Peeler (14 page)

Farrell leaned across the bar and as quietly as he could while still being audible, asked the barman where he could find O’Higgins. The barman stared at him for a moment and Farrell thought for a moment that he might be simple. He waited for the barman’s answer and when it didn’t come, asked, ‘You do know him? Bernie O’Higgins? Where can I find him?’

When the barman finally spoke, his words were almost what Farrell had expected.

‘And who would it be that wants to know?’

Farrell smiled that smile again.
Here we go lads
, he thought. He leaned in further, notching up the conspiratorial drama he and the barman were performing for the pub’s patrons.

‘The proper lads want to know, that’s who, boy. Now get him for me, would you?’ Farrell fixed him with his hardest stare, a look he was sure would convince the man of the seriousness of his mission. The barman stared back with a neutral, almost gormless expression before finally nodding.

‘I’ll get him for yeh. You wait there and I’ll get him.’

Farrell nodded with satisfaction, the nervousness he had felt upon entering the pub evaporating into the smoky air.

He had finished his pint and was thinking how much he could do with another, when the barman returned through the doorway behind the bar, closing it softly, waiting for the audible click of the latch. He moved to the taps then and poured another pint, topped it off carefully and set it on the bar in front of Farrell. Barely moving his lips he said, ‘That one’s on O’Higgins himself, boy. Get it down you. He’ll be along shortly.’ He gave Farrell a stagey wink and turned to his other customers.

Some minutes later there was a knock on the door behind the bar. The barman turned to Farrell. ‘That’ll be him. Come now and you’ll meet him, so you will.’

Farrell got up from the stool and followed the barman, passing behind the bar and through the doorway into the kitchen of the cottage that backed onto the pub. He had enough time as he passed through the kitchen to notice an old woman sitting in front of the fire, a long-stemmed pipe hanging from her lips, a black, knitted shawl around her shoulders. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she blessed herself as he passed out of the kitchen and into the small stable yard behind the pub.

The barman stopped in front of him and, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Farrell noticed that the man was pointing to the small, whitewashed cowshed across the yard.

‘You’ll find him in there,’ he said, in a harsh, excited whisper. It was the most animated the barman had been since Farrell’s arrival. ‘Don’t keep him waiting, boy,’ he muttered under his breath as he turned and went back into the pub, leaving Farrell to grope his way across the yard to the cowshed. The door to the shed was ajar and Farrell could see a sliver of yellow light from an oil lamp flickering unevenly in the draught.

‘O’Higgins?’

There was no reply and he called out the name again. He pushed open the door and stepped over the threshold into the shed. The blow came from behind, lightning fast, to the base of Farrell’s skull and he felt unconsciousness take him.

He was woken by a bucket of cold water thrown in his face. He started and tried to stand, only to fall onto his side in the musty straw, unable to gain his balance, his hands bound behind his back. The pain in his head was intense and he closed his eyes and waited as a wave of nausea rose in his throat and then slowly subsided. When he dared to open his eyes again, three men were standing over him, blocking out the light from the lantern. His spectacles were missing, so their faces were blurred.

One of the men leaned down and Farrell could smell beer and tobacco on his breath. He extended a hand and slapped Farrell’s face playfully. ‘Wakey, wakey. Time to talk so it is, yeh soft cunt.’ He smiled and slapped Farrell harder in the face. ‘Get yer arse up on that stool, boy. And do it now before I get cross.’

Farrell struggled upright and two men lifted him onto a milking stool. When he was sitting, a gruff voice ordered him to turn and face the wall. Farrell’s body began to shake. He started to speak and could hear the terror in his own voice. ‘I was sent here by Seán Brennan, Brigade Intelligence – ’

‘Turn around and
whisht
!’

The voice was like a whip, cracking across Farrell’s nerves. It had come from the shadows, beyond the remit of the lantern light and belonged to a fourth man. Farrell thought he had heard it recently, but his mind was so muddled he couldn’t place it.

‘So you’re looking for Bernie O’Higgins, are yeh, boy? Well, you’ve fucking found him you have.’

It was the voice of the barman, Farrell realised, a man he had dismissed as a simple, rustic sot. A stab of shame pierced him. It was a physical sensation, a wound to his pride almost as painful as the throbbing in his head.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘my name is Liam Farrell. Lieutenant Liam Farrell, 3rd West Cork Brigade Intelligence. I’ve been sent here by –’

‘By Brennan himself. So you said.’

Farrell heard the smile in the voice and felt the cold steel on the back of his neck, the place where his neck joined his skull.

‘And do you think the man himself will appreciate my service to the cause, boy? I hope he does. It’d make me fierce glad, to be recognised like.’

Farrell heard the other three men laugh and listened as one of them struck a match and lit a cigarette, and thought there was nothing in the world he wanted now more than a smoke. He was about to ask for one when he thought how much like a last request it would sound.

‘Now,’ Bernie O’Higgins said, ‘tell me who you really are and I mightn’t shoot you.’

Farrell swallowed and clenched his hands into fists to try to stem the shaking. ‘I am who I told you. Did you look in my bag? Those papers in there. Those were given to me by Brennan as cover against any patrols I met on the way. I’ve come today from the column training camp at O’Sullivan’s farm in Inchigeela. Honestly.’

‘If you’ve been sent by Brennan, where’s the letter from the man? I saw no letter, no orders from the man in your papers.’

Farrell was surprised by the question. And in his surprise, he was suddenly angry. ‘Letter? What do you mean
letter
? What do you think I am, the bloody postman?’

‘Get smart, boyo, and you’ve had your chips. Now where’s the letter if Brennan sent you?’

‘I told you, I’m a member of the Intelligence Squad. Do you think he’d send a letter with his name on it for any shite of an Auxie or Peeler to pull me on? None of us would be in this business very long if we went carrying signed letters round the place like summer sweethearts. Now untie me.’

O’Higgins snorted. ‘You tell us who you’re jobbing for and I’ll not start with your jewels, boy.’ He took the gun barrel away from Farrell’s neck and reached it down over his shoulder, pressing its barrel firmly into Farrell’s crotch.

But Farrell’s voice was suddenly confident. He could still talk. No one could take that away from him. ‘I order you to release me right now,’ he said, ‘or you’ll be held up on court-martial charges. Charlie Hurley would himself be a witness in the proceedings, as would Tom Barry and Seán Brennan. So if you –’

‘There’ll be no court-martial if I plug you and sink you in a boghole, will there, boy?’ The amusement was gone from the voice. Farrell could feel the barman’s breath on his neck. It occurred to him that if this O’Higgins really wanted to kill him, he would have done it already and had him halfway to the boghole by now.

‘If you plug me, Brennan will send somebody else. Or he might send for you, O’Higgins. Then you’d have some explaining to do, wouldn’t you? About what happened to the fella he sent to ask you about that girl on the hillside. Now cut me loose, so I can ask you the questions I was sent here to ask.’

‘What questions? What about the girl?’ It was the man who had slapped him, standing to Farrell’s left. ‘What questions are you on about, boy?’

Farrell detected doubt in his voice. ‘The questions –’

‘Lads, I’m going to shoot this fucker,’ O’Higgins said. ‘He’s a Tan spy, he is. The county’s fat with them. Listen how he talks.’

But there was hesitation in O’Higgins’ voice for the first time. Farrell had hit a nerve at the mention of the girl. O’Higgins again raised the gun to his neck. Farrell changed tack.

‘If you shoot me, make sure you use one of the six Enfields you Drumdoolin boys took delivery of, courtesy of the raid on the Royal Mail van last August. I imagine they’re getting rusty and could use the firing.’

The gun barrel pressed harder into his neck and Farrell wondered had he pushed too hard. He could hear the breathing of the men behind him and then the bated silence, as if in expectation of the gunshot.

‘Bernie, he knows about the girl on the hill.’

‘Of course he does. Every fecker in the town saw them Peelers ask me about it in the bar.’

Another of the voices spoke now. ‘And how did he know about the rifles? Only the four of us here know how many we took off Brigade.’

‘The four of us and who knows what fuckin’ Crown spies. I say we plug the fucker. Nobody will find him.’

‘Tell me about the girl.’ Farrell was persistent if nothing else. A part of him was surprised by his newfound assertiveness and another part of him was very much at ease with it. He had a sudden memory of his father ordering about one of the serving girls in his draper’s shop. ‘Did you or your men execute her, O’Higgins?’ Farrell swivelled around on the milking stool so that he was facing the barman. ‘As officer-in-charge of the Drumdoolin Company, did you or any of your men execute the woman Crown forces found on the hillside?’

Even in the dim light, Farrell could see O’Higgins’ face redden with anger. His eyes bright with violence, jaw rigid, O’Higgins stuck the gun in Farrell’s mouth, the barrel clacking against his teeth.

‘Bernie,’ one of the men said, ‘you saw the girl. What if Brigade thinks we done that to her? We should hear the lad out.’

O’Higgins clawed down the hammer of the gun and cocked it back again. Farrell could smell the sharp tang of his terror sweat.

‘Bernie,’ the man said again and gripped the barman’s arm. ‘We’d better hear him out.’

Watching O’Higgins, Farrell could sense his growing uncertainty. Suddenly he lowered his gun and moved to cut Farrell’s bonds.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back into the bar and hear what he has to say. But know this, boyo. If I don’t believe you, your body won’t be as easily found as that girl’s.’

The absurdity of the situation didn’t strike Farrell until he tried to sleep, later that night. He was in the master bed of a small labourer’s cottage in Drumdoolin – its owners, Dessie O’Driscoll and his wife, exiled, against Farrell’s will, to share a bed with their two young children. His clothes were freshly washed and hanging in front of the fire to dry. His belly was full and the cottage and bed were clean and warm. A delicious feeling of comfort was creeping over him, despite the dull ache in his head, and yet the oddness of it all made him want to laugh. He was sleeping in the house of the man who had knocked him unconscious earlier in the evening.

Over bottled stout they had taken from the pub after Farrell had finished answering questions and asking his own, he had sat with Dessie O’Driscoll at his table while his wife served them eggs and the previous night’s spuds fried into a hash, and the man had apologised for hitting him: O’Higgins had ordered him to do it and, like any good Volunteer, he’d followed orders. Mind you, O’Driscoll had said, he couldn’t have done
that
to no young girl, not even if Michael Collins … not even if de Valera himself ordered him to. Still, a whack in the aul’ loaf never did much harm.

‘And what did you hit me with?’ Farrell asked.

‘A hurl. But the flat of the blade, like. Sure if I’d used the edge you’d be dead instead of horsing down eggs and poppies.’ Mrs O’Driscoll had smiled at this and shortly afterwards there was a knock on the cottage door. Without waiting for it to be answered, one of the men from the shed entered and theatrically set down a bottle of Paddy whiskey on the table.

‘Glasses, Dessie,’ the man said, his ruddy, labourer’s face glowing red with drink and obvious excitement. O’Driscoll called for his wife to bring them and she did, setting down three mugs taken from the dresser.

‘What’s the scandal, Stephen boy?’

The guest glugged whiskey into the three mugs and called for Mrs O’Driscoll to take a sup as well. He raised his mug.

‘A toast.’

Farrell, O’Driscoll and his wife raised their mugs. ‘Who is it to, Stephen, in the name of Jesus?’ O’Driscoll asked.

‘To the boys of Kilmichael is who. To Tom Barry’s flying column which is only after sticking the boot to two lorryloads of Auxie bastards – forgive me, Margaret – on their way back to Macroom. Twenty-odd dead and all! A bloody great miracle of a massacre!’ His smile lit the room and the O’Driscolls smiled along with him.

So, it had gone off, Farrell thought. A pang of bitterness seized his throat and he swallowed it down. ‘And our lads,’ he asked, ‘were there any losses?’

‘Not that I heard, boy. Word is Barry and Connors and the lads tore into them Auxies with their bayonets, like … like spades into soft ground, by fuck – sorry Madge.’

Connors
. Farrell remembered his conversation with the man in O’Sullivan’s barn the previous evening. What a long time ago it seemed. Goose pimples crawled up his back. Seamus Connors. Running a bayonet like a spade into soft ground.

‘To the boys of Kilmichael,’ Dessie O’Driscoll said, and Farrell, Mrs O’Driscoll and Stephen from the shed repeated it and swallowed down the whiskey, the burn of it welcome in their throats. In his mind Farrell could see Connors, his eyes black and his bayonet bloody.

After O’Driscoll and his wife had gone to bed, Farrell drafted a brief report in a code of his own devising, leaving a key to the code with his host to be collected by a Cumann na mBan messenger later. Women did a lot of collecting and transporting of messages for the IRA. They had the advantage of voluminous skirts and dresses to hide things under and were much less likely to be thoroughly searched by soldiers or police.