by Lisa Henry
“Did you hear?” Danny asked.
“Hear what?”
“Ryan got arrested.”
Ciaran stopped and reached out to grab Danny’s sleeve. “What do you mean? What for?”
Danny wrinkled his freckled nose. “For breaking into the depot on Dargan Road.”
“What’d he do that for?” Ciaran asked with a sigh.
Danny started walking again. He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Sick of all this talk and no action. Sick of doing nothing but wasting breath. There’s food just sitting in there, you know, when it could be going to the people in the camps.”
“Well, getting arrested won’t help anything!” Ciaran kicked a bottle on the road. “Fucking idiot! He shouldn’t’ve broken the law.”
“Why not? What if the law’s unjust?”
“Then you change the law, don’t break it,” Ciaran shot back. His father liked to believe he was hanging around with criminals, and the man would be full of himself when he heard about this.
“They’re your people, Ciaran,” Danny reminded him. “Stuck in those camps.”
“Yeah, and we agreed that the only way to improve things for them is to make it so they can get home. That’s what Niall O’Connor says, and I thought we all agreed with him.”
Danny smiled brightly. “Fix the problem at the source. Sure, but Ryan’s not exactly a planner, is he?”
Ciaran smiled ruefully. “Not exactly.”
They walked on a little more, Danny lighting a cigarette as he went. “Have you told your father yet?” He shook off his match and tossed it to the ground.
“No.” Ciaran snorted. “If I tell him, he’ll find some way to stop me.”
“Well, it’s set for tomorrow night. Sarah’s got a loan of a van. We’ll pack it tonight and leave tomorrow. Wait until dark, and then …”
Ciaran smiled despite the frisson of fear that skittered up his spine. “Then we’ll be in Ireland.”
“Making a difference,” Danny said, his broad smile full of pride.
“Making a difference,” Ciaran agreed as they headed down to the oceanfront.
Ciaran had seen footage on the national news, but seeing Ireland for himself was another matter entirely. Their van rattled as they drove. The M1 motorway was in such disrepair, tarmac split and heaving, shot through with grass and other plant life, not to mention littered with the husks of abandoned vehicles, many of them stripped by scavengers. The place looked like a war zone, even more so than Northern Ireland. But then, with no government and few resources, maybe that was exactly what it was.
“See anything familiar, Ciaran?” Sarah asked him as she drove.
It was a joke, probably, but Ciaran couldn’t even raise a smile. “Were you ever here?” he asked the three of them back. “Before?”
“Just the once,” Richard replied. “As a kid we went on a family holiday to Galway. Nice town, nice town. The border wasn’t much different from now with the armed guards ’n’all.”
Sarah and Danny both shook their heads. The three of them were Northern Irish born and bred, the children of Belfast Catholics. Their connection to the Republic of Ireland was by politics rather than birthright, but it didn’t change how fierce their loyalty was. How far they were willing to go to save the people of the fallen country.
But they still didn’t understand what it was like for Ciaran to have been forced to flee the Republic as a child. To have watched the reports of anarchy and chaos and starvation and disease, and to not understand why they couldn’t just go home. To re-watch them years later with an adult’s understanding, to finally grasp the enormity of what had happened and to feel utterly powerless to help. To return now to a place so very, very changed. It broke his heart.
He stared out the window at the country he’d left—the country he’d been too young to remember much about. He remembered that the bedroom walls in the house had been yellow. He remembered a park he’d played in, with a statue of a man on a horse. He remembered going shopping with his mother, or maybe that was with his nanny. His mother had died before the disaster. At least not during, not frightened and abandoned, not like so many others.
To change the world, you only had to start with one small thing.
This, then, was where they were starting. Not with a loaned military force but with a vanload of supplies and optimism. Because when this worked, then they would go back north and tell their story any way they could, whether the national media liked it or not. Show people, people like his father, that it could be done. Just how much they could change things if only they tried. And put an end to those awful refugee camps once and for all. It wouldn’t be simple, but they could show it was possible. Change could begin with one act, with one person, at a grassroots level. So much depended on this.
Not the least of which was Ciaran’s own spirit. God, he needed to show his father, and himself, that this wasn’t just naive idealism, and that all his talk of making a difference wasn’t just empty rhetoric. If this failed, he wasn’t sure how he’d go on. Wasn’t sure what else there was, except for those things his father had laid out for him: travel to England and attend university with the rest of the privileged few (twats), inherit his father’s job in “government,” be safe, and never take risks. Be so grateful to still be amongst the living that you never asked for anything more. Or just to wait for the world to magically right itself so they could return to their place of power in Dublin like nothing had ever happened.
They were coming up on the city now. Maybe. It was hard to tell. The map was almost useless, but they’d passed the sign for Swords a little way back and were now creeping into urban ruins: warehouses, an industrial estate, shipping containers. They didn’t want to go into the city itself in the night; it was most certainly lawless and dangerous. But it was also undoubtedly the most densely populated area, so staying nearby would do the most good for the most people. In a year or two they might even have a permanent base of operations in the city, but for now they would do what they could with the supplies they had. Because if the North was sick of feeding and housing refugees, then surely it made sense to invest in repatriating them. They only had to show that is was possible, that people could start again in the Republic if they only had a little help, and a little hope. That the camps weren’t the solution at all.
Sarah turned the van off the main road into an overgrown layaway. The headlights illuminated a boarded-up building, maybe an old petrol station.
“What do you think?” she asked, peering doubtfully at it.
“Looks good,” Danny said. “Room to set up, and we’re close enough to the city that there must be someone around.”
For a few minutes, none of them moved. Then Danny threw the door open with a laugh and leapt down from the cab of the van. Ciaran climbed after him, his legs numb from being squashed all the way from Belfast.
It felt strange to be in Dublin, after all the talking and planning the past months. Momentous and oddly underwhelming at the same time.
Mostly, he was just focused on all the work that needed doing. They’d made a banner to hang on the side of the van, and the plan was to open the back doors up and hand out their pre-packed boxes of supplies from there. Assuming an orderly line formed and they weren’t mobbed. Ciaran was hoping for the best, however. Hoping for the best was often all he had.
“So you think there are any people around here?” Sarah asked as she lugged their personal supplies inside the building: sleeping bags, air mattresses, a small gas stove, and their packs.
Richard followed her in and shone his torch around. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find out in the morning. They would have heard the engine.”
“I suppose they would have; it’s quiet here,” Sarah said. “Eerie.”
Ciaran hadn’t thought he would miss the sound of traffic, having spent more than a few nights of his youth kept awake by it, but now that he was here, he did. The city felt dead and deserted without it. Wrong rather than peaceful.
“People
will be cautious, that’s all,” Danny said, lighting one of the hurricane lamps. “It might take a bit to earn their trust.”
Sarah rolled out her sleeping bag. “You don’t think it’s true, do you? About people being rounded up and sold like animals?”
That was one of the more lurid stories that had come out of the refugee camp at Crossmaglen.
“Sold to who?” Danny snorted. “Who even has money? The United States? Ha! China? Like they have a shortage of people, even after the pandemic. Nope, if there’s trade here, it will be for supplies, not people.”
“Well, some people still have money. Not governments, maybe—or at least they never seem to when the Dáil goes begging—but corporations and individuals, sure. Don’t tell me nobody profited from this. Don’t tell me no capitalists were buying up gold and oil. That’s right, I’m talking about the greedy fat cats who caused this whole mess in the first place. And they’ve got factories and fields and mines in need of cheap labour, to maximise profits, like,” Sarah told him. “They say men on boats come and buy up slave labour.”
“Oh, gowan with your Marxist crap, Sarah. It’s bullshit,” Danny said. “Port’s closed. Has been for years.”
“Border’s closed, too,” Ciaran put in. “But that didn’t stop us.”
“That’s only because they don’t give a fuck if you want to leave the North,” Richard said. “It’ll be going back across that will be the problem.”
Ciaran smiled at that. It was where he came in, he guessed. His father’s name would grease some wheels when dealing with the border guards on the way back. That was if his father didn’t send some military expedition down to bring him back. Kevin Daly may have been the head of a government in exile, but he still wielded some political clout. “Ah,” he said. “Let’s not argue about it. We’re here. We’re really doing this!”
The four of them exchanged grins.
“All right,” Danny said at last. “Who’s for first watch on the van?”
“I’ll do it,” Richard said. “You get some sleep. We’ll be busy in the morning.”
Ciaran climbed into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes, but sleep didn’t come. Not for hours because he was still excited about being here, about finally doing something to help. Sleep? He couldn’t even wipe the smile off his face. Seemed Danny and Sarah couldn’t sleep, either, because he could hear the wet sounds of them kissing in the darkness.
“Oh, shut up,” he muttered at them once, and heard Sarah’s stifled giggle.
But he didn’t really mind, because who was he to begrudge them this moment of celebration?
“You want a kiss, too, Ciaran?” Danny teased.
“Shut up,” Ciaran said again, trying not to laugh.
When Richard trailed back inside a few hours later, Ciaran hadn’t slept at all.
“Look,” Danny said, leaning against the side of the van as he lit a cigarette.
Ciaran squinted into the early-morning light. “What am I looking at?”
“There’s a kid. Behind that building. Keeps popping up. He’s been there for ages.”
Ciaran glimpsed a flash of movement. “Why’s he not coming over?”
Danny grinned. “Maybe his mam told him not to take sweets from strangers.”
“Especially ones in white vans!” Richard said with a laugh. He waved an arm cheerfully. “Come on, lad, don’t be shy! You want some food? We’ve got meal-replacement bars, and water-purification tablets, and seeds and tools for your mam and da.”
Nothing.
“You’ve spooked him,” Danny said. “He’ll be back soon enough.”
He wasn’t.
Nobody was. Oh, sure, they saw people—emaciated shadows that ducked in and out of windows, slipped behind overturned cars and makeshift barricades—but no amount of waving and gesturing and smiling seemed to entice them any closer.
Sarah, ever the optimist, hung the banner from the van and reminded them that they needed to be patient. Ciaran couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed, though. Here he was, ready to help, with nothing to do but hang around the van and play cards with Danny.
“You reckon your da is missing you yet?” Danny asked as he dealt.
Ciaran wrinkled his nose. “If you mean he’s noticed I’m gone, sure. Missing me? I fucking doubt that very much.”
“You blame him, don’t you?”
“What?”
Danny shrugged his narrow shoulders. “For all of this. You blame him.”
“I blame him for not doing more. For not being the leader these people clearly need. What’s the point of government if they aren’t going to govern?”
“Beats me.” Danny shuffled the last of the deck of cards and set it down. “Do you believe what Sarah says? About the human trafficking?”
“I don’t know.” Ciaran gazed at the decaying buildings around them. “Most people say it’s just a ploy, you know? Something people say to try to get asylum in the North. I mean, it doesn’t exactly look organised enough for that here, does it?” He frowned. “But I don’t know. This place … I could almost believe anything.”
Danny nodded, his smile fading. “I know what you mean.”
Danny’s customary bluster hid a surprisingly gentle soul. Ciaran had met him at an underground meeting, and again at a protest. For two solid weeks he’d hated him—gobby, arrogant shite—but somehow Danny’s uncompromising ideology had struck a chord in him. Not everyone had the balls to stand up in front of a wall of men in riot gear and give them the V. Danny had been arrested and the protest called a riot, even though it was just a bunch of frustrated teenagers and twentysomethings and a few broken windows. After his release, he’d returned with all sorts of activist connections, and he’d introduced them to Ciaran. Now they were actually here and they were going to make a difference instead of just sitting around and talking about it like everyone else. Ciaran loved Danny for that. Worshipped him, almost.
He had the feeling that Danny knew, but he never teased Ciaran for it. He never treated Ciaran like their mascot, either, or their token refugee, like some of the others did. And he’d never pushed Ciaran into becoming the mouthpiece of the operation, like Ryan had initially wanted, just because of the press it would give them to have Kevin Daly’s son speaking out against his own father’s policies. Danny was better than that. He treated Ciaran as a friend, a partner. Not a pawn.
Ciaran deeply respected that.
“Look!” Sarah called.
There was an armoured van approaching. Danny and Ciaran both put down their cards.
“A van,” Danny said, and flashed a grin at Ciaran. “Running. They’re not all ruined then.”
Ciaran shielded his eyes as he watched the van approach. A sign that remnants of civilisation still existed here. A sign of hope … or something else. Unease bit at his guts, but he forced it away. There were people approaching, just as they’d hoped. Not the needy children he’d seen creeping around, but someone, at least. Maybe after the people in the van came and received their food and supplies and deemed it safe, the fearful others would follow. Maybe the people in the van were whatever passed for authority in this place, and protocol demanded Ciaran and the others speak to them first. In that case, it would be important to make a good first impression.
The van pulled up to a stop.
Ciaran stood, and Danny followed his lead. They stepped forwards together, and Ciaran held up one hand in greeting, sure to keep the other hand visible, as well.
The doors of the van swung open. A scrawny man climbed out of the driver’s seat holding a cricket bat. Another man, broader than the first, followed him. Then a third man climbed out. Smaller than the others, and simultaneously larger than life, wearing a sanctimonious grin and a massive gold sheet collar that hung in a semicircle around his neck and chest. He gestured broadly as he strode and strutted, and the other men fell in line behind him as he approached.
Another two leapt out of the back of the van.
Ciaran puffed out h
is chest and plastered on a smile.
“Well, well, well,” the man in gold said in a booming voice, as stilted as a stage performer. “What’s this, an offering for the king of Dublin?”
What? Ciaran exchanged an incredulous glance with Danny.
“And who do I have to thank for this lovely gift?”
Danny didn’t flinch. “It’s not an offering. It’s aid, to help the hungry and suffering of Ireland. We’ve come from the North because we want to help.”
“That’s right,” Sarah added. “It’s for anyone and everyone. We’ve brought food and water-purification tablets and hygiene items, and—and … and seeds, and some basic farming supplies, and a few toys for children.”
“Toys for children!” the man in gold crowed, and the men flanking him laughed. “Well you certainly are a rare breed among the cowards from the North, but your charity won’t be necessary. The people of Ireland are already well provided for. By their king.”
“By their what?” Danny asked.
The small man’s smile vanished. Twisted into something like rage. “By their king. That’s me, you small-minded little fool. Noel, take their van.”
“Take our van?” Richard snarled. “That’s—”
A gunshot cracked through the air, and by the time Ciaran uncovered his ears and opened his eyes again, Richard was lying on the ground.
Sarah screamed. Danny reached for her—another shot rang out—and she was on the ground, as well.
“Well now,” the man who called himself king said. “That’s a shame, isn’t it? Pretty girl like that would have got a good price.”
A good price. God, the rumours were true.
Danny knelt at Sarah’s side, one bloodied hand pressed to the wound in her chest, the other on her throat, trying to find her heartbeat. “Why?” he screamed. “Why would you do this?” He was crying, and Ciaran had never seen him so out of control, so powerless. That was how he knew Sarah was dead already.
Ciaran was frozen on the spot. Some part of him knew he should go to Richard’s side, check to see if he was dead or just wounded, but he couldn’t will his legs to move. He stared at the so-called king of Dublin. There was no remorse on his face, not even squeamishness at the blood. He just smiled pleasantly.