At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [205]
“I hate it when I dream like that. I wake up and I’m so angry. I’m really angry with him.”
“I’m sorry, Jim.”
Jim felt Doyler bring his head round, he felt him kiss his eyes, his eyes feeling wet after. He said, “Oh well.”
Doyler said nothing.
Then Jim said, “I don’t know what’s it called. Will you do it with me? If I lie down, will you lie on top of me?”
“I’d like to. It’ll maybe hurt a bit.”
Jim hunched his shoulders, making him feel skinny of a sudden. He felt his bottom lip caught in his teeth. It did that if he smiled feeling awkward.
For a moment or two, he was aware of the hardness of the stone beneath him. He heard them come back again, the seaside sounds of waves and birds. Behind his eyelids the sun had its red glare. There was a sweat on his back which the air traced. He felt it far away, the intimate search of foreign fingers. Then Doyler pushed against him. His eyes squeezed and all sensation shook.
It was a moment when he scarcely existed but to suffer pain. Then Doyler’s weight came down on top of him. His hair fell on Jim’s cheek, reawaking the sense of his face.
“You all right?”
He rubbed his cheek against Doyler’s. He opened his lips and felt with his tongue along Doyler’s teeth, searching out the chip off the middle one. He tasted a salt of the sea where the lips creased at the side. Doyler was upon him and inside him, on his breath even, all about him. His body strained the more to meet the body above. He did not think of anything, but his thoughts were there in the back of his mind or in the sea that circled his mind. They had this together now. They had their island. Whenever a thought crossed or a look met, if a hair but brushed a finger, this was where they would be. No one could take it from them, chance what might, nor he couldn’t nor Doyler. He had to bring Doyler here because Doyler didn’t know to come of his own. This was the light the Muglins had shone all those years. It was here was their home, it was in the sea, an island.
Doyler whispered in his ear, “It’s my turn next.” It had Jim smiling to think of that. He felt lazy and free. “There’s all the time,” he said.
“Throw a line over, sor?”
“Do, by all means. And let me know when the tide turns.”
MacMurrough took off his coat and folded it behind his head, pulled down his hat over his eyes; closed his eyes, tired after the glaring water, to drowse the while. And drowsing he saw but waves and beacon and rock. But in the dip of that rock he knew there formed a primal unity, which was not, as Aristophanes had thought, an egg-shaped being, rather a twin-backed flapping seal; that unity the jealous gods had thought to sunder, not reckoning the human heart.
It was the boatman who woke him, plucking his trousers. “Only they looks to be harrished, sor,” he was saying.
“What is it?”
“Shwimmers, sor. Only they’s in trouble, could be.”
“Where?” He pointed. “Row,” MacMurrough said; then bellowed, “Row, man, damn you!”
He shoved the man, near upsetting the boat. He could make out one head in the water. There was a slick on the surface, a spill of something—never oil? The glare was bewildering. He had to throw water in his eyes. One head, yes. Down it ducked. Not oil: that wretched flag. He shouted to the men, “Row, row,” as he pulled at his clothes. The head came up. It was Jim. A breath, then down again. The flag was sinking, had sunk. But Jim was safe. He registered no relief. A kind of training took over, that his mind and dreaming body these months had rehearsed. Training judged the boat’s speed, their distance, his balance on the gunwale; it dived him to the water. The cold hit, near gasping his breath. He skimmed to the surface; air gulped in his throat. He pulled on the waves, tugging on them, willing a purchase, laddering them almost. Jim was ducking again and he charged into him, grabbed his hair, savagely wrenched him away. “Boat,” he yelled, then plunged below. He kicked with the current. His eyes still smarted, but the water was clear. He saw the cloth, a dark jelly-fish below. Beneath