At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [20]
On his padded way up the stairs, he said under his breath, You’d be so proud, if you saw them, you’d be so pleased. God rest you in peace everlasting. God rest you in peace, my dear.
In the bedroom, above the bockedy prie-dieu, hung a photograph-portrait of his wife. I’m so so sorry, he told her.
Way up Glasthule Road, through Kingstown and its breezy streets, a smack of industry hits the sleeping town. Outside a black-brick bakery, in the fallen light from a window, a young lad crouches. He looks to be reading, but in fact he’s nodded off. The book slips from his hands and slides to the road.
The bakery hand comes out and shakes him. “Here y’are, son,” he says and drops the broken bread in his lap. “God save us, I hope ’twas worth the wait. What’s that you’re after reading?”
He takes up the cheap cardboard cover. “Socialism Made Easy, what? By Mr. James Connolly. You don’t want the polis catch you reading likes of that. No, nor the priests.”
The lad acknowledges him but he’s too tired to grin or say anything. He stuffs the bits of bread in his pockets and homeward treads.
Through George’s Street with its shuttered shops, named for the king who named Kingstown, past the railed-in People’s Park and down the slope to Glasthule Road. The road must squeeze between chapel and college and he glances up at the gaunt red brick of Presentation where no light shows. No light shows from the church and on he treads without signing the cross. At the lane that leads to the Banks, he halts and sniffs the air. Weedy fishy middeny air that follows where he goes.
The words come to him of the old famine song and softly he sings while he crosses the road and past the public house to Ducie’s lamplit window.
O we’re down into the dust, over here, over here,
We’re down into the dust, over here.
O we’re down into the dust, for the Lord in whom we trust
Has surrendered us for lost, over here, over here.
“Flute, is it?”
Cigarette smoke and a glove on his shoulder.
“Band flute, aye.”
“Boxwood, I should say. German. What they used to call a student flute.”
Still Doyler doesn’t turn, but gazes dead in the glass. The chatty manner has an edge to it which he feels in the press of the hand on his shoulder.
“How much do they ask for it?”
“Five bob, actually.”
“Tidy sum. For a flute.”
“Worth more.”
“I dare say.”
The grip on his shoulder guides gently him round. The face lights up in the cigarette glow. Guard’s mustache under a soft felt hat. The amicable nob from the Forty Foot. Had wanted to learn him a dive. Brim drawn down.
“What’s your name?”
“Doyle.”
“MacMurrough.”
Costly smell of the tailor-made smoke.
“Walk with me a while.”
Doyler shrugs, careful of dislodging the hand. “If you say so.”
“So,” says MacMurrough.
CHAPTER THREE
Brother Polycarp rapped his wand on the easel and the fluting straggled to indefinite desistance. “Will the man at the back with the grace notes kindly stand forward?”
Feet shuffled, some faces turned, eventually the culprit rose.
“The new man, is it? Tell me, Doyle, where did you learn to play flute at all?”
“Nowhere, sir. Brother, I mean. I mean I learnt meself.”
Brother Polycarp inclined his head while a suspense playfully mounted. “In this band, Mr. Doyle, we are accustomed to a respectable music. A music in the tradition of Kuhlau and Briccialdi and like gentlemen of the transverse mode. We do not slip and slide the like of Phil the Fluter at his ball. Sit you in front in future, boy, and play by the tongue not your maulers.”
In a coarse whisper someone let out, “Plays be the arse be the smell off him.”
Brother Polycarp chose to disattend the cod. “Go on now, home with ye. No, stand still till we say a prayer first. Would think the public house was closing on us. Name of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.”
He charged through the Our Father versicle, the boys doing a trailing response. Three times in all, then three Hail Marys and an invocation to St. Cecilia. In the end, he called over the clatter of benches, “Now punctual next week. Don’t leave me down. The new