At Swim, Two Boys Part 59

"Why can't you?"

"It got flung in the sea."

"Ah no, Jim, not me uniform."

Yes, Jim was sorry, his uniform got soaked, flung in the sea in the muddle. Jim had took it home to get the salt out and he didn't know would it be dry again till morning. Doyler wouldn't mind stopping the night, would he? MacEmm had said it was all right. And Doyler wasn't fit, need only look at him. "You're delicate still," he said, easing him back in the bed.

"Will you get your hands off me, Jim. I've a pain, I'm not an invalid." He reached behind his head, plumping the pillow. "Well I'm stuck here so."

He didn't look too entirely put out. Jim pulled off his boots and sat up on the bed. "Listen," he began, "there was a paper inside your tunic. I didn't like to look but it got dropped out. Some sort of a street plan."

"That," said Doyler, "is me pride and joy. Do you know what it is? I drew it meself. It's what you could call the opposite of a street plan. Give us here that bread and I'll tell you."

"No, it's too heavy on your stomach."

"I need me strength is all." He reached anyway and the remains of the broth to dip it in. "Now what it does," he said, indistinctly through the slop in his mouth, "instead of the streets, it shows the ways above the streets-the rooftops of course. All round Stephen's Green."

"So Stephen's Green would be an important place?"

"Any number of roads coming into Dublin, they meet there. If I had it here I'd show you plain. Snipe and run." He made the motion of a rifle with his arm and elbow. Pow, the arm shot up, the elbow recoiled and broth spilt on the sheet. "That's all right, sc.r.a.pe of soda'll sort that out. Snipe and run," he repeated. "Never mind your slope-and-port, your form-fours. Snipe and run. What's up with you?"

Jim was staring at the bruise on Doyler's shoulder. It was just where the recoil of his gun would have hit, had his gun been real and not play. But his gun was real. It was hiding this minute in the broom-cupboard at Jim's home. He believed for the first time he understood that Doyler was a soldier, that he really had been in training, that Doyler in a very real sense was under orders. He wondered was it entirely sane what he was about.

"Oh that," said Doyler, following his look. "That's all you get for your pains."

"Does it hurt that bad shooting a gun?"

"Hurts worse getting shot, I believe."

Jim tried to think and make sense of his thoughts. Was he depriving the army of a trained soldier? It was only for one night, mind. And Doyler might be trained, but he really wasn't fit. And wouldn't Jim be there anyway to stand in his place? "Doyler," he said, "they would want me, wouldn't they, in the Citizen Army?"

"Ah no now, Jim, you'll steer clear of that lot. You're grand now and you don't want any messing in Dublin. Your da's in the right of that. He does right to be lost in town. A fool would be home there."

That decided it. Doyler would never let him in with him. Far better to have Doyler come find him. No, the Citizen Army would do fine. Tomorrow they'd have three, where they only had one before, and MacEmm a crack shot. He commanded his face. "And do you think," he asked, "is it St. Stephen's Green that Mr. Pea.r.s.e would be? If ever there was to be a rising, I mean."

"Don't ask me where that crowd'd be. Abbey Theatre most like, giving a reading. Have I got this straight now? We're to spend the night together here?"

"Oh gosh no," said Jim. "I have deliveries all evening."

"He never has you doing deliveries the bank holiday?" Jim shrugged: the unaccountable quirks of fathers. "You're saying I'm to be stuck in this house on me own the night? Ah Jim, it's an awful big house. There's noises."

"That's the wind."

"It's creepy on your own."

"MacEmm'll be here. He'll stay up with you sure."

"You and your b.l.o.o.d.y MacEmm. You won't be happy till you have us the three in a bed. I'll show you what I think of his n.o.bs." He made a grab for Jim's arms, twisting them. Jim let him wrestle away, exerting only a supine opposition. His arms were pinioned under and Doyler sat him astride, naked as Adam and as flawless. "James Mack, is that what I think it is? It is and all. You're worser than a he-goat, Jim Mack. You'd take advantage of a poor sick man to have your dirty end away."

"I won't," said Jim, "today." He gazed fondly into Doyler's eyes till Doyler rolled over on a pillow and was quiet. "Penny for them," he said. "I have a s.h.i.+lling even."

"Sure sorrow the s.h.i.+lling they're worth," said Doyler.

"Tell me anyway."

"I was thinking earlier lying here what you said about the schoolteaching. I don't know, it's a mad idea, but I can't think why I wouldn't give it a twist."

"Of course you will," said Jim. "You'll sit the scholars.h.i.+p. Maybe not this year, but next. We'll do the books together."

"And I was thinking, wouldn't it be gas if we did get a digs. Now I know we won't now. Pie in the sky, I know that. But wouldn't it be a gas if we did manage it? I can picture it even."

"So can I."

"No you can't. You never lived anywheres poor."

"I can too. It's poky and damp and there's a torn wallpaper and the fire won't draw."

"There's no fire. We can't afford a fire to keep. And there's bugs in the wallpaper."

"We'll have a box for our table and an old newspaper for a cloth."

"We'll have nix to eat and nuppence to buy it with."

"We'll eat bread and onions."

"Bread and onions, bread and onions, bread and onions," said Doyler. "Because you know onions repeat."

"And every time we sit to table, we'll be reading that same old paper, tenth time the same column. We'll curse it, so we will."

"We'll have no light to read by."

"We'll shake the lamp to find any oil left."

"There's no lamp sure."

"And you know," said Jim, exploring his fingers along Doyler's arm, along the sc.r.a.pes and grazes of the elbow, their mesmeric tactility, "you know, things won't be like this then."

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Listen to me. When you'd touch me, I won't be jumping, I won't be startled, won't hardly show if I felt it even."

"What about it?"

"I'm just thinking that would be pleasant. To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me-my neck, say, or my knee-and I'd carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn't lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We'd come so close, do you see, that I wouldn't be surprised out of myself every time you touched."

"And wouldn't you better like it if I touched you, say, down here, say? And if I was to go down, say, like this, say?"

"Don't bend, you'll bring on the cramp."

"And, say now, I took hold your b.u.t.tons and undone them, say, like this, say, and I fetched out your lad, what would you say to that?"

"Don't, Doyler. Stop it."

"And say I was to lick my, say my tongue, say? Only the tip of my tongue, like this, say?"

"Oh my goodness," whispered Jim. "Oh my gracious me."

He didn't need to ask where Doyler had learnt this. In this same bed-oh my gosh. The love he felt was extraordinary. The sense of its power astounded him. That all this should happen, and then Ireland to rise! that he should not be separated from any he loved. He felt humbled, and a little awed. The little hairs curled through Doyler's fingers as up and down the fingers stroked. This very bed. The eyes closed and the mouth wide and the thick lips on the pink thing. My gosh.

After, while they lay, Jim said, "Will I tell you now about the Sacred Band of Thebes?"

"Tell me anything you like."

"They was an army," Jim began. Yes, an army. They stood three hundred strong. And each man stood with his friend by his side. They fought that way, friend and friend, side by side. They were famed the world over, the ancient world over, for their courage and loyalty. They never once broke or ran. "For you know," said Jim, "it would be awful hard to do anything dishonorable with your friend by your side."

"So they was never bate?"

"Well, they was," said Jim. At Chaeronea they fell. But not a man but he had his face to the foe and his friend beside him, dead too. Sometimes it could make Jim cry picturing this. The victor too had cried to see them on the battlefield, when all else had broke and run, the Sacred Band of Lovers, each man so brave and true to the end.

"So that's what they was," said Doyler, "lovers?" Jim nodded. "The sergeants too? Did they have their chaps?"

"They were all of them lovers," Jim said firmly.

"Was they not worried they'd be thought partial? Giving out guard detail and that, a sergeant might be accused of favoring his own chap."

"I don't know," said Jim, "but the sergeants had only sergeants for their friend."

"I'm with you now," said Doyler. "So was the general's chap a general also? That was two generals. Two generals is a very chancy business. Could lead to any manner of confusion."

"I know what you're doing," said Jim, "and you're only wasting your breath. You know it's the most wonderful thing."

"Tell me this, Jim: what happened if one of them died?"

"What do you mean?"

"What happened the other fellow then? Did he fall on his sword or what? Did he hunt round quick to catch another chap? Maybe they had him excused drill till he found another fellow."

"You're no use at all," said Jim, "and I don't know why I bother with you." Doyler was making to rib-tickle his belly, and Jim just thumped him on the shoulder. He got up and was dressing. Doyler stretched in the sheets.

"I don't believe a bed and Doyler was ever this long acquainted. Reminds me of himself at home. When he used take to his bed till me ma found the money for his trousers to get back from the p.a.w.n. Like father, like son, eh?"

"Father?" said Jim.

"Something like it, I suppose. When's your man due back?"

"Any time."

"You positive now he don't mind me being here?"

"No, he's glad. He's glad if I'm happy." Jim sat down on the bed, tying his boots. "He's going tomorrow. He's to join the army in England. Only he wanted to be sure we were all right before he left."

"What's it have to do with him anyway?"

"He's a complicated man. I think the way it is, he wanted to leave something behind. He's got it into his head he'll be killed in the war. I have to stop that. I have to stop him leaving."

"You sound like him sometimes." Jim looked up. "Goodness gracious," Doyler mimicked.

"Do I say that?"

"My golly gosh."

"I don't say that." The pillow flung at him. He flung it back. "The state of this bed," he said. He tugged the sheets, tucking them under.

"How you going to stop him?"

"We'll see." Jim's thoughts ran on and he said, "It makes sense too. If there's fighting to be done, or dying even, it's only sensible it's an Irish war, not an English. That way, we'll all be fighting together."

"Mary and Joseph, but you're the bloodthirsty animal."

"I am not. Did you know the English had him in jail?"

"Sure the Irish would gallows him, only for the scandal of naming what he done."

"Not in my country they won't. Listen now, you'll sleep some more?"

"I'll have sores on me b.u.m and I sleep any more."

Jim felt his forehead. "There's still a temperature. We'll have a big day tomorrow. You can show me round the Green."

"Jim?" It was funny but he knew what Doyler would ask. "Jim, did you go with him, Jim?"

He smiled, partly in rea.s.surance, but there was more to it, he knew, and he said, "There were times all right we might have."

"You wouldn't let him though?"

"Sure he wouldn't let himself."

"Proper gent."

It was comical seeing Doyler looking round for somewhere to spit in that elegant polished s.p.a.ce, the only house Jim had known that didn't smell of food, only furniture. "The pot's under the bed," he told him. He went over and pulled the curtains to. At the door he said, "You know there's nothing to fear, don't you? If only you might have come swimming today you'd know it for sure. The Muglins there and the great sky above-we're immortal. We're no more than filling in now."

He waited outside the door a moment to be sure of Doyler's resting. Satisfied, he gathered the bundle of Doyler's clothes and skimmed down the stairs. In one of the recesses in the hall he hurried out of his jacket and trousers and into the dark-green uniform. Nothing really fitted. The chafe of the trousers, a thick coa.r.s.e cloth, p.r.i.c.kled the inside of his thighs, the sort of an irritation you'd offer up for the Holy Souls. The mirror glanced him pa.s.sing, a green stranger, and he paused for a more formal inspection. The tunic was too big and the trousers too long. He saw his inquisitive face poking out from under the brim of the slouch hat. He thought of his brother. Yes, he did look a soldier, he truly did. Too much the soldier in fact. He took off the tunic and hat again. He'd be better carrying them till he was surer of Dublin, how things stood. He might be stopped and questioned, there might be military checks, he didn't know what else.

He left his clothes by the hall stand, where they wouldn't be noticed but they would be found. He couldn't leave Doyler go to war with only MacEmm's linens to wear. He pulled the heavy front door and he was away up the drive. A moment's unease coming into the shop, for his father might be home and he'd be nosing about the strange trousers. But there was no sign of him yet. He went immediately to the broom-cupboard, s.h.i.+fted round inside till he came on Doyler's rifle. "Is that you, Jim?" called Nancy. He looked sharply: she was out the yard. She was saying something about the weather and he answered, Yes. The rifle was still in its brown paper covering. He stared at it a while considering, then he poked the sticks of three brushes down the top. He was going in his s.h.i.+rtsleeves: let people think he was a working man.

"What's that?" he said. Something about his dinner. "I'm to eat at MacMurrough's," he called. He was looking about to see was there anything else. His rosary beads. He reached up quickly to the shelf, and touching them, he glanced on the wall beside where his father's best coat hung on its hook. It looked so exactly like the back view of his father, it stopped him in his reach. He smiled. It really was like his father, shaped to the exact slope of his shoulders. He looked about the room. There were correspondences everywhere. He knew these things so very well, the fittings and furnis.h.i.+ngs of his boyhood, yet each particular object appeared clearer and fresher than ever he had known it before, as though they all had been very recently painted, but with a strange and vivid paint that applied no colors but memories. This is my home, he thought. Or rather, as after an absence, This was the home where I grew up. He saw, and necessarily touched, the table and his bench, where he had sat these countless meals. He saw the ghost of him on the match-boarding behind where the varnish had rubbed away. Another ghost showed beside, bigger a bit, where his brother had sat. On the press were his schoolbooks and prizes-The Sieges of Gibraltar, he read-all covered in brown paper and his father's neat stencil on the spines. He saw the dark disc round the gas-lamp that would widen and deepen till again his father whitewashed the ceiling, for the disc to form and grow and deepen again. Out in the scullery was the sink where his father had scrubbed him, scrubbed him pink with a hard brush, while he sat and s.h.i.+vered on that perilous height. It was all here. He sniffed, catching the smell of his home, cabbagy same like any kitchen in the world, save with something sweeter in it, apples maybe, mouldering in a box. He went to the mantel shelf and lifted the lid off the Huntley and Palmer's biscuit tin. He looked happily at its contents, pleased they had never changed, all manner of scrip-sc.r.a.p his father had saved: pins, b.u.t.ton, bands, three foreign coins pa.s.sed for sixpences, a Danish safety-pin. Nothing had changed. And he thought of his father who too had never changed. With his significant looks and his consequential airs, desperate lest any should think him soft. He had left the regiment that was his life to bring his sons home when their mother was dying. Such unselfish love, and oh such bravery. How he loved his father. It was the same huge love he felt for all, for Doyler and MacEmm, for Aunt Sawney and Nancy and Gordie's baby: how very much he loved them all. How very much indeed. he read-all covered in brown paper and his father's neat stencil on the spines. He saw the dark disc round the gas-lamp that would widen and deepen till again his father whitewashed the ceiling, for the disc to form and grow and deepen again. Out in the scullery was the sink where his father had scrubbed him, scrubbed him pink with a hard brush, while he sat and s.h.i.+vered on that perilous height. It was all here. He sniffed, catching the smell of his home, cabbagy same like any kitchen in the world, save with something sweeter in it, apples maybe, mouldering in a box. He went to the mantel shelf and lifted the lid off the Huntley and Palmer's biscuit tin. He looked happily at its contents, pleased they had never changed, all manner of scrip-sc.r.a.p his father had saved: pins, b.u.t.ton, bands, three foreign coins pa.s.sed for sixpences, a Danish safety-pin. Nothing had changed. And he thought of his father who too had never changed. With his significant looks and his consequential airs, desperate lest any should think him soft. He had left the regiment that was his life to bring his sons home when their mother was dying. Such unselfish love, and oh such bravery. How he loved his father. It was the same huge love he felt for all, for Doyler and MacEmm, for Aunt Sawney and Nancy and Gordie's baby: how very much he loved them all. How very much indeed.

In the summer of long ago he had heard of Wolfe Tone who gallantly and gay had gone about his deed. He too had loved so well. He too had been so loved.