War Children

by Gerard Whelan

  A bit beyond Halligan’s field I came to the crest of the land and the richer ground fell away and lay before me. I saw the empty road below, and the fertile fields of the broad river valley. Sinnotts’ roadside farmhouse looked lovely and snug just a mile or so ahead of me. It was a big, solid, single-storey thatched house, surrounded by various outbuildings. The Sinnotts had been there for a long time. They were prosperous. They had their own steam thresher and the latest in galvanised Dutch barns. A big apple orchard lay behind the house. In summer local children loved any excuse to call there, because old Mrs Sinnott, the mother, would never let a child go away without its pockets stuffed full of apples. Old Adam Sinnott, the father, was regarded as a lucky man. He and his wife had a brood of fine boys to help out on the farm. There were seven brothers, and the youngest, Matt, was in his twenties. He was a great friend of my father’s, and was often up at our house. Old Adam must have been nearly seventy, but he was as strong as a man half his age. They were a well-liked and well-respected family, too pleasant even to envy.

  As I started down the hill I saw men moving in a field to the east, maybe half a mile from Sinnotts’ house. They were too far away for me to make out much about them, but I could see at least that they weren’t in uniform. There were maybe half a dozen of them, and they were moving in single file by the ditch towards the house. I was looking at them when somebody called me by name, and I turned around.

  It was Matt Sinnott who’d called me. He was coming over the ditch from the next field.

  ‘Would you be here about a cow, be any chance, Lar?’ he asked. I liked Matt. He was a laugh.

  ‘Biddy Wall says your Syl found our Hannah,’ I said.

  Matt came over. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘He come in with her a while ago. He’d’ve brought her up only he had business back here. I’m surprised you came for her today, though.’

  He nodded to where the sun was already well down in the sky. In an hour or two it would be fully dark, and the heart sank in me when I imagined being out on the black, lonely road trying to drive a contrary cow. I’d been trying to keep thoughts of Tans and banshees from my mind as I came. In truth I’d only got this far because every step I took made it seem an even greater waste of time to turn back. But now that I’d arrived I cursed myself as a fool for ever coming.

  ‘I should have waited till the morning,’ I said. ‘Only I wanted to make sure it was Hannah. I couldn’t see how she’d got so far.’

  ‘Oh it’s Hannah, all right,’ Matt said. ‘She’ve the scar on her leg where the cur dog bit her that time.’

  Matt would know her, all right. He’d often seen her up at our house.

  ‘Where is she now?’ I asked him.

  ‘She’s with our own beasts down by the house. It’s not like you to let her stray.’

  Matt always treated me like I knew what I was doing. It was something not all grown-ups did.

  ‘’Twasn’t me let her out,’ I said. ‘’Twas Tans come through our near field.’

  ‘Tans?’ said Matt, interested. ‘What Tans?’

  ‘There was two different loads of them come through our yard. The first lot left the lane gate open. I think they stampeded Hannah – she must have been running to get to the road so far ahead of me. I can’t have been much more nor quarter of an hour behind her.’

  But Matt was more interested in my news of Tans than in how Hannah had got out.

  ‘Was there many of them?’ he asked me.

  I tried to think. I shrugged.

  ‘Twenty or thirty altogether, I suppose,’ I said.

  ‘And what way were they headed?’

  ‘I don’t know. Towards the hills, I think. Away from here, anyhow.’

  No-one liked to hear there were Black and Tans near their house, especially after an ambush. The Tans were unpredictable at the best of times, but after an ambush they got very dangerous. They liked to hit back at whoever was handiest to them. The Sinnotts might be prosperous, popular and respectable people, but to the Tans they were just natives, like the rest of us.

  ‘Come down to the house,’ Matt said. ‘You must be hungry and thirsty after that walk. My mother will want to feed you.’

  ‘I only want to start back, Matt,’ I said. ‘I was a fool to come at all.’

  Matt threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘If you think you’ll escape my Ma’s hospitality,’ he said, ‘then you’re even more foolish.’

  We made our way down the slope towards Sinnotts’, approaching from the back. I’d forgotten about the men in the field. When I looked in that direction now I saw no-one. It had probably been the rest of the Sinnotts.

  Sinnotts’ farmyard had a dry stone wall around it that was as high as my chest. Old Adam one day had told me that, when he was about my own age, he’d helped his father put that wall up. I always remembered that. When he said it, it was the first time I’d ever really thought about an old man being young: about fathers being sons one time, and then becoming fathers and having sons of their own. It was a comfortable notion, a notion that spoke of things continuing. My own father worried that he’d have no farm to leave for me. Sinnotts didn’t have such worries.

  Now when we reached the barred metal gate in that stone wall Matt Sinnott put a hand out and stopped me.

  ‘Just wait here for one second, will you, Larry?’ he asked me, and I thought that was odd. The Sinnotts’ house was always open to all. But I did as Matt asked – sure, why wouldn’t I?

  Matt made his way across the yard through a squawking mass of chickens. He went into the house and he was gone for a short while. I looked around, seeing would I maybe catch sight of Hannah. I thought again about the long road home in the dark.

  Matt came back out. His brother Conor was with him, and another man I didn’t know. The stranger was dressed in ordinary clothes, but over the legs of his trousers he wore leather leggings that reached to his knees.

  ‘Come in, Larry, and welcome,’ Conor said. ‘And tell us about these Black and Tans.’

  I told him the little I knew as we went inside. Conor and the stranger exchanged looks I couldn’t read.

  ‘You say they were heading up into the hills?’ the stranger said. He was a thin-faced man with sharp eyes.

  ‘I thought they were. The first lot looked to be headed that way. But the officer with the second lot got annoyed when I told him that. I don’t think they were supposed to go up there.’

  Again Conor and the stranger looked at each other.

  ‘How long ago did this happen?’ the stranger asked.

  I looked at the big clock Sinnotts had in their kitchen. It was half-past four.

  I tried to think what time I’d seen the Tans.

  ‘’Twasn’t long after two,’ I said.

  The stranger ran a hand through his hair, thinking.

  ‘They’re out hunting anyhow,’ he said. ‘We’d maybe better move.’

  ‘What about the hurted lads?’ Conor said.

  I tried not to look too curious, but an odd and frightening idea was growing in my mind. Then Mrs Sinnott came in.

  ‘Hello, Larry,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you the great chap to come all this way?’

  ‘The foolish chap, ma’am,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what possessed me. I’m thinking maybe I should go back, and come again for Hannah in the morning.’

  ‘Yerra, sure, you’re here now,’ Mrs Sinnott said. ‘You’ll have some tea, and some bread and cake.’

  ‘I won’t, Mrs Sinnott, thanks. I never told my Mam I was coming. She’ll murder me when I get back.’

  Mrs Sinnott, a mother herself, frowned when she heard this. But then she smiled again.

  ‘Sure you were trying to help,’ she said. ‘She can’t hold that against you. I’ll tell you what: you have something to eat, and then I’ll send Matt here back with you. Youse can take one of the horses, and lead Hannah home. ‘Twill be quicker. And Syl was foolish not to leave the beast up with youse in the first place. He should have recognised her.
’

  ‘Biddy Wall wasn’t sure of her either,’ I said. ‘And she’s seen her more often nor Syl has.’

  But Mrs Sinnott dismissed this. ‘Sure, Biddy wouldn’t know herself in a mirror,’ she said, ‘she’s that foolish. No, we’ll get you home safe.’

  ‘There’s Tans out, Ma,’ Conor said quietly.

  Mrs Sinnott gave him a quick, sharp look. Her red cheeks paled a little bit.

  ‘Around here?’ she said.

  ‘Up by Larry’s,’ Conor told her.

  Mrs Sinnott recovered her colour.

  ‘Sure, they’ll head back to their barracks by dark,’ she said. ‘They hates being out in the dark when they’re sober. They’ll have to go and prime themselves with drink at least. And food, for that matter – I suppose the creatures eat, though it’s a sinful waste of God’s bounty.’

  The mention of food reminded her of what she’d been about, and she came over and more or less made me sit down at the big kitchen table. I wasn’t happy about it. The lateness and my Mam’s worry weighed on my mind. And the stranger, with his military leggings and his interest in the Tans, seemed to me to be a suspicious character. The talk of ‘hurted lads’ was bad too. I remembered the reason that the Tans were out at all – the ambush on the Lackduffane road. The ambushers had to be hiding somewhere in the area, and that probably meant they were hiding on some farm. When I looked at the stranger again he was in a corner with Conor Sinnott, having a sharp conversation in very low tones. Mrs Sinnott kept casting anxious glances at the pair of them as she made me tea and cut me thick slices of freshly made bread and cake. She gave me a cold boiled egg that she took from a big dish of them. I looked at the dish. There must have been thirty eggs or more in it. Even a family the size of hers wouldn’t need so many.

  I muttered my thanks for the food. I was fearful, sitting there. If Sinnotts’ was a safe house for gunmen then I’d rather not know about it. Even knowing nothing didn’t always protect you, but it was the better than knowing too much. But I was surprised to find a prosperous family like the Sinnotts involved with the gunmen. I would have thought they liked things just the way they were.

  Stephen Sinnott, another brother, came into the kitchen. He was about to say something when he saw me sitting there and stopped. He put a false-looking smile on his face.

  ‘Larry!’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you this long time. How is the Da keeping?’

  ‘He’s grand, Stephen, thanks be to God,’ I said through a mouthful of bread and butter.

  ‘Good,’ Stephen said. ‘Good.’ Then he stopped smiling and went over to Conor and the stranger. He said something to them in a low voice, and the three of them went out. I didn’t like the look of things here at all. I felt I’d arrived at a very awkward time. To tell the truth, I was certain the farm was full of gunmen, and any place like that was not a safe place to be. I wanted to be up and off, but it would have looked very rude to leave Mrs Sinnott’s food half-eaten on the table.

  Matt Sinnott must have noticed my discomfort, because he suddenly stirred himself.

  ‘I’ll go and get a rope around that cow,’ he said. ‘And I’ll saddle the grey pony. We’ll have you back home before you know it.’

  And he went out too. I tried to make a respectable dent in the food, although every mouthful was harder to swallow than the one before. My mouth was dry as sawdust in spite of the tea. Mrs Sinnott made small talk, to which I mumbled responses. I wished more than ever that I’d never come. Since I had, I only wanted to be well away. Sinnotts’ house had never seemed so sinister. I jumped at every noise in the yard.

  Mrs Sinnott was in the middle of saying something when she stopped suddenly and cocked her head to listen. I listened too. When I heard the hoofbeats I thought first it must be Matt coming with the grey pony. But I realised immediately that that was impossible. The pony would be in one of the stables in the yard. This sound came from further away, and the hoofbeats were galloping. They were getting closer.

  ‘Who could that be, now?’ said Mrs Sinnott.

  I jumped up from the table and ran to the door. I had a bad feeling about that sound. I knew people who felt things before they happened, but I don’t know that was the case with me. I thought I’d just been miserable all day, from fear of the banshee and the Tans and worry about the poor lost cow, and then the threat of gunmen, even here.

  When I opened Sinnotts’ door I saw my father. He was on the big horse that he rode to work and he was galloping down the same slope Matt and I had walked a while before. A dim twilight had fallen, but I knew my father by the shape of him as much as anything else.

  My father can’t have seen it was me in the doorway, just that the door was open and that someone stood there. But he started roaring my name as he came, roaring it over and over at the top of his voice.

  ‘Larry!’ he roared. ‘Larry! Come away!’

  I heard people coming into the yard, and when I looked I saw maybe a dozen men there. They were all carrying rifles and pistols, and wore belts and bandoliers and all the accoutrements of war. One of them made to raise his gun but Stephen Sinnott put his hand on it and pushed it down.

  ‘That’s Johnny Quinn,’ he said, which was my father’s name.

  The big horse was a workhorse first and foremost, but she was a game girl. She could take a ditch as well as any hunter when her blood was up. My father rode her clear down to the wall around the yard. He set her at the wall and she sailed over it, as cursing gunmen scattered, panicked, out of the way. When the mare landed in the yard her great iron hooves struck up sparks off the stones. She was snorting foam and shining with a sweat that nearly glowed in the half-light. There was steam coming off her. She didn’t want to stop, and bucked and staggered while my father sawed on her reins with a savagery I’d never seen in him before. When I looked at his face I saw he looked nearly as mad as the horse. His hair was wild and his face was deathly pale.

  ‘Larry, thank God,’ he said. ‘Get up behind me, quick.’

  The horse was calming, but she was still dancing around. Matt Sinnott came running up, and he and Conor pulled at her bridle and stroked her.

  ‘What’s up, Johnny?’ Stephen asked my father.

  ‘Get out of it, the lot of youse,’ my father said. ‘The Tans are on their way here. They’re gathering beyant at Moore’s Cross, but they’ll be coming by now.’

  Moore’s Cross was several miles down the road that ran by the front of Sinnotts’, but the Tans would be in their big Crossley motor-tenders.

  ‘How many of them are there?’ asked a voice. I recognised the stranger who’d been in the house.

  ‘I didn’t see. But the word is the whole country around has been sniving with them all day.’

  ‘How do you know that they’re coming if you didn’t see?’ the man asked him.

  My father stared at him angrily.

  ‘Don’t believe me, then,’ he said. ‘Stay here. But let my son up behind me till we get away the hell out of this.’

  ‘Not until I hear what’s going on,’ the man said. His voice sounded threatening.

  ‘Are you deaf, man?’ my father shouted at him. ‘They’re coming! They’re coming and they’ll kill every man-jack of youse. Now, let my son mount.’

  Matt Sinnott looked around at the stranger.

  ‘If Johnny says they’re coming,’ he said, ‘then they are. We’d better scatter.’

  I pushed through them till I stood in front of my father.

  ‘We have to get Hannah, Daddy,’ I said.

  ‘To hell with Hannah,’ my father said. He stretched his hand down to me. ‘Get up behind me,’ he said.

  I took his hand and he pulled me roughly up and I mounted. I could smell the stink of sweat from horse and man, and another smell I didn’t know. I think it was the smell of fear. When I looked I saw Mrs Sinnott standing in the doorway of her house. She looked terribly sad.

  Somebody opened the iron gate and my father galloped away. I took one look back towards the yar
d and saw it full of hurrying figures, then I turned around and buried my face in the back of my father’s shirt. We were well up the slope when I looked again. It was almost fully dark now. The first star was on the horizon.

  I heard the sound of engines, a lot of engines. I looked towards where I guessed the road to be, but I saw no headlights. No lights showed until the shooting started, and then they weren’t headlights but the flashes from the muzzles of the guns. My father stopped very briefly at the top of the slope, at the point where I’d met Matt Sinnott hardly an hour before. He looked back then, and I looked back too. There was very heavy firing coming from below. You could tell from the flashes that there were many attackers. And some of the attackers’ gunflashes were coming from the east, from the open country to which the gunmen might have hoped to escape.

  My father took one hand off the reins for long enough to cross himself. ‘May God in his mercy look down on anyone in that house now,’ he said.

  Then he lashed the big horse hard with the reins and she took off like a mad thing through the fields. I don’t know what way we got home. It was a nightmare ride. My father can barely have seen the walls and ditches of the fields until he was nearly on top of them, but somehow the big horse didn’t kill us all. The thunder of her hooves filled my whole head, blocking out the storm of gunfire that faded as we left it behind. The jolting of the mare’s gallop made me feel my very skeleton would crumble. Every now and again she’d take off in a jump, and land with a jar that each time felt as though it had broken my back. My hair was standing on end. A few times I nearly lost my grip on my father and fell off. I gritted my teeth and I cried; all the way home I cried. I tried to imagine what it must be like back at Sinnotts’; but I couldn’t imagine it, and I was glad of that.

  * * *

  After a long time my father slowed the horse to a trot. You could feel her resist him, but even she was tired. She slowed, and he reined her in till gradually we were walking along.