At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [119]
“U-boat scare,” said Doyler. He had come up beside, and he nodded to the plume of the mailboat as it hurried in from a strange direction.
“Yes,” said Jim.
“The Helga now’ll be out on a sweep.”
“It will.” Jim knew he had only to wait and the arm would come round his shoulder. He would be mollified then. Mollified, that’s what he’d be. He sat stiffly apart. He stared at the bay. The houses on Howth looked brilliantly clear. They reminded him of pictures he’d seen of Italy or the Aegean Isles. The sea was deeply blue, save far out where waves broke, like fallen sails, in flashes of white.
“Lookat, are we pals or what are we?” said Doyler.
“Of course we’re pals. Only you’re not very pally today.”
“Don’t you see it’s that MacMurrough woman? Was I a college boy, now, she wouldn’t treat me that way.”
His hand was slapping on the curve of the wall. Jim counted the white spots on the fingernails. A gift, a friend, a foe; tidings to come, a journey to go. Doyler’s hand had all five. “She treats us all the same,” Jim said. “What would she care who’s a college boy?”
Doyler aimed a spit right across the promenade to the rocks beyond. Jim watched the propulsive lob, the curl in the air, the splash on the stone’s tip, the way the saliva seemed to cling to the granite. Truly, he was a very excellent spitter. Jim hunched his shoulders. He nodded out to Howth and said, “My da took me there once. I used think it was England, you see, when I was a kid. He brought me there and had me ask a fisherwoman was this still Ireland. She answered something very strange. She said, Not since the Chief passed over, nor yet till he come again.”
Doyler huffed a laugh. “She meant Parnell.”
“I know that. The da was very angry. Queer old harp, he called her. He was always very set against Parnell.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me your da sided with the priests.”
“Well, you’re wrong actually. Had nothing to do with the priests. Parnell voted against the relief of Khartoum. The time General Gordon was under siege. The da never forgave him that. Gordon was his hero. He named me brother for him sure.”
For the first time that day Jim heard a genuine amusement in Doyler’s voice. He let out a kink of laughter. “He’s the boyo, your da is. Parnell had the country torn asunder, and your da finds an argument nobody never heard of. There’s original for you. More power to him, that’s what Doyler says. What the—what’re yous doing down there?”
Not ten feet from them a gang of urchins had begun scaling the wall. They had lumps of mortar scattered about and tufts of valerian they’d tugged for a purchase. “Would yous get down off of that wall,” said Doyler, “before you have us all tumbled in the sea.”
“Want to get in, mister,” piped a crabby face.
Doyler reached down and heaved the creature up and over. “What’s wrong with the gate below?”
“Stuck.”
“Couldn’t you see us here? All you had to do was ask, we’d open it for yous.” He brushed the kid down. “Go on down by the gate,” he told the others. He marched the kid off, hauling him through the briers and in under the trees. Jim watched from the wall the other kids troop under his arm while he held the gate for them. One had a gash in his foot and Doyler bundled him down the rocks to bathe it. He had a rough kindness that way with children. “There’s Irish for you,” he said returning. “No trouble too much save troubling the head.”
Jim nodded.
“Come and sit here with me,” Doyler said. “I want to tell you something.”
“Can’t you tell me here?”
“It’s about schoolteaching.”
“What?”
“About being a schoolteacher.”
“What about it?”
“Come here and I’ll tell you.”
Jim looked over his shoulder. Doyler was sitting up with his kilt pulled over his knees. He beckoned Jim and patted the grass beside. “I want to talk is all.”
Jim dawdled over,