‘I know, Frank. That’s why you brought me back. I understand. But you shot my daddy.’
His face sets cement-hard with Republican honour. ‘He was a tout. We had to.’ The Army must defend the war of liberation by punishing collaborators and informers. ‘If he’d kept his mouth shut your ma wouldn’t…’ Hot tears dissolve the mask he’s worn for twenty-five years.
I pull the gun from his temple, sit on the sofa with it aimed loosely at him.
‘Tell me what happened, Frank: the fucking truth.’
He nods eagerly. ‘We’d been given the order to dump arms. Your mammy was taking me and some lads to a cache. She was high ranking Cumann na mBan, in charge of her own section and overseeing several weapons stores. We’d not been there ten minutes when a load of Free State bollockses showed up. Me and the lads, we’d prices on our heads; if we’d been lifted we’d have ended up jailed. Your ma said she’d give us chance to get away because she’d likely be let off anything they’d charge her with. The Gardai didn’t go for jailing women much then and she argued it was more important we got clear.’
‘So you left her?’
‘I didn’t want to, Caoilainn, but there wasn’t time to reason with her. She was a strong woman, your ma, and there wasn’t a thing she’d not do for the Movement.’ He ruffles his hair. ‘We were half a field over when I heard the shots. They reckoned she came out firing.’
‘You think that’s true?’
He raises watery eyes. ‘Knowing Fi, aye, it’s the sorta thing she’d do.’ He shrugs. ‘You’d be the same.’
Would I? Probably, if it was needed.
Frank continues, ‘Afterwards Charlie was broken. Just sat in his chair, drunk most times, muttering it was his fault. Folks thought he blamed himself for not talking Fi into getting yous away to America. But it niggled me. We’d had too many lads lifted, dumps raided. I asked around, put things together.’
‘So you shot him?’
Frank shudders. ‘I went to talk to him. He confessed. It was a relief, I think.’
‘You were doing him a favour?’
‘I did us all a favour. There would’ve been a court-martial: an execution. People would’ve known. Your granddaddy would’ve been shamed forever, his own son a traitor. Instead it looked like Charlie killed himself over the heartache. Most believed that, turned deaf ears to the rumours; it was easier to mourn a grief-stricken widower who couldn’t go on than admit one of our own had gone against us.’
‘Did Daideo know the truth?’
He starts to shake his head. I raise the gun, sharpening my aim. He swaps to nodding.
‘He’d had you out in your pram. Got back right after I’d… I told him; he’d half guessed already from your da’s drunken ramblings and been quare fretting over what to do. He thanked me.’
‘Because you saved him a job.’
‘Aye,’ Frank sighs, ‘but it’s not what you’re thinking. Sure, Pat was a rock-hard Republican and that would’ve been reason enough but you were the first, the only, thing more important to him than Ireland. There’s nothing he wouldn’t have sacrificed to protect you. Your da doing what he did, hurting you like that, Pat couldn’t’ve let it alone. If I hadn’t, he would’ve. At least I saved your granddaddy that, Caoilainn.’
He crumbles into a blubbering shambles of washed-out manhood, snot dribbling from his nose and spit from his mouth.
I slump against the cushions, rest the gun on my lap and mentally examine myself, a car crash victim checking for injuries. There are no bleeding wounds or broken bones, no pain because what happened didn’t happen to me. It’s not even that I was thrown clear of the wreckage; I wasn’t even in the car.
Standing in the future I have a 360° view of the past. It lets me see the tragedy of what happened isn’t in the deaths, the fatal flaws, the star-sketched circumstances. It’s in the catharsis that comes from the catastrophic ending. What happened was tragic and wasteful but necessary and right. It gave me a clean page to write my story on.
I glance at the old man opposite. He gulps down tears.
‘I’m so sorry, Caoilainn. I wish to Christ it could’ve been different.’
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘Don’t think too badly of your da. He was a good volunteer, just not a strong one. And your mammy was as brave and bold as they come. I hope you’re understanding now, why your granddaddy sent you to England.’ Frank wipes his face. ‘What now?’
I slip the gun away. ‘We’ve just to get on living with our choices, Frank.’
In the morning I return the gun to Liam.
‘Alright?’
‘Fine.’
He nods. ‘What next?’
‘Dublin, for a while. I need to be away from here.’
‘Fair enough. You want a lift?’
I finger a scrap of paper in my pocket. ‘Got one.’
As city bleeds into country the past lifts from me. Patrick chats about the weather, colleagues, music; he’s a massive Led Zeppelin fan. I realise how little I know him and ask questions. My ignorance disappears with the miles and when we park outside Daideo’s house the blanks are filled.
‘Oh Jesus, Caoilainn,’ he says, killing the engine.
The front door is boarded with graffiti-daubed plywood: IRA out.
‘I’d no idea,’ he moans.
I climb from the car and sweep the road, looking for clues that were washed away months, years, ago.
With a crowbar, we prise the boards off and get in. Pinned to the living room door is a search warrant, signed by the Chief Constable of the Dublin Gardai. At the request of the RUC, they have conducted a search. Furniture is overturned, carpets and floorboards lifted, crockery smashed. I pick my way through the rubble, detached from the carnage; these are things, they can be replaced. I’m fine. Until I get to the bedroom, find Daideo’s two schoolboy paintings, the canvasses slashed.
‘Fucking bastards. I’ll kill them.’
‘You won’t,’ Patrick warns, seizing me. ‘Standing Order number eight...’
‘Fuck SO 8. I’ll…’
He crushes me to his chest. I wrestle him, anger steaming off me. He keeps hold, even when I thump him and long after I’ve cried myself dry.
He helps me do practical things; getting the power switched on; lighting the fire, cleaning up: things I’ve forgotten I have to do for myself. It’s evening before the place is liveable. Patrick suggests a takeaway.
‘What do you fancy?’
‘Whatever.’
‘There must be something you’ve been longing for.’
There is, but it isn’t food.
‘Fish and chips?’ Patrick suggests.
I nod and he goes to the nearest chippie. The front door closes, not with a clang but with a click. I’m alone: free.
I wander from room to room, opening and shutting doors and windows. I stand on the front step, go out to the back garden, climb into the loft. I boil the kettle, flush the toilet, light the gas stove. I lie on the bed in Daideo’s room, stretching into the corners. I listen to nothing. I turn inwards, searching for cracks, find none. I think maybe I’m OK. after all. Then Patrick returns.
We eat sat on the disembowelled sofa, its stuffing spewing over us. It reminds me of another sofa in another wrecked house, another night with another man. I drink too much for someone who hasn’t had any for two years. Emboldened by Bushmills and panicked by loneliness, I try to kiss Patrick. He folds me down calmly.
‘Not like this.’
He puts me to bed. In the morning I find him on the gutted couch, half-buried in its innards like a slaughtered monster’s last meal.
Patrick stays a week, sleeping on the sofa until I force him to take Daideo’s bed. On his final night we go to a quiet pub where we sip wine and slurp leek and potato soup. Earlier he took me to the bank, helping me reinvest what’s left of Daideo’s money so I’ve enough to live off. He also sorted me a car, an old banger that he paid for, arguing the sense of putting it through his law fi
rm’s accounts as a tax dodge. I didn’t protest because I need a car, he needs to leave me self-sufficient and I need to let him help me. Although I do stop him taking me shopping; if I can’t manage that I might as well give up now.
‘You sure you’ll be OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘I could stay another…’
‘You’ve got work. I’ll be fine. I need to do this on my own, Patrick.’
He nods. ‘I should be giving you this.’
My chain appears on the table between us. I fasten it around my neck, the locket and ring resting against my jumper.
‘You won’t put the ring on?’
I shake my head. ‘I need to leave it behind.’
‘All of it?’
‘That’s a big question.’
‘Sorry, none of my business.’ He stirs his soup.
‘I’ll let you know when I’ve the answer.’ I lace my fingers through his.
March grinds into April. The empty hours nag at me. I need something to do, a routine, a ‘nine-to-five’. It’s what I’m used to. I find out where to go to get one but while I’m still dithering about doing it Spy Wednesday sneaks up on me. I barricade myself in the house for the next ten days, drawing the curtains and unplugging the telly before the Easter Rising commemorations besiege me. I don’t even pin a lily to my lapel.
A fortnight later the Easter bombardment is over and I’m done dithering. The job centre is a modern building, glass fronted and topped with a gaudy sign. Inside I present myself to a man in polyester slacks who smoothes down his comb-over. We sit at a plastic table. He produces a form, notes details; name, age, address. After that it’s more complicated. What qualifications have I? None. Skills? Experience? I can strip an Armalite in under a minute, bull’s-eye a target at a hundred yards, live a covert double existence: fight the enemy. I say I can draw. He probes; technical drawing? I show him my pad, filled with imagined life while my real one was suspended.
He sighs. ‘What have you been doing for the last few years, Miss Devoy?’
‘I’ve been away.’
‘Where?’
‘Armagh.’
‘Doing what.’
‘Not much.’
‘You must have done something,’ he says, tapping his biro.
‘I was in the jail.’
The pen falls from his fingers.
‘Jail? For what?’
‘Two years.’
‘I mean the offence, Miss Devoy.’
‘Membership of a proscribed organisation.’
His lips compress into a thin line. ‘I don’t think we can help you.’ He slips my form in his bottom drawer.
‘That’s right. As long as things are cushy down here in the Free State why would you?’ I stand, knocking over my chair. ‘Here you are in your safe wee world, not giving a toss about what’s happening in the Six Counties, tight-lipped when children get shot with rubber bullets, blind-eyed when innocent people are punished over your unfinished business. You make me fucking sick.’
A uniform comes towards me, an older fella, probably retired Garda. I could have him on his backside in five seconds.
I leave of my own accord, before we both get hurt.
There’s a knock on the door. A young girl is on the step.
‘You’re to be in the corner phone box in ten minutes,’ she recites.
‘What for?’
She shrugs and skips off. I collect my cigarettes and wander up the road, waiting in the box, smoking and defending it from potential users. The phone jangles on time. I snatch at the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘We’re needing words. Go to St Stephen’s Green. Wait under the Traitor’s Gate.’
I lean against cool stone, the pond behind me. I forbid myself to turn, afraid of not seeing three ghosts, a wee girl and boy with an older man, feeding the ducks. Instead I crane my neck. Above me, on the underside of the Fusilier’s Arch that forms the Grafton Street entrance to the Green are the names of 212 men, Irish traitors who defended England’s empire in the Boer War. Are you guilty if you don’t know it’s wrong? Is believing it’s right worse? I scan the names. There’s no O’Neill, no Devoy. There is a Ryan.
‘Caoilainn? I thought it was you,’ says a woman I’ve never met. ‘Shall we grab a coffee?’
‘Aye.’
We walk to her car. She drops the small talk and we head north to Clontarf in silence.
She parks by a row of shops; post office, butcher, baker, grocer, newsagent.
‘In there.’ She nods towards the newsagents. ‘You’re expected.’
A bell above the door announces my arrival. A middle aged man glances up from the racing form. He jerks his thumb to a doorway.
‘Upstairs, second left.’
I find a small kitchen. Kevin is at the stove, the kettle whistling.
‘Tea?’ he asks.
‘No, thanks.’
He puts two cups and the pot on the table.
‘Away in. Close the door. Sit down.’
I shut the door but don’t sit.
‘What’s up?’
‘I just want a wee chat.’
‘About what?’
He pours tea, pushes a mug towards me. ‘You.’ He nudges a chair out with his foot. ‘Sit down, for Christ sake.’
I drop into the chair and light a cigarette.
‘We were expecting you to check in.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Ah, sure.’ Pause. ‘Didn’t see you Easter weekend.’
‘I didn’t go.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Have you got me here just for that, for missing…?’
He bangs a fist onto the table. The mugs jump up; tea slops out.
‘You’re here to explain what the hell you were about in the job centre.’
I could make excuses, say I needed to see what I’ve lost. I don’t; I’ve lost nothing. Because I gave everything up. He continues:
‘We’ll have no trouble down here.’
‘That’s why you let the Gardai wreck my house, is it?’
He fetches a cloth from the sink, mops the spilled tea.
‘I’m sorry for that but there was nothing we could do. We know what you’ve been through, Jesus, most of us’ve had the same and worse but…’
‘Worse than finding out from the peelers your da was a tout? Did yous know?’
He searches the room for an answer. ‘There was talk, things we thought best not repeated.’
‘I should’ve been told.’
‘It wasn’t anything to do with us. We’ve enough problems with today’s touts; we don’t need to be bothering with yesterday’s as well.’ He changes the subject. ‘If we hadn’t got to Brendan you’d still be inside.’
‘And if I’d broken you’d still have him leaking stuff to every G-man in the Six.’
‘Fair play, you held out better than most but that doesn’t give you the right to carry on like you did the other day. Until you’re telling me otherwise you’re a volunteer and expected to act like one. That means not getting gobby about it in public,’ he warns, voice rising.
‘Is that what this is? You want to know what I’ll be doing now I’m out?’
‘I do, aye.’ He sits down.
‘What are my choices?’
‘You can’t operate like you used to, you’ll be on every list from here to shagging London. You’d be best off in public, doing something for Sinn Fein, like Mairead.’
‘I’ll not be a pin-up for politicians. I’m worth more than that. So’s she.’
‘Jesus, Caoilainn, that’s not in doubt. You’re both grand volunteers. But there are other tactics in play now. Mairead understands that. You could do a lot for the Movement; political rallies, campaigning against injustice: be the next Bernadette Devlin.’
‘What for? When the enemy’re making up the rules the game’s not fair.’
Kevin sighs. ‘Fine, but we’ve to be practical now you’re a known
Republican: a convicted one.’
‘You said choices?’ I press, stubbing my cigarette out on the edge of the table.
‘Have you considered leaving?’
‘The IRA or Ireland?’
‘Either. Both. I’m just saying if you’ve had enough that’s fine. We’ll not ask more of you than you’ve already given.’
‘What else?’
Kevin swirls the teapot and tops up our mugs. ‘I suppose… but it wouldn’t be my preference… I’d have to clear it with the Council.’
‘What?’
‘You could operate somewhere rural, remote, as long as you kept out of sight. But it’d be a hard life. You’d be cooped up most days, waiting for the next mission.’
Life in an underground army is extremely harsh and hard, cruel and disillusioning at times.
‘I’ve plenty of practice at that.’
‘Maybes too much. I can’t even say they’d clear you for it but it’s your only option if you want to be active again. We’d not put you in Belfast or Derry and not England, for sure.’ He studies me, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to bring me into focus. ‘Go away, do some thinking, but head down while you do, or it’ll not be a friendly chat next time. I don’t give second warnings.’
‘One’s enough. Sorry.’
I stumble home on foot, two hours jostled and overwhelmed on crowded streets, exposed and anxious on empty ones, trying to find a way forward, round: through.
I’m too close to the details to see the whole picture. I need the perspective of distance to view the choices, work out which one it’s to be.
On the doormat is a letter from Briege, inviting me to visit. I don’t want to but I can’t stay in Dublin; there’s no room for me here.
Galway City—27th April, 1987
Their house is in the Salthill district. I get ravelled up in the city’s one-way system, finally untangling myself, driving over Wolfe Tone Bridge, at 10.30 P.M. Their street, Grattan Terrace, is 1950s-built compact starter homes. I park across the road from the baby-boy blue house rented by Mr and Mrs O’Neill, and debate leaving. An upstairs window is lit. A man’s silhouette passes back and forth, a bundle clutched to his chest. Pain knots my stomach.
Herself Alone in Orange Rain Page 31