Free The Temporary Gentleman by Sebastian Barry Page A

was a misunderstanding. There is no record of me gunrunning in Togo or anywhere else. The official in the UN was quite wrong to say so. I was friendly with a man there, a Swede, who did indeed turn out to be supplying guns to rebels, rebels who, I may add, never had occasion to rebel, in the upshot, because the plebiscite was successful. And the Swede, Emmanuel Heyst, as I am sure you know, was arrested and prosecuted.’
    ‘He was, of course, yes,’ said the inspector. Then he stood up. ‘This visit is by way of warning. Do you understand? I didn’t come through Ireland and Palestine only to be fucked around by the likes of you.’
    I could only look at him quizzically, neutrally.
    ‘If we were to find that you were engaged in a similar activity – and if you are it will come to light, as sure as night follows day – we would bring the full force of the law down on you, and you will be dealt with definitively and thoroughly.’
    Now he was not so calm, or calm in a different way, rather austere and proud-looking, like the matador driving in his thin sword.
    ‘You are not an entirely desirable person here. My advice to you would be to go home as soon as you can. You have absolutely no role to play here in Ghana. If you are up to no good, you will find you have made a terrible mistake in thinking you could get away with it.’
    He had made his point, and knew it. I was filled suddenly with foreboding and misery. Not just because of what he had said. Something less concrete, something deep under everything, some alteration in the ground of myself, a little earthquake. Why had I stayed in Accra? Why was I here, with Tom, on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean? It was the question I had not been able to answer, and having been asked it again by this policeman, still could find no answer, for him or for me.
    ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Good evening.’
    I nodded to him, not able to find a decent response. The constable, who of course had not said a word to me throughout but had stood there looking as fierce as a Malay god, followed his inspector out into the full darkness of the night.
    I just sat there for a while, and Tom stayed where he was too.
    ‘Policemen are not good people,’ he said then.
    ‘What happened to Genfi,’ I said, ‘this Kofi Genfi?’
    ‘You kissed his woman and you had a fight and then he sat on you and then someone pulled him off because he was wanting to kill you and then he went out to kill his woman and her brother stopped him with a great blow and he is in the hospital.’
    ‘This is why I swore off drinking, this is why I will never drink again.’
    ‘It was these policemen killed my friends during the veterans’ march. Arrested us, and tortured us. They say it is a different force but they are the same.’
    ‘Never, never again, so help me God.’
    ‘Amen,’ said Tom.

Chapter Nine
    1926. Our marriage. On the one side of the church, the rather elegant and choice individuals who had travelled to see Mai wed, her aunt Maria Sheridan from Cavan, the one with the connection to Collins, encased in a brocaded day dress, giving her a slightly ironclad look, but very smart. Mai’s other aunts from Roscommon, Cavan and Leitrim, glinting in the holy gloom of the chapel, with small dots of gold and ruby light playing on old rings and necklaces and bracelets. And chief before all, her resplendent brother, Jack, the doctor from Roscommon, lofty, silk-hatted, confident, and silent. He was a man Mai adored, and he was said to adore her, even if he was a rare visitor, being devoted to fishing the rivers of Roscommon, and shooting at the wildlife there. He was six foot six in his stockings, I knew, and in every way he was as impressive to me as her father had been, and I prayed he would approve of me.
    All of these souls sitting on their side with the easy, rather solemn, occupying air that in other circumstances would have put me in suspicion that they were actually Protestants.
    On the other side, my