The Heirs of Owain Glyndwr

by Peter Murphy

  ‘Arianwen must be kept completely out of this,’ he said. ‘She must know nothing. Is that clear?’

  ‘Agreed,’ Caradog said.

  ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ Caradog and Dai Bach replied together.

  ‘Because if she is not kept out of it, you will answer to me – both of you.’

  ‘We understand,’ Caradog said.

  Trevor looked at Dai Bach.

  ‘You’re definitely going to build it, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I am a chemist,’ Dai replied.

  ‘I think there may be a bit more to it than just being a chemist.’

  ‘I know some people we can consult, if we have to,’ Caradog said.

  ‘We should move the instructions out of the cabinet now, tonight,’ Dai said. ‘I will keep them at my house.’

  ‘No,’ Trevor said firmly. ‘Not in your house, not in anyone’s house. Find a garage for rent somewhere in Bangor, and I will take a lease on it. Call me with the landlord’s number. You’re going to need a workspace anyway, and it should be in Bangor, well away from Caernarfon, but definitely not at your house. As soon as you’ve taken possession, then we move the documents. Not before.’

  He looked at Caradog. ‘Do you agree?’

  ‘Completely,’ he replied.

  16

  March 1969

  ‘I’ve hit a bit of a blank wall, see,’ Dai Bach admitted.

  The garage was small and cold, with off-white walls pock-marked with holes where some previous tenant had put up a shelf or hooks for tools, all of which had long since disappeared. Damp patches on the floor, which sloped downward towards the rear of the structure, suggested that the door, resting flimsily on the uneven concrete surface beneath, was powerless to keep the rainwater at bay. The garage was lit by stark tubular yellow lights which hung down from the centre of the ceiling. Trevor had seen it only once previously, on the day he rented it on a monthly cash basis from a local bar manager who had been disqualified from driving for a long time and had sold his car.

  The only item of any size in the garage now was the large metal trestle table which occupied the central area. Two bright desk lamps were connected by a long extension cable to a socket on the wall. On the front section of the table were quantities of electrical wire, several pairs of pliers and screwdrivers, and a small battery-powered alarm clock with its back panel missing. The remainder of the table was covered by several sets of instructions for assembling home-made bombs, which had previously been stored in the basement cabinet at the Tywysog. Two smaller tables had been set up along the rear wall, on one of which were three large cardboard boxes and two metal cases containing materials and tools for use in the assembling of the device. The second table held an electric kettle, a jar of instant coffee, a bowl containing lumps of white sugar, a bottle of doubtful milk, and several unwashed cups.

  ‘How are the ingredients?’ Trevor asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Do you know that?’

  ‘I know as far as I can know,’ Dai Bach replied. He sounded frustrated. ‘They came from a reliable source.’

  Trevor looked at Caradog.

  ‘Some friends had access to a military base some time ago, and helped themselves. This was surplus to requirements.’

  ‘Caradog…’

  ‘And that’s all I’m going to say. Even to you, Trevor. No offence. I had to give my word. This is serious business.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Trevor said. ‘But its quality is important. You’re storing it in less than ideal conditions.’

  ‘Dynamite is relatively stable,’ Dai Bach said, ‘as explosives go. Obviously, you have to be careful handling it, but it’s not going to deteriorate and start leaking nitro-glycerine in the time it’s going to be here. It comes from a military source. I’m not worried about the quality.’

  ‘I’m worried about everything,’ Trevor said.

  ‘I am satisfied that we couldn’t have done any better,’ Caradog said.

  Trevor nodded slowly.

  ‘All right. So, what’s the problem?’

  Dai Bach waved an arm over the table.

  ‘It’s setting up the timing mechanism, see. Your basic timed detonation is easy. One clockwork alarm clock, remove the minute hand, insert a screw as a point of contact, and when the hour hand touches the screw it completes an electrical circuit, allowing current to flow from the battery; child’s play, really, once you get the idea. But the maximum time you can get from that is twelve hours.’

  ‘Not enough,’ Caradog said. ‘Once I’ve found my spot, I have to plant it as soon as I can. I need a longer delay.’

  ‘So then,’ Dai said, ‘we have to think about a battery-operated clock, again ideally an alarm clock. In theory, that should give us up to 24 hours, but the instructions we have are not clear about the wiring. The best diagram is in the German booklet, but I can’t understand what the instructions say. I suppose I could get a German dictionary and do my best. The English instructions are not clear at all.’

  ‘You have to get the timing right,’ Caradog said. ‘Otherwise it’s useless.’

  ‘It’s not useless I’m worried about, man,’ Dai Bach replied. ‘It’s blowing myself to kingdom come I’m worried about. It’s bloody dangerous to fool around with timing devices. If anything goes wrong when I put it in place with the dynamite, the whole lot could go up. I’m scared to do it, to be honest with you. I’m not sure what I’m doing.’

  Trevor walked around the table and perused one of the instruction documents. He glanced over at the table.

  ‘The general principle seems the same, whatever you are using. You have to fix it so that the timer completes the circuit.’

  Dai Bach shook his head.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Einstein. I had got that far. But a battery-operated clock is not the same as a mechanical clock. I’m sure it’s easy if you’ve done it before. But I haven’t. And then…’

  He paused, seemingly reluctant to continue.

  ‘What?’ Trevor asked.

  ‘One set of instructions says you can set the timer in such a way that after the set time, the device becomes unstable. That would mean…’

  ‘It would detonate if someone tried to move it or tried to disarm it,’ Trevor said.

  ‘Yes. The trouble is, you need more equipment for that. I think you might need a mercury tube, and I don’t know where we would find one of those, and even if I did, mercury makes the whole thing much more volatile. And whatever we assemble, I have to test it safely before Caradog tries to put it in place.’

  ‘Well, obviously, you mustn’t test anything you’re not sure about,’ Trevor said. ‘Otherwise, I will have some explaining to do to Mr Watts about what happened to his garage. And it’s no good asking me.’

  ‘There are some people we could ask,’ Caradog suggested.

  ‘Who?’ Trevor asked. ‘The FWA? The Mudiad? You said it yourself, Caradog. We can’t risk that kind of contact with all the police activity going on now. We have to stay below the radar. I’m not sure I would trust them anyway. Are they clever enough to build what Dai wants to build?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about them,’ Caradog replied.

  ‘Well, who, then?’

  Caradog fingered the alarm clock gently.

  ‘You remember some time ago, a few Irish lads came over and threw green paint all over the statue of the Blessed David Lloyd George?’

  Trevor laughed. ‘I remember. It didn’t strike me as the most intelligent protest in the world, I must say. I assumed it was the result of a few too many pints on the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead.’

  ‘It was a bit more than that,’ Caradog said. ‘I was watching in the Maes at the time. They struck me as serious people. Just out of interest, I kept an eye on them and tracked a couple of them down later in the night, a
nd we had a couple of glasses. One of them, name of Seán, told me he was with the IRA, which we are hearing so much about now. He called himself a unit commander, or something of the kind.’

  ‘And you don’t think that was the Guinness talking?’

  ‘It would have been the Bushmills talking if it had been anything, and no, I don’t think it was that. This wasn’t his first visit to Wales, Trevor. He knew his way around, and he knew some people. He had met with some of the boys from the FWA. He had much the same opinion of them as we do. Amateurs, he called them. He said he wouldn’t trust them far enough to work with them.’

  ‘Well, at least we can agree on that.’

  ‘Yes, but he said he was open to meeting some more serious people in Wales, if there were any. He gave me a phone number. I still have it.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘You don’t know who you are dealing with,’ Trevor said. ‘He could be Garda, Special Branch, Army even. If he is IRA, why should he want to get involved with us? If we contact him to say we can’t work out how to make an efficient timing device, and can he please help us, he’s going to lump us in with the FWA. It will just reinforce his view that everyone in Wales is useless.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Caradog replied. ‘His problem with the FWA is the same one we have – it’s their lack of discretion. It’s security he is concerned about. I think we could convince him that we are serious about security.’

  ‘How would you propose to do that?’

  ‘By going to see him, not asking him to come over here, and doing it very quietly.’

  ‘Where did he claim to be based?’

  ‘Belfast.’

  ‘Where, particularly?’

  ‘West Belfast, the Falls Road.’

  Trevor considered for some time.

  ‘That’s a high-profile place at the moment.’

  ‘It would be more high-profile for us if he came over here.’

  Trevor nodded.

  ‘You’re really sure you need help, Dai?’

  ‘Aye. I’m out of my depth, man. You were right, see. I am just a chemist.’

  ‘All right, Caradog. Call Seán,’ Trevor said. ‘See if the number is real. But don’t tell him what we want over the phone…’

  ‘Of course not…’

  ‘And listen very carefully to what he has to say. We don’t move unless we are sure we are not walking into a trap.’

  She asked him later that night. She was already in bed by the time he got home.

  ‘You’ve been spending a lot of time with Caradog and Dai Bach lately. You’ve had quite a few late nights. What on earth do you get up to, the three of you?’

  ‘We have a few drinks,’ he replied, ‘and put the world to rights.’

  She made a face at him.

  ‘Actually, we are talking about the demonstrations to come before the Investiture. I’m trying to make sure they don’t get out of hand. You know what Dai Bach is like after three or four pints.’

  She scoffed.

  ‘We have all been on demonstrations before, Trevor.’

  ‘Yes, but these will be bigger.’

  ‘We will see about that,’ she said.

  He laid her back down on the bed. Harri was sleeping peacefully in his bed in the small bedroom across the hall. The door was open and the sound of his gentle breathing floated into the room. She looked incredibly beautiful to him in her simple white night dress, and her hair had that wayward look it had when she had just woken up, which could drive him mad.

  ‘I didn’t understand how strongly Caradog felt about Tryweryn,’ he said. ‘He only told me recently.’

  A sadness crossed her face.

  ‘Yes. It was my grandparents’ generation, and those who came before. Well, you’ve met Uncle Stan and Aunt Jenny.’

  ‘Yes, but I never understood how personal it all was, all the time we were going to the demonstrations, all those years when we were fighting to stop them flooding the valley.’

  She nodded.

  ‘It was very hard. We tried not to make it be about us, we tried to keep it political, to oppose them as a matter of principle. But that was very hard to do. It changed Caradog, I think. It’s strange how things like that can change you even when it doesn’t affect you directly.’

  ‘It’s the idea that your family was violated,’ Trevor suggested.

  ‘It’s the sense of being powerless,’ she replied.

  ‘What would you think?’ he asked, ‘if I took the two of them away for a day or two of drinking and general trouble-making, get them away from this obsession with the Investiture?’

  She laughed.

  ‘That might be a good idea. Did you have anywhere in mind?’

  ‘I thought we might take the ferry over to Ireland,’ he replied.

  ‘You should be able to find some trouble to make there,’ she said, with a smile.

  She turned on to her side and settled, to go back to sleep.

  ‘Will you bring Harri to the shop tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘I miss you both during the day.’

  17

  Friday 4 April 1969

  Seán raised his glass as a toast.

  ‘So, welcome to West Belfast, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Make yourselves comfortable. We want you to feel at home. We are going to chat for a while before we talk business. I think that’s the accepted way of discourse in civilised societies, isn’t it? Certainly in Ireland, and Klaus, I know that’s true where you come from also.’

  ‘We are a very polite people in Germany,’ Klaus said. He was a tall, thin man wearing a black and white checked shirt and blue jeans. He wore thick black-framed glasses and his long black hair was swept back. He fidgeted constantly, twirling a lock of his hair between his fingers.

  ‘Klaus knows the likes of Mr Baader and Miss Meinhof, you see,’ Seán continued, ‘so he has clearly mixed in the best of circles. We are among friends here, so there’s no reason to be nervous about us, no reason not to say whatever you wish. Nothing gets back to the Royal Ulster Constabulary from the Ring of Kerry, I assure you. But we do like to know who we are dealing with before we go into too much detail. You were very hospitable towards us when we were with you in Wales, Caradog, and I appreciate that very much. But you’ve brought two friends with you now.’

  The Ring of Kerry was a dingy pub in a side-street off the Falls Road. Miniature Republican flags decorated the bar. Hanging proudly on the walls were photographs of St Patrick’s Day parades of years gone by and, in pride of place, behind the bar, a photograph of the landlord as a younger man shaking hands with Éamon de Valera outside Leinster House in Dublin. At 8 o’clock in the evening, the bar was crowded and boisterous, the air thick with tobacco smoke. It already seemed an age since they had left Caernarfon to board the overnight ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. They had little more than two hours of snatched sleep before they disembarked into the fresh early morning air. There followed the almost 100-mile trip by road to Belfast in a left-hand drive Volkswagen Beetle which had seen better days, driven by a taciturn middle-aged man called Padraig, who had been sent by Seán. Although they negotiated the border and entered Northern Ireland without any apparent incident, they found themselves looking around anxiously when they entered the city. The route to their ultimate destination in West Belfast took them through unwelcoming, and sometimes overtly hostile areas, and did nothing to lift their spirits. The city was outwardly quiet, but there was an unmistakable tension and aggression in the air which was compounded by Padraig’s relentless silence. By the time they were seated in the Ring of Kerry waiting for Seán to appear, their nerves were frayed. They were questioning the wisdom of the trip, but they knew it was too late for that.

  ‘I feel I know you already, Caradog,’ Seán was saying. ‘And you know what I like? The idea of a man employed by the Inspector of Ancient Monuments ta
king a swipe at an ancient monument. I like that a great deal. Are you sure you’ve no Irish blood in you, Caradog? Because there’s something very Irish about that. I think James Joyce himself would have approved of that, I really do. Don’t you, Klaus?’

  Klaus was sitting on a stool nursing a beer, and gave no sign of having heard.

  ‘Well, Klaus wouldn’t know about that,’ Seán laughed. ‘I don’t know whether they read James Joyce in Germany, especially if they have to do it in English. On the other hand, God help anyone who has to translate him into German, or any other language for that matter. So, what about your friends, Caradog? Dafydd, isn’t it? What account do you give of yourself?’

  ‘They call me Dai,’ Dai Bach answered uncertainly. ‘It’s a short form of my name in Welsh.’

  ‘Is it indeed?’ Seán said. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good name for someone who wants to make bombs. Dai? Sounds just the same as “die” – D.I.E. – doesn’t it? Just a tiny bit pessimistic, to my way of thinking. But only if you are speaking English, of course, and you would be speaking Welsh. So, I understand, and if you are known as Dai in Wales, you shall be known as Dai in Ireland. You’re a teacher of chemistry, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a philosopher like Caradog?’

  ‘Not like Caradog, no.’

  ‘No, well, Caradog is a thinker, you can tell that about him. He can tell you every reason a Welsh man ever had to hate the English since the dawn of time, and every reason of logic why you are justified in doing whatever you have to do to drive them out, and when he puts all of this together, it becomes a storm in your mind of hurricane force that you can’t resist; you just have to lie down and let it roll over you. We have such thinkers in Ireland too, and God bless them, because someone has to remind us why we do the things we do. But I don’t think that’s how you got there, Dai. What makes you so anxious to harm the Queen?’

  ‘I haven’t said anything about our intentions,’ Caradog said.