At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [53]
He was pleased the way he had formed that. That was an acute way of thinking. He repeated it to himself, moving his lips to the words. What brutality he has in him he cannot purpose. Impulse alone gives it vent.
Doyler had his flute out, but he wasn’t playing it exactly, just running his fingers up and down the holes, making a kind of breath music. Jim would have to sneak the flute indoors somehow. Fix the parts down the sleeves of his jacket, walking in like a scarecrow. Where would he hide it? The only place for certain sure was inside the horsehair of his settle-bed. Would it be safe there? He would have to be careful sleeping. Might have to bring it out at night for fear of it crushing. Might have to sleep that way with it in his arms. It would be like sharing the bed, holding something of Doyler’s while he slept.
He glimpsed the dart of a meteor, a soul released from purgatory, so his father told. The constellations gleamed in their dome and all about the sea moaned. Doyler’s leg lay hard against his and his arm rubbed up and down with his whispery playing. Below Jim felt a familiar stir. Dispassionately he wondered was he an especially evil person.
Solitary vice he knew from confession. He would look out solicitation tomorrow in the school dick.
A scud of cloud approached from the west. One by one Jim watched the lights go out of the Crooked Plough till in the end there was just the gangling leg sticking out from under the covers.
“Listen,” said Doyler.
Then he heard it, thinly over the water, faint and faintly out of tune, a faraway band playing “Come Back to Erin.”
Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen, and the grand resonant mournful horn of the mailboat in reply.
“I knew they’d be playing tonight,” said Doyler. “I saw them earlier, the troops, marching in formation. I knew then there’d be a send-off.”
He got up and Jim followed to the Peak Rock, a granite outcrop where they could watch the mailboat inch its way. For this once the boat was illumined like it used be, lanterns rollicking in colored waves; the pier too was decked with lamps, and up here with the wind the band came full and clear. Five minutes and it was over. The music ceased, the lights went down, dark was on the sea again. “I wish if they wouldn’t go,” said Doyler. “But if go they must let them have their show. U-boats be damned. They’re Irish soldiers as deserve their farewell.”
Jim felt the change in Doyler’s tone. A fear came on him suddenly and he said, “You’re not thinking of leaving again?”
“Me?” said Doyler. “You’re the one what’s leaving.”
Jim was shocked. “I’m going nowhere.”
Doyler snorted. “You really don’t catch on what’s happening, sure you don’t, old pal?”
Nothing was happening. I’m straight, Jim wanted to say. We’re straight together. Straight as a rush.
“Your devotion ends Sunday week, right? What happens next? Come the Monday they’ll have you whisked away. Seminary down the bog we won’t know the where of it. Nothing heard of again till we reads in the Missionary Annals you was made a weedy soup of. Godforsaken tribe of heathens with more sense than taste. You’re the one what’s leaving, Jim.”
“I never thought I’d be leaving,” he said.
“I’d say you didn’t and all.”
Red infused his eye’s periphery. Jim turned from the wind and faced directly the Muglins light. Its period matched his blinking so that each time his eyes unblinked the radiance was there to meet them. Its light had