At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [90]
And Doyler answered, “Can’t say I was. Particular like.”
“I don’t believe I know any girls,” said Jim. “Saving Nancy out of MacMurrough’s.”
He felt himself blushing and really he couldn’t think why, because he didn’t look on Nancy that way and it was wrong of Gordie when he said those things about her. Jam, he called her. And then he asked, was it Nancy he thought of when he did that thing to himself?
“I suppose, then, the time being, we’ll just have to make do with each other.”
“I suppose we will,” agreed Jim in a resigned tone that had Doyler chuckling again.
“Come here. No, come here to me.”
He had ducked back down on the ledge and he held his arm out for Jim to join him. Jim slunk in under the arm, which pulled round his neck. “Do you mind me going on the while?” he asked.
“I don’t follow you the half of it.”
“Thing is you’re a decent skin, Jim Mack. I know I wouldn’t go far wrong if you was along with me.”
“Along with what sure?”
Pinch went the fingers and pain went his neck. “Ireland, you gaum.” But the fingers stayed there and stroked the sting. They stroked his neck and Jim felt the waking of each of his hairs as they passed. They seemed very much alone suddenly. Jim could hear the peelers in the cove, but they sounded a long way off, in a different sea almost. He was aware of other parts of his body waking too. How odd this moving thing that woke in his breeches. How very odd it was. Jim’s mouth opened and a little cough came out. It sounded amazingly polite in the sea-quiet.
“Funny to think we was swimming a minute back,” Doyler said, “naked and all.”
His face was very close to Jim’s. His tongue obtruded its tip and Jim felt the strangest wish to touch it with his own. “Yes,” he said.
“Is it hard still? Bet you anything it’s hard still.”
“But it’s getting easier.”
“What is?”
“Swimming.”
“Gaum you.” He pulled Jim closer round the shoulders and his other hand reached to Jim’s knee. It just rested there, the thumb stroking the weave of the cloth, just very softly the warp and the weft.
Away in the Southern Ocean, Jim heard the policemen chaffing. He was convinced the hand would move. It would travel up his leg. It would find him there, this moving thing. “It would be great if you’d kiss me,” he said. But he didn’t say that at all. He jumped to his feet, shrugging the arm from his neck. “We could pay them out.”
A spall of distrust in Doyler’s eyes. “Pay who, is it?”
“The polis. Pay them out, so we could.”
“With what?”
Jim’s heart was racing, but not so quick as his tongue. “We could nip in the shelters, they’d never see us, we’d take their uniforms, how’d they catch on it was us? Even and they did, they’d never find us, away up the hill before ever they was out the water. And how’d they chase us anyway if we had their clothes? We could throw them in under any old hedge.”
The spall stayed in Doyler’s eyes but he let a low cackle. “A bevy of horneys in the buff.”
“And everyone gawking.”
“Oh, what a blow for Ireland.” He took off his cap and wiped his forehead. “It’s a shame, though, you wouldn’t think of that earlier.”
“What shame?”
“You’ve been doing the swell in your college capeen this quarter of an hour. They’ll have you decked for certain. First pop and they’re knocking at your school. Second pop they’re down at your door. And you know the reputation your father is getting.”
“I’m sure they didn’t see me.”
“It was bravely thought, old pal. Another time we might risk it even. Get on now and I’ll walk you up the road. They’ll have me morgued at work and I’m another day late.”
All along the road Jim felt the limp exaggerated beside him. Doyler kept stiffly apart and their long thin shadows were parallel lines that never in this world would meet.
“Till tonight so,” Jim said at the junction.
“Practice, aye. I’ll be keeping me flute after.”
“But what about your da?”
“Don’t mind himself. And don’t mind me.