At Swim, Two Boys Part 60

He went out in the shop. He pa.s.sed between the narrow shelves and the dusted finicky wares. On the wall he saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt card for Robin Starch, the new new starch, the robin still told-sparrow-dull now so long it had hung. He picked up the rifle and bundled the tunic and hat under his arm. He pulled the door and the bell clinked, and he had the strangest notion standing there that the door had pulled itself. starch, the robin still told-sparrow-dull now so long it had hung. He picked up the rifle and bundled the tunic and hat under his arm. He pulled the door and the bell clinked, and he had the strangest notion standing there that the door had pulled itself.

The door had pulled itself and the bell of its own discretion had clinked. And now it clinked again as the door swung home behind him, and he turned towards Sallynoggin and the unfrequented road to town.

With the last bundle of washing, Nancy heaved backwards in from the yard: through the scullery and into the kitchen where she hefted the washing on the table. "Now," she said. She took a moment to wipe her forehead, listening to the peevish cries above, then up the box-stairs door, aware of the climb of each stair in her calves. "Well Aunt Sawney," she said, coming in the room. Aunt Sawney sat in her chair by the window, the babba on her lap. Nancy took the mite in her arms. "What's this now?" she asked, poking a finger at the screwed-up face, "what's this has you complaining to your Aunt Sawney about?"

Aunt Sawney thought the way the child was hungering.

"Sure that's only good complaints."

She humped the babba, easing the strain afterwards with a hand to her back. She took a corner of the bed to sit on. "Now," she said, while she loosened her blouse. A lovely evening light was in the room, all glimmery after the glare outside. "It's b.u.t.tered eggs for tea," she told Aunt Sawney, "and I've a mind to try a custard after." The babba nuzzled her mouth to her breast.

Aunt Sawney said nothing, only rocked to and fro. She had her beads already in her hands, but there was something in her face, worrisome a touch, the way the mysteries she told this evening would be unusually doleful. "Are you right there, Aunt Sawney?"

She didn't answer, only stared out the window.

"There you are now," said Nancy, as the little mouth dribbled its surfeit. In a glance of the swing-gla.s.s on the bedroom table, she caught a peek of her reflection. I have a face, she told herself, the color and texture of a turnip. She reb.u.t.toned her blouse. The mite was looking for hiccupping then, and she said to Aunt Sawney, "Will you take her again for a quarter of a mo while I see to them sheets below?"

Aunt Sawney nodded and reached the bundle to her arms. But still she said nothing, only stared her face out the window, that same window on that same strip of lane where these years she had watched her good boy go, come and go, come and go, till he never came no more. And now she had watched the little man too with the black fellow's gun to his shoulder.

"Are you sure you're all right in yourself?" she heard Nancy say. The glitter formed in the opaque of her eyes while still she stared, rocking in her chair, with the bundle of babe held close to her shoulder, and her hand tapped on the babe's back, the whole of her hand, in determined solacing pats.

"You want to play?"

"Play what?"

"Nap," said Doyler. He was sprawled on the saraband rug by MacMurrough's hearth, dealing a kind of demon patience with Aunt Eva's reserved ecarte cards. The evening long their conversation had not risen from the inquisitorial. Feel better?-Aye. Hungry?-No. MacMurrough had roamed the scattered appointments of his bedroom, packing his case, while Doyler hung grimly to hearth and bedlands, a ghettoing of their s.p.a.ce. Silly really. "Oh very well," said MacMurrough.

"I've no money," said Doyler, "so we'll play for noses instead."

"Whatever you say. What are noses?"

"Things, you find them usually on your face."

He gathered the cards and snappily shuffled them. MacMurrough creaked to the floor to sit. He felt a general disgruntlement, a sense of a damper. It was too bad of Jim, he had expected better. This evening, his last in Ireland-a coda to the action, when properly ordered it should have provided the climax, well perhaps not climax, but a generous envoi. The t.i.tian-glow of fire and candles, their voices quieting, his soothing wine: the evening previous repeated in fact, save with the added piquancy of tickets in his pocket, of the imminent and ineluctable tide. Instead he had this fellow parked on his rug the night. The state of the room too displeased him that evinced Jim's absence more than any maid's: yesterday's grate, the cigarette-blue air, the slop and jumble of the sick-bedside.

Fellow wasn't even sick, merely trouserless.

But MacMurrough took his cards and played the game. And noses, so he found, answered his mood to a turn. Whenever he made his nap, which he made invariably and far too unluckily for his heart, he got to rap Doyler with his winning cards: rap on the nose per point staked. How brave the boy bode, how meek he suffered: it did the soul good to see. They changed to brag, but brag the boy might, MacMurrough had aces. Aces went low, and MacMurrough had kings. The boy's pugnacious nose reddened to a geranium. "My dear," said MacMurrough, gathering the pack, "you cannot conceive how it becomes you, a little trouncing."

"You play a lot at cards, do you?"

"No," said MacMurrough. "But then I've always been," he began, and finished, "unlucky in love." Here was a rival's compliment and Doyler received it grinning, touchingly with his lips closed to contain his laugh. "You're doyling," said MacMurrough. "Yes, you're doyling. I used so to like it when you doyled."

"Aye aye, and what's doyling?"

"Doyling, if you didn't know, is that brazen discourteous vainglorious smirk which commonly distorts your face: the giving of it." And he clipped once again the boy's rubious conk.

"I'll get you back," said Doyler, but not vindictively, and once or twice indeed he did, making a comedy of adjusting MacMurrough's head just so, for the neatest crack at his nose. It was child's play, parlor-game stuff, and it held just that sufficience of malice to excuse their enjoyment, encourage it even. The gas was up, they fell about, a rorty time was had by all. MacMurrough broke off to fetch barley water and a pale ale, a plate of biscuits.

"My poor aunt," he said returning. "If she could see the state of her playing-cards."

Doyler pounced on the biscuits. He sat on the floor cross-legged, in his shirt only, no drawers. MacMurrough had thought to throw him an old trousers, but there was that delicacy between them of clothes. Every now and then, slipping out from his shirt tail, came the hint of a hair of his s.e.x. A proposition which once propounded MacMurrough found hard to ignore, and yet whose advancement, let alone its achievement, would surely be indescribably ba.n.a.l.

"Funny thing about your aunt," Doyler said, munching. "Did you know she was well thought of down Liberty Hall?"

"Liberty Hall, my aunt?"

Doyler shrugged. "Back in the Lock-out she helped out in the soup-kitchen there."

"You're pulling my leg."

"G.o.d's truth. There's a painting even. She has an ap.r.o.n on and her sleeves rolled up. Enormous big cauldron on the boil beside her."

"But this is extraordinary." He pictured his aunt in the steaming frame with the hungry ma.s.ses huddled behind: in Parisian pinny she plies the ladle.

"Beats me," said Doyler, "with half Dublin out of work, why they has to get rich folks to cook the soup. But there you are."

"Yes," said MacMurrough, "there you are." Truly she was a remarkable woman. He remembered how she had chastened him once for his unguarded a.s.sertion of female practicalism. He regarded women as practical, she told him, because he never saw the s.e.x but it was tending to his needs: bringing his tea, making his fire, paying his cigarist's bills. Yes, he would miss his aunt. All very large and fine having boys in and out of the house, but his aunt had been a good sport. And now she must retire, hors de combat. hors de combat. How it must pain her. Really, the English had grown too high: to presume to exile Irish men and women from their own country. Their own country-the thought repeated, and he looked at Doyler, whom Jim had once spoken of as his country. "What happened us at all, Doyler," he asked, "that we should have fallen so out of sympathy?" How it must pain her. Really, the English had grown too high: to presume to exile Irish men and women from their own country. Their own country-the thought repeated, and he looked at Doyler, whom Jim had once spoken of as his country. "What happened us at all, Doyler," he asked, "that we should have fallen so out of sympathy?"

"Matter of a knee in the b.a.l.l.s."

"Oh yes, that." MacMurrough conceded a moral homer, a hit not by virtue of the boy's being right but of his being wronged that morning in St. Stephen's Green.

"You was after that young chap Paddy's day."

"Yes, him."

"Piece of s.m.u.t, you called him."

"Yes, we shan't require the exhaustive history."

"You made out as I was after him too."

"Yes." Thank you Doyler, nicely pilloried. He took a Player's, lit it. "And were you?"

"Was I what?" For a moment the glowers returned. "Did you put a peeler on me in the park?"

"Grief no."

"I didn't know if you did. No, I wasn't after that chap. Not that time anyway. Not that way. Another time, maybe I was."

"You were?"

"Does it matter?"

"No." A sense of symmetry had MacMurrough inquire was it Doyler who informed the Castle of his aunt's rifles. But of course Doyler hadn't. "You did put the wind up me though, that rifle, finding it bang in my face." Doyler grinned. MacMurrough inspired the rough virginia of his Player's, reluctantly admitting an accustomation. "I never thought to ask-have you started smoking?"

"I don't, but thanks now for offering."

"Not at all."

They smiled daftly at each other. Reluctantly MacMurrough admitted a contentment with the evening. In its own unparticular way, it brought a close to this Irish episode, back where it had all begun with the boy from the Forty Foot who hobbled and spat. Rum fellow he was, but he wasn't a bad old hat. It was good to have things cleared up between them, if cleared up they were. He might almost thank Jim, though it was absurd to imagine the boy had intended it this way.

Looking at him now MacMurrough felt again the attractions of Doyle. Bold breezy insouciance that had made of him such worthy game. But he saw better the bitterness in the eyes, on his shoulder the chip, and he remembered the shrug, carelessly given, but which at heart he gave for he held himself not worth a care. So much MacMurrough might recognize in himself. Oh, other things too: a d.a.m.nable honesty, the penchant for misery, a yearning for magnificence but a spirit unwinged.

"You know," said Doyler, "you don't have to go, you know."

"Why thank you, Doyler. I shall stay so."

"I mean, not on my account you needn't. Jim says you're to join the British Army. I'd hate to think I drove any man to taking the Saxon shilling."

And so should I, young man, hate to think you had driven me anywhere. "My aunt once told me that nothing is gained by clinging to life save more life to cling to. The world I find is embarked on a grand adventure. I find I choose to play." He had stood up saying this, ruffling his hand in Doyler's scraggy thick hair. "You know where everything is, don't you?"

"You leaving me?"

"Yes, I'm going to bed."

"You leaving me here on me own?"

"What did you expect?"

"Nothing. Wasn't sure was all."

But there was a haunt in his face, like a maid new-arrived, of the big night in the big room in the big creak of a house. "Hope you don't mind the dark?"

He did not, most definitely not, what did MacMurrough take him for, he had no fear of the dark whatsoever, guaranteed.

"Good," said MacMurrough, lowering the lamp. The night and its draughts inhaled the light, and he left the boy to fret alone. He thought about it while he undressed in his appropriated cupboard across the hall. Earlier, the way one does, it was ravishment and rampage, a forcible entry, his hurting the boy face-down on the leafy pile, the punishment of p.i.s.s, other debas.e.m.e.nts, idly he had meditated. But when it all boiled down, a cuddle would nearly do. Yes it would; and it surprised how quickly the door k.n.o.b was in his hand.

"Who is it?" came the small voice.

"Move over," said MacMurrough. He climbed in the bed. "Lift up," he said, nudging under the shoulders. He turned the body, a sack, in his arm. "It's silly," he said, "pretending we're strangers."

The sack lumpily reposed. "I want to f.u.c.k you," MacMurrough said. There was no response. MacMurrough sighed. He patted the body where his hand had fallen. "I just want to," he said. "I want to," he elaborated, "but I won't mind if you don't choose to."

"Now there's a lie with a lid on it." Doyler's hand, in a casual way, had fingered below and found out MacMurrough's stand. "You like this?"

It wasn't the most imaginative ploy, but MacMurrough answered, Yes, for a tease, he did.

"How much will you pay me so?"

Little toe-rag. "Must we bring that up?"

"You know that suit, MacMurrough? I sold that suit."

"My dear, it was yours to do with as you pleased. I'm glad you sold it. I never liked it."

"Why'd you buy it me so?"

"I thought it made you happy. You surely knew I was fond of you. You were a cussed b.l.o.o.d.y-minded sod, and I admired you for it."

The hand below had cupped MacMurrough's b.a.l.l.s. Now a tentative ambivalent pressure exerted, exciting really, exquisite even; until Doyler said, "You'd pay Jim so, would you?"

Oh dear oh dear, MacMurrough thought; Doyler Doyler, my dear.

"I used see them in Dublin, MacMurrough, the girls in their glad necks. Up and down the street they'd go. I wanted to burn that suit. I knew what that suit made of me. But I needed the bra.s.s, so I sold it instead. Didn't p.a.w.n it, sold it."

MacMurrough brought his own hand down to cover the boy's grip, and he squeezed a little so that his groin hurt, nothing nauseating, just a little manageable penance. He said, "I'm sorry, Doyler, if you feel badly about that."

"You never lifted a finger."

MacMurrough believed he knew what the boy meant. It was a scene whose recall could torment him still, so that physically he would need to flinch the memory away: the garden fete, the summer house, the boy's shirt ripped, his nipple bared, that pathetic emblem, his bowed head. And MacMurrough rooted to the floor while the priest smiled, the priest barked.

"Not a finger," the boy repeated. "After you leading me on to believe we was friendly. You had me going and all, MacMurrough. You told me wear that badge. You told me. I knew then all I meant to you."

"Doyler, I am sorry. You must try to understand I wasn't myself back then."

"Sure I don't mind."

The b.a.l.l.s were loosed, MacMurrough reprieved. Doyler turned away, and MacMurrough turned with him, not to be ultimately estranged. Even so he could feel himself hard by the boy's b.u.m. G.o.d d.a.m.n me for an arrogant wh.o.r.eson pimp.

"Listen to me now."

"You can't tell me nothing."

"Listen to me, Doyler. Whatever pa.s.sed between us, you must understand it was only me paying you. It made something of me, not of you. You never sold anything." He reached an arm round and held it on his chest. "Won't you say you forgive me now?"

"Sure I told you I don't mind. There was a time I had the blue murders thinking of you. I don't no more."

They lay that way a while, MacMurrough embracing the boy, and Doyler embraced but rigidly untouched. Then MacMurrough said, "You will look after him, won't you?"

"He don't need looking after."

"He has no notion of being careful."

"He's a rare plucked one, ain't he."

"He is, yes."