Some people were just spiteful like that, she said. It was pure envy.
Most of the other respectable people of the town shared my mother’s view of these things, though I’d noticed that alot of the Irishtown folk admired the 1916 rebels. Some of them hung pictures of the rebels’ executed leaders in their houses, cheap prints torn from penny papers and tacked up on the plastered clay walls. I’d asked my father about that, but he’d just said that the poor could afford to favour revolutions – they’d less to lose. And he’d warned me, for the hundredth time, never to let my mother know that I actually went inside my friends’ houses in Irishtown, because she’d worry about dirt and consumption and lice.
‘You know your mother,’ he said. ‘She gets worried when she has nothing to worry about.’
And she worried endlessly about my friends. They were guilty of the greatest crime she knew: being poor. And that annoyed me. My Irishtown friends were honest, by their own lights, and by anyone’s standards they were adventurous . They were also reliable – true blue, as we said then. They were my pals, so I stuck with them, to my mother’s despair.
‘It’s you he gets that off,’ I heard her say in a moment of anger to my father once. ‘You that would talk to any dog in the street.’
Needless to say, we had no dog ourselves: my mother said they were dirty brutes, and would destroy the house. All of my Irishtown friends had dogs, of course, and their dogs had the freedom of their houses and ate the same food as the family – what there was of it. These dogs were mostly mongrel terriers, each with more character, on average,than most of my mother’s human friends put together. We’d often bring them, in packs, to hunt rabbits – the dogs, I mean – in the fields around the town, or rats in the cramped backyards of Irishtown that backed onto the river. It was great sport, but it was more than sport to my friends: the rabbits were a welcome addition to their households’ larders, while every dead rat was a cause for celebration in those infested shanties. Many’s the baby in Irishtown whose toes would have been nibbled by rats if it hadn’t been for those terriers. Irishtowners loathed rats; they loathed them even more than they loathed policemen. I don’t know that the rats had any particular feelings about the Irishtowners; in the case of the police, though, the loathing was mutual.
* * *
Phil Murphy, the sergeant who’d brought me home after the window-breaking, was the special enemy of Irishtowners . It wouldn’t be stretching things at all to say that he hated them, and blamed them for every crime that happened in our town. They hated him, too; but more importantly to Phil Murphy, they feared him. He liked to boast of how the tough men of Irishtown were more fearful of him than of any other man, and he called himself, when the mood was on him, the King of Irishtown.
‘They may have their pictures of rebels,’ he’d say, ‘and talk all they like of republics. But there’s one king they’ll never get rid of in Irishtown, and that’s Phil Murphy.’
Phil Murphy would quite happily have razed Irishtown to the ground, as I heard him say himself on more than one occasion: razed it to the ground with the people still in it, even the women and children. Since he wasn’t allowed to do that, he was content to be its king – and a true tyrant he was.
There were eight policemen in the barracks in our town, and Phil Murphy was in charge of them. He was a giant of a man, even among all those tall policeman. They were generally amiable men, the Royal Irish Constabulary, at least in my experience of them. But Phil Murphy was different. He was a former police boxing champion, and I always sensed an air of violence off him that set him apart from other RIC men. I could feel his eye on me down the length of a whole street, and it was rarely my imagination when I did feel it. He took a special
Most of the other respectable people of the town shared my mother’s view of these things, though I’d noticed that alot of the Irishtown folk admired the 1916 rebels. Some of them hung pictures of the rebels’ executed leaders in their houses, cheap prints torn from penny papers and tacked up on the plastered clay walls. I’d asked my father about that, but he’d just said that the poor could afford to favour revolutions – they’d less to lose. And he’d warned me, for the hundredth time, never to let my mother know that I actually went inside my friends’ houses in Irishtown, because she’d worry about dirt and consumption and lice.
‘You know your mother,’ he said. ‘She gets worried when she has nothing to worry about.’
And she worried endlessly about my friends. They were guilty of the greatest crime she knew: being poor. And that annoyed me. My Irishtown friends were honest, by their own lights, and by anyone’s standards they were adventurous . They were also reliable – true blue, as we said then. They were my pals, so I stuck with them, to my mother’s despair.
‘It’s you he gets that off,’ I heard her say in a moment of anger to my father once. ‘You that would talk to any dog in the street.’
Needless to say, we had no dog ourselves: my mother said they were dirty brutes, and would destroy the house. All of my Irishtown friends had dogs, of course, and their dogs had the freedom of their houses and ate the same food as the family – what there was of it. These dogs were mostly mongrel terriers, each with more character, on average,than most of my mother’s human friends put together. We’d often bring them, in packs, to hunt rabbits – the dogs, I mean – in the fields around the town, or rats in the cramped backyards of Irishtown that backed onto the river. It was great sport, but it was more than sport to my friends: the rabbits were a welcome addition to their households’ larders, while every dead rat was a cause for celebration in those infested shanties. Many’s the baby in Irishtown whose toes would have been nibbled by rats if it hadn’t been for those terriers. Irishtowners loathed rats; they loathed them even more than they loathed policemen. I don’t know that the rats had any particular feelings about the Irishtowners; in the case of the police, though, the loathing was mutual.
* * *
Phil Murphy, the sergeant who’d brought me home after the window-breaking, was the special enemy of Irishtowners . It wouldn’t be stretching things at all to say that he hated them, and blamed them for every crime that happened in our town. They hated him, too; but more importantly to Phil Murphy, they feared him. He liked to boast of how the tough men of Irishtown were more fearful of him than of any other man, and he called himself, when the mood was on him, the King of Irishtown.
‘They may have their pictures of rebels,’ he’d say, ‘and talk all they like of republics. But there’s one king they’ll never get rid of in Irishtown, and that’s Phil Murphy.’
Phil Murphy would quite happily have razed Irishtown to the ground, as I heard him say himself on more than one occasion: razed it to the ground with the people still in it, even the women and children. Since he wasn’t allowed to do that, he was content to be its king – and a true tyrant he was.
There were eight policemen in the barracks in our town, and Phil Murphy was in charge of them. He was a giant of a man, even among all those tall policeman. They were generally amiable men, the Royal Irish Constabulary, at least in my experience of them. But Phil Murphy was different. He was a former police boxing champion, and I always sensed an air of violence off him that set him apart from other RIC men. I could feel his eye on me down the length of a whole street, and it was rarely my imagination when I did feel it. He took a special
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