John McGahern - The Barracks

“Don’t be standin’ there, John. There’s a cup of tea just waiting for you,” Elizabeth urged.

She pulled out a chair and Reegan, who had been taking less and less part in the conversation, just lying in a bored stupor in the chair, laughed, “It’s not who’s first or last counts in this house. It’s to be in time for the tay. That’s what counts. And you couldn’t have timed it nicer, John!” as the ungainly old policeman sat down.

It took all the hatred that the gibe brought. Mullins laughed so tipsily that the cup rocked over and back on his saucer.

“Bejasus!” he swore. “It seems I med it on the eleventh hour, surely.”

Reegan began to tell his clash with Quirke to Brennan and Mullins, Casey forced to listen again; and the tones of violence had now taken the resonance of a constant theme repeating itself through the evening.

They listened nervously to his frustration and spleen wear itself to the end of its telling. When he finished Mullins burst out in drunken passion that, “They can’t ride roughshod over us these days. Them days are gone. They can try it on. But that’s all — bejasus!”

“You’d be surprised what they can do,” Casey argued with unusual conviction. “Things don’t change that quick. They might luk different, that’s all. But if you wance cross them they’ll get rid of you, no matter whether they can or they can’t. They’ll find ways and means, don’t worry. Who do you think the Chief Super’s goin’ to stand up for? For John Mullins or Mr. Quirke? Power, let me tell you, always stands up for power.”

“But what do I care? What the hell do I care?” Reegan shouted and it was another argument.

Examples began to be quoted, old case histories dragged up for it to end as it began — with nothing proven, no one’s convictions altered in any way, it becoming simply the brute clash of ego against ego, any care for tolerance or meaning or truth ground under their blind passion to dominate. And the one trophy they all had to carry away was a gnawing resentment of each other’s lonely and passing world.

Even that resentment went quickly as a sudden liking can when Brennan steered the antagonism to a safe stop against the boy, “What does young Willie think of all this? Will he join the Force when he grows up?”

“Not if he has any sense in his skull,” Reegan intervened. He spoke with the hotness of argument. The others were cooled and tired of it now.

“But do you think will he be the measurement?” Casey asked, preferring to ignore the challenge.

“We’ll have to put a stone on his head, that’s what we’ll have to do soon with the way he’s growin’ up on us,” Mullins said kindly and then he laughed. “But I’m afraid he’ll never be thick enough.”

“Thirty-six inches across the chest, Willie, and a yard thick with solid ignorance like the fella from Connemara; then five feet nine inches against the wall in your stockin’ feet and you’re right for the Force, Willie. All the requirements laid down by the regulations.”

The pun was a favourite that never grew worn, always bringing back to them the six months they spent training in the Depot when they were nineteen or twenty, in the first days of the Irish Free State.

The British had withdrawn. The Capital was in a fever of excitement and change. New classes were forming, blacksmiths and clerks filling the highest offices in the turn of an hour. Some who had worried how their next loaf or day might come were attending ceremonial functions. There was a brand new tricolour to wave high; a language of their own to learn; new anthems of faith-and-fatherland to beat on the drum of the multitude; but most of all, unseen and savage behind these floral screens, was the struggle for the numbered seats of power.

These police recruits walking the Phoenix Park in the evenings, or on the lighted trams that went down past Phibsboro’ to the music halls, what were their dreams? They knew that lightning promotion could come to the favoured. They saw the young girls stand to watch them from the pavements as they marched to Mass on Sunday mornings.

Now they sat and remembered, thirty years later, waiting to go to their homes in the rain.

“Some of the auld drill sergeants were a terror,” Casey comically mused as if he was enjoying bitterness itself. “Do ye remember By Garrup?”

“Ah, Jasus,” Mullins swore. “As if any mortal could forget him.…

“‘By Garrup, look at the creel of turf on Mullins’s back,’ he used roar, the auld bastard! ‘You’re not on the bog now, Mullins — By Garrup! Head to the front! Right wheel! Chests out! Ye’re not carryin’ yeer auld dyin’ grandmothers up the stairs on yeer backs now, By Garrup! Mark time! Lift the knees!’

“Oh, the auld bastard,” Mullins roared. They all joined him, loving few things better than these caricatures. The night that had hung about them like a responsibility seemed now too short, it was nearly wasted now and it seemed to be so quickly on the march.

“Do you mind Spats at the law classes,” Casey continued. “The concate of the boyo!

“A legal masterpiece, gentlemen of the jury, is the proper distribution of the proper quantity of ink on the proper number of white pages. That, gentlemen, is simply, solely and singularly the constitution of any masterpiece.”

“But wasn’t he said to be wan of the cleverest men in Ireland?” Brennan interrupted suddenly. “Wasn’t he a B.A. and a barrister?”

The interruption annoyed Casey intensely. He had been a conductor for a few months on the Dublin trams before joining the police.

“A barrister! What’s a barrister? A chancer of the first water,” he derided. “Hundreds of them are walkin’ round Dublin without a sole on their shoes. They’d hardly have even their tram fare!”

“But don’t some of them make more than £5,000 a year?”

“Yes — some of them! — many are called, James, but few are chosen, as you and I should know at this stage of our existence,” Casey quoted in such a funereal and sanctified tone that it left no doubt about what he thought of Brennan’s offering.

Brennan had been silent till then. He was a poor mimic. Neither could he sing. He had often tried, patrolling the roads alone, but catching the flat tones of his own voice he’d grow embarrassed and silent again. He envied Casey and Mullins their flow of talk, their ability to shine in company, and he did not know that those content to listen are rarest of all. He felt bored to distraction at having to sit silent for so long. He was determined to get a foothold in the conversation.

“Isn’t it strange,” he said, “that with all the men that ever went into the Depot none of them were exactly six feet?”

“That’s right,” Mullins asserted. “No man ever born was exactly six feet. It’s because Jesus Christ was exactly six feet and no man since could be the same height. That’s why it’s supposed to be!”

He had taken the words out of Brennan’s mouth, who twisted on the chair with annoyance and frustration.

“I often heard that,” Elizabeth joined, more to counteract Reegan’s bored restlessness and silence than any wish of her own to speak.

“It’s like the Blessed Virgin and Original Sin,” Brennan rushed out again and went on to quote out of the Catechism. “ The Blessed Virgin Mary by a singular privilege of grace was preserved free from original sin and that privilege is called her Immaculate Conception .”

“Six feet is the ideal height for a man,” Mullins asserted again. “Anything bigger is gettin’ too big. While anything smaller is gettin’ too small. It’s the ideal height for a man.”

“Kelly, the Boy from Killann,” said Casey, “was seven feet with some inches to spare.