At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [97]
“Is it the opinion of the street that you are insane, Aunt Eva?”
“One seeks the deliverance of one’s country from subjection. One’s country does not wish its deliverance. One’s countrymen would settle for a Home Rule that would shame a county council. Its leaders harangue its manhood to fight in the tyrant’s cause. These are the sane ones, these the nation’s respectability. At present one is clearly in the wrong. One is pernicious or malign, one is mad. One does not despair, however. One knows that should sufficient change their minds, one will be a good and honored prophetess. One therefore decides those minds shall change.”
MacMurrough grinned at her. “I had not thought you so sophistical,” he said. “That the good and the true should obtain in the opinion of others. You make a democracy of virtue.”
“If it is to be anything, it is to be an aristocracy,” she replied. “For some have the say of thousands, whereas many have no say at all. And let me tell you, it is the best who will join us. How shall we know them for the best? By virtue of their joining us, of course.”
“Then why must we trouble with the mob at all? I mean, this jamboree, why have them here?”
“Dear boy, with all your papers and manuscripts, have you never thought to inquire into the nature of your birthright? Ours is not to lord, but to lead. That is why you teach flute to boys. That is why my guests will be charmed.” Again she rang the bell, irritating it in her fingers. “You do remember you have the band this evening?”
“How should I forget?”
“Father O’Toiler is very pleased with your progress. Tremendous, to quote him. At the garden party you and your boys will present the grand finale. There will be fireworks.”
That was then. Now there was only the French ticking clock while they awaited the maid’s pleasure. Soon MacMurrough gave up and reached for the potatoes himself.
“Don’t be impetuous, Anthony. One so dislikes stretching at table.”
They waited, both glancing at the brass lady at the table’s center whose legs were clappers to her crinolined bell. Eventually, Eveline patted her lips on her napkin, those darned and redarned cloths cut from her grandmother’s trousseau. She brought the potatoes and served him herself.
“Stretching is so disagreeable, don’t you find?”
Damnation once again. Rataplan of snares, thubadub of drum, breathless flutes. MacMurrough beat time with his baton in front, beat rather the boys’ time than his own ordained. Keep things simple. His eyes strayed their hundredth time across the score; their hundredth time they scanned the words.
When boyhood’s fire was in my blood,
I read of ancient freemen,
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood
Three hundred men and three men.
Always something bathetic about a double rhyme. Besides, precious little to do with Ireland.
—It is a reference.
—Scrotes! All hail! You join us!
—A reference, if I am not mistaken, to the first Battle of Thermopylae, when the Spartan three hundred under Leonidas, their king, fell in honorable combat against the Persians.
—Fancy.
—The three, then, would be Horatius the one-eyed and his two companions who, in the brave days of old, defended the Sublician bridge.
—Well I never.
And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain,
And Ireland, long a province, be
A Nation Once Again.
—Stirring stuff. True, too. When boyhood’s fire was in my blood, I did dream of ancient Greeks. Though I’m not sure three hundred and three lusty spearmen isn’t coming it a bit high.
The last rasp of the snare was like Scrotes’s snort of disdain. Then the priest stepped forward, pattering bar-bar, and launched the band into prayer. Bar-bar done, he clapped his hands, commanding kilts. Subdued voices while the boys shifted from jackets and trousers. Careful boys, chary with their charms. Smell that would always carry to school. One by one they metamorphosed till before him ranked the heroes of Erin’s past—if heroes they were who dazzled with shirts and golden-pleated cloth. They sat with their legs