At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [233]
The earth splattered before him. Branches snapped from trees, scattered on the grass. Stunned, Jim watched the lawn squirm in a scythe, like a snake. “Keep down, ye bleddy fool!” he heard. Something ssssinged past him, sssinged again. Clay spurted up, battered his face. A terrific jab in his shoulder and he was thrust headlong into the trench. “Can’t ye stay down?”
“What is it?”
“Machine-bleddy-gun. Maybe two.”
Gung, the man pronounced it. It made Jim want to giggle. “Where are they?” he asked, whispering. That too made him gigglish.
“Shelbourne Hotel.”
Jim had his rifle though he wasn’t sure was it Doyler’s still. They had taken the one he came with and it was a while before he had them persuaded into giving him one back. The British machine guns chattered away, churning up the grass. There were sharper cracks between: rifles, he was told. A boy was down by the gates—was he down or lying low? He could see other figures hunched along the trenches. He pulled on the bolt, but he had forgotten the safety. He flipped it over and drew the bolt back, feeling for the cartridge inside. The trench was only shallow: he had to crouch sideways to fix the butt to his shoulder. He recalled cryptic comments MacEmm had let drop. You didn’t aim a rifle, your position aimed it. You didn’t shoot a gun, you allowed it to shoot. He gripped the barrel and fondled the guard. He had forgotten to bless himself: it didn’t matter. He took a breath, then swung out over the low banked earth and aimed in a wide arc along the range of buildings. Endless buildings, with four, five, six stories to them, windows staggered up and down, countless windows, a precipice of brick and glass. He had not thought to ask which was the Shelbourne.
It was surprise enough that the bell should be pulled at all. But earth-shattering, a preliminary of jacobin terror to come, when MacMurrough finally had the bolts pulled and the great door yawned wide, to find it was a tradesman-like fellow in a butcher’s boater who at this ungodly hour the godly portal steps disturbed.
“Why, Mr. Mack,” he said.
“My apologies, a thousand apologies,” said Mr. Mack. The unwonted boater lifted and dropped, discharging its wet upon Mr. Mack’s nose. MacMurrough looked beyond him at the drizzle-hued world. A magpie raucously gnattered in the trees. Perhaps four, a quarter after, in the morning. The boater was evidently a size or several too small, for it tilted on Mr. Mack’s head, in jaunty disavowal of his face where anxiety, effusion, exhaustion, the misery of weather, all jostled for command. His apologies again, only it was his son, his son James, he hadn’t come home in the night.
“Jim?”
Mr. Mack had waited up for the boy, only he nodded off, pray God forgive him, in Aunt Sawney’s chair—Mr. MacMurrough would remember Aunt Sawney, Miss Alexandra Burke, he should say—woke up in her chair—
“Won’t you step in?” said MacMurrough.
“I won’t now,” said Mr. Mack, stepping into the hall, “delay now and the terrible hour to be calling, but after the dreadful occurrences in Dublin—”
“Dublin? A train strike, I understood.”
“If only,” said Mr. Mack, “if only.” But the entire city was up, the rebels were out, Sinn Feiners were out. Lancers—he saw two killed himself, murdered in the street. Rioting. Destruction. Looting of premises. Barricades. “Barricades,” he repeated, “with mattresses in them.”
“Mattresses,” MacMurrough said, he too grasping this detail as peculiarly cogent and distressing.
“And no sign of Jim at home and no word left. I have it in my head—Doyler!”
MacMurrough turned. Doyler stood at the half-pace leaning over the baluster rail.
“Good morning now, Mr. Mack.”
“Doyler, thank all that’s good and holy, you’re here. I thought it might be the way you was mixed up—But no, sure you’re the sensible lad. Jim is here with you so?”
“He was, Mr. Mack. Only he went out for an early dip.”
“A dip, is it?”
“I’ll go fetch him, Mr. Mack. I’ll send him home to you.”
“Not to trouble yourself. Are you well again?”
“Grand, and it’s no