At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [236]
Instead of finding out for yourself, with a dictionary in a dark corner, by which time it’s just one other lie you’ve nailed them in on the sallady path of youth.
But MacMurrough was talking to himself. Doyler carried on. “Will I tell you what he says to me yesterday, he says, There’s nothing to fear, says he. We’re immortal. His very words—We’re immortal. The sky had told him so.”
Yes, MacMurrough allowed, it was certainly of a piece. It had all rather gone to his head, the Muglins, uncovering himself, rumptytumpty with this bugger here.
“Can’t believe I listened a word he said. He’s a kid sure. He never strayed farther than the Dalkey tram. Mary and Joseph, the nonsense he talked about schoolteaching. A digs, by Jesus. And I listened him.”
And really it was inconsiderate. MacMurrough had the right to leave, it was necessary that he should leave. And now this wretched squabble in Dublin—what if he should be caught in it? Oh God oh no, if by some chance he were shot, bloody stuck here in a hospital. Or worse, he were arrested, wound up in jail. Good grief, they’d take me for a rebel. Oh no no no, this really is not good enough.
“I’ll find him, I’ll fetch him out,” said Doyler, “I’ll clatter him something he’ll never forget. That’s right,” he continued, working himself up as he spoke, “you’ll hold him while I’ll hit him. I’ll blister him, I will, bleeding bate him good-looking. Then you’ll bring him home out of that. That’s your job. You understand that now?”
“Who are we kidding?” said MacMurrough.
The breath huffed out of Doyler. Visibly he sagged. “I don’t know, but if he’s anyway hurt at all.”
“Come on,” MacMurrough said. He took Doyler by the arm. “We’re coming to Blackrock. There’ll be news there. There’ll be something.”
* * *
The Shelbourne was the stately cream and orange building that towered upon the left. What it did was to dominate their flank. The British had snuck in in the night and garrisoned it. Their own trenches now were useless for trenches: they were dug too shallow. The machine-gunners and snipers in the hotel bedrooms had them pinned down, but they might not return the fire. Elevation was the word used to describe this situation, a problem of it. Elevation. The boy at the park gates was dead still.
Most the men had scattered from the trenches. They had taken cover in the bushes round about. But it was the wrong time of year really, for the trees weren’t half in leaf yet, and the shrubberies too were thin and bare. The women had left, hitching their skirts and trotting with the wounded. Whistles blew here and there. Guns could be heard over the house-tops, and pot-shots now and then nearer to hand. But mostly in the Green there was a kind of a hush. The ducks settled again on the ponds, huffily quacking. You could hear the voices of the soldiers down Merrion Row. Then a movement somewhere, and the mad clatter would start over, entire Shelbourne, from each its windows, blazing at the one square foot.
There had been talk of bombs. A bicycle would fly past the hotel, lob bombs through the windows. They’d rush it then. “I can cycle,” Jim said, but it was a talent in no very short supply, and no one paid him much attention, save the comedian who asked, “Who’s the firecracker, Bill?”
“Never bleddy mind this one,” Bill replied. “This one’s from the Southside.” Bill was a sergeant. He had a grey mustache and a face harassed and father-like. He had taken it into his head to keep Jim in hand. Jim mightn’t look at the Shelbourne without a dig in his legs and the sergeant bawling him down out of that.
In the hushes between the firing, Jim found his mind strangely wandered. He wrote a letter to Gordie. Well, here we are, he told him, in the trenches in Stephen’s Green. He discussed with the inner man the breakfast he’d most enjoy. He tried to describe a triangle that would demonstrate