‘Oh.’
‘We’ll send yous someone else soon.’
‘What do we do meantime?’
‘That’s up to you. You’re OC now.’
I gag on the gobful of responsibility he’s expecting me to chew and swallow. ‘I can’t. I’ve not that much experience.’
‘True enough.’ He shrugs. ‘But you’ve not wasted what you’ve had and that counts for a lot. The Council think you’re up to it: brains and nerve.’
Fuck ups and failures jeer in my head. I shut them up with the realisation that I’m here because I’ve learnt from them, not copied off them.
‘So the leadership really do believe in equality?’
Light from the pub window shows his Colgate-white smile. ‘You best be about proving them right. But we want things quiet for a wee while. We’ll be in touch when we’re ready.’ He goes inside, leaving me standing on my head.
In the morning, after our first legitimate night together, Aiden and I pack for our honeymoon in Rosmuc, near where Daideo stayed with Pearse in his holiday cottage when they were pupil and teacher. We load the borrowed car, Aiden’s head banging with stale Guinness and mine with Martin’s news. Briege waylays us.
‘Have you a minute, Caoilainn?’
She and I wander a little way from the pub; behind us Aiden throws up.
‘Did yous have a good night?’ she asks.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
We reach the road, turn ninety degrees and continue.
‘I’ve decided to become a volunteer,’ she says.
My foot slips over a loose rock, stumbling me. ‘What’s brought this on?’
‘I always wanted to be properly useful, not just fetching and carrying, but ’til I met you I didn’t feel I could. You set me thinking. If you can, I can. Now it’s not enough, being a messenger.’
‘We need couriers as much as…’
‘I know,’ she interrupts, ‘but this is what I want.’
‘Don’t do this because I am,’ I caution her.
‘I’m not. You’ve just helped me see that wanting to do it’s all I need to be able to do it.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I am.’
‘Then good on you.’
We spend three peaceful days walking the lanes, climbing the hills, listening to the silence and gazing at Connemara’s wild, barren beauty. The war is a hundred years away. Pearse’s cottage is two miles. I search our holiday let for drawing materials, find a small notepad and stubby pencil in a kitchen drawer and sketch the landscape; glassy loughs, jagged peaks, broken coastline and Pearse’s cottage. It hugs the hillside, brooding over the shimmering water it guards. I wish for watercolours to capture the buttery thatch yellow, the brilliant whitewashed walls, so vivid against the verdant undergrowth that encroaches on it. It haunts me, a memory I wish was mine, not Daideo’s. On our last evening, as we stroll back from the pub in Rosmuc I find myself turning up the track to the cottage, pulled by someone else’s past.
‘I don’t think we’re allowed,’ Aiden says as we scramble up the steep path.
‘I just want to see it. Daideo came here.’
‘Sure, I didn’t know that,’ Aiden pants.
‘I think it was shortly before the Rising. I can’t remember what he said now, something about it being a decisive moment for Pearse.’ I make the top of the bank and stop, breathless, at the cottage’s green door.
He was here, Finn Devoy. The boy I can barely imagine, never know. I stroke the cold rough stone, the weather-splintered woodwork; peer through the tiny windows, half-hoping, half-dreading, the sight of ghostly figures, a man and a boy, by the fire. There’s only my own reflection. It blurs. I blink down tears, shade the window with my palm and stare in. The cottage’s empty interior stares back.
‘There’s nothing here,’ Aiden says. ‘Let’s go.’
I face him. Over his shoulder the Twelve Pins loom. Yesterday we drove out to them, clambered over their rocky feet, rested in their shadow. Tomorrow Aiden’ll be in Tyrone and I’ll be in London. Fuck knows when we’ll next see each other.
‘In a minute.’ I reel him towards me, looping my arms around him.
‘Aye, in a minute,’ he murmurs.
We stay on Pearse’s doorstep, drawing out the moment, stretching it to snapping point. When we finally leave the darkness pulls us apart as we stumble through it.
For the next year I head up the London cell. It’s easy because GHQ tell us to hibernate; we drift into ordinary life. Tommy and Joe make a living from their trades. Having completed basic training, Briege joins us at Easter, at my request. She’s inexperienced but earnest plus another woman is easier to explain to the neighbours. She gets a job waiting tables. With her red hair, fair skin and the melodic softness of her Galway accent she’s safe being openly Irish. I take a class at the local college: ‘Watercolours for Beginners’. It’s me and a load of pensioners but I do a series of Connemara landscapes, washed with summer blue skies and always with a tiny white cottage on a hillside. It’s twee compared to the art I used to produce but, soothed by it, I ask myself no hard questions about this shift in my creativity. When term ends I buy a 1973 125cc Honda XL, learn to ride and buzz down to the coast where I sit on various piers doodling more cosy landscapes into a little sketchpad that I now carry everywhere. Some nights we go about as two couples, eating in cheap restaurants and drinking in bars that don’t have Guinness on draught. We celebrate my twenty-first in Chinatown. I wear my wedding ring on the chain with my locket. We tell Sheila ‘Brian’ is working in Scotland.
I go to Ireland four times in twelve months, juggling my two passports so British immigration think I’ve been in Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona and Copenhagen. If questions are asked I’m visiting art galleries, which I read up on, some I even actually see thanks to lengthy delays between flights. Aiden and I spend a total of seven weeks, five days and twelve hours together, most of them bunkered down in my house in Dublin which he uses as his whenever he isn’t needed in Tyrone or Armagh. Every minute together is time we beg, borrow and steal from the war. I don’t know if life will ever be different, normal, for us. This is normal.
We’re lying in front of the fire, naked and wrapped in each other, our skin toasted by the glowing turf. We’ve been married a year and a day.
Aiden nuzzles my neck. His hand rests on my stomach. He traces a petal-pattern with his forefinger around my bellybutton. His lips are hot against my ear.
‘When’re you gonna stop taking those daft wee pills and give me a chance?’
I close my eyes to avoid seeing the pleading in his.
‘Caoilainn?’ He strokes my hair. ‘Don’t you want to have a family?’
The phone rings. I push up. Aiden snatches at me.
‘What if it’s…’
‘I don’t give a shite who it is,’ he says. ‘We’re talking. Haven’t you thought about it?’
The phone rings out.
‘I’m not saying we won’t but now’s not the time.’
‘Plenty of the boys have wee ’uns.’
‘The ’Ra give maternity leave, do they?’
‘You don’t have to keep at it,’ he says.
I pull free. ‘So you’d have me give up what I believe in to have babies for you? Jesus, Aiden, you know what this means to me.’
‘I thought I meant more.’
The phone rings again. I go to answer it.
When I return Aiden’s lying on his back, blowing smoke rings.
‘Who was it?’
‘Martin. We’ve a situation.’
County Antrim—25th September, 1983
IRA Gunmen in Maze Break-out
Dozens of Criminals on the Run
in Northern Ireland
Thirty-eight Republican prisoners have escaped from the Maze prison near Lisbon. Using guns and knives smuggled into the jail, inmates, all from block H-7, overpowered guards before hijacking a lorry and driving through th
e prison gates. One officer was stabbed to death during the break-out and another is receiving hospital treatment after being shot.
Police and soldiers have sealed off the area and set up checkpoints in a five mile radius of the prison. Ten of the escapees have been recaptured and an extensive search for the remainder continues.
The prison, twenty miles south of Belfast, houses around 1800 prisoners, most of whom are Republicans. The escape is the largest in the history of Northern Ireland.
It is believed that some of those now on the run were involved in the 1981 hunger strikes which saw ten men starve to death in a failed protest for political status.
Authorities ask the public to remain vigilant but caution against approaching anyone suspected of involvement as the men are armed and dangerous.
We drive north overnight, crossing the border into Tyrone, stopping outside Coalisland where a car waits for Aiden. The driver climbs out to greet us and I realise I know him. Colm grins as he comes over.
‘If it isn’t herself. How are ya?’ He shakes my hand.
‘Not too bad. See you finally got that fuzz sorted out,’ I say, pointing at the moustache that has grown in, aging him more than the two years that have passed since he tentatively patted me down before my Green Booking with the big men.
He retaliates, teasing, ‘Sure, but I’m still waiting for you to stop mickeying about. When’re you gonna join a proper brigade, do some real fighting?’
‘Oi, watch it. I outrank you these days,’ I joke. ‘You want me complaining to your OC about the gob on you?’
‘Ach, you’re all trousers and no mouth,’ he laughs, pointing at my jeans. ‘Anyway, you’ve no rank this side of the water,’ he reminds me, stealing the advantage in our bantering.
I let him have the win; I’ll out-quip him next time. ‘Fair enough. How is he, your OC? I’ve heard he’s a hard man, Big Jim.’
Colm shrugs. ‘Fearless, so he is. The two of yous’d get on.’
‘Maybe when the Christmas campaign’s over.’
‘Grand, I’ll look forward to working with you.’
‘For me,’ I grin, unable to resist one final craic.
He laughs. ‘Aye, righto. Ready, Aid?’
‘Gis a minute,’ Aiden replies.
Colm retreats to a discreet distance.
Aiden loops his arms around me, pulling me close, enveloping me in his leather jacket. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the smell of him, feeling our bodies fitted together, a two-piece jigsaw. I kiss him. He kisses back; heat moves between us, then he draws away and cold air creeps over me.
‘About before,’ he says, ‘I was an eejit.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to but how can we with this going on?’ This is why Daideo sent me away.
He strokes my cheek. ‘Sure, we’ve time for wee ’uns when this is over, so we have. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
We kiss once more then he walks to Colm, turns and they both wave.
I watch until they’ve driven out of sight then point the car northward, heading for Carnlough.
North of Larne the road narrows, tracking the coastline. To my right a flat colour wash of waves, stretching beyond sight, rolls and swells gently beneath the shadowy light of an unborn day. On my left rocky, grass-spackled cliffs climb skyward. The road pitches around knee-scraping bends, unfurls into high-velocity straights. I promise myself a TT tuned motorbike and a return here one day, Aiden perched behind me, whooping with exhilaration.
Reaching Carnlough’s southerly town boundary I park, shoulder to the sea, get out of the car and step up to the railings. Rust mottles the white-painted metal. I perch on the bottom rail, grip the top one and lean over, stretching for the beach which is sluiced in high tide. Waves slosh against the sea wall. I put out an arm, fingers splayed, and icy salt-spray tingles my skin. Balancing on the bottom rail, I open my arms to the sea, hugging the cold bay, clutching at the headland, scooping up the town that lies scattered to my left, trying to pocket precious predawn peace. On the horizon the sun eases itself out of the sea, replacing greyness with gold. In my sketchpad I outline the coastal scene, studying the colour, light and texture, storing it for painting someday. When sunrise is done and the light blandly blue I put my back to the sea and wait.
I recognise Connor as soon as he slouches into view, moving along the seafront with Aiden’s easy-rolling gait, the sea, lit by the risen sun, glittering behind him. I lean against the car, watching. When he gets to within a few feet I see how thin he is; cheekbones cutting through greyed skin, eyes dark holes. When we shake I’m afraid of snapping his fingers. Fear chills me. This could be Aiden in ten, twenty years, when the war has finally spat him out, if he’s lucky and his coin lands jail-side up. Connor’s been seven years in the Kesh, four sleeping on a piss-soaked mattress, decorating the cell with his own shit, being beaten and humiliated by the war we’re told isn’t happening, for the freedom we’re told we already have. That’s Irish luck Republican-style.
‘So you’re the wee light in Aiden’s eyes,’ he says.
‘And you’re the big brother he looks up to,’ I reply.
He drops his gaze, studies his trembling hands. I pull out my cigarettes.
‘Want one?’
‘Aye, thanks.’ He drags deeply; coughs violently. ‘Jesus, been so long since I smoked anything but roll-ups.’ He looks around. ‘Are we going?’
‘Yes but first give me the gun,’ I say, pulling on a pair of gloves and holding up my hand.
He jerks his head round.
‘You need to trust me.’
He reaches into the pocket of a jacket that’s too large for him and gives me the handgun. I wipe it off thoroughly then sprint across the road and shove it into the post box as instructed.
‘What d’ya do that for?’ he cries.
‘The last thing we need is a collar for possession. One of the local brigade lads is postie on this route. He’s collecting it later.’
We get in the car. I slip a brown envelope from the glove box. ‘Here.’ I drop it onto his lap, start the engine and pull away.
Connor tears the seal. ‘What’s this?’
He opens an Irish passport that says he’s Michael O’Leary. Inside is a black and white photo of Aiden, taken only hours ago, in the Dublin house of his friendly forger.
‘Are we leaving the country?’ Connor’s voice pitches up.
I outline the plan Aiden and I scrambled together under the duress of necessity; cross the border into Donegal, drive for the airport, fly to Amsterdam.
Connor thumbs the passport. ‘Are we gonna get away with this?’
‘Yes,’ I say, strangling worries about the photo. It’s been years since Aiden saw Connor. He couldn’t have known, wouldn’t have wanted to, that now his big brother looks more like their da than him.
‘And when we get to Amsterdam?’
‘Stay a few days, fly to London when things’ve settled.’
‘London?’ The word is croaked.
‘Aye, but it’s temporary. If we’d’ve known you were escaping, had some time to prepare…’
‘My cellmate chickened out last minute. He only had six months to serve, decided it wasn’t worth the risk,’ Connor explains. ‘I took his place. I don’t want to go to London.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve things sorted there. I can hide you.’
‘Aye, sure,’ he mutters, gazing out to sea.
‘It’s hardest finding a needle in a pile of other needles,’ I say, thinking he’s worrying about capture.
He shakes his head. ‘I thought I’d be going home. I don’t want… I’m not sure… London’s so big, so busy.’ There’s strain in his voice. He’s fighting not to cry.
I never thought about how it would be, getting out after being in so long. I assumed being out would fix everything but Connor’s so broken that plain-old freedom isn’t enough to mend him.
‘That’s why you’ll be safest there,’ I say with fa
lse certainty.
By rights he should be going for debriefing, then through decontamination before being hidden well away from military activity. But with so many to hide and so few places the Brits don’t know to look options were limited. Martin only agreed to us, me, taking Connor to London because he couldn’t suggest anything else on so little notice and with resources pulled so taut. It’s got ‘balls up’ stamped all over it.
‘You’ll be grand. We’ll look after you,’ I add, hoping Connor won’t realise, until he’s strong enough to cope with another run, that our safe house can only be a temporary priest-hole for him.
‘Promise?’
‘Geallaim.’
A week later we arrive in Putney. I’m annoyed to find myself glad to be home and dismiss it as relief over getting Connor safely here.
Briege has organised a welcome: bottled Guinness, homemade soda bread and barmbrack; paper-chain shamrocks dangle in doorways and a large tricolour is pinned to the lounge wall. That night we are wholly Irish, wholly Gaelic, singing songs, telling folk tales. When it’s my turn I think I’m going to recite something from the Ulster Cycle but the words come differently:
Long ago there was a young boy, born across the sea from his homeland. The son of a once great and still powerful man, he was sent to live and to learn in the old country, the land of the bog and the little fields. There he studied under a wise master, becoming skilled, clever and strong, living out the master’s motto: strength in our hands, truth on our tongues and purity in our hearts.
The others listen in silence to Daideo’s story. As the Easter week surrender approaches, I dredge my mind for a point to finish on and decide to leave my young hero free, roaming the Irish countryside. It’s the closest I can get to a happy ending.
Connor has learnt Irish in jail so he, Briege and I start speaking it but after a while Tommy and Joe, who only have a few words, start fidgeting and I switch us back to English. We don’t go to bed until the sun is red in the sky. It’s only then I realise we haven’t sorted out who’s where. I clear my room, moving in with Briege so Connor can have his own space. Late morning, when I drag myself up, mouth dry and head pounding, the door to his room is open. He isn’t there. I fly round the house, banging doors, waking the others. Joe spots him, lying on the unkempt lawn in our postage-stamp garden. His face is peaceful, younger. We leave him to sleep outside.
Herself Alone in Orange Rain Page 19