by Roddy Doyle
—You’ll be alive.
—Is that supposed to comfort me? You smug little shite. I’d die for fuckin’ Ireland. D’you hear me? I would. Today. Now. If they’d let me. You remember that name?
—Count von Clausewitz.
—The other one.
—Yes.
—Have you said your prayers?
—Yes, he said.
—Good man.
I put the gun to the back of his head and shot him. And another one for luck. The name on Jack’s piece of paper.
Away from streets and walls, the noise wasn’t much and it was gone before he settled face-down in the leaves, after first falling sideways. There was no hurry. We were miles from anywhere. Me and Annie’s dead husband. In the mountains above Dublin.
I had a note and a nappy pin. Shot as a traitor and a spy. The I.R.A. I put the gun on the ground and grabbed hold of his coat with both hands. I made sure that I didn’t grab the empty sleeve. I turned him over onto his back. I didn’t look at his face. I flicked open the note, opened the pin and fastened the note to his lapel and I didn’t let myself remember that I’d once worn his clothes.
I picked up the gun - it was cold again already - and I walked away, under branches that were trying to grab each other in the wind. I walked for half an hour, to the edge of the woods. I sat against a tree and waited for daylight and the end of the curfew.
Ten
—Pass us the bucket.
—Say, Please.
—Please.
—There.
—Thank you.
—For what?
Another rocket exploded above us, to the west. It had come from a window below us.
—They’ll see that one in Strokestown, I said.—We’ve half an hour.
—That’s plenty.
—Unless they’re on their way already.
They were the Black and Tans, the mercenaries Jack had warned me about in January, the last time I’d seen him. The sweepings of England’s jails, he’d called them in the Irish Bulletin. He got great mileage out of it; they were still being called that years after they’d gone home and most of them were dead. What they actually were was veterans who’d been unable to get work in England and Scotland after the War and who’d now been promised good money, ten shillings a day, to sort out Ireland. They were soldiers of a kind, not the peelers we’d been fighting up to now; they were foreigners and savage, and their presence in the country was proof that we were winning.
I put the bucket down on the flat section of the roof and picked up the sledgehammer. I wanted a few more slates off before I poured the paraffin down the hole, into the barracks. As I lifted the hammer, my stomach turned and screamed.
—Christ!
—What’s wrong? she said.
—The fumes have gone to my guts.
It had happened before.
—Oh, God love you, she said.—Here. I’ll pour.
I sat on the roof. I looked at the sky and breathed long and deep and ignored the stars. I’d had the headache for hours but the stomach cramps were sudden and fierce. Gelignite head, was what we called the ailment. From inhaling nitro-glycerine fumes as frozen gelignite thawed under a low roof. An occupational hazard.
The Vickers gun inside was off again, cutting holes in the houses across the street. They were wasting their bullets. The lads who’d let the peelers see them at the windows were long gone. The houses were empty. We were after the Vickers - it was a prize and a half, well worth the gelignite head - and there were two Lewis guns in there as well. And up to twenty Lee-Enfields and ammunition to feed us for weeks. We were desperately short of cartridges; we went right through the war, always a few minutes from defeat.
The barracks front was two long lines of steel-shuttered windows, with slits for rifles. There was also a porch, right below myself and Miss O’Shea; it had been built up and reinforced to accommodate two men and the Vickers. Luckily, the barracks had been designed and built in less troubled times and the gable end was windowless and unprotected, just high and thick-walled. Our ladder was against that wall, carried in three parts over fields and nailed together behind a stone wall to the left of the barracks that any sergeant with half a brain would have knocked down after the first shots of the war were fired two years before.
Miss O’Shea was finished with the pouring.
—Lovely job, I said.
I was on my feet again.
—Mind yourself.
—I’m grand, I said.
My head swam in fumes and the gunfire played with my ears as I unwrapped the rope from around my waist, and the sod of turf at the end of the rope. Through the more general racket I could hear little pings, bullets being fired from deep below us that couldn’t break through the boards and slates. The sod had been lying in a basin of petrol for days. I held it well away because my coat was petrol-wet now too. Miss O’Shea lit a match and put it to the sod. The flames quickly climbed the sod to the rope and I dropped it into the hole.
We were knocked to our knees. She grabbed me. A slate hit against my head and something cut into my cheek. I saw blood drop into her eyes. And flames sliding towards us. She was up before me. My coat was on fire and the pockets full of tin-can grenades I’d made myself that afternoon. I slid out of the coat without unbuttoning and threw it onto the roof of the porch. I wasn’t burnt. I looked at her. She was fine.
—They’re flinging the bombs, I told her.
Our own men were lobbing bombs up onto the roof. We took a route that stayed clear of the flames, over the roof to the ladder.
—I thought they were to wait till we came back down, she said.
—So did I, I said.—Heads will roll.
The ladder was waiting for us. Neither of us said anything but we were both relieved when we saw it.
—After you, she said.
—Fair enough.
My feet found a rung and I was down the ladder three steps at a time. She was right after me, sliding so fast she landed on my head.
—Exciting all the same, isn’t it? she said.
—Is everything sex with you, woman?
—Just about, she said.
We ran at the stone wall, and over.
—Which one of you cunts threw the bombs?
I grabbed a shape beside me.
—Not me!
—Fuckin’ Ivan, I muttered.
There was no sign of him. It had more than likely been an accident, the bomb throwing, bad timing, fear and inexperience, but Ivan was getting dangerous. He was lord of his part of the county. He owned what he wanted and decided who lived and died. The old Fitzgalway house, Shantallow, was a shell now, one of the first of the old Protestant homes to go, and the cattle had been driven away and now carried the Ivan brand, somewhere safe. I was the only thing between Ivan and total power but my visits were sporadic. I was needed elsewhere - everywhere - in the parts of the country where the men had to have the fight kicked into them. We were only active in half the southern counties and a big part of my job was to create activity where there had been none. There was no rest. This now, the attack on Tonrua barracks, was a night out with Miss O’Shea.
The roof of the barracks was blazing now. Slates were cracking and I could hear the eaves joining the roar. I crept along, behind the stone wall, to get closer to the front of the building. I could feel a bump now where the slate had clouted me and my skin felt tight and very raw. I arrived in time to see a white flag coming from an upstairs window. Men around me and further away cheered. There were twenty-one of us in the column.
—No one to be shot, Willie, I said to Willie O’Shea who’d come up beside me.—They’ve surrendered.
—We’ll have to accept it another day, Captain, said Willie.—The Tans are on the road. Four tenders of them. They’re already shooting.
I could hear them. Two minutes’ drive, less, unless our men had had the time and sense to bring down a loose wall across the road to block the tenders. Or unless they’d dug a trench across
the road earlier in the day.
—Anything in their way? I asked.
—No, said Willie.—Only us.
It was my own fault. I should have taken control, instead of just turning up and falling in.
We left the ladder against the wall.
It was a blow. We’d badly needed the guns and bullets. We had none of the war-winning things, armour-piercing bullets or grenade rifles, no bombs worth more than a cough or a puncture. Most of our explosives were hand-made, and burying landmines that had been made by a lad who could hardly tie his laces was the stuff that sorted the men from the boys. And because of the nature of our living, on the run, two steps ahead of the next raid, it was difficult to keep our guns in proper shape; they were falling apart, rusting into the fields and ditches. We’d needed those guns and we’d needed the victory, the sight of the enemy coming out, hands up.
The going was difficult. The ground was wet and unpredictable. It had been cut up by the hoofs of cattle and hardened by the cold. The Tans’ headlights caught the corners of our eyes, then sprayed across our shoulders and made black shadows of the way ahead. We heard the boot nails scratch wood as they abandoned the tenders to chase us. I checked that Miss O’Shea was beside me; she was and there was another wall right on top of us, straight out of the darkness. It was a region of walls, low and old; they fell away under us as we tried to get over them. The Tans were right behind us now. We could feel their steady pace in the ground. They were fit, angry men. There was an army of them on our backs. We ran out of the power of their headlights. We could hear the walls behind us, crumbling under their organised weight. A flare zipped above us, and crackled. And there we all were, caught in bright red light, running across a hopeless field, up an uneven bastard of a hill and far from the next stone wall. And the firing started.
The R.I.C. had abandoned the isolated barracks - Tonrua was one of the last - but the country wasn’t ours any more. The Black and Tans were always around the corner. They’d even taken back the sky. Aeroplanes flew above the trees, along the rivers. Permits from the military were needed for cars and even bikes were prohibited in areas where ambushing was regular. We were living in bunkers, organised into flying columns and active service units, small armies on the run. Surprises, ambushes and raids. Sniping and disappearing. There was no time for training; we learnt as we ran. The days of amateur rebellion were over. Most of the original peelers had resigned, retired or died - replaced by the nut-hard bastards who were chasing us. Jack had been right; we hadn’t a hope of winning. There were too many of them, they were too well armed. They’d been made savage and bitter by the War and what they’d come home to. All we could do was hang on. Their uniforms were a mix of constabulary black and military khaki; they refused to be policemen or soldiers. They were a new thing, a new, desperate animal. They stayed in the towns behind sandbagged walls but they came at us in their Peerless and Rolls-Royce armoured cars, in steel-plated Lancias, in tenders, on motorbikes. Our lads had left their homes and jobs, the ones still in the fight; we’d left everything and we lived on the run and underground. Our numbers had fallen to the hardest few, the expendable boys with nothing to lose. We slowed them down with felled trees, barbed wire and snipers and our little landmines. We made their lives a constant misery. But they kept coming. We blocked the roads, blew up bridges, cut down every telegraph pole. The raids increased and improved; walls were tapped for hollowness, backyards were dug, rooms were measured, length and breadth, records kept of their dimensions. We were running out of places to hide. We had to hang on. We had to keep at them. Because they were our greatest ally.
We couldn’t turn to face them yet. We needed that wall ahead but it was still far away. The flare pointed a red finger at each of us. Low bullets made steam of the dew. We could feel them warming the air. I put my hand out and Miss O’Shea was there to grab it. We ran and we knew that we were in their rifle sights. We were fast and we knew that we would die together.
I felt the bullet in Miss O’Shea’s arm; it shook mine. We kept running. She didn’t slow down. She didn’t even moan. The blood slid down between our hands.
They did exactly what we’d expected and wanted them to do. They murdered priests and mayors. They declared war on every man and woman in the country. Fermoy, Balbriggan, Templemore, Cork, Granard - they burnt them all - Mallow, Milltown Malbay, Fermoy again. They dredged up stories of Cromwell and centuries of dormant hatred. They corked their faces and went berserk. They took people from houses and shot them. They shot children. They shot livestock. With the secret blessing of their government. We pulled the trigger and they went off.
Her hand slipped from mine but I had it again. We were still together. I got her sleeve into my grip. The flare above us was dying. Night was creeping back but it was taking the wall from us. We were still in the middle of nowhere. I felt another bullet. They were killing her slowly.
There were no neutrals. They burnt the creameries. They stole wedding rings. They destroyed farm machinery. They sneered at old women and young girls, pointed rifles at them as they raced by in their tenders. They beat up school-boys. They closed down towns and made them starve. They declared all Irish people Shinners and made terrorists of them all. We have murder by the throat, said Lloyd George. And, all the time, we were their puppet masters, the men and woman running across the field and a few hundred other men and women hiding in ditches and under other fields, and our own puppet masters in Dublin, in Shanahan’s and their shifting H.Q.s and hideouts. We knew how to make them set fire to the right creamery, in the quiet, law-abiding area, how to draw them to the right house. We controlled them. We just had to hang on.
She was still running, still right beside me. We couldn’t surrender. We were armed, in a martial law area; we’d be executed or killed on the spot. And I’d a gun full of split-nosed bullets, dum-dums; they’d use them to kill us slowly if they got us alive. Her hand still gripped mine. Her pain was in her breath, though, and the stiffness of her grip. We were nearing the wall. I could see it clearly now. If enough of us made it over, we could turn on the Tans and worry them. Shoot a few - they’d be the targets for a few minutes - and slow them down. Make them dive long enough for us to get properly away. To where we’d hidden our bikes. Where we were in charge. The wall was right in front of us. Black, solid in the night. Another bullet entered Miss O’Shea; she dashed ahead of me, knocked forward by the shot. She kept her feet. She squeezed my hand and let go. I grabbed it back. I wanted her pain. At least my share. I wanted it all. The wall. No distance now. Five big strides, six, seven. They weren’t going to kill her. I’d carry her there, and the rest of the way. I’d plenty of run in me. Still holding her hand, I ran ahead. I turned to lift her as she caught up with me and, as I swerved to catch her and lifted my arm to hoist her to my shoulder, the bullet slid in and I was falling hard and I couldn’t see anything, didn’t know anything, and when I was able to see again and think, when I looked and saw the ground jumping below me, she was carrying me.
Every time I opened my eyes I was in a different place. I fell in and out of different rooms and dreams. I lay on beds, stone, under sacks. Pigs near, or baking bread. Or nothing at all. Nothing. I rolled away from there, until I knew I was alive. The pain, beyond the skin, a pain becoming bone. The only thing keeping me alive. She wasn’t beside me, and sometimes I knew it, she was. Lying beside me, breathing with me. I felt her hand on my face, my cheek. And someone else. The smell of a child in the room. I tried to see but light flung itself at my eyes. He was near me. Victor was there. I tried to call but my throat was locked and solid. And I was in the back of a motor car. I could smell the leather, feel and hear the road under me before I closed my eyes. And once, I knew I was right under old Missis O’Shea’s roof. Miss O’Shea was right beside me. I woke again for a second and I was somewhere else. Pitch dark. Alone. I closed my eyes and everything was gone. Sun in my eyes, no light at all; pigs outside the window, petrol; damp from the wall I was lying against, heat from
her as she moved in her sleep; hungry, sick, always thirsty, always parched and sore. Noises below or beside me, no noise whatsoever. People under the window, boots on cement. Wheels going, motors. Birds giving out in the trees, a branch scraping the wall. Pain, torn awake by it. In my chest, my side. Pulling apart, tearing. Someone handling me. Pushing. Cutting me. Water. On the roof above me. Different roofs. Slate and thatch, corrugated iron. Under a hot tarpaulin, a smell of liquid grass. I was nine again, searching for Victor. Crying. Awake again under a proper roof. Rain slapping the roof. And water on my skin. Warm water being brought over my arms and chest. On my lips. I felt my lips being softened by the water and I slept. The rattle of a cart going over stones. I was in the cart, the back of the cart. Under straw. I suddenly knew that I had to stay still. I could hear other wheels going over the road and other sounds as well, life going on, and I knew that I was being brought through a town. I knew my name and I knew that I was a wanted man. And I knew that I had other names. I knew exactly who I was. I was injured and in pain. But the pain was fine, poking me awake. I breathed around it; it got no worse. It was a throb, a reliable thing. And it was going to go away. I’d been shot and now I was on the mend. If the straw was swept aside I’d be able to stand and run. I’d been saved by Miss O’Shea. I took a breath, my face to the side, not tickled too badly by the straw. She’d carried me away from the Black and Tans. I took a deep breath and knew that I was Henry Smart and that I was alive and still magnificent.