At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [120]
“Have you thought at all what you’ll do after college?”
“Sure that’s miles off.”
“No it’s not.”
“I need to be sure of an Exhibition first for the seniors.”
“No bother on you.” He began then talking about a King’s scholarship and how it was the same course as the intermediate seniors. “You’ll be sitting the seniors anyway, may as well go up for the King’s, what harm?” The King’s was a scholarship to train for a teacher. What happened, you got the King’s, then you went up to St. Pat’s in Dublin. St. Pat’s was the place to go. The boys at St. Pat’s would make a teacher of Jim. A bobby job was schoolteaching. A job with a collar and tie.
Jim had never given much thought to his future beyond that he’d somehow get away from the shop. The Post Office, he’d thought, a clerkship somewhere. But Doyler had it all worked out. Jim would go to St. Pat’s, he’d be a teacher, then maybe his friend would give him work at his school.
“Which friend?”
“Gaum you. His nibs from the Wolfe Tone. Don’t you know he gives a school in Irish? Up Rathfarnham way.”
“He’s a schoolteacher?”
“So he told me.”
“I didn’t know you’d spoke with him.”
“An tá tú schoolteacher, says I. Tá mé schoolteacher, says he.”
His cod-Gaelic wheedled the smile out of Jim. “And you think I’d make a good teacher?”
“Never doubt it. And sure what better employment? Helping your fellow man to get on in the world—you’d be proud of a job like that. The only job for you, old pal.”
“I never thought,” said Jim.
“Well, now you have.”
“Yes, now I have.”
“You see, Jim, I think of these things. I think an awful lot of you, I do.”
Jim looked at him. He was lying on his front with a meadow grass sticking out from his mouth. How did Doyler do this? He could make Jim so angry with himself, so ashamed. The next minute, he was all alive, like a spark was inside, like the full of him was electric. How did Doyler do this to him? He really didn’t know.
He stretched out in the grass too, leaning on his elbow, facing his friend, the pal of his heart, happy to watch him, fondly, his face. The grass was wonderfully cool in the shadows. It gave a fringy brush to his legs. Doyler grinned. He took the grass-stem from his mouth and tickled its ear under Jim’s chin. “You can tell does a fellow like you with a spear of grass, did you know that?”
“How do you tell?”
“You wave it under his chin, and if his face goes red at all, then you know.”
Jim laughed. The blush had risen, as of course it must, but for once he could be glad of it. He thought how lovely it would be to touch at this moment. The notion hadn’t formed before Doyler’s leg came to rest against his own. It pressed ever so lightly, and Jim pressed lightly back. He smiled with his bottom lip caught in his teeth, for it was wonderful to lie in the long grass, with just this tiny pressure of touch between.
Then Doyler said, “I think I’m going to ask for a kiss.”
And Jim said, “I think I hoped if you would.”
They neither of them moved. Until they heard voices approaching, and Jim quickly pulled away.
Butler, Courtney, Pigott. Butler had the cigarette, for his father had the tobacconist’s.
“Clear off,” Doyler said. “Yous aren’t let in here.”
“Sure, boys, we’re after interrupting the lovebirds.”
“Fuck off, Courtney.”
“Who’re you telling—who’s he telling to eff off?”
“Hark the college boy. Can’t even fuck like a man.”
Butler said something about the ineffable Doyle. Courtney still looked shocked. Pigott leant against the wall. He had paper and tobacco for making a cigarette. He rolled it, watching Doyler. He licked the paper and said, “Where’s your badge?”
“Never you mind me badge.”
“You was sporting it earlier. Mighty proud you looked. Never had known we had a Larkinite in our midst.”
“Larrikinite,” said Butler.
“Stick it, Butler. You know where and all.”
“Had it whipped off pretty fly, all the same, when the priest was there.”
“You want to make something of that, Pigott?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t want a certain somebody finding you out,” said Butler.
“Go on and smoke your gasper.