The Lost Soldier's Song, page 2
What they called the Intelligence Room was at the back of the building. The olive green walls stank sharply of new paint. There were two small windows above eye level with black iron bars both inside and out. The constable was seated behind a table on which lay a set of knuckle dusters and a jotter, and a soldier stood at ease inside the door. He sat on the other side of the table opposite the constable, with his hands resting loosely in his lap. He wanted to give an impression of relaxation and at the same time to be ready for whatever came his way.
‘The game is up, I regret to tell you. We’ve checked our records. There is no Philip Keegan in Booley. There isn’t even a Philip Keegan posing under a different name.’
‘I’ve always led a quiet life. I’m not surprised that my existence has gone unnoticed.’ He spoke with a show of calm self-confidence to mask the fear that had metamorphosed into whinstone in the pit of his stomach.
‘I must inform you that your quiet life has come to an end. You haven’t been very clever, have you? The last man who farmed Booley was a bachelor called Tim Madagan. He emigrated to Australia two years ago, sensible man.’
‘I think you should check your records again,’ he said recklessly. ‘I was born in Booley and so was my father before me.’
‘We’re holding you on suspicion. The times are against you. We know how to deal with awkward customers here.’
‘What about my wife? Surely you have nothing against her.’
‘Wife? The woman you were with at the time of your arrest will be held until the truth about both of you has been established.’
‘My wife is as innocent as I am. I know my rights. You’re acting against the law you’re supposed to be upholding.’
‘I am the law. Tie him up.’
He knew better than to resist. The soldier put him standing in two metal shoes that were clamped to the floor and he tied both his hands to a ring in the wall above his head. The constable put on the knuckle dusters and struck him in the ribs with the full force of his right arm. If he hadn’t been secured to the wall, he would have collapsed in a heap on the floor. He began breathing quickly through the mouth. He couldn’t breathe deeply because of the pain.
‘Your name. I want your real name.’
‘Philip Keegan.’
The constable struck him again in the ribs. This time the pain made him scream. The constable waited while the soldier stood at ease.
‘Your name, I said.’
‘I’ve given you my name. You can do your damnedest but I won’t say another word.’
The constable hit him in quick succession below the eye, on the side of the neck and just beneath the collarbone. Blood ran down his face into his mouth. The upper part of his body was aflame. He hung his head, wondering if he was about to pass out.
‘You’re far too pretty for your own good,’ the constable said. ‘Pretty boys have a high opinion of their looks.’
He turned his head away as the constable produced a matchbox from his trousers pocket. The soldier came across and held his head firmly between his hands. The constable lit a match and placed another against his cheekbone. As the flame came closer, he closed his eyes. The second match flared, burning into his cheek and singeing his eyelashes. He wriggled horribly in anger and disgust.
‘That’s to cauterise the wound,’ the constable said. He tried to spit in the constable’s face but his mouth was twisted and the spittle ran down his chin, as a naked fist shot into his solar plexus.
When he came round, he was stretched on the floor in the centre of the room. The constable had gone. Two soldiers carried him back to his cell and dumped him on the horse-hair mattress which stank of urine. He touched the blister under his eye. His finger travelled over its surface, as if it were a gooseberry beneath the skin. His vision was blurred and his chest was raw inside. He concentrated on his breathing because breathing had become an activity that could not be relied on. Maureen was on his mind. He kept dreaming about her and the constable throughout the night and even when he woke up, he could not escape from his dream. His mind was a muddle. Now and again he repeated the name Philip Keegan. They were two words he would hang on to, though he could not think of anything for long.
In the morning he was handcuffed and put on a lorry. A soldier flung a grey Army blanket over him. No one told him where he was going and he himself did not enquire.
Chapter 2
It was late afternoon when they reached the prison. He stepped off the lorry into a shrunken world of barbed wire, rusty bars and mortared grey-stone walls. It was the kind of place you might expect to find among the ruins of a deserted city. It was far from deserted, however. He had never seen so many Army vehicles and soldiers in one place. He was treated with few words and brisk efficiency. Within minutes he was taken to a room that smelt of mould, where he was searched again, this time more thoroughly. He was then marched through corridor after corridor of closed doors to the last cell in the row. It looked like a cul de sac, the bottom end of a sunless road.
There were two mattresses on the floor of the cell and on one of them lay a long-limbed man in his thirties whose legs extended over the edge like stilts. He looked up with a quizzical grin, then dismissively shifted his gaze to the ceiling, as if he were lying on a moor on a summer day completely absorbed in changing cloud patterns. The door ground protestingly on its hinges as it slammed, but the man never took his eyes off the ceiling.
Declan sat on a chair and began to unlace his boots. The air was thick and heavy and his feet were hot. He was expecting the long-limbed man to say something. When he didn’t, he cleared his throat and said, ‘It’s great weather for the turf. Pity to be spending it inside.’ The other man turned his head and stared at him. It was possible that he saw his cell as his castle and took exception to uninvited visitors.
‘You look like a man who had too much to drink and fell into a briar bush from a height. Was it the Tans who pulled you out?’ he said at last.
‘It wasn’t a Good Samaritan, I can tell you.’
The other man’s gaze returned to the ceiling. He lay down on his mattress in stockinged feet and stared up at his own part of the ceiling. He didn’t do it out of cussedness. He couldn’t lie on his side because of the pain in his ribs and chest.
‘You’re from Kerry,’ his companion said. ‘No need to brag. You’re not the first.’
‘I’m from near Carrick Colman. I was taken in my own house. My name is Philip Keegan.’
‘I won’t tell you my real name either. You can call me Owney, it’s my prison name. You need to have a prison name for spies, soldiers and warders. They have a habit of putting spies in with men like me. You don’t look like a spy, fair play to you, but the less you know about me the better for both of us. I’m not an ordinary man.’
He did not reply. It seemed to him that their conversation had come to an end.
‘I don’t call myself Owney for nothing,’ the other man said after a minute or two. ‘My great-great grandfather was called Owney. No one knows anything about my family before his time. He was the first and I’m the last. If anything happens to me, there will be no one left to carry on the line.’
The long-legged man got up from his mattress and came across towards him. He was at least six foot six, strongly built with long, dangling arms and big fists. On his right cheek was a long, thin scab reaching from his temple to the corner of his mouth.
‘You’ve been beaten,’ he said, looking down with a lop-sided grin. ‘The question is, “Are you beaten?” ’
‘If I were beaten, I wouldn’t be here. You’ve got a scar yourself, I see.’
‘I get beaten twice a week. It reminds me of school. Questions. Questions. Then it was grammar and sums.’
‘What do they want?’
‘Names, names æ names.’
‘You could give them false information. That would confuse them.’
‘I could if I wanted to, but I’m not an ordinary man. Any information, even false information, is playing their game. Total silence is the only policy. The good thing is that it can’t go on for ever.’
He didn’t quite follow Owney’s line of reasoning. Total silence is precisely what does go on for ever but he thought it unnecessary and possibly uncharitable to say so. He was thinking of what questions to ask when a single shot came from below.
‘An execution?’ he enquired with put-on nonchalance.
‘They’re trigger happy. They shoot at pigeons and any other bird that’s stupid enough to fly in over the wall. I’m sure it’s meant to make us think.’
‘There have been reprisal executions here.’ He was seeking confirmation for a nasty thought that had entered his mind.
‘You can tell the executions from the volleys. You hear them mainly in the morning. If you live till breakfast time, there’s a fair chance you’ll live for another day.’
‘It’s a comfort to know.’
‘I can see you’re a greenhorn. It’s your first time, God help you.’
‘I’ve had a good run, I can’t complain. Even a fox gets caught.’
He padded round the cell in stockinged feet like an agitated tiger. He looked absurdly tall and blind because of the way his eyes rolled, as if trying to turn inwards on torments that were not for warders to see. He crouched and put his ear to the door, then went from wall to wall, pushing against them with his open hands.
‘You’re the fourth cell mate I’ve had in three weeks. They’re dumped on me without a by-your-leave and taken away without a thank-you. The man who was here before you called it the last stop before heaven. Anyhow I’m still here. After three months I’ve stopped feeling pain except when I want to fart and can’t. All I feel now is anger. If only I had the jaw bone of an ass, I’d show them. If my arms were long enough, I’d push the walls of this fucken matchbox apart. As you can see, I’m not an ordinary man.’
Owney returned to his corner and lay down. They both looked up at the ceiling without speaking. The air was clammy and the smell of his own sweat rising bore him back to his father’s farm. It was late summer and he was unharnessing the mare after a day’s carting, inhaling the steam from her back, a gloriously healthy smell that made his nostrils quiver. He rubbed her down while she nosed her oats and he talked to her till she cooled. At bedtime he would go out to the stable again just to make sure that she was content. He was fond of the mare and she was fond of him. He examined her hooves every morning for stone splinters. Unlike his father and Matt, he never drove her hard. There was no need. Whenever he took her out, she gave of her best and her best was given willingly. The things that mattered in life were not the things that seemed to matter at the time. If he were given one last wish, he would ask to unharness her after a day of pulling and straining. He would give her a dish of oats and rub her down.
Towards evening the door ground open and Owney was taken from the cell. He went without a word of protest. Executions took place in the morning, so there was no real need for concern. They would question him again and he would refuse to answer. He had emptied his mind of the past. He lived in the diminished present, neither taking nor seeking comfort. Quite possibly it was his way of remaining strong.
What worked for Owney would not necessarily work for everyone. He himself, for example, was a case apart, far from typical of the men who were standing up to the Tans. He was different above all in motivation and character. The war had led him down an untrodden path on which there was no other traveller to lend encouragement. All he had to protect himself was a knowledge of his own weaknesses and a plucky determination not to give into them. He wondered if he had been put in with Owney so that he might get a glimpse of his future. To crack or not to crack was not the question. The question they were forcing him to ask was, ‘Do I wish to live or die?’ He wished to live, of course, but only on his own terms. He refused to contemplate a future in which he would be unable to live with himself. For a moment the certainty of death brought him a numbing peace that was too seductive to be long-lasting. His anticipatory imagination was the real enemy. He dragged himself off the mattress and began pacing from wall to wall.
He went round the walls, tapping with his knuckles and listening for an answering knock. Solid stone. There was no skirting and no holes in the corners. No holes, no rats. That at least was a mercy. His chair rocked beneath him. Through the bars he could see rows of other narrow windows in grey stonework. Even the light outside was grey. Sandbags were stacked like oats in a barn. Two soldiers stood at ease, two others marched up and down. Sixty-three steps each way. He counted the steps again. From now on he would have to find sanity in little things.
Hearing a sound in the corridor, he got down off the chair on which he was standing. Even the furniture had suffered physical violence. What was once a chair had become an unstable stool; all that remained of the back was an arc of toothlike stumps. He read aloud the scratched writing on the walls, testaments of defiance by nameless authors who would never pass this way again. He had come to a place of self-concealment where all personal history was taboo. The walls were grimy with fingerprints, the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling thick with dust. One hung down like a frayed silk stocking and below it a big-bellied spider dangled with a yo-yo motion. Out of a sense of fraternity he allowed it to go about its business, the business of survival, which was also his own.
The door had a spy-hole with a steel wire grille and a wooden disc outside that the guard could move back and forth. He lay down on the mattress again, trying out different arrangements of arms and legs. No matter how he lay the hollow in the centre drew him towards it. Even the mattress exercised a centripetal force that denied the rights of the disparaged periphery. He was looking at the unlit gas lamp above the door when the wooden disc moved silently as an eyelid. He returned the stare of the observing eye, though he could not see it. When the disc moved back again, he began going through his pockets to pass the time. They had taken his watch, cigarettes, matches, penknife and loose change. All they’d left him was chaff and fluff and, for a reason best known to themselves, a coin that had been given him by Frank Ganly. Perhaps they weren’t as thorough as they’d like to think, or perhaps they’d overlooked it because it was not a coin of the realm. He gauged its weight on his palm. Lighter than a florin and heavier than a penny. It was now his only personal possession. On each side was an uncrowned head with two faces looking in opposite directions. He hid it under the mattress. He was making far too much of it, seeking diabolical design where none had been intended. Here moral strength lay in keeping one’s eye on the object without allowing the luxuriating imagination to make two objects out of one. In preparing for the next encounter a simple, fixed strategy was best.
Within an hour two soldiers led Owney back to the cell. His face was flushed but unmarked. There were dark blood stains on the back of his gingham shirt. Slowly and painfully, he pulled off the shirt before the blood had time to congeal. His back was a diagram of red weals. He lay face down on the bed and said that the best thing to do with raw flesh was to give it plenty of prison air.
‘Who did it?’
‘Corporal Cropper. He’s not the one to watch, he only carries out Sergeant Bruff’s orders. I made a mistake. For the first time I lost my temper. When Bruff asked me, “Do you want to live or die?” I told him to fuck off. He didn’t like that. He likes patients who want to live, because they’re easier to cure. While there’s a chance that you want to live, he’ll keep on treating you. Till you break, that is. If you want to die, he’ll pronounce you incurable. I’ve proved myself incurable. I’ve had my last treatment.’
‘They made a right mess of your back.’
‘It could be worse. When your turn comes, don’t lose your temper. Say nothing. Keep them in the dark.’
After that Owney slept for a while, breathing heavily through his nose between groans. Some time before nightfall they had a visit from a priest, a gloomy young man who looked more like an undertaker than a chaplain. He had pale cheeks and thin, censorious lips, and he carried himself with an air of uncomfortable uncertainty. His light blonde hair had receded from his bulbous forehead, on which a glimmering dew of perspiration had formed.
‘I’m Father Delaney,’ he said uneasily, as if he himself was still in some doubt about his identity. ‘I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m your chaplain.’
‘I’m Philip Keegan.’
‘Then you must be Owney Muldowney.’
‘Names don’t matter, except to the prison authorities,’ Owney said. ‘You can call me Owney Mulligatawny if you like.’
‘I like to know prisoners’ names. I pray for you individually in the Mass every morning.’
‘I’ve had so many names in my time that now only God knows the real one,’ Owney smiled. ‘Next time you’re talking to him just tell him to expect a big strong buck-lepper with red ridges on his back. He’ll know who you mean, don’t worry.’
The priest pulled up a chair and sat between them, clutching a black prayer book from which protruded a green ribbon. He brushed the perspiration from his forehead with a smile that must have caused his facial muscles two seconds of extreme discomfort. Perhaps he realised that he’d got off on the wrong foot and was trying to put his better foot forward. It was difficult to know what to make of him. Quite obviously, he was doing his duty, though not with conspicuous efficiency. What he lacked was a little blob of self-deprecating humour that might at least lubricate the wheels of spiritual communication.
