At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [213]
He stood in his oval of candleshine, his slight blush tinting his face. He reached his hands behind his neck and stretched mightily, languorously, sumptuously. He held his stretch while his chest swelled and his nipples paled. His hands came down, and in their coming down, the god left him; and he was smiling that way he often smiled, a little wonderingly, with his bottom lip caught in his teeth.
“I won’t let you go, you know.”
MacMurrough nodded. “Don’t catch cold now.”
“I won’t,” he said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Easter Monday, and another God-sent day, sky blue and the grass green, wedding bells tripping over themself to be heard, any turn you took, wedding processions trooping to their breakfasts, and the people chirpy and nodding in the streets and the streets with a closed look, but not staunchly closed, as who should say in a Sunday manner, but rather sportingly shuttered as befitted a bank holiday when shopmen, according as the maggot bit, might choose or choose not to vend their wares. Mr. Mack, no misery-moper he, had opted for holiday; and so it was among the gay citizenry of Dublin’s fair city he was that morning to be found, tipping his howd’yedos like a native-born, and smiling with the full intense joy of the beaming sun above. Mind, there wasn’t much of any sun in these misfortunate streets where his direction took him, away from the fashionable thoroughfares, nothing at all bar the shadows, keen as knives, that cut the corners. And looking up betwixt impending tenement walls and the rags of washing that stretched between, he saw the sky for a pale faraway streak. Grass, you could go kick for it, green or otherwise. Terrible depressing environs to be traipsing of a spring morning.
But Mr. Mack was off to do his duty by an ailing comrade and matter a damn the solicitudes of the journey. He passed a tom-fiddler at a corner pitch, scratching out dance music of our own devil-may-care variety, and he added a pleasing percussion of his own when he dropped a copper in the tramp’s hat. Corner-boy eyes squinted at him. Little mothers of the doorstep bounced cheery baby on their laps. Boots rolled over idle pebbles—penny-boys laid off for the holiday, penniless. The streets grew quieter, the sounds of children faded that swung from lampstands. A decently clad woman quite startled him coming out of a stables, and it was a pleasure to lift his hat to her and feel the shadowy air on the crown of his head. The tenemented buildings descended by degrees to poky lanes and humble whitewashed cottages. And sure he didn’t need young Doyler’s directions then, had only to look for the door in poorest repair.
“It’s Fusilier Doyle,” he let out before he could choke it. “I mean, ’tis Sergeant-Major Doyle. Not at all, ’tis Quartermaster-Sergeant—”
“Is it you, Mr. Mack?”
“It is, Mrs. Doyle, come to visit an ailing fusilier.”
Sure he wouldn’t delay, he was only passing, but he’d have a taste of tea whatever, but not to mind that tin of milk, he’d drink it red. Oh well sure, if ’twas open, missus, go on so. He patted conscientiously each of the girls on the head while they watched his parcel that he deposited by the hearth. Was that himself inside of the curtain? It was. He’d been inside in his bed now six weeks since the giving under him of his legs. The fever had took him then. Mr. Mack nodded gravely. Would Mr. Mack have a peek inside whatever? It might cheer him out of it, seeing an old friend like. Mr. Mack would of course, he’d be happy to sit with an old comrade.
And God knows, thought Mr. Mack while he finished his tea, wouldn’t it take old Doyle to sniff out a hovel likes of this. Who would credit it, this day and age, that Dublin could boast an earthen floor? Leave out now the unrendered walls, the