The Bogside Boys
Page 32
McClean shook his head, his voice low, flecked with regret. “I’m sorry, Pat. It wouldn’t wash with the higher ups. They’d have assassins looking for you both within hours of Maggie getting out tomorrow. I’ll be able to give Mick the pass. I’m sure of that.” McClean reached over to him, put his hand on his shoulder. “He owes you his life. Sean Campbell too. I’ll do it myself. I promise it’ll be quick.”
Pat nodded, unable to speak.
If it were to end here, there would be no final words to loved ones, no advice to carry forward into the expanse of the vastness of their lives as his contracted into nothing. Goodbyes had already been said. The life Mick deserved would finally be his. The price for that would be his to pay. The fragility of his life came into focus, the fleeting, ephemeral nature of anything he’d ever done, the influence that he’d had. Mick would live on and that would be enough.
“I’m going to have to ask you to get out of the car,” McClean said. His tone was almost mournful. Pat’s body was ice cold. As if he were dead already. Pat opened the door and stepped out into the wash of the fresh country air, looked over at the field.
McClean got out of the car. He made his way around to the back and opened the trunk. A secret compartment held a handgun and McClean took it, gesturing to Pat to climb over the three-foot wall and into the field. Pat’s pulse raced through him as his feet came down on the squelch of the mud. He begged his body to relent, to allow him to greet this passing with the serenity he’d always imagined. His heart beat on, air rushing in and out of his lungs, his skin clammy, his gait stilted and stiff.
A whisper of wind came through the trees. The tender hiss of the grass in the wind. The sun peering through the gray clouds above, gilded beams cast down. The warmth on his face, the cold soil beneath. They walked for thirty seconds in silence, Pat’s mind sprinting though what cards he had still left to play, what could save his life. McClean motioned to him to stop. McClean spoke, doleful and bleak, murmured that he was a good man, that this was a tragedy, but Pat wasn’t listening. Pamela was smiling, her arms languid and slow around him. Peter was in his arms, and Michael laughing with him, with them all. And Siobhan came to him, her arms out, the mystery of life dancing in her eyes and expressed perfectly in every movement, every step. They were together. And nothing could be more perfect. Pat fell to his knees, his head up, back straight.
Each breath Pat took was to be his last, yet another and another followed in its wake. Pat felt McClean behind him, knew he had the gun drawn. He looked down, saw the shadow of his would-be executioner, and stood up.
“What are you doing?” McClean asked.
Pat turned to him. The fear washed away. His heartbeat was solid and even. “You don’t have to do this.” His voice was calm.
McClean brought a hand to wipe the pain from his eyes. “We’ve been through this already. There’s no other way.”
“Of course there is. Who else knows about this? Did Maggie tell anyone?” McClean didn’t answer, held the gun higher, aiming it at Pat’s face. “Then this is your decision, no one else’s. You can say I came to you, that you sanctioned what I did, in the name of progressing the real cause. My brother is not a danger. No IRA men will go to jail because of what he did. He saved the lives of hundreds of Catholics. He gave us a chance for peace after years of misery and death. I know you don’t want this. You remember what he did for you back in ’72, you remember how he took the heat for what you did when the whole unionist side of the province would have strung you up if they could. You OK’d the hit on Melissa. He kept her innocent blood off your hands. You owe him.”
“I do owe him, and that’s why he’s going to live. You can’t. You have to go, Pat, for killing those volunteers.”
“They weren’t IRA volunteers when I killed them. You know that. I’m not a danger to you or anyone else in the IRA.” Pat stepped forward to him. They were three feet apart now, the barrel of the pistol inches from his face.
“Stand back.”
“You don’t have to do this. If someone needs to pay for this, it should be the one person left who almost caused this catastrophe, not the people who stopped it.”
McClean didn’t speak. He took his finger off the trigger and slid it back on.
“This is wrong. You know that,” Pat said.
McClean let the gun drop to his side.
“They were dissidents,” Pat continued. “They had to be stopped. We were just the ones who had to do it. You would have done the same thing in my place. If it were your brother….”
“I know, and you’re right, but I just can’t let you away with this. Not completely free. I’m sorry, Pat.”
The roar of the pistol shook the air around him. Pat felt the bullet cut into his flesh. The pain sliced him down, his body crumpling to the cold ground below, his hands clutching the soil in clumps as he tried to drag himself back to the car, back to life.
Chapter 31
August 2nd, 1999
A noise from behind spun Mick’s head around but then receded into nothing. The fears had faded over time, but the instincts were still with him and the flutter of nerves inside took a few seconds to ebb away. He kept on, up the hill, further into the City Cemetery, each step propelling him further into a past that felt like a dream from which he’d never awoken.
Sean had moved back to Derry in ‘96 with Martina and the baby, but Mick had stayed away, haunted by the ghosts of the city he still loved. He brushed past the Republican plot, past the graves of Tony Campbell, Martin Heggarty and Maggie Heffernan, all dated within days of one another and all still alive in the darkness of his dreams. Maggie had died at the hands of her former comrades, her former masters. The story at the time had been brief, a two-line mention on the nightly news. He kept on, determined that they would not sully this moment. His breath quickened as he saw his father’s name chiseled in black into the gray headstone. The words caught in his throat as he tried to coax them out.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He tried to laugh. “Things are good down in Dublin. I’m sorry I haven’t been back, it’s just that with everything that happened….” The words stopped as if he’d come to a wall inside of himself. The others were behind him. He hadn’t noticed. Tears rushed down his cheeks as he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Come on, Dad, you don’t have to do this,” Jason said. Melissa stood behind him but didn’t speak.
“Thanks,” Mick said, trying to gather himself. “I’ll just be a minute. Make sure your sister’s all right,” he said, motioning to five-year-old Jenny, bent over to smell fresh flowers by the grave. Jason bent down and picked a pink carnation, sticking it behind her ear and the sight of them was a gleam in Mick’s heart, saturated with love. He coughed, felt Melissa’s arms envelop him, her face resting against his back. “It’s peace now. They’re saying the war’s finally over. Maybe what we did had something to do with that.” Mick’s voice began to break as tiny droplets of rain spattered down from above, wetting the names on the grave. “Melissa says that you’d be proud, that you’d have done anything to protect your family and your community. She says you’d be proud of the lives me and Pat have lived since you died. I hope she’s right.”
The sight of his brother coming up the hill, hobbling on his cane, refusing help from Pamela or the kids, brought a broad smile to Mick’s face. It had taken Pat ten minutes to make his way up and he was panting as he came to Mick, standing at the grave.
“How’s the knee?” Mick asked. Pat hadn’t walked without a cane since McClean had settled for the traditional IRA punishment of kneecapping in that field ten years before.
“It’s better than that face o’ yours. A fine pair we are,” he smiled and put an arm around his brother.
Green hills rolled across the river, the football stadium just in front. They cast eyes over the city to the old walls, and rows of houses threaded together, interspersed by cathedral spires, Catholic and Protestant. The sun emerged from the blanket of clouds, and they made
their way back down the hill, back to the streets of Bogside, gleaming from the rain as if sprinkled with diamond dust.
The End
The End
Author’s Note
After the most expensive legal inquiry in British history, the Saville Inquiry into the killings on Bloody Sunday was published in 2010. It exonerated the victims that day, laying the blame entirely on the Paras who did the shooting. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, issued an official apology to the victims and their families on behalf of the British Government.
Thank you so much for reading THE BOGSIDE BOYS. It was incredibly rewarding researching and writing this book. Meeting some people directly affected by the Troubles in the north of Ireland, particularly the IRA man I interviewed, who’d spent twelve years in jail, and the son of one of the victims of the Bloody Sunday massacre, was an amazing and humbling experience. Please check back on amazon for my other books.
Thanks again,
Eoin Dempsey (It’s pronounced Owen by the way!)