At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

“Socialism?”

  “It’s been on my mind to know what it is.”

  “Socialism is it?” He was putting the new candles at the back and bringing the old ones forward. He had already dusted the old ones and now, truth to tell, it was hard knowing the other from which. “Did you hand me up them dips like I told you?”

  “You stacked them sure.”

  “Are you holding on to that steps?”

  “Da, it’s all right if you wouldn’t know.”

  “Wouldn’t know what?” he said, climbing down. “Ho ho ho, running away with ourself now. Not that I wouldn’t know at all. Wouldn’t know where to begin is all. Socialism, well well.” He rubbed his hands. “What it is primarily is, what it is is wrong.”

  “But why’s it wrong?”

  “Do they not teach you these things at the college?”

  “No.”

  “Well it’s, basically it’s, what it is is greed. Oh yes, there’s greed there. Greed and envy. A heap of envy involved. Then there’s pride. Greed, envy, pride—sloth. Sloth there, too. Oh, all the sins. Every man-jack of them. The entire boiling, the hopping-pot, the whole kit and caboodle. I know what it is,” he added wisely. “You was listening to the sermon last Sunday. Well, ’twas all there. Three-quarters an hour the father spoke on the subject and you can’t ask fairer than that.”

  “But what does it stand for?”

  “It stands for what’s wrong, isn’t that plain as your nose?”

  He pulled out the till drawer. “What did I tell you? Herself is going dark as well as cranky. Coins all over the place, in the wrong place, you’d be all day grubbing for the correct change.”

  With delighted hands he set about the till’s rearrangement. “Socialism means Larkinism and Larkinism means all ballyhooly let loose. Do you not remember them strikes we had and oratating in the street? Bully-boy tactics is all them fellows knows. And trying to send poor Catholic children to Protestant homes in England? That was beyond the beyonds.”

  “Only so’s they’d be fed.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They had no food, Da. The children didn’t.”

  “If they had no food why wouldn’t they go back to work? Stands to reason.”

  “They were locked out sure.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “The employers locked them out so’s to starve them into lower wages.”

  “Who’s this been spreading notions?”

  “It’s well known.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Doyler told me.”

  The till slammed home. “Now, lookat here, young fellow-me-lad. Amn’t I in trouble enough without you palling up with agitating corner boys? Is it him spreading them notions in you? Lord save us, you haven’t the sense you was born with. I’m your father. Your father’s in peril of a prison term. Your father’s name is muck in the street. My name is in the paper sure. Piece of blackguardism in letters high as your hand. That’s talking about your father, that is. And you want to be trumpeting Larkinism? This is where you want it.”

  He tapped his son’s head, not intending to strike, but the tap in the event came out a blow. The lad recoiled. “That’s where you want it,” he said. Consistency required he drive the blow home. “And that’s where you’ll get it if I hear another word.”

  “I only wanted to know.”

  “You’ll know better in future.” The hunted look on the childlike face had him wavering toward conciliation. But the boy had no call to look hunted. The boy had no call to vex him so. “What are you standing for? Haven’t you sweeping to do?”

  His fingers agitated the thighs of his trousers. If he stopped any longer he’d know to clatter that look off the boy’s face. He went to the door. “And you can take that flute back to him and all. Aye aye, you needn’t look so startled. Think I’m green as I’m cabbage-looking. Cork grease and almond oil. I don’t know where you gets it at all. Let you earn your living for once. Let you have that floor spotless by the time I have my sup of tea. Cut of this shop. ’Tis muck to the street so it is.”

  He thrust into the kitchen, staying the door at the moment of its slam. His anger urged a clattering and clanging, but Aunt Sawney was nodding in her chair, and the last thing he needed was herself at her jibes. He had to creep making the tea, filling the kettle with a squeak of water, settling it scrapeless on the range. At the sink he stared through the streaky glass at the yard outside, that blank space he could never make up his mind what do with it. In consequence it harbored old crates, old sacks, broken yokes that one day he’d get round to. His passion shrank with the quietness, returned to the tight ball that lodged in his chest, losing none of its intensity, but changing by degrees from anger through resentment to pity. He sank into a chair at the table and soaped his face in his sweating hands.

  It had started with the constable and there was no downfacing that twister. Same at the station where they only played the jack at his explanations. It was a great stroke to have him caught redhanded. They bailed him for the police court and the police magistrate without benefit of reflection pronounced his act a piece of blackguardism. The papers made a banner out of that. “Piece of Blackguardism,” letters high as your hand. Calculated and likely to prejudice recruiting. Respectably dressed man giving his name as Arthur Mack, Glasthule, County Dublin. Regulations in pursuance of Defense of the Realm Acts. And the way the papers would distort the facts. “Was there the

  SMELL OF DRINK

  off him?”

  Twenty-two years with the Colors, he told the beak.

  “Which makes it all the more disgraceful you should appear before me tonight. Bind him over.”

  Case adjourned to a later hearing.

  The only hope to be had was the parish priest. If the canon would put in the good word. If that the canon would tell them what’s what and who’s who. The canon would show them the error of their ways. He’d get off with a fine if the canon would speak. A fine? Sure they’d thank him. Stirling act of civic duty.

  The kettle was coming on to boil and before it would whistle he snook it off the hob. Water dolloped on the oilcloth as he carried it to the sink. Herself is mighty dozy. She’d need that store of sleep to keep up the vexations.

  He listened at the shop door. Mouse sweeping inside. The way he’d make a broom to maunder. Mind, takings is up. Any number of gongoozlers coming in to gloat. Ounce of cut Cavendish while they’re about it.

  He peeped the door. “Jim?”

  “What?”

  “Not what, yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Papa.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Will you take a cup of tea?”

  “All right.”

  “No no, finish up what you’re at first. If a job’s worth doing. Sweep it out in the road, can’t you? The road is where it belongs. Arrah, give it here to me.”

  At last he could let go. He swept away, scraping and scrubbing the floor, scratching the boards with the bristles of his broom, his side tugging with the jerks, till a cloud of dust had risen to envelop him. Then out the door with it, out out in the road where it came from, out in the street where the muck belonged. He closed the door on the returning dust while the remaining dust settled about him. “If a job’s worth doing,” he said, “’tis poor Brother Ass had better see it done.”

  While he was pouring the tea Aunt Sawney stirred and her rosary slipped to the floor. She rose in an anguish. “I heard his name. I heard ye say it. What news of me good boy? What news are ye hiding?”

  Mr. Mack swapped eyes with his son. “Now now, Aunt Sawney. Was you dreaming in your sleep? There’s no news from Gordie. Wouldn’t we tell you was there any news?”

  “Where did ye send me good boy? Ye hunted him away on me.” She saw Jim at the table and her face cleared. “’Tis the little man here ye’ll be hunting next.”

  “Will you be quiet, woman, and take your tea. There’s no one hunting nobody.”

  She ignored the
tea he offered and made her way to the stairs door. On the first step she turned.

  “They’re out to make a brother of him. Aye, ye didn’t know that, did ye, Mr. A. Mack, Esquire? They’ll have the little man taken on us, them at the college will. If ye wasn’t so dosed in yourself ye’d know it. If ye wasn’t so keen on scandalizing the street, vandalizing the cruitie posters, bringing disgrace and dishonor on my poor house—aye, ye might twig the better your own flesh and blood.”

  “Is it true?” he asked when she was safely upstairs.

  “Brother Polycarp says I have a vocation.”

  “Holy farmer above, what nonsense is this?”

  “I thought you’d be pleased if I was to be a brother.”

  “And what about the shop?” The look on the boy’s face you’d swear it came as news to him it was a shop they lived in at all. “What about me slaving day in day out for to pay your way? Is that the price of a college education? I don’t understand you, Jim. You’re not cosmos mentis at all.”

  “Maybe my mother would want it.”

  “And now you want to bring your mother into it? Lord have mercy.”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Isn’t she my mother?”

  “How would you know what your mother would want?”

  “I mightn’t have a photograph to look at at night, but I still think of her.”

  “You don’t know snap about your mother.”

  “Whose fault is that then?”

  He could scarce believe he was hearing this. “Holy Jesus but you’re heart-set on provoking me this night. If ’tis a leathering you’re after, you’re heading the right direction.” His chair scraped under him as he straddled his legs from under the table.

  “Wasn’t it you told me keep in with the brothers?”

  “This is lip only. Any more of this and I’ll settle your hash for you.” He was half-rising in his seat. He had his arm held up and it shaking, the way he felt the threat of it himself. He brought his hands down to his belt where his fingers pulled at the leather. “I’ll hit you such a clatter, young man, you won’t know if ’tis Monday or doomsday.”

  But instead of looking sheepish and capital T for Tragic, the boy got up and went to the press.

  “What are you—where are you—what do you think you’re up to now?”

  “It isn’t Monday nor doomsday, but Friday,” he said. “And I have band practice on Friday.”

  The neck of him. The bold brass monsterpiece of a neck. He saw him take down his flute. He saw him take down that larrikin’s flute. “You’re the heartscald to me, Jim. I never thought to say it.”

  The boy waited at the door. His thin face had the look of being wedged in the jar. “Look, Da, if I’m not to be a brother, what am I to be?”

  “You’re to follow me in the shop of course. There’s your vocation. To learn to be a better shop-keeper.”

  It surprised what the boy said then. It surprised the way he said it.

  “Well it may so be a vocation isn’t like that. It may so be a vocation is like a friend you might make. You don’t choose a friend. A friend would come to you. And you don’t turn him out, no matter what others would say. You’re only too thankful if you found him.”

  “He does not appear to be watching this evening.”

  “Brother?”

  “Our Corydon. Tonight he has forsaken his Alexis. Alexis,” the brother repeated, “delicias Domini.” He turned from the casement and the blind resumed its untelling face. In lighter tone he remarked, “Mayhap it is a Gaelic feast. Rapparee Friday. Our swain has stepped off his wall and inside the chapel for the nonce. The new curate will be giving the Stations in Erse.” Such drollery demanded its encore. “Stations in Erse, I ask you.”

  Their devotion had ended a while since but still the brother bade Jim remain on his knees. He tweezed a pinch of snuff and said, “Hocus pocus.”

  “Brother?”

  “It is what the Protestants make of the sacrament of our Mass. Hocus pocus filiocus. Did you ever think of the priesthood, Jim?”

  Jim shook his head.

  “There’s many still believes a priest could make a toad of you. All it would take was a twistical squint off his eyes. You wouldn’t fall for that blatherumskite, would you, Jim?”

  “No, Brother.”

  The snort came and the brother winced. His face shook till the eyes cleared, settling on Jim.

  “Were you thinking any more on what we spoke last evening?”

  “I did, Brother.”

  “And are the intentions of Our Lady any the clearer to you now?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “The vicissitudes of home engross your thoughts.” But it seemed the brother’s thoughts too were preoccupied. “I had him in again this evening,” he said, “his Gaelic reverence, an Soggarth Aroon. Cut of him—cloth suit and his felt hat. The old biretta and cassock wouldn’t be swank enough. The very model of a modern vicargeneral. Drill he’s talking of now. Left turn, right turn—it lends a whole new twist to holy orders. Spalpeen to be interrupting my tea.”

  Jim closed his ears to the rambling, unseemly talk. He was thinking of the words he had said to his father. Was friendship truly to be compared to a vocation? He had a tract from a Dominican retreat that had a prayer for the blessing of a friend of the heart. The very words: friend of the heart. There was surely something devotional about it, something might be holy even.

  “Don’t be tempted into the priesthood, Jim. They say the brothers have not the consolation of the Mass. But we have other consolations. Humility is its own reward. Would it bother you if I knelt beside and we had a stim of talk together?”

  But Doyler had gave up waiting. The falling damps and the chill off the wall that he complained would give him the piles. He had gone home.

  Swish morendo of linen descending. Hand perdendo upon his neck. “Does it bother you, my hand?”

  A shrug moved Jim’s shoulder. The hand lifted, dropped. “No, Brother.”

  “At my age ’tis the bolster of the young I look for.” A pause while the finger-tips began their roam. “Did I mention to you ever about my own vocation, Jim?”

  “You did, Brother.” Along his neck, in under the collar of his shirt, the brother’s fingers.

  “I was your age then. Some might think sixteen old for a vocation. Believe me, Jim, only the riff-raff joins at fourteen. Their parents answer an advertisement in the newspapers. This they call a vocation.”

  His collar pulled and his tie strained against the intrusion. He blinked. He was irresistibly aware of the oddness of moving things.

  “At that time I had discovered in myself a certain sin. It is not necessary I tell what sin that was, save that it was a solitary vice.”

  Thumb-grope and finger-creep. How oddly things moved and strangely unmoved him, they fumbling over the chain of his medal, they playing with the medal on its chain on his chest.

  “As fouler I grew and deeper in my misery, the temptation rose to share that vice with others.”

  Out over his windpipe, along his throat, pressuring his apple, which made Jim gulp and swallow. The physicality of that reflex surprised him from abstraction. He felt a blush rising, mottling his cheeks.

  “Who those others were it is not necessary to tell, save that my schoolfellows were shocked and repelled by my solicitations.”

  The hand held now in its span the round of his neck.

  “Do you understand solicitation?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Would you make solicitation to another boy?”

  “No, Brother.”

  “Would you accept solicitation was it made you?”

  “Brother, your hand is hurting.”

  A fetch of a sigh while he loosed his grip. “That priest has me in the megrims. I have not the strength of it this night.” He labored to rise, unbalancing Jim’s shoulders, and Jim at last unblinked his eyes.

  A scratching at the door. The feeling of the door ajar. Abruptly his master’s voice:
/>
  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Nothing, Brother—”

  “How long have you been standing in my door?”

  “I was waiting, Brother—”

  “Waiting for what? You have no business in Presentation.”

  “Waiting for Jim,” said Doyler.

  The fool had come looking for him, looking as far as the brother’s room.

  “Out with you. In the road where you belong.”

  Already Polycarp was shoving Doyler down the passage. Jim hurried to the door. Other brothers and servants were gathering, roused by the ruction. He heard Doyler explaining stupidly, then Polycarp hit on something inside his collar.

  “What, pray, is this? What get-up is this to come to a monastery wearing?”

  “These are my clothes.”

  “Never mind your togs. What about this?” He flicked his hand at Doyler’s lapel. “You think it hilarious to parade your extremism before me? Does your precious priest know of this?”

  Doyler’s hand went to his badge and he fingered it, the embossed red hand. “I do always wear it.”

  “Take it off.”

  “Why would I?” The brother reached out and Doyler stepped back. “What has my badge to do with anything?”

  “I will not have agitation in my band.”

  “This is the parish of St. Joseph’s, Brother. Patron of the working man.”

  Polycarp roasted him. “Little born-in-the-gutter.” He shot round to Jim. “Is this vulgarian to do with you?”

  Jim felt the burning on his face. “He’s my friend, Brother. You know that already.”

  “Pal o’ me heart,” said Doyler.

  Jim saw himself weighed in the balance, then bitterly Brother Polycarp said, “And the half of your soul that is damned. Out of my sight, the both of ye.”

  Jim let a low whistle in the road outside. “What was that about?”

  “Don’t think I’m long for that band.”

  “All because of a badge? That’s cracked.”

  “Not any badge. The Red Hand of Liberty, emblem of the Citizen Army. Sword and shield of the working man, the red-flag socialists of Liberty Hall.”

  “It’s not as if you’re a member.”