At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  Doyler threw him a sneering look that told him not to quibble, then he swerved into the road to take a kick at a stone. Graceful approach, arms wide for balance; the stone scooned along raising puffs of dust. But his leg failed and he blundered after. “Shagging pins. Come on, Forty Foot.”

  They skirted round the back of the chapel towards Newtown smith and the sea. Some young ones had fixed a rope to a lamppost and Doyler heeled over to take a swing of it.

  “Get off, y’ ugly brute ya!”

  “Honors easy,” said Doyler and swung the rope back.

  When he came up with Jim, he clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “She’s after calling me ugly.” The hand dropped. “Does he pray that way with you always?”

  “We were at our devotion,” said Jim. “You oughtn’t have come in.”

  “Curious all the same the way he has you in a hugger-mugger to pray.”

  Even now Jim felt the remnants of his blush. On his neck and under his collar he felt a lurk of wet where the brother’s hand had passed.

  Doyler kicked at a few stones and beat his palm on the coping of a wall. Thoughtfully he said, “Like a crow he looked from behind. An old rook with a sparrow under his wing.”

  At the Forty Foot they lay side by side on the hard stone while the cold of the stone seeped through their jackets and chilled the sweat of their shoolering. Above them glimmered the Great Bear, an Céacht Cam in Gaelic, the Crooked Plough. “Plough and the Stars,” said Doyler, and Jim nodded for he knew that too now, the banner of the men of Liberty Hall, not red but blue. And if you leant your head far back you saw an Cúpla, the Twins, glistening just above the battery wall. Then Doyler said, “Brothers.”

  And Jim knew he did not intend Castor and Pollux.

  “Curious things are brothers. Neither hay nor grass. They wear the uniform, but they’re sergeants really, not officer class.”

  Jim smiled. Was this scandalous talk? With scandalous talk you did not argue but, silently invoking the aid of Mary, politely took your leave. “Matter of vocations, I should think.”

  “Vocations me arse.”

  Yes, definitely scandalous.

  “Sure who’d have a vocation to be a sergeant only? You want to be the officer in charge. Not as though old Polycarp’ll get promoted. Once a brother, die a brother.”

  “You don’t have a vocation to be promoted. The vocation is to serve.”

  “Damn all respect he gets for it. You saw the way the priest was down on him. All the vows and none of the glory.”

  “I respect him.”

  “Do you?”

  “Everybody respects the brothers. Why wouldn’t they?”

  Doyler leant up, looking to see some place to spit. “Well he don’t respect me. And if he don’t respect the working man, the Reverend Brother Polycarp can go spit.” And flit went the phlegm through the slit of his teeth.

  Jim said nothing, just watched the circling sky. Unseemly talk and scandalous notions, the working man and brothers and priests. Politics was a puzzle at the best of times. Gordie had joined the Irish Volunteers that drilled to fight the Ulster Volunteers that drilled to fight Home Rule. But then the war came and they all joined up and were drilling together now to fight the Hun. All save a few of the all-for-Ireland boys that Aunt Sawney cursed for Fenians whenever they marched down Adelaide Road, which they did the odd Saturday afternoon, hurleys upon their shoulders. And his father shook his head at the door, saying, “Hogs in armor, hogs in armor.” His father stood for Home Rule, because it was only square after South Africa and Canada and Australia and that, the English had done their job, Ireland was ready to take her place, stand among the dominions. Or so he said to his customers, but Jim doubted he ever brought himself to vote for the nationalists at Westminster. The memory of Parnell was too strong with him.

  Politics was always a puzzle but now there were new ingredients to bother the brew: the working man and Gaelic-talking priests and the Red Hand badge that Doyler hid inside his lapel.

  “I believe Brother Polycarp thought you were to do with the new father,” Jim ventured after a while. “I think that’s what got his rag out so.”

  “Me with the priest? Codding me.”

  “Speaking Gaelic and all that.”

  “Where was the priests when we called on them? Where was the priests when they locked out the workers? At the pulpit is where, damning to hell the working man. They have a saying down Clare way, the four cautions: Beware a woman in front of you, beware a horse behind of you, beware a cart beside of you, and beware a priest every which way.” He turned his head on the stone and looked cheekily out from under his cap. “Am I wicked or what?”

  “I don’t know what you are,” Jim answered, for he hadn’t the heart to let on he wasn’t near so scandalous as the Reverend Brother Polycarp in his cups.

  “Past praying for, anyways.”

  And even that was not quite so, for though he gave no names Jim made a prayer at night for the blessing of friends, as told in the Dominican tract he had kept, that they might be granted to meet in the joy of that everlasting home, amen.

  “I can’t delay long tonight,” Jim said.

  “The da, is it?”

  “He’s on the rare old ree-raw at home.”

  “Hold on a short while. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “Well?”

  “You’ll see.”

  On a sudden notion Jim asked, “What would you think would leave you insane?”

  Doyler pulled a face. “Is it a riddle or something?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jim considered the question. Something would leave you insane. The urge to something. Only a prayer would stop it. You’d have to sleep with your hands like so. A prayer to Our Lady.

  A shudder passed through him and the muscles of his stomach clenched. But no, it was not that thing. He had thought a moment back in the shop it might be that thing. But no, it could never be. A father wouldn’t ever remark such a thing to his son. It was insane considering it even.

  “I have it,” said Doyler. “Your da. Sure he’d have anyone away with the fairies.” There was truth in that, whatever. “How’s he bearing up anyways?”

  “Fit to be tied still.”

  “They had a bad right to nab him that way. And the paper and all. Thought I’d die reading it.”

  “He’s to see the canon on Sunday.”

  “Sound move. Priest is a good friend at court. How’s he to plead, does he know yet?”

  “They say to switch to guilty and have done.”

  “And will he?”

  “I don’t know. He’s been on the perpetual polishing his medals ever since.”

  His poor da. He did not think he would ever live it down, the shame of his name in the paper. Of course it was the sport of the parish. Rumor soon had him flootered to the eyeballs, cursing melia murder and clawing at posters till his nails were raw and his fingers raddled with blood. Six peelers it took and a superintendent to hold him down, frog’s march to the station and him bawling roaratorious and abusing the poor polis, seed, breed and generation of them, for Castle whores as sold their soul to England.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Doyler, “depend on it. Your da is known for a Britisher true and blue. No one’d credit he was ripping at posters.”

  He should not have provoked his father that way. It was unfair provoking him with the court hanging over. Would he truly have belted him, Jim wondered. It was a long time since his father had chastised him that way. His clumsy feet and the chair all wobbly, looking liable to collapse from under him. The lour of his face and the intimidation of his hand raised to strike. Then his great thick fingers on the scrawny strip of leather. The way he made a menace of uncoupling the buckle. He had looked foolish; and in a cold way Jim had felt ashamed of him. He remembered the time Gordie stole Aunt Sawney’s pipe. His father bate him with a ha’penny cane from out the shop. The cane broke, but only because he kept missing Gordie and striking the table leg by mi
stake. What brutality he had in him he could not purpose. Impulse alone gave it vent.

  He was pleased the way he had formed that. That was an acute way of thinking. He repeated it to himself, moving his lips to the words. What brutality he has in him he cannot purpose. Impulse alone gives it vent.

  Doyler had his flute out, but he wasn’t playing it exactly, just running his fingers up and down the holes, making a kind of breath music. Jim would have to sneak the flute indoors somehow. Fix the parts down the sleeves of his jacket, walking in like a scarecrow. Where would he hide it? The only place for certain sure was inside the horsehair of his settle-bed. Would it be safe there? He would have to be careful sleeping. Might have to bring it out at night for fear of it crushing. Might have to sleep that way with it in his arms. It would be like sharing the bed, holding something of Doyler’s while he slept.

  He glimpsed the dart of a meteor, a soul released from purgatory, so his father told. The constellations gleamed in their dome and all about the sea moaned. Doyler’s leg lay hard against his and his arm rubbed up and down with his whispery playing. Below Jim felt a familiar stir. Dispassionately he wondered was he an especially evil person.

  Solitary vice he knew from confession. He would look out solicitation tomorrow in the school dick.

  A scud of cloud approached from the west. One by one Jim watched the lights go out of the Crooked Plough till in the end there was just the gangling leg sticking out from under the covers.

  “Listen,” said Doyler.

  Then he heard it, thinly over the water, faint and faintly out of tune, a faraway band playing “Come Back to Erin.”

  Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen, and the grand resonant mournful horn of the mailboat in reply.

  “I knew they’d be playing tonight,” said Doyler. “I saw them earlier, the troops, marching in formation. I knew then there’d be a send-off.”

  He got up and Jim followed to the Peak Rock, a granite outcrop where they could watch the mailboat inch its way. For this once the boat was illumined like it used be, lanterns rollicking in colored waves; the pier too was decked with lamps, and up here with the wind the band came full and clear. Five minutes and it was over. The music ceased, the lights went down, dark was on the sea again. “I wish if they wouldn’t go,” said Doyler. “But if go they must let them have their show. U-boats be damned. They’re Irish soldiers as deserve their farewell.”

  Jim felt the change in Doyler’s tone. A fear came on him suddenly and he said, “You’re not thinking of leaving again?”

  “Me?” said Doyler. “You’re the one what’s leaving.”

  Jim was shocked. “I’m going nowhere.”

  Doyler snorted. “You really don’t catch on what’s happening, sure you don’t, old pal?”

  Nothing was happening. I’m straight, Jim wanted to say. We’re straight together. Straight as a rush.

  “Your devotion ends Sunday week, right? What happens next? Come the Monday they’ll have you whisked away. Seminary down the bog we won’t know the where of it. Nothing heard of again till we reads in the Missionary Annals you was made a weedy soup of. Godforsaken tribe of heathens with more sense than taste. You’re the one what’s leaving, Jim.”

  “I never thought I’d be leaving,” he said.

  “I’d say you didn’t and all.”

  Red infused his eye’s periphery. Jim turned from the wind and faced directly the Muglins light. Its period matched his blinking so that each time his eyes unblinked the radiance was there to meet them. Its light had ought to be blue like Our Lady’s but the Muglins had always flashed red for hazard. A mother would know your secretest thoughts like an angel would see your hiddenest deeds. Yet he knew so little of his mother, so grudging his father of her memory.

  The radiance dimmed and a familiar detachment came over him. He was sensible of this detachment in Brother Polycarp’s room when the brother would roam his hand on his skin: he did not feel but he saw himself felt. His mind’s eye watched a boy. It watched him at home and it watched him at school and it was watching him now at the Forty Foot. And looking back, it seemed to Jim that he had never prayed for himself at all but for this other boy that his mind’s eye watched, a rawney-looking molly of a boy, the son of a quakebuttock, a coward himself, praying that he should hear his calling and join the brothers like Our Lady wished and not to be so inconsiderate. Did the boy not understand it was what his mother wanted?

  He said again, “I never thought I’d be leaving.”

  “Come swimming with me,” said Doyler.

  “Swimming?” It was the last thing on his mind.

  “Forget your baths, come swimming in the sea. It’s different in the sea, don’t ask me why, but you don’t find the same anywheres else. There’s a freedom I can’t explain, like your troubles was left in your pile of clothes. There’s how many waves to wash you, sure they wash right through your head. Will you come?”

  “Sunday?”

  “It’s the Whitsun weekend, but they have me working tomorrow, working on Monday. Sunday’s the only day I have to meself.”

  Jim saw the crowds that would throng the seaside. Spectating men and expert swimmers. Advice they would give out. Case of the slows. Seen iron swim better. The way they would jostle you, might snap you behind with the wet of their towels.

  But Doyler had that misgiving read off his face. “Miss Mass this once. We’ll have the place to ourself. Give up on Polycarp just this once and come swimming with me instead. Will you do that? Out of friendship only?”

  Jim shook his head.

  “No?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sunday. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Is it true, Mack? He called you that?”

  Boots resounded on wooden boards and more boys trampled into the study. With a thud Jim closed the dictionary.

  “Did you hear what old Ponycart called Mack?”

  “The rebel shoneen?”

  “The Fenianeen?”

  “The croppy boyo?”

  And Butler took up the song:

  “Good people who live in peace and joy,

  Breathe a prayer, shed a tear for the Soppy Boy.”

  “He was after letting a royal curse at him.”

  “What did he call him then?”

  Fahy came in and said, “Whom called what which?”

  “You wouldn’t suppose what Ponycart was after saying to Mack. Ask Mack, he’ll tell you. Did you look it out in the dick yet, Mack?”

  Jim sensed the brawn of Fahy above. The room had begun to hum with the mushroomy smell of damp tweed. Rain drummed on the window-panes and sistled the fire when it spilt down the chimney. Fahy’s breath blew on his hair and his arm leant like a buttress on his desk. “The get of a blackguard, was it?”

  “No, nothing about in the newspapers. This was a different kettle.”

  “What did he call you so? Tell.”

  “In the yard. There are witnesses. Mack was playing at handball. It’s true, Mack, it is.”

  Jim looked at the pocky face, filling and draining with its breathless news. Courtney.

  “Well?” Fahy’s finger toying with the ink-well.

  “He asked for the ball,” said Jim.

  “And Mack said, Which one, Brother?”

  “What did he mean, which one?”

  “I had two balls on me,” said Jim, beginning to explain.

  “And had they dropped yet?”

  “Leave him tell, will you, Butler?”

  “But the brother didn’t know that. And the screw he gave out of his whites. Would annihilate you. He thought Mack was being coarse, don’t you see.”

  “But what did he say?”

  “Go on, Mack, tell us.”

  “He said I was supercilious.”

  “Super-what-is-it?”

  “No, he didn’t. Not at all. He called him a supercilious cornerboy fecker.”

  The room hushed. They heard the tread of Brother Polycarp in the hall, heavy to all
ow his ample warning. Fahy moved back an edge. “He called you that?”

  “Isn’t that a royal wallop for a brother to let out?”

  “Brother Polycarp said that to you, did he?”

  “Did you look it out in the dick yet? Fecker we know, but what does the jaw-cracker mean?”

  The boys proceeded to their places. “We’ll ask him,” said Courtney. “If he’s the right color, we’ll ask him. A right cod it will be.”

  The brother came in blessing himself, and all rose for prayers. “Virgil,” he announced, sitting down. “Book Two. Line? Line, Mr. Mack?”

  “Forty.”

  “Begin . . . Ahern.”

  Jupiter Pluvius lashing at the windows. It splattered into puddles on the sill. So thick it hardly seemed to fall at all, a suspension of glistening threads. The lowering clouds, the sudden chill, the tonant rumor from the hills.

  He thought of all the people who would be caught by the pelt. Shopkeepers fussing with their wares, the rails of suits, battered blooms, his father with the Spanish onions, hurrying the crate into the dry. Crowded porches and awnings with the sudden, democratic talk. Flags out for Empire Day, sodden. In the street the dust returns to muck and a horse slithers in the way. The gongs clang and a motor slides on the tram-lines. There he is, clinging to the tailboard of the cart, looking about for a cardboard or an old sack. What cheer, he says. Antiphrasis.

  Ireland. O begob, says his father, sure Ireland is England’s umbrella.

  Then he thought of the rain in the country, far up on the mountains, not raining really, an elemental wet, below and above and all about, and the sound of the wet in the streams that gushed and the sucky squelch of the turf. A bedraggled sheep who watches, a lone bird in the near sky.

  In a dreamy way he saw the sea and the way the sea was brighter than the sky when it rained. How the drops leapt on the surface like a myriad hungry fish. And a boy swimming at the Forty Foot, or maybe two boys swimming, the only figures in all the scene while all round the rain fell and the church bells tolled for Mass.

  Angelus soon, then home.

  “The horse do not ye credit, O Trojans.”