‘And you didn’t drink too much? Did you, Johnny?’
‘No, Anna,’ I tell her, and as I rise from the table I reach over and kiss her head. ‘I didn’t drink at all.’
‘So,’ Anna says, ‘are you going to tell Mam and Dad about this nature of man theory of yours?’
‘Actually, Anna, could you do that for me? I’m a bit busy with stuff.’
‘Johnny,’ my sister says to me, as she stands and touches my face. ‘You are as mad as the east wind.’
I decide to repeat my college year in Limerick. Until September, I have time to play with. I take Clara to Ennis, and we picnic with Bella and Marcela and Mick at Mullaghmore. I take Éamon to visit Aisling in Dublin. We go on the train — Éamon loves the train. I take Aisling, Clara, and Che to Castlewellan in the Renault 4. We picnic under the twisted oak. I take Mam and Dad for drives to Cooley and Carlingford. I take Che for walks to Soldiers’ Point, Ravensdale, and Cúchulainn’s Castle. I drink tea and coffee with Anna. I write a letter to Bremen. I don’t think about the war.
It is the eighth day of July, and we have a night out in the Cooking Pot. Everybody comes. Congratulations and good wishes are real and warm. Anna and Aisling remain together all evening, and speak in whispers. Eddie and Hannah are there with Mam and Dad, and so, too, are Fionnuala and Gerry Flannery. Big Robbie is camped at the bar with Frank, Peter, and Jack Quigley. Conor has come from London. Éamon has a gift for me. It is a map of Ireland, and on it my walk is traced in gold. I am surprised and don’t know what to say, and Éamon Gaughran has his moment. The gathering has travelled to his head like a tumbler of poteen, and all his lights are on. He puts his arm around me and flicks his head.
‘He’s some lunatic,’ he calls out. ‘Johnny D is some lunatic altogether.’
A day that started out easy
IT IS THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT IN THE COOKING POT. I TAKE A slow walk to town, pass by the side of the courthouse, and walk through the Market Square. Every time I pass here, I think of Cora.
I visit the redbrick house near the town centre, and I sit in the small front room.
‘I’m sorry about Delores, Chief. She is a great woman.’
‘The very best, John,’ Ignatius Delaney says. ‘We are fifty years married next month; it’s hard to believe so much time can pass so easily. But she is fading now from her own person. The memory started to slip — small stuff at first — but now she seems to be disappearing day by day, like someone has pulled a plug on her very self, and the drain cannot be halted, and what’s left is just collapsing away to a nothingness. It’s an odd sort of departure, unnatural. It can be savage on all concerned. But for the day-care centre and her sister’s help, I don’t know how I’d manage. Her mother went the same. Of her own crowd, you know, we never thought she would go first. Hope can make a blinkered fool of us all.’
‘The human brain is a peculiar and delicate thing,’ I tell him, but I don’t tell him more. I don’t tell him about the hundred billion cells, about the copycat function, about who is controlling whom, about us and them. Instead, I tell him about Aisling. I tell him about the baby.
‘That’s great news, John. No man ever wore a cravat as beautiful as his own child’s arm around his neck.’
I nod to acknowledge the poetry.
‘You stay down the country,’ Delaney continues. ‘Stay well away from this place, do you hear me? You’re well away from it. You have done your bit, God knows. It’s them against us still, but it won’t last much longer — there isn’t the will. A ceasefire is coming.’
There is something of the hunt in the Chief’s words, something coy, something of the measured cast of the angler’s line. I know him too well to be hooked with such bait, and I know he is guarding as much as he is probing.
‘You’ll retire from the struggle yourself, Chief?’
‘I’ll still do my bit. It’s the old devotee for the long war. An army is in need of all its foot soldiers.’
I remember the time he gave me that small speech about foot soldiers. I look to the old man.
‘I wonder about what we do. It doesn’t make a bit of difference.’
‘We fly the flag, John. We hold the line. If it wasn’t for what we do, they would have trampled over what’s left of Ireland long ago. They would have destroyed our beautiful country. But there will be no ovation from the masses. Don’t be expecting gratitude; don’t be hanging about for the applause. People in the Republic have forgotten the value of freedom. They don’t care about the cost. They don’t want to know — they are embarrassed by the whole thing. We chose a different view, you and I. We chose to look at what they have done: obliterated our language and culture, stolen our lands, scattered our sons and daughters to the four winds, starved the rest of us, made us outlaws on our own ground. They disregard the native man as nothing but annoying flotsam in the tide of their own greed. Sometimes the native man needs to fight. That’s what we did. We chose to fight. God alone will judge us.’
‘I think you’re right, Chief. But that isn’t true just of the English — it is true of all humanity. We Irish are well capable of bringing shit down on ourselves.’
‘Yes, but that would be an Irish problem in an Irish land. We have a right to make our own mess.’
‘Do you remember all that stuff about original sin, Chief? That man was born a sinner, that being born a sinner is the nature of man? I don’t believe that. I believe that man is born with three innate capacities: the love of homeland, the love of woman, and the proclivity to make war. These are our fundamentals. We are born with the tools for infinite joy. We are born with the tools to destroy us. This is the nature of man.’
‘We cannot punish ourselves for what we are,’ Delaney says.
‘True. But who can be blamed? God? We are the product of evolution. We are who we are by natural selection. Aggression is elemental to survival. It is built into us. We are born ready for war.’
‘We were born to this war, you and I,’ Delaney tells me. ‘Rolling over and allowing yourself to be beaten is no answer. Many a coward has hid behind the argument for peace.’
‘Yes, Chief, there have been many. Still, though, where has the killing brought us?’
‘John, you are looking for a clear path in a forest where there are no paths at all. We must all cut our own way through. We chose our way, and there are many who will condemn us for that. But inaction is no sure key to the door of serenity. That is not how this world works. History is filled with those who tip-toed quietly to their own slaughter. Didn’t you learn that in Hamburg? Abasement must be challenged — it must be fought.’
‘Yes, Chief,’ I tell him, ‘that is true.’
‘We have a right to defend our Irish nation.’
‘Nation? What nation?’
The Chief straightens and his face tightens. I reach across and take the old man’s hands in my own.
‘Twelve thousand years ago,’ I tell him, ‘we didn’t exist. The ice had just left, and all that was here were forests and rivers. Elk and deer and hare and wolf had the land to themselves. And then the first settlers came. And who were they? Who are the Irish? Are we Galician? Asturian? Basque? Gascon? Breton? Cornish? Welsh? Manx? Scottish? Or are we the peripheral deposits of Germanic tribes from the plains of Europe? Who are we? We have not spontaneously materialised on this island. We have to have come from somewhere. And then the Norse and the Danes came, and then the Normans and the English. You’d wonder why they’d all go to so much bother to get their hands on a damp place like this. You’d wonder at the attraction.’
Delaney laughs and relaxes again in his chair.
‘You always were of the fecund mind, John. Always a tendency to the discursive analysis.’
‘And who are the Normans,’ I go on, ‘but the Norse and the Danes speaking French? And who are English? They, too, are an inv
ention — a Celtic, Roman, Friesian, Saxon, Norse, French invention. Two inventions fighting each other for identity. Beneath our Irish and our English veneer, we are all someone else. And what are we fighting for? We are fighting for an island that was forged from two continents, an island that was buried below seas, that belongs not to any one place on the Earth, that will be lost again below northern ice, that is on its way to nowhere. Nations don’t exist, Chief. We come and we go. The whole thing is mad.’
‘We are fighting for our fathers, John. We are doing what they could not.’
‘The making of boundary is eternal,’ I keep to my argument. ‘It is made, broke, and remade. But the making belongs only to land and sea.’
I pause and look away. The beat of the wall-clock fills the silence in the small room. We are different men, the Chief and I. War does that; it builds odd alliances. And, like girls, it can wreck your head. I turn again to the old man.
‘War is the worst of man,’ I tell him. ‘Yet it is the essence of what we are, the consequence of being human. But, yes, it is war, Chief, and it came to us, that much is true. We chose to fight, and who can judge us?’
‘You are right, John,’ Delaney says quietly, almost whispering. ‘Listen to me, John,’ he says, leaning across the small table. ‘You build a new life down there. Marry that girl and make a family, and do all the right things. But stay away from here. They will never forgive you for those shootings. If they ever knew it was you, they would come after you. You brought fear itself down on them; with that gun, you changed the war. Thank God your identity will die with me. But take no chances — stay well away, and may God bless you. I’ll keep the fire lit, others will take on the battle, and one day we will be a nation once more.’
‘Maybe you’re right, Chief. But the people of Ireland today don’t care. For them, a united Ireland is as remote as a parallel universe. They know it is possible. They are not sure if it’s beneficial. But, mostly, they just don’t give a fuck.’
‘Remoteness is a subjective thing, John. It pivots on the personal.’
I lift a framed photo from his desk.
‘That’s a new photo, Chief?’
‘Yes, John, a present. She has me warned to keep it near, to keep her face shining out at me so I won’t feel so lonely.’
I now recognise the trace of melancholy in the air, that fragrance that has been on the edge of my knowing since I got here, that sweet mix of carnation and vanilla. I know what it is. It is L’Heure Bleue.
‘Is she at home these days?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘She is back in California.’ And he signals to a letter on his writing bureau.
‘And how is she?’
‘Oh, you know her, John. She is her own particular person; she likes her own peculiar comforts. She’s a mercurial sort — she’d be hard for any man to please. I thought she might be seeing someone here the time she was home, with her comings and goings, her secret dalliances. I think she might have had someone back to the house here. I thought she might stay, but she returned to the States in the end.’
I am probing, but, with other matters on his mind, the Chief is undisturbed by this.
‘Why did you call her Loreto?’
‘It’s after a little hilltop town near Ancona. We visited a church there when we were on honeymoon in Italy. What was it called again? The Basilica Della Santa Casa. When we stood there in the Piazza Della Madonna, the square in front of that beautiful church, Delores said that if we ever had a girl we would call her Loreto.’
I stand.
‘You sit where you are, Chief. I’ll make us some tea.’
I think about Loreto as I boil the kettle on the gas stove. I know the Chief is not lying; I know he thinks Loreto is in America. But I’m not so sure. I scald the white-porcelain teapot with hot water and empty it into the sink. I spoon loose tea into the warmed pot and fill it with boiling water. I stir the tea, replace the lid, and put the teapot on the table to draw. I lift a ball of green wool that must have been absentmindedly left on the table in what was always a spotless kitchen. I wonder why the Chief keeps the wool, as Delores is now beyond needlework. I guess we all have our sentimentalities; we all have our peculiarities. But we all go in the end. And each in our own way. What matter now the perfect arrangements?
And I wonder. I wonder why the Chief is so coy and guarded. I wonder, but I know. There can only be one reason. I know Delaney will never agree to a ceasefire. I know he believes a ceasefire will be the end of it. And he is right. A ceasefire with no ground won is more deadly than an enemy attack: it legitimises the status quo. Delaney knows this, he understands the consequences, and I know he will fight it. And he will fight it to a bloody end. And if the fight doesn’t involve me — and I am the only shooter he trusts — then it can only mean one thing: it has to be a return to the bomb.
I lift the lid of the teapot and stir the tea again. I know bad things are going to happen. I know that concentrating on me hasn’t given him the time to replace the volunteer bombers who died when the bomb they were preparing exploded. The recent bombs in England were by Delaney’s men, his new men. It was a disaster — two young boys were killed. I step out into the garden and take a twenty-pack of Carroll’s No. 1 from the Dunn & Co. I light a cigarette. I am thinking of those two boys. I can still see their faces on the television. I can still see their families. One boy was only three years old; the other was twelve — the same age I was when I first came to this house.
I pull hard on the cigarette. I go over what I know about those bombs. The London bomb was big — it took a tipper truck to deliver it. The Warrington bombs were small, and hidden in town-centre litter bins. The IRA blamed the British for not acting on the warning. But that’s not good enough. Putting a bomb in a town-centre litter bin is not war. There are many in the IRA who discredit these distinctions: Irish, Republican, and Army. There are those who bring us no good, and I have warned Delaney before about this. But what’s it to do with me? It’s not my war any more. I am sure Delaney will now take his battle to the north, and if the bomb is for Ireland, who’ll care? What’s one more bomb in a northern town? Who cares about any of it anyway? There were bombs before; there will be bombs after. People don’t care, not really. I finish the cigarette, and blow smoke high into the town air.
You wouldn’t get involved, Johnny, would you? she asked me. What about those terrible bombs? You wouldn’t do a bad thing, would you?
No, Cora, I told her. I wouldn’t do a bad thing.
I re-enter the house, and, as I open the back door, a draft enters and the ball of wool falls from the table. I reach to catch it and miss, and it rolls across the grey-tiled floor, leaving a green thread behind.
‘You are the best ever,’ Delaney says, as I bring the tea. ‘How Delores and I wished to have a son like you.’
I tell him about the remainder of my walk, about the long journey home from Donegal, and he laughs and shakes his head at every incident. He wants me to recount every town and village. But something is happening as I talk: one half of my brain has removed itself to another consideration. And that consideration is L’Heure Bleue. I just can’t get the fragrance from my senses. I think of Loreto Delaney, of the Margaux and the expensive coats, of her own particular wants, of her peculiar comforts, of her mercurial sort, of the secret dalliances, of someone back at the house here, of the letter from California, of the framed photo. Could Loreto Delaney be turned? Or bought? Or seduced and used? But why? How and what could she know? How could anyone know when I would call again on Delaney? That could be a long and useless wait. And how would they know to suspect me of the shootings? Loreto doesn’t know what I do. I am being paranoid. I am unbalanced since shooting Declan — that must be it. I try to focus on the conversation with the Chief. But then I think again. What if it isn’t me that this is about? What if I have walked into another game? What if …? All the tra
ining and the long hours in the fields of South Armagh have cultivated hard instincts, survival instincts. Something here isn’t right. I know something is wrong. But what?
Suddenly, the fog of rambling thought is gone. A cold blade of clarity falls, and I turn to what was in my peripheral vision all along — I look to the wall, to the copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that hangs there, to the aged print encased in a simple wooden frame, to the page that has dropped on one side and sits at a slight angle within the frame, to the only thing in this house or about Delaney that is not perfectly neat and aligned. But it is aligned now; inside the simple frame, the document sits perfect and square. And now I know. I know I have surrendered myself to a trap, to a trap that wasn’t even for me. I know it’s about the bomb. I know the fuckers know about the bomb. That they would use the framed Proclamation must have been their little joke. And that was their mistake.
Delaney is still talking about Tipperary, and only now does he notice my inattention, but I signal him to keep talking.
‘How about some music, Chief? What will we listen to?’
I turn the volume to full on Delaney’s cassette deck and press ‘play’. The slow, dragged intro to Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 fills the room. I let it run as I walk to the wall, and when I return I lower the volume.
‘Sorry about that, Chief. A bit too loud, even for an old fogie like you.’
The Chief is grey, then pink, but I insist he keeps talking as we look into the rear of the frame that I have taken the hardboard backing from. We both recognise a short-range radio transmitter.
‘I didn’t make Tipperary this time, Chief. I stuck to the coast. Maybe we’ll make a trip down there together. Where will we visit?’
A Mad and Wonderful Thing Page 24