At Swim, Two Boys Part 28

d.a.m.nation once again. Rataplan of snares, thubadub of drum, breathless flutes. MacMurrough beat time with his baton in front, beat rather the boys' time than his own ordained. Keep things simple. His eyes strayed their hundredth time across the score; their hundredth time they scanned the words.

When boyhood's fire was in my blood, I read of ancient freemen, For Greece and Rome who bravely stood Three hundred men and three men.

Always something bathetic about a double rhyme. Besides, precious little to do with Ireland.

-It is a reference.

-s.c.r.o.t.es! All hail! You join us!

-A reference, if I am not mistaken, to the first Battle of Thermopylae, when the Spartan three hundred under Leonidas, their king, fell in honorable combat against the Persians.

-Fancy.

-The three, then, would be Horatius the one-eyed and his two companions who, in the brave days of old, defended the Sublician bridge.

-Well I never.

And then I prayed I yet might see Our fetters rent in twain, And Ireland, long a province, be A Nation Once Again.

-Stirring stuff. True, too. When boyhood's fire was in my blood, I did dream of ancient Greeks. Though I'm not sure three hundred and three l.u.s.ty spearmen isn't coming it a bit high.

The last rasp of the snare was like s.c.r.o.t.es's snort of disdain. Then the priest stepped forward, pattering bar-bar, and launched the band into prayer. Bar-bar done, he clapped his hands, commanding kilts. Subdued voices while the boys shifted from jackets and trousers. Careful boys, chary with their charms. Smell that would always carry to school. One by one they metamorphosed till before him ranked the heroes of Erin's past-if heroes they were who dazzled with shirts and golden-pleated cloth. They sat with their legs apart, a droop of skirt between their knees. How touching was their vulnerability then. Half-girl faces on man-size bodies. Till their caps c.o.c.ked and a braggartness stiffened their chatter. The breached masculinity of the unbreeched.

He thought of the monstrous urges of that age and the incommensurate imagination. It was astonishing that his aunt should flaunt such game before him. She distinctly did not take him seriously at all.

I should become a master at a small public school. And yet boys are tiresome after a time. I should visit down the back of the pier and find me out a sergeant-major. Pretend temples there that give out on the sea. Might have been built for the purpose.

His aunt had been raised to a type of honorary male, for she remained in the summerhouse while the boys changed, albeit with her back to them, talking now with her priest and the queer card who taught the boys drill. In keeping with this status she had dressed in sober worsted. He thought of her wardrobe: billowy Lucilles in surprising neighborhood to frumpy reforms. And those Poiret pajamas she relaxed into of an evening. Aunt Eva in trousers and boys in skirts. What an interesting nation it will be.

It was s.c.r.o.t.es he had a mind to speak with, but d.i.c.k was nudging him, and at last he allowed his eyes to settle on the front row. Master Doyle, how are ye. How he leapt for joy, did d.i.c.k, to know, of a couple dozen fresh-faced lads, one already had drunk his s.p.u.n.k.

Has an out-of-the-way face, our young friend. Not unlovely, but as if the features had yet to take root. Jug-eared and mop-haired, lips slapped on with a raddle-brush. Reminds me of a game Nanny used to play: you got a potato and fixed it with b.u.t.tons and pegs and shards of old crockery till you'd made a little man. A face of sc.r.a.ps and hand-me-downs where nothing as yet quite fits. All save the eyes, darkly avoiding me.

Yes, he avoided him now. MacMurrough did not know what, but something had pa.s.sed between them: the boy was no longer agreeable. Young chap beside most like, little comfort for the troops. The merest glance and that one's blood came flooding. What secret shame doth rose thy Ganymede cheek? Entirely desirable. I have Master Doyle's word on it that should ever I lay a hand to that one, I'm deh meah. Yet my cup runneth over shouldst thou bear it to me. Watching, MacMurrough felt his fingers for claws.

He could hear this boy's father prattling to Aunt Eva and her priest about some detail of apparel. An officer's sash goes opposite ways to a non-com's. Well, most fathers are hard to conceive. Who would suspect the stiff-necked widow-peaked raven in London for my progenitor? Certainly the progenitor had his doubts.

Something in the comfort's manner, like homage. Holds Doyle's flute for him while Doyle attends his stockings. Quickly shines it with his cloth. Doyle takes it back, breathes a silent tune, Dryden's soft complaining flute. My hero.

-Ah, said Nanny Tremble, it's the lovely sight to see the two maneens together. When friends meet the heart warms.

It was true there was an attraction in their friendship. How many mornings have I gone down the sea? Charge myself to join in their swim. Well, G.o.d knows, might even be of some help. d.i.c.k is certain he could teach a stroke or two. End up on the bench by the Martello instead. Like the tramp in the V&A who marvels at beauty: he wants to touch but, should he touch, the marble is sullied. Lured and stopped by the same desire.

-The Victoria and Albert, s.c.r.o.t.es observed, is justly famed for its divers wonders. Not the least of which, from a tramp's consideration, is a roof which shelters from the elements.

-Good old s.c.r.o.t.es, always to hand for a bring-me-down. I feared you had deserted us.

-It is not for the scabrid knees I have delayed. I wished to regard the two boys in question. Do you think they may be lovers?

MacMurrough conjured Arcadian groves where lover and beloved, ephebes both, reclined upon the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. Cicadas sang in the boughs above, where olives swelled in the sun. Or it was later in the palaestra when, weary of wrestling, lover draws down the tender blade to sc.r.a.pe the beloved's sweat. Of serious things they speak.

Back in the summerhouse, he saw Doyle pull off the comfort's cap and search inside. He made play of finding a morsel therein, a louse indeed. Plucks it, plops it in his mouth. Delicious, grins his face. Giggling, reddening, the comfort turns aside.

-Not in any Greek sense, MacMurrough answered.

-Lovers none the less?

-It is not impossible. They have youth.

-Would age forbid them?

-Rather youth permits. The not knowing and the slowness of days. Lack of imagination may move mountains.

-Quaere: did you love at their age?

-Oh well, said MacMurrough, thinking back. There was a boy at school, I suppose. We became quite regular. One time, we'd been at it, and I turned round and held him. Is this love? I asked. I suppose it is, he answered. And we both sat back, not touching, thinking the same I suppose, the vacuity of it. We stopped soon after. He smelt, I remember, of oranges.

The priest clapped his hands again, the detail of sashes apparently decided, and the boys trooped out to the garden. In the evening light MacMurrough watched their parade. The antics of their instructor had amused at first, until he had discovered in the man's eagerness an innocence childlike as the boys'. In profile he saw the faces of his aunt and her priest. A dusk of midges danced above but their features were set like grim tutelaries. It struck him how little pleasure they gained of the boys and of their callow willingness to please. How little shame they felt of their exactions. The glances of the boys cut him and he foresaw in an inkling the thousand uses their willingness would be put to, until their faces changed, until they too were set.

He ambled towards the sea. He asked s.c.r.o.t.es what he had made of his aunt's disquisition over lunch. s.c.r.o.t.es replied saying, O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well! Which brought knowing smiles to their bookish faces.

The sun on a stone wall-yellow, gold, bronze, red-metal-shaded through and was gone in moments. He smoked with his ear to the waves and he thought of a ten-year-old boy whose rollicking kingdom this sh.o.r.e had been. Truly, he was a happy child.

-What did your aunt intend, s.c.r.o.t.es asked, when she spoke of the good people taking you away?

-The fairies, MacMurrough answered. They take the beautiful boy and leave a changeling brute in his place.

He looked back up the lawns to where the boys still paraded. In their golden kilts they looked like tulips, tulips which glowed and marched in the dusk.

-We're G.o.ds, he said. And these our playthings.

-There are many G.o.ds, returned s.c.r.o.t.es. Many to whom even you are but a whim.

-Ah yes, scaly-eyed Themis, guardian of law.

-One was thinking of Eros, whose arrows pierce and bring life.

Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.

And yet not boys but youth itself. Distance detached them, water unformed them, particularities washed away. Nasal whine, feet that smelt, these were accidents of their mundane selves. The sea proposed an ideal, unindividuate, sublime. Above on my perch I sit and watch. Alone one man.

-Not entirely alone, said s.c.r.o.t.es.

-No, MacMurrough conceded. One is never alone with the ghost of a friend.

He took up his towel as though to make room, patted it on his lap. In return s.c.r.o.t.es heaved a sigh, his weary limbs to ease, as if. Side by side they sat, chatting of this and that. With the boys swimming below, it was only natural their conversation should turn to friendship; and s.c.r.o.t.es remarked that the ancients had considered friendship a stimulus to virtue. The Philosopher, he further observed, went so far as to raise friendship to a virtue of itself. MacMurrough wondered was that still so, and s.c.r.o.t.es thought no, that its role had been subsumed in the family.

-Why should that be?

s.c.r.o.t.es did not immediately say, and MacMurrough conjectured that the family was more easily governed. Certainly friendship had its political implications and s.c.r.o.t.es was able to advance instances of friends who had effected risings and revolts against despots and bullies. Tyrants, so Plato said, stand in awe of friends. The question then arose: was friendship incidental or essential to these actions? MacMurrough inclined to the latter view; for friendship, he maintained, tending to the good of both friends, by extension might seek the good of all. s.c.r.o.t.es wondered might the same not be said of families? From this proposition MacMurrough dissented, discovering as he spoke what seemed to him the differentia of those two inst.i.tutions: the one, being generative, must seek its interest against the compet.i.tive generation of others; the other, owning no posterity, was free of such claims. Might we then say, asked s.c.r.o.t.es, that the virtues advanced by two such differing inst.i.tutions should themselves be different?

-It seems we very well might, MacMurrough replied.

And it was pleasant to speak of such things while on their windy prominence they sat. Below, the boys thithered and thenced to the raft and back. Three times, four times, five times, six. Like mating ducks they swam: parallel but one slightly ahead.

-And if it be the case that the one has subsumed the other, s.c.r.o.t.es continued, might we not then infer that the virtues advanced by the one are more in kilter with the times than the virtues advanced by the other?

-It seems inevitable that we should, said MacMurrough.

-What, then, are the virtues advanced by friendship?

MacMurrough replied that they were surely divers and legion; but that the cardinal virtue of friendship must be selflessness. That quality, he maintained, was exampled in all the heroic friendships, but for its cynosure he chose Castor and Pollux, opining that greater love hath no man than this, that Pollux laid down his immortality for his friend. He touched on the loyalty of Damon and Pythias and lightly glanced on Sergius and Bacchus and other couplings of the Christian calendar who had found in their friendship the fort.i.tude to accept their martyrs' crowns. Of the Sacred Band of Thebes he spoke, which at Chaeronea fell, each friend by his lover's side, and told how Philip of Macedon had wept for such valor, pledging through his candid tears, "Woe unto them who think evil of such men." Of Achilles and Patroclus he naturally spoke, of Pylades and Orestes (nomina fama tenet), of Theseus and Pirithous, of Nisus and Euryalus. Nor, in pa.s.sing to the modern era, did Summoner and Pardoner, Colin and Hobbinol, the two kings of Brentford, Sir Symphony and Sir Foeminine Fanviles, Chapman and Keats, Burke and Hare, Fortnum and Mason, Gilbert and Sullivan, Hook and Snivey, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels escape his survey, but all were mentioned, and the virtue exemplified by each particular friendship was granted its due regard.

-What, then, are the virtues advanced by family? asked s.c.r.o.t.es.

But MacMurrough was becoming bored with this now. Down below, the boys had touched the raft their seventh time and now they clung to the ropes. On kindlier mornings they would climb aboard, but the wind was too chill today. They rested in the water, chatting, he supposed, catching their breath, friends.

-You know, he said to s.c.r.o.t.es, I remember at my school the monks discouraged particular friendships. Particular friendships they condemned, if not as sin, as occasions gravid with its potential.

-Friendship tending to love may tend to desire, said s.c.r.o.t.es.

-Yes, but desire was there anyway. We all desired. We were riven with it. The monks policed friendship but all they effected was a s.e.xual abandon. Instead of fumbling with love, we fumbled in the dark.

MacMurrough then descanted on desire's having itself been the cause of friendship's fall. For whereas desire (by which, he informed s.c.r.o.t.es, he intended carnal desire) was for the pantheists unproblematical (s.c.r.o.t.es raised his eyebrows at this), in the teleological universe of the theists (by which, he informed s.c.r.o.t.es, he intended the Christian worldview) the gratification of that desire being fruitless (excepting the pleasure it afforded), it was therefore purposeless, and what was purposeless was of itself contrary to a purposeful G.o.d's will, therefore sinful.

s.c.r.o.t.es thought this rather a long-winded way of saying Christians disapproved of schoolboys jumping into each other's beds and MacMurrough had to laugh at his gentle teasing.

s.c.r.o.t.es allowed, nevertheless, there was something in what MacMurrough had said and by way of ill.u.s.trating this allowance he quoted from Augustine who had polluted the vein of friendship with the filth of desire polluted the vein of friendship with the filth of desire-a phrase, s.c.r.o.t.es remarked, which would mean nothing to the Greeks, for whom friendship and desire were congenial (if MacMurrough would forgive the paronomasia) bedfellows. And yet, s.c.r.o.t.es continued, even for the Christians, friendship was not irremediably flawed for, as Augustine later confessed, it was his love for his friend that brought him closer to his G.o.d-a notion, said s.c.r.o.t.es, worthy of the Athenian Bee himself.

Such gentlemanly discussion, so affably did they speak, MacMurrough felt a rising grat.i.tude for his old friend. He was a decent sort was s.c.r.o.t.es. True, he had taken to haranguing of late; but this morning it was like old times again, when they had had leisure in the sick-ward at Wandsworth to converse. Not conversation by any civilized standard, but a kind of a mussitation, the prisoner's half-mime half-whisper, under the nodding eye of an orderly. Funny old man with his donnish ways. His courtesy had affronted the warders whose satisfaction lay in black looks and oaths unuttered. At first MacMurrough had conceived it a kindness on his part that he should take an interest in the fellow. Months pa.s.sed before he understood it was the odd old fellow who had taken him in charge. Their friendship became his refuge; their talks his reprieve. That old man's nidorous whispered breath had entered into MacMurrough's heart an insufflation of-of what, exactly?

MacMurrough could not exactly say. He sniffed now, and sniffing caught the smell of hearthstone and heartbreak that had tenanted those echoing halls, those echoing halls, those echoing, those.

Whatever about that, he was sure this morning they were getting along famously. Indeed, he was coming to the opinion they had their subject nicely wrapped; when s.c.r.o.t.es of a sudden smacked his palm on the flat of his forehead and exclaimed, -First principles!

MacMurrough queried the void beside and repeated the curious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

-Here we are discussing the media, s.c.r.o.t.es elaborated, through which virtue may be advanced, without firstly having decided what virtue may be.

It was a grievous fault and they immediately set about its rectification. s.c.r.o.t.es, as was his use, delved to the root of the word and expounded its meaning as that which befits a man. As such, he said, virtue in its original was unavailable to women. Whereupon MacMurrough introduced a lighter note, to wit, nowadays the reverse held true, virtue being most commonly construed an instinct, proper in girls, to preserve their virginity, and in women to nurture the results of its loss.

Between these extremes, they had stoics at the door, epicureans to dinner, they had cynics snapping at their heels. Doctors they examined, angelic, subtle and invincible. They pa.s.sed from the sophists' virtue of the interest of the strong over the weak to its happier sibling, latterly denominated enlightened self-interest, but whose epitome they found in Matthew 7:12. Of mechanicalists they spoke, of rites and taboos; of revelationists, of ultimate goodness, of the soul. Of himeros, himeros, the desire that strikes the spirit through the eyes; of the desire that strikes the spirit through the eyes; of pothos, pothos, the soul's yearning for its separated love. Injunctions detained them: the soul's yearning for its separated love. Injunctions detained them: Gnosce teipsum Gnosce teipsum; Cogita ut sis. Cogita ut sis. Nor did the utilitarian ethic of the greatest happiness of the greatest number escape their attention. Did they speak of the hedonic calculus and the is/ought problem? Most a.s.suredly. As also of imperatives, categorical and hypothetical; of eudemonia and pandemonium. Nor did the utilitarian ethic of the greatest happiness of the greatest number escape their attention. Did they speak of the hedonic calculus and the is/ought problem? Most a.s.suredly. As also of imperatives, categorical and hypothetical; of eudemonia and pandemonium. Tabulae rasae Tabulae rasae-these were not omitted. Neither were hedonics, aesthetics, the Balmorality of good Queen Vic, the Ibsenity of the drama.

Was any science or branch of science, pertinent to their inquiry, omitted? Yes; axiology. On what account? MacMurrough's having forgotten for the moment what axiology meant. When reference was made to mechanical religion, did they happen to mention that taboos in the main are topographical, alimentary, bodily? To be sure. What rough-hewn witticism did MacMurrough thereupon interject? He postulated the most unvirtuous man of all, who fetched off in chapel while eating sweets. Did they laugh? They did.

Was MacMurrough satisfied with the course of their inquiry? Immediately, yes; ultimately, no. On what account was he ultimately dissatisfied? On account of his remembering that s.c.r.o.t.es was no longer with him. To what may be attributed s.c.r.o.t.es's absence? His being dead. Was this a sad fact? Without the least shadow of a doubt. What logical implicative was employed by MacMurrough, the unforeseen consequence of which was his realization of s.c.r.o.t.es's unbeing? If . . . then. State the protasis. If s.c.r.o.t.es had really been there on the bench. And the apodosis? Then he had reminded MacMurrough the meaning of axiology. All together now in oratio recta. oratio recta. "If you really were s.c.r.o.t.es, you'd b.l.o.o.d.y well know what axiology meant." "If you really were s.c.r.o.t.es, you'd b.l.o.o.d.y well know what axiology meant."

Was MacMurrough brought up sharp by this iteration? He was, figuratively. How did it affect him? Coldly, literally. Name three emotions of similar character that MacMurrough felt. Grief, loss, regret. Of which the greatest was? Loss. What did MacMurrough say? He said: "You left me the writing, old man, but not the cipher. You left me the words without their meaning. They dance on pins for me now, but with you I had the glimmering of answers. You are gone and I but know enough to mock." What quality, hitherto unmentioned, did MacMurrough thereupon ascribe to friendship? Kindness. Please to elaborate. His friendship with s.c.r.o.t.es had given him to feel kinder to the world; their parting had left him kindless.

What of the boys swimming? They let go the raft's ropes and swam their final length to the cove. The walls secreted them as they left the water like the earth would clothe whose nakedness belonged in the sea.

What does axiology mean? MacMurrough no longer cared. What did he do?

He got up and left the bench. At half-past eleven he saw his aunt off on her motoring spree to the mountains. He followed the car up the drive and peered inside the lodge. Derelict, roofless, yet someone made his home there. The kitchen maid found him and asked about his lunch. He told her he would chop at the Pavilion Gardens. Then he told her to take the afternoon off. He told Cook to take the afternoon off. His munificence might have extended to the gardener and the gardener's lad and to the gardener's lad's lad, save he came not across them. To the bootman he gave a three-quarter bottle of dry sherry wine.

But this was not kindness, merely the hunter's preparations. At half-past one he spied his prey, kicking its heels along the sea-wall. Dawdling thither, he sprang.

"Afternoon off, is it?"

"Could say that. Short time they has us on."

MacMurrough curtailed a smirk: he was well aware of the boy's working arrangements. "Anything special in mind?"

"Home."

The boy kicked stones. MacMurrough clicked the coins in his sovereign-purse. "Wouldn't fancy a spot of lunch, I suppose?"

"Lunch, would you listen. Where would I get lunch?"

"Anywhere, I should have thought. I was thinking of the Pavilion Gardens, if you wanted to join me."

"Get in off the gra.s.s. Doyler in the Pavvo. That'll be the day."