At Swim, Two Boys

  Jim lay with smiles on his face that he felt could flutter away of themselves and fill the room with butterflies. He knew he was still feverish, for the smiling ached his muscles. It was so pleasant to lie there and know that sleep was coming, it was coming soon for his eyes were heavy, but sleep would be peaceful. All was safe, he was well. He saw round the room his father’s things. The Staffordshire watch-holder with no watch to hold. The slats of wood and cloth by the door that his father called a prie-dieu. Above that, his mother’s portrait. She looked surprised, but pleased, to see him there. This was a strange bed, in a room he wasn’t used to, where the pillow and sheets were suffused with pomade. But it was home and he was not lost.

  “Well?” said his father.

  “Well what, Da?”

  “Aren’t you begging to know what Mr. MacMurrough wanted with you?”

  “To swim, I thought.”

  “That’s only the start of it. He has season tickets bought for the Kingstown Baths. Heated pool and sea-water pool, them both. Oh, sure he had some blarney about a gentleman expected and he never turned up. But ask me now, and I think he has them bought special. He has a wish for you, I do believe. Nothing would do but he came up to see you. Very modern ways he has. You couldn’t say Hop but he had the window opened. Change of air, he called it.”

  “I remember him, Da. I remember him coming in.”

  “Well, and I hope you took your cap off to him. For he’s a gentleman true and blue. Private lessons from Mr. MacMurrough, what? Will that make you eat up your beef tea?”

  “I have it finished.”

  “So you have.” He took the bowl and with his other hand he touched and rubbed Jim’s knee through the blankets. His face was out of the lamp, but still Jim saw his honest happiness which like soap shone on his cheeks. He picked up his book. “I’ll bring these down now.”

  “What book were you reading?”

  “Just some old thing out of Dickens. They gave it me to borrow from your school. Here’s a good one for you. Who the Dickens was Boz? That came to me all on my own while I was sitting here. What do you think? Might send that in the papers. Do you catch on at all? Who the Dickens was Boz? They give a reward for items of interest like that.”

  But Jim could see his father was already doubting if Who the Dickens wasn’t a touch too choice for the newspapers. It was strange about Mr. MacMurrough. In his fever, when he came in the room, he had seemed to Jim a silver knight, opening his window and banishing gloom. And he had looked so kind that last time they had met, his lip not checked by that mustache, and his eyes too that had lost the chill in their corners. His father was telling how Nancy was stitching an old vest and a drawers together which she was to dye blue and he’d be a bathing beau in the Kingstown Baths.

  “Da, I wouldn’t have gone swimming without asking you.”

  “Sure I know that, son.” He pulled a wry face. “Leastways, if you did, you’d be holding on to the ladder.”

  “You knew about that?”

  “Where would your towel be going if it wasn’t down the Forty Foot each morning? There’s a twitter of wit in the old man yet. Ho ho ho, not totally queer in the attic.”

  “And did you used follow me so?”

  “If it was particular inclement I might stretch that far. Don’t you know, son, you’re my pride and joy. I wouldn’t want to be holding you back always, but I couldn’t bear any harm to come. Sure don’t I know ’tis difficult with your brother, God bless him, and your mother, God rest her soul. But I missed you this last while. I don’t know where was this you strayed to get all them pebbles in your boots. But we’ll say no more about that. You’re back with us now in the land of the living. She used have a saying, your mother did, the pulse of my heart. And you are that, to all of us.”

  Jim saw his rosary beads hung on the post of the bedstead, and he saw that his father had hung his chain there too with his half a medal on it.

  “Papa, he was right, Mr. MacMurrough. You are a gentleman. I’m proud of you for a father.”

  “Irrah now,” he answered, wagging his head. At the door, he said, “I suppose ’tis a species of ridiculous to be calling me Papa. Do you hear that now? That’s your niece is calling.”

  “How is she?”

  “Little Estella is grand sure. We didn’t let Nancy in the room on account the fever and all. But little Estella is fine and dandy. Only she misses her Uncle Jim, I’d say.”

  Estella. They had named her for his mother. He had never thought to ask what was his mother’s name. Then the little thing had come and learnt it for him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “The problem is, it’s your”—MacMurrough slapped the side of his buttocks—“you’re letting them, it sink in the water. Think of your body as a balance.” He made a seesaw of his hands. “Every time you lift your head, then”—one hand rose, the other descended—“you push down instead of behind. Upshot is, your kick is wasted. Reason being you don’t keep your”—another slap of his buttocks—“up enough.”

  “My legs is it?”

  “Your arse,” said MacMurrough.

  The boy peeked sideways, checking, then his face dimpled with cheek. MacMurrough slipped into the pool. “I’ll hold you.”

  He got him into a swimming position, holding him by stomach and small of his back. Tickle the groin and we’d soon have that arse where we want it. “Arching your neck again. Face in the water. Don’t tense, I have you. Small kick will keep you balanced.”

  Slowly, as he relaxed, the navy-clad hillocks rose to break the surface. Fondly lapped lagoony tides upon the tidal creek. One of the more agreeable ruts of life. “Don’t forget to breathe.” The boy sided his face, gulped, faced down again. “Now. Forget about your arms. Roll and breathe. Roll and breathe. Head down and arse up.”

  Too high now. MacMurrough lifted his hand from the boy’s back and rested it on his bum, exerting a gentle pressure, at the same time lifting his shoulders, so that a straightish line was formed. They truly had come a long way together, and were getting along devilish well. Not so long ago, when these lessons had commenced, MacMurrough made no doubt the boy would be jumping ten feet from the water and banging his head on the diving-board, if his rear were so much as admitted to, let alone spoken of or, God help us, touched.

  “Now do your stroke.”

  He waded along with the boy swimming, releasing his hold till only his touch remained, and still the line held. The boy swam on, away from him, with fine leisurely crawls and unhectic flips of his feet. It was the only way. Anyone might dash a length. But to swim well, one must swim slow. MacMurrough pulled himself to the edge, where he sat with his feet in the sink, enjoying the contrary temperatures of tiles and water. The boy kept on, forgetting in his concentration to see where he was going, and swerving late to avoid oncomers. When he came back to the bar he asked had they finished and MacMurrough nodded they had.

  “I’ll get along to the other end so.”

  Of course it was the cold pool at the open end the boy looked forward to, the freezing, sometimes wave-washed, sea-water pool, where he did his so many lengths, splashing in all directions, unfrustrated by MacMurrough’s tuition. His moment had come the first week of their swimming together, that magical moment when the mind lets go and the body is released. You’ll find it, MacMurrough had promised him, you’ll feel it when you do. Then he slipped into the pool one time, and something the way he moved, with an ease, almost a grace, MacMurrough could see he did not strive against the water. Rather, the water had received him and he joined a little in its fluency. The puzzle on his face when he looked back. “I don’t know, it’s different today.”

  “You’re swimming,” MacMurrough told him.

  He swallowed water, but he came up beaming. “I think I am too!” He turned and plunged, thrashing his arms. “It’s easy sure!” Later, he said, still suffused with the wonder, “I never knew. I never thought it could be like this. It’s the most wonderful thing.” He stayed long in the wate
r that day. He had found his element. He was in the swim.

  Now, this afternoon six weeks on, MacMurrough came out into the crisp air to watch his dive. There he stood on the board. Not a von Gloeden study: the boy was too clad and the sky too dull: but reminiscent nevertheless. The unaware posture, the vital glow, limbs atop some ruined pilaster. He springs. Hands touch toes, but the knees are bent. Not so much a jack-knife as some brand of collapsible fork. We shall have to return to the diving. His arms the clear blue glass divide, ripples his body below. An Urning poem.

  MacMurrough smiled. Anyone might know such a boy. But to know him best, one must know him slow. And these days, and most especially their afternoons, passed wondrous slow and leisurely. He went to his cubicle and dressed.

  He smoked on a pool-side bench while the boy completed his lengths. Cold March day. It had drizzled earlier, but now the sun strained for a last shine. Over his shoulder stretched the Crock’s Garden, but they did not walk there. No, to be sure, they did not walk the pier nor any part of it, and the boy even now could scarce bring himself to look that way. With impersonal eye MacMurrough viewed the sprawl of rocks, pretentious temples, scraggy veronica bushes, unlikely genus for the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

  Bashful puzzled awkwardness—it had draped the boy like his home-made bathing suit when first these lessons had begun. But the boy was changing rapidly. He was shrugging that old skin; as his confidence grew, daily he shrugged it further. An adventurism pulsed inside, which every so often MacMurrough might trip, as when he asked the boy what had occurred in the Crock’s Garden. Every so often it tripped into alarming ventures of its own, as when the boy asked MacMurrough—they were eating their ices on Doyle’s Rock—would he ever kiss another man.

  Would I kiss a man indeed. And what had the boy answered to the Crock’s Garden? Sufficient for MacMurrough to tell him to stop. That he need not speak of it, nor dwell on it. That there was a difference between the dark and privacy. That the consequences of an action depended as much on the actors as on the deed. That the same deed, talking for instance, might be a chore or a delight, depending on the other. That if the other were special to him, the deed too might be special. In short, and unspoken, that with his friend he should feel different.

  For one might choose to leave the garden of Eden or one might dawdle there till expelled: either way, go one must. And the boy had said, quite simply, Yes, I know that now.

  And now the boy had completed his lengths. He crawls to the bar, pulls upon the ladder, his bag of jewels shrunk in their cloth. Stands in that hunched way, blowing through the hands, which ever marks the swimmer returned to land. Shiveringly takes the towel MacMurrough proffers.

  “How many lengths?”

  “Thirteen each way.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Five hundred and twenty yards.”

  “Not bad,” MacMurrough allowed. “No resting?”

  “None at all!”

  Shocked that any should doubt him. “You might try resting. On your back. You’ll have to rest when you swim to the Muglins. Might as well practice it now.”

  The boy considered and nodded. His half a medal dangled from his neck. It recalled to MacMurrough a ballad Nanny Tremble had used to sing. The lovelorn lass who spurns the sailor, not knowing him for her long-lost love, till he shows her the half of her ring he has worn these livelong salty years. Sometimes it was nearly too painful to have the boy close. Sometimes MacMurrough would need to smother him in his towel and chafe the gooseflesh out of him. Now he said, “Hurry and dress. You’ll perish me looking at you.”

  He thought of Marlowe, while he smoked, that they were fools who did not love tobacco and boys. He thought of Aristophanes, and on a rock in the sea he foresaw two boys with two halves of a medal. See how they fit? We two are one.

  And what did I answer when he asked would I kiss another man? I clipped him round the ear of course. Or at least I had thought to. Only his head had moved and I found I was stroking his hair. Lovely hair, the two textures together, razored behind and fingery-flop in front. He was quite nuzzling against my hand, like an animal, and when I looked I saw his long lashes were drawn over his eyes. I bent down and kissed his forehead. His eyes opened, and he gave that extraordinary blink. Big wide eyes that fixed you in memory, then the eyes squeezed, erasing what he saw.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  His bright face flushed with health and vim. Grinning even. “What’s so amusing?” MacMurrough asked.

  “The men over.”

  “Well?”

  “Doyler used always laugh when rich folk came down the Forty Foot. They wouldn’t be used to walking out of their boots. The quality waddle, he called it.”

  “I should hope you don’t think I walk with a waddle.” His barefaced denial. “It’s your turn to get the ices,” MacMurrough said severely and reached in his pocket for a coin.

  “I have the money,” and the boy was off up the road.

  Towards Newtown Smith and the sea MacMurrough ambled, then down the shore to a grey outcrop, licked by waves, happily named Doyle’s Rock. The Pavilion was gone, and there was no place convenient to tea, save some bun-shop with trestle tables. It smelt of soup and biddies, and the first time they went there MacMurrough could think of no surer escape than two ices they might eat on the road. Strolling home, they had strayed to this rock. Schoolboys and their masters being creatures of habit, ices on Doyle’s Rock were soon the necessary conclusion, the culmination even, of their afternoon swims together.

  He had swum, before Jim had arrived for his lesson, his own quarter-mile dash to the pier and back. Now he felt the relax of his muscles, that ponderousness in the limbs that bespeaks their strength. A wonderful felicity of nature was this: that the employment of strength should strengthen one. For full a year he had immersed himself in the sea, that wondrous element, and he felt imbued now, a touch, with the sea’s immensity. Coming to the shore, swimming: it was a kind of pilgrimage to our earliest beginnings. Before we slunk up the beach and—what? found our feet.

  The boy came with his ices two. He sat down beside, brushing his shoulder against MacMurrough. He made a habit of these casual touches, and would often cover them with some artifice, as shifting his legs that one might rub against MacMurrough’s or catching MacMurrough’s attention with a hand on his shoulder, that remained there, its fingers patting. From the beginning there had been an assumption of friendship, even of close friendship. At times it seemed absurd, a fancy. It must be this way, MacMurrough thought, when hysterics claim a previous life, dementia praecox must be like this, déjà vu even. Yes, I had known him all my life—and then we met.

  They gazed upon the glaucous sea where oily-necked birds floated and dived. Untimely intervals, unlikely places, they resurfaced, floated and dived again.

  The boy said, “You never told me you saved a man.”

  “Who’s been telling you that?”

  “Sure it’s all over the Forty Foot.”

  “Well, I don’t know that I saved him so much. He wasn’t drowning, more floundering about.”

  MacMurrough had been at the Forty Foot, where he liked to smoke his first cigarette of the day. At the boys’ end some fellow was making for shore, making heavy weather of it, he could see. They called it the boys’ end because boys might paddle on the sand there. But for swimming it was hardly recommended. Too many rocks, which at high tide, as then it was, made it positively dangerous. In particular a rounded reef called the Ring Rock, so notorious a hazard that an iron bar had been raised to mark its position. It was for this bar the swimmer was making. The surge washed him forward, then the backwash dragged him out again. He was clearly in trouble, though the danger was not so much his drowning as of his ripping his stomach on the rocks below. There was nothing for it. MacMurrough shrugged from his clothes and plunged.

  “I can only wonder what it’s like to save somebody,” Jim said.

  “Do you know,” said MacM
urrough, “the strange thing was—I was in my underwear, obviously I had no towel—I had to ask the gentleman might I borrow his. Indeed you must, indeed I insist, said he. In the end it began to feel rather quits, my rescuing the man and his lending me his rotten towel.”

  Jim laughed. “Were you in your Jaegars?” he asked.

  “Yes, I believe I was.”

  “You look best in your Jaegars.”

  He had made himself bright red and he shyly peeped up from his feet at MacMurrough’s face. He made to cross his legs and their knees touched. MacMurrough recalled his own discovery of touch, the willing of it, its exploration: so very different from the being touched, the receiving into one’s seclusion the touch of another. And so maddeningly sensual. Often, going home, MacMurrough ached of arousal unrelieved.

  Across the bay in Sandycove, a last sun warmed the Martello tower. The whole of Sandycove looked warm, inviting, all tanned stone and water-washed fronts, as though a kinder climate would obtain there. It seemed absurd they should swim in Kingstown. How he had saved for those two season tickets. Yes, he had scrimped and scraped from his allowance, skimping on cigarettes even. Going then to the boy’s home. Infant paraded for his benefit. They offered tea which he had declined. Funny really, quite happily hop in his bed, but drink their tea? One expects the best and can get by on the worst: it is the populars in between are beyond the pale. And the child Nancy looking so proud and womanly.

  “You know,” he said, “even if you get there you won’t stay long on your island if it’s this weather.”

  The boy shrugged. “What does it matter the weather?”

  Even things he did not quite trust, MacMurrough took pleasure in seeing them in the boy. That loyalty which, given a cause, would be silently fanatic; the determination which, given a means, could be ruthless. They talked about the parade tomorrow, St. Patrick’s day, when the Dublin battalions of the Volunteers planned a demonstration in the center of town. They might see Doyler there, MacMurrough suggested.