At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  “Was wondering only.”

  “There’s enough of your wondering now.” The box of medals went inside in the press. His hands remained on the open doors and he stared at the interior dark till in a tone of revelation he announced, “Mimosa.”

  “Mimosa, Da?”

  “Mum-mim-mom,” he said. “I had a smell of it the other morning walking up toward Ballygihen. Mimosa it was.”

  “What’s mimosa?”

  “I never thought ’twould prosper in this weather. She’d have been right pleased to know.”

  “Do you mean my mother?”

  “Who else would I mean? She did always favor the mimosa. We had it in the garden when we were quartered there. Wait-a-bit thorn, the Boers called it. Strange class of people.”

  Jim signed the word with his lips. Mimosa. What book at school would he look that out in?

  “Whatever about that,” his father said, stretching his back for a heat by the range, “’tis Gordie we must look to now. Deo volenting, he’ll come home to Dublin with the regiment and they’ll march with the Colors in triumph.” He reflected a moment, his face clouded, then charity found his better side. “No, fair dues. He signed up, so he did. Upped his age and took the man’s part in the end. Albeit behind my back.”

  “Aunt Sawney misses him, Da.”

  “Aunt Sawney?”

  “She came down in the night looking for him. She wanted to know why wasn’t he home. I think she thought it was morning.”

  “Did she give you a stir?”

  “A bit all right.”

  “She forgets sure. It’s her age. They were very thick together. Never knew for why, for he was ever on the tease with her. With her and the world and his wife. That’s all that boy ever needed, a taste of army discipline. Sure wasn’t he first chop the last time he stayed? The changed man. I always said if the army don’t drill some sense into that noddle, then the devil’s not in Ireland. If only now he hadn’t let that drapery miss to spoil his parade.”

  Jim couldn’t but smile. A week back, they had marched with Gordie’s battalion from the barracks, along the quays, up Dame Street, College Green, O’Connell Bridge down to the Custom House, a grand tour of the city’s princely center. And everywhere they passed, the flags were waving and handkerchiefs and hats, and from every window the hurrahs came till the panes rattled with the roar. He could feel his father set to burst with pride. And when the band broke into the regimental song, his voice joined lustily with the ranks:

  A credit to the nation

  A thousand buccaneers

  A terror to creation

  Are the Dublin Fusil—

  Dublin Fusil—

  Dublin Fusiliers!

  But the occasion had been marred by the sight that greeted them at the dockside. There was Gordie, fine, manly, with his good-conduct badge and his skill-at-arms badge, and his hands that seemed suddenly as large as his father’s, save his hands were wrapped round Nancy from Madame MacMurrough’s. Nancy in her Easter bonnet and Sunday finery, “looking a proper drapery miss,” said his father. And his father made Jim turn away, for she was kissing Gordie in the street.

  “Well, Gordon, I trust and you won’t let us down.”

  “Spectamur agendo, Da,” and he shook his father’s hand.

  The regimental motto made his father’s eyes water, and he said, muttering and turning aside, “Thanks son. Thank you, son.”

  Then Gordie scuffed Jim one final time on the neck, but his hand lingered there and rested almost gently on his nape. Thick coarse cloth enveloped his face, and Gordie was whispering, “Look after the old man for me. And look after Aunt Sawney. And look after Nancy too. And look after yourself, young ’un. Remember me.”

  He straightened up. “Mind this fella keeps to his books, Da. He’s beggar all use else.”

  A final salute to his father, a wink at Jim, and he returned to Nancy. Arm in arm they walked to the gangplank while the gulls above were calling. And it struck Jim that maybe his brother had been on his side all along. Had protected him from his father’s ways by all the time bringing damnation on himself. A great remorse rose in him and he wished desperately to speak once more with his brother, to share one more night the narrow bed at home. But the band had faded into “Come Back to Erin” and the ship pulled out from the quay, and all the hands waving were as wheat that shifted in a wind.

  “Has the dustman passed?”

  Jim realized he must have yawned.

  “Time for Last Post so.” While Jim readied the settle-bed, his father lit his candle from the Sacred Heart lamp. “I don’t seem to find the time these days. What with knitting the socks and polishing the medals and totting up the club-books for the tally fortnights. Tonight was First Friday. We might have found time to go.”

  “I had my devotion with Brother Polycarp tonight.”

  “But this is something we might do together. Father and son.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “The Sacred Heart has promised great things.”

  Jim nodded.

  “Or we could find something to do with the Virgin Mary. There’s a better class of people goes after the Blessed Virgin. I did always think that.”

  “My devotion with Brother Polycarp is to Mary.”

  His father blew at the edge of his mustache. “Perhaps you’re right. Keep in with the brothers.”

  The gas went down, the stairs door closed, and Jim lay down to sleep.

  * * *

  The glow of the Sacred Heart gained slowly before him. Its flame swayed the shadows on the wall. Once in the night he had put his hand in that flame, but his courage had failed him. He had to pray then that God would not call him for a martyr. For if he failed again, the flames would be for ever and unconsuming.

  Gordie used always blow out the lamp, bringing another day’s bad luck that only Jim’s frantic litanies could abate:

  Jesus, meek and humble of heart,

  Make my heart like unto Thine.

  O sweetest heart of Jesus, we implore,

  That we may love Thee ever more and more.

  The flame flickered on the gold crosses of the Sunday beads that hung from a shelf where the missals were kept, whose gold tooling flickered in flame. It played on the statue of the Blessed Virgin, dancing on her starry nimbus, then solemnly stained the golden corpse of the kitchen cross. The campanulate shade of the gas-lamp it found and the brass handles of the bread-box that was the table’s centerpiece. On the pans that hung like haloes over the sink and on the winged girandole by the stairs it shone. And just level with his eyes as he lay, it kindled the knob of the box-stairs door.

  If you stared long enough at this door, you’d see it opening. Gordie had told him that. He told him Aunt Sawney came down in the night to steal his breath.

  “What does she want with my breath?”

  “Have you never watched in the day? She daren’t breathe at all. Only by night. And it has to be from a boy’s babby mouth, else she’ll die.”

  “Why’ll she die?”

  “’Cause she’s a witch in league with Old Horny and she feeds on a young ’un’s breath. Be careful, else she’ll catch you.”

  “She’s not a witch.”

  “That’s all right so. Nothing to fear.”

  He told him about the Protestant church by the railway bridge up Adelaide Road that played hymns on its bells on Sundays. “Folk have got it wrong, you know. You don’t have to walk three times round to make the devil appear.”

  “No?”

  “Not at all. Just bless yourself as you pass and Old Horny’ll come.”

  That was all right because it was easy not to bless yourself, you could do that just forgetting. The cunning was too soon revealed. The cross was your sole protection, yet by signing there under the shadowy trees you invoked the enemy. The panic of those journeys past the Protestant church was with him still, a blink away.

  He stretched his legs to the end of the sheet. How wide the bed, how still without his brot
her’s dominant breath. The face of Our Lord reproached him. I promise you in the unfathomable mercy of My heart . . .

  Pal of my heart. Wished I hadn’t seen that. Wished I hadn’t delayed in the road.

  Mice in the shop. Outside he heard a shrill voice calling, Stop Press! Stop Press! Jim thought of a baton coming down on a newsboy’s leg. Why would they do that to a newsboy?

  Lusitania, he was calling. Another place he had never heard of. Tomorrow they’d mark it down on the map. Soldier in the mud with his legs missing and he turns with Gordie’s face to say, When are the other boys coming?

  Our Lady clothed with the sun and the moon at her feet and the twelve-starred crown atop the Muglins. No clear idea what a socialist does. Oft in the stilly night.

  Upstairs, Aunt Sawney coughed and creaked in her cot. “She’s on her way,” Gordie had said on his last visit, his embarkation leave.

  “Her way where?”

  “Young ’un,” he said and cuffed Jim’s neck.

  That night, lying head-and-tails as of old, Gordie had said quietly, “Do you never think of girls, young ’un?”

  “What about them?”

  “Nancy’s a bit of”—jam, he called her. “I take her out the odd time. Picture palaces together.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Matter a damn what you sees.” His toes nudged Jim’s ribs. “Dark as be damned in the picture palace.”

  He wished it was dark as be damned in the kitchen. He wished it was dark as he was damned. He shifted on his side and a hand reached under the sheet to the hole he had cut in the ticking and felt its way through the lumps of horsehair till it found the rag he kept stolen there. He shut his eyes from the gaze of Our Lord and the reddening gaze of King George and Sir Redvers Buller, and he crossed out the image of Brother Polycarp’s face and squeezed the mimosa from his mind, and he wondered what would it be like to swim in the sea, to swim in the sea off the Forty Foot, while his shirt lifted and the sheet began to move and the smell came up of the glue-pot.

  Old horny.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Nice bit of skirt.”

  “Ah stuff it, will ya?”

  The joke had been aired ten times over and no one was stirred by it any more. And yet it was curious to be wearing a kilt, to be clothed and to feel undressed inside. Four yards of saffron swung from Jim’s hips. Creamy stockings, Scotch cap, white shirt from Lee’s of George’s Street.

  A glance beside at Doyler who was tangling with a garter. Dark hairs curled from his stockings, stopping at the knee where the kilt hemmed. He caught Jim’s look and saucily swayed, lifting his hands in a Highland manner. The ribbons from his cap dangled down his neck. All about the white shirts glared with newness, giving to everyone a bright and flourishing air.

  “What cheer, eh?”

  “Grand,” said Jim.

  The usual must of the school commons was thickened with the sweat of unclothing. Over the benches lay shirts and gallused trousers, and the chatter and chaff was like many drums and many fifes and many boys and mayhem.

  “Are we to be a marching band now, Brother?”

  Brother Polycarp was at the blackboard where he was chalking an arrangement of “A Nation Once Again.” “Never fear, boy, when we of Presentation march it will be as gentlemen.” He turned. “Not as an early turn from the palace of varieties.”

  “Why the kilts so, Brother?”

  “Wouldn’t ye think to be merry enough with your Whitsun gauds, not to be moidering me with speculation?” He rapped his stick on the easel. “Quiet now, men, please. Ye can see the push I’m in. I have this jewel of the Hibernian muse to twist some refinement into it.”

  He looked surprised at the effect of his command. Every boy stood stock still. He nodded appreciatively, turned back to the board. Only then did he see the newcomer at the door.

  A priest. A young priest, black-suited, with a black felt hat, one hand stiffly in his jacket pocket, thumb hooked outside, the other holding a black breviary, finger keeping the page. So tall, his head had a stoop. Wire-framed spectacles saddled his nose. Oddly, ever so, foreign-looking. Stuck in his lapel, a button with a Celtic cross and words in Gaelic underneath. A young, tall, Irish-speaking priest.

  “Dia agus Muire dhaoibh.”

  Brother Polycarp was stung into action. “Father Taylor, we had not looked for you.” He strode the floor, offering his hand. “Boys, let me introduce the new curate at St. Joseph’s. Father Taylor has taken a keen interest in our musical diversions. Already he has provided us a costume. It will be a great treat, Father, to hear the boys play uniformis for the nonce.”

  The priest smiled generously at the brother while he released his hand from his shake. “Dia agus Muire dhaoibh,” he said again.

  No one answered.

  “Did ye not hear me, boys? Dia . . . agus . . . Muire. God and Mary be with ye.”

  His nose pecked before him as he spoke, crossways, as though each of his eyes required independent view.

  “Have ye no Gaelic?” Silence. “No boy?” Mounting silence. “No Gaelic at all in the vaunted college of Presentation?”

  At last Doyler spoke. “Dia ’s Muire dhuit ’s Pádraigh, a hathair.”

  Clap went the priest’s hands. “Did ye hear that, boys? God and Mary and Patrick be with you. Such is the response appropriate to my greeting, indeed the only response for an Irishman. For, as ye know or had ought to know, the Irish tongue may not speak but it utter a prayer. Good man for yourself. Good boy. There’s one true Irishman amongst ye, I am pleased to hear. Though, if I am not mistaken, you are not of Presentation?”

  “No, Father.”

  “It would seem, Brother Polycarp, this is not the unmingled elect you had led us to believe. Sigh síos.”

  They followed Doyler’s lead and sat down. The priest dusted his hands together. When he smiled starch had cracked. “Brother Polycarp, I fear we have a way to go yet with the Gaelic. I trust the music is on a firmer footing.”

  “For our sins, Father, we persevere.”

  “I would not doubt you. Well boys, pace the brother, my name is Father Éamonn O’Táighléir. Ye’ll know I have recently joined the parish here and I have great hopes for us all. Ye’ll be with me in that, boys?”

  Yes, Father, they would.

  “I hope soon to be coming to know each of ye individually. In a moment we will say a prayer for Ireland and her sequestration from the pagan breaths that on every side assail. In the meanwhile ye might entertain me to a rousing chorus. I believe Brother Polycarp will know the Hibernian jewel to which I refer?”

  His head tilted to Brother Polycarp who simpering deflected his glance.

  “Though why he should allude to our country by its Latin name, I do not know. Our country which alone withstood the degenerate embrace of the Roman Empire. Perhaps ye can tell me, boys?”

  No father, they could not.

  “Brother Polycarp, ‘A Nation Once Again,’ if you please.”

  The brother suffered his smile to remain. He looked to be chewing on leathery gums. Humbly he bowed. “Welcome though you be, Father, it is unfortunate your visitation should come all precipitate. What with the gimcracks and kickshaws of Mozart and Bach and sundry other euterpean gents, we have not found leisure to give justice to your request.”

  “Do you tell me?”

  “Another five minutes and we’d have made a fist of it.”

  “I believe I take your gist, Brother Polycarp.”

  The brother was all condolence till a notion occurred to brighten his guise. “There is, nonetheless, in our repertoire an old galliard that I have on good authority is a stirring Irish tune.”

  The pecks strayed from brother to boys. “Any music will serve that stirs the patriotic heart.”

  “Stand boys, please,” said Brother Polycarp. He raised his stick, wavered a moment. “Father Taylor, are you sure you would not rather stand with us?”

  The priest nodded and stooped to his feet.

&nb
sp; “Very well, boys. A rousing rendition for our new curate, please, of ‘God Save the King.’”

  “Game for a walk?”

  “Where to?”

  “Forty Foot.”

  Doyler didn’t wait for a reply but bounded over the bench. At the door he motioned for Jim to hurry. Furtively Jim was shaking his head, then Brother Polycarp intervened.

  “Have you forgotten your Christian Politeness, Mr. Mack? A gentleman does not beck and twitch. Talk sensibly, boy, and after you’re done, collect me the music. I’ll be waiting inside.”

  “The usual, is it?” asked Doyler.

  “Half an hour maybe.”

  He made a contemplative mime of a spit. “I’ll be waiting.”

  The day was down when Jim came out the monastery gate. A shadow waited on the chapel wall opposite. Vernacular transformed it to Doyler. “Half an hour, me arse. Them Protestant bells has gone three goes at least. Get on and shift your bob. I’ve piles waiting.”

  Jim felt the creep of eyes on his back, and turning he saw the blind shift in Brother Polycarp’s window. The brother had been in purple spirits throughout their devotion, smiling for holiday before their prayers; and during them, in their silences, Jim heard him chortling to himself. “Nation once again, how are you,” he said afterwards. “I think we put the kybosh on his Gaelic reverence. He’ll know better in future to poke his bake in Presentation. What do you think, Mr. Mack? Did we introduce our bootmaker to his tailor there?”

  The blind was down now but still Jim made the dark shape behind. The brother’s mood had shifted when he spied Doyler outside. Twice the past week they’d met after Jim’s devotion. Brother Polycarp wasn’t long catching on. Corydon, he called Doyler. “I see Corydon awaits his Alexis again.” Tonight he added, “Better alone than bad company, Jim. Lie down with dogs and you’ll rise with fleas.” Jim sucked his cheeks. There was nothing in the Cassell’s about Corydon. Nothing about Alexis either. He hurried down the lane to catch up.

  There was plenty about bad company, however, in most the books they used at Presentation. In particular a manual called Christian Politeness which described the proper deportment of a Catholic gentleman. Where the eyes should rest, where the hands; the lips part so when drawing breath; exhaling, a gentleman employs his nose. Doyler might have posed for the thou-shalt-nots. His hands wouldn’t settle, but swept along a wall or slapped against any lamppost he passed. He scrunched stones underfoot or scooted them away as though they posed an obstruction. According to Christian Politeness, the eyes were the windows of the soul: Doyler’s rarely rested: proof of a giddy and unstable character. Occasionally they glanced on Jim’s eyes, prompting a confederate grin. Jim might scatter a pebble, but he was conscious of imposturing. The fall of his hair bounced flatly on his forehead under the peak of his cap. He saw himself a study in brown that lumbered ponderously along. Then Doyler’s arm would bang on his back. “Slow as a wet week, so y’are.”