My Oedipus Complex

by Frank O'Connor

  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-martialed.

  ‘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.

  3

  A fortnight later and Jo Kenefick could talk 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 bomba’dier, 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 a portion of his skull blown away.

  Not that we gathered anything as lucid or complete from the slob of a mountainy man who talked to us at such length. All he could tell us was that his cousin’s house had been machine-gunned, and that, in the opinion of the parish, was carrying the matter too far. Nor did we want to know more.
Jo Kenefick was on his feet calling for men when Sean Nelson stopped him.

  ‘Leave it to us, Jo, leave it to us! Remember we’ve an account to square with him.’

  ‘I’m remembering that,’ said Jo slowly. ‘And I’m remembering too he got away from ye twice.’

  ‘All the more reason he won’t get away a third time.’

  ‘If I leave him to ye,’ said Jo, ‘will ye swear to me to bring him back here, dead or alive, with his machine-gun?’

  ‘Dead or alive,’ nodded Sean.

  ‘And more dead than alive?’ said Jo with his heavy humour.

  ‘Oh, more dead than alive!’ said Sean.

  And so it was that we three, Sean, myself, and the mountainy man set out from the village that evening.

  Three-quarters of an hour of jolting and steady climbing and we came to a little valley set between three hills; a stream flowing down the length of it and a few houses set distantly upon the lower slopes. The mountainy man pointed out a comfortable farmhouse backed by a wall of elm-trees as our destination. He refused to come with us, nor indeed did we ask for his company.

  The door of the little farmhouse was open, and we walked straight into the kitchen. A young woman was sitting by an open hearth in the twilight, and she rose to greet us.

  ‘ ’Morrow, ma’am,’ said Nelson.

  ‘Good morrow and welcome,’ she said.

  ‘A man we’re looking for, ma’am, a man with a machine-gun, I’m told he’s staying here?’

  ‘He is, faith,’ she said. ‘But he’s out at this minute. Won’t you sit down and wait for him?’

  We sat down. She lifted the kettle on to a hook above the fire and blew on the red turves until they gathered to a flame. It was easy to see that Nelson, the emotional firebrand of the brigade, was impressed. She was a young woman; not an out-and-out beauty, certainly, but good-tempered and kind. Her hair was cut straight across her brow and short at the poll. She was tall, limber and rough, with a lazy, swinging, impudent stride.

  ‘We’ve been looking for the same man this long time,’ said Nelson. ‘We’ve had a good many complaints of him, ma’am, and now he’s caused more crossness here, we heard.’

  ‘If that’s all you came about,’ she said pertly, ‘you might have found something better to do.’

  ‘That’s for us to say,’ said Nelson sharply.

  ‘Clever boy!’ she replied with an impudent pretence of surprise, and I saw by the way she set her tongue against her lower lip that Nelson had approached her in the wrong way.

  ‘That man,’ I said, ‘accidentally shot one of our fellows, and we’re afraid something else will happen.’

  At this she laughed, a quiet, bubbling, girlish laugh that surprised and delighted me.

  ‘It will,’ she said gaily, ‘something will happen unless you take that gun from him.’

  Her attitude had changed completely. Laughing still she told us how the tramp had arrived at her house one night, wet to the skin, and carrying his gun wrapped up in oilcloth. He had heard how her husband’s people had been annoying her, had heard something about herself as well and come fired with a sort of quixotic enthusiasm to protect her. On the very night of his arrival he had begun his career as knight-errant by gunning the house of one of the responsible parties, and only her persuasion had discouraged him from doing them further mischief. Three times a day he paraded the boundaries of her farm to make sure that all was well, and at night he would rise and see that the cattle were safely in their stalls and that fences and gates were standing. It was all very idyllic, all very amusing; and as there is little sentiment or chivalry in an Irish countryside there was no doubt that the young widow liked it, and appreciated with a sort of motherly regard the tramp’s unnecessary attentions. But Nelson soon made it clear that all this would have to cease. Nelson liked being a little bit officious and did it very well. Her face fell as she listened to him.

  ‘Of course,’ he added loftily, ‘you won’t have any more annoyance. We’ll settle that for you, and a great deal better than anyone else could. I’ll come back tomorrow and see you straight.’

  A few moments later the tramp himself came in; it was amazing how his face changed when he saw us sitting there. Nelson was as solemn as a judge, but for the life of me I could not resist laughing. This encouraged the tramp, who began to laugh, too, as though it were all a very good joke and would go no further. Nelson looked at me severely.

  ‘I see nothing to laugh about,’ he said; and to the tramp: ‘Be ready to travel back with us inside the next five minutes.’

  ‘Let him have his tea,’ said the woman of the house roughly.

  ‘I protest,’ said the tramp.

  ‘It’s no use protesting,’ said Nelson, ‘if you don’t choose to come you know what the consequences will be.’

  ‘What will they be?’ asked the tramp, beginning to grow pale.

  ‘I was ordered to bring you back dead or alive, and dead or alive I’ll bring you!’

  ‘There!’ said the young woman, putting a teapot on the table. ‘Have your tea first, and start shooting after. Will I light the lamp?’

  ‘There’s no need,’ said Nelson, ‘I can shoot quite well in the dark.’

  ‘Aren’t you very clever?’ she replied.

  They glared at one another, and then Nelson pushed over his chair. We took our tea in silence, but after about five minutes the tramp, who had obviously been summoning up his courage, put down his knife with a bang.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said solemnly. ‘I protest. I refuse to return with you. I’m a free citizen of this country and nobody has any rights over me. I warn you I’ll resist.’

  ‘Resist away,’ growled Nelson into his teacup.

  There was silence again. We went on with our tea. Then the latch of the door was lifted and a tall, worn woman dressed in a long black shawl appeared. She stood at the door for a moment, and a very softly-breathed ‘So there you are, my man,’ warned us whom we were dealing with.

  ‘Maggie! Maggie!’ said the tramp. ‘Is it you?’

  ‘The same,’ she whispered, still in the same hushed, contented voice.

  ‘How did you get here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m searching for you these three days,’ she replied soothingly. ‘I’ve a car at the door. Are you ready to come back with me?’

  ‘I – I – I’m sorry, Maggie, but I can’t.’

  ‘Och aye, me poor man, and why can’t you?’ The hush in her voice, even to my ears, was awe-inspiring, but he plunged recklessly into it.

  ‘I’m to go back with these gentlemen, Maggie. By order – ’

  ‘Order? Order?’ she shrieked, standing to her full height and tossing the shawl back from one shoulder. ‘Let me see the order that can take my husband away from me without my will and consent! Let me see the one that’s going to do it!’

  She threw herself into the middle of the kitchen, the shawl half-flung across one arm, like a toreador going into action. Nelson, without so much as a glance at her, shook his head at the table.

  ‘I’m not taking him against your wishes, ma’am – far be it from me! I’d be the last to try and separate ye. Only I must ask you to take him home with you out of this immediately.’

  ‘Oh! I’ll take him home!’ she said with a nod of satisfaction. ‘Lave that to me.’ And with a terrifying shout she turned on the tramp. ‘On with your hat, James!’

  The poor man stumbled to his feet, looking distractedly at Nelson and me.

  ‘Anything with you?’ she rapped out.

  ‘Only me gun.’

  ‘Fetch it along.’

  Now Nelson was on his feet protesting.

  ‘No, he can’t take that with him.’

  ‘Who’s to stop him?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Fetch it along, James!’

  ‘And I say he won’t fetch it along.’ Now it was Nelson who was excited and the woman who was calm.

  ‘There’s nobody can interfere with a wife’s rights ove
r her husband – and her husband’s property.’

  ‘I’ll shoot your husband and then I’ll show you what I can do with his property,’ said Nelson, producing his Webley and laying it beside him on the table.

  ‘What did you give for it?’ she asked the tramp.

  ‘Two pounds,’ he muttered.

  ‘Give it to you for ten!’ she said coolly to Nelson.

  ‘I’ll see you damned first,’ said Nelson.

  ‘Fetch it along, James,’ she said, with an impudent smile.

  ‘There’s a car outside waiting to take him somewhere he’ll never come back from,’ said Nelson. ‘I’m warning you not to rouse me.’

  ‘Five so,’ she said.

  ‘Go along to hell out of this,’ he shouted, ‘you and your husband!’

  ‘I’m waiting for me own,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll get your two pounds,’ he said, breathing through his nose.

  ‘Five,’ she said, without turning a hair.

  ‘Two!’ he bellowed.

  ‘Five!’

  ‘Get along with you now!’ he said.

  ‘I rely on your word as an officer and a gentleman,’ she shouted suddenly. ‘And if you fail me, I’ll folly you to the gates of hell. Go on, James,’ she said, and without another word the strange pair went out the door.

  The young widow rose slowly and watched them through a lifted curtain go down the pathway to the road where a car was waiting for them.

  ‘Well?’ she said, turning to me with a sad little smile.

  ‘Well?’ said I.

  ‘Well?’ said Nelson. ‘Somebody’s got to stay here and clear up this mess.’

  ‘Somebody had better go and break the news to Jo Kenefick,’ said I.

  ‘I can’t drive a car,’ remarked Nelson significantly.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the only thing you can’t do,’ said the young widow viciously.

  Nelson pretended not to hear her.

  ‘You can explain to him how things stand here, and tell him I can’t be back until tomorrow.’