At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [105]
“One of each will be ample. One pair cuffs, one pair holders, one pair studs. Will the young gentleman be wanting a nether integuments with his outfit?”
“What?”
The walker bent to whisper. “A drawers, I was meaning.”
It had gone beyond a joke. MacMurrough rose. “Do you pretend to practice upon me?” But his searing eyes caught the man’s urgency which betrayed little nastier than a wish to engage. Good grief, he’s a sod. All it is. Damn fellow’s one of us. He laughed out loud. “A drawers? No, my nephew doesn’t wear them. Most unhealthy.”
“I quite agree,” said the walker. “A needless encumbrance on the young.”
MacMurrough chuckled on so that he had to leave the gentlemen’s outfitting and wander about the store. He touched things, silk and satin, then went out in the street, sniffed the breezy air. They change the sky not their soul who run across the sea. But he could think of unpleasanter ports of refuge. His boy was in good hands, if not auspiciously safe ones. He took a turn round the town.
Outside the Catholic church he read the news bills. He looked at the flowers and considered a buttonhole. A chap sat on the steps in whose eyes he saw Dick’s as they followed the Saturday skirt. Wintry face of the flower-seller.
How delightful it was to spend money. There was a thrill in providing for another that was close to, if not actually, sexual. A thrill that very nearly, though not quite, sufficed.
A wedding left the church and, meeting a funeral, walked three steps with the dead. Three girls like miniature nuns, their shawls pulled over their heads, passed a little tramp who fed his dog with little crumbs of bread. He tossed his butt in the gutter and a boy retrieved it whose magic blows reglowed its end. Under a barber’s pole old men stooped. The church bells rang, signifying something. With holiday ears MacMurrough heard, with holiday eyes he watched.
He came upon an old man on a bench, and feeling the sulter of weather and fumes, he thought to share a while the shade and the old man’s air of being at ease with the world. He nodded, sitting down, and the gentleman tipped his hat. His old lips smacked and made gummy calculations; then he coughed, and coughing became Scrotes, who presently leant forward and inquired of MacMurrough,
—Who are we?
—I’m sorry, old man?
—The gentleman in the haberdashery. You mentioned he was one of us. Who are we?
—Sinners, old man, said MacMurrough laughing. Habitual degenerates in the making.
Doyle was emerging from the fitting-room when MacMurrough returned to the store. He had chosen his own cloth in the end, a bright brown tweed with gas-pipe trousers. The man and his boy fussed with the turn-up. Doyler wore a look of mortification.
“It is only a temporary stitch we had opportunity to put in, but the young gentleman believes there is at home a practiced hand who will make it the more durable for him. Else I would tap my toes and insist on Lee’s quality alterations.”
“How do I look?”
“See for yourself.” MacMurrough led him to a body-glass and the boy turned this way and that.
“Don’t hardly recognize meself.”
“Do you know what you look like?” MacMurrough was about to say an apprentice chauffeur-mechanic. But he stopped himself. He might be a boy from his schooldays. He might be any mother’s son.
“What do I look like?”
“Gilbert the filbert.”
“The knut with a K?”
“The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roué.”
As a last touch MacMurrough pulled a cap from a stand and landed it on his head. It was a wide flat cap which childed his face and made his eyes look deeper than ever.
“Are you sure you’re sure about this?”
“Quite certain.”
“For free?”
“Free—but you might come to the Pavilion with me.”
He grinned. And with ease, spirit, confidence, said, “Never mind the Pavvo. Go to the shagging Flower Ball in this rig-out.”
MacMurrough signed at the desk, and in his ears the chaplain’s words of doom: Your aunt will know of this. The account will be queried, questions will be asked. All for a grin and a foolish will to win.
They were wrapping Doyler’s tats in a parcel. Sparing