The Devil is an Irishman

by Eddie Lenihan

  Yet ... yet ... everything was not as it should be. Two more times he met travellers on the road and both times he saluted and gave them a friendly greeting. But the reaction was the same, and instant, in each case: a long, open-mouthed stare, quick sign of the cross, and then helter-skelter retreat.

  ‘Is the whole world gone mad, or what?’ he breathed, scratching his neck in wonder. It had not yet dawned on him that the cause might be himself, not the rest of the world.

  But if there was not the flicker of a doubt in his mind before, the reaction he got when he arrived at his own front door left him in no doubt that something was seriously amiss. His wife it was that opened it, certainly, but her response was not that of the Máire he knew – calm, welcoming and good-humoured. Instead, her hand jerked away as if she had been burned and she began to back into the kitchen.

  ‘No! Get off away o’ here, whatever you are!’ And she blessed herself. Jack’s temper was rising now. He had had more than enough of this foolery. He was tired. All he wanted to do was have a bite to eat, get to bed and sleep for a week. And here she was, acting the gamall like the rest of them.

  Trying to keep his voice in check he snapped, ‘Out o’ my way, woman!’ and stalked in, but if he did Máire was gone equally quickly by the back door. He was left to stare at her as she hared madly towards a neighbour’s house, faster, in fact, than he had ever seen her move before.

  He made no attempt to follow, only slumped wearily on to the sofa and began to consider. Something was most terribly wrong here. He could no longer doubt that. But what? He pulled himself to his shaving-mirror. Maybe he had disfigured his face in a way that was frightening them all.

  He almost fell out of his standing when he found looking back at him – nothing at all! He was gone ... or at least not there. Or ... or ... This was too unbelievable to even try to put words on. He looked again. Still gone! But where was he? How could a person just disappear?

  It never occurred to him that maybe he had never reap-peared.

  Not daring even to breathe, he raised his right hand to his face, to feel it for himself. And that was when he spotted it, the blue light where his hand ought to be. But there was no trace of any hand. Only the light.

  The lamp! That cursed blue lamp! He shook his arm violently to rid himself of the unwelcome thing. But it would not be removed, no matter what frantic contortions he put himself through in the next few minutes, and they were many and frenzied.

  His exertions were violently interrupted when the door was burst in by the boots of several neighbours armed with pikes, screwdrivers and shotguns. And there was Máire behind them, urging them on.

  ‘’Twas here only a minute ago. A blue light. Moving, it was. It must be Jack’s ghost or maybe a worse thing entirely. Maybe an evil spirit.’

  Jack dived under the sofa and lay low while they searched. No point in facing people who were in a mood like that, he told himself. Anyway, what Máire had just said was enough to be going on with, whatever she had meant by it.

  They proceeded to scour the kitchen and would surely have found him, but just then the priest strode in in his most business-like robes. Someone, in the midst of all the excitement, had thought to summon him. In a matter of minutes he had worked himself into a fine manful chanting of prayers of ... exorcism, no less!

  ‘Is he out o’ his mind, too, like all the rest of ’em? Or who does he think I am? The Devil himself?’ Jack gurgled, amazed.

  The prayers and the intent behind them could not be mistaken, though. And there could be only one response from Jack: clear out for now, while his pursuers were on their knees and temporarily quiet, and come back later when all the fuss had died down.

  Unfortunately, he was not fast enough. As he slithered towards the threshold a less-than-devout kneeler spied the stealthy movement of the light.

  ‘Look!’ he bellowed, his finger stabbing towards it. ‘He’s trying to escape on us!’

  ‘Catch him! Stop him!’ shrieked the priest, prayers forgotten for the moment as he scrabbled for the holy water.

  ‘Not if my legs can help it,’ Jack spat and charged down the pathway, the devout congregation of a moment before now a foaming mob on his tail.

  IT WAS THE BEGINNING of a pattern. From that day on he was hunted from post to pillar by this priest and that, all armed with bell, book and holy water, all intent on being the one to rid the land of Ireland of his unwelcome presence.

  And gradually, grudgingly, he was forced to accept the terrible truth poking its finger at him from every ditch and crossroad: there was no going back. He had made his choice. Neither Peter nor the Old One wanted him. Of that he could be certain. But neither did Cratloe, Clare, Ireland or any-where else in the land of the living. He was trapped in a horrible half-existence, neither man nor spirit.

  And so he was condemned to a furtive existence in out-of-the-way places, appearing at dark and ungodly hours, terrifying all who met him in his little blue light.

  So he remains to this day, alone, shunned, a wanderer. And he will be until the walls of the world collapse at last under the weight of Eternity.

  Seán Ó Duinnín and the Devil

  For as many generations as the average person has fingers and toes the Claddagh of Galway was famous as one of the most tightly-knit communities in all of Ireland. Nearly every family there made its living from the sea, and experts they were at their business, too, the men fishing while the women gutted, salted and boxed the catch. It was a steady, if dangerous, livelihood and many a ruined countryman trudging the streets of Galway when potato-blight had destroyed his crop envied them their snug homes, their full bellies and the healthy appearance of their children.

  One of the longest-rooted families in that village was the Ó Duinníns: they boasted that their first ancestor was the man who met Adam and Eve when those unworthies were flung out of the garden. And if men were inclined to smile at this for a slightly exaggerated claim, they did so privately for, as well as being noted fishermen, the Ó Duinníns also had a fearsome reputation with their fists, boots and gutting-knives, especially when the honour of the clan was concerned.

  The years of the Boer War were a time of exceptional prosperity, not alone in the Claddagh but also all over Ireland. Prices were as high as demand could raise them, for the troops had to be fed and it was considered by the powers-that-be that salted herring and mackerel were a mighty incentive to the fighting-man to do his duty best for Queen and Empire. The fishermen of Claddagh, naturally enough, had no argument with such wisdom. Galway boomed in those years and men spent freely.

  But hungrier days followed the Treaty of Vereeniging and the coming of peace, as is usually the case, and only when the Great War reared its ugly head did the good times come again. Mightier armies than ever before shook the earth now and every man of all those millions had a hungry mouth. For five years there was no end to the toil in Claddagh. Men and women worked all the hours God sent. Or almost all. For no matter what the hurry, one thing they would not do, either for profit, pressure or patriotism, was to fish on a Friday.

  ‘That’s the day Our Saviour suffered for us,’ the old people said. ‘It wasn’t worked in our fathers’ time, an’ it won’t be worked in ours either.’

  Outsiders shrugged at these quaint notions, those merchants with contracts to fill fretted, and even the local priests were prepared to intervene and negotiate a dispensation. But the ancients of the Claddagh were immovable. There would be no fishing on Fridays however pressing the need. That was that.

  In those troubled times Seán Ó Duinnín, the eldest son of the deep-rooted Duinnín family, was approaching manhood, and a fine young lad he was, too, strong, freckled and handsome, with a manner pleasant and most friendly to young and old alike. The apple of his parents’ eyes and the pride of the village, he had already long been accompanying his father on fishing trips, so imagine the shock to those people when early one Monday morning – a morning, moreover, when the mackerel were in the bay – he annou
nced that he was sick and tired of the same old dreary round of constant toil in the one place.

  ‘I want to see a bit o’ the world,’ he said, ‘before I’m too old. That isn’t much to ask, is it?’

  His parents were speechless, so much so that they were unable to object at first. But his friends were more forthcoming: ‘Is it so you’re out o’ your mind?’ they asked him urgently. ‘If you go out there now, you’ll be called up into some army or another. They’re still looking for amadáns to die in France for oul’ kings an’ Kaisers an’ fellows like that.’

  But there were others, less friendly or concerned, who ascribed baser motives to him: ‘Begod, he’s comin’ out through the top of himself. Gettin’ too important entirely for this place, the Duinníns are.’

  Begrudgery was alive and well, even in that neighbourly village.

  By a mixture of coaxing and well-directed threats Seán’s departure was postponed for a year and more, but by the dawn of the new decade even his parents had become reconciled to what they knew could not be changed: he would go, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it. They even attempted to console themselves by considering the threatening aspect of politics at home: ‘Muise, God knows, things isn’t lookin’ too good at the minute. Maybe he’d be better off out of it for a while.’ But this was mere neighbour-talk. In their silent hearts they grieved, never more so than when they saw him off for London at the Great Southern station in Eyre Square on a pleasant May morning in 1920, and there were tears as they waved him out of sight. Turning for home, one thing at least was obvious to his brothers and sister: the old man would not survive this blow to his pride, whatever about their mother. Any father who could not keep his eldest son at home, however the rest of the family might fare, was no man in the eyes of the people of Claddagh, much and all as they might sympathise and be understanding in public.

  But, for better or worse, the deed was done. He was gone, and life would have to be got through without him.

  Days passed into weeks passed into months. There was no word from Seán. Christmas came and went and it was obvious to the other children that the old couple were suffering, though they did their best to be of good cheer for the season that was in it.

  The new year began with a sense of resentment, among his brothers at least: why did he not even write? That would have been little enough to ask. But their anger dissipated for want of someone to vent it on, for Seán did not come. Nor during the next year. Nor the next.

  Under the circumstances his father did well to last the four years that he did. But even on the day of his burial Seán put in no appearance, to the grief of his mother, who was now convinced that he too must certainly be dead. The rest of the family had their own thoughts but in order to cause the old woman no greater misery they held their opinions close to themselves.

  Ten years drifted between themselves and Seán, and if he ever again entered their minds it was only as a brief irritant, for never a word did they hear concerning him, either alive or otherwise.

  Yet, he was far from dead. Quite the opposite, in truth. By dint of hard physical work plus his native Galway gobbiness and by getting to know many of his fellow-countymen in the great city he survived at first, then gradually began to prosper. Yet, despite this slow inching up in the world there was always a lack in his life, something he could feel but not account for. And the coldness and want of nature in the people of London did little to endear the city to him though he lived among them and profited from their needs. Many a night he tossed in his bed, thinking of the place he had left so many years before, wondering ‘Why .. ? If only ..? Whether?’ Yet the daily grind, the small but relentless necessities of his routine, slowly submerged all thoughts of any homecoming, froze each impulse to go west again and be at peace with himself where he really belonged.

  One thing he never forgot, though: his mother’s last shred of advice before he left Galway station and his own reply – ‘In God’s name, Seán, keep a hold of your ha’penny, an’ mind your religion.’

  ‘I will, mother. Don’t ever doubt it.’ And failed he had not, for when most of his companions stopped attending church on Sunday, preferring to sleep off Saturday night’s revels on this their only day of rest, he always took care to fulfil his promise to his mother, even if he went no farther than the church door and could hardly see the priest, let alone hear him.

  Drink enough he did during those London years, but never to stupefaction like other lonely Irish bachelors. For one thing, he still preserved that peasant frugality bred of youthful want – he was never one to pamper himself or to expect pampering of others – and also he was stubborn enough to resent parting with his hard-come-by cash to publicans who would scarcely condescend to trade a few civil words with him as they took his money. He began to look on his Irish drinking-acquaintances as somehow simple, to allow themselves to be held in a vice-grip of work for six days and hangover for the seventh, a downward-sloping treadmill that had only one ending for most: a desolate old age kicking autumn leaves in a local park or cemetery, or sitting huddled on a bench thinking wistfully of a home, family and Ireland long vanished. Oisín and Tír na nÓg. The stories of his youth would come back to him as he watched those old men wither uncared-for, all their years of independence gone, the service they had rendered now counting for nothing at all.

  And he would most likely have continued to watch them, pitying, condescending, unwittingly on the same road himself, had not an odd circumstance intervened. He was hurrying homeward towards Twisden Road one grey threatening October evening, a parcel of meat for his supper under his oxter, and had barely turned off South Grove and into Swain’s Lane when the skies opened and let down a torrent that seemed to blot out the dismal streetscape through which he was passing. He huddled deeper into his coat and looked about for shelter. No sense in going on. There was still the best part of a mile to be walked. He would be saturated by the time he got to the house.

  And then he noticed it. Something he had never seen before: one of the black cast-iron gates of Highgate cemetery was open. Many a time, trudging homewards before now, he had wondered why they were invariably chained and pad-locked. Such a useful short-cut the graveyard would make for people like himself, he had often thought, and, why, even the dead might benefit from some little prayer thrown their way by a grateful passer-by. But no! It was the manner of Londoners to value privacy more than charity. Dead or alive, there was little change in them. All such thoughts he pushed aside now, however, for here was the gate, offering entry on this most horrible of days. Seán slipped between the heavy iron uprights and took the path straight ahead, ignoring left and right. It appeared the shortest route to his destination. Head down, he hurried on, expecting to hear at any moment the muted babble of voices in prayer – for surely it was to admit a funeral that the gate had been opened. Then, as he approached a huge beech tree that marked the centre of the cemetery and the meeting-place of the various pathways, a blue and jagged flash of lightning stopped him in his tracks. Instinctively he ducked, then looked up, waiting for the thunder which he knew must follow. Instead, a second bolt of lightning flickered across the sky, so close that he thought he could hear it crackle. Or was it the cracking of stricken timber? He had no time to distinguish one from the other, for before he could even think of jumping to safety he was engulfed in, falling with, a bedlam of yellow leaves, slashing branches and what seemed like a scattering of all his wits.

  For some moments he lay, senses spinning, while the noises continued, then thinned and died away. He looked about him, dazed, then suddenly upward. A huge branch it was that had been torn from its place. ‘An’ here I am, under it an’ nearly dead inside in a graveyard!’ Was God having fun at his expense? Hardly the time for questions now. One warning was enough. He raised himself quickly – ‘Nothing broken, thank God, but where’s my meat?!’ – and squeezed through the cage of boughs that imprisoned him. The rain was still falling, heavier now, but he hardly noticed it. Or the fact th
e he had just escaped death by inches. He wanted his meat. He had paid a solid half-crown for it and God or anyone else had no right to take it from him. He plunged back into the maze of darkening branches, but it was a futile effort, and soon enough he knew it. Almost crying with frustration – and shock, if he had but known it – he scrabbled about on his hopeless task, then, beaten, stumbled back and sat glowering on a low-set headstone that had little besides its shoulders over ground. Unseeing, angry, he looked about him, then allowed his head to flop down helplessly on to his chest. He swayed this way and that for a few moments and then snapped to full consciousness.

  It ... could not be! He leaned forward, squinting through the gathering gloom. Hardly a yard from him stood a grimed marble headstone that had once been white, and on it, in letters of unnatural startling black, the words ‘Sacred to the memory of Seán Ó Duinnín, who departed this life Septem-ber 10, 1856’.

  The rest of it he left unread. On hands and knees now, he stared, oblivious to all else. How could such a thing be? A name inscribed in Irish in an English – worse, a London – graveyard! He glanced here and there, squinted to examine this and that stone. Solid English names, every one. Hebson, Firbank, Capstaff, Newcomb, Henderson, Mayne. Not a single other Irish surname in sight. Just the one and only Seán Ó Duinnín. Something urgent, a little voice growing suddenly louder in his mind, told him to go. Now. Before worse happened. But he could not. Not with his own name staring at him from that sad, once-white stone.

  He was jolted back to reality by the deep thud of heavy metal on metal. The gate closing! He would be locked in with his buried self.

  ‘No!’ he shouted, stumbling forward, ‘Don’t leave me here. I’m not dead at all.’

  It was a shaken enough verger who stared at him from the street-side of the gate, and his suspicions were in no way lessened by Seán’s frantic gibberings. Cautiously he undid the chain and made very sure to keep the gate between himself and this creature from the gloom. Seán dashed past him without even a word of thanks and never paused until he was safe in his lodgings, shivering and panting on the bed.