by Roddy Doyle
I let that settle.
—I married a good man, she said.
—You were already married to a good fuckin’ man.
—D’you know what, Henry Smart? she said.—In all the years I was married to him, he never said Fuck. Not once.
—That must have been nice, was it?
—Not even once.
—Listen, I said.—You knew what you were getting when you married me.
—That’s true.
—What was it like?
—What?
—Being married twice.
—It was very different, she said.—He was a different kind of man. And, I have to say, I became a different kind of woman.
—And no regrets.
—No.
She sighed.
—None.
—Go on, I said.—You’re lying.
—I’m not.
It was a new day outside. I could see the sun against the back wall, creeping down towards the flowerbeds. The grass looked cut and there were no weeds climbing out of the muck. She had a new gardener, the bitch.
—I was destroyed when I came home, she said.—I didn’t grieve till I got here. Not here. Home.
—It’s gone, I said.—The old house.
—I know that, she said.
—I went looking for it.
—And me in it?
—Yeah, I said.—In 1951.
—I was married in 1943.
—You’re a bigamist.
She laughed.
—I am, she said.—I’m a bigamist. Or I was. Did I stop being a bigamist when one of my husbands died?
—You’re not a widow now either.
—You might be right.
—I am fuckin’ right, I told her.—You’re married to me and I’m not dead.
—I can’t cope.
—You’ll be grand, I said.
—I stayed down home for a while, she said.—Then I came up to Dublin. This was at the start of the Emergency.
—The what?
—The war, she said.—The Second World War.
—I missed it, I told her.
She didn’t ask me what I meant. She was doing the talking. She’d moved up to Dublin with Saoirse, because Saoirse was going to the College of Art, all fees paid by her Uncle Ivan. They had a flat in Rathfarnham. She met her husband at a bus stop, in town.
—Was he younger than you? I asked.
The old eyes stared at me.
—It’s only a question, I said.
He was younger than her, but not that much younger. He was a bachelor and settled in his ways. Until he met her. He sat beside her on the bus and he was at the bus stop the next day, and the day after. And the next week, he was waiting at both bus stops, in the morning and the evening.
—I don’t know if I want to hear any of this, I told her.
She took him home and she gave him a fry and the ride of his life.
—The first one? I asked.—His first ride?
She nodded.
—He was very grateful.
—Did he pay you?
She slapped me. It didn’t hurt, but had some clout for a woman of her age.
He’d bought a new house in Ratheen, way off on the other side of the city. He’d bought the place but he hadn’t moved. It was too big and empty.
—So you married him.
—I loved him.
She looked at me staring at her.
—I did, she said.
We were sitting side by side. There was only a couple of inches between my eyes and hers.
He was handsome, shy, and a civil servant, in the Department of Agriculture. A big man in a big department. Her cousin Ivan was his boss for a while. The war was on and his work was vital; we were feeding England and we had to feed ourselves. He was sending cattle out onto the Irish Sea, to outrun the U-boats, to Holyhead and Liverpool. He’d come home late and he’d ride her for hours.
—Why are you telling me this?
—I want you to know, Henry, she said.—I don’t want you to cod yourself. I haven’t been waiting. I had a very good life. It wasn’t about sitting by the fire.
—Did you have any more kids?
—Will you do your sums, for God’s sake? It was more than thirty years ago. I was nearly sixty.
—Still riding.
—Yes.
—Good girl, I said.—Was there anyone else?
—What do you mean?
—Men, I said.—Or man.
—Between you and himself?
—Yeah.
—Of course there were.
—How many?
—Oh, stop that, she said.—Fine men, they all were.
—When?
—Stop it.
—I’d ride you now.
—What’s stopping you?
—My wooden leg, my bad back, the shrapnel in my chest.
—They’re just excuses.
—I know. You’re still the same woman.
—I am.
—What’re you looking at? I asked.
—Your forehead, she said.
—Are they still there?
She was looking for the pockmarks her nipples had dug, on the bed of stamps in 1916.
—No, she said.—There’s so many holes, sure. It’d be too hard to tell.
—They’re there alright.
—I left my glasses upstairs.
—I hear great things.
I’d seen him the odd time since I’d sat on the rug beside the sea, but he’d never stopped. He’d wave and keep pushing on, up the hill to the church and his house beside it. He was a walker. He knocked on the doors. He knew all the names, the holy communions and approaching deaths. He knew his parish. He didn’t drive unless he was leaving it.
I knew he was watching me. But I knew something else: he wasn’t the boss.
—Yes, he said.—Great things.
He sat there, looking at me over his glasses, pretending there was something more important than me in front of him.
I’d been summoned. Mister Strickland had given me the message.
—He’d like to see you now, he said.
—Grand.
—He stressed now.
Strickland knew his school was an I.R.A. cell, and he didn’t like it. It was the priest - the manager - who’d brought in the new teachers: whenever there’d been a vacancy, some young lad would arrive with top marks and a brand new briefcase. Most of them had been good and eager teachers. But Strickland began to realise it at the same time I did: they were Provos. He looked back - like I did - and realised what an eejit he’d been. He remembered tension in the staffroom some years back and, only now, he got it; the split, when the I.R.A. had divided into the Officials and the Provisionals. He remembered wondering where he was going to get a substitute at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, just before a call from the priest would save the day; there’d be a young lad on his way, to fill the gap.
I was in on it. That was what Strickland thought. And he was right - although I only found that out at the same time he did. But I couldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t have wanted to hear. He ran a very good school, not a hidey-hole for the I.R.A. And that could stay the story, if nothing was said. The Provisionals had never used the classrooms for recruiting. They didn’t need to. Once I started paying real attention to Ireland beyond the parish, I realised that it was 1920 again. Every stupid decision, every shooting, every rubber bullet - internment, Bloody Sunday, every strong rumour - British collusion in the planting of my bomb on Talbot Street and the other bombs that afternoon - all of these sent young men and women queuing up to join. Approval was in the air, everywhere. The British were back, on the telly every night, taking over the streets eighty miles up the road. There were dead bodies, there were refugees. Reprisal and counter-reprisal, terror and retaliation - it had gone on for three years, in my day. It went on for decades this time - and it was still my day. The priest behind the desk confirmed it.
—Great things, he s
aid.
—Mister Strickland said you wanted me.
He looked at me over the specs.
—That’s right.
There’d been a shift in the balance. He could look over his glasses as much as he liked, but he still had to look up. He’d been patronising me for years. Not now, though. Not while the I.R.A. thought that I was their last man standing. And not while I was pumped full of the fact that I had a wife who loved me. A secret wife - an even better secret. I’d look at her smiling at the kitchen window as she watched me slide over the back wall into her garden, with the bike on my back, the handlebars digging into the old spine. (I wasn’t the gardener any more, so I had to sneak in as well as sneak out.) The fields behind the wall had filled up with new, still soft houses, their windows full of mammies and daddies walking angry babies back to sleep. I wasn’t getting any younger. But that, too, was a big part of the crack. I was much too old for any of this, and so was she. I’d burst into the kitchen, she’d put on the kettle and we’d go in to the couch and watch The Late Late Show, and fall asleep watching. But not always. Sometimes there was some life left by the time I fell into the kitchen. I’d fall into her arms or she’d let herself drop into mine and she’d kiss and our mouths would open and we’d laugh as our old breaths met and we’d look into each other’s eyes and try to see. And then we’d go in to the couch and the telly. On Saturday nights, and sometimes Wednesdays too.
I wasn’t taking shite from the priest.
—I haven’t seen much of you lately, Henry, he said.
—You’ve seen me, I said.
He dipped the head a bit more, so the glasses were well out of his way.
—It’s my busy time of the year.
—Grand.
It was Holy Communion and Confirmation time, the spring, and two years since the bomb.
—How have you been?
—Grand.
—Everything’s as it should be?
I remembered my manners.
—Yes, Father.
He looked at me.
—Be patient, he said.
He said it again.
—Be patient. You understand me?
—Yeah, I said.—I do.
—That’s the message, he said.—You know what it means.
—Yes, Father, I said.—Do you?
A finger shoved the glasses back up along his nose. He looked uncertain - the fucker looked beaten.
—Yes, he said.
—Grand, I said.—I’ll go out the back way.
He was sitting at the desk but I was the officer in the room.
I got to the door, through the empty kitchen. His housekeeper was staying well out of the way. She’d lost her pulling power a few years before. I was paid by cheque these days, by Strickland, the tax and P.R.S.I. deducted, even though I was much too old to be working. I didn’t have to stand on her poxy step in the pissing rain and wait till she opened the door a chink and slid my money out to me.
I got to the door, and it hit me - I understood. The priest had been in on it from the beginning, and the beginning wasn’t the bomb. I’d known that for more than a year, but I hadn’t looked at it properly. It went back years, to the time he’d come looking for me. He hadn’t just stopped me in the village and offered me the job. He’d been told to. Before the Troubles had started again, before 1966, long before the bomb that was supposed to have brought me back, the priest - a young man then - had been told to get me the job, to keep a close eye on me. For later.
It hit me, but not enough to stop or slow me down. They’d been waiting for me when I got off the bus in Ratheen the first time; they’d been keeping an eye on me all those years, when I was gardening. And before that - back to when I came down off the plane at Shannon with John Ford.
I was still walking as steadily as an old man with a wooden leg could walk as I got to the end of the priest’s drive and kept going, onto the Main Road. The thought was mad - Irish history was all about me. I let go of the thought, and it scurried away happily enough. I wasn’t going after it. Irish history could fuck off; I was in love.
I fell over the wall one night. I got out from under the bike and sat on the grass till some of my breath came back. I could feel the damp climb into my trousers. But I couldn’t get up - I couldn’t manage the thing. The light was off in her kitchen. But the blinds weren’t drawn. She was standing there, watching, waiting. I rubbed my eyes, and stood. I swam a bit - my face felt gluey - and the lights and houses swerved and melted. But I stayed up. My mouth grabbed air and held it. The lawn was just a patch of grass, twelve good steps to the back door with only the empty clothesline in the way. I got there - the cold air was good on my face again - and I opened the door, into deeper gloom. There was no light at all, none from the hall or the landing above it. The house was completely dark.
My head caught up.
—Oh fuck.
There was something wrong.
She was upstairs, dying or dead. Maybe since Wednesday, the last time I’d gone back over the wall.
I made it to the light switch, beside the door to the hall. I turned on the light.
She was sitting at the table. In her Cumann na mBan uniform. She was smiling, nervous.
—Did you think I was dead, Henry?
—Not at all.
—Were you worried?
—No, I said.—Not much. Is it the same one?
—It is, she said.—Though the skirt is newer. It still fits.
—Why wouldn’t it? I said.—You were a lanky oul’ one back then too.
I sat down too - I had to.
—Hat and all, I said.
—Hat and all.
She stood up. She looked at the clock on the wall.
—It’s late enough, she said.—Come on.
She went out to the bike. She picked it up out of the flowerbed.
—I can’t manage the thing, I said.
—I’ll do the pedalling, she said.—And it won’t be the first time. You can get up on the crossbar.
—I can in my arse.
—Exactly.
We cycled through the village when the pub and the chipper were safely shut. We met no one, and nothing big got in our way. We stayed off the hill, so we wouldn’t have to hear the rattle in her chest. I held the bars and she held me. I pushed my old arse back at her and I knew it was me who gave her the power to push down on the pedals. She hadn’t cycled in years—
—Not since I became respectable.
Talking nearly killed her.
But she talked.
—What if they come along now?
—Who? I said.—The Garda?
—Oh God. What if—
—Sorry, love, I said.—I can’t hold onto the bars and talk. It’s one or the other.
She laughed. I felt the shaking in her arms.
—It’s a pity the post office is shut this time of night, she said.—We could have gone in, for old times’ sake.
—We’d never be able to ride back out, I said.
—That’s probably true.
—And we couldn’t manage the kerb, I told her.
She got us onto the new Main Road. It had been built on an easier slope; it didn’t go into the old village. She could just about manage it. I turned us onto the old road again, and we freewheeled down the hill and felt the wind grab at our clothes and cheeks. Her hat stayed on and so did I.
—Better than The Quiet Man, I said.
—God, yes, she said.—Those ol’ tandems are good for nothing.
—Except cycling.
She stopped at the bottom of the hill.
—I’m finished, she said.
So we swapped. She got up on the crossbar. I put the weight I remembered down on the pedal, and went. I couldn’t cycle because of the leg - but I did it.
—Still alive?
—Fuckin’ sure.
But I couldn’t take us far.
—The leg’s fucked.
—You’ve had enough.
—Wh
at about you?
—I’m grand.
—Good girl.
She got off the crossbar. I watched the pain cross her face. I looked away as she slowly assembled herself. But I stopped - I made myself look. And I loved her.
—I’m exhausted, she finally said.
—I did all the fuckin’ work.
—Always the smart answer.
We were three steps from my door.
—Will we go in?
—No, she said.
She looked at me.
—I’m not who you think I am, she said.
I looked at her.
—Fair enough.
We walked back to her house. We both leaned on the bike. I had to. This was the pain of a fresh-lost leg, and worse, every time I moved it - a new cut every step. But it didn’t matter. We struggled together, back up the Main Road.
We got onto the bed. I gave her a hand. She let me take off her second boot. She lay back on the bed in the uniform. She let the hat drop to the floor. I lay beside her. I didn’t take the leg off yet. I didn’t want to face the mess.
We lay there.
—What if they come in now?
—They’ll find two old people afraid of closing their eyes.
—They will not, she said.
I felt her head move. I felt her breath, then her lips touch the skin at my eye.
—There now, she said.
She lay back again.
—I won’t climb up on you tonight, she said.
—Thanks.
—You scut.
—Tomorrow, I said.—Get up on me tomorrow.
—I might, she said.—Are you happy, Henry?
I thought about it.
—Yes.
—Good, she said.—So am I.
We slept.
No dreams - no fingers.
We both woke up.
PART THREE
10
I waited for four years.
I was too old and wrecked for the job but no one was going to sack me. The school started to fall apart, and so did republicanism. The pub bombings had started before I was bombed, and the kidnappings. One after another, after another - Guildford, Birmingham, half the pubs in Belfast. Reprisal and counter-reprisal became tit for tat - murder was trivialised. Bank heists became the daily thing, and every housing estate knew a Provo with a red car and a stiff leather jacket. The rebel songs stopped, except in some of the pubs. Little boys stopped singing about Saxon gore and the men behind the wire. The portraits of the republican dead were taken down off the classroom walls. The Provisionals were losing but only a few of them knew it.