At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [29]
“If you say so,” he said. He watched a while, then added, “No wonder he’s worried with the tone. That wood looks cracked away. You’d be all day fetching a tune out of that. Mind now, see what happens when you don’t look after your instrument.”
Jim swabbed his flute and Doyler’s, then laid them together inside his sock with a piece of precious orange-peel to keep them humid.
“There’s bread and jam for those that wants it.”
“Thanks, Papa.”
‘’Twon’t break the bank. Hungry work at the spit and dribbles.”
Under his father’s gaze, Jim thinly spread the jam. He wondered vaguely what Doyler would be eating. The brawn had looked pitiful scant. Though they wouldn’t be eating brawn of a Friday. A gratitude filled him as he ate for his own home and he regretted having lied about Doyler’s flute. Why had he done that? An impulse he could not readily explain. He watched his father the way he worked. His lips moved with his concentration and the wings of his mustache blew up and down each breath he took. He frowned at the medal he was polishing, breathed on it, rubbed. “Do you know this one, Jim?”
“Khedive’s Star.”
“Dull old thing it is. Hard to get a shine off it. Bit of brummagem really, not regular British. Sandstormers, we called them. Khedive gave it us for saving his bacon. There.” He tried it against his chest. “Will I pass muster? Hangs awkward too. Three rings on the clasp where, correctly placed, one would suffice.”
“I like it, Da.”
Even the ribbon was dull: plain dark blue. Yet it was Jim’s favorite. Arab script like the scrawl of time, the exotic symbols, star and crescent, and a rather jolly Sphinx who smiled before the Pyramids. More than any the others, for all their dates and inscriptions, it begged to tell a story. When he had asked what tale that might be, his father had looked nonplussed. “Sure we all got one. Nothing pass remarkable.”
“Is there some occasion, Da, that you have your medals out?”
“I was thinking about your brother and I thought—never can tell when you needs your medals. There’s a war on, don’t you know.”
He dabbed the cloth in the Soldier’s Friend, chose a fresh medal, then set it down again. “I’ll be up with the owls at this.” Cloth redabbed, medal up, rub. “That was a turn-up, I don’t mind me saying, a son of mine parading through Dublin with my old regiment. It was always a shame to me that I never got to parade with the Dubs in Ireland. Oh, we paraded when we left, right enough, but I was only aetatis a nipper then. That was eighteen, that was eighteen-seventy, that was eighteen-seventy-nine. The barrack rat, they called me. Well, they called all the boys the barrack rat, that was the name they had for us. Barrack rats it was. Chuckaroo in India.”
Medal down, change cloth, medal up, shine.
“But I always regret that I never paraded through Dublin as a man. Of course, we paraded through many a town in our travels from the Rock to India and back, and very pleased they were to have us. Power of cheers we got from the assembled populace, venture wheresomever we may. But to march through Dublin as quartermaster-sergeant, now that had been the cheese. In charge of the stores of the fair city’s regiment, marching behind the Colors and the battle honors waving, now that had been the Stilton. But we never came home till after I left the army and I never got my wish.”
Arcot, Condore, Wandiwash, Pondicherry . . . Jim knew the battle honors by heart. Guzerat, Sholinghur, Nundy Droog, Amboyna . . . a rote that in his mind came before the rivers of Ireland, before the kings of England, before his two-times table even. The names were beautiful and told of isolated scenes, little gardens of Eden, where stepping-stones forded spuming streams and cherry-trees hung overhead. Once in a while a cherry dropped in the wash, a burst scarlet cherry.
He was leaning at the table with his head on his palm, lazily watching his father. How meticulous he was, yet disorganized with it. The way he tidied away the medals, each in its place, then each