Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  Within this rather loose framework, Brian managed to find a niche for himself. He revived, on a smaller scale, the Republican newspaper his father had founded some thirty years earlier and poured what little time and money he could find into it. He’d been taught Gaelic as a child and now taught his own sons, born in 1944 and 1949, to speak it as well. His boys were the core of his life and when their mother left, shortly after Pat’s second birthday, none of them, it could be said, was sorry to see the back end of her. Brian raised them to be self-sufficient, to cook and clean and mend and should the occasion eventually arise to not be too big of burden for a woman. He told them stories, pretty silver spun fancies when they were small, grand tales of rebellion as they got older, always at a safe remove in the mists of ancient Ireland. He gave them the sky on long summer nights when they went to the west coast to fish. In another life he might have been an astronomer or a poet or perhaps even both, one thing leading quite naturally to the other. Instead, he worked his weeks at a brewery and nights he built weaponry for a revolution whose coming he feared. His weekends and evenings belonged to his boys.

  They were good boys, Casey a little wild at times though not getting up to any mischief that a normal boy wouldn’t. With Pat there were no complaints, he was too quiet at times and too hard on himself, but all in all they gave Brian no sleepless nights. It was other things that did that. Casey, by ten, started doing odd jobs after school and on weekends, delivering groceries and then when he was a little older he did cleanup at the brewery after hours, which led to driving forklift in the warehouse and then driving van when he was of an age to get his license, delivering crates of Connemara Mist to the four corners of the country. School didn’t hold his interest but Brian was determined he would see it through. Pat was of a more academic bent and excelled particularly in literature and history. He too took on odd jobs and among the three of them, they managed to avoid the poverty and unemployment that plagued their corner of the world. They weren’t rich and never would be but as long as they ‘had the sky and a bit of something to eat,’ as Brian was wont to say, it was enough.

  Enough until Pat came home from delivering papers one day, black with bruises, blood running from cuts. A gang of Protestant boys had cornered him in a blind alleyway just off a road he’d unwisely taken as a shortcut. Brian, cleaning wounds and checking him over for broken bones had been grateful he’d only been beaten up and nothing more. Casey took a dimmer view of things. Always protective of his little brother he was enraged at what he saw as Brian’s lack of concern. Brian had to physically restrain him from leaving the house, afraid of what might happen to him if he let him out the door.

  “Goddamnit Da’,” Casey had sworn at his father for the first time, “how can ye sit here an’ do nothin’ after what’s been done to him? How can ye?”

  “Casey,” his father had said sternly, “sit down an’ behave as if ye’ve the grain of sense God gave ye. Now look,” he’d continued as Casey unwillingly sat, “what earthly good can it do to rampage up an’ down the streets lookin’ for a bunch of boys we’ve not the slightest notion of? We don’t know what they look like or who they are an’ runnin’ about knockin’ all their heads in isn’t goin’ to help yer brother.”

  “So we sit an’ do nothin’?” Casey, never still at the best of times, had leapt up from his chair. “Why do we live this way Daddy? It’s like we’re hidin’ from somethin’, it’s like we’re supposed to pretend that we don’t know where ye go after we’re in bed. It’s like ye expect us to deny our own birthright.”

  Brian had gone very still and white. “An’ just what might that be Casey?” he’d asked, voice deceptively calm.

  “To live as free men an’ if not that then to fight for freedom every day. Like yer father did,” Casey said, flushed with anger.

  “An’ to die like my Daddy did?” Brian asked, voice still light but the syllables flattened out in a way that, had Casey known his father’s anger, would have warned him to cease and desist.

  “Aye, if one must. It’s better than to live afraid.”

  “Better to die like a dog in the street, with only the one son left to mourn ye? That’s better, is it? I didn’t think our life here together was so terrible but apparently,” Brian gave his son a look that made Casey’s knees wobble ever-so-slightly, “I was mistaken.”

  “Daddy, ye know I mean no disrespect,” Casey began in a conciliatory tone but was cut off by Brian’s black look.

  “No I’m afraid boy that I don’t know that. Ye hint that I’m hidin’ in a corner like some cowerin’ child but ye think I’m so daft that I won’t notice the insult. No, boy,” he said firmly as Casey began to protest, “ye’ll let me say what I must in my own home. I loved my daddy, loved him like he was the whole damn world when I was a little boy, he seemed to fill up the sky he was that big, he’d that much presence an’ power. He carried the burdens of an entire nation on his back for most of his life an’ yet he’d time to read to us an’ play with us an’ spend days where we felt we were the only thing of any importance in his life. But I was his oldest son,” Brian’s voice lowered and softened, “an’ I saw the nights when he could not sleep an’ he felt cornered, when he couldn’t reconcile who he was with what he believed, until he got so weary that he didn’t know what he believed anymore. I saw the man who sacrificed things an’ people in his life but never was able to leave them behind. Yer granddad never knew peace a moment of his life. He gave everything he had, sacrificed things he never told anyone about an’ for what? Is Ireland free? Are we the inhabitants of an undivided peaceful nation?”

  “No,” Casey replied in a chastened voice.

  “No, we are not,” Brian agreed, “an’ so Casey tell me— for what did I stand in the street with my father’s blood on me? So that I could raise another generation to go out an’ make war? For no better reason than anger? I want you an’ yer little brother to be safe an’ to grow to see yer own sons grow an’ prosper, I do not want to raise another generation of men who die before their sons are out of nappies. An’ yet,” Brian looked sad and old in the dim twilight that entered their kitchen, “an’ yet when I look at ye boy I’ll be damned if I don’t see the shade of my Daddy on yer face an’ in yer limbs.”

  “Then what,” Casey asked quietly, “are yer nights about, Da’?”

  Brian had taken a long moment to reply and when he did the words were those of a defeated man, “Because, an’ may I burn in hell for this, I cannot help bein’ my father’s son.”

  “An’ I cannot help bein’ mine,” Casey said.

  Brian had watched his eldest carefully after that, knowing that the boy was biding his time and waiting for his moment. Knowing too that when all was said and done he could not choose Casey’s road for him. He had a motor running in him, the boy did, a motor that would roar into life when he found what he was looking for and Brian was afraid that he knew, too exactly, what that thing would be.

  Brian had worries of his own at this point. The Irish Republican Army had begun on their Border Campaign by then, a series of skirmishes that would never amount to a war but would disrupt the surrounding countryside, causing destruction and death. Beginning in December of 1956, it would run through to February of 1962 and would cost the British government one million pounds in outright damage and ten million pounds in increased police and military patrols. Six Royal Ulster Constabulary would lose their lives and eleven Republicans would forfeit theirs as well. In the South, there was an additional 400,000 pounds per annum in increased patrols and the money needed to re-open the Curragh internment camp. Belfast, with too many Catholics in a very vulnerable and tenuous position, was not included in the war. Brian was grateful for this as it kept Casey away from the action that the boy seemed only too eager to take part in. However, with his ties to the South still strong, Brian was called on in his capacity as weapons expert and tactical guide several times. He’d not much faith in the campaign its
elf, seeing too clearly the disorganization, the blunders and near farcical cock-ups that seemed to take place in far too many instances. It was one such blunder that would lead to his downfall.

  It started as a favor for Seamus, who insisted that there had been too many injuries and aborted attempts at bombing customs huts, by reason of a young and inexperienced weapons contingent. Brian could get in and out, trigger the explosion and there would be no loss of life, merely property damage. Brian had done as he was asked and the next day he and another fellow, dressed as Dominican priests, had crossed the border without difficulty and found shelter in a nearby village. There they spent a good part of the day in agony as there was a man in the next house dying and they fully expected to be called on to administer last rites. The gig was given up, not by a lack of Latin, but rather by the need for nicotine. Brian’s young partner had gone to a local shop and requested a brand of cigarettes only sold north of the border. It was enough to tip off the local constabulary, who swooped up and arrested them within minutes.

  The next two months found Brian living within the confines of the Curragh internment camp. As such things went it was not so terrible a place to be, the food was plentiful, there was tea to be had and the prisoners were encouraged to take exercise. There were four huts with approximately ten men to a hut, each with its own OC and chain of command. Brian, rather reluctantly, became the OC of his own, with the job of keeping up the morale of his fellow inmates and preventing the in-fighting which was becoming a problem within the ranks of the IRA.

  Escape was a thought which haunted his waking and sleeping hours. There were certain logistics to be worked out which would require some careful planning. There were five sets of fences surrounding the camp, two sets between the camp and a six-foot deep, eight-foot wide trench which was booby-trapped with flares and tripwires. Then if one was lucky enough to surmount these obstacles there were three more sets of fences, four elevated sentry posts at each corner of the camp, manned by armed guards with the added luxury of strolling guards patrolling the perimeter of the fences, a revolver in one hand and an ammonia grenade in the other. Brian, if not exactly cheered by the odds against him, was not entirely dismayed by them either.

  The opportunity for escape or rather the means of it, came to him one day while he was shampooing his hair in the shower. A clean man by nature, Brian knew he would raise no eyebrows by requesting a shower each day. The window in the shower had two not altogether sturdy bars, which when wiggled and prised gave way rather easily. Two showers later, a squeaky-clean Brian had his out. He requested his shower in the evening and given permission, went in, turned on the water full blast and shot out the window.

  Wire cutters, acquired through a lengthy and tortuous negotiation with a nineteen year old internee who doubled on the outside as a metalworker, facilitated his way through the first two fences. It was when he was very carefully navigating the intricacies of the trench that he realized he was not alone. Pete Kelly, he of the wire cutters, was directly behind him, bellydown in the mud, ready to take the trip across the trench.

  “What the fock d’ye suppose you are doin’?” Brian had hissed, infuriated at the gall of the boy.

  Pete Kelly had smiled the feckless smile of nineteen and replied, “I would suppose I am escapin’.”

  Brian had little choice then but to take the boy with him, it was either that or abandon the plan altogether. He was to regret the choice he made for the rest of his life. Brian cleared the trench safely but Pete, made overconfident by clearing the first two fences, tripped a wire and sent up a flare. Within minutes the perimeter was a hail of bullets drenched in ammonia fumes. The wire cutters were lost in the ensuing panic and Brian, dragging an injured Pete behind him, had to tackle the last three coils of fencing with his bare hands.

  The miracle of it all being that they made it, aided by dumb luck and the not altogether enthusiastic efforts of the guards who could have at any moment shot the both of them stone dead. Instead Peter, blinded by the ammonia, was shot in the leg and able with Brian’s help to more or less run when they cleared the last fence.

  They made it to a byre some six miles down the road, where Pete, now gushing blood from his leg and unable still to see through streaming eyes, collapsed and could go no further. He urged Brian to go on ‘as there was no use the both of them being captured, an’ perhaps he could slow the bastards up a bit.’ Brian, being who he was, stayed. He tied off Pete’s leg as best he could, fearing an artery had been struck and then put the boy flat on the floor following this position himself. The police were most likely to let loose a barrage from chest or waist height, they’d not escape capture but they would escape death by lying low.

  The ear-splitting fire of bullets came a half hour later and Brian laying silent on the floor, waited it out. Afterwards there was a bit of chatter, a shout or two and then the sound of trucks pulling away into the night. Brian, astonished, waited a full fifteen minutes knowing snipers could be waiting outside to pick them off like wounded geese.

  Outside he checked the area thoroughly and realized there was no one lying in wait. He went back in to retrieve Pete and saw that unlike himself Pete had not been bound by unnatural luck that night, a bullet ricocheting off a beam in the byre had struck him neatly in the temple, leaving only a small trickle of blood in its wake. Pete was dead. Brian, mindful that luck was likely to run dry at any moment, said a brief prayer over the boy’s cooling body and fled into the night. Two days later, he was back in Belfast, never quite understanding what had transpired that night in the byre.

  It was for him the end of the fighting and the end of all things signifying it in his life. He chose to live the rest of his life quietly, in what peace could be bought or bartered for in the realm of souls. It was to be brief. In early 1961, four men entered his house in the wee hours and dragged him off to an unidentified house somewhere north of Belfast. He would never tell another living soul what happened in the five days they kept him and he would never be a whole man again. A year later, he would die from a blast of gelignite handled improperly. Accident, was what his oldest son would tell the youngest and Pat, for Casey’s own comfort, would pretend to believe it. Pat knew though that his father had gotten out of the business of bombs some time earlier and had not gone back. But for Casey, who was his last blood link on earth, Pat would and could pretend.

  In Brian’s will there was enough money and a request that they take it and go to America. Casey would not go and Pat could not be persuaded to leave without his brother.

  Casey, against every wish his father had ever had for him, joined the ranks of an IRA that once the Border Campaigns fizzled to an end, was almost entirely defunct. It seemed that all signs pointed to the end of the IRA. In a sense, this would prove to be the truth; the IRA as it had existed in its previous decades and incarnations was over but from its ashes would rise the deadly military force of the Provisional IRA.

  Acting with permission of a tiny cell group and the force of his own grief and rage, Casey set off a bomb in a London tube station. No one was hurt but the damage was estimated to be near 50,000 pounds. Nineteen years of age and unrepentant in the face of judge and sentence, he landed himself five years in the British penal system, not the pleasantest of places for anyone, less so for an Irish Republican militant.

  Pat, fourteen and very much alone in the world, was taken in by an old lady who, from time to time, looked after boys in trouble, boys on the run, or in Pat’s case a boy with nowhere to turn. Pat stayed until he was eighteen and then in anticipation of his brother coming home, took up residence in a Catholic housing estate, one that trembled on the brink of the Shankill Road, the dividing line between Protestant and Catholic settlements in Belfast.

  On the day that Pat explained Irish history to his class, his brother had awakened for the first time in five years on Irish soil, had bid a polite goodbye to the girl in his bed, bathed, dressed and gotten on a plane for th
e Middle East and had begun by that simple act a ripple in the very fabric of their lives, a ripple that would continue to grow and build until it became a tidal force. Twenty-four, clean-shaven, hair freshly cut, he appeared nothing more than a handsome, extremely charming young man to the air hostess he flirted with for much of the flight. In some ways, that’s exactly what he was.

  Chapter Five

  Little Miss Lolita

  “Humbert Humbert,” said Jamie, “is not a role I ever particularly fancied playing.”

  Yevgena, buckling her suitcase, took a moment to reply, “Jemmy, at nineteen she hardly qualifies as Lolita and you are not a likely candidate for dirty old man either.”

  A triangle of green peeked out at her from under a white-sleeved elbow. “Then why do I feel like one?”

  “That,” said Yevgena sliding into a leather coat, “is a matter between you and your conscience. I,” she glanced at her watch, “have a plane to catch.”

  “Are you certain you don’t want me to take you to the airport?” Jamie asked for the tenth time.

  Yevgena, sighing as only a Russian can, replied for the tenth time, “Jemmy I am perfectly content to have Liam drive me as the dear man always does. Quit trying to escape that poor girl. It was you, after all, who gave her a job and, without anyone else’s coercion, offered her shelter under your roof.”

  Jamie, lying prone on a cream-silk couch, let out a sigh that in its length managed to convey injury and desolation in equal parts. This invited nothing more from Yevgena than a roll of her eyes. He sat, his sigh quite earnest now and rubbed the crease in his forehead.

  “Head still aching?” Yevgena asked, eyes surveying him in detail.

  “No, strangely enough it stopped aching when your little friend appeared on the scene.”

  “And hasn’t since?” Yevgena asked, patting powder down the slim line of her nose and then snapping her tortoiseshell compact shut.