At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [139]
Except the photographer had caught the full of her face in a looking-glass on a table beside. And in the oval of this glass she was altogether different. Her lips were not shut but had closed with a story. Her eyes shone wide and cryptic. While he watched he near could catch her laughter, mocking him for his lunacy.
They were like this were women. They could laugh and command without ever a contradiction. Suffer and smile with the same face.
He muttered something to her which he misbelieved had words to it. Then he took down the ring from its home on the ledge. He listened to his tread on the stairs and the creak of the box door as it closed behind him. Aunt Sawney was in the kitchen with her chin in his face.
“I’ll say this the once only,” she told him. “Ye’re the good man, Mr. Mack. ’Tis the way sometimes ye’d need coaxing to remind ye.”
Mr. Mack said, “When is the, when is the,” jerking his head to the parlor, “when is the happy event?”
“’Twill all be done by Christmas Day.”
Inside the parlor the young ones were gostering like it was an afternoon tea-party they were at. They hushed when he stood in the door. “Put this on now,” he said. “And if anyone should say anything, say you was coupled in Dublin. If they says anything more, send them to me. Or better still, send them round to your Aunt Sawney. But I’m warning you now, young lady—”
“Mr. Mack, you won’t regret it, I promise and you won’t. And I’ll soon have this place neat as ninepence.”
“What do you mean, neat?”
“Sure, the house is all colley and cobwebs. Leaping, so it is. But what would you expect with only men here and Aunt Sawney not current? I’ll soon have it fit to be lived in again.” She put on the ring on her long finger. “If only Gordie would be here to see it.” Then she burst into tears.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Quare fine day, thanks be to God.”
“Grand, thank the Lord.”
“A pet day for Christmas.”
“Breeze is a spanker, mind.”
“How was the water, gents?” asked the photographer.
“Wet.”
The photographer tinkered with his contraption while the men toweled down. “Not too dry now, gents,” he called. “We want it true to life for the readers at home.”
“Will someone tell that jasus to get on out of that. Catch our death waiting.”
Eventually the photographer was ready and he ushered the men to the spot he had selected, where the masts of the stricken bark in the background would lend a topical interest to the traditional scene. He looked out from his tripod. “Tall gentleman at back. Could you maybe step forward?”
“Forward?”
“Maybe kneel in front.”
MacMurrough excused his way through the little throng. He took a pose like a sporting hero.
“You can caption it Our Newest Recruit,” someone quipped.
“Smile please.”
“Bejeesus,” said the men and the shutter snapped.
MacMurrough shrugged out of his clinging suit. Toweled quickly and leisurely dressed. Banter about him of men in the raw.
“Would you look at the hairy gorilla of John Mary Cruise.”
“Has he a clothes-brush for that pelt on him?”
“Shower of mermaids, the load of yous,” said John Mary Cruise and his towel flecked the blubber of buttocks. In due course the pimpled skin and sinewy limbs were restored to their clothy dignity, and the talk too put on its collar and tie.
“No use in football. All the good rugby men is in France. It’s the Gaelic games I’m looking to now.”
“Damn the chance of that crowd enlisting.”
“Now gentlemen, politics.”
The photographer passed with his equipment stowed. “Shame the sky wasn’t colder-looking,” he said. He struck a match to a stubbed Woodbine. “They prefer it at home if it’s wintry.”
“When will that be in?”
“Might get the late editions Monday. Tuesday for definite.”
The men drifted away with handshakes for Christmas, and MacMurrough’s hand too was shaken as the latest initiate to the Sandycove Bathers’ Association. The puddles where the men had stood already were icing over and he gathered