasm of an audience in the town hall watching the village beauty dancing the can-can in the opening chorus of a Christmas pantomime. But the ructions drew the attention of the landlady’s daughter, who drank her fill through the keyhole and blew the whistle that evening at teatime with unrestrained glee.

Gussie was sent home. He was the one who had started the whole thing, the teachers said. And the landlady said. And the other boys said. Excuse me, said Birdie, but what age is my son? And what age are all the other bastards? So on and so forth. But it was useless.

It was an incident never repeated but often recalled. Connemara was a word that exploded in the air whenever it was uttered. If she didn’t like where he was going or what he was doing, she’d say I hope it’s not going to turn out like Connemara. When her heart was utterly black and she wanted to flail him to pieces, she simply said, I hope this is not going to be another Cornagore.