Read Online The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry - Free Book Online Page A

never to be seen with and if the rule of thumb among the recruits and indeed the RIC men in general is to stay clear of the Auxiliaries, or the Tans as they are called by the people, an article of faith is to avoid the Reprisal Man like the devil himself. To be spotted in the company of such as he either in hours of duty or relaxing in the bars of the town would be noted on some black-list of marked men.
    Even the sergeant Doyle stays away from him and Doyle is a policeman of the old school, loyal as a child to the kings and queens of England, Scotland and Ireland and the princes of Wales also. His father was a simple cabinkeeper in Leitrim after losing the huxter’s shop in Athlone when the sergeant was only a scrap. His grandfather died, it was said, during the hunger of the forties in the old century, killed by a mob for feeding Indian grain meant for paupers to his fattening pig. This isn’t information that Eneas gets from the sergeant, but the sort of thing you’ll get whispered to you by the older men less useful than the sergeant, less promoted.
    Well, the whole business is mightily complicated one way and another and Eneas in his heart cannot say that he enjoys the policing he is set to do. He had had in mind the more usual duties of the RIC, in days more peaceful, when he joined, and never had the ambition to be a carter of corpses or a young fella atop a cart weeping from bewilderment. No man fool or sage could get used to the scenes of murder, because they are ever changing and unnatural. Indeed older men long years in the force have taken their own lives in answer to the crushing horror of the times, and rakes of others in the country generally are said to be housed now in the county homes and the asylums. They were unfit for such sights. Eneas tries many a stratagem to water down what he sees, to satisfy his heart that it is a passing matter, but truth to tell each dead soul afflicts him. The trouble and sorrow of being a peeler is a revelation to him.
    Doyle is the man who tries to keep his men true and indeed safe. No constable walks alone now through the streets of Athlone, and many a homespun speech issues forth from Doyle’s lips on the topics of duty and order and loyalty and God. God is the chief superintendent, right enough, or even a commissioner.
    Bit by bit Eneas understands that a fella by the name of Mick Collins is the big man behind the wild lads willing to kill for the lovely trout of freedom. No decent description of him exists in police files, but a field of stories growing fast with brambles and tares attaches to the name. And yet the name rises immaculate and bright as a sovereign from the mire of events that muddy all normal men. It’s a mystery. Eneas could call Collins the enemy except in his private mind he does not. If he had a picture of him maybe he could. He sees the Reprisal Man every so often stomping through the wooden corridors of the barracks or passing up the street in a Crossley tender like a savage prince, and it seems to Eneas that that same Reprisal Man is more his enemy than the invisible Mick Collins. But both are men of blood no doubt. Eneas’s head rackets with warring notions. He’s adrift on the shallow sea of his homeland.
    At first he tries to get home to his Mam and Pappy every furlough but the cat’s cradle of Sligo talk is against him. His Pappy is stopped in the street and talked to by O’Dowd, the auctioneer, one of Collins’s men it may be, but a proper bowsie, according to Old Tom McNulty. Yes, a proper bowsie, a scam merchant and the son of a boxty cooker from over Strandhill way, an unkempt boiler of a fella that used mash up spuds for the trippers and their kids hungry after the salt sea and the wild playing. So it is a mighty affront for Old Tom to be stopped by the son of O’Dowd the boxty man and at the same time the words he says to Old Tom are precise and calm.
    ‘Let your son keep out of Sligo, man, if he wants to keep his ability to