Now and in the Hour of Our Death

by Patrick Taylor

  Cal covered his mouth with one hand, glanced at the tabletop and back into her eyes. “I don’t know,” he said quietly, rubbing the web of his hand over his chin. “It just doesn’t … feel right. Don’t ask me why.” He stood, clenched fists, which hung loosely by his sides. She saw his jawline harden. “But … and it’s a big but … them’s the buggers that got Fiach, so to hell with my feelings … superstitious drivel, anyway. If Eamon and his mates are on for it, and you’re still on for it, we’ll do it.”

  She moved to him and hugged her big brother. She knew, after thinking about it throughout last night, that her choice had been easy to make. Cal was willing to overrule his feelings, even if in Ireland such premonitions should be taken seriously, no matter what Cal might say about superstition.

  Although he hadn’t said it, Cal was willing to go ahead not because of how he felt about Ireland—although he was Irish to the bone—and only partly because he wanted revenge for Fiach. Cal had always fallen in with her plans because he loved his family, and she was his sister. And Erin loved him for that, and, because she loved him, she forced herself to tell him the thing that he didn’t seem to have considered.

  She let him go, walked a few paces, and turned.

  “You know that if we go ahead, me and Eamon and likely you too’ll have to go to the States?” She smelled the peat in the range, saw the old wooden table, and in her mind saw Da sitting there, pipe lit, singing old rebel songs. “We’ll have to leave the farm.”

  Cal surprised her. He nodded. “Aye. I’ve thought about that. I’d not want it to fall into strangers’ hands.”

  “Who’d…?”

  “Who’d look after it? Sammy. For a while.”

  “Sammy?” She heard her voice rise. “Sammy?”

  “Aye. When we talked about it, planned it, we reckoned we’d need a team of seven. I think we could manage with six. Sammy can’t go on the run with us, so he has to have a foolproof alibi if he does go out on the attack. He’s sure to get lifted afterward, because the peelers know he works for us.”

  “Why would Sammy get lifted?”

  “Come on, Erin. If we run, it’s the next best thing to a confession. I reckon the police would be smart enough to work out who the attackers were. They’d be bound to go after Sammy. We can’t take him with us, and if we make him come on the raid and he hasn’t got a watertight story for afterward, we’d be dropping him in the shite.”

  She recognized immediately that Cal was speaking the truth. She might not like the wee man, but it was a long Provo tradition to protect its volunteers. “You’re right, Cal. And if he doesn’t go and has a cover story, even if they do lift him, they’d have to let him go.”

  “Exactly. And then he could keep an eye to the place, aye, and look after Tessie and the beasts when we’re gone, at least until the rest of the family decide what to do. I think one of them would come home to take over. Maybe Turloch would come back from Australia.”

  Erin took a step back. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She’d never even thought about the border collie, or any of the other animals for that matter. And what Cal had just said about Sammy was brilliant. If Cal could have his feelings, so could she, and she didn’t trust Sammy.

  She knew she had no real reason not to trust him, but she’d seen him staring at her breasts yesterday. She shuddered. And something else still worried away at her. The police had been very quick off the mark to tell the O’Byrnes that Fiach had been killed because a routine patrol had spotted him. How often did the Security Forces patrol out here in the wilds of Tyrone? Practically never, because they were scared to. They could have had a tip-off, and the only one who could have touted was Sammy. She knew she couldn’t prove that. To try to do so would drive him away, and they still needed him to make the explosives, steal the vehicles.

  She had already decided not to tell him about the exact target until the very last minute. He’d accepted her explanation that he shouldn’t know until after he’d stolen the vehicles—just in case he got lifted. Now, if they did what Cal suggested, then they’d never have to tell Sammy, and she was pleased about that.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, then hesitated. “It’s a great notion, but do you think we could manage with five?”

  “Why five?”

  “Because we just heard that Sean Donovan was killed.”

  Cal crossed himself. “God rest his soul.”

  “Never mind his soul. He was meant to be coming here with Eamon.”

  “That’s right. So maybe we will need Sammy after all.”

  No. She wanted him kept in the dark, and she knew that once she and Cal were gone, there must be a caretaker for the farm until one of the other O’Byrnes came back.

  “I think,” she said slowly, “five could do the job, but we’ll need to talk to Eamon … when he gets here. I’d like to have Sammy able to stay and”—the realization hit her—“if one of the rest of the family comes back and runs the place, it’ll be waiting for us to come home to when…”—and it would be, it would be—“… when Ireland’s reunited and the Brits have gone.”

  She wondered why Cal was looking at her as a father might look at a child who’d just claimed she’d seen a leprechaun. Let her brother doubt. She had no doubts, none at all, that Irish independence would come.

  CHAPTER 31

  TYRONE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1983

  Irish independence. Sometimes Sammy had to remind himself what the fuck he was supposed to be doing this for. And what the hell did that mean: independence? A free shamrock on Saint Patrick’s Day for everyone, singing “The Soldier’s Song” instead of “God Save the Queen,” and every signpost in Gaelic, which he couldn’t read anyway. Sammy sneered and tugged his raincoat tightly round his skinny chest. It was fuckin’ well freezing in the stolen tractor’s unheated cab, so it was, with the rain driving in through badly fitting Perspex side panels that flapped and rattled in the wind. The gusts were so strong that every time he’d tried to light a Park Drive, he couldn’t keep the match lit long enough for the tobacco to take. He was dying for a fag.

  The only good thing about the gale was that it was keeping the Security Forces’ helicopters grounded. There seemed to have been more of them in the air than a swarm of gnats yesterday, hunting for the poor buggers on the run from the Kesh.

  Jesus, but the ones that were still free must feel great, just being out of their jail for a while. Sammy knew all about prisons and that being behind bars wasn’t the only sort of prison a man could be in. He knew that only too bloody well.

  If only his telephone conversation with Spud yesterday afternoon had gone better. Did the bugger not recognize the risks Sammy had to take just to phone? Could he not at least have congratulated Sammy for having been right that something was up at the Kesh? All the E4A man had said was that the new information about an attack on Strabane Barracks could be interesting, but not right now, Sunshine, I’m desperately busy with the breakout. Get hold of me in a couple of days. Good-bye.

  Fuck that. A couple of days? Had that bloody peeler any notion of what each day stuck in Tyrone meant to Sammy McCandless? Spud said he was Sammy’s friend. The only man he could trust. All he could be trusted to do was bugger Sammy around—but there was no one else to turn to, and, anyway, with a bit of luck in the next day or two, Sammy might have all the information he needed. If he could really be sure that it was Strabane and, most importantly, when, he could hand the lot to Spud on a plate, but only, only, when the E4A bugger had kept his word about England. Maybe waiting wasn’t such a bad idea.

  And it wasn’t Sammy’s fault that Spud was busy. He wasn’t the only one. Erin had said she wanted to get the job done as soon a possible.

  Sammy was doing his best about that. This freezing-cold tractor and the dusty five hundred pounds of ammonal he’d worked at making until late last night were the proof. He just wished it was like the old days, when he’d have been doing his work to please Erin. Now all he could think of was how soon h
e could find out more, could get Spud to agree to Sammy’s plan, and maybe, just maybe, very soon, for the first time in six months, could get a decent night’s sleep without having to wonder who might come hammering on his cottage door.

  Christ, but he’d like to see his way ahead.

  Sammy hunched forward but could hardly see through the squalls. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the weight of the front-loader bucket made steering nearly impossible.

  He had to wrench hard on the steering wheel to prevent the machine slewing off into the ditch. He slowed down because he knew that there was a hairpin bend coming up that would be a bugger to get round.

  Once he got onto the straight after the bend, it was less than a couple of miles to the outbuilding at his cottage. He’d be there in another five minutes, and then, by God, he was going to get this bitch of a thing inside and cover it with a tarpaulin. The repainting job and fitting false number plates could wait. He was going to run into his cottage, chuck a heap more peat on the fire, get dry, have the cigarette he craved, make himself a fuckin’ huge, hot John Jameson’s whiskey, even if it was only about noon and he normally didn’t take a drink before six o’clock, and then put his fuckin’ feet up. He’d earned that. Bejesus he had.

  Up half the night finishing making the explosive. When the storm had started, he had been truly thankful that the outbuilding was waterproof—a huge, cold raindrop was blown in and dripped down inside Sammy’s collarless shirt—unlike the cab of this bloody tractor. He was tired, soaked, foundered with the cold, and wanted to get home.

  The machine rocked and bounced over the pothole-pitted road. Christ Almighty, could the Tyrone County Council not send out a couple of men with shovels and a load of hot tarmac to fill in the craters?

  Sammy had never in his whole life been farther from Tyrone than into County Donegal across the border. He’d heard about the motorway from Belfast and that England was crisscrossed with first-class roads. He’d like to see one of them, if they existed. Aye, if. Irish folks were powerful good at believing what they wanted to believe. Them as had fled Ireland on the coffin ships when they’d been evicted by English landlords after the Great Hunger had believed that the streets of America were paved with gold. The Irish back then would have believed anything.

  They’d soon found out which end was up when the men, who hadn’t a word of English among them, were met at the docks by an interpreter, offered an immediate job, three square meals a day, and a new suit of clothes if they’d just make their marks on pieces of paper.

  Maybe the sidewalks of New York weren’t golden after all, but getting a paying job right off a boat where half the passengers had died of dysentery or typhus must mean America was the promised land after all. Leaving their homes forever and facing the perils of the Atlantic crossing had been worth it.

  Those that signed got the job all right, and the new suit. The suit was navy blue with a leather-peaked kepi and a .50 calibre minié musket as accessories. Most of the poor bastards who had, in all innocence, signed up for the Union Army never came back from the U.S. Civil War.

  And that, he thought, came from trusting someone who seemed to care about you. The damnable thing was that even if Spud really didn’t give a shite about Sammy, he was bloody good at giving the impression that he did. And Sammy had come in an odd way to like the policeman. He’d miss him when he delivered on his promise and Sammy was away to hell and gone from Tyrone, its fuckin’ miserable weather, its rutted roads with hairpin bends like the one he was crawling round, knowing that the cottage, the fire, the cigarette, and the whiskey were almost in sight …

  Fuck it. Fuck—it. There was a Saracen armoured car parked on the verge just after the crown of the bend, and a soldier in a flapping waterproof cape standing in the middle of the road waving at Sammy to stop. What had Erin said? We’ll not tell you the target in case you get lifted. He was stuffed.

  Yet Sammy was surprised to feel a sense of relief. If he was done for stealing a tractor, at least he’d be safe in a civilian prison for a couple of years. Maybe if they let him have a word with Spud, the peeler could get him off the criminal charge, just like the last time, listen to what Sammy had to say, and …

  He braked and pulled the tractor to the side of the road just in front of the armoured car. He took out his wallet, started to remove his forged driver’s licence, and recognized the uselessness of doing so. If the soldiers had the tractor’s plate numbers, he was buggered and that was all there was to it.

  He undid the catch, holding the side panel shut, making sure it was the one in the tractor’s lee. He was wet and cold enough as it was without taking an unnecessary soaking. That Brit was dressed for the weather in his army-issue waterproofs. Let him get drenched.

  Sammy waited for the soldier to draw level before lifting the side panel. He noticed that the man, although carrying a Belgian FN self-loading rifle, did so with its muzzle pointing to the ground. That would keep the rain out right enough, but Sammy knew from too much experience that getting the barrel wet didn’t usually stop these shites from covering a suspect.

  “Very sorry to bother you, sir, so I am.”

  Holy God, the man had a thick Belfast accent. Sammy knew it wasn’t unusual for Ulstermen to volunteer to serve with the British Forces. They’d done so for centuries. Old man O’Byrne, when he’d been alive, God rest his soul, was forever going on about England fighting her wars off the backs of the Irish.

  “We’ve run into a wee bit of bother, sir. Maybe you could help us, like?”

  It wasn’t an arrest. Sammy didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed, and as for helping the British, he was an expert at that. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

  “I’m only a buck private, sir,” the soldier said, hunching his shoulders against the driving rain. “It’s right fuckin’ embarrassing, so it is. I’m driving that yoke there”—he gestured to the Saracen—“and I’m lost.”

  “You’re what?” Sammy nearly smiled. “And you an Ulsterman? My God.”

  “Aye, well. I’m from East Belfast…”

  Protestant bastard.

  “… I’ve never been out of Belfast in my puff until I went to England for to join up.”

  Sammy did smile. Just like himself, who’d never been out of the country, but at least the soldier had been to England. “Where’re you trying to get to?” Sammy knew only too well where he was trying to get to.

  “Portadown, and then it’s only a wee doddle on to Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn. I tell you, mate, I’ll not be sorry to get in out of this fuckin’ rain.”

  “Me neither,” said Sammy, thinking of the big hot Jameson’s. “Right,” he said. “Go a ways the way you’re headed. About two miles.”

  “Right.”

  “Take the first right at the crossroads.”

  “First right?”

  “Aye. Onto the A5, and that’ll take you to Omagh. Follow the signs from there to Ballygawley. Left there’ll get you to the M1 Motorway.”

  “That’s great, so it is. Never mind Portadown. I can find Lisburn once we’re on the M1.”

  Sammy hoped he had given the man the right directions. He was simply repeating the route that he’d heard Erin say she used to go to the Kesh to visit Eamon.

  “Thanks, mate,” the soldier said. “Sorry to hold you up.”

  “Never worry. I wasn’t going anywhere important.”

  “Take you care now, oul’ hand. There’s all kinds of the bad lads on the run, so there is.”

  Sammy watched the soldier jog back to the Saracen and climb in. He waited for it to pull out and pass the tractor, and it left a cloud of exhaust fumes to be torn apart by the wind. He put the tractor in gear and started to drive to his cottage. Easy as that, by God. The soldiers had just wanted to be told how to get home.

  And Sammy had got himself all worked up over nothing. But maybe it wasn’t nothing. Maybe he was like those soldiers, looking for guidance. Maybe, he thought, maybe those lost soldiers could think of
a barracks in a hostile country as home. How the hell could he ever think of his wee cottage, Tyrone, Ireland, as his home? He could find his cottage, right enough, but was he safe there? No fuckin’ way. He just wished he had someone to give him simple directions that would get him out of here.

  CHAPTER 32

  TYRONE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1983

  “We’ll be out of here once it’s dark. We’ll juke across that there hayfield, through the hedge, and then we’re home, Father Davy,” Eamon said from where he and Davy and Brendan McGuinness lay at the edge of a pine wood. They huddled beneath a tarpaulin camouflaged by heaps of sodden, earth-smelling bracken.

  Davy looked straight up into the branches of a solitary rowan tree, its clusters of red berries dark from the rain that splashed from them and pattered on the dripping leaves. “Home,” he said through chattering teeth. “Home … and dry.” He smiled at his weak pun. He was frozen and wet, and knew that the other two men were as well.

  “Nice one, Davy,” Eamon said, grinning. “I’d not mind getting myself dry on the outside, but a wee hot wet inside would go down wheeker, so it would.”

  Davy’s smile broadened at the thought of having a hot Irish whiskey, sweetened with sugar, spiced with a couple of cloves, made piquant with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, the mug filled to the top with boiling water. It would be his first drink in nine years, and it might just bring a bit of heat back into his bones, which, at that moment, felt as ancient as the skeleton of a dinosaur he’d seen in the Ulster Museum on the Stranmillis Road.

  Davy glanced at McGuinness. The man was ignoring them both.

  Fuck you, McGuinness, you wizened-up wee git, Davy thought, and rolled onto his side, turning his back. At least Eamon and myself can squeeze a bit of humour out of the situation while we’re waiting for the last lap. It would be dark by seven, so they’d about four more hours to wait here in the woods.

  He stared ahead through the rain, over straight rows of mown hay, to a blackthorn hedge at the far side of the field. Eamon said their hidey-hole was down in a hollow behind that hedge. Beyond that was the back gate to a farmyard, in which Davy could see the glistening slate roofs of a farmhouse and its outbuildings.