As Station Sergeant in Baltinglass, Stefan used every opportunity to escape from the barracks in Mill Street. He had a limited appetite for the kind of peace and quiet that kept him sitting in an office processing the mountain of paperwork that just doing nothing seemed to generate. The pleasure of being at home with his son was one thing; it was what he had fought for. But there was a lot less pleasure in the four dark walls of the front office at the Garda station. There were no detectives in Baltinglass, however, and in their absence he did his own detective work; it kept his mind from seizing up and it got him out of the station. It suited Inspector Riordan, who didn’t like detectives coming down from Naas and poking about in his domain. If his sergeant could keep them at bay so much the better. An afternoon out of the station should have been what Stefan wanted on a day like this, but he wasn’t going to enjoy the appearance he had to make on Baltinglass Hill
The Archaeology Department of UCD had been excavating the passage tombs on the upper slopes of the hill throughout the summer, and today the director of the National Museum was visiting the site. In a town where not much happened, Adolf Mahr’s arrival was a big event. Local dignitaries would be out in force. And as Inspector Riordan was in court in Naas all day, Stefan would have to represent the Gardai. His knowledge of the archaeologist’s extra-curricular activities in the Nazi Party left him with no desire to be among the enthusiastic hand-shakers, but he had no choice.
He had walked up to the site several times that summer with Tom, who had just about worked out what archaeology was and had now decided he wanted to be an archaeologist when he grew up. He had been digging holes all over the farm for the last two months and the bedroom he shared with his father was filled with rusty iron and broken crockery. Stefan didn’t want to make any more of Mahr’s visit than he had to, but once Tom got hold of the news that the most important archaeologist in Ireland was coming it was impossible to tell him he couldn’t go to the site with his father.
There were several cars parked by the lane that led up towards the summit of Baltinglass Hill, but what Stefan saw first was the motor coach. A swastika pennant fluttered on the bonnet; several more hung on the insides of the windows. Adolf Mahr hadn’t only brought his archaeological hat to West Wicklow. The German community in Ireland had its own Hitler Youth branch now and they were down on a day trip to see the dig. It was the first time Stefan had seen a swastika flying since leaving Danzig. The world of missing sheep and poached salmon suddenly felt further away. The one that filled the newspapers and the wireless was in front of him again. He took Tom’s hand. Tom grinned up at him. ‘I like their flag, don’t you, Daddy?’
At the top of Baltinglass Hill there was a wide ring of heaped stones that had once supported a great cairn over a passage grave. Three thousand years ago it would have been visible for many miles, like a pyramid. The cairn had been dismantled long ago, though its stones were to be found in the Iron Age earthworks that surrounded the hilltop and in the hundreds of field walls that spread out across the countryside below. Inside the ring were the quarried pillars and slabs of the tombs that were being mapped and scraped and dug by the students from UCD. Adolf Mahr stood in front of the wall of stones, with a dozen archaeologists on one side and a group of children and teenagers on the other. The boys wore the brown shirts and shorts of the Hitler Youth; the girls were in white blouses and dark blue skirts. A swastika flew beside an Irish tricolour. The great and good of Baltinglass looked on approvingly. Sheep grazed indifferently at the edges of the crowd. Stefan and Tom joined the onlookers. It was a long climb and they were sweating.
Stefan saw the Church of Ireland minister, the Reverend Fisher, standing with Father MacGuire; the two men were laughing. From behind they were almost indistinguishable in their black suits and black hats.
Father Carey had been gone for two months now. His bishop had been surprised to receive an abrupt note from him in May to say how concerned he was that pursuing the issue of Tom Gillespie and his Protestant father might cause divisiveness in the community at a level he had not anticipated. He had to question whether the case was good for the Church after all. The note was so unlike the single-minded, bull-headed aggression that had filled the curate’s previous letters that the bishop could hardly believe it was from the same man. Divisiveness was Anthony Carey’s stock-in-trade. He had certainly never shown the slightest regard for the Protestants in his community before. Clearly something had happened. The bishop didn’t know what and didn’t much care. He had been backed into a corner by the turbulent curate and his friends in the Association of Catholic Strength. There was an appetite for putting Protestants in their place that he was a lot less enthusiastic about than some of his younger priests. So it was with considerable relief that the bishop called the Church’s lawyers and told them to find a suitable resting place for the file on Mr Gillespie and his son. He also decided it was high time Father Carey had his own parish. He had no vacancies himself, unfortunately, but he noted that other bishops did. The curate wasn’t missed in Baltinglass. If nothing else it meant the parish priest and the Church of Ireland canon could go back to playing chess with each other on Fridays, as they always did before Father Anthony Carey’s arrival.
At the Pinnacle, on the top of Baltinglass Hill, Adolf Mahr’s voice fought the wind that always blew there, but his presence was more important than what he was there to say. He slipped from English into German and back, even though most of the German children spoke English too. The onlookers liked that. It made the half-heard words feel somehow universal.
‘Prior to the coming of megalithic civilisation, around five thousand years ago, the north and west of Europe was inhabited by isolated and primitive tribes of hunter gatherers. We don’t know how the newcomers came to Ireland, by boat from Iberia or from Britain, but it is their skill with stone that left the first marks of civilisation on our landscape. They still stand on our hillsides today, these tombs and monuments that needed sophisticated organisation, technical expertise and huge resources in manpower. Who were these people? We have no idea. These are their only memorials. We will never know the language they spoke or the gods they worshipped. As they displaced the tribes before them, so they were displaced by the next wave of invaders, who brought bronze and then iron to Ireland. We don’t know whether they were extirpated or enslaved or simply absorbed by the Celts who finally claimed this island for their own. We may feel sadness sometimes, looking at these remains, for they are wonderful things and we should cherish them, but history is unsentimental. It is like nature. It obeys similar natural laws. The strong will survive; the weak will disappear.’
The German Stefan heard wasn’t quite the same as the English. In German it was the strong race that survived and the weak race that disappeared. He didn’t applaud as Adolf Mahr concluded with a few words in Irish to thank the local community for its support. Then, unexpectedly and delightfully for everyone there, with a nod and a smile from Mahr, the German children started to sing. The music was Schubert’s, the words Goethe’s. It had been one of his grandmother’s favourite songs. ‘
There was more applause, and people moved forward to chat and shake hands all over again. Stefan had had enough. He took Tom’s hand and started to walk away. As he did the Reverend Fisher and the parish priest turned towards him. ‘Marvellous, Stefan, don’t you think?’ said the Church of Ireland minister. There were tears in his eyes. Those young voices had touched something inside him; perhaps it was the memory of his own youth. He lowered his voice. ‘There may be a lot of things we don’t like about Herr Hitler, but my goodness, there are things we could learn.’
Father MacGuire smiled. ‘Probably great craic as long as you don’t want to sing a different tune, wouldn’t you say, Sergeant?’
Stefan nodded. ‘I’d say so, Father.’
Tom was pulling at his hand. As he looked round he saw that Adolf Mahr was walking towards them, smiling at the priest and the minister. ‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen. It’s quite a climb. But worth it for the view.’ They exchanged a few words about the view and the rain that usually meant there wasn’t one, before the director of the National Museum stretched out his hand to Stefan.
‘Thank you as well, Sergeant.’
Stefan had no option but to shake his hand.
‘There’s no need to thank me, Herr Doktor Mahr.’
The polite but unsmiling look and the oddly correct German unsettled Mahr. It seemed out of place. Something about the policeman was slightly familiar. He looked down at the small boy beside him and smiled warmly.
‘Are you interested in archaeology?’
‘I know it’s where we came from.’
‘It is indeed,’ laughed the director. ‘Good boy!’
He reached out and tousled his hair. Stefan, who was holding Tom’s hand, instinctively pulled him away. It
