The Scorching Wind Read online

  ‘There is here on this platform,’ he went on, ‘a citizen of Belgium, who, because he has suffered under this awfulness, can tell you more about it than I; who in his person can be a witness of the terrible things, which you and I, and every citizen of Ireland capable of shedding a tear, must stop with our blood and our very lives.’

  ‘Hear! Hear!’ they called, and ‘Long Life to You!’

  ‘There’ll be none of his blood let,’ said Sam. ‘He’s over the age limit.’

  ‘I will say no more,’ said the platform speaker, ‘just introduce to you this man.’ He turned and went back and came to the front again holding this thin frail-looking gentleman by the arm. He looked a bit bewildered. He had gentle features. His hair was white. He wore a small beard.

  He was greeted with the silence of sympathy, and he spoke into this silence.

  ‘Decent people of this town,’ he said, slowly and haltingly.

  ‘Ah, the poor man hasn’t the English,’ a lady said in what she thought was a whisper, but that came out of this silence almost like a shout.

  ‘No, the English well, I do not have,’ he said, ‘but I have the tongue. You are being what you call, deceived. Out there, those ones that are dressed in the habits of nuns, and that are pregnant, I tell you now, this I say, two are not nuns. You hear this. I tell you. One, she is a prostitute of France, and the other she is of the Belgians, but not good no. I tell you this, she is not what you call ten-shilling prostitute. She would be a twopenny prostitute – of Belgium, but trash, a slut. I tell you. Do not be deceived. Facts are true. This indecency is not necessary. We do not need this. You hear? What I say is true, true, true. No need for lies. No need for lies.’

  His face was very pale with red rising in his cheekbones. His eyes were flashing with anger.

  There was a terrible silence in the Square, as if everybody had suddenly died.

  Two army men came from the back and took the old gentleman by the arms, as if he were a dying lunatic. They had to force him away from the railing. One of them had to unclench his hands from it, and as they went back with him he kept calling out: ‘Is true. Do not be deceived!’

  That was all Dominic saw or heard. He was pushing his way through the crowds almost in a panic. He could see Dualta, tall fair-haired Dualta, riding a train into a nightmare.

  It was easy enough to get through the tightly packed people. They were shocked. They didn’t resist his pressure. He broke free of them on the far side of the Square and ran towards the railway station. Just let me be in time, he was thinking, just let me be in time. When Dualta hears this, he will know and he will not go. Something wrong. Something wrong. Can I persuade Dualta? Dualta will listen to me, he said, through clenched teeth. Dualta will listen to me. What have we to do with things like this? What have we to do with things like this?

  His heart sank as he met people coming away from the station, some of them with red eyes.

  They couldn’t wait to say goodbye, he thought, that’s what was wrong. They couldn’t wait to say goodbye.

  He ran up the stone steps and into the station. A man in a uniform tried to stop his passage, but be broke through and stood on the platform and watched the end of the train. He ran along the platform. He even shouted: ‘Dualta! Dualta!’ but it was no good. The train pulled away and his shout was echoing against the lofty smoke-begrimed panes of the roof.

  He was breathing heavily. His hands were clenched.

  ‘He wouldn’t have listened anyhow,’ said the voice of Sam beside him.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ said Dominic. ‘You just leave me alone.’

  He turned and walked away from him.

  ‘I’ll see you again,’ he heard Sam calling after him. ‘He wouldn’t listen anyhow.’

  ‘He wouldn’t listen anyhow,’ the echo came after him. He thought of getting out the horse and the trap and the long trip home. It would be dark, and his father and mother would be sitting one each side of the fire, and he would have to talk to them and what would he say? You were right, my dear father, Dualta is riding the wrong dream. I don’t know why, but if he dies he’ll be dying for a Belgian prostitute. Nothing more noble? Oh, nothing more noble, my dear father.

  And his father would be terribly sad.

  Dominic rubbed his sleeve across his eyes and went down the steps of the station, and from the Square he could hear the band playing a lively tune.

  Chapter Three

  DOMINIC LOOKED at his cards. They were useless, so he threw in his hand and leaned back in the chair to watch the others. The room was thick with cigarette-smoke. His own mouth was burned from smoking. Even if he had got good cards, he reflected, he wouldn’t have had the money to play them.

  The other five students at the table put on their poker faces as they looked at the cards. The actors among them looked very pleased as they asked for one or two. Poker didn’t really excite him, but it was a way of passing the hours until it was time to go home to the digs and bed. He thought that young people could never sit in a chair in comfort. They had to be straddling the chair, or half-sitting in it with an arm embracing the back of it, or leaning back like himself, with his thumbs in the band of his trousers, balancing the chair precariously on its two back legs. He thought that the chair didn’t have much more life in it. He could waggle it as well as balancing on it. He didn’t like Saturday night.

  He was facing the door when it opened and this tall fellow came in. He was a handsome one with darting eyes, broad shoulders and tawny-coloured hair. He looked around the crowded room. Dominic thought a look of distaste came over his face. This room in the College Club was like something out of Dante where the first-years or Gibs went through their period of delinquency, sharing their misspent lives with the chronics who never got out of first year until they had exhausted their fathers’ purses; condemned for ever and ever to playing poker and billiards and borrowing the price of a cigarette or a pint of porter.

  He was smiling at this thought, lazily, when he saw the eyes of the man at the door holding his own. This one was known as Lowry. Dominic didn’t know if this was his surname or his Christian name, or just a nickname. Nearly everyone had a nickname. Lowry wasn’t the type for the condemned cell in the Club. He was the sort of hero type, Dominic’s mind sneered, who effortlessly won races at athletic meetings, threw weights around as if they were feathers, jumped as high as a horse, had all the girls fainting with admiration, and yet who was responsible for many of the Rags that so annoyed the citizens. Trouble was he shouldn’t be here looking into Dominic’s eyes now, and beckoning him, yes, beckoning him imperiously, to come outside, because senior students rarely consorted with the Gibs. It wasn’t considered good form, sort of lesser vermin.

  So Dominic pointed to his chest, and soundlessly in amazement formed the word Me with his lips, and the big fellow nodded and just went out, leaving the door open after him. There’s an imperious gesture for you, thought Dominic, wondering if he would just leave it like that, but secretly flattered that he had been even beckoned to like this. Still, a man has his pride.

  ‘You better go,’ said one of the students at the table who had been watching, ‘God has called.’

  The rest of them laughed. This annoyed Dominic, so he got up immediately and walked towards the door. The chair fell on the floor behind him. Nobody picked it up.

  ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ said one in a loud voice after him.

  He closed the door.

  There was no sign of Lowry outside the room, so he went outside the building. He wasn’t there either. It was getting dark. It was March and it was cold. Then he looked towards the gateway and saw that Lowry was standing there. He went towards him. Lowry was illuminated faintly by a poor street lamp outside on the roadway. He was looking up at the twenty-foot high walls of the County Jail right opposite.

  Dominic pulled the collar of his coat round his neck and stood beside him wordlessly. Lowry was leaning against the arch, one hand on his hip.

  ‘You k
now most of the citizens of this town think that the positions should be reversed,’ be said.

  ‘How?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘They think that the inmates of the jail should be in the Club, and the inmates of the Club behind the walls.’

  ‘Maybe they have reason,’ said Dominic, thinking of the many forays, hundreds of doorknobs removed from doors, and knockers, and citizens’ clothes ruined with bags of flour, and many citizens in pubs, over the weight, who had to defend their powers against younger opponents.

  Lowry grunted.

  ‘Many men were in there over the years,’ he said, ‘who should never have been there. Many died in there who should never have died.’

  ‘You mean it would be better for first-years to die in there?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘I served Mass in there,’ said Lowry. ‘I used to pass notes to the Castlegar men who were in there for the land troubles. Your father was a good man.’

  ‘What do you know about my father?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘Come on, walk,’ said Lowry, turning right and striding off. Dominic hesitated, and then followed him. They crossed a river bridge and then headed towards the bridge over the canal.

  ‘I know of him well,’ said Lowry. ‘So do many more. Does your life consist of nothing more than playing poker, sitting around in a room like a zombie?’

  ‘I also cut up frogs,’ said Dominic. ‘I draw nice pictures of flowers. Ask me something about chemistry.’

  ‘What does your country mean to you?’ Lowry asked. ‘ You are not stupid.’

  ‘What proof have you?’ asked Dominic facetiously, because he was annoyed.

  ‘Time is running out,’ said Lowry. ‘Do you know Sam Browne?’

  Dominic thought of Sam Browne.

  ‘I know Sam Browne,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Sam Browne likes you,’ said Lowry. ‘Wake up. The time is getting short.’

  ‘The time for what?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘The time for doing,’ said Lowry. They were walking now over the canal bridge. The water looked black and smooth, like velvet.

  ‘There’s a big meeting tonight. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘Something,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Don’t you even read posters?’ Lowry asked.

  ‘No,’ said Dominic.

  ‘A big meeting,’ said Lowry. ‘A few of us are going to applaud. We want you to join us.’

  ‘Applaud a recruiting meeting?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Lowry. ‘Appropriately. Sam Browne said you wouldn’t like recruiting meetings. I don’t know enough about you. He suggested you. So make up your mind. Now. Go or stay. It’s all one to me.’

  ‘Do you treat everybody as if they were dirt?’ Dominic asked.

  Lowry stopped. They were near the entrance to the University.

  ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I do not. I’m impatient perhaps with people who waste time. Time is a precious thing. It’s going now, tick-tick-tick, like that, and there is so much to do and few of us live to be eighty.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dominic. ‘I will applaud with you.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Lowry, suddenly smiling. His whole face seemed to light up with the smile. He clapped Dominic on the shoulder. ‘Let us run. The others will be waiting.’

  Dominic let him run and then followed him into the gateway, and increased his pace on the wide drive towards where there was a body of young men clustered under a feeble light near the archway. He could recognize some of them. They were in different faculties to his own, just nodding acquaintances, superior nods if they were a year or so ahead, sympathetic if they were not. And he wondered all the time why Lowry had come after him in particular.

  ‘We are ready now,’ Lowry was saying. He handed Dominic an old tattered raincoat ‘ Put that on, you’ll need it,’ he said. ‘You’ll find a glass phial in the pocket. Don’t do anything with it until you are told. Right, lads, off we go.’ He himself took hold of a broomstick with the College colours tied to it and they set off towards the main gate. They were laughing. They were a very tattered-looking crew, Dominic thought. Students didn’t dress very well anyhow. Lots of times their Sunday suits were resting temporarily on the shelves of the pawnshop, but all these ones looked as if they had dispossessed all the tramps in the town. They started singing a marching song:

  ‘Sound the bugle, sound the drum!

  Give three cheers for Kruger!

  To hell with the queen and the old tambourine,

  And Hurrah for Kruger’s Army!’

  Lowry came back to them.

  ‘Please! Please, fellows,’ he said. ‘ Think of the cause we are here to applaud.’

  ‘Hurrah,’ they shouted. There were two dustbin lids which they proceeded to pound as they came out of the gates. They beat them with hurley sticks. Some of them had penny whistles. Some of them had jew’s-harps which were surprisingly audible and some of them played on pocket combs. The rest of them sang, hardly in harmony:

  ‘Keep the home fires burning

  While your hearts are yearning,

  Turn the dark clouds inside out

  Till the boys come home.’

  ‘That’s better! That’s better,’ Lowry shouted his approval and as two policemen stood on the road and watched them passing he shouted: ‘Three cheers for the Royal Irish Constabulary. Hip-hip!’ and they applauded the two policemen right heartily. This didn’t seem to reduce the Royal Irish Constabulary to tears, Dominic noticed, because they turned and thoughtfully followed after the marching students.

  Once they got around the jail walls and on to the Weir Bridge they got caught up with a great number of people who were making their way to the Town Hall. Lowry would turn and shout: ‘Three cheers for the noble Lancers! Three cheers for the Fighting Fusiliers!’ whenever he saw one of these soldiers among the crowd.

  They broke their way into the Town Hall square with the sheer noise of themselves. The place was crowded. There were two columns of Redmond Volunteers drawn up, with Garibaldi rifles at the slope. They held the people back from the steps of the entrance to the Town Hall where the distinguished visitors would enter. Many police held back the crowds at the other street entrances. The students following Lowry made their way to the far side where they could climb the stairs to the balcony of the hall. Halfway along here there was a woman speaking. She was held up on the shoulders of two men. She was saying: ‘Don’t send your sons to fight for them! Don’t let them go with them! Keep them here, I tell you, because the fight will be at home. Three months is all they last in the mud of Flanders. Three months and they are part of the muck; Irish blood and guts fertilizing the fields of a foreign land.’ She was dressed in a green uniform, a long green skirt and tunic with a Sam Browne belt, and a hat caught up at the side with a badge.

  About eight policemen converged on her. There was scuffling. He saw her hat being knocked off, the hairpins falling from her long hair. Brown hair she had and it almost enveloped her. The hands caught at her. She kept talking and a large hand was clapped over her mouth.

  ‘Shame! Shame! Shame!’ the students shouted. ‘Three cheers for the Cumann na mBan!’

  ‘No! No!’ Lowry was back shouting at them. ‘Away with the woman! Three cheers for the Royal Irish Constabulary. Cheer, ye misbegotten sons, or they’ll never let us in.’

  So they cheered heartily for the police.

  Dominic could see the straining people laughing. Them bloody students, he heard people say. Always up to their tricks. He noticed a face. It was the face of Sergeant Nick. Sergeant Nick was looking closely at the faces of the students. Dominic tried to avoid his eyes, but couldn’t. He saw the recognition dawning so he shouted louder than any of them for the Royal Irish Constabulary, and then as they turned towards the back parts of the hall he saw his father in the held-up traffic, sitting in the trap with his mother. He was sitting there calmly holding the reins of the pony, who was quiet, as if she was used to these things. And his father sa
w Dominic. He was smoking his pipe and in astonishment he took the pipe out of his mouth. He caught a quick glance at his mother. He thought her face was sad and that her eyes were red. Maybe he was mistaken. The light was very poor.

  Then they were in the hall climbing up the stairs. Here he saw another face he knew. That was Sam Browne, an idle spectator, who nodded at Lowry as he passed. He was looking closely for someone. When he met Dominic’s eyes he nodded expansively, like a hypocritical stage parson. He had acquired glasses now, wobbly ones on wire frames, and he was wearing a large cap.

  They pushed their way up the stairs, and forced their way through the people and right down to the front of the gallery. Here they banged their dustbin lids, and sang College songs and hurrooed and cheered. All the people in the body of the hall below turned their faces up to them, either laughing at their antics or frowning heavily. The stage was draped with the usual banners and flags; the chairs set, and the table with the jug of water on it.

  The audience consisted of the respectable people of the town, the many shopkeepers and traders who drew most of their living from the barracks on the hill since it was a garrison town. They had their wives and daughters with them. Some of the daughters were known to the students, who shouted their names and the girls blushed and when their fathers weren’t looking discreetly waved back at them.

  Then the trumpets sounded from outside and the swelling cheers of the onlookers. You didn’t have to be out there to see the cars coming down carrying the Government Officials from Dublin Castle and the politicians and the big brass. They could trace them down the street and stopping, and, as a cinematograph light from behind them brought the dark stage into a white glare, they all stepped into it and took their places in front of the chairs. The decent people in the body of the hall got to their feet and clapped and clapped and the students clapped and roared and banged their dustbin lids and just then all the lights in the place went out and, as he had been instructed, Dominic reached in his pocket and got out the phial and flung it in the darkness towards the stage, and then turned and pushed his way towards the exit. He had marked his passage before the light went out, where the bunched people were thin. He thought he would be out in time, but he had hardly gone four paces before he was enveloped in the most appalling stench ever concocted by man. It was a choking stink. It was a combination of all the most vile and terrible smells that it was possible to devise in a chemist’s laboratory. Choking, he thought of all the nice girls down there. Such a shame. Now he knew the reason for the old clothes. This stink would stay, he knew. Clothes would never be the same again after it. Whoever wore the clothes would smell for ever, like out-offices. It was a terrible plan, but it was successful. There would never again be a recruiting meeting held in a hall in the town, from which the authorities thought hecklers and disaffected people could be excluded.