At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [116]
He had another mannerism, which was to scratch quickly behind his ear then examine his fingers to see what had they unearthed. His smile now told it was something charming. Liberal to a fault, he flicked the charm away. The library shelves diverted him.
“I see your aunt has the entire Thesaurus palaeohibernicus. Isn’t that Eveline to a tittle? The rest of us must make do with O’Growney’s Irish primers while your aunt has the collected glosses of Dark Age Gaelic. Has she opened them at all?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“No. Still, she keeps a good Home Rule.” He meant, apparently, her Irish whiskey. At the drinks tray again, with his back to MacMurrough, he said, “Look here, I was sorry to hear about your trouble.” A pause, then the phrases came magpie quick. “In England. Your aunt has clarified all. One had no idea. An abominable slander. That the terriers should go to such lengths. Besmirch your grandfather’s name. It is intolerable. Look here,” he said again, and this time turned, “I have influence with a publication. We might write you up. As I’m a Member of Parliament it would be my duty to assist. The truth ought to be told.”
“I don’t know what my aunt would say.”
He looked blankly a moment from glazing eyes, then scratched his ear. Another charm he found there. “Perhaps you’re right. Sleeping dogs lie and all that. But the offer stands. We cannot have the terriers and their Orange whelps carry off every slander they choose. Speaking of whelps, I wonder what Carson makes of your aunt’s to-do.”
“Carson? He’s never here.”
“Here in the garden? Not while grass is green, he’s not. But he takes one of the villas over. A lot of bad blood between Eveline and our Orange friend. He always complained your sycamores interrupted his view to the sea. Who knows, perhaps it’s that which has advanced Eveline’s opinions. There was rumor of a court case.”
Carson. Sir Edward Carson, Wilde’s prosecutor, his persecutor, next door. Why, sir, did you mention this boy was ugly? Why, why, why? Until the poetry was beaten from him and he was just a fat blustering man. Squilde. It is the worst case I have ever tried. Two years’ hard. Next.
MacMurrough knocked back his glass. “To our enemy’s enemies,” he said.
“May we die in Ireland,” Kettle returned. Then he was off. “They’ve done a blundering stupid thing bringing Carson into the Government. More we work with the English now, less the country will work with us. We finally make a peace with them and they go and ditch us like that. Carson—leader of the Orangists, an avowed law-beaker, Attorney-General they make him. Tell me about the English. All the sensitivity of a pin-cushion. Sense of justice, fair play and all that. Play up, play up and play the game. Lauded game of cricket. Load of rot. Never did understand the Irish. Never will, until we look them in the eye from our own legislature. Home Rule,” he said, raising his glass in toast.
MacMurrough shifted his gaze from the thick spittle-wet mouth and stared instead through the garden windows. What a dreary drunk he was. He recalled the Spartan custom of inebriating slaves that young men should see how contemptible was drunkenness. Nowadays we leave it to our leshishlashors. And one had idolized him at school. Tom-tom Kettle-drum in his cricket whites. Tomtom Kettle-drum come to say goodnight. How sad to recollect in the dull-eyed face the rose-white boy.
Aunt Eva deep in conversation with her priest. What is she hatching now? Two golden boys eloped toward the sea. The way their heads inclined, the way an arm embraced: like a capital A they walked.
“Meanwhile I’m up and down the land, making a sacrifice of my throat, getting the buggers to enlist. What a hope. All down to Kitchener, of course. Gives the Ulstermen their own division. Catholic Irish get kicked about in any old sod’s brigade. But as I say, this is no time for nationalist quibbling.