The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  We seemed to be in the very heart of the invisible battle when suddenly the firing ceased and a little ragged figure – looking, oh, so unspectacular against that background of eternal fortitude – detached itself from behind a hillock, dusted its knees, shouldered a strange-looking machine-gun, and came towards us. It hailed us and signalled us to stop. I pulled up the car, and Nelson lowered his rifle significantly. The little ragged figure looked harmless enough, God knows, and we both had the shyness of unprofessional soldiers.

  What we saw was a wild, very under-sized cityman, dressed in an outworn check suit, a pair of musical-comedy tramp’s brogues, and a cap which did no more than half conceal his shock of dirty yellow hair. As he came towards us he produced the butt-end of a cigarette, hung it from one corner of his mouth, struck a match upon his boot-sole without pausing in his stride, and carelessly flicked the light across his lips. Then, as he accosted us, he let out a long grey stream of smoke through his nostrils.

  ‘Comrades,’ he said companionably. ‘Direct me to Jo Kenefick’s column, eh? Doing much fighting your end of the line? I’m all the way from Waterford, pure Cork otherwise.’

  ‘Yeh?’ we asked in astonishment, though not at the second clause of his statement, of the truth of which his accent left no room for doubt. He knew as much.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, ‘sure, sir. You have a look at my boots. All the way without as much as a lift. Couldn’t risk that with the baby. Been doing a bit of practice now to keep my hand in.’

  ‘It sounded quite professional to me,’ said Nelson mildly.

  ‘Ah!’ The little man shook his head. ‘Amateur, amateur, but I must keep the old hand in. A beauty though, isn’t she? All I’ve left in the world now.’

  He lovingly smoothed off some imaginary rust from his gun, which I took to be of foreign make. I bent out of the car to examine it, but he stepped back.

  ‘No, no. Don’t come near her. She’s a touchy dame. Guess how much I paid for her? Two pounds. The greatest bargain ever. Two pounds! I heard the Tommy offering it to my wife. By way of a joke, you know. So I said, “You lend me two pounds, old girl, and I’ll buy her.” Nearly died when she heard I wanted to buy a machine-gun. “Buy a machine-gun – a machine-gun – what use would a machine-gun be to her? Wouldn’t a mangle be more in her line?” So I said, “Cheerio, old girl, don’t get so huffy, a mangle may be a useful article, but it isn’t much fun, and anyway, this round is on me.” And I rose the money off an old Jew in the Marsh. So help me, God, amen. Wasn’t I right?’

  ‘And where are you off to now?’ asked Nelson.

  ‘You gentlemen will tell me that, I hope. Jo Kenefick’s column, that’s where I’m going. Know Tom Casey? No? Well, I served under Tom. He’ll tell you all about me, soldier.’

  We directed him to Jo’s column, which we had left in a village a few miles down the valley.

  ‘You gentlemen wouldn’t have an old bob about you, I suppose?’ he asked dreamily, and seeing the answer in our eyes hurried on with, ‘No, no, of course you wouldn’t. Where would you get it? Hard times with us all these days.… Or a cigarette? I’m down to my last butt as you may see.’

  Out of sheer pity we gave him three of the seven we had between us, and, in acknowledgement of the kindness, he showed us how he could wag both ears in imitation of a dog. It struck me that it was not the first time he had fallen on evil days. Then with a cheerful good-bye he left us, and we sat in the car watching his game, sprightly, dilapidated figure disappear over the mountains on its way to the column. After that we drove into Kilvara.

  At the schoolmaster’s house we stopped to examine the old school which had been indicated as a likely headquarters for our press. There Nelson set himself to win round the schoolmaster’s daughter, a fine, tall, red-haired girl, who looked at us with open hostility. He succeeded so well that she invited us in to tea; but with the tea we had to win over the schoolmaster himself and his second daughter, a much more difficult job. Neither Nelson nor I could fathom what lay beneath their hostility; the family seemed to have no interest in politics outside the court and society column of the daily press; and it was not until the old teacher asked with a snarl whether we had heard firing as we came up that we began to see bottom.

  ‘Ah,’ said Nelson laughing, ‘you’re finished with the tramp.’

  ‘Are we, I wonder?’ asked the teacher grimly.

  ‘That man,’ said Nelson, ‘was the funniest thing I’ve seen for months.’

  ‘Funny?’ exclaimed the younger daughter flaring up. ‘I’m glad you think it fun!’

  ‘Well, what did he do to you, anyhow?’ asked Nelson irritably. Nelson was touchy about what he called the bourgeoisie.

  ‘Do you know,’ she asked angrily, ‘when my dad said he had no room for him here with two girls in the house, your “funny” friend took his trench mortar, and put it on a sort of camera stand in front of the hall door, and threatened to blow us all into eternity?’

  ‘The little rat!’ said Nelson. ‘And he actually wanted to stay here?’

  ‘Wanted to stay?’ said the daughters together. ‘Wanted to stay! Did he stay for a fortnight and the gun mounted all night on the chair beside his bed?’

  ‘Holy Lord God!’ said Nelson profanely, ‘and we without as much as a good pea-shooter on the armoured car!’

  After this the story expanded to an almost incredible extent, for not alone did it concern Kilvara, but other places where the tramp’s activities had already become the stuff of legend.

  ‘He’ll behave himself when Jo Kenefick gets him,’ said Nelson grimly.

  ‘I tell you what, girls,’ he went on, ‘come back with us in the car and tell Jo Kenefick the story as you told it now.’

  At this the girls blushed and giggled, but at last they agreed, and proceeded to ready themselves for the journey, the old schoolmaster meanwhile becoming more and more polite and even going to the trouble of explaining to us the half-dozen different reasons why we could not win the war.

  I have no intention of describing the journey to Coolenagh and back under an autumn moon – though I can picture it very clearly: mountains and pools and misty, desolate ribbons of mountain road – for that is the story of how we almost retrieved the reputation of the Irish Republican Army in the little hamlet of Kilvara; but what I should like to describe is Jo Kenefick’s face when we (that is to say Sean and I, for we judged it unwise to lay Jo open to temptation) told the tale of the tramp’s misdeeds.

  ‘Mercy of God!’ said Jo. ‘Ye nabbed him and let him go again?’

  ‘But didn’t he arrive yet?’ asked Nelson.

  ‘Arrive?’ asked Jo. ‘Arrive where, tell me?’

  ‘Here, of course.’

  ‘Here?’ asked Jo with a sour scowl. ‘And I looking for him this fortnight to massacree him!’

  ‘Damn!’ said Nelson, seeing light.

  ‘It was great negligence in ye to let him go,’ said Jo severely. ‘And I wouldn’t mind at all but ye let the gun go too. Do you know I have seventy-five thousand rounds of that stuff in the dump, and he have the only gun in Ireland that will shoot it?’

  ‘He said he bought it for two pounds,’ said I.

  ‘He did,’ replied Jo. ‘He did. And my QM came an hour after and bid fifty. It was an Italian gun not inventoried at all, and it was never looked for in the evacuation. Where did ye find him?’

  We told him the exact spot in which we had last seen the gunner.

  ‘Be damn!’ said Jo, ‘I’ll send out a patrol on motor-bikes to catch him. That armoured car isn’t much use to me without a gun.’

  But when we returned from our joy-ride at two o’clock the following morning – leaving, I hope, two happy maidens in the hills behind – the patrols were back without gunner or gun.

  II

  Three days later the gunner turned up – between two stalwart country boys with cocked Webleys. He was very downcast, and having explained to Jo Kenefick how he had been sent out of his way by two men answe
ring to our description, he added, a moment after we had made our appearance, that he had been caught in a storm on the hills.

  The same night it was decided to make amends for our previous inaction by attacking the nearest town, and that no later than the following morning. The men were hurriedly called together and the plans explained to them. The town was garrisoned by about forty soldiers and the armoured car, driven by me and manned by the tramp, was to prepare the way for the attack.

  At dawn I stood in my overalls by the door of the armoured car and lectured the tramp. He was extremely nervous, and tapped the body at every point, looking for what he called leaks. I explained, as clearly as I could to a man who paid no attention to me, that his principal danger would be from inside, and showed him that my revolver was fully loaded to cope with emergencies.

  We pulled out of the village and passed little groups of armed men converging on the town. I had to drive slowly, principally because it was impossible to get much speed out of the car, which was far too heavy for its chassis, and needed skilful negotiation, but partly because the lumbering old truck refused to work on reverse and, to avoid occasional detours of a few miles, I had to be careful to get my turns right.

  Jo Kenefick, Sean Nelson and some others were waiting for us outside the town and gave us a few necessary directions; then we closed all apertures except that for the machine-gun and the shielded slit through which I watched the road immediately in front of me, and gave the old bus her head downhill. She slowed down of her own accord as we entered a level street the surface of which was far worse than any I had ever seen. As we drew near the spot where I thought the barrack should be I heard the tramp mumble something; I looked back and saw him fiercely sighting his gun; then the most deafening jumble of noise I have ever heard in my life began.

  ‘Slow! Slow!’ the tramp shouted, and I held her in as welumbered down the main street, letting her rip again as we took a side-street that brought us back to the centre of the town. I knew that the enemy was in occupation of some half-dozen houses. Beyond this I knew nothing of what went on about me. The tramp shouted directions which I followed without question. ‘Slow!’ he cried when we were passing some occupied post, and two or three times he exclaimed that he had ‘got’ somebody. This was none of my business. I had enough to do at the wheel.

  Besides I was almost deaf from the shooting and the chugging and jumbling of the old bus (all concentrated and magnified within that little steel box until it sounded like the day of judgment and the anger of the Lord) and suffocated by the fumes of petrol and oil that filled it. This went on, as I afterwards calculated, for at least two hours and a half. I could not tell what was happening between our men and the regulars, but I guessed that Kenefick would have bagged some of the supplies we needed under cover of our fire.

  Suddenly, in the midst of a terrific burst of firing from the tramp, the engine kicked. My heart stood still. The old bus went on smoothly for a little while, and then, in the middle of the main street, kicked again. I realized that the only hope was to get her out of the town as quickly as possible, and leave the men to escape as best they could. I put her to it, stepping on the gas and praying to her maker. Again she ran smoothly for a few yards and suddenly stopped, not fifty feet from the barrack door as I judged. I let my hands drop from the wheel and sat there in despair. There was no self-starter.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, man?’ shouted the tramp. ‘Start her again, quick.’

  ‘Are any of our men around?’ I shouted, indulging a last faint hope.

  ‘How could they be?’ yelled the tramp, letting rip an occasional shot. ‘Nobody could move in that fire.’

  ‘Then one of us must get out and start her.’

  ‘Get out? Not likely. Stay where you are; you’re in no danger.’

  ‘No danger?’ I asked bitterly. ‘And when they roll a bomb under the car?’

  ‘They’d never think of that!’ he said with pathetic consternation.

  I pushed open the door that was farthest from the barrack, pushed it just an inch or so in hope that it would not be detected. It occurred to me that with care, with very great care, one might even creep round under cover as far as the starting-handle. I yelled to the tramp to open heavy fire. He did so with a will, and when I banged the steel door back and knelt on the footboard a perfect tornado of machine-gun bullets was whirling madly in wide circles above my head. Inch by inch I crept along the side of the car, my head just level with the footboard. My progress was maddeningly slow, but I reached the front mudguard in safety, and, still bent double, gave the starting-handle a spin. The car started, jumped, and stood still again with a faint sigh, and at that very moment something happened that I shall never forget the longest day I live.

  Silence, an unutterable, appalling silence fell about me. For a full minute I was quite unable to guess what had happened; then it occurred to me – a dreadful revelation – that I had become stone-deaf. I did not dare to move, but crouched there with one hand upon the starter and the other upon the gun in my belt. I looked round me; the street with all its shattered window-panes was quite empty and silent with the silence of midnight. I tried to remember what it was one did when one became suddenly deaf.

  Then, the simplest of sounds, my hand jolting the starting-handle, roused me to the knowledge that, whatever else had happened, my hearing must be intact. To make certain I jolted the handle again, and again I distinctly heard the creak. But the silence had now become positively sinister. I gave the handle a ferocious spin, the engine started, and I crept back to the door on hands and knees. Still there was no sound. I raised myself slowly; still nothing. I looked into the car and saw to my horror that it was empty of gunner and gun. Then I glanced along the street and round the farthest corner I saw the last rags of my crew flutter triumphantly before they disappeared for good. The crew had gone over to the enemy, and left me to find my way out of the town as best I could.

  I sat in among a heap of spent bullet cases, made the doors tight, and drove lamely out of town. Nobody tried to hinder me nor did I see any sign of our men; it was like a town of the dead, with glass littering the pavements and great gaping holes in every shop window.

  I drove for half an hour through a deserted countryside until at last I caught up with a small group of men, two of whom were carrying a stretcher. I drove in amongst them and they surrounded the car, furiously waving rifles and bombs. For safety sake I opened the turret and spoke to them through that.

  ‘Where is he?’ they yelled, ‘where is he?’

  ‘Where’s who?’

  ‘Where’s the man with the gun? He hit Mike Cronin one in the leg, and if Mike gets him alive …’ From the stretcher Mike fully confirmed the intention, adding his vivid impressions of us both.

  At that moment Jo Kenefick and Nelson pushed their way through the excited crowd, and probably saved me from a bad mauling. But they were almost as unreasonable and excited as the others; Jo in particular, who promptly threatened to have me court-martialled.

  ‘But how could I know?’ I yelled down at him. ‘I couldn’t see but what was before my eyes. And how does Mike Cronin know it was a bullet from the car he stopped?’

  ‘What else could it be?’ asked Jo. ‘Where did you let that lunatic go?’

  ‘He went over to the Staters while I was starting the car.’

  ‘Staters!’ said Kenefick bitterly. ‘He went over to the Staters! Listen to him! And the last man evacuated the town at four o’clock this morning.’

  I groaned, the whole appalling truth beginning to dawn upon me.

  ‘And the grub?’ I asked.

  ‘Grub? Nobody dared to stir from cover with that fool blazing away. And the people will rend us if ever we show our noses there again.’

  That was the truest word Jo Kenefick ever spoke. We did not dare to show our noses in the town again, and this time Nelson and I could be of no use as peacemakers.

  III

  A fortnight later and Jo Kenefick could ta
lk about the affair; if he were pushed to extremity he could even laugh at it, but as his laughter always preceded a bitter little lecture to me about the necessity for foresight and caution, I preferred him in philosophic mood, as when he said:

  ‘Now, you think you have a man when you haven’t him at all. There aren’t any odds high enough again’ a man doing a thing you don’t expect him to do. Take that tramp of yours for instance. That man never done a stroke of work in his life. His wife have a little old-clothes shop on the quays. She’s a dealing woman – with a tidy stocking, I’d say. She kep’ him in ’baccy an’ buns an’ beer. He never had one solitary thing to worry him. And all of a sudden, lo and behold ye! he wants to be a soldier. Not an ordinary soldier either, mind you, but a free lance; brigadier and bombadier, horse, foot and artillery all at once! What’s the odds again’ that, I ask you? And which of ye will give me odds on what he’s going to do next? Will you?’

  ‘I will not,’ said Nelson.

  ‘Nor will I,’ said myself.

  ‘There you are,’ said Jo. ‘My belief is you can’t be certain of anything in human nature. As for that skew-eyed machine-gun man of yours, well, there’s nothing on heaven or earth I’d put apast him.’

  Some hours later Jo’s capacity for receiving shocks was put to the test. A mountainy man appeared to complain that the tramp was at his old tricks again. This time it was in connection with a squabble about land; there was a second marriage, a young widow, a large family, and a disputed will in it, but of the rights and wrongs of these affairs no outsider can ever judge. They begin in what is to him a dim and distant past; somebody dies and the survivors dispute over his property; somebody calls somebody else a name; six months later somebody’s window is smashed; years after somebody’s fences are broken down; the infection spreads to the whole parish; the school is boycotted; there is a riot in the nearest town on fair day; and then, quite casually, some unfortunate wretch who seems to have had nothing to do with the dispute is found in a ditch with portion of his skull blown away.