Return to Killybegs

23

Killybegs, Wednesday, 4 April 2007

The explosion woke me at three in the morning. Violent, in crashing echoes. Lightning. A tree in the forest was struck. I was in a sweat. I rekindled the fire, slipped a cardigan over my pyjamas and drank a beer while watching the flames.

Yesterday evening, going to bed, I hummed to myself. My voice surprised me. I was sitting on the bed, a biography of James Connolly lying on the blanket. I strained my ears, as if someone else had come into the room. Beer, vodka, nervousness, drunkenness. I hummed to myself like one who has become detached from his mind. I lay down. I read. Just a page to help me find sleep. Wounded by the enemy and then looked after by the enemy, Connolly was unable to stand on the day of his execution. So he was shot in a chair. On 12 May 1916, the day of the killing, the surgeon who had saved his leg asked Connolly if he would be so kind as to pray for him, and for all those who were going to put him to death.

— Yes, sir, Connolly responded, I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights.

I reread that sentence, pronouncing each word aloud.

— … according to their lights.

Connolly had prayed for the executioners because they believed they were doing their duty. I got up, tore the page out and stuck it into my notebook. Then I drank a beer. The last one — the one that always comes before the next one. It was a lager light as water. I polluted it with the vodka. I drank it in pints, mixing the spirit and beer together in equal parts.

I went to bed drunk, then woke up terrorized. It wasn’t lightning. A broken cry, of steel and iron. Not far from the house, on the path, perhaps. I took up a torch and Seánie’s hurley, my hand clenched on its wrist grip. It was dark. There was nothing outside, just me. I circled the house. Noise behind me. The rustling of the forest. A fox, or a field mouse hunting.

— I’m right here!

I roared:

— Tyrone Meehan is at home!

My hair was flying about in the sea breeze.

— I’m ready for you, you bastards!

I looked at the sky. It didn’t look like a storm was coming. The moon was bathing the low stone walls and the tops of the hills.

I had been woken by a night explosion, a din from memory, remorse hitting me in waves, shattering my dreams.

I went back inside. I opened the bottle of vodka. Pour, pour, pour. There, that’s it. The bubbling of a can of beer opening. I mixed them right up to the brim. Still drunk from yesterday, already drunk for today. And who is there to judge me? I’m talking with the rats. I have woodlice for friends. I share my bread with the ants, my soldiers. Whole units of them, marching under my orders. In my father’s house, I am in charge. I opened the curtains and the window wide. I wanted them to see me in the middle of the night. In a few hours, a pale brightness would light up the horizon. The first birds. The forgiving morning. Another new day and I would be alive.

It was not an explosion that woke me, it was the echo of an explosion. Its eternal memory. Twenty pounds of a combination of ammonium nitrate, diesel and TNT, packed by Jim into an iron dustbin filled with nails, bolts, filings, shards of glass and steel balls.

It was the end of October 1981. The hunger strike had ceased several days earlier. We were aching for revenge. Jim had manufactured three similar devices, all of them hidden on the first floor of a ruined house in Divis Flats. The guy in charge of logistics had asked him for a remotely controlled device. The first bomb was supposed to explode on 11 November to disrupt the Remembrance Day memorial ceremonies. The IRA had decided that the attack would take place in an open-air car park several streets away from City Hall, during the reception being given there.

I have never liked bombs. To my mind, since World War II and the Blitz on Belfast, that word was German. I don’t like the idea of scheduled death.

— The bomb is the weapon of the poor, Jim would say in defence.

Drunk one day, he said that a planter of bombs was a planter of questions. The pub had laughed. I hadn’t. The bomb doesn’t kill, it desecrates the body. It dismembers and mangles it. I’m not even sure that the soul survives.

I called Waldner on 5 November 2006. Meeting at the cemetery, at our patriot’s graveside. I had something for him, but I wanted him to reiterate his commitments. He was looking at me with interest. No arrests? Okay. We had already spoken about that. Did he promise? He promised.

— The IRA are preparing something for 11 November.

The MI5 agent paled. Without thinking, he straightened the red poppy adorning his lapel, the paper flower honouring the soldiers who died during World War I.

— What, something?

— An attack. During the ceremony.

The commemoration was set to take place at eleven o’clock. The bomb would be detonated at half-eleven, during the speech. It wouldn’t hit anyone, but its noise would drown out the event.

— Where will it be planted?

— No. I’m not giving you the unit, just the bomb.

There wasn’t much risk involved. A ruined house at the bottom of the Falls Road. Three bins hidden under rubble. Even if the IRA had lookouts, it wouldn’t intervene. We didn’t engage in combat to save material.

— You’re not taking a risk? Waldner asked me.

I was touched. I was no longer simply a victim of his blackmail, but also someone for whom he felt concern.

— Don’t you conduct routine raids on ruins?

— Day and night, smiled the Englishman.

— The IRA will just think you’ve got some damned luck.

Waldner was in a hurry to be off. He was feverish. He held out his hand to me, genuinely. The way one treats an equal.

On leaving him I felt something strange. I have never admitted it to myself, but that day, and for a few hours afterwards, I had a feeling of pride. Giving three bombs to the enemy wasn’t threatening our future. I was fighting death, and reassuring those who thought they were in charge of me.

That evening, in the pub, I forgot the traitor.

— It’s a pleasure to see you on form, Tyrone, an old friend said to me.

When I got back, Sheila and I made love, laughing.

The following day, 6 November, I went to buy her flowers and one of the rose-scented candles that a Traveller used to sell on Castle Street. On the way back, I saw Jim with Manus and Brenda, two youngsters who had joined us during the hunger strikes. Jim gave me a wink. Manus had just got his driving licence. The bomb-maker wanted to try him out for the transportation. Brenda smiled at me. After Bobby Sands’s death, she had asked me how she could be of use. The three were heading towards the hiding place. If the British had operated during the night as planned, the IRA would find nothing but their boot marks in the dust.

I took a collective taxi. I was carefree. A schoolgirl asked me if I had a light. Then if I had a cigarette. I laughed. A kid from our way, shameless, chin high and fists on her hips.

I went back up towards the house. As I passed its door, a local pub whispered something to me that I liked the sound of. I was about to go in, my hand on the brass handle, when everything boomed. A huge crash, farther down on Divis Street. The street stopped. I was stunned. A black smoke was rising behind the towers. People started running towards the fire. Black taxis made U-turns while beeping at people to get in and come to the aid of any victims. In Belfast, people don’t flee from misery, they go and help those who have been hurt.

— A fucking bomb! cursed the owner of the pub as he stepped on to the street.

I wobbled. I saw the three of them again. Jim, Manus, Brenda. The attempt they were making to appear innocent.

No arrests, Waldner had said. And that bollocks had kept his word.

Jim O’Leary, Manus Brody and Brenda Conlon died welded together. Remains of their flesh that were stuck together in the fire had to be separated. The IRA explained that the person in charge of its unit had suffered a handling error. It wasn’t true. Our headquarters knew it, but didn’t want to acknowledge the technological reversal.

I was maddened with rage. I questioned Waldner, the red-haired handler, all the bastards who thought they employed me. The RUC officer talked to me. So that I’d calm down, continue to inform for them, stop making a racket. A bomb disposal unit had gone into the house during the night with four SAS agents. They hadn’t lifted the explosives, but simply studied their detonating device. They were expecting a complex modulation system, responding to encoded impulses. What they came across was an unprotected system, a radio transmitter you’d find on any remote-controlled car. The bomb frequency was open to interfering signals.

— Mallory is too sure of himself, that’ll be his undoing, a soldier sighed.

They put the equipment back, removed all traces of their footprints and put the house under surveillance from a Divis Flats rooftop. Then they waited for the unit to go back to work before sending out their transmitter, disguised as an ice-cream van. Linked to a helicopter that was hovering overhead, it scanned a large spectrum of radio frequencies, searching for the switch that would activate the device. The operation should have taken less than an hour. Any longer and the British had decided to withdraw. Too dangerous. With those mournful chimes, ice-cream vans are always stormed by children, but this one was driving around like a silent marauder. A guy painting his fence noticed it passing twice. The third time, he went over to question the driver.

That’s when the bomb exploded, triggered by the British. A thick black smoke. Shouting. And those projectiles raining down, crushing everything they hit.

— It’s not a handler like me who decides what to do with your information, the redhead said.

— You killed three people!

— It was their bomb. Not ours.

Waldner said the same thing. He was sorry. The British services had discovered that the IRA had never intended to put the device in a car park, but to break through the doors of City Hall with a car bomb.

— That’s fucking bullshit! You’re lying!

— Your word against theirs, Meehan. If you’ll forgive me, I grant more credibility to my intelligence services than to yours. We took zero risk, that’s all.

I didn’t refuse the envelope he gave me, £150 for my taxi and the inconvenience.

I walked for a long time. I went through hostile neighbourhoods, hoping to put an end to it. I took off my jacket, rolled up my shirt sleeves. I flaunted my tattoos like someone giving the finger. The Irish flag, the Celtic cross and the figures ‘1916’ in black letters.

Nothing happened to me.

I had killed Danny. I had killed Jim and two of our children. I was no longer a traitor, I was an assassin. It was over. And there was no going back.

I have a fever. The day is taking its time to arrive. I am still waiting for that hint of light. My country makes me shiver, my land makes me ache. I no longer breathe, I drink. The beer is streaming in tears down my chest. I know they’re waiting. They will come. They are here. I will not move. I am in my father’s house. I will look them in the face, their eyes on mine, the one being shot offering forgiveness to his executioners.

My God, Mother, help me.

I am so afraid…