When Shadows Fall (12 page)

“I know.” Rourke’s eyes shifted. “A messy business.”

A silence passed between them. Then Rourke pulled up a stool and sat in close. “’Twasn’t right what happened to Timmy Hannigan. Was it, Lieutenant? I’ve thought about him a lot.”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about him a lot too.” Adam touched the whiskey glass between thumb and forefinger. He didn’t lift it yet.

“We was all treated wrong in the end, Lieutenant. Wasn’t we?”

“I told you, I’m not a lieutenant anymore.”

“Timmy left behind a widow mother and five sisters in Tipperary. I heard they never got his body back.”

“You know them?”

“Not in person. But a fellow who does told me of them. A messy business, as you said.”

Adam stared into the mirror at the back of the bar. He saw Timmy Hannigan’s terrified face as he hung from the post, blindfold pulled over his eyes. He cleared his throat. “Who looks after them now?”

“I don’t know, Lieutenant, and that’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve half a mind to go down there and look in on ’em. But, sure, I’ve enough to be at here.”

“Baking bread?”

“No.” Rourke’s eyes narrowed. “You might have taken a good look round since you came home, Lieutenant. And seen what’s going on in this country.”

“I have. And the more I see, the less I want to.” Adam’s cheekbone had started to throb again. He’d thought he’d seen the last of British cruelty with their execution of Timmy Hannigan. But it was here too. At home.

“Well.” Rourke glanced around the pub and lowered his voice. “There’s some of us aren’t done fighting yet, Lieutenant. Only a different war this time.”

Adam gazed at him. “What war is that, Rourke?”

“A war for our
own
liberty, for a change. Nobody else’s. Britannia wants Ireland but she doesn’t want the Irish, save for when we can build her roads or fatten her infantry. We’ve sacrificed enough to her whims and arrogance. Better we be done with her.”

Adam lifted the whiskey and inspected it in the light. Molten sunbeams and the prospect of foolish talk. “I’m guessing you’re telling me that you’ve thrown your lot in with the gunmen. Eh, Rourke? The IRA that I read about every day?”

“That depends. Am I talking to Lieutenant Bowen or Adam Bowen?”

“Adam.”

“Good. Aren’t you going to drink that?”

“I don’t know.”

“All I’m saying, Adam, is that there are far too many Timmy Hannigans on the butcher’s bill. And it will never stop. Not unless men like us do something about it.”

“Men like
us
?”

Rourke glanced back to his friends at the far end. They had gone noticeably quiet. “Maybe you should call in on Timmy’s family yourself. God knows, I’ll never get round to it. You go ahead, and let me know how you get on.”

Even in his mild fog of alcohol, Adam was tasting the idea. “But I wouldn’t know where to find them.”

“I can get that information to you. If you’re at all interested in your old army mates.”

“Of course I’m bloody interested. Timmy was like a brother to me. Actually, there’s something I’d like to give them.” Timmy’s diary rested underneath his bed at the flat. He still hadn’t opened it. “It was a promise I made to Timmy.”

Rourke got up from the stool. “Wednesdays are usually quiet in here. Meet me for a bowl of stew.”

He didn’t wait for an answer but went to rejoin his table. Adam abandoned the whiskey and left soon after.

As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the bloodstains out of his shirt that night.

Quentin gaped at Adam, his face blanching, as though Adam had proposed a canoe trip up the Amazon. “Bloody madness, boy. What the devil for? That’s bandit country down there. Half the roads are no go.”

“Are you saying you’re not going to lend me the motor?”

“What’s the reason for this?”

“A visit.”

“To whom?”

“To the family of one of my men in France. He didn’t make it back to them.”

Quentin rubbed his jaw. “A decent gesture, I understand. But it’s damned risky. When you left Ireland, it was mostly quiet. Now it’s all gun battles and ambushes. The IRA are a new breed and more ruthless than anything that has come before. You could get caught in the crossfire.”

“I’m sure none of them mean me any harm. And I’ll only be gone a day or two. So I can have the car?”

“Your mother won’t approve of this.”

“She needn’t know, though, need she?”

“I hope not.” Quentin grumbled. “Oh, very well. But you’d better take good care—especially of my Ford.”

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

After three days of confinement in the poky office, he was able to cajole two days’ leave from Duncan, glad of the opportunity to break free. It rained on Thursday morning but after a while the clouds parted and sunlight filtered down upon the back suburbs of Dublin. The car was a three-door, twenty-horsepower Ford Model T, capable of forty-five miles per hour on decent roads, and Adam left the hood back as he cleared the city boundaries and headed down the Naas Road into the countryside.

Kildare was flat country, a patchwork of emerald pastures embroidered with stone walls and wild hedging. Small villages with ancient names appeared every few miles, trout streams flowed under bridges, and in the meadows ruined castles stood sentinel while cows grazed the grasses around them. Several times Adam was delayed by herds being moved by young lads with wands of ash, another time by a duck leading her waddling offspring. Sweaty, ruddy farmers leaned on plough handles and waved to him as he passed. A dishevelled scarecrow hung on a stake inside a cornfield, four crows perched on his shoulders, defecating on his uniform.

That evening Adam booked himself into a guesthouse in Tipperary Town. The next day, Friday, was market day. By the time he’d eaten breakfast and settled his bill, the town square was packed with cattle bellowing and driving up dust. It was a noisy affair. Dogs yapped in the excitement while children wrestled each other and farmers spat on grubby hands, sealing bargains. A burly trader bawled his prices of pigs at forty-five shillings per hundredweight live, bakers’ patent flour was forty shillings per sack, a barrel of wheat was thirty shillings. A bold advert on a stand beside the market asked the crowd:

WHY BURY YOUR DEAD IN FOREIGN-MADE COFFINS
?

GET COFFINS AT ROCHE
’
S

MADE BY IRISH HANDS FROM IRISH OAK AND ELM

HIGH-CLASS WORK, GUARANTEED, AND PERSONAL SUPERVISION AT FUNERALS

AND DON’T FORGET,
THOSE ABOUT TO BUILD OR REMODEL THEIR HOUSES WILL FIND IT TO THEIR ADVANTAGE TO CALL ON US BEFORE GOING ELSEWHERE.

ESTIMATES FREE

For now Adam’s car was hemmed in by makeshift pens, and so he wandered amongst the heave for a while. Shawled housewives sold cheeses and vegetables from stalls. Seed potatoes were at discount along with stocks of rye grass, clover, and manure. A bow-tied man perspiring in his suit advised passersby that Kissane’s of Clonmel could provide them with animal medicine for timber tongue and sponge hoof, while farther away the men done with trading leaned against the gable wall of the tavern, tapping their feet to the rhythms of a fiddle player.

There were soldiers, too.

Two Crossley Tenders were parked up the street, near the Bank of Ireland. A dozen or so privates lounged on the windowsills, smoking cigarettes and watching the crowd. They didn’t seem inclined to interfere, however, and kept themselves at a respectful distance from the swell of the market.

Adam now wanted to be on his way.

As deals were sealed and monies exchanged, the men began to drift towards the taverns to wash the dust from their throats. The crowd thinned. Dodging piles of cattle dung, Adam was able to retrieve his car and nurse it out of the town.

Back on the open road, the slopes of the Galtee Mountains stretched ahead. Mild, verdant slopes for the most part, but with the big Galteemore heaving up between them like an awkward cripple-back. Closer to the mountains, the road went through a pleasant world, wooded hills and sunlit cups of grass in the glens, the Knockmealdowns of Waterford hazy to the south. Trees and tillage vied for space in the quiet surroundings. The odd spiral of smoke betrayed a farmhouse.

Colum Rourke had provided him with a hand-sketched map that traced the route to Timmy Hannigan’s home. A clumsy drawing, it showed lines snaking between other lines, a picture of a hill, and a tree. A four-year-old might have been better put to the task. But Rourke had also written the name of the parish—Rincesceach—and a blotted stump to represent a parish water pump that marked the turnoff to the Hannigan place. Adam now saw the pump, and he slowed the car. Next to a bridge fording a small mountain stream, the pump road led into the hills.

Adam steered the car into the uncertain track beyond. It climbed quickly. When the hedging gave way into unruly mountainside, he looked back and saw Limerick, Cork, and Waterford all in one broad sweep of plain and hill. The car began to rock as the fissures became too deep for the wheels, and so he got out and proceeded on foot. Sweet-smelling meadows surrounded him. Grass and heather covered everything, rippling in the breeze. Nothing moved but for distant sheep. He wondered if he had taken a wrong turn.

Then, ahead through a copse of oak trees, he spotted the snout of a chimney breathing grey smoke up onto the mountain.

Timmy Hannigan,
he thought,
I’ve brought your diary home.

The homestead in sight, he quickened his pace, hopping over a tumbled stone wall and catching his breath as the gradient steepened. There was a ragged acre or two cleared for crops and a timber byre balanced on the flat of a bank. The house itself was of uncut stone and thatch and a small garden fronted it, squalid with briar and bramble.

Adam walked up, scattering chickens out of his way. “Hello? God bless this house.”

There was no reply. But a movement round the side of the house caught his attention. Tethered to a rope, a dog raised its slumbering head, gave a token growl, and went back to sleep again.

“That’s far enough now.”

Adam started at the voice. He turned to see a man emerge from the cluster of scalped trees behind the house, holding a pitchfork in his hands. He glowered at the dog and spat. “And you’re as useless as tits on a boar, you dumb hound!”

The dog didn’t seem inclined to acknowledge the rebuke. Adam took a wary step back.

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to surprise you, sir. The name’s Bowen.”

“One of Kempton’s hired suits, are you?” The man was about forty, with a rough beard and an angry thrust to his jaw. His clothes were threadbare, his boots caked with muck. “Have you no shame but to be harassing a poor widower with small children to feed?”

“Er, I think you have the wrong—”

“Tell that overfed slurry heap that he’ll have his rent as soon as I have it. But we’re not moving. As God is my witness, we’re not moving. And if you try to force us . . . ” He advanced with the pitchfork.

“Fair enough, easy with that.” Adam gave him space. “I’m not here about any rent. I’m looking for the Hannigan family. Might I be in the right place?”

The man regarded him carefully for a moment. “No. You’re not.”

Adam sighed. “I was given a map. See? I thought I’d found it.”

The man lowered the pitchfork and cleared his throat. “The Hannigan family . . . I’m sorry. I thought you were somebody else. Come inside with me for a moment.”

Cautiously, Adam followed him. The interior of the cottage consisted of an open kitchen area and beyond it another room, presumably for sleeping. The floor was strewn with a couple of mouldering mats and a pot of stew bubbled by the fire. He thought at first the place empty, but then shapes stirred in the shadows, and two waxen-faced creatures emerged, blinking with big owlish eyes.

“I’m sorry if I gave you a scare there,” the man grunted. “These are my children. We’ve been having some trouble with the landlord lately. I thought you were another agent sent to scare us.”

“I shouldn’t have crept up here like that.”

“What is it you want with the Hannigan family?”

Adam told him, sparing none of the details. He took the diary out of his inside pocket. “It’s a small gesture, I know, but I thought it would be important for them to have it. I told Timmy himself I’d deliver it here.”

The man, who had introduced himself as Dwyer, shooed the curious children out of the way and pulled up stools for himself and Adam. He retrieved a half-full whiskey bottle from the rickety dresser and put it on the table with two glasses. “That’s a sorry story, right enough. I’d heard the lad met his end over there, but I didn’t know it was at the hands of his own. You’ll take a drop?”

Adam didn’t want to refuse the man’s hospitality. “Maybe just a small one.”

Dwyer poured him a generous measure. “A nice little lad, Timmy. He had a hard time after his father died, though. I remember when he ran off to Dublin to enlist. A lot of local boys did. Most of them never came back. A bloody foolish war.”

“Mistakes were certainly made.” Adam wondered if the man would ever get round to directing him to the Hannigan house. The protocols of Irish hospitality could be incredibly time-consuming. “Timmy’s family must have suffered after his death.”