1972

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “What brings you to Ballina?”

  “Just passing through on my way to Clare. My mother says she doesn’t see enough of me.”

  McCoy smiled. “Every mother says that.”

  “Do you visit yours very often, Séamus?”

  In a low voice, McCoy said, “I avoid graveyards.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “Nothing to know. She was hanging out the washing in the yard one day when one of His Majesty’s finest …” McCoy paused, lit a cigarette. Continued to stare at the match he held in his fingers. Fingers that began to tremble.

  Barry cried, “Don’t go on!” But the dam had burst. McCoy jumped up and began to pace the room, his feet beating a tattoo of rage on the plank floor. “The bloody bastard claimed it was self-defence. Self-defence my arse! Said she attacked him. My wee mother with her weak lungs and her bad back and her arms full of wet washing, she attacked a big husky soldier thirty years her junior and put him in fear of his life. The British Army gave him a promotion afterwards.”

  The cheerful mask had slipped and Barry saw the suffering man beneath.

  “Let’s go downstairs, Séamus,” he said huskily. “It’s my shout.”

  That night they visited every pub in Ballina, then crossed the bridge to the pubs of Killaloe. On the way back they sang rebel songs, their voices floating out over the dark waters of the Shannon. Shortly before dawn McCoy tumbled face-first across his bed.

  Barry fell asleep on the floor. His last waking thought was, That’s Séamus explained. And how many others?

  NED’s notebooks contained little military information because he had feared they might fall into the wrong hands. Sometimes a notation was nothing more than a comment on the weather. But the passages in code intrigued Barry; they appeared to be long lists. Familiarity with codes had become part of his life. After several false starts, he tried using the opening of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic for the key. The Proclamation his grandfather had made him learn by heart.

  Barry’s hunch proved correct—for the first five items. After that the key changed. Oh, Granda, you were very careful.

  The lists consisted of names and addresses. The very first ones were Michael and Isabella Kavanagh, with an address in New York State. After their names was a single star and a minuscule dollar sign. The dollar sign was not repeated, but each subsequent name was followed by one to a dozen stars. Isabella said her husband was a republican … these must describe financial transactions! Money raised in America for the IRA.

  URSULA made certain that Barry always left the farm with money in his pocket. He shared it freely with his fellow Volunteers, most of whom had none. Little was spent on himself. One of his few indulgences was a professional-quality camera he bought in Belfast while on his first assignment in the northern capital.

  A pall of coal smoke sat atop the city like a dirty cap, but otherwise Belfast was an attractive place. Tidy, prosperous, with a wealth of handsome Victorian brickwork. Hoping to get some sense of the people, Barry attempted to strike up a conversation with a man who was sitting on a bench near the railroad station, feeding the pigeons. When the man heard Barry’s accent he said, “I’ve never been to the south myself. I wouldn’t understand the language.”

  “Most people in the Republic don’t speak Irish, either,” Barry told him.

  “I don’t mean Irish, I mean Latin. All the Catholics down there speak Latin,” the pigeon feeder replied.

  Barry tried to enlighten him but it was like talking to a stone. The man listened politely and made articulate responses, but obviously did not believe a word he said. At the end of their conversation the Belfast man believed exactly as he had in the beginning.

  There’s a mind like a steel trap—rusted shut, Barry said to himself. Surely they aren’t all like this?

  When he noticed a shop with cameras in the window, Barry went in. There was a wide assortment of equipment on display. Feeling that it might be a good idea to explain his accent, Barry said, “I heard one could buy the latest equipment here, that’s what brought me to Belfast.”

  “You won’t find anything half as good in Dublin,” the clerk replied smugly.

  Eventually Barry settled on a 35-mm Leica M2. “Brand new on the market,” the clerk claimed.

  “Is there an instruction booklet with it?”

  “You’d need one,” said the clerk. He might have meant to be helpful; he might have meant to be insulting. Barry paid for the camera and left, feeling vaguely uncomfortable.

  After reading the instruction booklet and acquainting himself with the workings of the Leica, he set out to capture the character of Belfast on film. His intention was to photograph a few ordinary citizens going about their daily business in the heart of the city. It proved harder than he anticipated. When he asked permission of his prospective subjects, as soon as they heard his accent most were reluctant to talk with him. It was as if a wall came down.

  At least I can photograph the architecture. Buildings have no politics.

  Barry spent the rest of the day wandering wherever his feet would take him. Residential areas in Protestant neighbourhoods were well laid out, with solidly built, attractive houses. The bustling self-importance of the commercial areas spoke volumes about the nature of the city.

  Although Catholics and Protestants lived in separate areas, there were no sharp lines of demarcation and the children of both religions played together in the streets. But in Catholic neighbourhoods many houses were dilapidated and some of the shops were boarded up.

  Graffiti on a brick wall provocatively close to a Catholic church warned, “Rebels Beware. To hell with popery. Where popery reigns poverty remains. Down with IRA Scum!”

  Barry recalled a quote from Winston Churchill which Ned Halloran had included in one of his notebooks: “Arm yourselves and be ye men of valour and be in readiness for the conflict, for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altars.”3

  Under that quote Ned had written, “What Irishman can hear those words without thinking of Ireland?”

  RISING from the Harland and Wolf shipyard that had built the Titanic, two giant cranes, known as Samson and Goliath, dominated the skyline, a perfect symbol of the British industrial power that sustained the Protestant north. Barry walked back and forth, photographing the cranes from a number of different angles. After a while he had the eerie sensation that they were watching him. And his feet were beginning to hurt. Belfast has too much pavement.

  Although it was in a Protestant neighbourhood, Dempsey’s Bar in Donegall Street looked inviting. A real working man’s pub, a self-contained world. Sliding onto a bar stool, Barry ordered a whiskey, “Bushmills, please,” since this was the north. This did not seem the sort of pub where he could take out a book of poems and have a quiet read, but the men he saw around him looked no different from men he might see in any pub in the Republic. The accents were different but they talked about the same things: sports, politics, and women, in that order.

  Ballroom dancing was very popular in Belfast. Two men sitting near Barry were engaged in a lively debate about the relative merits of The Plaza in Chichester Street and the Floral Hall at Bellevue. As he listened to them Barry imagined himself walking into a ballroom in the company of some pretty Belfast girl; a girl who wouldn’t care about his accent any more than he objected to hers, or to the regional accents of Cork or Kerry or Donegal. They were, after all, one people.

  Then he overheard someone else make a vicious remark about “the filthy Taigs,” and Barry’s innocent dream died.

  The following day he planted three separate explosive charges, timed to go off simultaneously, on the outskirts of the city. Telephone connections between Belfast and Armagh city were disrupted for the better part of a week. The RUC scoured the area for the saboteur but found no trace of him, though he sauntered past several search parties.

  Evading the enemy had become a game. On assignment Barry customarily
wore a threadbare coat and shabby trousers whose cut identified him as “up from the country.” The garments were lined with expensive suiting material, a complicated alteration made by Eileen to Barry’s specifications. When he turned his clothes inside out he became a city man in a striped navy suit. In his pockets he carried little wads of cotton to stuff into his cheeks, and a tin of brown shoe polish to extinguish his bright hair. He could not make himself shorter, but by curling his shoulders forward and bending his knees slightly he gave the impression of being a smaller man.

  Barry made no effort to hide his natural grace. He was unaware that he moved with the controlled muscularity of a cat.

  He refused to cower in the shadows. Hiding in plain sight gave him a better opinion of himself. If anyone questioned him, now that he had the camera he could claim he was a photographer who had come north looking for subjects. It was at least partly true. The camera was becoming an addiction. F-stops, depth of field—he even loved the language.

  Society was a collage of misrepresentation. Devious human beings created multiple façades to mislead the multitudes. Only the camera was not deceived.

  Chapter Fifteen

  January 8, 1959

  CHARLES DE GAULLE INAUGURATED

  Becomes first President of the Fifth Republic of France.

  January 15, 1959

  EAMON DE VALERA PLANS TO RETIRE AS TAOISEACH

  Failing eyesight believed to be factor in decision. Will run for the Presidency of Ireland in June.

  IN March of 1959 the internment camp on the Curragh, which had become a covert university in republicanism and military tactics, was officially closed. Eamonn Thomas was among the last seven republican prisoners to be released. The closure of the camp did not mark an end to the Irish government’s campaign against the IRA. Republicans still could be arrested and charged under the Offences Against the State Act.

  Meanwhile the Stormont government continued to arrest those whom it perceived to be a threat to the Union. The most notorious of the northern facilities for incarcerating republicans was Her Majesty’s Prison, the Maze. Originally known as Long Kesh, the Maze was built on the site of a World War Two airfield some eight miles from Belfast. The prison was claimed to be escape-proof.

  “You could find a way to blow it open,” several Volunteers suggested to Barry Halloran. He was flattered. Maybe I could. If I was given the assignment.

  However, there were some assignments he no longer would take.

  Barry continued to plant mines on railways and bridges but refused to booby-trap buildings. There was a difference. A Jesuitical difference, perhaps, but a difference all the same.

  The first time he wrote “no” on a coded slip and sent it back to GHQ, he fully expected to be thrown out of the Army. That night he went down on his knees beside his bed and tried to petition God, but he could not formulate the words. At last he gave up and crawled into bed, trusting God to know what was in his heart.

  The next issue of the United Irishman held no message for him.

  He did not know that Séamus McCoy had been called up to Dublin specifically to discuss “the little problem with Halloran.” In a safe house on Serpentine Avenue, McCoy explained to members of the Army Council, “Halloran saw two good friends shot to death right in front of him at Brookeborough. It left him a wee bit squeamish. He’s a damned good man, though, and too valuable to lose. Give him time and he’ll get over it.”

  “He’s got under your skin, hasn’t he?”

  “I’ll probably never have a son,” McCoy said. “I’m married to the Army and that’s how it is. But if I did have a son, I’d want him to be Barry Halloran.”

  THE next issue of the United Irishman contained seven assignments for Barry.

  PROSECUTING the war required flexibility. Different areas presented different problems. On open ground, sniper locations were too vulnerable, while the RUC avoided areas that might harbour an ambush. Blowing up a road was difficult because the constables were suspicious of any strange object near a roadway.

  Barry thrived on challenged.

  A crossroads on a route that carried a lot of military traffic was deemed a prime target. The site was very exposed, with no nearby trees or bushes. Under cover of darkness Barry took a milk can which had been sawn in half, filled it two-thirds with gelignite, and buried it deep in the drainage slope. The wires were hidden in the grass. Next morning an active service unit watched from a distance. They allowed civilian traffic to pass unharmed. When an RUC patrol came along they hit the detonator. The resultant explosion funnelled back into the roadbed, overturning the patrol car. The badly damaged road was impassable for days.

  ON June 24, 1959, Séan Lemass became leader of Fianna Fail and taoiseach of the Republic. Lemass was a decisive man with a keen mind. In 1952, while serving as minister for industry and commerce under de Valera, he had suffered from ill health and Frank Aiken had to deputise for him. De Valera had urged Lemass to spend the time learning Irish. Instead he had begged the department of finance to send him books on economics.

  As taoiseach, Lemass immediately set about promoting industrialisation in what was still largely a rural economy. Extensive road building and the encouragement of foreign investment became high priorities. Irish Steel, the Shannon Free Airport Development Company, and Bord na Mona, which was supplying fuel to meet industrial expansion, received massive support from the Lemass government. Soon the mood of despondency which had characterised the Republic began to lift.

  The Irish Times wrote, “If Mr. de Valera is the architect of modern Ireland, then Mr. Lemass is indisputably the engineer, the contractor, and the foreman, rolled into one.”1

  The new taoiseach was not without his critics. There was no doubt about his patriotic credentials—Lemass had fought the British from the roof of the GPO during 1916—but his vision was unremittingly fixed on the future. He had no time for the rhetoric of revival, including the revival of the Irish language. Those who were passionately committed to the Ireland imagined by Pádraic Pearse were horrified.

  Meanwhile in Northern Ireland the war went on, month after month. Casualties were mounting on both sides. Stormont remained unalterably dedicated to maintaining a Protestant state for a Protestant people. The IRA remained unalterably opposed to the partition of Ireland and the oppression of Catholics in the Six Counties. The government of the Republic remained unalterably opposed to the existence of the IRA.

  IN a college debate in Northern Ireland, a young working-class Catholic called John Hume argued in favour of Ireland joining the Common Market. Such a move would, he claimed, eventually make the border irrelevant.2

  IN August a racist mob besieged Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, trying to prevent two black students from attending school. Barry saw the event depicted in the newsreels: stark black-and-white images of black and white people. Defying a federal court order, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus told the protestors, “I am with you all the way.”

  Barry shook his head. It could just as easily have happened in Texas, or anywhere in the deep south. Or even in another country. What is there about people that makes them hate so much?

  WHEN Barry returned to the farm in September he found his mother in a near fury. “That wretched man’s going to destroy all we fought for!” she cried.

  “What man?”

  “Lemass, of course! Don’t you read the papers anymore?”

  “What specifically are you complaining about?”

  “He’s picked up right where de Valera left off, attacking the IRA.”

  “To be fair, Ursula, Fianna Fáil’s been attacking the IRA for a long time. It’s because they recognise Sinn Féin as their rival, much more so than Fine Gael or any other party. Sinn Féin is the legitimate republican party, no matter how much Fianna Fáil claims to be. It’s all politics, really.”

  “It’s all Civil War politics,” Ursula said bitterly.

  “War is the failure of politics.”

  “Where did y
ou hear that?”

  Barry did not meet her eyes. “It’s a well-known adage.”

  Actually he had read it in one of Ned’s notebooks.

  As time passed, Barry was aware of the odds mounting against him. He was a soldier. Sooner or later, in spite of his best intentions, he might find himself in a position where he must fight for his life or die.

  He was not a man to die willingly. He loved life too much.

  Loved everything about it, even the lonely times. Perhaps especially the lonely times. Watching in awe as the sun rose over the Irish Sea, staining the silver water with crimson. Wandering at twilight through the Silent Valley while the birds sang their sleepy good-nights to God. Pausing in some tiny village along the Shannon where time had stopped generations earlier and just being there. Part of the little shabby houses and the ribbon of road.

  Taking photographs to capture one moment out of eternity.

  Or trudging down the lane toward the Halloran farmhouse with his mouth already watering at the thought of Eileen’s scones hot from the oven. He walked rather than ran to stretch out the delicious moments of anticipation.

  Sometimes anticipation could be better than the real thing.

  HE saved Ned Halloran’s notebooks until long after everyone else had gone to bed. Only then did he turn the pages and hear his grandfather’s voice again. To Barry that voice had become a precious link to an Ireland that was slipping away; the Ireland he was willing to die for, but not to kill for.

  He reread some entries again and again. Unfamiliar passages were kept for future delectation, like sweets at the end of a meal.