At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [247]
It was a place they knew very well, where they always came to swim, though when Jim tried he could not think the name. Doyler was already tugging off his clothes. Jim was far too fond to watch. He just smiled in the direction the shirt dazzled, where the gleaming black hair coursed in the wind. Are you straight, Jim Mack? Straight as a rush, Jim told him. Come on with me so. He was out in the waves where the breakers rolled and the sound came like far away. Will I tell you a story of Johnny Magorey? There isn’t any story, Jim told him laughing. Not much, said Doyler. His hand held out, and Jim reached for it, but he tricked it away and Jim pushed through a wave.
He dived under his legs and came back on the surface with his feet on the sand. Doyler was gone, and for a moment Jim couldn’t find him. Then he saw him back over by the dunes and he ran out of the water shouting, Doyler! Where you going?
It was hard work climbing them dunes and when Jim got to the brim he saw that Doyler was gone even farther away. He was walking up this slope, just walking up this slope, and Jim didn’t think if he’d ever catch him. Doyler! he called. Doyler, will you wait a minute! He was getting angry now and he called out, I’m not following you any more! But Doyler kept to his walking. Please stop, Jim cried. Won’t you stop it now? Doyler, please, you can’t leave me! Don’t leave me here!
“Doyler!”
He sat up bolt on the floor. His breath drew fast and shallow. Men coughed in the dark, they moved in their sleep. By the door the sentry horse-like stamped. He smelt the reek of slop-pails. From very close behind, MacEmm said, “Are you all right, Jim?”
Jim nodded. He felt the miss of something in his hand, and he started, checking for his Webley. But the British of course had that taken from him. He leant back on MacMurrough’s shoulder and MacMurrough’s arm came round his side. They seemed alone in the vaulting barrack hall: a curtain of dark removed the other prisoners. He had that way, did MacEmm, of finding a place apart, or just by being there making it apart.
“MacEmm, I’m frightened,” Jim said.
“Yes, my dear,” said MacMurrough, sounding tired and low, “we’re all a bit frightened now that it’s over.”
“No, I’m frightened if they don’t shoot us.”
MacEmm’s arm gave a squeeze of his side. “Nobody’s going to be shot now.”
“They will too be shot,” said Jim. “But I’m worried they won’t shoot me. They’ll say I’m too young or something and I’ll be left out.”
“You’re being silly, Jim. We’re prisoners of war. There’s nothing like shooting going to happen.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Well, what is it so?”
“I know what I’ll become if they let me go. And I don’t know can I bear to be that.”
“You’ll be a schoolteacher, of course.”
Jim thought of that a while, trying to make sense of the sound of the word. A school, a teacher, schoolteachering. “I suppose there will be such things,” he said. “All that will go on, I suppose. But it won’t for me.”
He leant on his elbow, looking up at MacMurrough’s face. “You know, don’t you, MacEmm, what I’ll be. I’ll be ruthless with them. I’ll shoot them easy as stones. I won’t never give up. I’ll be a stone myself. Tell me you know that.” MacMurrough’s hand just patted him. “If you loved me, you’d tell me.”
“You’re tired, Jim. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Jim weighed his head again on the shoulder. “I don’t know why you won’t tell me.”
MacMurrough’s hand come round his chest. It fiddled with his shirt buttons, doing them up. “You’ll be a schoolteacher,” he said. “I’ll find an island where we’ll live. A small island all to ourselves. There’ll be sand and dunes and cliffs. We shall call it Noman. Do you know why we shall call it Noman?”
“Go on so.”
“Because no man is an island. Listen to me now. We’ll have a cow and a pig and hens. We’ll go swimming every day. The weather will be atrocious. I shall smoke a pipe.”
“And who’ll I teach on an island all to ourselves?”
“There’ll be other islands