“Our breakfast, and a copy of Balzac’s ‘Droll Stories.’ But they were a very decent lot.”
“You were lucky. They are light-fingered gentlemen as a rule.”
“I expect some of those stories aren’t true.”
“Not true!” exclaimed another man. “My dear lady, I know a family near Cork who are constantly raided by the Black-and-Tans. The same man is always in charge. Just before Christmas he called upon them with a revolver in each hand and said, ‘I’ve called for my Christmas box. Make the cheque a decent one, as I’ve had a lot of trouble with this house.’”
Everybody laughed.
“I know two old ladies,” said somebody else, “Unionists by the way. One night at dinner time a party of officers arrived and captured the house. The man in charge told them there was a man on the roof; but he told them not to be disturbed, and to go on with dinner. He came back after a little, apologised, and said he’d made a mistake. They discovered afterwards that he had cleared the house of everything valuable.”
“They’ve got splendid opportunities, of course,” said my friend, balancing the cream jug on the end of the sofa. “I don’t mind looting so much as man-handling. I can tell you some of the boys get a bad time when they are interrogated.”
I swallowed my tea reflectively.
“There are cases of torture that we never hear of,” said a new woman, drawing close. “I know of several cases in the country where the boys were caught, rolled in barbed wire, then flung on the ground, and the Black-and-Tans jumped on them!”
“They must have got sore feet,” I suggested.