Now and in the Hour of Our Death

by Patrick Taylor

  “It never changes. British boys are still dying trying to keep ethnic and religious groups apart.”

  “In Cyprus?”

  Becky looked deeply into Fiona’s eyes, hesitated, then said, “And, forgive me for saying so, in Ulster.”

  And that was the truth. “I know,” Fiona said, and thought of Davy and the soldier he’d killed. And the forty years Davy was serving in the Kesh. “There’ve been too many deaths there.”

  “I seem to remember that once upon a time you actually tried to do something about it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You told me you’d been up to your neck in the Ulster civil rights movement. A regular … what’s the American word…? Peacenik. That’s it. You said that you’d worked hard for them.”

  “Yes. I did.” What was Becky driving at?

  “It seems to me, at least from what you said, that you did your best over there.”

  “Well, I…”

  “I’d even wager that your brother’s death was what got you involved in the first place.”

  Fiona’s eyes widened. Becky was right. It had been Connor’s death that had made her try all those years ago—along with George Thompson and the rest of NICRA—to put an end to the useless sectarian violence.

  “It’s hardly your fault that your countrymen are still at it. Queen Elizabeth the First knew that it was a waste of time trying to civilize the Irish.”

  “Becky, it was your Good Queen Bess who was responsible for the Troubles.”

  “In God’s name, how? She’s been dead for three hundred years.”

  “She was the one who decided to ship thousands of Lowland Scots as colonists to Ulster. They were Protestants. They called it the Plantation. She gave them the land that Catholic natives had owned. The natives didn’t like that. They still don’t.”

  Becky fiddled with her coffee cup.

  “Come on, Becky. Cheer up. It’s hardly your fault. It all started so far in the past.”

  “And that’s a foreign country,” Becky said pensively.

  “A what?”

  “A chap called L. P. Hartley once said a marvelous thing, and I quote, ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ And d’you know what? He was absolutely right.”

  “A foreign country?” Fiona toyed with the line, then said, “I try not to think about it too much. Sometimes … sometimes I wish we could blot out our pasts. Clean them off like chalk from a blackboard.”

  “Ah,” said Becky with a small grin, “we can’t, however”—she hoisted her latte—“we can polish off our coffees, and, if you’d like, I’ll run you home and you can take me for that walk.” She patted her stomach. “I probably could use a bit of exercise.”

  * * *

  Fiona could hear her friend breathing heavily as together they reached the top of the little hill in Vanier Park, a favourite spot for Vancouver kite fliers.

  “I,” said Becky, “need a breather.” Then she plumped down on the grass.

  Fiona sat beside her and watched the kites, multicoloured fabric birds that caught the breeze and dived and soared. “Aren’t they graceful?”

  “Pretty,” said Becky. “You’d think they were all trying to break free and go tearing off on their own. Of course, you know if their strings snap they don’t soar off into the wild blue yonder. They prang.”

  “They what?”

  “Prang. My dad was in the Royal Air Force. Prang was RAF slang for crash.” Becky turned her head to follow the aerobatics of two crescent-shaped creations that raced across the blue. “I wonder … remember you said you’d like to be able to blot out your past…? I wonder if our pasts are like kite strings?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “You said you’d like to be able to wipe out your past.”

  “Well, sometimes I would.”

  “I think everything that has happened to us is our string. We may think it’s an encumbrance, but all that has gone, all we remember, even the things we try to forget, remind us of who and what we are and keep us on an even keel. As long as we don’t dwell there too much.”

  Fiona considered what her friend had said and recognized that she, Fiona, had been dwelling too much on her past in the last few days. The bloody nightmare always did that to her. It was a good thing that it seemed to be coming less and less frequently. Perhaps, she grinned at the idea, perhaps it was like a teenager’s acne. She’d grow out of it.

  One of the kites swooped close to her, rose, stalled, and plunged to earth. She saw a little boy running to it, pulling a man by the hand. The lad lifted the broken thing, stared up at the man, and said, tearfully, “But you can fix it, can’t you, Daddy?”

  Poor wee fellow. The boy didn’t know, as she did, that there were some things even a daddy couldn’t fix. He’d learn as she had learned. Northern Ireland couldn’t be fixed, at least for all her efforts she and her NICRA friends hadn’t been able to fix it. And as they said there, “What can’t be cured must be endured”—or left behind as she’d left Belfast to carry on with her life. And Tim was now part of that life. He was taking her to dinner tonight.

  She stood. “You’ve said a mouthful, Becky, and I think you’re right. In fact … I know you’re right.”

  Becky struggled to her feet. “Doctor Becky usually is. Rather boring, don’tcha know?’

  Fiona laughed at her friend’s fake upper-class Victorian expression.

  “Not one bit. Come on. Let’s go home.”

  CHAPTER 7

  TYRONE. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1983

  Sammy McCandless just wanted to get this over with and get home. He slowed the Land Rover. Through the drizzle, its headlights lit a signpost. Clady was the last town on the County Tyrone side of the border with the Irish Republic. Underneath the pointing finger that read CLADY ½, nailed to the post, was a metal white-painted triangle surrounded by a red border. It wasn’t one of the usual traffic signs where the picture in the triangle, say of cattle, warned the motorist that this was where cows might cross the road and be a hazard to traffic.

  The picture was of a balaclava-hooded figure holding an ArmaLite rifle aloft. The slogan beneath proclaimed, SNIPER AT WORK. Not even the thickest British squaddie could fail to be aware of the effectiveness of a sniper, concealed in a clump of whin bushes or tucked in behind a dry-stone wall, firing from the Republic of Ireland side of the border. An ArmaLite’s .223 round could pierce body armour.

  He pulled the Rover to the verge, stopped, took a torch from the passenger seat, and got out. One last check in the horse box.

  He dropped the tail ramp and climbed in. Plenty of straw on the floor. Enough horse apples. He shoved the yellow stalks aside and shone the torch’s beam along the floorboards, each fitted to its neighbour by a tongue-and-groove joint. It would take a skilled eye to see how a section could be lifted and allow access to the hollow floor of the vehicle. It had seen a lot of use, this old horse trailer—and not just for gunrunning. Old man O’Byrne had made a bit of extra cash cross-border smuggling. It had been a way of life in all the border counties for as long as Sammy could remember. Tyrone in the North and Donegal in the Republic were neighbours. Before the partition of Ireland, both had been part of the old nine-county Province of Ulster, where today only six counties remained.

  About forty miles south of here, in South Armagh, “Slab” Murphy’s farm was half in Ballybinaby in County Louth in the Republic and half in Cornoogah in Armagh. He had oil storage tanks on both sides of the border and simply pumped oil from the side where the prices were lower to the side where the oil could be sold for more. He was supposed to be worth millions. An illegal traffic in grain and pigs always followed subsidies offered to farmers by the British or by the Republic of Ireland. There was big money in that, too.

  Money? Sammy kicked at a pile of horse turds. He’d been short of doh-ray-me all his life. The wages old man O’Byrne and now Cal paid a farm labourer would hardly keep a wood louse in wood chips. No wonder
Sammy’d got in with a bunch of lads who bought pigs in Ballybofey, trucked them north, claimed the eight-pounds-per-animal subsidy at the border, then herded the animals back across the fields at night to repeat the trans-border run the next day—and collect another bounty. Made him a good fifty pounds a week. With that amount of extra cash to spend, life hadn’t been too bad—until the day, three years ago, when Erin smiled at him.

  He sat down, let his leg dangle over the open back of the trailer, switched off the torch, pulled out a Park Drive—cheapest fags he could buy—lit up, and thought of her and her bloody smile.

  He’d been mucking out the byre, shoveling cow clap into a wheelbarrow, when she’d come round the corner.

  “Morning, Sammy.” Her hair was down, and the light behind her shone through the strands like evening sunlight on a rippled lake. He could see the silhouette of her legs, long, slim legs, through the material of her skirt.

  “Erin.”

  “Have you got a wee minute?”

  For her? She could have the rest of his life and his share of eternity. How often had he watched her move about the farm, graceful, young, high-breasted? How many nights had he sat alone in his cottage flipping the pages of an old Playboy, zip of his pants undone, tissues on the sofa beside him, staring at the nude American girls and picturing Erin O’Byrne, naked, lips pouting, beckoning to him? Why could he never get her out of his mind? She’d not even glance at a fellah like him, and anyway there were plenty of girls in Strabane who’d let you take them to the pictures on a Saturday night, fumble with their bra straps in the dark, give you a bit of the other up against a wall in a dark back alley, but still …

  A man could dream, although Sammy kept his dreams tucked in the bottom of the sock drawer of his mind as he used the dresser back home to hide his Playboys and a dog-eared photograph of Erin smiling down from her horse.

  “Aye, certainly,” he’d said, putting the shovel into the barrow and walking to the byre’s open door.

  “Great day,” she said.

  “Aye.” He wished he was quicker with the repartee, but the best he could come up with was, “It’ll bring the crops on a treat.”

  “Sam, I was wondering if you could do me a wee favour…?” She tilted her head to one side, and her hair caressed her left cheek and fell to her right shoulder in a copper cascade.

  “Aye, surely.” She probably wanted her horse saddled.

  “It’s a bit … you know…” She looked down at the floor of the byre. “A bit tricky.”

  It wasn’t like Erin to be hesitant about anything.

  “Are you all right?”

  She laughed in her throat and looked up. Her eyes, bright as emeralds, shone for him. “Aye. It’s just a wee thing.” She moved close to him and put her lips close to his ear. Her breath was gentle on him as she whispered, “I know you get stuff in from the Republic…”

  He started. What he and the boys got up to was meant to be a secret.

  She took his hand, and he felt the soft warmth.

  “I need a parcel brought over the border … tonight.”

  Brought in? For her? He didn’t hesitate. “What is it?” Lots of things, he knew, could be bought at a considerable discount over the border because of different taxes levied by the governments of the two countries. “A new skirt? Nylons?” He thought of her pulling the sheer stuff along her calf, her thigh.

  “Guns.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. She might have been asking him to smuggle a pound of butter and a couple of hams. “You’ll do it for me, won’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Guns.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He’d suspected for years that Cal was an active Provo. That was none of Sammy’s business. He’d no interest in politics, their fuckin’ “Cause,” but was Erin mixed up, too?

  “No,” she said calmly, “we don’t need Jesus Christ. There’s enough pictures of His Bleeding Heart around here. We need guns … and I need you to help.”

  He hoped to see pleading in her eyes. If it had been there, he could have refused her nothing, but her eyes were cold like the eyes of a newt.

  “I’m not…” He let go of her hand.

  “Yes, you are, Sam. For me.” And then she’d smiled.

  He’d be seeing that smile on his deathbed.

  Sammy tossed the butt into the ditch. If he hadn’t given in to it, he would never have made that first gunrunning trip, nor have been drawn deeper and deeper into the Provos, until two years ago he had made their declaration, accepted full membership.

  She’d kissed him that night, told him she loved him, but he knew it was only a word, one that she might have used to a girlfriend. “Nancy, I love your new blouse.” That’s all he was to Erin O’Byrne. A friend’s new blouse. All he’d ever be.

  And look where joining the Provos had got him. Fighting for a cause that meant nothing to him. Risking jail or worse—much worse—and for what? A united Ireland? That meant nothing to him. He’d never been further than Ballybofey in his life, and the few Donegal lads he knew were no different from himself. Working men who liked a smoke and a pint. What difference did it make to anyone if the government of Northern Ireland was in Dublin or London? The buggers would still tax the bejesus out of them.

  He’d only gone in to please Erin. He’d not known then their saying, “The only way out is feetfirst”—but by God he’d soon learned. And now there was that other matter—Christ, what a fuckup. Sammy shuddered.

  He slammed the tailgate, stamped back to the Rover, climbed in, and drove off, sucking a peppermint. He wound down the window, let the night air blow in, turned a corner, and there, up ahead, two RUC constables and four soldiers were waiting for him at the old customs post, on the Tyrone side. Once past them and over the bridge with its walls built like small battlements, he’d be in Donegal—in the Republic.

  One of the body-armoured constables stood in the middle of the road, torch aimed at the Rover. Sammy stopped and got out. He might as well. They’d want to search the trailer.

  Ahead, the officer bent and shone his torch at the front of the vehicle. He’d be making a note of the plate number. Let him. The Provos had known that since 1974 the army had been using a computer programme called Vengeful. It took thirty seconds, once a security man had entered the numbers at a remote terminal, for the programme to find out anything he needed to know about the vehicle in question.

  Good luck to the bugger out there. When he sent the plate information in, he’d find the Rover was registered to a big landowner in Sixmilecross. Sammy and Cal had seen to that after they’d had their supper. Plates were easy to forge, and no Provo in his right mind would go out on any mission in a vehicle that could be traced.

  The big peeler, with the ponderous gait of his kind, moved up to Sammy.

  “Evening, sir. Can I see your licence?”

  “Aye, surely.” Sammy produced the pink cardboard square.

  “Thank you, Mr. Pollock.” The constable wrote something on a clipboard. Sammy knew that every crossing would be logged. Time. Driver’s name and address. It was a good thing that British driving licences did not carry photos and, like plates, were easy to forge. An Active Service Unit in Newtownstewart had a graphic artist as a member. He took care of the forgeries.

  He returned the licence. “I’ll hae to take a keek in the beck.”

  The way the man said “hae” for “have,” “keek” for “look,” “beck” for “back,” and the sibilance of his s’s marked him as a County Antrim man, not a local who might have recognized Sammy. So much the better.

  Sammy accompanied the constable as he walked to the rear of the horse box.

  “Open her up please, sir.”

  “It’s empty.”

  “I’m sure it is, sir, but I still need to hae a look.”

  Sammy unlatched the tailgate. “Help yourself.”

  The police officer swung up inside and scraped the loose straw aside.

  Sammy’s palms started to sweat.

  �
��Sorry about that, but you never can be sure.” The policeman dismounted. “Bit late to be going down to the Republic.”

  “I’ve to pick up a horse in Stranolar.” The town was near enough to Ballybofey, and you never told the peelers exactly where you were going. “I’ll be back this way in a couple of hours.”

  “I’ll still be here. I’ll be here all fuckin’ night.”

  “Rather you nor me.”

  The constable shrugged. “Goes wi’ the job.” He nodded at the tailgate. “Close her up, Mr.”—he consulted his clip board—“Pollock, and away you go.”

  “Right,” said Sammy and bent to his work.

  “Sorry to have held you up. I’ll give the Garda Síochána detachment on the other side a bell, let them know you’re clean.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Night, sir.”

  “Night.” Sammy snibbed the last latch.

  * * *

  Sammy passed a finger post that pointed back along the road he’d traveled. BEALACH FÉICH 6. He was glad to be leaving Ballybofey. It had taken longer than he’d anticipated to load the ArmaLite semiautomatic rifles and five hundred rounds of .223 ammunition. Sammy had recognized the guns as Bushmaster XM-15 M4 A3s, an American civilian version of the U.S. Army’s M16. Thirty kilos of Semtex, and separately wrapped consignments of RDX and PETN, the explosive components of Semtex, to be used in the manufacture of detonating cords, completed the load, all tucked in safely beneath the floor—and under the sharp hooves of a bad-tempered chestnut gelding.

  He didn’t anticipate trouble at the border. The Gardai and the RUC detachments would be tired by now. More careless. He’d told the peeler that he was meant to be collecting a horse, and what was in the back? A fucking great horse. All he had to do once he’d passed the checkpoints was get the horse into the paddock and the shipment into its hiding place in Ballydornan churchyard. Then home, a wee whiskey, and bed.

  Sleep would be good. The only other thing he had to do before turning in was to make a phone call. From a coin box. A call that couldn’t be traced.

  He thought about the hint that Erin had let slip about something that might be going to happen at the Kesh. Would that be the key to let him out of the mess he was in?