At Swim, Two Boys Part 42

Mr. Mack put his hand on the red-flanneled knee and he squeezed it gently where the bones beneath were the bones he knew that had aged and thinned with his memory of them. "Well, Mick," he answered, "I believe and I am."

Jim had wandered as far as the West Pier where the Helga Helga gunboat gleamed at its mooring. Now he walked back along the harbor front to the East Pier again. The yacht clubs had been shut up for the duration and on their terraces canteens had been erected. Yellow light hung about, like balloons, in the doorways, where groups of Tommies gathered round. He heard the accents of Dublin and Cork, of the West and the North. The soldiers' feet stamped in the cold, like horses'. Vapor drifted from their mouths and from the mugs they cupped in their hands. gunboat gleamed at its mooring. Now he walked back along the harbor front to the East Pier again. The yacht clubs had been shut up for the duration and on their terraces canteens had been erected. Yellow light hung about, like balloons, in the doorways, where groups of Tommies gathered round. He heard the accents of Dublin and Cork, of the West and the North. The soldiers' feet stamped in the cold, like horses'. Vapor drifted from their mouths and from the mugs they cupped in their hands.

The tide was high and the enclosed water of the harbor chopped and changed like an animal pacing its cage. He fancied the waves beyond the piers and felt queasy thinking of boats on the sea and the Tommies who must soon embark. It seemed a poor mouth that would forbid them decorations on their last night in Ireland.

Last Christmas they had all the decorations out. The trees along the front swung with lanterns, the Pavilion shone with all the lights of fairy. Last Christmas, if you went up Killiney Hill, you could sketch in jewels the arms of the piers as they reached to clutch their own from the sea. Last year the war would be over by Christmas. This year people said it might never be over.

He crossed the opening of the pier, whose high wall governed the wind, and pa.s.sed along the road by the Crock's Garden, an exposed walk that straggled the sh.o.r.e. The wind here buffeted and blared, nicking his skin with an ice salt slice. He looked in through the railings where the bushes crowded the black-earth paths. He thought of the shelters down below that gave out on the sea. They were strange and eerie s.p.a.ces, done out to be temples, with colonnaded fronts: they smelt of toilets. A match struck, startlingly close, and he saw the glows after of twin cigarettes. He hurried on.

He wondered might he go back and view the ruins of the Pavilion; but a train was approaching by the Metals, so he crossed the road to watch. Adventure of its coming, the clatter and rush, that climaxed in a billowing steam. Then lives flickering by in single snaps of light. That odd impulse to wave your cap at strangers. The train disappeared under the road, gathering its business behind it, and the night resumed.

Jim pressed against the wall that vibrated still with the train's rumble. He could feel his thing below, stiff and unmitigated. What sustained it he could not think, for nothing of the sort was on his mind. He heard a voice on the path which he thought might be Mr. MacMurrough's. But no, there was a woman's voice too. An English officer pa.s.sed, a girl on his arm.

He couldn't think what to do with himself. Had sufficient time elapsed for a child to be born? The screams back home had unsettled him, though it was a ridiculous notion to suppose it had anything to do with women's suffrage. Butler was all mouth. That time they were pa.s.sing above the ladies' baths in Sandycove, and Butler was laughing and telling how you'd easy know by the higher pitch of the girls' squealing when the water reached the spot. "Which spot?" "Ask your ma." And walking the lower tier of the pier so's you'd see up her legs if a girl was walking the upper. Why would you want to look there?

He ran his tongue along his upper lip, imagining the feel where a mustache had been shaved. He had a wish to do something, to shape by deed the confusion he felt inside. But no deed he could think of seemed remotely expedient. It was so cold. He turned the collar of his jacket up and pulled his scarf more tightly round. He crossed the road and descended into the Crock's Garden.

He was picking his way through the veronica bushes, down the sudden steps and winding paths, when he felt the company of a young man beside him. It was a soldier in his greatcoat and cap, who walked a while in silence, then remarked in a familiar way, "Shame about the Christmas lights and all."

"Yes," said Jim. He had to shout to be heard above the wind. "My brother brought me up the Hill last year."

"That was decent of him."

"Yes, he came home from the camp at Woodenbridge, he was in his Kitchener blue, and Christmas Eve we walked up Killiney Hill together."

"He'd have been fond of you, your brother."

"I was never sure of his ragging but I liked him all the same."

"Isn't that the way with brothers, sure?"

"When we got to the top we saw Kingstown below us and all the lights as far as Dublin. The city was like a fire and the Hill of Howth a dog at its hearth."

"Did he mention anything to you that time?"

"Yes, he said it wouldn't be long now and he'd be out of this f.u.c.king kip."

"Sure he was the devil's own. But that was his way only. He was fond of the old sod, I'll engage."

"He's to be a father before this night is out."

"Farther and farther away," said his brother.

"Where're you going?" For his brother was cutting through the scrub to find his way to the sea.

"Must get back. I'll be ticked off for missing and I don't get back soon."

"But they're not there any more. They've evacuated the beaches. You'll never find them now."

"It's not this way you'll find what you're looking for."

"What am I looking for?"

"So long, young 'un. Mind you keep to your books."

Jim shook the phantasma from his head. A salt from the sea trickled on his face. The wind s.h.i.+vered up his jacket and his cold wet fingers drew the cuffs of his sleeves together. He had taken his cap off for fear of it flying. His hair flapped all ways.

He stood at the top of a steps. A blueish night light only just allowed the eyes to see. And he saw how the sea was truly wild. Waves dashed on the rocks, tumbling over in their hurry, creaming as far as the path below. Great gurgling sucks, like the sea drew breath, then roaring through chasms and spouting out in a froth of foam. It seemed to hang in the air, the foam, and s.h.i.+ne of its own luminescence. The wind was boastful in his ear.

He closed his eyes and he saw himself in that sea, far far out, released from his bounds, riding the crest of billowing waves. He felt it in the pit of his stomach, the exhilaration of the deep, and the mystery of the deep reaching up to take him.

His eyes opened and he saw dimly the temples on the shoulder of the pier.

He edged along the path, judging the waves and darting between, till he came to the first of the temples. It was filthy dark inside but still he pa.s.sed through the columns. The sudden quiet was enormous. He sat on a ledge at the back. Damp registered through his seat. He sensed the urinally smell. A drip from the roof dropped tip-tap. His mouth tasted of brine.

Before him in columned panorama the sea surged, grey with trouble and white with thrill. The same thrill and the same trouble boiled inside him. He felt a bursting to be known, to be born, that would no longer be delayed, but whose labor had come. He thought of that other birth at home and the child he soon would hold in his arms. Through his fingers he felt the wall behind and he was struck by the strangeness of concrete things: the ledge, the columns, the floor to his feet: things that did not move, while the sea never ceased.

He had not long to wait. A soldier had followed him. A match struck, a cigarette was lit. The red glow was offered in Jim's direction.

In his dark-green uniform Doyler lay, his slouch hat over his eyes, on the hard plank of his police-cell bed. There were steps outside and a rattle of keys. His cell door opened. It was the old sergeant who was at the desk last evening when the polis brought him in. He had a cup of tea with him which he held out to Doyler. "Now," he said. "You have your tea. Drink it."

Doyler caught the accent of Clare. West Clare, he thought: the fellows for football.

"Make the best of it, boy," the sergeant advised, once more at the door. "They'll let you out on the Monday, I'm told, with a caution only. You have your feed and sup till that. Do you want a read of an old newspaper?"

"You can give me back me Workers' Republic. Workers' Republic. I'll read that." I'll read that."

"You have a mouth on you," said the sergeant. "I'm not wondering that it's bruised."

Doyler lifted the tea to his mouth. "I'd say you'd wish you was in West Clare tonight," he said. "Away out of Kingstown. The old Kate Mac home."

The old sergeant nodded. "Merry Christmas now," he said.

"Merry Christmas, citizen," said Doyler.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

They had made a kind of a cot for her, Mr. Mack had and Jim, out of, I don't know, an old oranges crate, and they'd sanded it down and varnished it smooth, they were days at it, should have heard them out in the yard, bickering over what went where, and they'd taken the wheels from under the shop cart, so it was a kind of a pram, suppose you'd call it, with a handle at the end, which she pushed now, Nancy did, rocking it gently to and fro. She had fetched the customer's chair from out the shop, and she sat outside in the lane, under a fierce January sun that wouldn't heat you one bit, save that it warmed the heart to see. A couple old sparrows was chirping out of the chestnut trees over, the way they'd be fooled by a sunny day into arguing t.i.tle. It was near enough her first steps out of the house, barring the christening, and she still had trouble walking, though if she thought to point to the pain, she couldn't rightly tell where was it at. Up and down them stairs inside was murder altogether.

But G.o.d is good, and there wasn't pain but you was blessed for it; and the little blessing lay asleep in her rickety pram. Every few moments Nancy touched her hand to her cheek, checking for chill, but everything was rosy yet. And she really was rosy, was the little mite. That yellowy tinge, it had her in torments of worry that first week, it was after lifting, like Aunt Sawney always said it would, and her skin now was soft and pink and, I don't know, velvety something. And you'd want to be bending down the while, to sniff her smell, that was all powdery-milkery. Oh it would put you in mind of eating her, so it would. "I could eat you, gobble you right up," she said, shaking her head into the oranges crate, and she was sure a smile was after fainting across the face, though the sleepy mite was dozing still, with her squoze-up eyes and her thumb just licking her mouth.

The truth of it was, she couldn't wait to be showing the little babba off. Oh not to the street, never mind the street, the street was only ignorant, so it was. And as for that curate, making her take off her ring for the christening, that was plain badness. No, but to show her off to the daylight and let her know there was a sun up there and a blue sky to s.h.i.+ne out of, and she'd know, without even knowing she knew, the joy it was with the sun on your face. If only the hint of it, mind, for she kept her eyes out of the glare for fear it might wake the little mite and she'd go all dazzled.

Jim come out of the shop, with a rug in his arms, and she said, "Did you bring that out for your niece?" He had. But wasn't the little mite smothered, near or next to, as it was. So she bade Jim wrap the rug round her own shoulders instead. You'd swear she was nettles or briars the way he wouldn't touch her, only let the cloth fall in place. "Is that out of your bed?"

He said it was, coloring a touch. She drew it closer round her, the blanket Gordie had slept in under.

Poor old Jim. There was a cloud hanging over him, she didn't know what it was, only she hoped he wasn't jealous of all the attention. Night the babba was born, he comes home, but he's only hanging about the door. Say h.e.l.lo to your niece, says old Macks. And that's exactly what he does. h.e.l.lo, says he, like he'd be shaking her hand next. Then at the christening when he was standing G.o.dfather and they came to that bit about the gentleman below, do you denounce his works and pomps?-it took a while for him to answer till they all turned to look. Then out he thunders, I do, and the blaze in his eyes you'd swear 'twas old Nick himself at the font, and the little man defying him heart and soul. Even that twister of a curate looked startled out of his stole.

Whatever it was, there was no touching him these days and he was for ever at the wash-bowl. He washed his face so hard, he rubbed the smiles away.

He was watching one time when she was changing the babba. She could tell he was checking off the anatomy and muddling out the parts in his head. "See that," she said, and of course he did, for he was gawping and blinking at it, the nubble out of the babba's belly. "That goes down sure. We all had that, even you when you was little." She breathed on a penny, placed it on the nubble, before wrapping the napkin round. "That grows into your tummy b.u.t.ton," she told him. Oh I know, says he, coloring away. Knew that all along, he did of course. And sure G.o.d love the dote. At home she had all the beasts of the field, let alone her brothers and sisters. She pitied the townie children who'd know no better than they'd learn off the chickens in the yard. Declare to G.o.d, and I laid an egg, 'twould put no pa.s.s on Jim.

Not that Gordie was ever behind in catching on.

But where would you be without Aunt Sawney? You'd wonder how'd she know it all. Would swear she had a street of them raised, the little mites. And her parched old face when she watched you at nursing. She liked to see the child at her feed. Well, you'd go that way had you never gave milk. Smacking her gums, like she'd be tasting it herself. Hairy old chin she poked at the babba and her cheeks all sunk. You'd often wonder had she mistook the boot-blacking for rouge. But if ever a face told lies, Aunt Sawney's was the wickedest yet.

She woke in the night one time, without the babba crying, and she could just make out Aunt Sawney in her chair, rocking and rocking, slow-like and deliberate, over the drawer from the chest where the babba slept. Queer old fright she looked by the nightlight. You couldn't but think of them withered old jugs and for a moment the fear came on that she'd take up the child and-you didn't know what with it.

But Nancy hadn't moved nor made any sound, and she was glad of that after, for Aunt Sawney only kept to her rocking, so slow and deliberate-like, nodding stiffly at each Jesus in her prayers. There was something the way she stared, something near fierce about it, the way with every rock of her chair she'd be willing her hopes inside the sleeping mite. Till a moan from the drawer broke the moment and soon enough the babba was looking for her feed. While the tiny mouth dribbled and the withered face watched, Nancy had prayed that Aunt Sawney would be spared to them, spared at least till the child would know her, and she'd love her Aunt Sawney for the true cause and source of her happiness, whatever share would come her way.

She sighed now, and smoothed her dress over her knees. To and fro she rocked the crate, the wheels on cobbles sc.r.a.ped. She sighed again, and rhymed a music-hall s.n.a.t.c.h.

It ain't all honey and it ain't all jam Wheeling round the houses with a home-made pram.

It must be dinner-time for some boys came past, little tykes so they were, calling out "Maggie! Maggie!" and pointing their dirty fingers down the lane. Sure let them point. Soon enough now and it won't be fingers they're pointing. She took up the song herself, and sang as she'd heard it off the girls by the ca.n.a.l.

O Maggie, hold your head up high Walk tall and proud and strong.

You're worth twice twenty score and more Than him that did this wrong.

Well, she didn't know what she was worth, not much she supposed, nor what Gordie was worth, little more now than a letter off the King. But you couldn't call it wrong what they done together, not when you saw the little mite here. Oh sure Gordie, Gordie, I've mourned and missed you longer than ever I loved you. I love you yet, but I can't be mourning for ever. Isn't it enough I'll never have my wedding-day nor never share your bed with you? Not once for my man to hold me in the night and wake with my man in my bed beside me. All that's gone. The beginning of that was the ending of it. They'll know me in years to come for the old maid does be watching at weddings. No, she never married, they'll say, though 'tis known she was pretty once. Going into a hugger-mugger then, to relish the shame of the tale.

She reached into the oranges crate and brought the bundle of sleep to her breast. Turning she saw the card in the shop window. Aunt Sawney had put it there after the babba was born. Gordon Mack, Gordon Mack, in thin black lettering inside of a thick black border. in thin black lettering inside of a thick black border. Gallipoli 1915. RIP. Gallipoli 1915. RIP. And he was a rip too. A rip and a bold particle. I was a girl then and he was a boy. You were after making a woman of me, Gordie, if you did but know. Though I doubt if ever I made a man of you. Is it only with men they can be made men of? Is it that why they rush to go? And he was a rip too. A rip and a bold particle. I was a girl then and he was a boy. You were after making a woman of me, Gordie, if you did but know. Though I doubt if ever I made a man of you. Is it only with men they can be made men of? Is it that why they rush to go?

At the bottom of the card, old Macks had added, Corporal, "C" Comp., 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers. For King & Country. Corporal, "C" Comp., 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers. For King & Country. Which last was a lie, but what harm, if it made old Macks happy. Which last was a lie, but what harm, if it made old Macks happy.

Poor old Mr. Mack. He has it harder than any of us, I sometimes think. There he is with his heart all set on being a gent. Will he never learn 'tis the mark of a gent, not that hats are lifted to him, but that he lifts his hat to others? And Mr. Mack is a gent to the bone. To the crown of the bowler hat of him.

She went into the shop, where Jim looked up from the counter the way you'd be kind enough not to notice him there, and inside of the kitchen she heard Aunt Sawney giving a down-the-banks to Mr. Mack. The babba gave an egg-shaped yawn while the shop door closed behind. Home, said the clink.

When the Dominican brother had called each boy privately to his room-this was on the last day of their retreat, two summers previous-he told them-or leastways he told Jim: Jim didn't know what he told the other boys, for no boy ever spoke of that confession-he told Jim of the sins of the flesh, the horror of impure thoughts, the terrible consequences of the solitary vice. No sins destroy a soul so utterly as this shameful sin, he said. It steals the sinner from the hands of G.o.d and leads him like a crawling thing into the mire of filth and corruption. Once steeped in this mire, he cannot get out. The more he struggles, the deeper must he sink: for he has lost the rock of faith. My Spirit does not dwell in you, the Lord hath said, if you are nothing but flesh and corruption. And so G.o.d gives up the impure to all the wicked inclinations of his heart. Hear him laugh at the truths of religion. Delightful to him the stench of corruption. In the mire of pa.s.sions he wallows. Yet even so he will seek to hide his shame, even from his confessor, as if by darkness or solitude heaven were deceived. Will such a one at the last moment give a good confession, who has from his earliest youth heaped sacrilege on sacrilege? Will the tongue, which has been silent up to this day, be unloosed at the uttermost hour? No; G.o.d has abandoned him; heavy are the sins that already weigh him down; he will add one other, and it will be the last.

This then was the spiritual sequel. The priest went on to tell the corporal sequelae, how G.o.d has set the mark of ignominy on the solitary sinner's face. The sickly pallor, the eyes darkened with the shadows of vice, the listless restless joyless posture. Where once the future shone brightly in his eyes, now but gleams the dark road to lunacy. In this life the asylum is his sole hope, in the next the fires of h.e.l.l.

Jim had left that room, red-faced before the other boys who lined up outside waiting their turn, and he had walked the perimeter of the games field where other boys walked, each one alone, each with his head bowed down. He was burnt with shame and fear, but also he was scandalized. Why had no one warned him before this? Why wait till he was fifteen and he was confirmed in that vice? Indeed not confirmed only, but lost entirely, already abandoned by G.o.d. For the mark was on his face, plain to see, if he could bare to look, in his sallow skin, his dull eyes, in their maniacal blink. It was a scandal, and he had half a mind to go up to the national school now, burst in upon the cla.s.sroom, cry it out to the young boys there, Don't do it! Don't think of it! Don't start or you're lost!

But horror, at such a pitch, required a frequent refueling: his weekly confession attempted the task, but frequency of its nature makes horror tolerable. Time pa.s.sed, and it was the discriminations and distinctions of sin, with regard to impure thoughts, that held Jim's mind. That the Church should see so far ahead, so deeply inside the soul, that no contingency was overlooked but she planned for all the twistings and quibblings of conscience: it was a majestic thing to contemplate, a structure built of thought and logic, magnificent and complex as the cathedrals the Protestants had stolen from her. In the end, whether his hand moved to that solitary vice was neither here nor there. For already there was the sin of desiderium, desiderium, which was the desire for what is sinful; of which was the desire for what is sinful; of delectatio morosa, delectatio morosa, the pleasure taken in a sinful thought; of the pleasure taken in a sinful thought; of gaudium, gaudium, the dwelling with complacency on sins already committed. the dwelling with complacency on sins already committed.

It was round about that time when the notion first came on Jim that he might have a vocation for the Church.

Then his brother came home on his embarkation leave. He spoke about Nancy. He spoke about-fetching off, he called it. Jim had never encountered the expression and for a moment he couldn't think why his blood was rising. Then it hit him what his brother meant. It was worse, far worse, than confession. He felt his cheeks like coals.

"Or have you given that up for Lent?" said his brother.

"Shut up, you blackguard," Jim told him.

"Ah, shut up yourself, young 'un. Did you think I never catched on what kept you in the privy? I only wanted to say it's all right, and don't mind what they says. There isn't much the army don't learn you. 'Tis going without will drive you doolally."

"It's a sin."

"Suit yourself. It does no harm. Better with a girl is all."

Whatever about its sinfulness and harmfulness, this last was transpicuously absurd. Jim couldn't imagine doing it if a dog was in the room, let alone a girl. But living with a thing so long and so intimately could not but blunt the fear of its consequence. Besides, he was only half so wicked as he might be. His hand moved in actual sin, but his mind dwelt far away, far away from the efficacious sins of desire, perhaps on the sea, or on swimming there, or rocking amiably on the Forty Foot raft.

Sophistry! Cruel deluded casuistry! The Crock's Garden had been the end of that. He did not remember coming home, only lying in the dark later, in his settle-bed on his own. Even then he was not sufficiently steeped in the mire, but his hand must go below to the throb that was there, and moment by moment, touch by touch, he relived the scene, delighting in every strangeness, and the queer freedom he had felt in his submission, the relis.h.i.+ng of his exposure, his bending to the seat and willing his vulnerableness, even of the pain savoring the memory, and hearing still the grunts of pleasure and his own compliant moans. And in his mind's touch when he reached behind, it was not a soldier's khaki he found, but a blue-gone s.h.i.+ny trousers.

A holy draught had come in then under the window to shake the holy Sacred Heart flame. And in that flicker he saw it, the fiend that was his soul. His monstrous heart, his vicious flesh, nothing escaped that searing flash. Flickered the flame like the kitchen walls had gaped and before him blazed the fires of h.e.l.l, to which his bed was inching, dragging its length along, ever and downward, to tip him finally in the pit of d.a.m.nation.

He leapt from the bed, giddy in flight, like he'd scut off a moving carriage. He found his Rosary beads. Quickly he prayed. So abandoned was he, the words would not come. He wound the beads round his hands. Let his beads now be the chains that bound him. Hindered in this way he dressed: he could not bear to be unclothed. He dug his fingernails into his palms. All night he prayed. On his knees by his bed, his elbows propped on the mattress, eyes held by the holy flame, smarting, stinging, watering, closing. And when they closed, his elbows slipped, shocking him awake, for he felt the bed itself had lurched. He had not thought a night could endure so long. While above strange noises he heard, a baby crying, a mother's voice, the boards creaking with untimely pa.s.sage.

Next day was Sunday: there were no confessions to be had. Three Ma.s.ses he heard, but without his receiving, there could be no solace. He thought to try St. Michael's in Kingstown. It was St. Stephen's day. He had never known the town so full with soldiers. He feared to look them in the face, yet hunted their profiles, as foundlings are said to, seeking their parents, though it was stray glances he sought, and feared to find them, cringing to think that any might know him. There were no confessions at St. Michael's of course. He thought to stop a priest in the street. Father, I have sinned. But he dared not speak in the broad day. Another night he pa.s.sed without sleep. The Monday, confessions were not till ten. He walked the streets while the shutters came down from the shops and the gas flared in the windows. Away on Howth dawn was only screaking. He heard early Ma.s.s, then did the Stations. In the second bench from the altar he told his Rosary. At last Father Taylor came in from the sacristy. A velvet shadow, he swept along the side pa.s.sage. The door to his confessional latched home.