Irregulars (8 page)

‘Would you think such of us here, Seán?’

‘No, Father, but I had no way of knowing. Things have changed in the country, Father. Things, people, are different.’

Father O’Dea puffs on his pipe. ‘I don’t think people are any different. They’re not, in fact. Good people are good people and most people try to be good and oftentimes fail, but they’re no different now. We’ve not changed much, I shouldn’t think. Times, however,
are
different. What people think of as good has taken a strange road altogether. No doubt Nicholas thought that what he was doing was good, in its way. For the good of the country.
For a free and independent Ireland
. You hear that often, these days, to justify just about anything you care to mention.’

‘I’ve heard it and seen it, Father,’ O’Keefe says, vaguely ashamed that he had believed Mrs Dolan’s version of events without question.

The priest continues: ‘Nicholas was dismissed because he pointed a loaded weapon at a master and was leading a good number of other boys into actions that were disruptive to the functioning of this school, at best, and dangerous at worst. His mother’s trade is of no concern to me.’ His voice softens now. ‘I was heartbroken to have to dismiss the boy, but I would have been negligent in my duties if I hadn’t.’

‘A loaded gun?’ Just Albert says. ‘Why? What in the name of Christ—begging your pardon, Father—was the lad doing with a loaded gun?’

‘And why did he point it at one of the masters?’ O’Keefe asks.

‘You have to remember that the Irregulars were holding the Four Courts at the time. They were in need of weaponry and ammunition and had to get it into the Four Courts in some way. Nicholas told me that the gun was a sample from a shipment held by men on the docks. Men who had been smuggling arms for the IRA since the Tan War. These men had given him the gun to bring to one of our masters here, to see if the republicans would care to buy the whole shipment. It was a sample of merchandise, so to speak.’

‘And was this the master he pointed it at?’ O’Keefe says.

‘No. The man he had brought it in for was absent that day, indeed, he never returned to the college, and he brought more than a few Xavier boys with him when he left to join his comrades in the Four Courts. No, it was another master who had railed
against
the anti-Treatyites as traitors to the nation. As simple as that. Nicholas had the gun with him and could not help himself. Young boys are zealous creatures, gentlemen, as you both know.’

‘And young boys make mistakes, Father,’ O’Keefe says.

‘They do. And I considered keeping him in school. I did.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’ Just Albert asks.

‘Because there were more than just Nicholas involved. The boys in the school, many of them, have … involved themselves politically. Boys are like that. And Nicholas was very influential. He was a leader of sorts. Even some of the older boys followed him. In the end, I asked himself and four others to go. I felt I had no choice in the matter. There were fistfights at break, in the hallways, over the national question. Class boycotts of teachers who supported the Treaty. Masters afraid to teach their classes for fear of saying the wrong thing and being threatened. It’s not finished by any means, but the more radical actions have ceased. I’ll say it again: it pained me to have to ask him to leave, of all the boys. But I felt it was for the safety of the other pupils, and indeed teachers here, that I had to do it. He sat in that very chair, Seán, and begged me not to. And then told me that he would do what he had done all over again, for the future of Ireland. An independent republic. I had high hopes for the boy. I’ve no doubt he’ll go on to grand things, but this school cannot abide a boy who is a danger to it. If you want my opinion, Seán, the boy most likely joined O’Hanley and the other lads from the school.’

‘Felim O’Hanley?’

‘The very man. He was a fine master—one of our few lay teachers. An inspirational man when he wasn’t away fighting, and the boys loved him. Loved him and his ideas. If I had known the trouble he would bring to the school, I would never have hired him, but he’d been a great friend to Patrick Pearse, had taught with the man, and I thought he would be good for the school at the time. If only as a balance to the pro-Crown contingent on the staff.’

O’Keefe remembers that O’Dea had always been a republican of sorts—rare enough for a priest in an order that educated the sires of the establishment.

‘Jaysus,’ Just Albert says. ‘Sorry, Father, but jaysus, isn’t O’Hanley only the most wanted man in the whole of Dublin after trying to blow up all the bridges?’

‘He is.’

‘But how do we know then,’ O’Keefe says, ‘that Nicholas wasn’t lifted and interned after the attempt to blow the bridges into the city? Sure, weren’t half the lads involved caught and locked up?’

‘Or shot,’ Father O’Dea adds.

‘No, not that. He’s not been shot or we would have heard. Or locked up…’ There is worry in the doorman’s voice, the first notes of fear O’Keefe has heard from him.

O’Keefe gathers his thoughts. Albert stares at the painting of Loyola.

‘Is there any place you might suggest we look for the boy, Father?’ he says finally.

The priest is silent for a moment. ‘You might start with the man who gave him the gun.’

‘You know who gave it to him?’ Just Albert says.

‘I asked, and Nicholas told me. He was an open boy, naïve in some ways and worldly in others.’

‘He should have told me all this,’ the doorman says, ‘or Mrs Dolan. She would have forgiven him … anything, she would have. All of us would have. Will do … will forgive him.’

O’Keefe says, ‘The men who gave him the gun … they wouldn’t forgive him for telling you.’

‘No they wouldn’t, but they wouldn’t hear of it from me. And as far as I know, the men who needed it got the gun anyway.’

‘You mean he still had it when he left?’

‘I was hardly the one to take it from him. In the times that are in it, I wished no harm to come to the boy.’

‘You say some lad on the docks gave the gun to Nicky?’ Just Albert says. ‘Who was it then?’

‘A man by the name of Dominic Mahon.’

Just Albert sits back in his chair as if he’d been shoved. ‘Jaysus fuck,’ he says. ‘Domo Mahon.’ He does not ask the Father to forgive his language this time.

The priest turns to O’Keefe. ‘You’ve heard of him, Seán?’

O’Keefe nods. He has heard of the man and has heard of the family. Along with most of Dublin. ‘I can see how they might have had the guns, the Mahons. There’s not much of value that comes off a ship in this city that doesn’t pass through Mahon hands at some time or another.’

‘Sure, don’t they control the quays and every docker on them?’ Just Albert says. ‘What in God’s name was Nicky doing dealing with that mob, and me not knowing a thing about it?’ It is as if, O’Keefe thinks, he is blaming himself for the boy’s involvement with the Mahons.

The priest appears to sense this as well, and as if to humanise the Mahons says, ‘One of their boys attended here some years back. A bright boy.’

‘You’ll take anyone here, Father,’ Just Albert says.

Father O’Dea smiles and nods. ‘“Give us the boy at seven and we’ll give you back the man.” I wish Freddy Mahon had put his brains to better use, but there you are. You may tell him I said so if it doesn’t implicate the boy.’

‘So it’s a trip down the docks for us, then,’ O’Keefe says, rising from his chair. Albert stands with him.

‘Not exactly,’ Father O’Dea says.

‘How do you mean, Father?’

‘Dominic Mahon is interned in Gormanston Aerodrome, the last I heard. Himself and his many brothers and sons and one or two cousins I suspect.’

‘Why there and not Mountjoy or Kilmainham?’ O’Keefe says.

‘Because they have too much influence in the prisons in Dublin, I’d imagine, with the ordinary criminals and warders.
And
they are not up on any formal charges as such. Free State intelligence knows, however, that they have sold, will sell, what arms they can get their hands on to the highest bidder and have decided to remove them from the picture.’

‘Not unlike our former masters in the Crown would have done…’ O’Keefe says.

Father O’Dea smiles. ‘They’re fast learners in the art of government, the Free Staters.’

‘Where do you get all this … information, Father,’ Just Albert says, ‘if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘We’ve more than one old boy who served in the IRA who is now in the Free State Army. Some visit, from time to time.’

‘And old boys in the Irregulars as well, Father?’ O’Keefe asks.

‘Certainly. And then there are those like yourself and your friend Albert.’

‘How so?’

‘Serving the people themselves. People who have been harmed by the fighting of these past six years. People who have lost themselves and need to be found.’

Albert turns and opens the door. ‘I serve Mrs Dolan and her only. Mr O’Keefe can serve dinner for all I care, once we find the boy.’ He is ready to leave, a coiled tension in his muscled shoulders.

‘I don’t imagine a fella can just turn up at the gates of Gormanston and ask to visit whoever he likes,’ O’Keefe says.

‘
Whomever
,’ the priest says, rising and extending a hand to O’Keefe.

Again O’Keefe smiles. Memories of innocent times, when grammar mattered more than bullet calibre or proclamations of intent.

Just Albert is impatient, tapping his bowler hat against his thigh in the doorway.

‘No, I don’t imagine one can, but there’s a Xavier man, a commandant in the Free State Army—he was a senior warder in Mountjoy who helped the IRA from inside during the Tan War—who’s in charge out at the camp. Another old boy … of sorts. He’ll ensure entry for you there if I ask him.’

‘That’d be grand, Father. And thank you for your help today.’

‘I’ll give him a jingle, and if that fails, send a message, and tell him to expect the two of you, then?’ Father O’Dea says, guiding O’Keefe to the door.

Just Albert answers. ‘You do that, Father. The two of us. Until we find the boy, that’s how it goes.’

O’Keefe shoots Albert a dark look. ‘The sooner we find him the better.’

‘I’ll pray that you do, gentlemen. And I’ll pray for the boy. And yourselves.’

‘God helps the man who helps himself is how I see it, Father,’ Just Albert says, giving the priest’s hand a cursory grasp before turning and marching down the waxed parquet floor to the front door.

‘I’m sorry for that … for him, Father. I’ve been landed with him. The woman who’s employed me has insisted …’

‘Mrs Dolan is an astute woman, Seán. I dare say she knew what she was doing, lending you Albert’s services.’

O’Keefe is sceptical, but smiles all the same at his former teacher. ‘I’d manage better on my own, I think.’

‘Times have changed, Seán. You might find yourself more in need of the man than you’d imagine.’

‘Please God, I won’t.’ He returns his trilby to his head and shakes the old Jesuit’s hand.

On the footpath outside the school, the early evening sun has descended behind the buildings, casting the street in shade. O’Keefe stops and pats his jacket for a cigarette. Finding he has none, he thinks to ask Ginny Dolan’s man for one of his cigars and then decides against it.

‘Right,’ Just Albert says, ‘we’ll pay your man a visit, so.’

O’Keefe is tired suddenly, his legs hollow, weak as if the day has chased him. He tries to remember when he had last eaten, and realises it was breakfast at his parents’ house. Until this morning he had been an invalid. His own fault, he thinks, but he is paying for it now. The scar on his face begins to spasm, a sign that he needs to regather his strength, requires rest and food.

‘Father O’Dea said he’d tell the fella to expect us tomorrow,’ he says.

‘We can make a start of it now.’

‘We? Make a start of what, Albert? For fuck sake …
We
…’ Exasperation melds with the tiredness O’Keefe feels, making him irritable and angry. This doorman is worse than some of the officers he had worked under in the RIC and the Army. Obstinate to the point of stupidity.

Puffing one of his thin cigars, Just Albert says, ‘Yeah,
we
. If the Padre’s man is not able, we could grease one of the guards and see the Mahons tonight.’

‘Right, and end up walking around a camp full of angry fucking rebels and young Free State Army eejits armed to the teeth in the watchtowers, and all so we can meet one of the dodgiest mobs that ever walked the quays of Dublin. In the dark, mind.’

‘You’re not afraid of the dark, Mr O’Keefe, are you?’

O’Keefe remembers Father O’Dea’s advice, but can’t think of a single way this man’s help might be worth the sheer frustration he embodies. He turns and begins walking towards Parnell Street and the tram stop at the monument. He does it before there is violence between them. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Just Albert. Ten a.m., I’ll collect you at Mrs Dolan’s shop. I’m for me tea and me bed.’

‘You’ll not find Nicholas from your bed.’

‘And I won’t find him at all unless I’m fit to do it. Tomorrow!’ he calls out over his shoulder as he turns the corner, leaving Ginny Dolan’s man behind.

13

O
’Keefe steps off the tram in Rathmines. He thinks of a pint of stout, saliva flooding his mouth, and he wishes himself back in the cool, soothing gloom of Slattery’s. The creak of the barstool as he sits, the hanging swirls of tobacco smoke in the odd shaft of evening sunlight admitted through a propped door. It takes him a long moment but he crosses the road and buys a quart bottle of barley water and a loaf of batch bread from Tumulty’s Grocers and Hardware before making
his way up the Leinster Road to the basement flat he rents from Mrs Cunningham.

Arriving at the two-storey redbrick house, he descends the steps to his basement room, checking first under the stairs that his Triumph Trusty is still safely tucked up under its oilskin cover.
He finds that everything is as he had left it the week before: his towel hanging to dry on a wire rack before an empty fire grate, his wash-basin empty and dry, his few shirts, his trenchcoat and a single pair of heavy corduroy trousers hanging in the wardrobe. It occurs to him that he owns very few clothes for a man of his age, having spent most of his adult life in uniform. He had intended to buy a jumper some months ago, some casual wool trousers and stylish brown brogues that men were wearing now instead of boots, but had never bothered. It is as if the very act would symbolise the end of his life as a policeman, and he is not yet ready for that. Nearly six months a civilian and still not ready to believe it. He shakes his head, opening his dresser drawer, placing his wallet and keys within; his underwear and socks are neatly folded where Mrs Cunningham had placed them more than a week before. It reminds him that he must go upstairs to her and pay the rent he owes and for the laundry she has done.

Never once has he been so much as a day late with his rent, despite the aimless chaos of the past months, and here he is, he thinks, more than a week late.
You’re a disgrace
, he thinks, feeling the word.
In this country, sure, better to be called a murderer than a disgrace.

He sits down on the bed, however, exhaustion overcoming him. He will go up to Mrs Cunningham in a moment, he tells himself, shrugging off his suit jacket, tie and collar, hanging them on the chair, tossing his hat onto the desk beside the bed. His stomach rumbles, and he recalls the few tins of beef stew and beans he has stored in a press above the single-ring gas burner. He has to eat, he knows, and he tears off a hunk of the bread he’s bought, washing it down with gulps of barley water.
Send one of the Cunningham boys back to the shops for a quarter pound of butter, heat the beef stew
. In a minute he will do this, but first lie down.
For a minute only ….

Sleep gathers him in and opens its store of nightmares. The beach in Turkey and turquoise water running red. A man now, in a suit and flat cap, yards ahead of him, starting to run, as if in terror from O’Keefe, the hunter. Now the salon room in Ginny Dolan’s kip, the contorted face of a woman, a wad of pound notes .…

Loud banging on the rear door of the flat that leads to the back garden. O’Keefe sits bolt upright and checks his watch, his heart pounding, the morass of his dreams leeching into his waking, fear driving him. He searches frantically for a gun he no longer carries before he gets his bearings, recognising his room, his hat on the desk. Heart slowing, he checks his watch. Seven twenty. In the evening? Morning? He thinks it is evening. He feels as if he has slept for only a short time, and the panic he feels begins to drain away. He stands and goes to the door. Nothing to fear now as he recognises the voices at the door.

‘He
is
there. Ella saw him go in.’

‘And how do you know?’

‘’Cause she said so is how, thick-as-a-plank.’

A sharp slap resounds, and O’Keefe pulls open the door to find the youngest Cunningham boy, Henry, returning the slap to his older brother Thomas.

‘Lads,’ he says.

The two boys leap back from the doorstep, startled. The younger regains his composure quickest and greets O’Keefe. ‘You’re back!’ He turns to his brother. ‘See, I told you he was bleedin’ back.’

‘It was Ella told
me
he was back, yeh sap!’

‘What’s the story, lads?’ O’Keefe says, blinking away the last of his sleep.

The boys look up at him. ‘Hiya, Mr O’Keefe. We done a show. You want to see our show, do yeh?’

‘A show.’ O’Keefe pats his pockets. He is an experienced audience to the Cunningham children’s shows. He finds a few coppers in his trousers and thinks he will need to carry more—like his new associate Just Albert—if he is to continue living in the Cunningham house.

‘It’s a lovely show. Ella’s in it and I’m in it and it’s got songs.’

‘And I’m in it!’

‘Of course you are. Look,’ O’Keefe says, taking three pennies from his pocket and handing them to the older of the boys. ‘That’s one each, right? I’m busy now but there’s a penny each for you two and your sister. Well done on the show. I’d say it’s only smashing.’

The boys appear crestfallen. ‘But you haven’t even seen it.’

‘How do you know it’s smashing if you haven’t seen it?’

‘Or heard the lovely songs?’

‘Yeah, or heard them an’ all?’

O’Keefe cannot help himself and smiles. A show, so.

A window slides open from above in the house. ‘Boys, leave Mr O’Keefe alone and don’t be bothering the man, for the love of God.’

The boys look up to see their mother, leaning from the kitchen window. Thomas acts as spokesman. ‘But he already paid us money to see our show.’

Mrs Cunningham shows her own smile now. She is a handsome woman in her late thirties. She has dark hair worn in a bun and large, soft brown eyes and pale skin. Her sad smile is cut with good humour and O’Keefe wonders has it always been so, or is it the recent death of her husband that has sewn her every small joy with a thread of grief.

‘Mr O’Keefe, you’ll have those two ruined and you’ll get no peace from them. Like feeding stray cats, giving the pair of them pennies every time they pester you.’

O’Keefe steps out of the flat into the garden and looks up at his landlady in the window. Hens peck at the gaps between flagstones. ‘Sure, it’s not every day, Mrs Cunningham, do you get to see a show for a penny in this town.’

The woman laughs. ‘I wouldn’t know, Mr O’Keefe. It’s been so long since I’ve been to one.’

Too young to be a widow, O’Keefe thinks. But there are more young widows in Ireland now than at any other time since the Famine perhaps. Women like Mrs Cunningham, who’d lost her husband—an officer of the Leinster Rifles who had left his arm at the Somme—only two years before, in the last blast of the Spanish Flu to ravage the country. It is not an uncommon story—men surviving years of the worst fighting the world had ever seen, only to be snatched from life by the Spanish Lady on their return home. A disease that took the young and fit, those strong or lucky enough to survive the worst horrors of war, were some of the first to die. This is but another proof to O’Keefe, if any further proof were needed, that there can be no God in the heavens who would play such a terrible joke on the world of men.

Having lost her husband’s handsome income—he had been a solicitor, before enlisting in Lansdowne Road with his rugby team-mates in a Pals Battalion—Mrs Cunningham has been forced to rent out the ground floor of the house that she and her husband had bought before the war. To supplement this meagre income the woman keeps hens and sells the eggs to local shops and neighbours, takes in ironing and laundry and makes dresses to order with her mother-in-law and ten-year-old daughter as helpmates.

‘You’ve not missed much, from what I read in the papers,’ O’Keefe says.

‘I’ve enough drama in my life with those two, Mr O’Keefe, sure.’

He laughs. ‘These two lads? I don’t believe it for a minute.’

‘You’ve been warned, sir. I’ll leave you to it. Boys, leave the poor man alone now.’

‘They’re grand, Mrs Cunningham. And I’ll be up shortly with last week’s rent. I feel rotten being so late. I was laid up … ill.’

‘Sure, take your time, Mr O’Keefe. I’ve always known you were good for it. You’re well now, I hope?’

Unconsciously, he touches the back of his head. ‘Never better,’ he says.

The rear kitchen door, next to the window out of which her mother is leaning, opens, and the oldest of the Cunningham children, a daughter, skips down the steps into the garden.

‘Are you watching our show, Mr O’Keefe?’ she asks.

‘I am, of course, Ella. I wouldn’t miss it.’

Smiling, the widow says, ‘A short show, you lot. And then in and leave Mr O’Keefe in peace.’

The show has a pirate theme, O’Keefe suspects, though is not entirely certain. The two boys have swords made with slats from a packing crate—at one stage O’Keefe is forced to stop proceedings to remove a nail protruding from one of the swords—and Ella Cunningham sings
Green Grows the Rushes, O
in a high, sweet voice. When the song finishes, the boys return to scrapping, eventually abandoning their swords, ending up in the dirt, fighting for real until O’Keefe pulls them apart. Her role in the drama complete, Ella makes to go inside. The boys again begin fighting.

‘That was a grand show, Ella,’ O’Keefe says. ‘Did you get your share of the ticket sales from your brother?’

For a moment, the girl appears confused before realisation dawns and she goes to the boys and wrenches them apart. ‘Which of you has my penny?’

The youngest lad, Henry, points to his brother. ‘Thomas does!’

The girl clips the older boy around the ear and jams her hand into his pocket, coming out with her spoils. ‘You were going to filch it, you filthy caffler!’ Another clip, the boy crying out this time. She turns now and smiles at O’Keefe.

‘Thank you for the penny, Mr O’Keefe. I
sincerely
hope you enjoyed the show. We’ll be doing another one tomorrow for you and Mammy. Perhaps you can watch it together?’

O’Keefe smiles at the girl. Ten years old and no flies on her. ‘Well …’

‘Lovely, we’ll let you know what time in the morning. Ta ra!’

O’Keefe laughs and turns to go inside, the poison of his nightmares sluiced away by the manic, belligerent joy of these children. His father’s illness. The job for Ginny Dolan. All gone for the moment. It has been months, he realises, since he has smiled as much as he has in the past half-hour.
Sincerely
. He is blessed, he thinks, in ways he’d not expected, to have a flat in the Cunningham house.