Free War Children by Gerard Whelan Page B

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    I’d noticed a growing tendency in my father that summer to contradict my mother, in small things at least. It was always hard to know my father’s true feelings about serious things, because he always liked to be agreeable where possible. But I thought I could feel a difference in him, an impatience with the people my mother so admired, and whose meaningless respect and approval she craved.
    Naturally, my Irishtown friends and I were all mad supporters of Sinn Féin. None of us was certain what the party stood for, except that it stood for change. But that was more than enough. We saw how the Sinn Féiners – the Shinners, people called them – made the respectable people nervous, and for me that alone seemed proof of their worth. Still, when the first posters for the Sinn Féin candidate appeared – in Irishtown, of course – I was genuinely astonished , because the candidate named on the posters was none other than Tom Farrell. I hadn’t heard a word about this beforehand. When I asked Mickey, he said he was as surprised as I was.
    ‘We had a few strangers called to the house, all right,’ he said. ‘And they’d go into corners and whisper about stuff with Tom. But I thought it was just about ordinary stuff – thieving things and that.’
    Phil Murphy was keen to know where the Sinn Féin election posters had been printed, but they bore noprinter’s name. Seemingly that was illegal in itself. Glad of the excuse this gave him, the sergeant had his men tear down any Sinn Féin posters they saw. Whether this was political, or just because of who Tom Farrell was, I don’t know: probably it was both. In any case it did Phil Murphy little good: as fast as the old posters fell, new ones went up. This went on for several weeks, and finding the bill-stickers became an obsession with the big red sergeant. He had no success. The posters were put up by night, and each morning – in spite of extra police patrols – a fresh crop of Sinn Féin posters greeted the dawn from walls all over town. One morning the whole gable wall of the police barracks was covered with them, and the King of Irishtown nearly had a fit. Even some of the respectable classes laughed at this jape. To the inhabitants of Irishtown, who were suddenly Sinn Féin supporters to a man, it was hilarious. They, of course, kept their pleasure to themselves when any policemen were about. Their king didn’t like being laughed at.
    * * *
    It was announced that Sinn Féin would have a public election meeting in the square, and our excitement grew. A week or so before the meeting strange men began to appear in town, cocky young citified men who brought with them the air of city glamour, of city crowds and of wide, well-lit streets I’d never visited. We’d never seen anything like them. They were Sinn Féiners, of course, there for the meeting. My friends hung around them, plying them withexcited questions about the future. But I didn’t need to hear any election promises from these young men: to a boy like me, used to nothing but the dullness of this stuffy town, the very sight of them was a promise of bigger, brighter things in other places. The young men hung around together in groups, smoking ready-rolled cigarettes , and they seemed to spend a lot of their time in Irishtown . There was a challenge in the way they walked, the way they dressed, even in the way they stood. To our provincial eyes they were glamour itself, but once my eyes had grown used to the glamour I noticed another thing about the way these men walked and stood and held themselves: I noticed that they were tough-looking men under their city ways, and though they often smiled, their eyes – especially when they saw a policeman – could get narrow and cold. And the police, though they kept a wary eye on the strange young men, never interfered with them on the streets, even on the streets of Irishtown. It struck me that these strangers were quite ready to have a go at the police if