The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty Read Online Free

yet and it is the devil’s own job to keep the channels clear. Some are saying that there is a new terrible drift of sea-sand come down from Coney Island and thereabouts, that the autumn tides have gouged the channel by the Rosses ever deeper and pushed a frightful tonnage of sand and silt and God knows up into the docks. Men have seen salmon in shallows of the Garravogue where formerly there were deeps, and they are dredging but some hold that dredging is a fool’s errand in that no matter where you dump the sand, as far out into the sea as you like, the tides will carry it back for you in due course. But there is a tremendous trade in butter from all the western farms. There is still butter going down the Garravogue and excellent things coming up it. Now the men, the few that are most willing, are getting into the trains for Dublin and shipping out to England and beyond. You can sense the press of men behind them, the truer flood of men, held in just as yet by the ramparts of the wishes of their wives. But all in all the war is there and the men of Sligo cannot resist for long, nor ever could, whether Africa or Turkey or long ago in France herself. There is a frightful, some would say a peculiar love among the men of Sligo for the land of France, it is an old feeling that has survived. Eneas himself has strong views for France. He thinks her pleasing rivers and fragrant meads must be solemnly, solemnly protected. And he has half a notion that he might up and depart in the fullness of time, and do his bit, as the papers put it. Why wouldn’t he? Isn’t Sligo such a little place and mightn’t there be realms beyond it of great interest and high tone aspects, as wonderful as the magic lantern show or the mighty flicks themselves, those galloping and well kitted-out cowboys? And that damp yard of his bitterness echoes with agreement. He feels betimes a sort of rage to go, temporary, but fierce and shocking while it blows. Trouble is, everything is imagined, a picture painted with hints and horrors and news items. But, by God, he might chance it, should he live to see sixteen. Comfortably enough, that is some time off.
    Well he is sitting in the high grass at the back of the Convent for the moment, with Tuppenny Jane, and indeed it is warlike enough for him the while. The grasses are rich in meadowsweet and big yellow flares of ragwort, it is a sight. There is a thrumming of crickets to beat the band. How the world gets itself into such a state of heat, he does not know. Jane is no more than thirteen herself. Sometimes she acts thirteen and has a go at being with such as himself. But the world knows that Tuppenny Jane has been down the lanes often with some of the family men of the town. It is given out by some as a fact and, humorously, as the gospel truth, that the young priest, a man from the very cream of
    Castleblaney, gave her one for herself in the depths of winter, the time he was so down in his spirits and on the sauce and not long before he hung himself on one of the oaks in Dempsey’s dairy fields. He has heard it said that the men go for her because she cannot take to herself or in herself babbies yet, and as she is loose she is preferred as a place of refuge by the family men. In the meantime the priest has died for her and in that respect she is like France to Eneas, remote but important, vague but fatal. It is tricky for him to picture the priest with her. Maybe it was something else drove him to the oak branch. Maybe it was the sweets of Tuppenny Jane. Yes, Jane herself hinted as much with a lovely little handful of golden and sparkling hints that she likes to entertain with.
    She has a nose too big for beauty it is often said, and Eneas fears her. One night with Jonno Lynch he lay beside her in the ruined summerhouse in one of the old gardens in Finisklin, not his father’s, for safety. Jonno kissed her and put his hands in under her skirts and felt at her clammy crotch in a set of big school knickers. You