At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [170]
MacMurrough smiled wanly, for he knew very well what Easter would bring. It would bring two boys to the Muglins and there would be nothing left in this country for him. He tossed his cigarette away. The war, which had seemed so tiresome with its petty news and thuggish holler, which all along had seemed the concern of other people, lesser people, stupider people, the exigencies of which seemed spiteful, and nowhere less spiteful than in the difficulty he began to experience in finding Turkish cigarettes—this war had opened its arms one night to him, one night as he lay in bed not sleeping, opened its arms like a warm night, inviting him through the doors and into the garden, but a garden where the paths did not lead to the sea, that aimless expanse, but led purposefully onward, marching onward, marching with a thousand men and each with a face and no name. There was, after all, something he could do. And he could not think, for the life of him, why he had not thought of it before.
In the meantime, it was St. Patrick’s day, a rare spring-blue morning. Through holiday crowds down Grafton Street he strolled, his aunt upon his elbow. Soldiers on leave wore shamrock in their lapels, officers too, some of them—a liberty granted by Queen Victoria, if he remembered, in gratitude for the Irish killed by the Boer. A constable on point wore a sprig in his helmet. MacMurrough saw the eyes that narrowly followed him. I know every law and by-law you ever broke or thought of breaking. I have all your crimes, me bucko. Bloody great brutes, where do they find them? Must breed them special, pig’s fry three times daily. MacMurrough had had an interesting brush with one of Dublin’s finest, just up there in the lavatory in Stephen’s Green.
“The constable saluted me,” he said in surprise to his aunt. “And I a captain of the Volunteers.”
“Yes,” she replied, “you will find them full of pleasantries this morning. The Irish constabulary has a keen appreciation of rifle and gun, as many of our men today will carry. It is that which has kept it so fond of the English.”
“We got some fine looks in the Shelbourne.”
“Didn’t we indeed? We shall get them again over lunch.”
A flower-seller waved daffodils from a lane and Eveline paused to admire the display. “Daffydillies for the lady?” said the flower-seller.
Behind her a younger woman, her hair matted and leaking from her shawl, was staring at his aunt, and MacMurrough had a feeling of tables being turned in her thoughts. Something very sinister in her face. A boy too, maybe ten years old, in assorted oversize and feminine rags. More than hunger in their eyes, something like massacre, if ever the Church should lose its grip, massacre only a prayer away.
His aunt smiled kindly. “You should be selling shamrock,” she told the weazen old face.
From alleyways the benisons of beggars came, from lanes they waved their precatory hands. Grafton Street sailed like a galleon between. In a sudden lull he heard the creak of his leather.
“I do so like Grafton Street,” his aunt said. “There is nothing in Ferns the equal of it.”
And now they were coming into College Green and they must worm their way between stopped trams—trams delayed in Dublin, I ask you—motor-wagons, cabs with huffing horses and the cabbies standing up and calling to each other in consternation. Constables with whistles blew their faces red trying to make sense of the jam. The crowds were thick and MacMurrough felt the uncomfortable adjacency of the mob. He suggested a tram might afford their best vantage. But his aunt wished to press on. She tapped her umbrella on the setts, calling haughtily for way, and way miraculously appeared. At last they came through to the William III statue, where a reviewing stand had been raised, cunningly contrived to obscure his view, should ever King Billy choose to glance behind. “Are we invited?” asked MacMurrough. “Oh yes, I’m sure that we are.” He helped her up and willing hands above received her. She brushed herself down and he thought how handsome she looked amid