Country

by Michael Hughes

  After, she sat up and he lay down with his head in her lap, the usual. She stroked his hair and said he was her own little boy. He had a quiet wee cry and whispered about his mammy. She didn’t mind one bit.

  ‘It’s been a fair while,’ she says. ‘I was wondering what I’d done.’

  ‘I want no backchat,’ he says. ‘It’s a simple matter and I need it dealt with fast.’

  ‘You’ll have to fill me in.’

  ‘Fill you in, nothing. I know well you have eyes and ears besides mine.’

  ‘Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. All the same, I want to hear it from your own tongue. I know who I can trust and who I can’t. But if you’re in any kind of bother, and I can help, just say the word. I owe you plenty, and I pay my debts.’

  Nothing for a minute or two.

  ‘The young thing I took up with on the way down. I’m sure you know the one.’

  She rooted around in her bag, and handed over a wee square photo. ‘Brigid Nealon.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ says Achill. ‘Where did you get that?’

  She laughed. ‘It’s my own.’

  Achill gawped at her. Thinking back everything he’d ever said in front of her.

  She laughed again, at the stares of him. ‘What did you think I was, just some ha’penny tout?’

  Achill took the picture.

  ‘That’s her,’ says Achill. ‘Christ of almighty. Tell me the truth, did you ever see a girl like her? The boys from the class in school. It was said and said again, the only thing could love you is your mother. I fairly showed them. But my ma never loved me, Theresa. The only thing she loved was the drink. I’ve told you the whole history.’

  ‘Your mother had a hard life.’

  ‘Aye, and she gave me a harder one. I shed no tears for her, whether she’s living or dead. But this girl belongs to me. I won her, by my own deeds. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Except now she’s left you.’

  ‘She’s been made leave me. That treacherous cunt Pig. Had to give up his own piece, and then said he wouldn’t do without, and he’d a mind to take my girl off me. I wouldn’t stand for it, and he took it very bad.’

  ‘What did the girl say?’

  ‘Sure, what could she say? She’s his girl now.’

  ‘So you want her back, is that it?’

  ‘She can go and jump. I got what I needed out of her. It’s him I want a swing at.’

  ‘What good am I to you there?’

  ‘Don’t act the innocent, it doesn’t suit you. I want that man took down a peg or two. I need him and his whole fucking shower to get a hiding they won’t forget in a hurry.’

  ‘There’s plenty on both sides wouldn’t mind seeing the same boy get a boot up the hole. He’s not very popular with some of his own people. I’m sure you know well the higher-ups in Belfast are pushing for the truce to stay in place, and it’s Pig and his renegades down here who are pulling the other way. Is he up to some divilment?’

  ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out. I won’t go into the whys and wherefores. But he needs to know they won’t get on too well without Achill. They need a hammering like they’ve never had with me among them. I want the bit of respect I deserve, that’s the long and the short of it. Do whatever you need to do.’

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day. But it just goes to show. Everybody’s got their limit.’

  ‘Save it. Just do what you’re bid.’

  ‘Anything for my own wee boy. And don’t you worry, I’ll say nothing.’

  ‘Say what the fuck you like. There’s neither chickenshit Brit nor plastic peeler nor Loyal Orange hood will dare take me on. Not even the fucking SAS. They know what I am, and what’s waiting on them if they try. And they won’t know a thing about it till they see their own red guts splashed out on the road.’

  She wondered at him, doing the like of this. But she knew better than to ask.

  ‘Come on here and roll down them seats. You’ve earned more than your suck job the night.’

  4

  The minute she was in home, Theresa lifted the phone and called London. First time in three years, and it was somebody new answered, but they trained them well, and once she said a certain name she was put straight through. Another word, and she was transferred to the very top. And I mean the very top.

  ‘I have a wee favour to ask.’

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at? Go through the proper channels.’

  ‘Not this time. You owe me. And I expect my debts to be paid, in full.’

  She gave him the whole yarn. At the end of it, a big crackly sigh down the phone.

  ‘You know perfectly well that won’t wash with Dublin. We can’t go in mob-handed while they’re on ceasefire. The talks are at a very delicate stage.’

  ‘When are they not? I can help you with that too. For want of a nail, do you remember that one? It’s people like me know what’s happening on the ground, and I’m telling you, this man Pig is in your road. His people will never accept giving up their guns without a promise of withdrawal, and he has a lot of sway in the area and beyond. You need to get him out of the picture. Worst-case scenario, it’s a chance to exert a bit of pressure, the kind they understand. If they start thinking they can’t trust their own people, morale goes. Best-case scenario, it ends up with a feud, and they spend the next six months chasing each other round the back hills.’

  ‘Out of the question. Things have moved on since your heyday. We exert no pressure on the local factions. We simply don’t get involved. We’re honest brokers.’

  ‘Spare me the soundbites. I don’t need a politics lecture.’

  ‘Clearly you do. Sinn Fein and Dublin are living in cloud cuckoo land. Both demand a date for withdrawal, and while nothing would give us greater satisfaction than to be rid of the bloody place for good, that’s not politically possible, and they know it. We can’t move anything through the Commons without the unionists, and their price is decommissioning of weapons before Sinn Fein enters the talks. Stalemate.

  ‘But we’re working on both sides, slowly and patiently, inching them closer together. Three steps forward, two steps back. And just when Sinn Fein look like they might want to dance, you’re asking for an unprovoked aggression against their people, in the middle of a ceasefire? When they’re finally showing the political courage to take their movement by the hand towards a political settlement? By Jove, I don’t think so. Not on your nelly.’

  ‘Have you forgot what I done for you?’

  Nothing.

  ‘And then maybe you have. So I’ll spell it out.

  ‘Remember the time the IRA found out that Bonnie Prince Charlie was to visit thon school in Dungannon? Aye. And youse got word of the leak, so you pulled the plug. And then you did a second search, and you found a command wire in under the stage of the dinner hall, and the squib ready waiting in a garage down the road. Don’t play dumb. Oh, it was kept off the news, but the talk was about.

  ‘Well, it was me who gave you that word. Remember now? Aye. So I’m not nothing. It was said to me on that day, if there was ever anything I needed doing, no matter what, I was to come direct to you. Direct to you. And here I am, calling it in. You owe me big time, is the bottom line. After this, we’re quits.

  ‘And don’t give me that honest-broker shite. It’s your army and your SAS that’s been working flat out this twenty years or more to smash the IRA, to smash anybody but your own good selves that’s got the gumption to lift a finger to defend themselves and their families and their communities. You don’t get to have it both ways, you know. The republicans aren’t the only ones have been fighting with the Armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other. Isn’t that right? But nobody’s complaining. Your army has to do what your people demand. Keep them safe. Sure that’s all you’re good for at the end of the day, never mind all the big talk. Spend their silver, and guard the gate. Beyond that, it’s just a load of blah blah blah. And the very same with them. That’s politics,
boyo.

  ‘So just you get on the blower to Dublin, and tell them what’s what. Oh, they’ll buck and they’ll scream and they’ll kick their legs, but they don’t have your muscle. One clap of thunder out of you, and they’ll be quaking in their boots. You just tell them you’ll pull the guilt money out of the North, or you’ll block their EEC handouts at the next council meeting, or you’ll get the Yanks to stick on a few import tariffs they could do without.

  ‘Tell them it’s a done deal. London has given it the nod, and once the nod is given, the nod can’t be ungiven. Just tell them that.’

  5

  Pig got woke up by a tap at the front door. On and on and on. He found his watch by the bed. Near two in the morning. Nobody was supposed to know he was back in home.

  Up and peeped down out the window. Wee Stevie, the young lad that went back and forth with messages. The fuck did he want? But you never know, it might be something.

  Pig opened the door quick and grabbed him.

  ‘Come in here to fuck, before you’re seen. Do you not know what time it is?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be sleeping, there’s that much going on.’

  ‘Everybody has to sleep some time. You can die from lack of sleep on its own.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Fuck up and tell me your business, and it better be good.’

  Wee Stevie gave Pig the envelope. He told him no more than the truth. He’d been handed this stuff round the back of the Ships by a couple of lads who’d robbed it out of one particular car parked down by the old handball courts. They’d been told to look out for that one particular car, for it was known to be a plain-clothes RUC car, and to nick what they could if it was ever seen sitting empty.

  But what Stevie didn’t know, and Pig didn’t know, was that one of them wee lads had signed up just the other week to feed bits and pieces to Special Branch now and again, to get him off a drugs charge. And he had informed to Special Branch that he was told to look out for this particular car, among a load of other similar shite that he thought could do no harm to anybody. Somebody in the barracks picked it out of the report, and an army plainclothes lad had come in and told them to put this certain envelope in a very nice leather bag on the passenger seat of that car and leave it parked where it had no business being parked. The two boys were going to be lifted now shortly and given a hiding by the peelers, just in case Pig checked the story out. Which he would.

  ‘It might be nothing,’ says Stevie, ‘but I thought it looked like something. I’ve told nobody else, I swear to God.’

  Pig handed Stevie a scrunched-up fiver, and then a second one. He was a good lad. Knew when to keep his mouth shut, which was something these days. Scally eye, so he was always eager to please. He’d give him a leg up when he needed it.

  ‘If there’s ever anybody giving you bother, you let me know. And don’t be shy. Tell them straight out they’ll have to answer to the boss man.’

  Stevie tightened up his lips and nodded. Pig would have swore he saw the lad grow an inch taller. These things changed you, at the right age. Just a wee nudge.

  When the lad was gone, Pig closed the curtains and opened the envelope.

  A big thick pile of stuff. Classified all over it. Intelligence assessments, memos and printouts, scribbled notes and photocopies of notes. Stamps and codes he’d never seen.

  He felt his stomach gurgling. His hands were trembling. This might be big.

  He sat on the bog and had a read.

  Strategic vulnerabilities and big-picture repercussions. The base is at its weakest for many years but we do not believe this is apparent to the local community. We are rebuilding a certain section and the warning is that this would be the worst time to have an attack. The place could be taken out once and for all.

  Another page.

  Our current assessment is that GB public morale is very low and the stomach is no longer there in London and the MOD to continue Operation Banner indefinitely. Politically we are looking for an endgame. We have accepted the inevitability of a united Ireland within a generation, and quite possibly sooner if the temperature changes.

  He read on. And on. He could not believe his sleepy wee eyes. He fell for it hook, line and sinker. An old trick, but it hardly ever failed. Leak some dodgy information, have it fall into the wrong hands accidentally-on-purpose, stir the other side up into having a go, and let things roll on from there. Clean hands. Nobody to blame but themselves.

  6

  Coat on over the jim-jams, in the car and straight up the town, to rouse Ned. On the blower first, to get Dog on the scene too. He sat them both down in the good room at Ned’s and handed round the stuff.

  ‘Look at this here. Literally fell into my lap, in the middle of the night. I had to slap myself or I’d have swore the whole thing was a fucking dream. Look at it, would you. It says one big result for us could lead to political pressure in London for a military pull-out, a negotiated settlement that would be reunification in all but name, and fuck the unionists. Dublin has won the argument, it could be done this year or next at the latest, and all it would take is one big blow. The military is weak, they don’t have the men. Sub-calibre personnel. Lack of intel. Very vulnerable to attack.

  ‘I’m telling you, boys, it’s Christmas morning. We start moving, without delay, and fuck what anybody else says. Fuck Achill. Fuck the talks. Fuck waiting on the nod. The job is on. I’ll get word up to Belfast, and they may give it the rubber stamp.’

  ‘If anybody else had brought me a yarn the like of this, I’d have chased them,’ says Ned. ‘But you’re the OC, and your word goes. Let’s get the rest of them up.’

  Not Pig. Oh no. That was far too simple for him.

  ‘Stall a minute. I want to know first what these boys have left in the tank after eighteen months pipe and slippers. We’ll set them a wee test of their mettle. That’s the way it was done with me, and they’re going to get the same treatment now. Call the lot of them together.’

  7

  Sid sent out a comm to call a meeting of the usual suspects for that Saturday night, up at the Ships. If anybody asked, they were to say they were there for the parish quiz.

  The pub sat right by the border, from long before there was any such thing, and the original wee building in the North had been extended again and again so the most of the premises was now in the South. The Brits knew well that was where they met, but there was fuck all they could do about it. The front bar was their jurisdiction, with prices in sterling, but the rest of the place was out of bounds. As for that side of things, the local gardaí were onside, or paid off, or threatened. They never went near, unless they wanted a pint themselves after hours.

  Ten of them got asked, and ten of them were there. Pig sat at the top, with a pile of question cards Sid had wrote out in a hurry, that he could start into in case somebody walked in. Anybody that knew him would see through it in a second, but it would do the trick in a court of law. You could take nothing for granted these days. Touts everywhere.

  When they heard the bell from the chapel for devotions, Pig stood up, and there was hush. They all pulled in their chairs, and the nod was given to the dickers downstairs. The music started blaring from below. There was a band on, so nobody would hear a word unless they were right next to Pig. The words came flying out of him.

  ‘A chairde. Bad fucking news, and I won’t sugar the pill. London’s done the dirty on us. I’ve had documents passed to me from the talks, and they’re authentic, I’ve checked it out with my contacts at Leinster House, and the news is not good. Boys, the story is that the Brits are never going to pull out of Ireland, no matter what. No date for withdrawal, no timetable, no promise it’ll be done within a generation. The unionist veto stays in place. Rock solid, cast iron, one hundred per cent. The treacherous cunts! The border is not on the table and it never was. These talks are a sham. And there’s not a fucking thing we can do about it.

  ‘To think of the number of them over here, and the number
of us! You could set every Brit in the North behind his own bar, each one pulling pints for a pubful of Irish Catholics, and at the end of it you’d still have queues of us with dry tongues hanging out. But they have the loyalists, and the peelers, and the Stoop Down Low Party, all doing their dirty work. The good Protestant Irish, our historic friends and allies for self-determination, deluded and sworn against us. They’ve strung us along for months and years together, and now we find out the thing is hopeless.

  ‘But here’s the crunch. We know we can’t defeat them militarily. We’ve known that this ten years. We could prep a dozen bangs and rip the guts out of bases and towns and cities, here and England both, but I may tell you, if that hasn’t worked by now, there’s no hope it will. The talks were the only chance, and the armed struggle was the only card we held. But the reality is, our people here on the ground have no more stomach for a fight we can’t win. The Brits have us over a barrel.

  ‘So it’s time to take a long hard look in the mirror. And though it sticks in my gullet, we need to be men, and stand up and admit the Brits are right. We’re done. We’re all in. It’s over, boys. We lay down our weapons and take what we can get. Only a damn fool keeps battering on and on at the same thing that’s got them nowhere for donkey’s.

  ‘So the word is, a permanent cessation of operations, and put everything we have into building a mass movement on the ground. Wait to outbreed them, and then push for a referendum. But for the military side, the physical-force strategy, we wave the white flag. Accept decommissioning, and call off the armed campaign, once and for all. That’s the word from the very top. It’s over, boys.’

  Nothing for a minute. You could hear their thick heads ticking, chewing it over.

  And then.

  Well, if you’d heard the whoops. The cheers and yo-hos. ‘Let’s get to fuck out of this. I knew the whole thing was a bad job this long time.’ Coats on and downstairs to the bar. Barged right past Pig and Sid. The booze bruck out. Open tab for the whole place. Young lads shaking bottles of Buckie like Formula One. Like as if it was the Brits had announced a surrender, not the other way round.