At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O’Neill

  Doyler went back to his boots. “Do what you want, MacMurrough, only don’t get in my way.”

  MacMurrough pulled on his socks. Of course there could be no real danger in Dublin. But equally there could be no thought of his leaving without he first made sure. Once again, the mailboat receded into the Irish Sea. It was becoming exhausting, this not going. He glanced at Doyler, who frowned back. Yes, Jim had outwitted them all ways, tickled them to his purpose, in their very rumping manipulating them. He could only marvel at the boy’s mastery of the world—that same world which tossed MacMurrough, upped sided and downed him, and over which he had no more influence than the choosing of the socks he wore while it tossed. He pulled on his boots.

  “Ready?”

  “Aye, ready.”

  The sun no doubt had risen, but it was a dreary lightless morning, with a rain that never entirely ceased, but dripped from trees and mizzled between the showers. MacMurrough had thought they might take a cab or an outside car. Doyler asserted, as a soldier of the Irish Republic, he had the right to seize any vehicle he chose. But they passed not a postman’s bike. At Kingstown MacMurrough roused the stables—to find the stabler had no notion of his mounts riding to Dublin. Did the gentleman not know the ruccus was in Dublin? The Larkinites held the town for the Kaiser. They was shooting horses and sharing the meat.

  Hens pecked in the yard, sparrows fluttered on the walls. Kingstown wore its conventional slumberous air. MacMurrough fingered the Webley in his pocket, considering the puissance of its persuasion. He turned to Doyler whose only guidance was, “Don’t think you’re getting me up on one of them yokes.” When he turned back he saw the gates were swinging, the stable door had shut in his face. “I don’t think,” he said, “we make very effective revolutionaries.”

  “Will you stow that thing down the back of your pants,” said Doyler. “Any thick of an eejit can spot you’re carrying a piece.”

  Doyler persisted in this knowing, lording-it manner as on they tramped to Blackrock. It was MacMurrough’s fault. He blamed MacMurrough. MacMurrough had filled Jim’s head with notions. Did a man MacMurrough’s age not know he was dealing with a kid?

  “Wait a minute here. Are you saying I encouraged Jim?”

  “Well, who the hell else did?”

  “Well, you’re the one who struts about in a uniform.”

  “What are you allegating now? You saying I packed him off to Stephen’s Green?”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t.”

  “Of course I wear a uniform. I’m supposed to wear a uniform. Amn’t I a Citizen soldier?”

  “And now Jim’s gone off to be one too.”

  “That’s nothing to the point. And I don’t strut neither. Leg like mine, you’d want to strut.” His leg, which had largely been forgotten in their hurry, now made stiff semi-circles for a pace or two, knocking into MacMurrough’s shins.

  “You’ll find,” said MacMurrough, “you’ll get along faster if you rest your tongue.”

  “I’m not saying nothing.”

  “Good.”

  “Fine by me.”

  They tramped in silence. They passed, briefly, through the Kingstown slums, then on to the broad avenues of Monkstown. It was a strain, with the streets so empty, maintaining any sense of urgency. It was cherry week: all along the road and down the side roads, an exotic snow had pinked the gardens. Chestnuts were new-clothed and on the tip of candling, their loose green shawls picked with cream. But mostly the trees were bare yet, affording little shelter from the weather.

  For no very good reason, MacMurrough fell to pondering his funeral. Like so many things in life, he had missed his moment for death. That last year at school, had I topped it then, the splendor of it, my apotheosis. Cowled monks sanctus chanting. A squealer I favored once with a smile, his wispy treble, pie Jesu. At the back, bowed, awed, scrubbed, combed, urchins from the local boxing club; one, his stubby face, agnus dei, my protégé. Dear Father and dearest Mother, comforted, a little surprised even, as they glimpse in the candled gloom that lux aeternum the boy choir sings. He will be especially remembered for his many kindnesses to his younger fellows. Libera me. A look, a smile, a chink in the Sunday faces: a message slips in a pocket. Tonight at eight by the lats. In paradisum.

  Sometimes I wonder does anything in the world exist for me at all, beyond the horizontal refreshment. Well, all quite natural: one is walking, after all, to war. Please to note, no dies irae.

  Movement at last: a milk van round a corner came clopping, colloping, collopaling to a stop clop. As they drew near, the driver threw them a wary nod. Maids were queuing at the churn, tattling over their half-gallon cans. “Yez off to town, boys?—Don’t Maggie!—I hope yez aren’t Sinn Feiners, boys?—Maggie don’t!”

  “Well,” said MacMurrough, “do we take it?”

  “Crawl there faster than that old nag.”

  It dawned on MacMurrough that Doyler was rather the dull insurrectionist. That brief exchange had launched him again on his gripes. MacMurrough never thought things through. A round table would have the edge on MacMurrough. Was MacMurrough demented altogether to be telling Jim them tales?

  “Which tales are these now?”

  “Don’t ask me. The Holy Band of Thesbians.”

  “Of Thebes,” said MacMurrough. “The Sacred Band.”

  “All lovey-dovey dying together. Don’t you know he’s dippy over you? He takes anything you say at face. That’s a kid you’re telling that to. He don’t know it’s stories.”

  “Doyler, he’s the same age as you. Besides, I grew up on tales like that.”

  “Aye and you’re some example.”

  “What are you talking about? The entire world grows up on those stories. Only difference is, I told him the truth, that they were lovers, humping physical fellows.” Yes, and Jim had grasped instinctively that significance: that more than stories, they were patterns of the possible. And I think, how happier my boyhood should have been, had somebody—Listen, boy, listen to my tale—thought to tell me the truth. Listen while I tell you, boy, these men loved and yet were noble. You too shall love, body and soul, as they; and there shall be a place for you, boy, noble and magnificent as any. Hold true to your love: these things shall be.

  Instead of finding out for yourself, with a dictionary in a dark corner, by which time it’s just one other lie you’ve nailed them in on the sallady path of youth.

  But MacMurrough was talking to himself. Doyler carried on. “Will I tell you what he says to me yesterday, he says, There’s nothing to fear, says he. We’re immortal. His very words—We’re immortal. The sky had told him so.”

  Yes, MacMurrough allowed, it was certainly of a piece. It had all rather gone to his head, the Muglins, uncovering himself, rumptytumpty with this bugger here.

  “Can’t believe I listened a word he said. He’s a kid sure. He never strayed farther than the Dalkey tram. Mary and Joseph, the nonsense he talked about schoolteaching. A digs, by Jesus. And I listened him.”

  And really it was inconsiderate. MacMurrough had the right to leave, it was necessary that he should leave. And now this wretched squabble in Dublin—what if he should be caught in it? Oh God oh no, if by some chance he were shot, bloody stuck here in a hospital. Or worse, he were arrested, wound up in jail. Good grief, they’d take me for a rebel. Oh no no no, this really is not good enough.

  “I’ll find him, I’ll fetch him out,” said Doyler, “I’ll clatter him something he’ll never forget. That’s right,” he continued, working himself up as he spoke, “you’ll hold him while I’ll hit him. I’ll blister him, I will, bleeding bate him good-looking. Then you’ll bring him home out of that. That’s your job. You understand that now?”

  “Who are we kidding?” said MacMurrough.

  The breath huffed out of Doyler. Visibly he sagged. “I don’t know, but if he’s anyway hurt at all.”

  “Come on,” MacMurrough said. He took Doyler by the arm. “We’re coming to Blackrock. There’ll be news ther
e. There’ll be something.”

  * * *

  The Shelbourne was the stately cream and orange building that towered upon the left. What it did was to dominate their flank. The British had snuck in in the night and garrisoned it. Their own trenches now were useless for trenches: they were dug too shallow. The machine-gunners and snipers in the hotel bedrooms had them pinned down, but they might not return the fire. Elevation was the word used to describe this situation, a problem of it. Elevation. The boy at the park gates was dead still.

  Most the men had scattered from the trenches. They had taken cover in the bushes round about. But it was the wrong time of year really, for the trees weren’t half in leaf yet, and the shrubberies too were thin and bare. The women had left, hitching their skirts and trotting with the wounded. Whistles blew here and there. Guns could be heard over the house-tops, and pot-shots now and then nearer to hand. But mostly in the Green there was a kind of a hush. The ducks settled again on the ponds, huffily quacking. You could hear the voices of the soldiers down Merrion Row. Then a movement somewhere, and the mad clatter would start over, entire Shelbourne, from each its windows, blazing at the one square foot.

  There had been talk of bombs. A bicycle would fly past the hotel, lob bombs through the windows. They’d rush it then. “I can cycle,” Jim said, but it was a talent in no very short supply, and no one paid him much attention, save the comedian who asked, “Who’s the firecracker, Bill?”

  “Never bleddy mind this one,” Bill replied. “This one’s from the Southside.” Bill was a sergeant. He had a grey mustache and a face harassed and father-like. He had taken it into his head to keep Jim in hand. Jim mightn’t look at the Shelbourne without a dig in his legs and the sergeant bawling him down out of that.

  In the hushes between the firing, Jim found his mind strangely wandered. He wrote a letter to Gordie. Well, here we are, he told him, in the trenches in Stephen’s Green. He discussed with the inner man the breakfast he’d most enjoy. He tried to describe a triangle that would demonstrate this problem of elevation. Enormously steep hypotenuses he proposed, yet still he could not satisfactorily prove the difficulty. It had ought to be the same trouble firing down as firing up. Yet the incessant rattling gave the lie to that. It wasn’t the worst, he believed. There’d be no more of trig if trig had fell the first casualty of war.

  Not literally the first, of course, for the boy was still dead at the park gates.

  The sergeant wanted to know was he all right there. Southside, he called him. “You keeping out of trouble there, Southside?”

  “I’m keeping fine,” Jim answered him. He heard himself sounding unnaturally loud. “I’m fine sure,” he repeated more composedly.

  It was this sergeant last evening who took Jim’s rifle from him. It was dark when Jim got to the Green and the streets about were all but deserted. There were barricades across the junctions, carts and motor-cars, but they were loosely thrown, obstacles more than barriers. They too seemed deserted. He approached the park gates to find them locked. People moved against the shadows inside, figures only. It took a while to catch anyone’s attention. Even then they were dubious of him, though he told them about Doyler, that he was ill under doctor’s orders, that he’d be in tomorrow for definite; in the meantime Jim was here to stand in his place. The sergeant was called, this man Bill, and he took one look at Jim, demanded his rifle and told Jim go home out of that, they had sufficient of bleddy chisselurs already.

  It had been on the cards all along that appearance might disfavor Jim—folk had a disposition to finding him young-looking and inadequate. It was against this eventuality he had borrowed Doyler’s uniform in the first place. To no avail. He had to keep following them round the outside of the park, calling through the railings his knowledge of semaphore and bandaging and to strip a rifle. It was an astonishingly trying time. The worse for he could see other lads his own age, sure some of them positively infants.

  One of these lads asked him was he hungry, and he brought a custard pie. “Sure why don’t you hop the railings anyway?” he suggested.

  “Can I do that?” asked Jim.

  “You there,” came a bark behind. A short fellow pointing at him, clipping along the street. “What do you mean, leaving your post?”

  Jim said, “I don’t know, sir.”

  “This barricade is to be manned at all times. And where’s your rifle?”

  “It’s inside in the park, sir.”

  The man told off the lad to fetch it. “Don’t you know that’s a military offense,” he said to Jim, “to leave your equipment behind you?”

  He spoke with a thorough conviction, such that Jim could nearly feel shamefaced for his dereliction. He said, “It won’t happen again, sir.”

  “Be sure of that. Are you hungry?”

  “I’m not, sir.”

  “Stay there now till you’re relieved.”

  The lad came back with a rifle and a bandoleer of cartridges. That was the Commandant, he told him. He gave Jim another custard pie. They shook hands through the railings.

  That lad was dead now. In a way, he was still dead, lying by the park gates. But another boy had fallen since and the Commandant himself dashed out to fetch him. He heaved him home to cheers from the men, and the bullets spurting about him, one through his hat even. It was the bravest thing, a conspicuous bravery, and Jim had stood out, loading and bolting and shooting, fast as his fingers would fumble, to give a covering fire. Till the sergeant again had him ditched in the trench. That time Jim had turned. “I’m not here to be cowering,” he said.

  “Ye’ll bleddy obey yer elders. D’ye know at all the pains we had getting of them bullets? Firing them off at the bleddy masonry, snip of ye.”

  At last word came of action. Action at last, for it was mad holed up in these slobby trenches. It was not a retreat. It was a withdrawal. They were to make a tactical withdrawal to the far corner of the Green where a hump in the ground would better give cover. They would gather their forces there. Jim nodded his head listening to this, encouraging agreement among the men. “And then we’ll charge,” he said, still nodding.

  “Ye can stow that, Southside.”

  “Who’s the ball?”

  “This one’s with me.”

  “Lord have mercy on our souls.”

  “Stow that and all.”

  Over and over the sergeant told Jim what he was to do. He wasn’t to move till the word was gave. Then he’d crawl out behind the sergeant. He was to follow the sergeant exactly what he did. He’d keep his head down in the daisies. They’d get out of this safe, Jim would see.

  Still that boy by the park gates. There were other bodies about, but his looked so very much apart. It seemed nearly wicked to be carrying on without him. Jim wondered what had he done to be lying there alone, for he had seemed a friendly chap. A goner, somebody had called him. Jim swallowed, finding a difficulty in the action. He brought his hand to feel about his throat. He had a scarf round his neck that he woke up in the night to find the sergeant had wrapped there. His shoulder was hurting a bit now.

  Last night, when they had relieved him from the barricade at last, he had joined a group of men in the dark in the park. He’d thought they might be talking tactics or making bombs, and he was a little disappointed to find it was only the Rosary they were at. But he took out his beads and knelt beside. This sergeant shook his head at him, but presently he gave Jim the calling of a gaudious mystery. After, when they took their places in the trenches, he bade Jim stay near. Commandant Mallin made a tour of the posts and he told them the news, how the country was up. Cork was taken, Limerick was taken, the West was awake and marching for Dublin, the boys of Wexford were on the march once more. They had only to hold out till help came. And Jim had thought while he lay in his trench and the moon only risen and clouding over, had thought of Doyler and MacEmm in the big house together. Boy, they was in for some waking up.

  Now all of a sudden a woman appeared on the sward before him. She took her
aim—it was hard to say, a giant pistol or a miniature rifle—calmly stood there and took her aim. She fired. A machine gun was silenced, actually silenced. She returned, waving her arms, directing the withdrawal. She saw Jim gulping. “Can’t have the rotters have all the running,” she said.

  Oh boy, my gracious, good grief—they better come soon, Doyler and MacEmm. There wouldn’t be nothing left them to do.

  Blackrock, and the world awake. Knots of workmen gathered about the tram-stops, unwilling to walk but uncertain of holiday. The church doors were open, chapel as they still insisted in Ireland, and the hour drew its chain of pilgrims. Every passenger was pumped for his news, and that smidgen added to the general murmur. The soldiers, the rebels, the men of the north, the mountainy men, all of them up, marching all, the Prussians indeed on the Naas road.

  It was disconcerting to be told such startling truths and never a hint of the teller’s opinion. They had as well been gabbling of Poland or Salonika, such little consequence these rumors bore. The news itself was the marvel and the faces told the marvel of telling it.

  Doyler went among the men, asking was anyone on strike, was any man of them here present called out on strike. He insisted on this point, and some of the men did look sheepish a touch, as though they believed they had ought to be on strike. But rumor soon had the better of that. Dundalk was known to be agitating. Galway was worse. Belfast for gospel was brung to a standstill. And did MacMurrough know three bishops had been shot dead in their miters?

  Who was it was out, Doyler asked, was it the Volunteers were out in Dublin? Sinn Feiners, he was told. The Sinn Feiners hadn’t any arms, Doyler told them, did they mean the Volunteers? What the heck did it matter their name, weren’t they out anyway? Then a young chap said, My brother’s a Volunteer and he’s not out. So’s mine and me cousin, said another.

  “Well, who is it out?” said Doyler. He was becoming angry, and MacMurrough too was sensible of a rising animus, a want to separate from all by-standers and fire his Webley at their hats. See how I shoot? Make rumor of me. “Have yous a bicycle even to lend a man?”