And yet I am drawn back to these streets time and time again. I hear the sound of bells, my first music, always ringing true. I pass by the cabbage patch in the old Huguenot cemetery and see the cabbages with their white hearts like skulls luminous in the gloaming. And with first name familiarity, I greet Kevin and Patrick and Francis and Thomas. But within their maze I am still searching for a door which grants entrance to a world of light, a world of knowing, where one can rest, having completed the puzzle.
I wend my way out of the little streets where children are playing pickie-beds or taking their lives in their hands by swinging around a lamppost on a rope. Some are skipping and singing: ‘Green, white and yellow, your mother met a fellow.’ I cautiously circumnavigate Bride Street. The name. Superstition is a religion. There are things one can’t shake off.
I wander into the wider light of Dame Street, and ultimately into the cold surname formality of O’Connell Street. I pass the Angel of Courage,sitting at the base of the Liberator with the 1916 bullet hole in her left breast. I think of the stonebleeding breast of an angel, the chalk-bleeding Virgin, the paintbleeding heart of Jesus, all there to protect me, to give me solace, but not one is made of flesh.
It is dark when I return to the Rathfarnham house. It is cold and alien. Tainted. I don’t want to touch anything. Even the bedclothes in Patrick’s study feel dirty, and I kick them off and shiver, staring into the night. I long for a brother or sister. I am envious of those big families in the tenements. Numbers suffocate loneliness. Loneliness breeds in an empty house.
I long for Sinéad. I want to tell her about me. I want to talk to someone or something other than the night, to tell her about this guy up there in the North, this... this rapist (how hard it is to say the word)... his seed (those damn tears begin to flow again). I can’t tell her, I know that; I can’t tell Sinéad, for the telling would impair her image of my late mother and of me. Coercion doesn’t alter facts. Sinéad would run a mile from me if she knew I was a scion of the Orange foe.
So what am I to do? Pretend to be converted; pretend my pursuit of the paramilitary is based on purely ideological grounds. Didn’t he blow up Catholics? Isn’t that reason enough to go after him? Mustn’t a titalways follow a tat?
Sorrow focuses the mind. Or else unhinges it.
***
In Northern Ireland the orange spreads itself into flags and sashes and banners which parade to the pounding of drums.
I carry a satchel with a long shoulder strap. Inside the satchel my mother is resting. Her bed is hollowed out of a book. It is warm and secure. It has a steel sentry silently standing guard.
The train moves swiftly towards Belfast. Sinéad had phoned Rathfarnham to commiserate on Mam’s death. She had been arrested on the day of the funeral for throwing a petrol bomb at British soldiers, but was released soon afterwards. She claims Catholics are being treated unfairly by soldiers and the RUC. She says it’s all about marches.
There were two things which delighted her. One was the news that I was coming north at last, and the other was the slap on the face which Bernadette Devlin gave in the House of Commons to Home Secretary Maudling for his smug attitude towards Bloody Sunday. She wasn’t sure which of these two things delighted her more.
I told her we were seeking an elderly Protestant paramilitary who had just been released from prison, and that he posed a threat to Southern Catholics. We needed her help to track him down. To my surprise, she said she already knew about the matter and would pick us up at the train station.
Gearóid sits across from me in his dirty grey trench coat as the train chugs along. For a moment I see my aunt Peg glaring at a stern woman who has broken my flag. The train gives an occasional shriek, like an Indian on a warpath, announcing to the green fields, to the indifferent cows and sheep, that we are on our way, and that the world had better watch out.
‘Tickets please.’
‘Just a wee second,’ says Gearóid. ‘I’ll get them for you naah. Aye, ’tis a fine day surely.’
The ticket collector moves on, punching holes. His metal puncher like a wrist expander, stretches sinews as his hand opens and closes.
‘What’s with the accent?’
Gearóid smiles. ‘It comes with the job.’
‘Were you arrested in sixty six?’
‘Sixty six?’
‘It was in the news.’
‘They tried to nab me for the Pillar. Couldn’t prove it.’
‘Why didn’t you just topple Nelson?’
‘What?’
‘You could’ve left the Pillar alone.’
‘Not a sinner was harmed in that operation,’ he says proudly.
‘Forget it.’
Gearóid got the silencer to fit the revolver. Some friend of his, some expert in steel had done the job. He procured bullets. He asked no questions (didn’t mention the oath again, for the time being; he’ll be coming back to it no doubt in his own time). We had practised for an hour shooting chips off a Wicklow mountain. All he said after it was, ‘You’re sure you can handle it now?’ The tone: like a father to his kid who has just mastered a bicycle.
Who is my father? How can I ever know which one? One of the others perhaps, the ones plugged by Gearóid. But this one, the one who got away, he also played his part. But I’m not a murderer. I’ll not murder him – what Gearóid wants me to do, to finish off his business which he now has made my business. I’ll not murder him despite all he is reputed to have done to my mother. But I will emasculate him; be sure of that; that would only be fair after all. That would only be justice. No need to tell Gearóid these things.
I look across at him. He looks tired, old. Even older than what he looked at the funeral. Pale, anaemic like a vampire in daylight. I am amazed at his nonchalance, his indifference to detection. After all those years, why expose yourself now? He shows how chuffed he is that I’m accompanying him north by smiling, creating in his face a new physiognomy.
***
It is dark and misty when Sinéad collects us at the station in her Morris Minor. She has changed to Northern plates. All you need is connections. Sinéad has connections. The car is not out of place up here. There are many faithful Britishers who profess loyalty to a Morris Minor, just like Hitler did to his Volkswagen.
‘I hope we’ll have enough petrol,’ Sinéad says anxiously in Irish, hardly greeting me (so like my mother), acting like it’s all prearranged; the parts assigned.
‘The Arabs aren’t helping us,’ Gearóid says.
I open the window of the car. The streets smell of burning rubber. There are echoes of shouts, muffled, and the barking of dogs coming through a silence that’s like vapour, shrouded, secret.
A drizzle begins to descend
I see a soldier in camouflage standing at a shop. His greens and browns would make him a chameleon among trees, but against a background of plastic neon light, he is an incongruity. Only his boots blend with the night. A walkie-talkie hangs from his frame to communicate to some other world, to tell how the animals are behaving in this sodden place.
Sniffer dog. Barbed wire. You don’t ask people to point out the way. ‘Pointed out’ has a different meaning up here. It means a rifle at your head.
Sinéad dims the headlights. Sinéad was always good at dimming lights. Besides, it’s the law up here. It’s so British soldiers won’t be dazzled. They could get confused like rabbits. Rabbits with guns.
The pubs are closed. The sound of footsteps stands out up here. It’s not just climate that keeps people indoors. An intoxicated young man staggers along the pavement supported by a girl.
We are stopped at lights. He stops at a wall – the gable end of a chemist’s shop. He opens his fly. The girl looks on, helping him, holding him up. He pisses against the wall. I am close enough to see the steam rise. When he finishes, she fastens his fly like a mother with a child, and they both totter off into the mist.
Sinéad or Gearóid do not see any of this. They have their sights directed on
an ród seo romhainn. The lights change. We drive on. Sinéad, with help from the ‘movement’, has traced the paramilitary to the King William pub. We wait in the car some distance away. Someone is walking towards us. We pretend we are lovers. We kiss. Gearóid skulks down in the back.
A black uniform approaches. A peaked cap pulled down to hide the face. I think of crows. I think of the three-cornered hat of the Guardia Civil. All the same, just different shapes.
You are inside your body. A body is just a suit you wear to get around in. The real you is behind the suit smiling or crying or making unintelligible sounds. Our lips are like that as we touch, as if there is cloth between them.
We are told to move on.
We circle around like birds shooed away but who keep coming back to the same place.
I hear the sound of drums in the distance. A rehearsal for a march. I should know which one, but I’m losing interest in dates.
Some men come out of the pub. A car passes illuminating an elderly man, bald, short in stature.
‘He’s the one,’ says Gearóid.
‘The one? You’re telling me he’s the one, that guy?’ I say, more in incomprehension than disbelief.
‘Shush,’ Gearóid is saying. We haven’t time for that now. Put this on.’ He proffers a balaclava.
I hesitate to pull the balaclava down over my face. ‘Hurry,’ Sinéad says. She helps to position it so my eyes peep through the holes. There are three younger men with the bald man, with hair down to their shoulders. They walk up the road a little bit, their lips moving indecipherably. They stop under a street lamp. They look behind. My heart skips a beat. I squeeze my satchel tightly. The wool of the balaclava is making my skin itch. Our car: a silent black shadow. The younger men walk on. The older man turns right into a narrow sidestreet.
He stops outside a minute, terraced redbricked house enclosed by railings. Could this have been it? My house, my home? He opens the gate, its creak echoing like a signal. He stands at the door fumbling for his keys. Our timing is splitsecond accurate. Old Gearóid, despite his limp, is quick and nimble. The key turns in the lock. Hands – our hands – push a body in through a door. Curses try to break his fall.
Gearóid and I push him into a back room. Sinéad circles in the car. All according to plan. I turn on a switch. A red shaded light hitting against a cream coloured blind engenders a sort of surreal or psychic aura.
‘This is the one?’ I say again in Irish. ‘You’re sure?’
‘He’s the fucker,’ Gearóid says.
All I sense is a bulk cowering before me. But I wonder momentarily what he sees before him: eyes, just eyes piercing through a balaclava. Is that what my mother saw?
‘What the fuck do you want? Who are you?’ the bald man shouts. ‘You’re making a terrible mistake.’
Gearóid keeps him pinned to the ground with his boot, his eyes shifting, giving me the cue.
I take the book out of my satchel. I look at the man. I’m beginning to feel it now, as I whip myself into a state of conviction. This is the one, I keep saying, this is the one who did all those things to my mother.
‘Do you know the name of this book?’ I say to the man (with wonderful control in my voice). The man doesn’t answer. Gearóid kicks him in the ribs. ‘Answer.’ ‘No,’ the man squeals. ‘This is the History of Ireland,’ I say,but you see the middle of it eaten away; the words are eaten away to make a place for the gun.’
Gearóid is smiling. He likes the script.
I take the revolver out of the hollow. The man recoils. Slow. Everything slow. ‘Do you recognise this?’ I say.
‘I don’t know what…. Please. I’m not the one you want. You have the wrong person.’
‘Shut up,’ shouts Gearóid, pressing with his boot.
The man groans.
My hand is shaking. I look at it shaking, its palm and digits, as I take out three bullets from the pocket of my duffel coat and slowly put them into the barrel.
‘Three?’ Gearóid is saying, mystified.
‘My way,’ I say. Let this man feel the terror as my mother had done.
The bullets fit snugly, perfect cylinders. I attach the silencer. I think of my practice shots (were they enough?) as I point the gun at his groin.
‘Strip.’
‘What the fuck, are you mad?’
Another kick from Gearóid and the man whimperingly disrobes, the sweat on his bald pate blending beautifully with the red light and shining metal.
‘And the briefs.’
‘Please, a wee minute. I don’t know what you are…’
‘I’m going to turn you into a rig.’
‘A what? Please.’
I like the quiver in his voice, like a musical tremor. His voice is like my hands. But I don’t feel nervous now, not anymore. I’m into my stride.
Gearóid is encouraging me. ‘Go on,’ he says. He has the look of an approving master as he holds the man down.
I direct the silencer at the man’s left ball and pull the trigger. He screams, but there is just the sound of a click.
Gearóid laughs. There is a smell of shit. I remember reading somewhere in Swift, how he used to examine excreta in Liberties’ lanes to determine a person’s religion or even nationality. Sinéad can distinguish by physiognomy. She always could, even as a kid. ‘You know a Prod by his face, more sallow and longer, more like a horse’s.’
I look at this man’s face: it’s not long; it’s not sallow; it’s pockmarked.
‘Give me the gun,’ I hear Gearóid saying, ‘I’ll finish him off.’ There’s an impatience in his voice now.
‘Stay easy, Gearóid,’ I say, as my finger slowly begins to press the trigger once more.
‘Please...’ The man squirms.
Gearóid is crouched, one leg holding down the naked man, his bad leg stretched out behind him. He is restless and clearly in discomfort, and tired of games.
‘I have to get up. The stiffness.’
‘I told you to stay easy.’
The man kicks free, forcing Gearóid to stumble. A wallet drops from Gearóid’s inside pocket. Some paper money and a photograph fall out on the floor.
‘Don’t move.’ I point the gun at the man’s ball once more. He freezes. Take your time. This is it; this is the way I was planning it on the train coming up. Let him shit some more. I pick up the photograph. It shows me as a teenager. No, wait, it is not me (I hold it closer), but it is the spitting image of me. It is Gearóid as a young man with a hairless face and his arm is around my mother’s waist, my beautiful mother, and she is smiling.
I look at Gearóid. He reaches out his hand. ‘Give it to me.’
I push his hand back.
‘Please,’ he says.
The world is concealed: beards, photographs, fathers, they are all hidden.
‘You bastard.’
With my left hand I tear the balaclava off his face.
‘I know him. He’s McSweeney,’ the naked man shouts.
I try to pull MacSuibhne’s beard out by the roots. I am shouting, but I don’t know what words are coming out. My breathing is going too fast. I’m too hot, and all the time I’m holding the revolver cocked, pointing at the Northerner.
‘Listen to me, a bhuachaill.’
‘Buachaill,’ I shout, ‘buachaill beag,’ I push him. He falls backwards. The black boots shining, seen as if for the first time after all the years. The screams in the night. I look at the face of the naked man, a stranger, an unknown, cowering down before me.
The gun changes direction, pointing now at Gearóid’s crotch; the finger on the trigger presses back.
***
I got him. I left him bleeding; threw the smoking gun at him and left him there scuffling with the Northern guy. I didn’t care. I left them at it. Let them kill one another for all I care. That sort of caring is well used up. Slowly consumed by time until there is none left, like the drought that hit my tear ducts after my mother died. I walk down the street towards the main road, w
elcoming the drizzle refreshing my face. Just to breathe, to feel free. I could walk for hours breathing steadily in and out, walking for the first time in a linear fashion. I think of the first law of motion according to Galileo: if no force acts on a body in motion, it will continue to move uniformly in a straight line.
What was it? It was a sort of panic attack like when sleep seizes you and you are afraid to let go, afraid of sinking down into a world where you are no longer in control. A long time since I had that feeling – since way back in the bedwetting era. In and out slowly, listen to my own breaths ticking my life away. All measured. Slow; make them last.
That action. I never realised it was so easy to pull a trigger. The gun just takes the orders and does all the work. I thought I’d be more nervous. I thought the sheer weight of steel would turn my hands into putty. But apart from the tremor there was none of that. It was as easy as hitting a hammer on a nail.
I’m saying to myself I am fearless. It’s like I’ve projected the one-legged fear into history, neutered it as it were or at least temporally culled it. But that was a different fear. It had to do with oneself alone, one’s own resources. This time, however, there was no fear because I had the object, the technology (like my mother said) to take the fear away.
I keep walking. I don’t run. A fearless person doesn’t run. I see an army patrol car passing an intersection further down. I hear the familiar sound of the Morris Minor wheezing behind me. I don’t even look around. I don’t have to.
‘I had to keep circling,’ Sinéad says, her side vision towards the intersection as I sit in beside her. ‘Where’s Gearóid?’
‘He has some other business to attend to,’ I say.
‘I hope you finished off the wretch.’
‘I did what was necessary.’
She smiles. ‘I knew you would.’
We drive on.
‘He probably went to Cave Hill,’ she says. ‘He usually goes there after a job.’
***
The bedsit: a small room with a rattling bay window. ‘Even with the window closed and the curtains drawn it’s still draughty,’ she says, putting a match to a gas fire.
Peeling Oranges Page 17