A Goat's Song

by Dermot Healy

  When the Civil Rights march on 5 October 1968 passed through the city of Derry it was met by a police baton-charge. Jonathan Adams, along with other elder policemen, had been called up from various counties in the North for the day. Not only because of a shortfall in numbers but also because outsiders would not be recognized. The air was rank with bigotry and acrimonious shouts like “In the name of God let us through”. The whole affair, the police thought, would be restricted to a small side street, and here it was proposed that Law and Order would make its stand on a genuine footing. The police had been told beforehand that the march had not been properly endorsed by the Civil Rights movement, that it was directly Republican, directly IRA. This was the perfect chance to settle old grievances.

  First the Catholics parleyed, then became adamant. But the route they wished to take was closed to them. Then it started. It was a hectic violent day.

  Jonathan Adams clouted with euphoria to the right and left of him.

  That was the night, in the aftermath of the march that did not take place, that the riots started in the Catholic Bogside area of the city. But by then the old timers had been removed from the scene, the young local police took over, and Jonathan Adams, battle-worn and fiercely satisfied, had returned home to Fermanagh. The following morning he began three days’ leave with his wife and daughters.

  They drove at break of day into the west through Ballyshannon. With a sense of pride Jonathan Adams flashed his identity card as they entered the Republic. The guard, with a knowing nod, leaned in and said: “That was a bad doing, yesterday.” “What did he mean?” asked Maisie as they drove through the uplifted barrier. “I don’t know. Every last man of them is a Republican,” said the Sergeant, “but they don’t frighten me.” Then the family was undecided as to what to do. Because the girls wanted to see Yeats’ grave they turned south and drove along the coast to Sligo. From Sligo, they drove out west to Achill Island. They stopped there for the night in the Valley House Hotel.

  “What’s thon island I can see from here?” Sergeant Adams asked.

  “What’s that you’re saying?” asked the man.

  “What is that island over there?”

  “That’s Mullet peninsula,” the manager told him. “It’s where the Playboy of the Western World came from.”

  The intention was to spend the next night somewhere in Galway, but Jonathan Adams was drawn to explore the isolated peninsula to the north, and so at noon the following day they entered Belmullet town after a long drive through the unpopulated bogland of Erris. The Nephin Beg range of mountains, which had been shrouded the day before in mist, now rose clear and pure.

  An old Fair Day was in progress in the town. Cattle and sheep and chickens were being bartered. Gypsies sold socks, gates and radios. A man swallowed lit cigarettes and brought them back up again still burning. Dogs fought. Goats butted the sideboards of carts. Men sat on steps eating sandwiches. Cows shat on pavements. Men sat on tractors licking ice-cream cones. It was like watching some medieval pageant. They drove from Erris Head in Broad Haven Bay down to Blacksod in the south, amazed at the isolation, the white sandy roads that ran by the sea; the Inishkea Islands, holy, absolute; the wind-glazed violent cliffs; the meteorological station; the endless bogs, the rips and cracks through the huge dunes; the black curraghs; the lighthouse that sat perched on Eagle Island like a castle in a fairy story; the piers, the harbour, the sea.

  “What’s the island beyant?” asked Jonathan Adams of a man who was oiling his Honda 50. He straightened up with a grimace.

  “They are a great bike,” said the man, “if you look after them.” He wiped his hands on his trousers, looked at the Honda and then looked at the island. “That’d be Inishglora,” he said, and felt his wet nose with his thumb and forefinger. “The Isle of Purity.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s right. Yes indeed.” He grimaced again. “It’s where Brendan landed.”

  He saw that this remark did not signify anything to the Adams family.

  “Brendan the navigator,” he explained, “the lad who discovered America – like the rest of us. Except that he was the first. Though of course that may not be true.” The family and himself stood looking out, with the Honda up on its stand, and the car engine running. “And it’s where the Children of Lir are buried, God bless them.” He felt his nose again. “And there you have it.”

  “Thanking you,” said the Sergeant, humbly.

  “And what part of the world do ye hail from?”

  “Fermanagh,” said Jonathan.

  “Oh, but they’re giving you a hard time,” said the man, and he shook his head sadly. “The sooner you drive them to feck out of there the better.”

  Sheepishly, they got into the car, the man slapped the roof and they drove on. And the man stood there, his hands on the grips of the Honda, looking out on Inishglora as if he were seeing it for the first time.

  They booked into a bed-and-breakfast a few mile out the road in Corrloch. From her window there Maisie Adams saw that a large cut-stone house opposite was for sale. She was intrigued to hear from their landlady that the price of the property was only £1,200. Next morning, despite her husband’s entreaties, Maisie arranged a viewing of the house with the auctioneer.

  “The lighthouse men lived here,” he explained, “They’re known locally as The Dwellings.”

  “Such huge rooms,” said Maisie.

  “This one is mine,” said Sara.

  But Jonathan Adams, treating the whole affair as foolishness, kept up only a desultory conversation with the auctioneer. And as the man pointed out what came with the property the Sergeant merely nodded, not wanting to enter into any false dealings. Yes, it was a fine house, he agreed, indeed it had a wonderful view. This being as far as manners and prudence would allow.

  Afterwards, Jonathan Adams went down to the hotel in Belmullet for a coffee. They served him in the bar where he sat uncomfortably among the drinkers. First the Angelus rang out, then came the news from RTE on the black-and-white TV. The Sergeant took no notice till he heard sounds and names that gradually grew familiar. He looked up with terror and saw they were re-running an account of the march. This came as a shock to Jonathan Adams. He had seen no TV men there, nor was he used to them. It showed the Catholics gathering in Duke Street. Then the chaotic start of the march. The shouts for the police to give way were raised. With great religious zeal the Catholics called to the policemen. Within seconds a protester was being batoned. What happened next was seen by Jonathan Adams with blinding clarity. To the left of the picture could be seen a grey-haired policeman, hatless, chasing after a youth. When he lost him among the other marchers, he turned and batoned a middle-aged man who was already pouring blood.

  The crowd in the bar shouted “bastards”.

  On the TV the old policeman had found his hat. As he put it on, he looked round for someone else to hit. Seeing no one he turned back and hit the screaming man again. A woman crouched low as she pulled her man away. The old policeman charged past the camera. Then, wild-eyed and wielding a baton, he stared remorselessly straight at the lens. Jonathan Adams had become a witness to himself. He saw the mad look of fury in his own eye. He looked round the bar but no one was taking any notice of him. His chin began shaking. Then he shook uncontrollably.

  “Bastards,” said someone.

  Jonathan Adams slipped away.

  Next morning at six they left Mayo without breakfast. They were on the road in the dark. He brooked no complaints. And this time he kept his head down as they crossed the border lest anyone might recognize him. Everywhere this RTE film of the confrontation was being viewed. He was terrified. He could not wait to get back to the safety of his own home. He drove furiously, in his mind’s eye watching himself right his hat and turn back to strike the man who was down and screaming.

  Jonathan Adams had become a part of history. Whenever a documentary of those troubled years in Ireland was made, that clip from the Telefis Éireann file would be shown. W
ord went out through the police that the cameraman responsible should be dealt with. But by now, TV men were coming from all over the world.

  That evening on Ulster Television, as his family sat round after dinner, the news turned to the riots in Derry. Again, in slow motion, the Catholics collected in Duke Street. Again they began to move forward. Again they implored, hysterically, in the name of God, to be let through. Jonathan Adams stood up and switched off the TV. He said nothing. He left the room. Catherine switched the TV back on. In his kitchen, Jonathan Adams heard the eerie voices call out again. He thought it was fiction, but it was reality. He could envisage the whole scene, the heads, the hatred, the jerky movements. He came in shaking with wrath. The TV was switched off again.

  “I don’t want ye to look at that,” he roared.

  He unplugged the TV and put it into his car.

  By the following day it was obvious that everyone in the village, including Matti Bonner, had seen Jonathan Adams on the news the night before. He sent the TV back to the company he had hired it from. He phoned his superiors to see if they could bring forward his retirement. In the barracks, young Saunderson joked: “Ye still have it in ye, Sergeant.”

  “Mind your own business, sonny,” said Sergeant Adams.

  He was terrified. Terrified and angry. The seal on his privacy had been broken. Sleepless nights followed. Each night the same set of images swam again before his mind, and he succumbed to such fear that he spent the night at the foot of the stairs, a loaded revolver in his hand, facing the door.

  Then the girls learned at school how their father had been teaching manners to the popeheads.

  “Everyone saw you on television,” Catherine said, when she came in from school.

  He was sitting in his uniform in the kitchen. He looked at Maisie and then at Catherine, and then he went up to his room and prayed. He called on God to give him peace. They were calling him a bigot, but he was a patriot. He was not by nature a violent man. The camera could not tell the history that led to that moment when he had become one of those statistics he despised.

  The camera did not hear orders. The camera did not hear the chants of hate. It did not remember that wherever the Mass was said soon men were burning upon the stake. It selected its own branch of history. But why had he retaliated like that? And why had the young policemen held back? Had they seen the camera? Had the Fenians known the whole time that this would appear on TV and so deliberately driven the police to it? It was the old fogies like himself who had struck out, not knowing that they were being filmed. The young fellows had known.

  It was them that went up under cover of darkness to the Bogside.

  In the light of day he had become the author of his own misfortune. Jonathan Adams cursed the cameraman. He cursed the police that had used him and his stupidity. He remembered going up together with other policemen in the minibus from Fermanagh on the fatal day. They had stopped off at a seaside town for dinner at a hotel. All the talk that day was of how they would put a stop to Rome. We’ll show them! Hey! Now he felt that the same policemen had thrown him to the lions. After he turned on Saunderson for mentioning that escapade, his appearance on the TV was never mentioned. But sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he caught them smiling. There was no escape.

  The whole of the world had seen him.

  Because someone had knocked off his hat, Jonathan Adams had started a war.

  12

  The Summer Home

  After this, and because of the accelerating war in the years that followed, Jonathan Adams became estranged from his daughters. He no longer collected them from school. He did not walk the roads with them. He did not go shopping in town with them. He no longer went to public occasions. Each time they came home with him in the car he approached the house from a different direction, through tree-lined back roads, along laneways. All the ground-floor windows of the house were barred, new safety glass was installed, the doors bolted. The girls could invite few friends home.

  He sat in the house like a trapped animal. Nervousness distorted his features. His chin began to twitch. Before he stepped out in the mornings he stood a while behind a slit in the closed curtains searching the garden and the road with his eyes. A knock on the door once night fell was never answered.

  It was during this period of isolation that Catherine made her first appearance on stage. She joined the chorus in the school production of Annie Get Your Gun and was soon drafted into the lead. Sara played her leading man. The teachers were amazed at how seriously the Adams girls took the business of learning their lines. From the first day they’d attended the auditions and read out the parts chosen for them, the script had never left their hands. They went into swoons of exaggerated pathos. Each rivalled the other’s cowboy drawl. Maisie made the small red tight-fitting dress that Catherine would wear for the finale from bed-sheets soaked in raspberry dye. She corrected the bodice a number of times to suit her daughter’s taste. For Sara an old school blouse was transformed with gold-stitch embroidery into a Western dandy’s shirt. A cowboy hat was bought in Woolworth’s. In the world of make believe the women suddenly found themselves at home. The living room, with its bulletproof glass and bars, was turned into a Wild West wardrobe.

  Annie Oakley’s hillbilly costume was made from bald velvet dyed brown. Old riding boots were found that went back to Jonathan’s father’s time and into them he inserted cardboard insoles cut from ammunition boxes. The toes he stuffed with newspaper. One night Jonathan Adams came home to find his daughter, in leather boots to her thighs, standing in front of the mirror practising her draw with a silver six-gun he had carved in the long afternoons at the station.

  “This is too much,” he told Maisie.

  “They want you to come,” she replied, “on opening night.”

  “I can’t.”

  “They will be very disappointed.”

  “It’s too risky,” he said. “We’ll see.”

  Catherine started gargling. She practised voice exercises. She changed her walk. She stopped eating chocolate when she heard it prevented proper delivery. She began dreaming unashamedly of fame. She perfected a male stance by opening her knees wide as men do. She hunched her shoulders and took large comical strides. Then, when she donned the dress, she made two cute false breasts from rolls of tissue. She perfected a small maidenly walk for her forthcoming wedding to Frank Butler, her sister. Before the mirror in the drawing room she tried out her various roles as man and woman, and then, with her knees far apart, sang:

  You can’t get a man,

  Oh, you can’t get a man . . .

  On opening night, Maisie sat in the second row beside an empty seat. She put her handbag on it and waited. Every so often she looked over her shoulder to see if he had come. The hall filled with the murmur of voices and the crackling of chocolate papers. From behind the curtain came the boom of a microphone, or the clatter of dance steps. The lights were lowered. In the dark Jonathan Adams slipped in beside Maisie. She reached over and took his hand. He heard the opening chorus as if it were coming from a different planet. Then his eyes watered as Catherine, nervous and covered in shiny red make-up, threw her arms dramatically wide, and stamped to the centre of the small stage in her riding boots and buckskin trousers. She pulled out a gun and fired overhead with a quiet click. Offstage, the sound of the shot came seconds later. Then Annie Oakley, with a wild whorish fling, sat on her sister’s shining-trousered knee and, swaying her legs like a trollop, began singing a song whose refrain was taken up by fifty girls dressed as cowboys. And it was a refrain that Jonathan Adams despite himself could not get out of his head that night as he drove through the black lanes of the border country:

  Oh, you can’t get a man

  with a gun

  Oh, you can’t get a man

  with a gun

  With a gu-un, with a gu-un

  No, you can’t get a man

  with a gun

  Jonathan Adams had learned his lesson.

  Now
, when he had to accompany Major Bunting and the Reverend Paisley, he always stood at the furthest remove. When the Apprentice Boys marched, he stood in any available laneway away from the action. He heard the shots in Derry that were fired supposedly by the IRA before the British Army shot thirteen dead. A month later, he was standing at the start of a march that set off to commemorate the deaths of the thirteen. He saw assembled there faces he knew from posters, faces of Catholic revolutionaries, Marxists, students. He had got to know them all over the years since that terrible day in Duke Street. He might even have seen Jack Ferris there. He was helpful and tactful. And it was not cowardice, but cunning, that drove him into the background.

  He was only waiting to get out. A man of understanding holdeth his peace. The merciful man doeth good to his own soul; but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh. He learned to hold his peace. To let the law protect him. He must not be one who soweth discord among his brethren.

  Not that these Republicans were his brothers.

  They were not his brothers. They walked in the imagination of their evil hearts and went backward and not forward. Catholics were not of the people. The God of the Bible was the people’s God, but they were afraid of Him. They held fast to deceit. They spoke peacefully to their neighbours with their mouths, but in their hearts they lay in wait. They were filled with delusions and assumptions. All the Catholics of the North were on the move. They had fooled themselves into thinking they were in the right. But the Protestants were marching to meet them.

  And out of sight, accompanying them, went Jonathan Adams, his eye raised like a hawk for the telling angle of the hand-held camera. But he did not despise those Catholics he watched burying their dead, carrying Civil Rights banners or marching to confront the Housing Authority. He pitied them, and he was afraid of them. He pitied them because they were corrupt, he was afraid of them because they were the mercenaries of Rome. The year after Duke Street, a British report called for the disarming of the RUC. Then in October the first policeman was killed. It did not matter that he died by a Protestant hand, though some took vain refuge in that. The liberals always liked telling that story – how the first policeman died through Protestant terrorism. Or how there would have been no terrorism only for Protestant sectarianism and hatred. Jonathan knew that the enemy was always lying in wait. With the death of the policeman in Belfast Jonathan Adams knew it had begun. Soon policemen would die by guns fired by Catholics.