At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [106]
“Well, then, are you sorted?”
“Right I am.”
“Pavvo beware,” blarnied MacMurrough.
“Listen to you. It’s you is supposed to rub off on me.”
—If there is any god, said Dick.
“Sticky buns?”
“All right.”
“And an assortment of buns,” MacMurrough told the waitress. He tilted his chair and stretched his legs on the paving. “Touch crowded this afternoon.”
“Saturday, aye.”
“Shame about lunch.”
“Cakes is fine but.”
They were seated in a portico giving on the gardens. The band had removed temporarily for their teas and the air sustained a patter as though the trees received a dry adumbration of drizzle. Waitresses in white forked aprons swept past for all the world like mobile Ys. The boy hunched with a stiff neck. Only his eyes roamed and, roaming, gleamed.
“Not a bad spot, I suppose,” MacMurrough conceded.
“Slap-up so it is.”
“Told you you’d enjoy it.”
“Sure I been before,” said Doyler. “Many’s the time I snook in the Pavvo.”
“I see.” Rather a disappointment.
“Hawking the newspapers, of course. Could always reckon on ten minutes to get a sheaf of them sold. If you was quick like and handy with the makes. Then they catched on to you and it was out on your ear with a boot up the b-t-m. They had a down on newsboys, thinking us thiefs. But the takings was good while it lasted. Makes,” he added, having considered his eloquence, “is ha’pennies you do give for change.”
The tea arrived with the sticky buns. Nanny Tremble fretted about manners and the chaplain complained of sulphurous breaths. But toggery maketh gentle man: almond-eyed Doyler viewed the stand; morsure at a time, he chewed like a choirboy.
He leant forward over the table carnations. “You see the one what brung the tray?”
“What about her?”
“She’s after dropping her scent in the tea-pot.”
MacMurrough conspired in his smile and said, “You might have a soda, if you preferred.”
“No, tea is grand.”
Behaving as though I really did have a nephew.
The boy supped, swallowed, said, “Tea is quite satisfactory, I thank you.”
Which jollied the occasion no end. They chatted a time, then the boy looked hole-and-corner about him. Again he leant closer. “Do you mind me asking?”
“Ask away.”
“Is there many about that likes what you do?”
A long draw on his Abdulla. He stubbed it out. “I don’t know, actually. Common enough for there to be laws against it.”
“Wouldn’t mind the law.”
Antinomian little buggeree.
“Only the young fellow in Lee’s what measured me up, he said to me was you my gent. Said he had a gent and all. Said the walker there does look after him nicely. Then do you know what he did?”
Yes, thought MacMurrough, though his brows rose in candid query.
“Damn fellow had a squeeze at me flowers and frolics.” He sat back in consternation. “What would he want doing a thing like that?”
He was genuinely mystified. MacMurrough said, “Perhaps he liked you.”
“Liked me? Sure he wasn’t rich.”
This leap of logic required another cigarette. MacMurrough lit one slowly, then flicked the match. “Does one need to be rich to enjoy the company of a handsome young man?”
“Am I handsome?”
MacMurrough pulled deeply and savored the smoke, smiling his eyes on the boy’s face. “Yes.”
“And you’re rich. Rich as crazes, you are.”
“My family might be. Myself, I haven’t a bean.”
“How bad you are. Wasting away, I can tell.”
Little brat is teasing me now. “Money is irrelevant to desire. Only it helps to overcome another’s shyness. That’s all.”
“No, it’s not all.”
“Explain.”
“You think any fellow would want another fellow?”
Scrotes. Where was bloody Scrotes when you needed him? “I don’t see why not. I don’t say every fellow. But look at the clerk in Lee’s.”
“That’s me point sure. If it wasn’t for the walker as led him into it, he wouldn’t think to do that. If it wasn’t for meeting you I wouldn’t be . . .”
“Wouldn’t be what?”
“I wouldn’t be