War Children

by Gerard Whelan

I rode our horse Jessie down the lanes to Murrays’. It was still early, and I met no-one on the way. Across the valley I could see a cart slowly descending the lane on the far slope, and I could see the smoke rising from the chimneys of the scattered homesteads on the side of the far mountain. It was a cold, sunny day in November, and the air was full of a brittle winter light. Jessie’s big hooves plopped in the muck of the lane, and the bare hedges still dripped from the last night’s rain. I noticed all of these things very clearly on that short ride, and I noticed them as though I was seeing them for the first time. And yet I’d seen them all a thousand times before, because this was all the world I knew.

  I thought about the dead man in the stable, the dead man who wasn’t quite dead. I finally saw what was troubling my father. Dead or alive, the man was trouble. In fact, as my father had realised, he was more trouble alive than dead. If the worst came to the worst, you could dump a dead body. But the dead man hadn’t even had the manners to die properly. I know that might sound cruel, but they were cruel times. All times are cruel to people who only scratch a living at the best of times. We had enough to do looking after our own. We didn’t know the dead man, and he was none of our business, but now he was very much our problem. If he’d been involved in some outrage then the British would punish the whole area for harbouring him. It wasn’t fair, but it was their way. There would be no use in explaining things. Tans didn’t listen to explanations, it wasn’t their job. Their job, so far as I knew, was to frighten people. It had never made sense to me, but it seemed to make sense to them. They were good at it, too. When I looked at the scattered houses on the slopes across the valley, I tried to picture them burning. That was what the Tans would do, and my own home would be the first to go.

  At least the dead man wasn’t a problem for our family alone. The valley people were careful and silent and sensible, and they kept their own counsel; but when there was a shared threat they would stick together. I couldn’t feel that this fighting had anything to do with any of us, to whom only the weather and the farm prices mattered; but if having the dead man on our hands made him our business, then at least our own business was a thing we could look after. The valley people had a saying about a man: He sees what he sees and he says what he says, they’d say, but he never says the half of what he sees. When they said that of a man, it was said with approval.

  When I turned into Murrays’ yard Paddy and his brother Har were there looking at the engine of Paddy’s Ford motor car. It was his own car, for his own use, and not a farm machine. Paddy rented the car out sometimes, as a hackney, but that had been only an excuse for buying it. Mainly he used it to ferry himself and his friends around. People looked on it as an extravagance.

  ‘How do his Ma and Da let him waste money like that?’ the old people used to say. ‘Is it any wonder he’s gone to the bad, and he so spoiled.’

  Paddy and Har had heard the horse coming, and were looking up when we came through the gate. I told them what had happened. Har Murray was about forty, and I expected him to take charge of any response, but he said nothing. Paddy, on the other hand, kept interrupting me with short, serious questions. Har deferred to him, watching his brother’s reactions.

  ‘Right,’ said Paddy when I’d done. ‘Har, get the bits and pieces from the house. We’ll drive up.’

  Har went inside. Paddy Murray folded down the bonnet of his car. He looked as serious as he’d sounded. It wasn’t the Paddy Murray I was used to. There was no joking now.

  ‘You ride down to Hogans’,’ he said to me. ‘Find Jamesy or Beeda and tell them what’s after happening. If they’re not there, tell Marian. You can trust her.’

  It was another mile or so down the lane to Hogans’. They had a smaller farm of poorish land, the fields too scattered to be managed easily. Old Bridgie Hogan was a widow, and depended on her two sons to run the place. Her daughter Marian was always very nice to me. Bridgie’s hands were crippled now with the arthritis, and Marian ran the house. She was in the kitchen with Beeda when I came in. Marian was the local beauty. Someone had even written a song about her. One day at a fair Jamesy Hogan had heard someone singing the song, and he’d knocked the singer down. Jamesy had a sup taken that day, it being a fairday, but he’d probably have tackled the singer anyway, though the man probably meant no harm. They were a very close and jealous family, the Hogans, though I’d always found them friendly enough myself.

  I wasted no time in giving my message. Beeda Hogan chewed his stained moustache and looked at me with his eyes half closed. He was a big man who always seemed amazed by anything he heard. He spoke mostly in exclamations: ‘Be the hokey,’ he’d say, or ‘Be the livin’ jinnet.’ That was where he got his name, ‘Beeda’. But he said nothing at all as he listened to me now, only chewed the ragged ends of his moustache. He was good with animals, Beeda was. He had cures for their ailments. People would bring their sick animals to Beeda before they’d think of going to an animal doctor.

  ‘The poor wounded chap,’ Marian said when I’d done. ‘I’ll go up with youse, Beeda.’

  ‘No need. Sure, Jamesy and me can do anything you could,’ Beeda said. ‘Is Jamesy still up in the long field?’

  ‘He’s beyant in the haggard, I think,’ Marian said.

  ‘Go and get him then,’ Beeda said. ‘Tell him to get the guns. I’ll get the trap ready.’

  ‘Yerra, what do you want to waste the time for?’ Marian asked. ‘Get up on the pony the two of youse.’

  ‘She won’t carry the two of us that far,’ Beeda said.

  ‘Youse ride Jessie,’ I said. ‘She’ll take the two of youse. I’ll take the pony.’

  Jessie was a big, powerful horse, as Beeda knew. He thought, chewing. He was the sort of a man whose face showed it when he was thinking. Apart from exclamations he was a man of few words. Then he nodded.

  ‘Aye,’ he said.

  Marian had gone to fetch Jamesy. When Beeda and I went outside, he was already coming across the yard. Marian walked along behind him. Jamesy was carrying a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. When he unwrapped it I saw a shotgun and an old fowling rifle that looked like an antique.

  ‘Wrap them up again, ye fool,’ Beeda said. ‘There’s eyes everywhere.’

  ‘So long as the mouths stays shut,’ Jamesy said, ‘I’ve no fear of the eyes.’

  ‘Wrap them up, anyhow,’ Beeda said.

  Jamesy wrapped the guns back up. The brothers mounted Jessie and set out, Jamesy holding the bundle between himself and Beeda. I made to go and fetch their pony, but Marian caught my shoulder.

  ‘Do the chap above look hurted bad?’ she asked me.

  ‘I thought he was dead when I found him,’ I said. ‘He’s all blood everywhere.’

  She stared off at nothing.

  ‘Did you know him?’ she asked me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I hadn’t thought of it before. ‘I didn’t recognise him, but his face is all swelled up and bloody. You wouldn’t know Beeda if you saw him in that state.’

  ‘I pities the poor chaps that are out,’ Marian said. ‘I even pities the soldiers when they gets shot. It’s no fit life for a man, fighting.’

  I’d never thought about that, either, but I’d never needed to. Owning your own land and working it was all the life I thought fit. It was the way I’d been raised. My father had never taught me that lesson, at least not in so many words; but his whole existence shouted it out to the world.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘They might need me for something above.’ And I didn’t want to miss anything, though I didn’t want to say that to Marian.

  ‘Aye,’ Marian said. ‘I was only thinking out loud, anyhow. You know where the pony is, don’t you?’

  I did. It wasn’t as though they had many outbuildings anyway. On the way back home I felt eyes on me, though I passed no houses and saw no people. The lane led uphill, and anyone travelling on it was visible to half the valley. I was sure the unusual comings and goings had been taken note of by people in t
he scattered houses and cottages. We had no secrets in our community. Nothing odd happened there that was not seen, because so little ever happened that was odd.

  * * *

  At the last turn in the lane before our gate I met Har Murray. He was up in the ditch watching the lane, and I didn’t even see him till I was fornenst him. Har had a well-earned name as a poacher, and I suppose that taught you skills for which there were other uses. I would have gone past him if he hadn’t called my name.

  ‘Did you see anything quare?’ he asked me. He was carrying a rifle.

  ‘Divil a thing,’ I told him. I couldn’t tear my eyes off the gun. It looked very like the short carbines the police carried. Certainly it wasn’t the sort of thing you ever saw round our way.

  When I got to the house I found Paddy Murray’s Ford parked in the yard. Jamesy Hogan was standing beside it holding the old fowling piece. He nodded to me as he took the pony.

  ‘I hope you’re not after being hard on the poor pony,’ he said. ‘She’s all we have.’

  I left him examining the animal and ran into the stable. Beeda Hogan was kneeling by the red man, wiping his face with a wet cloth, making him that bit less red. Blood is awful oily sometimes, after it’s thickened a bit. They’d already cut off the dead man’s shirt and had cleaned and bandaged his body-wounds. It was the first time I saw how young he looked, and how skinny.

  My father was there with Paddy Murray. They looked round as I came in.

  ‘Is he shot bad?’ I asked them.

  ‘He’s not shot at all,’ Paddy said. ‘He was cut up with a bayonet or a knife.’

  ‘Is he a rebel, then?’ Bayonets sounded like soldiers’ or Tans’ work. It was said they tortured prisoners with them. Some of the Tans that I’d seen in the town on market days were a terrible rough-looking lot. You’d believe any cruelty of them.

  ‘He’s not from around here, anyhow,’ my father said. ‘Though I knows the cast of his face from someplace. He have soft hands, and city clothes.’

  ‘I know who he is,’ Paddy Murray said. ‘He’s one of our lads on a job from Dublin. He’s from around these parts originally.’

  ‘A townie, so,’ my father said, sounding unimpressed. Townies were alien to us, livers of soft lives and doers of strange deeds. Their heads, my father always said, got filled with strange notions. It came, he thought, of having nothing to do. There was never any fear of that round our way. Round our way there was always plenty that had to be done.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Daddy asked, but Paddy Murray shook his head.

  ‘You’re as well not knowing that, Myles,’ he said.

  I was amazed at the change in Paddy Murray. There was nothing of the playboy about him now. His whippet face was serious, and his eyes that always sparkled were cold and thinking.

  ‘What I want to know,’ my father said, ‘is whether he can be moved. It looks like he loused up his job, whatever it was, and, if so, then the Tans will be atin’ the country looking for him.’

  Paddy Murray looked at the dead man.

  ‘Maybe he loused up,’ he said, ‘and maybe he didn’t. I suppose it depends on the state of the other fellas. But he’s hurted bad. He’s all cut up. Beeda can tend a few ould things in animals, but not something like this. This fella shouldn’t be moved till after he sees a doctor.’

  My father folded his arms and rubbed his chin.

  ‘Lovely,’ he said, not meaning it. ‘Well, he didn’t come far in that condition, that’s for sure. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it near here. They’ll be hunting for him soon.’

  Paddy looked at him with no expression on his face. My father was a man who had no time for any politics. If a wounded rebel who’d done some devilment was found on his farm, the least we could expect was to have the place burned down around our ears. Beyond that, you never knew. Maybe my father would be arrested; maybe he’d be shot out of hand. It had happened.

  ‘There was strangers moved into that ould cottage up the mountain,’ my father said to Paddy. ‘Up beyant on the estate land. English, they say.’

  I’d heard talk of that myself. It had all happened very quietly, but nothing could be done secretly in an area like ours.

  Paddy Murray said nothing to my father’s words, only kept looking levelly at him. Then he went over and asked Beeda Hogan something in a low voice. Beeda made a face at him and shook his head. Paddy came back over.

  ‘Beeda thinks he’ll die if he’s moved,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe he’ll die anyhow,’ my father said. ‘He have my sympathy if so, but I’ve no desire to go with him. I don’t even know the man.’

  He raised a big hand and pointed west, up the mountain.

  ‘I follied his trail back a bit,’ he said, ‘He came across-country, and he left a trail that a blind fool could follow. Anyplace he stopped he left a lock of blood. I’m surprised he’ve any blood in him at all. If he came from that cottage, then that’s a good three mile.’

  I watched the two of them closely. Paddy Murray wanted the dead man to stay where he was, at least for now. My father – well, I was sure that he really did pity the man, the way he’d pity any wounded thing. But he had a farm and a family to think of.

  Paddy Murray sucked his teeth in thought. I knew now that the Murrays and the Hogans were rebels. I hadn’t known that before, and I was very surprised that I hadn’t known it. I expected Paddy to threaten my father, and to back up that threat with guns. But I knew too that my father would take threats from nobody, armed or otherwise. Where the safety of farm and family were concerned, my father would have defied God himself. But Paddy Murray knew that too.

  ‘God knows what’s up beyant in that cottage,’ he said. ‘This chap must have done the job in some form or fashion, else you’d be up to your oxters in Black and Tans already. And if he done the job then we’ve time. The police left supplies at the cottage only yesterday, and they’re only up there every two or three days.’

  ‘Someone was hiding there, then,’ my father said.

  Paddy Murray shook his head. There was no need for my father to know any more.

  ‘I’ll organise the lads,’ Paddy said. ‘We’ll clear up at the cottage and cover the trail.’

  ‘There’ll be bodies?’ Daddy asked. I knew it wasn’t really a question. The dead man had been doing some job that had led to him being carved up like a goose at Christmas: he obviously hadn’t been up at the cottage delivering potatoes.

  ‘If there’s bodies,’ Paddy said, ‘we’ll take them somewhere else. Make a trail down the far slope of the mountain, maybe, and leave them where they’ll be found easy.’

  My father nodded. They might have been discussing the price of cattle.

  I knew the old cottage on the estate. I tried to imagine what might be up there, then stopped myself. The picture in my mind was full of blood.

  ‘Don’t leave them near houses,’ My father said.

  ‘I’m not a fool,’ Paddy Murray said.

  My father gave him a long, cool look. ‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘Maybe not.’

  Paddy left that comment alone. My father looked around. He seemed surprised when he caught sight of me, as though he’d forgotten I was there.

  ‘Mylie,’ he said. He clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘You done well, son,’ he said. ‘Did you see anything odd on the road?’

  I shook my head. I wanted to tell him about my feeling on the way back, about my sense of being watched. But that meant nothing. Of course I’d been watched: everything here was watched. It was just that this morning was the first time I’d thought about it. It was the first time I’d done something that might be better kept hidden, here on these bare hills where nothing could be hidden long. But here before me now were the Murrays and the Hogans suddenly revealed as rebels, when, no doubt, they’d been rebels all along. And I’d known nothing about that at all. I’d never even heard a whisper of it. This thing at least had been kept hidden on the hill, hidden from one boy at least.

  Did t
he other people of the valley know about the Murrays and the Hogans? Of course they’d know. The Murrays and the Hogans … and who knew how many more? I thought of the men of that valley, the young men who worked in their fields and played cards on winter nights in the kitchens of their scattered homesteads. I tried to guess which of them might also be involved in this work, to picture them out in the fields at night, at once hunted and hunting, bent on their dangerous games. I tried to imagine them killing people. They were all my neighbours, and yet I realised that day that I did not know them. And after that day, the feeling stayed. When I looked at a neighbour, a person I’d known all my life, I would wonder who they really were, and what they really knew. I suppose in a strange way you could say I grew up on that day.

  * * *

  As for the dead man in the stable, he recovered. He was moved very carefully to the hayloft, where a snug little cell was hollowed out for him in the hay. A reliable doctor was brought that night to examine him. He said the man had lost a lot of blood, but no vital organs had been damaged so far as he could tell. The man had been wounded by a knife, and not a bayonet, and that was good because a bayonet, with its long blade, would probably have done more damage. The doctor sewed the man up, and left a supply of morphia and antiseptic powders to be used on him. He came back a few times after.

  The dead man was with us for a week and a half, and when he was well enough he ate food that we brought him. That came to be my job, and it was while I was bringing the food that I noticed the dead eyes he had. He didn’t talk much, and then one morning he was gone.

  On the afternoon of that first day, the day that I found the dead man, Paddy Murray led a group of ten men up through our haggard onto the hillside. My father told us to stay out of the way when they came, but from behind the net curtain of the bedroom window I watched them pass through, watching as I was sure I myself had been watched that morning. I knew every one of those men that passed by. I’d grown up knowing them. But there wasn’t one of them I’d have guessed for a likely rebel if you’d asked me before. They were ordinary men, ordinary farmers. That day as they went up the hill they all carried guns. These men especially I could never look at in the same way afterwards; I felt as though I’d glimpsed through the net curtains some secret adult side of them, some side that a child should not see. And I felt that I’d never known a single one of them at all. Then my mother caught me peeking and gave me a puck in the head, and I ran upstairs and hid. But I was glad to go, because watching those men I’d seemed to feel a thing I could barely put into words: I’d seemed to feel my whole world slipping away.