by Orna Ross
A spattering of rain was beginning to fall when they heard the rumble of a lorry in the distance, sounding like it might be coming their way. Tipsy looked back first. “Oh, Lord! It’s them.”
“It’s all right,” said Barney. “Stay calm. We knew this would likely happen.”
“We’re only walking, remember,” said Lama. “Not breaking any law.”
Peg glanced back. “It’s definitely them,” she said. “This is it.”
The lorry pulled in close beside them, revving. When they didn’t look back, it pulled ahead and drew itself crossways up ahead, blocking their way. The engine stopped and a soldier jumped down. Dan O’Donovan.
“These are mine,” Peg heard him say to the other soldiers in the car and he stood by the vehicle, waiting, his legs planted wide, his hand on his gun.
He looked fine, there was no denying it, six foot two of manhood in its prime, all shiny boots and buttons, the very picture of a soldier. She felt ashamed of her dilapidated coat and, if she was shabby, the three boys beside her were next door to tramps. One look at the contrast between them and him told the story of this war’s injustices.
The other officer stayed behind the wheel, a man she didn’t know. In the back, a third soldier petted a Labrador puppy.
“So,” said Dan, as they approached, dragging the word out. “We’re a little far from home, aren’t we?”
Silence.
“What brings us to this vicinity?”
Barney gave him the prepared line. “We’re visiting,” he said.
“Of course you are. And the person to be honoured by this visit?”
“An aunt of mine who lives in Ferrycarraig. Mrs Roche.”
“Looking forward to seeing half of Mucknamore village, is she?” This with a nod towards Tipsy and Lama.
“She’s a hospitable woman.”
This is witless talk, thought Peg. “Going for a walk is not a crime, Dan,” she said.
He turned to her. “You know well I could take you all in for questioning.”
His eyes travelled down her body and she could feel a blush rise in her cheeks. He was staring hard at where the bomb was pressed between flesh and fabric. She looked down, found a streak of whitewash down one side of the coat, which she had got one night painting wall slogans. “We’re whitewashing the sheds at home,” she said, then realised he hadn’t asked the question.
“Is that a fact? I must around come and see them,” he said. “To admire your handiwork.”
Oh, this petty taunting: it was hateful. She was flooded with a longing to say so. If they were alone, she would say to him: all right, Dan, we are enemies now. All right, so be it. But let us, please, have respect for one another. Let us not have smallness between us.
He threw her another look like something you’d fling at a yapping dog, then turned his attention to the boys. “Hands up,” he said. Six arms were raised. Tipsy started smiling like a drunkard, because the attention had turned from Peg. If he wasn’t able to keep better control of his face, he’d give them away. Dan ran his hands down the torsos of the three men who used to be his friends – pat, pat, pat – in the most mechanical way, like he’d no expectation of finding anything. Then his eyes returned, slowly, carefully, pointedly, to her.
His face was quizzical as he let his look travel down to the centre of her again as if he could see right through her mother’s coat.
How could she ever have thought it would fool anyone, and especially him, with his eye for the female form?
“New overcoat?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s Mammy’s.”
“I was thinking it wasn’t your style. And what might have you wearing your mother’s coat, I wonder?”
“I don’t need a reason, do I?”
She was done for. He was going to search her. He was well capable of it, the conventions wouldn’t matter to him. One touch of his hands and he would know it wasn’t flesh he was feeling through her garments but solid steel.
“Open it,” he said.
That day on the Causeway came to her mind, the day he’d bent to wipe the chalk-dust marks off her skirt, and another flood of blood surged to her skin, and with it, the realisation that whatever it was they had had for one another was now gone, spoiled forever. In that moment she knew again, but only really for the first time, their estrangement. He and she were enemies.
This full and final knowledge made her want to bend over and close her arms across her chest. She was splitting inside. This must be what people meant when they talked about hearts breaking, she thought. She’d believed she’d understood that phrase but she hadn’t, not until now, when she recognised just how precisely it described the feeling. Heart. Breaking.
Forbidden now from loving him, what felt like an irrevocable thought gripped her: I’ll never love another. You were the only one for me. The tragedy of that, the knowledge of how deep it went, pulled her eyes up to his. Search me if you like, she thought, knowing the thought showed on her. Search me, do your worst, do whatever you want, because it makes no difference now to me. I’m bereft anyway.
He stared at her. He was going to do it. As the moment grew and grew between them, she saw him decide that he would. She saw him change his mind. Then change it back again. And again make a reverse. Indecision danced forward and back in him until, finally, he dropped her gaze.
He turned to the others, gave them all a peremptory shake of his head. “Go on,” he said. “But ye’ll stay out of trouble if you know what’s good for ye.”
At Dunore, the sunset was dripping liquid oranges and golds and the rain-filled potholes all along the bridge glowed full of its light, as if they were broken fragments of the sky that had fallen to earth. Peg went behind a copse of wet bushes to divest herself of her load. By now, her flesh was screaming. The indentations the weapons made in her flesh were pink weals turning red, so deep she felt no immediate relief on untying the straps and belts that held them in place. She placed the bomb carefully on the grass, the heat of her own body still on it.
She brought her booty over to where the boys were gathered on the bridge, smoking. Lama and Tipsy had a gun each and Bronco was complaining that he wanted one. “That’s not fair.”
“You’re lucky to be here at all, lad,” Peg said to him. “Remember that and respect your officers.”
She handed the bomb – which seemed to be throbbing, as if it had a pulse – to her brother and they all took their places on the bridge, looking down on the flat road below. The sun was gone, leaving a fading shadow of pinks and golds behind all along the horizon. A wet star came out to shine. Then two. Soon there were dozens, and then too many to count. If the soldiers didn’t come on quick, it would be dark.
With the thought, she heard it, faint, distant but unmistakable: the engine-sound of the military motor, chugga, chugga, chugga. On the bridge, they stiffened themselves, each making eye contact with all. Peg could see the twitch of that little muscle of Barney’s that always flickered beneath his temple when he was nervous. Tipsy and Lama pointed their double-barrelled guns down to where the car would pass.
“Nearly too easy,” Lama whispered.
It would all be down to timing.
The chug of the lorry drew nearer. With it came the sound of voices: the soldiers were singing, yes, singing. “A Nation Once Again”, a song they had no right to sing. They took the bend that brought them into view. There were five of them, two in the front, three in the back.
No sign of Dan. A flood of relief swept through Peg, not entirely surprising her. Would she never learn?
The car approached, closer and closer. As it came under the bridge, Barney lobbed down the grenade. It fell with a clean arc and seemed, as far as Peg could see in the dusk, to land right in the middle of the vehicle.
“Bull’s eye!” hissed Lama. “Bull’s fuckin’ eye.”
The soldiers had time for a moment’s surprise. In the dimness, they took the moment to look down at the bomb, then up to see where
it had come from, before the explosion erupted, blasting them beyond thought.
The lorry veered off course. One body was flung clear. He might have had some chance of survival if he’d stayed where he was and played dead, but instead he picked himself up from the road and ran. Barney and Lama turned their guns on him, clack-clack-clack, and one or more of their bullets did its job: he crumpled onto the ground.
The vehicle, thrown off its steer, hit a wall. The driver had fallen sideways over his companion in the front seat, and both were apparently dead. The two in the back were also unmoving. Barney sliced the air sideways with his palm, his signal to the others to cease fire.
They stopped. The air drained of sound, became eerily empty. Above gulls cawed, casually, as if nothing had happened.
Peg was horrified but at the same time exultant. I am alive, she thought. They are dead now but I am alive. She could feel her blood moving. She could feel her skin and her fingernails and her scalp as if she’d never felt them before. Everything that she normally took as nothing was glowing bright in her; she was like something charged. The men on either side – her brother, their friends – were all looking to her and to each other, all bonded by the same wild and fearful and exhilarated awe. Now I understand, she thought. For the first time, I know.
Her brother shook his head at her. “You shouldn’t have been here for this.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You shouldn’t.”
He meant well but he was misguided, suffering from an outdated code of chivalry. The call to blood and dirt and sacrifice and glory was in her human heart as well as his. This was her world too, she wanted it just as he did. “Well, it’s too late now,” she said, not wanting to argue with him, but knowing that if he had the power to take this moment from her, she would fight him for it, claw it back from him with nails and teeth.
“Come on,” he said. “Strap those guns back on under your coat. And lads, scarper. We’d all want to be getting ourselves out of here.”
A quarter of a mile off, the Free State soldiers at the outpost had heard the explosion and were already jumping into their lorries, guns unlocked and ready, minds leaping with intentions of what they would do if what they had heard meant what they thought. Three minutes was all it took them to reach the bridge but they were too late. Only their five dead comrades remained at the scene. The killers were gone, swallowed by the rising tide of night.
1975
Unleashed, that is how I think of myself. Like I am letting out a breath that I have been holding since I was born. I am almost eighteen, I am in Dublin, I am at university. Mucknamore is now, almost, my past. I have to hold myself back from throwing myself down on the soft grass, from throwing my books and papers in the air, from throwing a song up to the sky.
Underpinning my delight is the knowledge that Rory O’Donovan is here too, walking around this very campus somewhere. Early this morning, I saw him, standing outside Lecture Theatre M, a crowd around him. He looks good: long, straight, black hair looped behind his ears. A long military coat, down to his ankles, complete with epaulettes on the shoulders. Black jeans and black polo-neck jumper underneath. Compared to most of the other guys in their woolly jumpers and duffel coats, he is…oh, incomparable. For a while I watched him like I used to watch him at Mass when we were children, then I slipped away leaving him to his new friends. It won’t be long, I know. We’ll find each other soon.
He seems to have met a lot of people already. I am the only person from my old school in my faculty. Dee is doing science, Monica has gone to Trinity College, the rest are training to be teachers or nurses or secretaries, the full gamut of our occupational options. But I will get to know people, I know I will: intelligent, amusing people. Books got me through my last two years in the convent and Mucknamore, reading and imagining other lives, the ways I might live once I got out. And now I am out. Released.
I walk circumspectly down to the lake that is the centrepiece at University College Dublin, a sunken concrete tub, square like a swimming pool but brown-grey, not blue. Leaves, papers, bottles, rusty tin cans, too-white plastic cups and other, less identifiable things lurk in its murky corners. Extinguished cigarette butts line the sides so it’s hardly picturesque, but still the students are drawn to amble around the wide flat steps that form the perimeter, or loll on nearby benches. Couples lay down coats to lie on the grassy verge, limbs twisted around each other.
October sunshine skims the square of flat, still lake water, burnishing it to brass and my heart swells with the beauty of the day. Rapture cracks through my skin, turning my walk into a skip down the concrete path, red folder clasped to my chest.
Behind me, a shout roars out. “Oi, O’Donovan, get back here.”
A stampede of feet and leaping yells comes hurtling my way. I turn to see him, Him, running towards me, his coat, that military coat, crooked over his arm. He runs a smoker’s run, to the tune of gaspy breaths, and a group of guys running after him are gaining ground. “Well…well…” he pants, when he sees me. “If…it isn’t…Dev.” Then he grabs me from behind and swings me out in front of him like a shield.
Into my ear he whispers, “Sorry about this.” Out loud to his pursuers he says, “Stop right there…or…the lady gets it.”
“Rory. For God’s sake!” I struggle to pull away but his grip tightens on my arms. His nonsensical “warning” has confused his pursuers. A tall guy, with arms so long they almost reach his knees, steps forward. “You’ll have to do better than that, O’Donovan.”
“I mean it. One…more step…and in she goes.”
“What do you mean? In?”
He pulls me closer still, so the length of his body behind me lines mine. His hair tickles my face; it smells of stale smoke. And of him.
Long-Arms advances cagily and Rory bends me over, towards the water, as a response. I kick backwards at him and connect with his shin. “Ow!” His voice is wounded.
“Let her go!” insists Long-Arms.
Kick or no kick, Rory is resolute. “Lay off your yes-men and I’ll think about it.”
His opponent looks behind, gives a toss of his head, says, “All right, lads, you can leave him to me.”
Objections murmur up but the group disbands, most moving away. One or two stay behind to watch, hopeful of action.
“Now,” he says. “Let her go.”
“Yeah. As soon as you clear off the same way your stooges went.”
“I’m not going anywhere, pal. You owe me.” He advances.
“I told you,” says Rory again, leaning me towards the water.
“You can fuck her in for all I care. I just want what’s mine.”
I twist my mouth down towards Rory’s hand, my teeth close around flesh and bone as I bite, hard. A yelp of pain loosens his grip a fraction, enough for me to slip away. As I pull free, I have one perching, teetering moment of disbelief – I’m going in? – then I’m falling, hands clawing the air.
I hear Long-Arms shout – “For fuck’s sake, O’Donovan” – as dirty water slams up to meet me. Gasping, spluttering, I find my feet. It’s shallow, only halfway up my thighs. Water streams from my eyes, my hair, my clothes. Water and rivulets of rage.
Around the lake, people are looking and pointing and laughing at us. At me. Rory’s face holds surprise, stifled laughter and contrition. And something else entirely. I feel his eyes on my breasts, a look that plucks me out of my own body, so that I see what he sees: my wet top clinging and my hands up squeezing water out of my long red hair. I am Woman in Water, Venus among the Waves, Miss Wet T-shirt.
Long-Arms extends a hand to me, an offer of help. Rory sees this, crouches and proffers his hand too, and it is his I take, his palm warm and dry against my own. He tries to pull me up but my grip is loosened by slippery water.
“I can’t,” I say.
He bends closer. “Give me your other hand too.” He leans forward onto his toes, penitent, keen to help. A sudden yank on both hands, as hard and strong as
I can make it, and his weight slips. With a splash, he’s in, and it’s his turn to cry out. “Nooooo!”
“Yes!” is my answer, as I hurry towards the edge.
Long-Arms is jubilant. “Well done! Well done!”
Before Rory has righted himself in the water, I am hauling myself out. Trying to ignore the growing audience, I retrieve my folder and press my way through a tunnel of laughing faces, my knees turned out, cowboy-style, jeans dragging between my legs, socks squelching inside my boots.
I haven’t gone far when I hear him coming up behind me, calling. “Hey! Dev! Wait.”
It’s the name that stops me, makes me look back, the name only he has for me. And the tone of his voice as he says it. He is clambering after me in wet clothes, insouciant to the crowd. Not ignoring them as I was, not even seeing them. His eyes are fastened on me. “Wait,” he shouts. “Please. Wait.”
As he reaches me, his index and middle finger are raised and crossed. “Pax,” he pants, like we’re a pair of schoolyard children.
“Pax?” I throw my eyes skywards. “Pax?”
“Ah, come on. We’re evens now.”
“We are not. What the hell were you thinking of?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. I wasn’t thinking, was I?”
“What did that guy want?” My voice is still cross but my anger is fading, overwhelmed by other feelings.
“Furry Freak.”
“A magazine?”
“Mmmm. This month’s issue, precious stuff.” He nods, releases the laughter he’s been holding.
“I ended up in the lake over goddamn Furry Freak magazine?” I am indignant and then, suddenly, find I’m laughing too. “Do you know how ridiculous you look?”
His hair is dry-black on top but wet-black at the ends, as if dye is growing out. His wool jumper is leaking runnels of water down his legs and around his feet.
“You look wonderful,” he says. “Goddamn gorgeous.”
The words stop the laughter bubbling in my throat. Then he is bending down and scooping me up. God, what now?
