Herself Alone in Orange Rain

by Tracey Iceton

  I leap off, skimming the road on my side, friction burning my arm as my leather jacket grates to nothing on the tarmac. I’m still skating as I try to stand, stumbling awkwardly, feet flailing as though on ice. A hedge catches me. Ripping off my helmet, I spin round. The bike is further up, rear wheel sticking out of the hedge. Briege is pinned under it. In a crouching run I dash to her. She holds up the gun.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ I pant. ‘I’ll lift the bike up…’

  A swarm of bullets bites the air around us.

  ‘Just go, Caoilainn,’ she gasps.

  I put my hands out, patting inside her coat. Warm wetness oozes through my fingers. She moans.

  ‘Jesus, no.’

  A voice hollers, ‘Put down your weapons and come towards us slowly.’

  I glance down the street. Illuminated by their own floodlights I can see the dead peeler in the road, flying on bloody wings. The second is a bulging shadow crouch by the meat wagon. I grab the gun and fire twice. The shadow dives behind the van. Thoughts charge through my head, express train carriages whipping by: he’ll be on the radio now; the nearest RUC station is Dungannon, twenty minutes for reinforcements from there; they could send an off-duty bollocks from Ballygawley or Garvaghy; I’ve ten minutes at most.

  ‘Back in a jiff,’ I tell Briege, fumbling around the edge of the helmet to stroke her cheek. ‘Don’t leave.’ I feel her smile.

  I creep along the hedge on the van’s nearside, gun drawn. Peering round I see him huddled against the vehicle the way a child hugs its mother’s skirts. I remember Callum cowering like that the night Cathy was shot. The peeler turns, blinks at me, starts to stand, splintering the memory. The glaring searchlight exposes his baby’s face; fresh pink skin, plump and downy. His hands fly up in a gesture of surrender. Both of them are empty.

  ‘Please, don’t shoot. I…’ he nods towards the road, ‘…dropped it. I’m unarmed.’

  So was Aiden.

  ‘Yous are the ones who wanted big boy rules. That means no take backs.’

  I pull the trigger. He falls forwards. It’s war. I’m not sorry.

  Aiming for the floodlight I fire twice more, popping it like a balloon.

  I sprint to Briege. She’s still conscious but her eyes don’t focus on mine and her replies are a mumbled jumble of Irish and English. She says Saoirse’s name three times. I tug off her helmet, lift the bike with adrenalin-fuelled superhero strength and shove it away. It falls with a clanging, crunching that bounds up the road. Staining the pale fabric of her coat are two inky patches, one on her right shoulder, the other on her left hip.

  ‘Need a hand, love?’

  I jump up, gun aimed and cocked, confronting the voice that belongs to a man, fifties or older, standing in the street in his dressing gown.

  ‘Steady, there.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Terry Boyce, from over the way.’ He points to the only house on the road, lights on, door open. ‘Soon as I saw those buggers setting up quarter of an hour ago I knew I’d best watch for trouble. It’s alright; I’m with yous.’

  ‘You don’t know who I’m with and for all I know you could be chief constable of the RU sodding C.’

  ‘Anybody out here with a gun and no uniform’s a Republican,’ he tells me, ‘and either you trust me or your friend’ll bleed to death.’

  ‘You a doctor?’

  ‘No, but there’s one in Monaghan I can call for you. You can take my car.’ He points to a hatchback parked nearby. ‘I’ll get the keys.’ He jogs to the house.

  I crouch by Briege, pinch her earlobe. Her eyelids flutter and her lips move but the words are silent. I think she’s praying.

  ‘Here.’ Boyce tosses me a key-ring, drops to his knees and starts ripping open first aid dressings.

  I put the gun away and we staunch the blood, strapping Briege’s side and shoulder with gauze and bandages. Boyce carries her to the car, a knight with a princess. He lays her on the back seat.

  ‘This is the doctor’s address. I’ll call ahead for you.’ He crumples a scrap of paper into my hand.

  ‘I can trust him?’

  ‘Aye. Now get going. I’ll wait a bit then call the peelers. It’ll look off if I don’t.’

  ‘What about…’ I glance at the dropped Norton, our chucked helmets.

  ‘Don’t worry, just get her seen to.’ He opens the driver’s door for me. ‘Jesus, didn’t I never think I’d see two wee lassies gunning down peelers.’ He smiles. ‘You’ll be village legends after this.’

  Don’t you have to be dead to be a legend?

  I race down the A5, turn off for the cottage, clatter through the door and yell to Danny, ‘Grab some towels. Get outside,’ then dart to the car and climb in the back.

  Briege is conscious again, shivering. Her face is blanched, her lips bluing. She fixes glazed eyes on me.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice is a thin whisper. ‘Tell Connor and Saoirse I’m sorry.’

  I blink away burning tears. ‘We’re getting you to a doctor. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Jesus, what happened?’

  Danny is behind me. I scramble out of the car.

  ‘Get in. Keep pressure on her wounds. Keep her awake. We need to get to Monaghan.’

  Danny clambers in. I start the engine.

  A few minutes later bilingual place names signal we’re over the border. I stamp on the accelerator, pushing the car to eighty and ninety, bouncing over potholes, railing around bends, headlights pinging off trees, wing mirrors brushing hedgerows. Danny talks to Briege but her replies are whimpers, Connor’s and Saoirse’s names, then nothing.

  ‘Is she awake?’ I demand.

  ‘I… can’t…’

  ‘Don’t let her go, Danny.’

  ‘How?’ he screeches.

  ‘Sing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fucking sing.’

  We arrive in Monaghan to the first verse of ‘The Queen of Connemara’: ‘When the black floor of the ocean and the white foam rush together, high she rides, in her pride, like a seagull through the gale.’

  I strain to read the creased-up paper under the flash of streetlights. There are bloody smears on it but I make out the road name and house number.

  ‘We need Hill Street. Can you tell what these directions say?’ I pass the paper to Danny.

  ‘Try a left up here.’

  I go the wrong way down a one way street, take other left instinctively and come to a t-junction.

  ‘Here,’ Danny shouts.

  I swing left again, onto Hill Street and bump the car onto the pavement.

  The house disgorges a white haired man, his shirt buttoned up wrong.

  I jump out. ‘Terry Boyce sent me, I’ve…’

  ‘He called, get in, quick.’ He retreats inside.

  Danny carries Briege into the house. The doctor leads us to the kitchen. The table is cleared and spread with a blue sheet. Medical instruments are lined up on the counter.

  ‘Put him there.’ He indicated the table, faces us, sees Briege and recoils.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

  ‘Terry said you’d an injured volunteer,’ he stammers.

  ‘We do.’ I nod at Briege, prostrate on the table.

  He shakes his head. ‘Is this your idea of feminism, getting yourselves shot?’

  I choke down a reply about it being better than being beaten and raped by a husband you can’t divorce and having a baby every year from sixteen ’til you hit the bloody change and say, ‘Are you going to help?’

  With a coal-faced expression he holds out a pair of scissors. ‘Cut her clothes off.’

  Danny’s cheeks flush. I snatch the scissors. Danny faces the wall. The doctor tips liquid from a small brown bottle onto a gauze pad and holds it over Briege’s nose and mouth.

  ‘What’s that?’ I demand.

  ‘Chloroform. Unless you’d rather have her coming round during surgery?’ he retorts. He lifts the pad from her face,
scrubs his hands then confronts the makeshift operating table. His examining eyes fall on the small mound of Briege’s stomach.

  He glares at me. ‘How far along is she?’

  ‘I don’t know. A few months?’

  He rounds on Danny. ‘Yours?’

  ‘My brother’s.’

  ‘And where’s he?’

  I shove the question aside with one of my own. ‘Will she lose it?’

  ‘If she goes into shock...’ He shakes his head. ‘You’ve no right risking an innocent life. The Republican Cause is one thing but this is over the line.’

  ‘The line’s where the Brits drew it,’ I say, folding my arms.

  He shakes his head again, examines Briege’s two wounds. Suffocating tension and fear coil around me as I wait for his diagnosis.

  ‘Seems you’ve God with you tonight. Both bullets’ve gone through muscle tissue.’

  He sweeps a hand over Briege and I see it’s not her shoulder but the top of her arm that’s been sliced by the bullet; the bloody mess on her hip made by a jagged tear through her side.

  ‘If there were organs damaged I’d not be able to save her. But she could still bleed to death, succumb to infection.’

  He wants to frighten me, punished me. Is this what we deserve? The Irish Republican Army’s right to engage in warfare is based on the right to resist foreign aggression, tyranny and oppression.

  ‘I can stop the bleeding, sterilise the wounds, close up. Then we’ll have to hope for the best. Both of you, wash your hands, you’ll have to help.’

  I go to the sink. Danny doesn’t move.

  ‘Christ sake, Danny, what’s it you’re wanting to save, her modesty or her life?’ I yank him to the sink, hold his trembling hands under the taps and we start scrubbing.

  ‘Right. You.’ The doctor gestures to Danny. ‘Pressure here, like this.’ He presses on Briege’s upper arm, hands close to her breast. Danny hesitates then does it. ‘You, help me here.’ The doctor beckons to me with his scalpel.

  I clear my mind with a deep breath. He pins back the tear’s ragged edges with long pincers, indicates that I’m to take them. I slip my fingers through the scissor-style handles and hold firmly. Blood, pooled in the wound, splashes at my feet. The muscle, slit by the bullet, looks like freshly trimmed steak. The doctor squirts fluid from a squeezy bottle into the gap made by the parted flesh. He peers inside.

  ‘Mother Mary, it’s a miracle her bowel isn’t perforated.’ He points, forcing me to look.

  A raw dimpled sausage quivers like blancmange. He stuffs gauze pads into the wound, pressing until they are blotted bloody then dumping them to the floor, tuts and repeats the process. Checks again and curses.

  ‘It’s bleeding badly. I’ll have to use ligatures.’

  He plunges two small clamps into Briege, sops up more of the red liquid that is flooding the wound and nods before selecting a needle, thread and scissors from the counter. A sliver of silver flashes up and down as he sews, knotting each stitch with a deft twist of fingers and needle. Done, he dabs the gash dry again and swills more fluid over it. Then he reaches for a small bladed knife, takes one of the pairs of pincers from me, releasing the flap of flesh, and cuts away the tattered edge, neatening. The trimmings drop to my feet with a splat and splash in the bloody puddles, spattering my boots. I gag, glance away, find myself looking at Danny’s white, trembling face and force a reassuring smile on him. The doctor takes the last pincer from my grip. I step back while he slices off the other side then nips the two folds together with a clamp.

  ‘Can you sew?’ he asks me.

  ‘No.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Didn’t your mammy teach you anything useful? Watch, then you can close up while I see to the shoulder. Like this.’ He inserts a tidy stitch. ‘Do one.’ He pushes the needle and thread onto me.

  I copy his precise cross-stitch with a scruffier one of my own.

  ‘It’ll not be neat but it’ll do.’ He moves around to Danny’s side and begins on the shoulder while I clumsily sew up Briege’s side, fingers shaking as I jab the needle through her skin.

  An hour later Briege, deathly white, sweating and shivering, held together with flimsy thread, lies on the living room sofa, drifting into a consciousness of pain and confusion. We smother her with blankets. She twitches and groans. The doctor pumps antibiotics into a vein. A smear of her blood is slashed over Danny’s forehead. My hands are sticky with it.

  ‘Clean yourselves up then see to my kitchen,’ the doctor orders.

  ‘What about the baby?’ I ask.

  He just shrugs. ‘God willing.’

  As the dawn sun scorches the city we load a limp, drowsy Briege into the car and drive, half-dead with exhaustion, to Galway because I want her at home with Connor and Saoirse. She lost the baby in the early hours.

  County Tyrone—25th July, 1987

  Bomb Wipes Out BA Patrol

  IRA Strike Back in Republican Heartland

  At approximately 11 p.m. on Thursday an explosion near the Fivemiletown army barracks killed five members of the Parachute Regiment and wounded four others, some seriously.

  The bomb, packed with 20 lbs of the highly effective plastic explosive, Semtex, went off at the roadside as the patrol was returning to base. Residents reported hearing a loud bang followed by shooting. The RUC confirmed that three soldiers sustained bullet wounds. No civilians were harmed in the attack and there was no damage to surrounding properties.

  This was the second incident in the area in twenty-four hours. On Wednesday Republicans attacked a police checkpoint in Ballymackilroy, killing two RUC officers. Local man, Mr Terry Boyce, 59, heard shots around midnight. He said, ‘We’re sick of the RUC stop and search policies. I hope this makes them think twice about harassing the public for no reason. This is a Republican area; if security forces don’t know that by now they’ll learn the hard way.’

  There is speculation that both attacks are part of the IRA’s response to the murder of eight Republicans at Loughgall in May. Addressing mourners at the funeral of the Loughgall martyrs, Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president, said the execution of the eight man ASU would be, ‘a bloody milestone in the struggle for freedom, justice and peace.’ With these operations the IRA have underlined their commitment to that struggle and demonstrated their ability to engage the enemy in a war of attrition.

  Dublin—18th August, 1987

  I cross the Liffey near the Four Courts. Mairead is waiting on a bench, under a tree, overlooking the river, her back to Justice, Mercy and Wisdom. The building’s massive dome and Grecian columns throw their statuesque shadows on her. She spots me among the foot traffic and waves. Wearing a red skirt and geometric-print blouse, her matching handbag over her arm and glossy curls dancing on her shoulders, she’s just another young woman, enjoying a precious day of Dublin sunshine. I wonder if I look so ordinary.

  She hugs me. Her body is soft and warm, prison’s hard edges rounded out.

  ‘Caoilainn, it’s grand to see you again.’

  ‘And you. You look even better than last time.’ Her face is tanned, fuller and her eyes glow. Her lipstick is the same crimson as her skirt. Seeing her smile, hearing the jangle of her bracelets, smelling the floral aroma of her perfume, you’d never guess she spent ten years in jail, four of them in shit-daubed squalor.

  ‘Sure, freedom’s a real beauty treatment,’ she laughs. ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  My stomach contracts. ‘Let’s just sit.’ I wave to the bench.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ Mairead asks.

  ‘Healing. But she miscarried.’

  Mairead crosses herself. ‘Poor Briege, it’s terrible for them.’ She grips my hand. A tear drips from my chin. ‘At least the mission was successful,’ she adds in a whisper.

  I drag my palm over my face and sniff back the waterworks. ‘I was for calling it off, staying with her, but she wouldn’t have it. Jesus, though, when we had to drop her off and drive straight back…’ The words choke me.
/>   ‘Christ, Caoilainn, this wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Not sure Connor agrees. How’ll he ever forgive me for getting his wife shot and baby killed?’

  ‘You mustn’t carry this with you. It’s hard when there’s a pull between family duty and Army duty,’ Mairead acknowledges. ‘We’ve all felt it, fought with it. My da was sick over me going on hunger strike but I couldn’t put that before the struggle. It’s the life.’

  Commitment to the Republican Movement is the firm belief that its struggle is morally justified.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So what about you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You look worse than when I came visiting,’ she says, nudging me back into Maghaberry’s callous corridors. ‘You know you can talk to me.’

  I light a cigarette and offer her one, which she takes. ‘Is that why you wanted to see me, to check if I’m breaking down?’

  ‘Are you?’

  I meet her glittering eyes. I owe her the honesty of comradeship, the trust of friendship. ‘I was close, maybe even there, for a few frightening days but I’m OK. now.’

  ‘Really?’ She raises her eyebrows.

  ‘Just OK.,’ I admit, ‘but that’s better than I was.’

  She smiles. ‘Fine, but if you need to talk…’

  ‘I know. Thanks. I will.’ I squeeze her hand, suddenly overpoweringly thankful for her friendship, the spoils of a war that has taken so much. I change the subject. ‘So you’re happy working for Sinn Fein?’

  ‘I’m helping where I can,’ she assures me, ‘but don’t worry, my orders are from GHQ these days.’

  ‘A promotion?’

  She blushes. ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Assigned to GHQ, sounds like one to me,’ I reply.

  ‘They’re just using people in the right places.’

  ‘Take it you’ve met Darkie.’

  ‘Aye, that was strange, shaking his hand, knowing we were on the same hunger strike seven years ago. He’s…’ Her long pause is uncharacteristic; Mairead’s too articulate to be stuck for words. She alters course. ‘Has he said anything to you?’