A Good Neighbour

A GOOD NEIGHBOUR
A salutary tale by Eamon Henry 1 July 2008

The Irish Civil War of 1922-23 is the source of the story following, with names of places and persons changed. Harry Martin worked a small farm in west Galway. He was a noted Free State supporter and had canvassed for their party in various local elections prior to 1922. His local importance as a “Freestater” made him a prime target for elimination by the hard men of the other side. It so happened that around this time at age thirty he sometimes came and lived alone in the farmhouse on his land, as farm work required it. This farmhouse was a simple one-storey cottage having a kitchen and two bedrooms, with front and back doors to the kitchen.
Living in a rather different environment was John Sweeney, also aged about thirty, and a neighbour of Harry. From being a casual labourer, John had joined the “Connaught Rangers” section of the British Army. During the 1914-18 War, first at the Dardanelles and later in the trenches of the Western Front, he had survived where so many had been killed. He was horrified and sickened by what he had experienced, and looked for only a frugal but better way of life back at home, after being demobbed in due course.
John returned home and then worked on a casual basis on the farms of two of the hard men of our story. In their plot to kill Harry, ex-soldier John was recruited to take a shotgun on the outing, as a back-up member of the team. In the circumstances, a refusal would at least cost him their available employment, if not having more serious consequences. John thus became a very reluctant member of the execution squad. However, he was extremely careful to conceal his inner feelings.
The plan of attack was simple. John with the shotgun was to watch the back door. The other two men would force open the front door and try to confront Harry within. This would be done after midnight, to reduce the risk of possible spectators and hopefully to catch Harry asleep in bed.
What the assassins did not know was that whenever he stayed overnight at the farm, Harry lived in a state of high alert. This involved staying fully dressed at all times, and sleeping on a settle-bed in the kitchen. He kept his kitchen back-door only slightly bolted, but the two bedroom doors he kept locked. His windows already had steel bars fitted on the inside to prevent thieves, so that a window smash-and-enter was not possible. His kitchen front-door was locked and also heavily bolted. He used no light indoors, except for the occasional lighted candle, in the days before rural electric power.
The night of the attack was in late October, calm and dry but cloudy, with a small half-moon, and thus fairly dark. John was quite clear in his mind. He was not going to shoot a neighbour, a man he had known from their childhood “national school” days together. Their fathers and grandfathers had been neighbours and friendly. In John’s simple heart the feeling of “old decency” was quite strong. He would not let any lunatic make him kill his neighbour Harry.
When they arrived very quietly on foot, John with a double-barrel shotgun was sent around the side of the house, to take a suitable stance on one side of the back-door. Their assault on the front-door, which did not yield as they had expected, immediately aroused Harry. He quickly and quietly passed out through the kitchen back-door and pulled it shut behind him.
John stepped towards Harry and said in a whisper “Quiet, Harry! This is me, John. Run for it out the back, and you’ll be safe enough”. John could still hear the sounds of banging continuing inside the cottage. The two men on entry through the front door in almost total darkness found the kitchen apparently empty. Their next targets were the bedroom doors, which being locked resisted strongly their attempts to burst them open.
And then, with Harry safely away and running through his own fields at the back, John fired one shot up into the air. At this sound the banging inside stopped, and the two men came out the front-door and hurried around to the back. They found John bent down, as he searched through a cabbage plot. A break in the clouds let some more moonlight come through. John spoke briefly “I think he fell in the cabbage. In such bad light I can’t be sure”. Further searching found no dead Harry among the cabbage. The search was abandoned and the men went home.
Some time later, when things had settled down, Harry returned to grow crops on his farm, although he never again lived in the farmhouse. He found a wife and there were children. It caused some surprise among those who did not know the full story, how Harry and John became such close friends in the years that followed.