At Swim, Two Boys Part 7

It was coming late now, and the boy was hooking the carca.s.ses from the butcher's shutter. Doyler said, "Wait for us a crack," and darted inside. Jim watched him through the window, bargaining for some broken brawn.

His eyes were drawn to a shelf at the back, where above the barrels of corned beef, a cow's head was on display. The butcher had prised its tongue out and curled it over the corner of its mouth, the way it would be licking its lips in antic.i.p.ation of its own taste. Moony eyes were staring down, contemplating its blood collect on a plate. There was blood on the pavement too where the carca.s.ses had dripped.

"After you with the pus.h.!.+"

A drunk had stumbled backwards out of Fennelly's and knocked into a bunch of fellows. He turned on them with colossal injury.

"Who're ya shoving at? Who d'ya think yous're shoving? Come back to me here and I'll learn yous manners." He staggered to his feet, cursing and reeling. But he had lost the direction he was traveling and kept peering about as though to find it in the road. "Who is it wants a puck? If's a puck yous want, need look no farther!"

Jim turned aside and found himself facing the blind lane that led to the Banks. Only a hundred yards from home, yet he had never been inside. There was no call for deliveries to the Banks. Gordie said he saw a naked woman there once. He used go down to buy bait when he was too idle to dig his own. He maintained it was like a party inside, with all sorts being drunk, red spirit even, and indeed you often heard singing in the night hours. Shrieks too, and sometimes, worst of all, that mad laughter that goes on too long and loud.

A marvel to picture tulips in such a place.

The Banks was the worst, but all about there was hards.h.i.+p. The dwellings beyond his father's shop, the courts behind the butcher's. You heard them at times, and if the wind went strange you had to smell them. But if you looked, you need never see more than shops and solid house-fronts. And when he looked up Adelaide Road to his father's shop on its watch upon the lane, he saw it for once not from his schoolfellows' view, as a dowdy and hucksterish stores, but as his customers must see it: the last and least, but still part of the strip of well-to-do that hedged their lives.

"Oft in the stilly night, ere slumber's chain has bo-o-und me-"

It was the drunk out of Fennelly's who had begun to sing.

"Fond memory brings the light of other days aro-und me-"

Moore's old melody. Under a gas-lamp he stood, in its puddle of light, lurching a little; his face cadaverous thin, though his voice, for all it rasped, surprising true. He aimed his song above the rooftops to where the night sky s.h.i.+mmered, while he told the tears of his boyhood years, the words of love he had spo-o-ken.

So ardent did he sing, each note might carry a breath of his life. People pa.s.sing stopped to hear. And seeing them gathered, he stumbled among them with his hat held out. It was easy to credit the truth of his song, that his dim old eyes, they once had shone, that his heart, once cheerful, had been bro-o-o-ken. Two coins c.h.i.n.kled in his hat. And so it was when nights were still and sleep had yet to bind him, round him shone that other light, fondly to remind him.

A creak in his voice, and the spell broke in a raucous cough. He sought to regain his moment, but he could not. People who drifted away he followed with his hat. Those drinkers who had crowded Fennelly's door set in to mock him.

Jim retreated in the butcher's doorway. There was another boy, he saw him in his mind's eye, who when Doyler came out took hold his arm and strolled him away up the other direction. But Jim was not that boy, and now when Doyler emerged with his parcel of brawn, he stood mutely by, sensing the darkened mood.

"Mary and Joseph," Doyler muttered, "in the street and all." In a jerk he had the pieces of his flute whipped out. "Are you straight, Jim Mack?"

That question again. Jim cautiously nodded.

"Hold on to me flute, will you? I might not catch you before practice again. Will you mind it for me?"

"All right."

"Next week then. I'll see you there."

He had been bidden to go. It was so quick, Jim wasn't sure what was happening. "We could maybe meet before, if and you wanted."

"Aye maybe."

The drunk was hacking in his sleeve again, and one of the mockers from Fennelly's called, "Have you a license to go hawking in the street?"

Doyler spun round. "Get on, you gobs.h.i.+te. Can't you leave a body in peace?"

"Who said that?" yelled the drunk. "Who's it calling me a gobs.h.i.+te?"

Jim edged away. "Is he all right?"

"Is who all right?"

Jim c.o.c.ked his head. "Your da."

"I said I'll see you." The apple in his throat was leaping now. He swallowed and the voice tempered. "Look, pal o' me heart, right? If he decks me with the flute he'll have it f.e.c.ked again." Still Jim didn't understand. "For to sell it of course or to p.a.w.n it."

Jim slowly nodded.

"Go on, then, before he catches on you have it."

In the shadow of an archway Jim watched the encounter of father and son. Mr. Doyle shadow-boxed in his circle of lamplight. "Who called me a gobs.h.i.+te? Was it you called me a gobs.h.i.+te?"

Doyler caught him by the arm. He muttered something while he held out his brawn. In a wild flail his father had it knocked to the road. "Is it you is blackguarding me? Look at me, mister, when I talk to you! Look at me, I say! Who d'ya think you're looking at? Ladies and gents, do yous know who it is? Do yous know who it is now, ladies and gents?"

Like lazy sparks the tulips had fallen. Doyler bent to retrieve them and the brawn. And when the father raised his arm it seemed to Jim the son had offered his neck for the blow.

"'Thus in the stilly night'-This is the wh.o.r.e's git I has to call me own. And there's a wh.o.r.e inside did bounce him on me."

Twelve years old. He was helping his father in the shop when the bell clinked and a fantastical character stopped in the door. Out of a bright check suit, b.u.t.toned high at the collar, shone a bright red face that danced with smiles under an orange flame of hair. A handkerchief flowed from his top pocket and a b.u.t.tonhole bloomed in his lapel. In his hand he held a silver-topped cane, a bunched pair of lemon gloves and the brim of a brown bowler hat.

Jim saw his father standing at gaze; then gradually his mouth came to work. "Well well well, I'll go to hades and back. What's this blown in of an old Irish morning?"

"Hayfoot, strawfoot, stand and freeze. Fusilier Doyle at the steady." Click went heels and the character made a humorous salute.

"If it isn't the Queen's bad bargain himself!"

"Let me present arms now, Mr. Mack, and if I shake your paw I'll shake the paw of the finest quarterbloke's bloke the Dubs did ever see."

"Well, if it isn't Mick me old sweat."

"If it isn't Mack me old heart."

It made Jim smile himself to see his father so beaming. He had come out from the counter and he had the stranger's hand gripped in both his own. "I'll go to hades and back," he said again. "Haven't seen sight of you, haven't heard wind of you, not since-"

"Pete'n'Marysburg, the Natal Province, October fourteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine."

"That's about the length of it. The regiment was setting off for Ladysmith, I remember."

"And your good self, Sergeant Mack, was setting off for home."

Gordie had come out from the kitchen, and he nudged Jim's shoulder. A sliver of doubt had crossed their father's face. "Well well well," he repeated. "And you've been prospering since. You'd take the stick on parade yet, so you would."

The newcomer gave a sw.a.n.k of his clothes. "Not a greasy b.u.t.ton in sight," said he.

Again that doubt in their father's eyes, his face a margarine smile. "My my my," he said. "And what brings me natty old sweat to the parish by the sea?"

"Amn't I domiciled local now? The dog's lady, the grawls and meself."

"Married and all?"

"Priest and witnesses."

"And whereabouts would you be staying so?"

"A handy four walls down a vicinity called the Banks. That's till we finds me feet, of course."

"You won't be long about that be the cut of you. Mighty prosperous altogether."

For a season then he was a regular in the shop and the two old comrades would often be jawing over old times. Every now and then a roar would let out of a regimental song: "Hurrah, hurrah for Ireland! And the Dublin Fu-usiliers!" In the kitchen Gordie would wink at Jim and Aunt Sawney used bang her stick on the floor.

Gordie called him Burlington Burt, and it was curious to see him late of a morning step out from the Banks, his swagger suit alive against the slob and a bloom in his b.u.t.tonhole if only an old dandelion he plucked on the way. His bowler he tipped at an angle and his cane he carried sloped to the ground. "It was the Colonel gave him that," their father explained to them. "Five times in a row the smartest man in the battalion." He said it with pride, the way he would share in his comrade's splendor. They had never known their father be friendly with anyone. It was inconceivable he would give credit so free.

Then one day Gordie took Jim aside. "Old Burlington Burt's put the stiffeners on the old fella."

"What stiffeners?" asked Jim.

"Don't you know the old fella cut and run from the Boers. Scut away out the army the first shot was fired. He's scared of his wits thinking Burlington Burt will blow the gab."

"The da never scut."

"Young 'un," said Gordie and he cuffed Jim's neck.

The pinch of tea and the tins of milk soon proved a burden, till finally Aunt Sawney put her stick unshakably down. "A double deficit," his father said sadly. "For they won't mind what they owe us and what pennies they have they'll spend elsewhere now."

"Ye're the slatey one," Aunt Sawney chid him, "and himself inside of Fennelly's regaling them what a touch ye are."

The brown bowler hat was presently an item in Ducie's window. The lemon gloves quickly joined it, followed one drab morning by the silver-topped cane. Then one evening Mr. Doyle came in the shop with Doyler in tow.

"Cross-patch, draw the latch, sit by the fire and spin. Is the coast clear, Sergeant?"

"She's away at chapel," Jim's father answered. "And who's this you have with you? Who's this the grand wee fusilier?"

"Sure you know the eldest. First shake of the bag. Say h.e.l.lo to Mr. Mack, son."

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Mack," came the surly voice.

"Though 'twasn't your humble what shook that particular bag, I don't think."

"Ha ha ha."

"You and me was sodgering yet when this wee mustard came out the nettlebed."

"Ha ha ha," echoed his father's strained voice, and the inside door closed to a crack.

In the kitchen, Jim returned to his books. Doyler he knew from national school. He was the rag-mannered barefoot boy who glowered at the back and never played games in the yard. He was mocked for a baldy peelo, for his hair would often be shaved against the itch, and his cap would slip and slide about his head. Every morning he was hauled for a thras.h.i.+ng because every afternoon he went working in the street. The master's face had been a sketch when he went up for the scholars.h.i.+p. But he sat it and was waiting, like Jim was now, the decision.

Movement by the door caught Jim's attention. Through the crack he saw Doyler's shadow, and the shadow of his hand was darting up and down to a shelf. Soaps. He was stealing soaps.

The grown-up banter continued beyond. Immediately, Jim understood what was going forth. Mr. Doyle kept his father occupied while his son helped himself to the shop-goods. He rose from the table, and with that movement Doyler clocked him. He froze in the jar. His coat was open and the torn lining sagged with his haul. Jim made to approach, but a jerk of Doyler's head commanded him wait.

The eyes s.h.i.+fted to where the grown-ups were, s.h.i.+fted slowly back. Dark ovals washed Jim in their gloom, and as though some deep communication had pa.s.sed the face nodded, nodding a.s.surance. Slow and deliberate, he b.u.t.toned his coat.

Jim nodded back, but it was unclear to him what he had a.s.sented to. He came to the door and pushed it a gap.

Inside, the hilarity had quickly faded. "I'm sorry now," his father was saying, "I couldn't be more a.s.sistance. But as you can see from the books here-"

"Spare your breath, old camerado. The well ever dried for the thirsty."

There was still that remnant of the swell about Mr. Doyle. His face was prinked and scrubbed and his jacket was brushed and b.u.t.toned high. But a patch of skin showed between the lapels. His cuffs gleamed their usual white but you could see they were unattached to any s.h.i.+rt.

"Where's that young buzzard after getting to?" he said, looking round for Doyler. He pushed him roughly to the door. "Sergeant Mack says we're to approach the Benevolent Fund. Say thank you to Sergeant Mack."

The black look deepened on Doyler's face. Without lifting his eyes from Jim, he said, "Thank you, Mr. Mack."

"Quartermaster-Sergeant Mack's the brave man for advising, never doubt it. He'd have the gun advised off a Bojer's back. Which is all to the good, for devil the chance he'd fight him for it."

When the shop door closed his father ushered Jim back into the kitchen. He took a heat from the range. He waited there with his back to Jim. "Wouldn't mind now what that fellow says. That fellow says the worse thing comes in his head. Terrible man for a dodge. Terrible man for the lend of a loan. Wouldn't mind anything that man says. Do you hear me there?"

The next morning on his way to school, a spit landed at Jim's feet and Doyler dropped from the wall above.

"You won't say nothing about last evening."

The words came out for a threat. He had that way of looking or talking that expected trouble. "No good," Jim answered. "The da'll soon feel the miss of what was took."

"Not if you put them back for me." Out of his coat he pulled six cakes of soap. "There's one got sold. I'll pay that back, only not till Sat.u.r.day fortnight. You'll leave me off till then?"