In a new story, Claire Kilroyresponds to Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a continuing series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the declaration
'This train is for," said the Dart voice.
"Bray," said the lads.
"Bray," said the Dart voice for the thicks.
The lads laughed. Bray was funny. Everything was funny after four tins. "We're in the second last carriage," Max was saying into his phone. He pulled a face. "How would I know how many carriages the train has? I'm not the fucking oracle." Max snapped the phone shut.
The lads fell quiet to keep an eye out for Aran when the platform at Sutton rolled into sight. They scanned the faces of waiting commuters who were shuffling blankly towards the train like zombies. "There he is," said Macdara, pointing down the far end where Aran was running in their direction, cutting easily through the crowd, his shirt collar turned up, his jeans belted low, straw-coloured hair sculpted into a fin. It was Saturday night.
The lads nearly broke their holes laughing when Aran sailed right past their window and boarded the carriage beyond. Even the girls in the seats opposite giggled. That was the first thing Aran saw when he opened the internal carriage door as the train rattled through back gardens in Bayside: the pretty girl in the white top smiling at him. Then the pretty girl looking shyly away.
* * *
It was about four drinks before he managed to get talking to her. The girl had smiled at him again when they found themselves in the queue for the same club on D'Olier Street, but she'd looked down at her feet before he got a chance to smile back. Aran had looked down at her feet too. Shoes way too big for her. Her friends were giggling again, elbowing her, whispering. Max kept prodding him in the arse. "Get off me, Gaylord," Aran warned him, but when he turned back, the girl was gone and the bouncer was demanding to see some ID.
* * *
He found the girl later standing on her own at the edge of the dance floor, gripping a bottle of WKD Blue. No sign of the giggling mates. "Alright in here, isn't it?" Aran shouted at her.
"Yeah," she shouted back, spilling smiles all over the place, "it's deadly."
He bought her a second WKD, then a third. Six lids a pop. He liked acting the big guy. The girl was younger than him, sixteen maybe, no money of her own yet, but Aran was flush from his part-time job, and wanted the world to know it.
They went out for a smoke in the corralled-off area of pavement on D'Olier Street, and Aran told the girl about his car. "Deadly," she kept saying. He offered to take her for a drive sometime, anywhere she wanted to go. The quarry, Dollymount, name it. A noisy fleet of Nitelinks pulled up to the kerb, and Aran got a notion into his head, a spur of the moment thing. "Hey," he said, "let's jump on the 31."
The girl looked nonplussed. "What about my friends?" She was swaying in her too-big heels.
Aran grinned. "What about them?" He touched her face and moved in for a kiss. That's how these things start. Easy.
* * *
"You're after missing your stop," the girl said when Sutton Cross had come and gone.
"Don't worry about it," Aran told her, and kissed her again. "Don't you worry about a thing." Their phones were yapping at each other like small dogs, but they paid them no attention. They got out at the harbour, though neither of them lived down there. Aran held the girl's hand in his left hand and her big sister's shoes in his right as the pair clambered across the boulders buttressing East Pier. It was a warm June night. The sky was navy, already brightening, Ireland's Eye a black sea monster drifting past.
Aran spread his jacket out on a large flat rock and the girl sat in the crook of his arm to share a joint. They laughed and talked and threw pebbles into the sea. When the girl shivered, Aran wrapped himself around her and she sort of eased against him. He cupped her head and laid her back, lowering his weight carefully down on her. Her head lolled drunkenly, but she was still smiling, still lovely. "Aw yeah," he said. "Aw yeah," he said. "Aw yeah."
* * *
"What have I reared?" his mother asked the ceiling when the two Guards had left. She bit hard on the knuckle of her index finger. Statutory rape. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
"I can hardly bear to look at you," his father wanted to tell his son, but didn't open his mouth. Instead, he phoned his solicitor and outlined the situation. "The father is pressing charges," he told him. Gerald said he'd come around to the house immediately.
"She didn't look thirteen," Aran kept protesting.
"She will when she's sitting in front of that jury," Gerald told the family grimly, taking out his legal pad.
* * *
The fact that the girl had lied her way into a nightclub for over-eighteens helped their defence enormously. The manager of the club testified that the false photo identification the girl had produced at the door was a professional job, not the handiwork of a schoolgirl. It was, however, the video footage of the two teenagers dancing recorded by Max on his mobile phone that convinced the jury that the whole unfortunate incident was an honest mistake on the defendant's part.
Aran's father was relieved to concede that, if anything, the girl looked more mature in the jerky, low resolution video than his gawky, plastered, moronic son, throwing himself around the dance floor with no heed to the beat of the music, the jeans hanging off his backside and that inane tuft of hair on his head. What have I reared? his mother wondered again. The girl may have been thirteen, but she didn't look thirteen, the jury concluded, and therefore she lost the rights due to a minor. Besides, it wasn't like she was a virgin.
* * *
The two families hung back in their respective barristers' chambers waiting for the other family to vacate the court buildings first. An hour apiece they gave it, to be safe. Gerald stepped outside, and reported that the coast was clear. He put his hand on Aran's shoulder as the lad left. A rape conviction would have destroyed his future, but Aran felt no relief.
Both parties rounded the corner into the entrance hall at the same time. They drew up sharply when they saw each other, then lowered their eyes and ploughed on, making their way down the steps together, she baby-faced without her make-up, and he awkward in a suit he wouldn't fill for a few years yet, the one as big a child as the other.
• This is one of a series of 30 stories and essays by leading writers marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The series was created by Sean Love for Amnesty International and continues next Saturday
ARTICLE 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.