by Roddy Doyle
I could feel hands now. Lifting weight from off me. I could hear feet, and gasping.The screaming around me didn’t stop.The crying, gulping. The smell, the noise, of burning. I could see a face; a handkerchief covered the mouth.
—You’re still with us.
I tried to nod. I tried to move.
—You’re grand, stay still for a bit.
He wasn’t a professional - a doctor or an ambulance driver. I could see that through the dust that caked him and his uniform. He was a postman.
—Bomb, I said.
—Bombs. All over the place.
I could hear sirens.
—I can’t see much, I told him.
—Mister, he said.—Believe me. You’re lucky.
He was crying.
There were more men now, and a stretcher.
—I think this wall is going to go.
—Let’s get him out of here. Jesus, this is terrible.
He wasn’t talking about me. I could see that. He was looking around, trying to find a door out of the nightmare.
I tried to get up.
—No, no, stay still. We’ll do the work.
They’d thrown rubble out of the way; the stretcher was right beside me. They grabbed my feet and shoulders and started to lift me - the leg slid out of my trousers.
—Oh, fuckin’ Christ—
—It’s grand, I said.
I could talk; I sounded fine.
—It’s a wooden one. I’ve had it for years.
—Are you serious? said the poor fucker holding the leg.
—Yeah, I said.—A train went over me.
—Fuckin’ hell, he said.—And now this.
They’d dropped me sideways onto the stretcher; the man with the leg couldn’t get a proper grip. But they moved fast, through hard dust, through the walking and the dead. I watched as they carried me. It was worse than anything I’d seen. It made no sense. This was Dublin, in 1974. A warm day, late afternoon. I’d been thinking about taking off my jacket. And the whole thing, the place and everyone around me, had disintegrated.
I was gone from there before the smoke had cleared. Thick walls of grey and yellow smoke. I didn’t see much - I couldn’t, although some of what I had seen hit me days, years, later. I’d wake up in it again; the smoke and grit would be at my mouth and nostrils, in my own bed. Sleep scared me, for a long time.
I heard the crunch of shoe leather going over broken glass. It was ankle-deep where the shop fronts had once been. I heard the groans and screams, of pain and disbelief; bodiless noise, last words and gasps, still hanging there after death. The fierce breath of men who didn’t want to breathe. The sirens that couldn’t get nearer.
I told the lads carrying me to go back for my leg. But they wouldn’t stop. They were brave, as long as they could keep moving. That was the fear; there’d be more bombs. I’d heard two more explosions, one of them quite close, while I’d waited for the stretcher. (Weeks later, I saw the pram. When I was thrown, a black pram had passed my face. I waited to see the baby, or the mother. Every time I closed my eyes, I expected the baby. But he or she never flew or landed. Babies died that day, but I only saw the pram.) They didn’t stop, and I couldn’t blame them. I wanted to get away; this was my past. I wanted to go home.
They kept going. It wasn’t far, but they were moving through mangled cars and people. I was one of the first to be brought out of the smoke. A harmless old man, with his leg blown off.
—It was gone already, I told the photographer, who was on his knees beside me.—There’s no blood; look it.
He didn’t hear me. He didn’t even look at me. I was sure I was talking; I could hear myself. I thought we were on Amiens Street. But it was hard to tell - I never knew. It was years before I’d go back there.
—What’s his name? I heard the photographer.
Now he was looking at me.
—What’s your name? he asked.
—Henry Smart, I said.
He heard me.
I lay there for hours. There were no more explosions; the ground stayed solid. I lay beside other stretchers. I spoke to no one. I stopped listening.
It had been a beautiful day. I still remembered that, and the street and women with their jackets off - before it all disappeared. It was night now. There were lights, torches, camera flashes.
I was lifted.
—You’re grand, said a voice right behind my head.—You’ll be grand. We’re just bringing you to the hospital.
—My leg, I said.
—It’s not too bad, said the man right behind my head, carrying the stretcher.—Someone cleaned it up nicely.
—I left it back on Talbot Street.
—You should see what’s left back there, he said.—It’s unbelievable. There’s more than thirty dead.Three bombs here. And another one in Monaghan.
—Who did it? I asked.
His face was even nearer now, because himself and the young lad at the front were lifting the stretcher into the back of an ambulance.
—The U.V.F., he said.—That’s what they’re saying.
—Who are they? I asked.
I’d hadn’t paid attention to the Troubles; I’d been living in my own contented republic.
—The U.V.F.?
—Yeah.
—The Ulster something or other, he said.
—Ulster Volunteer Force, said the other lad.
He was strapping me to a plastic mattress.
—Unionists, I said.
—God, yeah. Our own lads wouldn’t do something like this.
—Not down here, an’anyway, said the other man.
—My leg, I said.
—Be brave.
—My fuckin’ leg.
I always wore the good boots when I was getting the bus into town. (I remembered, years later: the buses were on strike. That was why I’d been on Talbot Street, on my way down to get the train home.)
—I need the boot, I told them.—It’s alligator skin.
I lifted the other leg - I tried to. But I was strapped down. They were shutting the back doors.
—Like this one, I said.
I was alone.
But I wasn’t. There was another mattress beside me, on the other side of the ambulance. I could touch it; the upper strap was across my chest but they’d left my hands and arms free. I could move my head, turn enough to see that I was sharing the ambulance with a dead body. Man or woman, I couldn’t tell. Adult, I could. The body under the blanket used to be a grown-up. I stopped looking.
I was taken out of the ambulance, and carried into the noise made by people trying to climb out of their wounds.Trying to forget, to shut down, get back to the weather and the afternoon and the promise of the night ahead, a bag of chips, a woman or a boyfriend. A priest stood beside me. A young lad who’d shaved just before he’d got the call. I could smell the aftershave. He prayed - I think - said things in Latin, put an oily finger on my eyes. I let him do it; I said nothing. He was getting me ready for death. I didn’t object.
I didn’t know the hospital. I don’t remember if I ever found out. It could have been the Mater or the Richmond, or Jervis Street. The Rotunda, the maternity hospital, was even taking in the wounded. The Northside’s newborns dropped into hell that night. I don’t remember leaving the hospital. I never knew how long I was there.
People came looking. Mothers, husbands, daughters. I wanted to be the one they were searching for. I wanted to take the terror from their faces. I watched them pass, and leave. And others came too. They saw the shape the absent leg gave to the bedclothes, and they sat beside me.
—What was it like?
—Dreadful, I said.
The word seemed feeble - all the words were. But it was the best I could do. It sounded right.
I should have kept my mouth shut.
—You’re Henry, aren’t you?
—That’s right.
—It must have been a shock.
She was a young one - very young. Too young to be sen
t off to interview the dead.
—Dreadful, I said, again.
—Henry Smart, she said.
—That’s it.
I’d been Henry Smart since I’d come home, more than twenty years before. I hadn’t hidden.
—I’ve heard all about you, she said.
—Is that right?
I couldn’t sit up. I knew who I was but I couldn’t feel the pain that everyone saw when they glanced at me.
—Did it remind you of 1916? she said.
—You know about that, I said.
Was I pleased? I was fuckin’ delighted.
—Yes, she said.
I tried to sit up.
She put down her jotter and she leaned over; for a second I thought she was going to climb up onto me. I fell back on the bed, to give her the room. I actually did think that I was in for my first big ride since the late 1930s, with a young one who hadn’t even been born back then. In a ward full of broken men who were trying hard not to die.
It was a bit of a shock when it didn’t happen. When one of her hands held one of mine, and the other one cupped my elbow, and I looked and saw her sympathy and some of her disgust, and I let her help me sit up. She thumped the pillows behind me, and I could smell whatever perfume or deodorant she’d sprayed on before she’d run out of her flat to meet me. I could see the flat too. She was showing me around - I was some fuckin’ eejit.
She’d picked up her jotter and pen again.
—You were in the G.P.O., she said.
—That’s a long time ago.
—What was it like?
—You’ll need more than that jotter if you want to know.
She smiled.
—Go on.
I crammed a big week into five minutes. I got to watch as she filled the pages with her shorthand. And I got to feel guilty too, quickly. She was a kid, doing her homework. This was her break. So, I talked. I filled her jotter for her. She looked up and smiled, and nodded.
—Go on.
And I did. I went through it day by day. I told her how the place had started to burn from the inside, how the melting glass of the dome had dropped onto the men and women beneath it.
—That’s amazing, she said.
—It didn’t seem that way at the time, I said.—It was just one of the things that happened.
—Still, though.
—You’re right, I said.—It was amazing. But I think we were all a bit mad by then.
—With the bombing?
—And the rest of it; yeah.
—Like now.
—Am I mad now?
She didn’t answer that one.
—You still had your leg then, didn’t you? she said.—After the G.P.O. and that.
—Yeah, I said.—But that’s a different story. A long time ago too.
—I knew it, she said.—They said you’d lost it in the bombing. You know, a week ago.
A week? There were men all around me who were moaning like it had been an hour ago. I couldn’t go back the seven days; I could only account for one. But that was nothing new; I’d been dead before for weeks, and much longer.
—Who said that? I asked her.
—Everybody, she said.—But I could tell. By your face.You didn’t have your leg amputated six days ago.
—No, I said.—It’s been gone a while.
The triumph was gone from her face. She looked a small bit angry.
—It’s a bit awkward, she said.
—What is?
—I’m supposed to talk to the old I.R.A. man who lost his leg last week. After all he’d - you’d - been through.
—No, I said.—I lost the leg in America. Sorry about that.
—Still though, she said.—It is a bit much, isn’t it? To be blown up again. At your age.
I slept - I must have.
She was gone. It was dark. Injured men moaned less in the dark. I’d been in the bed for six days, she’d said. I wondered now how long I’d been sleeping. She’d have looked up and seen my head falling back. I hated that, even when I was on my own, at home. Falling asleep before I was ready to - like dying. I wondered how long she’d waited, and I lifted my hand to my chin, to check if I’d been drooling.
Something was immediately different.
I felt it when I lifted my arm. The slight shift, the rearrangement - there was something on the bed, something had just rolled against me.
I sent my hand under the sheet. I went slowly - I didn’t like this - but it didn’t take long to hit the thing. Wood - my fingers knew it. Metal - smooth, cold. And leather.
There was a leg tucked in against me. I knew before I saw it: it was new.
I woke.
The priest was beside me. He’d been given a chair with arms. There was a cup on his lap, and half a biscuit sitting on the saucer.
—There’s no doubt about it, he said.
—Howyeh, Father.
—The men of your generation are made of stronger stuff, he said.
I closed my eyes. He was gone when I opened them. The chair was gone too.
He came again, another day. I was sitting up, on the mend. Sore where I’d never felt pain. This time I saw the young nun deliver the chair, and I watched him let her drag it till it was right behind him, so he could sit back safely without breaking his arse. He didn’t thank or even look at her.
—You’re a brave man, he said.
—I was only walking down the fuckin’ street, Father, I told him. He looked at me, hard. He didn’t move, but he was shoving me back into my box. And I went; he was my boss.
—You’re a stoic, Henry, he said.
—Thank you, Father.
—You know what a stoic is.
—I do, yeah.
I wanted to go home.
—And it’s nice of you to call me one, I told him.
—You’ve read the papers.
—No.
—No?
—I’ve been sleeping a lot.
—Recuperating.
—That’s right, Father.
—Good man, he said.—You spoke to a little girl between your naps.
—She wasn’t that little, Father.
—She gave you a great write-up, he said.—All your deeds of derring-do.
I had to listen carefully. I’d been drugged to fuck - I suddenly knew it. I still was. I’d been knocking back every pill they’d given me.
—There are people outside who can’t wait to meet you, he said.
I wanted to drift - I didn’t want to face this. What was he telling me?
—Friends, he said.
—Old friends? I asked.
—New friends.
I didn’t want to meet the old friends, even though the times had changed and nobody wanted me dead - except the fuckers who’d planted the bomb. That was something I suddenly realised: I hadn’t thought about them at all. Not since I’d been lifted into the ambulance.
New friends.
What had I told her? Everything - I thought I had. My entire life and times.
I had to be careful.
—Did I say anything I shouldn’t have, Father?
—Nothing substantial, he said.—There was mention of a married woman who helped you hide from the foe.
—Annie.
—That’s right. And a piano.
—Sorry.
—She was off the page for the late edition.
—Who managed that?
—Your new friends.
—Why?
—You’re a hero, Henry. But you’re tired. I’ll leave you to it.
He stood.
—One thing, Father.
—Go on.
—It’s a blunt question.
—The right ones often are, he said.
He fuckin’ loved himself.
I looked straight at him.
—Do you think I’ll be shot when I leave here?
He looked at me.
—No, he said.—Why would you be?
The bus strike was
over by the time I left. I know this, because I was on the bus.
I’d braced myself for something different. A small crowd, a quick burst of clapping as I came down the hospital steps. Some of the new friends the priest had mentioned, or the priest himself, his car door open for me. The odd photographer, and women with jotters. But there was no one.
I don’t know any of this.
I’ve no memory of leaving the hospital, or the moment when I knew I was being discharged. I still don’t know which hospital I was in, or if there were steps at the front door. But I was going home on the bus. I was wearing a suit that fitted me but wasn’t mine. I’d seen the old suit, already in bits and smoking, being cut away from me with big silver scissors. I’d watched as the scissors went straight up the full leg, cut through the waistband without any extra effort, and moved on up the jacket, to the shoulders. I’d stared at the hand holding the scissors. I was on my back, on a trolley, right under heavy light. But my head was propped up, pillows under my shoulders, to dam the bleeding I couldn’t see or feel.
I must have walked to the bus stop. I must have known the way. I wasn’t worried - this wasn’t new. And neither was the leg. I’d known that when I’d picked it up, to strap it on a week before, when I’d been ready to stand and go for my first piss since the bomb. It was the same leg I’d brought with me from America, polished up and cleaned, a lovely job. Someone must have gone looking for it, must have crawled across smoking rubble to find it for me - the same way I’d searched for my father’s leg after I’d escaped from Richmond Barracks in 1916. Who had done that? I didn’t really care. It was my leg and I wouldn’t have to learn how to walk all over again. I’d have missed the creaking feel of the straps, and the weight of the leg itself - every bit of me knew it off by heart. I was able to stroll to the jacks.
And I saw myself in the mirror. I looked at the ghost of the damage that must have nearly killed me. There were three thin gashes that ran into my hair. There was bruising, calm now, down the length of one side of my face. And a general swelling, still just there - I turned my head; the profile of a slightly different man. But, fuck it, the damage suited me. I was going out a better-looking man.
I thumped my chest, and knew that there was more. Beneath the striped pyjamas. I unbuttoned them slowly, and saw what I’d missed. Raw red and yellow blots, across my chest and stomach. The heat had threatened, but it hadn’t burnt too badly. I was getting away with the warning, and a shaved chest. I was slower going back to the bed. I was in pain for the first real time since the bomb.