The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty

The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry Read Free Book Online
Authors: Sebastian Barry
Tags: Fiction, Historical
convenience and which ships are carrying the Chinese poppy or the Russian spirits. Once it was cognacs out of far France coming into the coves of the west of Ireland, coming into places without roads whose people would greet you with a stone in their fist held in readiness behind their backs. Now it’s other contraband in all the ports of the earth.
    He feels a sadness to be tendering up his kit. Farewell to blue cloth and the starchy hat. Farewell to the lofty captain and his infallible orders. Farewell to the king, the queen and the knave and the numbers two to ten, played fiercely under the singing timbers. In addition to Eneas Bull Mottram has taken a fancy to another life. The two walk for the last time along the private stones. There is a sudden and unpleasant hint that, in this new adventure and with this new freedom, they are, he and Bill, ordinary strangers to each other.
    ‘It’s foolish maybe to give away a year at sea,’ says Eneas. ‘Maybe, Bull, it’s flighty. Every trade deserves a lifetime I’ve heard it said.’
    ‘But you’re going,’ says Bull.
    ‘Seems so.’
    ‘There’s an old saw you’ll also hear said below to the effect,’ says Bull, as they reach Nangle’s fearsome gates, and see the moil of more regular and even earthly traffic beyond, the gross shires and their mucky drivers, the smarter commercial vans and such, ‘if a boy don’t see himself shipwrecked before the age of seventeen then he may lay up his plans to make a life at sea.’
    ‘Is that so, Bull? And were you yourself in that predicament?’
    ‘I was, man, I was. In Madagascar many years ago I stood upon a sandbar of some half a mile in length with thirty other men and waited for rescue those five long weeks. We put up shelters and ate what we’d held back from the pilfering of the bloody storm. And we lived every moment in terror of storm on such a useless spit of land, and terror of thirst, and terror of being eaten by your mates. But I lived through and seven men lived through with me and it hardens your guts for the trade afterwards. I tried my hand at riding with cattle in Argentina for some years then, for the fear the sea had caused me, but in the upshot I was content to take a berth again and be a poor sailor.’
    ‘I expect that sort of high adventure makes the difference right enough,’ says Eneas, gloomily. It was another apparent fragment of gospel truth to torment him.
    ‘Don’t take it hard, man,’ says Bull. ‘The life at sea is an old life and men won’t go for it much longer the way they have it fixed for them. You’ll see now men will want their comfort after a war. See if they don’t. Even myself, that knows hardship like a street girl, won’t mind some ease.’ ‘What will you go for?’ says Eneas, passing at last through the gates into the earthly noise.
    ‘I imagine I’ll pass down on the train to the Isle of Dogs and see what they say down there where I have pals, in London. Sailors and such are well understood there, if you want to know.’
    Then Bull Mottram the master gunner retired takes a hand of Eneas in one of his own hard hands and gives it a firm and hearty shake. There is nothing else to say but Bull Mottram says it anyway, for the sake of friendship.
    ‘Good luck to you, man,’ he says. ‘Take care now and so long. I have to go across the road there to the port doctor for I must ask him to attend to the waterworks promptly. Every visit to the jakes is a little hell. So long, brother.’
    There is nothing for it but to relinquish Bull and go on into the milling town. Where is his confidence in the daily beauty of the world, not meaning outstanding beauty such as is expounded on the question of paradise, but the simple beauties that he has ever relished in things? The vans and shire-horses seem cruelly to advance, their custodians leaning greedily and smilelessly into the whipping wind. He looks back and sees old Bull go from light into the shadow of the doctor’s door.

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