by Siobhan Dowd
‘We’ve to hope for the best, Mam.’
She nodded. ‘I’m away to bed, Fergus. I’m wrecked.’
‘OK, Mam.’
‘What are you doing?’
He looked down at the envelope topmost in his hand and saw it was addressed to him. ‘Dunno.’
‘Don’t go running up that mountain, Fergus.’
‘Why not?’
‘According to the news on the radio, there was an army vehicle blown up near the sentry hut earlier today. Four soldiers died.’
She tilted the rest of her tea onto the lawn and drifted through the kitchen door, waving a weary hand.
The thousand and one beads that made up Fergus McCann swirled red and black. No pattern formed, just chaos. He was back at the bandstand, with the stately air playing. He was scouring the faces and this time Owain was there. His intent, pale face shone down on him. The silver of his trombone was liquid, like mercury. And his lips were speaking and playing at the same time. ‘It’s a question posed by the music, Fergus,’ he said. ‘Being answered, but not as you expected. A feminine ending.’
‘Owain?’ he whispered. He peered up at the mountain as if by some miracle of prayer he might make out Owain up there, in the little sentry hut, waving his SLR, but the mountainside stared back, relentless in its emptiness. This place, Owain. It’s the beginning and end of all sorrow. He opened the topmost envelope without thinking, and his future fell out of it, a B and a B and a B.
Forty-six
It was the first and the last time that I walked at the head of the clan’s procession. The rope was ready around my neck. I had on a white shift the women had made especially. Mam’s bangle sparkled on my wrist. Hidden in my hand was Rur’s knot of hair.
Rur walked behind me, with my family. I could hear Mam’s moans. I could hear the footsteps of the townspeople. In Inchquinoag forest I could hear every last leaf, trembling.
Padum, padum, padum, went my heart. It would surely explode and kill me before they did. Padum, padum, it said. I live. I work. I pump. This cannot be. I’ve a lifetime of beating still to do.
As we came to the place where the view opens up to the head of the lough, they let me stop. My home stretched before me in the dawn shadow. The hills cascaded downwards, embracing their descent. A skylark rose up, brown and small. It climbed its invisible staircase, crooning.
Death is not a reaper, like they say, nor even a friend. It is dark, fierce water, an inundation.
The person holding the rope gave the line between my neck and his hand a flick. I walked up the final stretch of hill. We came to the ordained place. A gallows, hardly higher than myself, had been erected. A block of wood was placed beneath in readiness.
‘Do you want a blindfold?’ the executioner asked.
‘No,’ I replied.
The prayer was said, the old prayer. Forgive us for what we have done, and for what we have failed to do. Brennor’s voice was loudest. I stepped up onto the block and turned towards them.
The faces were cruel, solemn, pitying, triumphant, sad, anguished. Brennor’s face and Rur’s face were side by side. One was ashen, the other broken. I foresaw the coming years of violence, the old grudges leapfrogging over generations, reappearing in different forms.
I smiled down a last time and turned away to the east. Rur, I prayed in my head. Have a care. I felt his breath on my neck. I smelled his smell. The merest rim of the sun nudged up over the mountain.
The metal slid home, fast and free. I took my last breath and let it go, jumping into the next day. Silver light fizzed and shot apart. Love fell in particles, like snow.
Fergus screamed in the darkness, then woke up. He’d a pain in his shoulder blade.
‘Mel?’ he gasped. The curtains billowed, as if possessed. He doubled up, groaning.
‘Owain,’ he whispered.
The news he’d seen before coming to bed had revealed the names of the killed, with one Private Owain Jenkins amongst them. He saw the Land Rover coming up the hill, then down, the awful sound of the explosion, and now the cells of Owain’s body, scattered over the mountain, breaking down and changing into something else. The bog claimed a life for a life, so they say, he remembered Felicity saying when they’d raised Mel from her resting place.
He got out of bed and looked out of the window. Outside was the half-light before dawn. The pebbledash of the wall over the way was grey.
Almost without thinking, he groped for his running shorts and trainers. He’d a need for air, action: anything but the nightmarish pictures in his head.
Out on the close, all was hushed. The only noise was of a streetlamp that blinked crazily, humming. Its bulb was ready to blow, its light pink-tinged. He shivered, picking up pace. His trainers tapped softly along the pavement.
Again he heard the noise of the old-fashioned sash window down at Finicule’s being opened. He paused, listening.
The sound wasn’t repeated. Uncle Tally, up early again. Or maybe unable to go to sleep.
Softly he ran past the school, up to the end of the tarmacadam. His head was like a slideshow again. Mel’s fingertips, with their beautiful spools. Cora’s hand, plucking the petals off the withered hydrangea. The little wound in Mel’s back. Owain setting his sights on something invisible in the air. The love knot Mel had carried in her hand. Joe’s palm pressed to the glass divider. Uncle Tally in the car, looking out to sea. A reminder of death, Fergus.
He ran into the Forestry Commission, darting among the trees. He stumbled and fell among the pine cones, picked himself up and broke cover as the crescent moon dangled low in the sky, and the grey in the east turned blue.
When he came to the place where the lough opened up, he stopped. He turned back to look at the view. Ghostly curves cascaded down. The lough was a mere darkness. He deviated off towards the place where Mel was found and at last came to the cut where he’d waited that first day, the day of her discovery, when Uncle Tally had driven off to get the Gardai. He panted. Blood pumped. Then quiet came. Voices from that happy, distant morning wafted over to him on the breeze. ‘You could make your own distillery, Unk.’ ‘But what would you distil?’ ‘The prayers, Unk. What else?’ He sat down on the springy turf, gulping for air. As his breathing slowed, the hum of insects and the small conversations of early birds were audible. There was no sign of the creamy white kid or the sparrowhawk he’d seen that day.
He looked down towards the plain, the place he’d lived all his life. The past rolled out before him. The family trips, the laughs, the squabbles, the afternoons with Uncle Tally. He saw the recent weeks: the packets, exam papers, the counting-off of days as Joe fasted. The condoms and pills, himself and Cora lying like two question marks, and Mel, the laughing, living Mel of his imaginings. And he saw the funeral party around the Sheehans’ family plot, the men in balaclavas.
The Provos with the Drumleash slope to their shoulders. The man at the end, who’d reminded him of Joe. And then he knew.
The local bomb-maker, Deus. Thaddeus.
Part of him had known it all along. The smell of Christmas in Uncle Tally’s room had been of marzipan, almond-flavoured: the smell of Semtex.
‘Don’t tell your family, Fergus,’ he heard Michael Rafters pleading. ‘I don’t want the Provos getting on to me.’
At the time he’d thought Rafters meant Joe. But Joe had been unreachable, hardly conscious. He’d meant someone else. Then there was Mam, forever down on Uncle Tally. Now he knew why. Uncle Tally led, and Joe followed. ‘Tell Uncle Tally it was all for the best,’ Joe had said. It had been a message from comrade to comrade, not rivals in love. He recalled that visitors to Long Kesh were sometimes fingerprinted: not a risk Uncle Tally would want to run, and Joe would have understood. There was no Cindy in the case at all.
Uncle Tally, a bomb-maker, in it up to his neck, despite protesting his detachment.
The bottom fell out of Fergus’s world. Nothing seemed the way it had been before. He watched the sun rise without seeing. Skylarks be
gan their song without his hearing. Then a cold, weary fury hardened in him.
We sin, Fergus, more by the sin of omission than of commission. It was Felicity again, smiling in the darkness of the back garden with the stars spangled overhead. Then she was standing by the white screen of the slideshow, next to Mel’s merry, living face.
The image faded into an empty rectangle of light.
He groaned, picking himself up. He knew he had to speak out, no matter how remote the chances were that he would be listened to. Slowly he ran down the hill, through the Forestry, and back to Drumleash. Every step of the way he worked on the arguments. Uncle Tally, you could have killed an innocent bystander. Uncle Tally, Owain had a life to live, same as you or me. Uncle Tally, violence begets more violence. Old grudges leapfrog over generations. The sentences came and went, but all he could see was Uncle Tally’s face, implacable.
But when he reached Drumleash, all need for argument was over. At Finicule’s, the police had stolen a march on the day. An ambulance flashed, sirens wailed, walkie-talkies crackled. He blinked, breathless, a sharp stitch in his side. The side door to Uncle Tally’s bed-sit was wide open. Two constables were posted on either side. He craned his neck, trying to look up the narrow staircase, but saw only darkness.
He spotted an RUC officer he recognized from Roscillin.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Stand back, stand back. We’re taking out the body.’
He heard a kerfuffle on the stairs. ‘Mind. It’s steep.’ ‘Keep him steady.’ ‘Lift at your end.’ ‘Christ. McCann was heavier than he looked.’
A stretcher appeared, covered over with the purple blanket Fergus recognized from Uncle Tally’s bed. The men bearing the stretcher slid it into the waiting ambulance without delay.
‘Jesus. What is this?’ Fergus whispered.
The RUC officer said, ‘Nothing you won’t hear about later.’
‘I need to know now,’ Fergus pleaded. ‘I knew this man.’
Finally the officer told him what had happened. The bomb-disposal experts had found a fingerprint on the device that had killed the soldiers yesterday. The match fitted the print that an undercover agent had taken off a glass a few weeks ago, from a pint of beer poured by one Thaddeus McCann. And that same Thaddeus McCann, would you believe it, had been shot dead while resisting arrest.
Forty-seven
The funeral under the great Scots pine was a quiet affair. Even the Provos’ final salute seemed muted. After it was over, the people of Drumleash dispersed in silence. Mam and the girls put on a spread back at the bungalow, but only the Sheehans and the Caseys came. They just had the one sandwich and went home. Of Harry, the publican of Finicule’s, where Uncle Tally had lived and worked down the years, there was no sign. People said he’d gone to ground, others that he’d fled the country under a new identity.
Three weeks later, Fergus loaded his rucksack into the boot of the Austin Maxi. Mam gave Theresa instructions for getting the tea. Da looked up from the Roscillin Star and smiled sadly.
‘Fergus,’ he said. ‘So you’re leaving us?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s what your Uncle Tally always wanted for you. We’d two boys, a soldier and a student. He promised us never to say a word to you. And he kept that promise.’ Da’s eyes filmed up. ‘Tally never kept a gun in his room at Finicule’s. I want you to remember that, Fergus.’
‘I know, Da. You keep saying. And I’ll remember.’
Da put a twenty-pound note in his hand and turned away. Theresa and Cath stood waiting to say goodbye at the front door. Cath gave him a collage she’d made on a page of A4. Dalmatian dog spots danced all over it. She’d cut them out from Joe’s old coverlet that Mam said was worn out and only good for dusters. She’d glued scrunched-up bubblegum wrappers amongst them.
‘What’s it supposed to be?’ Fergus said.
‘It’s the skin of a patient. Somebody with the plague and chicken pox.’
‘God help them. And God help me.’
Theresa said she’d no card, only some advice.
‘What’s that?’
‘Be prepared.’
‘Be prepared for what?’
Theresa leaned forward and whispered in his ear, ‘I saw the condoms. In your bedroom.’
‘You little snoop—’
‘I know all about it.’
Fergus stared, then laughed and put a finger to his lips. ‘You’re wise beyond your years, Theresa McCann.’
‘I know. Good luck, Dr McCann.’
Fergus got behind the wheel of the Maxi while Mam put the learner plates up. He groaned. Uncle Tally’s death had meant he’d missed the chance to take his test and now he’d to wait until the Christmas holidays. He backed out of the drive as the girls waved frantically, hooted the horn and drove off down the close. Mam and he said little as they crossed the rolling plains and hills of the North. They came at last to Antrim and to Larne and descended into the brightly lit harbour. Fergus pulled up on the dockside, close to where the ferryboat was moored. He hefted the rucksack onto his back and together they walked over to the departure point.
‘Have you everything?’ Mam fretted. ‘The cake, the papers, the directions?’
‘Yes. Everything.’
‘Because all I can see from here are those.’ Mam shook the new trainers that dangled down, knotted to the drawstring at the top of the rucksack. He’d bought them with the money from Rafters’ ‘operation’. ‘Watch they don’t come loose.’ They were top-of-the-range, springy, with pumas racing off the edges.
Fergus smiled. ‘They’re safe enough.’
They came to the barrier where he had to go through and she couldn’t. She’d her lips between her teeth. Her eyes glistened. Her sunglasses sat on her head and he’d never seen her look so happy or so sad. ‘Oh, Fergus. They’ll make a fine doctor of you.’
She pulled him into a rough hug. Eighteen years of scoldings, nudgings, goadings, praisings and teasings were in it. ‘What will I do without you?’
‘You’ve Theresa trained up now, Mam,’ he said.
‘Get along with you.’ She released him from her arms.
He was about to go when he thought of something. ‘Mam?’
‘What?’
He rolled up his sleeve and took off Joe’s watch. ‘Take this.’
‘Why give that to me? Didn’t Joe give it to you to mind?’
‘I don’t want to risk losing it, Mam. It said in the brochure to keep valuables to a minimum in the halls of residence. Besides…’
‘Besides what?’
‘I reckon they’ll let Joe out soon. Early.’
‘D’you really think so?’
‘Yes.’
Mam took the watch and put it on her own wrist, smiling. ‘He’s coming along grand, the doctors say. Maybe he’ll even be right as rain.’
Fergus suppressed a shrug. What he’d seen of Joe was hardly grand. ‘He’s definitely improved,’ he said. He gave Mam a final hug. ‘You’ve one son going and another returning.’ He quickly went through the gate, showing his ticket.
‘I’ll be waving from the car,’ Mam called.
Fergus turned. ‘See you at Christmas,’ he called back.
He was down the ramp and up the steps to the top deck in a few minutes. He went to the boat’s starboard and found a space by the railing. There was the old Maxi, and Mam beside it, her trouser suit a neat navy and her hair let loose. She waved the giant pot of Marmite she’d bought for him at the last minute but forgot to add to his rucksack, where there was no room anyway. He opened his two hands, grinning, and the funnel gave its boom of departure. Imperceptibly, the boat moved. He grabbed the rail and waved. Mam leaned on the bonnet, waving, smiling, and although he couldn’t see from so far away, he knew that she was crying. She was saying something that he couldn’t make out. Perhaps it was Study hard, or Write often, or maybe, Don’t forget to go to mass. He nodded and the boat pulled away. A rope unspooled. The gap between the b
oat’s flank and the massive rubber tyres of the dockside turned from a foot to a man’s length, then a tennis court. Still Mam waved. He threw his arms wide as if sending a last hug over the water, and the boat began turning. Mam stood up and opened the car door, blowing a kiss. He watched the coast slip away. Larne retreated, as he’d imagined it the day of Lennie Sheehan’s funeral, then Antrim, then the five other counties in all their throes. The summer of the bog child was over. Mel’s living, laughing face, as drawn by Cora, now framed and in his rucksack, would go with him wherever he went. But the old Fergus of that time would never return. Cells would die and be born. New places and faces would jostle with the old. Letters would go back and forth bringing news and conversation. The Fergus who’d return at Christmas would already be different. He’d years of the changing to come. The studying, the books, exams, arguments, theories. The jokes and pints, laughter, kisses and songs. Life was like running, ninety per cent sweat and toil, ten per cent joy. The small figure of his mam got back into the car. Soon the Maxi flashed silver and brown as it climbed back up the hill. He turned away and walked across the deck to the other side.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my beloved friend Helen Graves, who sifted through the final MS with deftness and aplomb. Dr Conor Carville lent me his acute Northern Ireland ear. I would also like to thank my publisher David Fickling for his inspirational belief from the outset in this story and, as ever, Bella Pearson, Annie Eaton, Kelly Hurst and Sophie Nelson for their invaluable input. The story’s first reader was Hilary Delamere, my agent, and as ever she held the ball of wool steady while I walked into the labyrinth.
I also owe a massive debt to BBC/Open University’s Timewatch for its inspirational programme on recent discoveries of bog people in Ireland and to the classic The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved (Faber and Faber Ltd, 1969) by P. V. Glob. Maximum thanks are also due to Yoko Ono and the estate of John Lennon for the use of Lennon’s song lyrics from Imagine: indeed, all the songs from this album provided a mesmerizing soundtrack while I worked.