At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [196]
Saturday afternoon MacMurrough visited his aunt. She was kept under detention at the military hospital in Dublin Castle. Oddly enough he had not been questioned himself about the guns. A policeman had called to inform him of a regrettable accident involving his aunt. The next, a detective arrived inquiring about his residency in Ireland. So that was how they would play it. With that ball in the air, even if the swim had not been tomorrow, he should be leaving on the Monday. Gruesome to travel on a bank holiday, but such were the exigencies of wartime. Mailboat to Holyhead, train to somewhere in the Midlands. Nottingham, he thought. Is Nottingham in the Midlands? Fuck my way to France.
While he waited to be shown to his aunt’s ward, he became aware of the corridor’s collection of war-wounded. Avoiding their faces, he glanced the more on their injuries. The different lengths of leg that might be cut off, how neat the tucks in armless tunics, in wheelchairs feet that pointed askew. He heard their unearthly banter: the races, the rain, Nurse O’Hara. He had a notion of his being naked in their presence, an urge to cover his exposure with his hands. How very much more precious was the body than the life. A ward door opened, a nurse came out: a glimpse beyond of unsayable distress. His hands in his pockets of their own accord moved to cover his balls. This too in France. The ward door creaked home, saying whyee, whyee, why.
Unlucky bastards. Unlucky to be in their presence.
At last his ticket was accepted and he was directed to his aunt’s ward. He found her on a verandah overlooking the Castle gardens, arranged in a wicker bath-chair. The cuts to her face had all but healed, though a nasty bruising still showed at her forehead. She did not complain, but her posture told the pain of her back. A sergeant in scarlet attended her. One of his aunt’s coups de maîtresse, so characteristic, had transformed this keeper into a family retainer. Shorty, she called him, on the grounds presumably of his being tall and burly. She conducted their relations in something of a musichall turn.
MacMurrough kissed her. She said, “Shorty, you will remember my nephew.”
“Yes, mum. Nephew, mum.”
“Did I mention he was a captain in the Volunteers?”
“Indominatably, mum.”
“He has resigned his commission.”
“Ah, mum, wise.”
“It was hoped once upon a time he would lead the men of Ferns. Yes, in the rising that was to come. But there will be no rising, will there, Shorty?”
“Couldn’t say so, mum.”
“Because they have taken Casement.”
MacMurrough asked for a private word, but this was not possible, indominatably not. He found a chair and brought it close. “Aunt Eva, I am told they will put you under a ban from Ireland. You will have to remove to England.”
“Is that what you are told?” she said. “I have been telling Shorty about Casement. Shorty never knew he was Irish, sure you didn’t, Shorty?”
“Sir Roger, mum? English as roast beef.”
“There. Even our heroes must be English.”
“Aunt Eva, there are arrangements to be made.”
“They’ll hang him,” she said. “Won’t they, Shorty, hang Casement?”
“Traitor, mum. Indominatably.”
MacMurrough sighed. He had as well ask or she might never drop it. “Tell Aunt Eva, what is the news of Sir Roger?”
“Casement,” she corrected him. “He has never liked to be Sir Rogered.” She waved at a newspaper, which told, blandly he thought, of an arms seizure in Kerry. But apparently Shorty had assured her it was all to do with Casement. Casement had been captured with the arms, he had been spirited through the Castle and already lay in chains in London. MacMurrough eyed Shorty, who might be on parade so inscrutable his demeanor. It occurred to him there might after all be a logic behind this tiresome double-turn.
Casement had brought an arms ship through the blockade, she told him, through the teeth of the British navy even, all the way from Germany he had brought it, to the coast of Kerry. “He does this wonderful thing, this incredible thing for them. And what do the fools of Volunteers do? What do they