The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty

by Sebastian Barry

  ‘But, Eneas, that Viv Roche is a grand girl, a lovely girl, perfect for you. Oh, Eneas, when I seen you going out with a girl like that, taking her up to the Gaiety, Eneas, a princess, oh, and lovely people. Not tradespeople at all, sure the father there is almost an engineer, a civil engineer, building fine bridges and the like for the town. When I saw you with her on your arm, I was content, I was happy as a mother. I couldn’t ask for a finer daughter.’

  ‘I know, Mam, only too well.’

  ‘Aye, well, son, we’ll see what happens, and sure, Christ, aren’t these new times, peaceful times, and all the hope that there is in the country. The King of England himself has shaken Collins’s hand and wished him and the country well. New times, son. Hold your hour now the minute.’

  Well, he holds it. And the upshot of it is, his mother despite his word does make a sortie out to talk to O’Dowd, and O’Dowd is very polite and pleasant with her, disavowing all understanding of her visit. He assures her there is no danger to her son from his quarter, nor indeed from the new dispensation generally. That all slates are wiped clean, and he has never heard of any case of a man being blacklisted or executed in Sligo. That her son is free to go about as he wishes, and when his mother mentions Viv Roche, O’Dowd says he has no opinion of the matter as he does not know the girl, but that her father is certainly a very fine Sligoman and a first-class greyhound breeder and a patriot, and he even goes so far as to say he wishes his cousin well. And Mrs McNulty comes away with a high opinion of Stephen O’Dowd.

  But it’s just poison to the blood of her son when she tells him. To disavow all knowledge of black-lists and executions is the crux, and though she is a hero to him in the matter he wishes she had not gone.

  And heartily wishes it even more so the next day when he goes down to the house by the old bridge and tries to gain entry. For the house is closed against him. And Mr Roche steps out to him right enough and tells him some fellas have been in their dark coats and have talked to him seriously about history and right, and of how a man might prosper in Sligo and how a man might not. And poor Viv was approached, he says, on Main Street and told to keep away from traitors or she would have her hair cut very short for herself. And the man on Main Street had called her some terrible names and she was mightily upset about it and is inside in the house like a rag, a wrung-out rag. And her father with the softness in his voice quite vanished tells Eneas to be gone and to come that road no more.

  Truth to tell the effect of this is worse on Eneas than a threat of death. To be separated from Viv for ever, even though he knows he must be separate from her and could have decided that himself even if he had been let alone, douses the flame of the old life in him. He is a new man and not so good a one, he believes. And no matter how much he goes about the strands and weeps and shivers and even curses his own God, he will not mend into the shape he was before. Sligo’s feeling about him is now complete and clear, and he should be off immediately. But somehow he lingers. He’s sort of killed anyway, already. Someone will come he supposes to do the task official-like. In the meantime he’s like one of them foxes, crushed and battered by the wheel of a car somewhere out on a dark night road.

  It’s amusing to him almost that in the end they send Jonno, his own lost friend Jonno, of the apples, to sort him out. Of course, he is the obvious choice. Oddly enough too they have waited till the summer. They have been too busy killing each other to bother with him. The civil war that followed the so-called peace is eating Ireland. He has heard that Jonno is a most boisterous hero now, excitable, passionate, and dangerous. He understands that tincture, that suggestion of madness. He feels it himself in this course of his own private war. Craziness, indifference, weeping, euphoria. Endless. In all the months of hanging on, he has been amazed at his indifference to his own death or his own survival. He has been almost bizarrely at peace, if everyone else has not. And Sligo, the tinny life of the town, the swift kids in the streets, the toiling trucks, has seemed to him unchanged by this murderous freedom. It is as if somewhere, maybe on the outskirts, or in some secret town field, there is a bull-ring, where every day a man is slaughtered, or a number, and you can read about it in the Sligo Champion with your tea. You can read about it, but never see a body or hear a shot. And yet there are legions of the dead now, or at least a battalion. Surely, just the same as England, this useless war will take away all the good young men, or the hardiest, and leave only the astutest killers. Those that have stalked most expertly, murdered most adroitly, the very dancing men of murder.

  Jonno comes to him in the little shed in the garden at Finisklin. Everyone knows he is there, he’s not hiding exactly, but he does not wish to bring disaster on his family by staying in John Street. He does not wish to bring the spirit of the bull-ring to John Street, no, so he has set himself up with a truckle bed and a table, and though a certain wildness is creeping into the once immaculate garden, it’s a pleasure to sit at the door of the shed in the summer sun and ruminate and drink tea and not mind. Even having no work does not torment him as once it might well have. Perhaps this time is a time between other times, there’s a word for that, he struggles to find it, an official word he once saw used by his sergeant at the station. Interregnum — yes, yes, a beautiful word. A time between kingdoms does it mean? If so, it is apt.

  When he sees the hollyhocks struggling up despite the rash of weeds and tall grass, he smiles to himself remembering Tuppenny Jane. Those times, not of innocence but of long ago, are marvels to him now, his amusements. Only the day before he has astonished himself by realizing he is only, by the clock, twenty-two years old. He feels like an ould fella. He feels like a fabled wanderer of old and he hasn’t left the spot yet. He has not endured shipwreck maybe but maybe he has — the shipwreck of freedom so general and welcomed in the land.

  Jonno comes to him. Jonno is more kempt now, more groomed, more allied to the pictures, more strange than Eneas remembers him — not more haunted as he would expect, but more buoyant, more up in the waves, more airy, more terrible. Spick and span like a new knife, even more than before. It is afternoon, soaked with a wet heat after the night rain, the grasses melting, and Eneas sees Jonno just the second he comes in the old wrought-iron gate and steps on to the cinder path. Not a weed has dared trespass upon those his father’s cinders, certainly. The poor hollyhocks are having to keep their tresses above the fronds of rich, wild grass. There is a battle on between his father’s handiwork and he supposes the reckless handiwork of God, a more savage gardener.

  It could be miles instead of yards that Jonno has in front of him, sun-darkened tough dapper Jonno. It’s not the parley he will have with him that bothers Eneas, but that Jonno has come at all. There was a time when Jonno would rather have stuck pins in his eyes than stalk up that garden path. Even now he fancies he can see the effect of the lead in his old friend’s legs. Possibly. They have reached this point because they have been faithful to different masters, and lacking in faith in each other. Many times secretly in his own private mind he has kind of laughed at Jonno for the seriousness of his beliefs. And here he is now invested with a fledgling power. People are choosing who they want in Sligo and who they want out. If Jonno were to draw a pistol and carry it up the path pointing at Eneas, how could he be surprised? It would only be natural. Only months before, he spotted Jonno marching with some others of Collins’s crowd, drilling you might say up Main Street. Is this Sligo Main Street? It is, and the farther you go the meaner it gets. Then they were shouting and wheeling about on the Showgrounds, causing grief to the football players trying to train. They had been a joke really, put against a real army, but there is no one of the correct sense of humour to laugh now. The pity is, yes, even as the new man he is now, and after everything that has transpired, he does love his friend Jonno, and truly it hurts him to see the yards of the cinder path covered. He loves him. A madness. Because it does not suit the present world. He looks at this man approaching who has said all manner of terrible things to him, and he feels
a love for him. And now he smiles like a dog and sticks his boots out from his bit of a chair. The dust from under the chair where the rain didn’t reach folds back on his bootleather like pieces of lace. Jonno is clearly surprised by his ease and smile and has a few moments of blankness, where the dark look he has maybe engineered coming out from the town seems to lighten and evaporate curiously.

  ‘Do you have a gun, Eneas?’ he say s.

  ‘No,’ says Eneas. ‘Do you?’

  ‘You’re not so badly fixed out here,’ says Jonno, who always admired a camp. ‘Have you any ould tea? I’m parched. It’s a long haul in this weather along the sea road. Thank God for the bit of rain last night.’

  The tone of it amazes Eneas, considering the nature of their last conversation. You’d swear there was no civil war anywhere, that Eneas had never joined the peelers, and that all was right with the universe, except for the pleasant enquiry after the gun. Clearly Jonno has lost his marbles. So be it. They can be two easy madmen here in his Pappy’s old garden. Jonno removes a finely laundered handkerchief from his jacket and smears at the smattering of dust on his forehead. His hatband looks tight and wet. When he removes the hat the hair is bright and jutting. Eneas gives half a snort but not of contempt. He gets up and goes back into the shed and fetches tea for his old pal. Jonno takes the cup and drinks the entire thing in one go like it was beer.

  ‘Tea for thirst,’ he says, fond as always of a good saw.

  Eneas decides more or less to say nothing.

  ‘Jesus, we had the gas out here in the old days, didn’t we, boy?’ Jonno stares about the garden busily then lets his stare fall pleasantly on Eneas. Eneas is not interested in a staring match and sits back into the chair. As a matter of fact it is an orange box from Venezuela. He found a broken chair-back behind Hanrahan’s public house on the shallow bay, and banged it on to the orange box with a couple of old nails and the heel of his shoe. It isn’t a throne but it takes his weight anyway.

  ‘Is there any chance you know why I’ve come out?’ There is a fine element of pleading here, of wanting to be let off his task. Maybe he is tired of killing and the plotting of killing and the going about and the shooting of former comrades in the moil and murder and foolishness of the civil war. Maybe he is a new man also. Maybe not.

  Td have an inkling all right,’ says Eneas, falling into the tone of it quite happily, and rubs the back of his right hand like the schoolmaster Jackson used to years ago. For some reason he remembers that. In fact his head is a riot of flashing memories because Jonno is exciting it. An electric storm. The friendliness of the man delights him and overwhelms him in the same instant.

  ‘Well,’ says Jonno, truly as if he had good news in a way, and he wedges half his arse on the old step of the shed, hitching the trouser leg when he has to bend a knee tightly, he doesn’t look in the least comfortable, but he’s acting comfortable, at ease, relaxed, a man confident with another man, ‘let me tell you, Eneas, there’s a section there, let me call it a powerful minority, that were keen as hounds to impose on you immediately the, the, you know what I mean, the old death-sentence, you know, in consideration of the black-list and the fact that you wouldn’t go after the Reprisal Man.’

  ‘The old death-sentence. Oh, rightyo.’

  ‘Aye, you know, the chop, the finito, the End.’

  ‘Yeh, yeh, got you. And how would they go about that, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Send out a few lads, you know, or just the one, like me today — sure you know how it’s done. Weren’t you a witness often enough to such matters when they were carried out during the — ?’

  ‘Murders, like?’

  ‘No, no — I wouldn’t call them that. During the struggle for, you know. Military operations, that sort of thing. Reprisals and so on.’

  ‘Aye, aye, Jonno — murders.’

  ‘Act the whiteman, Eneas. You can’t call all that murders. Acts of war and such are not murders. A priest would say as much. No. Sure a murder’s a mortaller, isn’t it?’

  Funny to hear the childish word applied so. Mortaller. Jonno is a changed man. The gloom and darkness is gone out of him. His very hesitancy and lightness are deeply inappropriate. Lunatic. He must have seen things, witnessed things, dark things, to be queerly lit so, no doubt.

  ‘I don’t remember anywhere in the good book, Jonno, where a directive shall we say from a group of bowsies to kill a man is said to be beyond the borders of murder.’

  ‘Sure what are you talking about? Isn’t that our whole point, boy? Aren’t you after shooting men yourself, Eneas McNulty? You see? What are you going on about the Bible for? Jaysus, that’s rich coming from you, constable.’

  ‘Oh, as you opine, Jonno, I have fired off a few bullets in my time. I didn’t hit anyone but I surely tried. Flogging about the countryside in your Ford motorcars and terrorizing bloody everyone. Jaysus, Jonno, a well-aimed bullet would have been too good for some of ye. And as for these present days, God himself couldn’t keep up with the goings-on of you.’

  Jonno rises up.

  ‘You can’t be serious talking like that. Don’t you know I’m after pleading for your life. Your fucking life, Eneas. I’m after pleading for it. There’s Stephen O’Dowd was rearing, rearing he was, to come out himself along the fucking Finisklin Road and blow your head off. And he could do it. He was very disappointed, Eneas, very disappointed about the Reprisal Man. Because, it embarrassed him. He wrote you a nice letter, the letter of a gentleman, and because you are a bowsie and an ignorant man you didn’t reply. He’s not a man used to getting no reply. And more to the point, you didn’t act. It wouldn’t have been anything to you. Hah? But you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t even try to do it, which would have been something to be going on with. I don’t like the killing. It’s for the sanitation of it, the new country. You know? There’s a load of rats being killed now quick, executed, you know, quick and quiet and official-like, and there was an RIC officer done just last night in the midlands. Shot at his own gates, the bastard, in front of his fucking wife. For mistreating prisoners in Dublin, one night they were held without coats or food in the forecourt of the Rotunda hospital during the fight against the British. O’Dowd hates you, man, hates you. By Jesus, twice you were asked, twice. And sending your feckin mother up to him was low, boy, low. It embarrassed him. He hates to be embarrassed. We all do, Eneas. You know? We all hate you. And I pleaded for you because, I don’t know why. I hate you. Now, you boy, you see what I’m after doing for you, even though you’re a hated man.’

  ‘Ah, it’s kind of you, Jonno, it’s kind. But, contrariwise, why don’t you eff off now down that path and let me alone?’

  Jonno’s stunned. He wasn’t expecting high talk, but he’s getting it suddenly. Eneas is taken aback too, bizarrely…

  The words in his head and his heart are in rebellion against him. It’s the word hate from Jonno’s mouth that has done something wild to him. Hate. I hate you. We all hate you.

  Tine talk to an old friend. From a bloody RIC man. Eneas, what in the name of Jamaica were you thinking of when you joined that shower? I could’ve found a job easy for you if you’d said.’

  ‘Oh, yeh, killing, like.’

  ‘Jesus, Eneas, it’s like I don’t know you. I always thought, I always woulda said you were a finer man than this, I woulda. Anyone asking I woulda said. Couldn’t you have obliged yourself and your country by going after that feckin Tan? Of course, we’ll get him now. He’s gone off down to Brazil or somewhere and there’ll be lads following him. He won’t escape the justice due to him. If it took us fifty years, it wouldn’t be too long for us. We’ll get him, however long it takes.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is really feckin annoys me, Jonno, since you’ve come out so far to see me. It’s that you have Viv warned off me goodo. Scared to see me. Terrified. You see, she’s that way, Jonno, because your comrades gave their spake to her, Jonno, my hero. A tender woman like that.’

  ‘It was me gave her the spake
. I did it. Just like I’m out here with you now, giving you the spake. Because Eneas, this is how you have me, ever trying to prove myself to O’Dowd, after you went and fecked everything up for me. The bloody friend. Your friend McNulty, that’s what O’Dowd always says to me. And I’m tired of it. I want him to stop saying it. I warned her off you. She was lucky she heeded me. Yeh, well, Eneas, no use looking like you’re going to burst, we’d shoot her too if we didn’t like the going about of her.’

  This more or less ends the conversation for Eneas. He is giving a good stare back at Jonno. He doesn’t know where the anger came from, well, he knows from where, but how he let the wild words rise up he doesn’t know. You need a good cage for anger in a corner like this. He knows well it’s a corner. A serious corner. Jonno himself is stuck for good words now, Eneas can see him beefing himself up a bit to say something good and vital, strong, ultimate, authoritative. He laughs suddenly in his familiar manner to think that once as a little lad he longed to call Jonno’s name and fight him for the wild hell of it and be one of the lads to rob the minister’s apples, to box the minister’s fox. You never knew how things were going to turn out.

  ‘You listen, Eneas, you pack your little bag because you’re finished here now.’

  Jonno seems very distant now to Eneas, unimportant. It’s odd. And Jonno’s backing awkwardly down the cinders like Eneas would go for him or something but there’s no likelihood in the world that he would. Sure it’s Jonno has the gun, he can see it making a hard lump in Jonno’s waistcoat. He’s a different Jonno now. Fearful almost. Hard to say. Probably more in fear of the words Eneas might say than the deeds he might do.

  ‘You know, Jonno, you should go to California and secure a job in one of them horse operas, you should. Yourself and all the other cowboys of Sligo.’