The Promise of Light

by Paul Watkins

  “Open your mouth, sir. I’m just going to set this under your tongue. It’s morphine, sir. It’s what you need for now.”

  Sutherland sighed and settled back against the door.

  I didn’t move. All my thoughts had concentrated into one tiny speckle of light. I felt as if I was staring back inside myself.

  The building shook. Something swished past outside and thumped onto the ground. Footsteps trampled upstairs.

  “What the fuck was that?” Sergeant Gillis stood. His voice traveled up the door.

  “They’re on the roof.” It was Byrne. “They just blew a hole through the tiles. We’ll get them off. Don’t worry. The Ennistymon people are probably halfway here by now. We’ve only got to hold out another half hour or so.”

  “You listen to me,” Gillis said. “I wouldn’t be so sure about the Ennistymon barracks setting out in the middle of the bloody night. We’ll have to hold out until morning and probably longer. Sutherland wants the hostage shot.”

  “You know damn well if the hostage dies and we have to surrender, they’ll finish off every last one of us. You know that, don’t you?” It sounded as if Byrne was about to attack Sergeant Gillis.

  “Sutherland said to…” Another explosion tore at the roof and something clumped down the stairs.

  The floor jolted under me. Chips of paint flickered down from the ceiling. I crawled to the doorway and lowered my head to the floor, hoping to see out under the door. As my face touched the ground, I felt a wetness on my cheek. It felt heavy and sticky and I realized it was Sutherland’s blood.

  Now I crawled to the air vent and balanced on the chair to look out. The hedge sputtered with gunfire. Sparks from the burning roof flickered down onto the grass. A hissing sound filled my ears and the bright curve of a flare sailed out. It burst and drifted. The grass lit up milky white. I made out the broken squares of loose roof tiles lying on the ground beside the house. A body lay in a gap near the hedge. The man’s shirt had come untucked and his chest was laid bare. In the light of the flare, his skin had the shine and smoothness of marble. The gunfire had stopped. All I could hear was the rustle of the flare. Shadows stretched as it drifted. Then the hissing died as the flare was sucked into darkness. Immediately, the gunfire started up again. Clank, clank against the window plates. Two men jumped from the hedge and ran across the grass. They carried an oblong box between them.

  They threw their box at the barrack wall and ran back toward the hedge.

  The air in the room crunched into fire and smoke and suddenly let go. I bounced off the table and fell to the floor.

  A gun went off outside the door. Another gunshot. Someone slammed into the door and fell down. The corridor outside was filled with people.

  The door opened. Sutherland’s body slumped into the room. Cold air poured in and the hallway was riddled with smoke.

  A man filled up the doorway. He stepped over Sutherland’s body and into the room. “Come on after me and keep your head down.”

  At first, I didn’t move, so the man strode across and yanked me to my feet. I followed him to a place where the outer wall had been blown through. Smashed brick covered the floor. Once the man turned to make sure I was following. In the smoke, I still couldn’t see his face. The man moved with a limp. One leg was stiff, as if a brace had been clamped on it.

  People in trench coats shuffled past. All of them carried rifles. Gunfire crashed in the hall. I heard the clack-clack of rifles reloading. Empty cartridges rattled on the floor.

  I stepped through the blast hole and out onto the grass. Dew soaked my bare feet. Now I recognized the hobbling man. It was Stanley. He still wore his RIC uniform but had pulled the two harp insignias from his lapels and he didn’t have his cap. “Clayton wants a word with you.”

  “What happened to Baldwin. Is he all right?”

  “Byrne shot him. He’d have shot you, too, if he had time.”

  I thought of Baldwin, pug-faced with his anger, and I wondered how long he’d held out while they were beating him.

  Branches of flame spread from a gap in the barrack-house roof. Ladders leaned against the building.

  Someone was shouting to cease fire. Gunshots sputtered dead inside the building. Orders barked from room to room. The front door swung open and a Tan walked out with his hands on top of his head. Another followed and another. They moved slowly, peering into the dark.

  “Here’s the gun they took from you.” Stanley held out the revolver in its holster. “And your feet…” Stanley pointed at the pale stubs of my toes. He led me over to a sunken road that ran beside the hedge. On the road where three bodies. Trench coats covered their faces. Stanley crouched down near the bodies and held his hand out to me. “Give me your foot.”

  I hopped on one leg as Stanley matched my foot first against the boot of one dead man and then against the boot of another. He removed one man’s boots and gave them to me, along with the socks. “You’d better take whatever else you need as well.”

  The socks were wet and cold and the boot laces clogged with mud. I strapped on the revolver and then buttoned the trench coat, hoping no one would recognize the clothes. I needed them too badly to do without some thin armor against the bramble hedges and flint-pebbled roads.

  The Tans stood in a line on the grass.

  IRA men stood guard. Their shredded trench coats fluttered around their knees. Flames gave them shadows which vanished when the fire died down.

  Dead men lay stretched on the path, faces covered with helmets or caps.

  The noise of a trotting horse reached my ears. I caught sight of McGarrity’s delivery cart. It was driven by Crow and stopped outside the barracks. Rifles and ammunition from the barracks were loaded on to it.

  Down the road, still hidden in the dark, I heard running. Then I saw a shape and a paleness. A flash came from the figure and the air tore open above my head.

  “Cover!” Stanley dove into the hedge.

  I fumbled with the holster and peered at the figure again. It was McGarrity.

  “Kill him!” Stanley yelled from the brambles.

  McGarrity kept running. He carried a gun. The air cracked again and dirt splattered up near my boots.

  I pulled the revolver from its holster. I could hear McGarrity’s breathing now. The man’s head was thrown back as he ran.

  “Shoot, for God’s sake!” Stanley bellowed from somewhere nearby.

  McGarrity’s body flashed as he shot off another round.

  I aimed the Webley down the road and locked my elbow straight. I breathed in once and held the breath in my lungs, then fired and lost sight of McGarrity behind the blur of gun smoke. The heavy kick thumped back through my bones. I kept firing until the drum clicked empty.

  McGarrity stood only a few paces away. His eyes were open wide. All of the buttons had popped off his jacket. The cloth lay in shreds across his chest. Now through the holes, McGarrity began to bleed. Dark lines ran down his stomach, falling in drops to the ground. He twitched suddenly, as if something had exploded inside him. He dropped to his knees and pitched forward onto his face.

  Stanley crawled out of the bushes. It took him a while to get to his feet. His stiff leg got in the way.

  I stepped toward McGarrity, but felt Stanley’s hand hold me back. “Don’t you worry about him. Worry about yourself instead. McGarrity came to the barracks as soon as the trouble started in town. He figured it was the only safe place for him.” Stanley pulled the ammunition bandolier from across his shoulders and draped it over me. “You’d better go find Clayton. He’s in charge now. He’ll tell you what to do.”

  I stayed looking at McGarrity’s body. I found myself waiting patiently for him to get up and walk away. The bandolier’s leather was warm where it had rested against Stanley’s neck.

  “Go.” Stanley’s voice climbed above the rustle of flames.

  My boots crunched over sand from spilled sandbags, rifle cartridges, and clods of brick chipped off the walls. It was dark inside the b
arracks, except for the wobbling light of an oil lamp, which barged an orange glow across the walls.

  Tarbox stooped over the body of Captain Sutherland, going through his pockets. The white pocket linings stuck out like handkerchiefs from Sutherland’s trousers.

  Clayton stood next to him, holding up the lamp.

  Tarbox scooped his hands under Sutherland’s armpits and propped him up against the wall. Sutherland’s tunic and shirt were open and a bandage had been wrapped around his chest. Blood had soaked through the dressing. “What do you have for me? Eh?” Tarbox pulled out a cigarette case, turned it once in his hand, then skimmed it away across the floor. “Anything I can use?” Tarbox slapped him on the cheek.

  Sutherland’s head flopped to one side. His eyes were half open.

  “Is that you, Sheridan?” Clayton held up the lamp. “Did you tell them anything?”

  “Nothing.” With my nose blocked and useless, my voice vibrated in my head.

  “Who beat you?” Tarbox took hold of Sutherland’s cheeks and squashed them together. A trickle of red saliva dribbled out onto his hand. “Is this the man?”

  “It was an RIC sergeant. Byrne.”

  The oil lamp quivered in Clayton’s hand. “It’s a shame we can only kill him once.”

  I breathed in the smoke that pillowed the ceiling. “I was leaving to find Hagan. They picked me up outside Ennistymon.”

  Tarbox stood. “We’re all heading north now. There’s been a change of plan. So you’ve got company for the trip after all.”

  “I heard them saying that the troops at Ennistymon barracks would be coming.”

  “They are.” Clayton walked toward me. “I want them to.”

  “Thank you for getting me out.”

  “We didn’t do it for you. We did it for the guns. On schedule. And now we need your help. The Ennistymon Tans will be here in an hour. If we don’t drive them back, none of us will get more than a few miles up the road and that includes you. They’ll set barriers on every road between here and Connemara and no one will be able to pass. But if we hit them hard now, they won’t return until they’ve gathered reinforcements and that will take a couple of days. By that time, we’ll be up in the hills, which is the only safe place for us now. At least until things settle down. We need everyone we can get.”

  I said I would do what I could.

  Clayton nodded. “My father … he says to take care of yourself.”

  * * *

  Byrne’s eyes strained in their sockets. He watched as Clayton approached.

  The Tans had all been searched. Their tunics were open, brass buttons like yellow pebbles on the khaki cloth. They still kept their hands in the air and the muscles were tense in their faces.

  Clayton pulled Byrne out of line.

  “I was doing what Captain Sutherland told me…”

  “Shut your face.” Clayton pointed at me. “Look what you did to this man.”

  Smoke peppered my skin. It made me flinch to catch Byrne’s eye, as if another beating would thrash me to the ground.

  “Look at this man.” Clayton’s voice was a rumble. “You damn near painted that cell with his blood.”

  “I was doing my job,” Byrne shouted. “Captain Sutherland…”

  “You people!” Clayton howled at the soldiers. He spent all his breath in the two words and had to fill his lungs again. “You know the rules by now. You know you’d never stand for this from us. Well, we won’t stand it from you.” He led Byrne towards the barracks, signaling for two IRA men to follow him. They took the handcuffs that dangled from Byrne’s belt and cuffed him to an iron railing that ran up beside the barrack-house steps.

  The two IRA men unshouldered their rifles. One of the men was Crow. They stood only a few paces away from Byrne’s twisting body.

  Crow chambered a bullet. The rifle bolt clacked into place.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake! I was following orders! Sutherland told me to rough him up.” Byrne tugged at the handcuffs. They scraped against the railing.

  The two men tucked the butts of the rifles into their shoulders and their heads hunched over the stocks as they took aim.

  “For Christ’s sake.” Byrne’s arms strained at the railing. His mouth twitched out of control.

  The rifles kicked back into the men’s shoulders. The noise of gunshots clapped off the barrack walls.

  Byrne flew across the railing. One of his arms dislocated. His body shook, then slumped. Slowly the handcuff chain slid down the railing, dragging Byrne with it, his hands still pinched in the cuffs. He moved inch by inch until his body settled on the ground.

  A moan came from the line of British soldiers. A Tan dropped to his knees. His fingers dug into the ground.

  No one moved to help him.

  The soldier began to crawl forward. The tendons stood out in his neck. His cap fell off and he crawled over it.

  Still no one moved.

  The soldier’s arms gave way and he rested his forehead on the ground. He began to cry.

  I heard someone barely a foot away draw in breath.

  “Get back in line!” The shout was deafening. A Tan stepped out of rank. He was a sergeant, with three chevrons and a crown stitched to his right arm.

  The IRA guards didn’t move. Nobody did.

  The sergeant’s face was crooked with rage. “Stand up and get back in line!”

  The soldier rocked his head back and forth, still sobbing.

  Then the sergeant walked across and picked up the man by his collar. The soldier shook his head. His jaw locked open and the moaning sound crept out. The sergeant spoke to him in a voice that only the two of them could hear. Then the soldier moaned louder and shook his head again.

  The sergeant smacked him in the face with the back of his hand and dragged him to the ranks. The two Tans on either side of the soldier had to prop him up. He stood with his knees half bent, ready to fall if the others let him go. His head hung forward. The sergeant went back to his place, raised his hands in the air and stared in front of him.

  Clayton said nothing. He made no gesture to show that he had even seen what happened. He shouted for the IRA men to fall in on the road.

  There was a sound of heavy footsteps on the grass as people followed his order. I ran with them.

  Then the hammer of a machine gun sent me down on my face. The others dropped, too. I lay pressed to the ground with my hands covering my head.

  The Tans were crying out.

  Their shrieking paralyzed me. I realized that they were the ones being shot at.

  The gun’s stitching thunder continued for long after the shouting had stopped. Then I heard Clayton yell to cease fire.

  I raised my head from the dirt and saw others doing the same.

  The Tans were all down, their bodies cripple-twisted and lying on top of each other. There wasn’t even the movement of a wounded man.

  Byrne’s corpse had settled on the ground, as if his skin was already blending with the grass.

  A Lewis gun had been set up in the hedge facing the Tans. Clayton must have ordered it. The two men who had manned the gun, one carrying a sack of spare magazines, sank back through the hedge and lined up on the road.

  Crow stamped toward Clayton. He looked as if he had gone mad. “What is the fucking point of executing Byrne in front of all these people, and then shooting them as well?” He screamed in Clayton’s face.

  Clayton talked back too quietly for us to hear.

  Crow was shaking with rage. “There’s a corridor in hell for people like you!” Then he spun around and walked back to the road.

  “What did he say?” I asked him as he passed me.

  At first Crow didn’t know who I was. Then he said in his old quiet voice, “Clayton told me he wanted it to be the last thing those Tans saw on this earth.”

  I found myself almost untouched by the bodies on the ground. There were too many of them. It dug into me more to have seen Byrne there by himself, or McGarrity facedown in the mud. But th
e carpet of khaki-clothed men left me with only a numbness, and I was already numb from the beating.

  * * *

  We set out across the fields, loaded down with guns and bandoliers.

  Clayton caught up with me. He had been running and was out of breath. He carried two Lee-Enfield rifles and gave one to me.

  I slung it on my shoulder without breaking stride. I didn’t want to talk. All the violence I’d seen since I walked ashore seemed to come from Clayton. It sparked off his fingers like lightning.

  I had hoped somehow to stand outside the war, and even thought it was possible. But with the killing of these Tans, it made no difference what I’d believed. It seemed as if I had crossed the line so long ago, I could no longer recall when it was.

  Clayton knew what I was thinking. “They got what they deserved,” he said.

  I didn’t answer. I raised my head and watched the moon spread silver across the black sky.

  CHAPTER 13

  The dark was filled with whispering. Fog had settled in.

  I sat against a low stone wall, sheltered from the wind. One by one, I pulled bullets from the bandolier and loaded them into the rifle. I set my thumb on the brass bullet cases and pressed down until they clicked into the magazine.

  Men in trench coats drifted past. From close by came the scrape of wall stones being rearranged.

  The field beyond the wall sank down to a hollow. A stream ran through it, and trees clustered on the banks. The Ennistymon Tans were down there somewhere. They had come across the open ground, avoiding roads. Now they were forming a battle line. Shards of voices traveled on the wind as the soldiers regrouped in the dark.

  When the magazine was full, I chambered a round and settled the gun across my lap. I tried to calm myself by thinking of home. It had been a while since I last imagined the daily movements of Willoughby, Hettie, and Harley, and the tides around the island. It used to be that every time I found myself with any room to think, standing half-asleep over the grey dishwater at Gisby’s, I had traveled home in my daydreams.

  The daydreams had ended, but I couldn’t remember when. The point had come and gone without my noticing. The island and the people I knew there had lost their clarity. Now they seemed blurred at the edges and half formed, like the products of my sleep.