At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [115]
“Why not you?”
“I have told you many times. I am his daughter. You are his grandson. It is not ours to concern ourselves with the petty inadequacies of human nature. There is the confessional for that. Our role is to lead, if not by example, by force of will. Where is that damned priest?”
She leant on her parasol, half standing, so that MacMurrough had to rise and take her elbow. “I saw him earlier at an ice-cream stall. He seemed in his element.”
“I know what you think,” she replied, sitting again. “A cockalorum of the walk. What they would call here a Puncheous Pilate. But a spinster of the parish, of whatever means or dignity, has little sway without a priest at her side. The old canon was a dotard, and one can only hope for his speedy deliverance from the sufferings of this world. Father O’Toiler is a godsend to us all. Until one’s nephew come into his inheritance.”
“Aunt Eva, what do you propose doing about the girl?”
She sighed. “Yes, la pauvre. In the country parts they call it tinning. They tin the girl out of the parish. I have never witnessed the procedure, but one presumes the rowdies and roisterers of the village, the men in plainer words, follow the girl, banging sticks on tin drums, until she has passed beyond the parish bounds. She will not return.”
“What becomes of her?”
“The poorhouse, possibly. In the bigger towns they have convents for such unfortunates. With luck she may arrange her affairs as far as Liverpool. She will need more luck there, of course. The fever may overcome her. It is rumored many have fallen by the hedge.”
“But you’re surely not intending to do any of these things?”
“What can you be thinking? I shall do nothing of the sort. Indeed, I shall do nothing at all beyond sending her home. It is her people who will cast her out. You think me very harsh. But let me tell you, were she my niece I should manage the affair differently. I should look after her and arrange, one way or another, her return into society. And the child should be for ever grateful. She would not fall so publicly again. Would she?”
“No, Aunt Eva, I dare say she would not.”
“Had she any sense. But one despairs of discovering sense in the young. And now, here at last is Father O’Toiler. Father O’Toiler, how do you do? I have been telling my nephew of the schoolmaster you have brought along. Tell us, do, where is the young man now? My nephew is most anxious to make an acquaintance.”
MacMurrough splashed soda in Kettle’s glass. “I was surprised to find you in British uniform.”
“There’s quite a war on, you know.”
“Only it jars with the nation-once-again crowd outside.”
He handed Kettle his tumbler. Kettle said, “Where it goes,” and knocked it back and MacMurrough raised his glass in reply.
“Your aunt has grown advanced with the years. But good old Eveline, she keeps a finger in most pies. Last I heard she was collecting comforts for the troops.” The glass was at his lips before he remembered it was dry. “Will I help you to a refresher? Not a sportsman for it. Well, you’re not long back.”
“Don’t they worry you?” said MacMurrough.
“The boys from Sinn Féin?” He turned cunningly from the tray. “They have me shivering in me socks.” He had spoken with the accent of a street-hawker and there was something in his look of the Dublin blowsy. He raised his glass, “Gaudeamus,” and decorum returned. “Why should they worry me? There were ever outandouters in Ireland. But these upstarts of your aunt’s represent the past. Home Rule is on the books now. The people know that, they know whom to thank: the Parliamentary Party. Once this war is over we’ll have our separate legislature. We have one final hedge to leap and that is to rout the Germans. Then it’s consummatum est. Consummatum for the Sinn Feiners, anyway. Let them keep their kilts and Gaelic. No harm in that. In a way they’ve done us a service. I’m quite an O’Growneyite myself, you’ll find. But politically they’re dead as mutton.”
The flushed boyish face moved away. MacMurrough remembered that from school. The muscular