Acts of Allegiance

by Peter Cunningham

  ‘Ted didn’t understand that in the North everything is divided. You only deal with your own group. So he bought a little van, began to make coal rounds. Kane’s Coal, he called it. They painted warnings on the van. He took no notice. Ho-ho, he said, I’ll be all right. They burned the van, but he bought another.’

  The day began to slip away into the crimson western sky.

  ‘They caught him down an alley on Christmas Eve. When he woke up in hospital, he was paralysed and blind. Iggy and Mags went to the police, but they were laughed at. Big strapping Ted who could carry a sack of coal on each shoulder. He lasted six months like that.’ Bobby’s lip quivered. ‘Six months. I made the journey twice. The first time I brought them up meat the Gent gave me. Legs of lamb, loins of pork. The second time it was to bury him.’ Bobby was panting. ‘I’ll tell you this much. Whatever Iggy does up there now, he’s just defending himself.’

  16

  WATERFORD

  December 1954

  With Uncle Stanley and my father both dead, Granny Kane had switched her unquenchable need for worry on to Uncle Ted.

  ‘I just wish he would come home for Christmas. I haven’t seen them for nearly a year.’

  ‘He has a farm to run, Mrs Kane,’ said Bobby Gillece, now married to my Auntie Kate. ‘A big responsibility.’

  ‘My lovely little Iggy,’ Granny said.

  ‘Christmas is a busy time on a farm, Mother,’ said the Gent, putting his cup and saucer aside. ‘Labour goes home for Christmas.’

  ‘He’s after starting up a coal delivery business, Mrs Kane,’ said Bobby, ‘and Christmas is when all the money is made.’

  ‘I know, I know, but why did he have to go so far away?’ asked Granny, and sagged, as if the wind had gone out of her. ‘If anything happens to him, how long will it take us to hear about it? He could be dead a week and still I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘We have a telephone being installed in the New Year, Mother,’ said the Gent gravely, his foot tapping out its ceaseless message. ‘I have one below in the office. If there is any news to be had, we’ll get it straight away—isn’t that right, Bobby?’

  ‘Of course, we will,’ Bobby said from his place beside the fire. ‘All they have to do is lift the receiver and talk to the exchange. There’s nothing to worry about, Mrs Kane.’

  ‘And what about your poor mother and her farm?’ Granny asked me, as if she had just remembered a fresh source of sadness. ‘Oh, God, imagine, poor Paddy dead too.’

  During the school holidays, Nancy always made sure I went to stay a night in Fowler Street.

  ‘I’m going upstairs to lie down, Marty,’ Granny said. ‘Come and help me with those stairs.’

  She was far heavier than she looked, as we made our way upwards, my arm around her. In her bedroom, she allowed me to ease off her shoes, and in a moment, she was asleep. As I tiptoed out to the head of the stairs, I could hear the men’s low voices.

  ‘Any word on that business?’

  The Gent.

  ‘My information is that so long as he stays away, there’ll be no trouble. The guards have said as much,’ Bobby replied.

  ‘He’s a right little cunt,’ the Gent said. ‘I never liked him.’

  ‘He’s my godson—’

  ‘Godson my arse. What he did was in cold blood, to a mental retard, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘He was only defending himself,’ said Bobby in a wheedling voice, ‘after what Stanley done to his kitten.’

  ‘Defending himself? This is murder we’re talking about! And anyway, poor Stanley couldn’t dress himself, for fuck’s sake, let alone do that to a cat.’

  ‘Well then who did it?’ Bobby asked. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Who do you think did it?’ the Gent said. ‘Little bastard, always up to mischief, looking for attention.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus, that’s harsh.’

  ‘I saw him at it. “D’ye want sweets, Uncle Stanley? Say fuck the Gent and I’ll give ye sweets!” I heard him, clear as I’m talking to you!’

  ‘I know, that’s a disgrace,’ Bobby said. ‘I gave him a couple of slaps myself, indeed I did. Spare the rod and spoil the child.’

  ‘I never saw you except you were giving him thrupenny bits.’

  ‘I chastised him too, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the Gent and I could almost see the look of scepticism on his face. ‘If it wasn’t for Ted, I’d fucking march him up to the barracks myself. He’s a horrid little article. Nothing good will come of him, mark my words.’

  Later, I lay down in Iggy’s old bedroom where the radio sets had once been kept, fingering the two pound notes Granny had given me.

  17

  DUBLIN

  September—October 1974

  We are at our most primitive when it comes to death. We don’t say dust to dust for nothing. We want to see our loved ones laid out, to kiss their icy foreheads, to touch their candled fingers and reassure ourselves that the cycle of birth and death remains intact. We lose our main co-ordinates if we don’t see the coffin lid screwed on, or hear the roar of the furnace in the crematorium. Left without a body, we cannot truly mourn, for without a body we do not truly believe in death. We may appear to, but we don’t. This is understandable, since death is essentially unimaginable. Without a body, we continue to clutch at the belief that life never ends, however absurd that possibility may be.

  By the time autumn arrived I had made a decision. When Alison eventually called and asked me to meet her, I left the office early and drove into the Dublin Mountains.

  ‘I came across a new adult toy in London last week,’ she said. ‘It’s a plastic square with coloured moving parts. You have to revolve the parts in order to align them all correctly. It’s called a Rubik’s Cube.’

  ‘Did you succeed?’

  ‘Eventually—after I persevered for most of the weekend. It just shows that success invariably requires patience.’

  We were sitting in the snug of a little pub I had discovered, beyond Stepaside. Sugar was in England, part of a Fitzwilliam tennis team, and our children were in Waterloo with Fleming. I felt suddenly emboldened by my decision, as if I were somehow in charge of matters.

  ‘There’s a reason for everything, you know. Iggy Kane’s father, my Uncle Ted, was crippled by Loyalist thugs in the North, probably because he was a Catholic trying to sell coal in Loyalist areas. The police ignored the incident. No wonder my cousin has problems with authority up there.’

  Alison shook her head. ‘What on earth has that got to do with murdering civilians in Britain?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m afraid I cannot become involved with what we last discussed. Not this time, not with him as the target. Sorry, but that is my decision.’

  She made a point of drinking her whiskey. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’

  ‘I’ve never been more serious.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m sure you will understand.’

  She sat unmoving, for almost a minute, and during that time her face became severely altered, in a way that was truly frightening, as if she was metamorphosing into another person before my eyes.

  ‘And I had thought that you really were someone who could make a difference,’ she said so quietly I had to strain to hear.

  Before I could respond, she had gathered her bag and coat and was on her feet.

  ‘Alison, listen … ’

  ‘You listen. We gave you an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution because we thought that was what you wanted. Personally, I have done my utmost to advance your career, and not without success. Now, at the first call to give something back, at a time of grave crisis, you welch. How very disappointing. And how very wrong I have been about you. Goodbye, Marty.’

  Then she was gone, and I was left standing there, already empty and bereft.

  I spent days in a kind of mental fever, like a gambler who, in a wild moment he will forever regret, has lost everything on a bad hand of cards. The fact that she was
gone from my life—and that I had caused her to go—amazed me, for I had never until that moment grasped how much I relied upon her. It was not that she had been ever present in the physical sense, or that we had met more than once every couple of months, but nevertheless she had become the core of my working life. Everything I did in the Department, and how I did it, was ultimately informed by my arrangement with Alison. She had provided me with the meaning and excitement that I craved, but had not known I craved until I met her. Now, like someone sitting on a train that has broken down in the middle of nowhere, I felt powerless, defeated and depressed. It was as if the ten years gone by had all been a waste of time.

  I tried to come to terms with the reason for my decision. I wished that I could discuss my dilemma with someone, but there was no one. An elusive feeling of loyalty to my childhood seemed to be at the root of what governed me, which, as I went over it a hundred times, seemed more and more tenuous. I was letting my early memories of Waterford contaminate the clear-cut principles of justice that Alison, and I, stood for. The Iggy Kane I was trying to protect was no longer the companion whom I had yearned to be with all those years ago, but a cold-eyed killer who, for whatever reason, had decided his own fate. He had dominated me and manipulated my emotions throughout our childhood, and now, even though he could not have known it, was doing so again.

  What would the Captain have thought? Despised Iggy Kane, without a doubt. The Captain had been a soldier, a man who had fought honourably and taken prisoners-of-war. He would have judged killing civilians as beneath contempt. I could hear myself reciting my predicament to him and imagine his derisive reaction.

  Not my kind of chap.

  I excused myself from our weekend trip to Waterloo, pleading an upcoming report that did not exist, and sat alone in Dublin like a man in the grip of a fatal disease. I wanted to drink myself into a state of insensibility, but knew that my situation would only be worse if I did so. Out on Sandymount Strand, in pouring rain, I actually contemplated walking out to sea and letting the tide look after my pathetic problems.

  My terror was now centred on the probability that I had gone beyond the point of no return with her, and that for all I knew she might have packed up and returned to London, in which case I had fucked myself completely. In sploshing shoes, I came home in darkness. My teeth chattered as I went straight to the phone. It rang and rang. I wanted to scream. She always answered on the first or second ring. I stood there, looking at myself in the hall mirror, a man gaunt, sodden, pale and terrified.

  ‘Alison Chase.’

  She seemed to be talking from thin air, but then I realised I was holding the phone down by my side.

  ‘Alison,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

  We never met twice in the same place, nor did we ever agree where we were going to meet until an hour or so before we did. It made sense to limit the possibilities of electronic eavesdropping, even then a rapidly evolving practise. Typical of the way our relationship had evolved, the location for the next meeting, when decided, sometimes by me, other times by her, always seemed to work. For example, that evening when I suggested a little pub on the Strawberry Beds, she said ‘perfect’ straight away.

  We sat with whiskies and a bag of Tayto crisps, as if our previous encounter had never taken place.

  ‘We’re talking about the first Sunday in November. On that morning, in Armagh Cathedral, a young man called Joseph McGinn will be ordained a priest. You know who he is?’

  I had to close my eyes in order to concentrate. ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘He is the nephew of Ignatius Kane’s stepmother, Margaret, or Mags, Kane. It will be a great occasion for the families; everyone will be invited. Including his cousin Marty.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘You will receive an invitation, believe me, as will Mr and Mrs Gillece. We’ve seen the guest list.’

  It was as if I was having a dream in which I was forever drowning.

  ‘That’s only a few weeks away.’

  ‘Exactly. Now we don’t expect Kane to risk entering a confined space such as Armagh Cathedral, but we do think there’s a good chance he’ll attend the celebrations afterwards—especially if he knows that his favourite cousin Marty will be there.’

  ‘I hate this.’

  ‘It’s as good an opportunity as we’re likely to get,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘You don’t know that the celebrations, as you call them, will be held in the North,’ I said and tried to take out a cigarette without shaking.

  ‘That I acknowledge is a possible flaw—but as of this moment the McGinn family have reserved the banqueting hall of the Ramblers Inn, a couple of miles to the south-west of the town of Aughnacloy for that afternoon. But as you say, that could change, and if it does, then all bets are off.’

  I was seized by terror, even as part of me did not believe what I had just been told. I bought more drinks, a double for myself, and more Tayto crisps, and we talked about politics and marriage, and our children. She could just breeze ahead, after what we had just discussed, without a bother, which was why her salary grade was, I assumed, far higher than mine.

  It may seem odd now, but when I look back I cherish every moment of my meetings with Alison, even the awkward ones. For me it was like going time and again to a deep and unfailing well that ultimately sustained me. Her style was infectious. I cleaved to her for all my worth—I still do—and relegated such matters as my personal safety to a zone beneath my radar. I have always needed to be infatuated with someone, which I know says a lot about the elements of my character that are missing, but I don’t care. I have always lived in turmoil, but I have always, in the main, been happy with the way I am.

  ‘What exactly am I to do?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘Just turn up, Marty. Just turn up.’

  ‘I’ll be completely on my own up there, you know,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Marty, you will not be on your own.’

  18

  DUBLIN

  November 1974

  Bill O’Neill had called me in. He was standing by the window to his office, his usual suit making a dark silhouette of him.

  ‘How is the battle going?’ he asked.

  In conjunction with the recently formed Anglo-Irish Section, we were working on the wording of a proposal to try and rescue some elements of the failed Sunningdale Agreement, a tedious and depressing task, made all the more so by my inability to concentrate on such banalities at a time when I was caught up in plans for a foreign government-sponsored assassination.

  ‘One step forward, two back,’ I said. Framed black-and-white photographs, of what I assumed were Irish seascapes, filled the walls. Everything about Bill seemed monochromatic. ‘You know the way.’

  ‘To be sure I do.’

  Bill sat behind his desk, invited me to take a chair and followed his usual ritual of tamping a pipe, which meant covering it with his hands, cracking a match in there, then sucking and puffing until overly sweet fumes filled the room like tear gas. He sat back with an air of general contentment. ‘But there’s a certain beauty to the whole process, isn’t there? Like a courtship being conducted by way of correspondence, an almost eighteenth-century series of rituals and niceties. We move this way, they move that. Eyes upon each other. A smile every now and then, a touch, a meeting of minds. I can sometimes almost imagine a quill in my hand.’

  Even though I had worked beside him for more than a decade, Bill was a man I knew little about. He was a bachelor. He sang in a male voice choir. He had entered the department with a degree in political science from UCD, but, other than that, as far as I was concerned, Bill might as well have come into the world like an egg.

  ‘You’re quite the romantic, Bill.’

  He laughed, as if unused to compliments. ‘Do you remember when you started work here at all? Years ago.’

  I knew him well enough to know that he never asked a question lightly.

  ‘Of cour
se. I was interviewed by Seamus De Bárra and then handed over to you.’

  ‘Ah, Seamus De Bárra, God be merciful to him. Did you know that he spent six years studying for the priesthood before he came in here?’

  Small hands offering a chalice, came to my mind. A tinkling bike bell outside.

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘It goes to show that we can never predict where we’ll end up, doesn’t it? Take your own family. Years ago, you were all one down in Waterford. Now you’re here in Dublin, and you’ve got cousins on the border. Who could have predicted that?’

  He was busily tamping his pipe again.

  ‘You’re talking about Ignatius Kane’s family,’ I said.

  ‘Well, his name does come up from time to time, yes.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said as darkness like a dull weight plunged in me, ‘so you know about the ordination.’

  ‘A great family occasion,’ Bill said. ‘Such days must be celebrated.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, how did you …?’

  ‘No great secret. Telephone traffic is the job of our friends in the Gardaí and in military intelligence.’

  I cursed myself. ‘I should have told you, Bill, I’m sorry, but I didn’t think there were security implications.’

  ‘It’s a young country and many of us have relations on both sides of the border,’ Bill said, ‘and we’d be much worse off if we didn’t.’

  ‘I apologise. I hope I haven’t embarrassed you.’

  ‘Me?’ He took the pipe from his mouth. ‘When I heard your name mentioned, I just let on that I had known all the time.’

  I was being reproved, but then I saw a way out.

  ‘I won’t go,’ I said with a flash of hope. ‘In fact, now that you’ve put it into perspective, I can see how my presence might be viewed as inappropriate. And, again, I’m sorry for being so stupid.’

  ‘Marty, Marty.’ Bill shook his head. ‘Have you learned nothing in all your time here?’ He beheld me through vaporous tobacco. ‘Of course you’ll go.’