At Swim, Two Boys Read online

  “They had a right to tell you.”

  He felt his son’s hand on his shoulder and when he looked he saw how small were the hands of leaping boys. He put his great warty crawg on top and patted Jim’s fingers. “Fetch down the beads,” he said.

  They prayed again that night after tea, himself and Aunt Sawney on either side of the range and Jim in the middle. Mr. Mack saw the fire that reflected on coal-box and fender, and he had the notion of it grinning at the novelty and sharing the joke with its neighbors. He left Aunt Sawney do the calling, though he’d take his oath, for all her practice, she had the order wrong. After ten minutes of arguing the toss, he let her have her way. Besides the which, it wasn’t the order Our Lady heard at all, but the intention behind it. When he rose from his knees he felt the ache in his back and his knees complained of the stony floor. He hung the beads on the shelf, avoiding Gordie’s picture, then he put the kettle on the stove, saying, “Cup of char suit us?”

  “’Tis easy knowing ye’re not accustomed to prayer,” he got in return.

  “Now now.”

  “Great gammocks ye had to see me telling me beads. Great gas and gaiters ye had of it. ’Tis a changed story this day.”

  “Now now, Aunt Sawney, there’s no call for vexation.”

  “The pity of it is ye left it so late.”

  He turned sharply from the range and was about to let a return on her vinegar, when he saw she had her go-to-Mass hat on. “Where are you off to this hour of night?”

  “I’m away to get a stamp.”

  “The post office is long closed.”

  “’Tisn’t every soul from this house meets a closed door when they knocks.”

  With that she was out, banging her stick on her passage through the shop. He stared glumly after her. His son had his nose dug in a book at the table. “Is that reading for school?”

  “Yes, Da.”

  He took the tea-pot to rinse it and at the sink he said, “At any rate, we’ll be saying the Rosary in chapel next week. October is the Holy Month of the Rosary. The father has asked for help with the seating. Usher I’m to be. ’Tis quite a responsibility.”

  The telegram had called him Corporal Gordon Mack. Wouldn’t think to write to tell us, oh no. We might have celebrated that. But oh no, let the old man stew at home. God forgive me.

  At last the kettle whistled. Clumsily the water poured. It was hard keeping his mind on things with the photograph behind on the shelf. He clumped the pot on the table, himself into a chair. “There’s been something I’ve been meaning to say, Jim.” He took a breath. “The swimming you do.”

  “What about it?”

  “’Tis getting on in the year.”

  “The water’s fine, Da. As warm in nor out now.”

  “Winter’s round the corner.”

  “It’s October only.”

  “Getting dark these mornings. ’Tis dangerous a boy on his own.”

  “I’m a fine able swimmer.”

  Mr. Mack heard a bang on the table. He felt the sting in his palm where his hand had slammed the board. The anger spilt from his tongue. “Wouldn’t you think of someone else for a change? Do you never think I might need you round the shop? Always out for yourself. I’m all right Jack, that’s your motto.”

  The miserables now to last till Christmas. Only shamming to be reading at all. After Gordie begging him to stick with his books. He passed the boy his tea. Species of nod was all he got. No use prinking me mustache, the thing is preened to death.

  But things like this, you can’t whip it out of them. “Don’t you see, son, it’s yourself I’m thinking of?”

  “Papa, don’t ask me to stop swimming. I can’t stop the swimming. Not now.”

  “I’m not asking you, Jim.” He saw the hope flicker in his son’s eyes that now he must snuff out. “Not asking you, I’m telling you. No more swimming and that’s the end of that.”

  Oh, it was too much with the photograph on the shelf and Gordie’s eyes on his back always, and the jaunty look of him from under his beaver, and his full dress kit that the photograph-johnnie would hire out for the occasion. And that cigarette, would he never have it finished? It was on his mind to take the picture there and then, whip it away upstairs, once for all, to the ledge above the prie-dieu where it belonged in the shadows with the photograph-portrait of his wife. God rest your soul and God forgive me, I’ve lost your son on you, so I have.

  Chink-chink, stick-stick-stick, whiskery old chin poking in through the door. “Aunt Sawney! You weren’t long getting back.”

  “No longer than ye was thieving me seat.”

  How was this she wouldn’t fail to catch him in her chair, yet he never could recall getting into it? He got up to let her sit, but she only grumbled away to the stairs. What was to be done with her at all? Has a genuine goatee on the grow there. Lips all chapped. Well, if ’tis chapped lips is her trouble, she oughtn’t let the chaps to kiss them. He shook his head. Chapped lips. Chaps to kiss them. Sort of thing you could send in the papers.

  It was curious to feel the scant mirth returning, even at the expense of a distracted old crone.

  The nights were fast drawing in. Mary Nights, when asked, was emphatic about it. The fields were still in their ricks, and winter came. They had never known such storms. Even Aunt Sawney could not recall the like. People said it was the artillery barrages in France that disrupted the upper airs. Day after day the rain sheeted and grey lumbering clouds, like continents of night, heaved through the sky. The sea crashed on the sea-wall, shattering its waves in blizzards of foam. Seaweed lay everywhere. And when Jim went down there, in the howling wind, he felt the lawless solitude of weather too wild.

  A sailing-ship struck by Sandycove Harbor. In the intervals of calm, in a pewter sea, tarnished and burnished by turns, bathers swam out to the wreck. But not Jim. Every morning before school, he climbed down the ladder at the Forty Foot cove, and there he clung while the waves surged and swayed him against the rock. But he did not let go the ladder, so it could not be said he swam. It was designing of him, what Brother Polycarp would have called Jesuitical, and it troubled him, the deceit. Yet it was daunting to do and required a mighty determination: no thrashing your limbs, no release from your bounds, no reward at all, just the miserable freeze. He offered it up to the lost souls, in tenements of Dublin, in wastes of Gallipoli. It was all he could think to do. If he lost touch with the water, when spring came round, who could say would he know to swim at all?

  The storms passed. Then the foggy nights looked in on the kitchen like shawlie ghosts at the window. In the morning the air had the taste of tin. Aunt Sawney added trimming upon trimming to her Rosary, and his father prayed to Our Lady of Lepanto who in 1571 had granted victory over the Turk. But the map on the wall that had recorded the progress of the war had stopped at Gallipoli, where a last red-topped pin signed Suvla Bay. In the shop one evening Jim snuck open a canister of thyme and sniffed the warm and arid scent. It told of dusty hills where shrubs took lightly in the dirt. A no man’s land where Gordie had stumbled. He was missing now, presumed dead, but still Aunt Sawney would not let a card in the window. They too were in a no man’s land.

  Of all things unexpected, the canon returned, restored to health and vigor after his months in the West. He immediately set about overturning the curate’s work. The Irish classes removed from the parish hall, the Volunteers no longer paraded after Mass, the plot in the Castlepark fields that had been marked for Gaelic games was turned over to allotments instead. Once more prayers were said for the King and votive Masses offered against the Turks. Almighty and everlasting God, in Whose hand is all power and the right of all sovereignty, look to the help of Thy Christian people: that the heathen who trust in their own fierceness may be crushed by the power of Thy hand. It was the same Mass Father Taylor would sometimes give, save the heathen then had been the English.

  A while previous Jim’s father had been promoted to the sixpenny-door at Mass. In the purge of the curate
’s appointments he was promptly demoted to the tuppenny-door again. Jim could see the dilemma it was for his father, as he brushed his mustache this way and that, trying to work out what course should he take. If he distanced himself from the curate might he get the sixpenny-door back? Or was it only the curate’s patronage got him any door at all?

  The flute band continued but the number of college boys dwindled. A new class joined, with whom Jim felt easier, whose fathers were known for their nationalism. The great debate was military compulsion, whether the British would introduce it to Ireland. Depending on that debate, so the fortunes of the band fluctuated. One week half a dozen boys would parade, another—if the papers had reported a particularly ominous speech—four times that number might show. But they were scarce a band at all now. They learnt no new music. Mr. MacMurrough rarely came to the summerhouse. Jim met him down the Forty Foot and they would often chat a while. It was kind of him not to mention the odd way Jim bathed. He was a fine swimmer too. Jim liked to watch him dive.

  In Glasthule when the band marched Jim felt the hurry of their feet, the way they were a little ashamed to be caught out of doors. Glasthule had dreamt a season, had dreamt an Irish nation. Now the cold light of day curled its lip at their foolery.

  He recalled an evening in the unimaginable summer gone by when he went with Doyler to a hurling match at Blackrock. He heard them long before he saw them, a tinkling jingling frolicking chime, under the gruff calls of the hurlers and the quick cracks of their sticks. Then out of the haze on the far rise came the Lancers, jog-trotting along, a perfect line of rigid men that only the seat between man and mount seemed to move at all. The sun came out in curiosity of their metal and a breeze rose to flutter their flags.

  Down they came. The spectators at the far end separated and one stumbled backward in the ditch. The game slowed in confusion till a player hopping with the ball, hopped slower and slower, and the ball rolled along on its own. Breast-high to the horses the hurlers stood. The eyes of the Lancers kept dead ahead. When they had traversed the field, they wheeled in perfect formation, with no word of command, traversed the opposite way. One or two of the horses made convenience of the slow measure to do their business on the grass. The last Lancer, with a deft lean from his saddle, swept up the ball and kept it. Then the jigging and jingling and fluttering pennants returned to the haze, faded on high, were gone.

  Jim turned to Doyler, whose eyes shone with the brightness of tears. Had he said the word then, Jim would have followed. Aye, to be kicked and trampled and cursed and crippled, he would have followed his friend then. All the King’s horse, nor all his men, would daunt the beat in his heart. On the tram home, while the trolley sparked and jerked in horrible masquerade of the cavalry’s dance, he heard Doyler mutter, “We will rise. We will.” And Jim had bit his lip to still the shiver in his spine. That day would come, sure as their Easter swim. And he too would rise with Doyler.

  But where was Doyler? He had muzzy thoughts of tenements in Dublin. He might have gone down the Banks to ask of his people, but he didn’t care to trouble them. Many evenings, after his deliveries, he pushed through the wind of the Point, down into the Forty Foot. In the dark, if he was certain of his solitude, he brought out his flute and played to the waves the music Doyler had learnt him there. Slipjigs mostly, those winding minor-keyed melodies, that seemed to say to him, sleepily on and over, sleepily stop—and on again; sleepily slow but surely, steepily deepily sleepily down. He’d pull his collar up round his neck and watch the Muglins light. It seemed unlikely as sunshine that he’d swim to that island. That come the spring he’d go with Doyler and struggling against the stream they’d rise to those rocks, upon whose face they’d lie, and under the tumbling clouds all would be made clear.

  All what would be made clear, he was not sure. There were words in the back of his mind, or in the sea that circled his mind, whose articulation, like his father with the Gaelic, his tongue could not get round. He sometimes felt if he would close his eyes and dip below, he might catch these words, they were drifting there in the flotsam, and he could say them now, if only to himself, and he would understand what it was that troubled him. Troubled and thrilled him, so that they were the same sensation to feel, trouble and thrill, a single trepidation. Yet it was not right he should understand now. He must wait till Doyler. Only when he was ready, when Doyler would bring him to the island, only then was the time for understanding.

  But as soon as he got this far, he started over, like he was swimming in his mind and had touched the raft and now must head for the cove again, for indeed it was not clear what he should understand, or even that there was anything requiring his understanding. And why wouldn’t he just look forward to the day instead of moidering in the deeps the while? For it might so be nothing would await him on the island. Yet the hurry of his heart told the lie of that. And there were words in the back of his mind or in the sea that circled his mind which, if only he would catch them, would tell the truth. And his heart didn’t need to be told but knew already that Easter next, all would be clear.

  Then the light of the Muglins recalled him and he sloped out of the Forty Foot and climbed on the shop bike, with its rusty chain and the mudflap that squeaked against the wheel, and cycled with the wind behind him home.

  His father came in one evening, having been into Dublin, on what business he did not immediately say. He shook his coat at the yard door then hung it to dry before the range. The steam rose with the homely aroma of ironing. “I went as far as the Coombe,” he said eventually. “Coombe and the Liberties. Did you know they’re away off beyond the Castle? I wasn’t so sure at first.”

  Jim smiled for his father was notorious for losing his way, especially in Dublin; though having been a Dublin Fusilier he refused to admit this and would never inquire directions. He brought his father cocoa and watched his hands engulf the mug. “The Coombe, Da?” he said.

  “Card after card after card,” he answered. “Scarce a window but they has their card in the glass. Some of them, God help us, with two cards, three cards, to show for it. All of them edged in black. I read the names and regiments. Old Toughs or Blue Caps to a man. I thought I might recognize some of the names. But I did not. These were younger men. These would be Gordie’s fellows. And all the young childer in the streets. I thought them is all orphans now.”

  He finished his cocoa and the little grouts at the bottom he emptied on the fire. “And do you know what it is? They had a shop there, no more than an old huckster’s this was, and I saw in the window they had Turkish Delight on display. I was that shook. It was all I could do not to lob a brick through the glass. They have no respect some people, no cop-on at all.”

  Next day the news came that the British had evacuated from Gallipoli. “Without Single Loss of Life,” the papers trumpeted. But Gordie they had left behind. Still Aunt Sawney would not hear of a card in the window. The black bordered the house instead.

  It was Christmas week and they took down the mother hen from the kitchen shelf and smashed it on the yard flag. Jim watched his father search through the smithereens. His round face sagged, as it always did on these occasions, on account the cost of the hen and the scant coppers that chinkled out. But as he said, they would need less decorations this year. The usual festoons in the shop—there’d be mutterings from the customers else—but the kitchen would go bare, and only a candle in the parlor window to light the way.

  They fetched down the box of Christmassings from the attic and replenished its unaccountable shrinkage, same every year, from the mother hen’s savings. They got in the usual supply of tall red candles to give out among the customers on Christmas Eve. After many hours of fabulous sums on the kitchen table, Jim’s father paid out the Christmas club savings, correct to the last farthing. They had puddings on the shelf in festive tins, which as usual no one would afford and Aunt Sawney would be serving them up at unlikely seasons in the coming year. Carollers sang in the street and pantomimes advertised on garish hoardings.
And when a tiny snow fell, his father said to Jim, “The old woman’s picking her geese and selling the feathers penny apiece.” Then she hung them stiff from the poulterers’ shutters.

  “The army now was the place for Christmas,” he said while they were decorating the shop. He spoke more and more of his army days, the way remembering them would bring him closer to Gordie. “Little balls of fluff that we’d tie with a thread and hang them from the ceiling. You’d come into the barrack and think the roof was after lifting off and there you was in the midst of a snowstorm. Great tuck-in you’d have on Christmas Day. Some regiments would have the officers to serve the men. The Dubs didn’t go for any of that malarky. Behavior unconductive. I regret to say there was considerable drink partook. Sergeants made themself scarce for the duration. Then when the festivities was over we’d take the men on a good twenty-mile march. Sweat old Christmas out of them.”

  “What was Christmas like before the army?”

  His father stroked his mustache. “To tell the God’s honest, I misbelieve I had any Christmas before I found the Dubs. If and I did, I don’t recall it. Templemore was my first with the regiment. Mullingar, then Fermoy. It was England after that.”

  Nothing was ever told of his father before the army. It was like he was born to the regiment. “Did you mind leaving Ireland?”

  “Sure I was only a nipper. Set sail for Southampton, not a cloud in the sky. What had I to mind anyway? The trouble of it was, I wasn’t yet on the strength, not official-like. Had to beg them to take me. On me marrowbones I begged. Meself and young Mick, this was. Fearful fuss we must’ve put up for in the end the Adjutant took pity. Wasn’t ulagoning from the stern I was, but gazing into the blue beyond.”

  Jim pictured his father with his hands on the rail and the sun setting behind. His father without boots on, jags in his breeches, the orphan boy. “How old would a nipper be?”

  “Sure nobody took much note of your age in them days. If I was ten, I wasn’t a day more. Four years out then, and ’twasn’t the barrack rat but Bugler Mack what sailed with his regiment for the Rock. Proud as a peacock with my fusilier hackles. Blue facings that told the world the Dubs was a royal regiment.” The smile wavered on his face and he said, “Though they wasn’t the Dubs then. Was still the old 103rd. And I never did get the hang of the bugle.”