At Swim, Two Boys Part 41

Mr. Mack viewed sideways the sc.r.a.p of him and he wondered what on earth we had them for, to send them working this hour of night, to clothe them thinly and feed them poorly, and never a thought for impressionable young minds. Every day you see them, up and down the street, selling papers they can't read them or coals they can't burn them or cakes they'd never afford to eat. And their folks inside of Fennelly's knocking back the Christmas spirit. G.o.d send 'tis a kinder world for the wee one above.

"Listen, young shaper, how many of that rag have you there with you?"

"Thirteen."

"How much is that all together?"

"One and three."

"It is not," said Mr. Mack, though he counted out a shilling and thruppence for the boy. "Get on home to your bed now. And don't be repeating things you oughtn't be listening to. Do you hear me now?"

The boy did not appear the least surprised by the exchange. As if it was a popular halt, Glasthule, for good Samaritans. Mr. Mack stowed the sheaf under his arm. He wondered what was he to do with thirteen Larkinite papers. Knowing his luck now a constable would come along and he'd fetch up himself in the cells. Wasn't that the price of the police? Arrest the messenger and leave the message floating about for any young waif to pick it up again.

The boy without papers to shift flapped his arms instead. His tiny toes curled over the curbstone. "There'll be no rising so?"

Mr. Mack shook his head. Wouldn't you think they'd find him a boots for the winter at least? "No, son, there'll be no rising."

"We was ready. Me and me pals was ready and willing."

"I'm sure you were," said Mr. Mack. "I'm sure you're good brave boys. But you'd do better thinking of school and getting your readamadaisy and your rickmatick right."

He bade a good night and a happy Christmas to the boy who homeward trod. He turned round, then turned again. The sheeny light from the chapel was in his eye. His name had been down for the Forty Hours adoration. But the Forty Hours was too respectable for him now. He'd given a home to the mother of his grandchild and Christmas Eve he found his name struck off, for all to see, on the list inside of the door. Shine on, he told the church. A lighthouse in a bog would have no edge on you.

Mr. Mack stared down the lane to the Banks.

They were a long time answering his knock so that in the end Mr. Mack gave out, "It's Quartermaster-Sergeant Mack only, come to inspect an old fusilier."

A sound of shuffling then, and after a time the latch of the topgate sc.r.a.ped from its catch. Mr. Mack peered inside. He could make out little in the gloom, but he ventured, "Is it himself?"

"It is," said a voice by the fire. "All that's left of me."

Mr. Mack entered the cabin. The smell wasn't the worst. Besides the which, it was a poor soldier who wouldn't bide his comrade's breath. They were wise all the same not to leave any candle burning, for the fire would be robbed of what glow remained. Like an old crone he huddled by the hearth, on his box with a blanket drawn round him. Mr. Mack glimpsed the faded red of flannel legs and knew even the trousers was gone now.

Mr. Doyle coughed, worrying the blanket. He kept his eyes on the ashes, and said, speaking with a strange old-time courtesy, "I would bid you stay for a sup, but the woman is away at chapel yet."

"Has she the youngsters with her?"

"And why wouldn't she? Warm there nor anywhere."

Mr. Mack left a parcel on what might be the table. Only the pickings of the goose from home, some old tarts, no more. "I might take a heat off the fire, all the same."

"Take an air of it and welcome. Whatever, there's little enough to sit on."

"Had I the use of that bucket I might sit on that."

"You might too."

"Was I let."

Mr. Doyle nodded to the fire, as though in agreement with its ashes on some consequential point. "Sure take it and welcome. 'Tis all we have bar the holes that are in it."

That old c.o.c.kiness, the jackeenism that so had disturbed Mr. Mack when Mr. Doyle had rolled up first in Glasthule, had dropped away like it had never been. In its place he heard the crabbed pride of a man with no farther to fall. But a countryman, thought Mr. Mack, not any go-boy on the loose out of Dublin.

He turned the bucket upside-down. Another parcel he laid by the hearth. Before he would sit he took out the half-bottle of whiskey and pulled the stopper half-way. On the floor in front and between them he placed it, judging a finical equidistance. Mr. Doyle turned his eyes till they took in the amberly gleaming bottle, then they swiveled home to the ashes.

"I was sorry to hear of your trouble," said Mr. Mack.

"I wasn't smiling hearing your own," said Mr. Doyle.

"Is herself over it at all?"

"You wouldn't know with women."

Mr. Mack lowered his voice. "I thought you had a grand send-off for the weeshy thing."

"We did our best sure."

"Fine frisky horse. Grand plumes. Always sad to see the little coffin. The white brings it home somehow."

"She left in better style than she lived, G.o.d bless the little Missy."

"That goes for us all," said Mr. Mack. "G.o.d willing. I would have gone myself but the shop and all. And my son had school that day."

"A scholar you have there."

"Something like it. What's the wind of your fellow?"

"No wind at all this way."

"My young one was hoping to see him, I think."

"They have a wish for one another." The eyes darted up. "That age and they know no better." The quick flare brought on his coughing and had him spitting afterwards, copiously into the fire. Mr. Mack saw it before it died, the pink tint of his phlegm.

"The old whiskey," he said, "would murder you altogether and you was to risk a sup."

"'Twouldn't cure me at any rate."

"A cigar would be the end of you entirely."

"Not this side of Last Post and I'll taste again the smoke of a cigar."

"Sure there's plenty smoke where we're headed," said Mr. Mack. He had the corona out of his coat and he was testing its end with the blade of his pocket-knife. "Christmas box from the boy, but little the use it is to me. Is it this way you'd cut it, I don't know?"

"Ah sure give it here to me. Ballyhays you'll make of that."

"You used have a fondness for the old cigar, I do recall."

"I had me day."

"You might light it now you've gone this far."

"Throw me a spill and I will." He blew on the spill, little whiffery breaths, till it took fire and he brought it to the cigar. In the flame Mr. Mack saw his face, an old skin-and-bones of a thing. Deep furrows reached from his nose like tackles to hold his jaw in place. His hair was gone a shock of white, sticking out in startlement at the change. "I'm not dead yet," he said in disputatious tone. "I might cheat the worms of me yet."

"Why wouldn't you?" agreed Mr. Mack. "You have smoke enough and whiskey inside to be proof against all comers."

"There's that."

"Except they shoot us, we Old Toughs refuse to die."

"The Dublin Refusiliers," said Mr. Doyle.

"You did always have a way with words," said Mr. Mack smiling and shaking his head. "Would you take a sup of the creature now? If you had it to hand, say?"

"I wouldn't know to get any this hour."

"There's a small drop I have with me."

"I saw that. And you known to have the pledge taken."

"Didn't we take it together sure?"

"Aye we did. There's many gone under the bridge since that."

"Many and more," agreed Mr. Mack. "We used always be pledging ourself after a night on the Billy Stink."

"The old Billy Stink was a killer right enough."

"That and the purge."

"That and the purge."

"And we did often share an old shock off a pipe together."

"I did often have a red pipe put in my hand, 'tis no lie."

"Sure the first pipe ever I smoked, we shared it."

"People was known share a bit in them days, 'tis true."

There was some old tinder in a nook in the hearth and Mr. Mack, judging his station as old comrade would just about stretch to it, leant down and threw a stick or two on the fire. He opened the parcel he'd left beside him and one by one he placed the coals he'd brought. He dusted the coal-dust from his hands and held them over the blueing flame. They were talking the while, of the past still, Mr. Mack a.s.serting some friendly deed, Mr. Doyle recognizing in a general way the possibility of such things occurring.

"The first time ever I sc.r.a.ped my chin," said Mr. Mack, "'twas yourself found me the razor. I can remember you now, stropping the blade on the sling of your hipe for me."

"I wasn't the worst for doing a good turn. If I could see my way at all, G.o.d knows."

Mr. Mack stared into the flames, and sure what did he see but this fellow here, with his shoulders back, his chest blown, thighs that would grip a shilling bit. Red hair you'd think his head was on fire. Not a man but he was proud to step out with Red Doyle. He had the poor ladies fainting with the scarlet fever. Mick and Mack the paddy-whacks. Rang like bells.

"Till they gone and went and made a sergeant of you," said Mr. Doyle, "and you turned like."

And there it was, that old wound, done with as that fire and still with a heat at the heart of it. Mr. Mack could see it now, in the flicker of flame, the queer look on the man's face that time, before he had snapped to attention. Yes, Sergeant, said he. b.u.t.tons greasy, said he. But his eyes were crooked the way they looked. Mr. Mack could doubt but they were straight again since.

"You took the heart out of me that day, you did," said Mr. Doyle now. "What you see before you is the close of that day's work."

Oh and the rest, thought Mr. Mack. All downhill after that, for sure. Tell a man his b.u.t.tons is greasy and his pride is gone, his manhood broke, his life in tatters ever after. "Do you know something?" he said. "You was never any d.a.m.ned good for a soldier."

"Nor you was any good for a sergeant."

"We're snacks there then."

"Snacks," said Mr. Doyle. "And I'll tell you what else," he said, more animated now and the blush on his cheek-tips deepening. "There was n.o.body complaining me b.u.t.tons was greasy at Talana Hill. No, nor at Glober's Koof. Tugela neither."

"Grobler's Kloof," said Mr. Mack. "Would you get it right."

"I stood me ground, I did, with me fellow Toughs. I didn't turn tail the first shot was fired. I stood to them Bojers, I did. 'Twasn't me what ran for home."

"To hades and back with you," said Mr. Mack. "You've this story told up and down the street. We'll have this out once for all. I was time-expired. I had my discharge papers gave out me-"

"There's plenty men signed on again."

"I had my pa.s.sage booked. I had my young wife that was sickening. Sure the war was to be over by Christmas. How was I to know 'twould take three years? You think I had it rosy then, with my wife pa.s.sed away on me and my two sons I didn't know what to do with them, coming into Southampton and the news everywhere of rout after rout after rout? You think there was many wanting to employ me then, a man come back from the Cape and a war on? Only for Aunt Sawney above I was on the dunghill, my two young sons with me. And not a night but I thought of the regiment."

"Battalion," said Mr. Doyle.

"Ah, would you give it a rest, man."

Mr. Doyle began a cough that rumbled in his belly before it rose to his chest and made quick hacking barks in his throat, and only when he turned could Mr. Mack see it wasn't coughing at all, but laughing he was at. "G.o.d knows," he said, "I'd take me chances with old Piet any day, with General Bother himself, before I'd face that crosspatch above."

Mr. Mack granted him his laugh, and when the laughter was done the quiet that followed recalled him to the barracks at Quetta, high in the hills, when his sergeant's stripe was fresh on his sleeve. The sense he had of fun and fellowship retreating wherever he advanced, always a corridor's length away. "And yet," he said, "'tis true, you know. Them b.u.t.tons of yours was greasy."

"Sure what about it," said Mr. Doyle. "I wouldn't know to get b.u.t.tons now, leave out the grease to muck them. b.l.o.o.d.y end to the lie in that."

Mr. Mack's fingers tapped on his knees. He watched the wispy curls coming up from the cigar, which Mr. Doyle had lit but would not yet smoke. "Aren't we two very foolish old quilts," he said, "to be argufying the past? Whatever about b.u.t.tons and time-expired, it isn't a sergeant at all I am now."

"And what are you this night coming here to my hearth?"

Barmy old fool, thought Mr. Mack. "To tell the truth I'm a bit out of myself."

"A child would tell you that."

Mr. Mack picked up the bottle and made as if to sip. He made as if to change his mind and offered the bottle over. "For old time's sake itself?"

He had the bottle held out a long while before Mr. Doyle nodded. He wiped his mouth and without looking accepted the whiskey. He drank his due of it, a good third, in slow slipping slugs, then wiped his lips again. He drew on the cigar till the smoke came out the sides of his mouth where the teeth were gone.

"Well, Arthur," he said, after his cough had ended. "Is it a grandfather you are this night?"