At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [146]
Mr. Mack stared down the lane to the Banks.
They were a long time answering his knock so that in the end Mr. Mack gave out, “It’s Quartermaster-Sergeant Mack only, come to inspect an old fusilier.”
A sound of shuffling then, and after a time the latch of the topgate scraped from its catch. Mr. Mack peered inside. He could make out little in the gloom, but he ventured, “Is it himself?”
“It is,” said a voice by the fire. “All that’s left of me.”
Mr. Mack entered the cabin. The smell wasn’t the worst. Besides the which, it was a poor soldier who wouldn’t bide his comrade’s breath. They were wise all the same not to leave any candle burning, for the fire would be robbed of what glow remained. Like an old crone he huddled by the hearth, on his box with a blanket drawn round him. Mr. Mack glimpsed the faded red of flannel legs and knew even the trousers was gone now.
Mr. Doyle coughed, worrying the blanket. He kept his eyes on the ashes, and said, speaking with a strange old-time courtesy, “I would bid you stay for a sup, but the woman is away at chapel yet.”
“Has she the youngsters with her?”
“And why wouldn’t she? Warm there nor anywhere.”
Mr. Mack left a parcel on what might be the table. Only the pickings of the goose from home, some old tarts, no more. “I might take a heat off the fire, all the same.”
“Take an air of it and welcome. Whatever, there’s little enough to sit on.”
“Had I the use of that bucket I might sit on that.”
“You might too.”
“Was I let.”
Mr. Doyle nodded to the fire, as though in agreement with its ashes on some consequential point. “Sure take it and welcome. ’Tis all we have bar the holes that are in it.”
That old cockiness, the jackeenism that so had disturbed Mr. Mack when Mr. Doyle had rolled up first in Glasthule, had dropped away like it had never been. In its place he heard the crabbed pride of a man with no farther to fall. But a countryman, thought Mr. Mack, not any go-boy on the loose out of Dublin.
He turned the bucket upside-down. Another parcel he laid by the hearth. Before he would sit he took out the half-bottle of whiskey and pulled the stopper half-way. On the floor in front and between them he placed it, judging a finical equidistance. Mr. Doyle turned his eyes till they took in the amberly gleaming bottle, then they swiveled home to the ashes.
“I was sorry to hear of your trouble,” said Mr. Mack.
“I wasn’t smiling hearing your own,” said Mr. Doyle.
“Is herself over it at all?”
“You wouldn’t know with women.”
Mr. Mack lowered his voice. “I thought you had a grand send-off for the weeshy thing.”
“We did our best sure.”
“Fine frisky horse. Grand plumes. Always sad to see the little coffin. The white brings it home somehow.”
“She left in better style than she lived, God bless the little Missy.”
“That goes for us all,” said Mr. Mack. “God willing. I would have gone myself but the shop and all. And my son had school that day.”
“A scholar you have there.”
“Something like it. What’s the wind of your fellow?”
“No wind at all this way.”
“My young one was hoping to see him, I think.”
“They have a wish for one another.” The eyes darted up. “That age and they know no better.” The quick flare brought on his coughing and had him spitting afterwards, copiously into the fire. Mr. Mack saw it before it died, the pink tint of his phlegm.
“The old whiskey,” he said, “would murder you altogether and you was to risk a sup.”
“’Twouldn’t cure me at any rate.”
“A cigar would be the end of you entirely.”
“Not this side of Last Post and I’ll taste again the smoke of a cigar.”
“Sure there’s plenty smoke where we’re headed,