At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [168]
“Naturally. I am a gentleman.”
“Oh, quel beau coup pour l’Irlande!” And she gazed upon her nephew with fondest affection. She took both his hands in hers. “What a wonderful boy you are. And I did love you so and I do love you still.”
“Do you think he will make a stink?”
“The man is a cad and who can say what a cad may do? Let him utter a word, the country shall roar. Now let me look at you.”
In point of fact they were not boots MacMurrough wore, but stout toe-capped Oxfords. Puttees wrapped infallibly to his knees, cavalry breeches swished as he walked, then rather a plain, disappointing tunic, whose insignia on the sleeve, though he did not understand them, he was reliably informed, proclaimed him a captain of the Irish Volunteers. He even carried his very own swagger-stick.
“You look most becoming,” she pronounced. She settled once again the shamrock at his breast. She angled her elbow. “I shall be proud to walk with my nephew through Dublin.”
This good favor in which MacMurrough currently stood had begun shortly before Christmas. His aunt invited him to accompany her on one of her motoring jaunts. “Ferns,” she said.
“High Kinsella in this weather?”
“I thought we might shoot.”
Horrid drive in the freezing cold to that freezing tumble-down pile. Rough shooting with scatter guns, he had expected. But no, from a dirty oil-smeared covering his aunt produced a gleaming Lee-Enfield.
“How on earth did you lay your hands on this?” She did not immediately say. His hands ran along the barrel, bolt, trigger-guard. The stock was a touch loose. He would need to tighten the bolt. “Short magazine modified,” he said. “At college we had to make do with the Boer War originals.” He raised the rifle, trying the balance, sighted. “You bribed a soldier, I expect.”
Her prim smile told indeed she had.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
But dangerousness, as a subject, did not interest her. She wished to know was it any good.
“Well, that very much depends what you want to shoot. If it’s rabbits, it’s useless. Thing was designed to stop a cavalry charge.”
But he knew how to shoot it? Well, of course he knew. He had shot for his college at Bisley. Service Rifle Team Event, he told her. And had he won? No, the team hadn’t won—but MacMurrough was sufficiently proud of his musketry to lay the emphasis on team. So he was proficient? He could shoot a mark, yes.
“As I thought. You shall teach me.”
So all that day and the next he had taught his aunt to shoot rifle. The Sunday morning, even she could not disguise the pain in her shoulder. He advised a revolver. “Yes,” she agreed. “But that would mean bribing an officer, which would never do. I shall have to get one in liquor. Then he may mislay the thing.”
She had form, you had to give her that. Good or bad, it hardly mattered. She carried it off magnificently.
After Mass, groups of men and boys had come trudging up the avenue. At first MacMurrough had thought them retainers or tenants come to pay their respects. But not so. In the courtyard they lined up smartly in column of two files, and waited there, eyes forward, standing to attention. They carried pikes. They actually carried pikes. Intrigued, MacMurrough left the library where he had been browsing and came to the front steps. His aunt was already there, with an ancient gentleman attired, plausibly, in officer’s rig. The gentleman addressed the men. Usual nationalist platitudes, save at the end MacMurrough heard his own name mentioned. His aunt produced the Lee-Enfield and announced that her nephew would be giving each man present a lesson in its use. They cheered.
Over sherry that evening, his aunt said, “The men have elected you their captain.”
“The men?”
“They have elected you.”
“Those men who were outside?”
“I have already said.”
“Their captain?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s preposterous. Why should they elect me?”
“You are a MacMurrough, what possible more could they want? So tomorrow evening, Anthony, I really think you might wear your uniform. Pour encourager les