England's Janissary

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, comforting him, caressing the line with her finger tips. ‘How did you get this?’ she asked.

  ‘I walked into a door,’ he said lamely but her eyes shining up at him in the moonlight told him she was unconvinced. She smiled nonetheless. ‘Have you ever seen a corpse?’ he asked suddenly, unsure why he asked.

  He saw her cock her head to one side and then nod. ‘I saw my grandma all laid out,’ she whispered. ‘When I was wee. She looked pale and like she was just asleep.’

  ‘You know, sometimes we’d find men huddled together like that, like waxworks, without a scratch on them, stone dead, all the same from shock or blast or even fright. Sometimes they looked like they were asleep.’ He paused to gather his thoughts. ‘Yes, old Tom Muldoon is dead. Shot through the head.’ He could still see the old man lying face down, trussed up and slaughtered like an animal. He’d seen plenty of dead men, too many, but somehow this felt different. It felt wrong and it sickened him deep inside.

  ‘They shot Constable O’Leary too.’ His tone was slow and measured as he spoke. ‘He’s lucky to be alive and I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t lose an arm or leg or both.’ He rubbed his face with his hands. ‘What sort of war is it when old men are taken out and shot in their own back yards? I’d really hoped that I would never see another shot man in my life,’ he added. ‘What the hell did Muldoon or Jimmy do to anyone, eh? That’s what I want to know. We caught one of them too. Little Shinner gobshite stood there bold as brass giving it all that “I’m a soldier of the republic” blarney, like that made gunning down two men in cold blood all right. At least Jim managed to shoot one of the bastards.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Moore, I really shouldn’t use language like that, there really is no excuse.’

  She took his hand and squeezing it gently, moving closer, it felt like ice against her skin and she was relieved when he didn’t pull it away. She held it tightly in her own, warming it against her lap. ‘It’s all right, Constable Flynn, I’ve heard worse. If you don’t mind me asking, why did you join the constabulary, Constable Flynn?’ she asked him quietly.

  ‘You know,’ he replied, after one of those brief pauses that felt like an age, ‘I’m not sure that I had anywhere else to go really. I came out of the army last year, came home, or so I thought. The problem is home isn’t all it used to be. I’m a city boy, Miss Moore, a Dubliner born and bred. Dublin was in a right mess when I got home. The GPO in ruins, Sackville Street too! Christ, it was worse than I’d expected, it was like being back in France, rubble everywhere and people pretending everything was normal. But it isn’t, is it? Not anymore.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Kathleen murmured quietly, as she snuggled closer.

  ‘I hate them for what they did to my town. It was beautiful, like an old friend – Grafton Street, College Green, Bachelor’s Walk, Sackville Street, Parnell Square, the lot. The haunts of a misspent youth. The ghosts of my past hang about on every street corner.’ Flynn went quiet, choking down the emotions that were unexpectedly welling up in him.

  ‘You know, when I was a lad I played soldiers with the others on my street but I never thought I’d ever end up a soldier. Why should I? It’s not what my family’s menfolk do. I had a cousin join the Volunteers but we all thought it was a bit of a joke really. The Boy Scouts, full of politics and popguns and a load of pipe dreams and nonsense.’

  ‘Our da wasn’t happy when Davey joined up. Said we were respectable shopkeepers not soldiers,’ she said quietly. The moonlight shone in her eyes.

  ‘I was a shipping clerk down in the docks before the war. I used to watch the ships come and go and listen to the sailors’ stories. I was fascinated by all those languages, the strange words, and I dreamt of travelling the world, going on adventures but always I knew I would come home. Home to Dublin’s fair city—’

  ‘Where the girls are so pretty,’ she interrupted, stealing a line from the old ballad ‘Molly Malone’ and Flynn chuckled.

  ‘You know, Miss Moore, you’d like Dublin, it’s a grand city. The second in the Empire, so they say. If you’re ever there, you should have tea at the Gresham.’

  Kathleen sighed. ‘You know, I’ve an aunt outside Dublin and I stayed with her once or twice, by the seaside with its fresh air and boats bobbing on the waves with their little blue flags on them. I love the sea. I used to stand on the pier and look at the beach. I never really took to the city, full of dirt and people and noise. Not like here.’

  Flynn smiled. ‘’Tis a grand place all the same. You just haven’t looked at it properly.’

  Kathleen shuffled up closer still. ‘Maybe you could show it me?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ he replied, suddenly feeling warm inside.

  ‘You’ve a lovely smile,’ she said and Flynn felt his cheeks flush. He was glad it was too dark for her to see. Kathleen shifted again. ‘You know I’ve never really left this place.’ She paused. ‘And our Davey’d never been away before the war. Thought it’d be an adventure. Off to see the world, but he never came back.’

  ‘Christ, we got an adventure all right!’ Flynn said, his voice brittle with bitterness. She was close enough for him to feel her warmth, the smell of her hair. ‘I joined up at the start, me and my pals. We were cocky so-and-sos but the Somme changed all that.’ He paused. ‘War isn’t a game, it’s … it’s …’ His voice trailed away. ‘It’s something I’d hoped I’d never see again, but ever since that bloody rising, it’s just not been the same. Bloody hero when I left and when I got home …’ He gestured around him.

  ‘Did you ever think of staying away?’ she asked him.

  ‘Sometimes, but why should I? This is as much my country as any flaming Fenian! Why should I stay out of my own home just because I couldn’t give a damn about their flaming republic! Anyway, where else would I go, where else?’

  ‘Was coming home really that bad?’ she asked.

  The memory was still vivid, like yesterday. He’d been so excited by the thought of getting his old job back. His old boss Mr Byrne was a decent enough sort and had even given him five shillings when he joined up, but looked worried when he came back. ‘You’re a good fella, Kevin,’ Mr Byrne had said with a weary sigh, ‘but things have changed since you left and there isn’t a position for you here anymore.’

  Things had changed! Too bloody right things had changed, Flynn thought, seething with fury as he stomped out of the shipping office. He passed a gaggle of young office boys furtively smoking on the steps and recognized one or two of them. One, a lad called John Riley, turned and spoke through a stream of smoke. ‘What about you, Mr Flynn? Back from the war, is it?’

  ‘I am that,’ he replied, ‘but that old bugger Byrne won’t give me my job back!’

  ‘Have you not heard?’ Riley continued. ‘It’s the Shinners. The old fella would have you back if it were up to him, but it ain’t, Mr Flynn, it truly ain’t.’

  Flynn stopped and turned to Riley. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s them Shinners. They told him; told everyone hereabouts.’

  ‘Told him what?’

  ‘That those who went to fight for the English are traitors to Ireland and that anyone who gives them a job is a traitor too. Some fellas came by and told Mr Byrne so. I heard them talking and this one fella tells Byrne that anyone who betrays Ireland best look out.’

  Now the memories were coming thick and fast. He looked at Kathleen and smiled. ‘The Shinners ordered a boycott of ex-soldiers. Dublin’s not like here. All those people, it’s easy for them to hide in the crowd and frighten poor folks from the shadows.’ If he closed his eyes he could still picture the graffiti as he ambled from the docks along Eden Quay towards the O’Connell Bridge and the town centre past the grey-stone buildings. ‘Up the republic!’ it declared, or ‘English go home’.

  Yeah, right up the effing republic, thought Flynn angrily and although he didn’t care much for politics it made him angry that anyone thought of him as less than Irish just because he w
asn’t a republican. ‘Half the lads in my mob had been home rulers before the war,’ he told Kathleen, ‘but the Fenians treated them like traitors just the same. Why is it that people in this bloody country think that it’s all right to murder people just because they disagree with you?’

  Kathleen frowned. ‘My da says that if you take the gun out of politics, you may as well take politics out of Ireland.’

  Flynn burst out laughing. ‘He’s a wise man is your da! If you ask me, I don’t really care how the country’s governed as long as we don’t keep killing each other. Every bloody rebellion seems the same, an excuse to pick on little people, the ones who can’t fight back, eejits playing the big man,’ he said bitterly. ‘There were men like that in the army. Give them a little power and it goes to their heads. If you don’t stand up to them they walk all over you. Gutless buggers.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t talk like this.’

  ‘It’s all right, I don’t mind,’ she said in a soft voice. He looked down into her eyes and his train of thought wandered again to more pleasant, less salubrious pastures. ‘You were saying?’ she said, squeezing his hand and laying it in her lap. ‘When you came home?’

  Flynn looked at the stars. ‘My father tried to help but he couldn’t get me a job.’ He didn’t want to tell her that he wasted his days hanging around street corners or drowning his woes in a glass of stout and whiskey. ‘I almost went back, you know, to the army. I used to stroll down to Royal Barracks and stare at its grey-stone walls. Sometimes I thought that I’d be safe there, sort of going home.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked, as she gently stroked his hand.

  ‘The recruiting posters make it look such fun: “Join the army and see the world.” What they don’t say is, go overseas and get shot at! Jesus, you can stay at home and do that these days and still get to sleep in your own bed! Why bother travelling halfway around the world to die, eh?’

  ‘Davey liked the army; he said so in his letters. He was always writing letters was our Davey,’ she said.

  ‘What’s not to like?’ Flynn said. ‘It feeds you, clothes you, looks after you, it even gives you friends to look out for you. It’s the making of some fellas.’

  ‘Did it make you?’ she asked.

  He didn’t know how to answer that one. Had it been the making of him? Was that all he was, an ex-squaddie? Is that why when he’d been demobbed all he’d done was hang around with other down-on-their-luck ex-Fusiliers clinging to each other like shipwrecked sailors trying not to drown? How could she understand what they had been through, he thought, how could anyone who hadn’t been there? He’d grown up in the trenches and he wondered if Kathleen would ever truly grasp the enormity of that – an adolescence of unspeakable violence.

  ‘Sure, I missed the fellowship of it all,’ he said. ‘Danger, hardship, grief, it pulls people together. It’s the killing I don’t miss.’ He went quiet. ‘I’d rather hoped that I’d be coming back to a better life. You’d have thought people would have had enough of killing these last few years. Sadly, sometimes I think some people fall in love with it.’

  ‘Did you?’ she asked. He didn’t reply. Somehow he couldn’t. ‘Why did you join the RIC?’ she asked again as he sat quietly mulling over the question, unable to answer. Then, as if some invisible floodgate had been opened, the memories came thick and fast. He’d been drinking in one of the few pubs that welcomed ex-soldiers when he’d noticed a stranger moving through the crowd talking quietly, a smile here, a pat on the back there. The man sidled up to Flynn as he was finishing his fourth glass of stout. ‘Can I fetch you another?’ the man asked in a comradely tone and gestured at the barman for two pints without waiting for a response. ‘Would you be the Kevin Flynn who won a medal at Ginchy?’ the man had asked in hushed, conspiratorial tones.

  Flynn plonked his empty glass down before peering at the stranger’s pock-marked face with renewed curiosity, still sober enough to be a little alarmed. How did he know who he was? He suspected that someone had told him. After all, the bar was full of ex-Dubs and it wouldn’t have taken long to find out who Flynn was but it still worried him. These were, after all, worrying times. ‘The army could do with men like you, Sergeant Flynn,’ the stranger continued, causing Flynn to laugh bitterly.

  ‘And which army would that be? Haven’t you noticed the war is over?’ Flynn slurred slightly.

  ‘Oh no, mister, the war has just begun to get the English bastards out of Ireland for good,’ the stranger said, eyes shining fanatically as he warmed to his theme, ‘and the army needs experienced soldiers like you, Sergeant Flynn.’

  Flynn looked at him with barely disguised contempt. ‘You know, I don’t have a flaming clue who you are. I don’t remember seeing you at Ginchy or anywhere else for that matter.’ He looked around the smoky bar as the murmur of conversation dropped away amongst the ex-Fusiliers. ‘You’re not one of us. What do you and your bloody army know about war? This isn’t a war, it’s boys waving guns and playing soldiers. If you had the slightest clue what war was like, you wouldn’t be so keen to fill the streets of your own country, my country with blood! Now do yourself a favour and piss off before I kick the shit out of you, you pathetic shite!

  ‘Where were you when I needed a job, eh? You people called me a traitor when I wanted my old job back, we all were.’ His words slurred as alcohol fuelled his anger and frustration welled up inside as he shoved the man towards the door. ‘But good enough for your army now, am I? That’s a joke. You think I’d fight for you when you people treat me … us,’ he added with a wave of his arm, ‘like something you’ve flaming trodden in?’

  Flynn felt one of his comrades touch his arm. ‘Leave him, Kev,’ he said and turning to the man added, ‘Get away whilst you can – you’re not wanted here.’

  The street was dark and as Flynn staggered home, his alcohol-befuddled mind didn’t notice the footsteps closing on him from the shadows. Nor did he get the chance to fight as his assailants put him on the ground, raining kicks as he curled into a tight ball, his mouth full of bitter, coppery blood. Then, as he lay bruised, bleeding, throbbing with pain, a familiar voice, close to his head said, ‘Kick the shite out of me, will you, soldier boy?’ and then another boot in the ribs and then he was alone. When he woke up the next morning, hungover and covered in bruises, he decided to join the Royal Irish Constabulary.

  In the thickening dark, Flynn turned to Kathleen. ‘Why did I join the police?’ He paused and smiled at her. ‘I guess I don’t like what has happened to my country. I fought for something better and I came home to this pile of …’ his words faded. ‘And besides, like I said, in the circumstances I’m not sure I had much choice. Maybe I just like the uniform!’

  Abruptly he stood up. ‘Well, young lady, I think it is time that you and I got back where we belong,’ he said as he tugged Kathleen up onto her feet. She felt light in his hands and she could feel his strength as he pulled her up close enough for her to look straight up into his pale grey eyes reflecting in the moonlight. Flynn could feel her breath, warm, playing on his cheek, sensed her face close to his. Something stirred as he sank into her eyes. It was the closest he had stood to anyone in years without trying to kill them. On impulse, he kissed her, pushing her mouth open with his tongue.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ he spluttered, as he pulled back from her, embarrassed.

  ‘No, it’s all right. I hoped that you’d do that!’ she said, smiling up at him as she cupped his face in her hands and on tiptoe kissed him back.

  ‘Well, Kathleen, let’s get you home before your da starts worrying where you are.’ He sighed as they finally fell apart and he led her by the hand towards the lights in the village below.

  CHAPTER 11

  Drumlish, County Longford

  SERGEANT WILLSON TORE open the dog-eared brown envelope that had arrived in the morning post before tugging out a sheet of crisp white constabulary-headed paper and read it quietly. ‘Well, lads, it looks like Jim won’t be coming back after a
ll. They managed to save his arm but he’s lost his leg below the knee. We’ve to send his things on. It says here that he will be heading over the water to Cardiff to stay with his sister. Any of you ever been to Cardiff?’

  ‘What? That’s in Wales! You must be bloody joking! At least he’ll be getting his pension so he should be all right, eh, even in Wales?’ O’Neill said from behind his desk.

  ‘At least Wales isn’t crawling with fellas waving guns all over the place. Mind you, he might get sick to death of all that close-harmony singing! Every time I came across bloody Taffs in the army they were always bloody singing!’ Flynn said.

  ‘I’d best pack his things,’ O’Neill said, rising from his seat.

  Flynn held up his hand. ‘No, I’ll do it. After all, I was with him when he copped it.’ O’Neill didn’t protest and Flynn wearily climbed the stairs. He knew that O’Leary had been too badly injured to resume his duties but it hadn’t seemed real somehow until it was there in black and white, as if paperwork made rumour and supposition true. It was a bit like when he used to fill in casualty returns; somehow it all seemed so final written down.

  ‘Now, I really do have to get by with just you two clowns,’ he heard Willson chuntering to O’Neill. ‘By Christ, they better be sending me some replacements soon.’ He’d heard it a thousand times before in the army, in the police yet short handed as they always seemed to be, they always managed somehow. War was like that, he thought as he began to go through O’Leary’s things.

  He didn’t have much and it didn’t take Flynn long to pack. He folded everything neatly into O’Leary’s kit box and it dawned on him that he too had very little to show for his brief time on the earth. When he had finished, he carried the laden box down to the duty room and placed it quietly in the corner to await the day when it would be sent across the water to Cardiff.