At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [38]
He seemed genuinely delighted with his story. His teeth were grinning whitely, showing the chip off the edge of the middle one, his dark face chuckled up and down. Then he tossed the last pebble in the sea and said, “Do you smell a cigarette? I smell a cigarette smoke.”
He was up again and sniffing the air. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn’t there, and presently he flumped back on the steps.
“That priest is out of the League,” he said. “Wears the badge and all.”
“Which league is that?”
“Gaelic League, you gaum. Mind, there’s something afoot if the priests is turning patriot. Them was never known cheer a horse but it was at the winning-post. Do they not have nothing Irish at Pres? No music, no Gaelic—they’ll have you turned a right old Bertie.”
“There was a matriculation class all right, but the brother who took it went down of a decline.”
“Decline aye?” He coughed twice, politely, in sympathy.
“Is it the consumption your da has?”
“A bit all right. That and a cough won’t shift. Eitinn they calls it in Irish. Bet you wouldn’t know that in Latin.”
Jim stared to sea. “No I wouldn’t.”
“Curious, isn’t it, with college boys how they learn them Latin but they wouldn’t care tuppence for their own native tongue.”
Me care tuppence he means.
“Why,” he asked, “why would I want,” he demanded, “what would I want going to Pres for anyway?”
There was no answering that. Jim shrugged thinly his shoulders. “Was it the Gaelic League you got your Irish?”
“Gaelic League, me arse. I got it off my mother’s people. Can see me now, Doyler in his duds, in the Garlic Tweed. I tell you, it’s a conspiracy against the working man. If you’re at hurling and you curse in English they send you off the field. But they won’t teach you to curse in Irish. They think our native tongue is good for nothing but praying in. That’s why the priests is for it. They think there’s no words in it for, I don’t know, anything the priests is against. They’d have us blessing ourself in Gaelic the day long. And what worth is a blessing to a working man? For an ignorant heathen whoring bastard working Irish man?”
The air was blue with his swearing and a tinge of it shivered the skin. He got up, muttering something, and was off away again. Jim watched him climb an outcrop where he balanced on top, skimming stones in the waves. A question repeated in his mind. What is the Latin for consumption? Pulmonia, tuberculosis, phthisis even. It felt wrong to be watching Doyler the way he did. The Muglins was blinking, and within a wink it was himself he watched, a fretful boy who crouched with his arms about his knees. But it wouldn’t do. At home they’d wonder about the mud on his boots. There’d be a wigging for the hour too. When Doyler came down, he stood up and said, “Well, was he here?”
“Was who here?”
“You been agitated looking about you since we came.”
“I have?” He let a horse-laugh. “I met a toff the other week and he said he does often come this way of an evening.”
“Well?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t fancy to bump into him tonight is all. Are we fixed for Sunday, so?”
“To swim?”
“Sure why not?”
“I go with Brother Polycarp to the Men’s Mass.”
“After Mass then.”
“We do a retreat on Sundays.”
“Has you praying with him day and night, that fellow. Mighty devoted, the pair of yous.”
“He says I have a vocation.”
Doyler puffed a cheek and the air hissily issued. “And do you?”
“He says my mother would want me to be a brother.”
“Why would she want that?”
Because a brother took vows, and if he kept those vows his mother need never feel shame before the angels. “Wouldn’t any mother?” he said.
On the steps to the path above, Doyler ran his fingers in a lackadaisical way through the posters that lined the battery wall. Strips that came off ruffled to the sea, whence the breeze from Wales laconically returned them. At Ballygihen Avenue, an arm lumped round Jim’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about me cursing back there.”
“That’s all right.”
“I wouldn’t want upsetting you. You’re a college boy and they don’t be used to that manner of talking.”
Jim felt most indignant.