At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [66]
Then he fetched in the boy’s mouth and prettily it dribbled till the boy swallowed, popping his apple. “Gluggary,” said he, “like egg gone off.”
That had made MacMurrough laugh. He might have sent him away then, in the decent obscurity of the dead of night. But his gameness was amusing and his smile beguiled that smelt of MacMurrough’s comings. He stroked his skin while good-humoredly the boy defended his honor. ’Course I never done it before. Never said I liked it or not. Sure you’s the one as asked me here. They talked till he nodded and his eyes closed on the pillow and MacMurrough had watched while the yawning curtains moved in the breeze.
—That blackguard would need a good thrashing, ordained the chaplain. And MacMurrough smiled when Dick volunteered his rod for the task.
Scrotes? Still no Scrotes.
The boy stirred and made grumpy moan. An arm shrugged the covers away. Poor lamb, said Nanny Tremble, he wouldn’t be used to the woolly warmth.
MacMurrough ran his hand through the hair, which was scraggy from sea-water. A faint salt dusted his skin that he could feel when he stroked his neck. He smelt of sea-water too, and tasted of it, like an oyster in the mouth. Extraordinary eyes, MacMurrough recalled. No eyes are truly black, but this boy’s seemed to be. Like rain on a laid road, rain on a road in the moonlight. Swimmer’s body, tight, lithe, all of a piece. It really is the best exercise and might be encouraged more among the lower orders as it costs nothing and the effects are wholly benign. Listen to me, sounding off like the chaplain.
—But we must remember with the Keating’s Powder, said Nanny Tremble; and MacMurrough sighed because this was very sound advice.
His hand, which had ranged over the boy’s shoulders, traced now through its finger-tips the descent of his spine. And when it came to the flat bone that marked its end—Coccyx, said Dick; Os sacrum, said the chaplain—it splayed its five fingers and cupped the rounding cheeks of his bum. Ripe fruity firm: the peach he had been so careful with last evening.
Funny how they all undress with their tail to you, saving till the last moment the flourish of their manhood. Comes as a shock to discover you’re as keen on their behind as their front. Back-scuttler, bum-jumper, arse king, gentleman of the back door, shit-hunter, gut-fucker, stern-chaser who navigates the windward passage: as though all their street expressions were ultimately without meaning for them.
How shy they go then, like a girl with her cherry, the boy with his peach. Buxom seat of unmanhood. Get thee before me, Satan.
Appropriately, it was MacMurrough’s ring finger that crept into the crease now, discovering hair, a dampness, a hairyless wetness, dry spot; on to the perineum where a tiny pulse gave him to wonder was the boy awake. He worked his hand through the thighs, clutched in rather a how-are-ye way the tightening balls till, proud as the morning, he found what he sought. Pulled once or twice, just to get the strength of it, then back through the plush and the silky skin to the stone-dry ring. In a bit. Knotted. A Mary-hole.
It would mean a further five bob, but he determined on buggery.
He withdrew his hand from the parting—such sweet sorrow—spat on it, wet himself. He seized the boy’s shoulder and as he turned him, mounted him. Not savagely, as Dick would have it, but with patient steady mastery so that Nanny Tremble need fear for neither’s posterity.
The boy gasped and battled out of his fox-sleep, but by the time he had marshalled awareness of his surroundings the worst was done. Color washed from his cheeks and the eyes fixed in their corners, but the pain diminished as resistance fell. His gape unfroze and the fists unfroze that had gripped the sheet. The mouth puffed and little grunts came out, hardly of pleasure, but of pain contained.
It was safe now to leave Dick in charge and MacMurrough felt himself depart. In his mind he climbed spiral stone stairs till he entered a draughty