At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [240]
“Them lot’s always the enemy. Wait now, you’re not going to shoot him?”
“Of course I’m not going to shoot him.”
MacMurrough flagged the constable down. He scooted to a halt on the pedal, his kindly face raised. “Now sir.”
MacMurrough said, “My name is MacMurrough, of Ballygihen House and of High Kinsella, County Wexford. Do you understand?”
The constable nodded and brought his hand to salute. MacMurrough continued, “Now, this fellow here, he fucked me last night. Isn’t he the handsome rake? Yes, he fucked me something divine, then after he fetched up my arse, he turned me over and brought me off in his mouth. Glorious, constable, words cannot describe, you’d want to try it yourself. Or perhaps you have? In the meantime, you’ll be so good as to lend me your bike for I find we’re running late for the revolution.”
The constable followed but imperfectly the thrust of this communication, for in the act of his saluting, MacMurrough had punched him in the stomach. Punched so hard the constable doubled, and MacMurrough, still holding forth, boxed his face, a left upper-cut to the jaw and a right just under his nose. It was troublesome with the helmet and cape, so dispensing with the ring, he booted the man in the groin and kneed him upwards on the chin. He held him by the cape while he reeled. “You want a go?”
“No,” said Doyler, shaking his head.
He let go the policeman, who crumpled to the road.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Oh I don’t know.” MacMurrough picked up the bike. He was short of breath. The violence still trembled in his legs. “The boot was by way of apology, I suppose.”
“Apology accepted.”
People were gathering. An elderly woman had fainted. “I say,” came a man’s voice.
Doyler knelt down to the policeman and was undoing his collar. “You’ll be all right, lay still.” The constable reached a hand to grab his ankle, and Doyler told him, in a very grown-up and reasoned voice, “Be sensible, man. I won’t mind shooting you at all and you must think of your wife and home.” His ankle was let go.
“They’re robbing that poor man,” a lady said. “Common thuggery, I call it,” pronounced a gentleman.
MacMurrough said, “Well, we’re in it now.”
Doyler stood up. “Was that true about last night?” he wanted to know.
“Glorious, every minute. We’ll do it again, I hope. Soon.”
A smile slanted across his face, half-doyler. “You know, MacMurrough, I never disliked that side of it with you. It was always the ’tache I could never get beyond of.”
MacMurrough laughed. “Cross-bar, or sit up behind?”
“Sit up behind’ll do.”
MacMurrough plunged on the pedal. He splashed through puddles. The bike wobbled till he found his momentum. Wind at last. Yahoo, he heard Doyler call behind. The gunfire grew louder and the volleys imperative, ever more imperious. He heard the garrulous natter of machine-guns. Here we go, our mad minute of glory, charging towards it. And it was true, the dead it was that walked. See them mutter and stare from the pavements. His aunt was right. It was far too absurd to die of a Tuesday.
A tingling in his arse told him it was today Tuesday, and he laughed out loud. “We’ll all be dead by tonight,” he called to Doyler.
“Sure I know that,” Doyler called back. “Yahoo!”
The sergeant whispered Jim the word, and Jim leapt from the trench. He careered it over the lawn, dodging and ducking behind tree trunks, weaving in and out, skipping the branches that had fallen, other debris he didn’t know what it was, the lawn-rail. He heard the sergeant calling him back, but he was damned if he was cowering any longer nor crawling behind them pudding posteriors. The bullets came amazing close, ssshooting past. The noise quite shocked at times. But he reckoned he had the gauge of them now. They had no wish to hit him or hurt him, only to be the same place as he. It was fool’s play really. All he needed was to keep one step ahead. The corner of his eye he saw the swerving skew of their impact, sure miles off aim the most of them. The land rose for the bridge over the pond. He resisted the lure of the parapet’s shelter. The machine-guns