At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [224]
“I’m grand. Grand total. Who was the biddy outside? Was it she made the broth? Listen and I tell you. I went out looking for the flush-down article—”
“There’s a pot under the bed sure.”
“Never mind that. Hello now, says she. Hello missus, says I. How’re you coming up? says she. Fine now missus, thanks. You’re rallying anyway, she says, looking me up and down. And there I was, the full of the door, stark mother naked.”
“Never,” said Jim. “Oh gosh, you weren’t?”
“God’s truth. And you know that way you are when you wake up?” He made a size with his hands. “There’s no aiming at a po with that.”
“Don’t, Doyler.”
“And there she was, calm as clocks, getting her eyeful up and down. You’re rallying, says she. I nearly bursted. Oh, laugh away. I tell you, I was back in bed before you’d cry crack. She had me all of a heap thinking she might be getting notions.”
“You ought never be let out,” said Jim. “And your shirt only on the rail where you flung it.”
“Where? Sure I didn’t think, the house so quiet. Pass us over that now and I’ll be making me move.”
“You won’t be making any move,” said Jim. “You’re stopping here. Two days’ bed, the doctor was decided.”
“Aye aye. Suppose he left a note excusing me work and all. Better, a draft on his bankers to tide me over. A decent set, these half-crown medicals.”
“He was a guinea doctor, matter of fact.”
“A guinea doctor! Kiss me pink. I’m not rallying at all, I’m resurrected. Get on now, Jim.” He made motions of getting up, but the pain gripped him. It wasn’t sudden, you could see on his face it was coming round. He arched forward clasping his belly. Seconds and it was gone, and he flumped on the pillow. But he looked harrowed after, and a little surprised.
“Is it very bad?”
“I don’t know, it rolls round. Actually, it is. I’m at death’s door if you did but know. It isn’t upright I’ll be leaving this premises. Oh Jim, won’t you pray for your pal? And won’t you promise me, Jim, you’ll cry at me funeral? Tell them, ’twas of a broken heart and the colic he died.”
“Shut up,” said Jim. “I don’t know anyone would cry over you.”
“Serious now, they’ll be wondering in town what’s happened me. I didn’t say, but I skipped a guard detail Sunday morning, then the evening I missed parade. I have me officers, you know. Year and a day I’ll be peeling spuds and the revolution nowhere the nearer.”
“What revolution?”
“Gaum you. Just give us me shirt and find me me uniform.”
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“It got flung in the sea.”
“Ah no, Jim, not me uniform.”
Yes, Jim was sorry, his uniform got soaked, flung in the sea in the muddle. Jim had took it home to get the salt out and he didn’t know would it be dry again till morning. Doyler wouldn’t mind stopping the night, would he? MacEmm had said it was all right. And Doyler wasn’t fit, need only look at him. “You’re delicate still,” he said, easing him back in the bed.
“Will you get your hands off me, Jim. I’ve a pain, I’m not an invalid.” He reached behind his head, plumping the pillow. “Well I’m stuck here so.”
He didn’t look too entirely put out. Jim pulled off his boots and sat up on the bed. “Listen,” he began, “there was a paper inside your tunic. I didn’t like to look but it got dropped out. Some sort of a street plan.”
“That,” said Doyler, “is me pride and joy. Do you know what it is? I drew it meself. It’s what you could call the opposite of a street plan. Give us here that bread and I’ll tell you.”
“No, it’s too heavy on your stomach.”
“I need me strength is all.” He reached anyway and the remains of the broth to dip it in. “Now what it does,” he said, indistinctly through the slop in his mouth, “instead of the streets, it shows the ways above the streets—the rooftops of course. All round Stephen’s Green.”
“So Stephen’s Green would be an important place?”
“Any number of roads coming into Dublin, they meet there. If I had it here I’d show you plain. Snipe and run.” He made the motion of a rifle with his arm and elbow.