by Roddy Doyle
This was two days after the G-men had told me that I was their informer. My new career was about to start.
The nurse didn’t know he was connected, but he was virtually the first man who hadn’t gawked at her since she was fourteen. She knew he was dangerous but she wasn’t sure why. She might not have recognised the ideology, but I did. I’d slept in ditches with men who’d cried in their sleep for an Ireland free. She wanted to go. Her common sense was screaming but her vocation wouldn’t let her budge.
He stepped into the room. He seemed to be alone but I knew he wasn’t.
—Out, he said.
—Are you talking to me? she said.
His jacket creaked. He took another step.
—It’s alright, I told her.—He’s here for me. We’ll only be a minute.
—Do you know this man? she asked.
—I do, yeah, I lied.—It’s grand.
—Are you sure?
I was already out on the corridor, and so was he. He held my elbow, lifted me along. He carried me down the stairs, giving me speed I hadn’t had in years. He was hurting me. But it didn’t matter. A part of me - a big part - was delighted. We were falling into each other’s traps, but I was the one who knew it.
We were in the hall, near the front door. Past oul’ ones on Zimmers, through the smell of soup and piss.
The back of another car. No pillowcase over my head this time. My escort pushed me in and slammed the door. Then he got in behind the wheel.
There was another man sitting beside me. I knew him.
—A chara, he said.—How are you?
—Grand, I said.—Go maith.
—Good.
I’d read enough in two days to know I wasn’t going to be shot. Not on this trip. The man beside me was the voice, one of the important faces. There’d be no one killed while he was near.
—Would you be up for a drive? he said.
—Where to?
—Bodenstown, he said.
—Grand, I said.
Bodenstown was a graveyard near Sallins, in Kildare. The big grave in the yard belonged to Wolfe Tone, the leader of the United Irishmen, who’d given the Brits a scare in 1798. The march to Bodenstown had always been a big date on the republican calendar. I’d stayed away in 1918 because I was a wanted man and by 1919 I’d had enough of marching.
—It’s not June, I told the man beside me.—Is it?
I wasn’t sure.
—No, he said.—It isn’t.
—It’s not Sunday.
—Aye, he said.—It is.
—Oh, I said.—Grand.
—One day must be like the rest of them beyond in the home, he said.
The small talk wasn’t natural. He looked out his window as the car flew down the hill, through Sutton Cross and along the Strand Road, through Baldoyle.
It was up to me.
—Terrible business, I said.
—What’s that?
—The hunger strikes.
—Aye, he said.—Difficult.
—Difficult?
—Aye.
I began to feel a sneaking admiration for some of the men I’d shot in the head. There was obviously more to informing than just listening. My arm was hopping, sore, where the bollix driving the car had gripped it as he’d hauled me out of the nursing home.
—Is your belt on, Henry? the man beside me asked.
The beard was back. It was dark but well managed, like a Protestant hedge.
—No, I said.
—Best put it on, he said.
We’d gone past the airport. I didn’t know where we were. We drove on country roads that suddenly widened, the hedges fell away, showing off new, unfinished housing estates, before the car dived back into the country and the gloom of the high hedges.
—How is she? he asked.
—The same, I said.
—Tough business. And Mister Reynolds?
—Deteriorating, I said, a bit surprised as the word came out.
—Sad.
—Yeah.
—A good man.
—Sometimes.
—Ach, that’s all of us.
—Why are we going to Bodenstown?
—Same reason we always go to Bodenstown, Henry, he said.—To renew our vows.
—It’s not June, I said.
—Aye, right enough.
—What make of car are we in?
He looked a bit lost, annoyed. Then amused.
—D’you know what? he said.—I don’t know, myself.
—Toyota Corolla, said the driver.
—There you go. Toyota. Why d’you ask?
—Just wondering, I said.—I was thinking of investing.
—Tired of the bus, hey?
I looked at him.
—You’ve been watching me.
—Aye, he said.—You’re a popular man.
I was in trouble.
I tried to read my own face, tried to see what he’d be looking at. Made sure no shock or fear got through. Felt no heat beneath the skin. Skin so hard and weather-beaten, a knife couldn’t have got through it, let alone embarrassment or terror.
I looked out my window. I gave it twenty seconds.
I’d seen no one following me, nobody standing near the house or sitting behind a paper in a car - like a Toyota - as I passed. Except the unemployed and the junkies. Men and boys I knew to see and nod to; men, I knew, I’d written off. Maybe the spy was one of them, shooting heroin for Ireland. Pretending to be worthless. Fitting right in and doing a good job.
—What colour is it?
—The car?
—Yeah.
—Can you not see for yourself?
—The name for it.
—Silver, said the driver.—It’s a bit on the dirty side.
—A wee bit, aye.
—Less conspicuous, I said.
—Aye, said the man beside me.—Unless there’s too much of the dirt. Then it becomes noticeable.
—Like a suit, I told him.—In my day. No suit at all and you were stopped by the rozzers.Too flamboyant and you were stopped as well. It’s the balance.
—Right enough.
I felt my chest loosen as I spoke. I knew what I was talking about. I was safe in the words.
There were no more housing estates. The driver was taking us by the scenic route, hugging the hedge on narrow roads that hopped and twisted beneath us. There was something else I began to notice. He’d slow down, almost stop, on some of the straighter stretches, and wait before putting the foot down again. I sat up, to see better. There was another car, about two hundred yards ahead. It was approaching a bend. It slowed down, or seemed to. Our driver slowed. Then I saw lights, once, the hazard lights. The car disappeared around the bend and our car started going at a decent clip again.
—The car ahead up there, I said.—Is he scouting for us?
—Spot on, aye, said the man beside me.—Looking out for the peelers.
—I thought so.
—Did you put the belt on, like I told you, Henry?
—No.
—Do that, like a good man. We need you alive for a wee while yet.
He gave me a smile full of teeth. Then he dropped the lip over them.
—I’ll tell you why we’re on our way, he said.
The car and the sudden heat - it was a quick, hot day; I was fighting my eyelids, dropping into sleep. He rolled down his window. Then he leaned across me and rolled down mine.
—There we go.
He sat up again.
—That’s a bit better.
The air was good. I was awake again and on the case. We passed pig shite and a crowd of cows, then hedges too wild to see over. I could hear soft branches scrape my side of the car.
—So, he said.—The hunger strikes.
One of the blanket men, Bobby Sands, had stopped eating on the 1st of March, at midnight - I knew that now - and other men had joined him, one by one. No man had died yet but the country was waiting. They won’t break me because the desire for freed
om, and the freedom of the Irish people is in my heart. An M.P. in the north, Frank Maguire, had died, and there was talk of running Sands in the by-election. I’d read the morning’s paper. Two days on the trot. I was bang up to date.
—A bad business, he said.
—Yeah.
—Like in your day, Henry, eh?
—I never went without food, I said.—If I could help it.
I’d go for his head and knock out any doubts he had about me.
—I knew hunger all my life, I said.—And it was never a fuckin’ strike. Only the middle class could come up with starvation as a form of protest.
I stared back at him.
It worked. I could hear the big teeth grind. But it wasn’t anger. He was reversing, back-pedalling furiously, reassessing the oul’ eejit beside him in the silver Toyota. He’d have to be interesting now.
—I disagree with your analysis, he said.—I disagree fundamentally. But—
He didn’t hesitate, exactly. But he dropped the voice.
—There’s no persuading them, he said.—Bobby and the other boys.
He sighed, but the noise wasn’t theatrical.
—We have to make the most of it.
The smile was small now, shy.
—It isn’t the route I’d have wanted, he said.—Your class analysis is way off the mark, Henry. But I understand, you came out of different times. But the doing without food - there I agree with you.
I had my information. I’d made my day.
—What’s on in Bodenstown? I asked.
—The usual, he said.—And the unusual. We honour our republican dead. And we plant something too. For tomorrow.
—What do we plant?
—You, he said.—We plant you.
I was sitting in front of a window. It was mid-afternoon out there. I could feel the heat but I could see absolutely nothing. It was paint. The window had been painted black, recently. There wasn’t a scratch or a hint of the day outside.
I’d been told to sit there, facing the blackened window. There were men behind me. At least two of them. Probably more.There’d been quiet coming and going. The door behind me, to the left, had been opened and closed. Another door further away had just been closed.
Politely, firmly, I’d been brought to the chair. It was ready, alone, facing the black window. I looked for rope in the gloom, or straps. Strong hands told me to sit. I did, but I wasn’t tied down. Nobody said, Don’t turn. Nobody had to.
I waited for it to start.
Then a voice. I didn’t know it. Northern. How far north, or west or straight ahead, I couldn’t tell. In my day I’d have been able to pin an accent to a town and a street. I wished now that I hadn’t been so bigoted. The north had never featured. I never gave a fuck about the north, or the strangers up there. They were foreign then, and they were still foreign.
The voice. A smoker, in his forties, carrying his share of lost life. He was speaking for the benefit of other men. There was more than one other man behind me in the room, and the talker didn’t know them very well.
—So, Henry, he said.—Welcome. This is standard procedure, nothing to be concerned about. You understand? You have no need to fear.
—This isn’t Bodenstown, I said.
That got no reaction, at all - not a foot moved or a sock pulled. I was in a room with experienced interrogators.
—Give us your name.
—Henry Smart.
—Age?
—Seventy-nine.
—Where do you live?
—Dublin, I said.
—Exactly?
—Ratheen.
—What’s your line of work?
—I’m retired.
—What did you do before you retired?
—I was the caretaker, in the national school. The boys.
—You’re a fair age, Henry.
—I know.
—Why do you want to join the I.R.A.?
—I don’t want to join the I.R.A.
—That’s not what—
—I never left.
—What?
—I’ve been in the I.R.A. since 1917, I said.—I never left or resigned, or anything. And I was in the Citizen Army before that. Before there was an I.R.A.
The men behind me knew their history. They knew about the Citizen Army, and James Connolly. They’d read him and revered him. He was up on their walls, with Che Guevara. They’d be looking now at the back of my head and thinking, He knew Connolly.
I was in control.
The shout appalled me. Right into my ear.
—Why!
I’d heard nothing. No one had crept up on me. But he was there. I could feel his breath while the shout still burrowed into my head. He didn’t touch me but I couldn’t get away; I couldn’t lean away from his weight.
I couldn’t budge.
—Why?
I couldn’t talk. I wasn’t there.
—Why were you talking to the peelers?
I couldn’t talk - I’d have spilled everything. I was choking.
—Answer now.
My head was coming back to me.
—What did you talk about?
This wasn’t interrogation. It was a test. Say nothing - keep the mouth shut. That was the rule, and it wouldn’t have changed - since my day.
—Answer!
Say nothing, don’t listen. The shout was solid but it wasn’t a shock now. The real shock was the fact that I was still sitting, that I wasn’t being dragged across the floor. I hadn’t been touched. And that was the torture.
I decided to breathe - I had to decide.
They knew that the G-men had been at my door. I could talk my way out of that. Or they knew that I’d never been Henry Smart M.P., and they were working themselves up, to get past my age and history, so they could kill me. But there wasn’t enough sense in that. They’d have shot me already, or left me alone. This was a test. They had business in mind and they were checking to see if I was up to it. One of their big men had travelled here with me - wherever we were - in a silver Toyota. They weren’t here to execute me. He wouldn’t have gone near a condemned man.
—Stand up!
I didn’t know if I had the life in me; I expected the hands to pull me up.
—Stand up.
Refusing to speak was resistance. Refusing to stand was a sign of nothing but the probable fact that I couldn’t. I gave it a go. I left the chair, tried to make sure my legs didn’t knock it back. I could feel the man’s breath on the sweat that soaked my neck. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But I made it. I stood.
—Turn.
It was the difference. The stance. The difference between my time and theirs. The modern gunman, legs apart, the arms pointed straight ahead, at me, at my mouth. In the half-light, it took a while to see that there was actually a gun his hands. I hadn’t a clue what make it was.
I stared back at him, over his hands and the gun. At the man who had shouted into my head. The man who’d been driving the car. He was wearing a black balaclava but I’d seen his eyes in the rear-view mirror, when he told me the car’s colour.
He should have looked a bit thick or at least sheepish, because he wasn’t going to shoot me. But he didn’t. He stared at my mouth. Whether he shot me or not didn’t matter. I wasn’t there; he didn’t give a shite. I didn’t know why he bothered with the mask.
The first voice spoke again. I looked at him, and I let them know: the pointed gun wasn’t bothering me that much. It was still a test and I thought I was passing.
—Sit down again, Henry.
—Face to the window?
—Yes.
There was one other man. He was wearing a balaclava too. I could just about see him in the corner near the door; the light coming from under it gave his shoes a good shine. I didn’t stare at him. He wasn’t to be seen. My guess was he’d been sitting beside me in the car. He was two men, two roles. Two paths to Irish freedom.
I sat again.
More qu
estions followed, because they had to be asked. They went through the catechism, even though I’d already passed, or failed.
Had I ever sung rebel songs publicly?
—Yeah.
Had I ever attended marches or republican funerals?
—Yeah.
Did I have a criminal record?
—Yeah.
Had I ever been arrested?
—Yeah.
—What for?
—Being Irish.
They loved that one; I heard them behind me. If I’d been in charge, I’d have slapped the head off the man who gave that answer. The sentimentality nearly made me puke.
—When was this?
—Well, I said.—That particular time would have been in 1916.
—Of course.
The shout was a bigger surprise.
—Why?
I was gone again, dead.
—Why did you talk to the fuckin’ peelers?
I found the words from somewhere deep; I could feel the slime on my fingers as I pulled them out.
—What peelers?
The wrong words - I knew it.
—Why? You cunt!
—Steady, said a different voice.
—Don’t fucking waste our time!
Hard hands were clapped beside my ear. Or it might have been the gun. There was no cordite. Did spent bullets still come with cordite? I didn’t know.
The glass in front was still black and intact. The day was still outside.
—Talk.
—I didn’t talk to anyone.
—They were at your house.
—I didn’t talk to them. I told them nothing.
I had my grip. I could choose the words; I was climbing, grabbing each one.
—I didn’t have anything to tell them, I said.—Nothing recent. They already knew about 1916.
I was sitting on the chair. I could feel it again, under me. I could feel it against my back. I shouldn’t have been talking. But this wasn’t the police. This was my side.
—They said they’d be back, I said.—I’ll tell them nothing then either.
I could hear a baby crying downstairs. Definitely in the same house, under me. It was a farmhouse. I hadn’t been blindfolded before we’d arrived. They’d let me see the lane, the new gravel - I’d have heard it hopping under the car if I’d been blindfolded - the wide yard, the whitewash on the walls. The walls reminded me of a photograph I’d carried for years. But I didn’t let it. I concentrated. There were two greyhounds tied to an iron ring in one of the walls. They had plenty of rope, but they looked bored and too skinny. There were slates missing off the farmhouse roof, and another dog, a mutt lying on the step at the back door. No one came out to greet us or see who we were. There was nothing going on in any of the outhouses. I’d got out of the car on my own steam. The man beside me had stayed put. The driver didn’t lay a hand on me, but he’d been right against me, straight in and up the stairs, into the room where I sat now, facing the black glass.