At Swim, Two Boys Part 29

"Serious. Come, my treat."

"Thanks all the same but."

"Why ever not? No strings, company only. My word of honor."

That raised a smile. The face plained immediately after. "Need only look at the state of me."

It had to be admitted he was in rather a muck. Funny, really. After those months inside, forgotten how my nose would turn up. Perhaps we should all spend a term in quod. Debt the leveller. "Walk with me anyway. Bored talking with myself."

They pa.s.sed the fellows who fished along the sea-wall and the boy spat derisively after them. "Too much larking for real fishing."

"What do they catch?"

"Pollack if they're lucky. Cook it as whitebait. Dabs, I suppose. Mostly all that lot'd catch is cold."

Father tickling trout. Why did he bring me along? Tedium of those hours not allowed to speak. Struggle of the fish against the line, end always so flat. The pity of it served up at supper. Test of a true hunter-Do you eat your catch?

Doyler. I wonder what a doyler does. He doyles of course. But what is doyling? "Have you really nothing to change into?"

"I have a shirt all right."

"No more?"

"You don't want to know very much, do you, Mr. MacMurrough?"

"I didn't intend . . . I don't wish to pry."

"'S all right. I know what you meant. This is where I turn."

High wall by a mud lane which MacMurrough had always supposed led nowhere. So that's where the smell comes from.

"So now you know where I live. And it's me ma as cleans your dirty sheets, Mr. MacMurrough. So don't be thinking I'll be coming with you, you understand that now?"

"Wait a minute, can't you?"

"Wait for what?"

"Just talk. Can't we talk?"

The boy squinted up the lane then back at MacMurrough. "Talk so."

"About lunch-"

"I already told you about that."

"What if I were to arrange a suit of clothes?"

He snorted. "You kidding me on?"

"We could go up George's Street. What's it called, Lee's. Just something made-up."

"You'd really buy me a suit? Where's the sell? You want your jeer at me in the Pavilion, is it?"

"Forget the Pavilion."

"Why, then?"

"Does it matter why?"

"Matters to me."

MacMurrough felt an anger rising, which really he might have contained. But, feeling liberal, he let the lid off a squeeze and said, "If you don't recognize friendship when it's offered, that's your misfortune." And he strode purposefully off. He had gone a dozen yards and had quite despaired of human nature, when the boy called after.

"No strings at all?"

"I told you, none."

Some further jittering but MacMurrough in victory could be a patient soul. At length the boy smiled, in what MacMurrough was pleased to decide was a doyling way and, having doyled deliciously, he said, "Wait for us, then. Be back in a crack." And the lovable legs went gamely tripping.

-Nicely tickled, said d.i.c.k.

And the chaplain said, That guttersnipe is out for anything he may get.

But Nanny Tremble thought he'd look dandy in a nice clean suit. Tweed, she proposed, out of Donegal. For I'm sure it looks awful damp where he stays.

MacMurrough glanced at the sky, whose lowering clouds were edged in sun. He smiled at the fishing men who, too, unhungrily hunted. He looked up the lane, feeling in his pocket his sovereign-purse, pondering wise old saws upon muck and bra.s.s and how amiably they got along, those commodities.

A boy was scampering over the far rocks. MacMurrough watched him. An unkempt but well-dressed boy, ten years old, maybe younger, lost in a private world with his gla.s.s jar and collecting-net. Through his feet and his scrambling hands, MacMurrough had a sense of the stones and sand and barnacles and wet. And breathing his air, he savored the lazy freedom of holidays. The boy stopped suddenly, as though something had struck him. He stood poised on a slip of rock, attending as if he heard a whisper in the faraway or glimpsed a shadow in the deep of his eye.

MacMurrough was seized with a certainty he would turn. The boy would turn and he would see MacMurrough and a horror of recognition would come on his face.

He stepped back till the wall stopped him. But the boy did not turn. His head shook the disturbance clear. Then, dipping behind an outcrop, he was gone.

Hobbling feet told Doyler's return. "You changed your mind," he said immediately he saw MacMurrough's face.

MacMurrough looked down on the soap-bright phiz. His hair was smarmed and a new shirt blossomed, collarless but clean, inside his new-brushed serge. Really he had ought to send him packing. "Not changed my mind at all," he said. He dropped the stub of a cigarette, unmindful of having smoked it. His eyes peeked along the sh.o.r.e where the little boy had been. Gone. "Are we ready?"

"No strings," Doyler repeated in a tone that would admonish himself more than MacMurrough.

MacMurrough's hand patted his b.u.m. "Not that a little feel would go astray."

His face washed and his mind made up, Doyler could laugh. "Mary and Joseph, but you're the heathenest case I did ever meet."

A Man Of Moderate Means Finds True Economy In A Suit!

A Suit Will Give A Man Ease, Spirit, Confidence!

A Suit Will Make A Man Know His Worth!

The boy read the notices as they pa.s.sed down the aisle. He snorted and MacMurrough said, "Just think what an overcoat would achieve."

It took the name of Ballygihen House to get decent ministration and MacMurrough was happy to give it. The mask in charge became a face with a welcome. Man and boy he had served the MacMurroughs of Ballygihen. "And let me see, you must be . . . ?"

"Nephew," said MacMurrough.

"The nephew," he repeated. "Over from England if I do not mistake. I hope now and you're enjoying your stay with us?"

The tone was familiar, a custom of the Irish servantry which at times MacMurrough found charming. Today, however, it was crack service he required and he rapped on a gla.s.s-topped case. "Is there anyone in charge who can see to me? My friend here needs a suit."

"I was thinking the very same thought myself," said the man.

He could feel Doyler fl.u.s.tering beside him. The Irish a.s.surance with which he'd entered the store leaked away under the sidelong stares. MacMurrough sighed. "Can't you just find us something? We have a meeting this afternoon with my nephew's solicitor."

"The young gentleman's solicitor, no less. Well sir, you have come to the appropriate shop. A suit bought at Lee's of Kingstown will give ease, spirit, confidence to any man or youth that wears it. Matthew! Matthew!" he called. "Where are these fellows when you need them? Always on the gallivant, what? On the gay galoot, I don't doubt it. Matthew, will you show the young gentleman to the fitting-room and take his measurements for him. Have you given any thought to the cloth you'd be thinking of? Tweed, we have found, is a rough hard-wearing fabric and will often show to the best in difficult weathers."

"He's not going ratting. We want something smart."

"No, I like tweed," piped Doyler.

"The young gentleman has a mind his own. Let you go with Matthew till he gets the measure of you, and Mr. MacMurrough and myself will decide what is proper."

Doyler hung behind, looking doubtful. Though he didn't feel like it, MacMurrough winked and nodded for him to follow the boy. "Where may I sit?"

"Take the weight off your legs, please do, Mr. MacMurrough. Is it Anthony now it is?"

"Do I know you?"

"Not at all. Though I have served the MacMurroughs, man and gorsoon, these forty years, I wouldn't doubt it. Over from London. Your aunt will be mighty glad to have you on her hands. Is it for the recuperation you have come? I dare say it is never the local sights that has you brought this way out from Piccadilly."

It seeped into MacMurrough like the grease off his tongue. Newspaper reports, of course. And one had begun to forget. Had begun to imagine n.o.body would care. Aunt Eva, d.a.m.ned seductrix. He smoked while the walker extolled his cloths, slipping his head between the rails of ready-mades and his palter inside his patter. Terrible shortage of young men this season. Due to the war, he wouldn't doubt it. The trouble in finding a willing boy. No sooner found than he was off to enlist. One had to take them as one found them these days. Had he noticed a similar shortage in England? Of clerks, he meant.

There was more to it than newspapers. Something stickier in his ointment. "He'll need shoes too."

"Boots or shoes? Will we settle for high-lows? That way they may be serviceable to the young gentleman after his meeting with the solicitor."

MacMurrough waved a hand. "And a shirt. Tie, collar."

"One of each will be ample. One pair cuffs, one pair holders, one pair studs. Will the young gentleman be wanting a nether integuments with his outfit?"

"What?"

The walker bent to whisper. "A drawers, I was meaning."

It had gone beyond a joke. MacMurrough rose. "Do you pretend to practice upon me?" But his searing eyes caught the man's urgency which betrayed little nastier than a wish to engage. Good grief, he's a sod. All it is. d.a.m.n fellow's one of us. He laughed out loud. "A drawers? No, my nephew doesn't wear them. Most unhealthy."

"I quite agree," said the walker. "A needless enc.u.mbrance on the young."

MacMurrough chuckled on so that he had to leave the gentlemen's outfitting and wander about the store. He touched things, silk and satin, then went out in the street, sniffed the breezy air. They change the sky not their soul who run across the sea. But he could think of unpleasanter ports of refuge. His boy was in good hands, if not auspiciously safe ones. He took a turn round the town.

Outside the Catholic church he read the news bills. He looked at the flowers and considered a b.u.t.tonhole. A chap sat on the steps in whose eyes he saw d.i.c.k's as they followed the Sat.u.r.day skirt. Wintry face of the flower-seller.

How delightful it was to spend money. There was a thrill in providing for another that was close to, if not actually, s.e.xual. A thrill that very nearly, though not quite, sufficed.

A wedding left the church and, meeting a funeral, walked three steps with the dead. Three girls like miniature nuns, their shawls pulled over their heads, pa.s.sed a little tramp who fed his dog with little crumbs of bread. He tossed his b.u.t.t in the gutter and a boy retrieved it whose magic blows reglowed its end. Under a barber's pole old men stooped. The church bells rang, signifying something. With holiday ears MacMurrough heard, with holiday eyes he watched.

He came upon an old man on a bench, and feeling the sulter of weather and fumes, he thought to share a while the shade and the old man's air of being at ease with the world. He nodded, sitting down, and the gentleman tipped his hat. His old lips smacked and made gummy calculations; then he coughed, and coughing became s.c.r.o.t.es, who presently leant forward and inquired of MacMurrough, -Who are we?

-I'm sorry, old man?

-The gentleman in the haberdashery. You mentioned he was one of us. Who are we?

-Sinners, old man, said MacMurrough laughing. Habitual degenerates in the making.

Doyle was emerging from the fitting-room when MacMurrough returned to the store. He had chosen his own cloth in the end, a bright brown tweed with gas-pipe trousers. The man and his boy fussed with the turn-up. Doyler wore a look of mortification.

"It is only a temporary st.i.tch we had opportunity to put in, but the young gentleman believes there is at home a practiced hand who will make it the more durable for him. Else I would tap my toes and insist on Lee's quality alterations."

"How do I look?"

"See for yourself." MacMurrough led him to a body-gla.s.s and the boy turned this way and that.

"Don't hardly recognize meself."

"Do you know what you look like?" MacMurrough was about to say an apprentice chauffeur-mechanic. But he stopped himself. He might be a boy from his schooldays. He might be any mother's son.

"What do I look like?"

"Gilbert the filbert."

"The knut with a K?"

"The pride of Piccadilly, the blase roue."

As a last touch MacMurrough pulled a cap from a stand and landed it on his head. It was a wide flat cap which childed his face and made his eyes look deeper than ever.

"Are you sure you're sure about this?"

"Quite certain."

"For free?"