Shambles Corner. Edward Toman

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СКАЧАТЬ of interest in what he was telling him. ‘Some time I must tell you the whole story of that pair of hoors, or at least as much of it as our side of the house will ever know. But now I must go and pay my respects to the Patriot.’

      They checked on the pigs. ‘As right as rain,’ Joe declared, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. All the talking had put him in the humour for a drink. From the Patriot’s came the subdued murmur of early-morning supping. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, lifting the boy up into the tractor seat, ‘I’ll just pop in here for a moment to conduct a bit of business. Be a good man and keep an eye on the beasts. If anybody comes along showing an interest you’ll know where to find me. And don’t for the love of Jesus let any cowboy go prodding them.’ He swung open the doors of the Patriot Bar and disappeared into the noise. Frank was listening to the bells booming out the hour over the city when he became aware of another voice calling him from the pavement below: ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? Are you deaf?’ The man was short and thick-set, with arms and shoulders overdeveloped for the rest of his short frame, and dark, suspicious eyes. ‘I’m asking are yiz selling these pigs?’ Frank looked down but made no answer. The man’s face reddened and he shouted angrily, ‘Where’s your da?’ For a moment Frank made no move. Then his head turned in the direction of the public house. The man stood back and looked carefully at the building. ‘Are you sure it’s in there he is?’ He reached up and roughly pulled the boy down from his perch and dropped him on to the ground. ‘Take a run in there and tell your father that Mister Magee is outside and taking an interest in these beasts.’

      The door of the pub was stiff but Magee made no attempt to help him with it. Frank pushed it open and fell inside. It was warm and smoky, smelling of porter and whiskey and sweat. A pair of men near the door grabbed hold of him and began to fool about with him roughly, reaching for his balls and prodding him, but something told them they wouldn’t get much of a rise out of him the way they would with a proper half-wit who had wandered in off the street, or a woman in after her husband. He saw his father standing at the end of the bar and he broke away from their grasp and ran to him, tugging at his sleeve to get his attention. Joe reached down and picked him up and sat him on the bar and gave him a sip of his porter, all the while carrying on a one-sided conversation with a fat Tyrone man who was standing with his back to him. The fat man turned to look at the boy, tousled his hair roughly and asked what was the matter with him. ‘Need you ask?’ said Joe. ‘Or need I say any more than that he is a past pupil of our very own Christian Brothers?’

      ‘All the same,’ said his companion, ‘where would the country be without them? Tell me that.’

      ‘True,’ said Joe, buying the man another chaser. Frank tugged at his arm. He raised the glass to his mouth and drank slowly. ‘Sure whoever he is, can’t he wait?’ He lifted the whiskey glass and drank it in one swallow, following it with another swig of the black porter. ‘Now tell me this,’ he said to Frank, ‘why couldn’t he come in and fetch me out himself like a Christian? Why did he send the boy in?’ He addressed this last remark to his companion.

      ‘Never send a boy on a man’s errand,’ the other agreed.

      ‘There’s only one answer to that question,’ said Joe, once more turning to the boy on the bar. ‘I fear our friend outside digs with the other foot.’

      ‘There’s a lot of their side of the house that don’t take a drink at all,’ reasoned the Tyrone man.

      ‘There’s plenty on our own side you could say that about too. You’d see nothing but Pioneer pins round our way after the mission. But since when did that stop a man walking into a licensed premises and civilly conducting his business. Tell me that! What’s to stop him having a mineral?’

      ‘They give you fierce wind, minerals,’ said the other, easing his buttocks on the stool at the thought.

      ‘I’ll tell you what’s to stop him coming in here! The Patriot! Mine host here is a real deterrent. That’s a boy won’t be happy till he’s died for Ireland. And maybe taken a few others along with him for company.’

      The Patriot was out of earshot, sitting impassively at the far end of the bar, but the Tyrone man wasn’t taking any chances. ‘Sure isn’t there good and bad in all of us,’ he said, easing himself down from the stool and beginning to edge towards the back of the bar, nervous of the political tone creeping into the conversation.

      ‘Where the fuck are you off to,’ demanded Joe, ‘when it’s your round?’

      ‘Why don’t you run outside like a decent man and conduct your bit of business, and I’ll set them up for you the minute you come back in?’

      ‘You’ll buy a drink now,’ said Joe, his voice rising. ‘Didn’t I tell you there’s no hurry on your man outside!’

      ‘I’ll not drink with you now, if that’s the tone you’re going to adopt,’ said the other, rising to the occasion.

      ‘A typical fucking Tyrone man! Armagh men aren’t good enough for you, I suppose!’ He left Frank on the bar and pursued the man across the floor. The other drinkers went suddenly quiet. It was early in the day for this diversion. Before closing, such scenes would be two a penny, hardly worth putting your pint down for; but at this hour of the morning it was a bonus. ‘You’re nothing but a cunt,’ said Joe.

      ‘Who are you calling a cunt?’

      But here the ritual, so promisingly begun, was prematurely interrupted. Behind the bar the Patriot rose to his feet and the drinkers went back to their glasses. What had looked like a certain fixture had just been rained off. Nobody argued with the Patriot.

      Packy Hughes, the name by which he was known to the Crown Authorities, or Peacai Mac Aoidh to give him the only title to which he would now answer, or the Patriot, the name by which he was best known to both sides of the house, was a giant of a man, over six foot tall and as broad as he was long. It was not for nothing that he was called the Patriot, for no living man had suffered more for his country. As a boy he had been interned on the ship in Belfast Lough, and as a young man he had seen the inside of every prison in the country. But where others had whiled away the long lonely nights dreaming of hot meals, comforting drinks and the pleasures of the flesh, the Patriot had kept his vision intact. On the rotting hulk he had taken a vow never to cut his hair till Ireland was free. It hung now to his waist, lank, grey and greasy. On formal occasions, as when he led the march out past the cathedral to the cemetery to honour the glorious dead, he would tie it into a ponytail held in place with a rubber band. Not many men in Armagh wore ponytails. But no corner boy jeered after the Patriot as he shuffled to the head of the colour party. When they were sure he was out of earshot, the people of Irish Street would say to each other that he was a right psycho and no mistake, and thank God with a chuckle that at least he was on their side. The people of Scotch Street would say, as his silhouette passed, that he was a right psycho, and, lowering their voices, question why something hadn’t been done. It wasn’t for want of trying. His limbs still bore the scars of a dozen attacks; his barrel chest still showed the wounds where they had taken the bullets out of him. Bullets fired at a range that would have killed a normal man. But the Patriot was no normal man. A month after they had left him for dead at the back of the Martyrs Memorial, he had been back behind the bar. He had been shot, stabbed, garrotted, blown up, drowned and half hanged, and every time the Patriot had pulled through. Martyrdom had eluded him down the years.

      He had taken a second great vow when he was in the Crumlin. He had enrolled in an Irish class on the wing; in the first flush of enthusiasm he foresaw Ireland Gaelic again and the forgotten sounds of the language echoing once more through the streets СКАЧАТЬ