‘None taken. And you’re from the area, Albert?’
‘From the Kips, Father, again, no disrespect.’
But O’Keefe hears something in Just Albert’s voice that runs against his words.
‘I’ve many friends there,’ the priest says, leaving Albert waiting for the judgement he had been expecting. ‘Perhaps in the future I can count you another?’
Anxious to avoid a confrontation, O’Keefe says, ‘Father, if it’s no trouble to you, could we speak with you inside? I’ve been employed by a Mrs Ginny Dolan …’ he waits for the priest to acknowledge that he knows of the woman ‘… to find her
son Nicholas. The boy has gone missing and Albert and myself have …’
‘… Albert and I,’ the priest says, smiling.
O’Keefe smiles despite himself. ‘We were hoping to ask you a few questions, Father. I don’t even know why, really, only that it seemed a good place to start. His school … former school.’
‘Certainly, please come in.’
Father O’Dea’s office is all oak panelling, a large mahogany desk under a crucifix braced by paintings of St Francis Xavier and
St Ignatius Loyola; the mingled scents of floor wax, pipe
tobacco and incense. O’Keefe and Albert take chairs in front of the headmaster’s desk, feeling like truants on the brink of chastisement.
‘Tea, gentlemen? Or a drop of something stronger?’
Something stronger. O’Keefe would gladly die for a sup of the priest’s whiskey. He decides to abstain, and is about to tell the priest that they would take tea if it was going when Just Albert intervenes. ‘Nothing for us, Father. We need get down to business so we can find Nicholas.’
The man is now answering for the two of us, O’Keefe thinks, holding on to his anger in front of Father O’Dea. He will have it out with his ‘colleague’ when they leave. Until then he will direct the questioning, if they are to get anything useful to go on.
‘Father,’ he says, before the doorman can begin, ‘if you don’t mind my asking, do you remember Nicholas Dolan? He was expelled some time before the summer.’
‘I do remember him, of course.’
‘And can you tell me why Nicholas was actually asked to leave the college? By all accounts—well, by his mother’s account—he was a bright boy and a fine student.’
‘Oh, he was,’ the priest says. ‘He was a kind and clever lad. Always sticking up for the younger boys or the victims of bullies. He was a good boy who fell in with … with certain men both inside the school and out. Idealists, Seán. The kind of ideas that appeal to boys of a passionate nature.’
Just Albert shifts in his chair, and O’Keefe senses he has taken offence; that perhaps he feels the priest is implying that the boy was not supervised properly and, by implication, that streets of Monto were no place for a lad to be reared.
‘So he was expelled before the summer holidays then,’ O’Keefe prompts before Albert can give voice to any objections.
The headmaster takes time packing his pipe and lighting it. ‘Late June, yes. I can check the date. But surely the lad hasn’t been missing since then?’
‘No, he’s only been missing for the past month or so. And his mother knows of his involvement with the men you describe. The anti-Treatyites, the Irregulars. What I’m trying to get at is whether his dismissal might have led to his joining them. I mean …’ O’Keefe wonders where to go next. He thinks it may have been a worthless venture coming here. What can the priest tell him, really, about the boy’s whereabouts?
‘It was quite the reverse, Seán.’
O’Keefe frowns. ‘Pardon me, Father?’
‘His dismissal. His dismissal was a result of his being a member of the anti-Treaty faction, a follower of Mellowes and O’Connor, that lot. A week, two weeks before the shooting started at the Four Courts, Nicholas was dismissed for bringing a pistol to school.’
‘A what?’ Just Albert says, leaning forward. ‘I thought he was given the boot for … for how Missus Dolan makes a crust.’
Father O’Dea smiles and shakes his head. ‘Is that what he told you?’
Just Albert nods, averting his eyes, as if embarrassed.
‘I’m disappointed in the boy, but I can understand it,’ the priest says. ‘And is this the impression you were given as well, Seán?’
O’Keefe nods.
‘Would you think such of us here, Seán?’
‘No, Father, but I had no way of knowing. Things have changed in the country, Father. Things, people, are different.’
Father O’Dea puffs on his pipe. ‘I don’t think people are any different. They’re not, in fact. Good people are good people and most people try to be good and oftentimes fail, but they’re no different now. We’ve not changed much, I shouldn’t think. Times, however, are different. What people think of as good has taken a strange road altogether. No doubt Nicholas thought that what he was doing was good, in its way. For the good of the country. For a free and independent Ireland. You hear that often, these days, to justify just about anything you care to mention.’
‘I’ve heard it and seen it, Father,’ O’Keefe says, vaguely ashamed that he had believed Mrs Dolan’s version of events without question.
The priest continues: ‘Nicholas was dismissed because he pointed a loaded weapon at a master and was leading a good number of other boys into actions that were disruptive to the functioning of this school, at best, and dangerous at worst. His mother’s trade is of no concern to me.’ His voice softens now. ‘I was heartbroken to have to dismiss the boy, but I would have been negligent in my duties if I hadn’t.’
‘A loaded gun?’ Just Albert says. ‘Why? What in the name of Christ—begging your pardon, Father—was the lad doing with a loaded gun?’
‘And why did he point it at one of the masters?’ O’Keefe asks.
‘You have to remember that the Irregulars were holding the Four Courts at the time. They were in need of weaponry and ammunition and had to get it into the Four Courts in some way. Nicholas told me that the gun was a sample from a shipment held by men on the docks. Men who had been smuggling arms for the IRA since the Tan War. These men had given him the gun to bring to one of our masters here, to see if the republicans would care to buy the whole shipment. It was a sample of merchandise, so to speak.’
‘And was this the master he pointed it at?’ O’Keefe says.
‘No. The man he had brought it in for was absent that day, indeed, he never returned to the college, and he brought more than a few Xavier boys with him when he left to join his comrades in the Four Courts. No, it was another master who had railed against the anti-Treatyites as traitors to the nation. As simple as that. Nicholas had the gun with him and could not help himself. Young boys are zealous creatures, gentlemen, as you both know.’
‘And young boys make mistakes, Father,’ O’Keefe says.
‘They do. And I considered keeping him in school. I did.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’ Just Albert asks.
‘Because there were more than just Nicholas involved. The boys in the school, many of them, have … involved themselves politically. Boys are like that. And Nicholas was very influential. He was a leader of sorts. Even some of the older boys followed him. In the end, I asked himself and four others to go. I felt I had no choice in the matter. There were fistfights at break, in the hallways, over the national question. Class boycotts of teachers who supported the Treaty. Masters afraid to teach their classes for fear of saying the wrong thing and being threatened. It’s not finished by any means, but the more radical actions have ceased. I’ll say it again: it pained me to have to ask him to leave, of all the boys. But I felt it was for the safety of the other pupils, and indeed teachers here, that I had to do it. He sat in that very chair, Seán, and begged me not to. And then told me that he would do what he had done all over again, for the future of Ire
land. An independent republic. I had high hopes for the boy. I’ve no doubt he’ll go on to grand things, but this school cannot abide a boy who is a danger to it. If you want my opinion, Seán, the boy most likely joined O’Hanley and the other lads from the school.’
‘Felim O’Hanley?’
‘The very man. He was a fine master—one of our few lay teachers. An inspirational man when he wasn’t away fighting, and the boys loved him. Loved him and his ideas. If I had known the trouble he would bring to the school, I would never have hired him, but he’d been a great friend to Patrick Pearse, had taught with the man, and I thought he would be good for the school at the time. If only as a balance to the pro-Crown contingent on the staff.’
O’Keefe remembers that O’Dea had always been a republican of sorts—rare enough for a priest in an order that educated the sires of the establishment.
‘Jaysus,’ Just Albert says. ‘Sorry, Father, but jaysus, isn’t O’Hanley only the most wanted man in the whole of Dublin after trying to blow up all the bridges?’
‘He is.’
‘But how do we know then,’ O’Keefe says, ‘that Nicholas wasn’t lifted and interned after the attempt to blow the bridges into the city? Sure, weren’t half the lads involved caught and locked up?’
‘Or shot,’ Father O’Dea adds.
‘No, not that. He’s not been shot or we would have heard. Or locked up…’ There is worry in the doorman’s voice, the first notes of fear O’Keefe has heard from him.
O’Keefe gathers his thoughts. Albert stares at the painting of Loyola.
‘Is there any place you might suggest we look for the boy, Father?’ he says finally.
The priest is silent for a moment. ‘You might start with the man who gave him the gun.’
‘You know who gave it to him?’ Just Albert says.
‘I asked, and Nicholas told me. He was an open boy, naïve in some ways and worldly in others.’
‘He should have told me all this,’ the doorman says, ‘or Mrs Dolan. She would have forgiven him … anything, she would have. All of us would have. Will do … will forgive him.’
O’Keefe says, ‘The men who gave him the gun … they wouldn’t forgive him for telling you.’
‘No they wouldn’t, but they wouldn’t hear of it from me. And as far as I know, the men who needed it got the gun anyway.’
‘You mean he still had it when he left?’
‘I was hardly the one to take it from him. In the times that are in it, I wished no harm to come to the boy.’
‘You say some lad on the docks gave the gun to Nicky?’ Just Albert says. ‘Who was it then?’
‘A man by the name of Dominic Mahon.’
Just Albert sits back in his chair as if he’d been shoved. ‘Jaysus fuck,’ he says. ‘Domo Mahon.’ He does not ask the Father to forgive his language this time.
The priest turns to O’Keefe. ‘You’ve heard of him, Seán?’
O’Keefe nods. He has heard of the man and has heard of the family. Along with most of Dublin. ‘I can see how they might have had the guns, the Mahons. There’s not much of value that comes off a ship in this city that doesn’t pass through Mahon hands at some time or another.’
‘Sure, don’t they control the quays and every docker on them?’ Just Albert says. ‘What in God’s name was Nicky doing dealing with that mob, and me not knowing a thing about it?’ It is as if, O’Keefe thinks, he is blaming himself for the boy’s involvement with the Mahons.
The priest appears to sense this as well, and as if to humanise the Mahons says, ‘One of their boys attended here some years back. A bright boy.’
‘You’ll take anyone here, Father,’ Just Albert says.
Father O’Dea smiles and nods. ‘“Give us the boy at seven and we’ll give you back the man.” I wish Freddy Mahon had put his brains to better use, but there you are. You may tell him I said so if it doesn’t implicate the boy.’
‘So it’s a trip down the docks for us, then,’ O’Keefe says, rising from his chair. Albert stands with him.
‘Not exactly,’ Father O’Dea says.
‘How do you mean, Father?’
‘Dominic Mahon is interned in Gormanston Aerodrome, the last I heard. Himself and his many brothers and sons and one or two cousins I suspect.’
‘Why there and not Mountjoy or Kilmainham?’ O’Keefe says.
‘Because they have too much influence in the prisons in Dublin, I’d imagine, with the ordinary criminals and warders. And they are not up on any formal charges as such. Free State intelligence knows, however, that they have sold, will sell, what arms they can get their hands on to the highest bidder and have decided to remove them from the picture.’
‘Not unlike our former masters in the Crown would have done…’ O’Keefe says.
Father O’Dea smiles. ‘They’re fast learners in the art of government, the Free Staters.’
‘Where do you get all this … information, Father,’ Just Albert says, ‘if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘We’ve more than one old boy who served in the IRA who is now in the Free State Army. Some visit, from time to time.’
‘And old boys in the Irregulars as well, Father?’ O’Keefe asks.
‘Certainly. And then there are those like yourself and your friend Albert.’
‘How so?’
‘Serving the people themselves. People who have been harmed by the fighting of these past six years. People who have lost themselves and need to be found.’
Albert turns and opens the door. ‘I serve Mrs Dolan and her only. Mr O’Keefe can serve dinner for all I care, once we find the boy.’ He is ready to leave, a coiled tension in his muscled shoulders.
‘I don’t imagine a fella can just turn up at the gates of Gormanston and ask to visit whoever he likes,’ O’Keefe says.
‘Whomever,’ the priest says, rising and extending a hand to O’Keefe.
Again O’Keefe smiles. Memories of innocent times, when grammar mattered more than bullet calibre or proclamations of intent.
Just Albert is impatient, tapping his bowler hat against his thigh in the doorway.
‘No, I don’t imagine one can, but there’s a Xavier man, a commandant in the Free State Army—he was a senior warder in Mountjoy who helped the IRA from inside during the Tan War—who’s in charge out at the camp. Another old boy … of sorts. He’ll ensure entry for you there if I ask him.’
‘That’d be grand, Father. And thank you for your help today.’
‘I’ll give him a jingle, and if that fails, send a message, and tell him to expect the two of you, then?’ Father O’Dea says, guiding O’Keefe to the door.
Just Albert answers. ‘You do that, Father. The two of us. Until we find the boy, that’s how it goes.’
O’Keefe shoots Albert a dark look. ‘The sooner we find him the better.’
‘I’ll pray that you do, gentlemen. And I’ll pray for the boy. And yourselves.’
‘God helps the man who helps himself is how I see it, Father,’ Just Albert says, giving the priest’s hand a cursory grasp before turning and marching down the waxed parquet floor to the front door.
‘I’m sorry for that … for him, Father. I’ve been landed with him. The woman who’s employed me has insisted …’
‘Mrs Dolan is an astute woman, Seán. I dare say she knew what she was doing, lending you Albert’s services.’
O’Keefe is sceptical, but smiles all the same at his former teacher. ‘I’d manage better on my own, I think.’
‘Times have changed, Seán. You might find yourself more in need of the man than you’d imagine.’
‘Please God, I won’t.’ He returns his trilby to his head and shakes the old Jesuit’s hand.
On the footpath outside the school, the early evening sun has descended behind the buildings, casting the street
in shade. O’Keefe stops and pats his jacket for a cigarette. Finding he has none, he thinks to ask Ginny Dolan’s man for one of his cigars and then decides against it.
‘Right,’ Just Albert says, ‘we’ll pay your man a visit, so.’
O’Keefe is tired suddenly, his legs hollow, weak as if the day has chased him. He tries to remember when he had last eaten, and realises it was breakfast at his parents’ house. Until this morning he had been an invalid. His own fault, he thinks, but he is paying for it now. The scar on his face begins to spasm, a sign that he needs to regather his strength, requires rest and food.
‘Father O’Dea said he’d tell the fella to expect us tomorrow,’ he says.
‘We can make a start of it now.’
‘We? Make a start of what, Albert? For fuck sake … We …’ Exasperation melds with the tiredness O’Keefe feels, making him irritable and angry. This doorman is worse than some of the officers he had worked under in the RIC and the Army. Obstinate to the point of stupidity.
Puffing one of his thin cigars, Just Albert says, ‘Yeah, we. If the Padre’s man is not able, we could grease one of the guards and see the Mahons tonight.’
‘Right, and end up walking around a camp full of angry fucking rebels and young Free State Army eejits armed to the teeth in the watchtowers, and all so we can meet one of the dodgiest mobs that ever walked the quays of Dublin. In the dark, mind.’
‘You’re not afraid of the dark, Mr O’Keefe, are you?’
O’Keefe remembers Father O’Dea’s advice, but can’t think of a single way this man’s help might be worth the sheer frustration he embodies. He turns and begins walking towards Parnell Street and the tram stop at the monument. He does it before there is violence between them. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Just Albert. Ten a.m., I’ll collect you at Mrs Dolan’s shop. I’m for me tea and me bed.’
‘You’ll not find Nicholas from your bed.’
‘And I won’t find him at all unless I’m fit to do it. Tomorrow!’ he calls out over his shoulder as he turns the corner, leaving Ginny Dolan’s man behind.
13
Irregulars Page 9