At Swim, Two Boys Read online

  “Carson? He’s never here.”

  “Here in the garden? Not while grass is green, he’s not. But he takes one of the villas over. A lot of bad blood between Eveline and our Orange friend. He always complained your sycamores interrupted his view to the sea. Who knows, perhaps it’s that which has advanced Eveline’s opinions. There was rumor of a court case.”

  Carson. Sir Edward Carson, Wilde’s prosecutor, his persecutor, next door. Why, sir, did you mention this boy was ugly? Why, why, why? Until the poetry was beaten from him and he was just a fat blustering man. Squilde. It is the worst case I have ever tried. Two years’ hard. Next.

  MacMurrough knocked back his glass. “To our enemy’s enemies,” he said.

  “May we die in Ireland,” Kettle returned. Then he was off. “They’ve done a blundering stupid thing bringing Carson into the Government. More we work with the English now, less the country will work with us. We finally make a peace with them and they go and ditch us like that. Carson—leader of the Orangists, an avowed law-beaker, Attorney-General they make him. Tell me about the English. All the sensitivity of a pin-cushion. Sense of justice, fair play and all that. Play up, play up and play the game. Lauded game of cricket. Load of rot. Never did understand the Irish. Never will, until we look them in the eye from our own legislature. Home Rule,” he said, raising his glass in toast.

  MacMurrough shifted his gaze from the thick spittle-wet mouth and stared instead through the garden windows. What a dreary drunk he was. He recalled the Spartan custom of inebriating slaves that young men should see how contemptible was drunkenness. Nowadays we leave it to our leshishlashors. And one had idolized him at school. Tom-tom Kettle-drum in his cricket whites. Tomtom Kettle-drum come to say goodnight. How sad to recollect in the dull-eyed face the rose-white boy.

  Aunt Eva deep in conversation with her priest. What is she hatching now? Two golden boys eloped toward the sea. The way their heads inclined, the way an arm embraced: like a capital A they walked.

  “Meanwhile I’m up and down the land, making a sacrifice of my throat, getting the buggers to enlist. What a hope. All down to Kitchener, of course. Gives the Ulstermen their own division. Catholic Irish get kicked about in any old sod’s brigade. But as I say, this is no time for nationalist quibbling. I ask you, have we that luxury when German steel is skewering the maidenhead of Belgium?”

  “Shall I fix a drink?” said MacMurrough.

  “Well, why not? Nunc est bibendum, what?”

  Skiagrams, silhouettes, pictures of shadows that turned their faces from him: MacMurrough’s gaze roamed the library art. Family crest in the unlaid hearth: lion rampant, rather a boxing pose actually, a shadow-boxer, argent on a bloody field. On the library shelves, bound volumes of the saints and scholars. Acta sanctorum Hiberniae. Navigatio sancti Brandani abbatis. Book of Moling. Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland. Bunting, Moore, Lecky. Novels, various, in the love her and leave her vein. The Love Songs of Connaught.

  Above the hearth hung a print of Maclise’s Marriage of Strongbow and Eva—“Courtesy of the House of Commons,” ran the tag. Kettle remarked it now, saying, “And yet she never did marry, did she, our particular Eva. After her father, no mortal man would answer. Though they say she made quite a run at Casement when he was here.”

  MacMurrough turned. “Casement?”

  “Don’t start me on that blackguard. An Irishman, a Protestant even, prancing about Deutschland tempting our men to turn traitor. Our brave Irish prisoners of war, wants to turn them into renegades. Man’s a blackguard, a cad.”

  A name at last. Casement. “In Germany, you say?”

  “I say, am I being indiscreet?”

  “Not at all,” said MacMurrough.

  “Bloody Sinn Feiners. Mark my words, they’ll get their comeuppance. The country don’t know them, don’t wish to know them, too citified by half. Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletics, our friends from Irish Freedom, all that rag-bag and bobtail. Could say they’ve done us a service. We in the Parliamentary Party, we were so occupied dealing with the English, we had forgotten to be Irish. We’ve admitted that criticism now and our policies are clear. Our land, our learning and our legislation. The three Ls, I like to call them, after the three Fs of your grandfather’s and my father’s time.”

  MacMurrough could remember something of those three Fs. Feast, a fuck and a footrace, wasn’t it? Alarmingly the face wobbled directly in front.

  “I’m pleased you remembered me,” it said. “Lot of water gone under since school.”

  “How should I forget? Your name is a household word.”

  “That old clench. Of course, it was one of Parnell’s. Said it of my father. No, there’s a drop in that glass. I’ll just—there you go. May his shadow never grow less. It was witty, no doubt, but also the man to a dot. He needed us. There’s no purpose to a locomotive except it pull a train. But the engine is sui generis. Never liked us. I believe it was only the English he disliked more. We owe a lot to him naturally. One worries we owe too much. His shadow stalks the land. You find that amusing?”

  “I was thinking: Parnell and Wilde, the two great scandals of the age: both Irish. It’s good to know Ireland can lead the world in something.”

  Something less charming he found behind his ear this time. “Morbid thing to say.”

  “You know, what my aunt said—about the charges being trumped up against me.”

  “Water under the bridge.”

  “Not exactly.” MacMurrough wondered was he going to say what was on his mind, and after a while discovered that he very possibly was. “When we were at school together that year, I quite admired you.”

  “One had an equal regard for yourself, be assured.”

  “You were brash and outspoken and you saw no harm in friendships and acted on that impulse.”

  “Don’t know if I’m sure what you mean.”

  “It’s quite true. I was guilty as charged.”

  Kettle swayed on the soles of his feet. He appeared to waver between outburst and conciliation. An indignant compromise prevailed. “You can’t imagine I didn’t know? God’s sake, man, I took silk years back. I am informed you have since—how to say?—put away the things of a child.”

  MacMurrough’s eyebrows lifted. “Truth, for instance?”

  “You are telling me that there is a flaw in your character?”

  “I am telling you that I do not think it is a flaw.”

  The empty glass went down on the table. “There’s nothing more to be said.” But there was just the tiniest drop at the bottom of the glass. He lifted it, bottomed it, banged it down. “Damn it all, MacMurrough, are you telling me you are an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort?”

  “If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.”

  * * *

  “Where we going?”

  “Out of this crush for a breather.”

  By private paths Doyler led away from the lawns, across a vegetable garden, past the gate to the sea-wall, and up narrow overgrown steps where their kilts snagged on the briers. They came out on a sunny corner, quite hidden from the house, and near enough level with the sea-wall so that the view gave out directly on the sea.

  “How’d you know this place?” asked Jim.

  “Maybe I been before,” said Doyler, slumping down in the grass. The grass was long and meadowy, quite wild. Jim sat down beside, though he had to hitch up again to arrange the kilt properly under. He believed he knew better now than to ask was it Mr. MacMurrough had taken Doyler here.

  “Did you ever in your puff see such a crop of la-di-das?”

  “It’s a let-out all right,” Jim agreed.

  “And that old witch Madame Mac-shagging-Murrough. I’ll tell her next time, I will. Came to play the flute is all. If it’s a flunkey she wants she can re-im-bloody-burse me.”

  “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing up with me. Have me pride is all.”

  Doyler was in his band kilt at last. It was a relief to Jim because he
couldn’t see that strange suit but he was searching for blood stains on it. Some young fellow had died in that suit and his mother, unable to bide the memory, had given it away out of charity. The stains wouldn’t shift, inside maybe, where you wouldn’t see, but you’d know they were there, reminding.

  Doyler picked his nose. He twiddled with what he found, watching Jim the while. He flicked it over Jim’s shoulder. Jim scowled at the indignity. Doyler leered.

  “Your da’s doing a roaring trade. Bet you was up all night painting them bottles green.”

  “We was.”

  “Were, Jim. Were, not was. You’re a college boy. Speak the King’s English sure.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Doyler?”

  “Nothing, I told you.”

  He hawked his throat and spat. Jim watched the gobshell jelly down the stalk of a grass. “Is it something I said?”

  The flash smile aged on Doyler’s face. “Not at all.” He looked mean with his smile that had no humor in it. “Them high-sniffing nobs eye-glassing you would have any man out of sorts.”

  He lay back, chewing on a grass. The way he lounged he had his knees up and wide apart. They were grazed and grassy from the athletics earlier. His kilt had slipped back. Jim shredded the seeds of a grass in his fingers. The shadows of the trees reached out. They wouldn’t be long here in the sun.

  “Did you see your man from the Wolfe Tone above? He’ll be giving a speech I suppose. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Jim? A speech from your man.”

  Jim shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind it.”

  “I seen you bring him the tray of tea. Big wide eyes on you same like a cow. I’d say you’ve took a fancy to that man. Sounded to me you was coughing up Gaelic at him.”

  “What and I was?” The man had smiled at Jim, in a way that wasn’t at all uncomfortable. It was hard to think this was the same soldier-speaker who had thundered of war and Ireland and death. But Jim had liked him all the more for his gentle manner. “He was pleased if I tried to speak Irish with him.”

  “God and Mary with you,” Doyler said in a peenging voice. “And God and Mary and Patrick with you, your honor.”

  “Shut up,” said Jim.

  “Shut up yourself.”

  A kick poked his boot, and Jim clambered his feet to give a kick back, but the way Doyler reclined he could see right up his kilt. It flustered Jim to look there and he quickly turned away.

  Doyler said, “What you blushing for?”

  “Who said I was blushing?”

  “Even your ears is gone purple.”

  “I’m not blushing for you anyway.”

  “There’s nothing down there you not seen it before. Seen it a hundred times swimming. Aye, and looked for it and all.”

  “Are you going to talk dirty?”

  “Little molly, you.”

  Jim got up. He went to sit on the wall. A courting couple passed on the promenade below. Away up the lawns, a band played something jolly, something nice, something way out of tune. He looked at his boots with his stockings down at his ankles. He didn’t feel shame, but rather looked at it. He looked at a boy who sat on a wall, carefully pulling his stockings up. A shameful sight, quite wretched really.

  “U-boat scare,” said Doyler. He had come up beside, and he nodded to the plume of the mailboat as it hurried in from a strange direction.

  “Yes,” said Jim.

  “The Helga now’ll be out on a sweep.”

  “It will.” Jim knew he had only to wait and the arm would come round his shoulder. He would be mollified then. Mollified, that’s what he’d be. He sat stiffly apart. He stared at the bay. The houses on Howth looked brilliantly clear. They reminded him of pictures he’d seen of Italy or the Aegean Isles. The sea was deeply blue, save far out where waves broke, like fallen sails, in flashes of white.

  “Lookat, are we pals or what are we?” said Doyler.

  “Of course we’re pals. Only you’re not very pally today.”

  “Don’t you see it’s that MacMurrough woman? Was I a college boy, now, she wouldn’t treat me that way.”

  His hand was slapping on the curve of the wall. Jim counted the white spots on the fingernails. A gift, a friend, a foe; tidings to come, a journey to go. Doyler’s hand had all five. “She treats us all the same,” Jim said. “What would she care who’s a college boy?”

  Doyler aimed a spit right across the promenade to the rocks beyond. Jim watched the propulsive lob, the curl in the air, the splash on the stone’s tip, the way the saliva seemed to cling to the granite. Truly, he was a very excellent spitter. Jim hunched his shoulders. He nodded out to Howth and said, “My da took me there once. I used think it was England, you see, when I was a kid. He brought me there and had me ask a fisherwoman was this still Ireland. She answered something very strange. She said, Not since the Chief passed over, nor yet till he come again.”

  Doyler huffed a laugh. “She meant Parnell.”

  “I know that. The da was very angry. Queer old harp, he called her. He was always very set against Parnell.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me your da sided with the priests.”

  “Well, you’re wrong actually. Had nothing to do with the priests. Parnell voted against the relief of Khartoum. The time General Gordon was under siege. The da never forgave him that. Gordon was his hero. He named me brother for him sure.”

  For the first time that day Jim heard a genuine amusement in Doyler’s voice. He let out a kink of laughter. “He’s the boyo, your da is. Parnell had the country torn asunder, and your da finds an argument nobody never heard of. There’s original for you. More power to him, that’s what Doyler says. What the—what’re yous doing down there?”

  Not ten feet from them a gang of urchins had begun scaling the wall. They had lumps of mortar scattered about and tufts of valerian they’d tugged for a purchase. “Would yous get down off of that wall,” said Doyler, “before you have us all tumbled in the sea.”

  “Want to get in, mister,” piped a crabby face.

  Doyler reached down and heaved the creature up and over. “What’s wrong with the gate below?”

  “Stuck.”

  “Couldn’t you see us here? All you had to do was ask, we’d open it for yous.” He brushed the kid down. “Go on down by the gate,” he told the others. He marched the kid off, hauling him through the briers and in under the trees. Jim watched from the wall the other kids troop under his arm while he held the gate for them. One had a gash in his foot and Doyler bundled him down the rocks to bathe it. He had a rough kindness that way with children. “There’s Irish for you,” he said returning. “No trouble too much save troubling the head.”

  Jim nodded.

  “Come and sit here with me,” Doyler said. “I want to tell you something.”

  “Can’t you tell me here?”

  “It’s about schoolteaching.”

  “What?”

  “About being a schoolteacher.”

  “What about it?”

  “Come here and I’ll tell you.”

  Jim looked over his shoulder. Doyler was sitting up with his kilt pulled over his knees. He beckoned Jim and patted the grass beside. “I want to talk is all.”

  Jim dawdled over, pulling a face. He sat down. “Well?”

  “Have you thought at all what you’ll do after college?”

  “Sure that’s miles off.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “I need to be sure of an Exhibition first for the seniors.”

  “No bother on you.” He began then talking about a King’s scholarship and how it was the same course as the intermediate seniors. “You’ll be sitting the seniors anyway, may as well go up for the King’s, what harm?” The King’s was a scholarship to train for a teacher. What happened, you got the King’s, then you went up to St. Pat’s in Dublin. St. Pat’s was the place to go. The boys at St. Pat’s would make a teacher of Jim. A bobby job was schoolteaching. A job with a collar and tie.

  Jim had never given much thou
ght to his future beyond that he’d somehow get away from the shop. The Post Office, he’d thought, a clerkship somewhere. But Doyler had it all worked out. Jim would go to St. Pat’s, he’d be a teacher, then maybe his friend would give him work at his school.

  “Which friend?”

  “Gaum you. His nibs from the Wolfe Tone. Don’t you know he gives a school in Irish? Up Rathfarnham way.”

  “He’s a schoolteacher?”

  “So he told me.”

  “I didn’t know you’d spoke with him.”

  “An tá tú schoolteacher, says I. Tá mé schoolteacher, says he.”

  His cod-Gaelic wheedled the smile out of Jim. “And you think I’d make a good teacher?”

  “Never doubt it. And sure what better employment? Helping your fellow man to get on in the world—you’d be proud of a job like that. The only job for you, old pal.”

  “I never thought,” said Jim.

  “Well, now you have.”

  “Yes, now I have.”

  “You see, Jim, I think of these things. I think an awful lot of you, I do.”

  Jim looked at him. He was lying on his front with a meadow grass sticking out from his mouth. How did Doyler do this? He could make Jim so angry with himself, so ashamed. The next minute, he was all alive, like a spark was inside, like the full of him was electric. How did Doyler do this to him? He really didn’t know.

  He stretched out in the grass too, leaning on his elbow, facing his friend, the pal of his heart, happy to watch him, fondly, his face. The grass was wonderfully cool in the shadows. It gave a fringy brush to his legs. Doyler grinned. He took the grass-stem from his mouth and tickled its ear under Jim’s chin. “You can tell does a fellow like you with a spear of grass, did you know that?”

  “How do you tell?”

  “You wave it under his chin, and if his face goes red at all, then you know.”

  Jim laughed. The blush had risen, as of course it must, but for once he could be glad of it. He thought how lovely it would be to touch at this moment. The notion hadn’t formed before Doyler’s leg came to rest against his own. It pressed ever so lightly, and Jim pressed lightly back. He smiled with his bottom lip caught in his teeth, for it was wonderful to lie in the long grass, with just this tiny pressure of touch between.