Read Online The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sebastian Barry
Tags: Fiction, Historical
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walk.’
There’s no misunderstanding that song and Eneas keeps to barracks when other men are able to catch motor-buses or trains or go on the long walk and lift-cadging home to towns and rural places, and no word said against them, as yet. But Eneas knows that the stint at sea is held against him also, the stint at sea and maybe also his old friendship with Jonno Lynch, which might be a useful thing to a policeman bent on gathering intelligence. Eneas is not bent on anything except daily life but O’Dowd’s imagination and the imaginations of a score of worried men in Sligo are afire with conspiracy and secrecy.
At any rate something occurs that puts such straightforward matters in the halfpenny place. There’s a right old hooley of a series of tit-for-tat jobs between the Roscommon rebels and the Tans, with the RIC mixed in somewhere too. And the doings of the rebels are further tangled by betrayals in their own number as the curious war grows in months like a terrible child, and certain quaint advantages are to be got out of the situation. Sometimes now Eneas carts back creatures done in by their own comrades, mightily done in. And fellas say now that it’s like the old famine days when some of the worst cruelty was visited on the poor of Ireland by them that were slightly less poor, and Doyle’s ould grandfather is darkly cited. When a strong farmer was content to see his rentless neighbour driven off to fever, death or America, if he could only get a hoult of the vacated farm, and attach it to his own. If this is not the bedevilment of Irish historical goings-on, Eneas doesn’t know what is, or so he says plainly to his companions, though indeed the matter is not quite so clear as that in his head.
Well, he’s going up the town one night in Athlone with Sergeant Doyle himself as a companion, and they’ve been idly drinking in the old Great Western Hotel where the proprietor is above politics and beneath neutrality. It has become a policeman and soldier’s drinking spot but no matter, the two are well watered now but not drunk as such and climbing the little hill past the curious pewter of the black river and the mossy walls of the Cathedral. And there’s a little stone-covered alleyway there that would bring you up conveniently to the sacristy if you were a priest, and there are two dark men in the gap there that get a good hold on Doyle and a penknife to his throat. And Eneas hangs back from jumping at the men or trying to get his gun out of his cut-down holster because he piercingly sees how honed and steel the knife is, as thin as the leg of a sandpiper.
‘Come in, you bugger, out of the light,’ says one of the men, ‘or I’ll tear out the gullet of your sergeant.’
So Eneas steps in carefully, into the holy dark, where priests and priests’ messengers have often darted, and Doyle says not a word, for fear of inciting a regretful move. These are clearly some of the bould men themselves, some of the heroes of Athlone, the dark men of freedom. Some of Jonno Lynch’s crowd, or the Athlone branch anyhow. They have an air about them fretful and desperate, not like policemen or soldiers but like hunters, fellas that go out after hares with big long streels of dogs in the blessed autumns. Townies with guns — nothing worse, nothing more dangerous to the peace of the countryside. And Eneas is silent, as indeed his training recommends. For an attacker is like a snake that strikes at movement, at history, at words.
‘We’re taking you for the job done on Stephen Jackson,’ says the same man, ‘just so you know why we’re doing this to you.’
And Eneas knows who Jackson is or was and so does Doyle, because Eneas took Jackson to the coroner’s icy room with bullets of the Reprisal Man in his cold head.
‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ says Doyle in his Leitrim accent.
‘Ah, you do, and you did,’ says the man.
‘It’s the feckin Tans you want,’ says Doyle, simply.
‘Jaysus,
There’s no misunderstanding that song and Eneas keeps to barracks when other men are able to catch motor-buses or trains or go on the long walk and lift-cadging home to towns and rural places, and no word said against them, as yet. But Eneas knows that the stint at sea is held against him also, the stint at sea and maybe also his old friendship with Jonno Lynch, which might be a useful thing to a policeman bent on gathering intelligence. Eneas is not bent on anything except daily life but O’Dowd’s imagination and the imaginations of a score of worried men in Sligo are afire with conspiracy and secrecy.
At any rate something occurs that puts such straightforward matters in the halfpenny place. There’s a right old hooley of a series of tit-for-tat jobs between the Roscommon rebels and the Tans, with the RIC mixed in somewhere too. And the doings of the rebels are further tangled by betrayals in their own number as the curious war grows in months like a terrible child, and certain quaint advantages are to be got out of the situation. Sometimes now Eneas carts back creatures done in by their own comrades, mightily done in. And fellas say now that it’s like the old famine days when some of the worst cruelty was visited on the poor of Ireland by them that were slightly less poor, and Doyle’s ould grandfather is darkly cited. When a strong farmer was content to see his rentless neighbour driven off to fever, death or America, if he could only get a hoult of the vacated farm, and attach it to his own. If this is not the bedevilment of Irish historical goings-on, Eneas doesn’t know what is, or so he says plainly to his companions, though indeed the matter is not quite so clear as that in his head.
Well, he’s going up the town one night in Athlone with Sergeant Doyle himself as a companion, and they’ve been idly drinking in the old Great Western Hotel where the proprietor is above politics and beneath neutrality. It has become a policeman and soldier’s drinking spot but no matter, the two are well watered now but not drunk as such and climbing the little hill past the curious pewter of the black river and the mossy walls of the Cathedral. And there’s a little stone-covered alleyway there that would bring you up conveniently to the sacristy if you were a priest, and there are two dark men in the gap there that get a good hold on Doyle and a penknife to his throat. And Eneas hangs back from jumping at the men or trying to get his gun out of his cut-down holster because he piercingly sees how honed and steel the knife is, as thin as the leg of a sandpiper.
‘Come in, you bugger, out of the light,’ says one of the men, ‘or I’ll tear out the gullet of your sergeant.’
So Eneas steps in carefully, into the holy dark, where priests and priests’ messengers have often darted, and Doyle says not a word, for fear of inciting a regretful move. These are clearly some of the bould men themselves, some of the heroes of Athlone, the dark men of freedom. Some of Jonno Lynch’s crowd, or the Athlone branch anyhow. They have an air about them fretful and desperate, not like policemen or soldiers but like hunters, fellas that go out after hares with big long streels of dogs in the blessed autumns. Townies with guns — nothing worse, nothing more dangerous to the peace of the countryside. And Eneas is silent, as indeed his training recommends. For an attacker is like a snake that strikes at movement, at history, at words.
‘We’re taking you for the job done on Stephen Jackson,’ says the same man, ‘just so you know why we’re doing this to you.’
And Eneas knows who Jackson is or was and so does Doyle, because Eneas took Jackson to the coroner’s icy room with bullets of the Reprisal Man in his cold head.
‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ says Doyle in his Leitrim accent.
‘Ah, you do, and you did,’ says the man.
‘It’s the feckin Tans you want,’ says Doyle, simply.
‘Jaysus,
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