At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [58]
“Rain,” said Doyler. “Not for a while yet, but rain is on its way.”He nodded over his right shoulder, north toward Kingstown, and said, “See the pier there?”
Long graceful arm, one of a cradling pair, reaching out in the bay.
“Here’s a handy trick to remember. Where the elbow is, if the foam is breaking on that, it’s definitely too rough to swim. Easy enough getting in, but the devil’s own job getting out again. The swell, do you see.”
Jim followed the line of the shore. Kingstown with its three spires, Protestant, Catholic, municipal; the parade of grand houses, palely painted, that led to the sea-wall; the rocks and outcrops and huddled spills of sand that carried his gaze to the Forty Foot.
“Odd the way you lived all your life a spit from the sea and you never swam there. Bet you never went fishing neither.”
“Gordie used sometimes fish,” said Jim, “but he never seemed to catch much.”
“Stingoes and horny cobblers—little enough you can eat. There’s pollack over by the baths there, and bream off Kelly Shore. Mullet sometimes on a calm day. See where the sand is white?—dabs there. Unreliable though. All right if you had the leisure, but if you was hungry you’d be surer minding a carter’s horse or flogging firewood up the villas. I caught a conger once. Thing near took a chunk out of me hand, it did. But no one would buy it. Said an eel was food for the devil only. After all me toiling and moiling.
“Crabs was always the best. Over by Bullock after a good tide. Could sell them, you see. The la-di-das would go for the crabs. Never tasted it meself. Squealing’d put you off. Mighty squealing they let out when the pan goes on the fire. Made up me mind to sell them after that. Let the la-di-das to suffer the screams. I bought bread with the money instead.
“Mackerel too. Was on a boat once, out from Bullock, middle of the night this was. I tell you we dropped the lines, a minute later we hauled them in and there was five, six of the fishes there. Marvellous it was. Didn’t need do nothing, only drop the lines and wait a crack. Lashings, I tell you, they was tumbling over themself to get in inside of the boat. Over there by the Muglins. What it was, we’d hit a shoal. Four times we turned back to load them off. Four times out again. All the one night.
“The chap was so delighted he let me take a bucket or two home. Well, there was mackerel with everything the next few days. Then after a time, didn’t they start going off. You wouldn’t credit the stink. Couldn’t give them away after that. In the end I had to dump a bucket back in the sea. I was glad to be rid of them, but I was sad too. For a day or so we’d had our full and plenty and that was grand.”
While he spoke, Jim watched the places he indicated, Kelly Shore, the tumbling creamy rocks by Bullock Harbor, Muglins Sound with its deeper ominous green. It awed him that Doyler was not bemeaned by his life as Jim felt bemeaned by his. The lithe and wind-tanned body awed him too, so that he dared only glance at it obliquely. Glance and blink, squeezing his eyes.
“What changed your mind?”
“My mind about what?”
“Coming swimming, you gaum.”
Jim shrugged. That the brother had got it wrong about the root of supercilious did not seem adequate cause to miss Mass, skip his devotion and give over most likely a vocation to the brotherhood. “The day was sunny,” he said.
“’Tis sunny right enough.” He frowned concentrating on the shore, like he was searching for some particular spot. “What you said back there.” He shrugged. “Don’t suppose I never had much of a friend neither. Saving that time we was twelve together.” A long wait, then an arm went round Jim’s neck. Again that shock of touch—it near jumped Jim from his skin. “Look at the pair of us. Mother-naked on a plank in the