The Dead Republic

by Roddy Doyle

  He sat down again.

  —So, tell me about the wedding.

  I heard the typewriter; I watched it. I spoke, and saw the words being thumped across the page.

  Meta Sterne had added a card table to the pile of things she carried everywhere. And the typewriter, a slick, low Underwood - she carried that too. I saw her walk across the parade ground and I remembered Winnie Carney, James Connolly’s secretary, as she marched with the Citizen Army in 1916, down Abbey Street to the G.P.O., with her huge typewriter and a Webley revolver nearly as long as her leg.

  We turned our backs on every set, and wrote.

  I must have looked the part. I stood up as I talked. I paced the Utah desert.

  —Where’s Collins?

  —His office.

  —Boring.

  —It’s guarded.

  —Okay.

  —He’s always ready to run.

  —Great.

  COLLINS

  This might be a no-come-back job, Sean.

  SEAN

  I’m in.

  COLLINS

  Good man yourself.

  —Where’s the office?

  —Bachelor’s Walk. The quays. Overlooking the river.

  —Those little Guinness boats, right? Army tenders skidding, braking. The boots, the Tans - we hear them land and run.

  —We got out over the roof, once.

  —That’s a new scene. Who’s on the roof? Heads down. On the hunkers. Collins, Seán.

  —And Jack.

  —Seán says something.

  —I don’t remember.

  —It’s a fucking story. Come on, come on. You’re on the roof. In mortal danger. We’ll make it night. Searchlights, crisscrossing there. Three good men on the roof, escaping from the might of the fucking Empire. Steep. Loose slates, all that. And you say—

  SEAN

  Grand night for a walk, lads.

  COLLINS

  It surely is.

  I heard the deep tap of the Underwood keys bounce off the mesa walls and come right back over our hats. I saw the words dig their way down the page. I sat when a clean page was being pulled into the machine, or when Ford was up directing the film going on behind us. I turned the chair and sometimes watched.

  Wayne and Maureen were good together; I could see that from where I sat. Wayne, like the last time I’d seen him, was made to look older than he actually was. And she, in the film, was a woman with a grown-up son, a gawky kid who’d enlisted and ended up in his father’s regiment. Maureen and Wayne played two people who’d met decades before but they looked at each other like the blood roaring through them was still a surprise.

  The local Mormons were objecting, Ford told me. Half the extras were threatening to walk out of the fort.

  —I guess that’s the catch with that particular creed, he said.—You can have yourself a house full of wives, but you can’t want to fuck any of them. Has to be a duty.

  —Sounds like Ireland, I said.

  —Not the part where that woman comes from.

  He was talking about Maureen.

  —Dublin’s different, I said, although I didn’t know if I meant it.

  —Dublin, he said.—See, that’s a problem.

  I should have listened.

  —Dublin doesn’t really count, he said.—Folks just didn’t get The Informer back then. Because it was set in the city. It wasn’t Irish. Dubliners aren’t really Irish. They’re scum.

  —And proud of it.

  My head was full of the typewriter and the block of pages growing up beside it.

  Wayne and Maureen FitzSimons stood and chatted as the camera and the lights and miles of cable were lifted and brought around them the long way. I’d seen it quickly this time, I’d understood, how the make-up and dirt could make men like Wayne older or younger. And Maureen looked, would always look, the one big, glorious age. I’d be Seán, and Wayne would be me. They’d make him young. Then they’d make him older; they’d give him the years and the beatings. Then he’d become the old, stiff man getting ready now to stand up out of his writer’s chair, so he could punch out more of the lines of his life. Wayne could be all of the men in that life.

  —Come on, said Ford.—Let’s beat this son of a bitch. We’re cycling into town. Seán and Mary Kate. Ready, Meta?

  —All set here, Pappy.

  —We got the camera on a hill there, we see them coming through the pass. Then they fly past one of the stone high crosses. And some other stuff, on into town. They’re on the bike. They laughing?

  —No.

  —They’re enjoying it. A day out.

  —They’re robbing the fuckin’ post office.

  —The devil may care. They cycle straight in there. What’s he say?

  SEAN

  Good morning! No messing here and there’ll be no one hurt.

  MARY KATE

  This post office is a relic of the British presence. And is now closed.

  SEAN

  So, let’s see the cash and God save Ireland!

  It’s there, in Rio Grande, if you look. You can see it in their eyes. Wayne and Maureen knew there was something more important going on. They were delivering their lines but they were listening out for the lines coming up off the Underwood. They were already in The Quiet Man.

  Maureen stayed away from me. She smiled her smile and played the Paddyette for Ford, the headstrong Irish girl, when he called her over to the opened-sided tent that was, that day, our desert office.

  —You able to cycle a bicycle, Maureen?

  —Of course, I am, Mister Ford, she said, like it was one of the lines from the pages sitting upside-down beside the typewriter.

  He looked at her not looking at the pages.

  —Reckon you can handle a gun?

  —Oh, yes.

  —Just checking, said Ford, and he looked away.

  She knew the routine; it was time to get out of the way. One lifted eyebrow, very slight - that was all she sent me. I didn’t look, but I could hear her humming as she went.

  He’d come back off the set, bawling new lines through the dust. Not lines - he bawled to get the new lines out of me.

  —They’re in the bar - what’s it called?

  He was still a good distance away.

  —Cohan’s, said Meta Sterne.

  —That’s right, he said.

  He was nearly at us.

  —Having a drink, a break in the fight.

  He stopped.

  —And Red Will Danaher says - Meta?

  —You know what? she read from the page still in the typewriter’s roller.—This is a fight I’d come a long way to see.

  —That’s right, said Ford.

  He looked at me.

  —And what does Seán say?

  SEAN

  I hope you can stick around for the finish.

  RED WILL

  Don’t worry about that.

  It was give and take; I went along with it. I’d never been in the fight that Ford said was going to be the longest in screen history. I’d always fought quickly, to kill; rules were fuckin’ stupid. But he was right and he kept reminding me: it was a story. I gave him the fight, and I enjoyed it. We dragged the fighting men and the watching population over fields and walls, through rivers. The fight eventually ended, victory to Seán. There was the cheering, the back-slapping. Then screeching brakes and pounding boots - the Black and Tans had arrived. Seán and Mary Kate escaped, hand in hand. They dashed across the field, over the dry-stone wall. Mary Kate got shot in the arm.

  They run - they ran. Mary Kate took another bullet. Seán turned, to lift her onto his shoulder. The next bullet caught him—

  —In the back, Meta, said Ford.

  —Got it.

  And Seán ended up on Mary Kate’s fine shoulder, carried over another wall, into trees and a fade. It took three days for us to get that far, and another day to get Seán fixed again and on his feet, reunited with Mary Kate, also mended. We doubled back, and rewrote the recupe
ration. They recovered side by side, in single, sunlit, attic beds, nursed by the wise old widow of a Fenian.

  Seán recovered first, and went back to the war. He got himself caught and tortured, and Mary Kate came over the wall of Kilmainham Gaol, to rescue him.

  —We’ll get some swashbuckling out of Maureen, said Ford.

  —We’ll give her a sword.

  There was the Truce, the Treaty, the Civil War.The men in charge were now coming after Seán. He was on the run, with Mary Kate at first, and then without her. She’s about to drop the baby.

  —Stop, said Ford.

  —What?

  —She can’t be pregnant.

  —Why not? She was.

  —Too physical, said Ford.—It means they fucked. The censor won’t allow it. Maureen’s fans won’t want it.

  —She had a kid in Miracle on 34th Street.

  I knew my stuff.

  —She has the kid. The kid’s a ready-made kid, there from the get-go.

  —Babies have been born in pictures.

  —Tell that to the fucking censor, he said.—It’s not the baby. It’s the circumstances. They’ll say she isn’t a fit mother. She’s a psychopath, for Chrissake.

  —She’s not—

  —It’s un-American.

  —You’d know what that fuckin’ means, I said.

  He stared at me. He stared at me for a long time. He didn’t chew the handkerchief. This was the real thing; real, white fury. The typewriter stayed silent and Meta Sterne stayed sitting at it, while the page in the platen baked and the words began to fade under the dirt.

  Ford went away and filmed men riding past on horses.

  I’d brought the outside world to the desert. He’d come here to avoid it. The Cold War, McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee - where he stood and didn’t stand, what was right and what was manly, what he’d said and wouldn’t say, what stance would keep him in work. He was there to escape, into the nineteenth century, long before there was an un-America. He was inventing America while he tried to get away from it. He was defining the place, and I’d reminded him of that. There was America, and there was un-America. He was building America, with John Wayne and the desert. He was giving Americans the history they wanted.

  He came back, much later in the day. His shadow arrived and cut across me for five, six deep breaths before the man himself sat down and spoke.

  —All set there, Meta?

  —All set.

  —She can be pregnant later, he said.—When the Limeys are gone. I didn’t hesitate.

  —Alright.

  —So, he said.—Where are we?

  —They’re on the run.

  —That’s right, he said.—They’re on the run. In a ditch.

  —Okay.

  —Together.

  —Yeah.

  —They’re caught - he’s caught.

  —She’s caught.

  —No. Back. Neither of them is caught. He was caught already, right? She rescued him.

  —That was the British, I told him.

  —That’s right, he said.—Now it’s the Civil War. The Irish arrest him.

  —Yeah.

  —Tricky, he said.—Back, back. They’re on the lam. They’re running from the Irish, the other side, but still Irish. Jack, his old buddy. Why is he doing that?

  —They want him dead.

  —Why?

  I wanted to tell him that he already knew the answer. Some of his old friends were un-American now, although they’d been grand and upright a couple of years before. It had happened in Ireland too; you could be too Irish or not Irish enough, depending on which side of the table you sat at.

  —Why? he said again.—Why do they want to put a bullet in him? He’s a good guy.

  —They’re the bad guys.

  —No, he said.—They’re Irish. They can’t be bad. Outright bad, Limey bad. So, why does Jack want Seán dead?

  —He loves Mary Kate.

  —That could work, he said.—You’re thinking now. He pushes the piece of paper across the desk.

  Meta Sterne was typing again.

  —Seán picks it up. And his name is on it.

  JACK

  Don’t worry, Seaneen. She won’t be a widow for long.

  SEAN

  That’s the game, is it?

  —No, said Ford.—Rip that out, Meta.

  The sound of the paper being torn from the platen was a sudden relief.

  —He gets out before the Civil War, said Ford.

  —No.

  —You’re right, he said.—We can’t avoid the story just because it’s tricky. We need to see that piece of paper. I love that piece of paper.

  —The Treaty, I said.

  —Fuck the Treaty.

  —My name on the paper had nothing to do with the Treaty.

  —Go on.

  —They had it in for me before the Treaty.

  —Why?

  —I was awkward. I’d be dangerous after they got what they wanted.

  —Go on, said Ford.

  Meta Sterne wasn’t typing.

  —I was fighting for more than they were ready to settle for. I was—

  —A traitor.

  —No, I fuckin’ wasn’t.

  —That’s the story. That’s how Jack nails you. He frames you.You have to run. We know you’re innocent. The people watching the picture know it. But Collins doesn’t know it. They’ll be shouting up at him. He didn’t do it! Who’s Collins, by the way? Chuck Heston. Or that kid, Bill Holden.We can put him up on a fucking box.That’s for later, I’m distracting myself. Heston’s too straight to be Irish.

  He stood up and joined me.

  —The folks who paid for their seats will know Jack has it in for Seán.They’ll even be kind of sympathetic. Because it’s Maureen he loves, not some broad. She’s Ireland. He loves Ireland. They both love Ireland.

  He stopped. He looked at me.

  —Ready, Meta?

  —All set, Pappy.

  COLLINS

  All those good men?

  JACK

  He gave their names to the British, Mick.

  Mary Kate was arrested - Jack’s doing. He arranged for her to be put into Kilmainham, to keep her safe, out of Seán’s reach.

  —He can’t put her in Kilmainham, I said.—The British still have it.

  —Fuck, he said.—Fuck, fuck. She isn’t arrested.

  —She is.

  —She isn’t.

  —She is, I said.—The handover.

  —What?

  —We see the handover of power as she’s being brought in the yard at Kilmainham - where Connolly was shot, earlier.

  —Page 27, said Meta Sterne.

  —The Union Jack comes down, the tricolour goes up, as they drag her past the flagpole.

  —It works.

  —It’s an Irish jail by the time they get her to the door.

  —Great, he said.—Let’s get her there.

  We wrote through a dust storm. I didn’t see it coming, blackening the day. The walls of the tent were unfurled and tied by men I didn’t know because they’d tied cloths across their faces, while myself and Ford shouted at each other. We had to shout; the wind was solid noise. We were alone, the three of us. The world outside was gone. The canvas walls stopped flapping; the weight of the dirt held them tight. We were lit now, yellow, by a storm lamp that swayed and rocked, then stopped. I couldn’t hear the typewriter, but I could see it.

  SEAN

  Look for me!

  MARY KATE

  Yes!

  SEAN

  Look for me!

  MARY KATE

  I will!

  He’s spotted under the jail wall by a patrol. He runs. They fire. His feet on the cobbles - the bullets chip the walls. He escapes. He lifts a manhole cover, and drops. The lid is rattling, back on the hole, by the time they turn the corner. He’s on the mail boat—

  —New scene, Meta.

  He’s looking back at the lights of the city. He�
�s aware that other men are watching—

  —Stop right there, he said.

  He didn’t have to shout. The wind outside was dead.

  —What?

  —The boat, he said.

  —What about it?

  —That’s our ending.

  —What about the rest of it?

  —Different story. Different country. We’re done. The boat - it’s perfect.

  He was right. I saw that ending. I could feel it too now.

  —Except, said Ford.—Let’s go back to the jail.

  —Why?

  —He rescues her. They’re on the boat together.

  —No.

  —Yes.

  —There’s already been a rescue. She rescued him.

  —That’s right, he said.—We ditch it?

  There were two breakouts. She’d saved him, and now he goes over the wall and grabs her. They stand on the boat, together, and look back at the fading city.

  They had to dig us out.

  —Everybody okay in there?

  Ford answered.

  —We’re okay.

  I heard the shovels sliding into sand. I heard the labour, the grunts, the laughter. I saw the stain, sunlight, on one of the walls. It grew, and quickly spread.

  —Stand back, said a voice, outside.

  A knife burst through the canvas. I heard the rip, then saw the sudden, gaping hole, and white, blinding light.

  I climbed out after Meta Sterne. She carried the typewriter, and the pages. The finished script, The Quiet Man.