Strangways in a moment became to us not only a hero but a miracle-man; we pretended not to believe him in order to make him tell us the truth and we were almost crazy with breathless desire. I got him to invite me up to the vicarage and I saw Mary the nurse-girl there, and she seemed to me almost a woman and spoke to him as «Master Will» and he kissed her, though she frowned and said, «Leave off» and «Behave yourself,» very angrily; but I felt that her anger was put on to prevent my guessing the truth. I was aflame with desire and when I told Howard, he, too, burned with lust, and took me out for a walk and questioned me all over again, and under a haystack in the country we gave ourselves to a bout of frigging, which for the first time thrilled me with pleasure. All the time we were playing with ourselves, I kept thinking of Mary's hot slit, as Strangways had described it, and, at length, a real orgasm came and shook me; the imagining had intensified my delight. Nothing in my life up to that moment was comparable in joy to that story of sexual pleasure as described, and acted for us, by Strangways. My Father Father was coming; I was sick with fear: he was so strict and loved to punish. On the ship he had beaten me with a strap because I had gone forward and listened to the sailors talking smut: I had feared him and disliked him ever since I saw him once come aboard drunk. It was the evening of a regatta at Kingstown. He had been asked to lunch on one of the big yachts. I heard the officers talking of it. They said he was asked because he knew more about tides and currents along the coast than anyone, more even than the fishermen. The racing skippers wanted to get some information out of him. Another added, «He knows the slants of the wind off Howth Head, ay, and the weather, too, better than anyone living!» All agreed he was a first rate sailor,
«One of the best, the very best if he had a decent temper-the little devil.» «D'ye mind when he steered the gig in that race for all?
Won? Av course he won, he has always won-ah! He's a great little sailor an' he takes care of the men's food, too, but he has the divil's own temper-an' that's the truth.» That afternoon of the regatta, he came up the ladder quickly and stumbled, smiling as he stepped down to the deck. I had never seen him like that; he was grinning and walking unsteadily: I gazed at him in amazement. An officer turned aside and as he passed me he said to another: «Drunk as a lord.» Another helped my father down to his cabin and came up five minutes afterwards: «He's snoring: he'll soon be all right: it's that champagne they give him, and all that praising him and pressing him to give them tips for this and that.» «No, no!» cried another. «It's not the drink; he only gets drunk when he hasn't to pay for it,» and all of them grinned; it was true, I felt, and I despised the meanness inexpressibly. I hated them for seeing him, and hated him-drunk and talking thick and staggering about; an object of derision and pity!-my «governor,» as Ver-non called him; I despised him. And I recalled other griefs I had against him. A Lord of the Admiralty had come aboard once; father was dressed in his best; I was very young: it was just after I had learned to swim in Carrickfergus. My father used to make me undress and go in and swim round the vessel every morning after my lessons. That morning I had come up as usual at eleven and a strange gentleman and my father were talking together near the companion. As I appeared my father gave me a frown to go below, but the stranger caught sight of me and laughing called me. I came to them and the stranger was surprised on hearing I could swim. «Jump in, Jim!» cried my father, «and swim round.» Nothing loath, I ran down the ladder, pulled off my clothes and jumped in. The stranger and my father were above me smiling and talking; my father waved his hand and I swam round the vessel. When I got back, I was about to get on the steps and come aboard when my father said: «No, no, swim on round till I tell you to stop.» Away I went again quite proud, but when I got round the second time I was tired; I had never swum so far and I had sunk deep in the water and a little spray of wave had gone into my mouth; I was very glad to get near the steps, but as I stretched out my hand to mount them, my father waved his hand.
«Go on, go on,» he cried, «till you're told to stop!» I went on; but now I was very tired and frightened as well, and as I got to the bow the sailors leant over the bulwark and one encouraged me: «Go slow, Jim; you'll get round all right.» I saw it was big Newton, the stroke-oar of my father's gig, but just because of his sympathy I hated my father the more for making me so tired and so afraid.
When I got round the third time, I swam very slowly and let myself sink very low, and the stranger spoke for me to my father, and then he himself told me to «come up.» I came eagerly, but a little scared at what my father might do, but the stranger came over to me, saying: «He's all blue; that water's very cold, Captain; someone should give him a good towelling.» My father said nothing but: «Go down and dress,» adding, «get warm.» The memory of my fear made me see that he was always asking me to do too much, and I hated him who could get drunk and shame me and make me run races up the rigging with the cabin boys who were grown men and could beat me.
I disliked him. I was too young then to know that it was probably the habit of command which prevented him from praising me. Yet I knew in a half-conscious way that he was proud of me because I was the only one of his children who never got sea-sick. A little later he arrived in Armagh and the following week was wretched: I had to come straight home from school every day, and go out for a long walk with the «governor,» and he was not a pleasant companion. I couldn't let myself go with him as with a chum; I might in the heat of talk use some word or tell him something and get into an awful row. So I walked beside him silently, taking heed as to what I should say in answer to his simplest question. There was no companionship. In the evening he used to send me to bed early, even before nine o'clock, though Vernon always let me stay up with him reading till eleven or twelve o'clock. One night I went up to my bedroom on the next floor, but returned almost at once to get a book and have a read in bed, which was a rare treat to me. I was afraid to go into the sitting room; but crept into the dining room where there were a few books, though not so interesting as those in the parlor; the door between the two rooms was ajar. Suddenly I heard my father say: «He's a little Fenian.»
«Fenian,» repeated Vernon, in amazement. «Really, Governor, I don't believe he knows the meaning of the word; he's only just eleven, you must remember.» «I tell you,» broke in my father, «he talked of James Stephen, the Fenian head-centre, today, with wild admiration.
He's a Fenian, all right, but how did he catch it?» «I'm sure I don't know,» replied Vernon. «He reads a great deal and is very quick:
I'll find out about it.» «No, no!» said my father. «The thing is to cure him. He must go to some school in England; that'll cure him.»
I waited to hear no more but got my book and crept upstairs. So because I loved the Fenian head-centre I must be a Fenian. «How stupid father is,» was my summing up, but England tempted me, England-life was opening out. It was at the Royal School in the summer after my sex-experience with Strangways and Howard that I first began to notice dress. A boy in the sixth form named Milman had taken a liking to me, and though he was five years older than I was, he often went with Howard and myself for walks. He was a stickler for dress, said that no one but «cads» (a name I learned from him for the first time) and common folk would wear a made-up tie: he gave me one of his scarves and showed me how to make a running lover's knot in it.
On another occasion he told me that only «cads» would wear trousers frayed or repaired. Was it Milman's talk that made me self-conscious or my sex awakening through Howard and Strangways? I couldn't say, but at this time I had a curious and prolonged experience. My brother Vernon, hearing me once complain of my dress, got me three suits of clothes, one in black with an Eton jacket for best and a tall hat and the others in tweeds. He gave me shirts, too, and ties, and I began to take great care of my appearance. At our evening parties the girls and young women (Vernon's friends) were kinder to me than ever, and I found myself wondering whether I really looked «nice,» as they said.
I began to wash and bathe carefully and brush my hair to regulation smoothness (only «cads» used pomatum, Milman said), and when I was asked to recite, I would pout and plead prettily that I did not want to, just in order to be pressed. Sex was awakening in me at this time but was still indeterminate, I imagine. Two motives ruled me for over six months: I was always wondering how I looked and watching to see if people liked me. I used to try to speak with the accent used by the «best people,» and on coming into a room I prepared my entrance. Someone, I think it was Vernon's sweetheart, Monica, said that I had an energetic profile, so I always sought to show my profile. In fact, for some six months, I was more a girl than a boy, with all a girl's self-consciousness and manifold affectations and sentimentalities: I often used to think that no one cared for me really and I would weep over my unloved loneliness. Whenever later as a writer I wished to picture a young girl, I had only to go back to this period in my consciousness in order to attain the peculiar viewpoint of the girl.
Chapter II.
