1972 Read online

  “I need advice, and you’re the only officer I know who isn’t in jail or on the run.”

  “You want to leave the Army, is that it? Did Brookeborough put the frighteners on you?”

  Barry lifted his head. His eyes were clear and calm. “I wasn’t afraid then and I’m not afraid now.” Except of myself and what I’ve discovered about me. “I love being part of the Army. But I shot a man and saw him die right in front of me, and I won’t do that again.”

  McCoy gave a snort. “And here’s me thinking you were such a clever fellow. I even told GHQ you had the makings of officer material. Maybe I was wrong. This is war. If you didn’t regret having to kill a man I wouldn’t want to know you, but if you want to be part of the Army you’ll learn to live with it.”

  “Last night on my way here …”

  “You cycled all the way from Clarecastle in the dark? Trying to avoid the gardai?”

  “Not at all, I don’t even think they’re looking for me. And I didn’t set out in the dark, it was late afternoon when I left the farm.” He had waited until Ursula was preoccupied with her horses. The broodmares would be foaling soon.

  “By the time I reached Lough Derg the night was drawing in. I don’t have a light on my bicycle, so I camped a couple of miles north of Killaloe. I found the perfect campsite, Séamus. There’s a little promontory overlooking the Shannon with a deep hollow like a bowl in the centre and oak and beech trees growing all around the rim. The trees form a huge dome I could see from the Scariff road even at dusk.”

  “According to the locals,” said McCoy, “that’s the remains of an ancient Irish ring fort. What you call the rim is an earth embankment now, but under the mud and ivy are the stones of a wall built over a thousand years ago.”

  “Last night …” Barry began again, then stopped himself. Some experiences were too amorphous to articulate. But he would remember. He would remember always.

  Sitting on a fallen tree at the bottom of the hollow. Too troubled to sleep. Alone while the night closed around him. Burying his face in his hands and trying to drive the memories of Brookeborough from his mind.

  I killed a man and I hated it.

  But … for just one moment it felt wonderful.

  Killing the enemy is what heroes are supposed to do.

  But … I was raised to obey the Ten Commandments.

  Thou shalt not kill.

  But … what about Feargal and Seán South, and all the other Irish men and women the British have killed over the years? Don’t they have a right to be avenged?

  Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.

  But … who better to dispense the Lord’s vengeance than the creatures he made in his image? If God didn’t want me to kill that man, why’d he make me so I’d enjoy it?

  Barry beat his knuckles against his skull in an effort to silence the voices inside, but they went on praising and condemning, denying and justifying.

  Then, slowly, a sort of music eased into his overheated brain. It overrode his tortured thoughts with an arpeggio of branches played by the wind. A largo of river flowing to the ocean.

  His tense muscles began to relax.

  The earthwork bank encircled him with protective arms. His nostrils were filled with the clean fragrance of damp soil and the pungency of rotting wood. All around him were the rustlings of nocturnal life, the hunters and the hunted acting out the roles decreed for them since the dawn of time.

  The site possessed an almost palpable atmosphere. Layered, complex. There was a degree of peace in this place, but not tranquillity. In addition to life and death on an elemental level, a haunting echo of emotion persisted. Barry strove to identify it. Intense excitement; yes. Joy amounting to exultation. There was also a residue of terrible grief. And futility; the flat, unpleasant, familiar taste of futility.

  As the hours passed, Barry no longer felt alone. He was in the company of silent multitudes. There was neither past nor future, only now, an eternal Now in which he and the place and all it contained existed in and through one another. Perhaps he dreamed. Perhaps not. It seemed possible, even desirable, to remain where he was forever. To be one with the earth and the river.

  Shortly before dawn, clear, unimpeded thought came like a gift.

  MCCOY’S voice brought him back to the present. “What were you saying about last night?”

  “I did some serious thinking and I realised something I hadn’t realised before. Listen here to me, Séamus. We want to unite Ireland in order to make life better for everybody on this island, right?”

  McCoy nodded.

  “And the purpose of a gun is to destroy life, right?”

  McCoy nodded again.

  “Logic tells me it’s futile to use one to achieve the other. Therefore, the gun is the problem.”

  Chapter Ten

  MCCOY threw back his head and laughed. “You’re as daft as a brush, Seventeen! The gun’s not the problem, the British are. As long as they control even a fraction of Ireland they can pretend they’re still the almighty Empire. They’ve proved time and again that they don’t respect anything but force or the threat of force. Without guns we haven’t a hope of getting them to give back the north.”

  “That well may be,” said Barry, “but what I’m saying is, I personally don’t want to use a gun anymore. A man doesn’t have to be a gunman to be a hero. In 1916, with the British doing their level best to kill him, Pádraic Pearse didn’t fire his Browning once. Tom Clarke was carrying an old revolver that might have killed him if he tried to use it,1 but he never did either.”

  McCoy rolled his eyes heavenward in a now-familiar gesture. “You’re a terrible trial to me, lad. A terrible trial.” Barry’s gaze was so intense that McCoy could feel it burning into his face. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want to carry firearms, is that right?”

  “It is right.”

  “But you’re still a republican?”

  “I am. And I want to stay in the Army.”

  “Jaysus.” McCoy lit a fresh cigarette and took a thoughtful drag. “Well. There is an alternative, but it’s bloody dangerous.”

  “I don’t mind. I’ll do anything except shoot another human being.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” said McCoy.

  URSULA intercepted her son as he wheeled the bicycle into the yard. “Where have you been this time?”

  “Army business.”

  “I thought we decided you were going to college.”

  “You decided, Ursula, I didn’t. School’s out of the question for now because I have a new assignment starting tomorrow. Granda always said we couldn’t have won the War of Independence without the republican women, so I expect you to support me in this.”

  Ursula realised she was outmanoeuvred.

  Her son had not been strictly honest about having an assignment, however. That would come later, McCoy promised, after he completed his training.

  McCoy had given Barry a name and an address on the outskirts of Limerick. “Mickey’s probably the best explosives engineer the Army ever had. He and his wife are keeping an IRA call house now—a safe house—I’ll give you the password. Mickey can teach you everything you need to know. If you dance him around he’ll take against you, so be straight with him from the beginning.”

  Barry set out early the following morning. As he sped south on his bicycle he was aware of the countryside flashing past. In the hedgerows tiny birds were gathering strength for their spring courtship. The fields on either side of the road lay open and empty, anticipating the plough. Ireland was a land waiting to be reborn.

  When the conquerors finally give up and go home.

  THE middle-aged woman who came to the door was decidedly suspicious until Barry gave the password. Standing aside, she beckoned him into a narrow front hall. “Someone for Mick,” she called to the interior of the house.

  A door opened and a man peered out. “Who’s looking for him?”

  “I am,” said Barry. “Séamus McCoy sent me.”

&
nbsp; The man was sixtyish and paunchy, with a tuft of colourless hair like a clump of withered grass atop his otherwise bald head. “Come on through,” he said, indicating the small parlour behind him.

  Over the fireplace someone had hung an old hammer as if it were a sword.

  Barry glanced curiously at the hammer but made no comment. The other man saw the glance. Keeping both hands in his pockets, he looked Barry up and down. “How do you know Séamus McCoy?”

  “He swore me into the Army and was my first training officer.”

  “And you would be … ?”

  “Halloran. Barry.”

  “McCoy give you any message for this Mickey fellow?”

  “He said to tell him there are a hundred potholes in the Falls Road.”

  “Nothing changes, then. Nothing ever bloody changes. Sit down over there, Halloran. I’m Mickey. What can I do for you?”

  “Teach me what I need to know. Séamus says you’re the best engineer in the country.”

  “Was,” Mickey corrected. “Was the best. I’m retired now.”

  “How’d you learn your trade?”

  “You don’t care about all that.”

  “But I do,” Barry assured him. “I’ve always been curious about other people’s lives.”

  Mickey slouched against the doorjamb with his hands still in his pockets. He did not often talk about himself, but Barry’s obvious interest was irresistible. “I was born and reared in Lame, in County Antrim—you know Antrim?—when this whole island was still part of the United Kingdom. Lame was mostly Protestant in those days. Still is, of course. Because we were Catholic my father couldn’t get work, so like a lot of others he took the boat to England and hired on with a construction crew building roads for the government.

  “He came home once a year, for Christmas. My mother always cried. That’s how I remember Christmas: my mother crying and my father turning out his pockets on the table and telling her everything would be all right. ‘Just keep your faith, Peggy,’ he’d say. ‘Just keep your faith.’

  “When I was fourteen I went back with him to work on the road crew. There were seven children still at home and my mother needed the money. As soon as I realised that the men who handled the explosives made the most money, I apprenticed myself to one of them. I was smart and I grew up fast.

  “After a couple of years my father was beat to death by some thugs in an alley. The police didn’t want to know. To them, the killing of an immigrant Paddy was no more than the killing of a dog.” Mickey’s level, unemotional voice concealed a lifetime of rage.

  “I came back to Ireland after that. But I couldn’t stomach life in the north anymore, so I made my way south and joined the Irish Volunteers. When I wasn’t much older than you are now I was blowing up train tracks to keep the Black and Tans from getting supplies. During the Civil War, I took the republican side and kept on fighting. I really was the best with explosives in those days. If I wanted, I could blow the chin whiskers off a man and not singe his eyebrows.

  “When Frank Aiken gave the order to dump arms, I thought I’d put all that behind me. I married the missus and settled down. Then things started up again a few years ago, so I went back on active service. Unfortunately my reflexes weren’t as sharp as they used to be. One day my age caught up with me.”

  Mickey took his right hand from his pocket and held it out for Barry to see. The hand shook uncontrollably. The thumb and first two fingers were missing and the remainder was cobwebbed with angry red scars. “I don’t work with explosives anymore. No prizes for guessing why.”

  Barry tore his gaze away from the mutilated hand. “You can still teach me,” he said.

  MICKEY led the way to a woodshed behind the house. He propped a log against the door to prevent its being opened from the outside, then switched on the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Shelves lining one wall were crammed with empty tins, jam pots, glass bottles, and stacks of old newspapers.

  “Hold out your hands,” Mickey ordered. He carefully examined Barry’s palms and fingertips. “Those long fingers could be an advantage if they’re flexible.”

  “They are.”

  “For your sake I hope you’re right. D’you smoke?”

  “I do.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Mickey retorted. “These aren’t toys you’ll be playing with. Now help me shift this woodpile.”

  With Barry doing most of the lifting, they moved a stack of timber from one side of the shed to the other, uncovering a trapdoor in the floor. “Lie down on your belly,” Mickey instructed, “and feel around in the crawl space down there until you find two big boxes. Bring them up.”

  Barry watched curiously while Mickey took an odd assortment of items from the first box. Wooden clothes pegs, nails, corks, a roll of corrugated wrapping paper, kitchen matches, a narrow plastic tube with holes drilled in it, a mousetrap, some strips of solder, and a roll of blue-grey cord. At the bottom of the box were several battered alarm clocks.

  “This,” said Mickey, “is a bomb-making kit.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, but I am. Deadly serious. The British government gives the RUC and the B-Specials all the weapons they want, and thousands of them are passed on to loyalist gangs. To counter that we’ve had to become resourceful in the true meaning of the word. A resourceful man can construct a bomb with little more than an old alarm clock, a clothes peg, and two drawing pins. Of course one other ingredient is necessary.” He opened the second box, revealing sticks of a substance wrapped in cellophane.

  “Gelignite,” Mickey said. “It comes either like this or in a sort of sausage. Either way, it’ll blow. If you know what you’re doing.”

  He took a small tin from the shelf and removed the lid. “If you pack this full of gelignite you can make a handy little throwing bomb by poking a hole in it and inserting a length of commercial fuse—that’s this over here.” He indicated the roll of cord. “There’s a core of black powder inside a waterproof casing. Don’t let it kink, whatever you do, and be sure to cut the fuse at an angle to expose the core.”

  By way of demonstration Mickey deftly put together five more dummy bombs of various sizes, with a running commentary on each. “This one may look simple, but you’d want to mind what you’re doing. More than one bomb’s failed to explode because somebody forgot to wind the clock.”

  As he worked, the man issued almost as many warnings as instructions. “You’d want to be careful about static electricity. A wool jumper, a cheap nylon shirt—dangerous as hell. I knew a lad who combed his hair too close to an explosive device and set it off.”

  “What happened?”

  “He lost the hair. And the head it grew on.”

  Barry swallowed hard.

  One tiny device made from the workings of a writing pen, was, Mickey claimed, sufficient to blow open an old-fashioned door lock when inserted in place of a skeleton key. “You tailor your explosives to the situation. Some blow upward, some blow out, some’ll even blow under if you place’em right. A tiny charge can open a safe as slick as surgery. A large mine can take the front off a building, but if you’re using a battery-operated detonator things can always go pear-shaped”

  “I know,” Barry said ruefully. “I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Unfortunately I can’t give you any real practice. Since I blew my hand off, the authorities think I’m harmless, but one explosion in my back garden and there’d be swarms of gardai around here. I’d be in prison before I could bless myself lefthanded. So just listen and learn, Halloran. Listen and learn.”

  During the next few hours Barry asked so many questions that Mickey finally said, “You don’t have to make such a meal of this, Halloran.”

  “Did you not claim you could blow the chin whiskers off a man without singeing his eyebrows?”

  Mickey dug in one ear with the little finger of his ruined hand. “Did I?”

  “You did. And I want you to make me as good as you were. Don’t hold anything back.�
��

  He was rewarded with a terse nod of approval.

  Barry stayed for a week, absorbing all Mickey could teach him. The man was a consummate craftsman. He spent a whole day on timing. “All fuses aren’t alike, Barry. A roll of commercial fuse will have slight chemical differences from every other roll. The weather can affect it, too. In a damp climate like ours, fuse that’s out in the open can absorb a surprising amount of moisture from the air. That will affect how fast it burns. Cut off an exact twelve inches, then burn it and measure the time it takes with a good watch. Actually you should burn three pieces to be sure.”

  Barry slept on a battered couch in an otherwise unfurnished back room. He took his meals with Mickey in the kitchen while the woman stood by the hob, watching them. She rarely spoke and never called Mickey by name, but she always served him first. Once or twice her hand lingered on his.

  She touched the mutilated hand as lovingly as she touched the other.

  Along with his expertise Mickey shared a number of anecdotes. “Three or four of us were creeping up on an RUC station, planning to lob a bomb through the window. Just as I was about to throw the thing, I stumbled. It rolled away down the street with the fuse burning and a little mongrel came racing out of nowhere to chase it. He caught it at the worst possible moment. I like dogs; I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

  At the end of three days Mickey admitted, “You’re all right, Halloran. Most men haven’t the temperament to work with explosives. It’s fiddly work at the best of times, but never forget: good workmanship is essential to success.”

  What Mickey called fiddly, Barry called precise. The painstaking detail appealed to a certain orderly quality he was discovering in his own nature: the counterbalance to the wild and reckless side.

  HE returned to the farm eager to utilise his new skills. “When Mickey’s finished with you,” McCoy had said, “get word to me. Then wait for your assignment.”

  When Barry telephoned the pub in Ballina he was told, “Never heard of anyone called McCoy.”