At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [65]
The man only laughed.
Jim waited with his back to the door, staring at the table. “Is Nancy here?”
“I believe it’s her evening with her relative. Were you looking for her?”
He shook his head. “Will I put the stockings down?”
“On the table, I suppose. Someone will see to it tomorrow.”
There was a tray with cold meats on the table with two bottles of double-X stout. Still the man’s eyes upon him when he glanced round.
On the flag floor a red thing showed. Jim frowned. He blinked and it was still there. Still shining on the flags, a Red Hand badge.
The man saw what had caught his attention and smartly he picked it up. He fiddled with it in his hands. “Do you need a receipt? Am I required to sign anything?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Is there something else?”
“No, that’s all.”
“I’ll tell my aunt they arrived safely.”
Charming, thought MacMurrough as the boy fled past, a streak of wet vermilion that vanished up the steps. He heard the scrape of bicycle wheels on the gravel, then closed the door against the night.
He collected the tray and ascended the backstairs, extinguishing lights as he went. “A boy about stockings,” he said when he came to the bedroom. “Now, there’s a comfort for the troops.”
Doyler turned from the window. “If ever you lays a hand on that one you’re dead.”
MacMurrough grinned and tossed him his badge. “I believe you may have mislaid this. Careless, very.”
“Dead meat, you got that?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
MacMurrough woke at the peep of day with the boy’s body beside him. He watched it form in the greying light while the voices came in his head. Scrotes as usual remained above the fray but Dick and the chaplain went at it like cats.
—There’s an eyeful for you, Dick was saying. A sore sight for hornified eyes.
—Direct not the eyes at naked flesh, the chaplain admonished. The horned beast himself is among us.
—Horny beast is right.
—Is there no conscience in this house of hell?
—A standing dick, sir, hath no conscience.
A kinder voice intervened, Nanny Tremble, to calm the crossness. Now men, leave off the argufying, she said. We have a guest staying and the poor boy is at his slumbers yet. Little lamb, he must be worn away.
But Dick was incorrigible. He’ll be shagged away soon enough, I warrant.
The chaplain embarked on his hellfire-jaw and sodom-talk, and we will all go down for habitual degenerates! And Nanny Tremble said, Dear dear. Well, I never.
Lazily MacMurrough thought to catch Scrotes’s attention. Scrotes? Are you there, Scrotes? But the old shade was not easily conjured. Often the most he would rouse was a snort, which might be of contempt, might be of exasperation. At times like this, MacMurrough conceived a fusty don in a turret room, bent upon some musty text, absentmindedly cold, huffing every now and then and scowling over the affray below. A crusty old friend, a ghost in the attic.
Scrotes? Nothing.
MacMurrough turned to his sleeping mate. The boy lay with his back to him, his head steeply inclined, so that his body culminated in the knobbly top of his spine. The knob there recalled to MacMurrough the apple in the boy’s throat, which had bobbed up and down last evening. Up and down it had bobbed as he took his turn on MacMurrough’s stand. Uncommonly decent of him, really, for MacMurrough had not asked or expected it. Just at one point, the boy had pushed him away and gone down himself between MacMurrough’s legs. There was a speculative look on his face while he contemplated his purpose. He closed his eyes and brought the shaft to his lips, but it took a time to appreciate the lips would better be opened.
Not a perfect pleasure because MacMurrough had a suspicion of authority undermined. The boy flushed when he opened his eyes and saw he was watched, as though to have forgotten there was company present. And that was thoughtful of him. But proportion was only duely