Friend or Foe

by Brian Gallagher

  ‘OK, Jack, I have you now!’ said Emer. ‘It’s all right, that’s good, that’s good!’

  Emer had a firm grip on his chin, and Jack felt himself being towed backwards as she swam towards the bank. Before he knew what was happening, his friends hauled first him and then Emer from the water onto the grassy slope.

  ‘Roll him onto his stomach!’ cried Emer, and before Jack could react he had been rolled over and Emer was pressing hard on his back. The pressure on his lungs was painful, but he suddenly expelled the water that he had swallowed. It was a horrible feeling, yet he felt the better for it. Emer sat back wearily on the grass and, still panting, Jack sat up shakily.

  ‘Thanks, Emer,’ he gasped. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My God, Jack, that was touch and go.’

  Jack was aware that he could have pulled her under and, still gasping, he looked at her apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed to get out. ‘I’m … I’m really sorry for–’

  ‘It’s fine. Really, I wasn’t complaining. I’m just glad you’re alive.’

  ‘Not as much as me,’ answered Jack.

  ‘I thought you were a goner!’ said Joan, her eyes wide with the drama of it all.

  ‘Thanks, Joan,’ said Jack.

  ‘No, like, I’m really glad you’re not. Imagine having to tell your da!’

  ‘If we were Arabs,’ said Gladys seriously, ‘Jack would be Emer’s slave now.’

  ‘What?’ asked Ben, looking quizzically at his sister.

  ‘I read in a book that if an Arab saves your life, then you owe him that life. Like you’re his slave for the rest of your days.’

  Jack’s breathing was returning to normal now, and he looked at Gladys with a hint of amusement. ‘Just as well we’re not Arabs then.’

  ‘Pity though,’ said Emer with a smile. ‘I wouldn’t mind having a slave!’

  Jack returned her smile, then spoke seriously. ‘I won’t forget this, Emer. I owe you a big favour. Anything you ever want – just ask. Is that a deal?’

  Emer looked at him. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘That’s a deal.’

  Chapter Two

  Any excuse was a good excuse, Emer felt, when it came to interrupting piano practice. It wasn’t that she had anything against playing, as such, and if she could have done popular tunes like ‘Swanee River’ or ‘You Made Me Love You’, practising might almost have been enjoyable. Instead her mother sent her for lessons with Miss Gildea, who lived around the corner from Ellesmere Avenue in a tall house on the North Circular Road. Miss Gildea slapped her pupils on the knuckles with a wooden ruler, and insisted that the correct piano music for young ladies was by Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt.

  Emer had been working her way through a Chopin prelude in the parlour when there was a knock on the front door. She was glad to hear Jack politely greeting her mother, then Mam ushering him into the hall. Her mother did the book-keeping for Dad’s greengrocer shops and would sometimes complain about being distracted if too many of Emer’s friends called to the door when she was going through the invoices. Mam liked Jack the best of all her friends, however, and had returned his greeting warmly.

  It was strange, really, because both of Emer’s parents were wary of Jack’s father, Mr Madigan. He was a pleasant, friendly man, but he was also a sergeant in the Dublin Metropolitan Police and therefore an agent of the government. At present, Ireland was ruled from London. Emer’s father and mother were nationalists: they wanted, at the very minimum, a change to Home Rule – which would mean a parliament in Dublin to deal with local affairs. For preference, though, they wanted an independent Irish republic and a complete break with British rule. Her father, in particular, was on a collision course with the government since he had joined the Irish Volunteers. All of their parents were still very polite to each other as neighbours, but Dad had warned Emer not to discuss the family’s politics with Jack. As if Jack would snitch back to his father, Emer thought – although she hadn’t actually said that to Dad.

  Now Mam opened the parlour door. ‘Jack to see you, Emer.’

  ‘Aw no,’ said Emer playfully, ‘just when I’m practising Chopin.’

  ‘If you’d rather practise, I can call back,’ said Jack with a grin.

  ‘Well, let’s not be hasty!’

  Mam smiled. ‘I’ll leave the pair of you to it,’ she said, closing the parlour door and returning to her book-keeping.

  ‘So?’ said Emer, swinging around on her piano stool. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘OK. But yesterday was pretty scary.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Emer. ‘When I thought about it last night I got the shivers.’

  ‘Me too. And I know I thanked you at the time, but I wanted to say thanks properly. So I got you something.’

  ‘There was no need, Jack. But what is it?’ she added.

  He reached into his pocket. ‘Nothing much. I got my pocket money today, and I know you like jellies, so here.’ He handed over a bag of sweets.

  ‘Thanks, Jack,’ replied Emer. Although the conversation was light-hearted, she was touched by his gesture. She held out the bag, and they each had a sweet, then she looked thoughtful. ‘I was thinking last night …’ she said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Remember you said how great it was that I knew life-saving? Well, why don’t you join my swimming club? Then you could become a better swimmer – even go on to life-saving if you wanted?’

  Jack looked thoughtful. ‘In one way I’d love to.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘I’m not …’ Jack looked a little sheepish. ‘I know it sounds stupid, but I’m not great at putting my face down into the water. And good swimmers have to.’

  ‘Sure I usen’t to like that either,’ said Emer. ‘But they teach you how to do it. Really, it’s not that hard when you’re taught right.’

  ‘It’s not just that. There’s my da as well. If I wanted to join a swimming club he might be suspicious and wonder why I’m asking now. And I really don’t want him to know what happened yesterday.’

  ‘Right.’ Emer chewed on her jelly, savouring the sugary taste as she considered Jack’s situation. ‘There might be a way round that,’ she suggested.

  ‘How?’

  ‘The Old Reliable, I call it.’

  Jack breathed out. ‘OK, I’ll ask. What’s the Old Reliable?’

  ‘It’s what nearly always sways parents. You tell them that the other parents have agreed to something. Then once that’s persuaded them, your friend tells his or her parents that your parents have agreed. Works really well.’

  Jack laughed. ‘It’s not bad.’

  ‘Know how we make it even better?’

  ‘No, how?’

  ‘We get the Waltons to join as well. You talk to Ben, I’ll talk to Gladys. Everyone tells their parents that all the other parents have agreed, and the Old Reliable does the trick!’

  ‘Do you think Ben and Gladys would be on for that?’

  ‘Yeah, Gladys was dead impressed with my life-saving yesterday, and sure Ben thinks you’re great.’

  ‘You know … that might actually work.’

  ‘What am I?’ asked Emer.

  Jack pretended to consider the answer. ‘Bossy, headstrong, spoiled rotten …’

  Emer punched him playfully. ‘A genius, is the answer you’re looking for!’ She opened the bag of sweets and offered Jack another jelly. ‘So, will we give it a try?’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’

  ‘Great,’ said Emer, then she popped a sweet into her mouth, swung round on the stool and loudly banged out a dramatic chord on the piano.

  ‘Don’t be such a snob, Ma!’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Jack’s mother, looking up from her embroidery. ‘I’m just saying you don’t want to get in with the wrong crowd in that factory.’

  Jack sat in a corner of the kitchen as his sisters Una and Mary argued with Ma about going on a day trip with the other staff of the munitions factory where they worked. At twelve years of age, Jack w
as the youngest in the family, with four sisters. His eldest sister, Sheila, was a milliner like Ma, and Maureen worked in a shop in town. Una and Mary had grasped the opportunity presented by the war and were earning good money in a factory that produced artillery shells.

  Jack half listened now as his mother cautioned Una and Mary about not associating too much with some of the rougher workers. He liked this time, late in the evening, when the family gathered together, even if sometimes there were arguments and different family members were engaged in their own pursuits. Jack himself was following his hobby of fretwork, sawing an intricate pattern around the border of a piece of wood. Sheila and Maureen were out at a concert, and his father read the newspaper as he relaxed in his favourite armchair beside the fireplace.

  Jack wanted to ask Da about joining the swimming club, and he had decided to use Emer’s ‘Old Reliable’ tactic when the time seemed right. The near-drowning had actually shaken him up more than he had admitted to his friends, and he was determined to become a better swimmer – and maybe even get a chance to rescue a life in return for his own – by learning life-saving. Before he got the chance to pitch the idea to his father, however, Da lowered the newspaper and spoke.

  ‘My God, it’s turning into a slaughter.’

  ‘What is, Da?’ asked Jack.

  ‘This war with Germany. They’ve released casualty figures. Three hundred and thirty thousand casualties since last August.’

  To Jack, this sounded like a staggeringly high number of people, but the war – which people had said would be over by the previous Christmas – still showed no signs of ending. Russia and France were allied with the British Empire, but Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were united on the other side along with Turkey, where Jack’s uncle Bertie was fighting in a place called the Dardanelles.

  ‘That’s an awful lot of people, Da,’ answered Jack.

  ‘It is, son. More than every single man, woman and child on the northside of Dublin.’

  Somehow this made the numbers seem more real, and Jack was horrified. He remembered thinking at first that the war was a great adventure, like in the books he read. He had been proud of his mother’s brother Bertie, a Ringsend man who was in the Dublin Fusiliers, a famous regiment in the British Army, and of Mam’s nephew Ronnie from Manchester, who had volunteered at the outbreak of war and was serving in Belgium. Now, though, Jack felt almost guilty about his earlier attitude, and he prayed every night that his relations would come home in one piece, and that the war would end.

  ‘Do you think we’ll win soon, Da?’ he asked.

  His father breathed out wearily. Usually Da was optimistic, but now his tone was cautious. ‘I’d love to say yes, Jack. But both sides are bogged down on the Western Front.’

  Jack knew that the Western Front was the blood-soaked line of trenches that ran for hundreds of miles through Belgium and France.

  ‘And when we get the upper hand somewhere like Africa,’ Da continued, ‘they get on top someplace else like Turkey.’

  ‘Right.’

  As though aware of his downbeat manner, his father raised his chin and spoke more hopefully. ‘Still, huge numbers of Irishmen have shown loyalty to the Crown by joining up. That should count for something when the Home Rule Bill is reviewed after the war.’

  John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Party at Westminster, had urged Irishmen who wanted Home Rule to fight for Britain in her hour of need. But although Jack approved of thousands of Irishmen joining up, part of him was glad that Da was a policeman and safely stationed in Dublin. Even if they brought in conscription – forcing men to join the army to make up for all the losses – his father’s age and job probably meant that he wouldn’t be sent off to the front.

  ‘Still, the war isn’t all bad, Da,’ said Una now, turning away from Ma and the argument about not mixing with girls from the factory. ‘I know it’s terrible about the killing and all,’ she continued, ‘but the war’s brought loads of work. Plenty of people who were going hungry are earning a living now.’

  ‘There is that,’ conceded Da.

  Jack hadn’t thought of it that way before, and Una did have a point. But still. Thousands of people were being killed and maimed; there had to be better ways of creating jobs than by countries going to war.

  Just then Sheila and Maureen arrived home from their concert, and the conversation moved in a different direction. Normally Jack would have been keen to hear about the latest music hall songs, but all this talk of war and his own near-drowning had made him realise that life was fragile, and he continued quietly with his sawing, lost in his thoughts.

  He had to approach Da about the swimming club. But the mood wasn’t right tonight, and it would be better to wait than to waste his chance through ill timing. A little disappointed, Jack concentrated on his fretwork, resolving to make his move the minute the time was right.

  Chapter Three

  Emer felt slightly guilty. She was sitting in the sun on the kerb outside her house on Ardmore Avenue with Gladys, and had just persuaded her to join the swimming club. It was typical of Gladys to be agreeable, even if before now she had shown no great interest in improving as a swimmer. Emer didn’t like manipulating her, but she told herself that it would be in Gladys’s and Ben’s interest to be better swimmers.

  Jack and Ben were round the corner in the Waltons’ house on Glenard Avenue, and with Joan Lawlor away visiting her granny, Emer had grasped the opportunity to get Gladys on her own. ‘You can tell your parents that I’ll look out for you and that Jack is joining too,’ said Emer now, wanting to reassure her friend.

  ‘OK,’ agreed Gladys, ‘I’ll say that to Mam.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Ah, here come the boys,’ said Gladys as Jack and Ben came down the lane in good spirits.

  ‘Close your eyes and open your mouth, and see what God will send you!’ Ben said to Emer. She hesitated, knowing the mischief that Jack and Ben sometimes got up to, but Gladys spoke reassuringly.

  ‘It’s OK. We got you something on our day trip yesterday.’

  ‘Some day trip,’ said Ben as he and Jack sat down on the kerb. ‘Dad said it would be a surprise, and I was sure it would be the seaside – somewhere good, like Bray.’

  ‘The Meeting of the Waters is still nice,’ said Gladys.

  ‘Two measly rivers joining forces,’ snorted Ben. ‘If Tom Moore hadn’t written a song about it, who’d even go there?!’

  ‘Anyway, give Emer her souvenir,’ said Gladys.

  ‘Is it a stick of rock?’

  ‘That would be telling,’ answered Jack. ‘You have to close your eyes and open your mouth, like Ben said.’

  ‘This better not be a worm or something,’ Emer warned, then she did as she was bid.

  She felt something hard and round being slipped into her mouth, and she opened her eyes in alarm. The others all laughed, and Emer realised that it was a shiny black stick of liquorice.

  ‘They didn’t sell sticks of rock,’ explained Gladys, ‘so you’ll have to settle for that.’

  ‘It’s great,’ said Emer. ‘Liquorice lasts for ages, and I love the way it makes your teeth look like they’re rotten! Thanks, Ben, thanks, Gladys.’

  ‘You’re grand,’ said Ben.

  ‘Did Gladys tell you the comedian’s jokes from yesterday?’ asked Jack.

  ‘No,’ answered Emer.

  ‘Sure I’m no good at telling jokes,’ said Gladys.

  ‘Neither was the comedian,’ said Ben.

  ‘Neither are you. All you’re good at is cricket,’ said Gladys.

  ‘At least I’m good at something,’ retorted Ben to his sister, before turning to the others. ‘We ran into a Works Outing yesterday,’ he said, ‘and this fella from the company was telling all these fish jokes – just because they were at the Meeting of the Waters.’

  ‘Like what?’ queried Emer.

  ‘Like … what’s the best way to catch a fish?’ asked Ben.

  ‘What is?’

>   ‘Have someone throw it at you!’

  ‘That’s not bad,’ said Emer. ‘And talking about water and swimming …’ She looked enquiringly at Jack, who gave her a thumbs-up.

  ‘We talked it over,’ he said. ‘Ben’s on for joining the club.’

  ‘Great!’ said Emer. ‘Gladys is too, aren’t you, Glad?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So we can all be in it together,’ said Emer. ‘I’ll ask Joan too when she comes back from her granny’s.’

  ‘So we each hit our parents with the Old Reliable then?’ asked Jack.

  Ben frowned. ‘What’s the Old Reliable?’

  ‘Emer’s trick for winning over parents,’ answered Jack. ‘Will you explain it, or will I?’

  ‘You tell them,’ said Emer smilingly. ‘I want to stuff my face!’ Then she broke off a length of the liquorice and slipped it into her mouth, pleased at how things were working out.

  ‘You’re in trouble with Da!’ Jack’s sister Mary was unable to keep the glee out of her voice as she entered the kitchen.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You tell me. But he wants to talk to you in the parlour, and he looks dead annoyed. I wouldn’t like to be you.’

  ‘It’d be worse being you!’ snapped Jack. Mary was the youngest of his sisters and although sixteen now, four years older than Jack, she could still be childish. She claimed that he was spoiled, but he didn’t think he was, and sometimes – like now – he found her really annoying.

  Before Mary could think of a retort, Jack made for the hall, then stopped outside the parlour. Da sometimes retreated there when he wanted to do police paperwork without interruption or play his violin. It was also the room, however, to which he occasionally summoned family members for a talking-to. Jack hesitated, then nervously tapped on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Jack took a breath to steady himself and stepped into the parlour. His mind was racing as he tried to figure out what might have him in trouble.