Now and in the Hour of Our Death

by Patrick Taylor

  A dog barked twice, and Davy enjoyed the sound. He’d never once heard a dog while he was in the Kesh, and it had been little things like that he’d missed.

  He watched a curl of smoke rise from a chimney and slowly drift away, showing him that the gale-force winds had died almost as quickly as they had screeched in overnight.

  Eamon’s Erin would be in that house, maybe sitting by the fire. Davy imagined he could smell the peat smoke, and his picture of her close to the glowing turf warmed him. The poor girl must be frantic with worry. Eamon was meant to have got to her last night. She’d have no idea what had happened to him but wouldn’t be human if she didn’t imagine the worst.

  Davy glanced over at his friend and saw how Eamon stared at the farmhouse. He was bustin’ to see Erin, tell her everything was all right, and fair play to him for that.

  Davy accepted that it could be weeks before he could get to Canada. It was about three o’clock here in Tyrone, 1500 hours as all armies, including the Provos, measured time. Vancouver was eight hours behind Belfast, so it would be … 1500 minus eight equals seven. Seven in the morning. Perhaps she’d be waking up beside the doctor fellah and making breakfast before the pair of them went to work.

  Would Tim Andersen make Fiona a cup of tea the way Davy used to?

  God Almighty, knowing the man’s name made the whole bloody thing too immediate, too personal. Too real. Maybe if the doctor was important to her, seeing her was all Davy’d be able to do, just see her, talk to her for a wee while.

  Then he might have to walk away, but Davy couldn’t believe she’d be able to dismiss him so easily once she’d seen him. Once he’d kissed her. If she’d let him. But she would. He knew she would after all they’d meant to each other—and nine years apart wasn’t all that long, not really.

  Leaves above sagged under the weight of water and spilled frigid drops onto his head. He shook himself like a soaked dog, slipped farther under the tarpaulin, and silently blessed the now-dying gale for the cover it had provided when they’d made their break from Castlederg.

  He thanked their saviours back there, the Donnellys. If it hadn’t been for them, he’d be in the Crumlin Road Jail or back in the Kesh by now. He shuddered, and it wasn’t from the biting cold. He’d be a lot colder but for the tarp Dermot had given them, and that wasn’t all he and his missus had done.

  Davy stretched out his legs to their full length, enjoying the luxury of that. He’d no idea how long he and Eamon had been forced to lie curled up under those floorboards, hardly daring to breathe.

  They’d only been in the hiding space for twenty minutes when he’d heard doors being hurled open, the crash of hobnailed ammo boots, the shouting of foreign English and Scottish voices, of British soldiers on a house-to-house search.

  He’d felt Eamon beside him tense as Davy had stiffened and frantically stifled a sneeze when footsteps thundered overhead and paused for what had seemed like an eternity until the clumping had moved away and finally vanished.

  Neither he nor Eamon had dared to relax until Davy’d heard the front door slam and Mrs. Donnelly, who must have slipped in silently in her carpet slippers, call from overhead, “It’s all right, they’ve gone, but youse’d better stay there ’til the morning.”

  He wriggled farther to one side because the wee .25 in his pocket was digging into his hip. He’d rather have that discomfort than suffer the cramps he’d had through the long hours under the Donnellys’ floor. When Mrs. Donnelly had come to let them out, it had taken Davy half an hour to get his legs to work properly, and by the way Eamon had groaned and massaged his calves, he wasn’t in much better shape.

  Davy glanced over to where Eamon lay. Good God, the man was asleep. Davy could hear him snoring, envied his friend’s ability to snatch a nap, and wished that he, too, could drift off, but after the excitement of the last twenty-four hours, he knew he was far too keyed up. At least he wasn’t hungry.

  Mrs. Donnelly had made sure the fugitives were well fed. She had a huge pot of tea ready and must have been up for hours frying bacon and eggs, soda farls, potato bread, tomatoes, and black pudding.

  Davy slipped a finger into his mouth and used the nail to dislodge a shred of bacon from between two teeth. He could taste its saltiness.

  Dermot hadn’t joined them for breakfast but had come in through the back door, wringing wet, dripping puddles on the lino floor. Mrs. Donnelly had scolded her husband for making a mess, clearly more concerned about the puddles than the fact that her tidy kitchen held three escaped Provos. She’d reminded Davy of Under Milk Wood, an oddly written book by the Welshman Dylan Thomas. Davy’d found it in the prison library. One character, Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, wouldn’t let the sun into her parlour until it had “wiped its shoes.”

  Dermot had told his wife to wheest because he’d been out for a couple of hours getting things ready to get Eamon and his friends away to hell out of Castlederg. It was bucketing down outside, and how did she expect him to come in and not bring some of the rain with him? Davy could still hear her exasperated sniff as she’d grabbed a mop and cleared up the wet patches. Just about this time yesterday he’d been mopping. He spared a thought for Mr. Smiley and hoped he was all right.

  Davy stared across the field ahead. There was so much space to enjoy after so many years of his tiny cell, and being able to see it and feel the openness was thanks to Dermot Donnelly.

  While Davy and the others had been feeding their faces, Dermot had been out and confirmed that the army still had a roadblock on the Castlederg Bridge. He’d borrowed a builder’s van and made room in the back for the three men to hide behind heaps of construction supplies. It had been his idea to drive them, hidden in the lorry, to Spamount, a small village a few miles away. There was a bridge over the Derg and it was usually only protected by a small RUC detachment.

  In Dermot’s opinion, they should leave in broad daylight while the gale was still screaming through the streets of Castlederg, sending dustbins bowling and clattering down the back alleys, ripping slates off roofs to crash and shatter on the concrete of the backyards. The peelers at Spamount would rather stay in their hut than struggle out into the downpour to search the lorry thoroughly.

  Eamon had agreed.

  They’d piled into the lorry. Davy wondered who McGillivray and Sons were. That was the name painted on its sides in fancy gold script inside curling red bars. He hoped Dermot wasn’t going to catch any shite for borrowing it.

  They’d huddled into a small space behind laths, bricks, and bags of plaster, then Dermot had shoved sheets of plywood over the narrow opening. Davy shuddered. It had been too bloody much like the back of the food lorry, and look what a cock-up that had been.

  He needn’t have worried. Dermot was right. There’d been a momentary hold-up before the Spamount Bridge, then, in what to Davy had seemed like no time, the lorry stopped, and Dermot hauled the supplies out of the way and told them to get out.

  Davy’d blinked in the sudden light and slipped out of the lorry to join Eamon and McGuinness as they hunched their shoulders against the wind and rain. He waited, looking at a wood that reached the verge of the narrow country road; watched as Dermot gave Eamon a package. “A wheen of ham sandwiches and a couple of bottles of lemonade. The missus put them up for you.”

  The sandwiches had been eaten hours ago. Davy could still smell the mustard. He was sorry the lemonade was gone, but he could put up with a bit of thirst now that safety was so close. He slid farther under the tarp, Dermot’s parting gift. If it hadn’t been for the big sheet of canvas, Davy reckoned the three of them would have frozen to death waiting for nightfall.

  He moved and accidentally nudged McGuinness.

  “Watch what you’re doing, McCutcheon.”

  Davy pulled his legs away, rolled onto his side, and found himself face-to-face with McGuinness’s scowl, his one good eye almost as lifeless as his glass one. “Can you do nothing right?” McGuinness spat. “You never fuckin’ could.”

  All r
ight, Davy thought. All right, you shite, you want to have this out now, once and for all? “What exactly do you mean by that, McGuinness?” He kept his voice low and steady, not wanting to alarm Eamon.

  “You know bloody well what I mean. I’d not be in this fuckin’ wood, half-froze, but for you.”

  “That’s right. If I’d not found the gate switch in the Tally Lodge, all of us, you included, would still be in the Kesh.”

  “You think you’re quare and smart, so you do. You’re not. I’d not have been there in the first place if you hadn’t let a British agent into the Provos. You asked a stranger for help with Semtex without telling me, your senior officer. I got you the stuff, and you were too fuckin’ proud to let on you hadn’t a clue how to use it, so you got advice from a man you thought was an explosives expert from Canada who wanted to join the Provos. He was a Brit, you fuckin’ cretin.”

  “Christ Almighty, McGuinness, tell me something I don’t know.”

  But McGuinness was right about the bare facts. Davy hadn’t known how to use Semtex. Jimmy had met a young man who called himself Mike in a pub and found out that he worked with plastic explosives in the oil fields of Alberta. It hadn’t hurt Mike’s case when Jimmy had said that his daughter, Siobhan, was daft about the young man. When Jimmy introduced Davy to him, his expertise had seemed like the answer to Davy’s problem. He would help Davy use the Semtex, so Davy could keep his promise to his senior officers.

  “You don’t know your arse from your elbow, you never did, you stupid old shite…”

  Davy’s hands, unbidden, curled into tight fists. His breathing quickened.

  “… You thought the youngster was an Irish expat, just because he had a Bangor accent and said he’d come home to help in the struggle. You arsehole.”

  “He was an undercover Brit. I know that.”

  “You didn’t know it then, and he tipped them off and put them onto me. You got me put in the Kesh.” Spittle flecked McGuinness’s lips. “Me, for Christ’s sake, who’s done more for the Provos in a week than you did in twenty fuckin’ years.”

  Christ, McGuinness had confronted Davy with all this rubbish on the very first day they’d bumped into each other in the jail. He’d been feeding off his poison for nine years, bearing a grudge, still probably wanting some kind of revenge. Davy wasn’t going to ask for forgiveness, and McGuinness wasn’t going to back down, so what was the point of rehashing it all over again? “Have you finished?” Davy asked, struggling to keep his voice level.

  “Fuckin’ right I have. I’ve finished what I have to say.” McGuinness rolled away from Davy and snarled over his shoulder, “And I’ve finished with you, McCutcheon, you useless old bastard. Once we’re out of this mess, I never want to see you again.”

  Davy let his fingers uncurl, his rapid, shallow breathing slow. There was no point arguing with McGuinness. The man’s mind was too closed to understand how someone like Davy had his pride, and because of that pride had been too ashamed to admit when he’d been asked to do a proper job against a legitimate military and political target that he lacked the skills for. He’d hardly even heard of Semtex, much less ever had the chance to use it, and, he smiled grimly, the orange Czechoslovakian plastic explosive hadn’t come with a handy instruction book.

  It had made him happy then to feel that he could pull off one more real attack and, in a way, by doing so, salve his conscience for the unnecessary civilian deaths that he, no one else, had caused. He’d been determined to make that important ambush his swan song before, with the full permission of his old commandant, Sean Conlon, bidding the Provos farewell and going to Canada with Fiona.

  At least Fiona had made it to the promised land, and he sincerely hoped she was happy there. Davy consoled himself by arguing that if she still loved him—and she must, she must—as much as he loved her, then everything would be all right when he saw her.

  A small part of him could feel sorry for this Tim. If Fiona liked him, he must be a decent chap, and if she left him for Davy, Tim was going to get hurt. Maybe leaving him would upset Fiona, too. But, he asked himself, what was the point of trying to puzzle out answers to those questions, here, eight thousand miles from Vancouver? The important thing was to wait for a few more hours and get to the safe haven across the hayfield and the hedge. If he didn’t, if he was recaptured, he’d never need to face any problems in Canada.

  Davy glanced at Eamon, who was still deeply asleep. His friend had promised that he’d take care of all that was necessary to help Davy get there and that he’d do that as soon as possible. Eamon and Davy were two of a kind. Once they had made a promise, they’d keep it, no matter what.

  And that shite McGuinness? Christ, he wasn’t worth arguing with. He never wanted to see Davy again? He was going to get his wish, and that, as far as Davy was concerned, was all the revenge he needed. McGuinness could carry on his futile fight for his useless “Cause,” go to hell in his own way and in his own good time. Davy would be far away from the likes of him, from the Provos, from the bloodshed, and from—the last thought made him pause—from Ireland.

  He would miss some things about the place, like the football, even if his team, Celtic, were having a horrible season. He’d miss the pubs with their smoky fug and beer stains on the tables and the craic of the lads. But what else really important to him was he leaving? Cramped, dirty streets; cramped, dirty houses; no jobs; city people with minds as narrow as their tenements, where the gable walls were painted with slogans and tribal flags.

  King Billy on a white horse. Orange lilies. Union Jacks. The Red Hand of Ulster set in the middle of the cross of Saint George of England. “Remember 1690.” “Not an inch.” “No surrender.” “This we will maintain.”

  Kathleen ni Houlihàn, with her green cloak, her long chestnut hair. Irish harps. Shamrocks. Green, white, and gold tricolours. “You are entering free Derry,” “Brits out,” “Faugh à Ballagh.”

  Taunts of “Fenian gits,” “Croppies lie down,” “Fuck the pope.” “Orange bastards.” “Black and Tans,” “Remember the martyrs of ’16.”

  The songs “The Sash My Father Wore,” “The Green, Grassy Slopes of the Boyne,” “The Augherlee Heroes,” on one hand; “The Wearing of the Green,” “The Foggy Dew,” “The Patriot Game,” on the other.

  And what did the pictures, the flags, the slogans, and the war cries mean? That those who used them were devout adherents to a particular brand of religion?

  They might think they were, but Davy had come to see and now believed that the Protestants and Catholics in the Six Counties, in their poverty and unemployment, had more in common than they realized. Both sides, in their own warped way, and with their deep attachment to what was in reality a very tiny piece of real estate, were so very much alike. Why couldn’t their commonality bring them together as it had done in April 1941, when the Nazis had blitzed the Belfast docks and Protestant families had taken in and sheltered Catholics made homeless by the bombs?

  The badges and emblems they clung to were nothing more than symbols of an ingrained tribalism as primitive as the family bonds of chimpanzees, bonds that drove the primates to stick together and defend their territory against all other chimps and their families. Sometimes he wondered if that was all the human race was, a brighter, more lethal primate, and he knew full well he’d been as primitive in the early days as the rest of them.

  Their tribalism had driven them into futile sectarian conflict that had gone on for eight hundred years, and as far as Davy could tell would still be going on long after he was in the grave.

  And when he was in his grave (and the thought didn’t bother him), it would be under a foreign sod like generations of the Irish before him; in the quarantine camps on Grosse Isle in the Saint Lawrence, in America by their hundreds on the banks of canals dug by Irish navvies, along the embankments of railroads laid by Irish labourers, in the outback of Australia, where men and women transported for crimes as trivial as poaching a rabbit had scrabbled to exist in the penal col
onies.

  Irishmen lay in their thousands in France after the Battle of the Somme, in which most of the fallen soldiers were from the Ulster Division, five thousand in the first July day in 1916, three months after the leaders of the Easter Rising had been executed in Dublin. Dublin Fusiliers slept in the rocky soil of the Gallipoli Peninsula at Sed el Bahr and Suvla Bay.

  When they got round to planting Davy McCutcheon, all he would ask for was to have Fiona say an Ave for him, “Hail Mary, full of grace, blessèd art thou among women … pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.” And when her time came, and he didn’t want to dwell on that thought, she’d be laid down beside him, and if the flag overhead was a maple leaf, which one of them would care?

  God, he told himself and smiled, sometimes, McCutcheon, you really can be a morbid old bugger.

  The silence that, until that moment, had been broken only by the soft rain, the dripping of the leaves, and Eamon’s snores was shattered by the deafening whicker of rotors. The leaves above him trembled in the downdraft. A Puma helicopter, mottled in dark green and khaki dazzle paint, swooped out over the wood, across the field, and hovered low over the farmhouse, its slipstream shredding the chimney smoke.

  Davy could see a collie in the farmyard, frantically leaping. It must have been barking its brains out at the intruder, but he couldn’t hear that, only the roar of the rotors.

  He hated the sound. The last time he’d heard it so close was when he’d been trapped in that farmhouse near the Ravernet Bridge while trying to send Harold Wilson to his maker.

  Davy could still see the soldiers piling out of their aircraft and running toward him. Sweet suffering Jesus, was a platoon going to be disgorged now and fan out, rifles ready as they ran across the hayfield to where he lay?