A Man in a Distant Field (37 page)

News came that Liam Kenny had been wounded and taken by the Civil Guards who had assumed policing duties in Leenane. He was sent to Galway, where he was imprisoned and then released. He wrote to Declan, saying that he had great respect for his teaching and that the young men from his classroom had spoken with some knowledge of Irish history and politics. “I am
about to take my degree at the university, though there was some determination to keep all jailbirds out, but those who knew my father have spoken in my favour. I will work against the cursed Treaty but hope, of course, that this might be done in a civilized way. I mind that an Irish winter is a cold time to be camping out around a sizzling fire with only the odd old tune to comfort a man. Erin go bragh, Mr. O'Malley.”

One ghost less in the chilly hills
, thought Declan. One less song to ring in the clear air, accompanied by the crack of a rifle shot, a circle of stones, the smoke gone out. And he wondered if a girl had loved Liam Kenny and watched for his light across the hills and was waiting yet for him. In years to come, this might form a story for Liam Kenny, something he would tell his grandchildren, of how he had fought with Republican brigades in the Connemara mountains, had been shot in the leg, and had left their grandmother for years not knowing whether he was alive or dead, and here he was, a solicitor in a country town who would meet old mates for a drink from time and time and relive the days of '23. For his sake, Declan hoped the story might go something like that.

One night, sleeping in Una's bed, he heard the soft rap of knuckles at her cabin door. He gently shook her awake.

“Una, there is someone knocking. It might be best if I not answer.” Declan helped her out of the bed; she reached for her wrapper and lit a candle to see her way to the door. Declan stood behind the bedroom door, which he left ajar so he could hear if he might be needed; there was no telling what to expect on those dark nights with the Civil Guards in the barracks and the fierce Republicans still in the mountains.

He listened as a boy, he couldn't tell who, told Una that there had been a skirmish and some wounded and the women of the Cumann na mBán were needed for first aid—the doctor, reliable in such emergencies, was away on a difficult maternity case down near Kylemore. They were to go to the designated place, the boy said, and sounded relieved when Una said she would just dress and get her kit. She told the boy to go wait in her car and she would be ready shortly. She returned to the bedroom to quickly put on warm clothing.

“Will I come with ye, Una? I don't like the thought of ye travelling into dangerous ground.”

“Declan, I would rather you didn't. We have an arrangement, I have three women to collect to bring along with me, and two of them have revolvers in case we need such things. I am quite certain, though, that first aid is just what we are needed for.”

He heard the car engine start, cough a little. The vehicle moved down the driveway, the headlamps casting a path to follow. He drew on his clothing and walked out to the main road and watched the smudge of light make its way towards Leenane, then disappear as the car turned at one of the side tracks leading into the pleated hills. She would be collecting Brigid Tierney, he thought, and it gave him some comfort to stand in the darkness and imagine sensible Brigid joining Una for the task ahead of them.

It was hours until she arrived back, dishevelled, her clothing spattered with blood. Yes, there had been a skirmish near the barracks. The road leading south to Clifden had been trenched by the Republicans and the road leading through the Maam Valley had been barricaded by the Nationals; she'd had to do some fancy talking to get past the latter to the safe house, four women in a private car in the dead of night. They'd said they were attending a birth. There had been a lot of shooting, some dead on each side, sniping from impossible positions in the hills where you'd expect only to find gorse, maybe some hardy sheep. Una
was very pale as she recounted the number of wounded who had been spirited away to the designated house—she would not tell him which one, she said, because it was safer that he didn't know in the event she was arrested—where the local Cumann na mBán team arrived with their kits to staunch the bleeding and remove bullets.

“One young man, Declan, whom I will not name but whom you have taught as well as spoken of, he will lose his leg, I'm afraid. The bone was splintered beyond repair and although we gave him opium and then brandy on top of that, he could not keep from screaming in obvious terrible pain.”

She was sponging a bloody mark out of her skirt as she talked and Declan noticed that her hands were behaving as though separate from her. They kept dabbing obsessively at the mark with a cloth, without thought, and finally Declan came to her and gently took the cloth from her. She covered her face with her hands for moment, gave a small sob, and then continued.

“The doctor's wife—and you will forget that I told you she was there—was very calm, holding his hand while we tried to clean the wound but privately, once he had been sedated enough to lose consciousness, she told us she was certain the leg could not be saved. The others were less serious, though it was traumatic for them, of course. And for one woman who entered the room to find her own son-in-law on the table, head bandaged and arms riddled with bullet wounds.”

Declan finished removing the bloody mark from the skirt and then made tea for Una; he poured in a measure of whiskey, as she had begun to shake in the telling. Neither of them slept at all in the hour remaining of night and in the morning they said reluctant goodbyes. Both had work to do in their individual houses, and Declan declined Una's offer of a ride home, thinking that the morning air would clear both his head and his heart. He had been saddened beyond telling to know that deaths
had occurred while he lingered in the protection of Una's cabin, the night spectacular with stars. He tried to find comfort in the poem on his walk home but realized how many deaths were contained in its own sinewy lines.

At the turn north by Tully, the road was barricaded by an armoured car, two other military vehicles, sandbags piled around their tyres. Declan could see no men at all, but as he approached, a voice shouted “Hands up”; he stopped and raised his arms above his head. Two men emerged from the armoured car and advanced towards him, rifles pointed at his chest. To his horror, he noted that the guns were Enfields, the same as those he had found that day in his turf pile. These men were dressed in the uniform of the National Army, and their voices were Irish.

“Why are you on the road so early?” one of them asked.

“I am returning home after a night away,” Declan replied, as calmly as he could. He could feel sweat dampening his shirt, and his heart pounded in its cage of chest.

“Away, were you? Can you tell us, please, where you were and what you were up to?”

“I spent the night in a woman's bed,” he answered. “I would rather not say her name.”

The men laughed, and one of them nudged Declan's arm with his rifle. “You'll have to do better than that, man. These are dangerous times, you must know, and we are charged with protecting the citizenry from the Republican Western Division, what's left of them—you might have heard they attacked the barracks in Leenane last night and there was great bloodshed. Can you say you know nothing about this? You cannot hide behind an anonymous woman, man, when for all we know you might have been one of the men with dynamite. We've found one young lad down by the river trying to hide a rifle and we've got him hog-tied by the lorry. We'll do the same to you if you don't come clean and tell us what you know of the ambush last night.”

“I know of it to be sure. This is my community, after all, and people talk of shots being fired in the night, explosions. But I am not part of them, I am only a schoolmaster who has never fired a gun. And I will not harm the name of the woman I was with by identifying her to you.” Declan was growing angry at the repeated nudge of the rifle in his ribs, his shoulders. He could see a boy, one of the youths he'd spoken to on their way home from Tawnynoran gap, and the boy was shivering with fear. Declan longed to go to him, to lead him firmly up the Delphi road to his farm and his mother who would scold him but then offer porridge, tea. “Ye have a job to do, I am with ye there, but to threaten a man on his own road, to insult him as ye are doing, this is no way to treat an Irish citizen. Where were ye with those protecting guns when my house was burned to the ground by the Black and Tans in 1921, when my wife and daughters were burned within it? Where were ye then with yer brave words and guns? Take that rifle from me arm and let me pass. And mind ye treat that young lad with respect. There is no need to tie him up like an animal going to be butchered. He has no gun and there are more of ye than him, I'm thinking. He could be yer brother, or yer son. I am going home to plant potatoes.”

Another man with the stripes of a sergeant joined the two soldiers, and the three of them conferred for a moment. The sergeant held out his hand to Declan and told him he was free to pass but to mind his step—there were snipers positioned in the hills overlooking the Delphi Road all the way up to Westport.

It was the longest road he'd walked. The blackbirds were silent in the reeds by the Bundorragha River, the sun rose quietly over Ben Gorm, spilling its gold over the rocky flank of the mountain, and there was a smell in the air of cordite and brass—or was that dust washed from the stones by an earlier rain? He did not want to think of explosives as he walked home to his unfinished house and a bucket of shilawns for planting. Cupping
his hands around his eyes, he tried to keep the image of all that was sacred to him on this road that his family had walked for generations, a tunnel of rocks and low trees, punctuated by bird-song, a scrabble of badgers in the dense fuchsia. All that he loved was held in that cup of vision, all that he knew of homecoming and leave-taking, the road inward and outward, the long stitches of stone walls securing the fields of Tullaglas to the townland. He was overcome with such contrary emotions—anger at the soldiers, love for Una and this road that also stitched them together, an unlikely quilt, grief at the darkness of war that shadowed these sunlit mountains like the rot that had come to the potatoes in the last century and which caused such endless suffering—so overcome that he sank to his knees as though shot. He wept into his hands, closing the cup so that flat palms covered his eyes. His tears scalded his face, his sobs came from his throat like a sickness, bitter as sloes. When he stood again, the view tilted and he saw only the track leading home. He would stop at the young lad's home and tell them what had happened, hoping by now the ropes had been loosened, a few civil words said.

It was all that was spoken of in the district for some weeks. The boy treated by the women did lose his leg, and his parents mourned that loss as though he had died himself; there would be no great lad to help with the ploughing or to shepherd the lambs. The man with his arm badly wounded was spirited away to Sligo, word had it, where a boat was waiting to take him to France. It appeared he had connections to the bringing in of arms and it was felt loose tongues might jeopardize his safety. Women from a Cumann na mBán branch further south had been arrested and sent to Mountjoy Prison; they had been stopped at a roadblock and guns found in the boot of their car. But still the fighting continued, smaller skirmishes followed, the Republicans emerging from their mountain fastness in the night to blow up a section of road or to fire at sentries. Winds were
shifting, the Free State National troops taking over Clifden to the south and restoring bridges, train service, and the Western Division staff was found and arrested.

Declan was reading about the aftermath of the slaughter of the suitors, some of them felled by the bright bow. Odysseus had sent his old nurse, Eurycleia, who had already figured out who he was by the unusual scar on his thigh, left by a wild boar's tusk, to bring Penelope down to greet her husband. All along she had thought him a beggar, though a useful one, willing to take on the men who hung around the palace, hoping to be chosen by her as her new bridegroom; she was unwilling to believe that this man was her husband, having waited for him for nineteen years, raising their son on her own, and sleeping alone in the olive-trunk rooted bed of their marriage. She refused to believe that her husband had returned, thinking it a cruel trick of the gods.