At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [121]
“We’ll see about feathers.”
“Butler, do you really want me to wallop you?”
“I’m a reasonable chap,” said Pigott, “and I don’t go for this baiting fellows less fortunate than meself. But you need to know I won’t have a buttonman in my company. You need to understand that, Doyle.”
“It’s a shame you’ll be leaving the band so.”
“You make him see reason,” Pigott said to Jim. “Tell your pal don’t be making a parade of himself. Tell him I’m afraid he’ll be properly licked else.”
“Aye will I,” said Doyler. Pigott raised a cautioning finger. He beckoned the others to follow him, and lumbered off. “And if you lick me all over you won’t miss me arse. Mawgabraw!” Doyler shouted. He turned to Jim. “Do you mind the cheek of that?”
Jim said, “He means what he says. His da’s something in the Hibernians.”
“He looks the bully neck would have a da that way.”
He was panting a bit, out of his breath with anger. Jim said, “We should go,” but Doyler paid no regard, just slumped in the grass. Jim knelt down. He felt jiddery in his legs and he had to hunker back on his heels. He was intimidated by the boys in a way he had not felt before. They had brought this on themselves and it was only right the boys should menace them. Through his fallen hair he stole a view of Doyler’s face. There was doubt in his eyes, the way they squinted back at him. His forehead was frowning and his jaw chewed, ruminating, like he had trouble thinking. Some calculation, on the tip of Jim’s nose, that would not add up.
He said, “I seen them fists you had in your hands. You’re a good pal. You was ready there to back me.”
“We’ll go,” said Jim.
“Is that what they call us, the lovebirds?”
“No.”
“Why did he say it?”
“That’s just Courtney.”
It was nearly chilly in the grass. The shadows of the trees reached beyond them and made crazy jags along the wall. From up the lawns came the groan of a warpipes.
“Lie down a moment.”
“No,” said Jim, “we should go back.”
“A moment just.”
He pulled Jim down by the hands. Jim was looking about him, and Doyler said, “They’re gone. They won’t be back. There’s no one to see us here.” He pushed Jim’s shoulders down, not roughly but firmly, and kept his hands there till Jim settled. “It’s all right,” he said. He lay beside, leaning over a little. He put his hand on Jim’s leg.
The grass had nearly a smoky smell. Midges were rising. Jim felt a swamp of heat, though the sun was way behind the trees. His neck was straining as he tried to watch the hand. The saffron of his kilt creased and contoured. The hand was moving upward. The saffron flower, he told himself, is either purple or white. It is the stigmas that are used for dye.
It didn’t seem to be Doyler’s hand at all, merely one of those things with which the world was furnished. It shifted the hem of Jim’s kilt so that his thigh was revealed, gooselike and pale. The passage of the hand was mesmerizing. Doyler too watched it, darting betweenwhiles glances at Jim’s face. Then very quietly he said, “Did you ever hear tell of a place called Sparta?”
Jim felt the strain in his neck and a stiffening in his throat, and the impossible strangeness of moving things. The saffron flower is not yellow at all. It is the stigmas that give the dye. He swallowed. “It was in ancient Greece. They fought Athens in the Peloponnesian War.”
“Did they win?”
“In the end they did.”
“I’m glad of that. Can I hold it now?”
“No,” said Jim, but he was already holding it.
“It’s all right,” Doyler told him. “You wanted this. It’s what you wanted me to do.”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t.”
“Ask me to stop so, and I will.”
“Stop it, Doyler.”
He looked into Jim’s face. Jim had to blink his eyes deep shut. The hand came away from his kilt but Jim couldn’t look at it for fear of its being disfigured or discolored some way. He couldn’t look at Doyler at all, and he turned his head on the grass.
“We have to go now,” he said. “They’ll be wondering what’s happened.”
“Won’t you kiss me, Jim, even?”
“No.”
For a moment or two they lay side by side. Side by side they lay, then Doyler got