At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [173]
And it was too. The daffodils opened in lakes of yellow beneath the trees. The japonica was coming to blossom, laburnum splashed in corners. A powdery blue sky sailed above the branches. The branches conceived the very merest imagining of green.
They crossed the lake by the humped bridge and rounded the George II block. “Monumentally misplaced,” his aunt sniffed. Novices, a hush of them, hurried from the park to wait in the doorway to Newman’s church. Something about Newman. Buried beside his life-long friend. Friend’s name? Can’t remember. The novices waited for their director, who came, his arms wide, herding them in, their bowed heads deprecating. Male hairy, bull of grace, the lard is with thee.
“Shall we sit?”
“We will.”
Though MacMurrough did not sit. He handed his aunt to the seat and stood beside. A few months back, he had stalked a likely-looking thing to this very bench. Chatted a while, then the thing had got up, gone on to the lavatory, just down the path there. MacMurrough had followed, only a big burly bumpkin of a policeman had come in and frightened the chase away. MacMurrough was still at the urinal when midnight blue bashed against him and he was propelled inside the closet. His trousers were down before he was scarcely aware of his buttons, his head thrust by the bowl. It was a brutish rutting, more of a flogging than a fuck, great baton of a dick poling his innards, his forehead chilling and bruising against the porcelain. Not the pleasantest of experiences, though in recall it did own a certain collywobbly titillation. When the bobby had done, he bade MacMurrough hitch his unmentionables. He yanked him by the hair and told him in his ear: “And if I catch ya anywheres at it agin, y’ill be on tha boat ta England.”
“Not too cold, Aunt Eva?”
“Perhaps,” she replied. “Let you finish your cigarette and we shall go in to lunch.”
Hello, what have we here? Rather a likely-looking thing himself. Fetching little bumfreezer, waiter or something. Do waiters have a lunch hour? I know you. Where do I know you from? Arseless thing, all legs, out of the bottomless pit where Dublin breeds. Got you. Clerk out of Lee’s in Kingstown. Had fondled Doyler’s flowers and frolics. There he goes, straight into the lats. And out again. Unforgivable to let it go waste.
“Aunt Eva, I shan’t be a moment.”
“Anthony?”
“I must briefly—”
Make an arrangement at least. Yes, they had no swimming this afternoon. Take him to a Turkish baths. Would just fill the gap nicely, a little plenum et obtabilem, then catch the train to Ferns. Yes yes, MacMurrough was saying to himself, and he was just coming to the boy, he was just lifting his hand to tap the boy’s shoulder, when he saw the boy was not alone. No, the boy had stopped, he was talking with another boy.
It can’t be. Surely not.
“Well, Mr. MacMurrough.”
But it was. “What are you doing here?”
Doyler frowned. “Now where would you want me to be?”
“Never mind that. What are you doing talking with this fellow?”
The clerk from Lee’s, who might possibly now be a waiter, looked on bemused.
“I think I’ll talk to any man I choose,” said Doyler.
“You’ll talk to me now. I want a word with you.”
“You’re talking, aren’t you?”
“Get rid of this—Get rid of your piece of smut first.”
“Smut?” His frown deepened as his eyebrows lifted, cramping his forehead. His Adam’s apple gave a little hop. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Get rid of him.”
“Calling any man smut then ordering me about?”
“You get rid of him or I soon will.”
Doyler looked him up and down, taking in MacMurrough’s uniform. He said to the clerk from Lee’s, “Go on over the bench there. I’ll be with you a minute. Go on, now,” he told him. Then he turned to MacMurrough and he pushed him. He actually pushed him. “I see you’ve taken it into your head to be a Volunteer,” he said. “And I see some gobshite company was fuddled enough to make an officer of you. But you don’t be ordering me about. The Volunteers might stop the traffic but they don’t be running this country yet.”
MacMurrough could scarce persuade himself