At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [137]
“Sit ye down,” Aunt Sawney answered.
“Well, I don’t think as I will.”
“Ye’ll do as ye’re bid, Mr. A. Mack Esquire, or if ye don’t ye’ll have the length of my tongue for your supper.”
“Will you have the goodness to get out of this, woman?”
Jim arrived at the door with a cloth. Mr. Mack gestured for him to clear away out of that but Aunt Sawney beckoned him in.
“Fetch two cups for yourself and his lordship. We’re to have this day a ponderation.”
“No no, not the boy.”
“The boy’ll hear what’s to be said.”
“But recollect yourself, Aunt Sawney.” He motioned to Nancy who bestrode her chair like something regal. “He’s only a lad.”
She near pounced on him at that. “There was another boy was only a lad. Where is he this day? Get away, little man, and fetch them cups. We’ll drink tea together as a family.”
Mr. Mack saw, without consent, that his son obeyed. When he would be out of earshot, he said, “Now this is nonsense, Aunt Sawney. You’re evidently out of yourself. There’s no family here.”
She said to Nancy, “His lordship would have it his family ended with the regiment, so he would.”
“Leave the regiment out of this.”
“He sent him away, hunted him out of it, for the pennies he owed the publican. And d’ye know what my good boy did then?”
“What did he do, Aunt Sawney?”
The familiarity was scandalous to Mr. Mack’s ear.
“He did join his father’s regiment. At age eighteen.”
“And didn’t it make the man of him? Haven’t you read his letters since?”
“’Tisn’t the letters we’re reading now but the telegrams.” It was a cut which she made the best of by thrusting her chin where his face was. “Ye have lost my good boy on me.” She threw a hand in Nancy’s way. “Will ye lose the grandchild with it?”
“What do you mean, grandchild? This really cannot be let go farther. This skit here has importuned on your kindness for long enough. I will not suffer these proceedings—”
She banged her stick on the floor. “Ye’ll sit down and suffer with the rest of us.”
He sat down, stared at his legs. “She has no business calling at this house,” he told them. Then he broached the girl’s face. “You had no business returning here, Nancy. Madame MacMurrough did well to send you home. You ought be ashamed to show your face.”
“’Twasn’t home I went,” said Nancy.
“Wherever then.”
“She gave me money for England.”
“And wouldn’t you be better off over, where nobody would know you? I cannot get over the out-and-out sauce of you. Strolling to my door on Christmas week.”
“Your son didn’t mind me calling.”
“My son, is it? My son is likely dead or dying. He has done a brave deed for his King and Country. What manner of girl are you to come here and speak his name?”
“I’m the girl he loved.”
The one was close to blubbering now, so he turned his eyes to the other who chewed her tongue with toothless gums. “She had no call coming,” he told her. “You had no call letting her in.”
“She came for I bade her.”
“You bade her?”
“She wrote me, Mr. Mack. Months back she wrote and told me the news.”
The girl was fumbling with a letter which Mr. Mack waved aside. “You have this hatched on me. You have it planned all the while. Behind my back to make a mockery of the house.” His son was at the door with the cups. “Lookat, let the boy go only.”
“The boy’ll stay.”
The tea was long stewed but his son poured with concentrated movements then sat down by the door. Mr. Mack stared into his cup at the floating leaves. It was Jim who broke the silence.
“Where have you been staying, Nancy?”
“Up by the canal. Oh, it was dreadful, Mr. Mack. Only for Aunt Sawney gave hope, I don’t know what to have done. They treated me something cruel. Like a common walker in off the street. And they had me doing laundry the day through. All day through, Mr. Mack, without ever a smile or a kind word.”
“And what might you expect in the awkward state of you?” He tasted the bitter tea. In his mind’s eye he saw a deeshy waif who gulped red-haired