Return to Killybegs

15. Killybegs, Saturday, 30 December 2006

Yesterday morning, I had a visitor. A car pulled in just after the little bridge. I was at the well, getting water for the night. I heard the car reversing. I placed the bucket on the edge of the well. A door slammed. I made my way towards the cottage, walking backwards.

All these years, I’d kept Seánie’s hurley, which was now hidden behind my armchair. I had plaited a rope handle and a leather wrist strap to keep it firmly in my hand. I was smiling as I strengthened it, imagining an assassin’s surprise when faced with an eighty-year-old man brandishing a second-hand bludgeon.

I drew back, my eyes on the clearing that opened up at the bottom of my path. I could hear heavy footsteps on the road. I was frightened for the first time since arriving.

Barely ten days earlier, the IRA was interrogating me in a Dublin suburb. Opposite me were Mike O’Doyle and an old IRA counter-intelligence guy I didn’t know. I admitted I was a British agent, simply, nothing more. I had said it to the press, I was repeating it to my former brothers in arms. The rest did not concern them.

Without the peace process I would have ended up with a bullet in my neck in a dump beside the border. But the IRA had laid down its arms, and my fate was part of that commitment. They would not kill me. They had the military capability to do so, of course, but not the political means. And I wanted them to take responsibility for what might happen to me. I had decided not to flee. I would remain in my country. I wanted them to know that.

— I’m going home to Killybegs, in Donegal.

— Shut the fuck up, Meehan! shouted the older man.

— Now you know.

— We don’t want to know anything.

Too bad. They knew. I had trapped them. I was no longer their soldier, or their prisoner, and I was placing myself under their protection. If I was killed, by a Loyalist, a Brit or an armchair nationalist with his hunting rifle, everyone would accuse the IRA. Nobody would believe their denials. And that would be the end of the peace process. If the Republican movement wanted to protect its negotiations, it would have to keep me alive.

— What do I do now? I asked.

— You fend for yourself, replied the IRA.

I was astonished.

— You’re signing my death warrant, Mike O’Doyle, you know that?

They turned off the camera that was recording my interrogation.

— You should have thought of that before, Tyrone. We can’t do anything else for you.

A guy was walking along the path. Short and stocky, with short grey hair and creased eyes. His hands were empty, a satchel over his shoulder. When he saw me, he froze and waved.

— Tyrone Meehan?

I stopped at the door.

— Are you Tyrone Meehan?

— Why?

— Jeffrey Kerr, from the Donegal Sentinel.

I motioned to him not to come any closer.

— How did you find me?

— A bit of investigating, adding up…

A journalist. The beginning of the end. He was looking at the house from a distance.

— May I come in?

— No.

— May I come a bit closer?

— What do you want?

— Are you going to hide here for long?

He was moving forward slowly, like a child stalking a bird. Because of his weight, he was stumbling over the ruts and breathing heavily.

— I’m not hiding. I just want to be left alone.

— Are you staying here or will you go elsewhere?

— I’m not going anywhere. Leave, please.

— People are talking about you a lot these days.

— Can you not see? I’m in the middle of nowhere and I’m doing no one any harm, so leave now!

He sniffed noisily, glancing at my door with the sorry look of someone not allowed in. He raised a hand, and dropped it again.

— Who gave you this address?

The journalist shrugged. He didn’t even turn around.

— Gave? You mean sold!

— Who?

— A friend of yours, Timmy Gormley.

I shook my head. Timmy Gormley. I repeated his name out loud, ‘King of the quays.’ I calculated. It was the first time in sixty-five years that I’d heard that name. When I left him, the pitiful gang leader was picking a fight with Josh Byrne, the pixie with the pockmarked face. After all this time, Josh had become an old priest, Timmy had remained a bastard, and I was no longer anything at all.

I waited for the door to slam shut. For the car to leave. I went back inside. The fire was nearly dead so I pulled on a second jumper. And then I was overcome with dizziness. I sat down at the table. I could see the journalist again in my mind’s eye, balanced strangely on the path, turned sideways, his left arm behind his back. Every time I moved, he had moved with me. I’d found it strange, suspicious. And suddenly I understood. The bag, his stance, his arm thrown behind him so as not to block the screen. He was filming. I’d been filmed. He had stolen the cottage, the fir tree, the surroundings, my unshaven face, my tired eyes, my trousers that were too big, my large jumper and my muddy shoes. It had occurred to me that he’d given up too quickly, but he hadn’t given up anything. He hadn’t taken out either a pen or a notebook. He knew well, in coming here, that I wasn’t going to confide in him. That he’d be going back to the office without confessions or regrets. It wasn’t my words he came to steal, it was my image.

I didn’t eat dinner. The Donegal Sentinel had no need to even make a film. The journalist would simply take an image for the front page and then sell the rest to television. I knew it. I was certain of it. I didn’t sleep, either. I stayed sitting at the table, my head on my arms, my anorak thrown over my shoulders, watching the flame of the candle dance.

This afternoon, I wasn’t able to walk through the door of Mullin’s. Two men turned to look at me when I arrived in Bridge Street. A woman crossed the road. The owner was waiting for me at the pub door. It was the time I usually came to drink and he knew it. My steps slowed. He placed himself in the doorway. I gave him a questioning look.

— We don’t want any trouble, Meehan.

— What trouble?

— You’re in the paper, on the television. We’re simple people, you know. That business is far too serious for our little town.

I put my hands in my pockets. I withdrew.

— Buy your beers in the shop and drink at home, it’ll be better that way.

The door opened. A man walked out. He put on his cap, said goodbye to the owner, avoided my eyes. Behind him, the bar was packed. My father’s table was no longer there, nor the coat stand. They’d moved the cigarette machine. It was in my place.

— Sorry, Meehan.

He wasn’t. I don’t think he was. He went back into his bar. I looked again, one last time, just the few seconds it took for the swinging door to close behind him. The dark panelling, the old counter, the gilded lamps, the high stools, the pictures, the black and red ceiling, the snugs down the back, the brass beer taps, the surge of warmth and the buzz of all those people. I didn’t leave immediately. I crossed the street and leaned against the opposite wall. I was waiting for the door to open.

— Come on, Tyrone Meehan! Come back in here! One last pint for old time’s sake. Out of respect for your father, and as a homage to your past. In memory of the kid who wouldn’t dare go into the place or walk across the room, who used to cough in the smoke, who’d sip the creamy head from the large glasses held out to him, who’d listen to Padraig Meehan sing, who’d come to look for him in his drunkenness, and take him back through his darkness, step by step. To you, Tyrone Meehan! Before all the Timmy Gormleys of heaven and earth come looking to kill you!

I bought a bottle of whiskey. I walked through the town. I went as far as the fortified tower. It was cold. There was frost over everything, the grass, the brambles, the trees, the low stone walls. My father had told me one day that my mother deserved to be living in a castle. That it was our fault if she was working herself to death. Ours, their children’s. It was the middle of summer. There was a light, salty rain falling. He took me to the tower. He was walking quickly, he wasn’t waiting for me. When we arrived, he sat on the rocks facing the ruin and told me the story of that keep. A very beautiful woman had lived there with her very happy husband. A count, a prince, I don’t know. Someone who had a job. When the first child came along, the first stones fell from the tower. With the second child’s arrival, more stones fell. And the bigger the family grew, the more the tower crumbled. One day, the prince left in anger and the princess died, crushed by an enormous block that had come away from the roof.

— And the children? I asked.

My father got up. He moved ahead of me, with his bigger, ‘father’ steps.

— The children? They turned into crows.

He pointed out a black bird in the sky.

— There you are, that one’s called Francis.

I was walking behind him with wee, fearful steps. I was crying softly. I didn’t want to ruin our house. I didn’t want Father to leave. I didn’t want Mother to die. I didn’t want to become a crow.

I was six years old.