At Swim, Two Boys Read online

  It was the new father had told him that. Fierce down that father has on the brother. Can understand for why now. He was in the right of it too: Polycarp is not an Irish name. Mind, that father is fierce all ways. I had no notion it was Erse he was talking. Dee’s mirror git. To which the correct reply is Dee’s mirror git is Patrick.

  But small the harm in Erse and I’ll be happy for Jim to take classes. So long as it wouldn’t interfere with the Latin.

  “I must say, Madame MacMurrough, I have always wanted to congratulate you on the sterling work you do put in for the war effort.”

  “What?” called Eveline over the wind.

  He leant forward, holding on to his hat, and shouted, “The stockings you do collect.”

  “What about them?”

  “Well done, I wanted to say.”

  “Look here, there’s a rug in the box. See if you can’t wrap it about him.” She checked over her shoulder. “You say he’s a brother?”

  “From the Presentation College, mam.” He waited a moment, then said, “He takes my son for Latin.”

  “You have a son there?”

  “I do indeed. Latin and music. He gives a flute band out of hours.” The engine faltered and Mr. Mack leant forward again. “Are we doing all right?”

  “An obstruction in the road. Gone now.”

  “As a matter of fact, the new father is after appointing me drill sergeant. I’m to teach the boys marching.”

  “You?”

  “Oh, murder above!”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve only now recollected. If the brother’s for the sick-ward we’ll have no band at all. Oh, holy murder above.”

  Silent amid the roaring world, Eveline wove through the trams and jarveys and the May processions of girls and boys. At the People’s Park she swerved to the right, then left along the seafront. The wind confused the groans of her passengers while the road ahead showed clear and sure.

  Doyler had been right: the rain came in the evening, and it was still pouring when Jim pushed with the shop bike up Ballygihen hill. The shiny asphalt, the mop of trees, the chimney teeth with a chip off the middle, the squeaks of the wheels which seemed to complain of piles and the falling damps, the mudguard spitting wet: the world conspired with his thoughts and everywhere he looked was Doyler’s presence. Ahead lay Killiney Hill, its obelisk stark against the last cloudy light.

  He turned under the arch into Ballygihen Avenue, then pushed against the tradesmen’s gate to Ballygihen House.

  Tyre-grooves in the gravel, but no sign of any motor. A light showed in a bedroom and he saw a figure at the window looking out on the bay. There was an area with a steps down and another light showed there. He propped the bike at the railings, took the parcel in its waxed canvas, went down to the kitchen door.

  It was a man who answered and he had not expected this. He was in his shirtsleeves but still there was an air of quality about him. “I’ve come with the stockings,” said Jim.

  The man lifted an eyebrow in what Jim, an authority now, identified for superciliousness. “Stockings?”

  “They’re for Madame MacMurrough.”

  “Is my aunt in need of stockings?”

  Jim felt the reddening of his cheeks. “They’re comforts for the troops. My father sent me with them.”

  The man had an easy and leisured manner that unsettled Jim, the way his eyes felt free to ramble over him. He said, “Best bring them in so.” But he didn’t move from the doorway and Jim had to squeeze past. In the jar he brushed his trousers inadvertently by the man’s hand and he felt the breath go puff out of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The man only laughed.

  Jim waited with his back to the door, staring at the table. “Is Nancy here?”

  “I believe it’s her evening with her relative. Were you looking for her?”

  He shook his head. “Will I put the stockings down?”

  “On the table, I suppose. Someone will see to it tomorrow.”

  There was a tray with cold meats on the table with two bottles of double-X stout. Still the man’s eyes upon him when he glanced round.

  On the flag floor a red thing showed. Jim frowned. He blinked and it was still there. Still shining on the flags, a Red Hand badge.

  The man saw what had caught his attention and smartly he picked it up. He fiddled with it in his hands. “Do you need a receipt? Am I required to sign anything?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Is there something else?”

  “No, that’s all.”

  “I’ll tell my aunt they arrived safely.”

  Charming, thought MacMurrough as the boy fled past, a streak of wet vermilion that vanished up the steps. He heard the scrape of bicycle wheels on the gravel, then closed the door against the night.

  He collected the tray and ascended the backstairs, extinguishing lights as he went. “A boy about stockings,” he said when he came to the bedroom. “Now, there’s a comfort for the troops.”

  Doyler turned from the window. “If ever you lays a hand on that one you’re dead.”

  MacMurrough grinned and tossed him his badge. “I believe you may have mislaid this. Careless, very.”

  “Dead meat, you got that?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MacMurrough woke at the peep of day with the boy’s body beside him. He watched it form in the greying light while the voices came in his head. Scrotes as usual remained above the fray but Dick and the chaplain went at it like cats.

  —There’s an eyeful for you, Dick was saying. A sore sight for hornified eyes.

  —Direct not the eyes at naked flesh, the chaplain admonished. The horned beast himself is among us.

  —Horny beast is right.

  —Is there no conscience in this house of hell?

  —A standing dick, sir, hath no conscience.

  A kinder voice intervened, Nanny Tremble, to calm the crossness. Now men, leave off the argufying, she said. We have a guest staying and the poor boy is at his slumbers yet. Little lamb, he must be worn away.

  But Dick was incorrigible. He’ll be shagged away soon enough, I warrant.

  The chaplain embarked on his hellfire-jaw and sodom-talk, and we will all go down for habitual degenerates! And Nanny Tremble said, Dear dear. Well, I never.

  Lazily MacMurrough thought to catch Scrotes’s attention. Scrotes? Are you there, Scrotes? But the old shade was not easily conjured. Often the most he would rouse was a snort, which might be of contempt, might be of exasperation. At times like this, MacMurrough conceived a fusty don in a turret room, bent upon some musty text, absentmindedly cold, huffing every now and then and scowling over the affray below. A crusty old friend, a ghost in the attic.

  Scrotes? Nothing.

  MacMurrough turned to his sleeping mate. The boy lay with his back to him, his head steeply inclined, so that his body culminated in the knobbly top of his spine. The knob there recalled to MacMurrough the apple in the boy’s throat, which had bobbed up and down last evening. Up and down it had bobbed as he took his turn on MacMurrough’s stand. Uncommonly decent of him, really, for MacMurrough had not asked or expected it. Just at one point, the boy had pushed him away and gone down himself between MacMurrough’s legs. There was a speculative look on his face while he contemplated his purpose. He closed his eyes and brought the shaft to his lips, but it took a time to appreciate the lips would better be opened.

  Not a perfect pleasure because MacMurrough had a suspicion of authority undermined. The boy flushed when he opened his eyes and saw he was watched, as though to have forgotten there was company present. And that was thoughtful of him. But proportion was only duely returned when MacMurrough pressed his hand on the boy’s head and forced his measure upon him.

  Then he fetched in the boy’s mouth and prettily it dribbled till the boy swallowed, popping his apple. “Gluggary,” said he, “like egg gone off.”

  That had made MacMurrough laugh. He might have sent him away then, in the de
cent obscurity of the dead of night. But his gameness was amusing and his smile beguiled that smelt of MacMurrough’s comings. He stroked his skin while good-humoredly the boy defended his honor. ’Course I never done it before. Never said I liked it or not. Sure you’s the one as asked me here. They talked till he nodded and his eyes closed on the pillow and MacMurrough had watched while the yawning curtains moved in the breeze.

  —That blackguard would need a good thrashing, ordained the chaplain. And MacMurrough smiled when Dick volunteered his rod for the task.

  Scrotes? Still no Scrotes.

  The boy stirred and made grumpy moan. An arm shrugged the covers away. Poor lamb, said Nanny Tremble, he wouldn’t be used to the woolly warmth.

  MacMurrough ran his hand through the hair, which was scraggy from sea-water. A faint salt dusted his skin that he could feel when he stroked his neck. He smelt of sea-water too, and tasted of it, like an oyster in the mouth. Extraordinary eyes, MacMurrough recalled. No eyes are truly black, but this boy’s seemed to be. Like rain on a laid road, rain on a road in the moonlight. Swimmer’s body, tight, lithe, all of a piece. It really is the best exercise and might be encouraged more among the lower orders as it costs nothing and the effects are wholly benign. Listen to me, sounding off like the chaplain.

  —But we must remember with the Keating’s Powder, said Nanny Tremble; and MacMurrough sighed because this was very sound advice.

  His hand, which had ranged over the boy’s shoulders, traced now through its finger-tips the descent of his spine. And when it came to the flat bone that marked its end—Coccyx, said Dick; Os sacrum, said the chaplain—it splayed its five fingers and cupped the rounding cheeks of his bum. Ripe fruity firm: the peach he had been so careful with last evening.

  Funny how they all undress with their tail to you, saving till the last moment the flourish of their manhood. Comes as a shock to discover you’re as keen on their behind as their front. Back-scuttler, bum-jumper, arse king, gentleman of the back door, shit-hunter, gut-fucker, stern-chaser who navigates the windward passage: as though all their street expressions were ultimately without meaning for them.

  How shy they go then, like a girl with her cherry, the boy with his peach. Buxom seat of unmanhood. Get thee before me, Satan.

  Appropriately, it was MacMurrough’s ring finger that crept into the crease now, discovering hair, a dampness, a hairyless wetness, dry spot; on to the perineum where a tiny pulse gave him to wonder was the boy awake. He worked his hand through the thighs, clutched in rather a how-are-ye way the tightening balls till, proud as the morning, he found what he sought. Pulled once or twice, just to get the strength of it, then back through the plush and the silky skin to the stone-dry ring. In a bit. Knotted. A Mary-hole.

  It would mean a further five bob, but he determined on buggery.

  He withdrew his hand from the parting—such sweet sorrow—spat on it, wet himself. He seized the boy’s shoulder and as he turned him, mounted him. Not savagely, as Dick would have it, but with patient steady mastery so that Nanny Tremble need fear for neither’s posterity.

  The boy gasped and battled out of his fox-sleep, but by the time he had marshalled awareness of his surroundings the worst was done. Color washed from his cheeks and the eyes fixed in their corners, but the pain diminished as resistance fell. His gape unfroze and the fists unfroze that had gripped the sheet. The mouth puffed and little grunts came out, hardly of pleasure, but of pain contained.

  It was safe now to leave Dick in charge and MacMurrough felt himself depart. In his mind he climbed spiral stone stairs till he entered a draughty turret room. Scrotes looked up from his text.

  —I see you have taken to rape now.

  —Is it rape? asked MacMurrough.

  —Do you need to ask? Or do you need to be told?

  As though from on high, MacMurrough viewed his work. He had tugged the boy sideways again and was fetching him off by hand. Clumsy motion that counter-rhymed with the mounting thrusts behind. The boy too had found an action of sorts and he was bumping his bottom pudently along—more hindermate than help, for Dick went at it like a beast of the wild. At one point, his childlike hand reached behind and pressed the thigh he found. The touch shot a pang through MacMurrough. As though the boy would share what Dick knew might only be taken.

  In boyish throes he spurted. MacMurrough would follow, but just as he did he leant over and kissed the boy’s lips. It surprised that they parted and his unready tongue was met by another.

  He slipped off the boy and collapsed on his back. His head fell on the pillow and, sinking through the down, he heard the pounding of his heart; and every pound was a footstep, as down the iron-railed hall the warder clanged, calling out the numbers of the cells and the cell doors slammed as he called them rebounding, and the bawling and banging and hounding steps came closer till his door was resoundingly next.

  —C.3.4, called the warder.

  Slam. This cannot be. Prison. But it is.

  Songbirds released him. Ballygihen, smell of lawns and the sea. He forced his eyes to open. His breath returned and the pounding ceased. Sandycovely safe.

  He needed a cigarette then, and he got up to find his carton. He drew on the darkly fragrant Abdulla. At the open window he watched the sea and he saw himself a snail at its shore who carries not his home but his prison with him. They only let you out: they never let you go.

  “Who’s Scrotes?” said the boy, watching him.

  “Scrotes?”

  “You was calling him out.”

  “When?”

  “Just then, while you was . . .”

  “Really?” You hear that, Scrotes? I call out your name. In the throes of my passion I call for you.

  “Friend, is it?”

  MacMurrough flicked the match with his nail on its tip, flipped it in the grate. “Someone I used to know. Dead now.” Hear that, Scrotes? You’re dead.

  Distantly he heard the rustle of sere pages.

  He pulled on his drawers, sat down on the bed. “Are you recovered?”

  “I won’t be sitting cosy for a while.”

  “Rather a rude awakening, I suppose.” Though he looked comfortable enough. Hands behind his head, showing mohairs under the arms. Less boyish now, as if a dick up the arse really could make a man of you. Rather pleased with himself, actually. Suppose it is a hurdle to be over. Accomplished without need of decision. Put like that, I’ve done him a favor. Your honor, I was asleep at the time. Something else too. When you use them for pleasure they’re more at home in the big house. Breaks the ice, so to speak.

  He touched the depression of the boy’s chest, running his finger through half a dozen fledgling hairs to a leather string where clung a cheap tin medal.

  “Stay the night, says you. Promise I won’t jump you.”

  “Hard to resist when you turn your back like that.”

  The boy shifted his legs. “’S all right anyway. Don’t be sitting much in my line of work.”

  A bitter tone which reminded MacMurrough of their first meeting at the Forty Foot. He came from the latrine with his dress unadjusted. In a casual way MacMurrough said, “Do you need any help with that?” The boy shrugged. “They works me like a horse. Might as well hang out like one.” At the time, he’d taken it for no more than a chase-me. Not so sure now. Chip on his shoulder. My proud Hibernian boy.

  “Seems early yet. What time is it at all?”

  MacMurrough leant over for his wrist-watch.

  —He will have that item, warned the chaplain. If we are not vigilant, he will.

  —Ah no, said Nanny Tremble, and he looks such a nice young man.

  —He is not nice nor honest, the chaplain retorted, who will permit what that vulgarian has submitted to.

  “Four,” said MacMurrough. “Twenty after. Rotten bind, I know, but I’m afraid . . .”

  Moments later the boy was at the washstand soaping himself. How it gladdened Nanny Tremble’s heart to find him so mindful of the daily rinse. Today he wo
uld shovel shit smelling of violette de Parme. Skin flowed translucently over ribs as he stretched to pull on his trousers. Nacreous or in some way like the sea, rippled. Each bone was defined, perhaps a touch too defined.

  —Oh, and he was so hungry last evening, said Nanny Tremble. Remember and he sent you down for the cold meats? We thought he’d never have his nough. But you can never give a boy too much to eat.

  —And he lapped up all his milk, added Dick, stirring in his drawers.

  No sign of injury though the limp is there. And that, too, had attracted at the Forty Foot. Youth, poverty, minor impairment: had a lot in his favor. Walked along the sea-wall with him that first time, tried to interest him in diving. Well, anything to keep a conversation up. Knowing grin he had. Convinced all along he was fly to the game. Tossed him a coin. The magic effect of half a crown, deposit on a bit of brown.

  Found him that night outside the hand-me-down shop. I remember geese barking in the yards while we chatted on the sea-steps. I bent down and took him in my mouth.

  Afterwards he had bread which he was happy to share. Boland’s. They don’t use foreign flour, he chose to tell me. I paid him, the full pledge, his flute for his flute. His smile was collusive then. And I thought of those lines from Blake: Stolen joys are sweet, and bread eaten in secret pleasant.

  And very pleasant it has been. He found his notecase. “I hope you don’t mind paper,” he said, “as I haven’t sufficient coin.”

  The boy took the red ten-shilling note. A week’s, two weeks’ wages, MacMurrough calculated. Not so very long ago and the least smile should have earned a sovereign. He watched him read the note like a morning paper, turn it over and read the back page. Soap shone on his face, and he gave his regular godless oath.

  “Mary and Joseph, are you always so free with your bunce?”

  “It wouldn’t do to defraud a laborer of his wages,” MacMurrough responded and kissed his forehead. “That sin cries to heaven for vengeance.”