At Swim, Two Boys

  “Watch them go, the cripple and his pooch.”

  Under the yard wall of the parochial house, a cigarette glowed in a huddle of forms. “Fahy,” said Jim.

  “Ignore ’em,” said Doyler.

  A throat hawked and an oyster of phlegm splashed at their feet. Doyler spun. “What ails ya, Fahy? Have you something to say or what is it?”

  Fahy laughed and one of his cohorts, a clever-shins named Butler, crowed, “There’s that whiff again.”

  Doyler grabbed at Butler’s coat. “Any more of that and I’ll have ya ate. Ate without salt I’m telling ya.”

  Fahy detached from the wall and leant forward the way his finger pressed on Doyler’s chest. “Now listen to me, my wee sleeveen. You’re becoming a pain in the Erse, if you don’t mind me saying. Hop away home to your hut in the Banks. And take the pooch with you.”

  “Let’s go,” said Jim.

  Doyler let go Butler, who brushed himself prettily down, and measured Fahy with his eyes. But Fahy was not easily browed. His father owned a slaughterhouse in Dalkey: he fed his sons on steak for breakfast.

  Suddenly Doyler was laughing, “Ah, have a banana.” A thin streak of spit landed expertly on top of Fahy’s. “What ails them fellas?” he asked when they climbed down the steps to the sea-wall and the jeers were left behind. “Are they that way always? Are they that way at Pres?”

  “Mostly.”

  “You’d do better to ignore them.”

  “I do.”

  He stopped Jim with a hand that bolted on his shoulder. “Do they give you trouble? You’d tell if they laid a hand?”

  Eyes burnt and the ridge of brow protruded like horn. The grip was fast through Jim’s jacket. He could feel the press of each finger.

  “Sure why would they give me trouble?” he said, though in his heart he knew if trouble came it would come on account of Doyler.

  “Butler’s all mouth, but Fahy’s a hard nut.” He spat his bile on the rocks below.

  Jim swallowed. The hand had lifted, but the tension it had induced remained. “Are we really to go to the Forty Foot?”

  Doyler looked round as though the rocks would decide him. “Said you never been. Thought to show you was all.”

  “It’ll be dark soon.”

  A flash of his grin. “I’ll see you won’t fall in,” he said and the arm went round Jim’s shoulder.

  Gently this time, though still the touch shot through Jim’s clothes, through his skin even. It was this way whenever their bodies met, if limping he brushed against him or laughing he squeezed his arm. The touch charged through like a sputtering tram-wire until it wasn’t Doyler he felt but what Doyler touched, which was himself. This is my shoulder, this my leg. And he did not think he had felt himself before, other than in pain or in sin.

  “Are we straight so?”

  “Aye we’re straight,” said Jim.

  “Straight as a rush, so we are.”

  The shore lay deserted in the last light of evening. The tide was far out, no sound bar a faint tingling and every now and then a wallow in the deeper pools. Doyler slipped down from the sea-wall to the rocks—“This is madness with our flutes,” said Jim—and they slid their way across the scalp. Up and down he lurched, making odd heelers when his right foot failed. “Good for the balance,” he maintained.

  They skirted the ladies’ bathing-place, that seemed a deep and untouched pool, and climbed instead the brawny ridges that thrust to the sea, over the brash and barnacled boulders to Sandycove Harbor. They rounded the cushiony sand outside then plunged in the mud of the breach. And it was queer to enter the harbor that way. Sea-wrack lay everywhere, a rank and oily flow. Hard above loomed the Martello tower, looking ghostly and portentous on its grassy knoll.

  Doyler stopped to peer round. The sand was grey, for color had departed as evening dropped. Rivulets of silver veined its skin, save where the deep dark crept from the caves of stranded boats. The solemn houses of Sandycove looked inward against the night. In the west the clouds were one with the mountains. All was hushed save a crane behind that whispering flapped away. Then Doyler patted his bad leg and gave out a roar.

  “What?” said Jim.

  “Run!” he roared.

  He charged up the slipway, slithering down and up again, roaring all the while, a wild yahoo of a yell.

  For a moment Jim stalled, looking about and behind. His mouth had watered and it surprised him to find he had spat. His spittle pearled in the draining sand. Then his feet were running and the breath came fierce in his lungs, and still he roared while Doyler roared, up to the Point where the wind hit them with a coarse cloth cuff; then round the battery wall, down the sloping winders, on through the shadows and shelters, down into the Forty Foot where their howls exhausted on the hanging rocks. They collapsed at the steps that dropped to the water where wavelets lapped, foamlessly lapping.

  “That’s me spent.”

  “Me too.”

  His heart was pounding like a throb in the rock and his ears dinned with stopped sound.

  “That was madness with our flutes.”

  “That was madness with me leg.”

  It was grand though too, thought Jim.

  The way they had fallen their bodies were heaped, Doyler’s leg thrown over Jim’s.

  “Why did you run?”

  “Why wouldn’t I run?”

  “You was roaring like billy-o.”

  “So was you.”

  Yet it hadn’t seemed it was they who roared, but the stillness that had raged against them. Jim sat up, scrupulously removing his leg from under. Phosphorescent glimmers showed in the cove. Away on Howth the Bailey swept and the lightship at the Kish responded, mother and daughter, crotchet and quaver. In the corner of his eye, he caught the Muglins winking. He felt flushed and able. Forty Foot at last, gentlemen’s bathing-place. He reached his hand to the water.

  “Too cold for you?”

  “Not at all,” he answered.

  “Best spot in Ireland for a dive and a dip. Should try it some time.”

  “At school they take us to the baths at Kingstown.”

  “What use is a baths at Kingstown? Come down here to the sea. Don’t have to be scared. I’ll see you right.”

  “Not scared,” said Jim judiciously. “Not a strong swimmer is all.”

  “I’ll learn you. What you need is the crawl. Best day is Sunday. Half-past ten, we’ll have the place to ourself.”

  “But Mass is on then.”

  “Nail on the head. Swaddlers won’t swim on the Lord’s day, and the Catholics is hearing the Men’s.”

  “You mean you’d skip off Mass on a Sunday?”

  “Can’t you catch another if it bothers you?”

  “But do you miss Mass?”

  “Ah miss it something dreadful.” He stood up with a muttered, “Back in a crack,” and wandered off behind the shelters. In the quiet Jim heard the scurry of feet, tiny animal scutterings. It was unfair that he had mentioned the baths in Kingstown. They did not let you in at the baths in Kingstown without you were wearing a collar and tie. Red blinked the Muglins light.

  A body brushed behind and Doyler hunched down again. He was still buttoning his trousers and Jim turned aside.

  “They do say there’s a partition at the baths against the ladies’ modesty. Is it true?”

  “Some days all right.”

  “Well, sure as eggs, there’s no ladies at the Forty Foot, nor little modesty neither.”

  He had his flute out now and he was screwing the joints. “Does he never have anything Irish to play at that band,” he asked, “old Polycarp?”

  Jim thought through the repertoire. “St. Patrick’s Day.” “Brian Boru.” “Garryowen.”

  Doyler spat. “Regimental marches. Shagging polis band does that. I mean real Irish.”

  “Would ‘A Nation Once Again’ be Irish?”

  “Cod-Irish maybe. Like that priest’s cod-Irish name. Father O’Táighléir. Did you ever hear the like? Ri
ght cabbage-looking patriot.”

  It was a puzzle that he’d make a jeer of a priest of God. A puzzle too how quick the ape would leap on his back and quickly then leap off again.

  “Never thought I’d enjoy to give the old Godsave, but I did that time, I tell you. Good on you, Polycarp. Puss on the priest was glorious to behold.”

  He leant forward on his sitting bones. His grin adjusted to the fluter’s smile and he brought the instrument to his lips. Long opening note that was the breath of music, then he burst into play. Grace-notes galore, slurs and sudden staccatos, octave leaps inside of a triplet. The tune was oddly familiar though it took a while for Jim to place it. “God Save the King” done into a jig. Brother Polycarp would have been appalled, let alone the new father. But the walls of the Forty Foot rang about them.

  In the dim light Jim could just make out the contortions that came over his face. It was like the flute was after surprising him there, he had no notion of that leap coming, fancy a flute putting pass-notes inside of that. The impression was of his cracked old stick having a will its own and Doyler merely following on.

  After a time the virtuoso wore off. He slowed to a plainer air whose melancholy mode curled over the rocks and out to sea where waves flapped in mild percussion.

  “You’re after oiling it for me. Greased it too. I want to thank you for that.”

  Jim shrugged. “I was doing me own sure.”

  “Almond oil don’t come cheap.” He studied his instrument, toying with the bindings he’d made about the joins.

  “Where did you learn to play that way?” Jim asked.

  “My uncle knew a tinker out of Sligo who knew a traveler out of Roscommon who had the playing. Try along with me sure. Not difficult if it’s slow like. Notes do mostly find themself.”

  Jim untied his sock, but not without reservation, for he’d been told often enough against shifts in temperature. Indeed he had only to look at Doyler’s flute. But in the end it was Doyler’s playing that decided him against, for he feared to disfigure it with his fumbling way. The music was remote and unresolved, wound about with slides and those yearning delays, not notes really, but the lingering between. It was like the harmony of another air whose melody he believed he could catch and maybe, had he the fingering, might one day play. He closed his eyes and it wrapped round him, the dark timbre that was breathy and warm; and he carried to black waters where a wave washed, or maybe two waves washed, under the star of an evening. The music ended, but a haunt of it hung on the air like the last heat of a grey fire.

  Jim opened his eyes and realized that Doyler was speaking.

  “Cá dtéigheann an taoide nuair thagann an trághadh?

  Mar a dtéigheann an oidhche nuair thagann an lá?”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Just saw the tide had turned. It’s an old thing they do say in Clare.”

  The tide indeed had turned. Waves sent gentle spume on the steps that divided the cove. Behind, unseen, a spray landed with indignant horsy snort. Doyler unscrewed his flute, whipped the bits in the air to dislodge any moisture. It was all the ceremony he had for its care.

  It was time and past to go, but neither shifted. In silence they gazed on the dark mid-main, then Jim said, “I hadn’t expected to find you gone that time.”

  And Doyler answered, “I looked for you to say goodbye but.”

  “But what?”

  “I was in a stir leaving.”

  “All they knew was County Clare and they couldn’t say when you’d be back and I kept thinking you’d be coming soon and then the college started and still no news and I knew then you were gone for good.”

  “I was down with my mother’s people.”

  “They told me that all right.”

  Jim felt himself sloping like a weight was in his shoulder. His neck bristled when the arm came over and the hair of his skin felt the shock of touch as Doyler’s mop brushed against his face.

  “Old pal o’ me heart,” said Doyler.

  And Jim said, “Cara macree.”

  “You remember that?”

  “I do.”

  “We were good pals that time.”

  “We were great.”

  “I thought of you down in Clare I did. I’d say you’d like it down that way.”

  “I would?”

  “We’ll go one day, you and me together like. We’ll stay on the island with my mother’s people. And I’ll show you the hut on the shore where we change for Mass. You’d laugh to see us. Traipsing in a grush of paupers, then out we troops in our Sunday majestics. They’d love you and all, with your college capeen.” He tipped the back of Jim’s cap so he had to catch it quick before the sea would take it.

  “You’ll have me murdered,” he said.

  “Hung, drawn and quartered,” Doyler agreed. Then he added, “I wouldn’t blame you going to the baths at Kingstown.”

  There was a note of absolution in his voice. In like vein Jim answered, “I’d say the sea would have more of a challenge all the same.”

  “There’s that all right. There’s many afraid they’ll drown in the sea. Not Doyler though.”

  “Never?”

  “Who’s born to hang will never drown.”

  He had gathered spalls of rock in a heap which delicately now, one by one, he plopped in the water. “Will I tell you the story how I learnt me to swim?”

  “Go on so.”

  “Himself pushed against me one time and I fell in.”

  Himself was how he called his father. “What happened?”

  “Himself jumped in and rescued me, of course. They learnt him that in the army.”

  “And did he teach you after that?”

  “Not at all. By the time he had me hauled out a crowd had gathered. They had a collection made, bravery and so on. I tell you, from that day out it was dangerous walking near water with the man. If the thirst was on him and he hadn’t the entrance to a house, you was liable any minute to fetch up in the splash.”

  “But your da wouldn’t do that to you.”

  Doyler shrugged. “That’s not the best. I listened to meself and meself was after saying, if it’s this world you likes over the next, me bucko, had better learn swimming proper like. So I jumps in on me own one time without himself to rescue me. And I’ll tell you what, I did learn. Learnt mighty quick, I don’t mind me saying. So the next occasion he took me walking I was wary of his temper and I was waiting on him to make his move. I ducked out the way and what happened but he fell in himself.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I jumped in after, of course. But wait till I tell you. A fellow rescuing a boy is one thing. But a child of ten delivering his old man? The collection rate was doubled. He had us touring Leinster with that one, so he did.”

  He seemed genuinely delighted with his story. His teeth were grinning whitely, showing the chip off the edge of the middle one, his dark face chuckled up and down. Then he tossed the last pebble in the sea and said, “Do you smell a cigarette? I smell a cigarette smoke.”

  He was up again and sniffing the air. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn’t there, and presently he flumped back on the steps.

  “That priest is out of the League,” he said. “Wears the badge and all.”

  “Which league is that?”

  “Gaelic League, you gaum. Mind, there’s something afoot if the priests is turning patriot. Them was never known cheer a horse but it was at the winning-post. Do they not have nothing Irish at Pres? No music, no Gaelic—they’ll have you turned a right old Bertie.”

  “There was a matriculation class all right, but the brother who took it went down of a decline.”

  “Decline aye?” He coughed twice, politely, in sympathy.

  “Is it the consumption your da has?”

  “A bit all right. That and a cough won’t shift. Eitinn they calls it in Irish. Bet you wouldn’t know that in Latin.”

  Jim stared to sea. “No I wouldn’t.”

  “Curious,
isn’t it, with college boys how they learn them Latin but they wouldn’t care tuppence for their own native tongue.”

  Me care tuppence he means.

  “Why,” he asked, “why would I want,” he demanded, “what would I want going to Pres for anyway?”

  There was no answering that. Jim shrugged thinly his shoulders. “Was it the Gaelic League you got your Irish?”

  “Gaelic League, me arse. I got it off my mother’s people. Can see me now, Doyler in his duds, in the Garlic Tweed. I tell you, it’s a conspiracy against the working man. If you’re at hurling and you curse in English they send you off the field. But they won’t teach you to curse in Irish. They think our native tongue is good for nothing but praying in. That’s why the priests is for it. They think there’s no words in it for, I don’t know, anything the priests is against. They’d have us blessing ourself in Gaelic the day long. And what worth is a blessing to a working man? For an ignorant heathen whoring bastard working Irish man?”

  The air was blue with his swearing and a tinge of it shivered the skin. He got up, muttering something, and was off away again. Jim watched him climb an outcrop where he balanced on top, skimming stones in the waves. A question repeated in his mind. What is the Latin for consumption? Pulmonia, tuberculosis, phthisis even. It felt wrong to be watching Doyler the way he did. The Muglins was blinking, and within a wink it was himself he watched, a fretful boy who crouched with his arms about his knees. But it wouldn’t do. At home they’d wonder about the mud on his boots. There’d be a wigging for the hour too. When Doyler came down, he stood up and said, “Well, was he here?”