by Roddy Doyle
6
Nothing had changed. The same roads and rocks. The leg was heavy. The ground was hard and uncertain. But I didn’t care; I didn’t tire. I knew where I was going.
There was copper in the air as I hauled myself out of Roscommon, into Mayo. I could taste it, like an old wet penny on my tongue. The farmers were spraying the spuds.
—The blight’s back, an oul’ lad told me.
He was fixing a wall, messing with the stones.
—The potato blight?
—That’s the man, he said.
—Like the Famine?
—There was never anything but famine or the promise of it in this part of the world.
He held a flat stone in both big hands, as if he was thinking of taking a bite from it.
—Are the potatoes rotting?
—Maybe not, he said.—It’s met its match in the spray.
He coughed till his face was wet. He stopped looking at the stone and stared around his yellow cataracts, at me.
—A Yank using his feet, he said.—That’s a rare enough sight.
—I’m not a Yank, I told him.
—You’ve been across, though.
—Yeah.
He nodded.
—See now. And did you meet my brother there, did you?
—I don’t think so.
—Willie O’Connor.
—No.
—He’s a twin, he said.—I’m the other one. He’d look like me now, I’m betting.
—Never met him.
—In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
—No.
He placed the stone on the wall. He stood back and tried to see it.
—I never liked him, he said.—Never. If he broke one of his legs this day, I’d feel fuck-all.
I’d had enough.
—I’ll be seeing you, I said.—Good luck.
—A lamey leg like that would be hard going, he said.
—It’s not too bad, I told him.
—You get used to it.
—That’s it.
—Like nearly everything, he said.—Except walls made of bastard stone. I’ve been making the stone walls all my life, since I was smaller than the stones. Right back to the bad times before the English left us alone to make our own bad times. I’m still the best at it around here and further. But still and all I hate the bastard stone walls. They never stay built.
I was back, in among the walls and shite, loving and fuckin’ hating it. I tried to fight it, the creeping, sugary thought: I was home. I wouldn’t let myself feel or fall for it. I wasn’t John Ford. I’d left a kip and I was back in a kip.
But it was my kip.
Bollix to that; nowhere was mine. That was the honesty. That had been the big lesson, the real words on the piece of paper that Jack Dalton had slid to me across his desk.
—Good luck, I said.
I headed west along the broken road, till I got to an untidy crossroads where I’d once ambushed a tender full of Black and Tans with Miss O’Shea. I didn’t stop for old times’ sake. I chose my next road and walked. The sun was at my left shoulder now, throwing my shadow over the wall and across the land. I could still hear the oul’ lad.
—You’re on your way to Cong.
I couldn’t help it.
—That’s right, I shouted over my shoulder.
—It’s full of Yanks, he said.—You’ll be at home there. With your boots.
—Go and fuck yourself.
—I did that once, I heard him.—When I was a younger man than I am now.
I didn’t look back.
—It was like riding the bastard stone.
I kept my eyes on the ground.
—Full of big Yanks, it is. Making a fillum.
I was going the right way.
The first explosion was no surprise; it came with the geography.
I dived for the ditch. But I missed it by a yard and a half and had to crawl the rest of the way. I worked as I slithered. What direction had it come from? Who was it meant for? What war had I walked into and what fuckin’ year was it?
I waited for gunfire, or the next explosion. But they didn’t follow. Or the rubble and screams, or flying grit. The birds were still at it, like they hadn’t heard what I’d just heard and felt. It wasn’t a good ditch for hiding in. It was too shallow, and the wind from the Atlantic had shaved the top off anything green that wanted to grow. But I stayed where I was.
I was catching up; I hadn’t walked into a war. The silence made no sense.
The film - the explosion had been for the camera.
But there were no bombs in the script. There should have been. There had been bombs, but they’d gone when I read the final draft.
Unless they were back in.
The second bomb was exactly like the first. It was muffled, careful, intending no harm or heart attacks. It was a Hollywood explosion.
I got out of the ditch and followed it.
I wasn’t supposed to have seen the final draft.
The plane - my first time on one, and my last - charged down the Idlewild runway. I was pulled back into the seat. I felt the thing lift, and the end of the shuddering. There was nothing else I could do now; I was flying to Ireland.
It was at my feet. I’d felt it as the plane was climbing, and now I looked. A script. I parked my alligators on top of it.
—Anybody got my script back there?
It was Wingate Smith, Ford’s brother-in-law and assistant director, a noisy, bullying fucker. I shut my eyes while, in front and behind me, hands and legs stretched under the seats.
—Nope.
—No.
—Nothing down here.
I kept my eyes shut. There was no one sitting beside me. No one ever sat beside me, except Ford. The empty seat was paid for, in case Ford wanted it. I was his I.R.A. consultant, and he might need me as the plane brought us closer to Ireland.
I waited until Smith was sitting down again. I hadn’t looked, but I’d heard him as he’d pushed his way down the aisle, looking under the seats and ordering others to do it. I’d dropped a blanket over my legs and feet. I knew he’d leave me alone.
I let things settle.
I opened my eyes. There was a good-looking face very close to mine.
—How are you there, Mister Smart?
—I’m grand.
She was one of the hostesses. Her fingers were on my shoulder, gently digging.
I’d been asleep.
—Where am I?
—Nowhere yet, she said.
I remembered the script under my feet.
—I’ll tell Mister Ford you’re still with us, she said.
—Grand, I said.—You do that.
She was gone, back behind the curtain to the dearer seats. I waited a while, to see if the good news that I wasn’t dead would bring Ford through the curtain for a chat. But nothing happened. He left me alone.
I picked it up. And I read it.
I knew I wasn’t hiding from the Black and Tans but I crept along, behind the walls and the small bits of hedge.
It made no sense. I was moving away from where I knew Cong was, on the strip of land between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask. This was the place Ford had chosen to make the picture; it was going to be his Irish Monument Valley. I could see the town’s two church steeples but they were smaller now than they’d been when the first explosion had sent me diving. The afternoon had travelled on; it was early evening and the sun was hanging over the sea. It was three or four hours to darkness but the light had changed.
I heard trucks on the road and I decided not to hide. I got over the wall and waited. A truck came over the bit of a hill. I heard its engine calm down, and it crawled nearer. It was open-backed and filthy, driven by a thick-looking lad sitting under a peaked cap. He nodded as he passed, without looking at me. I watched the muck trickle out both sides of the tailgate onto the muck already on the road. The next truck was the same, and the third one had an extra lad sitting on a heap of stones at the ba
ck. He nodded too, as the truck crept past. And he winked.
—Watching the work, he shouted.
—That’s it, I shouted.
—Good man.
—What’re yis up to?
—The electric, he shouted.
—What?
—We’re bringing the electric to Cong.
I walked beside him. I was an old man with a wooden leg, but it was no big effort to keep up.
—What about the explosions? I asked.
—The fuckin’ stones.
He nodded back, the way the truck had come.
—Blowing them all to fuck. They’re making big holes for the pylons. Foreign lads with the gelignite. As if we didn’t know a thing or two about that stuff ourselves. But that’s the way. They bring in foreigners to handle the gelignite and we get to hold the fuckin’ shovels.
I let him go.
There was no need to go looking at the new holes or the shiny pylons. So I pointed myself at Cong. Thirty years after I’d freed it, parts of Ireland still didn’t have electricity. It didn’t surprise me, and I didn’t know if it should have. It was starting to feel like a very long day - it was my second day walking and hitching since I’d left Roscommon - but I pulled myself towards the town’s two steeples. I climbed over the walls, and I remembered how I’d been able to get over them without having to trust or even touch them, and often with the bicycle on my back, how I could cross the broken ground without a complaint from my soles or the stone. Those days were gone. But I went carefully, like a man in a war. I knew I’d be doing some creeping when I got into Cong.
It was dark and so was I by the time I got to the outside of the place. I was sweating, clogged - but I’d made it. There was a granite high cross at the top of the road into the town. I stopped there, and looked down rural Ireland’s idea of a street. I leaned against the cross. It fell over with me onto the road. The fuckin’ thing was made of wood, as real as a Fort Apache cactus.
The plane brought me nearer to Ireland and I read the script I’d written with Ford. But I didn’t. Because this wasn’t the script I’d seen Meta Sterne thump onto white paper.
But it was. That was why the shame took me over so quickly and entirely. I wasn’t entitled to anger. I thought I’d die - I wanted to.
But I kept reading.
I remembered a cold night in 1920. I was with a flying column, in a safe house outside Ballinrobe. There were seven of us, six local men and me, the outside man sent down from Dublin to teach them manners and soldiering. One of the men was only sixteen, and two of them were twenty, but they were veterans already. (I’d just turned nineteen myself, but no one knew it. They looked at me and saw the original Fenian.) These men had killed other men, and had been away from their homes for more than a year. They were farmers who couldn’t farm, a teacher who would never teach again. They stared into the fire and talked about burning down Ashford Castle.
—There’s no one living in the castles these days, sure. It’s a long way to go, to put a match to a ruin, just because a Protestant used to live in it.
Ivan Reynolds was there that night, well on his way to being a frightening man.
—This one’s different, said Ivan.
—How is it?
—Big people own it.
—Who?
—The Guinnesses.
—The people who make the porter?
—That’s them.
—We’ve nothing against them, have we? They’re fuckin’ grand, sure.
They laughed quietly.
—We could shoot the lot of them, said Ivan.—And the porter would still get made.
—There’s big money in drink.
—There is, said Ivan.
—So, will we throw the paraffin at it, so?
—We won’t, said Ivan.
He stared across the fire, to where he knew I was sitting. I said nothing. The war needed Ivan and the other Ivans. I was doing my job, letting him grow.
The young lad broke the silence.
—Why not, Ivan?
—Too far, he said.—There’s plenty we can be doing around these parts. There’s more to rebellion than setting fire to big houses.
No one argued. Ivan was their man.
—And another thing, said Ivan.
—What’s that, Ivan?
—We won’t be at this forever, said Ivan.—We’ll be the winners one of these days.
—Good man.
—And I’ll tell you what, boys, said Ivan.—We’ll tell the fuckin’ Guinnesses to get out of that to fuck. And one of our own will move right in.
—That’ll be the great day, alright.
Ivan sat there while his men slowly realised that he was talking about himself. They loved him for it, and it scared them. It wasn’t a dream coming out of a cloud; it was Ivan’s plan. They could see him walking up to the big wooden door. And they could see him giving it the boot.
So Ashford Castle had been spared, although Ivan never moved in. The castle was just outside Cong, and I was looking at it now. It was the real thing, turrets and all. But there was a tricolour at the top of the flagpole. The Guinnesses were gone and these days it was a hotel. I’d have no problem getting in. The door would be wide open. But I was waiting until it was properly dark, countryside dark, when I could see just enough and know I wouldn’t be seen.
The Prods had always managed to convert their own patches of hell into some sort of England. Trees grew where none could; hedges flourished in places where finding muck to cover the spuds was the yearly struggle for the Catholics. I knew: it was the history of the place. The conqueror had taken the land that could support the trees and left the shite for the natives, and had even taken rent from them for it. I knew all that. But it was easy to fall for the alternative story: the conqueror was just better at it, more industrious, there because he deserved to be. Plants grew because he planted and tended them; he told them to fuckin’ grow. I was leaning towards that version now, because I was well hidden behind some Protestant trees, fifty yards from the front steps of the castle.
The working day was ending, and a convoy had arrived. Cars, a truck, a green double-decker bus - I’d never seen one before. I was impressed. An Irish bus, a good shade of green. I watched men jump off the back of the bus, before it had finally stopped. They walked away in all directions, waving and shouting, over the lawn, and into the bushes. They were The Quiet Man’s extras, the Mayo Navajo, going home for their dinners. And some of them were heading towards me. I needed to keep looking at the castle, to see who was going up the steps. So, I stopped looking like a hidden man and leaned against the best of the trees, and let the extras come at me.
—You got back before us, said a young fella as he passed me and kept going.
—That’s it.
—Good man, he said.—Taking the air before you go in.
I could hear him running at the wall behind me, and hitting it. It wasn’t one of the dry-stone walls. It had been built high, not to keep sheep in, but to keep the natives out. I didn’t look back, but he got over the top without much fighting. Two women strolled up, trailing bright shawls on the grass behind them. They hauled in the shawls as they stepped off the lawn into the rough. They carried them under their arms. They both saw me, and smiled.
—You brought the weather with you, said one of them.
She was young. They both were. They might have been thirty, but life hadn’t knocked the bounce out of them.They were freckled and red-haired - I couldn’t believe it - and lovely.
I kept an eye on the castle. I saw John Wayne going in, trotting up the steps.There was a wind now, coming off Lough Corrib. It took spray from the fountain; I could feel it on my face.
The girls were in no hurry to go.
John Ford was getting out of one of the cars. He stopped, and looked across the lawn, to where we stood. He was blind, but he stared.
—What are yis up to? I asked.
I nodded at the bus and the rest.
Ford ha
d gone up a few of the steps. Meta Sterne was with him, lugging her table and a basket. He stopped on a step, and he was looking across at me. I didn’t know why I wasn’t hiding.
—What’s up? I said.
—Are you not in it?
—In what?
—The film.
It was only one girl doing the talking.
—No, I said.—What film?
—Ah, it’s great, she said.—The Quiet Man, it’s called. We’re in it, me and herself.
He was going up the rest of the steps.
—That’s great, I said.—You’re the stars, I’d say, are yis?
I was slipping into it.
—Go ’way out of that. We are not.
Maureen FitzSimons was going up the steps now, on her own. Something about the way she was lifting her feet - she was tired.
—So, what were yis up to today? I asked.
—We went to the beach.
There was no beach in my script. I’d once buried a spy up to his neck in the sand at Dollymount, while the tide tumbled towards us. He’d admitted he’d given big names to the G-men in Dublin Castle and we’d had to be quick digging him back up, so we could execute him in the dunes. But that beach hadn’t made the script.
—Lovely, I said.—What beach was that?
—Lettergesh. D’you know it?
—No, I lied.—Is it nice?
—It’s lovely.
—And what was happening on the beach?
—The horse race, said the talking girl.—At least, we think it was a horse race. There were horses. Weren’t there?
Her friend nodded.
The race was still there in the script. The beach was new but the horses weren’t. I’d let them trot right in. Somehow, somewhere in the tumbling of the story back and across from Ford to me, the early animosity between myself and my wife’s cousin, Ivan Reynolds, had become a race between myself and her brother, on horses. I’d let it happen. I was born before cars became common, but I’d never been on top of a horse. I wasn’t scared of much that I could look at, but horses scared me. They were too magnificent. I was always a tall man but I could never look down at a horse. The horse’s eye was always there, always staring through me. I knew the horse would never let me stay in the saddle; it was the only fight I knew I’d always lose. But I’d seen what Ford had done with horses, the beauty of the trailing dust, the pounding of the hooves. I was a scriptwriter, and my life and times became a Western, for just five pages. The race went in, across the mountains and the bog, with guns. Ivan was after me; Red Liam was chasing Seán.