The Barracks (27 page)

So few people took on individuality in her mind, and this priest was definitely not one of them. A big tall man in his sixties, as tall as Reegan but not so straight, bloated, a tracery of thread-like purple veins under the red skin of his face. She was detached, she could watch: he was sitting on a chair at the bedside, a priest supposed to be comforting a dying woman; she didn't care. Sometimes the pressure of his talk oppressed her to near craziness, as if she'd been dragged close as inches to the steel singing far away across the lake, and she felt like crying at him for some ease or silence. Mostly she didn't hear what he was saying but agreed with him mechanically as she watched him, his bloated appearance fascinated her most, and she'd think how strange it was how some wore down to skin and bone and others puffed out to burst like a pod in the sun.

The one thing she'd fear if she could care enough was his aggressiveness, when he began to suspect that her total acquiescence wasn't agreement but the evasion it actually was.

“You must pray to Mary, she has the ear of God, she speaks to God for us, we're one of the few nations in the world who understand Her importance. Don't you think we should have great devotion to Mary?” he impressed hotly one evening.

“Yes, of course,” she answered wearily.

“There's no of course about it, we should, and that's all,” he said.

She went hot with resentment, the instinct to savage him rose and as quickly died. He was simply a person to be avoided if she had a choice in the matter but she didn't care whether she chose or was chosen any more, it was all the same. For a moment a picture of the ridiculous village presbytery, the hideous Virgin Mary blue of doors and windows in the whitewashed walls at the end of the lovely drive of limes, showed itself to her eyes and she wanted to laugh. “Yes. That's quite right,” she said. She was able to agree. She'd save herself that much noise.

It was hard enough to accept the reality of her situation; but it was surely the last and hardest thing to accept its interpretations from knaves and active fools and being compelled
to live in them as in strait-jackets. To be able to say yes to that intolerant lunacy so as to be able to go your own way without noise or interruption was to accept everything and was hardest of all to do.

A worn and dry craving to see the back of this priest would take possession of her; for Reegan to come from the bog with turf-mould dried in sweat to his face and hands; for them to kneel down about her bed so that she could hear them chant.

The rosary had grown into her life: she'd come to love its words, its rhythm, its repetitions, its confident chanting, its eternal mysteries; what it meant didn't matter, whether it meant anything at all or not it gave the last need of her heart release, the need to praise and celebrate, in which everything rejoiced.

She grew worse, she began to sink, though they didn't know when it would end. As she felt herself go she tried to say once to herself, “This is not my life. This is not the way I lived. What's happening now was never part of my life. I have lived in health, not in sickness in death,” but suddenly it was too tiring or futile to continue and the resolution was soon lost, as everything was.

Reegan spent most of these May days on the bog, scattering the barrow heaps out into the drying. The weather was dry and hard, white frost at nights, a still low mist white in the morning that couldn't be penetrated as far as the navigation signs at the mouth of the lake from the barrack door; the sun would beat it away before ten and rise into a blazing day, getting quite cold again towards evening. It was the best possible weather for saving turf, and Reegan was on the bog with Sheila and Willie the day she died, Una let stay in the house with Mrs Casey because the illness had reached the stage when some one had to be all the time with her in the bedroom.

She had drowsed through the morning, stirred once to get her dose of drugs, and was breathing heavily when the Angelus rang.

“That was the bell, Willie, wasn't it?” she said to the child.

“'Twas, Elizabeth,” Una answered, and there was noise and smells of Mrs Casey cooking in the kitchen.

“I wasn't sure, all day I seem to hear strange bells ringing in my mind, church bells. It was the bell, wasn't it?”

“'Twas,” the child was growing uneasy.

“Did they come from the bog yet?”

“No, not till evenin', Daddy has a day's monthly leave, they brought bread and bottles of tea in the socks.”

“But they were to be back to go to devotions, it grows cold on the bog in the evenings. But that was the first bell, wasn't it?”

“No,' twas the Angelus, Elizabeth,” the child gave a short laugh, though it couldn't be possible that Elizabeth was trying to play tricks with her.

“It's the bell for the Angelus,” Elizabeth repeated, obviously trying to understand.

“It's the bell for the Angelus, late no more than usual, twenty past twelve on the clock now,” the child said with the faint suggestion of a laugh, the unpunctual ringing of the bells was a local joke.

“But why did you draw the blinds?”

“What blinds?” the child was frightened.

“The blinds of the window.”

“No, there's no blinds down, but it'll not be long till it's brighter. The sun'll be round to this side of the house in an hour.”

“There's no clouds?”

“No, no,” the child said, trying to behave as if everything was usual, but she was stiff with fright. The wide window where she stood was open on the summer, changing corrugations of the breeze on the bright lake and river, glittering points; butterflies, white and rainbow, tossed in the light over the meadows, wild flowers shining out of the green, the sickly rich heaviness of meadowsweet reaching as far as the house.

“No, there's no cloud,” the child said, and stood in terror. Elizabeth's head fell slack; the breath began to snore and rattle; her fingers groped at the sheets, the perishing senses trying to find root in something physical; and the childran calling to Mrs Casey in the kitchen.

After the first shock, the incredulity of the death, the women, as at a wedding, took over: the priest and doctor were sent for, the news broken to Reegan on the bog, the room tidied of its sick litter, a brown habit and whiskey and stout and tobacco and foodstuffs got from the shops at the chapel, the body washed and laid out—the eyes closed with
pennies and her brown beads twined through the fingers that were joined on the breast in prayer. Her relatives and the newspapers were notified, and the black mourning diamonds
sewn on Reegan's and the children's coats.

Reegan was sent to the town to make the funeral arrangements,
and it was the first chance he got to think what had happened since Casey came to the bog with the news. There was such a bustle of activity about the death, and he felt just a puppet in the show. When he got home from the town and undertaker the house was full of people. The wake would last till the rosary was said at midnight; and a few would remain in the room afterwards to keep the early morning vigil, the candles burning close to her dead face while it grew light. All Reegan had to do was stand at the door and shake hands with those offering him their sympathy, answering the customary, “I'm sorry for your trouble, Sergeant,” with what grew more and more idiotic to him as the night progressed, “I know that. I know that indeed. Thank you.”

The next evening she was coffined and taken to the church where she was received by the priest and left beneath the red sanctuary lamp, surrounded by candles in tall black sticks, till she'd be taken to the graveyard in Eastersnow after High Mass the next day.

Cars crept jerkedly in low gear behind the hearse at the funeral, a few surviving horse-traps that seemed to belong more to museums than the living day followed behind the cars, the bicycles came next, and those who walked were last of all. A funeral's importance was judged by the number of cars behind the hearse and they were counted carefully as they crawled past the shops: Elizabeth had 33 cars at her funeral. The most important funeral ever from the church had 186 cars, it was the record, and labourers hired out for their lives from the religious institutions that reared them to farmers, homeboys, were known to have as few as 5 cars behind their deal coffins, so Elizabeth's funeral with 33 cars was considered neither a disgrace nor a remarkable turnout.

Mullins and Casey rode in the fourth car behind the
hearse, just after the mourning cars, but they had told the driver not to wait for them afterwards, and escaped from the throng about the grave in the first drift-away during the decade of the rosary. They didn't want to face back to the barracks and relatives and last grisly drinks and sighs with Reegan standing silent like a caged animal, they had more than enough of the bustle of death in the last three days.

By the back way, around by the Eastersnow Protestant church, they escaped, this part of the graveyard thinly populated because there were few of any other religions outside Catholicism left in these western districts. Not till the grave scene was shut out of sight by the church did they feel at ease or speak, the way the little whiskey bottle that held the holy water had shivered to pieces on the corner of the bright brown coffin when the priest threw it into the grave and the scraping of the shovel blades against the stones in the clay and the hollow thudding on the coffin boards still too close, and their satisfaction, “It's Elizabeth that's being covered and not me and I'm able to stand in the sun and watch,” not able to take the upper hand in their minds till they got the bulk of the stone church between themselves and the grave.

Before the church door was the King-Harman plot, the landowners of the district before the New Ireland had edged them out, the deer parks of their estate split into farms, the great beech walks being gradually cut down, their Nash mansion that once dramatically overlooked the parks and woods on one side and the lake with its islands on the other burned to the ground, and here Casey and Mullins stopped to light cigarettes, Casey's attention attracted by some of the inscriptions on the smaller headstones in a corner of the plot and he read:

Chains hanging between low concrete piers girdled the plot, a concrete path ran down its centre to where a pair of great cypress trees rose, one in each corner, and to the right of the path stood the three baronets' headstones, large Celtic crosses in old red sandstone, on each of them two fingers raised from a hand clasping a crown to point sky-wards with the inscription:

“It's easy to see who those gentlemen belonged to,” Casey remarked as he read the inscriptions and then he derided as he saw the fingers point to the heavens, “They might get a hell of a land; whoever told them heaven was in that direction anyhow!”

Both of them laughed at the sally, their fear fast going. They gazed a while at the plot, and crossed the stone stile out of the graveyard.

“Though it is up,” Mullins said. “They're right in that. It was up Jesus Christ went on Ascension Thursday.”

“But how do you know it was that way up?” Casey laughed as he set himself to argue. “The world rotates, it does a full circle every twenty-four hours, in twelve hours it'll be down where Australia is now and it'll be pointin' in the direct opposite direction then.”

“It's to Mulloy's we're goin', isn't it?” Mullins halted the argument, but he was not beaten. Mulloy's was a small pub down the Eroona road, out of the way of the mourners who'd return to the village.

“That's where we said, it's a long time since we had a drink on our own, and where there's more than two people you can never get any satisfaction out of talkin',” Casey said.

“To get back where we left off,” Mullins said, “in twenty-four hours the earth'll be back where it is now and it'll be
still the same direction. I think the Ascension is the important thing.”

“But the world rotates round the sun as well,” Casey countered and they both squared themselves. It was plainly a problem that'd not allow itself to be solved in a moment, and when they were not putting on a show or face before people they loved few things better than to feel themselves garbed in the seriousness of these philosophical arguments.

When they reached the road they quickened their pace, their speech grew more excited. Away to their right the plains in the summer swept greenly down to the river and village and woods. There was a shimmer of heat in the fields of young oats and the powdery white dust of the road dulled the shine on their boots as they walked, it was the time of year for pints of cider.

T
here's nothing to lose! Nothing to lose! You just go out like a light in the end. And what you've done or didn't do doesn't matter a curse then, wore itself into Reegan's bones in the next months.

He'd won and sold his turf, fulfilled all his contracts, but he hadn't near the money he'd expected to have, the expenses
of her last illness and burial eating up most of the profit he had calculated on as well as all her savings, the savings that had meant so much to her now only a pathetic little sum against the flood of bills.

And would he have to knuckle down and grin and bear the police till he died or was forced to retire at sixty, or the children were able to fend for themselves.

“No, no, no,” the whisper grew more savage as the autumn wore to winter and the end of another year of his life. “No, no, no! There's nothing to lose! Nothing to lose! You just go out like a light. And what you did or didn't do then doesn't matter a curse, so do what you want, what you want to do, while you've still the time.”

It grew and grew as he watched Quirke more. He'd smash him if it was the last thing he did, and he seemed to dog the barracks these days, the other policemen as much as Reegan, with surprise early morning inspections and oral examinations
of their knowledge of police duties. It seemed as if he thought he'd hound them into efficiency.

“I can't remember anything I read these days. It just slips through the auld mind, the memory is goin', sir. I had it all off once, sir!” Reegan listened to Mullins near breaking down under examination one early morning.

“But, my good man, haulage vehicles are something that
you should come up against every week,” Quirke retorted impatiently. “It shouldn't be even necessary to have a memory, if you had only your eyes open I can't see how you could escape knowing,” he said in cold disgust, staring at Mullins's great and sagging corpus. Then, “when have you had your last summons in court?” he asked quietly.

“It's a good while,” Mullins tried to bluster. “About a year ago, sir. Nothing ever much happens in this district.”

“No, everybody just breaks the law quietly, without any fuss, in broad daylight,” Quirke said with heavy sarcasm and then, “Perhaps, you, Sergeant, could illuminate that section of the Road Act for Mr Mullins,” he turned to Reegan.

“The Road Traffic Act,” Reegan corrected.

“The Road Traffic Act,” Quirke said, both of them staring at each other without any veils on their mutual loathing and hatred, and Reegan, who had almost perfect knowledge of duties and regulations, answered in a tone that was calculated to be as blameless on the surface and as insulting as possible in undertone. The examination eventually ended with a scarifying lecture by Quirke, the policemen trooped hotly away to leave Quirke and Reegan alone.

“I've been informed that you've supplied the Convent Laundry and half the town with fuel, Sergeant,” Quirke went straight to the attack as soon as they were alone.

“And what if I did?” Reegan stiffened.

“We'll pass that point for the moment. May I ask you this one question, Sergeant? Do you intend to stay long more in the police? Why, Sergeant, are you a policeman anyhow?”

“Is it the regulation answer you want?” Reegan insulted, though well in the grip of the habit of years of discipline that had kept his feelings towards his superiors from erupting
into violence.

“Any answer!” Quirke shouted, far the more infuriated.

“To keep from starvin' I suppose,” Reegan ground.

“And you don't believe you have a responsibility in the matter? You don't believe you should do a fair job of work
for a fair remuneration,” Quirke beat with his fist on the patrol book on the table.

“I don't believe anything nor care,” Reegan said.

“Well, I'll see that you'll act something at least, I'll see that much, Sergeant.”

“You can see what you like!” was Reegan's answer.

Quirke had taken his gloves from the table: he rose and went half-way to the door. He grew quieter to say, “I thought there for a time that you were coming to your senses, and left you alone, but that was no use. Then you had your trouble and I wanted to give you every consideration but that's plainly no use either. Things have passed out of bounds. This station might as well not exist, except as an example in everything that no police station should be. And those men can be led, you're the root——” he was saying when he saw Reegan's eyes look hard as steel, the breath hissing: “You leave my trouble out of this, she's the dead!”

Quirke apologized quickly as he moved towards the door, “Though what I've said stands! I intend to make a serious report. There'll have to be changes.”

“There'll have to be changes,” Reegan almost bared his teeth to shout as the door closed, and it was to all intents the end of Reegan the policeman. He did no more patrols, rose always late for roll call in the mornings, answered no official letters, and made a complete travesty of the signing in-and-outs, but waiting, not sending in his resignation. The others grew afraid; they had a secret meeting together in the dayroom; and while deciding against reporting him they resolved to attend to their own subordinate duties with blameless care. And they knew that the situation couldn't continue long as it was, soon there would have to be some crash. It was Brennan who was the most indignant of the three, he'd have reported Reegan to make sure of his own safety. “We have a duty to protect ourselves,” he said. “The man's gone out of his mind, he doesn't care what happens, and he'll get us the sack as well as himself. We must look out.”

“No. I'll not inform on any man,” Mullins said.

“No,” Casey said too. “We'll just have to see that we do our own jobs properly and then we can't be blamed. No such a thing as reporting though, that'd not be playin' the game, some of us here are a long time under his baton and he reported no man.”

“We'll watch our own ends, that's all, but no skunkin',” Mullins said last, and Brennan felt chastised and shamed and angry.

So the next early morning inspection found Mullins and Casey and Brennan lined up the other side of the table before Quirke and their faces and boots and uniform shining clean, but Reegan was still in bed. There was sense of real occasion, and tension; something would have to happen today. It was the children who brought Reegan first news of Quirke's presence.

“Daddy, the Super's car is outside,” they had already caught the fear of authority in their voices.

“So he's come,” Reegan said, and they were shocked by his casualness; another time the news would have stirred him into some kind of action.

“He's in the dayroom, Daddy!”

“That's all right, don't worry,” he said, but there was a shake in the voice; and then Casey pounded upstairs to tap at the bedroom door.

“The Super's down below, Sergeant,” he said, the pallid skin as white as ever death would make it. “He wants to know if you're reportin' sick or comin' down.”

“Tell him I'm comin' down,” Reegan said.

“I'll tell him you're comin' down,” Casey wanted it to be confirmed.

“Do.”

“Right, Sergeant,” Casey shuffled uneasily away as Reegan pulled back the bedclothes and swung his feet out on the floor.

He dressed hurriedly and came downstairs and into the kitchen in his socks, there he laced on his boots, and very quietly got notepaper and envelopes and pen and ink and wrote his resignation. He took much time and when he had
the envelope closed, he called Willie and told him to run to post it, now.

“It's finished and done at last,” he said to the uncompre-hending children, and then went down to the dayroom in a royal state of disorder, unshaven, the hair tousled, the whistle-chain hanging loose, and the tunic wide open on the dirty flannel shirt that was open without collar on the throat.

Both Quirke and the three policemen were in a state of nervous tension when he opened the door; there had been a ridiculous parody of an inspection after Casey's return; their whole minds on Reegan's feet padding downstairs; and what in the name of Christ could he be doing in the kitchen. Quirke was writing when he entered, the three policemen standing in a stupid line the other side of the table, so many red and black inkstains on the bare deal, the official pens and books of foolscap and stampers and pads; seams of dirt in the cracks between the scrubbed boards. Quirke did not look up, he continued writing, as if no one had entered; but Reegan went and leaned against the corner of the table, deliberately jogging it so that Quirke had to take notice before he intended. He surveyed Reegan's appearance and demanded an explanation in as unemotional a tone as he could master. He got none.

“So you have no explanation to offer, Sergeant,” he had to say, he'd already lost much of his calm.

All Reegan did was drawl, “No,” and lounge more fully on the table.

“Stand to attention, Sergeant!” Quirke shouted, white at the insult, and losing all control.

“Stand yourself,” Reegan said in utter contempt.

“I'll have you dismissed! Do you realize that?” Quirke pounded.

“I've resigned, so do you want me to stand to attention, sir,” he raised his voice to parody Quirke.

“I'll see you are disciplined. I'll see you get your deserts, you pup,” Quirke hardly knew what he said. Reegan moved closer, the mocking mood gone at that last mouthing insult,
and the three policemen grew afraid, they knew how dangerous Reegan was.

“No, you can't,” and the ring of hatred that came hissing on the voice now even chilled Quirke. “No, you can't. I wore the Sam Browne too, the one time it was dangerous to wear it in this balls of a country. And I wore it to command—men, soldiers, and not to motor round to see if a few harmless poor bastards of policemen would lick me fat arse, while I shit about law and order. And the sight of a belt on somebody else never struck me blind!

“Now get out before I smash you,” Reegan ground.

He was dangerous, there could be no doubt, and he'd shocked and overawed the younger officer. Quirke had never been confronted with a situation anything like this: he'd lost sight of whether he should go and report or stand on his authority, and he saw that the line of three across the table would be no use to anyone. He rose with as much dignity as he could keep.

“You're obviously in no condition to listen to reason but you've not heard the last of this, resignation or no resignation,” he stumbled.

“I'm tellin' you to get out,” Reegan said and crowded him to the door and kicked it shut on his heels.

He was pale as death when he came in to them in the kitchen. They were startled when he spoke but it was only to ask the boy if he had posted the letter. Then he dressed himself properly and went out and round by the window on the high policeman's bicycle and he was away all day, nearly night when he returned to his meal that was spoiled with waiting.

The dayroom door opened as he ate and Mullins ventured up the hallway to tap on the door and wait for Reegan's “Come in.”

“I just wandered up,” he stated. “A man'd get the willies down in that joint on his own.”

He was given a chair at the fire but wasn't easy till he got “Jasus!” out at last. “I never saw the bate of this mornin' in all me life. 'Twas as good as a month's salary. Some of the
stations were on the phone already for particulars. Jasus, you have him rightly humped, Sergeant; they'll have to give him an office job in the Depot; this day'll follow him round for the rest of his life.”

Reegan was quiet, a sort of bitterness and contempt on the face that leaned towards the fire in the failing light, and then he stared into Mullins's face and said, “It's always easy to make a Cuchulainn outa the other fella, isn't it, John?”

“What? What do you mean, Sergeant?” Mullins ejaculated,
either unable or unwilling to understand, a shade of terror on his face.

“No, nothing, don't mind, John,” Reegan laughed sharply. “I was only sort of talkin' to meself, you know, jokin'.”

The night had come, the scarlets of the religious pictures faded, their glass glittered in the flashes of firelight and there seemed a red scattering of dust from the Sacred Heart lamp before the crib on the mantelpiece. “And is it time to light the lamp yet, Daddy?” the boy's voice ventured.

“Yes,” Reegan answered without thought.

He was silent with Mullins, and the silence seemed to absorb itself in the nightly lighting of the paraffin lamp. All the years were over now, and the kitchen was quick and full with movement. The head was unscrewed off the lamp, the charred wicks trimmed, the tin of paraffin and the wide funnel got from the scullery, the smoked globe shone with twisted brown paper, the boy running from the fire to touch the turned-up wicks into flame, and the two girls racing to the windows to drag down the blinds on another night.

“My blind was down the first,” they shouted.

“No! My blind was down the first!”

“Wasn't my blind down the first, Guard Mullins?” as the boy adjusted the wicks down to a steady yellow flame and fixed the lamp in its place—one side of the delf on the small white table-cloth.