Supposing somebody were to come into Biddy Burke’s and say that Frank McPhillip had been killed owing to information being given to the police? They were sure to say that. They would see him there with money in his pocket. They would suspect. …
He turned to the right, past the corner of the main road. He went twenty yards down the street and then brought his two feet together like a soldier coming to a halt on parade. He wheeled inwards, still in the same mechanical manner, towards a shop window. He stood at ease, clasping his hands behind his back in military manner. Somehow, it gave peace to his distracted thoughts, as if he had suddenly given over the responsibility of his thoughts and actions to an imaginary superior officer.
Into his resting mind pleasant memories came, distant pleasant memories like daydreams on a summer day, dreamt on the banks of a rock-strewn river, among the flowering heather. They were memories of his youth. They came to him in a strange bewildered manner, as if afraid of the dark, ferocious mind into which they came. Gypo stared at them fiercely, with bulging lips, as if they were enemies taunting him. Then gradually he softened towards them. Then a mad longing seized him for the protection of the environment of his youth, the countryside of a Tipperary village, the little farm, the big red-faced healthy peasant who was his father, his long-faced kindhearted mother, who hoped that he would become a priest.
He wrinkled up his face and looked at his youth intently. He stiffened himself, as if he were about to hurl himself by sheer force back through the intervening years, of sin and sorrow and misery, to the peace and gentleness and monotony of life, in that little village at the foot of the Galtees.
Various, intimate, foolish, little recollections crowded into his mind. He remembered goats, asses’ foals, rocks in a mountain torrent, a saying of the village smith, a glance from a girl, his first drink of wine stolen in the sacristy of the parish church while he was serving Mass. Thousands of memories came and went rapidly. They passed like soldiers before a saluting-point, some gay, some sad, some dim, some distinct and almost articulate as if they had happened a moment ago.
Suddenly he felt a wet daub coming down each cheek. He started. He was shedding tears. The horror of the act made him stare wild eyed. He swore aloud. He bared his teeth of their covering of thick lips and ground them. His youth went out like a candle that is quenched by a squall in a long passage. The grinning spectre of the present became real once more. He shut his mouth. He sighed very deeply. Putting his hands in his pockets again, he walked off at his habitual slouch, with his head hanging slightly forward, hung on the pivot of his neck like a punchball.
“I must make a plan,” he said to himself once more.
Somehow he was convinced that the Revolutionary Organization already suspected him of having given information concerning McPhillip. He felt that he was being sought for already. So he must make a plan. He must have a plausible excuse.
“If ye got a good aliby,” McPhillip used to say, “the divil himself couldn’t fasten anythin’ on ye.”
But how was he going to get an alibi for himself? He walked the whole length of the road three times irresolutely, with his eyes fixed on the ground. He was unable to think of anything. His mind kept branching off into the contemplation of silly things that had nothing at all to do with the question, the favourite for the Grand National and whether Johnny Grimes, the comedian, had drowned himself in the Canal or whether he had been murdered and then thrown in; the two main questions that were agitating the Dublin slums just then.
At one moment he decided to go to the Dunboy Lodging House, pay for a bed and go to sleep. But immediately he was terrified at this suggestion. They might know already that he had given information. Then maybe, while he was asleep, somebody would be sent into his little cell with a loaded stick to murder him in his sleep. Or they might give him “the bum’s rush,” breaking his neck silently like a rabbit’s neck. He pictured the little narrow wooden cells in the lodging house, the silence of the night, broken only by the dismal sound of snoring on all sides, an indiscriminate number of unknown people snoring loudly, dreaming, grumbling, snoring and sleeping in all directions, while “they” approached silently to murder him.
He shuddered. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. Eagerly, with relief, he decided to keep in the open, where he could use his hands and his strength. If he were going to be murdered he would be murdered with his hands gripping a dead throat.
Then at last he stood stock-still and thumped himself in the chest.
“Well, I’m damned!” he cried. “Amn’t I an awful fool? Why didn’t I think of it before? They’ll be wonderin’ why I’m not there already. Everybody in the town must ’a heard of it be now, an’ me that was his pal an’ I not there to say a word to his mother. They’ll surely suspect something if I don’t go at once.”
Narrowing his eyes, he set out at a smart pace in the direction of McPhillip’s home in Titt Street. He took his hands out of his pockets and swung them by his sides after the manner of a policeman. He threw his head back and towered like a giant over those whom he passed.
He passed them, almost over them, like a being utterly remote, a unique creation.
IV
Titt Street was in turmoil like an anthill that
