England's Janissary

by Peter Cottrell

  The dormitory seemed bigger somehow, the nights quieter without O’Leary’s snoring and farting, especially as O’Neill was usually on duty whenever Flynn was off, and it felt strange to have the room to himself. There was a time he would have relished the prospect but now he feared being alone in the dark, alone with his dreams, and even the ones about Kathleen didn’t quite keep his demons at bay.

  Flynn was finishing his lunch, one of Mrs Willson’s substantial stews, when the lorry arrived carrying their long-overdue reinforcements. One of the policemen who jumped out was tall and thin and in his late thirties. He nodded at Willson and it was obvious to Flynn that they were old acquaintances. The other, a dark, thick-set war veteran in his twenties, looked around, somewhat unimpressed with his new surroundings.

  ‘Boys, this here is my old friend, Constable Mick Reidy,’ Willson said, introducing the tall policeman to Flynn and O’Neill. ‘He’s an old hand, so it’ll be good to have a real policeman around for a change, not like you two eejits, eh? That is unless the good life in Longford hasn’t made you soft, eh, Mick? And you must be?’ Willson said, turning to the other new arrival.

  ‘Constable Mullan reporting for duty, Sergeant,’ the new arrival declared in a heavy County Tyrone accent.

  ‘God save us! Not another Ulsterman!’ Willson said, rolling his eyes in mock horror before tossing a sly wink at O’Neill. Mullan’s humourless features darkened momentarily and Flynn guessed that he was not one of those northerners blessed with the same dry wit as O’Neill.

  ‘So not all Ulstermen have a sense of humour after all,’ Flynn muttered, gently elbowing O’Neill in the ribs.

  Willson scarcely gave the men’s papers a glance and absentmindedly passed them straight to O’Neill. ‘You can get this sorted,’ he said to O’Neill, before turning and walking back into the barracks. O’Neill shrugged and popped the folded sheaf of papers into his tunic pocket.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Flynn said, ‘he’s not been the same since one of our lads was shot. It hit him really badly. I guess it’s getting us all a bit down. Anyway, my name is Kevin Flynn and this here is Gary O’Neill. He thinks he’s a bit of a comedian. We just play along with him. It spares his feelings. Anyway, c’mon, let’s give you a hand with your kit.’ The men exchanged perfunctory handshakes and then, between them, picked up the kit boxes.

  ‘So who were you with?’ Flynn asked, nodding at Mullan’s ribbons.

  ‘Ninth Skins,’ he replied, meaning the ninth battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, part of the notoriously or famous, depending on your viewpoint, Irish Unionist 36th Ulster Division.

  ‘Irish Guards me,’ O’Neill butted in and, nodding towards Flynn, added, ‘Ninth Dubs him!’

  Mullan seemed comforted by O’Neill’s thick Ulster brogue. ‘The Micks, eh,’ Mullan said, referring to the Irish Guards’ nickname. ‘Now there’s a fine bunch of lads. Were you at the Somme?’ he asked O’Neill.

  ‘That I was and so was Kevin here. He got that Military Medal at Ginchy,’ O’Neill replied softly, nodding at Flynn’s medal ribbons.

  ‘Aye, you lads done well at Ginchy, not bad for a scurrilous bunch of home rulers,’ Mullan said without malice, ‘but Thiepval, now that was a real ruck.’ Flynn ignored the obvious dig at the politics of his old unit.

  Reidy rolled his eyes. ‘Will you lot give all this old soldier nonsense a rest and get this lot inside before it starts tipping down!’ The others laughed and they lugged the kit boxes inside.

  Now there were four constables in Drumlish life was a little easier but the barracks seemed suddenly overcrowded, especially at night, and when the steel shutters were closed up, the atmosphere became oppressive, claustrophobic even. Ominously, it reminded Flynn of being cooped up in a dug-out, awaiting an enemy bombardment.

  ‘What did you do before the war?’ Flynn asked Mullan one evening when they were out on the beat.

  ‘Belfast docks,’ he replied tersely, giving little away, and Flynn noticed that it was hard to strike up conversation with the taciturn man. The docks were a hotbed of sectarian bigotry dominated by working-class Unionists and Flynn had an uncomfortable feeling that Mullan disliked being stuck in a rural backwater full of taigs.

  Unlike O’Neill, it was obvious that the unsociable Mullan was deliberately keeping himself apart from the others and, after a while, it became apparent that even his fellow Ulsterman found it hard to get on with him. One day, Flynn had been cleaning the weapons in the armoury when he overheard the two Ulstermen talking in the back yard.

  ‘Yer know, O’Neill, I’d hoped they’d’ve sent me to a decent barracks, somewhere up north after Phoenix Park. Didn’t I put in for Belfast but they sent me to here. Tell me, don’t you miss being up north amongst decent folk, your own kind? How do you do with all these taigs hereabouts and the sergeant himself a taig too! How do you do it?’

  ‘Listen here, Mullan,’ O’Neill snapped irritably, ‘I’d keep my views to myself if I were you. This isn’t some Orange Lodge!’ Flynn had rarely heard such venom in the usually chirpy Ulsterman’s tone. ‘Hereabouts they’re mostly taigs, as you so bloody charmingly put it, but they’re decent folk. So they’re mostly Catholics, so what? They’re Irish like you and me, just the same. This isn’t Belfast and don’t we have enough problems without some eejit stirring up any more?’

  ‘Are you calling me an eejit, big fellah?’ Mullan bristled and Flynn heard O’Neill just laugh as he walked away, then the back gate slammed and Flynn could hear Mullan muttering menacingly to himself. ‘The sooner I get myself back to Belfast the better!’

  ‘You and Mullan don’t seem to have hit it off?’ Flynn said to O’Neill when he saw him next.

  ‘You should take yourself up north,’ O’Neill replied. ‘You’d see why I left. Belfast is full of Mullans, wee men with wee minds and big prejudices. Tell me, Kevin, why do we spend so much time hating each other when we could be building one of the finest countries in the world?’

  Flynn shook his head. ‘Ah, that would be politics, Gary, and you should know by now, that’s not my strong point!’

  O’Neill laughed and shaking his head strolled over towards the potbellied stove in the duty room. ‘Tea?’ he asked, holding up the pot.

  Through the open door to the sergeant’s private quarters, the two policemen could hear Willson and his wife arguing much as McLain and his wife had. ‘I’m telling you, Will, it’s unbearable. Half the shops won’t serve me and the other half would rather I’d go away,’ Joy Willson lamented.

  ‘It’s this blasted boycott, darling, and I can’t help it if the Fenians’ve put the fear of God into folk hereabouts. I’ll have a word with Father Keville after Mass and see if he can help,’ Willson said earnestly, trying to placate his wife.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘And what good will that do? I’ve already spoken to the man and he just said that we’re not from this parish, so he can’t help it if people won’t be civil to me!’

  ‘And what am I to do, darling?’ he asked her. ‘Arrest them? You know that half the folk round here are only doing it because they’re afraid of the Shinners.’

  Even buying supplies for the barracks had become a bit of a pantomime with one of his constables ‘requisitioning’ supplies in the king’s name and leaving the money on the counter or surreptitiously collecting them from a back door after dark. It depressed Willson that life in Drumlish was increasingly far from normal but it depressed his wife even more.

  ‘What am I to do? Is that all you have to say for yourself? What am I to do? Do you want to end up like poor Tom Campion and leave the force in a hearse or something?’ Joy Willson said bitterly, referring to the barracks sergeant over in Granard who had managed to accidentally shoot himself whilst pumping up the tyres of his bicycle.

  ‘Ach, that was an accident and poor Tom was never any good with a gun,’ Willson replied.

  ‘And you are?’ she threw back at him. Willson sighed. She was right. She knew how much he hated guns and it st
ill amazed him that he had not managed to do himself a mischief with his own. ‘You could always resign. You’d get a good pension,’ Joy persisted, brandishing a tatty leaflet under his nose.

  ‘And what do you have there?’ he asked, taking the piece of paper. It was a leaflet from the ‘Resigned and Dismissed Members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police Association’ headed by an ex-RIC sergeant called Tom McElligott who’d been forced to resign because of his overtly republican sympathies.

  ‘Jesus, Joy darling, I wouldn’t wipe my arse with anything that bugger McElligott’s had a hand in – it’s just Fenian lies. If I jack this in, what do you think would happen to us, eh? The Shinners’d make sure no one gave me a job and we’d end up living on the parish. Is that what you want?’

  Joy Willson looked up at him, concern written across her face. ‘Well, at least you’d not be shot by the Fenians or yourself!’

  Willson shook his head. ‘No, darling, the country’s no place for an ex-policeman. We just have to sit tight until this madness passes, like it always does, and things go back to normal.’

  ‘Could you not transfer to another force?’ she asked him.

  Willson paused, momentarily in thought. ‘I’ve been with the constabulary these twenty-five years. Where else could we go, eh?’ He had to admit a transfer had crossed his mind a few times in the last few months.

  ‘My cousin Andy transferred to the Liverpool City Police before the war; he’s a sergeant now. Perhaps I could write to him and find out who you speak to? Maybe we could go to one of the colonies even. I’ve seen recruiting ads in your Police Gazette before now. You’re an experienced sergeant; sure they’d love to take you? And besides, anywhere has got to be better than here, love?’ Mrs Willson pleaded.

  ‘I’ll think about it, Joy, darling,’ Willson said quietly, ‘but I can’t promise anything.’ Joy Willson looked reassured and smiled at her husband. She was terrified that one day one of the others would walk into her little home and tell her that her Will had been shot by the IRA.

  As Willson entered the duty room he thought that Flynn and O’Neill looked suspiciously busy for a change, although he couldn’t put his finger on what they were up to. ‘So,’ he said, with a sharp intake of breath, waving the leaflet at the two men, ‘which one of you comedians brought this masterpiece of literature into my barracks?’

  O’Neill smirked, snatching the paper from the sergeant’s hand. ‘That’ll be me, Sarge. I saw it when I was out on my rounds the other day and besides, that’s good paper, that is. Anyways,’ he quipped, as he unslung his braces and headed towards the lavatory, ‘I thought that I could find a use for it, Sarge, and after all it looks so absorbent!’

  Willson’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘Well, at last you’ve said something sensible for a change!’ The three men laughed but laughs were getting fewer as the IRA’s campaign intensified, even in a sleepy backwater like County Longford.

  ‘Have you seen the latest Hue and Cry, Sergeant?’ Flynn asked, as he slid the police newspaper over the desk to Willson. ‘Attacks are on the up. It says that over sixty of our lads have been killed since this terrible business began last year.’

  Willson nodded gravely. ‘I don’t know what the rebels are trying to prove by it but without the constabulary this country would be a right mess.’ Flynn thanked God that the worst of it was down in the south-west and that so far things had been relatively quiet since Tom Muldoon’s shooting. If all they had to put up with was name calling, graffiti and people letting his bike tyres down, he thought that he could cope.

  ‘Did you manage to visit Jim in hospital?’ Willson asked.

  Flynn nodded. ‘He’s not taken it well and who can blame him? His leg’s gone and he’s lost part of the use of his hand. Christ knows what he’ll do when they discharge him.’

  ‘He’ll have his pension,’ Willson added.

  ‘I think he’d rather have his leg back!’ Flynn retorted.

  ‘Aye, you’re probably not wrong there,’ Willson said wearily. ‘It’s a bad business.’

  ‘Did you hear the Shinners raided the Upper Military Barracks in Longford, the cheeky bastards?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘Aye and the police barracks at Ballymahon. Buggers got away with a handful of guns and some bullets too. Lord help us, they’ll be giving them back to us soon enough!’ Willson added grimly. ‘Maybe the army and these auxiliary fellas will put the wind up them. They’ve been joyriding round here more and more recently. You know, Flynn, this flaming country always seems to be lurching from one bloody crisis to another. I’m tired of it, so bloody tired.’ Flynn could not remember seeing Willson look so old.

  ‘What do you make of that business down in Listowel?’ Flynn asked. Willson and the sergeant’s face darkened.

  ‘Bloody outrageous!’ he snorted. ‘What business have a couple of constables to ignore a direct order from a county inspector? That gobshite Mee was always a trouble-making weasel and Inspector O’Shea is a good man!’ Willson was suddenly animated in his indignation. ‘If you ask me the Shinners put Mee up to it. How else would an “eye-witness” account of his so-called mutiny appear in that Fenian rag, the Irish Bulletin, the next day, eh?’

  ‘Rumour has it their divisional commissioner ordered them to shoot IRA suspects on sight,’ Flynn said. ‘Munster’s a bad place these days, worse if the rumours are true.’

  Willson snorted. ‘Nonsense, just Fenian nonsense. Colonel Smyth was a good man and didn’t deserve to be gunned down because of that oily git Mee’s evil lies!’ Willson was referring to the one-armed constabulary divisional commissioner for Munster, Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Smyth, an ex-Royal Engineer and Banbridge Ulsterman who was gunned down in the smoking room of the Cork Country Club on the strength of ex-constable Jeremiah Mee’s account of the so-called ‘Listowel Mutiny’.

  ‘Well, sure, wasn’t yer man a fool for going to an unguarded place like a country club in a place like Cork!’ O’Neill said, as he banged through the door from the yard, making Flynn and Willson jump. ‘You wouldn’t get me wandering about on my own like that if I knew the Shinners were after me. Would you, Kevin?’

  Willson gave O’Neill a cheeky look and Flynn reddened slightly, looking away, anxious to avoid being drawn into that conversation. ‘I think I’ll take a turn around the town,’ Flynn said hurriedly as he buckled on his pistol belt and headed for the door.

  Behind him he heard O’Neill’s mocking voice call out: ‘If you find yourself up on St Mary’s Street say hello to Miss Moore for me, won’t you now?’ O’Neill and Willson both broke into raucous laughter.

  ‘Sod off!’ Flynn muttered as he banged the door behind him but they were right and Flynn knew that he would find himself on St Mary’s Street and that he would probably bump into Kathleen.

  Ever since that evening on Cairn Hill he had found himself thinking about her more and more and he knew that he would be disappointed if he didn’t bump into her. It was a game they played in public. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Moore,’ he’d say and she’d reply, ‘Good afternoon, Constable Flynn,’ with mock formality.

  ‘You know the Fenians won’t be happy about you being seen with a peeler,’ he’d said but she’d dismissed it.

  ‘What do I care what the Fenians think?’

  Everyone in the village knew that there was something going on between the two; that was the difference between Dublin and Drumlish. It was difficult to keep secrets in Drumlish, even from the police.

  ‘Were you at Gallipoli?’ Mr Moore had asked him when he first sat in the Moores’ kitchen drinking a cup of tea. ‘Do you know anyone who was?’ he’d persisted. Flynn guessed that they were desperate to find out more of what had happened to their son.

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ Flynn had said. He liked the Moores, they were honest folk, but he sometimes wondered if they approved of him being seen with their daughter. ‘Do you mind?’ he’d asked Mr Moore when they were alone.

  ‘Mind what?’ Dick Moore
replied.

  ‘Me walking out with your Kathleen?’

  Moore had looked at him for a moment. ‘Not at all. You remind me of my Davey, you know,’ he said and that was the end of it. Kathleen had been fifteen when her brother disappeared and she constantly quizzed Flynn about the war. It was obvious that her brother’s loss had left a big hole in her life and what made it worse was that his body had never been found, he was still missing.

  ‘Do you know that except for going to Mass on Sundays I hardly speak to anyone else in the village, other than you and your folks,’ he’d declared one afternoon as he chatted to Kathleen in her backyard.

  ‘And do you mind that?’ she’d asked, looking up at him with a smile.

  ‘Not at all, it doesn’t really bother me and it bothers me that it doesn’t, if you get my drift?’ Kathleen looked at him blankly. She didn’t. ‘Some folk are scared to be seen with the likes of me but you and your family, you’ve made me welcome and I like that.’ He smiled.

  She picked up his hand and held it on her lap. ‘Then they’re fools. You’re a lovely man, Kevin Flynn, a lovely man,’ she said, as she leant over and kissed his cheek.

  No, I’m not, he’d thought. You wouldn’t think that if you knew.

  He was back in no man’s land, the full moon bathing everything in a soulless silver light, his heart pounding in his chest. He pressed himself into the mud as stray bullets zipped low overhead. Quietly, he slipped into the trench, his boots thudding softly on the muddy fire step. The haft of the spade was hard in his hands and he tightened his grip, holding its razored blade before him as he slipped around the traverse. In the dark, a figure loomed from the shadows and he slashed at it with all his strength, feeling the shock shudder through his arms as the blade sank into flesh. It was so clear in his mind, like yesterday.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Kathleen had asked, and he realized that he had been squeezing her soft hand like a vice.