At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [23]
His arms had swept forward and the shadows shook in the disturbed air.
After a while, he said dully, “We will pray to Our Lady of Presentation for her continued longanimity. Ever glorious and blessed Mary . . .”
“Ever glorious and blessed Mary . . .”
“Queen of virgins, Mother of mercy . . .”
“Queen of virgins, Mother of mercy . . .”
“Hope and comfort of dejected and desolate souls . . .”
Arm-enfolded they prayed, so close that Jim could trace on the brother’s face the imperfect course of his shaving. Each time their heads bowed in honor of Jesus, he sensed the chafe of jowl on his cheek. And when in the prayer’s pause silently each made his lawful request, he heard the brother’s breath come short and sharp, tingeing the air with a tinct fume of alcohol.
The road squeezed between college and church. Light streamed from the chapel doors where the congregation was leaving after their First Friday. Aunt Sawney would be among them. Jim felt the smother of the coming streets and the coal-smoke from the houses. The memory was with him still of the monastery’s candles and the manufactured sting of whiskey and Macassar oil. He pulled up his collar and made for the shore.
Shiny sky with scratchy clouds. Mares’ tails, his father called them: they had something to do with storms. Thin stars in misty faces, a frosty breath in the nightfall.
When he turned a corner he came on the sea, the sound of it sudden and as always unexpected; and as always he was struck by its equivocation. He heard the tired roar and felt its casual toil, the fresh breeze that whiffed of decay.
There were ships in the bay, hulks of darkness against the night, waiting the turn of the tide. The fishing-boats were out, he could hear the men, their reboant calls, but he couldn’t see them. The lights of Kingstown shone in rows, twice reflected, three times, in the slowly moving mirror, while away on Howth, the Bailey Light flashed welcome and warning. He followed the sea-wall to Sandycove, then up past the Point, where the wind hit him full from the sea. He peered down the dark hole that led to the Forty Foot, gentlemen’s bathing-place, then on round the Martello to a thin ledge of grass that gave out on the bay. And there at last it was, the Muglins light, blinking redly, redly blinking. Ave, Maris Stella.
Gordie maintained he could remember their mother, but Jim remembered nothing. He was only an infant when she died, on the voyage home from the Cape. They buried her at sea. At home they had a photograph-portrait, but his father kept that in his room. Sometimes Jim saw her drifting in the weeds, not weeds but the floating gardens of the Sargasso. Other times she had washed upon the rocks and there she reposed with seaweed in her hair, while all about the candles danced, bobbing on the waves.
He believed it had been his decision to embark on the Thirty Days’ Prayer, though he could not now retrace the steps that had led to his taking it. Over the evenings, in his guidance, the brother had introduced the notion of vocation. But it was unclear to Jim was he to pray for a vocation or only that he hear it should one call. Looking back, he recalled other boys that the brother had taken a fondness to. Had they too prayed thirty nights at his grotto? Each had heard his vocation in the end. Each had disappeared one sudden morning. Seminary, if anyone inquired.
A bat squeaked past. Hush, said a wave. Rush, said its fellow.
Where goes the tide when comes the ebb?
Where goes the night when comes the day?
He was musing on these lines, seeking their provenance, when a patter of feet behind, a tap on the back of his head and his cap tilted forward over his eyes. He turned wildly.
“There you are, pal o’ me heart.”
Jim blinked. It was Doyler. Dowdy suit and his cap at a rake. Teeth flashing in the gloom.
“I say,” said Jim and immediately felt foolish for it.
“Say what?” said Doyler, clambering onto the wall beside and clapping