At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  He broke off. A squeak outside, a scringe on the windowpane. “Bats,” he said.

  “Yes,” said MacMurrough. “There’s an owl too sometimes. And there’s a blackbird in the morning. He’ll wake you if the crows don’t. You can tell the time from the tree he’s singing from.”

  “And the sea too. It’s a wonderful house.” He gave that blink which had a feeling of velvet when the lashes came down. He yawned and MacMurrough too felt tiredness come upon him. “I keep thinking how lucky I was meeting you, MacEmm. It’s a gift you’ve gave me. It might have been so different. How empty it would be if we didn’t know—it’s like a secret really—didn’t know how we could be.”

  “You’ll have me tearful soon, young man.” He pecked him on the forehead. “Come, we’ll make up your bed.”

  A little of his fine-pretty-fellow returned and he said, “Anyway, why would I want to be careful? Won’t I have you to be looking over me, in your grand house too?”

  You shall not, thought MacMurrough. And the lease on this house will not be renewed.

  They shifted the sofa to Doyler’s bedside. MacMurrough found rugs and pillows while Jim refilled the warming-pan at the fire—yes, fire in the room and the windows ajar, the extravagance. The boy went out with the pot and returned, maidenly, with it cleaned. Doyler was deep asleep with an interrupted, minor, snore, like a dog’s.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Jim.

  “He will of course. Do you need a pajamas?”

  “Do you wear pajamas?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t so.”

  “Goodnight then, Jim.”

  “Wait a moment. Wait till I’m in bed.”

  He was undressing. He had his shirt pulled out and underneath its folds MacMurrough watched his fingers unbuckle his belt. The boy watched too, as though unsure of the procedure, darting upward glances at MacMurrough. The trousers unbuttoned and they slipped to the floor. He stepped out of them. His shoulder lifted, and he rubbed it along his neck and chin, before he pulled his shirt over his head. The drawers he had recently taken to wearing ridged at his pelvis. It was an outline MacMurrough was familiar with from time out of mind, but this was the first it had been presented proud and blooded. He pulled the string of the drawers, they slipped, and his stand sprang out.

  He stood in his oval of candleshine, his slight blush tinting his face. He reached his hands behind his neck and stretched mightily, languorously, sumptuously. He held his stretch while his chest swelled and his nipples paled. His hands came down, and in their coming down, the god left him; and he was smiling that way he often smiled, a little wonderingly, with his bottom lip caught in his teeth.

  “I won’t let you go, you know.”

  MacMurrough nodded. “Don’t catch cold now.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Easter Monday, and another God-sent day, sky blue and the grass green, wedding bells tripping over themself to be heard, any turn you took, wedding processions trooping to their breakfasts, and the people chirpy and nodding in the streets and the streets with a closed look, but not staunchly closed, as who should say in a Sunday manner, but rather sportingly shuttered as befitted a bank holiday when shopmen, according as the maggot bit, might choose or choose not to vend their wares. Mr. Mack, no misery-moper he, had opted for holiday; and so it was among the gay citizenry of Dublin’s fair city he was that morning to be found, tipping his howd’yedos like a native-born, and smiling with the full intense joy of the beaming sun above. Mind, there wasn’t much of any sun in these misfortunate streets where his direction took him, away from the fashionable thoroughfares, nothing at all bar the shadows, keen as knives, that cut the corners. And looking up betwixt impending tenement walls and the rags of washing that stretched between, he saw the sky for a pale faraway streak. Grass, you could go kick for it, green or otherwise. Terrible depressing environs to be traipsing of a spring morning.

  But Mr. Mack was off to do his duty by an ailing comrade and matter a damn the solicitudes of the journey. He passed a tom-fiddler at a corner pitch, scratching out dance music of our own devil-may-care variety, and he added a pleasing percussion of his own when he dropped a copper in the tramp’s hat. Corner-boy eyes squinted at him. Little mothers of the doorstep bounced cheery baby on their laps. Boots rolled over idle pebbles—penny-boys laid off for the holiday, penniless. The streets grew quieter, the sounds of children faded that swung from lampstands. A decently clad woman quite startled him coming out of a stables, and it was a pleasure to lift his hat to her and feel the shadowy air on the crown of his head. The tenemented buildings descended by degrees to poky lanes and humble whitewashed cottages. And sure he didn’t need young Doyler’s directions then, had only to look for the door in poorest repair.

  “It’s Fusilier Doyle,” he let out before he could choke it. “I mean, ’tis Sergeant-Major Doyle. Not at all, ’tis Quartermaster-Sergeant—”

  “Is it you, Mr. Mack?”

  “It is, Mrs. Doyle, come to visit an ailing fusilier.”

  Sure he wouldn’t delay, he was only passing, but he’d have a taste of tea whatever, but not to mind that tin of milk, he’d drink it red. Oh well sure, if ’twas open, missus, go on so. He patted conscientiously each of the girls on the head while they watched his parcel that he deposited by the hearth. Was that himself inside of the curtain? It was. He’d been inside in his bed now six weeks since the giving under him of his legs. The fever had took him then. Mr. Mack nodded gravely. Would Mr. Mack have a peek inside whatever? It might cheer him out of it, seeing an old friend like. Mr. Mack would of course, he’d be happy to sit with an old comrade.

  And God knows, thought Mr. Mack while he finished his tea, wouldn’t it take old Doyle to sniff out a hovel likes of this. Who would credit it, this day and age, that Dublin could boast an earthen floor? Leave out now the unrendered walls, the slats of wood that did for the door. To top it all, hadn’t they found a family in worse condition than themself to out-let the back room of it to. True, she kept it tidy enough. A blow of air wouldn’t hurt the old conk, however.

  He stooped in under the rag that hung for a curtain. His old comrade made no sound or movement. Well he did, but that was only his breathing, very short-coming and laborious, more rattle than breath. He lay with his head sideways. His eyes were open and the one eye that showed seemed huge in his face, sunken, the way it saw from deep inside. Uncanny really, what you’d call unearthly. A hand lay out of the bedding, massive-looking by comparison with the spindle of his arm. The relics of a man, no more.

  Mr. Mack bent down and said some words. Now the eye stirred. He didn’t know was he recognized, but something lit in that face. The hand lifted from the blanket and Mr. Mack took it in his own. Surprising heavy it weighed. The rosary beads shook on his wrist and the head nid-nodded. Some important information he had to say, it seemed the entire skin and bones must tremble to tell it. Mr. Mack put his ear to the lips. It took a while till he understood. “That’s right,” he said, “the Colonel gave you a cane.”

  The head lay back on the bedding. Mr. Mack kept hold the hand. “A malacca cane,” he told him, “with a gold-embossed top, sure you remember that.” The eyes still shifted, but it seemed to Mr. Mack the violence of the trembling had eased a touch. He patted his old pal’s hand. He believed he knew what that sinking mind wished to hear, and what harm, wasn’t it the good truth anyhow? He hitched his knees and sat down on the bed. He told him the tale of his cane. How Fusilier Doyle had paraded the smartest man in the battalion, by far and away the smartest. How he’d won the stick, five times he won it, five times in a row, mind. Bombay, Karachi, Quetta, not a maidan in all India but Fusilier Doyle had stood the smartest. Begod, he had that stick won so many damned times, men cursed their luck. Sure they’d never get nowhere with Red Doyle to the fore.

  His own head nodded too now, recalling, and he looked up suddenly, saying, “Do you remember, Mick, the time—” But that old head knew nothi
ng more than what it wished to hear, and Mr. Mack sighed, returned to his telling. How the Colonel had thought to get Doyle a stick of his own. Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes that was, an officerly gentleman. “Not any old stick neither,” he told him, “but a cane. Had to send to Malacca special. Swankiest yoke you’d think of. Wouldn’t see the better of it from here to Donegal. The better? You wouldn’t see the like. A gold-topped malacca cane.”

  All rich it was in color and what’s this they call it, mottled. Had the Bengal tiger leaping out from the knob. Indeed Mr. Mack could picture it still, going wallop on a lazar’s bum or clickety-click under the awnings of the street. Clickety-clack, slinging the bat, as arm-in-arm they strolled. “It was a gold-topped malacca cane,” he repeated, tapping the hand with each stress, “and a fine grand smart handsome fellow you was with it.” The eyes no longer stirred. Only for a sweat that glistened on his temple, he was gone already. Mr. Mack replaced the hand on the bedding, rethreaded the beads through its fingers. He saw his own hand was trembling now. He brought a finger under his nose and sniffed.

  “And your buttons too would shame the sun. They would too. They would too.”

  In the room the girls were nibbling the crubeens he’d brought. They eyed him with something less than trust, the way he might be thinking of taking them back again. He had a quiet word with Mrs. Doyle inquiring, discreetly as he might, of the arrangements, and she said they had the insure paid, thank God, himself was always up to his time with that, and it was good of Mr. Mack to ask, thank you for that, he was very good altogether and the crubeens too.

  He put on his hat. “You’ll let me know?”

  She would.

  He came out in the street. The Angelus bell was ringing. He lifted his hat and crossed himself, still with a wet on his finger from the Doyles’ font. He stood by a wall muttering the words. The people at the wall opposite had the look of a frieze, stopped there too and muttering their prayers. Behind rose the bleak black blocks of malt-houses, distilleries. There was a house at the corner, not overly dowdy-looking; he went in. He drank a whiskey choking and smoked the half of a cigar, coughing in stifled whoops. He stared at the rows of glasses and bottles, gauging how much capital would be tied up in stock. It was a question that often exercised him, the comparative worth of a corner-grocery’s stock. He went out to the pisser at back, and returning he saw another whiskey waiting for him. He drank it slowly, disremembering having ordered it. He felt very old. He was altogether sad.

  Sad, and yet cheated too. He felt his youth to be stolen, so it was. That fellow above thieving the happy times from his past. What were they only young fellows together with never a thought in the world? By rights, they would have remained that, a thing of the memory, something fond and scarlet in the mists, you’d look behind on it and smile. But no, this fellow had to burst back in his life. Right into his shop he burst with his smilery and his clothery. You’d have to see him then and know your old pal for the chancer he’d made of himself, with his jokery and his fakery and his Dublin jackeenery. You’d have to be stepping over him in the street, the drunken gutter-singing rowdy. You’d hear it from biddies how he battered his woman and famished his care. And now this wheezing old skin, you’d have to smell him and take his hand and sit in his miserable hut and drink his germs with his miserable tea and his aimless pernickety wife. It was bloody, so it was, it was bloody. It would drive a man to drink—and Mr. Mack held out his glass to the curate—wouldn’t it take him to choose a house with a freckle-faced flame-haired lad for a curate—“Put the other half in that, when you’re ready. Only a nipperkin now. And a ginger beer for yourself.”

  He was a touch light in the head leaving that pub, and considerably lighter in his pocket, having stood treat, for some very practical reason that escaped him now, a round or was it two for the house. He had lost Doyler’s street-directions but he held in his hand an infallible nod for the Irish National, though how he was expected to find his way to Fairyhouse he did not know. What time was it at all?

  He came out at a crossroads, King Street said the sign. He stood at the corner. High and low he stared, puzzled to an amplush. He couldn’t make it out at all. It seemed to him there were evictions up and down the street. Bedsteads coming out of the little houses, mattresses, a settee even. You’d think all the bailiffs in Ireland had suddenly descended this day. And a rum set of bailiffs they looked too, no more than boys the most of them. Out of every house they came, lugging some old goods or other and piling them in the street. Children were bawling, women were tugging at their belongings, beseeching, all manner of language, dog’s abuse at the shrill of their voice. And the piles extending right across the street, sticks of furniture, any old thing. Now what sense was there in that? Only blocking the public highway.

  Mr. Mack took a step towards them. The street crunched under his boot. Everywhere he looked, broken glass. Broken glass everywhere, bits of bottles and plate glass smashed. How long was this he was on the skite in that lushery? He didn’t know but a riot was after taking place in the meantime. And never a constable in sight.

  A cart was jolting towards the crossroads and Mr. Mack ran out. “Halt,” he called. “Don’t come down. There’s glass in the road, she’ll slip and hurt, the beast.”

  One of the bailiffs stepped out. He had a gun. He had a gun pulled on the carter. “This cart is commandeered,” he said.

  “Take the gun, take it off him,” a woman shrilled. “Shirkers, they’s only cowards.”

  Mr. Mack said, “What’s going on here?”

  The woman turned to him. “They took me bed, they took me only bed they did.”

  “The republic will repay you, missus,” said the fellow with the gun.

  “What republic?” said Mr. Mack.

  “Get down off that cart,” said the gunman.

  They took the cart. They turned it endways up with the bedsteads and mattresses. The woman was explaining to Mr. Mack, as a man of some authority in a bowler hat, that it was the bed her mother had left her, her poor mother, God rest her soul, she died in that bed.

  The carter’s cob whisked its tail. The carter looked round the circle of people. “Ye saw that. Ye won’t deny it. He had a gun on me.”

  “Daylight robbery,” said a man at the door of his shop.

  “Ye’ll back me up. He had a gun.”

  Suddenly, down the street, came the sound of gunfire. Holy Mother of God! Screaming and shoving, the people scattered, Mr. Mack with them, dodging into doorways. Mr. Mack peeked out: nothing in the road save three girls who stood in a row with their aprons hitched up at their mouths, gaping, and a curious weazen man who hopped about—he had lost a boot—hopped about, bleeding from the glass and dodging bullets the same time. Making an extraordinary stookawn of himself for there were no bullets to dodge. Nothing at all was happening, and gingerly following the lead of the bolder class of urchin, Mr. Mack came out in the street again. Another crackle of musketry and they were all scarpering anew, but the fire was sustained now, and clearly from down by the river; way down by the Four Courts, Mr. Mack heard. He had received a fierce dig in the ribs and he was looking about for the culprit, saying “Now now” with his finger raised, when a cry went up. Lancers! The Lancers! The Lancers is coming! Some dashed ahead only to hurry back, rejoining the mass that generally surged forward, sweeping Mr. Mack along. “Now we’ll see the fun,” said a man in his ear. “The Lancers is the boyos will sort them blackguards.”

  But that musketry came from no Lancer’s carbine. Mr. Mack recognized that barking discharge, inconceivable though it was in the streets of Dublin. Mausers without a doubt, great blunderbussy yokes of things the Boers had always favored. But what would the Boers be doing in Dublin? A hurry of hooves ahead; a screaming avenue formed in the crowd; terror big in its eyes, a riderless horse bolted through.

  Up side streets surged the crowd, searching, anywhere, to center its alarm. Dumbly Mr. Mack was carried along. His head he found was somewhat obfusticated in drink: he coul
d form no very clear understanding of what was happening and the natural malignity of streets worked on him so that he had no notion at all where he was in this maze of back alleys and cuts. Horse-clops echoed everywhere, many many horse, or a few gone galloping wild. The Boer War Mausers growled still, and it would scarce surprise him now if de Wet himself appeared at the head of a commando—wasn’t it always whispered de Wet was none but Parnell returned?

  But who came in the end was only two bewildered troopers. They hunched over their mounts, evidently lost, and the mounts, their reins trailing, snorted and blew. Someone shouted the rebels were at the barricade. And yes, it did look like a barricade, now Mr. Mack came to regard it. The Lancers fired quick cracks off their carbines. “There’s a child down!” someone shouted. Mother of God, we’ll all be slaughtered. The barricade returned a broken blustering volley. Chunks of masonry showered off the walls. The crowd had scattered, losing Mr. Mack his hat. The two horses bucked and tossed, going at a strange diagonal gait, sparks firing off the cobbles, till they reared wildly, bucketed up another side street. “A child is down!” the call kept going round. Mr. Mack darted out to retrieve his hat. And the crowd, that stupid poking gawping mass, heaved behind him again, pushed him down once more to the barricade, breached the rickety thing and flooded through, tumbling it down behind them. Mr. Mack glimpsed a face bloodied below, not a child’s thank God, trampled over.

  A group of men from the barricade—some had green sort of uniforms on them—were advancing with rifles up the farther street.

  “Who are they supposed to be?” said Mr. Mack.

  “Them’re the Sinn Feiners,” said his neighbor.

  “Oh, they’re Sinn Feiners,” said Mr. Mack, peering the better to see these queer near-fabled specimens.

  “They’ll be thinking to cut the troopers off at the corner.”