by Roddy Doyle
It sickened me. Not the riot - the riot was always coming. The riot was the start of nothing; it was the strike’s last shout. What sickened me was myself, my uselessness. The fact that I could do nothing. Get stuck in, observe, bear witness - I couldn’t even walk away on my own.
—Photograph me, for fuck sake. Look! I’m drenched in blood. An old man! It’s fuckin’ scandalous.
The van kept going.
—There’s plenty of blood today, said a new voice.
It seemed new; I didn’t recognise it. I couldn’t keep up with my minders. There was a core of five or six men and, except for the man with the beard, I couldn’t remember them long enough to describe, either to myself or the G-men. I heard the names - they weren’t kept from me - but never managed to keep them.
—You’re above all that, Henry, said the voice.
I couldn’t see the man at the front of the van. I was in the back, lying across a damp mattress.
—We don’t want you to be seen bleeding, he said.—You’re not flesh and blood.
—I fuckin’ am.
—No. You’re not.
It was over. The families started to intervene; they wouldn’t let their sons and husbands die. Unconscious men were drip-fed back to life. Other men saw it was over and took food before they slipped out of the world.
The lady, the miserable cunt, wasn’t for budging. The Famine Queen herself. Thatcher would have let every man and woman on the island die. But there was that, at least. The hatred. Defeat was always victory, another telling of the old story, to lure the latest young lads into the movement. Defeat was impossible. It was just a horrible kind of victory, the victim’s wheezy triumph.
I gave up, again. I couldn’t face another day. They were hammering on my door the morning after the Ballsbridge riot but I wasn’t getting up to answer. I couldn’t. I slipped below - I was gone. Far away from fact and hunger strikes. Back into the burning heart of Monument Valley.
I knew who I was again one afternoon in November. I didn’t sit up in the bed; I was already doing that. I saw the woman standing at the kitchen table. I saw her through the open bedroom door and I knew who she was, because the knowledge, the name, beat back the thought that it might be Miss O’Shea.
It was Saoirse. She was peeling cooking apples. I knew her, as if I’d been watching her at work for hours. There was a strong beam of sun cutting across the room, lighting two of the table legs. Her head was out of the light but I still knew her. Miss O’Shea was in the nursing home - I knew that. (I didn’t know yet that it was months since I’d seen her.) Saoirse was there in the kitchen, peeling apples. She’d never been in the house before and I didn’t have an apple peeler. But grand. I’d been sick and my daughter was looking after me. I was a lucky man. I was a happy man.
Ivan was dead and buried. The hunger strike was dead and buried. The coalition government that was formed after the June election was about to be buried. I fell asleep, and woke up the same man. I woke and saw a man beside me, sitting on one of the kitchen chairs.
—Benjamin.
—That’s right.
—When did you get here?
—This morning.
—Good man.
I closed my eyes and slept. We’re in the money - we’re in the money. I loved Saoirse, first thing, every time I woke. Whether she was there or not. I loved her mother. I couldn’t wait to see her, to look at her solid, dark red face.
—Is it Ben or Benjamin?
—Benjamin.
—Grand.
Then he was gone.
—Where?
—Home.
—To the dogs.
—That’s right.
—Will he be back?
—Perhaps.
—Grand.
I’d wake up alone, or she’d be there, somewhere in the house - it didn’t matter. The radio was quietly on.
I leaned out of the bed to hear.
—Turn it up a bit.
—I could bring it in to you.
—No, I said.—Just give the volume a bit of a twist.
I could hear the news from a safe distance. The Red Brigades were kidnapping half of Italy and Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland. I listened for news from Ireland. The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child was calling for a referendum to protect the rights of foetuses. And corporal punishment was about to be banned from Irish schools, twenty-five years after I’d banned it. I heard nothing about the H-Blocks and little of anything from north of Swords. The north was far away again. It was safe to get out of the bed.
I felt fine but I fell over. I hadn’t walked in months, and I’d forgotten that I’d only the one leg. I’d been young again, a father - We’re in the money, we’re in the money - before I’d gone under the train. There was no self-pity, just a bit of catching up. I was ancient and my daughter was an oul’ one. She had to grunt as she helped me off the floor.
We talked. But there was no making up for lost time. She was happy enough in the small talk. And so was I. I sat beside the Superser. I listened to the news and I didn’t shout back at the radio.
I knew it wasn’t over. The hunger strike had been lost but I was still the talisman. I’d seen the struggle before, the split between the gun and the vote, and I had a good idea of what was going on out there in the land of the Provisionals. They’d be re-enacting our glorious past. I knew I was in the middle of it. Sinn Féin had sudden political clout, on both sides of the border - the border they insisted didn’t exist. The strike was over but seats had been won. I knew they’d come knocking - they’d all come knocking. I didn’t mind. I was rested.
She drove me to her mother.
She turned left, onto the coast road. I couldn’t see the Hill of Howth, because the weather was in the way. The wipers worked but they weren’t much help.
—It’s lovely here, she said.
—I suppose so.
She took us through the nursing home gates. There was no Special Branch bus there, waiting. But they’d be knocking soon. They’d be following us now, I thought. But the thought did nothing to make me sit up or worry. I was ready for them too. Until I forgot about them.
—A big funeral, was it?
I’d stopped at Ivan’s door. There was someone else in there, a little oul’ one shaking inside her nylon dressing gown, standing at the window and staring at her hands.
—Very big, she said.
—A good send-off.
—Yes.
—He wasn’t the worst, I said.
—He was great.
—Did he leave you anything?
—You are such a horrible man, she said.
She meant it; I’d upset her.
—I’m sorry, I said.
She walked away, back the way we’d come.
—Sorry, I said again.
She stopped and turned.
—You were there, she said.
—What?
—You were at the funeral.
—Was I?
—Yes.
She knew I wasn’t messing. She followed me into her mother’s room. I sat beside the bed.
—Did I behave myself?
—Of course you did.
—Because we had our differences, me and Ivan.
—I know, she said.—He hated you.
I wanted to cry - I fuckin’ did.
—He was scared of you.
—That’s better, I said.—I don’t remember it at all. Did he die here?
—No, she said.—At home.
—Grand.
There was no change in the bed. Miss O’Shea was maybe deeper, darker, but I couldn’t really judge. I leaned over her, slowly, managed to hold the creaks, and I rested the side of my head on her stomach. Nothing gave or settled back. I lifted my head, very slightly. The blanket touched my ear, and dropped. Touched, and dropped.
—She’s breathing, I said.
—Yes, said Saoirse.
She must have dressed me for Ivan’s funeral. I w
as trying to see what had happened, making it up. I’d been sick and she’d helped me get the togs on. Some sort of a fever, the works; it was only natural that I couldn’t remember. I’d insisted on getting out of the bed and off to Roscommon to make sure that they did a proper job burying the fucker.
—You’re quite the celebrity, she said.
She was driving us into town, another day. We were going to the pictures.
—Yeah, I said.—It’s gas.
—There were people who wanted to shake your hand, she said.—My God, a queue.
It was she who’d taken me to the burial, not the man with the beard or one of the other northern men. Ivan would have been on their long list of renegades. All he’d done in the War of Independence had been cancelled out when he’d decided to stand for election. He’d stood, and won, and he’d recognised the state. He’d been clever, Ivan; he’d always been very clever. He knew there’d be more than one split, that the more interesting splits always followed the first one. He went with the wrong side, de Valera and the diehards, at the start of the Civil War, because he knew they’d end up winning. He knew his history and he knew his own people. He lost the war and sat back. He was a young fella, and he could still get fat while he waited. Then the second split came, and his timing was perfect. He went with de Valera again, into the arms of democracy, and it wasn’t long - 1932 - before the former rebels took power from the other former rebels and started to run the place. But Ivan had already been running the place. He was a gas man. He soon had his feet in under the Cabinet table and he helped stir the country through the Economic War and the Emergency and everything else, even up to the steps of the Common Market. But then there was the Arms Trial - maybe he’d felt guilty; maybe he’d felt old - and he’d lost his place at the table. He’d run guns for the Provisionals, but they still wouldn’t go to his funeral.
—That man, Haughey? said Saoirse.
—Charlie Haughey?
—He shook your hand, she said.—But some of the other political guys stayed well away from you.
—That suits me fine.
—You’re a hot customer.
I saw her smiling.
We went to Chariots of Fire, the first time I’d been inside a picture house in this country. It was hard to get worked up about posh Brits trying to outrun one another. Ford, I knew, would have hated it. There was too much talk, and no place in the script for Maureen O’Hara. After the film we went to Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street. She held the tray. My wrists wouldn’t take the weight of two full plates and a pot of tea. And I didn’t mind at all. My daughter was looking after me. We both had the shepherd’s pie and I ate my own and most of hers. Then we walked back slowly - there was no choice there; I was fucked and full - up to Parnell Square, where she’d parked her car. On the way home, as we crawled with the traffic over the canal bridge at the North Strand, I realised something that shocked me: I’d just lived the perfect day.
There were more good days and empty days. She was gone for a long time and I was back on the bus, up the hill to sit with Miss O’Shea and the wallpaper, and more sitting alone at home waiting for the bang on the door, the boys, or the lads who were chasing the boys. They hadn’t gone away. I often knew that.
I kept the radio on low, but I listened. Lenny Murphy put on some weight when two lads with a sub-machine-gun put twenty-six bullets into his head and body. A Prod with a Catholic surname, a young man with a lot to prove, Murphy had been slaughtering Catholics, cutting them to pieces in the back rooms and front rooms, the romper rooms, of Shankill drinking clubs - Romper, bomper, stomper boo.Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. His pals in the U.V.F. told the Provisionals where Lenny would be on the night he swallowed the bullets - it was a complicated war.
That was in 1982, coming up to the Christmas. I remembered it, and other deaths and goings-on. I made it to 1983, most of the days accounted for, in the proper order. I woke up every morning and remembered the day before. I knew where I was and who I was. I had a calendar on the wall in the kitchen. I didn’t know who’d put it there, but there it was, to the left of the cooker. I marked off each day, put a thick line through it, and made sure I was waking up in the day after the last one. I bought myself a new calendar, for 1983, with a woman on it, some skinny one called Olivia Newton-John.
Saoirse looked at me when she saw the calendar. It was a deliberate while before she spoke.
—Does that ever stop?
—It was half-price, I told her.
I’d bought it in early February.
—Were there none with cute dogs or horses? she asked.
—I just grabbed the first one, I lied.
I’d climb out of the bed and stroll, or try to stroll, across the kitchen to Olivia Newton-John. She wasn’t my kind of woman at all but I still tried to make sure that my pyjamas were clean, when I remembered. And twice, before I’d made it to the woman, I’d know that there were days missing, whole clumps of the things. I’d know by the slant of the light, or the lack of it, or the fact that I was starving, too weak to make it across to the calendar. I hated that - I fuckin’ hated that.
I met Saoirse at the airport. I knew the date. The 23rd of February, 1984. I knew she was arriving. I had the time of her flight on the calendar - it was Kathleen Turner up on the wall that year, and she left poor Olivia in the halfpenny place. I was dragged by my wet heart out of the bed by the alarm clock I’d bought specially. And I was waiting when she pushed her trolley into the arrivals area, my sixty-three-year-old daughter. She was flaked, I could see, but she grinned.
She came and she went. She never stayed with me. She had a place, she said. She had a car. She brought Benjamin with her, or she came alone. He was a nice, dull lad - like one of the dogs, she said. She wasn’t joking. She loved him because he was like none of the men she’d known before him. He’d given her peace and I liked him for it, and I liked him anyway. He was quiet but he wasn’t hiding anything. I saw him once or twice a year. I could measure his visits in those terms because the years were passing and I spent most of them in bed or sitting beside my wife’s bed.
—Is this unusual? I asked one day.
—What?
—This, I said, and I nodded at my wife.
The gorgeous nurse had gone, off to California. More money and sun, she’d said as she’d kissed me on the cheek and let me gawk at her arse one last time as she carried it out the door and down the corridor and the stairs. I heard her rubber soles, and I missed her. She’d gone and been replaced by other girls I couldn’t remember till I saw them again. It was one of those I was talking to now.
—Being unconscious, I said.—Dead and alive.
She looked uncomfortable, and red around the nose.
—Missis O’Kelly is not dead, she said.
—I know, I said.
—There’s no life-support machine, she said.—You can see that.
—Yeah.
—This isn’t a hospital, she said.—We feed her and clean her. Everything else, she manages herself. Do you understand me?
—Yeah.
—She’s perfectly alright.
—I wasn’t asking you to turn off any fuckin’ machine.
—Language.
—She’s used to it, I said.—And look it, I’ll sit here forever, I don’t mind. But it’s been a long time. It’s like a fairy tale or something.
She was looking at me now, properly.
—I’ve even kissed her, I said.—To see if that would work. But it didn’t. You don’t know any handsome princes, do you?
—They’re all working on the building sites in London, she said.
—Is it unusual?
—I’d say so.
—Is she listening?
She stepped away from the bed, as if the consequences of her answer had just whacked her.
—Is she? I asked.
—I don’t know. She’s the way she should be. She’ll go in her own time.
—Okay. Fair enough.
Maybe
she was right. She’d go when she was ready. But when would that be? After I died? When the Brits got out of Ireland? I wouldn’t fall for those ones, the romance and religion. The hunger strikes were over. She was nearly a hundred years old. She was dying slowly, and the only thing I wondered now was when I’d know she’d died. She didn’t know I was sitting beside her. She didn’t know anything at all.
But sometimes I didn’t believe that.
They were out there. I knew that. But there was no bang on the door.
He was sitting beside my bed. The man with the beard.
—Are you well rested, Henry?
—Yeah.
The beard was gone.
—You’re looking well.
—Thanks.
It was good to see him.
He brought his face closer to mine. I knew there was no one else in the house. He was alone.
—This is where it starts, he said.
The hunger strike had been lost. But it hadn’t. Defeat was always more valuable - the better songs came out of it. Thatcher had done what she’d always been supposed to do. She’d let Irishmen die. They nailed themselves to the cross and she sat in the shade and watched. Cromwell came, slaughtered the innocents, and left. The surviving Irish, in the absence of a grave, pissed on his memory. But Thatcher came, and she stayed. The strikers died in 1981, but she was still Prime Minister years later. She killed Argentinians, she broke the heads of her own coal miners. She was the Provisionals’ greatest asset. She was living, breathing evil and she was on the telly every night.