At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [227]
“Any time.”
“You positive now he don’t mind me being here?”
“No, he’s glad. He’s glad if I’m happy.” Jim sat down on the bed, tying his boots. “He’s going tomorrow. He’s to join the army in England. Only he wanted to be sure we were all right before he left.”
“What’s it have to do with him anyway?”
“He’s a complicated man. I think the way it is, he wanted to leave something behind. He’s got it into his head he’ll be killed in the war. I have to stop that. I have to stop him leaving.”
“You sound like him sometimes.” Jim looked up. “Goodness gracious,” Doyler mimicked.
“Do I say that?”
“My golly gosh.”
“I don’t say that.” The pillow flung at him. He flung it back. “The state of this bed,” he said. He tugged the sheets, tucking them under.
“How you going to stop him?”
“We’ll see.” Jim’s thoughts ran on and he said, “It makes sense too. If there’s fighting to be done, or dying even, it’s only sensible it’s an Irish war, not an English. That way, we’ll all be fighting together.”
“Mary and Joseph, but you’re the bloodthirsty animal.”
“I am not. Did you know the English had him in jail?”
“Sure the Irish would gallows him, only for the scandal of naming what he done.”
“Not in my country they won’t. Listen now, you’ll sleep some more?”
“I’ll have sores on me bum and I sleep any more.”
Jim felt his forehead. “There’s still a temperature. We’ll have a big day tomorrow. You can show me round the Green.”
“Jim?” It was funny but he knew what Doyler would ask. “Jim, did you go with him, Jim?”
He smiled, partly in reassurance, but there was more to it, he knew, and he said, “There were times all right we might have.”
“You wouldn’t let him though?”
“Sure he wouldn’t let himself.”
“Proper gent.”
It was comical seeing Doyler looking round for somewhere to spit in that elegant polished space, the only house Jim had known that didn’t smell of food, only furniture. “The pot’s under the bed,” he told him. He went over and pulled the curtains to. At the door he said, “You know there’s nothing to fear, don’t you? If only you might have come swimming today you’d know it for sure. The Muglins there and the great sky above—we’re immortal. We’re no more than filling in now.”
He waited outside the door a moment to be sure of Doyler’s resting. Satisfied, he gathered the bundle of Doyler’s clothes and skimmed down the stairs. In one of the recesses in the hall he hurried out of his jacket and trousers and into the dark-green uniform. Nothing really fitted. The chafe of the trousers, a thick coarse cloth, prickled the inside of his thighs, the sort of an irritation you’d offer up for the Holy Souls. The mirror glanced him passing, a green stranger, and he paused for a more formal inspection. The tunic was too big and the trousers too long. He saw his inquisitive face poking out from under the brim of the slouch hat. He thought of his brother. Yes, he did look a soldier, he truly did. Too much the soldier in fact. He took off the tunic and hat again. He’d be better carrying them till he was surer of Dublin, how things stood. He might be stopped and questioned, there might be military checks, he didn’t know what else.
He left his clothes by the hall stand, where they wouldn’t be noticed but they would be found. He couldn’t leave Doyler go to war with only MacEmm’s linens to wear. He pulled the heavy front door and he was away up the drive. A moment’s unease coming into the shop, for his father might be home and he’d be nosing about the strange trousers. But there was no sign of him yet. He went immediately to the broom-cupboard, shifted round inside till he came on Doyler’s rifle. “Is that you, Jim?” called Nancy. He looked sharply: she was out the yard. She was saying something about the weather and he answered, Yes. The rifle was still in its brown paper covering. He stared at it a while considering, then he poked the sticks of three brushes down the top. He was going in his shirtsleeves: let people think he was a working man.
“What’s that?” he said. Something about his dinner. “I’m to eat at MacMurrough’s,