At Swim, Two Boys Part 47

"I think I'll talk to any man I choose," said Doyler.

"You'll talk to me now. I want a word with you."

"You're talking, aren't you?"

"Get rid of this-Get rid of your piece of s.m.u.t first."

"s.m.u.t?" His frown deepened as his eyebrows lifted, cramping his forehead. His Adam's apple gave a little hop. "Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?"

"Get rid of him."

"Calling any man s.m.u.t then ordering me about?"

"You get rid of him or I soon will."

Doyler looked him up and down, taking in MacMurrough's uniform. He said to the clerk from Lee's, "Go on over the bench there. I'll be with you a minute. Go on, now," he told him. Then he turned to MacMurrough and he pushed him. He actually pushed him. "I see you've taken it into your head to be a Volunteer," he said. "And I see some gobs.h.i.te company was fuddled enough to make an officer of you. But you don't be ordering me about. The Volunteers might stop the traffic but they don't be running this country yet."

MacMurrough could scarce persuade himself this was happening. Here was Doyler pushing him backward into a hedge. Doyler. And he had been talking with the clerk from Lee's. It was obvious they had made an appointment to meet. The clerk from Lee's who had fondled his flowers and his frolics.

Still Doyler went on. "With your badge on your cap and three stars on your sleeve"-his fingers flipped the peak of MacMurrough's cap, they flicked at his sleeve. "Is it the spring fashions you was at?"

"Will you stop pushing, you d.a.m.ned fool. This has nothing to do with the Volunteers."

"I'd say that's true and all. Devil the chance of yourself volunteering, but your aunt pushed you. I pity any men you lead, MacMurrough. Your kind never failed at nothing yet, for you never stopped at nothing long enough to find out."

"Will you shut up and listen?"

"I'll listen when I'm good and ready."

There was nothing for it but MacMurrough grabbed the boy's wrist and twisted it. "This isn't about me, you little toe-rag, it's about Jim."

"What about Jim?"

"Anthony?"

"I want you to go and see him."

"What are you talking about?" He shrugged his arm free.

"He's with the band. They were at the parade, now they're visiting the pro-Cathedral. Go say h.e.l.lo."

"Anthony?"

"What's Jim to do with you?"

"Tell him you'll be there at Easter. He's worried frantic. Jim, do you understand?"

"Anthony? What is this?"

"Oh, Aunt Eva, not now."

"What's Jim been saying?"

"He hasn't said anything."

"Have you laid a hand on him?"

"You, boy. Shoo, now. Go away."

"If you laid a hand on Jim, I'll f.u.c.king murder you. I'll crucify you, you hear me."

"Stop this. Go away. Shoo."

"Aunt Eva, leave the umbrella down."

"You hear me, MacMurrough? I don't know what I'll b.l.o.o.d.y do, but you'll wish you was never-"

"I shall fetch a constable and have you in charge."

"You, lady, can fetch a f.u.c.king priest for I'm telling you now-"

But he did not tell, for MacMurrough caught him by the shoulders, pinning his arms with his elbows, and shook him against the railings. "You will not talk to my aunt that way." He had his hand over the boy's mouth and a knee poised in his groin. "Do you hear me? Good. Now listen. Your friend is with the band and they are visiting the pro-Cathedral. He was hoping to see you at the parade. Give up your letch with the flowers and frolics here and go say h.e.l.lo. It's the least he deserves."

MacMurrough lifted his hand from Doyler's mouth. The mouth was in a fleery grin like a horse's with the bit pulled. Doyler laughed. "You never had him, had you. Oh but you're cursing to. Has you ate up. But you won't never have him, MacMurrough. You're nothing to Jim and you know that. Nothing at all while I'm there first."

With no anger, with a feeling almost of its being foreordained, MacMurrough let his knee into the boy's groin, while the boy spat at him full in the face before the pain gripped and his bend began, into the groin where often by the sea in the summer gone he had enjoyed to let his mouth and his tongue.

It was a dismal lunch. MacMurrough pecked at his food. Aunt Eva soldierly knifed and forked her way through, her face in grim d.i.c.kensian way, an index to her mind. At length she said, "I have been giving some thought to your problem with Turkish cigarettes. I have the address of a cigarist's who I believe will have what you want. You might visit there this afternoon before you train to Ferns."

"Aunt Eva, don't let's pretend. I'm sorry about what happened. I was foolish and inept."

"Oh, that is what you were. You were foolish and you were inept. I see. I have a foolish and inept nephew. And in what way is my nephew inept? Why, he cannot contain himself half an hour without dragging his corner-boy minions before his aunt."

"Of course you are right. It was much worse than inept."

"I say nothing of the vulgarity," she continued, "I believe that has spoken for itself. I say nothing of the exhibition: I have never cared for the general, nor ever will. But I had thought it was over. I had heartfully thought you had come to your senses."

"But Aunt Eva, it's not ever going to be over."

"Then I pity you."

MacMurrough saw his cuffs, his links, the elegance of just this square foot about his plate. I have no human failings, none whatsoever. All my failings are animal.

"I pity you for you will never know what it is to be a man. As I have never known-"

"As you?"

"As I pity myself for the ingrate I have for a nephew. I had thought you would settle now, that you would wish to settle. Marriage and children, I should find you an employment even. I had thought this period would be something we would share, privately. We would come to laugh of it even, in happier times. I had thought it was finished. I was mistaken."

He thought for a moment she was going to cry. That indeed she was crying, and was reaching now into her reticule for a mouchoir. What she brought out made her wrist look frail and old. He saw the veins where her coat had pulled back. Its weight was too much for her to brandish it successfully. Her arm wavered up and down. She did not point at MacMurrough, as he had half expected, but at a party of officers at a table beside. It had often flitted through his mind, but he had never given it any serious consideration, that his aunt was mad.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"A Webley. You must have got him very drunk, your officer."

"We might go to the manager now. We could so easily take this building. It has a commanding presence, you will agree. With the Shelbourne, we should hold the entire Green."

"Hadn't you better put it away now?"

"So soon?"

"Is it loaded, Aunt Eva?"

"I believe it may be."

"Is the catch on?"

"I'm not sure if I can tell."

"Please, Aunt Eva, will you give it to me now?" Slowly the gun went down on to the table. "We had as well put it to our heads," she said. "The fight is coming and we leave nothing behind us. We leave it all to penny-boys and clerks."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

The young man with Doyler, who indeed no longer worked at Lee's of Kingstown, but had advanced to a position of boots and bottle-washer at the Russell Hotel adjacent the Green, was looking uneasy. He had knelt beside Doyler. "You all right now?" he asked.

Doyler pushed him away. "I told you wait, didn't I?" He was still in agony. His groin felt it had kicked into his stomach. He had to bend tight and squeeze inside to hold the pain. And he was seething with anger. And now, Jesus, here was a peeler coming. That f.u.c.ker sent him and all. He got to his feet, still bending and holding where it hurt. He felt a lightness in his head.

"You'll be all right in a minute. You need to stand and walk round."

"Will you get your maulers off of me? Come on, get out of this place."

He led the boots out by the Surgeons, and hurried up past the keeper's lodge into Harcourt Street. He stopped at the stable lane to the Russell Hotel. The weeds in the walls and crevices gave off a whiff of urine. He looked back to see was he followed. The pain was gone or bearable anyway. He sought his sensible workaday face. "You sure now you can get me in? I don't want any trouble about it."

The boots was sure. He went in the staff way, and after a time a coach-house door opened. He led Doyler through the dark and up narrow staircases that had a creak of worm and damp in their tread, up to the attic story. n.o.body had seen them. He opened a door into an odd-shaped bandboxy room. Three beds jammed inside. He pointed to one and said, "That's where I sleep."

Doyler was looking up at the skylight. "How d'you get out?"

Well, you pulled the bed and if you balanced ever-so on the bedstead you could just with your fingers get a shove on the skylight. "Give me an hour," said Doyler. "You'll have to be back again to let me out. You won't forget now?" He climbed on the bed, and the boots gave him his body for a ladder. The skylight eased open and he heard the clap of pigeon wings. Then he was out on the roof and all of the Green swam before him. He checked down again. That quilt of a boots had his face gawking. "Put the bed back," he told him, whispering now. "And don't stand about looking to be catched." He shifted the skylight back into place.

There was a parapet about two feet high where he lodged his feet and he leant back against the roof. n.o.body would hardly see him up here. And people never looked up. Up was always the place to hide. He pulled some papers out of his pocket. One of them was a sketch he had made of the Green, its paths and ponds, bandstand, where would a thicket break the line of fire, that sort of thing. He judged it against what he saw, clearly now and entire for the first time. Not bad for a fellow had never made a map in his life. He began penciling adjustments.

The pigeons trooped back. Little sideways steps they made along the ledge. They had the bricks white with their droppings. With a start he remembered what that f.u.c.ker had done. He reached inside his trousers and felt about his groin. He spat. There'd be another day and that man's time would come. He had work to do.

When he was satisfied with the Green, he looked about the surrounding rooftops. He began to make his way towards the railway station, crawling along and creeping over the intersecting walls. Every now and then he stopped to make a note of a problem in the way and its workaround, or of a particular vantage, say, for sniping. He'd write it up proper back at the Hall. You couldn't get all the way to the station, a lane cut in. But he'd known that anyway. Still, if you took a lep down on a wall there and shinned it up a drainpipe you might come close. That was another day's work. He started back for the Russell Hotel.

The boots was waiting for him under the skylight. He had a mug of tea ready. "Now what did you go and do that for?"

"I only thought."

Doyler took the tea, gruffly thanked him.

"That was your bloke, wasn't it?"

"Who was me bloke?"

"The gentleman."

Doyler looked at him, not liking him at all, a sniffy sort of a face, would want to blow his nose. "What do you mean, me bloke, anyway?"

"I thought you was with him, you know, that you went with him."

"I never went anywheres with him bar Kingstown."

"He got you them clothes."

"He never bought me nothing and I don't know what you think you're saying. Here now and thanks for your tea."

He held the door, then followed the boots through the back ways of the hotel and out into the stable lane. The quilt seemed to want to follow him into Harcourt Street. "Was that any help to you?" he wanted to know.

"Help enough."

"You can come again. I'll let you in."

"I might then."

"The architecture, isn't it. At the night cla.s.ses."

Doyler had a notion of clandestine activity which this lanky snuffles d.o.g.g.i.ng him in the street didn't serve at all. He felt a pull on his sleeve and he turned impatiently. "What is it you want?"

The boy leant his head sideways looking into Doyler's face. "Don't you like me?"

"Ah now, what's this now? You don't want to be bothering your head if a man likes you. Don't you have work to do? You have it very easy here is all I can say. Go on now."

He pushed him, not roughly, to send him on his way, then he crossed to Stephen's Green without looking back. Soft as s.h.i.te that one was. A few weeks before, he was in the Green, trying to make sense of the paths, and that young quilt had come out of the gents there. He was all pally in an anxious sort of a way. Doyler thought he remembered him all right but he wasn't going to make any fuss about it. Only he happened to hear the Russell Hotel mentioned at training, and he let it drop that he might know the boots there. Would he be let on the roof, they wanted to know, and Doyler said he'd ask, what harm.

He made some quick turns in and out of alleyways to be sure of anyone following, then he headed down for the river. There was a Guinness barge tooting under the bridge and seagulls squalled above. He looked up O'Connell Street. Jim wouldn't be still at the pro-Cathedral. There was no good traipsing up there. What had he to say to Jim, anyway, that he couldn't write it in a letter? He was under orders. He hadn't time to be making calls.

He walked along the quay looking down at the lumpy green of the Liffey. Above the Customs House the Union Jack was flying. It had a way of flying, that flag, like the wind from the sea was made for it special. He turned the corner into Beresford Place, took the steps at a leap into Liberty Hall.