by Paul Reid
The sergeant studied him a moment. He lowered his voice. “We had reports of illegal weapons in transit on Adelaide Road. This box matches the description of one of the vehicles involved.”
Adam cast his eyes over the sorry-looking cart and chortled. “This worm-ridden thing? You hardly think so, Sergeant. Look at that poor fellow, he hasn’t cut his toenails in about six months.”
“So?”
“So he doesn’t quite look the fit of a gunrunner, does he?”
“He looks like crafty IRA scum, that’s what he looks like. Hey!” The sergeant jerked his revolver at the boy. “Stop edging away, you swine, and start talking. I should hand you over to the peelers and let them knock the sauce out of you.”
“I haven’t done nothing.” There was desperation in the youngster’s eyes as he looked at Adam. “Please, can I not just be on my way?” The donkey snorted nervously in the commotion and the boy went to calm it.
“I said don’t move! How dare you turn your back on me, you—” The sergeant grabbed the youngster’s collar and yanked him back. The boy tripped and fell on the road.
“No need for that.” Adam frowned, but before he could intervene the sergeant swung the revolver like a club and cracked it across the boy’s skull.
“Filth! I’ll teach you,” he roared and would have gone further had Adam not suddenly grasped his wrist.
“I said that’s enough.” Adam maintained his hold, unable to resist the anger that came in a quick, hot flood. The more he looked, the more the boy reminded him of a younger Timmy.
The sergeant’s eyes widened with stunned indignation. Before he could get any words out, a dozen rifles snickered into readiness.
“Let him go, Paddy,” warned the nearest soldier, gesturing with his gun. “Now.”
Adam did as told and stepped back. The sergeant shook himself, shuddering with outrage. He holstered his pistol. “Private Hutton!”
“Sir.” A big, barrel-chested youth presented himself, a rifle clutched in his paws.
“Private Hutton, address this man, please.”
“Yes, sir.” Hutton advanced.
“Now, hold on.” Adam braced himself. “Can’t we just—”
Acting with a speed that belied his huge size, Hutton turned the rifle round and rammed the butt into Adam’s stomach. Adam doubled over, wheezing as a burst of agony ripped through his belly. Before he could straighten, Hutton drove his knee upwards and smashed it into his nose. Adam was flung back and fell heavily on the ground.
“How’d you like that, Paddy?” the sergeant hissed. “Stay on the deck, scum, if you’ve got any sense.”
Adam couldn’t get up even if he’d wanted to. His eyes swam with tears from the impact of the private’s knee, enough to blind him, and blood leaked from his nose into his mouth. He spluttered for air and tried to rise, but the pain in his stomach was a searing hot ball, as though his innards had been viciously twisted. He fell back again and gagged. They laughed.
“Back on the truck,” the sergeant bellowed, and one by one the soldiers clambered into the transport. “Grab the pup, let’s see what the coppers will make of him.”
Adam was left alone on the footpath. A few startled onlookers eventually offered assistance, and he groaned as he struggled to his feet. They’d take that boy some place and probably beat the tar out of him. The boy who looked like Timmy. Once again, Adam hadn’t been able to help.
“No problem, folks, I’m fine.” He gave them a weak smile. “Just young lads having fun.”
It took him some time to hobble as far as the office, and he was out of breath when he arrived. A young woman answered the door. Her hands flew to her mouth in horror; Duncan came rushing out at her shrieks.
“Lydia, what the devil is wrong with—Jesus Christ! Adam?” He gaped at the panting, bloodied figure in the doorway. “What the hell happened to you?”
Adam’s first day at Bowen & Associates proved to be something of a nonevent. Lydia the secretary was in tears at his appearance. Allister, fastidious as always, turned green in the cheeks and promptly disappeared.
“Perhaps, er,” Duncan mumbled in embarrassment, “you might be able to tidy yourself up a dash. Need a hanky?”
Adam peered down at his rumpled shirt. “Blood stains don’t shift with hankies, I’ve learned.”
“Er, yes. I understand. Well, let’s see if we can get you settled in.”
They had allotted Adam an office on the second floor, near Duncan’s own office. It usually served as a storeroom for files and boxes, but they managed to squeeze in a small teak desk.
“It will do you for now,” Duncan said. He wiped his brow from the effort of heaving the desk. “We’ll come up with a better solution in due course.”
Adam was just able to lower himself into the chair crammed between the desk and the wall. “A bit snug, isn’t it?”
“Quiet now, you’re lucky to have an office of your own. Allister’s isn’t that much bigger than this one, you know.”
“I’d imagine Allister doesn’t share his office with brooms and wash pails.”
“I’ve got some reading for you to do. To brush up and all that. It will give you an idea of what exactly we do here at Bowen’s. Tell me, do you remember much of what you learned at Trinity?”
“Loads of it,” Adam lied.
“Splendid. That’s a good start. You’ll pick up the rest on the job, and of course you’ll return to the curriculum once you’re ready.”
“Sounds ideal.”
By midmorning he was dozing, with a stack of legal volumes and case studies wobbling dangerously by his elbow. It was lunchtime when Duncan stuck his head in the door. He frowned.
“Oh, Christ. You’re a sorry state, Adam. Tell you what,” he checked his watch, “you should knock off early. Go home, get cleaned up. Tomorrow will be a fresh start.”
Adam was glad of the opportunity to escape the stuffy room. “Nice idea, brother. I’ll be off.” He levered himself out of the chair and reached for his coat.
“Oh, and Adam,” Duncan murmured as he left, “try to avoid street brawling with soldiers on your way to work in the morning.”
At home he stripped off his shirt and left it to soak in a tub of hot soapy water before heading back up along St. Stephen’s Green to sit awhile on a bench and watch Dublin flurry about. Two students from nearby Trinity College were debating with arrogant animation, wagging fingers at each other, fresh-cheeked young men looking barely above nineteen. As they squabbled over things like heuristics and contractarianism and liberal monarchies, an unshaven drunk asleep on the grass eventually sat up, spat, and roared at them, “That wasn’t Rousseau, you prissy little virgins! That was John Locke, seventeenth century!”
Chastened, they gathered up their books and hurried off.
By midafternoon Adam had the moody rumblings of an appetite building in his stomach, notwithstanding the pummel it had taken from the big private. He got up and strolled as far as Dawson Street, then took a turn into Duke Street, before stopping into Davy Byrne’s, the old haunt of James Joyce. Despite a modest facade, the pub had a pleasing interior, plenty of warmth and wood polish. He sat at the long bar and ordered a sandwich of mustard and tongue, washed down with a pint of Guinness. The last of the lunchtime trade was filtering out. Two dapper gentlemen in suits and scarves of peacock blue were smoking in a corner, on scotch and Apollinaris, while another two in salt-encrusted jerseys and stinking of brine sat at the bar, slurping out of bowls of giblet soup. At the far end a group of younger men lounged about a table, laughing, boasting, exchanging horse tips.
Adam had a second pint of Guinness. He found that his face no longer throbbed, and the food and stout settled nicely in his belly. He could have chased the beer with another, and easily so, but no. He had squandered far too many days in England through drunkenness.
“There you go, sir.” The landlord slid a glass of whiskey across to him. Adam stared at it.
“Did I order that? I was just abou
t to leave.”
“’Tis all right, sir. ’Tis paid for.”
“Oh?” Adam turned his eyes warily up the bar. None met his.
“Lieutenant Bowen, sir?”
He heard his former title spoken and a hand clasped his shoulder. For an instant, the briefest instant, he saw crumbling trenches, cratered fields. He shut his eyes, opened them again, and turned in the stool.
A young man was grinning at him, nervously clutching a tartan cap. “Aha. I thought it was yourself I recognised. It’s me. Don’t you remember?”
Adam blinked. “Jesus, I do. Colum Rourke?”
“It is.” Rourke beamed through his freckled face. “Sure I saw you and I says I have to buy the lieutenant a drink.” Colum Rourke had been one of the privates under Adam’s command in France—the one who reported Timmy’s last desperate flight.
“Jesus, I do remember.” Adam laughed. “Damn it, good to see you, Rourke. You’re living about?”
“I am. Working in a bakery over on Sackville Street. So how are you, Lieutenant? Cripes, what happened to your face?”
“It’s fine. And no more ranks please, Rourke. I’m a civilian now.”
“Like us all. Glad to see you survived in the end. We never knew what happened to you after the scrap at Villers-Bretonneux.”
“They sent me back to Brighton. A messy business. Yes, I survived, but a messy business.”
“I know.” Rourke’s eyes shifted. “A messy business.”
A silence passed between them. Then Rourke pulled up a stool and sat in close. “’Twasn’t right what happened to Timmy Hannigan. Was it, Lieutenant? I’ve thought about him a lot.”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about him a lot too.” Adam touched the whiskey glass between thumb and forefinger. He didn’t lift it yet.
“We was all treated wrong in the end, Lieutenant. Wasn’t we?”
“I told you, I’m not a lieutenant anymore.”
“Timmy left behind a widow mother and five sisters in Tipperary. I heard they never got his body back.”
“You know them?”
“Not in person. But a fellow who does told me of them. A messy business, as you said.”
Adam stared into the mirror at the back of the bar. He saw Timmy Hannigan’s terrified face as he hung from the post, blindfold pulled over his eyes. He cleared his throat. “Who looks after them now?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant, and that’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve half a mind to go down there and look in on ’em. But, sure, I’ve enough to be at here.”
“Baking bread?”
“No.” Rourke’s eyes narrowed. “You might have taken a good look round since you came home, Lieutenant. And seen what’s going on in this country.”
“I have. And the more I see, the less I want to.” Adam’s cheekbone had started to throb again. He’d thought he’d seen the last of British cruelty with their execution of Timmy Hannigan. But it was here too. At home.
“Well.” Rourke glanced around the pub and lowered his voice. “There’s some of us aren’t done fighting yet, Lieutenant. Only a different war this time.”
Adam gazed at him. “What war is that, Rourke?”
“A war for our own liberty, for a change. Nobody else’s. Britannia wants Ireland but she doesn’t want the Irish, save for when we can build her roads or fatten her infantry. We’ve sacrificed enough to her whims and arrogance. Better we be done with her.”
Adam lifted the whiskey and inspected it in the light. Molten sunbeams and the prospect of foolish talk. “I’m guessing you’re telling me that you’ve thrown your lot in with the gunmen. Eh, Rourke? The IRA that I read about every day?”
“That depends. Am I talking to Lieutenant Bowen or Adam Bowen?”
“Adam.”
“Good. Aren’t you going to drink that?”
“I don’t know.”
“All I’m saying, Adam, is that there are far too many Timmy Hannigans on the butcher’s bill. And it will never stop. Not unless men like us do something about it.”
“Men like us?”
Rourke glanced back to his friends at the far end. They had gone noticeably quiet. “Maybe you should call in on Timmy’s family yourself. God knows, I’ll never get round to it. You go ahead, and let me know how you get on.”
Even in his mild fog of alcohol, Adam was tasting the idea. “But I wouldn’t know where to find them.”
“I can get that information to you. If you’re at all interested in your old army mates.”
“Of course I’m bloody interested. Timmy was like a brother to me. Actually, there’s something I’d like to give them.” Timmy’s diary rested underneath his bed at the flat. He still hadn’t opened it. “It was a promise I made to Timmy.”
Rourke got up from the stool. “Wednesdays are usually quiet in here. Meet me for a bowl of stew.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but went to rejoin his table. Adam abandoned the whiskey and left soon after.
As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the bloodstains out of his shirt that night.
Quentin gaped at Adam, his face blanching, as though Adam had proposed a canoe trip up the Amazon. “Bloody madness, boy. What the devil for? That’s bandit country down there. Half the roads are no go.”
“Are you saying you’re not going to lend me the motor?”
“What’s the reason for this?”
“A visit.”
“To whom?”
“To the family of one of my men in France. He didn’t make it back to them.”
Quentin rubbed his jaw. “A decent gesture, I understand. But it’s damned risky. When you left Ireland, it was mostly quiet. Now it’s all gun battles and ambushes. The IRA are a new breed and more ruthless than anything that has come before. You could get caught in the crossfire.”
“I’m sure none of them mean me any harm. And I’ll only be gone a day or two. So I can have the car?”
“Your mother won’t approve of this.”
“She needn’t know, though, need she?”
“I hope not.” Quentin grumbled. “Oh, very well. But you’d better take good care—especially of my Ford.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
After three days of confinement in the poky office, he was able to cajole two days’ leave from Duncan, glad of the opportunity to break free. It rained on Thursday morning but after a while the clouds parted and sunlight filtered down upon the back suburbs of Dublin. The car was a three-door, twenty-horsepower Ford Model T, capable of forty-five miles per hour on decent roads, and Adam left the hood back as he cleared the city boundaries and headed down the Naas Road into the countryside.
Kildare was flat country, a patchwork of emerald pastures embroidered with stone walls and wild hedging. Small villages with ancient names appeared every few miles, trout streams flowed under bridges, and in the meadows ruined castles stood sentinel while cows grazed the grasses around them. Several times Adam was delayed by herds being moved by young lads with wands of ash, another time by a duck leading her waddling offspring. Sweaty, ruddy farmers leaned on plough handles and waved to him as he passed. A dishevelled scarecrow hung on a stake inside a cornfield, four crows perched on his shoulders, defecating on his uniform.
That evening Adam booked himself into a guesthouse in Tipperary Town. The next day, Friday, was market day. By the time he’d eaten breakfast and settled his bill, the town square was packed with cattle bellowing and driving up dust. It was a noisy affair. Dogs yapped in the excitement while children wrestled each other and farmers spat on grubby hands, sealing bargains. A burly trader bawled his prices of pigs at forty-five shillings per hundredweight live, bakers’ patent flour was forty shillings per sack, a barrel of wheat was thirty shillings. A bold advert on a stand beside the market asked the crowd:
WHY BURY YOUR DEAD IN FOREIGN-MADE COFFINS?
GET COFFINS AT ROCHE’S
MADE BY IRISH HANDS FROM IRISH OAK AND ELM
HIGH-CLASS WORK, GUARA
NTEED, AND PERSONAL SUPERVISION AT FUNERALS
AND DON’T FORGET, THOSE ABOUT TO BUILD OR REMODEL THEIR HOUSES WILL FIND IT TO THEIR ADVANTAGE TO CALL ON US BEFORE GOING ELSEWHERE.
ESTIMATES FREE
For now Adam’s car was hemmed in by makeshift pens, and so he wandered amongst the heave for a while. Shawled housewives sold cheeses and vegetables from stalls. Seed potatoes were at discount along with stocks of rye grass, clover, and manure. A bow-tied man perspiring in his suit advised passersby that Kissane’s of Clonmel could provide them with animal medicine for timber tongue and sponge hoof, while farther away the men done with trading leaned against the gable wall of the tavern, tapping their feet to the rhythms of a fiddle player.
There were soldiers, too.
Two Crossley Tenders were parked up the street, near the Bank of Ireland. A dozen or so privates lounged on the windowsills, smoking cigarettes and watching the crowd. They didn’t seem inclined to interfere, however, and kept themselves at a respectful distance from the swell of the market.
Adam now wanted to be on his way.
As deals were sealed and monies exchanged, the men began to drift towards the taverns to wash the dust from their throats. The crowd thinned. Dodging piles of cattle dung, Adam was able to retrieve his car and nurse it out of the town.
Back on the open road, the slopes of the Galtee Mountains stretched ahead. Mild, verdant slopes for the most part, but with the big Galteemore heaving up between them like an awkward cripple-back. Closer to the mountains, the road went through a pleasant world, wooded hills and sunlit cups of grass in the glens, the Knockmealdowns of Waterford hazy to the south. Trees and tillage vied for space in the quiet surroundings. The odd spiral of smoke betrayed a farmhouse.
Colum Rourke had provided him with a hand-sketched map that traced the route to Timmy Hannigan’s home. A clumsy drawing, it showed lines snaking between other lines, a picture of a hill, and a tree. A four-year-old might have been better put to the task. But Rourke had also written the name of the parish—Rincesceach—and a blotted stump to represent a parish water pump that marked the turnoff to the Hannigan place. Adam now saw the pump, and he slowed the car. Next to a bridge fording a small mountain stream, the pump road led into the hills.