The miniature republican sleuth, Galvin, stared at Marsh with a merciless intensity. They were outside the shop lifters’ flat on York Street. He handed Marsh a brown envelope, his grey slits of eyes, menacing above a curled lip, not missing any minutiae in Marsh’s features that might hint at something worthy of future note. “Swallow after reading,” he said in a low voice out of the corner of his mouth. “Dev is going to the house of Art O’Donnell of Tullycrine tomorrow.”

 

“Where the fuck is that?”

 

“Clare. The rest is in the envelope.”

 

“Who the fuck....” before Marsh had finished the question about who Art O’Donnell was Galvin had vanished like a ghost.

 

Art O’Donnell was Commandant of the 7th Clare Battalion of the Irish Volunteers and had a most distinguished career during the War of Independence. In 1913 with war between England and Germany imminent, Art was very active in distributing anti-enlisting leaflets in West Clare. After the victory of de Valera in 1917, the Clare Company Captains were ordered to take out their men and drill them publicly. In the course of a few weeks, arrests were made for public drilling.

 

Art was arrested on 14th August, and taken to the Military Detention Barracks in Cork. He received a sentence of two years’ hard labour, commuted to one. He and others were then removed to Mountjoy Gaol, Dublin where they were put in solitary confinement and put to work sowing mailbags in their cells.

 

Art took part in the 1917 Hunger Strike in Mountjoy Gaol during which Thomas Ashe died from forcible feeding. Throughout the War of Independence Art also served terms of imprisonment in Belfast, Cork and Dundalk as well as several English gaols.

 

Marsh headed for the Peacock. As he passed the Abbey, he was mulling this new information around in his head. “Clare,” he thought, “Clare is where its at. Wasn’t it some Free Stater who said that Clare was the most lawless county of all after the Staters had taken over from the British? Then there were Quinn and O’Shaughnessy executed by the Free State British imposed government some days after the ceasefire. Maybe it was in Clare where he could get the answers about the Lincoln Prison key, the answers about the IRB split that even Galvin was unable to crack and the Stacpoole business that Dennehy spoke so eloquently about in the tenement in Essex Quay. His passion, leaving his audience agitated and angry.”

 

He had a spring in his step as he turned into the Peacock and joined the group at their usual table. A glance at the company revealed that Bates, Casey, Redican, Ructions, Timmons, Des Keane and O’Neill were in situ but no Frank O’Donnell who Marsh was looking for. He shook his head... “He’s not up in the park again?” he asked impatiently.

 

“Looks like the Duck Pond again Tommy,” said Bates.

 

“Seems that the civil rights gang in Dagenham and Islington found the measurements the last time that him and Flood took were not up to scratch.”

 

“No fucken wonder when the last time they were up there it was pitch dark at least they have daylight now,” Marsh concluded as he called a pint from Clarke.

 

“That Duck Pond can be a very dark place even in the middle of the day, Tommy,” suggested Casey.

 

“Well, maybe they’ll do it right this time but are these civil rights English fuckers not stretching things a bit. I mean what was the fellow's name...?”

 

“Casey,” said Casey, “Denis Casey I think.”

 

“Yeah. Sure, didn’t they take him out of here and only give him a few kicks!! I mean they put a cocked Uzi or something up to Frank’s head and he didn’t complain, he didn’t run off to the newspapers asking Dick Walsh to get a photo of him covered in tomato ketchup,” Marsh argued.

 

Bates examined his fingernails. “The Brits are divils for human rights.”

 

There was a burst of laughter.

 

“Its in their DNA, like imperialism,” added Colm O’Shea who had just arrived from Cork to give a lecture later on with a Mr Barrett on Waterloo Road on the concept of ‘Nothing’. “I mean even when they had sort of leftie governments like with Attlee they still couldn’t stop shoving bayonets up peoples’ arses in Malaya and around there, and then Wilson the darling of the left, was doing everything he could to undermine the Allende democratically elected government in Chile not to mention Comrade Blair taking part in the deaths of a million people to topple the secular government in Iraq. Somebody once said, Dyas, I think, that they’ll only lose their addiction to imperialism when there is no such entity as Britain.”

 

“Fucking bang on Colm but I doubt if the other two will be rushing back as they’re both big into nature I think,” said Redican. “He might be checking out the insects because only last week he was saying in here at this very table that the insect population was in dangerous decline not that I’d give a fuck about horseflies, but you know pollination and all that…”

 

“Something dipteral,” said Bates.

 

“What?”

 

“The horse fly.”

 

“As in diphtheria? Is that from horseflies?”

 

“No. That’s a bacteria. Corynebacterium diphtheria,” confirmed Bates, “I only know the name Tommy because...”

 

“I didn’t fucken ask.”

 

“Yeah well. The birds and the bees are all busy in the afternoon. Entomology! He’s big into nature alright, especially if its wearing a miniskirt. But you’re right about the horseflies Martin, you don’t even feel the fuckers landing on yeh until they’re drinking your blood. At least Ructions would ask before he started drinking your wages.”

 

“Wouldn’t like to be waiting for you to call,” retorted Ructions.

 

“Remember the fella who came in the door here and got a fucking unmerciful coughing fit Jimmy,” Des Keane shouted to Clarke behind the bar.

 

“That’s right. An all youse fuckers laughing at him instead of giving him a clap on the back and the man after swallowing a moth or something.”

 

“I love the dragonflies,” announced Ructions. “You get them in the late summer like little helicopters over ponds.”

 

“And they can screw in mid-air,” claimed O’Neill. “Can we be of any help Tommy? I mean maybe Frank wants to get out of buying a round…”

 

“Maybe he’s avoiding Ructions,” suggested a mirthful Joe Edwards who had just joined the speculative company. He was looking like a real gentleman in a nice gabardine overcoat.

 

Timmons looked admiringly at the coat. “Spratt won’t know you in that Joe.”

 

Marsh turned to Redican. “Ah its fine. Just a place I wanted to ask about. I’m a bit curious after the Dennehy talk.”

 

“It would have contained more flux and flow if he had delivered it in the afternoon. You know Tommy that Joyce believed that the brain was more alert, precise and at its busiest in the afternoon,” Bates announced as he crackled his knuckles while Ructions shook his head in disapproval because the sound reminded him of breaking bones.

 

“I see,” Marsh drawled. He had taught himself to let a lot of what Bates said about Joyce go in one ear and out the other while giving the impression that he was listening to every syllable with profound and imperturbable attention.

 

“I’m really sorry to have missed that talk all the same,” Bates remarked.

 

“Nothing you could have added to the horror,” said Marsh.

 

“I could have given them something to measure their outrage against.”

 

“Like what?” asked Ructions.

 

Bates swallowed a mouthful from his pint glass as Plopps squelched his way to his usual spot at the counter. “Well say if you go back two hundred years and more to the aftermath of the Munster Plantation and you have the picture from Spenser, the fucking genocide supporting poet you know you get the bits from him like: “At this period it was commonly said, that the lowing of a cow, or the whistle of the ploughboy, could scarcely be heard from Dun-Caoin to Cashel in Munster,” or “Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts, crying out of their graves: they did eat of the dead carrions, happy were they if they could find them, yea, and one another soon after.....”  

 

“Jesus!!” groaned Davis for he had not heard this before.

 

“And as regards the North,” Timmons added, “Have youse noticed how the establishment hacks, especially the Fine Gaelers try to portray the Provo war as an aberration when in fact its the Northern Ireland sectarian statelet that is the aberration!”

 

Bates ran his fingers through his hair. “A lot of people think of Ireland especially hundreds of years before the 1840’s Starvation as sort of always been like that but in between the invasions and the attempted genocides there is a more mellifluous tale.”

 

“Ernie is right for once in his paltry fucking life,” agreed O’Neill, “there is a sort of mindset, for those who bother their arse to think about the thing, that it wasn’t the British who fucked up the country but the Irish themselves, that we are a kind of fucked up race, that we need to be looked after and this outlook is surreptitiously promoted by our own establishment, the liars and chancers we elect who we pay jernormous salaries and pensions to care for us and whose way of fucking paying us back is to privatise everything so they don’t have to bother their arse looking after it and maybe as a double bonus they can get a backhander and well paid jobs for all their relations which now means we pay exorbitant amounts like for our health or rent or heat or refuse and this fits in cosily with the globalisation gang, who our crowd are members of anyway and all these, many of them not even elected, cheerleaders and war mongers for NATO and Goldman Sachs who want a nationless corporation in which everyone can break their sumptuous bollicks racing to the bottom, not unlike Spenser’s half ghosts.”

 

“Sometimes you surprise even me Charlie,” acknowledged Casey. “Actually, Galvin did send in a report that Charlie Haughey warned John Major about growing powers for the European Parliament shits.”

 

 Bates began rummaging through a haphazard bundle of papers he had dragged from the inside pocket of his long grey overcoat. He eventually settled for two sheets and gave a satisfied grunt. “This is from the Dublin Review March 1845 just at the onset of the Starvation as it transpired. It was republished by Jack Lane. It goes: “A priest member of Rinuccini’s party (though probably not Massari) wrote accounts of his visit and there is a letter of his to Rinuccini’s brother in Florence 1645 and because of the date these comments are likely to be based on what he saw and experienced in the Cork/Kerry area. He wrote: ‘The courtesy of the poor people among whom my Lord the Nuncio took up his quarters was unexampled. A fat bullock, two sheep, and a porker, were instantly slaughtered, and an immense supply of beer, butter and milk, was brought to him, and even we, who were still on board, experienced the kindness of the poor fishermen, who sent us presents of excellent fish and oysters of the most prodigious size in most abundance.

 

While we were crossing along in the frigate, in the track of the Nuncio, I observed a harbour about half a mile in length, and a pistol shot in breath, so very beautiful, that curiosity led me to take the boat and go onshore, for the purpose of examining the wonders of the place. In a short time, I was surrounded by an immense multitude of men, women and boys, who had come running down from different places in the mountains to see me and some of them happening to observe the crucifix which I wore on my breast, they all made a circle around me, and kissed it one after another.

 

After this, they made signs of the greatest affection and friendship to me and conducted me, almost perforce, to one of the nearest huts, where I was seated on a cushion stiffed with feathers, and the mistress of the house, a venerable lady, sat down beside me along with her daughters and offered to kiss me, according to the usage of the country, and had I not explained by signs, that it would not be becoming in one who bore Christ crucified on his breast, and who accompanied the Nuncio as priest, I think they would have been offended. The lady then brought me a wooden vessel, a great draught of the most delicious milk, expressing the utmost anxiety that I should drink it. As it was of the most excellent flavour, I drank copiously of it, and was quite revived by the draught. They all endeavoured to stand as close as possible, and those who were able to touch me, considered themselves happy, so that it was with difficulty I could disengage from them, in order to return to the frigate, on the contrary they wished to escort to the water edge and some of the young men wished to accompany me altogether. What is most remarkable, is, that in these wild and mountainous places, and among a poor people who are reduced to absolute misery, by the devastations of the heretic enemy, I found notwithstanding, the noble influence of our Holy Catholic faith, for there was not one man, woman or child, however small, who could not repeat the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Creed and the Commandments of the Holy Church.

 

The country, through which we passed, though mountainous, is agreeable and been entirely pasture- land, is most abundantly stocked with cattle of every kind. Occasionally one meets a long tract of valley, interspersed with woods and groves, which, as they are neither high nor densely planted, partake more of the agreeable than the gloomy. For seventy miles the country which we met was almost all of this character, but having once crossed the mountains, we entered upon an immense plain, occasionally diversified with hills and valleys, highly cultivated, and enriched with an infinite number of cattle, especially oxen and sheep, from the latter of which is obtained the very finest of what is called English wool....

 

The men are fine-looking and of incredible strength, swift runners and ready to bear every kind of hardship with cheerfulness. They are all trained in arms, especially now that they are at war. Those who apply themselves to letters are very learned, and you meet persons of every profession and science among them.

 

The women are distinguished by their grace and beauty, and they are as modest as they are lovely. Their manners are marked by their extreme simplicity, and they mix freely in conversations on all occasions without suspicion or jealousy. Their dress differs from ours and is somewhat like the French. They also wear cloaks reaching to their heels and tufted locks of hair, and they go without and headdress, content with linen bands bound up in the Greek fashion, which display their natural beauty to much advantage. Their families are very large. Some bear as many as thirty children; all living, not a few have fifteen or twenty, and all these children are handsome, tall and strong, the majority been fair-haired, white-skinned and red- complexioned. They give most abundant entertainments both of flesh and fish for they have both in great abundance. They are constantly pledging healths, the usual drinks being Spanish wines, French claret, most delicious beers and most excellent milk. Butter is used abundantly on all occasions with all kinds of food and there is no species of provisions which is not found in great abundance. As yet we have all accommodated ourselves to the usages of the country.

 

There is also plenty of fruit- apples, pears, plums and artichokes. All eatables are cheap. A fat ox sixteen shillings (a pistol) a sheep fifteen pence (thirty bajocchi) a pair of capons, or fowls five pence (a paul) eggs a farthing each, and other things in proportion. A good size fish costs a penny (soldo) and they don’t worry about selling game. They kill birds almost with sticks and especially thrushes, blackbirds and chaffinches. Both salt and freshwater fish are cheap, abundant and of excellent flavour and for three pauls we bought one hundred and fifty pounds of excellent fish; as pike, salmon, herring, trout and all of excellent quality. We got a thousand pilchards and oysters for twenty-five bajocchi.

 

The horses are numerous, strong, well-built and swift. For five pounds (twenty crowns) you can buy a nag which in Italy could not be got for a hundred gold pieces.’ ”

 

“No mention of spuds in that,” said Keane breaking the stunned silence.

 

“And while yer man was writing that account another devastation was in progress, well fuck me,” said Marsh.

 

Despite the mother and father of a hang-over Marsh was up earlyish the next morning. The sun was threatening a thin cloud blanket and the birds were cheering it on in the Drimnagh environs. His mother had a substantial fry waiting for him in the small, neat kitchen. It was something she always dutifully rustled up whenever he had let her know that he had to go down the country to do some business of national importance and he had informed her of that the night before. She had deciphered this on Marsh’s third attempt at the Queen’s English and after her twice shouting at him not to stand on Joey the jackdaw.

 

He had answered his mother’s call looking like a corpse at the bottom of the stairs. Now after a delicate beginning, allowing each morsel of well-chewed food find its way in its own time into his stomach or wherever it went he was more adventurist, more savage and the colour had returned to his face.

 

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.... kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly,” he said with a laugh, “that’s Ulysses, did you ever read it?”

 

“1 know right well what it is and you know right well that I never read it but you’d be much better off sitting down by the fire here and reading it than all this running around the country so you would.”

 

“Moral turpitude Mother, and Ireland on a precipice!!”

 

“You want to be careful its not yourself that’s on a precipice, I saw two of them down the road in a car yesterday watching here.”

 

“Probably watching Byrnes.”

 

“Mr Byrne the pensioner who can barely walk. I doubt it very much.”

 

“But we don’t know his history mother, I mean yonks back he could have been a sheep......”

 

“Don’t you say another word? The man is never out of the church.”

 

Marsh laughed. “Maybe he’s stealing the church candles and selling them to the people the ESB cut off for non-payment.”

 

After giving Joey, the jackdaw, a small bit of sausage he went out onto the road and checked that it was clear of special branch surveillance. “Maybe the two fuckers are camped outside Frank Keane’s house today,” he thought with a grin. Then he put a flask of boiling water, some sausage sandwiches, and something wrapped in a cloth into the container behind the motorbike seat. Finally, he donned the full-length sheepskin jacket, jammed his trilby onto his head, threw his left leg over the bike and headed for the Naas Road in a hit-and-miss string of mechanical explosions.

 

Even though the traffic on the dual carriageway was light there was the usual crawl through the town of Naas. As he reached the Moore Abbey side entrance at Monasterevin, he opened the throttle full and rattled through the town without glancing to his left or right. He pulled the bike into the left side of the road and dismounted at Boland’s pub near Ballybrittis.

 

A young dark-haired woman was behind the counter. Marsh reckoned that she was in her mid-twenties. She stood back from the counter, her left hand dug into the pocket of a deep blue dress. He asked her if a cup of Bovril was a possibility and a ham sandwich as an inviting tang of the night before tobacco wafted over him. She nodded with a smile. He leaned over the solid wooden counter which was in keeping with the pub’s traditional ambience and glanced at her legs as she turned around. He considered them elegant. A slight splutter escaped his lips and the woman turned and stared at him. Marsh shook his head.

 

“Couldn’t help laughing saying that Miss,” he apologised, “it’s just an imbecilic thought of a big farmer walking in and asking for a ‘hang sangwich’ entered me head.”

 

The woman gave a titter, “Yes, that’s what a lot of them say alright. Have you come from Naas or…?”

 

“Clongowes,” Marsh lied, “by the way Tommy is my name. I’m taking a message from the authorities in Clongowes to the Jesuits in Mungret,” he added, not having a clue why he said so except that it might be a peripheral thought which surfaced from the mire of his brain because he was in the vicinity of where he had, not long before, met the group of cycling Jesuits.

 

“Oh, are you a priest Father?”

 

Marsh laughed “Not really just God’s messenger.”

 

“I never knew that there was such a thing.”

 

“Ah sure I take messages from all over, all kinds of messages, long messages, short messages, messages from the here and now and messages from the beyond, messages of happiness and messages of sadness, messages from the minima and messages from the maxima, messages of arrival and messages of departure, messages of hope, messages of despair, messages of forgiveness, messages of retribution, messages from the womb, messages from the tomb, good messages from days of great recall, bad messages from day’s best forgotten, messages of life, messages of death, messages from the Bishop’s palace in Dublin, messages from the Jesuits. Sure, don’t be talking, its all in a day’s work. There was a famous Jesuit who lived down the road once, did you know that?”

 

“I’m afraid its over my head, it seems to be a very responsible job though,” said the woman who said her name was Ann.

 

“Its over my head too and it is a responsible job. If you were to dwell too much on it you’d end up in a nut house. Ah yeah, sometimes I have to take very responsible decisions. Onerous decisions.”

 

The woman put out a thick ham sandwich on a plate and a steaming cup of Bovril. “I think I did hear about that famous priest....”

 

“Thanks. Oh yes, Gerard Manly Hopkins. A great poet indeed many consider him to be the founder of modern poetry. He was into sprung rhythm and that…”

 

The woman gave him a sheepish look. “Tommy. You’re trying to trick me I think.”

 

“Trick you, how?”

 

Marsh noticed the woman blush slightly as she sort of whispered, “sprung rhythm….”

 

Marsh laughed. “Ah no I know what you’re thinking but that’s just a poetry term to do with the structure of a poem like say iambic pentameter.”

 

“I’m afraid that’s above my head.”

 

“Well here’s a bit of one of his that’s not above yer head and I can’t say I have it accurate but the end of it goes something like ‘what would the world be once bereft of wind and of wilderness, O! let them be left, let them be left, long live the weeds and the wilderness yet....’”

 

“That is nice. A homage to nature.”

 

Marsh nodded. “Yeah. Anti-weed killer. Yeh needs weeds an’ briars an’ nettles and...”

 

“For the butterflies and that...”

 

“Or for a man to hide behind.”

 

She laughed and said gingerly “To go to the toilet?”

 

“Maybe that. Maybe to kill a man.”

 

Her eyes narrowed. “When my father was very young he knew a man who was killed like that near here.”

 

“That’s correct. Syl Sheppard was his name. He was from Monasterevin and he and another man were killed near Castledermot.”

 

She stood back in surprise as Marsh munched into the sandwich. “Was he related to you?”

 

“Nope,” he said after swallowing. “Never knew him but to answer what yer thinking...I read a lot of history. That’s how I know.”

 

“I see. I think it was the time of the civil war,”   

 

“That’s what some people call it.”

 

She pulled up a tall stool and sat on the inside of the counter. Leaning forward she asked, “And what do you call it?”

 

Marsh took another mouthful of Bovril. “I’d say,” he said thoughtfully, “that Syl Sheppard was killed while continuing the War of Independence against the British-imposed mercenary army led by Michael Collins.”

 

“But he is a hero to a lot of people who would....”

 

“He is but his own people did him in. They were waiting behind the rocks, in the wind above the road whispering ‘keep coming Mickeen, keep coming, atta boy’ then blamm! Blam! Jesus! Mick shouted to the driver of the armoured car....... “what da fuck?”

 

Ann watched with a mixture of curiosity and surprise as Marsh jumped off the stool and crouched behind the counter pretending he was Collins. “Stay in the car Mickeen now you know you have a good sup on yuh I told yuh not to finish the last one and yuh wouldn’t fucking listen, come back here Mickeen, that's the driver.”

 

Marsh ran up and down in a semi-crouch with one hand holding an imaginary revolver pointing upwards. “Come out yis republican shites yis think yis can take me on in my own county and disturb the peace, show yereselves yis cowardly shits and I’ll box the nackers ears of yis....Tell him Emmet tell him to get back in the car an he full a drink....Don’t do this to me now Mickeen and God blessus an saveus and you seeing double double of everything with yer belly full of drink......agggghhhhh.”

 

Marsh stretched himself out on the floor. The woman leaned over the counter and stared down at the prostrate figure. “Get up Tommy, if the boss walks in he won’t be too pleased to see someone footless after a cup of Bovril that I made. I think you would be an absorbing but disrespectful teacher of history,” she said with a laugh.

 

Grinning, he picked himself up. He took off the sheepskin and gave is a vigorous shake outside. Ann emptied and refilled his flask with fresh boiling water. When he finished the Bovril he thanked her and said that if she ever came to Dublin she wouldn’t go too far astray by heading straight for the Peacock bar and lounge where the barman and gaffer, Jimmy Clark, would point out any number of presentable young men who she would have no qualms in bringing home and introducing to her mother.

 

 Going through Portlaoise Marsh’s head with the trilby pulled low on the forehead almost disappeared into the sheepskin. He was wary as the town was full of screws and he was known to many of them because of his visits to the prisoners in the high-security prison as they passed through from time to time like Casey, Murray, O’Shea, O’Neill and O’Donnell. A well-built figure walking smartly with his chest prominent near the Garda station reminded him of the prison chief Harbinger but he couldn’t be sure. He laughed to himself thinking of the account he had heard in the Peacock when Bates and others confronted the bristling chief in the local church grounds after Mass one Sunday morning during the Portlaoise Prisoners’ Union campaign.

 

After passing through the town of Roscrea and the village of Mountrath Marsh pulled into a council parking and picnic spot just outside Toomevara.

 

 It was almost two o’clock when he made a cup of tea using the flask top and unwrapped the sausage sandwiches on one of the four cement tables and seats provided. He was the only picnicker there. Suddenly he made a dash to the small square cement building which housed both male and female toilet facilities depending on which entrance was used. He liked to get in and out of a public toilet when business was slack as he felt uneasy the way some fellows gave the impression that they were trying to peep down at another fellow’s cock in the act of taking a piss while pretending they were looking at the ceiling.

 

He noticed messages, written with ink markers on the bare walls. “Phone Mary specialist in blow jobs after 5 pm.”  “Jean until the crack of dawn nothing ruled out.”  “Tumbling Bridie unmatched prices open all hours.” Phone numbers were given for all the notices. He wondered about their authenticity. Some perhaps, pranksters, giving the phone number of the local Legion of Mary, holy Mary. Others, maybe vengeful farewells to broken relationships.

 

Monto crossed his mind as he bit into the sandwich. Might have been one of the few red light districts which was run by the Madams themselves. The paying customers getting and enjoying who began it from Betty Cooper, May Oblong, Fresh Nelly, Mrs Mack, Bella Cohen and others who had lead pipes for protection in case of trouble.

 

No protection though against the Catholic vigilantes and baton-wielding gardai who invaded the area on March 12th 1925. Backed up they were by the former secretary to Michael Collins, Frank Duff, whose Legion of Mary ladies rosaried around pinning holy pictures on the brothel doors while the redundant whores looked on. Marsh wondered who held the high moral ground!

 

After demolishing one of the sandwiches he re-wrapped the other for later and lit a cigarette. With his back to the Limerick road, he could see across the fields the tips of what he presumed were the Silvermines Mountains. Somewhere to his left a cock crowed out announcing its importance to whatever clucking hen might be interested. “I thought those fuckers only crowed at dawn” he muttered to himself “this must be some lazy bastard or there again he could have been riding into the early hours,” he guessed with a smirk.

 

He inhaled deeply sucking in the clean air and promised himself to take more time away from the filth and grime of Dublin and the falling down houses that Dennehy and others were campaigning against, not to mention the noise from the endless traffic spewing out whatever the fumes were that they spewed out along with the chimney soot and other obnoxious effluvium and odours, whiffs, ghastly stench, putrefying vapours and bacterial decomposition of the near million inhabitants going around their normal business. In his meticulous mind, he wondered what percentage of those walking around the streets washed regularly if at all. He thought about them lying at night in their rancid rooms between soiled sheets speckled with stale, shedded skin, copulating, sweating, farting, touching, feeling, scratching, and poking every possible bodily orifice of their own and of any other. Then they pile out in morning time in their unwashed clothes, more farting and perhaps shitting before cramming themselves into a bus jammed with steaming snifflers and coughers who are staring out the closed windows envying the pedestrians and cyclists who appear to have a tincture of freedom. After that, it’s a routine of exchanging coins, caressing door handles, shaking of hands, passing sheets of office material and licking stamps for letters that have been handled and contaminated by the whole filth of humanity. The office world that is, more deadly by far than the factory environment.

 

Marsh thought about the other half or whatever percentage they were of the city population. The scrubbers. Every hygienic one of them messaging and shampooing their soapy bodies in their power showers while they sang ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’ at the top of their voices. Then they coax their noses with precious scents and leave their perfumed spic and span houses to intermingle with the other unwashed, walking germ pits who enthusiastically shake their hands and…Marsh smiled and smiled again when it occurred to him that at the end of the working day they are all together drinking in smoke-filled pubs from glasses that are handed over the counters by people whose hands are…..who knows….. or they are eating in restaurants food that is cooked in kitchens by people who…. may or may not!

 

He stared at some birds, maybe larks, which twittered and chirruped high up in the cloud-streaked sky. A sign of good weather as he remembered someone saying, maybe the Mayo man, that the larks or was it something else followed the flies and that the flies were only high because they were following God knows what which obviously flew high for some other reason when good weather was around. He swatted at a wasp, a cold weather survivor if it was a wasp and not something like a warble fly, which appeared to have fallen in love with the tip of his nose. A minor rural inconvenience perhaps but then one could get buzzed by a wasp in the middle of O’Connell Street.

 

 He recalled the dapper Davis who only a year or so ago almost danced into Peter’s pub to meet members of the Behan family about an artistic commission. He had only sat down when a wasp, which may have followed him up South William Street, got too close to his face for comfort. He lashed out, the effort causing him to lose his balance on the low stool and in trying to redeem the situation he pulled over a whole table full of drinks while the involuntary movement of one leg nearly took the face-off Kathleen, the mother of all the Behans, and of the swearing Rory Furlong who was sitting beside her. Meanwhile, the wasp took off out the open door and back into South William Street presumably blissfully unaware of the carnage it had left in its wake and probably not giving a flying fuck anyway.

 

A car, which Marsh would call a banger, skidded slightly as it pulled up. Three fellows about his own age got out and headed for the toilet. A bit on the shabby side was a first impression. The car radio continued to blare out heavy metal music not something Marsh was especially into. Soon after they emerged and approached Marsh.

 

“How’s the fella then?”

 

“Fine.”

 

“D’yah have a smoke by any chance?”

 

Marsh passed the cigarette packet around. One was a non-smoker. Their names, they said, were John, Raymond and Vincent. Marsh gave his name as Lambert Simnal. Raymond who had a reddish, freckly face to go with his hair wondered where somebody could be from with a handle like that. Marsh explained that his people going back were religious, bishops and that but that he was an ordinary Dublin lad. They said they were on their way to visit friends in Limerick and Marsh said that he was on his way to Kerry.

 

“Jeeesus! Kerry. That’s a fucking long way,” said John stroking his short black beard.

 

“Its a stretch alright,” agreed Marsh.

 

Vincent guffawed. “Kerry!!! Sure you’re talking about another fucking world and language.”

 

“You could say that,” Marsh agreed again.

 

“You know those bishop relations of yours...?” asked Raymond

 

“They’re all dead like... I never actually met them.”

 

“Well, that might be all the better because you could kneel down right here and pray to them,” continued Raymond.

 

Vincent shook his head. “You can’t beat the power of prayer.”

 

“So they say,” said Marsh “but what would I actually be praying for?”

 

The three laughed in unison. “Jesus he’s a comedian, lads,” said one.

 

“He’s better than Norman Wisdom,” said another.

 

“I’ll give yeh three guesses,” said Raymond who appeared to be the leader.

 

“For a good harvest.”

 

There was another bout of derisive laughter. “Try again?”

 

“For the third secret of Fatima.”

 

More laughter before Raymond called a halt. “Look at the time.” He turned to Marsh. “What you have to pray for is a new pair of legs because we need that fucking bike.”

 

“That’s fine,” said Marsh standing up. “All of me family were great walkers. Sure, me mother would walk the hind legs.... who is going to ride the bike?”

 

“Me,” said John.

 

“There’s a secret fuel switch on it I need to show you, or she’ll splutter to a stop a mile down the road...”

 

“I’m sorry ‘bout this Lambert an’ after we use it I have to burn it out you know....fucking forensics. Can’t...”

 

“Don’t even think about it John,” Marsh advised in a cringing voice. “You know my mother who tied herself to the gas cooker to nourish me always told me to be generous to people who are not so lucky in life...”

 

“A generous and wise woman,”

 

“She was a socialist John who knew nothing about the theory of surplus value or that the value of a commodity obtains independent and definite expression, by taking the form of exchange value, know what I mean?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Good,” said Marsh as he lifted up the container cover. He whipped the cloth from what he called his ‘Dan Breen’ a heavy .45 revolver and swinging round he struck John with full force across the jaw. The two at the table could hear the sound of it breaking. “Don’t even think of blinking,” he shouted to the two stupefied figures as John rolled on the ground in agony. He then went to the car, switched off the ignition and removed the keys. “That was crap music,” he shouted as he pulled onto the main Limerick Road.

 

Marsh continued on and turned down into Killaloe. He decided to avoid Limerick City as it was near there where he had the arms dump in the graveyard vault not to mention the little business of the O’Malley green Triumph motor car. He had a cup of tea and a smoke in Killaloe before heading off. He shook his head in awe as he caught views of Lough Derg before tuning westwards towards Bodyke.

 

The sun was beginning to dip in the sky as he passed through Tulla and skirted around Ennis but instead of heading for Kilrush, he took the Kildysart Road. It looked like the right road. It seemed to him, a road that had secrets. There was something intimate about it, something mysterious, and it gave him a cosy sort of feeling that he was around its bends before, and its bends were many. Something put the Keats La Belle Dame poem, which Bates often recited in the Peacock, into his head. Maybe he would find her, the spooky sybarite at the road’s end. Maybe she would lead him to her elfin grot.

 

He took a left into Labasheeda, a village he had never been in before. The long main street, the only street, with its number of pub shops was empty save for a single barking terrier. A small garda station on his left didn’t escape his notice. After he passed a substantial stone church building he came to where the road forked at the end of the village and stayed on the right going up the hill. About a mile up his attention was drawn to a sign saying Killofin graveyard. It was a small graveyard on his left which contained the ruins of an old church. He leaned the bike against the low stone wall noticing a flock of sheep in an adjoining field. It would be a good idea he told himself to run a check over the headstones and find out what would they tell him if they would tell him anything.

 

First, he reached into the Honda backpack and took out the flask and the last sandwich. The sun was going down on the brooding hills somewhere in the Kilkee direction when he stood up after flicking his cigarette butt into the ditch. His feet crunched on the gravel like the sound of walking on week-old snow as he began to move among the gravestones paying particular attention to the few old vaults. He was unaware that every move he made was been watched and studied.

 

Nuvol was a large Pyrenean sheepdog also known as the Great Pyrenee or ‘le Patou’. His role was to sit among the sheep and protect them from attacks by wolves or dogs or any harmful threat. From any distance, the snow-white coats of the fierce guard dogs made them invisible to see as they completely blended in with the sheep flock. Nuvol, majestic and always vigilant, felt the hairs of his superb white coat bristle a little as his olfactory senses were alarmed by the most unusual scent which reminded him of a slaughterhouse. He watched the source, a figure, which seemed to be disguised as a sheep, mooch around the graveyard. In his time with the Clare flock, he had chased off the odd stray mongrel intruder but he had not come across this kind of carry-on before. The thing, for he could not be certain what it was, sometimes crouched down as if it was hiding and then it would stand straight up again on two legs and move to another place. Then it would go on all fours again and hide. Hiding, Nuvol thought, was a futile exercise for he could smell it from miles away and he wondered what the hell it ate. Nuvol looked around just in case the malign presence was acting as a decoy for another, then he realized that the pungent scent which disgusted him would give the game away on any intruder of that kind. He would pick it out before it reached the fork in the road.

 

Marsh had covered a lot of the old memorial stones that lay flat on the graves. On many, the inscriptions were so faded that they were difficult to decipher. He was about to leave when he came across this vault that was in a state of disrepair near the graveyard perimeter. He got down on all fours and his eyes widened. Stacpoole, the name and here it was. He felt inspired.

 

 

 

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Nuvol on Guard

 

Nuvol had never seen this kind of foreboding behaviour before. It was as if the thing was trying to play some devious game of hide-and-seek which was a cover for something unscrupulous. Nuvol had played that game with his brothers and sisters but only when they were pups. This thing was no pup and all Nuvol knew from his training days was that when you were unsure, you had no choice but to go into full attack mode.

 

Nuvol came over the small wall like a growling rocket. He went straight for the tail less rear of the thing that was hunkered down near the wall. They both rolled over as the thing, for a second was gripped with indescribable confusion and made some loud, high-pitched noises which he couldn’t make head nor tail of. The struggle was furious and relentless. The thing grabbed him with its front paws which had long claws. It gripped his neck like steel so that, try as he might, he failed to get his jaws into the thing’s strange face as it stared at him with cavernous eyes. Now up on two legs, the thing was furiously using its back paws and repeatedly tried to kick him into the balls and the solar plexus as it held him by the ears. Nuvol was also forced up on two legs. They both spun round and round as if they were doing some crazy dance while in a feverish embrace. He got a bite into the shoulder area and tore a bit of furry skin away. After what seemed an age the thing broke free. The thing circled around a gravestone dedicated to some long-dead members of a family of Keanes. It stared at Nuvol with an expression of mortal hatred on its face. Suddenly it bent down, and picking up a fist-size stone it sprung onto a low vault and fired the stone at Nuvol with full force. Nuvol, on the lower ground, ducked and thrust himself onto the vault and lunged at the interloper a second time.

 

They both hugged and danced on top of the vault or at least that is what a passer-bye on the road would have thought. Marsh fed his left arm into Nuvol’s jaws as his right hand searched feverishly for his lighter in his coat pocket. He pulled it out and leaned in against Nuvol’s hairy chest, his hand furiously flicking the flint wheel. First, there was a smell of singeing hair which was quickly followed by flames. They both split apart. A flaming Nuvol scattered the sheep flock as he tore across the field to the water trough nearby. Marsh fled at full speed through the graveyard giving Nuvol a withering look. Nuvol hit the water trough and almost instantly, doused and fireproofed, took off back over the graveyard after the galloping Marsh who reached the road seconds before Nuvol. Le Patou uttered a few triumphant barks as he danced around the graveyard, lifting his hind leg in thundering jubilation and spraying every spot where he detected Marsh’s scent. He was trained not to chase any prey, even one that seemed to be covered in a tattered wolf skin too far from the field because that would leave the flock unguarded and in danger, especially in this desolate place.

 

The unprovoked attack left Marsh badly shaken. His mouth was parched and cracked as in a drought. And worse, he realised that his two front false teeth were missing. These were an expensive replacement for his real teeth which were lost after a number of baton charges at the Easter 1966 commemoration when the flag which was carried across town by the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, was deemed illegal. His head was in a spin. It seemed like some kind of mad sheep had gone completely berserk and before he knew it he felt a lancinating pain shoot from his arse to his brain. All he had noticed when he stopped at the graveyard was a flock of sheep in a field and he gave them no more than a passing glance, no more then a flock of sheep would get from anyone. He had seen hundreds of sheep up on the Featherbeds grazing peacefully and he had never heard of anyone being attacked by one and this as far as he could be sure was not even a frustrated ram.

 

Marsh, still trembling, drove gingerly through the village and turned left. He headed up the hill and after a number of twists and turns which involved negotiating some deep-looking potholes he pulled up outside a single-storey establishment called ‘The Pub’ which appeared to be in the middle of nowhere.

 

 

 

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THE PUB

 

The sallow-faced proprietor, unknown to Marsh and to the comings and goings of the handful of the weary plethora of nomadic strangers who happened to cross the shabby but beguiling threshold, was a sturdily built man of about fifty years of age. His fine head of black hair was firmly Brylcreem down as if the top tradesman in the area had given it a professional plastering using pitch. Behind the counter, he had a large notebook and in this, he surreptitiously scribbled down every lewd remark, every word he heard from the unsuspecting habitués that may have had some literal connection to other words which suggested something that might hint of an unusual sexual imponderable as he was hoping to write, under an assumed name, the world’s greatest bonkbuster. The money from this best-seller, which would leave Harold Robbins open-mouthed and which he planned to call ‘The Philandering Rambling of the Rampant Male Member’ was going to modernise the drinking den after the completion of an underground bunker.

 

It was the Cuban missile crisis some years earlier which had set him down this path. As a result, he had convinced himself that the cold war could become white hot at any moment. Sometimes after he had a sup and a sup on top of that sup taken he would look up to the smoke-stained rafters and say in a sorrowful voice a bit like an old priest at a funeral, “If they drop the automatic bomb we’ll all be doomed unless we build a bunker.”

 

The construction of an underground bunker that could survive a nuclear attack was deemed by all to be a mighty idea. Even Red Bennie, the lone communist who held that it would be Johnson and not Brezhnev who would fire the first missile was sympathetic to the proposal. Money was the problem. Was it ever otherwise?

 

One evening there was a GAA training stint in the local field. Among the usual small swarms of flying things, there was only Beatrice and Mac the owner in the pub. Mac was feeling amorous and trying to convince Beatrice, who had a bit of a reputation, to let him have her on the long wooden seat beneath the ring board.

 

“Yeh want to fuck me on that narrow thing and me to fall off it an break me arse! Are yeh drunk or what.  And if Father Turlough was to walk in, what would you say you were doing…giving me spiritual erection is that it?”

 

“You know Father Turlough is up in the football field,” he laughed, “in case anyone needs the last rites. Hop up with you on the counter then

Beatrice. The training won’t be over sure it’ll be a while yet don’t yuh know.”

 

“You have your wuss Mac and that counter not cleaned since your father was laid out on it,” laughed Beatrice as she tried to rescue a lone fly which was caught in a spider’s web in a corner of the grimy front window.

 

“Please Beatrice, c’mere an I’ll tell you a secret.”

 

“A secret! What kind of secret would you know that I don’t already know?”

 

“A secret about where the money for the bunker is going to come from Beatrice,” he said in a low trembling voice as he leaned across the wooden counter.

 

Beatrice pulled back and laughed. “We all know Mac that the bunker is only a dream an like all dreams when you wake up they go with the wind….”

 

“Its not Beatrice,” pleaded Mac, “the money is coming from a book I’m writing, a fucking best seller that’ll…”

 

Before he could say anymore there was a commotion outside the door and within seconds the pub was full of excited figures. Eventually, the crestfallen Mac learned that the car battery makeshift lights had failed and in the failing light, two players collided at full speed, argy-bargy followed, the trainer got jostled and the session was abandoned.

 

After some semblance of order was restored to the dispute as to who was to blame Beatrice called for buckets of hush. She then told the curious gathering that Mac was writing a best-selling book to pay for the bunker. The announcement was greeted with wonder and astonishment.

 

“That beats the fucking barney, that does!” exclaimed Long John the village poet who had a pale emaciated face and a boring personality.

 

“Fair fucking play,” shouted Eddie whose long dark hair and combat jacket gave him a Che Guevara tinge. “Sure, isn’t that publican in Kerry chancing his arm with saaaaaad shite why can’t we have Mac from Clare putting some real juice into literature.”