At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [118]
“If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.”
* * *
“Where we going?”
“Out of this crush for a breather.”
By private paths Doyler led away from the lawns, across a vegetable garden, past the gate to the sea-wall, and up narrow overgrown steps where their kilts snagged on the briers. They came out on a sunny corner, quite hidden from the house, and near enough level with the sea-wall so that the view gave out directly on the sea.
“How’d you know this place?” asked Jim.
“Maybe I been before,” said Doyler, slumping down in the grass. The grass was long and meadowy, quite wild. Jim sat down beside, though he had to hitch up again to arrange the kilt properly under. He believed he knew better now than to ask was it Mr. MacMurrough had taken Doyler here.
“Did you ever in your puff see such a crop of la-di-das?”
“It’s a let-out all right,” Jim agreed.
“And that old witch Madame Mac-shagging-Murrough. I’ll tell her next time, I will. Came to play the flute is all. If it’s a flunkey she wants she can re-im-bloody-burse me.”
“What’s up with you?”
“Nothing up with me. Have me pride is all.”
Doyler was in his band kilt at last. It was a relief to Jim because he couldn’t see that strange suit but he was searching for blood stains on it. Some young fellow had died in that suit and his mother, unable to bide the memory, had given it away out of charity. The stains wouldn’t shift, inside maybe, where you wouldn’t see, but you’d know they were there, reminding.
Doyler picked his nose. He twiddled with what he found, watching Jim the while. He flicked it over Jim’s shoulder. Jim scowled at the indignity. Doyler leered.
“Your da’s doing a roaring trade. Bet you was up all night painting them bottles green.”
“We was.”
“Were, Jim. Were, not was. You’re a college boy. Speak the King’s English sure.”
“What’s wrong with you, Doyler?”
“Nothing, I told you.”
He hawked his throat and spat. Jim watched the gobshell jelly down the stalk of a grass. “Is it something I said?”
The flash smile aged on Doyler’s face. “Not at all.” He looked mean with his smile that had no humor in it. “Them high-sniffing nobs eye-glassing you would have any man out of sorts.”
He lay back, chewing on a grass. The way he lounged he had his knees up and wide apart. They were grazed and grassy from the athletics earlier. His kilt had slipped back. Jim shredded the seeds of a grass in his fingers. The shadows of the trees reached out. They wouldn’t be long here in the sun.
“Did you see your man from the Wolfe Tone above? He’ll be giving a speech I suppose. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Jim? A speech from your man.”
Jim shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind it.”
“I seen you bring him the tray of tea. Big wide eyes on you same like a cow. I’d say you’ve took a fancy to that man. Sounded to me you was coughing up Gaelic at him.”
“What and I was?” The man had smiled at Jim, in a way that wasn’t at all uncomfortable. It was hard to think this was the same soldier-speaker who had thundered of war and Ireland and death. But Jim had liked him all the more for his gentle manner. “He was pleased if I tried to speak Irish with him.”
“God and Mary with you,” Doyler said in a peenging voice. “And God and Mary and Patrick with you, your honor.”
“Shut up,” said Jim.
“Shut up yourself.”
A kick poked his boot, and Jim clambered his feet to give a kick back, but the way Doyler reclined he could see right up his kilt. It flustered Jim to look there and he quickly turned away.
Doyler said, “What you blushing for?”
“Who said I was blushing?”
“Even your ears is gone purple.”
“I’m not blushing for you anyway.”
“There’s nothing down there you not seen it before. Seen it a hundred times swimming. Aye, and looked for it and all.”
“Are you going to talk dirty?”
“Little molly, you.”
Jim got up. He went to sit on the wall. A courting couple passed on the promenade below. Away up the lawns, a band