Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Billy stayed in the waggon, evidently waiting for it to be uncoupled and shunted to the stockyard or loading ramp. He stood staring at the two men approaching, the leader of whom was evidently unaware of the one behind. He nodded to Eddy as he came up, but got no such amiable greeting in reply. In the official tone, Eddy snapped, ‘I want a word with you, Brew.’

  Billy looked past Eddy at Jeremy. As Eddy swung round, Jeremy said harshly, ‘And I want a word with you, too, McCusky.’

  Eddy looked confused: ‘Oh . . . hello . . . didn’t see you . . .’

  ‘You’ve been at great pains not to see me since you’ve been here. What’s the idea . . . you got a guilty conscience?’

  Eddy’s hat came down another inch, and the official snap back into his voice: ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Have a conscience? I thought people were born with ’em. Looks like I was wrong.’

  ‘Well, what d’you want?’

  ‘Just to tell you that in my opinion you’re a bloody murderer.’

  Eddy started, went red, cried, ‘Hey . . . go easy!’

  In the same level menacing tone Jeremy said, ‘That’s all I have to say . . . to you, at any rate. I’ll have plenty to say elsewhere.’

  Paled now, and rather breathless, Eddy said, ‘You better be careful what you say. Remember there’s a law . . .’

  Jeremy, climbing up into the waggon by the brake-lever, cut in: ‘Only one law? I thought there were three . . . one for the rich, one for the poor, and the crookedest of all for the Aborigines.’

  Eddy turned again to Billy. ‘I said I want a word with you, Billy . . . if you don’t mind getting down.’

  Billy looked at Jeremy, who shook his head. Then he looked at Eddy and said, ‘You come up here and say your word, mate . . . and you can get donkey-walloped the same time. Me colt here’s pretty fresh.’ It sounded like the Billy of old.

  Eddy turned away, saying, ‘I’ll be seeing you later, then . . . maybe at the Police Station.’

  Billy yelled after him, ‘I’ll bring me colt along . . . so he can wallop the lot o’ you!’

  But Billy’s wide grin collapsed on the instant as he turned to Jeremy. Looking utterly miserable he muttered, ‘Terrible business, that boy, Jerry . . . all my fault, too.’

  ‘We’re all saying that, man . . . except the one bastard it fits . . . that one!’ Jeremy tossed his head towards the retreating strutting figure of McCusky.

  ‘How’d it happen?’ asked Billy. ‘All I’ve heard is from what the phone gossips ’a’ been maggin’. You got my letter, o’ course . . .’

  ‘Wait. Here’s Oz Burrows coming. You’ll come and camp with me at Tom Toohey’s, eh?’

  The train did not go back to Town as usual next morning, but thanks to the power in the land of the downtrodden Irish in general and of that Greatest Irishman of ’em All, Finnucane, in particular, was delayed for a day. Tonight was to be the Night of Nights; as some called it, Irish Hogmanay, and others Maginty’s Gatherin’. As Jeremy Delacy was still about the township that day, the third of his stay this time, when usually he stayed only a few hours, it was natural the assumption should be made that he was staying for the shenanigans, as voiced by Shamus himself, when late in the morning the man appeared in the front bar of the Hotel with Billy Brew. Although Jeremy avoided actual committal, he was as amiable almost as Shamus himself, asking him to have a drink with them, adding: ‘What about the gentlemen across the way?’ He nodded to the corner where McCusky was having what looked like an official conference with Sergeant Cahoon and Constables Gobally and Kinelly, over beer. McCusky, who had been holding forth, faltered in his magging when he saw the newcomers and half-turned away. His mates looked at Jeremy and Billy under lowered brows. The suggestion was just what the blarney-brimming Shamus wanted. Quite joyfully he communicated the invitation. The trio looked suspicious to begin with, but relaxed to Jeremy’s nod and grin, doubtless thinking he was liable to compromise on grand occasions as they were on any that suited them. Jeremy even gave the toast, the old Sinn Fein one: Up the Republic!

  Then Shamus himself did the honours — then Eddy. Then Jeremy produced the copy of Australia Free he had rolled up in his back pocket, and spread it on the counter. The bright jacket was instantly arresting. Finnucane took a look at it, saying, ‘And what’s t’is? Very attractive from the outside, I must say.’ Jeremy explained that it was a new political paper strongly advocating Australian interests first. ‘And a goot thing too!’ cried Shamus.

  The trio in the corner were watching with interest. Jeremy held the thing up. Eddy commented, ‘Very attractive, yes . . . good title, too. Heard something about it. Comms up against it, I think. Never seen it before, though.’

  Jeremy, looking a little red and sounding a little breathless, began to move round to the group, saying, ‘Perhaps you’d like to have a look at it. You should find it interesting.’ They looked a bit suspicious again as he approached them, but made way for him as he breasted the counter to lay the bright thing down, and crowded round to look.

  ‘The good old Southern Cross,’ commented Eddy. ‘Looks good without the Union Jack stuck in the corner, eh? I’ve always said that without that Union Jack, our flag would be the most beautiful in the world.’

  Jeremy looked at him. ‘You’ve always said that?’

  Eddy reddened, but gave a crooked grin, ‘Well . . . yes, I think I did get it from you, Jerry . . . but I been sayin’ it ever since.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jeremy. ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’ He looked from one policeman to the other. They were still wary. Then, as they looked back at the paper as it lay, he opened it, at that article of Alfie’s, with its headlines running over two pages. As the three pairs of eyes popped, he said, ‘I’ll leave it with you. You might find other things to interest you in it, too. For instance, there’s a review of Hitler’s famous book, Mein Kampf, which discusses the matter of the superiority of the white race . . . Nordic Race, to be more precise . . . not against it, no! They’re all for Uncle Adolf. Strange how this sort of thing got into it. But maybe they see it as a thing to whip the Nation’s conscience with . . . that part of it that’s got one . . . eh, Eddy? See you later.’ He walked out by the side door.

  Billy Brew came leaping out to meet him by the front door; and as they set off up the road, heading back towards Toohey’s, he chuckled, ‘Beautiful, beautiful . . . hit the bastards fair in the solar plexis! You’re a genius, Jerry . . . the way you nutted it out. We’d ’a’ never got nowhere just roarin’ at ’em, like I would ’a’. But the way you done it lad . . . why, you just reared up like a thoroughbred and pissed all over ’em . . . hahahahahaaaaaaa!’

  Angus McDodds, in the doorway of his shop, leered at them as they passed him, saying in answer to their nods of greeting, ‘What hae ye go’ to gaggle at, Billy Brew, at the end of a year of wurrukin’ to feed a thoosand silly asses and get yesel’ the DT’s?’

  Billy flung back at him: ‘We was tickled at what we ’eard up the pub, ’bout a silly old bugger wurruks all year to get money to stuff his beddin’ with.’

  Jeremy said to Billy, ‘It was just sheer luck, getting that paper, and catching them together. I’d like to hit the lot of ’em tonight, though . . . on the Irish business.’

  Billy cried, ‘I’m with yo’ man, I’m with yo’. Jes you nut it out . . . and I’m there to sink ’em, the bigoted bastards!’

  ‘I think I can see a way. While we were talking to Finnucane there about the new President they’ll have . . . this Douglas Hyde, when everybody’d thought it would be DeValera himself . . . I remember reading something about Hyde in a digest thing I get . . . when it was first mooted, the Republic thing, in June or July. I always pass my reading matter on to Tom Toohey. If only he’s still got it! I didn’t take much notice of it at the time . . . wasn’t interested . . . but if what I think I read’s right, by golly we can sink ’em man, so that they’ll go down for the third time and never come up!’ Jeremy sighed, addi
ng: ‘Not a very nice metaphor, is it, when we’ve got the drowned boy on our minds.’

  Billy also sighed. ‘Speakin’ of metaphors. That’s one of the words he learnt, like I told you, “Metaphorically speakin’,” I says to him a couple o’ times: and he asks . . . “What’s Metaphorically, Billy?” And I says: “Get the old Webster out;” and he does, and pores over it for hours, till he knows every Meta in the bloomin’ thing, from Metabasis to Metazoic . . . Aw, Jesus, Jeremy!’ Old Billy was near snivelling.

  Jeremy and Billy and Tom Toohey, along with others not included in the Gaelic revels promised for this night, looked in on the strongholds of the two rival clans, the pub and the store, somewhat late, knowing that the revellers had been saving themselves so as to be at their best at the witching hour. Both store and hotel had been closed for the afternoon, while their menfolk slept and their women sweated in the kitchens over the gustatory specialities without which celebration would be no more complete than Communion without the Eucharist. The excluded snoopers sniffed the strange odours of haggis and spiced boar’s head.

  It was about nine before anything started. Then a fiddle and a concertina were heard sleepily waking up in Finnucane’s, and at McDodds’s the squealing and groaning of bagpipes as old Angus blew out of his ancient set a year’s work by mason-wasps and carpenter-bees and cockroaches. Round about ten the ancient ceremonial began. Mick Curry, Finnucane’s son-in-law of Charlotte Springs, who was something of a fiddler, played the Boar’s Head in from the kitchen, borne on a great decorated baking dish by Shamus himself and itself highly decorated with icing in the three new national colours — wit’ a lolly shamrock in its tusky mouth and the new Tricolour flying from a hatpin in its head — to the laden table in the dining-room. ’Twas the way it was done in Ould Oireland on the grand occasions in the Ould Days: Far, far beyant the days o’ King Boroihme,’ as Finnucane explained to those Lesser Ones Without the Law peeping from the passage. ‘And shame-on-us if we can’t do the loike av it ourselves on t’is grandest of arl occasions!’ Along at the store there was the Pipin’ o’ the Haggis, an annual event these many years and hence not of anything like so much interest to outsiders as the other turn-out. But Jeremy and Billy and Tom were there, looking in through the back door of the room at the rear that served as kitchen and general living-room; while the McDodd of the McDoddses, wearing a kilt for the occasion, but otherwise his inevitable white cotton shirt and sandshoes, and tootling what could have been any Scottish piece on his bagpipes, was marching round and round the much less lavish table, at the head of about a dozen of his clan, among them Oz Burrows, with Maceachrin, Chief Linesman of the OTL bringing up in the rear with the ancient pièce de résistance steaming in its offal bag, a big black dog at his heels, slavering over the rank smell — all this with a wide-shaded acetylene lamp flaring whitely overhead.

  As they retreated, Jeremy said to the others, ‘They’re all the same, the bastards. They’ve never belonged here . . . and they’ve never let us who do belong, belong properly, dragging us along with their moth-eaten traditions. If only we could find a way to bust up this Jock show along with the Micks.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah!’ said Billy eagerly. ‘How can we do it?’

  ‘Something to do with bigotry. That’s what they are first and last . . . bigots.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah . . . let’s nut it out.’

  They got what they wanted as they strolled up to the pub again. Above the din that had risen considerably with the end of the gobbling and real guzzling of Tullamore Dew — concertina and fiddle and piano play and voices beefing The Irish Exile: ‘There came to the beach, a poor exile of Ee-er-rin, the dew from his eyes, pour-hored down-how-how-ho-hown his chee-heeks . . . oh, Erin, my country, oh Erin, ghobrah’. They heard someone shouting, in what must have been a political group on the side, ‘And now what we got ’o do’s kick them yeller-bellied Presbyterian bastards out o’ North. We’ll never be a nation till that’s done.’ A chorus of Hear, Hear! Jeremy nudged Billy and winked.

  It needed only some twenty minutes to midnight when Jeremy and Billy, Tom squibbing this bit, walked boldly into the Hotel dining-room, now cleared of its central furniture and being used for an Irish jig, the vigour of which in sound and action was like to bring the old place down. But it quickly stopped at their appearance, for the reason that the MC, McCusky, had seen them at once and stopped his calling. He had no hat to shove over his eyes, but made the movement as if to do so, as, tight mouthed, for all the swaying of his stance, he stared at them. Old Shamus came into it quickly, striding up as if to bar the way to what he was pretty certain must be Throuble. Nevertheless, it was politely, if also with a rumble of threat, that he asked, ‘Ah . . . and what moight you gintlemin be wantin’?’

  Jeremy said, ‘We thought we’d just drop in and congratulate you all.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy.

  ‘Well, thin, if ’tis meant in arl sincerity and goodwill, we thank ye for it . . . although to my moind ye a little late in the day.’

  ‘Midnight’s the very time for it, isn’t it?’ asked Jeremy.

  Silence and suspicious eyes, even if they were mostly bleary with booze. Cahoon, somewhat drunk, was muttering, but being held tightly by Sister Aggie.

  Jeremy cleared his throat: ‘What struck us as reason for congratulation, apart from the fact that at last you’ve got nationality, after living in Australia so long without it . . .’

  Finnucane raised the large red hand. ‘I said if you come here in all sincerity and goodwill, which that kind o’ talk don’t make it sound to me . . .’

  ‘Wait,’ said Jeremy. ‘What I really want to congratulate you on is your great religious tolerance . . .’

  ‘We don’t want religion talked here . . .’

  ‘I said religious tolerance. I’ve just been reading about the new Republic of Eire. The new Constitution declares it to be a Sovereign, Independent, Democratic, Catholic State, with a National Flag . . .’

  Mick Boland chimed in: ‘Bein’ a tri-colour, of green and white and orange, without anny indication o’ the Union Jack whatsomever . . .’

  ‘That’s right . . . the very words. And the President is elected for a term of seven years, and is to be called Uachtaran na h Eireann, and the man chosen is Professor Douglas Hyde . . .’

  Now Mick Curry, who had been a schoolteacher home in Ireland before entering bondage as barman to Finnucane, came into it: ‘A famous Gaelic scholard . . . the most famous in the wurruld . . . and’s goin’ to declare the use of the good Oirish tongue the only wan to be lawfully used in Oireland . . .’

  ‘I know . . . and he’s also a Protestant . . . did you know that?’

  Stunned silence, blinking and twisting of heads as if ears hadn’t heard aright.

  After a moment Finnucane asked, ‘What’s this, what’s this . . . some idea of a joke?’

  ‘No,’ said Jeremy, ‘As I said . . . cause for congratulation . . . that a country that declares itself a Catholic State puts up a non-Catholic as its first President. I must admit I was astonished at such tolerance . . .’

  Boland yelled, ‘It’s a loy!’

  The yell was taken up all round: ‘A loy . . . a bloody loy!’

  Again Jeremy took from his back pocket a magazine, handed it to Finnucane, who ignored it, but with bushy brows shooting up, roared, ‘Out of my house, you renegades, you trouble makers!’

  Jeremy dropped the paper at his feet. Boland yelled, ‘Down wit’ the bastards . . . taich ’em a lesson for comin’ here with their bloody loys!’

  The voices rose up: ‘Hear, hear . . . chuck ’em out!’

  There was a rush for them, sweeping the protesting Finnucane aside. Dinny Cahoon’s long legs put him in the lead. Jeremy and Billy leapt for the door, but Jeremy to linger there long enough to hit Dinny in the solar plexus and lay him out for the others to fall over. By the din they left behind them, the yells and thuds and thumps, the celebrants were taking one another for the enemy. Then there was utter
chaos, when Jeremy, running out the back way, threw the main switch in the little power-house.

  ‘So far so good,’ said Jeremy. ‘Although I’d liked to have got in that bit about how the invaded and persecuted Irish never gave a thought to their own crime of invading this country and persecuting its simple inhabitants. Still, let’s see what we can do with the other alien buggers.’

  They went round to the back of McDodds’s store again. The company here was also doing a jig, to Angus’s boozy wheezing piping, and making so much noise, as they should be with all the empty whisky bottles on the table, that the pair came right into the back doorway without being seen, till the dog, cavorting with the rest, probably scented them, and raised the alarm. Angus’s piping died with the usual death-cry. He blinked at the newcomers. Jeremy spoke first, ‘No good wishing you a Happy Hogmanay, seeing you gave it away to the Irish.’

  Maceachrin hiccuped: ‘We ha’e gi’n naething awee tae the — hic — Irish, mon!’

  Dodds advanced belligerently: ‘Wha’ would ye two trooble meekers be wantin’?’

  ‘Just to take a look at the Scots holed up in fear of the Irish.’

  A couple of Scottish road-workers barged in: ‘Wha’s this afeared the Irish?’

  ‘You let ’em have your Hogmanay . . . and now they’re talking of driving all Presbyterians out of Northern Ireland.’

  ‘The Deil ye say!’

  ‘If you don’t believe me, go up and ask ’em for yourselves. It’s just midnight. Go and break your bottles on their doorstep the way you always did . . . and they’ll be out and chuck you in the river . . . or are you too scared?’