At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [95]
Soup. God knew what of.
“I remember to have been in Paris one time when that gentleman visited. This was after the débâcle with the Boers. He was hooted through the streets. At the Comédie Française the gallery hissed when he took his box. Within three days he had the mob eating from his hand. It was ‘ce bon vieu Eddie!’ all over again. There is much to be said for personal charm and uncomplicated indulgence in fun. Though it must be added the late King was never known be unpunctual in his life. And I doubt he went promenading with kitchen maids.”
How did she know? MacMurrough had never yet seen his aunt condescend to talk with a neighbor. He had been on his way to the little bench by the Martello tower where he liked to sit of a morning and watch the boys at their swim. He had found the kitchen girl at the Forty Foot wall, retching.
“Cook tells me she is not so well these days,” his aunt remarked, “these mornings, I should say.”
Yes, retching quite severely. “I thought her flourishing,” MacMurrough said.
“Well, that is a very good news, as I should hate anything to happen to the child, la pauvre, la petite innocente.”
The dining-room reflected his aunt’s Parisian sojourns. Side table, Directoire, with Phrygian-cap motif; large cassolettes, pair, ormolu, on top. On shelves above, row upon row of painted glazed plates. Souvenir china, he should have thought, but his aunt, who valued such things, reckoned them faïence patriotique. Their patriotism was not in doubt: the untrammelled cock crowed from each: Vivre libre ou mourir! or suchlike.
They reminded him of the children’s dishes he ate off as a boy. The virtues they advanced. “If little girls and boys were wise, they should always be polite. For sweet behavior in a child is such a delightful sight.”
“What a particular thing to say,” said his aunt.
“I was remembering when I was a child.”
“Yes,” she said, and she regarded the plates as though for her, too, they brought memories of his boyhood. “You were a happy child. A delightful child, one might say, if not noticeably polite.”
“I was?”
“Mischievous, of course, but happy with it. You would insist on playing carpet bowls in the hall. You had the maids in terror of tumbling. You were a great encouragement to the footmen we had then. But it was impossible to be annoyed with you, annoyed for very long. Such a sweet smile you had in those days. Your eyes smiled with your face.”
A type of soldier’s blessing: fond memory that wrapped a current disapproval.
“One wonders at times if the wind didn’t change and the good people took you from us.”
Fish replaced the soup. Plausibly mullet.
“I do hope the weather will improve,” Aunt Eva continued. “So unpleasant motoring with the hood up. They call it an English hood. I cannot conceive why. The Delage I had previous had the same équipage. Nobody thought to call that an English hood. It was simply la capote.”
“Have it dyed green. An Irish hood.”
“Such a notion. Still it would not temper the downpour.”
“When do you intend motoring?”
“Tomorrow.”
“High Kinsella again?”
“What an inquisitive boy you are.”
“But what if something should happen to the car? The roads must be dreadful.”
“The car, as you call it, is a Prince Henry. My Prince Henry has never faltered a stroke.”
“But what do you find to do up there in the mountains? You must see that mystery provokes curiosity.”
“The mountains,” she answered, “yes. Whence the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles, our tributaries, harried the Dane, and Art MacMurrough Kavanagh, of undying fame, descended on the Palesmen. Whither the boy O’Donnell fled from his Castle captors, where Fiach Mac Hugh swore his word. They held out longest there, the insurgents of ’98. They hid him there, poor Robert Emmett. There Parnell first looked upon the land of Ireland, there the Fenians blundered in the fog. Over the mountains I go, over the military road.”
It was futile his pursuing the matter. And perhaps she let on more than she knew. Her tryst might truly be with history. He saw her on some dolmenned moor, sipping a Chablis on a picnic rug, defying