At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [49]
“Is it true?” he asked when she was safely upstairs.
“Brother Polycarp says I have a vocation.”
“Holy farmer above, what nonsense is this?”
“I thought you’d be pleased if I was to be a brother.”
“And what about the shop?” The look on the boy’s face you’d swear it came as news to him it was a shop they lived in at all. “What about me slaving day in day out for to pay your way? Is that the price of a college education? I don’t understand you, Jim. You’re not cosmos mentis at all.”
“Maybe my mother would want it.”
“And now you want to bring your mother into it? Lord have mercy.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Isn’t she my mother?”
“How would you know what your mother would want?”
“I mightn’t have a photograph to look at at night, but I still think of her.”
“You don’t know snap about your mother.”
“Whose fault is that then?”
He could scarce believe he was hearing this. “Holy Jesus but you’re heart-set on provoking me this night. If ’tis a leathering you’re after, you’re heading the right direction.” His chair scraped under him as he straddled his legs from under the table.
“Wasn’t it you told me keep in with the brothers?”
“This is lip only. Any more of this and I’ll settle your hash for you.” He was half-rising in his seat. He had his arm held up and it shaking, the way he felt the threat of it himself. He brought his hands down to his belt where his fingers pulled at the leather. “I’ll hit you such a clatter, young man, you won’t know if ’tis Monday or doomsday.”
But instead of looking sheepish and capital T for Tragic, the boy got up and went to the press.
“What are you—where are you—what do you think you’re up to now?”
“It isn’t Monday nor doomsday, but Friday,” he said. “And I have band practice on Friday.”
The neck of him. The bold brass monsterpiece of a neck. He saw him take down his flute. He saw him take down that larrikin’s flute. “You’re the heartscald to me, Jim. I never thought to say it.”
The boy waited at the door. His thin face had the look of being wedged in the jar. “Look, Da, if I’m not to be a brother, what am I to be?”
“You’re to follow me in the shop of course. There’s your vocation. To learn to be a better shop-keeper.”
It surprised what the boy said then. It surprised the way he said it.
“Well it may so be a vocation isn’t like that. It may so be a vocation is like a friend you might make. You don’t choose a friend. A friend would come to you. And you don’t turn him out, no matter what others would say. You’re only too thankful if you found him.”
“He does not appear to be watching this evening.”
“Brother?”
“Our Corydon. Tonight he has forsaken his Alexis. Alexis,” the brother repeated, “delicias Domini.” He turned from the casement and the blind resumed its untelling face. In lighter tone he remarked, “Mayhap it is a Gaelic feast. Rapparee Friday. Our swain has stepped off his wall and inside the chapel for the nonce. The new curate will be giving the Stations in Erse.” Such drollery demanded its encore. “Stations in Erse, I ask you.”
Their devotion had ended a while since but still the brother bade Jim remain on his knees. He tweezed a pinch of snuff and said, “Hocus pocus.”
“Brother?”
“It is what the Protestants make of the sacrament of our Mass. Hocus pocus filiocus. Did you ever think of the priesthood, Jim?”
Jim shook his head.
“There’s many still believes a priest could make a toad of you. All it would take was a twistical squint off his eyes. You wouldn’t fall for that blatherumskite, would you, Jim?”
“No, Brother.”
The snort came and the brother winced. His face shook till the eyes cleared, settling on Jim.
“Were you thinking any more on what we spoke last evening?”
“I did, Brother.”
“And are the intentions of Our Lady any the clearer to you now?”
“Not entirely.”
“The vicissitudes of home engross your thoughts.” But it seemed the brother’s thoughts too were preoccupied. “I had him in