Bring Larks and Heroes

by Thomas Keneally

  His Excellency’s red hands with their curly white hair, two genial-looking animals to find at a proconsul’s desk, ceased rutting amongst the documents and, as it were, sniffed the air.

  ‘The Provost-Marshal?’ he asked. ‘Passage home?’

  Rowley made an excruciated face.

  ‘I’ve heard often that the Provost-Marshal fixes up passages home for a just price. I thought it was part of the system.’

  ‘Not of our system,’ said His Excellency.

  ‘I hardly know how I’ll get home.’

  ‘It’s not time to consider that yet.’

  Quinn was struck by courage as by nausea. He lifted both his fists to chin level. Though they quivered, they did not altogether give the impression of quivering supplication.

  ‘I ask you, Your Excellency, please don’t you confuse a poor fellow close to despair. Because I’ve spoken to a man who’s already paid money to the Provost-Marshal for a quick passage home when the ships come in.’

  The Governor leant forward.

  ‘I don’t want to hear that man’s name, Quinn, and I don’t want to hear any more.’

  ‘Sir, you can’t . . .’

  ‘Quinn!’ roared the viceroy. The big cheeks purpled, with the result that Quinn put down his head and started mumbling with grief.

  ‘Now, be a brave man,’ said the Governor, and his voice quavered with successfully expended emotion. ‘And a patient one. Lead him off, sergeant. And give him a drop before he goes back to work.’

  They sat him by the side wall and poured him a grudging drop of rum. Quinn remembered the man from his parish who claimed to have seen Christ weeping beyond consolation at the bottom of a mug of rum. But God had left no messages in the cup for Quinn.

  14

  Quinn left a wary silence behind him in the office. The wind seethed, but did not fill the dead sails of the delf ships, or flutter the used years which lay vouched for in black and orange along the picture-rail. His Excellency sucked hard at the petulance in the corners of his mouth, knowing that it was improper that Rowley should so irk him. In the end he had to speak however, petulance and all.

  ‘I can’t see any reason why the Provost-Marshal has to be told of Quinn’s – well, what was it? – Quinn’s mistake. It would be gracing it too much to call it an accusation. Not that it would matter a damn if it was.’

  Rowley remained in a respectful stance. His eyes took no cognizance of the Governor.

  His Excellency hawked without success and picked up the year’s returns, as edited by Long and a felon called Hearn. They were capable of being tapped and butted into a state of symmetry. He tapped and butted them severely, these records of the colony’s paltry industries, of the productivity of the Briton in an impossible country.

  ‘Good! There’s nothing more I wanted you for, Rowley.’

  ‘Sir,’ Rowley said, ‘the Provost-Marshal is a Marine officer as well. As such, he is not directly subject to your control.’

  The Governor exhaled rowdily. He put the returns down at a pace that spun the top two out of line. He groaned against the Chancellery lawyers who left out of the colony’s Royal Charter any reference to the Marines in their service to him. So that the officers considered themselves an independent garrison and were, by far, too many independent wills for any professional autocrat to view serenely.

  Rowley went on.

  ‘I can understand your not being especially concerned about his honour as a garrison officer.’

  ‘You can?’

  ‘Yes. The officers of the garrison have not always been as pliant as you’ve wished, Your Excellency.’

  ‘Thou sayest it, who should know,’ muttered His Excellency.

  ‘But may I point out that as Provost-Marshal, he is your servant, sir. And he has been slandered to your face by an Irish felon.’

  ‘You don’t like Irish felons, Rowley? You speak as if the fact that a slander comes from an Irishman makes it a slander twice over.’

  ‘Perhaps it does, sir.’

  ‘I think it halves it, Rowley. Not that I love them. Do you think I like all that secretive muttering in Gaelic? They are an abomination, whether subservient or rebellious. Any officer quickly learns it. I detest them when they keep to their gods. But when they don’t they decay with twice the noise and trouble that an English sinner makes. And you and I eat rations because this colony is top-heavy with them.’

  But Rowley continued aloof from His Excellency’s anti-Hibernian ardours. Having got to the crest of his argument, the Governor grunted and began to follow it downhill.

  ‘Just the same, I’ll lay my soul on it that of all of them, that poor animal Quinn is the most harmless. To look on him as a serious slanderer is laughable. Remember that terrier of yours you shot for meat?’

  That told. Apollo Rowley ate dog in his hunger.

  ‘You know how it was always feloniously and treasonably insulting my vice-regal gate-post. Quinn’s of that order, his offence is of that order. The simple truth is, he’s a harmless animal, below giving offence.’

  ‘A clumsy comparison, if I might say so, Your Excellency.’ No if about it; he’d said it sure enough.

  So that now His Excellency took to the attack, standing up lightly. His bulk came upright with a very few small, cloth sounds.

  ‘Rowley, you may face me if you like. I’m not a divine presence. Nor am I an exposed stool. I won’t dazzle you. That you know. I won’t offend your nostrils. I don’t think you’re quite so sure about that. However, you may face me.’

  But at first, Rowley wouldn’t. He needn’t have, what with his well-connected family, what with the world’s width which lay between the two of them and any higher office. Probably because His Excellency was redolent of some form of brisk violence, because it didn’t seem unlikely that he himself might be punched by a big man and thrown across the room, Rowley obeyed. Still his eyes, beyond command, kept their aloof integrity.

  ‘Rowley,’ said His Excellency heartily, ‘it would be impossible for any officer not to be vindicated in court. In that case, vindication scarcely seems necessary. I don’t care, Rowley, if the Provost-Marshal is defrauding felons who have brought dirty money with them to this country. That money is forfeit, and he’s as welcome to it as anyone. I am willing to consider such a perquisite very much the same as the good cheeses and pork cuts from ship’s stores that captains of Royal Naval vessels send ashore to their wives just before sailing.’

  Across the valley came a scarcely audible drumming; and then the midday bugle bayed, implying a unity which didn’t exist, not even here, in the colony’s heart.

  So the bugle cut the morning adrift, and when it had finished, Rowley spoke.

  ‘Sir, I believe the contingent of gentlemen in this colony is an embattled group. You forget that when Quinn returns to his comrades and spreads his slander, we will all be weakened accordingly. I would like to be bold enough to remind you, Your Excellency, that nothing was done in the end to dissuade Quinn from peddling the story as truth.’

  Slap went the Governor’s hand on his twilled leg. There was plenty of firm meat there to resound his honest exasperation.

  ‘I don’t know what you think they think of us in the convict lines, Rowley. I’ll tell you. They expect us to figure forth authority. Apart from authority, they expect nothing else. They do not expect benevolence or sanity or probity. They drag our names through ordure. They play merry hell with our more private faculties. Do you know that they have a fable about the reason why all our livestock died off; that I and a few others gave the pox to the poor beasts? If the Provost-Marshal is such a precious gentleman, then he shouldn’t care what the sweepings say against him. Let him damn the lower deck, as the rest of us have to.’

  There was a pause which stretched itself out to half a minute. Rowley remained imm
obile. The governor set his chin at the door and then examined his desk. And, as Rowley had hoped, lost his aplomb in the end.

  ‘All right then, get out and thwart me again! Thwart me in every damned matter, big and small! You’re able to disobey, and you disobey for its own sake. Go to your brotherhood of officers and arrange for that poor bastard Quinn to bleed! Go on! Go away, you arse-twirling little freemartin!’

  Rowley waited for a formal dismissal.

  ‘Go on! You-may-go!’

  The Aide went away, so pale that Quinn would be sure to bleed for it.

  Quinn was detained in a hut without windows. Hailstones had made a hole in its roof, and he could be seen while the moon filled his corner, as it would not do for many more minutes. There was a young fellow further down the hut, out of the light such as it was. He was there for making a ragged hole in a lady’s head. He knew he had made the ragged hole – hadn’t he done it with a palpable lump of quartz? His crime seemed genuine to him. It did not seem like the crime of another person. He was sure he had wielded the quartz, he was sure of the punishment. He had no imagination, except that he wished he’d made a bigger hole.

  Whereas Quinn could not believe in his crime; would not believe in the punishment; and his imagination had overflown. He sat in the ruin of Corporal Halloran’s poetic letter, and its phrases came to him in any order, for the sound of words was a great comfort in the dark and in boredom, and even in fear. And the young man without imagination called him a daft old bastard and lofted pebbles at him across the dark, and scratched now and then so heavily that you’d have thought Quinn himself had made him itchy.

  Only now and then did Quinn come to himself and was aware.

  Me Dinny Quinn man of no malice at all in this downright dark. Why am I here and I mustn’t rave about it any more. I am not old. I do not say the crazy things old men come out with. Their daughters move them here and there about the house like a shameful piece of furniture. But they still make themselves heard. That’s not me. Not me. Dinny Quinn. By heaven and earth and all things green. I broke a girl on the Learmouth Estate’s heart named Mary Hart. Mary Hart I broke her heart. Bound to have it broken from the womb for her with a name like that. But I broke it. Me Dinny Quinn. Not some old man wetting himself where he sits and talking out of the top of an addled head. Girls. Girls in the demoned grey of churches – one of them Mrs Quinn-to-be – nothing wrong with Mrs Quinn-to-be – putting their heads down so the priest won’t see who it is. Muttering in the box bless me father I was tempted by Dennis Quinn. My daughter what did he do my daughter. It was the way father he danced at the Barry’s ceili and looked at me during it. Or perhaps it was the way he sang at the Redhills market. You must pray daughter and confess often and go to Communion at Easter. The might of religion and sacraments forged by God’s hand of steel may yet save you from the shocking sweetness of Dennis Quinn.

  But in the end, he always saw that the lavender qualms of girls in confessionals, letting out their lovely guilt in little puffs of winter breath, had not saved him. Was it believable? Could a lover and singer and a man without malice, but with imagination, believe it?

  ‘It’s funny till it happens,’ he said, yet the moon had left him alone in his urine-smelling corner.

  In the morning, the sun was thin gold, and obese thunderheads nudged it around the sky as if it were a boy king amidst councillors. So that by the time they had brought Quinn and the young man whom Quinn made itchy to court, there was thunder in the north-west. It might have meant only that the town would be watered. Remotely, it could have been a threat to the court. But all the members of the court were Marine officers, habituated to storm; and this was such uninspired thunder.

  A woman was there with a bandage round her shaved skull. She had four lady friends to pat her arm when Quinn and the boy were marched in. The women all said that the boy had let out her reason with the lump of quartz, that she was now mad beyond hope. Surgeon Partridge came to court, and said the woman had very nearly died and was very nearly mad beyond hope. The ladies made mouths at Partridge’s caution. By a quarter past ten though, the court sent the boy off to four hundred lashes and five years labour in chains. On the way out, he called ‘Yah, you old whores!’ at the four ladies.

  The court was bored by Quinn’s case. Most of them would not have bothered to start legal action, but since it had been started, Quinn had no hope, and would have been foolish to take any comfort from the languor of the bench. He was foolish, just the same. They gave him a sentence of four hundred lashes, and the burden of what Major Sabian, Judge-Advocate had to say to him was that he was damned lucky.

  Later in the morning, at Government House, His Excellency, who had the power to pardon or mitigate, called Rowley into the office.

  ‘Rowley,’ he said, holding in his hands a report of the morning’s court, ‘by how much can I cut down Quinn’s sentence? Without having all the members of the court resign on me, that is.’

  ‘Perhaps down to three hundred, Your Excellency.’

  ‘Thank you,’ muttered His Excellency, taking up his pen and writing two hundred and fifty.

  ‘Is that all, sir?’

  ‘Rowley, I think you’re a stupid young man. I think you’re nearly the stupidest young man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Possibly, Your Excellency.’

  ‘Get out then,’ the Governor told him.

  Two nights later, Halloran kept half of his evening meal aside for Quinn. Easily said; but his belly crept at the thought of it. Quinn’s back was all blood-bruises, which had broken and begun to heal in a great many places. He hid his head when Halloran gave him the mugful of stew, and Halloran thought at first Quinn was grateful and patted the man’s wrist.

  ‘Christ damn you!’ Quinn said.

  Halloran remained still for some seconds.

  ‘God tread you under!’ Quinn said.

  ‘Why?’ Halloran asked.

  ‘That lordly letter. It made them wise. You sold me to them.’

  ‘Who told you, Quinn?’

  ‘Who sold me if you didn’t?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘There you are.’

  ‘Nobody ever sold you. That’s what I meant.’

  ‘God tread you under!’

  ‘Don’t go mad, Quinn. They want to send you mad. Don’t you go mad! Come on now. You’ll get better. Your papers will come.’

  ‘You weren’t in court to speak for me.’

  ‘They invite to court the people they want in court. They didn’t ask me, so I couldn’t go. You know that.’

  ‘Did you speak to any of them? Did you tell them what a poor beggar I was?’

  Halloran was silent.

  ‘There!’ said Quinn. ‘God stew you in the pit!’

  ‘They knew you were harmless. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d spoken to every one of them.’

  ‘Your letter mattered, it made them wise.’

  ‘You’re talking in circles.’

  ‘Listen. It’s evil to curse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ever known curses to work?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Where have you lived all your life? You know curses work. Haven’t you seen them work, under God or the devil, who knows? But they work.’

  Quinn sweated. He had already said too much.

  ‘People who are alive die,’ said Halloran, ‘people who are well sicken, people who are well-off lose what they own. Being alive’s a curse no one can better. Especially when you’re so weak. Why don’t you rest and be quiet now. They’re all cur-dogs, but it’s no use fretting over it.’

  ‘When I am well and have found the words, I’ll curse the balls off you.’

  ‘Perhaps you will. Curse me or not, Quinn, I hope you get back God’s own good health soon.’

  ‘God tr
ead you under, you officers’ fancy-man.’

  Later, Halloran asked Ann why Quinn should have wanted to curse him.

  ‘He was in pain, for one thing,’ said Ann very wisely.

  But Halloran was not satisfied. Did he deserve to be cursed, like all men who pursued their won safety, like all the worldly-wise? That was what he wanted to know. But he was too uneasy to ask it outright.

  ‘Why me? Why not Dublin Castle or His Excellency?’

  Ann had no doubt why. There were some of the profoundest things that women knew instantly, without drawing breath. And when they knew one of these things, it was not simply knowing as a scholar knew; they gave off certainty as a candle gives light.

  ‘It’s because you’re of his kith. His Excellency’s too high to hate the way you can hate someone close. He can see through you, Quinn can. He can’t see through Dublin Castle or through His Excellency. Don’t let the fellow worry you. It was to be expected he’d turn around and end up cursing you.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it,’ Halloran said. ‘I’m the dimmest judge of men.’

  ‘You’re only a boy,’ said Ann with authentic sympathy.

  15

  Ann had first put on the St Megan’s cord five years before, ordered by her mother after a story was spread about a German regiment running wild in a town in Louth. The cord lost some of its dye in the tropics, but kept its virtue until the morning it came apart and fell onto the floor of the Blythes’ front parlour. The red cord, as a red cord, was probably more outlandish medicine even than a giblet poultice. Yet it had supplied Ann for some time with faith in her cosmic significance. This faith was staggered to find the cord gone. Seeing it on Mrs Blythe’s book-table the next morning brought to Ann a sense of being rarely and especially threatened.

  ‘This old cord, is it yours, Ann?’

  Ann blinked, busy with the hot water.