The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  A tram left them at the hospital gate and Jumbo’s wife and the other woman rushed in. She asked for Jumbo Geany, but the porter looked at her blankly and asked what ward she was looking for. ‘There were two men here a minute ago,’ she said frantically, ‘where are they gone to?’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘now I have you! They’re gone over to St George’s Ward.…’

  In St George’s Ward at that moment two or three nuns and a nurse surrounded the house doctor, a tall young man who wassaying excitedly, ‘I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t stop them! I told them he was at his last gasp, but they wouldn’t believe me!’ ‘He was lying there,’ said the nurse pointing to an empty bed, ‘when that woman came in with the basket, a sort of dealing woman she was. When she saw him she looked hard at him and then went across and drew back the bedclothes. “Is it yourself is there, Jumbo?” says she, and, poor man, he starts up in bed and says out loud-like “You won’t give me away? Promise me you won’t give me away.” So she laughs and says, “A pity you didn’t think of that when you gave Mike Kenefick the gun, Jumbo!” After she went away he wanted to get up and go home. I seen by his looks he was dying and I sent for the priest and Doctor Connolly, and he got wake-like, and that pair came in, asking for a stretcher, and—’ The nurse began to bawl.

  Just then Jumbo’s wife appeared, a distracted, terrified figure, the shawl drawn back from her brows, the hair falling about her face. ‘Jumbo Geany?’ she asked. ‘You’re too late,’ said the young doctor harshly, ‘they’ve taken him away.’ ‘No, come back, come back!’ he shouted as she rushed towards the window that opened on to the garden at the back of the hospital, ‘you can’t go out there!’ But she wriggled from his grasp, leaving her old black shawl in his hands. Alone she ran across the little garden, to where another building jutted out and obscured the view of the walls. As she did so three shots rang out in rapid succession. She heard a gate slam; it was the little wicket gate on to another road; beside it was a stretcher with a man’s body lying on it. She flung herself screaming upon the body, not heeding the little streams of blood that flowed from beneath the armpit and the head. It was Jumbo, clad only in a nightshirt and bearded beyond recognition. His long, skinny legs were naked, and his toes had not ceased to twitch. For each of the three shots there was a tiny wound, two over the heart and one in the temple, and pinned to the cheap flannelette nightshirt was a little typed slip that read

  SPY.

  They had squared her account with Jumbo at last.

  SEPTEMBER DAWN

  I

  IT WAS LATE September of the finest autumn that had been known for years. For five crowded days the column had held out, flying from one position to another, beaten about by a dozen companies of regular soldiers. At Glenmanus they had taken shelter among the trees, and fought for a few hours with the river protecting them, but, a second column of soldiers having crossed by a temporary bridge a mile or two up the road, they had found themselves completely outflanked. Then they had fought their way across country; seven men holding one ditch while the other seven retreated to the next. Again they had been headed off and again had changed direction. ‘It was the sort of game a schoolboy would play with a beetle,’ remarked Keown.

  This time they had been trapped by a column coming from the direction of Mallow. Finally, in desperation, they had come back by night and along a different route to their old stronghold in Glenmanus, and here they rested while Keown and Hickey, standing apart, held counsel.

  Hickey, dressed in a black coat and green riding-breeches, was very tall and slim. He had the reputation of being as conscientious as he was inhuman, and there was a strain of fanaticism in his pale face and in the steely eyes behind their large horn-rimmed spectacles. It was the face of a young scientist or a young priest. He lacked imagination, people said. He also lacked humour. But he was a good soldier and cautious where men’s lives were concerned. His companion was stocky and pugnacious, with a fat, good-humoured face and a left eye that squinted atrociously. He was unscrupulous, good-natured, and unreliable, and had a bad reputation for his ways with women. He even boasted of it, and added, with a wink of his sound eye, that there wasn’t a parish in Munster where he couldn’t find a home and children. He read much more than Hickey, and rarely went anywhere without a book in his pocket. It was most often an indecent French novel, but sometimes he carried about a book of verse which he read aloud to Hickey in his broad, bantering, countryman’s voice. He liked to hear himself speak, and, when his column was in billet, practised elocution before a mirror. The two men now stood on the river bank, Hickey idly disturbing the sluggish water with a switch, and Keown, small and ungainly, with a rifle swung across his right shoulder and a sandwich in his hand, eyeing him in silence.

  After about ten minutes they returned. Hickey glanced coldly at the twelve volunteers sitting on the grass, chewing sandwiches and drinking spring water out of a rusty water-bottle. Their rifles lay beside them. Most of them had doffed their hats and caps. An autumn sun shone warmly and brightly overhead, and cast spotlights through the yellowing leaves upon their flushed young faces, upturned to his, and their bare brown throats.

  ‘We have decided to disband the column, men,’ he said briefly.

  ‘Disband? Do you mean we are to go home?’ one of them asked with a quick look of dismay.

  ‘Yes, there’s nothing else for it. It’s disband or go down together; we can’t carry on as we’ve been doing.’

  They stared blankly at him.

  ‘And the rifles, the equipment? What are we to do with them?’

  ‘Dump them.’

  ‘Dump them – after five days?’

  ‘You heard what I said.’

  ‘We’re genuinely sorry, boys,’ Keown put in kindly. ‘Jim and I appreciate more than we can say the way you’ve stuck by us through it all. Don’t think we’re ungrateful. We aren’t. We’ve made friends amongst you that we’ll always be proud of. But it’s better we should lose you this way than another. We want to live for Ireland, not to die for it, and die we will if we stick together any longer. There’s no use blinking that. The country here is too damn flat, too damn thickly populated, and there are too many roads.’

  There was silence for a moment. The men sat looking desperately at one another and at their leaders. Suddenly one of them, a farm labourer with a thick red moustache, who had been tying up a packet of sandwiches tossed it away; it broke through the leaves, and fell with a little splash in the river. He rose and threw aside his cloth bandolier, and then began to unbuckle his khaki belt. His face was pale, and his hands fumbled nervously at the catch. The others rose too, one after another.

  ‘Faith, it’ll be a comfort to sleep at home after a week of this, neighbours.’

  The speaker was a handsome youth, scarcely more than a boy.

  ‘Ah, my lad,’ said the other man bitterly, ‘you’ll sleep in a different bed, and a harder bed, before this week is out, and serve you right.’

  The speech was greeted with a murmur of approval.

  ‘We must only risk that,’ said Keown hastily. ‘After all you’ve only been away from home for a week; they can’t have spotted you so easily.’

  ‘Spotted us?’ exclaimed the other angrily, squaring up to him. ‘Who talks about spotting? Or do you know who you’re speaking to? Him and me came up all the way to fight at Passage. We’re out of the one house, and we went off together in the dead of night on our bikes to join the brigade. We followed it to Macroom and we were sent back from that. Just as you’re sending us back now. We’re no seven-day soldiers, but, let me tell you, it’s the last time I’ll make a fool of myself for ye.’

  Keown shrugged his shoulders helplessly without replying.

  It was the youngster who showed them where the old dump was. It was dug into the low wall that surrounded the wood, and after some difficulty they succeeded in locating it. He and Keown together took out the heavy stones, one by one, and revealed a deep hollow beneath the wall. There was a long box like a coffin
in it, and half a dozen sheets of oilcloth, with some old greasy rags and a tin of oil. The rifles were gathered together – there was no time to oil them – and wrapped in the oilcloth. The same was done with bandoliers, belts, and bayonets. Only the two leaders kept their arms and equipment. Hickey did not even pretend to be interested in the funereal ceremony, but walked moodily about under the shadow of the trees, his spectacles glinting in the stray shafts of sunlight.

  When the work was finished, the stones replaced, and all traces of fresh earth cleaned away, the twelve men, looking now merely what in ordinary life they were, farmers’ sons or day-labourers, stood awkwardly about, hands behind their backs or buried in their trousers’ pockets.

  ‘And now, men, it’s time we were going,’ said the youngster in a tone of authority; already he was testing his own leadership of the little group.

  Keown grinned and held out his hand to the farm labourer who had spoken so rudely to him. It was taken in silence and held for a moment. The rough unsoldierly faces cleared, and a smile of tenderness, of companionship, crossed them. The youngster strode bravely over to Hickey’s side, and held out his hand with all a boy’s gaucherie.

  ‘Well, good-bye, Mr Hickey,’ he said jauntily. ‘See you soon again, I hope.’

  ‘Good-bye, Dermod, boy, and good luck,’ said Hickey, smiling faintly, as the others shambled over to say farewell.

  Then with a last chorus of ‘Good luck’ and ‘God be with you!’ the little group dispersed among the trees, going in different directions to their own homes. Their voices grew faint in the distance, and the two friends were left alone upon the river bank.

  II

  An hour later as they leaped across the fence above the wood a shot rang out and Keown’s hat sailed along beside him to the ground. Hickey flattened himself against the ditch and raised his rifle, but Keown flung himself distractedly on the grass beside his hat, brushed it and contemplated regretfully the little hole on top.

  ‘A man who’d do a thing like that,’ he commented with disgust, ‘would snatch a slice of bread out of an orphan’s mouth!

  ‘But he’s a good shot, Jim,’ he went on. ‘I will say that for him. He’s a great shot. One, two, two and a half inches farther down and he’d have got me just where I wouldn’t have known when. Ah, well!…’ He picked himself up gingerly with head well bent. ‘A miss is as good as a mile, and talking of miles.…’

  ‘I’ll stay here until you get across the next field.’

  ‘And where do we go after that, Brother James?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Anywhere out of this; we can take our bearings later on.’

  ‘At this point in the battle General Hickey gave the order to retreat,’ murmured Keown, and scudded across the field, head low, his rifle trailing along the grass. Hickey looked down towards the road.

  He could see nobody. The sun was high up in the centre of the heavens, and a great heat had come into the day. Beneath him was the wood, and the broad shallow river shone like steel through the reddening leaves. Beyond it the main road ran white and clear. Beyond the road another hill, more trees, and a house. The house one did not see from the wood, perched as it was like a bonnet on the brow of the hill, but from where he stood he had a clear view of it, outhouses and all. An old mansion of sorts it was, eighteenth century probably, with a wide carriage-way and steps up to the door. As he looked the door opened and a figure appeared, dressed in white; it was a girl whose attention had been attracted by the shot, perhaps also by the knowledge that a column of irregulars was in the vicinity. It amused him to think that he had only to lift his hat or handkerchief on the barrel of his rifle for her to hear more from the same source. Despite his natural caution, the idea became a temptation; he fingered with the safety-catch of his rifle, and began to calculate how many of the enemy there were. Scarcely more than a dozen, he thought, or they would have shown more daring in their approach to the wood. She shaded her eyes with her hand, searching the whole neighbourhood. To wave to her now would be good fun, but dangerous.

  He looked round for Keown and saw him hurrying back. Clearly, there was something wrong. But Keown, seeing his attention attracted, came no farther, and made off in another direction, waving his hand in a way that showed the need for haste. Hickey followed, keeping all the time in shelter of the ditch.

  When he reached the gap towards which Keown had run, he found him there, sitting on his hunkers, his tongue licking the corners of his mouth, his hands gripping nervously at his rifle.

  ‘James,’ he said with affected coolness, ‘we must run for it. My tactics are particularly strong upon that point. Leave it to me, James! In the military college I was considered a dab at retreats.’

  He pointed to a field that sloped upward from where they crouched to the brow of the hill.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll be exposed crossing the field, but we must only risk it. After that we’ll have cover enough. Ready?’

  ‘Are there many of them?’ asked Hickey.

  ‘As thick as snakes in the DTs. Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready!’ said Hickey.

  He closed his eyes and ran. For a full half minute he heard nothing but the beating of his own heart and the soft thud their feet made upon the grass. The sunlight swam in a rosy mist before his darkened eyes, and it seemed as if at any moment the ground might rise out of this nowhere of rosy light and hit him. Suddenly a dozen rifles signalled their appearance with a burst of rapid firing, and immediately on top of this came the unmistakable staccato whirring of a machine-gun. His eyes started open with the shock, and he saw Keown, almost doubled in two, running furiously and well ahead of him. He put on speed. The machine-gun fire grew more intense until it was almost continuous. Then it stopped, and only the rifles kept up their irregular rattle until they too trailed off and were still. It was only then he realized that he was under cover, and that what was driving him forward at such speed was the impetus of his original fear.

  Keown waited for him, leaning against an old white-thorn tree, his sides perceptibly widening and narrowing as he breathed. His head seemed to be giddy and shook slightly; his trembling hands mechanically sought in every pocket for cigarettes. A faint smile played about the corners of his mouth, and when he spoke his words came almost in a whisper.

  ‘Rotten shooting, James, but still a narrow squeak.’

  ‘A very narrow squeak,’ said Hickey, and said no more, for his own head trembled as if a great hand were holding it in a tight grip and pushing it from side to side at a terrific speed. He stumbled along beside his companion without a word.

  About a mile up the glen there was a stream. The two men knelt together beside it and plunged their faces deep into the gleaming, ice-cold water. They rose, half-choking, but dipped into it again, their dripping forelocks blinding their eyes. When the water had cleared a little they sank their hands in, and, still in silence, drank from their cupped palms. Then they dried hands and faces with their handkerchiefs, and each lit a cigarette, taking long pulls of the invigorating smoke.

  ‘It looks to me,’ said Keown, with a faint gleam of his old cheerfulness, ‘as if this was to be a busy day.’

  ‘It looks to me as if they wanted to locate the column,’ Hickey added wearily. ‘And now the column is broken up we’d be fools to hang round.’

  ‘You want to get back west?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Home to our mountains.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘I don’t know how that’s to be managed.’

  ‘I do. If once we get outside this accursed ring it will be simple enough. Probably it’s closing in already. If we can hold out until nightfall we may be able to slip through; then we have only to cross by Mallow to Donoughmore, and after that everything will be plain sailing.’

  ‘It sounds good. Do you know the way?’

  ‘No, but I think we might get a few miles north of this, don’t you?’

  ‘Out of range, Jim, out of range! That’s the main thing, the
first principle of tactics.’

  They shouldered their rifles and went on, keeping to the fields, and taking what cover they could. Hickey’s legs were barely able to support him. Keown was in no better condition. Every now and then he sighed, and cast longing glances at the sun which was still upon the peak of heaven and let fall its vertical beams upon the wide expanse of open country, with its green meadowlands and greying stubble, its golden furze, and squat, pink, all-too-neat farmhouses; or looked disconsolately at the chain of mountains that closed the farthest horizon with a delicate, faint line of blue.

  ‘I know where my mother’s son would like to be now,’ he said with facetious melancholy.

  ‘So do I,’ said Hickey.

  ‘In Kilnamartyr?’ asked Keown, thinking still of the mountains. ‘God, Kilnamartyr and wan melodious night in Moran’s!’

  ‘No. Not in Kilnamartyr. At home – in the city.’

  ‘Your paradise would never do for me, Jim. There are no women in it.’

  ‘Aren’t there, now?’

  ‘There are not, you old Mohammedan!’

  ‘How do you know, Antichrist?’

  ‘There aren’t, there aren’t, there aren’t! I’d lay a hundred to one on that.’

  ‘You’d win.’

  ‘Of course I’d win! Don’t I know your finicking, Jesuitical soul? You hate and fear women as you hate and fear the devil – and a bit more. It’s a pity, Jim, it’s a real pity, because, God increase you, you’re a terror to fight; but there’s as much poetry in your constitution as there is in a sardine-tin. Will you ever get married, Jim?’

  ‘Not until we’ve won this war.’

  ‘And if we don’t win it?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no if; we must win it!’