At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [98]
He thought of the monstrous urges of that age and the incommensurate imagination. It was astonishing that his aunt should flaunt such game before him. She distinctly did not take him seriously at all.
I should become a master at a small public school. And yet boys are tiresome after a time. I should visit down the back of the pier and find me out a sergeant-major. Pretend temples there that give out on the sea. Might have been built for the purpose.
His aunt had been raised to a type of honorary male, for she remained in the summerhouse while the boys changed, albeit with her back to them, talking now with her priest and the queer card who taught the boys drill. In keeping with this status she had dressed in sober worsted. He thought of her wardrobe: billowy Lucilles in surprising neighborhood to frumpy reforms. And those Poiret pajamas she relaxed into of an evening. Aunt Eva in trousers and boys in skirts. What an interesting nation it will be.
It was Scrotes he had a mind to speak with, but Dick was nudging him, and at last he allowed his eyes to settle on the front row. Master Doyle, how are ye. How he leapt for joy, did Dick, to know, of a couple dozen fresh-faced lads, one already had drunk his spunk.
Has an out-of-the-way face, our young friend. Not unlovely, but as if the features had yet to take root. Jug-eared and mop-haired, lips slapped on with a raddle-brush. Reminds me of a game Nanny used to play: you got a potato and fixed it with buttons and pegs and shards of old crockery till you’d made a little man. A face of scraps and hand-me-downs where nothing as yet quite fits. All save the eyes, darkly avoiding me.
Yes, he avoided him now. MacMurrough did not know what, but something had passed between them: the boy was no longer agreeable. Young chap beside most like, little comfort for the troops. The merest glance and that one’s blood came flooding. What secret shame doth rose thy Ganymede cheek? Entirely desirable. I have Master Doyle’s word on it that should ever I lay a hand to that one, I’m deh meah. Yet my cup runneth over shouldst thou bear it to me. Watching, MacMurrough felt his fingers for claws.
He could hear this boy’s father prattling to Aunt Eva and her priest about some detail of apparel. An officer’s sash goes opposite ways to a non-com’s. Well, most fathers are hard to conceive. Who would suspect the stiff-necked widow-peaked raven in London for my progenitor? Certainly the progenitor had his doubts.
Something in the comfort’s manner, like homage. Holds Doyle’s flute for him while Doyle attends his stockings. Quickly shines it with his cloth. Doyle takes it back, breathes a silent tune, Dryden’s soft complaining flute. My hero.
—Ah, said Nanny Tremble, it’s the lovely sight to see the two maneens together. When friends meet the heart warms.
It was true there was an attraction in their friendship. How many mornings have I gone down the sea? Charge myself to join in their swim. Well, God knows, might even be of some help. Dick is certain he could teach a stroke or two. End up on the bench by the Martello instead. Like the tramp in the V&A who marvels at beauty: he wants to touch but, should he touch, the marble is sullied. Lured and stopped by the same desire.
—The Victoria and Albert, Scrotes observed, is justly famed for its divers wonders. Not the least of which, from a tramp’s consideration, is a roof which shelters from the elements.
—Good old Scrotes, always to hand for a bring-me-down. I feared you had deserted us.
—It is not for the scabrid knees I have delayed. I wished to regard the two boys in question. Do you think they may be lovers?
MacMurrough conjured Arcadian groves where lover and beloved, ephebes both, reclined upon the coarse grass. Cicadas sang in the boughs above, where olives swelled in the sun. Or it was later in the palaestra