At Swim, Two Boys

  —Not in any Greek sense, MacMurrough answered.

  —Lovers none the less?

  —It is not impossible. They have youth.

  —Would age forbid them?

  —Rather youth permits. The not knowing and the slowness of days. Lack of imagination may move mountains.

  —Quaere: did you love at their age?

  —Oh well, said MacMurrough, thinking back. There was a boy at school, I suppose. We became quite regular. One time, we’d been at it, and I turned round and held him. Is this love? I asked. I suppose it is, he answered. And we both sat back, not touching, thinking the same I suppose, the vacuity of it. We stopped soon after. He smelt, I remember, of oranges.

  The priest clapped his hands again, the detail of sashes apparently decided, and the boys trooped out to the garden. In the evening light MacMurrough watched their parade. The antics of their instructor had amused at first, until he had discovered in the man’s eagerness an innocence childlike as the boys’. In profile he saw the faces of his aunt and her priest. A dusk of midges danced above but their features were set like grim tutelaries. It struck him how little pleasure they gained of the boys and of their callow willingness to please. How little shame they felt of their exactions. The glances of the boys cut him and he foresaw in an inkling the thousand uses their willingness would be put to, until their faces changed, until they too were set.

  He ambled towards the sea. He asked Scrotes what he had made of his aunt’s disquisition over lunch. Scrotes replied saying, O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well! Which brought knowing smiles to their bookish faces.

  The sun on a stone wall—yellow, gold, bronze, red-metal—shaded through and was gone in moments. He smoked with his ear to the waves and he thought of a ten-year-old boy whose rollicking kingdom this shore had been. Truly, he was a happy child.

  —What did your aunt intend, Scrotes asked, when she spoke of the good people taking you away?

  —The fairies, MacMurrough answered. They take the beautiful boy and leave a changeling brute in his place.

  He looked back up the lawns to where the boys still paraded. In their golden kilts they looked like tulips, tulips which glowed and marched in the dusk.

  —We’re gods, he said. And these our playthings.

  —There are many gods, returned Scrotes. Many to whom even you are but a whim.

  —Ah yes, scaly-eyed Themis, guardian of law.

  —One was thinking of Eros, whose arrows pierce and bring life.

  Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.

  And yet not boys but youth itself. Distance detached them, water unformed them, particularities washed away. Nasal whine, feet that smelt, these were accidents of their mundane selves. The sea proposed an ideal, unindividuate, sublime. Above on my perch I sit and watch. Alone one man.

  —Not entirely alone, said Scrotes.

  —No, MacMurrough conceded. One is never alone with the ghost of a friend.

  He took up his towel as though to make room, patted it on his lap. In return Scrotes heaved a sigh, his weary limbs to ease, as if. Side by side they sat, chatting of this and that. With the boys swimming below, it was only natural their conversation should turn to friendship; and Scrotes remarked that the ancients had considered friendship a stimulus to virtue. The Philosopher, he further observed, went so far as to raise friendship to a virtue of itself. MacMurrough wondered was that still so, and Scrotes thought no, that its role had been subsumed in the family.

  —Why should that be?

  Scrotes did not immediately say, and MacMurrough conjectured that the family was more easily governed. Certainly friendship had its political implications and Scrotes was able to advance instances of friends who had effected risings and revolts against despots and bullies. Tyrants, so Plato said, stand in awe of friends. The question then arose: was friendship incidental or essential to these actions? MacMurrough inclined to the latter view; for friendship, he maintained, tending to the good of both friends, by extension might seek the good of all. Scrotes wondered might the same not be said of families? From this proposition MacMurrough dissented, discovering as he spoke what seemed to him the differentia of those two institutions: the one, being generative, must seek its interest against the competitive generation of others; the other, owning no posterity, was free of such claims. Might we then say, asked Scrotes, that the virtues advanced by two such differing institutions should themselves be different?

  —It seems we very well might, MacMurrough replied.

  And it was pleasant to speak of such things while on their windy prominence they sat. Below, the boys thithered and thenced to the raft and back. Three times, four times, five times, six. Like mating ducks they swam: parallel but one slightly ahead.

  —And if it be the case that the one has subsumed the other, Scrotes continued, might we not then infer that the virtues advanced by the one are more in kilter with the times than the virtues advanced by the other?

  —It seems inevitable that we should, said MacMurrough.

  —What, then, are the virtues advanced by friendship?

  MacMurrough replied that they were surely divers and legion; but that the cardinal virtue of friendship must be selflessness. That quality, he maintained, was exampled in all the heroic friendships, but for its cynosure he chose Castor and Pollux, opining that greater love hath no man than this, that Pollux laid down his immortality for his friend. He touched on the loyalty of Damon and Pythias and lightly glanced on Sergius and Bacchus and other couplings of the Christian calendar who had found in their friendship the fortitude to accept their martyrs’ crowns. Of the Sacred Band of Thebes he spoke, which at Chaeronea fell, each friend by his lover’s side, and told how Philip of Macedon had wept for such valor, pledging through his candid tears, “Woe unto them who think evil of such men.” Of Achilles and Patroclus he naturally spoke, of Pylades and Orestes (nomina fama tenet), of Theseus and Pirithous, of Nisus and Euryalus. Nor, in passing to the modern era, did Summoner and Pardoner, Colin and Hobbinol, the two kings of Brentford, Sir Symphony and Sir Foeminine Fanviles, Chapman and Keats, Burke and Hare, Fortnum and Mason, Gilbert and Sullivan, Hook and Snivey, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels escape his survey, but all were mentioned, and the virtue exemplified by each particular friendship was granted its due regard.

  —What, then, are the virtues advanced by family? asked Scrotes.

  But MacMurrough was becoming bored with this now. Down below, the boys had touched the raft their seventh time and now they clung to the ropes. On kindlier mornings they would climb aboard, but the wind was too chill today. They rested in the water, chatting, he supposed, catching their breath, friends.

  —You know, he said to Scrotes, I remember at my school the monks discouraged particular friendships. Particular friendships they condemned, if not as sin, as occasions gravid with its potential.

  —Friendship tending to love may tend to desire, said Scrotes.

  —Yes, but desire was there anyway. We all desired. We were riven with it. The monks policed friendship but all they effected was a sexual abandon. Instead of fumbling with love, we fumbled in the dark.

  MacMurrough then descanted on desire’s having itself been the cause of friendship’s fall. For whereas desire (by which, he informed Scrotes, he intended carnal desire) was for the pantheists unproblematical (Scrotes raised his eyebrows at this), in the teleological universe of the theists (by which, he informed Scrotes, he intended the Christian worldview) the gratification of that desire being fruitless (excepting the pleasure it afforded), it was therefore purposeless, and what was purposeless was of itself contrary to a purposeful god’s will, therefore sinful.

  Scrotes thought this rather a long-winded way of saying Christians disapproved of schoolboys jumping into each other’s beds and MacMurro
ugh had to laugh at his gentle teasing.

  Scrotes allowed, nevertheless, there was something in what MacMurrough had said and by way of illustrating this allowance he quoted from Augustine who had polluted the vein of friendship with the filth of desire—a phrase, Scrotes remarked, which would mean nothing to the Greeks, for whom friendship and desire were congenial (if MacMurrough would forgive the paronomasia) bedfellows. And yet, Scrotes continued, even for the Christians, friendship was not irremediably flawed for, as Augustine later confessed, it was his love for his friend that brought him closer to his God—a notion, said Scrotes, worthy of the Athenian Bee himself.

  Such gentlemanly discussion, so affably did they speak, MacMurrough felt a rising gratitude for his old friend. He was a decent sort was Scrotes. True, he had taken to haranguing of late; but this morning it was like old times again, when they had had leisure in the sick-ward at Wandsworth to converse. Not conversation by any civilized standard, but a kind of a mussitation, the prisoner’s half-mime half-whisper, under the nodding eye of an orderly. Funny old man with his donnish ways. His courtesy had affronted the warders whose satisfaction lay in black looks and oaths unuttered. At first MacMurrough had conceived it a kindness on his part that he should take an interest in the fellow. Months passed before he understood it was the odd old fellow who had taken him in charge. Their friendship became his refuge; their talks his reprieve. That old man’s nidorous whispered breath had entered into MacMurrough’s heart an insufflation of—of what, exactly?

  MacMurrough could not exactly say. He sniffed now, and sniffing caught the smell of hearthstone and heartbreak that had tenanted those echoing halls, those echoing halls, those echoing, those.

  Whatever about that, he was sure this morning they were getting along famously. Indeed, he was coming to the opinion they had their subject nicely wrapped; when Scrotes of a sudden smacked his palm on the flat of his forehead and exclaimed,

  —First principles!

  MacMurrough queried the void beside and repeated the curious ejaculation.

  —Here we are discussing the media, Scrotes elaborated, through which virtue may be advanced, without firstly having decided what virtue may be.

  It was a grievous fault and they immediately set about its rectification. Scrotes, as was his use, delved to the root of the word and expounded its meaning as that which befits a man. As such, he said, virtue in its original was unavailable to women. Whereupon MacMurrough introduced a lighter note, to wit, nowadays the reverse held true, virtue being most commonly construed an instinct, proper in girls, to preserve their virginity, and in women to nurture the results of its loss.

  Between these extremes, they had stoics at the door, epicureans to dinner, they had cynics snapping at their heels. Doctors they examined, angelic, subtle and invincible. They passed from the sophists’ virtue of the interest of the strong over the weak to its happier sibling, latterly denominated enlightened self-interest, but whose epitome they found in Matthew 7:12. Of mechanicalists they spoke, of rites and taboos; of revelationists, of ultimate goodness, of the soul. Of himeros, the desire that strikes the spirit through the eyes; of pothos, the soul’s yearning for its separated love. Injunctions detained them: Gnosce teipsum; Cogita ut sis. Nor did the utilitarian ethic of the greatest happiness of the greatest number escape their attention. Did they speak of the hedonic calculus and the is/ought problem? Most assuredly. As also of imperatives, categorical and hypothetical; of eudemonia and pandemonium. Tabulae rasae—these were not omitted. Neither were hedonics, aesthetics, the Balmorality of good Queen Vic, the Ibsenity of the drama.

  Was any science or branch of science, pertinent to their inquiry, omitted? Yes; axiology. On what account? MacMurrough’s having forgotten for the moment what axiology meant. When reference was made to mechanical religion, did they happen to mention that taboos in the main are topographical, alimentary, bodily? To be sure. What rough-hewn witticism did MacMurrough thereupon interject? He postulated the most unvirtuous man of all, who fetched off in chapel while eating sweets. Did they laugh? They did.

  Was MacMurrough satisfied with the course of their inquiry? Immediately, yes; ultimately, no. On what account was he ultimately dissatisfied? On account of his remembering that Scrotes was no longer with him. To what may be attributed Scrotes’s absence? His being dead. Was this a sad fact? Without the least shadow of a doubt. What logical implicative was employed by MacMurrough, the unforeseen consequence of which was his realization of Scrotes’s unbeing? If . . . then. State the protasis. If Scrotes had really been there on the bench. And the apodosis? Then he had reminded MacMurrough the meaning of axiology. All together now in oratio recta. “If you really were Scrotes, you’d bloody well know what axiology meant.”

  Was MacMurrough brought up sharp by this iteration? He was, figuratively. How did it affect him? Coldly, literally. Name three emotions of similar character that MacMurrough felt. Grief, loss, regret. Of which the greatest was? Loss. What did MacMurrough say? He said: “You left me the writing, old man, but not the cipher. You left me the words without their meaning. They dance on pins for me now, but with you I had the glimmering of answers. You are gone and I but know enough to mock.” What quality, hitherto unmentioned, did MacMurrough thereupon ascribe to friendship? Kindness. Please to elaborate. His friendship with Scrotes had given him to feel kinder to the world; their parting had left him kindless.

  What of the boys swimming? They let go the raft’s ropes and swam their final length to the cove. The walls secreted them as they left the water like the earth would clothe whose nakedness belonged in the sea.

  What does axiology mean? MacMurrough no longer cared. What did he do?

  He got up and left the bench. At half-past eleven he saw his aunt off on her motoring spree to the mountains. He followed the car up the drive and peered inside the lodge. Derelict, roofless, yet someone made his home there. The kitchen maid found him and asked about his lunch. He told her he would chop at the Pavilion Gardens. Then he told her to take the afternoon off. He told Cook to take the afternoon off. His munificence might have extended to the gardener and the gardener’s lad and to the gardener’s lad’s lad, save he came not across them. To the bootman he gave a three-quarter bottle of dry sherry wine.

  But this was not kindness, merely the hunter’s preparations. At half-past one he spied his prey, kicking its heels along the sea-wall. Dawdling thither, he sprang.

  “Afternoon off, is it?”

  “Could say that. Short time they has us on.”

  MacMurrough curtailed a smirk: he was well aware of the boy’s working arrangements. “Anything special in mind?”

  “Home.”

  The boy kicked stones. MacMurrough clicked the coins in his sovereign-purse. “Wouldn’t fancy a spot of lunch, I suppose?”

  “Lunch, would you listen. Where would I get lunch?”

  “Anywhere, I should have thought. I was thinking of the Pavilion Gardens, if you wanted to join me.”

  “Get in off the grass. Doyler in the Pavvo. That’ll be the day.”

  “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 passed 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.