At Swim, Two Boys

  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. God help the rain if it thought to pour on Aunt Eva’s fête. “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 Scrotes 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 swanked 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.

  Shit-shoveller and comfort for the troops, Arcades ambo. Naturally he blames me. And I suppose I have cast that apple before him.

  —That apple, the chaplain trumpeted, which, once he taste of it, shall rot in his mouth to the apple of Sodom.

  Yes yes, we know all that. Besides he’s already taken a tolerable bite. But did my giving it him to taste beget his desire or waken it? That is the question. Or is that the question? Mayn’t they find a half-hour’s happiness in each other’s arms? God knows, there’s little enough joy in the world, and precious little for free.

  I wonder does he frig himself thinking of his friend. Don’t suppose he finds much privacy where he sleeps. I should like to hold him while he frigged. Yes, that would be pleasant. To stroke his hair and hold him close while he thought of his friend and frigged in my bed. His flowers and his frolics to fondle and lovingly Dick to lunge, while the name of his friend to the pillow he moaned.

  Test of a true hunter—Do you fuck your catch? Pater, O pater, behold thy son.

  Doyler returned. Sheepishly showed his hand, the coins still there. “Do you mind?”

  MacMurrough shook his head. “She does little to earn it more than ask for it.”

  They walked back through George’s Street, then through the People’s Park, which pleased the boy immoderately. No, he had never been before, never in his puff. A right cheek they had calling it the People’s Park, then the keepers chasing you out without you was wearing a collar and tie. And vaguely MacMurrough agreed.

  “You know, Scrotes had many friends in the socialist movement.”

  “Scrotes? Your friend, is it?”

  “Some people in Sheffield. I was supposed to visit with them. But I didn’t. I came here instead.”

  “Maybe you was better going with the socialists.”

  “England is bloody at the moment. This war has got into everything.”

  “There’ll be war here soon enough.”

  “They’re always saying that about Ireland.”

  “Sure as tomorrow’s rain, there’ll be fighting in the streets.”

  “Yes, and the Russians are on the Tyne and the angels are at Mons.”

  “Ah well, you being a visitor, you’d know better than me.”

  MacMurrough laughed in good grace.

  “Tell us about them socialists anyway.”

  “Fellow called Carpenter. Written books, apparently. Talks about comrade love.”

  “Aye does he.”

  “No, seriously. Believes it’s a way of bridging the social divides.”

  “Likely story. If that was the case, every time a nob took a tart they’d end up talking socialism.”

  The import of what he had said gradually dawned. MacMurrough raised a brow in curiosity. But the boy, too, had a good grace.

  “Ah sure well,” he said, having spat on the wall, “that makes me the tart.”

  They slowed their pace, yet still they came to the lane where he lived. They watched the fishing men a while. MacMurrough put out his palm, feeling wet. He looked up at the sky. Drizzling again.

  “Suppose you’re going to ask me to go on with you now.”

  “Would you—if I asked?”

  “No.”

  “That’s plainly said.”

  “Not if you asked. Different if I offered.”

  This was a new adventure. And though Dick wasn’t particular what machinations were employed, MacMurrough was not so sure the rest of him felt so agreeable.

  “And do you intend to offer?”

  Twisted lips that pursed to the embouchure of a kiss. “You’ll have to wait while I find the ma. She’ll be looking for me wages packet.”

  There was a shout from behind. One of the fellows on the rocks had caught a fish. MacMurrough saw the exultant face and the limp thing held up. Then he heard the dog-patter of slippered feet as down the spiral stairs, step at a time, step at a time, Scrotes descended from his turret retreat. A breath of cold preceded him till round the bend his face appeared. And which are you? his eyes inquired.

  —Fisher or fish? he asked.

  But it wasn’t Scrotes who held MacMurrough’s attention. Out of the very corner of his eye he saw the small boy who earlier had scampered over the rocks. He held his nanny’s hand now and was walking with her home along the sea-wall. He looked over his tiny shoulder. Even from this distance, his eyes shone blue as once MacMurrough’s had shone. And it seemed to MacMurrough that a recognition came on his face. That he smiled. That he waved his tiny hand and smiled.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Anthony, dear, if I am to knot your tie you shall have to stand still. Cannot you bend your knees? How tall you must be.”

  “Six feet to the inch.”

  “Don’t say so too loudly. Only Our Lord was six feet exactly. Some of these people can be very touchy on these subjects.”

  “Ought I to be shorter or taller?”

  “For the moment you might consider being shorter. It is an age since I bowed a man’s tie. Not since your grandfather. Let me see. No, that won’t do at all. We want you looking your best for our guests. Young ladies, and more pertinently their mothers, have an eye for a well-bowed tie.”

  “It being the first serious step in life.”

  “How whimsical you are.”

  Wilde, of course; though he did not say so. There had been disappointment already. “Turn-ups in your trouser legs. Really, Anthony, I cannot think what your tailor intended. A turn-up is a slight on a gentleman’s carriage.” And his socks. “Lavender, indeed. I have never known morning so colorful. Is it the last cr
y of St. Germain? Perhaps we might utilize that. My nephew has been abroad. Yes, la Légion étrangére. So happy to have him home.”

  “Surely they will have heard where I’ve been?”

  “They will have heard what the English have said. Truth is quite another matter.”

  Now, while she pulled at his throat, he said, “Hadn’t I ought to be told who’s coming?”

  “Few that you would know. Though you ought to know them. It is absurd that a MacMurrough should be so ill informed of his country’s society.” While her fingers fretted, her tongue spilt names. “The usual foule en fête. Old Mrs. Houlihan has long arrived. Ensconced in the garden room with her invalid wine and wafers. Really it was only a charity that I invited her at all as the family has fallen considerably. The estates are encumbered and her sons have flitted about the globe squandering what fortune remained. One fears the daughters may suffer the same trait. Still, she was quite a figure in her day and one had to invite her, if only as a point de départ.

  “Then whom have we? Lady O’Brien, to whom we all pay tribute for her remarkable triumph at Crufts. Her Great Danes were judged best of breed, and I might add myself they are the friendliest tamest beasts, quite belying their grisly appearance. She is to present her daughter, wild young thing, gap-toothed, alas, and rather quarrelsome, one hears.

  “Madame O’Connor with her crony that Breifne woman. Such memories these people have. I doubt if we’ll ever be forgiven the incident with your grandfather. He invited the woman to share his compartment and such a fuss she made afterwards, protesting she had no notion the train was traveling to Ferns. In the end her husband had to come fetch her and there might well have been a scene had not your grandfather prudently dispatched to Bristol for the season.

  “Then there’s poor Lady Geraldine. Did I get the simnel cake? Did I enjoy it? Isn’t it the king of cakes? She is quite touched, I find. We are told the family line was saved by a monkey. I do hope not in Mr. Huxley’s sense. O’Neills, O’Donnells, Maguires, unmanageable fillies out of the north. It is the fathers I blame. Cook’s tours of the Continent and the poor children left to mind for themselves. Miss Butler with her darling spaniels and picture-hat. Quite the cavalier.

  “Charming couple from Lucan I met in Paris with their daughter Ruth. I’m sure that child’s not all together. Something alarming the way her head lolls. It seems Limerick has evacuated for the season, for not a solitary reply has returned from that quarter. The Misses French insist on coming by yacht. I cannot think how they may hope to debark in this tide. The Bridges will be here, Grattan and Butt, but they of course are Protestant.

  “Still, there is nothing like a Protestant to raise the tone. Hence poor Miss Emmet, though I fear she has waited too long and now must be written off entirely. Numerous dreamy blue-stockings who write poetry for the press. I say poetry. I say press. And that poor old tired old thistlewhipper out of Kerry. She also was at Crufts. But her Irish terriers were found thin and straggling in the end. They have been bought as a job lot by the Ministry for War and will work as fetchers and sentinels in the trenches, the creatures. And in fine Miss Ivy Day, about whom least said, soonest mended. I believe the only hope for that child now is a convent’s laundry.”

  MacMurrough said, “It sounds a tolerably uninspiring lot.”

  Tightly she tensed a temporary knot. “Do not mock the Irish womanhood,” she commanded. “It was not the monks or the chiefs who civilized the Dane, but the Irish slavewomen who nursed his sons. It was not the great kings nor the petty kings who had the Normans more Irish than the Irish themselves, but the daughters of kings whom they took to wife. And it was their Irish wives who kept the Old English to their faith. Who knows, but that the gentlemen took flight, their women might have made something of the planters who replaced them. But the men deserted her, and their dark Rosaleen they beggared to the hillside.”

  He watched her reflected view in the glass. An emerald glittered in her hair and fine pearls lustered below. The rest was long and black, as though her shadow and she might be one. “Beggared?” he asked.

  “As good as, for all the gentlemen recked of her.”

  A last tug and she withdrew. “Still, beggars may not be choosers, and I am sure we shall find many a suitress in the months ahead. That, after all, is what young ladies and gentlemen are for. Now, let you turn round.” His neck reprieved, his hair was next arraigned. “Oh lah, Anthony, you might have visited a barber. You look every inch a banjoist.”

  “An’t I supposed to be a musician?”

  “You are supposed to be what you are: a MacMurrough leading the young to their duty. Nobody has asked you to be artistic about it. Please don’t smoke.”

  He closed the carton lid.

  She glanced about the room in a withering way. Huckaback towels rumpled on the shaving stand. Unslopped Minton slop-pail. His papers at his desk. Her hands hugged her arms. “Is it very chilly in here? Does the child lay a fire for you?”

  “I forget to keep it sometimes.” Her dress, he saw, was not entirely black. A fine embroidery greened its neck. She looked a very elegant, very tragic relict. “And you, Aunt Eva, what are you supposed to be?”

  “I am my father’s daughter.”

  “Yet you never married.”

  The withering look advanced, narrowing on its way, glinting towards him. Then it passed and settled on the view through the window. “Do hurry, Anthony. I shall need you to organize your boys. The guests will be arriving any time and I had thought how thrilling if our golden heroes served the bonnes-bouches.”

  Coming down the stairs MacMurrough halted at the half-pace glass. Momentarily a blue-eyed boy in Fontleroy lace quizzed him. He winked and the glass returned the boy grown up. And such an elegant gentleman he was. Sleek fell of hair, his thread of a ’tache, eyes the color of a blue-fox fur. Morning-coat and grey slip showing, pearl pin, pale gardenia, choker of a collar to keep his chin up. In his hand a slip of gloves, silk topper, his grandfather’s best malacca. His front-creased pants, pearl-grey spats, his bals, buttoned, patent. An aubade in black and dirty white.

  He felt an itching in his nose which, if Nanny Tremble were to be believed, boded a stranger to meet. Or perhaps he was already looking at him. He satisfied the itch, then lodged the cane in the half-pace corner, sloped the gloves above. Légion étrangère, my aunt. I’m Gilbert the filbert. He topped the silk, tipped it to an angle. L’incroyable. Tapped down the stairs.

  His aunt’s voice came loudly from the garden room, surdity now having apparently been loaded upon old Mrs. Houlihan’s other misfortunes. He thought a livener might be in order but there was a gentleman in uniform by the library door.

  “Ah, MacMurrough,” this officer called. “Don’t suppose you’ll remember me.”

  His hand was out for a shake. MacMurrough gestured a brief delay and darted through the pass door. Kitchens like Piccadilly Circus. Child in the corner weeping to herself while the trays passed overhead.

  “Is everything all right, Nancy?”

  She looked up through reddened eyes. “Oh, Mr. MacMurrough, I’m a good girl, really I am.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Though somebody evidently thought otherwise.

  He came out on the area, then up the steps to the side terrace. Family groups knotted about, each with its attendant cleric; magnificent matrons in powder and mink, maidens pale beside. Threading between, black-tailed waiters and exotic-liveried youths.

  Now that he’d thought about a drink, he couldn’t get the notion off his mind. Who was that fellow in uniform? Should have lifted a glass while I was down the kitchen. Interesting specimen against the wall there. Glass tilting out of his hand. Very louche he looks. Lounge suit inside the enclosure, sound the alarm. One of the Houlihan sons who have frittered their wealth. Or is it? Good grief, it’s bloody Doyle.

  “Well, Mr. MacMurrough, grand isn’t it?”

  “Shouldn’t you be in your kilt? Shouldn’t you be serving the guests?”

  “Th
ought I’d swank it a while in me suit of clothes.”

  “Did you indeed.”

  “Besides, there’s the division of labor involved. I’m here for to play music not to be kowtowing to the la-di-das.”

  “You’re looking rather la-di-da yourself. Is that champagne you’re drinking?”

  “Don’t rightly know what it is. Was standing here, just looking, like, and a young thing comes and offers me the tray of it. Sure why not? says I. Is that what it is, champagne? Wait till I tells them at home.”

  “Fetch me a glass, will you? Fetch two glasses. I need to keep clear of the house for a time.”

  They stepped over the rope that enclosed the high lawns from the mud-show proper. Stalls were still setting up as they wandered down the paths. Banners fluttered with looping Celtic letters. Rinuccini’s ice cream. Keogh’s saddlery. Catering by Allen, Larkin and O’Brien. Clod-hopper who taught the boys to march trundling his barrow to its station. Through somber umbrage of trees shadow-tailed squirrels flickered.

  “Queue a mile long at the gates,” Doyler said. “What time’s it due opening at?”

  “Whenever the refreshments are finished, I suppose. We don’t want feeding the hungry, do we?”

  “Wouldn’t do at all, that wouldn’t.”

  Makeshift stage where later his boys would perform, where now hob-nailed laborers thumped the boards. Behind and in the wings, national schoolteachers led their charges in final rehearsal. Communion-frocked girls sang hymns to Our Lady, crop-haired boys peeped Hibernia irredenta. In equal doses, Home Rule and the BVM. Horrisonant call of somebody’s warpipe.

  “Let’s cut to the vegetable garden. Private there.”

  It had rained overnight but morning in its discretion had seen better sense. It might even prove a summer’s day. They passed the cracked sundial, overgrown with briars, whose gnomon shadow zigged and zagged to find some time to tell. The paths were streaked with slime where snails had passed. Why do snails travel in the rain? MacMurrough did not know but he watched Doyler step carefully aside to rescue those that had lost their way. They sat where old Moore liked to sit, amid the dilapidated cucumber-frames, with his half a loaf and can of tea.