ATTACK

Lomasney and I came through the wood after dark,
and at the stepping—stones over the little stream
we were joined by another man who carried a
carbine in the crook of his arm. We went on in
silence, Lomasney leading the way across the
sodden, slippery ground.

The attack on the barrack was timed to begin at
two hours after midnight, and as yet it was only
nine o’clock. Beneath us, through the trees, we
could see a solitary light burning in one of the
barrack bedrooms where some thoughtless policeman
had forgotten to close the shutters.  Surrounded
by barbed wire, its Windows shut- tered with
steel, the old building stood on the outskirts of
the village, a formidable nut to crack.

But for a long time now this attack of ours was
being promised to the garrison, whose sense of
duty had outrun their common sense. Policemen are
like that. A soldier never does more than he need
do, and so far as possible he keeps on good terms
with his enemy; for him the ideal is the least
amount of disorder; he only asks not to be taken
prisoner or ambushed or blown up too often. But
for the policeman there is only one ideal, Order,
hushed and entire; to his well-drilled mind a
stray shot at a rabbit and a stray shot at a
general are one and the same thing, so that in
civil commotion he loses all sense " of
proportion and becomes a helpless, hopeless,
gibbering maniac Whom in everybody’s interests it
is better to remove. That at least was how we
thought in those days, and the garrison I speak
of had been a bad lot, saucy to the villagers and
a nuisance to our men for miles around. Oh, it
was coming to them—everybody knew that. In the
evenings when the policemen were standing outside
their door, sunning themselves and enjoying a
smoke, some child’s voice would be raised from a
distance, singing:

  Do you want your old barracks blown down,
    blown down?
  Do you want your old barracks blown down?

And blown down it would be if Lomasney’s
new-fangled explosive that was to put T.N.T. in
the shade proved a success.

We jumped the fence above the wood and landed in
a meadow whose long, wet grass spread a summery
fragrance about us. A star or two shone out above
the hill, but night was not yet
complete. Lomasney let the other man take the
lead and waited for me.

‘There’s something I wanted to say to you,Owen,’
he said. ‘This house we’re going to—there’s only
an old couple in it. They’ve had a deal of
trouble already, and I’d be sorry to frighten
them. So I’ll let on we’re only sheltering for a
few hours, and do you make a joke of it if you
can.’

I agreed, and went on with him in silence,
waiting for the explanation that I knew was
coming. Lomasney was intense and slow, and you
could feel a story or a retort springing up in
him long before it passed his lips.

‘I’ve known those people since I was a kid,’ he
went on. ‘I used to be friendly with the son of
the house one time—he was a deal older than I
was, but we hit it off well together. He was a
big, handsome, devil-may-care fellow, a great
favourite with the girls and a fright to hurl.
Everyone was fond of him. He was kept down at
home by his father, and so he used to spend his
evenings anywhere but at home. He’d walk in on
top of you, and sit by the fire as if he was one
of the family, and, as soon as not, if you’d a
bed to spare he’d spend the night with you.

‘Five years ago, he got into trouble. He was keen
on a girl in the village. She was married to a
waster who used to beat her. One night her
husband was knocked out in a row and didn’t over
it. Paddy hit him, of course, but it was his head
cracking off the floor that did for him.  Nobody
was very sorry for him, but everybody was sorry
for Paddy and the girl.

‘That night some of Paddy’s friends drove him
into the city. The people around were very
decent; they made up enough money to take him to
the States, and he cleared out. It was a stupid
thing to do—I know that now—but we were
frightened of the law in those days.

‘Well, since that night there hasn’t been tale
nor ti’ding of him. For a while the old father—he
has the devil’s own pride—was pretending he got
letters through boys that had been with Paddy in
New York. Maybe he did, in the beginning, but
that was as much as he got. To my own knowledge,
Paddy never wrote as much as one line home, and
the best we can hope for is that he didn’t go the
same way as some of the, others go. I think he
must be dead, and things being as they are, I’d
rather he was dead. But you can’t convince his
father of that. He’s as certain as the day that
Paddy’s alive and flourishing, and it would be as
much. as your life was worth to contradict him.’

I was strangely moved by this little tale, mostly
I think because it came to divert my thoughts
from the dark building below to the cottage up
the hill.

The man who accompanied us lifted a heavy branch
out of a gateway, we pushed it home again,
skirted a field of potatoes, and approached the
house from the back. Lomasney knocked, and the
door was opened by a sharp-eyed, ragged old man
whose body was twisted like an apple-tree. He
started back when he saw the three of us standing
there with our rifles, and let the latch drop with
a clatter. Lomasney immediately hailed him in a
purposely boisterous tone—too boisterous, I
thought, considering our errand— but it had its
effect. With a curious gesture he bent forward
and drew us in one by one by the hand, giving us
as he did so a piercing look that made me wonder
if there wasn’t a streak of insanity in him. When
he took my hand in one of his own old rocky hands
and rested the other on my shoulder I felt I
understood Lomasney’s phrase about contradicting
him. There was danger there.

We took our places on a settle beside the fire,
opposite an old woman who called out a cracked
greeting, but kept her eyes turned away. She wore
a black shawl about her shoulders and hair, and
her profile was taut in the firelight. The old
man lit the lamp. There was a ladder leading to
an attic in the centre of the floor, and he took
his stand against this, with hands in the pockets
of his trousers. He stared at us all in turn, but
I came in for the most careful survey. Lomasney
made up some legend about me to content the
boundless countryman’s curiosity in him, and
meanwhile, without raising my eyes, I studied
him. He was much taller than I had thought him
bent beneath the shadow of the doorway, taller
and more powerful, with a stubborn and avaricious
mouth. His trousers, without as much as a button
down the front of it, was in rags, and he hitched
it up about his belly with a shrug that displayed
the great shoulder-blades and the twisted muscles
of his neck. He had a little yellow goat’s beard
that grew outwards from his chin and made his
head appear to be tilted up.

After he had looked his fill at us, he spat out,
heaved a chair across to the fire and sat down,
spreading his dung-caked legs wide across the
hearth.

"Tis late ye’re stopping from yeer homes,’ he
said sourly.

‘We’ve no choice in that,’ replied Lomasney.

‘’Tis late-—-—and foolish.’

‘Maybe ’tis.’
  
‘’Tis.’

‘We’ve our work to do,’ added Lomasney.
cheerfully. ’

‘Work?’ The old man looked at him in pretended
wonder. ‘Work? Oh, ay.’ He slowly quoted two
lines of an Irish song. I saw the old woman’s
shawled head go up with a little jerk. It was her
way of smiling at the aptness of it. But Lomasney
and the other man looked blank. The old man bent
across and laid a stony hand heavily on
Lomasney’s knee.

  Tramping the dews in the morning airley,
  And gethering chills for a quarter.

he translated.

‘If we are, there’s more like us,’ said Lomasney,
trying to steer the conversation round to
politics.

‘Wisha, is there?’

‘There is, and no one knows that better than
yourself, Mike.’

I was amused to see the old man dodging him.
with a very cleverly assumed ignorance or
indifference.  After a time I saw that he had
long since taken the measure of Lomasney’s very
earnest and passionate but simple mind, and was
getting great enjoyment out of the battle of
wits. He dropped his air of boorishness, and a
glint of sour amusement flickered in his eyes. A
bitter remark or two in Irish flung at his wife
showed me the measure of his contempt for the
younger man. I let him continue this country
sport for a while until I saw Lomasney grow
confused. Then I threw in a phrase of my own in
Irish to show the old rascal that I understood.
At this he looked me up and down wonderingly for
a moment, broke into a loud, tempestuous laugh,
and shoved back his seat to the table.

‘Come,woman!’ he shouted. ‘Supper! Supper!  The
young cock is crowing.’

I felt in my heart that he despised me for an
interfering young fool.

The old woman filled us out each a jam-crock of
milk and cut us a slice of cake. We talked no
more during the meal, and when it was over old
Kieran produced his beads and knelt beside a
chair, touching his forehead with the crucifix.
We knelt likewise, all but the old woman, ‘whose
kneecaps were wake,’ she said. Kieran gave out
the rosary.

When the prayers proper were finished Lomasney
blessed himself hurriedly and half rose, but the
old man’s voice, angry and strident, broke in to
stop him.

‘... And for my son, Patrick Kieran, who is in
the States these five years, Our Father who art
in heaven ...’

And he led us through seven Our Fathers and Hail
Marys before he raised the cross on his beads to
bless himself.

When he rose his face was flushed, and the same
angry, resentful look was on it that it had, worn
when he opened the door to us.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Lomasney mildly. ‘I forgot
about Patrick.’

‘Remember him in future,’ Kieran said churlishly.

‘Have you heard from him lately?’ Lomasney asked
in the same tone.

‘What’s that to you, young man?’ Kieran shouted
with sudden fury, showing his bare yellow gums.

‘Oh, nothing, nothing. Don’t eat us! I only
wondered how he was getting on.’

‘He’s getting on—he’s getting on all right, never
fear. He’s in Butte, Montana, now in case you
want to know.’

‘Oh, very well!’

‘Why did you ask?’

‘Why wouldn’t I ask? Wasn’t he a friend of mine,
man?’

‘He have the Son of God to look after him!’

The cry sounded impious, more a challenge than an
act of faith.

‘Tttttttt!’ the old woman sighed moodily into
the fire, and Lomasney said no more. Kieran lit a
candle and opened the door of a room off the
kitchen.

‘Stop in there, will ye?’

‘We’ll be going before morning. We may as well
stay in the kitchen.’

‘Do what ye’re toult, man. There’s a fine big bed
in there ye can all lie on.’

There was no mistaking the resentment in his
tone, and I nudged Lomasney to let him have his
way. Having warned him to leave the front door
unbolted, we said good night and went into the
room. The third man and I removed our boots and
lay down, while Lomasney, who had opened the
window, sat on a chair beside us and lit a
cigarette. The night was calm and clear.
Lomasney looked at his watch.

‘Midnight,’ he said. ‘They’re cutting the wires
now. You fellows may as well try and get an
hour’s sleep. Will I quench that candle?’

He did so. After a little while he continued
softly, to me.

‘There! What did I tell you? That old fellow is a
devil! ... You’re lying on Patrick’s bed now.
They keep it made up in case he’d come back
without warning—and it’s shown to everybody who
comes inside the door .... A queer old
pair!... And they say the same blessed prayers
still! I’d forgotten they’d be doing that.

‘They are a queer pair, I said. ‘The old woman
looks as if she was crushed.’

‘So well she might be.’

‘And hopeless!’

‘Patrick would have been crushed too if he’d
stayed at home,’ Lomasney added, as if he had
thought of it for the first time.

After that it was silence. The lad beside me was
asleep, as I soon knew by his regular breathing.
Lomasney’s cigarette died out, and for close on
an hour the two of us remained alone with our
thoughts. Once we heard a distant explosion that
reminded us sharply of the men who had been out
since midnight, felling trees and destroying
bridges. I thought of the policemen below
listening to that, poor devils! Already they
probably knew there was something in the wind,
and were padding around half-dressed in their
slippers, erecting a barricade behind the doors,
and asking one another whether they could hold
out till morning.

At last, able to bear it no longer, I rose, and
stood beside Lomasney, who was leaning with his
two elbows on the window-sill, looking down at
the little village in the darkness of its valley.
His watch lay before him on the window-sill,
loudly and petulantly ticking the moments away,
and his fingers were drumming a tattoo on the
sill. I saw that the barrack was in total
darkness.  Lomasney told me in a whisper that
there had been four lights on the top of the
building. All had gone out together. Someone must
have heard the explosion and tried to phone.

‘For God’s sake, let’s get outside for a bit,’ he
said with ill-suppressed excitement. ‘I’m
suffocating in here.’

We tiptoed to the door and opened it softly.
Suddenly he caught my arm and drew me back, but
not before I had seen something that startled me
far more than his gesture. As I have said there
was a ladder in the centre of the kitchen, and it
gave access to a loft. Now the trap-door that
covered the top of the ladder was open and a
light was showing through, but even as we looked,
it was closed with the utmost care, and the
kitchen was in darkness again.

I could feel the excitement of the chase working
in Lomasney; his hand twitched against my arm.
Then he made a bound for the ladder. It shook
under his weight with a squeak; the old woman’s
voice from another room was suddenly raised in
bitter protest, and—I leaped after him.

I can still see myself with my head through that
trap and Lomasney standing above me with a drawn
revolver. We must have looked a rare pair of
grotesques in the light of the candle that old
Kieran was holding—on the defensive too, for if
ever there was murder in a man’s eyes there was
murder in his. But what drew our attention was
not he, it was the figure that lay on the straw
at his feet. Bearded, emaciated, half-savage;
this strange creature was lying sideways, his
body propped on two spindly arms, staring dully
up at us. He wore only a shirt and trousers.

We must have been staring at one another like
this for some time before Lomasney seemed to
become conscious of the old woman’s shrill crying
below. To add to the confusion our companion was
awake and shouting hysterically at me from the
foot of the ladder.

‘Go down and stop that woman crying,’ said
Lomasney harshly.

Old Kieran looked as though he would resist, but
Lomasney stared coldly past him, pocketed his
revolver, and knelt beside the man on the
straw. The old man laid his candle on the
dresser.  I made way for him, and he climbed
heavily down the ladder, without as much as a
backward glance. I heard him talking to the other
man, his voice. charged with rage, but I did not
catch what he was saying. I had eyes and ears
only for what was going on in the loft. I noticed
even the heap of weekly papers on the floor and
the three or four child’s games like ‘Ludo’ and
‘Snakes and Ladders’ beside them.

‘You’d better come down too, Paddy,’ said
Lomasney gently.

I ran to help him lift young Kieran, but he waved
us both aside and feebly rose without our
assistance.

‘Have you been here always?’ asked Lomasney.
‘All these long years?’ but again the other man
just waved his hands, vaguely, as though begging
us not to force speech from him.

‘Poor devil!’ said Lomasney with an anguish of
compassion. ‘Poor devil! If only I’d known it!’

I took hold of his legs and Lomasney of one arm
as we helped him down the ladder to the
kitchen. A candle was lighting on the
mantelpiece, and the old man, his face and beard
thrown into startling relief, was sitting with
his back to the ladder, glaring at the ashen heap
of burnt turf on the hearth. He said nothing, but
the boy’s mother, who wore an old coat over her
nightdress, held out her bare arms and raised a
piercing screech when she saw him. We put him
sitting beside her on the settle, and she dropped
into a quiet moaning, holding his two hands in
hers and caressing them tenderly.

Lomasney jerked the old man’s shoulder, and anger
and contempt mingled in his voice when he spoke.

‘Listen to me now,’ he said. ‘I’m taking charge
here from this on. And I want no more of your
cleverness, understand that! You’ve been too
clever too long, confound you, and now you’re
going to do what I say....

‘In two or three days’ time you’ll go to the city
with Patrick. You’ll leave him there, and come
home without being seen. After that he can come
back whenever he pleases—from America that is. We
won’t say anything about it, and you won’t say
anything about it, and so far as anybody will
know, he will have come from America. Do you
understand me?’

‘And the policemin?’ asked old Kieran sullenly,
after a moment’s silence. ‘How long do you think
they’ll leave him here? Hey?’

‘To-morrow,’ said Lomasney, ‘there won’t be any
policemen there, please God!’

Kieran started. He glanced from Lomasney to me
and back again. A look, half cunning, half
triumph, stole into his bitter old face.

‘So that’s what he’s here for?’ he asked, pointing
at me.  ‘That’s what ye’re out for? Do you tell
me you’re out to ind them? Do you?’

‘That’s what we’re out for,’ Lomasney answered
coldly, fetching his rifle and swinging it across
his shoulder.

Kieran chuckled, and the chuckle seemed to shake
the whole crazy scaffolding of his bones.

‘And I thinking ye were only like children
playmaking!’ he went on. ‘Do it, do it, and
remember I’ll be on me bended knees praying to
Almighty God for ye. Divil a wink I’ll sleep this
night!’

We left them, old Kieran, who seemed to be
possessed of a new lease of life, grown garrulous
and maddeningly friendly; the mother sitting very
quietly beside her son, who had not as much as
opened his mouth but down whose beard the heavy,
silent tears were rolling as he gazed vacantly at
the candle flame.

Lomasney’s voice was exultant as we strode down
the fields and picked our way through the wood to
join the rest of the attacking party who were
assembling in the village street from every house
around.

‘Lord, O Lord!’ he exclaimed gleefully, nipping
my arm with his fingers: ‘I never went out on a
job with a clearer conscience!’

And a few moments later he added:

‘But old Mike Kieran isn’t quit of me yet,
Owen—damn me but he isn’t quit of me yet!  I’m a
bad judge, Owen, if we haven’t signed on our best
recruit!’