Return to Killybegs

22. In the morning, our milk bottles had been broken. Glass on the porch and the stone steps. Brady, the milkman, had belonged to the 2nd Battalion of the IRA. He was a decent man. I couldn’t imagine him smashing pints of milk against the wall of the house in the early hours

— Must have been kids, Sheila murmured.

Must have been, yes.

She went out to get bread and papers at Terry Moore’s wee grocery on the corner. Terry had been in Crumlin with me, and his son Billy had followed mine to the Kesh. Every morning for years and years, Terry put four daily papers aside for us. The main one was the The Irish News, the Northern Ireland Catholic community’s newspaper. Then the Newsletter, its Protestant competitor, and also The Guardian and The Irish Times, published in England and Dublin respectively. The local residents reserved their newspapers, it was the custom. Terry would carefully write the surnames in blue pen on the margin. At the end of the week, when he was in good form, he’d right ‘Ronnie’ or ‘Wee man’ on our bundle. A simple ‘Meehan’ meant that there was a problem between us, one too many words after one too many pints. It wouldn’t last long. The following day, he’d draw a tiny childish head on the paper with my first name, and something like: ‘Buy me a Guinness and we’ll not talk of it again.’ It was our way of making peace.

That morning of Friday, 15 December 2006, Sheila came back with the bread but no newspapers.

— What do you mean, he didn’t keep them?

— He didn’t keep them. That’s all he said.

— Nothing else? You’re sure?

Of course she was sure. She told me of the silence in the shop, of Erin’s look from behind the counter, Terry’s embarrassment. He served her the loaf of bread, eggs, bacon, sausages. When she reached out towards the pile of newspapers, sitting on the glass counter, the shopkeeper lowered his eyes.

— Not today, Sheila.

— Why not?

— You have food for your breakfast, you’re doing pretty well.

I got up from the table. I was furious. I wanted to go and see Terry the grocer, Brady the milkman and all of our neighbours one by one. What was the problem? Had we made too much noise during the night? Spoken badly about someone? Wronged someone? I was going to do a round of the neighbourhood, fists at the ready, when Sheila held me back. I fell into my armchair. She took me by the hand and knelt down facing me.

— If you want to talk to me, talk to me. If you don’t want to, I’ll understand. But I beg you, Tyrone, don’t lie to me.

And then she got up. She filled a basin with water. She picked up a brush and knelt down to clean the doorstep, slimy with milk.

I slipped my jacket on, tied a scarf around my neck, pulled my cap down to my eyes. It was raining. A December rain blowing in icy squalls from the harbour. Behind me I could hear the bristles scraping against the cement. When misfortune prowled around us, Sheila would wear herself out with household chores. She’d dust, wash and scour our little world, blessing each object in turn for being there.

I walked down the Falls Road alongside the hostile brick, gave a nod to stop a communal taxi going back up through Andersonstown. I knew Brendan, the driver. He was a former prisoner, like the majority of drivers in the Republican areas. The priest from St Joseph’s was sitting up front beside him. On the back seat was a young woman with her child on her lap, sitting between a schoolgirl in uniform and an elderly man. A youth was sitting on the foldaway seat on the far side. The other one was empty. The schoolgirl pressed it down for me. Not a word. Through the open hatch, I could hear the radio. It is raining in Belfast, the presenter informed us over a background of soft music.

— That we know, the priest smiled.

The driver switched off the radio. Silence fell over us again. I was finding it harder and harder to breathe. I watched the schoolgirl, the youth, caught a glint in the woman’s eyes. I wondered whether they knew. If all of them knew. If the news had spread from street to street as far as the port. If, on leaving my place last night, the Bear Cub and O’Doyle hadn’t stirred up the entire city. I smiled at the child. The young mother returned the favour. That graveyard quiet was for me. When I got into the car, everyone had been talking, I was sure of it. I think I even saw Father Adam turned around in his seat, laughing with the others. Now, we were stiff. A car full of statues.

We passed by the Sinn Féin headquarters, Falls Park, the Royal Victoria Hospital. The schoolgirl turned and tapped lightly on the glass partition with a twenty-pence piece. The taxi stopped. I met Brendan’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. I knew that look. That contempt reserved for the enemy. I smiled at him, a wink accompanied by a slight nod. It was a habitual gesture, a sign of complicity. He didn’t respond. Then he had some trouble changing gear. The engine protested violently.

— Bollocks! the driver responded.

The priest slapped him on the shoulder.

— Brendan!

— Sorry, Father, it slipped out.

His eyes brushed mine with a furtive glance, then cut me off again, his gaze locked on the rain.

I got off at Milltown Cemetery. On my way past the florist, I bought a bunch of dried flowers. I walked over graves, over friends. In the Republican patch I gave two yellow daisies to the hunger strikers, and one to Jim O’Leary, the great ‘Mallory’, our bomb-maker and my friend, who had died for Ireland on 6 November 1981.

Then I laid my flowers at random, like a child dropping pebbles for fear of getting lost. I murmured a word each time. Standing very straight, an old soldier at attention. Goodbye, Bobby. Goodbye, Jim. I sat for a moment at Tom Williams’s grave with its tragic headstone.

The clouds were hugging the hills tightly. The rain was scratching black on the sandstone statues. A glimpse of sunshine, three rays of light. Then the darkness once more. The sky closed up again like a gloomy curtain.

I went to the railing. I turned around. I said farewell to Milltown.

On the other side of the Falls Road is the municipal cemetery. A place of rest without this common history. There you die in grey, not in tricolour. The heads are lowered, the hearts don’t lift. Over there, they bury those who aren’t our men. And it is there that I will go because I am an other.

At nightfall, I decided to give myself in to the IRA.

Sheila was waiting for me when I got home, sitting in my armchair. The television was switched off, its silence hit me. I stayed standing, a last daisy in my hand. The flower was like me, its head drooping. Sheila got up. I handed it to her. I was going to speak, she pressed the end of her fingers to my lips. No lie. We had agreed on truth or silence. Silence suited her. I was going to go upstairs, gather a few bits of clothing. My bag was sitting against the armchair; she had already packed it. She didn’t know anything, but she suspected everything. On top was some money, an egg and onion sandwich and a bottle of water.

And the key to Killybegs.

The living room was dark, and the curtains were pulled. Sheila hadn’t turned on the little lamp that sat on the dresser, with ‘Paris’ written on the midnight-blue base. She slipped a photo from our bedroom wall into my coat pocket, the three of us smiling, with Jack aged six wearing a black, plastic London-Bobby cap. Then she retied my scarf. She handed me the woollen gloves that I’d left on the table by the front door. For one moment, I was afraid she would cry, but she didn’t. Not that, not in front of me. She even wore a pale smile, the gift to the dying man on his sickbed. I embraced her. She gently pushed me away, then took my hands. She kissed them, one after the other, her eyes looking deeply into mine. She sighed, fished for something in her cardigan pocket. She handed me the rosary my mother had used for praying, the black beads shiny like lead pellets.

Mother died in Drogheda during the night of 29 September 1979 with a smile on her lips. Up at five that morning, she had made it to the Phoenix Park where Pope John Paul II was to speak.

Baby Sara was forty years old, she had entered the St Teresa convent in County Meath. With the wee Sisters of the Visitation, she had made the journey by car and invited Mother to join them in prayer. The weather was glorious. They had prayed together under the sun.

In the evening, Mother had returned in a feverish state. She was praying in a low voice. Since she’d been living alone, neighbours used to visit her before she went to bed, taking it in turns. That evening, Mother had dressed herself for leaving. She had put on her Sunday best, black dress with a white collar, slipped on lace gloves and her patent-leather shoes. She lay down on the bedspread, the portrait of the Virgin against her chest and two candles lit on the ground. Her rosary lay on the night table, tucked into a blue envelope.

For Sheila Meehan, who will have need of it, Mother had written.

The neighbour had found her like that. The doctor said that she hadn’t died of anything. She was dead, and that was all.

— To die, all you have to do is ask, my mother often said.

When I opened our front door to leave, Sheila didn’t move.

Don’t turn around, Tyrone. Don’t look at another thing. Close your life without any noise. The night. My street. My neighbourhood. The first drunks making a racket in the distance. The litter being plastered against my legs by the wind and rain. The smell of Belfast, that delicious nausea of rain, earth, coal, darkness and misery. All that silence won back in the absence of weapons. All that peace returned. I passed my local pubs, my tracks, my footsteps. I pushed open the gate to the square where the memorial to the 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade had been erected. The flag took the wind as though flying from a ship mast. On the black marble was the list of our martyrs.

Vol. Jim O’Leary

1937–1981

Killed in action

I said his name aloud. And the others as well.

Engraved silhouettes stood either side: two IRA soldiers, heads high, hands resting on their rifle butts, a canon at their feet. With a finger, I stroked the stone to hear it. When I was a child I would listen, palm against the bark, to my father’s old elm tree and huge fir tree. I used to question the warm, blackened bricks of the fireplace, and the greasy pine that covered Mullin’s. I believed I was a sorcerer.

I rang. Mike O’Doyle opened the door. He saw my bag. He nodded.

— I’m coming, he told me.

He didn’t ask me in.

Through the open living-room door, I could hear him making a phone call. Abbie, my wee goddaughter, half-opened the curtain. She must have been kneeling on the couch. She saw me, recognized me, gave me a little wave, smiling.

— It’s Tyrone!

I could read my name on her lips.

Mike was facing the wall, telephone at his ear. He was pulling on his jacket with one hand. The wee one tapped the windowpane with her finger. She signalled me to come in, beckoning with her fingers. I shook my head. No, sweetheart. It’s late. I can’t. I pulled her favourite funny face, hand miming a telescope at my eye and a pirate’s grin filled with my ruined teeth. She laughed, turned around to tell her father. He raised a hand impatiently. Then she opened the curtain more. With a sweeping gesture, she showed me the Christmas tree that was set up in the corner of the room. It was twinkling slowly. I smiled, held back a sob. What a beautiful Christmas tree, wee Abbie. I stuck my thumb up. She clapped. Mike put away his mobile phone. He came over to his daughter, looked at me. Him in that warmth, that happiness so violent. And me in my frozen night, my winter. A pane separated us. A white lace curtain, held back by a child’s hand. Mike the darkness, Abbie radiant. He who knows, and she who doesn’t.

— Our revenge will be the lives of our children.

I had said that at Danny’s graveside. And it was done, Abbie.

When Mike pulled the curtain across, over his daughter’s eyes, I closed mine. I would keep that moment. That carefreeness, that innocence, and that love for me.

The first car had parked on the pavement, lights cut, between the O’Doyles’ front door and the street, the same way the British armoured vehicles used to do when concealing an arrest. I recognized Rory, a guy from the Short Strand area. He was behind the wheel. He had left the engine running. Beside him was Cormac Malone, a member of Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle and a friend from way back when. His presence reassured me. I was in the hands of the party, I hadn’t been handed over to the army. Neither of them turned around. They were looking straight ahead, as concentrated as if they were driving on a motorway in the pouring rain. Peter Bradley was sitting in the back: Pete ‘the Killer’, who had spent more time in English prison cells than in his living room.

Pete didn’t just fight the English, he hated them. For him, there was no difference between a soldier and a child. They were killing our kids? We should kill theirs. Blow for blow, grief for grief. He confused Loyalists and Protestants. Like the racists on the other side, for whom every Catholic is a potential IRA man, he’d say that no Presbyterian was innocent. Bradley was terrified by the idea of peace. War was his life. After the ceasefire, some of the other Bradleys took the dissident route, joining the handful who refused to lay down arms. He was tempted. He hadn’t done so. Even disbanded, the IRA was still his army and we were his OCs. So he just made a lot of noise in the pubs, invoking Bobby Sands and swearing that ‘those guys’ would have continued to fight.

On Friday, 17 May 1974, Peter Bradley and his fiancée Niamh were visiting Dublin. For the first time in their lives, they had crossed the border. He was twenty-one, she was nineteen. Their wedding was set for 14 September. They had visited the GPO on O’Connell Street, where Connolly and his men had proclaimed the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic at Easter 1916. They had kissed on the Ha’penny Bridge, the footbridge of lovers that straddles the Liffey. They had wandered up Grafton Street and dreamed they were rich and students. Pete had bought a pair of shoes and Niamh a white blouse. At half past five they were walking down Parnell Street when the first bomb exploded. The second blew up on Talbot Street. The third destroyed South Leinster Street. Niamh was blown to pieces, projected head first against a wall by the violence of the blast. When the firemen and the Garda Síochána arrived, Peter was comforting the dead body by trying to stick its arm back on.

One hour later, a bomb exploded in Monaghan, a town on the border. Twenty-seven dead in Dublin, seven in Monaghan. Amongst them were a pregnant woman, an Italian woman and a Jewish French woman, the daughter of camp survivors.

The Loyalist militia from the Ulster Volunteer Force had decided to bring the war to the Republic of Ireland. They had done so in their own way, without warning. They wanted to kill papists, and the British security forces were accused of having assisted them.

That day, sitting amongst blood and scraps of flesh, Peter Bradley became Pete ‘the Killer’. It would no longer be for Ireland’s liberty that he’d fight, but to avenge Niamh, his own youth and his mangled life.

Beside him in the car was Eugene Finnegan, the Bear Cub. He opened the door and stepped aside so that I could sit between them on the back seat. The warmth was stifling, but the smell of Cormac Malone’s aftershave welcomed me. It was an eau de toilette that I’d brought him back from Paris. I was clinging to the tiny details. To miniscule hopes. Why wear the aftershave I’d given him as a gift? What did he want to tell me? That I needn’t fear anything? That he was my friend? I searched out his eyes in the windscreen reflection. He had the absent gaze of someone you pass in the street.

A second car parked across the way. They exchanged a brief flash of headlights. Mike ran over and sat up front. The Bear Cub got in beside me. He jostled me, pressing me against Pete. The Killer placed a hand on my knee. He took hold of it with an animal grip. I was his prisoner and he was letting me know.

We drove through the heart of our enclaves, heading along the familiar streets. I knew them as well as you know a man. Each house had its history, every door its secret. They were giving me a sign. I was saying goodbye to them.

One evening in 1972, at this crossroads, Cormac Malone should have died. Since then, he’d close his eyes whenever he went through it. On this night, too, he turned away. The Loyalists had arrived from Shankill. They had fired at him through their open car window, driving at full speed, not concerning themselves with the old man talking to him. Cormac saw them coming. He threw himself on the old man, pushed him to the ground with his walking stick and his vegetables and covered him with his body, but it was too late. Three bullets in the back, two thousand people at the funeral. Cormac hated the survivor he had become.

In October 1974, under this streetlight on the Springfield Road, Cathy and Jim’s son Denis had been killed by a plastic bullet, shot through the embrasure of an armoured vehicle. He was going to get some milk from the shop. He died at the age of thirteen, on the pavement, a £5 note clutched in his hand.

At the end of February 1942, in that little garden, against that red Beechmount door, an IRA man had handed me my first gun.

We crossed the border at six in the morning on Saturday, 16 December 2006. Pete’s hand was tight on my knee. Cormac had slept, the Bear Cub, too — snoring lightly, his forehead against the pane. We were in the Republic of Ireland. I was returning home. The party had reserved the lounge of a Dublin hotel and booked a press conference. Sinn Féin wanted to demonstrate that the British were continuing their dirty war. After having tried to crush our resistance, they had infiltrated it and corrupted some of its members.

Everyone had put on a tie before leaving the vehicles. I was the only one with an open shirt, looking like someone who had been in police custody overnight. The room was full. I arrived on foot, freely, surrounded by the men. I was overcome with dizziness. The cameras, the microphones, all those journalists talking at the same time. What did they know about me? About our struggle? What had they come here for? To hear what? Find out what? Report what? For them, the war had been so easy to describe. The good British, the bad terrorists. Everything had already been said. They didn’t believe in the ceasefire. ‘Manoeuvre’, ‘tactics’: they drew their headlines from the big bag of doubts. When they had to admit it was really happening, they confused political volition and military surrender, then turned away from us. Peace? Uninteresting. Hope is harder to sell than fear. And suddenly, without any warning, here they had a traitor to sink their teeth into, a spy, a thrill. An old and lingering odour of war.

Cormac was behind me, accompanied by another Ard Chomhairle member. They were grave and sullen. When the microphones were held out, I confessed. Nothing more. That way the British would know that I had given myself up.

— My name is Tyrone Meehan. I am a British agent. I was recruited twenty years ago, at a vulnerable point in my life. I was paid for handing over information…

I inhaled deeply. The breath was coming back to me. There. It was done. That confession had been stuck in my throat for all those years. I had repeated it night and day. I had uttered it in a low voice in the streets, at pub counters, in the heart of tricolour marches. I had said it quietly with my eyes. To Sheila, to Jack, to my comrades, to my friends. I would have really loved someone to hear it. And I prayed so hard that nobody would find out. At night I wanted deliverance. In the morning I’d still partly believe I was the great Tyrone Meehan.

I confessed. The men led me outside, pursued by dozens of questions. I got back in my seat, between Pete and the Bear Cub. My hands were shaking slightly. The Killer didn’t catch my knee this time. They brought me to the countryside, a few miles beyond Dún Laoghaire, to be questioned by the IRA. They hadn’t understood that that soulless admission for the press was also addressed to my own side. I would remain silent. I had said too much. It was already past the time to stop talking.

I found myself back on the street on 20 December 2006 at nine o’clock, after four days of questioning. They didn’t touch me, or even mistreat me. They had given up.

— We’ll leave it there, Tyrone, Mike said to me after turning off the camera.

— I’m free to go?

— That’s right.

So I walked. Along the harbour, towards the city. I was wearing black sunglasses, and my cap was pulled low the way I’d worn it as a soldier. My photograph had been all over the newspapers. It was still hanging about, at the bottom of the page. Two faces placed side by side, the young Tyrone and the bastard. The bright-eyed kid, standing with other combatants, his cheeky grin in Crumlin Gaol. And the dazed old man between Mike and Eugene, grey, dishevelled, lips dry, gaze absent, surrounded by microphones like the guns of a platoon. A ball of anxiety. At that hour, from the north to the south of Ireland, loud-mouthed hardmen were dreaming of putting a bullet in me. The pubs were humming with my name, eyes were searching me out. Others were swearing to have known me. They were interviewed over and over on the national airwaves.

— You really didn’t suspect anything?

Sheila had hidden €150 in my bag. Three €50 notes, folded in a paper napkin with my sandwich. I took a bus as far as the city centre. My head and stomach ached. I had never felt comfortable in this city, I had become a threat to it. I decided to get to Donegal by coach. No station to get through, less moving around than on a train. Once you’re sitting down, you’re sheltered. The first Bus Éireann bus was leaving at one o’clock. I sat right at the back, on the left, to avoid the driver’s large rear-view mirror. I ate Sheila’s sour egg, onions and soggy bread.

Several seats away from me, I saw my photo spread out. I shrank back into my seat. I needed to sleep.

I closed my eyes in Navan. For a few minutes only. Virginia, Cavan. My country was flashing past in silence. At every stop I’d turn towards the glass, my hand shading my forehead. Ballyconnell, Ballyshannon. The driver was having fun with the sheep on the road, a fallen tree, and that American tourist who got on in Pettigo and took a photo of the inside of the bus.

— In Ireland, it’s a euro per passenger to take a photo! the driver muttered into the microphone.

She blushed, apologizing comically, before the laughter reassured her.

We drove through Donegal. It was getting dark. I could feel the boundaries of my childhood battering inside me. Almost five hours on the road.

— Killybegs! Upper Road, shouted the driver.

He was a short redhead, with funny blue glasses. A farmer, who looked like he’d borrowed them from a Trinity College student. I went up the aisle silently. My scarf was covering my mouth. I was the only one getting off. He hadn’t opened the door. I was forced to turn around, to look at him. He operated the lever.

— Good luck, the driver said.

I was on the step, I turned around. He was watching me. I nodded. You say goodbye to your passenger. See you. I hope we won’t have rain. But not ‘good luck’. I didn’t respond. He nodded and closed the door behind me.

I crossed the village. Walked towards my father’s house. I was bent over, pains in my legs, tired from everything. It wasn’t yet completely dark when I got to the path. The huge fir tree, the old slate roof. Thrown into the brambles was a tar bucket and a large brush.

Traitor!

The graffiti was scrawled across the wall.

Nothing had been forced. The key turned in the lock. I left the shutters closed and put on the latch and chain. There were still a dozen candles on the shelf, and a bottle of alcohol for a lamp. I lit the remains of a tall candle. I didn’t want anyone to see the light from the road. I didn’t get undressed. I left my scarf, cap and gloves on. The fire could wait until tomorrow. I lay down like that, with my shoes on, buried under our bedcovers and the ones from Jack’s bed. I opened my flask of vodka. Half-empty. I drank all of it in one swig. I listened to the silence. The winter of my childhood, with Christmas in the distance. I toasted my return. My mother’s misfortunes. My father’s fists. I could see my brothers, my sisters, all crowded into the big bed and on the ground on straw mattresses. I counted their shadows in the darkness. Cheers to all of you, my loves. The night is going to be long. The longest night a man has lived. And even if he wakes again, the day will never come again. Nor the spring, nor the summer, nothing else but night.