At Swim, Two Boys Read online

  Jim finished lighting the candles. Grease had spilt on his finger and he rubbed it now with his thumb. Particles fell like dandruff to the floor.

  “He’s a decent enough mouth on the flute, I’ll grant, for all he’s not a college boy. Howsoever, there is a certain redolence.” The eyes yellowly closed, whitely opened. There was intimation of humor in the thirsty wax of his face. Muscles strained and opened till a wheezing noise let out. “The ars musica,” he said with lubricious intonation.

  He picked up some music he had been studying, fetched a sigh, replaced it on his table. “On that subject St. Augustine as always is enlightening. Feast Day?”

  “August twenty-eight.”

  “What he says, inimitably, is: ‘There are those who can break wind backwards so artfully would they sing.’ Dates?”

  A brief hesitation. “Three-five-four, four-three-o AD.”

  “The anno Domini is unnecessary. A supererogation in the instance of a saint.”

  “Yes, Brother.”

  The brother was shifting through the folds of his soutane in search of the slip for his pocket. Unbidden otherwise, Jim stood and waited. He could never be sure if Brother Polycarp liked him, or, if he liked him, was it for company or play. It was a trust of sorts to be the audience of these remarks. But was he trusted to share their scandal, or merely not to repeat it? His eyes roamed the scanty room, its whitewashed walls, crucifix over a bed perfectly if thinly made. In the corner, the little grotto to Mary, Our Lady of Presentation. Smell of Macassar from the grey-sleeked head of the brother.

  He took Jim for Latin, and on those mornings when he ran a fever and his hands shook with the strain he had Jim stand up and read page after page of Virgil. All morning long the stumbling feet, while the brother nodded and the boys like Virgil’s Trojans embraced their arms in weary sleep.

  Keep in with the brothers, his father admonished. Mister Suck, said the boys, the Grand Exhibit.

  Was that true about saints? He could think of any number that were born before Christ, but had any died BC? St. Zachary perhaps, father of John the Baptist. Supererogation. It was an easy word to say once you had heard it spoken. Tomorrow he’d look out vilipendence in the school dick.

  The candles at the grotto glimmered and guttered. He wished the brother might hurry that their devotion would begin and be over. Our Lady’s downcast eyes.

  A silver snuff-box had appeared and the brother made play with settling the top layer of dust. There were stains all down his soutane, a tide of rust, from grains that had rubbed in and soiled. On his sleeves was a shine of chalk-dust. Before he snorted, he blew his nose on a big blue belcher with grubby white spots. The ritual over, he picked up the new sheet of music again. “What do you make of this, Mr. Mack?”

  “A Nation Once Again,” Jim read. The page was white as nip. Con brio was crossed out and underneath, in green ink, a phrase in Gaelic had been substituted. Surprising, on account Brother Polycarp wasn’t known for his advanced opinions in politics.

  “Are we to learn this next?”

  “The new curate has asked for it. A particular favorite, evidently. He would appear to be under the impression we are a band of rapparee fifers. Mountain-men musicianers. Fluters with slips and slides.” He watched Jim’s face a moment, then brightly said, “How’s your Virgil today?”

  “Brother?”

  “Vincet amor patriae laudumque immensa cupido: translate.”

  Reddening, Jim said, “Love of fatherland will conquer and the immense cupidity of applause.”

  “Applause? Where do you get applause? ‘The overwhelming greed for praise,’ says Virgil.” He took the sheet of music. “We’ll give it a blast, I suppose.” Opened a drawer, let it slide within. Before the drawer closed, Jim saw without looking for it the protuberant cork of his whiskey bottle.

  “An all-for-Ireland personage,” the brother continued. “Went out of his way to tell me ‘God Save the King’ is an Irish air the English have purloined on us. Father O’Táighléir he calls himself. Meaning Taylor. In my day it was a pandy on the palm for speaking Erse. O tempora, O mores: now they have you priested for it.”

  Another pinch, another snort. He sneezed and spindrift floated through candleshine.

  “Take the hair out of your eyes.”

  Momentarily, Jim mistook this for a metaphorical injunction, but screwing his eyes he saw the brother’s encouraging nod. He fingered the flop off his forehead.

  “You might train your hair to keep out of your eyes. You have long lashes for your eyes, Jim, and no need of hair to hide them. I’m surprised your mother didn’t tell you that. But I was forgetting. You don’t remember your mother.”

  Jim was counting the candles. Twelve. He blinked. Six.

  “It is a shame, for a vocation is often the easier with a mother in the home.”

  The brother shifted from his chair, heaving himself up and round, and Jim closed his eyes as resiny black linen enfolded his neck. The brother’s arm wrapped round him, bringing him down, on to his knees, the brother kneeling beside.

  “Don’t worry you feel confused. It is only natural you feel confused with your mother taken from you.”

  A finger rubbed on his cheek, down his chin-bone, to the collar of his shirt. Far out to sea, Jim registered the touch.

  “Believe me, Jim, this world without a mother’s care is a parlous place indeed. I know this because mine too was taken from me at a tender age. But I found solace in the words of our Lord. Do you know the words I intend, Jim?”

  “I do, Brother.”

  “When on the cross our Savior in His passion turned to the disciple He loved. And He said to him, to the disciple whom He loved, Behold thy Mother. Believe me when I say to you now, Behold thy Mother, Jim.”

  The statue glittered before them while the finger that had played on his neck ceased its roam. Suddenly the brother called out, “Mater misericordiae, mater dolorosa, advocata nostra, O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria: ora pro me!”

  His arms had swept forward and the shadows shook in the disturbed air.

  After a while, he said dully, “We will pray to Our Lady of Presentation for her continued longanimity. Ever glorious and blessed Mary . . .”

  “Ever glorious and blessed Mary . . .”

  “Queen of virgins, Mother of mercy . . .”

  “Queen of virgins, Mother of mercy . . .”

  “Hope and comfort of dejected and desolate souls . . .”

  Arm-enfolded they prayed, so close that Jim could trace on the brother’s face the imperfect course of his shaving. Each time their heads bowed in honor of Jesus, he sensed the chafe of jowl on his cheek. And when in the prayer’s pause silently each made his lawful request, he heard the brother’s breath come short and sharp, tingeing the air with a tinct fume of alcohol.

  The road squeezed between college and church. Light streamed from the chapel doors where the congregation was leaving after their First Friday. Aunt Sawney would be among them. Jim felt the smother of the coming streets and the coal-smoke from the houses. The memory was with him still of the monastery’s candles and the manufactured sting of whiskey and Macassar oil. He pulled up his collar and made for the shore.

  Shiny sky with scratchy clouds. Mares’ tails, his father called them: they had something to do with storms. Thin stars in misty faces, a frosty breath in the nightfall.

  When he turned a corner he came on the sea, the sound of it sudden and as always unexpected; and as always he was struck by its equivocation. He heard the tired roar and felt its casual toil, the fresh breeze that whiffed of decay.

  There were ships in the bay, hulks of darkness against the night, waiting the turn of the tide. The fishing-boats were out, he could hear the men, their reboant calls, but he couldn’t see them. The lights of Kingstown shone in rows, twice reflected, three times, in the slowly moving mirror, while away on Howth, the Bailey Light flashed welcome and warning. He followed the sea-wall to Sandycove, then up past the Point, where the wind hit
him full from the sea. He peered down the dark hole that led to the Forty Foot, gentlemen’s bathing-place, then on round the Martello to a thin ledge of grass that gave out on the bay. And there at last it was, the Muglins light, blinking redly, redly blinking. Ave, Maris Stella.

  Gordie maintained he could remember their mother, but Jim remembered nothing. He was only an infant when she died, on the voyage home from the Cape. They buried her at sea. At home they had a photograph-portrait, but his father kept that in his room. Sometimes Jim saw her drifting in the weeds, not weeds but the floating gardens of the Sargasso. Other times she had washed upon the rocks and there she reposed with seaweed in her hair, while all about the candles danced, bobbing on the waves.

  He believed it had been his decision to embark on the Thirty Days’ Prayer, though he could not now retrace the steps that had led to his taking it. Over the evenings, in his guidance, the brother had introduced the notion of vocation. But it was unclear to Jim was he to pray for a vocation or only that he hear it should one call. Looking back, he recalled other boys that the brother had taken a fondness to. Had they too prayed thirty nights at his grotto? Each had heard his vocation in the end. Each had disappeared one sudden morning. Seminary, if anyone inquired.

  A bat squeaked past. Hush, said a wave. Rush, said its fellow.

  Where goes the tide when comes the ebb?

  Where goes the night when comes the day?

  He was musing on these lines, seeking their provenance, when a patter of feet behind, a tap on the back of his head and his cap tilted forward over his eyes. He turned wildly.

  “There you are, pal o’ me heart.”

  Jim blinked. It was Doyler. Dowdy suit and his cap at a rake. Teeth flashing in the gloom.

  “I say,” said Jim and immediately felt foolish for it.

  “Say what?” said Doyler, clambering onto the wall beside and clapping his hand on Jim’s shoulder. He had a bunch of flowers with him which he waved in front. “What cheer, eh?”

  “Tulips?” said Jim.

  “Aren’t they brave? They will be brave in the morning, anyhow. They’re for the ma. You know there’s hordes in the gardens behind.”

  “You’re after stealing them?”

  “Stealing, me arse. Redistribution if you must know.” He leant forward and spat into a rock-pool below. “What kept you at the brothers’?”

  “You were waiting on me?”

  “Wanted to say hello was all.”

  Jim said, “Brother Polycarp has me doing a Thirty Days’ Devotion.”

  “Mary and Joseph,” said Doyler. “You’d be all year at that.”

  Of course they wouldn’t, only Mary’s month of May, but it was a humorous thing to say. Jim took off his college cap to set it straight, and Doyler said, nodding sideways, “See you got the scholarship all right.”

  “I did. I heard and you got yours and all.”

  A moment, then Doyler slapped his hand on the coping. “Get piles off sitting here. Walk along back with you?”

  “All right,” said Jim. He picked up his flute-sock and fell into step.

  Peripherally he was aware of a luminescence beside him. Doyler’s blue-gone clothes, so thoroughly brushed, shone like the night sky. He sniffed to see if the smell was there that the fellows had complained of at practice. Nothing, unless his smell was same like the shore.

  “Still got that blink, then?”

  “What blink?”

  “They used call you Blinky for it.”

  He’d forgotten that. Blinky they used call him at the national school. “That was years since.”

  “Four years,” said Doyler. “D’you remember them soaps?”

  “I do.”

  “I never thanked you for that.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You never split on me. I was thankful for that.”

  “Sure, you returned them all.”

  “Could have been in bother over that. Himself could have been in bother.”

  “You replaced them,” said Jim. “There was no harm.”

  “I’m thankful all the same.”

  A tram scooted past, looking for speed for the climb out of Glasthule. Bovril briefly was British beef, then all lay quiet. Save for Doyler’s walk. A slip-jig step, crotchet and quaver, crotchet and quaver.

  “What happened your leg?”

  “The leg? Polis done that.”

  “Why would the polis do that to you?”

  “Batons came down. I was one in the crowd.” Doyler shrugged. “Was a lot of that in the Lock-out.”

  The Lock-out. It was the word they used for the Larkinite riots of a year or so back. The papers had been full of it, mob rule and baton charges in the streets of Dublin. It never really touched Kingstown, let alone Glasthule, save for a while the trams into town hadn’t run on time.

  “What were you doing in the Lock-out?”

  “Was a newsboy then. The newsboys was the first to go out.”

  “Weren’t you sent to County Clare?”

  “I got about. Are you straight?”

  “Straight?” repeated Jim.

  “Hold on to these a crack.” He thrust the tulips into Jim’s hand and Jim watched astonished as he tore at a poster on a letter-box they were passing. “When are the other boys coming?” a strapping Irish soldier inquired, save now his legs were missing. And Doyler was rhyming,

  “Full steam ahead! John Redmond said

  That everything is well, chum.

  Home Rule will come when we are dead

  And buried out in Belgium.”

  Jim blinked. “You’ve turned a right Sinn Feiner,” he said.

  “Sinn Feiners, me arse. I’m a socialist, never doubt it.”

  This was unchancy ground and Jim was relieved they were approaching the Adelaide turning where the red-brick shops and naphtha flares would prove a civilizing force. Out of the blue, an arm lumped round his shoulder. “’S all right, Jim. Sure no one saw us and Dora’s away in the arms of Murphy.”

  “Dora who?”

  “Go way, you gaum.”

  Jim squinted round to get a view of this queer and friendly character. He had a big round grin like a saucer was stuck in his mouth. His Adam’s apple jogged above his muffler while he chuckled away to himself. The arm round Jim’s neck gave a squeeze.

  “Defense of the Realm Act, of course.”

  Tramlines glistened under the quietly hissing lamps. The old woman with the widow’s stoop that people called Mary Nights was passing through, her pram of belongings behind her.

  “How’re you, Mary?” called Doyler. “What way are the nights this weather?”

  “The nights is drawing out,” said Mary Nights from her bent old head.

  It was coming late now, and the boy was hooking the carcasses from the butcher’s shutter. Doyler said, “Wait for us a crack,” and darted inside. Jim watched him through the window, bargaining for some broken brawn.

  His eyes were drawn to a shelf at the back, where above the barrels of corned beef, a cow’s head was on display. The butcher had prised its tongue out and curled it over the corner of its mouth, the way it would be licking its lips in anticipation of its own taste. Moony eyes were staring down, contemplating its blood collect on a plate. There was blood on the pavement too where the carcasses had dripped.

  “After you with the push!”

  A drunk had stumbled backwards out of Fennelly’s and knocked into a bunch of fellows. He turned on them with colossal injury.

  “Who’re ya shoving at? Who d’ya think yous’re shoving? Come back to me here and I’ll learn yous manners.” He staggered to his feet, cursing and reeling. But he had lost the direction he was traveling and kept peering about as though to find it in the road. “Who is it wants a puck? If’s a puck yous want, need look no farther!”

  Jim turned aside and found himself facing the blind lane that led to the Banks. Only a hundred yards from home, yet he had never been inside. There was no call for deliveries to the Ba
nks. Gordie said he saw a naked woman there once. He used go down to buy bait when he was too idle to dig his own. He maintained it was like a party inside, with all sorts being drunk, red spirit even, and indeed you often heard singing in the night hours. Shrieks too, and sometimes, worst of all, that mad laughter that goes on too long and loud.

  A marvel to picture tulips in such a place.

  The Banks was the worst, but all about there was hardship. The dwellings beyond his father’s shop, the courts behind the butcher’s. You heard them at times, and if the wind went strange you had to smell them. But if you looked, you need never see more than shops and solid house-fronts. And when he looked up Adelaide Road to his father’s shop on its watch upon the lane, he saw it for once not from his schoolfellows’ view, as a dowdy and hucksterish stores, but as his customers must see it: the last and least, but still part of the strip of well-to-do that hedged their lives.

  “Oft in the stilly night,

  ere slumber’s chain has bo-o-und me—”

  It was the drunk out of Fennelly’s who had begun to sing.

  “Fond memory brings the light

  of other days aro-und me—”

  Moore’s old melody. Under a gas-lamp he stood, in its puddle of light, lurching a little; his face cadaverous thin, though his voice, for all it rasped, surprising true. He aimed his song above the rooftops to where the night sky shimmered, while he told the tears of his boyhood years, the words of love he had spo-o-ken.

  So ardent did he sing, each note might carry a breath of his life. People passing stopped to hear. And seeing them gathered, he stumbled among them with his hat held out. It was easy to credit the truth of his song, that his dim old eyes, they once had shone, that his heart, once cheerful, had been bro-o-o-ken. Two coins chinkled in his hat. And so it was when nights were still and sleep had yet to bind him, round him shone that other light, fondly to remind him.