At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [159]
“I think I have a fever, Da.”
“Sure, you’ve had a fever these last four days.”
“What day is it?”
“Never you mind about that. You’ve only it broke in the night. Rest now.”
The hand came over his eyes, closing them.
Later his father held his head while he fed him broth, inconveniently really, from a huge wooden spoon into his mouth. It must have been that evening when they had their first real conversation. His father sat on a chair by the bed. He had been reading from a book, but Jim could not recall what. His jaw ached, as though it was worn out from speaking, and he still heard echoes of voices in his head. Those monotonous phrases and scenes that had repeated and repeated. It worried him now he had been talking through his fever.
“Oh sure ranting away you was.” His father swiped his nose significantly. “We have all your secrets out now. There’s no use hiding. We have you well taped, young man, so we have.”
But his father was laughing and Jim could see that he had no secrets told at all. He felt so happy looking at his father’s face, all round and honest and pleased to see him.
“Belting out the hic haec hoc, you was. I never heard such Latin, ’twas better than a priest on Sunday. If I didn’t know it before, I know it now, that I have a proper scriptuarian for a son.”
“I think I was dreaming of Brother Polycarp.” His eyes closed. “Is Brother Polycarp dead, Da?”
“Don’t you remember he was read out at Mass?”
“I remember something.”
“He died of a stroke, son. This was in Enniskillen. They say there’s to be a month’s mind at St. Joseph’s. We’ll go to that.”
“Yes.”
His father closed his book. “We oughtn’t be talking sad things at all. The doctor says you’ll be out of your strength a while yet.”
“You had a doctor in?”
“Half-crown doctor. White gloves, top hat, the works. Three-day fever, he calls it, which just goes to show.” Though what it showed he didn’t say. “A friend of yours was after recommending him.”
“Which friend was that?”
“I never knew you had such connections. Up there with the quality and you never let on.”
“Who was it, Da, tell me.”
“Mr. MacMurrough of course.”
Jim felt confused, but the confusion did not distress him. His father leant over and kissed his forehead. “Rest again now and I’ll be up in an hour or two. You know there’s the you-know under the bed. Well, you know that sure. Try to sleep now.”
It was the next morning before Jim had the story.
“What it was,” his father said, “you was after making an appointment with Mr. MacMurrough to swim with him. At the Forty Foot, this was.”
“Yes, I remember. He was to teach me a dive.”
“Then you never turned up.”
“I forgot all about it.”
“So he comes here looking for you. I was inside in the kitchen at the time. I heard the doorbell and I shouted, Presently, the way I do. Then, would you believe it, the bell on the counter gets a mighty wallop, and there’s some joker calling Shop! Would you credit that? And if you only saw it, the stupid faction on your Aunt Sawney’s face, when she tumbles who it is. I thought her gums would be sweeping the floor.”
Jim laughed, feebly, and it made him smile too, the wonderful way his father had with words he didn’t know. Stupid faction and palatable nonsense and poppy lectric fits. “What did he say, Da?”
“The short of it is he wanted your nibs here. But we’ll come to that. What could we do only show him into the parlor, and he was after admiring that old brass tray of mine and your Aunt Sawney’s firescreen.”
Jim saw them, the parrots, red and green, on the screen his great-aunt had embroidered, which his father complained wasn’t embroidery at all but something he called Berlin-work and as such by rights ought not to be entertained during the current hostilities. And the brass tray from Benares that his father had kept by him all the way from India, which Aunt Sawney held was unfit