At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [198]
“It seems unlikely,” he answered, “the world the way it is.”
“No,” she agreed. She said, with the merest interrogation, “You shall be brave.”
“I hope to. I wasn’t very brave with you in the car.”
She nodded. “You will be brave. Sure he will, Shorty?”
“Indominatably, mum. A MacMurrough.”
That was the Saturday, a most dismal parting. MacMurrough made his way to Trinity, waited there for his tram. It came; he sat on the open upper tier, with the pipe-smokers and the spit. The fender grated on the setts, the trolley hissed above. Snatches of his interview with his aunt repeated, inducing involuntary musculations. Conception of your sensibilities in this matter—could he truly have said that? Words of a stiff. His hand went to his pocket, it came away empty: naturally he had forgotten the tobacconist’s. The garish shine on his good brogues caught his eye: and he sighed. It was one of the trials of Dublin, that one mightn’t stand still a second for the accostment of her shoeshines. At Ballsbridge a boy ran skipping with his hoop. For a moment MacMurrough thought of cliffs, of gulls that soared on island airs. His buttocks clenched on the seat. I am proud to love him—tell me I didn’t say that, please tell me I didn’t say that to my aunt.
And if it is love, it is a curiously inefficient force, urge and halt, the both at the same time. I want, but nothing I can propose would satisfy this wanting. I can’t say what it is I want, not anything much, not even to fuck him particularly, if at all. Simply I want. Earnestly, most hurriedly, wretchedly want. God, let it be true they make a man of you in the army.
The conductor called out the stops: Sandymount, Blackrock, Monkstown. Kingstown, he called, and MacMurrough on an impulse whipped down the stair. He no sooner dismounted than the rain fell, that particularly Irish rain which soaked without apparently wetting. He sloped down to the sea. He realized he was looking at places for the last time, the Crock’s Garden, the swimming-baths, over there at Doyle’s Rock. And he had hoped to avoid all this; or rather to hoard this seeing for one final gulp from the mailboat rail. Now he had blundered into it. He heard the rain’s whisper on the tide: through pearly clouds the sun still shone. He looked beyond at Sandycove harbor, the Martello above on its modest cliff; at the walls that seemed to rock and tumble in the light. It was a strange land, of rainshine and sunpour; and it was true there was a spirit in this land that called to freedom, a singularly Irish freedom with which really there was nothing in the world to do.
He pushed through the gate to Ballygihen House. The staff had been paid off, save for old Moore who would act for caretaker. He stared a while at the grey façade, watching through a gauze of rain that softly from the mountains came. Somebody was waiting.
“My gosh, what are you doing out here in the wet?”
“I was hoping I’d find you.”
“I thought you’d be busy today.”
“Oh sure Doyler won’t be here till the evening.”
“You sound very sure. Come in, come in. Are you wet?”
“I was sheltering.”
“Come in, please.” He led him through the garden room. The boy was looking at the furnishings, white-sheeted now. “I forgot, you haven’t seen inside before.”
“Will I take off my boots?”
“Not at all.”
“I think Doyler was inside before though.”
MacMurrough stopped. He turned. “Yes, he was, actually. Do you mind waiting? I must find something dry.”
“Can’t I come up with you?”
“Do, by all means.”
The boy followed MacMurrough into his bedroom. MacMurrough took off his coat. He noted an exaggeration in his movements. This is my towel—see? I dry myself. He must have changed a hundred times before the boy. Difference a bed in a room could make. “Why did you want to see me?”
He was worried. MacMurrough had left