At Swim, Two Boys

  “What are you snivelling for anyway? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “You didn’t need to be so rough.”

  “You want to see me rough? Throw you off the roof, then you’ll know me rough all right.”

  “You didn’t have to be rough with me.”

  “Ah will you shut your snivel. What manner of a man are you I don’t know. Right sheela.”

  He still hadn’t turned round. He was still kneeling, fumbling with his shirt and holding his trousers up the same time.

  “Ah lookat here,” said Doyler exasperated. “Turn round for God’s sake till I sort you out.”

  He didn’t turn but he let Doyler coax him round. Doyler pulled the trousers down. He straightened the shirt tail, then pulled the trousers up properly, buttoning the waistband. “You can do the rest for yourself,” he told him. “Have you a handkerchief?” Not looking he nodded. Doyler found it in his pocket. “Go on now, blow your nose.”

  He blew his nose, but he didn’t wipe his eyes, which were red and sore-looking.

  “I’m sorry, all right? I’ve said I’m sorry now.”

  Again the boy nodded.

  “I didn’t do nothing anyway. I didn’t hurt you.”

  “I thought you’d be friendly.”

  “Lookat I have a friend already.”

  “You didn’t do that to him.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “You did it to me though.”

  “I said I’m sorry. You can hit me if you want.”

  “Don’t want to hit you.”

  “You can sit down anyway, can’t you?”

  The boots sat down, sliding against the tiles till he was hunched like Doyler.

  “Listen to me,” said Doyler. “I have me friend. Least I think I do. And I wanted to be with him.”

  “Why wouldn’t you go there then?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “You’re scared to,” the boots said and sniffed.

  “Blow your nose,” said Doyler. He watched him blow his nose. “That’s better, isn’t it? It’s better when you blow your nose.”

  “You’re scared he won’t be your friend no more.”

  Yes, he was scared. He was scared to be with Jim. And he wanted to hold him. He wanted so much just his arm round his neck. But he didn’t know could he be trusted. If he made Jim do what he made this boy do. And worse if Jim would let him.

  “Do you miss him?”

  Doyler sighed, and with that breath spilt all the tide of his loneliness and fears. “I miss him, aye,” he said. “He was pal o’ me heart, so he was. I try not to think of him, only I can’t get him off my mind. He’s with me always day and night. I do see him places he’s never been, in the middle of a crowd I see him. His face looks out from the top of a tram, a schoolboy wouldn’t pass but I’m thinking it’s him. I try to make him go away, for I’m a soldier now and I’m under orders. But he’s always there and I’m desperate to hold him. I doubt I’m a man except he’s by me.”

  “Maybe he misses you too. I’d miss you was you my friend.”

  Doyler patted his knee, that could never be more than bones to him.

  “What scares me most,” said the boots, “is not that I’ll be hit or they’ll hate me. I’m scared if I wouldn’t find anyone. I can’t help looking, can I?”

  “No, you do right to look.” Doyler stood up. “I’m going to Kingstown.”

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “You know now you can still hit me if you want?”

  “I never wanted to hit you.”

  “Sure I know you didn’t. If I thought you did, I wouldn’t offer it.” He held out his hand to give the boots a pull up.

  “I still like you,” he said.

  “Ah come here to me,” said Doyler, “you old wirrasthrue thing.”

  He went back to the widow woman’s room and took his rifle from the rafters. He’d take that in case, but his equipment could wait till tomorrow. To hell with his guard duty. They’d get some other jasus to guard their Hall for them. It was a long journey on foot, seven miles. It was raining hard when he got to Kingstown. He had his rifle in a brown-paper parceling. By Glasthule the paper was sogging away. He passed between chapel and college. He found he was walking more briskly. He had a spring in his step. He turned up Adelaide Road. He was running now. Sprinting and scarce a falter of his leg. The months fell with his feet till it was only a day since last they swam. He spun into the lane, splashing in puddles. The door pushed and the bell clinked. Jim was behind the counter. He looked up. His smile had been practising all day. Doyler held out his rifle in one hand and his bush-hat in the other. “What cheer, eh?” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Doyler had the salt and he was offering it round the table. “Salt?” he said to Jim. The words wouldn’t form on Jim’s lips. He felt his face stupid with smiles, but his face wouldn’t brook their interruption. “Will I leave a pinch of it anyway?” Jim nodded and a white scruple formed on his plate.

  “Elbows, Jim,” said his father. “You don’t see Doyler with his elbows on the table.”

  His father sat with the bread before him, his face significant, sleeves hitched up, slicing. Jim heard Nancy laughing into Doyler’s ear, “Would think ’twas the Christmas goose to be carved.” He watched Doyler dip in his egg. The spoon paused before his mouth and he glanced over, the way Jim had called him to look. The dark gleamed in his eyes, and they collusive, full of meaning. Jim felt his own quicken in response. Doyler grinned, the spoon in his mouth. A boot reached under the table and rubbed Jim’s shin. He thought his smile then would leap the plates to hit Doyler smack on the cheek. It had been this way since he arrived. Scarce a word between them, what conversation they had in gestures—a shake, a shrug, the cock of a query; smiles, their thieving eyes.

  Meanwhile Jim’s father made talk and Doyler politely earned his tea. No, Mr. Mack, he had never stepped inside of the Castle. True to be sure, Dublin was notorious for losing your way in it. Italy joins Austria? No, he hadn’t heard that. Certainly, that was a grave development. Oh yes, he saw it now. On the map, yes. That was a good one, Mr. Mack. Italy joins Austria. No, he never thought of that. Sure why not, send it in, the papers might publish it.

  The tea things came and went, sparingly with Lent. At last the table was cleared and Jim might leave his elbows legitimately there. He rested his chin in the crook of his hands, watchful and listening. The fire spat at the hearthrug. Long time ago he would used curl on that rug, a ball of pinky heat, while the furniture winked and tall shadows peopled the walls. Then, like now, though he had not then the words to describe it, he was aware of his detachment, of his being a witness to the moment, witness not participant. Now, in a lazy way, he was pleased to remain so, these last few hours, a time yet. His feet pressed against the bench he sat on which later they’d pull out for their bed.

  Doyler had little Estella on his lap, and he was dandling her up and down, asking her, riddling, “Will I tell you a story of Johnny Magorey? Will I begin it? That’s all that’s in it.”

  Jim’s father said, “I believe there are two flutes here somewheres about. Are you with us at all there, Jim?”

  “What, Da?”

  “I said we have two flutes here somewheres.”

  “Yes,” said Jim. “I kept your flute for you.”

  “Sure I knew you would.”

  Jim showed it down from the press, casually, and busied himself with his own, piecing the sections. Hours of work that flute had cost him. Cleaning the years of use from the finger-holes, new-twining the tenons, oiling the brittle from the wood, shining away till he found its yellow gleam; and all the while testing to be sure of the tone, bright and near silvery in the high Ds, dark and warm in the low. Doyler gave out a scale. He said something. Jim shied his head. “Oh well sure,” he muttered.

  “Slipjigs,” called Doyler. He rapped on the floor, one two three, and off they flew, spattering the dew. Nancy tapped on the tiles, Estella jogg
ed on her lap. His father called up the stairs, “Are you all right with the rattle, Aunt Sawney?” “Way with you!” they heard her back. They had the dew nicely spattered: on they played. It was a puzzle how they agreed the tunes, but a glance to Doyler and Doyler would nod, and their fingers leapt to the change. The night came down and the fire gathered them round. They slowed to airs. Doyler’s eyes glimmered in their corners, watching him. Jim closed his own and he heard the notes, how they found themselves, as once Doyler had told they would. He heard them drifting above, their harmonies, shifting in the draughts of the fire; with the smoke they lifted, up up above, in modes he did not know the names of them, aloft and adrift in the night and the stars.

  “You been practicing,” said Doyler.

  Jim nodded.

  Nancy said, “Now then, Mr. Mack, will we leave these two dotes to themself a while?”

  “Already?” said his father. “And I was only thinking I’d fetch the spoons.”

  “’Tis Lent a while yet,” she said, “and Our Lord still in the tomb.”

  There was admonishment in her tone and Jim saw his father glance to the walls the way he’d hear the neighbors malavoguing his house. “Bed so,” he said.

  Nancy was away up the stairs. His father went out the yard—“The inconvenience,” he said with a wink to Doyler. They were alone a moment. Doyler bent down for a heat off the fire. He looked over at Jim. “You’ve a spot on your chin,” he said.

  “So have you. You have three growing.”

  He laughed and Jim laughed too. Jim finished with the flutes, running a cloth through the sections. He said, “I didn’t expect you’d be in a uniform.”

  Doyler stood straight and squared his shoulders. “Am I handsome or what?”

  “Throwing shapes, so you are.”

  “And yourself in your breeches. They’re gone too small for you now.”

  Jim lowered his head, feeling the passage of Doyler’s eyes. His hand smoothed the crease of his knee, wet from the flute. Doyler said, “But I always preferred you in your breeches.”

  Jim peeked up through the strands of his hair. “You never told me that before.”

  “Did I not? I might have.” Doyler rubbed his nose, finger and thumb, like a snuffers. “Lookat, I’ll go back into town. I’ll be out again tomorrow, promise.”

  “You said you’d be staying.”

  “I’m saying I could go back. If you wanted like.”

  “Don’t be saying that, Doyler. You wouldn’t leave now.”

  “No.” Again he fretted with his nose. “Where’d you stow me rifle anyway?”

  “It’s safe,” said Jim. “Help me out with the bed.”

  His father returned, making low inward mouth-music. He played with lighting his candle while they undressed to their shirts. They climbed in the bed, head and toe, and his father said, “What’s this, no prayers?” They had to climb out again and kneel on the floor. Doyler hid a claub of laughing behind his hands. Jim blessed himself and they clambered once more in the bed.

  “Goodnight so, boys. Sure you won’t stay awake gostering all hours?”

  “No, Da.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Mack, and thanks now.”

  “Not a word.”

  The gas came down, the stairs door closed. Jim heard the steady tramp above, the weary grievance of his father’s bed. The legs beside him stretched and he squinched up by the wall to make room. Out from the dark Doyler said, “Your feet’ll froze me. And you know what? They smell and all.”

  “Yours are no soap.”

  The covers threw back and Doyler’s shirt was shimmering by the window. The blind eased up. “There’s no moon,” he said, “but it’s better open.” He knelt there a moment. He appeared to rise in the air: it was his shirt pulling off. “Shift over,” he said. Feet traveled Jim’s legs in drifts of warm and ice, then Doyler lay beside. He pinched Jim’s shirt. “Take it off.”

  Jim pulled the shirt over his head. When he lay back, Doyler’s arm was waiting on the pillow. It turned him in its hold. “Now we’re settled,” Doyler said.

  “We are too.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No, it’s lovely.”

  He cuddled over Doyler’s chest. His head lifted and dropped with each breath. He listened to the pump of the heart. His hand had fallen on Doyler’s side. Now he strayed it up his arm, fingering the hairs in the sneak of his armpit, then up along the shoulder. There was a feeling in this touch, yellow and soft, that was very like the color of candle-light. He found the leather string round Doyler’s neck, and he traced it along, on past his scapular, till he touched the half of a medal.

  “It’s there,” said Doyler, “never fear.”

  “Sure I knew that.”

  Then Jim was telling, he didn’t know why, about the flag he had made. A green flag, he had it stitched himself out of an old cloth. And he’d fashioned a kind of a strap to carry it on his back with. He’d tried it swimming and you wouldn’t hardly notice it in the way. Had Doyler forgot? The flag was for the patriots Gidley and MacKinley. To claim the Muglins for Ireland.

  Doyler was huffing away. “What’s funny?” asked Jim.

  “I know a pole too we can hang it from.”

  Jim felt a tug on him below and his breath came murmuring out. He had to take another breath the further to let it murmur.

  Doyler creaked round to face him. “It’s a tiny bed,” he said.

  “I can make more room.”

  “No, it’s a tiny bed not to be friendly in it.” He pulled Jim closer and pressed against him. “Sure you don’t mind?”

  “It’s lovely, Doyler.”

  “I wouldn’t want you having any doubts.”

  It streamed out of Jim then. Oh sure he knew that, he had no doubt about that, all along he never doubted, leastways he believed he knew, save he couldn’t see it back last summer, he was scared then, but he wasn’t scared now, he had longed for it to be this way, and how could it be any different, it was never a case of whether, only of when or who first, weren’t they made to be this way—

  “Shut up,” said Doyler. “Case of whether—You’re giving me earache.” He pulled Jim closer again. And it was strange being there, not strange with Doyler, but with this other thing that shared their bed and bumped against Jim at times, expected of course, but in physicality an astonishing event. Doyler laughed into his ear, “You know, with your pole and mine, never mind a flag, we could hang our washing out.”

  Jim turned on his belly.

  “No use turning your back, Jim Mack. Your back’s as good as your front is to me.”

  “I’m not shy,” said Jim. “Only if you touch me again—”

  “Come here to me, you gaum.”

  “No,” said Jim. “No,” he said again. “I mean, Doyler, don’t.”

  The shape that had crouched above him stiffened. “No?”

  “We can’t.”

  A moment. “Will they hear us above?”

  “It’s not that.”

  A moment again. “Don’t you want me, Jim?”

  Jim reached his hands to Doyler’s shoulders. “Don’t you know we have to wait till the island?”

  A long while then while Doyler arched over him. The thin light of night, and of vigil and embers, found the outline of his face. Then he lay down stiff in the space beside. He took a breath.

  “Lookat Jim, I never swum to the Muglins that time. What happened I was swept out one day. I was struggling like mad to keep afloat even. Only for a launch chancing by I don’t doubt I’d be drownded. I’m sorry for leading you on. I did it by reason I wanted to swim with you. I wanted to be with you that way. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And about them fellows with the flag. They was never patriots. They was robbers and murderers. They was no better than pirates. And me leg too, Jim. I never hurt that in the Lock-out. That was himself at home did that.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s it. I’m sorry now. But y
ou can’t swim to the Muglins. It’s too tough a stretch.”

  “You can so swim there,” said Jim. “I know for I swum half-way and back.”

  “You did?”

  “I did, last week. And I had enough in me to swim it again the same time.”

  Doyler let a low whistle. “Me life on you, Jim, but you’re the man if you did.”

  “And I know about the pirates for I spoke with men at the Forty Foot and they only laughed at my story. That doesn’t signify. We still have the Muglins to claim for Ireland and that’s why I made the flag. About the leg I guessed, for you was either in Clare or in Dublin, you couldn’t be both. Now listen to me. We’ll swim to the island tomorrow. We have that pledged and we can’t go back on a pledge. You’re not forgetting we spat on it?”

  “I’m not forgetting we spat on it.”

  “Well then. If you never been there, that’s all the better. It was a thing that muddled me that you swum there already. It’s clearer now. It’ll be us two together, out there in the sea. We have to go, because in a way, you see, we’ll always be there.”

  “We will?”

  “No one will take it from us. Even you can’t nor I can’t. That’s why we’ll swim.”

  “When did you work this out?”

  Jim heard the tone in Doyler’s voice. He heard himself sound strangely too. “I’ve been thinking is all.”

  “You been talking to MacMurrough?”

  “We go swimming all right.”

  Doyler scratched his arm. “You like him?”

  “I do.”

  “I suppose and he told you about them Spartans?”

  “A thousand and one things he told me. You wouldn’t know where he was coming from half the time. Spartans, Alexander the Great, the Sacred Band of Thebes. Even the Gaels, that they had a ceremony, two men if they loved each other.”

  “What ceremony?”

  “A blessing. Before a priest and all. Christian priest.”

  “I wouldn’t fancy the blessing we’d get off that curate if he catched us now.”