At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [134]
The details Jim already knew. HMS Serapis to Gibraltar; HMS Devonshire to Egypt; quartered in the Citadel in Cairo. He wondered was Cairo near the somewhere-in-Egypt where Gordie had stayed.
“Egypt wasn’t the worst,” his father continued. “Imshee. Do you know what imshee means? ’Tis Gyppo that for go away. First thing you learns out East. Imshee! Imshee! With a smack of your cane on their b-t-m. Bamboo backsheesh they calls that. Terrible lads for the importuning.”
“But the Pyramids, Da, the Sphinx? Did you not see any the sights?”
“Would you get away with yourself and your sights. A regiment is too busy for any of that carry-on. Always something going forward, wedding or a funeral, any number of parades. And all the clobber and nick-nacks they give out. All to be kept spick and span. I doubt I’ll ever forget it, the wonder of so many things to call my own. A poor lad who had only his Tipperary fortune before that. Do you know what’s this is a Tipperary fortune?”
“The shirt on your back,” said Jim.
His father glanced down suspiciously from the steps. “That and your wits,” he allowed. He had a pin in the corner of his mouth, which made it difficult for him to speak clearly. He took it out now and stabbed it through a streamer. Climbed down the steps which together they shifted the regulation three feet along the wall. Climbed again.
“Everything bright and colored,” he said. “Tunic to be pressed. Pouches and belts to be pipe-clayed. Five ration tins that you cleaned with bath-brick. Eight metal wash-basins. My very own knife, fork and spoon. All to be buffed four times daily with Globe Polish. And never touched but with a cloth. You kept any old makeshift yoke for use. Do you know how to be sure of a crease in a trousers?”
“Soap the inside, wet the outside, sleep on them under your mattress.”
“Did I happen to mention these things before?”
“Once or twice.”
“Ah sure well, that’s how they teach in the army. By rote.”
Jim handed him the end of the streamer, retrieved the pin his father had dropped, reached that up to him. To be told, “Head first, Jim. You don’t never pass a pin that way. Where’s this that streamer’s got to?” After Jim had once more passed him its tail, he said, “Sights now, let me see. Did I ever let on about the time I went down the casbah?”
“No,” said Jim, “I don’t think so.”
“With Mick this was. What it was, we heard tell of a padre, he was famous for it, he used go down the opium dens, on the scout, see, for swaddies what had been kidnapped. He’d have to brave his way out, carrying the poor lads on his back, some of them. Well, meself and Mick, we thought we’d have a twist at the rescuing lark ourself. Youthful high spirits, I suppose you’d call it. Officer we hit on wasn’t at all grateful. Threatened to throw the book at us if we didn’t clear out double-quick and let him alone with his hookah. Occifer, Mick used always pronounce it.”
Jim laughed obligingly. “Mick would be Mick Doyle,” he said.
“What other Mick would I be talking of? ’Tis well known we was pals together. Mick and Mack the paddy-whacks. More than once he had me on the orderly’s mat. Defaulters’ book and regimental entries. Many’s the scrape we had of it. Terrible to the world was Mick.”
His father a lad with a lad for his friend. His father cod-acting and getting into trouble. It made you blink twice to think of it.
“Then it was India. HMS Serapis again, trusty old sardine-can. Shocking voyage that was. Some of the men didn’t make it at all. Fierce hot in the Arabian Ocean.”
Jim mimed Sea.
“What it was we hit a calm. Never known anything the like of it. Eerie to say the least. Ship steamed on but not a stir of a breeze gave out. And the heat like the insides of an oven. Poor old Mick. At death’s door we all thought. Had to cradle him in me arms, I did, and drip the water on his tongue. Days on end I sponged his forehead, speaking the Brigid’s Rosary in his ear. There was a fear of the water giving out but I scoured that tub upside-down till I had a source found from a sailor-johnnie. Time we reached port there