At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [50]
Jim closed his ears to the rambling, unseemly talk. He was thinking of the words he had said to his father. Was friendship truly to be compared to a vocation? He had a tract from a Dominican retreat that had a prayer for the blessing of a friend of the heart. The very words: friend of the heart. There was surely something devotional about it, something might be holy even.
“Don’t be tempted into the priesthood, Jim. They say the brothers have not the consolation of the Mass. But we have other consolations. Humility is its own reward. Would it bother you if I knelt beside and we had a stim of talk together?”
But Doyler had gave up waiting. The falling damps and the chill off the wall that he complained would give him the piles. He had gone home.
Swish morendo of linen descending. Hand perdendo upon his neck. “Does it bother you, my hand?”
A shrug moved Jim’s shoulder. The hand lifted, dropped. “No, Brother.”
“At my age ’tis the bolster of the young I look for.” A pause while the finger-tips began their roam. “Did I mention to you ever about my own vocation, Jim?”
“You did, Brother.” Along his neck, in under the collar of his shirt, the brother’s fingers.
“I was your age then. Some might think sixteen old for a vocation. Believe me, Jim, only the riff-raff joins at fourteen. Their parents answer an advertisement in the newspapers. This they call a vocation.”
His collar pulled and his tie strained against the intrusion. He blinked. He was irresistibly aware of the oddness of moving things.
“At that time I had discovered in myself a certain sin. It is not necessary I tell what sin that was, save that it was a solitary vice.”
Thumb-grope and finger-creep. How oddly things moved and strangely unmoved him, they fumbling over the chain of his medal, they playing with the medal on its chain on his chest.
“As fouler I grew and deeper in my misery, the temptation rose to share that vice with others.”
Out over his windpipe, along his throat, pressuring his apple, which made Jim gulp and swallow. The physicality of that reflex surprised him from abstraction. He felt a blush rising, mottling his cheeks.
“Who those others were it is not necessary to tell, save that my schoolfellows were shocked and repelled by my solicitations.”
The hand held now in its span the round of his neck.
“Do you understand solicitation?”
“I think I do.”
“Would you make solicitation to another boy?”
“No, Brother.”
“Would you accept solicitation was it made you?”
“Brother, your hand is hurting.”
A fetch of a sigh while he loosed his grip. “That priest has me in the megrims. I have not the strength of it this night.” He labored to rise, unbalancing Jim’s shoulders, and Jim at last unblinked his eyes.
A scratching at the door. The feeling of the door ajar. Abruptly his master’s voice:
“What is the meaning of this?”
“Nothing, Brother—”
“How long have you been standing in my door?”
“I was waiting, Brother—”
“Waiting for what? You have no business in Presentation.”
“Waiting for Jim,” said Doyler.
The fool had come looking for him, looking as far as the brother’s room.
“Out with you. In the road where you belong.”
Already Polycarp was shoving Doyler down the passage. Jim hurried to the door. Other brothers and servants were gathering, roused by the ruction. He heard Doyler explaining stupidly, then Polycarp hit on something inside his collar.
“What, pray, is this? What get-up is this to come to a monastery wearing?”
“These are my clothes.”
“Never mind your togs. What about this?” He flicked his hand at Doyler’s lapel. “You think it hilarious to parade your extremism before me? Does your precious priest know of this?”
Doyler’s hand went to his badge and he fingered it, the embossed red hand. “I do always