At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  “Funny thing about your aunt,” Doyler said, munching. “Did you know she was well thought of down Liberty Hall?”

  “Liberty Hall, my aunt?”

  Doyler shrugged. “Back in the Lock-out she helped out in the soup-kitchen there.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “God’s truth. There’s a painting even. She has an apron on and her sleeves rolled up. Enormous big cauldron on the boil beside her.”

  “But this is extraordinary.” He pictured his aunt in the steaming frame with the hungry masses huddled behind: in Parisian pinny she plies the ladle.

  “Beats me,” said Doyler, “with half Dublin out of work, why they has to get rich folks to cook the soup. But there you are.”

  “Yes,” said MacMurrough, “there you are.” Truly she was a remarkable woman. He remembered how she had chastened him once for his unguarded assertion of female practicalism. He regarded women as practical, she told him, because he never saw the sex but it was tending to his needs: bringing his tea, making his fire, paying his cigarist’s bills. Yes, he would miss his aunt. All very large and fine having boys in and out of the house, but his aunt had been a good sport. And now she must retire, hors de combat. How it must pain her. Really, the English had grown too high: to presume to exile Irish men and women from their own country. Their own country—the thought repeated, and he looked at Doyler, whom Jim had once spoken of as his country. “What happened us at all, Doyler,” he asked, “that we should have fallen so out of sympathy?”

  “Matter of a knee in the balls.”

  “Oh yes, that.” MacMurrough conceded a moral homer, a hit not by virtue of the boy’s being right but of his being wronged that morning in St. Stephen’s Green.

  “You was after that young chap Paddy’s day.”

  “Yes, him.”

  “Piece of smut, you called him.”

  “Yes, we shan’t require the exhaustive history.”

  “You made out as I was after him too.”

  “Yes.” Thank you Doyler, nicely pilloried. He took a Player’s, lit it. “And were you?”

  “Was I what?” For a moment the glowers returned. “Did you put a peeler on me in the park?”

  “Grief no.”

  “I didn’t know if you did. No, I wasn’t after that chap. Not that time anyway. Not that way. Another time, maybe I was.”

  “You were?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No.” A sense of symmetry had MacMurrough inquire was it Doyler who informed the Castle of his aunt’s rifles. But of course Doyler hadn’t. “You did put the wind up me though, that rifle, finding it bang in my face.” Doyler grinned. MacMurrough inspired the rough virginia of his Player’s, reluctantly admitting an accustomation. “I never thought to ask—have you started smoking?”

  “I don’t, but thanks now for offering.”

  “Not at all.”

  They smiled daftly at each other. Reluctantly MacMurrough admitted a contentment with the evening. In its own unparticular way, it brought a close to this Irish episode, back where it had all begun with the boy from the Forty Foot who hobbled and spat. Rum fellow he was, but he wasn’t a bad old hat. It was good to have things cleared up between them, if cleared up they were. He might almost thank Jim, though it was absurd to imagine the boy had intended it this way.

  Looking at him now MacMurrough felt again the attractions of Doyle. Bold breezy insouciance that had made of him such worthy game. But he saw better the bitterness in the eyes, on his shoulder the chip, and he remembered the shrug, carelessly given, but which at heart he gave for he held himself not worth a care. So much MacMurrough might recognize in himself. Oh, other things too: a damnable honesty, the penchant for misery, a yearning for magnificence but a spirit unwinged.

  “You know,” said Doyler, “you don’t have to go, you know.”

  “Why thank you, Doyler. I shall stay so.”

  “I mean, not on my account you needn’t. Jim says you’re to join the British Army. I’d hate to think I drove any man to taking the Saxon shilling.”

  And so should I, young man, hate to think you had driven me anywhere. “My aunt once told me that nothing is gained by clinging to life save more life to cling to. The world I find is embarked on a grand adventure. I find I choose to play.” He had stood up saying this, ruffling his hand in Doyler’s scraggy thick hair. “You know where everything is, don’t you?”

  “You leaving me?”

  “Yes, I’m going to bed.”

  “You leaving me here on me own?”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Nothing. Wasn’t sure was all.”

  But there was a haunt in his face, like a maid new-arrived, of the big night in the big room in the big creak of a house. “Hope you don’t mind the dark?”

  He did not, most definitely not, what did MacMurrough take him for, he had no fear of the dark whatsoever, guaranteed.

  “Good,” said MacMurrough, lowering the lamp. The night and its draughts inhaled the light, and he left the boy to fret alone. He thought about it while he undressed in his appropriated cupboard across the hall. Earlier, the way one does, it was ravishment and rampage, a forcible entry, his hurting the boy face-down on the leafy pile, the punishment of piss, other debasements, idly he had meditated. But when it all boiled down, a cuddle would nearly do. Yes it would; and it surprised how quickly the door knob was in his hand.

  “Who is it?” came the small voice.

  “Move over,” said MacMurrough. He climbed in the bed. “Lift up,” he said, nudging under the shoulders. He turned the body, a sack, in his arm. “It’s silly,” he said, “pretending we’re strangers.”

  The sack lumpily reposed. “I want to fuck you,” MacMurrough said. There was no response. MacMurrough sighed. He patted the body where his hand had fallen. “I just want to,” he said. “I want to,” he elaborated, “but I won’t mind if you don’t choose to.”

  “Now there’s a lie with a lid on it.” Doyler’s hand, in a casual way, had fingered below and found out MacMurrough’s stand. “You like this?”

  It wasn’t the most imaginative ploy, but MacMurrough answered, Yes, for a tease, he did.

  “How much will you pay me so?”

  Little toe-rag. “Must we bring that up?”

  “You know that suit, MacMurrough? I sold that suit.”

  “My dear, it was yours to do with as you pleased. I’m glad you sold it. I never liked it.”

  “Why’d you buy it me so?”

  “I thought it made you happy. You surely knew I was fond of you. You were a cussed bloody-minded sod, and I admired you for it.”

  The hand below had cupped MacMurrough’s balls. Now a tentative ambivalent pressure exerted, exciting really, exquisite even; until Doyler said, “You’d pay Jim so, would you?”

  Oh dear oh dear, MacMurrough thought; Doyler Doyler, my dear.

  “I used see them in Dublin, MacMurrough, the girls in their glad necks. Up and down the street they’d go. I wanted to burn that suit. I knew what that suit made of me. But I needed the brass, so I sold it instead. Didn’t pawn it, sold it.”

  MacMurrough brought his own hand down to cover the boy’s grip, and he squeezed a little so that his groin hurt, nothing nauseating, just a little manageable penance. He said, “I’m sorry, Doyler, if you feel badly about that.”

  “You never lifted a finger.”

  MacMurrough believed he knew what the boy meant. It was a scene whose recall could torment him still, so that physically he would need to flinch the memory away: the garden fête, the summer house, the boy’s shirt ripped, his nipple bared, that pathetic emblem, his bowed head. And MacMurrough rooted to the floor while the priest smiled, the priest barked.

  “Not a finger,” the boy repeated. “After you leading me on to believe we was friendly. You had me going and all, MacMurrough. You told me wear that badge. You told me. I knew then all I meant to you.”

  “Doyler, I am sorry. You must try to un
derstand I wasn’t myself back then.”

  “Sure I don’t mind.”

  The balls were loosed, MacMurrough reprieved. Doyler turned away, and MacMurrough turned with him, not to be ultimately estranged. Even so he could feel himself hard by the boy’s bum. God damn me for an arrogant whoreson pimp.

  “Listen to me now.”

  “You can’t tell me nothing.”

  “Listen to me, Doyler. Whatever passed between us, you must understand it was only me paying you. It made something of me, not of you. You never sold anything.” He reached an arm round and held it on his chest. “Won’t you say you forgive me now?”

  “Sure I told you I don’t mind. There was a time I had the blue murders thinking of you. I don’t no more.”

  They lay that way a while, MacMurrough embracing the boy, and Doyler embraced but rigidly untouched. Then MacMurrough said, “You will look after him, won’t you?”

  “He don’t need looking after.”

  “He has no notion of being careful.”

  “He’s a rare plucked one, ain’t he.”

  “He is, yes.”

  “Will I tell you?”

  To MacMurrough’s confusion, the boy turned round. He turned round and rested, even insisted, his head on MacMurrough’s chest. They were back as MacMurrough had started, and his hand patted once more the boy’s side.

  “Will I tell you?” he repeated. “We went to Mass on Easter Sunday. We were at the back with the men and when it came to communion he stood up. He gave such a look at me and said, Come on. I thought, you know, after the night we’d spent. But he was so sure of things. We went up together. I snuck me eyes at him kneeling there. The priest was beside and he had his tongue out waiting. He was so sure everything was right and square. I don’t know but I loved him that minute. He frightened me a bit too. He’ll be a great leader of men one day.”

  “Yes, I believe he will.” MacMurrough heard a doom in his voice, and to dispel it he added, “Lead them a merry old dance.” He became aware of Doyler’s hand again on his stand. He had the strangest sensation of Jim’s watching, of his willing this. “We still might, you know,” he said, “if you’d a mind to.”

  The hand maintained its impartial progress up and down. “What and I was to do you?”

  Yes he was, a cussed bloody-minded sodomitical object. “That’s sweet of you, my dear, and don’t think I shouldn’t enjoy it, except you’re of that age, you’d imagine you’d put one over upon me.”

  “Fair’s fair,” said Doyler.

  “Believe me, nature knows best in these matters.”

  “That’s the way it is, MacMurrough. Take it or leave it.”

  “Oh very well,” MacMurrough said. “Only Doyler, not as a punishment.”

  Doyler hawked his throat. The hand removed from MacMurrough’s stand. He hawked again and spat twice in the hand. That old unction, MacMurrough thought, by arse or by tarse once more to balm us.

  They slept cuddling, the each the other, though it seemed to MacMurrough he but dozed, when the bells were clanging to shake the windows and waken the sleep of the just.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The rain had begun to fall, drizzling upon Jim’s sleep. He blinked awake. He was sensible of an urgency, though not immediately of its cause. One by one his body told its complaints: the cold, the stiffness, the hunger, and now the wet. A church bell was striking the hour somewhere over the city, ringing once, ringing twice. He made out his neighbor in the grey light, shifting too in the narrow trench. Three bells the church rang. The rain fell on his face and he peered at the sky. Four bells, and a clattering chaos shattered the quiet.

  The earth splattered before him. Branches snapped from trees, scattered on the grass. Stunned, Jim watched the lawn squirm in a scythe, like a snake. “Keep down, ye bleddy fool!” he heard. Something ssssinged past him, sssinged again. Clay spurted up, battered his face. A terrific jab in his shoulder and he was thrust headlong into the trench. “Can’t ye stay down?”

  “What is it?”

  “Machine-bleddy-gun. Maybe two.”

  Gung, the man pronounced it. It made Jim want to giggle. “Where are they?” he asked, whispering. That too made him gigglish.

  “Shelbourne Hotel.”

  Jim had his rifle though he wasn’t sure was it Doyler’s still. They had taken the one he came with and it was a while before he had them persuaded into giving him one back. The British machine guns chattered away, churning up the grass. There were sharper cracks between: rifles, he was told. A boy was down by the gates—was he down or lying low? He could see other figures hunched along the trenches. He pulled on the bolt, but he had forgotten the safety. He flipped it over and drew the bolt back, feeling for the cartridge inside. The trench was only shallow: he had to crouch sideways to fix the butt to his shoulder. He recalled cryptic comments MacEmm had let drop. You didn’t aim a rifle, your position aimed it. You didn’t shoot a gun, you allowed it to shoot. He gripped the barrel and fondled the guard. He had forgotten to bless himself: it didn’t matter. He took a breath, then swung out over the low banked earth and aimed in a wide arc along the range of buildings. Endless buildings, with four, five, six stories to them, windows staggered up and down, countless windows, a precipice of brick and glass. He had not thought to ask which was the Shelbourne.

  It was surprise enough that the bell should be pulled at all. But earth-shattering, a preliminary of jacobin terror to come, when MacMurrough finally had the bolts pulled and the great door yawned wide, to find it was a tradesman-like fellow in a butcher’s boater who at this ungodly hour the godly portal steps disturbed.

  “Why, Mr. Mack,” he said.

  “My apologies, a thousand apologies,” said Mr. Mack. The unwonted boater lifted and dropped, discharging its wet upon Mr. Mack’s nose. MacMurrough looked beyond him at the drizzle-hued world. A magpie raucously gnattered in the trees. Perhaps four, a quarter after, in the morning. The boater was evidently a size or several too small, for it tilted on Mr. Mack’s head, in jaunty disavowal of his face where anxiety, effusion, exhaustion, the misery of weather, all jostled for command. His apologies again, only it was his son, his son James, he hadn’t come home in the night.

  “Jim?”

  Mr. Mack had waited up for the boy, only he nodded off, pray God forgive him, in Aunt Sawney’s chair—Mr. MacMurrough would remember Aunt Sawney, Miss Alexandra Burke, he should say—woke up in her chair—

  “Won’t you step in?” said MacMurrough.

  “I won’t now,” said Mr. Mack, stepping into the hall, “delay now and the terrible hour to be calling, but after the dreadful occurrences in Dublin—”

  “Dublin? A train strike, I understood.”

  “If only,” said Mr. Mack, “if only.” But the entire city was up, the rebels were out, Sinn Feiners were out. Lancers—he saw two killed himself, murdered in the street. Rioting. Destruction. Looting of premises. Barricades. “Barricades,” he repeated, “with mattresses in them.”

  “Mattresses,” MacMurrough said, he too grasping this detail as peculiarly cogent and distressing.

  “And no sign of Jim at home and no word left. I have it in my head—Doyler!”

  MacMurrough turned. Doyler stood at the half-pace leaning over the baluster rail.

  “Good morning now, Mr. Mack.”

  “Doyler, thank all that’s good and holy, you’re here. I thought it might be the way you was mixed up—But no, sure you’re the sensible lad. Jim is here with you so?”

  “He was, Mr. Mack. Only he went out for an early dip.”

  “A dip, is it?”

  “I’ll go fetch him, Mr. Mack. I’ll send him home to you.”

  “Not to trouble yourself. Are you well again?”

  “Grand, and it’s no trouble at all.”

  “Sure what am I saying?” said Mr. Mack, his hand springing to his damp forehead. “The events has left me all to seek. And his coat only staring me in the face.”

  Indeed it was: on a low hook
on the hall stand, Jim’s Norfolk jacket, among the whips and canes. MacMurrough looked with puzzlement at Doyler.

  “Rest easy, Mr. Mack,” said Doyler lightly, “I’ll fetch him home direct.”

  “Well, if you’re sure now.” The boater straw returned to his head, his expression better tallying with its rake. It lifted in farewell and another thousand of apologies, the door closing behind him.

  “Bring me up that jacket,” said Doyler.

  MacMurrough came into his dressing-closet where Doyler was ransacking the wardrobe. He had pulled on a pair of MacMurrough’s trousers, the corrugate folds of the legs giving him a clown’s look, one who had mislaid his stilts. “Is there never a braces or a belt?” he cried, coat-hangers flinging on the floor.

  MacMurrough tossed him Jim’s trousers. “I found them in the hall.”

  “Scheming bloody monkey. I’ll pay him out for this. I’ll murder him, so I will, bloody massacre him.”

  “You knew nothing of this?”

  “Answer me, would I be here and I did? He knew I’d stop him.

  He knew I’d never let him a hand in this.”

  He knew more than that, thought MacMurrough.

  “Can’t think why I didn’t catch on. Staring me in the bleeding face. Stephen’s Green this, Stephen’s Green that. You and your train strike. I knew there was more to it, I knew—What do you want getting dressed for?”

  “I’ll be coming along.”

  “Oh no you don’t, mister. This is between me and Jim.”

  In his consternation Doyler had snapped the lace of his boot. He was making rather a camel of it, rethreading the sucked ends through the eyes. MacMurrough threw him an ironed pair. He unhooked a smart check Newmarket vest. “It’s damp out,” he said: “put this on inside the jacket.” For himself he chose tweed and a hunting jerkin underneath, forgoing for once his linens and creams. From a cabinet he produced his aunt’s Webley. He revolved the chamber, counting the cartridges remaining.

  “Is that thing loaded?”

  “Yes,” MacMurrough replied, it rather pointing than aiming at the boy’s good leg. “So don’t let’s argue who’s coming.”