At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  “Good garden of potatoes there,” Doyler said. “What they calls a broo, with the cabbages in between.”

  “You’re welcome to help yourself, you know.”

  “Serious?”

  “Don’t suppose anyone would notice.”

  “Aren’t you the grand nob, Mr. MacMurrough. But you don’t know gardeners very well.”

  He hadn’t thought of old Moore, it was true. “Must you keep on with this Mr. MacMurrough? We know each other better than that.”

  “Aye do we. First off you’re asking why amn’t I serving your guests. Next you’re offering me spuds to steal.”

  “You’re sharp enough to know what I meant.”

  “Aye, you meant charity.”

  Out in the bay MacMurrough saw what he presumed was the Misses French’s motor-yacht. Its jolly-boat had moored by Kelly shore. There were toy poodles inside. He heard their yapping and he could just make out their crimped heads as up and down they leapt, will-they-won’t-they spring to land.

  The best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. Wilde again; his observation concluding: They are quite right to be so. Wilde, too, had provided his boys with suits of clothes. At the trial Carson produced one in evidence. We picture the scene, the lawyer’s flourish, almost the prestidigitation, Do you deny, sir, that you provided this boy with this suit of blue serge? It was said the lad in question, paperboy off Worthing pier, was to be found that afternoon outside the Old Bailey with the other renters, winking and nodding at likely customers. Oh, to have bought them all that day, the luxury, and only a few quid the lot, glorious.

  Were Wilde’s panthers grateful or rebellious? Eventually, of course, one prefers a rebellious bedfellow. But it requires a degree of gratitude to get him to bed in the first place.

  While he watched the poodles and mused on charity and rent, his hand descended on Doyler’s thigh. He could wish Doyler had chosen blue serge instead of this agony in check. A shave of the rough cloth and his hand was brushed aside.

  “Do you never give over?”

  “Beg pardon, I’m sure.”

  “Wouldn’t you let a body be himself?”

  Rather a lacuna then, fit of the magnificents. MacMurrough inclined his head to search through the glowers. “Aren’t we friendly today?”

  “I have me friend.”

  “I could help.”

  “Help with what? He don’t need clothes.” He stood up. He took a swig of his champagne. The sulky look was disturbed by surprise as a hiccough escaped his throat. “Champagne, what?”

  “Boy, they call it.”

  “Who calls it boy?”

  “Them what drinks it.”

  Doyler laughed, expectorated. The cap came off and returned dégagé and a hand lunged in his pocket. “Lookat, I’m thankful I met you but.”

  You’re all right, Doyler, MacMurrough thought. You’ll do fine, my sputative disputative boy. “Come here,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  MacMurrough felt for the pin inside the boy’s lapel, unpinned it, fixed it flagrantly on the outside. Doyler looked gaugingly at him. MacMurrough said, “I hereby grant you the freedom of my garden to wear your badge with pride.” Then he kissed him on the cheek and muttered in his ear, “I’ll bring a blanket down the meadow garden. Tonight at ten.”

  “Get on with you,” he answered, pulling away. He wiped his cheek, the action too impulsive to be thought discourteous. “What if they catched you?”

  “This is my garden. I refuse to be cowed in my own garden.”

  “Aye aye. Why’re you avoiding them above so?”

  Damn me, if he isn’t sharp enough to slice himself. MacMurough quaffed the last of his wine, tossed the glass in the briars. “Shall I let you into a secret? You know what the good cause is here? For which every family in the parish has prinked and spruced and scraped its pennies? The marriage of a MacMurrough. My aunt is to find me an Irish colleen.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t find that deceitful?”

  “Running away with yourself. Do likes of this, there’ll be any number of weddings after it.”

  The troubled trebles of schoolboys greeted them as up the path they returned. A nation once again, a nation once again, a nation, a nation, a nation. And rather a latration of yaps and yowls as a harum-scarum of dogs swept past. Then, out of the agitation, a nation rising yet again.

  “You know those Greeks the song refers to?”

  “Ancient freemen? Did often wonder about that.”

  “They were from Sparta. One of the Greek cities. Rather militaristic, actually.”

  “Well?”

  “It was considered among the soldiers—and the soldiery was every citizen in Sparta—”

  “Sound enough.”

  “Considered disreputable if a soldier among them did not have his lover.”

  “His lover, aye?”

  “Friend. Comrade, if you like. Another man.”

  “What’re you saying to me?”

  “Just pointing out the history.” The boy is interested. Scrotes, I take my hat off to you. Bloody papers have a use after all. “It was an Irishman who first made this point. In print, I mean. Chap name of Mahaffy, in his Greek history. Not sure about now, but he was often to be seen beetling under the clock at Trinity. Mind you, that was the first edition. Scrotes tells me, told me, in the later editions the subject was purged. He taught Wilde.”

  “Is it Oscar Wilde?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was a very bad fellow, they say.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “They’d say anything against an Irishman, the English would.”

  “They might tell the truth, too.”

  “Aye, they might. They say he used be very famous at one time.”

  “He was. He stayed here, you know.”

  “In this house?”

  “Walked these very paths. It’s whispered some of his poems were, if not written, contemplated here.”

  “Is that where you . . . ?”

  MacMurrough laughed. “I wasn’t thought of at the time. Or if I was, I was only an infant in your mother’s shawl.”

  That took the queries off his face, dimpled his face to smiliness. “You seen the ma and the missy so?”

  “She made a difference to me, your mother did. I came across her one time and I heard her singing.”

  “She does always be singing, all right.”

  “I felt I might belong. I might, God help me, be”—irrational, irrepressible, irresponsible, iron-brained, irascible, irksome, entirely irresistible—“might be Irish,” he said.

  “There you are, Anthony. I have been searching aux quatre vents.”

  “Aunt Eva, I was coming to see to the gates.”

  “The gates are long opened. Really, Anthony, you might be more considerate. Est-ce que je connais ce jeune voyou?”

  “Doyle. He’s from the band.”

  “Quel insigne intéressant il porte. La Main rouge. You are from the band,” she said, enunciating clearly for the dull ears of the low. “Scurry along, young man, and change into the costume provided. There’s all to do and each to his task.”

  She took MacMurrough’s arm and wheeled him round. He had a glimpse of a black devil beshadowing the path, and Doyler was gone. “Did you need to be quite so direct?”

  “I have annoyed you. Oh lah, que je can be brusque. It was his vesture. Such colorful taste. Is your friend by any chance a bookie’s runner?”

  Suit. She knows, of course. Does she know? Of course she knows.

  “But of course he is not your friend. He is, as you say, a boy from the band. Now do come along. I have a most interesting young man I wish you to meet.”

  “I thought I was to be wed.”

  “All in God’s time. Today we display the goods. To their best advantage, one hopes. Good day, Mrs. O’Donnell. Good day to you, Mrs. O’Neill. Splendid show, I agree. Yes yes, Erin go brea
gh! O’Donnell aboo! Sassenachs à bas! Presently now.”

  She directed him to a tangential path. “Ulster folk, a contumelious breed. I discovered them earlier arguing the name of a flower. It is a sweet william. Not at all, it is a stinking billy. They do pout so. Dear dear, Anthony, and you have scuffed your shoes. Lead me to a seat and we shall sit a moment. You have a mouchoir?”

  “I have a handkerchief.”

  “Now, this young man, Father O’Toiler has brought him along, he is a schoolteacher. His pupils will enact a drama. Something of a lisp and all the gaucherie of youth, but he has such stirring ideas. You recall my mentioning a Fenian had died?”

  “The dynamiter.”

  “The funeral is tomorrow. This young man is to give the panegyric at his graveside. He was tempting us with little morceaux choisis on the terrace. How we thrilled. Les fous, les fous, les fous! Meaning the British. The lisp is unfortunate and he has small grasp of oratory, but the words had us all a-tingle.”

  “Is the speech to be given in French?”

  “Don’t tease. One translates for dramatic effect.”

  Her oh-lah French and her oh-lah ways. He was nettled still by her sharpness with Doyle. But of course it wasn’t her sharpness, it was his own pusillanimity. What a dumb dog I am, forever consulting my safety. Not even my safety. My menus plaisirs—two quid a week.

  She was mentioning now some school in Rathfarnham where everything was taught through Irish. Wasn’t that a marvel? An Irish school was just what Glasthule needed.

  “And will you run down the entire Presentation College to have your way?”

  “You have a very diseased imagination. Where is that priest?”

  “Who is the fellow in the library? Officer of some sort.”

  “Oh, that’s just Tom. Tom Kettle. His father and your grandfather were sparring-partners of old.”

  “Tom-tom Kettle-drum,” said MacMurrough.

  “You know him, then?”

  “He was above me at school. That dreadful year I schooled in Ireland. After you ragged father into sending me here.”

  “For all the good it did you.”

  “Why’s he in British uniform?”

  “Tom Kettle is a very teasing man. But he is a Member of Parliament. And, more to the point, he is married to a Sheehy. The Sheehy girls are all mad or married to madmen. One of them, after all, has fetched up with that dwarfish oaf in knickerbockers. But they will have many befitting acquaintances, any of whom should be delighted to meet a MacMurrough.”

  “Don’t you feel any shame at all?”

  “Shame?” she repeated and her fingers tapped on her parasol.

  “The duplicity of it all. Charging a shilling a head of the poor, just so’s you can see me wed.”

  They had come to a bench and she waited while he took her hand and led her to sit. She said, “Balmorals,” and he took out his handkerchief, began wiping his bals.

  “How very little you know of the poor, Anthony, dear. No doubt you would deck them all in screaming tweeds. But they are poor people: they are not garden pets. They will take what they wish from this entertainment. Fear not, they will have their shilling’s worth. And should a wedding come of it, that too will entertain. They will queue outside the church, praising the fine clothes and the grand procession, and the talk for weeks to come will be of you and your bride. They expect these things. They do not expect one to perambulate in their muck. The duplicity you remark has given employment to fifty men. That is fifty tables with dinner tonight.”

  He looked up from his shoes with surprised admiration. A surprise that was becoming ever more customary. He had never supposed she had considered the subject.

  “I am sure that does not surprise me,” she said. “You suppose very little in your elders beyond fatuity. Where has that priest got to?” Her gaze glinted east and west but nothing she found dulled its edge. It glanced off MacMurrough’s eyes, grazed his chin, then settled on the pearl pin of his neck-tie. “Perhaps this is not the moment to speak of it,” she said. “I wonder.” The wonder flittered across her face. Dismissed, it fluttered down her sleeve, to butterfly away in her fingers. “We have something of a scène de ménage on our hands. It requires attending.”

  “We have?”

  “The kitchen girl. She is with child.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Cook is certain. It’s not . . . ? No, of course it is not.”

  “Aunt Eva!”

  “One is a woman of the world. Such entanglements occur in a big house. Your grandfather was a great man, but he was not renowned for a saintly conduct. And no one would have expected it of him. Least of all I.”

  “Why not you?”

  “I have told you many times. I am his daughter. You are his grandson. It is not ours to concern ourselves with the petty inadequacies of human nature. There is the confessional for that. Our role is to lead, if not by example, by force of will. Where is that damned priest?”

  She leant on her parasol, half standing, so that MacMurrough had to rise and take her elbow. “I saw him earlier at an ice-cream stall. He seemed in his element.”

  “I know what you think,” she replied, sitting again. “A cockalorum of the walk. What they would call here a Puncheous Pilate. But a spinster of the parish, of whatever means or dignity, has little sway without a priest at her side. The old canon was a dotard, and one can only hope for his speedy deliverance from the sufferings of this world. Father O’Toiler is a godsend to us all. Until one’s nephew come into his inheritance.”

  “Aunt Eva, what do you propose doing about the girl?”

  She sighed. “Yes, la pauvre. In the country parts they call it tinning. They tin the girl out of the parish. I have never witnessed the procedure, but one presumes the rowdies and roisterers of the village, the men in plainer words, follow the girl, banging sticks on tin drums, until she has passed beyond the parish bounds. She will not return.”

  “What becomes of her?”

  “The poorhouse, possibly. In the bigger towns they have convents for such unfortunates. With luck she may arrange her affairs as far as Liverpool. She will need more luck there, of course. The fever may overcome her. It is rumored many have fallen by the hedge.”

  “But you’re surely not intending to do any of these things?”

  “What can you be thinking? I shall do nothing of the sort. Indeed, I shall do nothing at all beyond sending her home. It is her people who will cast her out. You think me very harsh. But let me tell you, were she my niece I should manage the affair differently. I should look after her and arrange, one way or another, her return into society. And the child should be for ever grateful. She would not fall so publicly again. Would she?”

  “No, Aunt Eva, I dare say she would not.”

  “Had she any sense. But one despairs of discovering sense in the young. And now, here at last is Father O’Toiler. Father O’Toiler, how do you do? I have been telling my nephew of the schoolmaster you have brought along. Tell us, do, where is the young man now? My nephew is most anxious to make an acquaintance.”

  MacMurrough splashed soda in Kettle’s glass. “I was surprised to find you in British uniform.”

  “There’s quite a war on, you know.”

  “Only it jars with the nation-once-again crowd outside.”

  He handed Kettle his tumbler. Kettle said, “Where it goes,” and knocked it back and MacMurrough raised his glass in reply.

  “Your aunt has grown advanced with the years. But good old Eveline, she keeps a finger in most pies. Last I heard she was collecting comforts for the troops.” The glass was at his lips before he remembered it was dry. “Will I help you to a refresher? Not a sportsman for it. Well, you’re not long back.”

  “Don’t they worry you?” said MacMurrough.

  “The boys from Sinn Féin?” He turned cunningly from the tray. “They have me shivering in me socks.” He had spoken with the accent of a street-hawker and there was something in his look of the Dublin blowsy.
He raised his glass, “Gaudeamus,” and decorum returned. “Why should they worry me? There were ever outandouters in Ireland. But these upstarts of your aunt’s represent the past. Home Rule is on the books now. The people know that, they know whom to thank: the Parliamentary Party. Once this war is over we’ll have our separate legislature. We have one final hedge to leap and that is to rout the Germans. Then it’s consummatum est. Consummatum for the Sinn Feiners, anyway. Let them keep their kilts and Gaelic. No harm in that. In a way they’ve done us a service. I’m quite an O’Growneyite myself, you’ll find. But politically they’re dead as mutton.”

  The flushed boyish face moved away. MacMurrough remembered that from school. The muscular mouth-breather who bobbed into your face then bobbed back again to utter a little laugh at what had been said. Kettle. Now here’s a man whose name is a household word. It was the school taunt.

  He had another mannerism, which was to scratch quickly behind his ear then examine his fingers to see what had they unearthed. His smile now told it was something charming. Liberal to a fault, he flicked the charm away. The library shelves diverted him.

  “I see your aunt has the entire Thesaurus palaeohibernicus. Isn’t that Eveline to a tittle? The rest of us must make do with O’Growney’s Irish primers while your aunt has the collected glosses of Dark Age Gaelic. Has she opened them at all?”

  “I shouldn’t think so.”

  “No. Still, she keeps a good Home Rule.” He meant, apparently, her Irish whiskey. At the drinks tray again, with his back to MacMurrough, he said, “Look here, I was sorry to hear about your trouble.” A pause, then the phrases came magpie quick. “In England. Your aunt has clarified all. One had no idea. An abominable slander. That the terriers should go to such lengths. Besmirch your grandfather’s name. It is intolerable. Look here,” he said again, and this time turned, “I have influence with a publication. We might write you up. As I’m a Member of Parliament it would be my duty to assist. The truth ought to be told.”

  “I don’t know what my aunt would say.”

  He looked blankly a moment from glazing eyes, then scratched his ear. Another charm he found there. “Perhaps you’re right. Sleeping dogs lie and all that. But the offer stands. We cannot have the terriers and their Orange whelps carry off every slander they choose. Speaking of whelps, I wonder what Carson makes of your aunt’s to-do.”