Celebrated Letters of John B. Keane, page 1
John B. Keane
Celebrated Letters
Vol. 2
MERCIER PRESS
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© The Estate of John B. Keane, 2011
ISBN: 978 1 85635 297 0
Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 027 4
Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 026 7
The characters and events in this book are purely fictional and no reference is intended to any real person living or dead.
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Letters of a Civic Guard
Introduction
Leo Molair, chief author of the following letters, is a member of the Garda Siochana, that most respected and distinguished of peacekeeping forces which has almost always succeeded in attracting to its ranks a most superior and dedicated type of individual.
Leo Molair is a man of honour but he is also possessed of a wry and somewhat caustic sense of humour. For reasons best known to himself he never took a wife although it could be said that as years went by he became married to his vocation.
The preservation of peace always was and is his primary function but because the strict enforcement of the code does not always succeed in maintaining order he is often obliged to harness the chariot of the law to the horses of discretion and humanity.
He is the man on the spot and as such knows the value of such effective weapons as tact and delicacy. He also knows the case histories of his clients the way a family doctor knows his patients.
He is always mindful of the evil of wrongdoing but mindful too of many areas of innocence relating thereto and it is here that discretion and insight of a high order are needed if the law is to serve rather than expose the community.
If some of these letters read seamily or sordidly it is not the fault of the author. Rather it is the fault of the community which has been entrusted to his care. If there were not a seamy side to life there would be no necessity for custodians of the peace. Leo Molair’s role is one which has been created by the follies and weaknesses of his fellows.
Consequently folly and weakness must, perforce, dominate the greater part of the following correspondence.
We find our man, towards the end of his career, writing to his nephew Ned who is also a civic guard but of a mere two years standing.
***
Garda Barracks
Monasterbawn
County Cork
Dear Ned
You ask about your new Super. I had a visit four years ago from the same Patcheen Conners who now answers to the call of Superintendant Patrick Conners. We were together in the Depot and afterwards we spent a spell in the same station in Dublin. Patcheen has an accent now like you’d hear from an elocution teacher. On top of that he needlessly indulges in a lot of other grandiose antics. The wife, of course, must shoulder the blame.
Answering to the name of Susie McGee she graduated thirty years ago from a juicy ranch of nine acres in the latter end of Mayo and between cajoling and screeching, nagging and pestering you might say she would be entitled to take full credit for all of Patcheen’s promotions. Fair dues to her she was and still is a fine ball of a woman. There are some unkind souls who say she went to bed a half a dozen times with a certain politician, once for sergeant, twice for inspector and three times for superintendent. However, you may take it from me that those who spread such stories come under the general head of hostile witnesses.
Patcheen was all right when I first knew him. He was as easygoing as an in-calf heifer, tough as an ass, fond of a pint and afraid of nothing of God’s earth until he was hooked and gaffed by the aforementioned Susie McGee. She was the oldest of seven sisters and neighbours who knew them will give evidence that not one of them drew on a knickers till the day they went into service.
Susie came to Dublin to work as a housemaid for a surgeon named Halligan. She was only barely gone eighteen at the time. She arrived in the city in the middle of March and she married Patcheen Conners in the middle of June. She changed him overnight.
About six months after the marriage I called to see them one evening when I was off-duty. They had their own house in a nice area of Rathmines.
There was Patcheen, made up by the wife like he’d be a magazine model with cardigan and slippers and a fart of a pipe hanging from the side of his mouth. We sat down for a chat. From the minute I took to the chair he never stopped sermonising about the evils of drink and the terrible after-effects of late-night carousing. After a while Susie landed in with three small cups and a tiny teapot you wouldn’t put in front of a midget.
There was no mention of drink and I having a head on me like a furnace after a party the night before. After a while Susie says to me:
‘How’s your handicap?’
I told her it was as good as could be expected thinking she was referring to my private part. I was ruptured earlier in the year making an arrest outside a public house in Henry Street.
‘Patrick’s,’ said she, ‘is down to fourteen.’
‘Twas then I knew she must be referring to golf. I nearly fell out of the chair because when I first met Patcheen he wouldn’t know a golf club from a hockey stick. Susie is one of those strong-willed women who will never latch on to a made man. They prefer to start with their own raw material, no matter how rugged or crude and to mould what they want out of that. The husbands have no say whatsoever in the outcome. She did a fair job on Patcheen. When I knew him he wouldn’t track an elephant through six inches of snow. Anyone who could make a superintendent out of Patcheen Conners could make a bonfire out of snowballs. He called here once to see me. He didn’t stay with me long. He had an appointment for a four-ball at Muskerry Golf Club. Susie stayed in the car so I came out to say hello to her. You’d hardly expect a woman so high-up in the world to call into a one-man station.
‘You’ll never marry now,’ was the first thing she said to me.
‘Not unless you divorce Patcheen,’ said I by way of a joke.
‘Surely you mean Pawtrick,’ she said and she cocked her nose high.
‘He’ll always be Patcheen to me missus,’ said I.
That stung her. What the poor woman keeps forgetting is that the only real difference between myself and Patcheen Conners is the colour of our uniforms. Patcheen himself is all right. You don’t have to worry about him. All he wants is to draw his pay, play golf and be seen in his uniform now and again. My fondest regards to Gert and the baby. Find out the names for me of the older guards and sergeants in your division. Chances are I know some of them.
Your fond uncle
Leo
***
Main Street
Monasterbawn
County Cork
Dear Guard Molair
Sacred heart of Jesus and his divine Mother will you do something about the carry-on at Fie’s public house. I am the mother of a family that never put a hard word on no one but the conduct going on there you wouldn’t hear of in Soho. At all hours of the morning is the after-hours guzzling of drink going on, single men hobnobbing with married women and vice versa if you please. God alone knows what amount of whoring goes on there. If you don’t do your duty and close down this den of iniquity before the whole village is corrupted and scandalised I will write to the minister that you are turning a blind eye on criminal and immoral activity. Margie Fie is worse nor any madam you’d find in a whorehouse with her lips daubed scarlet and the make-up an inch thick and the grey hair dyed blonde. Who does she think she’s codding. Hurry up quick and close her down in the name of all that’s good and holy.
Devoted Catholic wife and mother of a large family.
***
Main Street
Monasterbawn
Dear Guard Molair
It is high time someone took the initiative in the stamping out of after-hours drinking and other vices that arise from it. Wives are without money for their shopping and many children in this godforsaken village are hungry and without proper clothing. The money is squandered on drink to buy style for the wives of certain publicans. The most brazen example of after-hours boozing is to be seen at Crutt’s public house right here under your very nose in Monasterbawn. On my way from eight o’clock Mass yesterday morning what did I behold outside the front door of Crutt’s pub but a rubber object which I took at first to be a finger-stall or some sort of unblown balloon. Casually over breakfast I described the object to my husband. Imagine my horror when he told me that what I had seen was undoubtedly a contraceptive. Hell is a light punishment for the proprietors of Crutt’s public house.
Signed
Indignant Housewife
***
Fallon Street Garda Station
Dublin 13
Dear Uncle Leo
Many thanks for your letter and for the enclosed gift of which there was no need as we have more than enough. We are all very distraught and upset here after the brutal murder of our colleague yesterday. It is incredible that an Irishman should gun down another Irishman in cold blood merely because the victim was doing his duty and upholding the law for the benefit of all the citizens of the state. There is a despairing feeling of futility at the callousness of these extremists who snuff out life without thought for loved ones left behind. I cannot conceive of a more foul and brutal deed. Those who murdered this likeable and loyal member of our force cannot be called men. Yet the arch-criminals who are their superiors walk the streets as free men with smug looks on their faces. God forgive me if I ask Him to wipe these scum from the face of the earth. I’ll say no more now as I may say too much. I see the gentle smile on my dead comrade’s face and I hear his light laugh fading away forever. It’s terrible.
I envy you your peaceful way of life down there, far from the madding crowd and all that and the clean countryside at your doorstep. It is my ambition to move down the country as soon as possible. I’m checking up on the older members of the division to find out who would have been most likely to have served with you. I’ll write as soon as I hear from you again. Be thankful for the grand, quiet, peaceful place where you live and for the innocent people in your bailiwick.
Your fond nephew
Ned
PS We are making a collection for the widow.
Ned
***
Garda Barracks
Monasterbawn
Dear Ned
I enclose a subscription towards the collection for our dead comrade’s widow. A horrible business altogether. How should one react when one’s brother is murdered, gunned down mercilessly without a chance of any kind and remember that we who wear these uniforms are brothers and comrades in the cause of law and order. All we must endeavour to do is protect our charges, the small boys and girls, the fathers and mothers, the senile and the helpless and to see to the safety of their belongings and their homes. Nothing must come between us and our concern for those in our care. If one of us is brutally murdered our function is to stand fast and to pray for the resolution and courage to carry on with the job. We may ask ourselves how any human being could cut down another in his prime without regard for his young wife and family. We may ask ourselves how such an awful deed can be justified. We may ask if there is any form of punishment on this earth severe enough for these inhuman wretches who spill our life’s blood. We may ask and ask Ned but in the end all that matters is the honourable discharge of our duty regardless of all other considerations and this force, in that respect, can look to its record with pride.
Like yourself I will draw the line here and now on this most tragic event. Stick to your post. Be loyal to your superiors and to your comrades and there need be no fears for the future of our country.
In your letter you say to me that I should be thankful for this grand, quiet, peaceful place where I live and also for the innocent people in my bailiwick. Wait till you’re as old as I am and you’ll find out that there aren’t as many innocent people as you think. There is an extract from Hamlet which goes like this:
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres;
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
I too my dear Ned could a tale unfold, in fact a hundred tales, about this village and no other, that would make the News of the World read like a Communion tract but this would achieve no worthwhile end except to do the world of harm and absolutely no good.
If you think Monasterbawn is quiet and peaceful read this account of one particular day in the life of your humble servant, Leo Molair. I rose at seven-thirty and went to eight o’clock mass which I had to serve for the good reason that the altar boy’s mother forgot to call him. How could she and she at a wren dance till five in the morning. On my way from Mass I was summoned to a house in Jackass Lane by a gorsoon of eight who informed me that his father was in the process of murdering his mother. From the casual way he spoke I gathered it wasn’t his first time murdering her. I arrived at the house to find the poor woman seated on a chair with a bleeding mouth, a swollen right eye and a cut nose. The husband whose name is Mocky Trembles was still giving out when I crossed the threshold. My first instinct was to lay him out but when you’re in this game as long as I am you’ll find it pays to play cool. I started attempts at reconciliation at quarter to nine and six cups of tea later at precisely eleven o’clock I had the two of them cooing like pigeons and Mocky promising never to lay a finger on her ever again. For her part she knelt and swore that not a nagging word would be heard out of her as long as she lived.
When I left he was bathing her face with a sponge and telling her that she was to keep the next allotment of family allowance money in order to buy some style for herself. Mocky drank the last allotment.
Back at the barracks there was a caller awaiting me. She was the female teacher in the national school down the road, a spinster by the name of Monica Flynn who, if I may say so, has had strong matrimonial designs on yours truly although if you saw her you wouldn’t give me any credit. Monica had arrived to make a complaint about a man called the Bugger Moran. She had some difficulty in explaining herself but I gathered that the Bugger had been exposing his population stick, if you’ll pardon the expression, opposite the young girls on their way home from school. I promised to look into the matter. Monica refused to proffer charges for fear of embarrassing herself, the school and the children. Rest assured that the Bugger will have a sore posterior shortly.
When Monica departed I had my breakfast and took a skim through the paper. My next chore was to visit the farm of a man called Thade Buckley about five miles up in the mountains. No hope of a lift in that direction so late in the day with all the creamery cars long gone. Nothing for it but the bicycle. I arrived after nearly an hour on the uphill road. Some months previously at a bull inspection the same Thade had a yearling rejected and it was my job to ensure that certain requirements be fulfilled if he was to keep the animal.
‘What brought you?’ asked Thade with an innocent face and he knowing well what brought me.
‘You had a bull for inspection lately?’
‘I had a bull,’ said Thade.
‘And did you castrate that bull,’ I asked, ‘in compliance with the departmental order?’
‘I squeezed that bull myself,’ said Thade, ‘and you may be sure that he is now a happy bullock grazing the mountain.’
‘He must be a very odd sort of a bullock,’ said I, ‘seeing that he attacked and nearly killed a fowler last Sunday.’
‘That’s the first I heard of it,’ said Thade. I then instructed him to locate the bull for me so he led me across a few wet fields to the base of the mountain where sure enough there were some bullocks grazing. He pointed at the animal in question. I noted that this beast was castrated beyond doubt but when I looked for the rejection mark on his ear which the departmental inspector impresses on all rejects I could find no trace of it. Alongside this animal was another with a wicked-looking pair of bloodshot eyes and he pawing the ground indicating a charge at any minute. Sure enough in his ear was the letter ‘R’. The animal was not castrated it was plain to be seen.
‘Explain this,’ I asked Thade but when I turned he was haring his way down the mountain. The next thing you know I got an almighty thump on the rump and there was the rejected bull coming at me again. I followed Thade’s example and scrambled over a gate into a nearby field. Back at the house I confronted Thade.
‘I must have squeezed the wrong one,’ he explained, ‘or else they must have grown there again.’ I had enough of this nonsense. I charged him with possession of a reject and refused his offer of whiskey which I strongly suspected was home-made anyway. Three years earlier his house had been searched from top to bottom for poteen but not a drop was found. I discovered later from a friend that under every bed in the house was an enamel chamber pot and every one of these pots was filled to the brim with a liquid which was not urine.
When I arrived back at the barracks it was too late for lunch although there is always a plate kept hot for me at the house where I normally have lunch. There were two visitors awaiting me at the barracks. One was an elderly woman who had just been badly bitten by a dog and the other an unfortunate woman whose husband had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. I took particulars from both women and went into action. A phone call confirmed what I suspected about the missing man. He had spent the family allowance money the night before in Clonakilty, started a row in a chip shop and wound up in the barracks where he was still being held for refusing to identify himself. The orderly promised to send him home in the patrol car some time that night. As for the cross dog the poor creature is now in the kennels of Heaven.
