At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [210]
The sacristy door opened. She saw him plainer now, in his Volunteer green, quietly ashimmer, enthused still but muted, a trace fatigued, dazed even, and perhaps with a falter in his step on this earthly ground. At the aisle he genuflected to the altar. She reached, before he turned to leave, her hand to his elbow.
“Young man, forgive me,” she said, hearing her voice come whispered and awed. “You must tell me. The sword of light, it will yet shine. Tell me now.”
He looked at her at gaze a moment. Her fingers fretted the cloth of his sleeve, feeling for the scorch of that flame which these years had blazed in her breast. She searched his face through the gauze of her veil.
“Not today,” she said, “but tomorrow, surely?”
His eyes flecked down the aisle, where she knew Shorty watched for her. The eyes flashed back. That smile, almost of amusement, had reformed on his face. Curtly, deliberately, he nodded. He strode down the aisle. Turning, she saw Shorty had moved from his way and the young man thrust through the chapel doors to the shiver of day beyond.
Her face too formed the grim appearance of a smile. So let it be. Tomorrow.
In the end the doctor was no more useful than his motor which ferried them through a clapping, even cheering, crowd up the road from Bullock to Ballygihen. A spoon of arrow-root in a port wine, Parrish’s nerve tonic was not to be despised, beef tea had its place in the pharmacopoeia, a draught of chlorodyne towards evening maybe: these sanatives the doctor recommended. And so, all afternoon Doyler had groaned while Jim plied teaspoon and invalid cup. Until MacMurrough intervened. The doctor was only earning his fee, he assured him: all Doyler needed was rest, a window open and the pot handy.
Even Mr. Mack had called with his particular corrective, a bottle of something extra A1 against the—pantomime—“keeping it regular, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
MacMurrough had mentioned Jim might stay up with Doyle the night.
“Did you hear that, Jim? Mr. MacMurrough says you’re to stay with Doyle the night. Is it here in Ballygihen you mean, Mr. MacMurrough?”
“Oh yes, doctor’s orders, mayn’t be moved.”
The evening then, while Doyler drowsed under the chlorodyne, they fetched a sofa into MacMurrough’s room and arranged it by the window where just they could hear the sea. They talked of old times, things that had happened weeks, sometimes months, before; their old chats on Doyle’s Rock, the Saturdays they swam with a Blackrock priest to the pier and back, their ice-creams. Jim talked of the plans he had made. That he would go for the King’s scholarship in June. Yes, he would try for a schoolteacher. He would need to get a digs then in Dublin. Doyler would share that digs with him. In the night, they’d go over the books together. Himself, he had the makings maybe, but Doyler was promised for a teacher. The world knew the teacher Doyler would be and it was the pity of the world if he didn’t try. Jim wouldn’t rest till Doyler had the scholarship too. They would be schoolteachers together. It was only right.
He was a kind boy and rarely unthoughtful, and he paused now and then in the rehearsal of these schemes to intrude MacMurrough’s lumping presence: a chair at his table, an hour of his evening, holidays all three to the West. Their low voices in the falling light invited an intimacy. MacMurrough rested against the sofa’s shoulder and Jim rested upon his lap and MacMurrough played his hand through Jim’s hair. Across the room where a night-light burnt, Doyler dozed in MacMurrough’s bed.
“Do you know what it is, MacEmm?” Jim said. “It’s having to thank you more than any drowning has him exhausted.”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised.”
MacMurrough reached for his wine, a good claret, ’93, which he had