At Swim, Two Boys Part 10

"Butler's all mouth, but Fahy's a hard nut." He spat his bile on the rocks below.

Jim swallowed. The hand had lifted, but the tension it had induced remained. "Are we really to go to the Forty Foot?"

Doyler looked round as though the rocks would decide him. "Said you never been. Thought to show you was all."

"It'll be dark soon."

A flash of his grin. "I'll see you won't fall in," he said and the arm went round Jim's shoulder.

Gently this time, though still the touch shot through Jim's clothes, through his skin even. It was this way whenever their bodies met, if limping he brushed against him or laughing he squeezed his arm. The touch charged through like a sputtering tram-wire until it wasn't Doyler he felt but what Doyler touched, which was himself. This is my shoulder, this my leg. And he did not think he had felt himself before, other than in pain or in sin.

"Are we straight so?"

"Aye we're straight," said Jim.

"Straight as a rush, so we are."

The sh.o.r.e lay deserted in the last light of evening. The tide was far out, no sound bar a faint tingling and every now and then a wallow in the deeper pools. Doyler slipped down from the sea-wall to the rocks-"This is madness with our flutes," said Jim-and they slid their way across the scalp. Up and down he lurched, making odd heelers when his right foot failed. "Good for the balance," he maintained.

They skirted the ladies' bathing-place, that seemed a deep and untouched pool, and climbed instead the brawny ridges that thrust to the sea, over the brash and barnacled boulders to Sandycove Harbor. They rounded the cushiony sand outside then plunged in the mud of the breach. And it was queer to enter the harbor that way. Sea-wrack lay everywhere, a rank and oily flow. Hard above loomed the Martello tower, looking ghostly and portentous on its gra.s.sy knoll.

Doyler stopped to peer round. The sand was grey, for color had departed as evening dropped. Rivulets of silver veined its skin, save where the deep dark crept from the caves of stranded boats. The solemn houses of Sandycove looked inward against the night. In the west the clouds were one with the mountains. All was hushed save a crane behind that whispering flapped away. Then Doyler patted his bad leg and gave out a roar.

"What?" said Jim.

"Run!" he roared.

He charged up the slipway, slithering down and up again, roaring all the while, a wild yahoo of a yell.

For a moment Jim stalled, looking about and behind. His mouth had watered and it surprised him to find he had spat. His spittle pearled in the draining sand. Then his feet were running and the breath came fierce in his lungs, and still he roared while Doyler roared, up to the Point where the wind hit them with a coa.r.s.e cloth cuff; then round the battery wall, down the sloping winders, on through the shadows and shelters, down into the Forty Foot where their howls exhausted on the hanging rocks. They collapsed at the steps that dropped to the water where wavelets lapped, foamlessly lapping.

"That's me spent."

"Me too."

His heart was pounding like a throb in the rock and his ears dinned with stopped sound.

"That was madness with our flutes."

"That was madness with me leg."

It was grand though too, thought Jim.

The way they had fallen their bodies were heaped, Doyler's leg thrown over Jim's.

"Why did you run?"

"Why wouldn't I run?"

"You was roaring like billy-o."

"So was you."

Yet it hadn't seemed it was they who roared, but the stillness that had raged against them. Jim sat up, scrupulously removing his leg from under. Phosph.o.r.escent glimmers showed in the cove. Away on Howth the Bailey swept and the lightship at the Kish responded, mother and daughter, crotchet and quaver. In the corner of his eye, he caught the Muglins winking. He felt flushed and able. Forty Foot at last, gentlemen's bathing-place. He reached his hand to the water.

"Too cold for you?"

"Not at all," he answered.

"Best spot in Ireland for a dive and a dip. Should try it some time."

"At school they take us to the baths at Kingstown."

"What use is a baths at Kingstown? Come down here to the sea. Don't have to be scared. I'll see you right."

"Not scared," said Jim judiciously. "Not a strong swimmer is all."

"I'll learn you. What you need is the crawl. Best day is Sunday. Half-past ten, we'll have the place to ourself."

"But Ma.s.s is on then."

"Nail on the head. Swaddlers won't swim on the Lord's day, and the Catholics is hearing the Men's."

"You mean you'd skip off Ma.s.s on a Sunday?"

"Can't you catch another if it bothers you?"

"But do you miss Ma.s.s?"

"Ah miss it something dreadful." He stood up with a muttered, "Back in a crack," and wandered off behind the shelters. In the quiet Jim heard the scurry of feet, tiny animal scutterings. It was unfair that he had mentioned the baths in Kingstown. They did not let you in at the baths in Kingstown without you were wearing a collar and tie. Red blinked the Muglins light.

A body brushed behind and Doyler hunched down again. He was still b.u.t.toning his trousers and Jim turned aside.

"They do say there's a part.i.tion at the baths against the ladies' modesty. Is it true?"

"Some days all right."

"Well, sure as eggs, there's no ladies at the Forty Foot, nor little modesty neither."

He had his flute out now and he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the joints. "Does he never have anything Irish to play at that band," he asked, "old Polycarp?"

Jim thought through the repertoire. "St. Patrick's Day." "Brian Boru." "Garryowen."

Doyler spat. "Regimental marches. s.h.a.gging polis band does that. I mean real Irish."

"Would 'A Nation Once Again' be Irish?"

"Cod-Irish maybe. Like that priest's cod-Irish name. Father O'Taighleir. Did you ever hear the like? Right cabbage-looking patriot."

It was a puzzle that he'd make a jeer of a priest of G.o.d. A puzzle too how quick the ape would leap on his back and quickly then leap off again.

"Never thought I'd enjoy to give the old G.o.dsave, but I did that time, I tell you. Good on you, Polycarp. Puss on the priest was glorious to behold."

He leant forward on his sitting bones. His grin adjusted to the fluter's smile and he brought the instrument to his lips. Long opening note that was the breath of music, then he burst into play. Grace-notes galore, slurs and sudden staccatos, octave leaps inside of a triplet. The tune was oddly familiar though it took a while for Jim to place it. "G.o.d Save the King" done into a jig. Brother Polycarp would have been appalled, let alone the new father. But the walls of the Forty Foot rang about them.

In the dim light Jim could just make out the contortions that came over his face. It was like the flute was after surprising him there, he had no notion of that leap coming, fancy a flute putting pa.s.s-notes inside of that. The impression was of his cracked old stick having a will its own and Doyler merely following on.

After a time the virtuoso wore off. He slowed to a plainer air whose melancholy mode curled over the rocks and out to sea where waves flapped in mild percussion.

"You're after oiling it for me. Greased it too. I want to thank you for that."

Jim shrugged. "I was doing me own sure."

"Almond oil don't come cheap." He studied his instrument, toying with the bindings he'd made about the joins.

"Where did you learn to play that way?" Jim asked.

"My uncle knew a tinker out of Sligo who knew a traveler out of Roscommon who had the playing. Try along with me sure. Not difficult if it's slow like. Notes do mostly find themself."

Jim untied his sock, but not without reservation, for he'd been told often enough against shifts in temperature. Indeed he had only to look at Doyler's flute. But in the end it was Doyler's playing that decided him against, for he feared to disfigure it with his fumbling way. The music was remote and unresolved, wound about with slides and those yearning delays, not notes really, but the lingering between. It was like the harmony of another air whose melody he believed he could catch and maybe, had he the fingering, might one day play. He closed his eyes and it wrapped round him, the dark timbre that was breathy and warm; and he carried to black waters where a wave washed, or maybe two waves washed, under the star of an evening. The music ended, but a haunt of it hung on the air like the last heat of a grey fire.

Jim opened his eyes and realized that Doyler was speaking.

"Ca dteigheann an taoide nuair thagann an traghadh?

Mar a dteigheann an oidhche nuair thagann an la?"

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Just saw the tide had turned. It's an old thing they do say in Clare."

The tide indeed had turned. Waves sent gentle spume on the steps that divided the cove. Behind, unseen, a spray landed with indignant horsy snort. Doyler unscrewed his flute, whipped the bits in the air to dislodge any moisture. It was all the ceremony he had for its care.

It was time and past to go, but neither shifted. In silence they gazed on the dark mid-main, then Jim said, "I hadn't expected to find you gone that time."

And Doyler answered, "I looked for you to say goodbye but."

"But what?"

"I was in a stir leaving."

"All they knew was County Clare and they couldn't say when you'd be back and I kept thinking you'd be coming soon and then the college started and still no news and I knew then you were gone for good."

"I was down with my mother's people."

"They told me that all right."

Jim felt himself sloping like a weight was in his shoulder. His neck bristled when the arm came over and the hair of his skin felt the shock of touch as Doyler's mop brushed against his face.

"Old pal o' me heart," said Doyler.

And Jim said, "Cara macree."

"You remember that?"

"I do."

"We were good pals that time."

"We were great."

"I thought of you down in Clare I did. I'd say you'd like it down that way."

"I would?"

"We'll go one day, you and me together like. We'll stay on the island with my mother's people. And I'll show you the hut on the sh.o.r.e where we change for Ma.s.s. You'd laugh to see us. Traipsing in a grush of paupers, then out we troops in our Sunday majestics. They'd love you and all, with your college capeen." He tipped the back of Jim's cap so he had to catch it quick before the sea would take it.

"You'll have me murdered," he said.

"Hung, drawn and quartered," Doyler agreed. Then he added, "I wouldn't blame you going to the baths at Kingstown."

There was a note of absolution in his voice. In like vein Jim answered, "I'd say the sea would have more of a challenge all the same."

"There's that all right. There's many afraid they'll drown in the sea. Not Doyler though."

"Never?"

"Who's born to hang will never drown."

He had gathered spalls of rock in a heap which delicately now, one by one, he plopped in the water. "Will I tell you the story how I learnt me to swim?"

"Go on so."

"Himself pushed against me one time and I fell in."

Himself was how he called his father. "What happened?"

"Himself jumped in and rescued me, of course. They learnt him that in the army."

"And did he teach you after that?"