At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [194]
“Shut up,” said Doyler. “Case of whether—You’re giving me earache.” He pulled Jim closer again. And it was strange being there, not strange with Doyler, but with this other thing that shared their bed and bumped against Jim at times, expected of course, but in physicality an astonishing event. Doyler laughed into his ear, “You know, with your pole and mine, never mind a flag, we could hang our washing out.”
Jim turned on his belly.
“No use turning your back, Jim Mack. Your back’s as good as your front is to me.”
“I’m not shy,” said Jim. “Only if you touch me again—”
“Come here to me, you gaum.”
“No,” said Jim. “No,” he said again. “I mean, Doyler, don’t.”
The shape that had crouched above him stiffened. “No?”
“We can’t.”
A moment. “Will they hear us above?”
“It’s not that.”
A moment again. “Don’t you want me, Jim?”
Jim reached his hands to Doyler’s shoulders. “Don’t you know we have to wait till the island?”
A long while then while Doyler arched over him. The thin light of night, and of vigil and embers, found the outline of his face. Then he lay down stiff in the space beside. He took a breath.
“Lookat Jim, I never swum to the Muglins that time. What happened I was swept out one day. I was struggling like mad to keep afloat even. Only for a launch chancing by I don’t doubt I’d be drownded. I’m sorry for leading you on. I did it by reason I wanted to swim with you. I wanted to be with you that way. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“And about them fellows with the flag. They was never patriots. They was robbers and murderers. They was no better than pirates. And me leg too, Jim. I never hurt that in the Lock-out. That was himself at home did that.”
“Is that it?”
“That’s it. I’m sorry now. But you can’t swim to the Muglins. It’s too tough a stretch.”
“You can so swim there,” said Jim. “I know for I swum half-way and back.”
“You did?”
“I did, last week. And I had enough in me to swim it again the same time.”
Doyler let a low whistle. “Me life on you, Jim, but you’re the man if you did.”
“And I know about the pirates for I spoke with men at the Forty Foot and they only laughed at my story. That doesn’t signify. We still have the Muglins to claim for Ireland and that’s why I made the flag. About the leg I guessed, for you was either in Clare or in Dublin, you couldn’t be both. Now listen to me. We’ll swim to the island tomorrow. We have that pledged and we can’t go back on a pledge. You’re not forgetting we spat on it?”
“I’m not forgetting we spat on it.”
“Well then. If you never been there, that’s all the better. It was a thing that muddled me that you swum there already. It’s clearer now. It’ll be us two together, out there in the sea. We have to go, because in a way, you see, we’ll always be there.”
“We will?”
“No one will take it from us. Even you can’t nor I can’t. That’s why we’ll swim.”
“When did you work this out?”
Jim heard the tone in Doyler’s voice. He heard himself sound strangely too. “I’ve been thinking is all.”
“You been talking to MacMurrough?”
“We go swimming all right.”
Doyler scratched his arm. “You like him?”
“I do.”
“I suppose and he told you about them Spartans?”
“A thousand and one things he told me. You wouldn’t know where he was coming from half the time. Spartans, Alexander the Great, the Sacred Band of Thebes. Even the Gaels, that they had a ceremony, two men if they loved each other.”
“What ceremony?”
“A blessing. Before a priest and all. Christian priest.”
“I wouldn’t fancy the blessing we’d get off that curate if he catched us now.”
“MacEmm says there’s more things happened already than ever you’d dream of to come. MacMurrough: I call him MacEmm.”
“I don’t like him.”
“You had a barney is all. Friends can’t fall out that way. You’ll make up, you’ll see.”
“Has