At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  The deeshy waif was back in his eye and the days he spent laying roads over the hills where the rain was a mist in the air. But never mind the deeshy waif. What about this coming one? “And where’s it to be born so?”

  No one answered till Jim said, “Papa?”

  “Don’t you be papping me.”

  “Da, it was in the Union you were born. It was, wasn’t it? Down Tipperary, Da?”

  He swallowed. He took a long time answering. The waif in the evening used climb the ditch to peep at the world go by. “What and I was? There’s many a man better than me was born in the workhouse. I came into the world with nothing and what I have I have made myself.”

  “But Da, was it not hard on you there?”

  “It was hard enough.” Sat on the ditch and watched the world. “Lookat, where would she sleep anyway?”

  “She’ll sleep in my bed with me.”

  “She can have my bolster, Da. I’ll have a coat instead of the blanket.”

  “You have it all worked out behind my back. I’m not the man of this house at all.”

  “I won’t be staying, Mr. Mack, only you ask me to.”

  “For Gordie’s sake, Da.”

  On the ditch he sat till he saw them go by, the other boys no different from him, save they went by the middle of the road, and he waited on the ditch and watched the smoke in the sky from the houses. Then the red-coats came by with a rubbadub-dub, and when all the other boys had left off chasing, he carried on in the trail of the soldiers. That night they gave him biscuit that was hard as stone and bade him dance to the fifer. The cheery thin faces laughed in the firelight. The friendly fire with the hands about it in the homely camp of the red-coats.

  He put his hand to his eyes and in a kind of blindness he stumbled to his feet.

  “Lord have mercy, where’s he at?”

  “Leave him go,” said Aunt Sawney.

  He maundered through to the kitchen and crabwise up the stairs. It was gloomy in the room and he ought have gone down again for a candle but he fumbled his hands along surfaces till he pooched out a match and lit the lamp. The chestnuts outside waved against the window. Twigs scratched the pane like the scraub of fingernails, like every targe in the parish would be scolding him for the house he kept. In the drawers of the prie-dieu he could find nothing. Where was it that he was looking for?

  Her countenance stopped him. In the between-light of window and lamp he peered at her face. So often he had prayed here but he prayed with his eyes closed so that he had forgotten what her portrait told. She had the look of Aunt Sawney really. Her face was in profile, the sharp nose and the thin lips, her eyes unseen but the one eyebrow brooding. The half of her hair that was visible was secured in a plait. She looked the competent wife, in charge of affairs, stern to the world.

  Except the photographer had caught the full of her face in a looking-glass on a table beside. And in the oval of this glass she was altogether different. Her lips were not shut but had closed with a story. Her eyes shone wide and cryptic. While he watched he near could catch her laughter, mocking him for his lunacy.

  They were like this were women. They could laugh and command without ever a contradiction. Suffer and smile with the same face.

  He muttered something to her which he misbelieved had words to it. Then he took down the ring from its home on the ledge. He listened to his tread on the stairs and the creak of the box door as it closed behind him. Aunt Sawney was in the kitchen with her chin in his face.

  “I’ll say this the once only,” she told him. “Ye’re the good man, Mr. Mack. ’Tis the way sometimes ye’d need coaxing to remind ye.”

  Mr. Mack said, “When is the, when is the,” jerking his head to the parlor, “when is the happy event?”

  “’Twill all be done by Christmas Day.”

  Inside the parlor the young ones were gostering like it was an afternoon tea-party they were at. They hushed when he stood in the door. “Put this on now,” he said. “And if anyone should say anything, say you was coupled in Dublin. If they says anything more, send them to me. Or better still, send them round to your Aunt Sawney. But I’m warning you now, young lady—”

  “Mr. Mack, you won’t regret it, I promise and you won’t. And I’ll soon have this place neat as ninepence.”

  “What do you mean, neat?”

  “Sure, the house is all colley and cobwebs. Leaping, so it is. But what would you expect with only men here and Aunt Sawney not current? I’ll soon have it fit to be lived in again.” She put on the ring on her long finger. “If only Gordie would be here to see it.” Then she burst into tears.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Quare fine day, thanks be to God.”

  “Grand, thank the Lord.”

  “A pet day for Christmas.”

  “Breeze is a spanker, mind.”

  “How was the water, gents?” asked the photographer.

  “Wet.”

  The photographer tinkered with his contraption while the men toweled down. “Not too dry now, gents,” he called. “We want it true to life for the readers at home.”

  “Will someone tell that jasus to get on out of that. Catch our death waiting.”

  Eventually the photographer was ready and he ushered the men to the spot he had selected, where the masts of the stricken bark in the background would lend a topical interest to the traditional scene. He looked out from his tripod. “Tall gentleman at back. Could you maybe step forward?”

  “Forward?”

  “Maybe kneel in front.”

  MacMurrough excused his way through the little throng. He took a pose like a sporting hero.

  “You can caption it Our Newest Recruit,” someone quipped.

  “Smile please.”

  “Bejeesus,” said the men and the shutter snapped.

  MacMurrough shrugged out of his clinging suit. Toweled quickly and leisurely dressed. Banter about him of men in the raw.

  “Would you look at the hairy gorilla of John Mary Cruise.”

  “Has he a clothes-brush for that pelt on him?”

  “Shower of mermaids, the load of yous,” said John Mary Cruise and his towel flecked the blubber of buttocks. In due course the pimpled skin and sinewy limbs were restored to their clothy dignity, and the talk too put on its collar and tie.

  “No use in football. All the good rugby men is in France. It’s the Gaelic games I’m looking to now.”

  “Damn the chance of that crowd enlisting.”

  “Now gentlemen, politics.”

  The photographer passed with his equipment stowed. “Shame the sky wasn’t colder-looking,” he said. He struck a match to a stubbed Woodbine. “They prefer it at home if it’s wintry.”

  “When will that be in?”

  “Might get the late editions Monday. Tuesday for definite.”

  The men drifted away with handshakes for Christmas, and MacMurrough’s hand too was shaken as the latest initiate to the Sandycove Bathers’ Association. The puddles where the men had stood already were icing over and he gathered his roll and climbed to the rocks. He sat on an exposed ledge and smoked to the sea. Extraordinary blue. Flecks of white like a furry nap drifted across it. At ease with itself, a cat-creature somnolent after recent repast. Trust me not, said the blue-eyed smile.

  A finger moved to his upper lip where the breeze abraded the tender smooth. That grim dread line: this morning he had shaved his ’tache off. Matter of an inch or so of hair, yet he felt positively airy for its going. The cigarette was exquisite, and left him unsatisfied. As Wilde had said, what more could one want?

  In he patters now. Shy thing like a dog in slippers. Coast clear? Check behind walls. Undresses deep in the shelter, shirt and vest modestly last. Delightful how he folds his clothes, boots squared under the bench. That’s right, turn round and let me see you in the sun.

  Coming along nicely. Shoulders broadening, the chest separating, not the ribs and salt-cellars I remember only months back. Touch of a stiff if I’m not mistaken. Se
nsuality of the open air. A decent, hand-reared boy. Say hello. No, wait.

  The boy padded to the cove. He reached for the ladder, but he stopped in half-stoop. A movement of his shoulders seemed to shrug the cold from him. He stood full upright in the strained sun, staring down at the water. Then slowly his arms began to rise. His fingers uncurled and his elbows bent. His arms rose, drawing him up, feet to his toes, toes to his tips. Up he rose, pulling his stomach in, stretching his torso, his armpits opening their downy nest. In a wide arc his arms rose, till high and forward of his head his hands prayer-like met. His head ducked down. So he stood, minutes it seemed.

  Afterwards, MacMurrough could not decide what view he had of the boy, for he seemed to have seen all sides at once. His hair’s shaven back and the flop of it over his forehead; those long shivery lashes and the freckles on his neck; how his spine grooved, how his nipples were pale and tight. He saw the deep cleft of his seat and the small stand of his front, the each shaped for the other. Water foamed below him and sky streaked above. His white body stood out sharply against the blur of stone and rock. Mica darted in the sun.

  MacMurrough was certain the boy was aware of his presence. Certain too that he did not pry, but had been appointed to see. A glimmering of fate told him he would know this boy. He would know him, perhaps, for all that he was and had been and should be. But he would never see him again so completely. He must look now and see all there was to see. The boy posed a practice dive, and not a very serviceable one at that. But the animal within had willed its revelation.

  At last MacMurrough let him go. He turned away. When next he looked, the boy had descended the ladder. He was in the frothing water, clinging to the rungs, his usual penance in the sea.

  MacMurrough went to the shelter. The boy came huddling out. When he saw MacMurrough holding his towel he gave that extraordinary blink. Then he turned and MacMurrough wrapped the towel round his shoulders and began rubbing him dry. Rubbing all of him, all over his body, rubbing, it might be, a drenched puppy.

  “Now dress,” he said.

  He left him and returned to the ledge looking out on the sea, and smoked. After a time the boy joined him.

  “I’m not allowed swim,” he said without prompting. “I mean I promised my father I wouldn’t till the spring. That’s why I hold on the ladder. Because it’s not really swimming.”

  “I see,” said MacMurrough.

  “Only I wouldn’t like my father finding out.”

  “Of course.”

  It seemed faintly ridiculous their talking. Yet the boy needed to talk. They had come so close, so precipitantly. He needed to anchor his emotions. MacMurrough said, “Fathers can be difficult at times.”

  “Do you say so?”

  So, said MacMurrough to himself, though he knew that this time it could not be that way. “How is the band these days?” he asked, filling in for the boy’s awkwardness.

  “The band is grand, thank you.”

  “I don’t hear much music coming from the summerhouse.”

  “No, not music so much. They have us learning bandaging. I think we’re to be an ambulance.”

  “I’m told your father has resigned.”

  “From the drilling? He has, yes.”

  “How is she?”

  “Who?”

  “Forgive me, I’ve forgotten her name.”

  “Is it Nancy?”

  “She’s all right, I hope?”

  “Grand, I think.”

  He had got the story from his aunt. Drill instructor of insufficient probity, nation’s youth, curate’s opinion not hers, regrettable all round. She had looked distressed rather; and not a little surprised at the man’s having shown such ballast.

  MacMurrough yawned. His eyes were tired from the glare and pinched in their corners with salt. They sat so close but he had no need to touch the boy, to pat his leg or stand up and, by adventure, brush his trousered stiff on his forehead. All that was given. It was settled and to come. He felt nearly sleepy: that luxurious sleepiness when slumber is certain, and one lies awake pondering trifles, till theftuous sleep drift one away.

  “Yes, she’s grand and fine,” the boy said.

  “She must be coming due. A Christmas child.”

  He was proud to be spoken to on such a subject, and studiedly he vouchsafed, “We aren’t sure the exact day, but I heard them mentioning it could be any time now.”

  “And you’ll be an uncle.”

  “I will,” he said and smiled.

  MacMurrough’s fingers went to his pocket for a cigarette, but he willed them to wait. He suffered the exquisite delight of gratification delayed. So too with the boy, in not holding him, not touching him. But they were coming down now from that high place they had been. The moment of vision fast was fading. The after-glow of his bathe too was fading and MacMurrough felt the spanking breeze edging his appetite. Tiresome ceremony to go home to. Staff lined up at the pass door. Small token of one’s appreciation. Little bob and the surreptitious fingering of the parcel, poker-faced estimation of content, of worth.

  The boy held his cap in his hands. Its donning would mark an irreversible leave-taking. MacMurrough said, “Did you get a Christmas box?”

  “A book, I did. Kipling.”

  “Let me guess. Barrack-Room Ballads.”

  “And Other Verses. How did you know that?”

  “Fathers are much the same, I suppose. Macaulay was my particular bugbear. ‘Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the nine gods he swore’—wretched stuff. My father would read chunks of it out loud after Christmas table. I could never understand, if he liked it so much, why he didn’t buy himself the rotten books. I always wished for Shelley.”

  He laughed at that. Schoolboy surprise at the masters maligned. Kind of relief, too, that they can be. “I never read Shelley,” he said.

  “You might like it.” Yes, bearding the pater in his den and quavering an interest in Prometheus Unbound. God-forsaken man. Having that obscenity in the house.

  MacMurrough stroked the raw trace on his upper lip. The boy glancing saw this and his smile freshened, brightness itself.

  “I knew there was something,” he said.

  “Yes,” said MacMurrough. “Mustache. Do you like it?”

  “I do.”

  “Shaved it off this very morning.”

  “I was sure there was something, only I couldn’t think what it was.”

  “So you like me without?”

  “I do so.”

  “I’m pleased.”

  “Yes, I like it.”

  He colored slightly. He stared down at the stone by his boots. How wonderful it was this coming to know, certain of the knowing to come. Every word was weighed and every glance an inquiry. Each gesture gave just that little too much away. As now when the boy fiddling with his cap let it slip and, they both reaching to retrieve it, their hands touched on the felt. Touched that little too long. With another glance, the boy relinquished his claim, leaving MacMurrough to hold the prize, that blue peter without which no departure was possible.

  After an interval the boy asked, “Was it because of Doyler you gave up the band?”

  “Oh—partly, I suppose.” MacMurrough shrugged. “I thought it most unseemly how the priest handled it.”

  “You were close with him, I think.”

  “We were friendly, yes, for a time.”

  “I saw you together a few times all right.” His drying hair fell in his eyes. His tongue showed between parted teeth which themselves showed between pale sensual lips. “I saw you once on the sea-wall. Doyler had the new suit on him that he started to wear. It was the first I saw him in it. I wouldn’t have known him only I heard his voice. You were chatty together I thought.”

  MacMurrough saw it from far off, coming, a wave over the sea, spraying the outlying rocks, unmindful, aimless, parting and merging, onward ever coming. And I thought that I—

  “I used be jealous a touch that he’d be talking with you,” the boy went on. “But I’
m glad now if he did. I’m glad to be talking with you myself. I think you’d know what I was feeling. And I’m glad if Doyler was able to talk with you.”

  On came the wave, and MacMurrough watched it, feeling the lumbering land’s insignificance to the sea. The wave splashed carelessly on the rocks below, drenching him in the knowledge of his inconsequence. That I should have thought that I—How could I have thought that I—?

  The boy’s gaze was steadfast on the Muglins rock. He bit his lip. “For I let him down.”

  My gracious grief, thought MacMurrough. What on earth did I think I had done that I should ever dream that I—that of all people I—To have come to have imagined such a thing, I?

  Still the boy continued, regardless of MacMurrough, berating himself for some negligence or lapse. Some private anguish that MacMurrough, should he live a thousand years, would not reach to. “And all the time,” he said, “I was telling him his buttons was greasy—were greasy, I mean.”

  MacMurrough saw that his hand was patting the boy’s knee. He might have been patting a wave, so insensate the leg. He let it drop and rest there; a fatuous five-fingered thing. “You must miss him deeply.”

  “I do that. I thought he might be home for the Christmas. But he didn’t come yet.”

  Of course, that was the present in all the world he hoped for. And I had thought to please him with a book of Shelley filched from my aunt. God, that I could be so insensible. “I’m sure he’ll be back.”

  Now he turned. “Will he?”

  “Well, I’m sure he will.”

  “Only I thought you might know where he was.”

  “Why should he tell me?”

  “It seemed to me he was close with you. I fancied you had talks together. Only he might have mentioned something.”