The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry Page B

hill, has done nonetheless great altering in the hearts and minds of the townspeople. And if it isn’t that, it’s the worsening state of money matters cited, and true enough men are being let go everywhere in the country, not just Sligo, and wise people are pulling in their feet so the elephant of poverty won’t crush them. Even the Protestant businesses won’t touch him, which he tries in the last resort. Not that they would have been likely to employ him in the first place, inclined as they were, and rightly, to see to their own. Yet, having sailed about for the sake of France, though a little uselessly, is he not a hero of sorts? A servant of the King? A trustworthy man? No. He wonders what fear it is or weather that has changed everything so. It is that to-do in Dublin and its aftermath no doubt. And maybe he gets a grasp now of why Jonno Lynch calls him an eejit. There’s a lot of slip and tug and pulling of tidal waters that he can’t make out the pattern of. Not for want of banging his head against all the new stone walls of Sligo.
    Even his Pappy is beyond helping him and seemingly has no connection or debt due in the town that would jimmy up a job for him. Oh, this is all a tremendous shock for Eneas, to be this buffeted figure. His quiet nature is all blown about, all windy and ragged.
    The carefree mood as he bade farewell to Bull Mottram is no more. Now the days are heavy and bare and dangerous to him. Maybe he exaggerates the rejection of the townspeople, maybe everyone now has their troubles, but, his blood withers, his heart shrinks, his step on the rainy granite of the pavement shortens. And he feels afraid just as he used to as a little boy, half in the hands of sleep, the visages of old demons leering and looming at him.
    But in the end it’s his Pappy after all that has the remedy. Old Tom has been working the last while in the asylum, to the exclusion of his band work. He’d rather be raising the rafters in the hotel in Bundoran where formerly he excited the visitors. It’s been an atrocious summer for holidaying and little call has there been for music. But, a lad belonging to the under-surgeon in the asylum has just gone into the peelers, only back himself from Flanders. He’s a silent boy and a ruined one maybe by the ferocity of that war, but the peelers take him readily enough.
    Eneas looks at it all with simple eyes and having no desire to loiter the rest of his days, joins at the hint of his Pappy the Royal Irish Constabulary. He’s not the complete eejit as Jonno may believe, he’s not the last innocent on earth. He knows why there are places in the peelers when there are places nowhere else. The RIC is composed no doubt of lost men, ordinary fellas from the back farms of Ireland, fools and flotsam and youngsters without an ounce of sense or understanding. And the legends of the RIC are all evictions, murders and the like, though many an Irish family was reared on those wages, and many a peeler was a straightforward decent man. Still, the word Royal is there before all, and they carry arms, and the top men are all out-and-out Castle men. But no matter. He can’t live a life to please Jonno Lynch, much as his heart is grateful for the adventures of his youth. Or he would lead a life to please Jonno Lynch if Jonno still had a gra for him, a friendly love for him. But he does not, clearly. And a fella must work, must toil in the dry vale of the world.
     
    A fresh recruit by the wisdom and mercy of headquarters in the Phoenix Park is never let serve in his own town and especially so in the new world of guerrilla war and reprisal, for a policeman is a target now, like one of those wooden ducks in the fairground going round and round on the wooden hill. Every recruited man is suspected by both sides of informing, one way or another, and a man is rendered greater innocence by being posted to an unfamiliar town. So Eneas finds himself in Athlone with the bright peaked cap and the shining