At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  CHAPTER TEN

  Aunt Eva was in the garden room, on a bentwood rocker, a tickled surmise on her face. She was perusing through a spy glass a rough sheet called the Irish Volunteer. The wicker table presented similar matter. The Gael, the Gaelic American, Eire, United Irishwoman, The Leader, Spark; along with the Irish Automobile Club newsletter and yesterday’s London Times. “At last,” she said when MacMurrough joined her. Her head flicked in irritation, a mannerism from her girlhood, he believed, when her trailing locks she tossed behind, a forbidding come-hither to his grandfather’s cronies.

  She offered her hand and he guided her up and into the diningroom. He pulled her chair and sat her, but before he might sit himself, she remarked, unfolding her napkin, “I recollect it was the previous King who instituted that curious fashion. Whether through negligence or corpulence, we are not told.”

  His unclosed waistcoat button. Friday lunch: the routine fish to break the flesh routine; food to be served tepid and dolloped on plates; but the service pristine, plates boasting the family crest, all form obeyed. He slipped the last button through its loop in his waistcoat and sat. A maid came, unknown face and manner, only the white Berlin gloves familiar.

  Soup. God knew what of.

  “I remember to have been in Paris one time when that gentleman visited. This was after the débâcle with the Boers. He was hooted through the streets. At the Comédie Française the gallery hissed when he took his box. Within three days he had the mob eating from his hand. It was ‘ce bon vieu Eddie!’ all over again. There is much to be said for personal charm and uncomplicated indulgence in fun. Though it must be added the late King was never known be unpunctual in his life. And I doubt he went promenading with kitchen maids.”

  How did she know? MacMurrough had never yet seen his aunt condescend to talk with a neighbor. He had been on his way to the little bench by the Martello tower where he liked to sit of a morning and watch the boys at their swim. He had found the kitchen girl at the Forty Foot wall, retching.

  “Cook tells me she is not so well these days,” his aunt remarked, “these mornings, I should say.”

  Yes, retching quite severely. “I thought her flourishing,” MacMurrough said.

  “Well, that is a very good news, as I should hate anything to happen to the child, la pauvre, la petite innocente.”

  The dining-room reflected his aunt’s Parisian sojourns. Side table, Directoire, with Phrygian-cap motif; large cassolettes, pair, ormolu, on top. On shelves above, row upon row of painted glazed plates. Souvenir china, he should have thought, but his aunt, who valued such things, reckoned them faïence patriotique. Their patriotism was not in doubt: the untrammelled cock crowed from each: Vivre libre ou mourir! or suchlike.

  They reminded him of the children’s dishes he ate off as a boy. The virtues they advanced. “If little girls and boys were wise, they should always be polite. For sweet behavior in a child is such a delightful sight.”

  “What a particular thing to say,” said his aunt.

  “I was remembering when I was a child.”

  “Yes,” she said, and she regarded the plates as though for her, too, they brought memories of his boyhood. “You were a happy child. A delightful child, one might say, if not noticeably polite.”

  “I was?”

  “Mischievous, of course, but happy with it. You would insist on playing carpet bowls in the hall. You had the maids in terror of tumbling. You were a great encouragement to the footmen we had then. But it was impossible to be annoyed with you, annoyed for very long. Such a sweet smile you had in those days. Your eyes smiled with your face.”

  A type of soldier’s blessing: fond memory that wrapped a current disapproval.

  “One wonders at times if the wind didn’t change and the good people took you from us.”

  Fish replaced the soup. Plausibly mullet.

  “I do hope the weather will improve,” Aunt Eva continued. “So unpleasant motoring with the hood up. They call it an English hood. I cannot conceive why. The Delage I had previous had the same équipage. Nobody thought to call that an English hood. It was simply la capote.”

  “Have it dyed green. An Irish hood.”

  “Such a notion. Still it would not temper the downpour.”

  “When do you intend motoring?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “High Kinsella again?”

  “What an inquisitive boy you are.”

  “But what if something should happen to the car? The roads must be dreadful.”

  “The car, as you call it, is a Prince Henry. My Prince Henry has never faltered a stroke.”

  “But what do you find to do up there in the mountains? You must see that mystery provokes curiosity.”

  “The mountains,” she answered, “yes. Whence the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles, our tributaries, harried the Dane, and Art MacMurrough Kavanagh, of undying fame, descended on the Palesmen. Whither the boy O’Donnell fled from his Castle captors, where Fiach Mac Hugh swore his word. They held out longest there, the insurgents of ’98. They hid him there, poor Robert Emmett. There Parnell first looked upon the land of Ireland, there the Fenians blundered in the fog. Over the mountains I go, over the military road.”

  It was futile his pursuing the matter. And perhaps she let on more than she knew. Her tryst might truly be with history. He saw her on some dolmenned moor, sipping a Chablis on a picnic rug, defying through the smokes of Dublin the castle-turreted foe. He remarked, “It seems a signally busy road.”

  To which witticism she deferred with a smile. “Did you know,” she inquired after an interval, “that a Fenian has died?”

  “I did not know there were any Fenians left.”

  “No. Well, there you are. Dead ones, leastways. This was in America, which continent, I am persuaded, will ever produce novelties. He was of your grandfather’s time, this particular Fenian. Something of the dynamitard, if I recall. The remains are to be returned to Ireland. There will be a public demonstration of grief, which naturally I shall attend. If I am not deceived, my nephew will offer to accompany me.”

  “Should you like me to accompany you, Aunt Eva?”

  “That would be most acceptable. It is just what the country needs. To electrify the soul, galvanize the sinews, march the patriotic heart: a glorious grand monumental funeral!”

  “Cometh the hour,” MacMurrough murmured, “cometh the corpse.”

  “In the meantime we have the garden party to consider. Really, Anthony, you might show more interest. Caterers,” she offered by way of example. “Where to rope off, where for the canaille. We are to have a play performed. Won’t that fascinate? An enterprising young man of Father O’Toiler’s acquaintance keeps a school for Gaelic youths. He has composed a drama which his boys will enact.”

  “I had not thought the drama a subject to move our priest.”

  “I have read the résumé. All quite wholesome, what I could make of it. Father O’Toiler assures me it is a mystical chef d’oeuvre. Whatever, it has diverted his mind from this hockey bout. Really, hockey on one’s lawns. I had suggested croquet at a shilling a mallet, but this apparently was not the thing. So difficult when one entertains outside one’s circle.”

  “How many are expected?” he asked.

  She glanced up, then glanced down again, having perceived in his eyes the root of his query. “Absurd boy. That a garden party should dismay a MacMurrough. I have never heard such a thing.”

  “One can’t help wondering if one isn’t to be paraded as a fairground attraction.”

  “How little you know of the world.”

  “If one were to be blunt, one might posit a similar nescience in one’s aunt.”

  “Really Anthony, you would have me believe that a term of imprisonment and a bent for slumming are to be reckoned an education. The naivety of the young never fails to amaze. Nor their impertinence to offend, no matter how iffed.” She rang the little bell at the table’s center. “The world does not hang upon your misdemeanors. T
he world is no longer interested.”

  “Oh, but it is, Aunt Eva. To the tune of Church, Parliament, press, the mob, the courts, police, the prisons. It is that I should take an interest that is objected to.”

  She stared at the door a moment in expectation of the maid. No maid forthcoming, she said, “I can form no idea of the occasion, but suppose I had thieved at one time. Do I hold myself a thief for ever? Do I attempt a philosophy of my thieving? I do not. I have blasphemed. A saint would blaspheme with such a nephew. Am I nothing ever more than a blasphemer?”

  “There is no equivalence.”

  “The laws are unjust, that I will grant. But not as you would have it. It is girls and young women they prejudice. Men who rake hell in the customary manner, in them the courts discover no wrong, the law propounds no remedy against them. Yet how many young women have they ruined? And you think to right this wrong by having chauffeur-mechanics for ever at your disposal? My nephew will not persist in this. I think better of him than to suppose it.”

  She had shifted into French, but still this was pretty strong stuff, and MacMurrough couldn’t but feel impressed. At home, he hadn’t dared say Stomach for fear of his mother reaching for the smelling-salts.

  “No more of this Job and Jeremiah now. It is over, it is done with.” But not quite done with, for she added, with a haughty lift of her chin, “As though to say twelve men in London, whom the law humorously describes as your peers, should decide the fate of a MacMurrough. Why, were I to heed the opinion of the street, I should think myself insane.”

  “Is it the opinion of the street that you are insane, Aunt Eva?”

  “One seeks the deliverance of one’s country from subjection. One’s country does not wish its deliverance. One’s countrymen would settle for a Home Rule that would shame a county council. Its leaders harangue its manhood to fight in the tyrant’s cause. These are the sane ones, these the nation’s respectability. At present one is clearly in the wrong. One is pernicious or malign, one is mad. One does not despair, however. One knows that should sufficient change their minds, one will be a good and honored prophetess. One therefore decides those minds shall change.”

  MacMurrough grinned at her. “I had not thought you so sophistical,” he said. “That the good and the true should obtain in the opinion of others. You make a democracy of virtue.”

  “If it is to be anything, it is to be an aristocracy,” she replied. “For some have the say of thousands, whereas many have no say at all. And let me tell you, it is the best who will join us. How shall we know them for the best? By virtue of their joining us, of course.”

  “Then why must we trouble with the mob at all? I mean, this jamboree, why have them here?”

  “Dear boy, with all your papers and manuscripts, have you never thought to inquire into the nature of your birthright? Ours is not to lord, but to lead. That is why you teach flute to boys. That is why my guests will be charmed.” Again she rang the bell, irritating it in her fingers. “You do remember you have the band this evening?”

  “How should I forget?”

  “Father O’Toiler is very pleased with your progress. Tremendous, to quote him. At the garden party you and your boys will present the grand finale. There will be fireworks.”

  That was then. Now there was only the French ticking clock while they awaited the maid’s pleasure. Soon MacMurrough gave up and reached for the potatoes himself.

  “Don’t be impetuous, Anthony. One so dislikes stretching at table.”

  They waited, both glancing at the brass lady at the table’s center whose legs were clappers to her crinolined bell. Eventually, Eveline patted her lips on her napkin, those darned and redarned cloths cut from her grandmother’s trousseau. She brought the potatoes and served him herself.

  “Stretching is so disagreeable, don’t you find?”

  Damnation once again. Rataplan of snares, thubadub of drum, breathless flutes. MacMurrough beat time with his baton in front, beat rather the boys’ time than his own ordained. Keep things simple. His eyes strayed their hundredth time across the score; their hundredth time they scanned the words.

  When boyhood’s fire was in my blood,

  I read of ancient freemen,

  For Greece and Rome who bravely stood

  Three hundred men and three men.

  Always something bathetic about a double rhyme. Besides, precious little to do with Ireland.

  —It is a reference.

  —Scrotes! All hail! You join us!

  —A reference, if I am not mistaken, to the first Battle of Thermopylae, when the Spartan three hundred under Leonidas, their king, fell in honorable combat against the Persians.

  —Fancy.

  —The three, then, would be Horatius the one-eyed and his two companions who, in the brave days of old, defended the Sublician bridge.

  —Well I never.

  And then I prayed I yet might see

  Our fetters rent in twain,

  And Ireland, long a province, be

  A Nation Once Again.

  —Stirring stuff. True, too. When boyhood’s fire was in my blood, I did dream of ancient Greeks. Though I’m not sure three hundred and three lusty spearmen isn’t coming it a bit high.

  The last rasp of the snare was like Scrotes’s snort of disdain. Then the priest stepped forward, pattering bar-bar, and launched the band into prayer. Bar-bar done, he clapped his hands, commanding kilts. Subdued voices while the boys shifted from jackets and trousers. Careful boys, chary with their charms. Smell that would always carry to school. One by one they metamorphosed till before him ranked the heroes of Erin’s past—if heroes they were who dazzled with shirts and golden-pleated cloth. They sat with their legs apart, a droop of skirt between their knees. How touching was their vulnerability then. Half-girl faces on man-size bodies. Till their caps cocked and a braggartness stiffened their chatter. The breached masculinity of the unbreeched.

  He thought of the monstrous urges of that age and the incommensurate imagination. It was astonishing that his aunt should flaunt such game before him. She distinctly did not take him seriously at all.

  I should become a master at a small public school. And yet boys are tiresome after a time. I should visit down the back of the pier and find me out a sergeant-major. Pretend temples there that give out on the sea. Might have been built for the purpose.

  His aunt had been raised to a type of honorary male, for she remained in the summerhouse while the boys changed, albeit with her back to them, talking now with her priest and the queer card who taught the boys drill. In keeping with this status she had dressed in sober worsted. He thought of her wardrobe: billowy Lucilles in surprising neighborhood to frumpy reforms. And those Poiret pajamas she relaxed into of an evening. Aunt Eva in trousers and boys in skirts. What an interesting nation it will be.

  It was Scrotes he had a mind to speak with, but Dick was nudging him, and at last he allowed his eyes to settle on the front row. Master Doyle, how are ye. How he leapt for joy, did Dick, to know, of a couple dozen fresh-faced lads, one already had drunk his spunk.

  Has an out-of-the-way face, our young friend. Not unlovely, but as if the features had yet to take root. Jug-eared and mop-haired, lips slapped on with a raddle-brush. Reminds me of a game Nanny used to play: you got a potato and fixed it with buttons and pegs and shards of old crockery till you’d made a little man. A face of scraps and hand-me-downs where nothing as yet quite fits. All save the eyes, darkly avoiding me.

  Yes, he avoided him now. MacMurrough did not know what, but something had passed between them: the boy was no longer agreeable. Young chap beside most like, little comfort for the troops. The merest glance and that one’s blood came flooding. What secret shame doth rose thy Ganymede cheek? Entirely desirable. I have Master Doyle’s word on it that should ever I lay a hand to that one, I’m deh meah. Yet my cup runneth over shouldst thou bear it to me. Watching, MacMurrough felt his fingers for claws.

  He could hear this boy’s father prattling
to Aunt Eva and her priest about some detail of apparel. An officer’s sash goes opposite ways to a non-com’s. Well, most fathers are hard to conceive. Who would suspect the stiff-necked widow-peaked raven in London for my progenitor? Certainly the progenitor had his doubts.

  Something in the comfort’s manner, like homage. Holds Doyle’s flute for him while Doyle attends his stockings. Quickly shines it with his cloth. Doyle takes it back, breathes a silent tune, Dryden’s soft complaining flute. My hero.

  —Ah, said Nanny Tremble, it’s the lovely sight to see the two maneens together. When friends meet the heart warms.

  It was true there was an attraction in their friendship. How many mornings have I gone down the sea? Charge myself to join in their swim. Well, God knows, might even be of some help. Dick is certain he could teach a stroke or two. End up on the bench by the Martello instead. Like the tramp in the V&A who marvels at beauty: he wants to touch but, should he touch, the marble is sullied. Lured and stopped by the same desire.

  —The Victoria and Albert, Scrotes observed, is justly famed for its divers wonders. Not the least of which, from a tramp’s consideration, is a roof which shelters from the elements.

  —Good old Scrotes, always to hand for a bring-me-down. I feared you had deserted us.

  —It is not for the scabrid knees I have delayed. I wished to regard the two boys in question. Do you think they may be lovers?

  MacMurrough conjured Arcadian groves where lover and beloved, ephebes both, reclined upon the coarse grass. Cicadas sang in the boughs above, where olives swelled in the sun. Or it was later in the palaestra when, weary of wrestling, lover draws down the tender blade to scrape the beloved’s sweat. Of serious things they speak.

  Back in the summerhouse, he saw Doyle pull off the comfort’s cap and search inside. He made play of finding a morsel therein, a louse indeed. Plucks it, plops it in his mouth. Delicious, grins his face. Giggling, reddening, the comfort turns aside.