501

  Mum keeps a stack of magazines in the tall cupboard so I quietly select a few. At least that’s what I’m intending to do but behind that stack of magazines I see something half familiar: a couplet of words on a biscuit tin.

  Huntley and Palmers.

  I’m pretending to be asleep and Mum’s crying into her hands in a refuge for the maltreated.

  ‘If only you’d come back sooner. If only I could have told you in time. It would have been all right; I know it would have been.’

  I know I shouldn’t be doing this, tugging the lid off Mum’s secrets, prying into her life, but I can’t help myself. It’s late and the world is asleep and no one will ever know. At least that’s what I tell myself.

  And there’s a curiosity tapping at my head like a woodpecker. ‘Perhaps he’ll be in here. Perhaps there’ll be a clue. Perhaps I’ll have a dad after all this time.’

  So I sift through Mum’s photo’s, through those months of her life that aren’t in the family albums. I sift through pictures of an impossibly youthful Mum and a young man who’s as thin as a rake.

  There’s one taken at the seaside. Mum has on a silly kiss-me-quick hat. She’s looking adoringly at a man with dirty-blond hair; a man who has his arm around her waist. They’re so close you couldn’t get a fag paper between them. His skin is tanned, his shirt is open at the neck, his sleeves are rolled up and he looks a little bit wild. But this man – this boy, really – has a face that I’m sure I’ve seen before. It’s the same feeling in the other photos. I hold them closer to the light, try to catch an expression, a clue of identity, on that young thin face but it slides away from me.

  And Mum in her thorough way has dated each picture in the order of a seven-month romance of thirty-six years ago. I don’t even have to check the maths to confirm what is obvious.

  There’s a photo that I nearly miss, that’s bonded to one of Mum and – I take a deep breath and say the words – my father. I peel away a picture of a baby in an old woman’s arms. This woman is cradling a child who is reaching for the woman’s earring: one of those big hoops that used to be fashionable a long time ago.

  On the back there is the giveaway date and my name. But who is this woman who is holding me, smiling down into my face?

  Unthinkingly I light a ciggie and puzzle over what I see. I spread out Mum’s now not-so-secret past on my makeshift bed and put them in Mum’s order of dates. Then I wonder what happened between Mum and the boy with dirty-blond hair and the woman with the big earrings.

  I wonder at Mum’s years of denials, of the ‘not known’ on my birth certificate. I really believed I was some sort of accident: not a virgin birth, of course, but that she really didn’t know. How naïve was that?

  I finish my fag, flick the dog-end out of the window, put the Huntley and Palmers biscuit tin back in the cupboard, turn off the lamp and slip into bed.

  I suppose I lie in the darkness for about five minutes with all I’ve discovered, absorbed, floating around my head. I wonder how I’m going to sleep but suddenly, so suddenly, I’m gone.

  I dream. I dream of Mum so young, so pretty, so full of love for the boy in the photos. She’s laughing as I’ve never seen her laugh. I can feel her happiness, touch it, taste it. Then her smile fades and she’s walking the street with Jim. She’s pushing a pram and her head is down and her shoulders are hunched. It’s raining and the pavements are grey and the tarmac is shining wet. I’m watching her as she walks by me and I’m a small child, a child without a voice who tries desperately to call to her. But there’s no sound from my mouth, nothing to turn her to me as she draws further and further away. I’m wet and cold and I’m crying on the cold pavement.

  Then the dream has me walking away and Laura is the young child crying in the rain.

  I get up then, go into the kitchen, boil up the kettle, set the table. Tea and toast for me and Mum. It’s still very early so I’m out into the dark garden for a fag and a cough. Mum’s light comes on and then she’s at the back door in her dressing gown.

  ‘Katy, it’s only six and you’re on the fags already.’

  I’m tempted to say that, after what I’ve found out, I should be on something stronger.

  I’ve been composing in my head how I should confront Mum. I was thinking that I’d be angry, bitter, desperate for truth, but it’s like I’m taking a first cautious step on a path of secrets. I don’t know where it’ll lead but I know it’s going somewhere.

  Mum’s chewing slowly on her toast and she’s beginning to look old: old and fragile. I add eighteen to thirty-five and come up with fifty-three. That’s all she is, fifty-three, and worn out by life. I add, ‘And that bastard Jim.’

  Then I silently add, ‘And me.’

  I know it’s stupid but on the way to work I find myself looking at men on the wrong side of fifty. I imagine one of them looking back at me, somehow recognising me, and saying, ‘Katy? Is that you, Katy?’

  Like I said, I know it’s stupid. My dad, whoever he is, could be a hundred miles from here. He could be on the other side of the world: in Australia, in New Zealand. Anywhere.

  And then the thought strikes me. He could be dead. And a terrible sense of being cheated settles on me. But then what if he’s ill or dying and the chances of seeing him, perhaps knowing him, are dripping away?

  God almighty, why am I so negative?

  So I know what I’ll do; on Sunday night I’ll sit in with Mum and pour her a giant sherry. Then I’ll tell her that I found this Huntley and Palmers tin in the cupboard, that I fancied a biscuit but found old photos instead.

  ‘And I couldn’t eat them, could I, Mum?’

  Then I’ll see what she has to say and I won’t take any fobbing off. I’ll sit with her until the whole story is out and I have a name.

  A Friday night in early December.

  Irish.

  When I come home Gobshite is sitting at the kitchen table with a man I’ve never seen before but who reeks of the Old Country. Gobshite says to me, ‘Make yerself scarce, we’ve business to attend to.’

  This other man, much younger than Gobshite, brown hair spiked into fashion, doesn’t speak but he has cold dark eyes that flick to and then disregard me.

  I’m turned out of my own kitchen because of a fucking stranger, because of business they have to attend to. It’s my home and I’m fucked if I’m going to…

  going to what?

  All I’m doing is making myself angry, trying to defer judgement by anger, while inside me a terrible realisation grows. I know what the stranger wants; it’s that time again. After all these years, it’s that time again.

  There’s something big planned. Something really big to show the Brits that we’re not finished. Not finished by a long chalk. Fuck the Good Friday Agreement. Fuck the traitors who signed it. One for all and all for Ireland’s thirty-two.

  The struggle goes on.

  It’s still early when Spiky leaves.

  ‘Goodnight to you, Mrs O’Brian.’

  He pauses in the hall, in front of the picture of Davey. He studies my boy for a moment and I don’t want those cold eyes looking on my son.

  Spikey shakes his head slowly and his gelled hair doesn’t even ripple. He says, ‘Such a shame. Such a shame, Mrs O’Brian. Fucking Brits,’ and I’m thinking that my Davey isn’t a fallen soldier shot in the line of duty; he’s an innocent child. My child.

  But Spiky gives him the clenched fist salute to a fallen comrade and then he says goodnight again and adds, ‘And a Merry Christmas to you, Mrs O’Brian.’

  ‘And a Merry Christmas to you.’

  I don’t even know his name.

  And I never want to.

  Then he’s gone. I know that Gobshite will follow his own pattern of preparation. It’ll be the whisky bottle and the Rebel songs and the dark, dark sex in that order. It will be the same every night until he says, ‘I’m away in the morning, I’ve things to do.’

  And very soon those things, that thing, will be in the papers, on the
news.

  The man has hardly left the house before Gobshite starts on the drink. He comes into the lounge with, ‘Jesus, Irish, is this all we’ve got? Not enough here for an altar boy.’

  He’s waving a quarter-full whisky bottle at me and already that mood is in him.

  I say, ‘I’ll go to the supermarket.’

  ‘Now,’ he says. ‘You’re to go now.’

  ‘I’ll go now.’

  On my way out, in my ritual of leaving, I touch my Davey. I kiss the tip of my finger, touch the cold glass of his face, whisper a mother’s love to the dead child. Then into my head come my thoughts, words of solution to end a cycle of killings.

  ‘I’ll do it, Davey. I’ll do it for you.’ Then I add the bind that cannot be broken as I touch him again, trace the profile of his face.

  ‘Mummy promises. Mummy promises Davey.’

  Then I’m out of the door into the street, into the chill of an early evening in autumn. It was autumn in Ireland when Davey was taken from me.

  Michael is nervous when he puts the phone down.

  ‘My name’s come up. The Brits have a price on me.’

  I’m changing Davey’s nappy and he’s putting up a hell of a fight. He’s walking well and he wants to spend his life at his new height.

  Michael says, ‘We have to run now, before they track me down.’

  In the car I strap Davey into his seat. He’s still wriggle-arsing and I say to Michael, ‘He wants his freedom.’

  Michael says, ‘We all want our freedom.’

  I sit with Davey in the back and he’s grizzling at the restrictions on him.

  We edge out into the traffic, into the flow to the suburbs, and along the old road to the border. The traffic becomes sparse and Michael relaxes a bit. He turns the radio on and says over his shoulder, ‘We’ll stop at the first pub in Eire and have ourselves a bucket of Guinness.’ He laughs then, and before the laugh has left his throat, he says, ‘Christ, what the fuck are they doing out here?’

  Just around a sweeping corner the Brits have set up a roadblock. A car is in front of us and another has squeezed in behind and there’re the soldiers, cradling their rifles, standing each side of the car at the checkpoint. They keep the driver for a few minutes and then wave him through at the point of a gun. Now it’s our turn and Michael is sweating and I’m sweating and Davey is still moaning.

  Michael says, ‘Jesus Christ, I’ve got to go through.’

  Now I don’t know what he’s going to do, I don’t know what we’re carrying. I don’t know what’s in the boot, what’s in the glove compartment. All I know is that Michael is more nervous than I’ve ever seen him.

  So what does he do? He rolls the car into the checkpoint slowly, gradually. He’s even casually winding the window down as a Brit is stepping in to meet him.

  That’s when Michael floors the accelerator and our vehicle clips the soldier, sends him spinning to the ground. Then we’re away, weaving from one side of the road to the other as the back window takes a hit and showers us in glass. There’s a pounding on the back of the car like the devil himself is trying to get in and Michael shouts, ‘Keep yer fucking head down.’

  My head’s down all right, I’m covering my Davey and I’m screaming like a banshee.

  Then we’re around a corner and we swing off the road into the maze of lanes and tracks that criss-cross the border. Michael knows the area, he’s been using the smugglers’ highways – ‘Since I was a boy,’ he says. ‘They can’t get us now.’

  I’m raising my head and Davey’s gurgling in my ear. His breath is warm, warm and wet and… and his mouth is full of blood. It’s spilling onto his face, down his chin, onto his chest.

  Oh no. No. No.

  Davey, my beautiful Davey, is dying. The light is fading from his eyes, his arms are settling at his side. He’s lolling like a rag doll, still strapped into his car seat: his safety seat. A seat for a baby who’ll never grow out of it.

  And that’s it; that’s how my child dies, with Michael on the run and a soldier’s bullet in Davey’s back.

  We spend the night in a safe cottage in Free Ireland; me, Michael and our dead child. I don’t sleep that long night, not for a moment. I’ve laid Davey on the bed and every few minutes I go in to check him, to see if a miracle has happened, but every moment of stillness is taking him further away from me. Michael spends most of the time on the phone and by morning his voice is hoarse, and his eyes are red-rimmed. He’s talking to people, he’s pulling strings, he’s making arrangements.

  And these arrangements take us to an early morning where a warm Irish drizzle is floating off the hills. It clings to our clothes. It clings to the autumn trees, the baring hedges. It clings to the black-frocked priest who clutches the black-faced bible of the Lord.

  By the cemetery wall, in an overgrown corner, someone’s dug a grave; someone’s laid a child’s coffin on the wet grass; someone’s made a wooden cross.

  We bury Davey here. I’ve washed his face, combed his hair, wrapped him in his blanket, kissed his cold, cold skin until my lips are numb. I stand by my baby’s grave in a country churchyard and wish that I were lying in the damp earth with him, my arms around him, my heart next to his.

  So we bury my Davey by the church wall in Free Ireland and Michael cries for the first and only time.

  And alongside Davy I bury my reasons for living.

  Yes, it’s autumn in this English town and it’s autumn in Ireland, and the leaves are drifting over a country churchyard. It’s time of the year for wanting to drown the remembering. Gobshite (he is Gobshite now) knows as well and he says, ‘Get yer glad rags on, yer Irish strumpet, I’ll take yer for a meal.’

  We call a taxi because he’ll be in no state to drive back and I’m fucked if I’m going without a drink tonight.

  The restaurant is fairly busy and we’re lucky to find a quiet corner table.

  Gobshite mutters as we sit down, ‘Good of the English bastards to make a bit of room for us.’

  I shush him. ‘For Jesus sake, keep your voice down.’

  He’s like this, forever carrying that chip – well, more like a log – on his shoulder. I wonder there’s enough room left for his head.

  A waitress takes a Gobshite order of my gin and tonic and a whisky and soda for himself.

  ‘And a Guinness,’ he adds. ‘Yer have Guinness?’

  ‘Cans, sir.’

  ‘Yer call that real Guinness?’

  ‘It’s all we have, sir.’

  ‘It’ll have to do then.’

  He’s starting to pick at things and I can see what mood he’s building into. These are the signs I see from the old days, signs that I haven’t seen this intense for years.

  Something big planned. Something really big to show the Brits that we’re not finished. Not finished by a long chalk.

  So Gobshite drinks and eats and, under his breath, curses his hatred of the English. His eyes are wild and I pray to Jesus that I can pull him away from this, from exposure. There’s been nothing, nothing for ages. Not a phone call, not a postcard. Nothing. I’d thought that maybe, somehow, it was all done and the likes of Leary wouldn’t touch us again.

  Not after what happened to Davey.

  But yer man’s called and it’s open season again.

  Gobshite stabs at his food, drains his Guinness, bangs the table with his glass. ‘Some service here for a poor Irish boy.’

  We’re being watched, the waitress and the manager whispering together in a head-down collusion of disapproval. If I don’t get him out of here soon there’ll be trouble.

  Gobshite, handsome and wild, and so full of bile it’s almost choking him, has to be led by the nose. Like a bull.

  I say to him, ‘Will you listen to me?’ Then, more loudly, ‘Listen.’

  ‘What do yer want?’

  I lean across the table, so close to him my lips touch his ear. I whisper, ‘I forgot to put my knickers on tonight.’

  He looks me in the eyes; already th
e changing of his mood is on his face.

  ‘Forgot to put yer knickers on? Yer fucking Irish slut.’

  He hits his whisky back and calls for the bill. ‘As quick as yer like. And a taxi, will yer order us a taxi?’

  There’s no please or thank you with Gobshite and we’re shipped out pretty quickly, and with some relief.

  And so it’s to home, to the usual, to the dark sex that holds us together, to the losing of it all in the blind lust of the night. But this night there’s a question rapping on my door.

  When? How? Where?

  Afterwards, after what it’s always like, the question won’t go to sleep. It’s in my head, it’s in my eyes. I know that I’ve always been able to put it into that black box and bury it separately, so separately, from the memories that tear at me. But tonight there’s a sweet piping voice that slices cleanly through the haze of sex and alcohol.

  ‘You promised me. You promised me, Mammy.’

  So Gobshite sleeps the sleep of the just, of the righteous. He lives, and breathes, even in slumber, the cause, the fight against the centuries of injustice.

  ‘Yer see, Irish, we’re still not there. It’s got to be the thirty-two, not the fucking twenty-six.’

  There’ll always be a reason for a timer, a fuse, and the blast of a bomb.

  And now at night Gobshite puts on his rebel CDs and he dies on the bridge with Roddy Macauly. Then, in a cell in Mountjoy gaol, he’s Kevin Barry waiting bravely for his last walk, for his last glimpse of the ragged blue sky.

  Gobshite sings, ‘Just a lad of eighteen summers but there’s no one can deny, as he walked to death that morning, he proudly held his head up high.’ And then the moon’s ‘shining bright above the highway, where those men who fought for freedom now are dead.’