1972

by Morgan Llywelyn

  His gorge rose as his imagination presented him with explicit images of ordinary men and women … and pretty girls … and soldiers and constables and even loyalist thugs who might be caught up in the dreadful result of his work.

  The nameless man on the nameless street of his nightmare.

  “Do you have any idea what a bomb can do?” Ursula had asked. “Your own father …”

  TWILIGHT. His mother just coming out of the milking parlour. Wearing an old red jumper and corduroy trousers too large for her slight frame, and raking her fingers through her short hair. When she saw him Ursula smiled the rare and dazzling smile that made her beautiful. “Barry! What a pleasant surprise.”

  “There’s something I have to ask you.”

  “Certainly. But next week’s your birthday, can you stay until then? I don’t have a present for you yet but twenty-one’s a milestone. Perhaps there’s something special you’d like?”

  “The answer to my question.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean it, Ursula. No evasions.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “More serious than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  “Shall we go in the house and talk?”

  “Afterwards. First answer me. Here and now.”

  Ursula knew that unyielding tone. She gave a slight sigh. “Very well, what do you want to know?”

  “Was my father killed by a bomb?”

  She stared at him.

  “Just yes or no, Ursula. Was he?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “A German bomb that was dropped on Dublin’s North Strand during World War Two.”

  There was so much pain in her eyes that Barry asked no more questions.

  But as they were having dinner he reached across the bowl of roasted potatoes and covered her hand with his. “There is a special present you can give me for my birthday, Ursula. I’d like to go to Trinity.”

  She blinked. “Sorry? I’m not sure I heard you.”

  “I said I’d like to go to Trinity.”

  “What about the Army? I thought being a Volunteer was so important to you.”

  “It is important to me; I have no intention of resigning. But I’ve been told by someone I respect that the Army needs educated men, so I’m asking you to help me go to university.”

  Ursula’s beautiful smile returned like a rainbow after a storm.

  Next morning as soon as the milking was done she wrote to the registrar of Trinity College Dublin, requesting an admissions application. The oldest university in Ireland, Trinity had been founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1591. Until 1873 the school was limited to members of the “established Church,” i.e., Anglicans. In that year religious requirements officially were dropped. The majority of the student body were still Protestants of various denominations. However, there also were some Jewish students, a few agnostics, and a small number of Roman Catholics—mostly the sons and daughters of landowners and professional people.

  Yet Trinity remained fixed in Irish minds as a bastion of the old Ascendancy.

  When the long brown envelope arrived Ursula opened it herself. She hung over Barry’s shoulder while he read the application form. “Are you planning to ride on the crossbar of my bicycle when I take this to the post office?” he snapped.

  She drew back. “There’s no need to be sarcastic, I was merely interested.”

  Barry carried the prospectus to his room where he could pore over it in peace. If I’m doing the studying, I’m going to choose what I study. He spent a long time reading the array of courses, imagining himself taking almost every one. So many possibilities! More than a man could learn in a lifetime. It was an embarrassment of riches.

  He completed the application in every detail before approaching his mother for the cheque which must accompany it. “Are you sure you got everything right?” she enquired. “Would you not like me to look it over before you send it off?”

  “I’ve checked it twice and it’s fine. But thanks for your offer of help.” Barry smiled to take the sting out of his rebuff.

  When the reply to his application arrived Barry made certain to get to it first. With thumping heart, he read that he was to present himself at Trinity the following week for interviews. Now it begins! Now the rest of my life truly begins!

  Ursula purchased two train tickets to Dublin. Barry objected. “You’re the most independent person I know,” he told her. “Why deny me the same privilege?”

  “This has nothing to do with independence. In Ireland everything comes down to a matter of who you know, and I have some connections in Dublin which might be useful. If I go with you I can introduce you to them. There’s no harm in having references from a few prominent people.”

  They caught the early train to Dublin, arriving in a sudden rainstorm that abated as quickly as it began. The shabby old city, having survived a thousand years and innumerable power struggles, glistened with a misty glamour and smelled of the river. Ursula took Barry to a small hotel off Dame Street, her usual accommodation when visiting Dublin.

  While they were settling in Ursula kept up a running monologue. “Don’t mention the IRA, and there’s no need to make any reference to your grandfather, either. You come from a strong farming family and that’s all they need to know. I doubt if anyone will be so ill-bred as to enquire about your politics, but if they do, plead indifference. It’s a common enough attitude these days.”

  Barry was not expected at Trinity until the following morning. Ursula devoted the rest of the day to visiting old friends and introducing her son to men and women whose names he knew only from the history books. She also called on several politicians who remembered her from her time with Radio Éireann. The name of Halloran opened many doors, Barry observed. But it slammed others. The divide left by the Civil War was as deep as ever.

  WHEN he approached Trinity for the first time Barry half expected to be refused entry. Through those gates passed fresh young scholars and mature intellectual. I don’t belong in either category. I’ve fought in a war and killed a man.

  His head came up; he strode forward. A brief moment under the shadow of the archway, and he was inside.

  A helpful undergraduate gave Barry directions to his first interview. Her hair was white blond; her accent, she explained, was Finnish, and her name unpronounceable. But she did not seem like an outsider. She was clearly at home here.

  The classical beauty of the college took Barry by surprise. As he picked his way over the cobblestones he feasted his eyes on one magnificent Georgian structure after another. The College Chapel, the Examination Hall, the Old Library … Barry Halloran was falling in love again.

  The atmosphere of Trinity was unlike anything in his experience. In spite of hundreds of people constantly moving about the campus, there was an overlay of academic serenity that affected Barry’s troubled spirit like a soothing balm. He had arrived feeling like a fraud. At the end of the day he left seduced; seduced by ancient tradition and modern opportunity.

  Ursula was waiting anxiously at the hotel. “How did it go?” she asked before he even took off his coat. “Did you give them your letters of reference? Did you make a good impression?”

  “Not too bad, I think. Everyone was courteous to me and one or two were quite encouraging about my prospects.”

  “You never told me, what courses will you sign up for?”

  “It’s academic until I’m accepted.” He smiled at his pun.

  “I think you should concentrate on history and the classics. That would prepare you for a career in teaching and teachers can always find work.”

  Why doesn’t she ask me what I want?

  “But you’re right of course,” Ursula went on. “The important thing is to be accepted.”

  “It isn’t a foregone conclusion,” Barry warned.

  “You will be. I know it.”

  BEFORE they returned to Clare, Ursula took her son on a tour of “her” Dublin. Although she did not notic
e, he paid particular attention to the architecture. The city’s elegant Georgian heritage, which represented British imperialism in many minds, had fallen into decay. Many of the spacious red brick houses had been carved into multi-family tenements in the last century and were falling down from neglect.

  Busáras, the central bus station, was a different story. The first of Dublin’s post-war buildings, Busáras with its cantilevered canopy to protect the buses had won major architectural awards and excited considerable controversy. Barry loved it on sight.

  His mother was more interested in places connected with the Easter Rising. At the foot of the Mount Street Bridge she told her son, “Papa fought here.” She stood for a while with her head cocked to one side, as if she could hear the British troops marching up the Northumberland Road. “Papa and Mama dodged British bullets here,” she said at the Ha’penny Bridge.

  At the General Post Office in O’Connell Street, Barry pressed his fingers into the bullet holes that still scarred the columns of the portico. But his eyes kept straying to Nelson’s Pillar, only a few yards away.

  The Pillar, erected three years after the Battle of Trafalgar, dominated Dublin’s central thoroughfare. It consisted of a massive base of Portland stone supporting a fluted granite column in the Doric style, surmounted by a cylindrical plinth and a thirteen-foot-tall statue of Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson.

  The Pillar was by far the highest structure in the street, towering over even the GPO. A landmark that could be seen for miles, it was the main terminus for public transport. As if Nelson were the heart of Dublin, tram lines radiated from his monument like arteries.

  For sixpence one could enter the base and climb an internal staircase of 168 steps to an observation platform below the statue. This provided an unparalleled view of the city. A decorative iron railing had been heightened by an addition after an ex-soldier committed suicide in 19171 by leaping from the platform.

  Nelson’s Pillar appeared on almost every postcard of Dublin. For generations it had been the unofficial symbol of Ireland’s capital.

  Barry had to tilt his head far back to look up at the statue. Imperious and aloof, Lord Nelson was staring with eyes of stone across a city he had never visited in life.

  Monumental architecture at its most arrogant, thought Barry.

  Ursula said, “That monstrosity should have been knocked down ages ago. It’s an insult to all those who died trying to win our freedom from England.”

  Barry sometimes enjoyed taking an opposite point of view, just to watch his mother rise to the bait. “To be fair,” he said now, “as an island we’re dependent on sea trade and Nelson rescued the international shipping routes by defeating Napoleon. Some might say he did Ireland a favour.”

  “To be fair,” she mimicked, “Nelson was part and parcel of England’s desire to rule the world. One of the Volunteers on the roof of the GPO during Easter Week nicked his nose with a well-placed rifle shot. I consider that lad more of a hero than the swaggering admiral ever was.”

  “Would you not admit that’s a rather prejudiced view?”

  “I am prejudiced. On behalf of my country, my native land. And so should you be, Barry.”

  “Prejudiced on behalf of Switzerland, you mean?” he asked mischievously.

  “Of course not! You’re Irish, blood and bone.”

  “But I was born in Switzerland, and thanks to you I have a Swiss passport.”

  “I went to a lot of trouble to get that for you, young man. During World War Two a Swiss passport was worth its weight in gold.”

  “Surely you don’t believe there could be another war? I thought the atom bomb made that unthinkable.”

  “World War One was supposed to be the war to end all wars,” Ursula replied grimly.

  AT the farm a letter was waiting for Barry. “I apologise for taking so long to reply,” Claire had written in a schoolgirl’s carefully formed script. “I had the most awful cold that went on and on. Aunt Miriam hovered over me like a mother hen. She kept me in bed for ages. She is a bit of a tyrant and I confess I am a little afraid of her. She has my best interests at heart, though. I hope your business will bring you back to Athlone sooner rather than later. I am longing for someone my own age to talk to.”

  Someone my own age to talk to? Barry was disappointed by her choice of words. The letter was less affectionate than he had hoped. Perhaps she doesn’t understand how I feel about her. Perhaps she needs more encouragement.

  He took up pen and paper to tell her of his plans: “I’ve decided to go back to school and get a university degree. I plan to have a career that will enable me to support a wife and family and …”

  Barry halted the impulsive flow of words and wadded the paper into a ball. It’s too soon, he warned himself. I might frighten her. He started over, filling page after page with cheerful chat and amusing anecdotes. Keeping it light. Keeping it charming. With just a few fond little phrases tucked here and there, so she would understand he was more than just a friend.

  Then he went to Ennis to buy a gift to accompany the letter.

  Barry visited shop after shop, seeking the perfect present. It was not as easy as he had thought. Clothing, he concluded, might be too intimate—especially as he did not know her sizes. A piece of jewellery might be presumptuous. A book? He did not know if Claire even liked to read. They had never discussed books. If she did like to read, what books did she enjoy? He could not send a mystery to a girl who loved romances. Or vice versa.

  He finally decided a scarf would be safest. But what colour?

  Red, perhaps. Like her lips.

  This necessitated a fresh search. There were so many shades of red! At last Barry found a pretty square of crimson silk, darker and richer than flamboyant scarlet. The salesgirl assured him it would be perfect.

  As Barry was wrapping the little package he thought, If it’s that hard to find the right gift for a girl who’s still just a friend, how hard will it be to please a wife?

  In June the Army Convention would be held in Dublin. Séamus McCoy planned to go, he told Barry when they met for a pint. “They’re going to try to rent a hall so there’ll be enough room for ordinary Volunteers to attend. That’s real democracy for you, Seventeen. Of course it also means there’s more opportunity for disagreement. Not everybody’s happy about the way things are going.

  “Finances are worse than ever,” McCoy confided, coughing through cigarette smoke. “If the border campaign had gone better the Americans would be rowing in with buckets of money, but now they don’t want to know us. Thank God I know we’re going to win in the end. Otherwise I’d be worried.”

  When Barry got home a letter from Trinity was waiting. Ursula was out riding and had not seen it yet. Barry tore the envelope open so hastily that he almost ripped the headed notepaper inside.

  “Dear Mr. Halloran,

  “Please present yourself at Trinity College Dublin on the date given below, prepared to sit your entrance examination. We wish you every success.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  OVER his mother’s objections, this time Barry would travel to Dublin alone. “Don’t be making a holy show of me,” he told her. “I’m too old to go everywhere with my mammy.” The skin tightened around his eyes, warning Ursula not to argue.

  THE entrance examination was difficult, though not more difficult than Barry expected. After he finished and turned it in, he was ready to put the next step of his plan into action.

  The General Headquarters of the Irish Republican Army currently was located in a private house in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood. The well-dressed woman who responded to Barry’s knock opened the door only halfway. “May I help you?” she enquired in an impeccable English accent. Thrown off guard, Barry hesitated before answering. “I’m looking for Éamonn Thomas.”

  “There’s no one here by that name. Are you sure you have it right?”

  Undaunted, Barry said, “I called’round to the United Irishman office but it was closed, so I thou
ght Mr. Thomas might be here. If he is, please tell him one of his subscribers, Barry Halloran, would like to speak with him.”

  The woman took a step backwards and closed the door. After a minute or two a man in his shirtsleeves came trotting around the side of the house. A lively little man with exceptionally bright grey eyes and a merry, elfin smile. He was ten or twelve years older than Barry. A lingering trace of prison pallor made him look older still. Behind the bright eyes were memories of pain.

  “It’s about time you came to Dublin!” Éamonn Thomas cried with genuine delight. “Inside with you now, and meet some of the other lads.”

  This time the door opened wide. In what miraculously had become an impeccable Irish accent, the same woman said, “Failte isteach.”t

  Including Éamonn Thomas, three members of the Army Council were at headquarters that day. When Barry followed Thomas into the kitchen, Rory Brady and a middle-aged man whom Barry did not know were sitting at the table. “ … But the Belfast republicans are only interested in protecting the Catholics from the RUC and the B-Specials,” the middle-aged man was saying. “They don’t have any commitment to a united Ireland.”

  Éamonn Thomas cleared his throat. “Look who’s here.”

  “I know Volunteer Halloran already,” Brady said, jumping to his feet with a broad smile. “He was one of Seán Garland’s lads, a graduate of the Brookeborough School of Hard Knocks.”

  The other man was sturdily built, with thick, wavy hair turning grey. Putting down his cigarette, he extended his hand across the table to Barry. “Cathal Goulding. Éamonn and Rory and I are graduates of the Curragh Camp division of that same school.” Goulding spoke with the rapid-fire cadence of a machine gun. “Curragh Camp was a great place. No privacy at all and nothing to sleep on but wooden pallets. People tried for years to get me out of there but I just wouldn’t leave. Where else could a fellow get free food and board and spend all his time with friends of a like mind?”