At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [117]
“Shall I fix a drink?” said MacMurrough.
“Well, why not? Nunc est bibendum, what?”
Skiagrams, silhouettes, pictures of shadows that turned their faces from him: MacMurrough’s gaze roamed the library art. Family crest in the unlaid hearth: lion rampant, rather a boxing pose actually, a shadow-boxer, argent on a bloody field. On the library shelves, bound volumes of the saints and scholars. Acta sanctorum Hiberniae. Navigatio sancti Brandani abbatis. Book of Moling. Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland. Bunting, Moore, Lecky. Novels, various, in the love her and leave her vein. The Love Songs of Connaught.
Above the hearth hung a print of Maclise’s Marriage of Strongbow and Eva—“Courtesy of the House of Commons,” ran the tag. Kettle remarked it now, saying, “And yet she never did marry, did she, our particular Eva. After her father, no mortal man would answer. Though they say she made quite a run at Casement when he was here.”
MacMurrough turned. “Casement?”
“Don’t start me on that blackguard. An Irishman, a Protestant even, prancing about Deutschland tempting our men to turn traitor. Our brave Irish prisoners of war, wants to turn them into renegades. Man’s a blackguard, a cad.”
A name at last. Casement. “In Germany, you say?”
“I say, am I being indiscreet?”
“Not at all,” said MacMurrough.
“Bloody Sinn Feiners. Mark my words, they’ll get their comeuppance. The country don’t know them, don’t wish to know them, too citified by half. Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletics, our friends from Irish Freedom, all that rag-bag and bobtail. Could say they’ve done us a service. We in the Parliamentary Party, we were so occupied dealing with the English, we had forgotten to be Irish. We’ve admitted that criticism now and our policies are clear. Our land, our learning and our legislation. The three Ls, I like to call them, after the three Fs of your grandfather’s and my father’s time.”
MacMurrough could remember something of those three Fs. Feast, a fuck and a footrace, wasn’t it? Alarmingly the face wobbled directly in front.
“I’m pleased you remembered me,” it said. “Lot of water gone under since school.”
“How should I forget? Your name is a household word.”
“That old clench. Of course, it was one of Parnell’s. Said it of my father. No, there’s a drop in that glass. I’ll just—there you go. May his shadow never grow less. It was witty, no doubt, but also the man to a dot. He needed us. There’s no purpose to a locomotive except it pull a train. But the engine is sui generis. Never liked us. I believe it was only the English he disliked more. We owe a lot to him naturally. One worries we owe too much. His shadow stalks the land. You find that amusing?”
“I was thinking: Parnell and Wilde, the two great scandals of the age: both Irish. It’s good to know Ireland can lead the world in something.”
Something less charming he found behind his ear this time. “Morbid thing to say.”
“You know, what my aunt said—about the charges being trumped up against me.”
“Water under the bridge.”
“Not exactly.” MacMurrough wondered was he going to say what was on his mind, and after a while discovered that he very possibly was. “When we were at school together that year, I quite admired you.”
“One had an equal regard for yourself, be assured.”
“You were brash and outspoken and you saw no harm in friendships and acted on that impulse.”
“Don’t know if I’m sure what you mean.”
“It’s quite true. I was guilty as charged.”
Kettle swayed on the soles of his feet. He appeared to waver between outburst and conciliation. An indignant compromise prevailed. “You can’t imagine I didn’t know? God’s sake, man, I took silk years back. I am informed you have since—how to say?—put away the things of a child.”
MacMurrough’s eyebrows lifted. “Truth, for instance?”
“You are telling me that there is a flaw in your character?”
“I am telling you that I do not think it is a flaw.”
The empty glass went down on the table. “There’s nothing more to be said.” But there was just