At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [26]
That question again. Jim cautiously nodded.
“Hold on to me flute, will you? I might not catch you before practice again. Will you mind it for me?”
“All right.”
“Next week then. I’ll see you there.”
He had been bidden to go. It was so quick, Jim wasn’t sure what was happening. “We could maybe meet before, if and you wanted.”
“Aye maybe.”
The drunk was hacking in his sleeve again, and one of the mockers from Fennelly’s called, “Have you a license to go hawking in the street?”
Doyler spun round. “Get on, you gobshite. Can’t you leave a body in peace?”
“Who said that?” yelled the drunk. “Who’s it calling me a gobshite?”
Jim edged away. “Is he all right?”
“Is who all right?”
Jim cocked his head. “Your da.”
“I said I’ll see you.” The apple in his throat was leaping now. He swallowed and the voice tempered. “Look, pal o’ me heart, right? If he decks me with the flute he’ll have it fecked again.” Still Jim didn’t understand. “For to sell it of course or to pawn it.”
Jim slowly nodded.
“Go on, then, before he catches on you have it.”
In the shadow of an archway Jim watched the encounter of father and son. Mr. Doyle shadow-boxed in his circle of lamplight. “Who called me a gobshite? Was it you called me a gobshite?”
Doyler caught him by the arm. He muttered something while he held out his brawn. In a wild flail his father had it knocked to the road. “Is it you is blackguarding me? Look at me, mister, when I talk to you! Look at me, I say! Who d’ya think you’re looking at? Ladies and gents, do yous know who it is? Do yous know who it is now, ladies and gents?”
Like lazy sparks the tulips had fallen. Doyler bent to retrieve them and the brawn. And when the father raised his arm it seemed to Jim the son had offered his neck for the blow.
“‘Thus in the stilly night’—This is the whore’s git I has to call me own. And there’s a whore inside did bounce him on me.”
Twelve years old. He was helping his father in the shop when the bell clinked and a fantastical character stopped in the door. Out of a bright check suit, buttoned high at the collar, shone a bright red face that danced with smiles under an orange flame of hair. A handkerchief flowed from his top pocket and a buttonhole bloomed in his lapel. In his hand he held a silver-topped cane, a bunched pair of lemon gloves and the brim of a brown bowler hat.
Jim saw his father standing at gaze; then gradually his mouth came to work. “Well well well, I’ll go to hades and back. What’s this blown in of an old Irish morning?”
“Hayfoot, strawfoot, stand and freeze. Fusilier Doyle at the steady.” Click went heels and the character made a humorous salute.
“If it isn’t the Queen’s bad bargain himself!”
“Let me present arms now, Mr. Mack, and if I shake your paw I’ll shake the paw of the finest quarterbloke’s bloke the Dubs did ever see.”
“Well, if it isn’t Mick me old sweat.”
“If it isn’t Mack me old heart.”
It made Jim smile himself to see his father so beaming. He had come out from the counter and he had the stranger’s hand gripped in both his own. “I’ll go to hades and back,” he said again. “Haven’t seen sight of you, haven’t heard wind of you, not since—”
“Pete’n’Marysburg, the Natal Province, October fourteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine.”
“That’s about the length of it. The regiment was setting off for Ladysmith, I remember.”
“And your good self, Sergeant Mack, was setting off for home.”
Gordie had come out from the kitchen, and he nudged Jim’s shoulder. A sliver of doubt had crossed their father’s face. “Well well well,” he repeated. “And you’ve been prospering since. You’d take the stick on parade yet, so you would.”
The newcomer gave a swank of his clothes. “Not a greasy button in sight,” said he.
Again that doubt in their father’s eyes, his face a margarine smile. “My my my,” he said. “And what brings me natty old sweat to the parish by the sea?”
“Amn’t I domiciled local now? The dog’s lady, the grawls and meself.”
“Married and all?”
“Priest and witnesses.”
“And whereabouts would you be staying so?”
“A handy four walls down a vicinity called