At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [138]
Aunt Sawney banged her stick. “I’ll say this the once only. No blood of mine will be born in the Union.”
Mr. Mack muttered, flecking his son with his eyes, “How do we know whose blood is it at all?”
“Shame on you, Mr. Mack, for thinking such a thing.”
“Is it shame on me? The strap of you to give such lip. I’m an honest man here. I try to do an honest labor. I tried to bring my sons up something decent. I looked to keep a good name to this house.” His hand beat on his breast with each argument. He turned to Aunt Sawney. “God’s sakes, woman, don’t you know they have my name down for the Hibernians? I’m only clinging to the tuppenny-door as it is.”
“Pish,” she said, “what sign of a fool are ye at all? If ye wanted to get on in the chapel, ye’d double your dues and be done with it. Ye’re the careless man, Mr. A. Mack Esquire. Careless enough to lose the half your name till we don’t know is it MacThis or MacWhat-is-it. Careless enough to lose your woman bringing her home from Africa. You lost your son for to please the King of England. The little man here was a Presentationer only the black fellow saved him out of it.” Even Jim glanced up surprised at this. “Will ye lose the infant to please the priesteen that’s in it? I say again, ’ tisn’t born in the Union my good boy’s child will be.”
The deeshy waif was back in his eye and the days he spent laying roads over the hills where the rain was a mist in the air. But never mind the deeshy waif. What about this coming one? “And where’s it to be born so?”
No one answered till Jim said, “Papa?”
“Don’t you be papping me.”
“Da, it was in the Union you were born. It was, wasn’t it? Down Tipperary, Da?”
He swallowed. He took a long time answering. The waif in the evening used climb the ditch to peep at the world go by. “What and I was? There’s many a man better than me was born in the workhouse. I came into the world with nothing and what I have I have made myself.”
“But Da, was it not hard on you there?”
“It was hard enough.” Sat on the ditch and watched the world. “Lookat, where would she sleep anyway?”
“She’ll sleep in my bed with me.”
“She can have my bolster, Da. I’ll have a coat instead of the blanket.”
“You have it all worked out behind my back. I’m not the man of this house at all.”
“I won’t be staying, Mr. Mack, only you ask me to.”
“For Gordie’s sake, Da.”
On the ditch he sat till he saw them go by, the other boys no different from him, save they went by the middle of the road, and he waited on the ditch and watched the smoke in the sky from the houses. Then the red-coats came by with a rubbadub-dub, and when all the other boys had left off chasing, he carried on in the trail of the soldiers. That night they gave him biscuit that was hard as stone and bade him dance to the fifer. The cheery thin faces laughed in the firelight. The friendly fire with the hands about it in the homely camp of the red-coats.
He put his hand to his eyes and in a kind of blindness he stumbled to his feet.
“Lord have mercy, where’s he at?”
“Leave him go,” said Aunt Sawney.
He maundered through to the kitchen and crabwise up the stairs. It was gloomy in the room and he ought have gone down again for a candle but he fumbled his hands along surfaces till he pooched out a match and lit the lamp. The chestnuts outside waved against the window. Twigs scratched the pane like the scraub of fingernails, like every targe in the parish would be scolding him for the house he kept. In the drawers of the prie-dieu he could find nothing. Where was it that he was looking for?
Her countenance stopped him. In the between-light of window and lamp he peered at her face. So often he had prayed here but he prayed with his eyes closed so that he had forgotten what her portrait told. She had the look of Aunt Sawney really. Her face was in profile, the sharp nose and the thin lips, her eyes unseen