At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [62]
In Kingstown or in Dublin they would sometimes mistake him for a priest. If a woman or child brushed past, a haunt came in their eyes when they saw the collar. “Forgive me, Father.” Lucky is the touch of a priest. At such moments his heart filled with joy and Her humble mantle invested his soul. “No, my child, good woman, my fellow man—I am but a brother of Presentation.”
A family passed, decked out in their Whitsun flaunty. How wide the street on Sunday without the awnings out. Bacon, cabbage and potatoes. Like an incense it came from every door. The very air gloried in the smell. Every wife and daughter in the land must be knelt before a cooking-fire. And Brother Polycarp thought of Her Whose sufferance had made holy the work of women. Under this cerulean sky all womanly things bore Her witness: the diligence of elbows, the charity of hands, the chaste blush of a lowered face.
A sudden clanging and the Protestant tram scooted past, ferrying the lavender-glove and prayer-book brigade to their service in Kingstown. You have stolen the bricks and mortar of our faith but you have never touched our soul! Yet even they who had spurned Her were not entirely abandoned. For was not the vaunted sobriety of Protestants but a dull reflection of Her perfect temperance? He prayed for the Protestant brethren and their deliverance from error, as ineluctably, step by step, his feet carried to Fennelly’s public house.
Ora pro me Maria; pro me Maria ora!
She heard his prayer at the last and at the last his steps veered. With joy he discovered he had passed Fennelly’s. Fennelly’s was behind and all the world lay onward and sunny. With heaven-sent joy he looked back on his triumph, and who was it turning the corner but Jim Mack on his walk to Mass.
Jim Mack, Jim Mack, his heart sang a canticle of songs. How beautiful he was and comely in delights! His cheeks were as the turtle dove’s, his neck as of ivory, his throat most sweet. Such is my beloved, and he is my friend.
The boy enraptured him. What joy it was to pray with him, to hear the delicate pant of his soul as heavenward it soared. There She reigned, resplendent with miracles, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, but terrible as an army set in array. In the blue and stelliferous light he could not bide, but the innocent soul of the boy thrilled to Her presence. Next week your feast, O Queen of Heaven. I have vowed to you my darling.
For the flesh is weak and the blood unruly and how else to atone the sins of the heart than dedicate to Her the heart’s desire? Receive my gift, love him as I would I would, pray for my wrung and twisted soul.
He hurried along to join the boy. But the boy turned and down a lane he went, a lane that turned from the chapel to the sea. The other boy came and his arm was on his shoulder.
Brother Polycarp dizzied, and leaning on a wall he smelt the overwhelming stench of the sea. He turned to the streets which stranged and narrowed. The gluttony that coursed from each doorway sickened him. Bells were ringing and angrily he cursed their conceited clangor. He cursed the intemperate streets and the blowsy women with their lips of Eve. A ha’penny spun in the air like a sun that would plunge to the earth and he saw the narrow covetous eyes of corner-boys. In the branches of trees, in the eaves of houses, in the hunched backs of the hills he saw it, the dangling slothful vicious arm about the neck he loved.
It was moments later, though hours had passed. He was sensible of a pain in his hand. Opening his fingers he found a pin there whose shield was the Sacred Heart. Its point had pierced his palm and the blood blobbed pathetically. His temperance pin, he realized. It surprised when he looked about to discover he was seated in Fennelly’s select.
“What will it be, Brother?”
“A tot of . . . a small tot of . . .”
“Same again, is it, Brother?”
“Tot of Irish.”
Words were floating through