At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  “Thoughtlessness is small excuse.”

  “I merely meant that in some ways you are better fitted to be head of the family, The MacMurrough. In place of my—as you call him, recreant—father.”

  “One does not wish oneself changed. One wishes the world changed to accommodate one. Such is suffragism. Such is all emancipation. You may wonder where a pipsqueak priest and his poor boys’ band may enter in such a scheme. But you will find, dear boy, that all roads lead to the same end. Which end is that? Why, the future of course. It is our task to ensure the future shall be glorious—if not in its state, then in its memory. We can do no more. And I,” she continued, “a woman alone, can do little at all, unless my nephew help me.”

  She held out her hand, which he took in anticipation of guiding her to her feet. But instead she kept his hand in hers and he felt her searching through the kid of her glove the calluses of his fingers. “Let us dismiss your embarras with the English. A small clarification is all that is required. How the English, to traduce your grandfather’s memory, concocted the charges against you. You will find society only too willing for so happy an éclaircissement. The world of affairs awaits you, my boy. I intend you shall enter it and prosper.”

  “I was not aware you had any intentions for me.”

  “We shall begin with the garden fête. Don’t glower so, Anthony dear. You know perfectly well one cannot have one’s nephew staying without an announcement. It would not do.”

  “Would not do for whom?”

  “For a MacMurrough. Whatever has happened, we are still MacMurroughs, and I will not have you shut in your room the day or flâneuring along to the Forty Foot. The garden fête will mark your return. I shall invite all the leading families. The nationalist ones, naturally. They will see a bright likely young man leading local youth in patriotic song and everyone shall be charmed. For you are a charming boy when you wish to be. You have élan, you have éclat, you have breeding. And you shall marry.”

  “Marriage now?”

  “Of course you shall marry. Did you think I would allow our name to die on account of some foolishness in London? I have never heard such a thing.”

  She was in earnest but he could not bring himself to take seriously her designs. “Why stop at a garden féte? Why not an advertisement in the Irish Times?”

  “I do not follow.”

  “I might telephone to them myself. Anthony MacMurrough, surviving son of Sir John MacMurrough, and grandson of the late regretted Dermot James William MacMurrough, QC, MP, so forth and so fifth, has returned from His Majesty’s Wandsworth where lately he served two years’ hard for gross indecency with a chauffeur-mechanic. July Jamboree in Glasthule. Apply Ballygihen House.”

  He said this looking her in the face, while her face hardened, but he looked away after and it was from her voice he learnt how deeply he disappointed his aunt.

  “Yes, they have coarsened you. They have made—I mean the English have made—a braggart of my nephew. No doubt you believe I interfere. But you are fortunate to have anyone take an interest at all.”

  “I should survive without you, Aunt Eva.”

  “Yes, you would,” she agreed, “if only to spite us.” She stood up, a deliberate lean upon her parasol. “You hold yourself a very proud young man. But I see no pride, only a wallowing in fanfaronade. One day I wish you may have something to be proud of.” Her elbow angled, expectant of his arm. “I am afraid this chamaillerie has quite exhausted my humor. You may walk me to the house.”

  He took her arm but held it stiffly. Contretemps, embarras, chamaillerie. The worst crime in the calendar he could live with. Foolishness was too unkind.

  “As it happens, I do not flâneur nor shut myself in. I have my work.”

  “Yes, a book that you write.”

  “I am preparing a manuscript for publication.”

  “Some unfortunate you took pity on when you were”—her fingers waved—“indisposé.”

  “He took pity on me, actually.”

  “And in return you undertake the publication of his—what is it?”

  “It is a scholarly work, Aunt Eva, whose subject is the nature of nature.”

  “No less.”

  “De natura naturae. It was Scrotes’s life’s work.”

  “Scrotes being the author of this exercise.”

  “Dr. Scrotes, in fact.”

  “Indeed. And how did Dr. Scrotes come to find himself in your”—again the waving fingers—“bonne compagnie?”

  “On account of some foolishness, as you put it. But not in London. In Oxford.”

  “Well, it is very interesting and I make no doubt the nature of nature is a topic we all shall thrill to in due course. In the meantime, we have your future to consider. Cannot Dr. Scrotes prepare his manuscript for himself?”

  His voice, when he heard it, surprised by its evenness. “Scrotes is dead. He died in Wandsworth. In a prison corner he died while picking the shreds from hawser ropes. Have you ever seen a hawser rope, Aunt Eva? It is the thickness of my leg. They allow you your fingers to pick it with, and you may not cease till your day’s tally has been picked. In the night you smell the bonfire on which they burn the day’s work. For the world has no use for oakum any more, only for the labor that will produce it. A scholar, Aunt Eva, a gentleman of sixty-seven years of age, worked to death. On account of some foolishness. In Oxford.”

  “How terrible.”

  He believed she meant it. “Aunt Eva, can you truly believe any society would want me now?”

  “I want you. I am society.”

  They had reached the French windows and she turned to take one last view of the garden. Gossamer floated over the lawns as though, when she sighed, blown by that breath. “Sometimes I think the only course is to dig it all up and start afresh. Away with the shrubberies, a fountain that works.”

  “Tulip-beds.”

  “Yes, tulips too. But do you know, there is a surprising complication with tulips. Every now and then, nobody seems to know why, a perfectly decent yellow will break into the most alarming variegation. There are people who become very excited by it. They take a pride in the display. For myself, however, I find it spoils the effect. As I say, it is their conformity one prizes.”

  From Scrotes’s turret room MacMurrough watched the waves. Howth was a grey mist and the sea was grey and the gloomy pines that marshaled his view bent to the easterly wind: December descending.

  The close scratch of Scrotes’s pen. Flick of pages when he searched a reference. Veni Karthaginem. Et circumstrepebat me undique sartago flagitiosorum amorum. A little August to shine on our winter. The book snapped shut.

  —If we are not to work, Scrotes said, let us rather talk. I cannot abide these wintry broodings. Speak. You are dismayed by your aunt.

  Petulantly MacMurrough re-found the page.

  —What had you supposed? Scrotes persisted. That you should stay in this fine house with its fine views without charge? One had thought you would enjoy teaching flute to young men.

  —You begin to sound like Dick.

  —I beginneth as I endeth, Scrotes retorted, sounding as you.

  MacMurrough stared again through the window. Dull imperative waves. Like a child, they commanded attention, imparting nothing. Can you see me as Erin’s bandleader? he said. Married off to the first Hibernian hoyden with a father sufficiently green? It’s too absurd.

  —And this absurdity upsets you?

  —I might go along with her, I suppose. But I could never bring myself to believe any of it.

  —And she requires you believe?

  —The worst of it is, she doesn’t. All she requires is that I should conform. Which is show, a denial of my beliefs.

  —Remind me, said Scrotes: which are these lofty principles you quake to disavow? The world I’m sure trembles to hear.

  MacMurrough smirked. Very clever, Scrotes. And it may be true that I don’t believe in anything much. But I believe I ought to believe, which is something.
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  —It is a very modern something.

  —You say this while we trudge through Augustine’s Confessions?

  Scrotes raised his eyes in monkish supplication. Da mihi, he prayed, sed noli modo.

  —Tee hee hee, rallied MacMurrough, and he jounced his shoulders in pantomime of the other’s crow.

  Scrotes settled the papers before him, the papers restoring his donnish air. By tradition, he said, those of your station have been more than happy to conform, in public. In private they debauched to their hearts’ content. What scruples arose they retained chaplains to resolve. Doubtless it is the way of all great families, all low families, too, in fine. The one to sink, the other to rise, and all to meet in the embracing middle. In time all will throb to the Daily Mail and all hands be raised in horror at hypocrisy.

  It was a pleasing fancy, but MacMurrough shook his head. I doubt I could rise to hypocrisy any more. Don’t you see, old man, I can’t persuade myself. I can’t pretend with the sniff of oakum in my nostrils. This is what I’ve come to. It is true. I am this.

  —What is this that you are?

  —I can tell you what I wanted to be. I wanted to be the queer bugger who lives in that house. See that man? That’s the man we don’t talk about. I thought I’d come here to Ireland and somehow I’d stop here, literally stop. See that man? He isn’t there. But she’s not going to let me, is she. She must have it all begin again, this time with fanfares and fêtes. She thinks I have no pride. But I have.

  —I wonder, said Scrotes.

  —Indeed, said MacMurrough.

  —Is it pride you have, or fear?

  —Let us say it is a certain reluctance to give delight to these people. An Oscar Wilde in Ireland—whatever next? It’s true I hold myself proud. Even my aunt admitted me that.

  —Your aunt, a benevolent and admirable lady—Here MacMurrough raised his finger in interruption. Two pounds a week she allows me, Scrotes. That is not benevolent nor admirable. That is four fucks and no fags.

  —Your aunt, Scrotes persisted, after the merest sniff, has remarked what she calls your fanfaronade. An appellation not wholly ill-advised, for you are that strange beast who prides himself yet has no pride. You blush for your nature, yet will freely speak of chauffeur-mechanics, the efficient cause of its detection. You congratulate yourself on a capacity to prostitute impoverished youths, yet are ashamed of the desire that draws you to them. You fear discovery, yet will flippantly bring a boy into your aunt’s home.

  —Yes, you’re right, of course, said MacMurrough. I’ll rape him on a rug down the meadow lawn in future.

  —Listen to me, MacMurrough. You have survived an imprisonment of two years with hard labor, a sentence which is judged the maximum a man may suffer and still hope to live. You have survived it well, with every prospect of recovery. Are you proud of the fortitude, the determination, the character this proves? Not a bit of it. You warble a wish to stop, to cease to be. Even more remarkable, you commingle these sentiments to the one comprehension. You despise yourself, and are proud of the despisal, regarding it a virtue. It is an arrogance of disgust—Scrotes signed the papers before him—venerable as Augustine and as vain.

  —After you have finished this tirade against me, Scrotes, my treasure, do you intend saying anything nice?

  —As a matter of fact, I do. Solvitur ambulando. Come, fetch my coat, fetch my hat. We shall venture without where the sun yet shines.

  —I rather think not, said MacMurrough. I’ve already beat the bounds once today.

  But Scrotes was having none of it. While he trussed his neck with a muffler, his banter carried on.

  —A remarkable aspect of this prison you have contrived is the circumambulance of its walls. Wherever you go, the walls go with you. It is a kindly improvement on the traditional practice, allowing for ample exercise and the variation of views. We shall visit to the celebrated Pavilion Gardens and take tea like gentlemen.

  —The Pavilion? I’ll be the talk of the tea-room.

  —Gammon, said Scrotes. I hesitate to disappoint my illustrious young friend, but between his incarceration and his release there has broken out the greatest war mankind has known. Only last year this country was on the brink of its own civil war. The people have other concerns. It is the Whitsun bank holiday. Society rejoices. August brings the Horse Show. Why, next month is the Regatta.

  —Next month is Aunt bloody Eva’s fête.

  Scrotes held the door. MacMurrough pressed his nib on the paper. The dull paper grey as the sea. Veni Dublinum. And seethed all about me the noisy stew of infamous loves. The pen pitched from his hold.

  —Not the tradesmen’s gate, said Scrotes when they were outside. Let us walk with the trees and nod good-day to the neighbors.

  —Nod to the neighbors? repeated MacMurrough. Hello and Gomorrha to you. Hello and Gomorrha.

  But they met no one at the gates and no one of consequence till past Glasthule. Crossing to Kingstown it was a surprise after the broken paving to hear his shoes clip on the Aberdeen setts. George’s Street was striped with awnings. Straw hats, postcards, trinkets, an excursionist’s treasury dangled in the sunshine. Those few buildings that were not new and red-bricked had scaffolding on their fronts, properly ashamed amid the town’s gay prosperity. A crazy jam of traffic, horsecart and tramcar. Six priests, four monks, seven nuns MacMurrough counted in the space between two public houses.

  “Herrody May! Even Herrody May!”

  —What can they mean? asked Scrotes.

  —Herald or Mail, answered MacMurrough as the newsboys darted past. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

  Austrian veal butcher’s festooned with Union flags. Indeed, the red-white-and-blue waved high and low.

  —Empire Day, said Scrotes.

  —Yes, Empire Day, agreed MacMurrough. I had forgotten.

  And he was not alone, it seemed. Some dismal procession was wedging its way between the tramlines and horsemuck. Men with hockey-sticks, or hurleys as they called them, at a shambling march, their green armbands a scandalous sedition of the chromatic propriety. Jeers from the jarveys, cold stares from gentlemen, ragamuffin boys mocked their step. Even the dogs of the street joined in, yelping and wagging their furious tails: that uncanny sense in the canine that recognizes preponderant disdain. Then a biddy from a fruit-stall stepped out to lead them. She walked backwards in front, waving her skirts and jigging her feet in hilarious burlesque. And how the crowd loved her, cheering her on, and her hawker sisters called ribaldly after. But by degrees that could be measured in the granite setts, her face hardened and her mockery slowed, till all of a heap was revealed in their midst—Mother Erin. Erin go bragh, she sobbed till she stumbled in a gutter. Her sisters came with the bottle and the shambling men marched on.

  Then a boy stopped his bicycle outside a shop selling wool and he made to climb off. The way his leg stretched it was like time stood still. MacMurrough could feel the abrasion of his breeches, could catch the sweat of his crotch, taste the ink on his fingers, even. The curve of the leg as it hung in the air had a Palladian perfection. He blinked in an odd way when he saw he was watched. MacMurrough smiled and the boy half smiled before the color rose and he turned away. The boy with the stockings, the comfort for the troops.

  —You know, he said to Scrotes, if Ireland might be a boy instead of a blowsy old cow, I’d be all for Ireland, I would.

  At last they turned into Marine Road, quietly sedately hoteled, guest-housed. Matrons in thick-starch double-blue frocks rustled by. Squadron of schoolboys done up as sailors, Nanny Tremble in charge with fob dangling. At the cab-stand, the blinkered blood-eyed nags. He stopped by the entrance booth to a walled and landscaped garden whence drifted the oompah of a brass band.

  —So this is the famous Pavilion Gardens, said Scrotes. Has the aspect, you’ll forgive me, of an ice-cream factory.

  —It’s intended to resemble a ship on the sea.

  —No, definitely an ice-cream manufactory.

  Through
the bars of the gate he glimpsed ladies with parasols and gentlemen with cigars who strolled the snow-white palace of iron, of glass and iron and floating belvederes. Behind him, when he looked, two giant constables kept watch from the courthouse steps. He heard the stall-women at the railway station. He smelt the shit of the horses at the hazards.

  —I have forgotten my cane, he said to Scrotes.

  —You have forgotten nothing, Scrotes returned.

  It was true. Only a gentleman might carry a sword. He pitched a coin at the man in the booth and swung through the turnstile.

  Waiting to be seated, he felt his fists gripping. He would have preferred his back to the wall, but he had come this far, so he ordered a middle table. He was conscious of little noises, tea-spoons, teacups, against a background of refined chatter. His chair scraped when pulled and faces turned. That first meal in Wandsworth. Thanked the old hand who brought it to the door. He shook his head, signaling silence. The warder saw and cuffed him.

  The girl came to take his order. “Sticky buns and a pot of tea,” she repeated. “Are you here on your furlough, sir?”

  MacMurrough nodded.

  —She takes me for an officer.

  —Naturally. Your upright bearing and eleven-a-side mustache.

  A laughter rose from a party two tables away. Fashionable eyes wreathed in glee. He edged his chair so that he no longer faced them. I don’t feel very upright, he said.

  He took out his case but, choosing a cigarette, he saw the calluses on his hands. Cuticle: such a dainty word for shredded skin, blisters. Hello, dear, have we been picking oakum lately? He felt his hands retreat up their sleeves.

  —A course of manicure, suggested Scrotes.

  —And the earth returns to its orbit.

  The strains of the band carried through the garden doors. MacMurrough read the program. In tribute to our new and glorious allies, an admired selection of Italian overtures. At the bottom, it informed, The members of this band have been exempted from Military Service. He saw now that the saloon and terraces were dotted with khaki.

  One of these khakis, a young lieutenant, was shown to the table opposite. He nodded to MacMurrough, who nodded back. Blond mop atop a gentle high-colored face. Tennis sort of build. He caught MacMurrough watching and smiled, playing with his swagger-stick on the table. MacMurrough raised an eyebrow in return. Barely out of school. Cadet corps and third fifteen. Would let you fuck but really he preferred to hold hands.