At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  A creak in his voice, and the spell broke in a raucous cough. He sought to regain his moment, but he could not. People who drifted away he followed with his hat. Those drinkers who had crowded Fennelly’s door set in to mock him.

  Jim retreated in the butcher’s doorway. There was another boy, he saw him in his mind’s eye, who when Doyler came out took hold his arm and strolled him away up the other direction. But Jim was not that boy, and now when Doyler emerged with his parcel of brawn, he stood mutely by, sensing the darkened mood.

  “Mary and Joseph,” Doyler muttered, “in the street and all.” In a jerk he had the pieces of his flute whipped out. “Are you straight, Jim Mack?”

  That question again. Jim cautiously nodded.

  “Hold on to me flute, will you? I might not catch you before practice again. Will you mind it for me?”

  “All right.”

  “Next week then. I’ll see you there.”

  He had been bidden to go. It was so quick, Jim wasn’t sure what was happening. “We could maybe meet before, if and you wanted.”

  “Aye maybe.”

  The drunk was hacking in his sleeve again, and one of the mockers from Fennelly’s called, “Have you a license to go hawking in the street?”

  Doyler spun round. “Get on, you gobshite. Can’t you leave a body in peace?”

  “Who said that?” yelled the drunk. “Who’s it calling me a gobshite?”

  Jim edged away. “Is he all right?”

  “Is who all right?”

  Jim cocked his head. “Your da.”

  “I said I’ll see you.” The apple in his throat was leaping now. He swallowed and the voice tempered. “Look, pal o’ me heart, right? If he decks me with the flute he’ll have it fecked again.” Still Jim didn’t understand. “For to sell it of course or to pawn it.”

  Jim slowly nodded.

  “Go on, then, before he catches on you have it.”

  In the shadow of an archway Jim watched the encounter of father and son. Mr. Doyle shadow-boxed in his circle of lamplight. “Who called me a gobshite? Was it you called me a gobshite?”

  Doyler caught him by the arm. He muttered something while he held out his brawn. In a wild flail his father had it knocked to the road. “Is it you is blackguarding me? Look at me, mister, when I talk to you! Look at me, I say! Who d’ya think you’re looking at? Ladies and gents, do yous know who it is? Do yous know who it is now, ladies and gents?”

  Like lazy sparks the tulips had fallen. Doyler bent to retrieve them and the brawn. And when the father raised his arm it seemed to Jim the son had offered his neck for the blow.

  “‘Thus in the stilly night’—This is the whore’s git I has to call me own. And there’s a whore inside did bounce him on me.”

  Twelve years old. He was helping his father in the shop when the bell clinked and a fantastical character stopped in the door. Out of a bright check suit, buttoned high at the collar, shone a bright red face that danced with smiles under an orange flame of hair. A handkerchief flowed from his top pocket and a buttonhole bloomed in his lapel. In his hand he held a silver-topped cane, a bunched pair of lemon gloves and the brim of a brown bowler hat.

  Jim saw his father standing at gaze; then gradually his mouth came to work. “Well well well, I’ll go to hades and back. What’s this blown in of an old Irish morning?”

  “Hayfoot, strawfoot, stand and freeze. Fusilier Doyle at the steady.” Click went heels and the character made a humorous salute.

  “If it isn’t the Queen’s bad bargain himself!”

  “Let me present arms now, Mr. Mack, and if I shake your paw I’ll shake the paw of the finest quarterbloke’s bloke the Dubs did ever see.”

  “Well, if it isn’t Mick me old sweat.”

  “If it isn’t Mack me old heart.”

  It made Jim smile himself to see his father so beaming. He had come out from the counter and he had the stranger’s hand gripped in both his own. “I’ll go to hades and back,” he said again. “Haven’t seen sight of you, haven’t heard wind of you, not since—”

  “Pete’n’Marysburg, the Natal Province, October fourteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine.”

  “That’s about the length of it. The regiment was setting off for Ladysmith, I remember.”

  “And your good self, Sergeant Mack, was setting off for home.”

  Gordie had come out from the kitchen, and he nudged Jim’s shoulder. A sliver of doubt had crossed their father’s face. “Well well well,” he repeated. “And you’ve been prospering since. You’d take the stick on parade yet, so you would.”

  The newcomer gave a swank of his clothes. “Not a greasy button in sight,” said he.

  Again that doubt in their father’s eyes, his face a margarine smile. “My my my,” he said. “And what brings me natty old sweat to the parish by the sea?”

  “Amn’t I domiciled local now? The dog’s lady, the grawls and meself.”

  “Married and all?”

  “Priest and witnesses.”

  “And whereabouts would you be staying so?”

  “A handy four walls down a vicinity called the Banks. That’s till we finds me feet, of course.”

  “You won’t be long about that be the cut of you. Mighty prosperous altogether.”

  For a season then he was a regular in the shop and the two old comrades would often be jawing over old times. Every now and then a roar would let out of a regimental song: “Hurrah, hurrah for Ireland! And the Dublin Fu-usiliers!” In the kitchen Gordie would wink at Jim and Aunt Sawney used bang her stick on the floor.

  Gordie called him Burlington Burt, and it was curious to see him late of a morning step out from the Banks, his swagger suit alive against the slob and a bloom in his buttonhole if only an old dandelion he plucked on the way. His bowler he tipped at an angle and his cane he carried sloped to the ground. “It was the Colonel gave him that,” their father explained to them. “Five times in a row the smartest man in the battalion.” He said it with pride, the way he would share in his comrade’s splendor. They had never known their father be friendly with anyone. It was inconceivable he would give credit so free.

  Then one day Gordie took Jim aside. “Old Burlington Burt’s put the stiffeners on the old fella.”

  “What stiffeners?” asked Jim.

  “Don’t you know the old fella cut and run from the Boers. Scut away out the army the first shot was fired. He’s scared of his wits thinking Burlington Burt will blow the gab.”

  “The da never scut.”

  “Young ’un,” said Gordie and he cuffed Jim’s neck.

  The pinch of tea and the tins of milk soon proved a burden, till finally Aunt Sawney put her stick unshakably down. “A double deficit,” his father said sadly. “For they won’t mind what they owe us and what pennies they have they’ll spend elsewhere now.”

  “Ye’re the slatey one,” Aunt Sawney chid him, “and himself inside of Fennelly’s regaling them what a touch ye are.”

  The brown bowler hat was presently an item in Ducie’s window. The lemon gloves quickly joined it, followed one drab morning by the silver-topped cane. Then one evening Mr. Doyle came in the shop with Doyler in tow.

  “Cross-patch, draw the latch, sit by the fire and spin. Is the coast clear, Sergeant?”

  “She’s away at chapel,” Jim’s father answered. “And who’s this you have with you? Who’s this the grand wee fusilier?”

  “Sure you know the eldest. First shake of the bag. Say hello to Mr. Mack, son.”

  “Hello, Mr. Mack,” came the surly voice.

  “Though ’twasn’t your humble what shook that particular bag, I don’t think.”

  “Ha ha ha.”

  “You and me was sodgering yet when this wee mustard came out the nettlebed.”

  “Ha ha ha,” echoed his father’s strained voice, and the inside door closed to a crack.

  In the kitchen, Jim returned to his books. Doyler he knew from national school. He was the rag-mannered bare
foot boy who glowered at the back and never played games in the yard. He was mocked for a baldy peelo, for his hair would often be shaved against the itch, and his cap would slip and slide about his head. Every morning he was hauled for a thrashing because every afternoon he went working in the street. The master’s face had been a sketch when he went up for the scholarship. But he sat it and was waiting, like Jim was now, the decision.

  Movement by the door caught Jim’s attention. Through the crack he saw Doyler’s shadow, and the shadow of his hand was darting up and down to a shelf. Soaps. He was stealing soaps.

  The grown-up banter continued beyond. Immediately, Jim understood what was going forth. Mr. Doyle kept his father occupied while his son helped himself to the shop-goods. He rose from the table, and with that movement Doyler clocked him. He froze in the jar. His coat was open and the torn lining sagged with his haul. Jim made to approach, but a jerk of Doyler’s head commanded him wait.

  The eyes shifted to where the grown-ups were, shifted slowly back. Dark ovals washed Jim in their gloom, and as though some deep communication had passed the face nodded, nodding assurance. Slow and deliberate, he buttoned his coat.

  Jim nodded back, but it was unclear to him what he had assented to. He came to the door and pushed it a gap.

  Inside, the hilarity had quickly faded. “I’m sorry now,” his father was saying, “I couldn’t be more assistance. But as you can see from the books here—”

  “Spare your breath, old camerado. The well ever dried for the thirsty.”

  There was still that remnant of the swell about Mr. Doyle. His face was prinked and scrubbed and his jacket was brushed and buttoned high. But a patch of skin showed between the lapels. His cuffs gleamed their usual white but you could see they were unattached to any shirt.

  “Where’s that young buzzard after getting to?” he said, looking round for Doyler. He pushed him roughly to the door. “Sergeant Mack says we’re to approach the Benevolent Fund. Say thank you to Sergeant Mack.”

  The black look deepened on Doyler’s face. Without lifting his eyes from Jim, he said, “Thank you, Mr. Mack.”

  “Quartermaster-Sergeant Mack’s the brave man for advising, never doubt it. He’d have the gun advised off a Bojer’s back. Which is all to the good, for devil the chance he’d fight him for it.”

  When the shop door closed his father ushered Jim back into the kitchen. He took a heat from the range. He waited there with his back to Jim. “Wouldn’t mind now what that fellow says. That fellow says the worse thing comes in his head. Terrible man for a dodge. Terrible man for the lend of a loan. Wouldn’t mind anything that man says. Do you hear me there?”

  The next morning on his way to school, a spit landed at Jim’s feet and Doyler dropped from the wall above.

  “You won’t say nothing about last evening.”

  The words came out for a threat. He had that way of looking or talking that expected trouble. “No good,” Jim answered. “The da’ll soon feel the miss of what was took.”

  “Not if you put them back for me.” Out of his coat he pulled six cakes of soap. “There’s one got sold. I’ll pay that back, only not till Saturday fortnight. You’ll leave me off till then?”

  Jim handled the cakes. Monkey Brand. It won’t wash clothes was the slogan. Costly stuff that they never used at home. Neither did their customers, for they’d gathered dust as long as Jim could remember. Comical to think of Doyler stealing soap. His tousled hair and dirty face were a study for the monkey on the wrapper.

  He wasn’t just dirty: there were bruises forming round the eyes and his lip was gashed. “He beat you, didn’t he. He beat you, your da did, ’cause you wouldn’t hand over the soaps.”

  Doyler glared and for a moment Jim feared he might cut up rough. He spat at the wall, a streak of browny phlegm. But when he looked up again, his eyes were shining, and the hint of smile took the ape off his back. “I didn’t want you thinking me a thief.”

  “I wouldn’t have told.”

  “You’d be thinking it all the same.” At a dueller’s distance he called back, “Good luck with the scholarship results.”

  “Good luck with yours,” said Jim.

  They met a few times after that. They walked up Glenageary once. They walked as far as Ballybrack. He put leaves on Jim’s leg after he was stung by nettles. One time he called Jim cara macree, which he said was Irish for pal of my heart, and he took a thorn and pricked their palms and smeared their blood together. In the back of Jim’s mind an idea was forming that if after all he went to college, it would be better if another from his own streets went with him. They were palling up, on the cusp of being great, when news came of their joint success. That day Doyler wasn’t to be found. County Clare, they said.

  When Jim came in his father had the Soldier’s Friend out and was polishing his medals. The table was a rainbow of ribbons, blues and greens and reds. He looked up, glazed from his painstaking. “There you are at last. Home from the spit and dribbles. What kept you?”

  “I was at the devotion with Brother Polycarp.”

  “Oh, keep in with the brothers,” his father said wisely. “The brothers won’t see you down. Is that a new flute we have there?”

  Surprised at the ease of it, Jim answered, “The brother wanted me to try it for him. He wasn’t sure with the tone. He said to keep it by me for the time being.”

  He climbed on a chair to fetch the cleaning rod from atop the press. When he looked down, his father wore a doubtful look.

  “If you say so,” he said. He watched a while, then added, “No wonder he’s worried with the tone. That wood looks cracked away. You’d be all day fetching a tune out of that. Mind now, see what happens when you don’t look after your instrument.”

  Jim swabbed his flute and Doyler’s, then laid them together inside his sock with a piece of precious orange-peel to keep them humid.

  “There’s bread and jam for those that wants it.”

  “Thanks, Papa.”

  ‘’Twon’t break the bank. Hungry work at the spit and dribbles.”

  Under his father’s gaze, Jim thinly spread the jam. He wondered vaguely what Doyler would be eating. The brawn had looked pitiful scant. Though they wouldn’t be eating brawn of a Friday. A gratitude filled him as he ate for his own home and he regretted having lied about Doyler’s flute. Why had he done that? An impulse he could not readily explain. He watched his father the way he worked. His lips moved with his concentration and the wings of his mustache blew up and down each breath he took. He frowned at the medal he was polishing, breathed on it, rubbed. “Do you know this one, Jim?”

  “Khedive’s Star.”

  “Dull old thing it is. Hard to get a shine off it. Bit of brummagem really, not regular British. Sandstormers, we called them. Khedive gave it us for saving his bacon. There.” He tried it against his chest. “Will I pass muster? Hangs awkward too. Three rings on the clasp where, correctly placed, one would suffice.”

  “I like it, Da.”

  Even the ribbon was dull: plain dark blue. Yet it was Jim’s favorite. Arab script like the scrawl of time, the exotic symbols, star and crescent, and a rather jolly Sphinx who smiled before the Pyramids. More than any the others, for all their dates and inscriptions, it begged to tell a story. When he had asked what tale that might be, his father had looked nonplussed. “Sure we all got one. Nothing pass remarkable.”

  “Is there some occasion, Da, that you have your medals out?”

  “I was thinking about your brother and I thought—never can tell when you needs your medals. There’s a war on, don’t you know.”

  He dabbed the cloth in the Soldier’s Friend, chose a fresh medal, then set it down again. “I’ll be up with the owls at this.” Cloth redabbed, medal up, rub. “That was a turn-up, I don’t mind me saying, a son of mine parading through Dublin with my old regiment. It was always a shame to me that I never got to parade with the Dubs in Ireland. Oh, we paraded when we left, right enough, but I was only aetatis a ni
pper then. That was eighteen, that was eighteen-seventy, that was eighteen-seventy-nine. The barrack rat, they called me. Well, they called all the boys the barrack rat, that was the name they had for us. Barrack rats it was. Chuckaroo in India.”

  Medal down, change cloth, medal up, shine.

  “But I always regret that I never paraded through Dublin as a man. Of course, we paraded through many a town in our travels from the Rock to India and back, and very pleased they were to have us. Power of cheers we got from the assembled populace, venture wheresomever we may. But to march through Dublin as quartermaster-sergeant, now that had been the cheese. In charge of the stores of the fair city’s regiment, marching behind the Colors and the battle honors waving, now that had been the Stilton. But we never came home till after I left the army and I never got my wish.”

  Arcot, Condore, Wandiwash, Pondicherry . . . Jim knew the battle honors by heart. Guzerat, Sholinghur, Nundy Droog, Amboyna . . . a rote that in his mind came before the rivers of Ireland, before the kings of England, before his two-times table even. The names were beautiful and told of isolated scenes, little gardens of Eden, where stepping-stones forded spuming streams and cherry-trees hung overhead. Once in a while a cherry dropped in the wash, a burst scarlet cherry.

  He was leaning at the table with his head on his palm, lazily watching his father. How meticulous he was, yet disorganized with it. The way he tidied away the medals, each in its place, then each removed, returned, adjusted.

  “Why was that, Da?” he asked.

  “Why was what is it?”

  “We came home to Ireland before the regiment.” He knew, of course. The parish knew. And once at college when Jim muffed at football he heard a brother say to another brother, “Quakebuttock for a pater.”

  “Oh sure don’t you know that was your mother.” His father was silent a while then he added, “Heaven be her bed tonight.”

  “Did she not like Africa?”

  His father looked him a caution. “You have your fill of questions tonight.”