The Scorching Wind Read online

  ‘What do you want?’ Dualta asked.

  ‘It’s a good job,’ said Poric. ‘The money is good and at the end you get a pension. Aren’t you keeping law and order? Maybe I’d have to quiet a drunken man with me fist if he was throwing rocks. I don’t know. He made me feel small I wanted his goodwill.’

  Dominic took hold of Poric’s fist which was clenched on his knee. It was a good strong fist, the size of a four-pound ham, he thought laughing. ‘Don’t hit anyone with that fist,’ he said, ‘or you’ll knock him into eternity.’

  They laughed.

  Then Poric stood up and waved. They were passing a lane. It led to a row of thatched houses up among the rocks. Out here, they said if the rocks had straw on them they were houses. They could see the people standing in front of the whitewashed wall, man and woman and many young ones. The woman’s red petticoat stood out startlingly against the white background.

  ‘I wouldn’t let them come to the road,’ said Poric. ‘They’d make a spectacle of me for all time.’ He turned his back on them deliberately then, sat and pulled the peak on his cap down over his eyes and was silent. Dominic thought: That will hurt Dualta. Dualta’s father wouldn’t be waving farewell after him.

  Later Poric said: ‘Would you stop at the barracks in the street town? They will give me the travel ticket.’

  ‘What made you desire to be a policeman?’ Dominic asked.

  Poric thought over it ‘The sergeant in here, I suppose. He said: You have the size for the police and you have the education. I got that from the Master. They didn’t care one way or the other at home, but it would be respectable. My eldest brother Sean is there for the landwork and the boat fishing. I don’t know. Maybe it will be nice to be a policeman. I don’t know. I wish the Master respected my choosing.’

  ‘Did you expect him to?’ asked Dualta.

  ‘It didn’t trouble me to think,’ said Poric ‘All his talk about the great patriots and that. It all seemed like stories from books. And singing the ballads. My soul, but I didn’t think it was real with him.’

  ‘There are only a few of them left,’ said Dualta grimly.

  They came down the hill and crossed the bridge into the small town. There was no great activity. Mostly people were working in the fields. They stopped near the police barracks. ‘I’ll put no great delay on you,’ said Poric and went down there.

  ‘Don’t waste your time in the University,’ said Dualta.

  ‘Oh-ho,’ said Dominic.

  ‘It’s because I did, I’m telling you,’ said Dualta. ‘Don’t imitate me. If they gave degrees for playing cards I would have earned a first-class honours.’

  ‘Are you doing what you want now?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Dualta. ‘ Ever since we were doing those things in the Volunteers, drilling and such. It appealed to me. So being a soldier will appeal to me.’

  ‘Even a military funeral?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘Don’t be an old woman,’ said Dualta.

  They watched Poric come out of the barracks with the sergeant. The sergeant was nearly as tall as Poric. He held himself well. He filled his black uniform. His boots were shining. He wore a moustache with the points of it waxed. He had thick eyebrows which slanted up, making him look like the devil, so the people called him Sergeant Nick. He had small eyes which always seemed to be darting here and there. People didn’t love him much. He was too efficient. He came close, put his hand on the side of the trap. There was a thick growth of dark hair on the back of it, Dominic noticed.

  ‘I was saying that I didn’t like Patrick travelling with disaffected persons,’ he said. He had a harsh sort of voice. He laughed to show this was meant to be humour. ‘Your father is still an old Fenian,’ he said. They didn’t answer him. ‘I hear you are joining the colours, Dualta,’ he said then.

  ‘I might change my mind,’ said Dualta.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘or someone might give you a white feather.’

  ‘They’d get it back where they wouldn’t like it,’ said Dualta. ‘Right, Poric? Hup, Saili.’ The pony took off at once. They left the dust of the road enveloping the sergeant. He stood there looking after them.

  ‘That fellow puts the hair up on the back of my neck, said Dualta.

  ‘There are worse men,’ said Poric doubtfully.

  ‘Hear Poric,’ said Dualta laughing. ‘He hasn’t met a hundred people in his life and he knows the best from the worst. If they ever put you under a one like that he’ll make you jump.’

  Dominic knew that they weren’t an hour from the town now and his heart began to sink.

  Dualta had been away before and he had come back. Dominic had been away for five years at a secondary school and he had come back. But Dualta was always there somewhere, sometime. They didn’t know much about this war in France. The papers mainly seemed to be full of lists of dead ones. Dominic didn’t like to think of Dualta dead. They didn’t talk.

  They drove through the town slowly. It was fairly filled. There were soldiers in khaki walking the streets, drab ones and Lancers with white strings on them and bandoleers, some of them standing and laughing with linked girls in front of shop windows. It was slow work getting through the horse drays and the horse carts, an occasional Crossley army lorry, or a motor car with officers in it, honking furiously while policemen tried to make the people concede a way for them.

  In the open of the Square they saw that a platform was being erected for a recruiting meeting. It was draped with the colours of the Empire, and men were still hammering at it. They got past this and turned right up towards the station. The entrance to the station was so jammed with traffic and people that Dualta said: ‘We’ll stop here and walk the rest.’ He drove the trap to an opening beside a house. ‘ Now,’ he said, ‘we go and you go home, Dominic.’

  ‘I’ll go with you to the train,’ said Dominic.

  ‘What for?’ Dualta asked. ‘What the hell good will it do? Aren’t there enough people for that?’

  Dominic could see this for himself. Men were moving towards the station with women and children around them. They were all bawling. Young soldiers walked silently with white-faced girls holding to their arms. He tried to imagine what it would be like in the long length of the train.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Dualta was saying, holding out his hand.

  Dominic took it. Dualta’s face was very stern.

  ‘When you get my address,’ said Dualta, ‘you will write and tell me how things are going at home. Don’t forget.’

  ‘I won’t forget,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Come, Poric,’ said Dualta and started to shoulder his way towards the station.

  ‘My blessings on you, Dominic,’ said Poric, nearly kittling him with a blow on the shoulder, and then he followed Dualta.

  Dominic stood for a few moments holding the reins in his hands. He tried to stop tears in his eyes by clenching his jaws until sweat broke out on his forehead. The leather of the straps hurt his hands as they bit into his palms. He won that way. He decided not to go for home yet. He led the pony up this street where they were wont to buy their provisions and he tied her in the yard here and threw her the hay from the sack. Then he set out to walk and kill the flood of loneliness, at least until he heard the train whistle.

  Chapter Two

  WHEN DOMINIC reached the Square, he saw that it was filling. The platform, a solid business raised on porter barrels with a handrail around it, looked very efficient. In the distance he could hear the army band approaching. They had marched through the town and were marching back again hoping a battalion of recruits would follow the flag and the spine-tingling sound of the brass and the drums.

  ‘Farther to the right, near the Bohermore, he saw a smaller crowd. He went towards it. There a man was standing on a horse cart. Below him there stood four men, dressed in Volunteer uniforms of green. He was speaking in low tones. There were few people around him, a lot of children, and more policemen than spectators. The big sergeant with the mou
stache was writing in a notebook.

  This man was slender and was fair-haired. Sometimes the hair was blown over his forehead and he swept it back with an impatient gesture. He had thin lips and his eyes were gleaming.

  ‘You don’t die for an empire,’ this man was saying. ‘You live for your country. Does a man go and put out the fire in a neighbour’s house, when his own house is smouldering? Does he go to put food in the mouth of starving ones, when the bellies of his own children are slack?’

  ‘Go and join the army if it’s fighting you want,’ a woman shouted. She was a woman with a shawl. She had a few drinks taken.

  ‘God help those who help themselves,’ the man said. ‘How can you pretend to be fighting to raise a small nation from the heel of an oppressor if your own neck is under a boot?’

  The sergeant spoke.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ he said. ‘ Don’t go over the limits.’

  ‘That is the freedom of speech we possess,’ the man said. ‘ I say to you: Love your country. Is that treason? I say to you: Die for your country. Is that treason? I say to you buy the products of your own country, not bellybacon from America, matches from England, cloth from Birmingham. Is that treason? I say to you buy what we can make, to keep your own people at work and in jobs so that they don’t have to die in mud like pigs. Is that treason?’

  ‘Yes, it is treason,’ said the sergeant, putting his notebook in his pocket. ‘You have said enough now. This meeting is over.’

  He signalled with his hand to the other five policemen. They started to move towards the man on the cart. The four young men in uniform who were hatless came forward to meet them. They had no arms.

  ‘No,’ the man on the cart said. ‘We will obey you. I know how dearly you would love to use batons. Did you ever stop to think that you are Irishmen?’

  ‘Move on now, move on now,’ said the sergeant, ‘if you don’t want to end up down in the jail.’

  ‘Attention,’ the man said in Irish. ‘Oghlaigh. By the left, quick march.’ He came down from the cart and got to the head of his little column. They marched up the Bohermore. Dominic knew the Sinn Fein Club was somewhere up there. The people looking on whistled derisively. There was something very pathetic about the five marching men, something forlorn, like boys playing at soldiers. He knew they were the remnants of the great Irish Volunteer Movement. When the Great War came there was a split in the ranks, and Redmond siphoned off the vast majority of the Volunteers and pledged them to fight for the freedom of a little nation called Belgium. Very few people knew where it was. The five marching men were the tatters that remained of the Volunteers who opposed Redmond. They called themselves Sinn Fein.

  He was brought to himself when knuckles rapped quite hardly against his head.

  ‘Here,’ a policeman said to him, ‘get away from here. This is no place for you. Do you want to become disaffected.’

  Dominic felt his face go pale and then red, he supposed. It was all he could do not to hit the red-haired policeman, even though he was twice his size. Then he wanted to spit in his face. He did neither of these things. Just looked murder at him. The policeman put a large hand on his shoulder and pushed and Dominic staggered. ‘Off with you now! Off with you!’ he said, and then turned away. This was most hurtful to Dominic. That I am only worth knuckles on the head and a push, he thought. He looked at the broad back of the retreating policeman.

  ‘If you had a gun now, would you shoot him?’ a voice asked. ‘Right in the middle of that broad, bullocky back? Eh?’

  Dominic blushed. This young man stood beside him. He was grinning. He was a thin sandy-haired man, deceptively young-looking Dominic now saw. He had deep, sunken eyes. His cheekbones were broad, almost Asiatic. His nose was thin, like his lips, and as he smiled now, Dominic saw he had small teeth, the sort that sloped inwards. He was ashamed that this stranger had seen the naked look on his face. He felt as if he had been seen without some of his clothing.

  ‘I don’t suppose you would,’ this young-old man said. ‘You know that’s what’s wrong with us,’ he went on. ‘None of us wants to shoot a policeman.’

  ‘Why would we shoot a policeman?’ Dominic asked cautiously.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Just for fun, say, like you would shoot rats. Have you ever shot a rat?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dominic, seeing the body of a running rat he had got, flying fifty feet in the air after getting the full blast from the shotgun.

  ‘What’s the difference?’ the man asked.

  Dominic laughed, imagining the big body of the red-haired policeman flying through the air.

  ‘There’s a little,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ the man said. ‘ You are not from our town?’

  ‘No,’ said Dominic, ‘ I’m from way out. You are a man of the town?’

  ‘Yes,’ the other said. ‘ Call me Sam Browne. I don’t know if that’s my name or not, but it’s short and simple and it sounds good. Have you come to join up and save all those pretty Belgian girls from being raped by the Germans?’

  Dominic was a bit shocked. Then he saw the man was trying to shock him, watching his reaction, smiling.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was seeing my brother away. He joined.’

  ‘One of Redmond’s people, eh?’ he asked.

  ‘He thinks Redmond is right,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Poor fellow,’ Sam said. ‘So do thousands of others. It’s terrible when you think of those Germans killing all those Belgian babies and boiling them down for gun-grease.’

  ‘What are you up to?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sam. ‘I’m just sad about the babies.’

  ‘Nobody believes that about the babies,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Oh, some people do,’ said Sam. ‘Thousands of noble Irishmen have gone out to battle for those babies. They are the most valuable recruiting babies that were ever invented. You watch it or they’ll get you too.’

  He had to shout now. The band had come from the narrow street into the Square. It was a grand brass band. The drummer wore a leopard skin over his uniform. He was a tall man and he was swearing, but he was a flamboyant drummer. The band was followed by the Lancers on horseback. They looked very well; the horses were groomed and their coats shone in the sun. Behind the Lancers there were soldiers marching. They were very neat. Then came guns on carriages pulled by six mettlesome horses. It made a brave show. The parade was followed by hundreds of children, shouting and screaming. Dominic felt the tingle running up and down his spine.

  ‘They could do with those guns in France instead of here,’ Sam shouted into his ear. ‘I didn’t hear your name.’

  ‘Dominic,’ Dominic shouted, trying hard to keep the glitter out of his eyes, wondering at himself, at the sort of feeling bands and soldiers and banners waving could arouse in him.

  The Square was well filled now. There were pictures tied to the railings of the place, posters of Germans with the faces of monsters; Germans behind bayonets, or machine guns, straddling burning churches; leering Uhlans bending from their racing horses to lance children, and in front of the platform there was a great banner with letters two foot high beseeching:

  GOD SAVE IRELAND FROM THE HUNS.

  The platform was filling up with well-dressed gentlemen with whiskers and high collars, and army officers, and long-dressed ladies in flowered hats, and suddenly Dominic found himself hemmed in from all sides and pressed by the multitude of people. They were separated from the platform by the soldiers who stood all around it in two ranks. The band had wheeled smartly and its martial air came to an end with a great flourish and a tremendous bang-bang on the big drum. And the people there cheered and called shrilly and hand-clapped loudly, and an army man came to the front and held up his hand and said: ‘Citizens!’

  ‘God bless you, General,’ a lady called shrilly, and everyone hurrooed, although even Dominic, who knew nothing about such things, could see that the officer wasn’t a general.

 
He got some silence, and he said: ‘Mister … (Dominic couldn’t distinguish his name) will address you. He …’ The rest was lost in cheers and shouting, so the army man retired and a black-suited tall man with a moustache, and side hair brushed over a bald spot, came to the front, and grasped the rail with practised hands and shouted: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, but more particularly young men of this patriotic city, I come to address you here on behalf of our great Leader: John Redmond!’

  This was the signal for renewed cheering, and shrill cries of the shawled women: ‘God bless him! God bless him!’

  ‘If blessings were negotiable,’ said Sam in Dominic’s ear, ‘ he would have been canonized years ago.’

  ‘I could talk to you today,’ the man said, ‘about many things. But there is nothing that speaks louder than example and nothing more true than the sight of reality.’ This didn’t get a cheer. People boggled at it. Dominic heard Sam chuckling.

  ‘Too many syllables,’ he said to Dominic.

  ‘You know, by rumour and report, that this city in its great generosity has opened its gates and arms in a warm-hearted gesture to some of the stricken citizens of that little land, bowed under a load of hate and terror, crying out to the world for the succour that all free men are bound in conscience to give with all they possess. Ladies and gentlemen, I refer to that noble little land of Belgium.’

  They answered this one with great cries, and groans and cheers.

  ‘I will not refer to the delicate matter of the religious ladies who are in our midst, so unspeakably treated by those monsters of iniquity; not to cloak their shame, of which they are not guilty. Who is guilty? I will tell you who is guilty. The Nero of Europe, the unspeakable Emperor of the Germans, who loosed his barbarian Huns on a defenceless and peace-loving people.’

  ‘That ought to rouse them,’ said Sam, just before the thousands of people broke into a roar of hate. A forest of fists seemed to be raised in the air and shaken at the terrible-faced Emperor of the Germans who glared at them from a poster, his helmet gleaming menacingly.