At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [149]
Last Christmas they had all the decorations out. The trees along the front swung with lanterns, the Pavilion shone with all the lights of fairy. Last Christmas, if you went up Killiney Hill, you could sketch in jewels the arms of the piers as they reached to clutch their own from the sea. Last year the war would be over by Christmas. This year people said it might never be over.
He crossed the opening of the pier, whose high wall governed the wind, and passed along the road by the Crock’s Garden, an exposed walk that straggled the shore. The wind here buffeted and blared, nicking his skin with an ice salt slice. He looked in through the railings where the bushes crowded the black-earth paths. He thought of the shelters down below that gave out on the sea. They were strange and eerie spaces, done out to be temples, with colonnaded fronts: they smelt of toilets. A match struck, startlingly close, and he saw the glows after of twin cigarettes. He hurried on.
He wondered might he go back and view the ruins of the Pavilion; but a train was approaching by the Metals, so he crossed the road to watch. Adventure of its coming, the clatter and rush, that climaxed in a billowing steam. Then lives flickering by in single snaps of light. That odd impulse to wave your cap at strangers. The train disappeared under the road, gathering its business behind it, and the night resumed.
Jim pressed against the wall that vibrated still with the train’s rumble. He could feel his thing below, stiff and unmitigated. What sustained it he could not think, for nothing of the sort was on his mind. He heard a voice on the path which he thought might be Mr. MacMurrough’s. But no, there was a woman’s voice too. An English officer passed, a girl on his arm.
He couldn’t think what to do with himself. Had sufficient time elapsed for a child to be born? The screams back home had unsettled him, though it was a ridiculous notion to suppose it had anything to do with women’s suffrage. Butler was all mouth. That time they were passing above the ladies’ baths in Sandycove, and Butler was laughing and telling how you’d easy know by the higher pitch of the girls’ squealing when the water reached the spot. “Which spot?” “Ask your ma.” And walking the lower tier of the pier so’s you’d see up her legs if a girl was walking the upper. Why would you want to look there?
He ran his tongue along his upper lip, imagining the feel where a mustache had been shaved. He had a wish to do something, to shape by deed the confusion he felt inside. But no deed he could think of seemed remotely expedient. It was so cold. He turned the collar of his jacket up and pulled his scarf more tightly round. He crossed the road and descended into the Crock’s Garden.
He was picking his way through the veronica bushes, down the sudden steps and winding paths, when he felt the company of a young man beside him. It was a soldier in his greatcoat and cap, who walked a while in silence, then remarked in a familiar way, “Shame about the Christmas lights and all.”
“Yes,” said Jim. He had to shout to be heard above the wind. “My brother brought me up the Hill last year.”
“That was decent of him.”
“Yes, he came home from the camp at Woodenbridge, he was in his Kitchener blue, and Christmas Eve we walked up Killiney Hill together.”
“He’d have been fond of you, your brother.”
“I was never sure of his ragging but I liked him all the same.”
“Isn’t that the way with brothers, sure?”
“When we got to the top we saw Kingstown below us and all the lights as far as Dublin. The city was like a fire and the Hill of Howth a dog at its hearth.”
“Did he mention anything to you that time?”
“Yes, he said it wouldn’t be long now and he’d be out of this fucking kip.”
“Sure he was the devil’s own. But that was his way only. He was fond of the old sod, I’ll engage.”
“He’s to be a father before this night is out.”
“Farther and farther away,” said his brother.
“Where’re you going?” For his brother was cutting through the