At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [114]
“I have a handkerchief.”
“Now, this young man, Father O’Toiler has brought him along, he is a schoolteacher. His pupils will enact a drama. Something of a lisp and all the gaucherie of youth, but he has such stirring ideas. You recall my mentioning a Fenian had died?”
“The dynamiter.”
“The funeral is tomorrow. This young man is to give the panegyric at his graveside. He was tempting us with little morceaux choisis on the terrace. How we thrilled. Les fous, les fous, les fous! Meaning the British. The lisp is unfortunate and he has small grasp of oratory, but the words had us all a-tingle.”
“Is the speech to be given in French?”
“Don’t tease. One translates for dramatic effect.”
Her oh-lah French and her oh-lah ways. He was nettled still by her sharpness with Doyle. But of course it wasn’t her sharpness, it was his own pusillanimity. What a dumb dog I am, forever consulting my safety. Not even my safety. My menus plaisirs—two quid a week.
She was mentioning now some school in Rathfarnham where everything was taught through Irish. Wasn’t that a marvel? An Irish school was just what Glasthule needed.
“And will you run down the entire Presentation College to have your way?”
“You have a very diseased imagination. Where is that priest?”
“Who is the fellow in the library? Officer of some sort.”
“Oh, that’s just Tom. Tom Kettle. His father and your grandfather were sparring-partners of old.”
“Tom-tom Kettle-drum,” said MacMurrough.
“You know him, then?”
“He was above me at school. That dreadful year I schooled in Ireland. After you ragged father into sending me here.”
“For all the good it did you.”
“Why’s he in British uniform?”
“Tom Kettle is a very teasing man. But he is a Member of Parliament. And, more to the point, he is married to a Sheehy. The Sheehy girls are all mad or married to madmen. One of them, after all, has fetched up with that dwarfish oaf in knickerbockers. But they will have many befitting acquaintances, any of whom should be delighted to meet a MacMurrough.”
“Don’t you feel any shame at all?”
“Shame?” she repeated and her fingers tapped on her parasol.
“The duplicity of it all. Charging a shilling a head of the poor, just so’s you can see me wed.”
They had come to a bench and she waited while he took her hand and led her to sit. She said, “Balmorals,” and he took out his handkerchief, began wiping his bals.
“How very little you know of the poor, Anthony, dear. No doubt you would deck them all in screaming tweeds. But they are poor people: they are not garden pets. They will take what they wish from this entertainment. Fear not, they will have their shilling’s worth. And should a wedding come of it, that too will entertain. They will queue outside the church, praising the fine clothes and the grand procession, and the talk for weeks to come will be of you and your bride. They expect these things. They do not expect one to perambulate in their muck. The duplicity you remark has given employment to fifty men. That is fifty tables with dinner tonight.”
He looked up from his shoes with surprised admiration. A surprise that was becoming ever more customary. He had never supposed she had considered the subject.
“I am sure that does not surprise me,” she said. “You suppose very little in your elders beyond fatuity. Where has that priest got to?” Her gaze glinted east and west but nothing she found dulled its edge. It glanced off MacMurrough’s eyes, grazed his chin, then settled on the pearl pin of his neck-tie. “Perhaps this is not the moment to speak of it,” she said. “I wonder.” The wonder flittered across her face. Dismissed, it fluttered down her sleeve, to butterfly away in her fingers. “We have something of a scène de ménage on our hands. It requires attending.”
“We have?”
“The kitchen girl. She is with child.”
“You are sure?”
“Cook is certain. It’s not . . . ? No, of course it is not.”
“Aunt Eva!”
“One is a woman of the world. Such entanglements occur in a big house. Your grandfather was a great man, but he was not renowned for a saintly conduct. And no one