Return to Killybegs

19

I met Antoine in the Thomas Ashe in April 1977. He claimed I taught him to piss that night, but I have no memory of it. I saw him from a good way off, at the back of the room, sitting with Jim O’Leary and his wife, Cathy. Aside from two Basque sympathizers lost in the crowd, he was the only one wearing a Republican T-shirt. Everyone in the place was connected to the IRA, everyone except those who publicly glorified it.

At first, I took him for an American, the kind who shivers over his Irish roots, cries as he places his feet on our soil for the first time, and rushes off to buy a white Aran sweater and a tweed cap. The kind who loves everything about Ireland, from its mud to its rain, from its poverty to its misery. The kind who wants to make himself useful, asks for a gun, but is wary all the same of giving us his passport and declaring it lost at the American consulate.

And then I looked at his lips, their extreme mobility, that particular way the French have of elaborately chewing their words. He was speaking with his mouth open, the way people without secrets do.

I saw him again the following day, for the Easter parade. I was getting the Fianna to line up in the street when I caught his eye. He was crying. He was watching the crowd, our wives, our children and our men, and he was crying. Not the way a child or someone who is hurt cries, but silently, taking advantage of the rain to disguise his tears. When the hundreds of former prisoners lined themselves up in rows of three alongside widows carrying wreaths, and their children in their Sunday best, he turned to face the wall. The wee Frenchman wasn’t like the other visitors. He wasn’t observing our suffering, he was sharing it.

It was cold. We set off down the road and he followed us, one of the family now. A little earlier, I had called him ‘son’ for the first time. I’d positioned him on the corner of Divis Street, promising him a surprise. The IRA was my surprise. Several dozen fighters in parade uniform, wearing black berets and white belts. I looked at my men through his eyes. I felt his shudder. He had arrived the evening before and found himself plunged into the war. The helicopters, the armoured vehicles, our flags, our fifes, our drums. What did he see? Shadow soldiers, children without fathers, wives without anything left at all. Sad and weary, ours was a solemn portion of humanity, with our silent companions — poverty, dignity and death. Like him, my gaze was brushing over the worn coats, the muddy shoes. Like him, I looked at the rain-drenched hair, the exhausted faces. I glimpsed my bleak shadow in the reflection of a window. I couldn’t disown any part of these people. They were made of me as I was moulded from them. And Antoine stood there with his mouth agape. I was touched, and I was proud, too. My country was giving him a gift.

That April Sunday was the first and last time I saw Antoine cry. Much later, years afterwards, I asked him why. He simply replied that the tears had been his way of applauding us.

When I got out of the Kesh, I learned that Antoine had been used by the IRA. Appalled by my arrest, my laughable trial and sentence, and disgusted by the dirty protest, he had begged Jim O’Leary to find him a task, a role, some little thing he could do to help.

Ireland’s war is the business of the Irish. I have always distrusted foreigners who wanted to fight at our side. As for explaining our position to people in their own country, organizing information meetings, holding press conferences, mustering up demonstrations? Yes, of course, a thousand times. But I never considered entrusting them with a single round.

— That attitude will be the death of us, Jim used to say. Connolly taught us internationalism, not the cult of borders!

— The IRA isn’t an army of mercenaries, I’d reply.

He’d burst out laughing.

— Mercenaries, Tyrone? What do you mean by mercenaries? When your father wanted to fight for the Spanish Republic, was he a mercenary?

He got on my nerves. He was right, he was wrong, depending on my mood. I didn’t want a stranger to die in our war, or be taken prisoner. That was all. I imagined the British propaganda, the press, the Unionists. The IRA? A bunch of French, Americans or Germans looking for a revolution. The IRA? The newest attraction for Western leftists. Wake up, Ireland! Look who’s fighting on your soil in your name!

Jim made fun of me. He thought me a narrow-minded nationalist. One day, he asked me if I had even been out of Ireland. If I’d crossed the sea. If I’d heard a single foreign language in my whole life. If I’d come across a single viewpoint from elsewhere. If I had even the slightest idea of what Rome or Brussels was. If I’d even looked beyond my own backyard. He was hitting the nail on the head. I hadn’t yet betrayed Belfast for Paris. We were in the Thomas Ashe, ordering rounds. It was before the grass informed on me. Antoine was there, listening to us without speaking. They exchanged a quick, amused look. I said to myself that those two were up to no good. And I was right.

The wee Frenchman had made the most of my thirteen months under the blankets to defy me. Jim had arranged a discreet meeting between Antoine and an international affairs officer. Antoine was a Parisian violin-maker, probably unknown to British intelligence. Of course, he strode up and down our streets and drank in our clubs, but so did many others. He played the violin, that was his weapon. In the eyes of the police, he was an idealist looking for inspiration for his compositions.

Jim made enquiries. Antoine was living on a quiet street that led on to boulevard des Batignolles, the instrument-makers’ quarter. He had an unused utility room to which he gave Jim the key, on an anchor keyring. It became a hideout, with an inner yard and a simple low wall joining the neighbouring building. There were three metro stations at equal distances — Rome, Liège and Europe. It was an ideal, quiet location. Several of our lads stayed one after the other under this Paris roof. John McAnulty, Mary Devaney and Paddy Best. None of them ever met Antoine.

He also transported money to pay for somebody’s passage, and more money another time to assist several combatants on their way to Hungary. Twice, he hired cars with false French papers. He hid bulletproof vests in his workshop. He served as a translator. He accompanied an IRA officer on a night train from Paris to Bilbao. He didn’t ask any questions. Our reasons gave him a clear conscience and our suffering gave him conviction.

When I learned that Antoine had assisted the IRA, I went to see Jim. The exchange was heated and brief. I was his OC. I demanded the names, the places, the dates, the facts. The Frenchman was to be left outside all of that.

The following Saturday, I led the wee Frenchie into a room in the Thomas Ashe, a corner to ourselves, behind the bar. A man guarded the door. Antoine sat down and I remained standing. I threw his key on the table. The anchor.

— What is that?

He looked at me, flabbergasted.

— The key to my place.

— Who did you give it to?

He lowered his eyes.

— Who to, son?

He shook his head. He didn’t know their names. I was whispering. The clamour from the bar came to us in waves. On the stage, the band was playing ‘Danny Boy’.

— You are not Irish, Antoine.

I whispered it to him gently, the way you’d deliver bad news.

— What would you be if you weren’t Irish, the owner of Mullin’s had once asked.

— I’d be ashamed, my father had replied.

I leaned back against the wall as I told him that he was Antoine the violin-maker, not Tom Williams, not Danny Finley. He was a friend of Ireland, a comrade, a brother, but also a bystander. He had no ancestors who had died during the Great Famine, no grandfather who was hanged by the English, no brother who had fallen in active service, or sister who had been locked up. I told him that by indulging himself, he was putting people in danger.

Indulging? He gestured in protest.

— We’re not playing at war, we’re making it, son.

I told him that he couldn’t claim our anger.

And then I sat down across from him. I placed my hand on the table, palm up. I asked him to place his alongside. My farmer’s hand, his musician’s hand. Tyrone’s skin, Antoine’s skin. One worn by brick, the other polished by wood. Leather and silk.

— Promise me you’ll drop all that.

He looked at me.

— Promise me, I repeated.

I told him that he would remain our wee Frenchie, our violin-maker. He’d talk to us of maple, ebony, boxwood, rosewood. He’d place a cylinder of pale wood between our pints, swearing on his life that it was the soul of a violin. He’d play drunken jigs for us, the national anthem, a lament beside a grave to mourn one of our own. He would be our reflection and our difference.

— I promise you.

He had understood.

Then I leaned over the table and took his face between my hands.

— You wee insignificant volunteer.

Thomas McElwee died on 8 August 1981, at twenty-four years of age, after sixty-two days of hunger striking. Micky Devine went on 20 August after sixty days of fasting. He was twenty-seven.

That’s when the family of a hunger striker asked for an end to the suffering. A father and a mother, sitting at the bedside of death, warming up the hands of their lifeless statue with their own hands. Their son had fallen into a coma. They gave their consent to have him fed. Then another mother gave in. And another. And another. And another eight mothers who each refused to lose her child.

The hunger strike officially ceased on 3 October 1981 at half past three. One hundred volunteers were signed up to join the protest in turn. Some had secretly pushed their names up the list to start sooner.

Several days later, the prisoners were given authorization to wear civilian clothes, but not to claim they were political prisoners.

Margaret Thatcher never yielded, it was said.

Antoine had followed the martyrdom step by step. He was infuriated by his powerlessness. He observed our distress as a witness kept at a distance.

— You don’t think that the Frenchman might be useful to you?

I hesitated, looked at Waldner.

— Which Frenchman?

The British agent gave me a pitying look.

— Ah now, Tenor! None of that between us, come on.

I remained silent. I didn’t know what he knew.

— Antoine Chalons, the name doesn’t ring a bell?

We were walking along the street, sheltered under a large umbrella.

— Nobody wishes him any harm, this Antoine of yours.

He looked at me, smiling.

— On the contrary, in fact, Meehan. On the contrary.

I had my hands in my pockets. I was squeezing my left thigh between my thumb and index finger so hard I could have screamed.

— You were right to advise him to quit his stupidity, but that doesn’t suit us at all.

I looked at him.

— He has nothing to do with all that.

Waldner stopped dead. I met his gaze.

— Nothing? He’s hiding terrorists, he’s moving dough around, and you call that nothing?

— You’re bluffing! You haven’t any proof.

— The French police have everything they need. His workshop is under surveillance, and I’m suggesting to you that we place him under protection.

He had started walking again. I threw him a foolish question.

— What do you want?

Waldner lit a cigarette while keeping an eye on the street.

— The French are watching him but we’re going to reassure them. We’ll tell them that we need this guy. That they shouldn’t take him in.

That day, I refused to enter the cemetery. Pretending to pay homage to a hero in the company of the enemy was killing me. Waldner was courteous, as usual. He didn’t give any orders, he made suggestions. He asked me to use the end of the strike to appear to change my mind regarding Antoine. I’d have to see him again. Invite him into our secret circle. Ask him for his key.

— But you and you alone will make use of it, Meehan. There’s no question of him putting anyone else up or transporting anything. He will be your alibi.

— I have no reason to be in Paris for the IRA.

— You’ll find one, Tenor. Your imagination is already legendary.

Antoine arrived in Belfast two days later, on 11 October 1981.

I took him by car to the upper part of the city.

— Do you still want to serve the Irish Republic?

He looked at me. He was astonished. There was laughter in his eyes. Want to? Absolutely! Of course he wanted to! When? Immediately! Whatever I needed of him. I calmed him down with a look. We passed some armoured vehicles. He smiled at the helmeted soldier sticking up out of the open turret, cheek crushed against his rifle butt.

— Pan! Pan! Pan! the wee violin-maker kidded. Rapid fire in French, a good-humoured onomatopoeia uttered through the windscreen.

He would give me the key the next time he came over. No, he’d never ask me anything. Yes, he’d come to meet me at the airport and leave me back there at the end of each trip. It’s a promise, Tyrone. A secret between the two of us, Antoine?

— Not even Jim?

— Just you and me. A mission requiring the utmost trust.

He looked at me, suddenly anxious.

— You’re not going to strike in France?

Never, my wee toy soldier. You don’t spill blood in a country that supports your cause. You love it, you protect it, you respect it. The IRA would never touch your soil. It is sacred to us.

— Alright, son? Will we keep it like that?

We would keep it like that. Of course. If he had been less cramped, he would have taken out his violin to celebrate the great news. Antoine was entering our ranks once more. He was leaving his loveless life for the love of our lives. I felt strange, neither shameful, nor guilty, nor remorseful. I looked at him. I didn’t regret a thing. By using him, I was making amends for his foolhardiness. He would play at war without risk or injury. I was going to protect him. He had his eyes closed, his hands crossed behind his head. He was the picture of happiness. And I was happy for him.

— Pan! Pan! Pan!

Bent over the tape recorder, Waldner jumped. He gave me a questioning look.

— We were passing an armoured car.

He nodded, smiling.

— A real terror, your little Frenchman.

Three months before, they had installed a miniature recording device and microphone in my glove compartment. Every Saturday at the Castle Place post office I would write a postcard on the counter that was always covered in scraps of paper. The tapes were in a closed envelope, sellotaped to the inside of the Belfast Telegraph. Waldner would come in, approach the counter and take the newspaper. Not a word exchanged, not a glance. It was convenient. As if he wasn’t who he was, as if I wasn’t myself.

I became acquainted with Honoré. A little like the way you learn to recognize a French wine. I observed him for a long time before tasting him. He was different to Waldner or the red-haired handler, who had stayed behind in Belfast, with their military questions. When they met me, they were waging war. Honoré, on the other hand, was not a soldier, but rather a student who works hard at his course. And I was the subject of his study.

We met at the Jussieu Campus in Paris. Unlike Belfast, the gates of the institution were not guarded, the stairways were clear and the classrooms often left open. Only once, after violent incidents between students from the left and right, did campus police screen everyone. Honoré asked me for a passport photo to make me a university staff card in case that should happen again, but the guards had disappeared the following day. On fine days, we sat out on the flagstones on chairs borrowed from a classroom. I’d talk, he’d take notes. From a distance we looked like a professor and his student. In the cafeteria, at the back of a deserted amphitheatre or sitting on tables in a deserted space, we looked like the ghosts surrounding us. We would eat sandwiches and drink soft drinks. No alcohol during our talks. He’d asked me that as a favour. So I’d come to the meeting with my flask in my pocket and I’d drink behind the Englishman’s back.

The first time I saw Honoré, he was wearing a civil-servant suit, but in Paris, with me, he preferred jeans, polo-necks and trainers.

To begin with, he asked me unimportant things. I think he was warming up. He wasn’t interested in what the IRA was up to.

— What I want to know is what it’s thinking.

What the IRA was thinking? He wanted to get a picture of who gave the orders within the army, the politicians or the soldiers. If there were dissensions in that respect and who made up the different factions. He asked me questions about Irish current affairs. At the last Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, which public speaker had been wildly applauded by the crowd, and which had practically cleared the room when they took the platform? Why? And what impact did it have on the movement’s strategy? Discussing that kind of thing seemed fairly harmless. But his way of taking notes reminded me who he was. As he wrote, he didn’t stop watching me for a moment. He never lowered his gaze to his notebook. He’d scribble his letters by guesswork, instinctively putting sentences together. Between my eyes and his eyes was the thread, and he was afraid of breaking or losing it. He knew that while I was looking at him, I’d almost forget he was writing. From time to time, Honoré would nod, blink, offer me a sign of understanding. When I hesitated, he’d encourage me with a frown. Two friends chatting, the older seeming to captivate the younger. Never, in all my life, had anyone ever listened to me like that.

It is difficult to write, to say or even to understand, but little by little I came to enjoy these exchanges. My words weren’t killing anyone, making anyone suffer or sending anyone to prison.

— I’m sure you’re going to like Honoré, the handler had told me.

And I had shrugged disinterestedly.

Sometimes I even found him funny.

— You don’t consider that by naming a party ‘Sinn Féin’, Protestants will feel excluded? he asked me one day.

— Excluded?

— Calling yourself ‘We Alone’, yes, that’s going to cause feelings of exclusion!

I smiled.

—‘Ourselves’, Honoré. The words ‘Sinn Féin’ mean ‘ourselves’ in Irish. We will free ourselves by ourselves.

He made a note, pulled a face despite what I’d told him and circled the word in black.

— When I circle a word, it’s to check it, he informed me.

— You circle quite a lot of things.

— That’s true.

The British agent’s main interest was about our real attitude towards an eventual ceasefire. Our newspapers, meetings and demonstrations all called for a lasting peace. He wanted to know if it was a slogan intended for onlookers or an ideology that drove us.

— How can you advocate phrases such as ‘With a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other’?

So I’d explain, the way a man does to a child. I was patient and we had the time. Yes, the Republican movement was ready to discuss peace, but we needed a strong signal from London. Without this signal, our people would forbid us from laying down our arms.

— Even since the hunger strikes?

I looked him right in the eye. Contact between the IRA and London had never ceased. Never. Even during Bobby’s death throes, even after his death and those of his comrades. There had always been a means of communicating between the two camps. He knew it, I knew it. So why didn’t he quit asking his trick questions.

— What strong signal?

— A gesture for the prisoners.

— A gesture?

— Or a word, a phrase that would allow everyone an honourable way out.

— Too early.

— Well then, an Armalite in one hand…

He wrote, then crossed out that sentence. Like me, he knew that no military victory would ever be won in Northern Ireland. The IRA wasn’t strong enough to break up the British force. And after having fought our great-grandparents, our parents and us, the British were going to have to fight our children, and our children’s children. He nodded, looking at me. There was something in his eyes. Curiosity, interest, even sympathy, I searched for a long time without working it out. One day, he asked me why we were at war.

— God made us Catholics, the gun made us equals, I answered.

He circled the sentence to check it, just to make me smile.

In 1991, we swapped the Jussieu Campus for the red double-decker buses imported from England for tourists to take trips around Paris. In winter as well as summer we’d go up on top, in the open air, carefully choosing the passengers sitting close by. We’d pick Asians or Arabs. We’d listen to them, and if they were speaking English between themselves, we’d change seats. Honoré would always sit on the outside and I’d sit in the aisle seat so as not to be seen from the street. The tour had commentary included, with tourist information and music. Each passenger had headsets, so we could speak freely in low voices. Honoré would always get off at the Louvre and I’d stop at Opéra. No goodbyes. Until the next time.

When I’d get back to the hideout, I’d sometimes pass by Antoine’s workshop. I’d look at him from the street, through his ground-floor window, bent over a volute, knife in hand. Local residents would often stop to watch his work. He didn’t see them, but he would sense my presence. He’d raise his head. Just a sign, a wink, the code of a resistance fighter, before returning to his work. I could tell his heart was pounding. On the other side of his window stood the great Tyrone Meehan, secretly furthering his country’s struggle. What had he done? Transported arms? Checked places out? All that mattered was that he was safe in this city, this street, this hideout, and that he owed it to a French violin-maker.

Paris gave me the courage to brave Belfast. With Honoré, I had some influence. With Waldner, I skulked along the walls. My work with one justified my informing the other. After all, why not instruct the enemy about our politics? What had we to hide? Nothing. Sinn Féin spent its time calling for dialogue with the British, and there, in Paris, Honoré and I had initiated peace talks. For eleven years, he had been Margaret Thatcher, then John Major, then Tony Blair for me, and I had been the IRA for him.

But above all else, I was Tyrone Meehan, a Republican combatant. I wasn’t renouncing or corrupting anything. I had left the bastard on the curb of the Falls Road. In Paris, I wasn’t betraying, I was teaching. I was doing something useful, active, essential and probably historic. Something that hadn’t yet been attempted by anybody in the movement. Without my leaders’ approval, or even their authorization, I was in direct contact with the enemy through its ambassador, and we were preparing the future. It was dizzying, beyond intoxicating. I felt stronger than anyone or anything. Greater than our politicians, than the IRA Council, than Waldner, than the red-haired handler. So much more important than Honoré, this kid from Norfolk who wrote down what I dictated. I had never felt that power. In my whole life, I had never been so strong. I wasn’t obeying anyone’s orders. I was writing my country’s history. In secret, in silence, on the fringes of my world and people, I was serving my homeland to the best of my ability. I was so much more useful to peace doing this than I was firing some futile shot at a night patrol from a rooftop.

There was respect in the way Honoré looked at me. That distinctive brightness, that complete attention, beauty I couldn’t name, that’s what it was. Honoré respected me. He drank up every sentence I uttered. He still circled information to check, but less and less frequently. The word ‘fascinated’ hit me one intoxicating day. That was it exactly: I fascinated the enemy and he respected me. He no longer commanded me, it was I who had him.

One afternoon in June 1994, while our bus was parked at Trocadéro, Honoré’s respect for me was transformed to admiration. I had just told him that the IRA had decided to permanently cease hostilities. He looked at me without writing. For a long time, without saying a word. And then he turned his head. The Eiffel Tower, the laughing tourists, the souvenir vendors, the cloudless sky. When he turned back to me, I thought I saw a child.

— Are you sure, Tyrone?

Tyrone. Not Meehan, not Tenor. The name my father had given me. Yes, I was sure. I knew. Before the year was out. That summer, perhaps.

— A ceasefire, Honoré murmured to himself.

— No. The complete cessation of military operations.

He looked at me again, the way you’d fondly look at a friend. And then his eyes left mine for the first time. He was writing. His hand was shaking. It was as if he didn’t want to let that phrase slip away.

The complete cessation of military operations.

He reread the sentence. Contemplated it all the way to the Champ de Mars.

And he didn’t circle it.

The British would negotiate with the IRA. The Protestants would be obliged to accept us in the corridors of power, and then at the decision-making table. And one day Ireland would be united again. Then the border would be trampled over by thousands of laughing children. Then our women, our men, our daughters and our soldiers would run across the fields towards our brothers in the Republic. Then they would finally embrace, hug, kiss and cry with joy. Then the breeze would get up and the sun shine on our flags. Then we would suddenly be on our knees, and suddenly, from cities to villages, from Belfast backstreets to Dublin avenues, from Wicklow hills to the harbour in Killybegs, we’d be praying for our martyrs and thanking heaven. And our Protestant brothers would accept our outstretched hands. And war would be a thing of the past, and we would have peace for all time. And there I would be, in some dark corner, not even in uniform, without a medal, without friends, without cheers. I would be standing in the middle of my people, unknown, anonymous. I, who would have done that, all of it. Who could finally ask forgiveness of Danny Finley, of Jim O’Leary, and forgiveness of my dreams.