Return to Killybegs

21

On 2 December 2006, we were invited to Deirdre’s wedding. She was the granddaughter of Pat Sheridan, another Kesh veteran. Something wasn’t right from the moment I walked in, the silence behind some looks. When I arrived with Sheila, the young bride was dancing on a pub table, arm in the air and glass raised. The room was packed. I went to sit down at our usual table. Our places had been kept. On the stage, a band was playing Sixties tunes. We had missed the national anthem, the father of the bride and husband’s speeches, and I wasn’t wearing a tie.

When she saw me, Deirdre beckoned, laughing.

— Tyrone! At last! Ten minutes later and you’d have been attending my divorce!

I winked and gave her the thumbs up. I hadn’t wanted to come. I was actually about to go to bed when Sheila insisted. She had slipped into her green velvet party dress with white frills and cuffs, and pierced her grey hair with a large black comb.

— Nobody will understand, Tyrone. And besides, I don’t want to lie to them.

I had complained of a pain in my head, then in my stomach and then I’d given up. I simply didn’t wish to go. Sheila placed my grey suit on the bed, smiling the while. So I got dressed, and then I followed her.

The pub had closed its bar for the evening. Everyone had come with their own drink. In my paper bag were six cans of Guinness and a flask of vodka. Sheila had brought a small bottle of gin and a large one of tonic water. Fruit juices were lined up on the bar so people could help themselves. There were two people at our table, Divis residents. Chairs arrived for us, passed from hand to hand over people’s heads, brushing against the white paper flowers bedecking the ceiling. Several minutes after we walked in, Sheila took off her shoes to dance. Just like that, stone-cold sober, with a slightly ridiculous enthusiasm. She was catching up on the evening, her drunken friends. When I went to the jacks, I bumped into the groom’s brother. We had been imprisoned together.

— Some night, eh Gerry? I said out of politeness while pissing loudly.

He was doing up his buttons.

— If you say so.

Gerry Sheridan had never been too talkative. In the Kesh, the screws called him ‘the Oyster’. He didn’t give them anything, not a word. He didn’t speak to us, either. But his face was made for smiling. That evening, Gerry didn’t turn his head. It was the first time. Maybe he was making me pay for being late.

We had missed the Mass, and the cavalcade on the Falls Road, with a British Saracen armoured car to lead the bridal party. The newly-weds had been stopped on the steps of the church by four fake soldiers in English uniform. Then they were driven to the club like that, in the midst of laughter and cheering, saluted by beeping, hoisted on the open turret, shouting their heads off. I didn’t like these games. Ten years earlier, we were looking at these khaki cockroaches from the sights of our rocket-launchers, and here were our children paying to drive around in them. They’d decorate them with flowers and paper chains, hang the national flag from the antenna, install loudspeakers and tear through the nationalist areas pumping out rock music and revving the engine.

— This is peace, Tyrone, Sheila would say, when an armoured car decorated for a celebration would roar past us.

She’d take my arm, laugh, raise a happy hand.

— Unlike you, they’ve succeeded in taking it over without firing a shot.

She’d tease me and I’d shake her off just long enough to pretend to be mad. I’d shout ‘Long live the IRA’, shaking my cap at arm’s length.

When I emerged from the bog, I looked over at Gerry Sheridan’s table. The Oyster was talking with Mickey, head to head. He turned towards me, and then Mickey looked at me too, his lips white.

When Mickey got out of prison, we fell into each other’s arms. Of all the combatants brought together to kill Popeye the screw, I was the only one to have got away with it. I had sold Mickey, and Terry went down shortly afterwards as did Jane, the girl on the bike who was supposed to take our guns. Even the two lads from Divis, our reinforcements, had been imprisoned.

Mickey had talked under torture. It was because of him that everyone had gone down and nobody had ever held it against him.

One time he’d been drinking, he publicly expressed surprise that I hadn’t been taken in.

— Why? Had he given them something on me?

Mickey protested. He’d said nothing! They didn’t know anything, but I was known in the ghetto, so they could have guessed I was involved, that was all. I frowned. I remember that moment perfectly.

— You’re sure you’ve nothing to tell me, Mickey?

My friend started trembling, his lips and his hands. The batons had knocked out half his teeth, his arm was crippled. He didn’t know what I was talking about, he swore he didn’t. He was panicking. I felt like a bastard, despicable, worse than the devil himself. He was pitiful. He had told them everything about me, everything. He had betrayed me in the blood, described every one of my gestures, every thought I’d expressed. All the British had to do was gather me up like fallen fruit. For weeks, he’d been afraid of seeing me pass his cell door. Feared seeing my smashed face and the look I’d give him before asking for an explanation. Then, over the years, he’d hoped I’d be arrested. He’d prefer to face my anger than have doubts about me. And he’d waited for me. In vain. Then he understood that my freedom had had a price, and that he was the cost.

In one another’s arms, on his release from prison, we were bound together. He with his secret, and me with mine. We were going to have to confront peace, injured by this silence. Since then, we’d avoided each other. I am still Tyrone, he is still Mickey, but in laying down our arms we have buried the truth.

There couldn’t have been contempt in that look, surely? Not that, not for me. I must have stumbled into a painful conversation between the two men. Those late-night confessions that drunkenness demands. Mickey had been widowed only nine days previously. He said that without his wife and without his war, there was nothing left in his life. That was it. I had just stumbled over Mickey’s sorrow, his distress faced with grief and peace, that was all.

Later that night, I passed Mike O’Doyle. He gave me a look, too. He went back to his table and watched me closely over his glass. Fourteen days later, it was him questioning me. Him asking me my surname, my first name and my date of birth for some ridiculous ceremony. He who was trying to make me talk.

— Since when have you been betraying us, Tyrone?

Poor kid. Standing totally rigid beside the old combatant he was trying to impress with his questions and his looks. Did he know already, that evening? I never asked him. Sheila was tipsy. At one point, she knocked into her chair. Mike got up, laughing, twirled through a few steps with her, and then took up his silent observation once more.

They know!

And it was suddenly obvious. They knew, all of them. This wedding was a trap. Sheila had dragged me here to make me talk. I mixed her gin with the end of my beer. I looked around at the other tables, the half-emptied glasses. I would help get rid of all that, I’d drink these leftovers on the sly.

No. They don’t know anything. It’s just a bad night, another night that has haunted me for the past twenty-five years. I’m no longer able to read people’s eyes, I don’t understand what their lips say. I take an embrace for an elbow and silence for disdain.

And yet, that night in the club, the looks became unreadable. Not those of the women, of distant friends, of lads met along the way, but those of my brothers in arms. For the first time in my life, I saw the IRA the way one sees the enemy. Because it was still there, the IRA. Despite the ceasefire, despite the peace process, despite our weapons destroyed one after another, it was still there. At that packed table, behind that bar, in that murmuring group, at the door, in the corridors, in that dark suit or that pale shirt. It was there, hostile. I felt its distrust. I recognized its behaviour, its manner, its way of shunning a man. For my entire life, I have suspected men. So many men. I would mutter their names in a friend’s ear, I’d point them out with a finger. I’d get down from my barstool or cross the street and I’d stand there, right in front of them, letting the suspect know he should be on his way. And today that man was me, Tyrone Meehan. On that evening of celebration I was being watched, they were keeping an eye on me. Leaning on Mickey’s shoulder, the Oyster pointed me out. I drank from a glass that wasn’t mine. A bitter-tasting liquor. I was hot, cold, could no longer feel my stomach or heart. I wanted to get sick. I was afraid. Just as Deirdre came to my table, I got up.

— Quick! A glass for Tyrone Meehan or he’s going to desert! shouted the bride.

A guy handed me a pint of the black stuff. Five more were waiting, flat from sitting too long. The Sheridan girl sat on my knee.

— Why the long face, Sheila’s wee man!

From calling me that in front of people, my wife had managed to spread the word around the neighbourhood, then the city and perhaps even the whole country. I apologized. You know, young lass, I’m eighty-one years old all the same. The days are long when you near the end.

— The end? But sure you’ll live to a hundred, Tyrone Meehan!

She laughed, and hugged Sheila who was making her way back to the table. I met Mike O’Doyle’s unpleasant look. A hundred? I could swear he shook his head to say no.

The following day was a Sunday. My mobile phone rang shortly before eleven in the morning.

— Tenor? It’s Dominik.

I was in the living room reading the Sunday World. I spilled my coffee.

— Cemetery at midday.

Not another word. He hung up.

It had been a long time since I’d seen the red-haired handler. A long time, too, since I’d been to Henry Joy McCracken’s grave. I got up without a word. Sheila was at Mass. I no longer went. They had forbidden me Communion so I refused them my prayers. I took a taxi, not my car. Sunday. The rain, the grey facades of the city’s north side. I went around and around on foot, the newspaper in my hand to give me a role. I had put on my cap, my dark glasses and a scarf pulled up over my mouth.

On my third circuit of the neighbourhood, the red-haired cop was standing there against the railings. Once he saw me, he got into a car and opened the passenger door. I looked around, the misery of the seventh day. I got in and he drove off.

I instinctively lowered the sun visor to hide my face. He headed for the motorway. I was angry. We had said that I’d be the one to call. Me, always. No question of ringing for me like a servant. I wanted him to speak first. I turned towards him, he was watching the road.

— It’s over, Tyrone.

My breath was cut short.

— What’s over?

Still that absent gaze.

— You, me, Dominik, Tenor, all that shit.

I let myself sink back into the seat. I had forgotten my seatbelt, I put it on. I think I was smiling. Over. So that was it. I was going to live again.

— And why is it you who’s come to tell me this? Waldner isn’t around?

Silence. The cop jerked his head.

— You know, Tyrone, the English…

— What about them?

— He’s gone back to London. His mission is over.

— And Honoré?

— Gone back to his studies.

All the better. Two fewer of them.

— And me? What’ll become of me?

— We have a deal to offer you, Tyrone.

— A deal?

We were right in the middle of a Protestant enclave. The British flag was painted all over the walls. Pictures of William of Orange, conqueror of the Catholic armies in 1690. Some paramilitary frescos in homage to their battle cry: ‘No surrender!’

The handler stopped the car beside a park.

— Let’s walk for a bit, Tyrone.

My heart was in turmoil, my legs jelly. And I was so thirsty. My palate felt like cardboard and my tongue was rough. I had no voice left. I was waiting. I watched his slow steps, the way he lit a cigarette, handed me one, met my eyes over the flame.

— You’re going to have to leave, Tyrone.

— What’s going on?

A very old man’s voice.

— First, we’re going to put you under cover somewhere and then we’ll extract you.

— Answer me, for fuck’s sake. What’s going on?

The handler inhaled the smoke. He was buying time.

— We’re going to provide you with a new identity. You’ll also get a house and £150,000, to keep you going a bit while waiting.

I caught him by the sleeve.

— I don’t want any of your money. I’m Irish and I’m staying in Ireland.

— You don’t have a choice, the handler replied gently.

I looked at him. I’d never seen him so calm.

— My cover is blown, is that it?

— That’s it.

I whacked the park railing with my newspaper.

— Fuck! But how is this possible? What happened?

— The ceasefire has moved the boundaries…

I grabbed him by the shoulders. He was taller than me, younger than me, he could have thrown me to the ground with a look, but he let himself be manhandled.

— You didn’t do that? Damn it! You haven’t sold me?

— Not us, no. Not the Ulster police, Tyrone.

— MI5? That dog, Waldner?

The policeman shook me off. He put his hands in his pockets.

— What did you think would happen, Tyrone? Really? How did you think this was going to end?

— Why the fuck couldn’t you leave me in peace?

— Precisely because this is peace, Tyrone. You were useful during wartime, you’ll be useful in peacetime, too.

— I don’t understand any of this! Any of it!

I was shouting. He calmed me with a hand on my arm.

— Sinn Féin is reaping the fruits of the peace process. You’re scoring points everywhere, you’re going to become the first political party of Northern Ireland, and that, well, that’s pissing them off, Tyrone.

— What have I to do with any of that?

— London doesn’t like you, and neither does Dublin. You’ve laid down your arms, so they can no longer shoot at you, but they can still harm you.

— What are you saying?

— A traitor chucks a community’s morale out the window. It’s like a grenade exploding. It tosses out little splinters in every direction. Everyone is wounded when a traitor is discovered, and it’s difficult to heal those wounds.

— Fucking pigs!

— I came to warn you.

— When are they going to inform on me?

— It’s done.

I found it hard to breathe.

— They’ve sold me to the IRA?

— Not sold, Tyrone. A gift. And they’re also going to claim that they had three agents in your movement’s command.

— But that’s bullshit!

The handler smiled.

— Maybe, Tyrone, but the IRA aren’t going to content themselves with your opinion. Everyone will suspect everyone, and that will create disorder.

— You shower of bastards!

I turned my back and walked towards the avenue.

— Tyrone?

He caught up to me at a run.

— Don’t mess around, Tyrone. They’re going to come looking for you, you’ll be interrogated. You know well what they do with traitors!

— It’s the peace process. They won’t touch me.

I carried on but I hoped he’d catch up to me again, talk to me, explain how it had worked for the others. What do you do after treason? What becomes of you? Where do you go? Die in England like an apostate? Go into exile in the United States? Australia? False papers, false address, fake job, fake friends, fake life? And then, of course, the IRA finds its traitors. No matter where, it always finds them, even a long time afterwards. Sixty or so grasses had been executed, hundreds of others chased from our towns.

No! I wouldn’t do what they told me to any more. I was stopping everything. I was staying. This was my home. I had as much right to this land as all the other Irish put together.

I hoped he’d run after me. That he’d collar me, take me away by force, calm me down, protect me. But he didn’t move. When I turned the street corner, he had already climbed into his car. I didn’t see him again. I never knew if Frank Congreve was his real name. Or how his left eye had been wrecked.

— Tyrone?

I was sleeping. I sat up, mouth open, noisily starting to breathe again. A diver breaking the surface.

— Mike O’Doyle and Eugene Finnegan are here. You know, the Bear Cub…

Sheila was at my bedside table, her dressing gown gripped in both hands against her chest. It was stuffy, my temples were pounding, my forehead frozen.

— You have apnoea. You need to see a doctor, she’d often tell me.

I was still half-asleep, coming back from a very long way off. A dream bathed in sweat, shouting. I got up. I was shaking.

— Are you okay, Tyrone?

I slipped my bare feet into my shoes.

— Shall I tell them you’re sick? To come back tomorrow?

— Where are they?

— In the living room.

— I’ll go down.

— They seem annoyed, my wife whispered.

Before she even knew, she understood. The animal’s instinctive fear before the fire. Something was going to happen to her man. Someone was going to do him harm, her heart sensed it. She had known war too long to believe in this peace.

It was eleven at night on 14 December 2006. Two IRA men had called to the door. It wasn’t normal. They wore blank expressions and looked like the bearers of bad news. They didn’t smile at Sheila and refused her offer of tea. Her face was queasy with worry. I asked her to stay upstairs.

— Please.

She had nodded. How many times had she made the bed up for my return, praying all night that death would pass me by? She knew me too well. She knew my behaviour when danger was prowling around.

— What did you do, Tyrone?

I placed a finger on her lips, adopting the sign of the angel. I closed the door on her and went down slowly.

The Bear Cub was looking at the photos on the mantelpiece, Mike was watching the stairs. When I appeared, the first man took off his woollen hat. The second kept his on. I made a poor attempt at a smile, a forced contraction somewhere between sadness and defiance. I held out my hand, neither of them took it.

— Mike, Eugene…

I gave them a brief nod.

The Bear Cub looked at O’Doyle. There was an embarrassed silence.

— There’s a problem, Tyrone.

I smiled again.

— You have a problem?

— You have a problem, the Bear Cub replied.

I nodded at the armchair, the couch. They remained standing.

— There’s rumours going round about you, Tyrone. Bad rumours.

Mike O’Doyle had his hands in his pockets. He straightened up. A respectful movement. One point for me.

— What rumours, Mike?

— Would you kindly follow us?

I looked through the window. Badly hidden by the lace curtain, a car was waiting in the street with two men inside.

— Not like that, no. Not at night. If you have something to say, send me someone from the Army Council.

— You know well that’s who’s sent us, Tyrone.

— You’re wasting your time, Mike, I know the procedure.

— Get your coat.

My life was at stake. I was sure of it. Ceasefire or not, leaving the house now would mean rotting in a dump beside the border. I had to get them to leave. To come back later, during the day and without those faces on.

— Hurry up, Tyrone, the Bear Cub said.

— Good Christ, have you never got plastered or what?

The sentence came out like that, words carefully assembled to give them a nasty punch, thrown with force. Mike opened his eyes wide. Eugene frowned. I had them. Their surprise had tipped the balance. I couldn’t allow them a second, I had to snare them, like a rabbit in the wild.

— You want me to be sorry? Is that it? Okay! I’m sorry. But you don’t disturb someone in the middle of the night for that!

Nothing showed on the surface. Not even surprise. They were trying to understand. And as for me, I was performing. Deep down I was laughing, moving my pawns forward. I knew everything about their game, I had made the rules. Waldner believed he was the most powerful, Honoré the smartest. The handler always looked at me as though he was afraid to take the lead and me, I was dancing on a thread.

— Get Joe Cahill to come, all the others, and I’ll apologize publicly.

Mike O’Doyle took off his cap. He had suddenly remembered he was under my roof. He removed his hat before an officer.

The Bear Cub was pale.

— What are you saying, Tyrone?

— What do you mean, what am I saying? I’m sorry! I’m prepared to get up on the Thomas Ashe stage to kneel down and apologize and that’s not enough for you?

I went to the kitchen to get a beer. I drank it while looking at them. I was winning. Death was continuing on its way. They were tiny and the living room huge.

I lowered my voice.

— I shouldn’t have drank at Tom’s funeral. Shouldn’t have made a scene. I know that. There was no need to mobilize a unit, all the same!

— They’re saying you’re a traitor, Tyrone.

The Bear Cub had pounced first. I spat out my beer. I straightened up.

— I misheard you. What was that?

— A British agent, Mike O’Doyle repeated.

Death had just walked in. It had stalked around the block, scowled through the window, carried on, changed its mind, and here it was knocking at the door.

— Get out. Both of you.

— Tyrone… Mike began.

— Shut your face, O’Doyle! What do you know? What have they taught you since you joined the army? The Brits have two ways of waging war: propaganda and the gun!

— I know, Tyrone.

I was roaring.

— No! You know nothing! Absolutely nothing! We’re in the process of winning this war. They’ve given up killing us so now they want to pull us down! They’re tossing poison in the water and whoosh! Everyone’s swallowing it, you included!

I was enraged, genuinely. Blood in my mouth and fists clenched to kill. I was no longer acting. I was bellowing out my anger for the whole street to hear. I heard the upstairs door, Sheila’s steps on the first few stairs. I was shaking. My mouth was twisted, foam at the corners, my eyes screwed up to block out the glare. My whole body was like a barrier.

— And what else are they saying? How many other traitors are there besides me? Two? Ten? The entire city? And who’s to tell me you’re not a traitor, Mike O’Doyle? And you, Eugene Finnegan, spending your time asking questions?

The two looked at each other. Sheila was coming down slowly.

— Don’t you understand? You’re doing the Brits’ dirty work! Go on! They’re denouncing Tyrone Meehan! And then Mickey, too? And the Sheridan brothers and Deirdre, the wee bride? And Sheila while they’re at it?

I whirled around abruptly. My wife was pale, her bare feet on the bottom step, hands clasped together like Mother used to do.

— For Christ’s sake! Were you spying on us, Sheila Meehan?

— No!

The cry of a mouse.

I took her by the arm. I shook her so hard she lost her balance.

She burst into tears. She was scared. For the first time, I was hurting her. I felt nothing.

She fell, her dressing gown open on a flash of breast. The Bear Cub lowered his eyes. Mike came towards me.

— Tyrone, stop.

I had lost it. Sheila had given up. She was lying on her side in the middle of the living room.

Mike tackled me. The Bear Cub tried to lift her to her feet. She pushed him away. She fell back down heavily. I met her eyes. She was devastated. She lay on her side, turned towards the wall, neck bent over, hands covering her face, knees against her belly, in the position of an unborn child, or an old person close to death.

Padraig Meehan! I saw him, in the dresser mirror. A bastard with raised fist, ready to strike till tears fell. My father and his children. Wee Tyrone, wee Sheila, terrorized brother and sister. Mike pinned me against the wall. I was spitting.

— Look at her, you bastards! Look what you’ve done to my wife!

The front door opened. Two lads came in, former soldiers from the 3rd Battalion.

— The neighbours are getting worried, said the older of the two.

I shouted one last time for the night to bear witness.

— I am Tyrone Meehan, soldier of the Irish Republic! And nobody is going to stop me fighting for my country’s freedom!

One of the óglaigh gave a sign.

— Let him go, Mike.

The young man released me. I was standing up, legs apart, arms wide open. I had the look of a man who has broken his chains.

The Bear Cub went out first. Without a word, he turned his back on the dreadful scene. Mike put his cap on and looked at me. I held his gaze. He had that sorry grimace on him. He went out the door and death walked with him. The other two left the room. When they reached the pavement, the older turned back. Flanagan, I think his name was. I’d met him in the Kesh.

— You know where to find us, Meehan. But don’t wait too long.

And then he left.

I waited. The door was wide open. A neighbour appeared, scarf over her head. She gave a small wave, and then closed the door gently.

Sheila hadn’t moved. She was stretched out against the wall, hands protecting the back of her neck. Her body was shuddering, her left leg shaking with tremors. She was whimpering. I knelt down beside her, then lay down, curled around her back, spooning, like on Sunday mornings when we had the time. I wrapped her in my arms, squeezing her tightly. I had her hair in my face, her fingers between mine, her faint smell. My breath was waiting for hers so it could start up again. I was burning hot. She was frozen.

Her voice. A voice of suffering.

— What have you done, wee man?