At Swim, Two Boys Part 30

"Free-but you might come to the Pavilion with me."

He grinned. And with ease, spirit, confidence, said, "Never mind the Pavvo. Go to the s.h.a.gging Flower Ball in this rig-out."

MacMurrough signed at the desk, and in his ears the chaplain's words of doom: Your aunt will know of this. The account will be queried, questions will be asked. All for a grin and a foolish will to win.

They were wrapping Doyler's tats in a parcel. Sparing his gloves, the clerk used expendable hands. Doyler broke in and said, "Hold on a crack," and he rummaged through the mess of his jacket. He found the pin on the inside of his lapel and quickly transferred it to its new concealment.

"Well, then, are you sorted?"

"Right I am."

"Pavvo beware," blarnied MacMurrough.

"Listen to you. It's you is supposed to rub off on me."

-If there is any G.o.d, said d.i.c.k.

"Sticky buns?"

"All right."

"And an a.s.sortment of buns," MacMurrough told the waitress. He tilted his chair and stretched his legs on the paving. "Touch crowded this afternoon."

"Sat.u.r.day, aye."

"Shame about lunch."

"Cakes is fine but."

They were seated in a portico giving on the gardens. The band had removed temporarily for their teas and the air sustained a patter as though the trees received a dry adumbration of drizzle. Waitresses in white forked ap.r.o.ns swept past for all the world like mobile Ys. The boy hunched with a stiff neck. Only his eyes roamed and, roaming, gleamed.

"Not a bad spot, I suppose," MacMurrough conceded.

"Slap-up so it is."

"Told you you'd enjoy it."

"Sure I been before," said Doyler. "Many's the time I snook in the Pavvo."

"I see." Rather a disappointment.

"Hawking the newspapers, of course. Could always reckon on ten minutes to get a sheaf of them sold. If you was quick like and handy with the makes. Then they catched on to you and it was out on your ear with a boot up the b-t-m. They had a down on newsboys, thinking us thiefs. But the takings was good while it lasted. Makes," he added, having considered his eloquence, "is ha'pennies you do give for change."

The tea arrived with the sticky buns. Nanny Tremble fretted about manners and the chaplain complained of sulphurous breaths. But toggery maketh gentle man: almond-eyed Doyler viewed the stand; morsure at a time, he chewed like a choirboy.

He leant forward over the table carnations. "You see the one what brung the tray?"

"What about her?"

"She's after dropping her scent in the tea-pot."

MacMurrough conspired in his smile and said, "You might have a soda, if you preferred."

"No, tea is grand."

Behaving as though I really did have a nephew.

The boy supped, swallowed, said, "Tea is quite satisfactory, I thank you."

Which jollied the occasion no end. They chatted a time, then the boy looked hole-and-corner about him. Again he leant closer. "Do you mind me asking?"

"Ask away."

"Is there many about that likes what you do?"

A long draw on his Abdulla. He stubbed it out. "I don't know, actually. Common enough for there to be laws against it."

"Wouldn't mind the law."

Antinomian little b.u.g.g.e.ree.

"Only the young fellow in Lee's what measured me up, he said to me was you my gent. Said he had a gent and all. Said the walker there does look after him nicely. Then do you know what he did?"

Yes, thought MacMurrough, though his brows rose in candid query.

"d.a.m.n fellow had a squeeze at me flowers and frolics." He sat back in consternation. "What would he want doing a thing like that?"

He was genuinely mystified. MacMurrough said, "Perhaps he liked you."

"Liked me? Sure he wasn't rich."

This leap of logic required another cigarette. MacMurrough lit one slowly, then flicked the match. "Does one need to be rich to enjoy the company of a handsome young man?"

"Am I handsome?"

MacMurrough pulled deeply and savored the smoke, smiling his eyes on the boy's face. "Yes."

"And you're rich. Rich as crazes, you are."

"My family might be. Myself, I haven't a bean."

"How bad you are. Wasting away, I can tell."

Little brat is teasing me now. "Money is irrelevant to desire. Only it helps to overcome another's shyness. That's all."

"No, it's not all."

"Explain."

"You think any fellow would want another fellow?"

s.c.r.o.t.es. Where was b.l.o.o.d.y s.c.r.o.t.es when you needed him? "I don't see why not. I don't say every fellow. But look at the clerk in Lee's."

"That's me point sure. If it wasn't for the walker as led him into it, he wouldn't think to do that. If it wasn't for meeting you I wouldn't be . . ."

"Wouldn't be what?"

"I wouldn't be sitting here, that's all."

Comfort for the troops. He wants his friend. He actually wants his friend. Briefly MacMurrough glimpsed balmy waters where ephebes naked bathed. And on his bench, in pallium draped, their tutor kindly watches. Pulling on an Abdulla.

"He means a lot to you."

"Who does?"

"Your friend."

The eyes flared and, sneering, he said, "Don't think I don't cop you getting your eyeful of us swimming."

Coolly MacMurrough replied, "Not watching so much as waiting my turn. Wouldn't seem right, somehow, disturbing your lessons."

The sneer curled the corner of his mouth while he considered this. The l.u.s.ter dulled in his eyes; his head bent. In its stead reared Mammon's nummular n.o.b.

"They do say money is the root of all evil."

"I thought that was supposed to be the love of money."

"There's neat for you. 'Tis them without that loves it best. That puts Doyler in his place. Doyler and all his kind."

Nanny Tremble thought another sticky bun and a refreshment of the cups was in order and MacMurrough did the honors. "Look here, do we have to talk about money?"

"Talk what you like. It's you what's paying."

"I thought we'd got past all this."

"Oh well, d.a.m.n the thing anyway." He seized a bun and took a munch of it, dominoes flashing between spittled dough. "You can have the suit back if you wants it."

Was this good humor returning? MacMurrough searched till he found a little doyle that with coaxing might grow to a doyling full grin. "Would you let me watch you take it off?"

"Go away, you-I don't what you are. A bad lot for sure."

Friends again and honors easy. Time for a change of subject. "That badge you're so careful about. I've noticed before. Some religious attachment?"

Quick dart of his eyes. "Religion, me a.r.s.e. I'm a socialist."

"An agitator, no less. In the Pavilion Gardens."

He liked that. "Never know where we'd be." He turned the lapel and screwed his eyes to view it. "Badge of the Citizen Army. Nor King nor Kaiser we serve, but Ireland. Meaning the working man."

"Why do you hide it?"

"Don't hide it."

Very well. "Why do you wear it where no one can see?"

He let go the lapel and fussily patted it down. "They have them banned at work. Door to the street if they catched you wearing your badge. I suppose and you could say I have it hidden. Hard to know what's for the best. You know why I got this job?"

"Good worker? Hard worker? Honest?"

"The owner was after letting the men go for to encourage them to list. Great plaudits he got for that day's work. Then he employs us boys at half the rate. He has the union banned. What can you do? Half the rate means half a loaf but nix means nothing on the table. They don't like you to have ideals. Ideals is for likes of you. For your aunt and the father."

"Yet you still have ideals."

"Aye do I. I have the words of them. I have a badge I don't dare to show."

It was a tale of woe which was just verging on the tedious. "Can be hard to believe in something when the world's against it."

"Aye aye, and what do you believe in, Mr. MacMurrough?"

A wasp buzzed about him and he felt, or apprehended, the small breeze of its wings. The terrace sloped to trees at the bottom and there beyond the railway began the harbor, whose arms reached to cuddle a calm. Swifts or swallows darted low in the air. An Irish summer: half-hour's sunshine between the showers. G.o.d help the rain if it thought to pour on Aunt Eva's fete. "Believe that I exist," he said.

"Aren't you the bold one."

"Bolder than you might think. I have a friend, or rather I had one, he's dead now; but he believed that I existed."

A compursion of the boy's face. "Does it mean something I don't understand?"

"That we existed, he and I, and others like us." MacMurrough shifted in his chair. A voice was wondering why he bothered with this; an innominate voice which was plausibly his own. "You asked me earlier were there many of us about. The question for my friend was, were there any of us at all. The world would say that we did not exist, that only our actions, our habits, were real, which the world called our crimes or our sins. But s.c.r.o.t.es began to think that we did indeed exist. That we had a nature our own, which was not another's perverted or turned to sin. Our actions could not be crimes, he believed, because they were the expression of a nature, of an existence even. Which came first, he asked, the deed or the doer? And he began to answer that, for some, it was the doer." MacMurrough smiled, seeing the boy's concentrating face. "I don't follow much of it myself," he said.

"You think I should wear my badge with pride?"

He had forgotten about the badge. I have spilt my soul and he bothers with baubles. "I shouldn't risk losing my job over it. But in the Pavilion Gardens I don't see why not."

In one of his cracks he had the badge pinned openly. Red hand supinate on a tinny metal. In this he believes.

He made to stand up. "Have to go round the corner."

"You'll need some change."

"They makes you pay?"

"A tip. There'll be a woman outside. Just drop it in her saucer. It's expected."

He shot his cuffs, in a gesture unbecomingly spontaneous, and sw.a.n.ked through the tables. Thruppenny masher I've made of him, thought MacMurrough. Already his neck was reddening where it wasn't accustomed to a collar. Howling check he chose. On their way from Lee's he had called at the railway station where he plastered his hair with tap water.