Irregulars Read Free

O’Hanley they were gunning for. The green pimpernel.’
    ‘And the poor horse got it in the crossfire, along with Slattery’s window and mirror. I nearly had a bullet with my pint.’
    ‘Free State musketry leaves much to be desired, so I’m told.’
    O’Keefe smiles. Harold ‘Solly’ Solomon had been eight years old when his father landed the Solomon clan in Dublin, renting the house two doors up from the O’Keefe’s with another Ukrainian Jewish family fleeing the pogroms of central Europe for the poverty of Dublin. The poverty had not bothered the Solomons much, and they now own the house they had once rented. The three Solomon brothers are professional men, their sisters married well to upstanding Dublin Jews.
    ‘Will you come inside for a glass or three, Solly?’ O’Keefe asks.
    Solly tugs a pocket watch from inside his coat. ‘Seeing as I’m late already, sure, a quick one would be no harm.’
    When they are settled at the bar with their pints of stout, Solly says, ‘How is the father anyway, Seán? I’ve not been in since your mother called for me, what, two weeks ago now? I must stop in to him.’
    O’Keefe is puzzled. He has been to see his mother only once since his return to Dublin. Five months of wilful negligence, though his digs are hardly a mile from his home. This pub, a fifteen-minute walk to his front door. He feels heat rise to his face.
    ‘I … I didn’t know he wasn’t well.’
    Solly takes a sup and nods. ‘I know things weren’t good between you and the Da, Seán. After Peter … God rest him. Jesus, don’t I know what fathers are like, having one of them myself?’
    ‘Your auldfella’s a sound man, Solly. Not like mine at all.’
    ‘Different but the same. We go weeks without talking.’
    ‘Not seven years, but …’
    ‘No, not seven years. Jews have a harder time with begrudging silence than the likes of ye. If only for the chance of further recrimination, my auldfella can’t hold his tongue for long—you’re right there.’ Solly laughs. ‘He’s always asking after you, Seán, Daddy is. You should call in. The pot of borscht is still always on the go. The mother as well would love to see you. She’d want to feed you up, you know that.’ He breaks into an imitation of his mother’s rudimentary English. ‘ Irish boy, only beer, need food for fat. No beer, soup! Soup! You’re a fourth son to them, sure.’
    ‘I’m too thick to be a Solomon.’
    ‘Every house needs a heavy.’
    O’Keefe laughs softly. ‘Will you go another jar, Solly?’
    Solly claps him on the shoulder. ‘No, I’ve a patient to see in Rathgar. I’ll be hoofing it now that the tram’s off. But we will, Seán, soon, yes? Call in to me and we’ll go for a gallon.’
    O’Keefe realises what he must ask his old friend, and feels the shame of asking. ‘Solly? What’s … wrong with the auldfella? He’s all right, isn’t he?’
    Solly’s eyes darken under his homburg. ‘You should go see him, Seán. Go see him and then call in to me and we’ll sit down for a chat. But you’d do well to see him, right?’ He squeezes O’Keefe’s shoulder, and O’Keefe shudders under the grip.
    ‘All right, I will.’
    ‘Good man, Seán.’
    ‘Right so, Solly.’
    O’Keefe walks his friend out of the pub, and watches him weave his way through the thinning crowd. On the street a DMP constable has finally arrived on the scene, and has enlisted some men standing on the path to help him shift the dead horse and the coal wagon off the tram tracks. O’Keefe turns momentarily north, instinct directing his heart homewards, but shame trumps instinct and he swivels about face—a parade ground pivot from his days of drill in the Peelers and the army—and heads back into Slattery’s to the safety of the bar’s daylight shadows.
     
    For three days, O’Keefe drinks. He does not eat and does not play the horses and only vaguely remembers stumbling out of wherever he had finished the first night. There