The Barracks Read online

  He was small for a policeman, the bare five feet nine of the regulations, his face thin, and the bones standing out. He looked overcome in the heavy woollen greatcoat.

  “A terrible night that’s in it,” he said.

  “A terrible night.”

  The voices echoed him, more or less in unison, the hoarse chant of a prayer.

  “I saw the light turned low in the dayroom. I was thinkin’ ye’d all be here.”

  And he left his flashlamp down on the window-sill, his greatcoat and cap on the pedal sewing-machine just beneath. There was no further need of the cards. They were raked up and the green table lifted out.

  “You let no grass grow under yer feet tonight, Jim?” he was asked, for it wasn’t yet ten, and it was always later than ten when the policemen came to make their reports and sign themselves out for the night.

  “I was makin’ a bird cradle all the evenin’ with the lads,” he explained. “We just managed to make it a minute ago there. So I thought it might be as well to face out for here at wance and be finished with it for the night.”

  They could see him on his knees in the kitchen of their rooms across the river, most of his eight children gathered round, building the cradle out of sallies and the cement coloured rods of elder. When the snow came they’d set it on the street. And all through the hard weather they’d have cold thrushes and blackbirds.

  “We got a great strong cradle med,” he added. “None better in Ireland!”

  The others smiled, Brennan’s intense pride in everything that came into his possession was a barrack joke, it was artless as a child’s.

  “The best woman in Ireland to get a bargain,” he’d say when his wife came from town on a shopping Saturday; and when he came home himself with the little yellowed bundle of Early York in spring, the plants still knotted in their ragged belt of straw, he had already, “A hundred of the best heads of cabbage in Ireland. Without question or doubt!”

  “And how is Mrs Brennan’s cold?” asked Elizabeth quietly.

  “She’s still coughin’ away. A fierce rasp in her chest. But nothin’ll get that woman of mine to stay up in bed,” he complained proudly.

  “She’d be wiser to stop. Is she takin’ anything for it?”

  “She rubs on a bit of Vick at night. That’s all I ever see her do. She always says a cauld has to run its course.”

  “The bed’s the only man,” advised Casey. “It’s the only place you can keep your temperature even. She needn’t think that she can’t be done without—the very best of us can be done without. So she’s as well to take it aisy. Time and tide, they say, waits for no man, nor woman neither.”

  It was the end, this litany of truisms, draining away whatever little life the conversation ever had. In the way women are so quick to sense, Elizabeth knew it was the time to do things. She got cups and saucers from the dresser, bread from the white enamelled bread box, tea out of a paper bag on the mantelpiece. They took the cups in their hands at the fire, and a plate of buttered soda bread was passed about.

  Mullins came as they were eating. He was no older than the others, but red and swollen, a raw smell of porter on his breath, though he appeared more depressed than tipsy.

  “A wild night!” he said. “It seems I’m the last of the Mohicans.”

  “But the last shall be first, remember,” Casey couldn’t resist quoting. With his weak laugh it came like a sneer of derision. Mullins stiffened at the door with resentment.

  “Aye!” he answered inarticulately back. “And the first might be last.”

  “Don’t be standin’ there, John. There’s a cup of tea just waiting for you,” Elizabeth urged.

  She pulled out a chair and Reegan, who had been taking less and less part in the conversation, just lying in a bored stupor in the chair, laughed, “It’s not who’s first or last counts in this house. It’s to be in time for the tay. That’s what counts. And you couldn’t have timed it nicer, John!” as the ungainly old policeman sat down.

  It took all the hatred that the gibe brought. Mullins laughed so tipsily that the cup rocked over and back on his saucer.

  “Bejasus!” he swore. “It seems I med it on the eleventh hour, surely.”

  Reegan began to tell his clash with Quirke to Brennan and Mullins, Casey forced to listen again; and the tones of violence had now taken the resonance of a constant theme repeating itself through the evening.

  They listened nervously to his frustration and spleen wear itself to the end of its telling. When he finished Mullins burst out in drunken passion that, “They can’t ride roughshod over us these days. Them days are gone. They can try it on. But that’s all—bejasus!”

  “You’d be surprised what they can do,” Casey argued with unusual conviction. “Things don’t change that quick. They might luk different, that’s all. But if you wance cross them they’ll get rid of you, no matter whether they can or they can’t. They’ll find ways and means, don’t worry. Who do you think the Chief Super’s goin’ to stand up for? For John Mullins or Mr. Quirke? Power, let me tell you, always stands up for power.”

  “But what do I care? What the hell do I care?” Reegan shouted and it was another argument.

  Examples began to be quoted, old case histories dragged up for it to end as it began—with nothing proven, no one’s convictions altered in any way, it becoming simply the brute clash of ego against ego, any care for tolerance or meaning or truth ground under their blind passion to dominate. And the one trophy they all had to carry away was a gnawing resentment of each other’s lonely and passing world.

  Even that resentment went quickly as a sudden liking can when Brennan steered the antagonism to a safe stop against the boy, “What does young Willie think of all this? Will he join the Force when he grows up?”

  “Not if he has any sense in his skull,” Reegan intervened. He spoke with the hotness of argument. The others were cooled and tired of it now.

  “But do you think will he be the measurement?” Casey asked, preferring to ignore the challenge.

  “We’ll have to put a stone on his head, that’s what we’ll have to do soon with the way he’s growin’ up on us,” Mullins said kindly and then he laughed. “But I’m afraid he’ll never be thick enough.”

  “Thirty-six inches across the chest, Willie, and a yard thick with solid ignorance like the fella from Connemara; then five feet nine inches against the wall in your stockin’ feet and you’re right for the Force, Willie. All the requirements laid down by the regulations.”

  The pun was a favourite that never grew worn, always bringing back to them the six months they spent training in the Depot when they were nineteen or twenty, in the first days of the Irish Free State.

  The British had withdrawn. The Capital was in a fever of excitement and change. New classes were forming, blacksmiths and clerks filling the highest offices in the turn of an hour. Some who had worried how their next loaf or day might come were attending ceremonial functions. There was a brand new tricolour to wave high; a language of their own to learn; new anthems of faith-and-fatherland to beat on the drum of the multitude; but most of all, unseen and savage behind these floral screens, was the struggle for the numbered seats of power.

  These police recruits walking the Phoenix Park in the evenings, or on the lighted trams that went down past Phibsboro’ to the music halls, what were their dreams? They knew that lightning promotion could come to the favoured. They saw the young girls stand to watch them from the pavements as they marched to Mass on Sunday mornings.

  Now they sat and remembered, thirty years later, waiting to go to their homes in the rain.

  “Some of the auld drill sergeants were a terror,” Casey comically mused as if he was enjoying bitterness itself. “Do ye remember By Garrup?”

  “Ah, Jasus,” Mullins swore. “As if any mortal could forget him.…

  “‘By Garrup, look at the creel of turf on Mullins’s back,’ he used roar, the auld bastard! ‘You’re not on the bog now, Mullins—By Garru
p! Head to the front! Right wheel! Chests out! Ye’re not carryin’ yeer auld dyin’ grandmothers up the stairs on yeer backs now, By Garrup! Mark time! Lift the knees!’

  “Oh, the auld bastard,” Mullins roared. They all joined him, loving few things better than these caricatures. The night that had hung about them like a responsibility seemed now too short, it was nearly wasted now and it seemed to be so quickly on the march.

  “Do you mind Spats at the law classes,” Casey continued. “The concate of the boyo!

  “A legal masterpiece, gentlemen of the jury, is the proper distribution of the proper quantity of ink on the proper number of white pages. That, gentlemen, is simply, solely and singularly the constitution of any masterpiece.”

  “But wasn’t he said to be wan of the cleverest men in Ireland?” Brennan interrupted suddenly. “Wasn’t he a B.A. and a barrister?”

  The interruption annoyed Casey intensely. He had been a conductor for a few months on the Dublin trams before joining the police.

  “A barrister! What’s a barrister? A chancer of the first water,” he derided. “Hundreds of them are walkin’ round Dublin without a sole on their shoes. They’d hardly have even their tram fare!”

  “But don’t some of them make more than £5,000 a year?”

  “Yes—some of them!—many are called, James, but few are chosen, as you and I should know at this stage of our existence,” Casey quoted in such a funereal and sanctified tone that it left no doubt about what he thought of Brennan’s offering.

  Brennan had been silent till then. He was a poor mimic. Neither could he sing. He had often tried, patrolling the roads alone, but catching the flat tones of his own voice he’d grow embarrassed and silent again. He envied Casey and Mullins their flow of talk, their ability to shine in company, and he did not know that those content to listen are rarest of all. He felt bored to distraction at having to sit silent for so long. He was determined to get a foothold in the conversation.

  “Isn’t it strange,” he said, “that with all the men that ever went into the Depot none of them were exactly six feet?”

  “That’s right,” Mullins asserted. “No man ever born was exactly six feet. It’s because Jesus Christ was exactly six feet and no man since could be the same height. That’s why it’s supposed to be!”

  He had taken the words out of Brennan’s mouth, who twisted on the chair with annoyance and frustration.

  “I often heard that,” Elizabeth joined, more to counteract Reegan’s bored restlessness and silence than any wish of her own to speak.

  “It’s like the Blessed Virgin and Original Sin,” Brennan rushed out again and went on to quote out of the Catechism. “The Blessed Virgin Mary by a singular privilege of grace was preserved free from original sin and that privilege is called her Immaculate Conception.”

  “Six feet is the ideal height for a man,” Mullins asserted again. “Anything bigger is gettin’ too big. While anything smaller is gettin’ too small. It’s the ideal height for a man.”

  “Kelly, the Boy from Killann,” said Casey, “was seven feet with some inches to spare.

  “Seven feet was his height with some inches to spare And he looked like a king in command,”

  he quoted out of the marching song.

  There was immediate feeling of blasphemy. The song connected up with Jesus Christ, though Casey had meant no harm, he said it just because it happened into his head and he’d decided to say something. In the subsequent uneasiness the time was noticed. It was five to eleven.

  “There’ll be murder,” Casey jumped. “That woman of mine’ll be expectin’ me for this past hour.”

  He put on his cap and coat in the dayroom. Elizabeth hurried Una so that she was waiting for him at the door. She wore Wellingtons and had the parcel of her nightdress clasped inside her blue raincoat.

  “It’s time for any respectable man to be makin’ home,” either Brennan or Mullins said and they went down to sign the books and left almost on the others’ heels.

  Reegan rose from the fire and pulled back the circle of chairs. His hair was tousled from scratching it with sleep, the collar of the tunic still unclasped, his feet loose in the boots.

  “It’s a good cursed job that those don’t decide to come up many nights,” he complained.

  His face was ugly with resentment.

  “Oh, it wasn’t so much harm, was it?” Elizabeth pleaded. “The nights are often long enough on us.”

  “But were you listenin’ to that rubbish?—Jesus Christ and Kelly, the Boy from Killann. Sufferin’ duck, but did you hear that rubbish?”

  He was shouting. Elizabeth had to gather herself together before answering quietly, “It’s only a saying that He was six feet tall. Does it matter very much? Did you never hear it?”

  “Of course I heard it,” he cried, beside himself. “I’m not deaf, unfortunately. If you listened long enough to everything said around here you’d soon hear the Devil himself talkin’.”

  Then he grew quieter and said without passion, as if brooding, “Surely you’re not gettin’ like the rest of them, girl?”

  She drew closer. She felt herself no longer a woman growing old. She wasn’t conscious of herself any more, of whatever beauty had been left her any more than her infirmities, for she was needed.

  “No, but does it matter what they say?” she said. “Hadn’t the night to pass?”

  The night had to pass, but not in that manner, was how he reacted. He turned towards the radio that stood on a small shelf of its own, some bills and letters scattered beside its wet battery, between the sideboard and curtained medicine press.

  “Such rubbish to have to listen to,” he muttered. “And in front of the childer.… And the same tunes night-in, night-out, the whole bloody year round.”

  He switched on the radio. The Sweepstake programme was ending. To soft music a honeyed voice was persuading, “It makes no difference where you are—You can wish upon a star.”

  It should all make you want to cry. You were lonely. The night was dark and deep. You must have some wish or longing. The life you lead, the nine to five at the office, the drudgery of a farm, the daily round, cannot be endured without hope.

  “So now before you sleep make up your mind to buy a Sweepstake ticket and the first prize of £50,000 out of a total of £200,000 in prizes on this year’s Grand National may be yours.”

  The music rose for the young night. It was Venice, the voice intoned. There was moonlight on the sleeping canals as the power of longing was given full sway. A boy and a girl drift in their boat. There is a rustle of silken music from the late-night taverns. They clasp each other’s hands in the boat. The starlight is in her hair and his face is lifted to hers in the moonlight. He is singing softly and his voice drifts across the calm water. It is Venice and their night of love.…

  In spite of themselves they felt half-engulfed by this induced flood of sentimentality and sick despair. Reegan switched it off as the speaking voice faded for a baritone to ease the boy’s song of love into the music. The house was dead still.

  “The news is long over,” he said. “Are ye all ready for the prayers? We should have them said ages ago.”

  He took a little cloth purse from his watch pocket and let the beads run into his palm. He put a newspaper down on the cement and knelt with his elbows on the table, facing his reflection in the sideboard mirror.

  Elizabeth’s and the children’s beads were kept in an ornamental white vase on the dresser. Willie climbed on a chair to get them from the top shelf. Elizabeth’s beads were a Franciscan brown, their own pale mother-of-pearl with silver crosses that they’d been given for their First Communion.

  They blessed themselves together and he began:

  “Thou, O Lord, will open my lips”,

  “And my tongue shall announce Thy praise,” they responded.

  They droned into the Apostles’ Creed. Then Our Fathers and Hail Marys and Glory be to the Fathers were repeated over and over in their relentless
monotony, without urge or passion, no call of love or answer, the voices simply murmuring away in a habit or death, their minds not on what they said, but blank or wandering or dreaming over their own lives.

  Elizabeth’s fingers slipped heedlessly along the brown beads. No one noticed that she’d said eleven Hail Marys in her decade. She had tried once or twice to shake herself to attention and had lapsed back again.

  She felt tired and sick, her head thudding, and she put her hands to her breasts more than once in awareness of the cysts there. She knelt with her head low between her elbows in the chair, changing position for any distraction, the words she repeated as intrusive as dust in her mouth while the pain of weariness obtruded itself over everything that made up her consciousness.

  She knew she must see a doctor, but she’d known that months before, and she had done nothing. She’d first discovered the cysts last August as she dried herself at Malone’s Island, a bathing-place in the lake, not more than ten minutes through the meadows; and she remembered her fright and incomprehension when she touched the right breast again with the towel and how the noise of singing steel from the sawmill in the woods pierced every other sound in the evening.

  What the doctor would do was simple. He’d send her for a biopsy. She might be told the truth or she might not when they got the result back, depending on them and on herself. If she had cancer she’d be sent for treatment. She had been a nurse. She had no illusions about what would happen.

  She had been only away from the house once since she was married. She shuddered at how miserable she’d been those three days, the first blight on her happiness.

  A cousin had invited her to her wedding in Dublin. She’d no desire to go, but that she had been remembered so surprised her with delight that she told them about the letter at the dinner hour.

  “You might as well take the chance when you get it. It mightn’t be offered again. It’d be a break for you. It’d take you out of yourself for a few days,” she was pressed to go.

  “But look at the cost! The train fare. The hotel. A wedding present for Nuala. And how on earth would I get past those shop windows full of things without spending every penny we have?” she laughed.