“I don’t think so,” I replied.
“To cut a long story short, they blew themselves up,” Tony said. “I heard they were due to plant a bomb in there and warn the staff—there was a war on property and businesses at the time—but it detonated as they were leaving the car. The story that went round Derry was that the boys went in, planted it, shouted to the staff, and the manager locked them inside, intentionally or otherwise. I’m not certain what is true, but that story became the one people believed. Two teenagers from Shantallow, they were. One of them was Protestant.”
“Damn,” I replied. “You wouldn’t bat an eyelid driving past that place. Just another shitty supermarket.” I stared out at the river. “You always hear of ghosts in old Victorian houses. You never think of them walking around the aisles of supermarkets. Did you know those young kids who drowned? The ones from the woodlands years ago?”
“Aye. One of them survived.”
“Serious? I didn’t know that.”
“Aye. Dan died. Sad, as he was a decent fella, but his brother survived. The wrong one lived, in my opinion. The others had gone in and floundered, but he swam to one of those floating buoys and clung to it all night, screaming his head off. You imagine what that was like?”
“Jesus.”
“He was fucking crazy, though, even before that. A bad bastard, to be honest. Wired to the moon. Complete space cadet. He was in the UDA. You remember them?”
“Vaguely.”
“They were a paramilitary outfit. Did terrible things. Thing is, they were legal—right up until the early nineties, I think. He was mad as a fuckin’ hatter. Even by their standards.
“We had a bonfire down at the lighthouse one night. We were just kids. I don’t even think we were drinking yet. We used to go down and shout over insults to boys in Strathfoyle doing the same thing. The water carried the voices. We couldn’t get at each other—not that we’d have done anything. He came down with a friend of his. Probably saw the smoke from the top of the hill. You could feel a change in the air when he arrived. He came up with this smirk on his face, hands in his pockets: ‘All right, lads.’ He hung around like he was waiting for something. I knew he was a head case, so I tried to pay him no heed, let on I wasn’t bothered, but he made me nervous. He hung around with this sense of … intense menace. And he knew it. He was smiling to himself. It was like something sinister came along with him. My mates were trying to keep their cool too. I could see them, trying to act all normal, like mini-adults. People like him look for weakness. They sense it. Feed off it.
“Then, as if it was nothing, he took out his gun and held it up so we could all see. I swear my heart stopped and I was rooted to the floor, but I tried not to show it. Then he unclipped it, emptied the cartridge into his hand, and threw the bullets, one by one, right into the fire. We just froze, until one of us suddenly bolted and then we were all off, all confused, like we were running in different directions at once, tumbling over ourselves. I made a dash for that concrete structure that covers the pipes down there and squeezed myself in, and my mates followed behind me, trying to push their way in too, but there was hardly any room. We were there two or three seconds literally, and suddenly you could hear the crack of the bullets whizzing around and hitting things. I just pressed myself as far as I could behind the concrete. And that crazy bastard was walking around the whole time, laughing, circling round the fire.
“There were rumors he was involved in an assassination of a local politician who went down on this side of the river, out in the sticks. The killers knew the bridges would go into shutdown, so he got them back across the river by boat. Who knows? You hear these things like Chinese whispers.”
“What became of him? He still around?”
“He used that gun on himself, in his shed, of all places. Sorry end, but I can’t say it didn’t suit him.”
I tried to imagine that night he’d clung to the buoy. The depths of that. Sweet Jesus!
“I guess it was boredom that brought us down here. We’d copy my da, I s’pose. Catch flatfish and eels with a rod and line. We’d make swings out over the river. The Brits would race powerboats down the Foyle. We’d shout to them, get chases. They had a launchpad at Ebrington. They went unbelievably fast, the bottom bouncing over the waves, soldiers clinging on, being thrown around like ragdolls but trying to look cool, like they were in ’Nam. They’d often have three soldiers on board, but it could be anything up to ten. All armed to the teeth. We’d light fires to draw them in and then brick the boats. We were warned by Anthony repeatedly to stay away from the narrows. The most dangerous part of the river, he’d say. I was fishing with a friend once, and he cast out and I felt this horrible tug on my cheek and realized he’d put the hook right into my face. We couldn’t pull it out; we had to push it through the wound—or, rather, the nurses did, after I’d walked home with the rod attached to my face. I got a double whamming for that.” Tony laughed, shaking his head.
We walked along. I pointed to a blue frayed rope dangling from a branch out over the Foyle.
“That one of yours?”
“Could well be. That may have been our hanging tree.” He laughed again.
Across the water the factory lights were blazing, even though it was daytime.
“That’s Coolkeeragh power station. British Oxygen used to be there. It was a military airfield before then. You know Anthony worked over there for years? After he gave up the full-time fishing. DuPont, it was. Pushing vats of chemicals around. The factory made bulletproof vests. You believe that? With all the shit going on in town.
“He’d still fish on the side: moonlight fixing nets, weaving knots, with his waders up to his waist. That was ’78 or ’79. He took me out on the boats. He had a knowledge of the Foyle that was like a computer. Like a satellite. If someone went in, Anthony would get the fleet up from Greencastle to look for them. There was an exception, though.”
“What was that?”
“Suicides. If they thought the person went in deliberately, they backed off. I don’t know if it was not to meddle with the person’s intentions or whether it was forbidden by the priests. They were all staunch Catholics. Suicide was really frowned upon then. It was a mortal sin. Might still be.”
“Strange, when you think of all the saints they worship. How they died. And Jesus.”
“Aw, they love their martyrs, under certain conditions. It’s the rest of us that are the problem.”
We walked on.
“What about the younger boys? The ones who drowned?”
“Well, your ma’s right. They did come up to us on the day they died. It was weird, come to think of it. We kept playing and they left at teatime. We didn’t get no tea that day. They went in, ate with their families, and then came back out, telling lies to their folks no doubt, and dodging us for some reason—maybe they wanted the game all to themselves. They went down to the river when the sun was setting. We found out the next day they were gone.”
“What a thing … Christ! What stopped him? Anthony, I mean. Working on the river? He came off a motorbike, didn’t he?”
“He smashed up his leg bad. Compound fracture. Bone shattered and came through his skin. Real bad. I know because I took my turn looking after him, and it wasn’t pretty. That was the late seventies, but Anthony was phasing out the working world already. That was his excuse to wind it up really, or maybe it forced him to face reality. Kitty ran upstairs, unable to handle it, when he was brought back injured, so we were left with the handling. Not a model patient by any means. He recovered, though, pretty much fully. Years later Anthony had veins that needed seeing to on his legs. I’m not sure if it was related, but it was a minor operation, to ease the pains that he felt, or claimed to, when the weather changed. He got it into his head the operation was a big deal. That it had gone wrong, when it hadn’t. Some leftover taboo about being a cripple. Took to the bed. Never left it again.
“He was doing night shifts in DuPont when he came off the bike. He was
like a bear with a sore head, working shifts. Clock time, not tide time. Couldn’t get used to it. He’d made himself a real pain in the ass, trying to keep the fishing thing going, tagging along on other guys’ boats. Forcing himself on people by helping them, accumulating debts, hauling up lobster pots and all that. He’d no idea of leaving people alone.”
Something like footage came into my mind of Greencastle, the port where the fishing boats were mainly based on the Foyle, just past Moville. Boys with silver trays of fish. Someone washing away the overspill. The heady reek of marine life. Tires and pots hanging, jangling from the sides of boats. Bobbing awkwardly against the quay, trying to lasso a rope onto the bollards there. And a word that I’d read that stayed in my mind—Abraham-men. Originally these were beggars who were either formerly bedlamites or were imitating bedlamites for money. They eventually migrated to the docks, out-of-work mariners or those masquerading as sailors begging for money. It had once been a dangerous business to hang around the docks, as press gangs stole men into the Royal Navy—and rum, sodomy, and the lash—from that very quay. Maybe Anthony was the last of the Abraham-men.
“He could be friendly when there was something in it for him. And even then, only ever to those above him. I went out with him once or twice toward the end. He liked that, holding court with stories. Didn’t matter who it was or whether they wanted to listen. He’d talk about every kind of fish, how fishing in the Atlantic in winter was so cold his shirt would stick to his back with frozen sweat, or nets that got caught on downed planes and rusting ships.
“One thing I noticed: he had the most amazing eyesight. He’d be talking and then swing around to something in his peripheral view—a shoal or a salmon leaping really, really far away. It all looked the same to me, but he could spot it. He’d point to the horizon and say, ‘You see that ship out yonder?’ And I swear I’d scan the horizon for a good ten, twenty minutes before it appeared, microscopic in the distance.”
Tony paused, thinking of something. “You know he spoke Gaelic?”
“Fluently?”
“Yup.”
I could hear Anthony’s booming Paisley-esque foghorn voice. “It’s the quiet ones you watch, I guess.”
Tony laughed.
I thought of Anthony and his crew praying in Gaelic in case the Holy Spirit spoke the mother tongue.
There’s an imaginary destination called Fiddler’s Green. The afterlife for sailors. A place of uninhibited joys. You got a key to it when you died, if you’d served fifty years on the sea. Anthony made sure to quit before the prospect of bliss neared.
“There used to be houses down there. That old overgrown ruin. The roof’s fallen in now, but the local Orange families owned them. They were used as sheds by that stage, but they’d lived in them once. They were born on the river, those kids, and then it took them.”
I remembered the houses. Some were still there. Completely enveloped in plant life. Windows gaping black rectangles in a riot of green. The rooms decorated with generations of graffiti. The words “No Future” faded by seasons.
“What did they keep in them? Smuggling stuff?”
“I think it was fishing gear, but you could never be sure. They guarded it ferociously. Their auld boy—tough nut, he was—if he saw you anywhere near the path, he would be onto you. Thought nothing of giving you a fist to the ear. They kept a vegetable patch down there, and he’d be down two or three times a day. He was a real bitter old Orangeman. He’d wave his stick and set his dog on you. Took to wearing his sash around the estate when he found out they were housing Catholics there. He didn’t believe we should live anywhere near them. Bothered him to see us going where we pleased. There was a lot of paranoia around. You know the big house down there at the end of the lane?”
“I’ve seen it through the trees.”
“We found out it had secret staircases, passageways, a tunnel to the river. Christ knows what trouble they were expecting or how inflated that story was, but I had it on good authority. That’s the thing, though: we were always treated as if we were the ones who suddenly arrived here, as if we had somehow invaded. As if they were the ones needing protection. Preemptively. I suppose they knew about revenge.”
“I guess that was the intention. Make you a stranger in your own land.”
“My patience with the auld boy gave out one day. He said something he shouldn’t have when I was out shooting rabbits. You remember the shotgun I had? Got rid of it when I had the kids. Can’t have a thing like that lying around. God forbid. I was out shooting when I saw that bitter old bastard Orangeman. I’d emptied the gun, hung it over my shoulder. He hadn’t expected me there but he froze. He’d called me a ‘Fenian bastard,’ called me ‘boy,’ expecting me to know my place when we were on his turf. I walked right up to him and said—really slowly, so he’d get it into his thick skull—‘You … don’t treat us … like that … anymore.’ And that was that. My hands were trembling afterwards, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
“The sons were all right. It was generational too, to an extent. They were around nets all their lives. What they think happened is they pushed the raft out, with a net to catch fish. They anchored it down somehow, threw the net in, and waited awhile. When they were pulling it in, it got snagged on something. They all tried pulling individually, but it stuck fast, so they tried collectively. First rule of small boats: never stand up, especially with more than one person. The net gave and the boat tipped, flipped upside down with them. And that was that. We were due to play them at football the next day, the new estate versus the old estate, but they never showed up.
“You can’t imagine how dangerous the narrows are. All that water being squeezed through the channel. You can barely see a trace of it on the surface.”
It was hard to believe, given how calm the water’s surface was, that it moved with the force of an iron juggernaut, a constant landslide, a quiet tsunami moving through the city every day, barely even noticed by anyone who lived on its banks.
“Anthony knew the river so well that he had names for every single bit of it, from Derry to Inishowen Head. He knew the lie of the land below the waves. Experience, stories. Who the fuck knows?” Tony began clicking his fingers. “What’s that thing they do with lead and line?”
“Depth sounding,” I added, regretting it as soon as I spoke. “Bathymetry, I think it’s called.”
Tony nodded. “Aye, some shit like that. He even knew where and when the dead would resurface. He used to say it takes ten days, and the stomach bloats with gas and it floats. They’d work shifts, all day and night. He could read invisible currents as if a map was on the water. He knew the river well because he was afraid of it. He used to say that a ship passing would disturb the silt, churning it up, and bring bodies to the surface. He knew what places to dredge and what places to ignore. I remember seeing two or three trawlers at work. They had these huge grappling hooks, dragging wood and wire along the riverbed. Pulled-up cables and things best left alone, no doubt.
“You’d get the loved ones down at the river, though it was no place for them. I was there when they found one missing boy. He’d snagged out on the nets, opposite the gas pipes. A fisherman out pulling up pots got into a right state discovering the body unexpectedly, the face staring up at him from the depths.
“Anthony knew the river inside out. I remember when he found a body, a kid I knew called Geoffrey. I remember my auld boy crying afterwards, when he’d come home. That creeped me out, ’cause I’d never seen him like that. Geoffrey’s father was on the boat when they found him. They had to hold him back. They kept his boy in the water until they’d got to the docks and ushered the father off and away.”
The sea change that happened to a body in the water for many days was not the magical metamorphosis of Shakespeare. It required a closed casket at the funeral. The bodies ended up discolored all over and inflated. The skin would peel off. Their sex, race, let alone identity, became hard to tell. Anthony said they were like p
regnant women floating. Sometimes fish would get into the soft parts and pour out of them when pulled onto the shore. Crabs crawling out of eyes and mouths.
We stared out at the water.
“Once, some family members hired a boat and found a body, and the fishermen had to go out and relieve them, drag them away basically, because they hadn’t been prepared for what they’d found and were in hysterics. They learned to keep relatives away when the body was found.”
Out of sight. Such things could never be forgotten. Such things could replace what memories they had of the living. Such things were a cancer to memory itself.
Tony continued, “Anthony was a professional. A real determined bastard. He went at it day and night when he knew the bodies would be rising. And he hauled in a lot of bodies down the years. Truth be told, he played on the savior aspect: ‘I brought your son back to you.’ Like he’d saved a life.”
The grave is, at least, tangible. Though there was a romance to those willingly buried at sea; for the unwilling it was a means of erasure. There would be no tomb, no marker on land, no burial in consecrated ground, and hence no rising on the Day of Judgment. It was a resting place of eternal restlessness, reserved for heathens and the disgraced. The bones of Wycliffe, damned as a heretic, were exhumed, crushed, and burned and his ashes thrown in the River Swift. The Nazis hanged after the Nuremberg trials were cremated and had their ashes dumped in the River Elbe. It was said that Hitler, his wife, and the Goebbels family followed them. Bin Laden was buried somewhere in the Arabian Sea. No body, no shrine. Yet the innocent, too, were lost in the sea.
Vikings, who had scoured this land and built on it, believed the uncared-for unburied dead became revenants, and the restless would visit and profoundly disturb the living family members, which usually foretold more death. To bury them in peace was to end a cycle.
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