Carn

by Patrick McCabe

  The funeral cortege passed through the silent streets of the town. The Dead March played from an open window as the coffin was eased into the grave. The Last Post was sounded by a lone bugler from the brass band. Benny felt his stomach turning over. The funeral was reported on the evening news and Benny’s father listened to it with his fist clenched. The town felt as if it was about to come apart with anger.

  For weeks afterwards, the teacher spoke about the two gallant young men who had been done to death by the authorities in the north. He took out some old copybooks which he had preserved for posterity because of their excellence. He passed them around and read selections of poetry to the astounded students. They had been written as a boy by the youngest of the dead men. The students listened, aghast. They could not believe that someone who had been shot dead on a raiding mission had once sat in the same desks as themselves. They clenched their fists and became red-cheeked like their fathers. The teacher’s voice trembled.

  But it did not last. A few weeks later, the frenzy had died down and people went about their daily tasks as before. Very slowly all trace of the event passed away.

  Then something happened that was to change the atmosphere in the Dolan house for a long time to come. Little more than a year after the death of the volunteers, Benny was wakened in the night by the sound of his parents’ voices downstairs. He stood at the top of the stairs and felt the blood drain from his face when he found himself confronted by the sight of his father standing in the hall. There was blood on his trouser leg and his face was dirt-caked. Benny’s mother was trying to calm him down but he kept ranting about something and made no sense. “It’s all right,” Benny’s mother repeated, “it’s all right Hugo.” When he saw the tears in his father’s eyes, Benny was shocked, it sent a dart of anxiety to his stomach. “It all went wrong,” he said. “Joe’s shot. I had to leave him Annie. They got Joe. We—we blew the wall. But there was three of them upstairs. We called on them to surrender. They weren’t supposed to be there—they came down firing. It all went wrong. I don’t know how it happened. Oh Christ . . .”

  Benny went back to his room, his heart racing. All night long he waited for the sound of the police hammering on the front door. But it did not come.

  In the days that followed, Benny’s father did not leave the house. He sat from early morning staring into the dead ashes of the firegrate, cups of tea going cold on the arm of the chair. The abortive raid was reported in the newspapers, along with photographs of Joe Carron, one of the raiders who had been wounded in the attack and later died.

  When people came to the house now there was no longer any chatter. Nobody knew what to do because Hugo Dolan would not talk to anyone. He just sat staring into the fire, his face grey. When they said, “Joe Carron died a good man,” he looked up with eyes that had no feeling in them. When they castigated the institutions of Northern Ireland, he did not reply, their animation followed by cavernous silences.

  Even when, the following year, the IRA formally announced the cessation of its activities along the border, Benny’s father made no reference to it. When he came in from work, he sat in the armchair with his eyelids drooping, speaking only of the weather and the course of his business. News items which before would have halted all activity in the kitchen now drifted past anonymously.

  The time passed and the people of Carn forgot there had ever been any trouble along the border. The empty shell of the custom-post was bulldozed and a new building erected in its place. The blown bridges were rebuilt, the southern police and army were withdrawn. The customs men began to smile again and tilted their harp-badged white caps as they chatted leisurely to the drivers. It all became the colour of an old photograph, fading by day as the new prosperity encroached upon the town of Carn.

  In Benny Dolan’s classroom, a portrait of the dead volunteer gathered dust in a corner, his copybook poetry lay forgotten in an ink cupboard.

  When Benny was in his final year at the vocational school, aged 16, there was an announcement that the town was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 rising and the Junior Chamber of Commerce had decided to erect a plaque in the town square to the memory of Commandant Matt Dolan who had led the raid on the railway in 1922. Furthermore, the town square, which was then called Carn Square, was to be renamed Dolan Square.

  Tricoloured posters appeared all over the town. Above the new record shop (a recent addition to the Trendy Boutique) a speaker blared martial tunes. Young children once more set about making rifles and assembling gangs. The library set up an exhibition of photographs of the insurrection. Buildings burned everywhere and khaki men raced through rubble and devastated city streets. Machine-guns rat-tat-tatted on the radio as the Dublin of 1916 caved in on itself. The Sapphire Ballroom was transformed into a theatre where the local people performed their version of that Easter’s events. The Turnpike Inn resounded with songs of the rebellion, James Cooney obliging with a song of his father’s endeavouring as best he could to mask all trace of his American accent as he sang. Eyes fell and ribs were nudged as he raised his fist and brought them all with him—oh what matter when for Ireland dear we fall.

  The new plaque was draped in green and gold.

  The day of the unveiling of the plaque Carn Sons of St Patrick marched through the streets with their green and gold banner held high, the bass drum booming. Benny’s father had consented to being guest of honour on account of his own father, and now stood nervously beside the minister who checked his notes and straightened his tie. Then he began to speak. “The day has not yet come in which we can write the epitaph of Robert Emmet. It has not come because the Ireland that he wished for, the Ireland in which differences between sections of our people would have been forgotten—that day has not yet arrived . . .”

  He went on in that vein for over half an hour. Then he said he would like to call on Hugo Dolan to assist him in the unveiling of the plaque. A loud cheer went up from the crowd. Aware of the discomfort of the police who flanked him, in particular the detective whose duty it had been some years before to arrest him, Hugo Dolan smiled as he shook the hand of the minister. Benny felt a surge of pride as he listened to his father speak of that fateful day in 1922, of the hunger that had been in Matt Dolan to see the country free, a hunger that he himself had always understood and shared. Men said to each other in the crowd, “It’s the same old Hugo all right. You don’t put men like him down so easy . . .” When the speeches were over, the crowd clapped and moved back as the ritual began. There was a roll of drums as the national flag was lowered to half-mast. The crowd scanned the sky as if they expected it to darken. The minister moved forward facing the plaque on the wall. He tugged at the cord and the velvet curtain rolled back. The band played a slow air. “Erected to the memory of Commandant Matt Dolan, North Monaghan Brigade, IRA, Killed In Action 1922 . . .” read the minister over a whistling microphone. The crowd cheered again and banjos and accordeons struck up a tune on the stage with local musicians winking at their families who waved proudly up at them. After a time, the people began to disperse and drift in the direction of the taverns and hotels, and Benny for the first time drank a number of bottles of stout which were bought for him by men who told him that the name of Dolan had gone down in history. One man dragged long and hard on his cigarette and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “Your grandfather took a bullet in the head. He died a soldier. My own father was at the funeral. And that man there, your own father, he got it from them too, both sides of the fence, our own free state lackies and all, they gave him the treatment. That’s your breed son. And I hope you’re made of the same stuff. I know you are.”

  The alcohol was taking effect and Benny did not reply to any of this as he was having difficulty focussing on the words, the movement of the man’s lips capturing his whole attention. A group in the corner demanded silence. From their mouths uncoiled a lament for Ireland’s division. Then someone stood on a chair and called for three cheers for Hugo Dolan. When Benny heard the na
me he tried to wade his way back through the fog that the drink had drawn about his mind but the volume of the cry they sent up confused him even more. It was only when he saw the glass shaking in his father’s hand that things began to clear for Benny. When the cheer had subsided they all looked expectantly at Hugo Dolan. They were sure that the smile they wanted would soon spread across his face. But it did not. And when he spat and flung the glass against the wall where it smashed in pieces, they were dismayed. They looked at him, awaiting his explanation. His hands trembled. “Fucking circus,” he said tensely. “Fancy flags and a porter-bellied minister wining it above in the hotel with the doctor and the priest. They get their rewards all right. They’ll see to themselves. The same people who locked up Luke Devlin and Mickey Kerr, parading like fucking royalty. Off to Dublin with the Thompson Gun. Fighting the good fight. The hand on the shoulder boys—I’m with you all the way men. Up the republic. Let them ask Joe Carron about the republic, or Lukey, twenty years in front of him. Hypocrites and liars! A bunch of mealy-mouthed sham republicans! Republic—don’t make me fucking laugh!”

  They stared at him in disbelief and wondered what to do next. They looked away and hoped he would disappear. He swayed to and fro and stared. Then he turned on his heel and left, banging the door behind him. The humming began anew and they turned to the bar, splitting up into various groups to discuss this sensational new development. Some of them attributed it to nervous trouble that he had never got over. He had seen them being riddled. “How would you get over that?” they asked. Others felt that this wasn’t true. They said that Hugo Dolan had always been a bit touchy. They recalled incidents which although innocuous at the time now appeared loaded with significance. They continued to drink and debate, their initial understanding and objectivity gradually being overtaken by anger and annoyance. It began to seem as if Hugo Dolan had spoiled the whole day for everyone. They said that no matter what trouble he had had himself he had no business going about insulting the people of the town. And the minister, that minister had done a lot for Carn. It was he who had tried to step in and block the closing of the railway. One man suggested that they ought to break the newly-erected plaque to teach Dolan a lesson.

  The debate was still raging when Benny finished his drink and went outside.

  He stood in the doorway to get his bearings. Above the town hall the tricolour sagged. The signatories of 1916 stared impassively from the library window. Benny stood there, replaying the hurt and anger on his father’s face. Then, hearing new voices in the yard behind him, he set off across the empty square towards home.

  III

  The day the Turnpike Inn opened its doors to the goggle-eyed citizens of Carn, Sadie Rooney leaned over the privet hedge at the bottom of her garden and thought to herself how much she loved Elvis Presley. She would have gone anywhere with him and indeed dreamed up an interminable series of locations where herself and the handsome crooner tripped the light fantastic. Fairgrounds where they soared into the vast blueness of the sky on the back of a big dipper to the accompaniment of a pulsating rock and roll soundtrack. The very mention of the word “Elvis” made every muscle in her body stiffen. Whenever an Elvis film was due to play in the local cinema, she was tense for days before. She knew every line of dialogue in Love Me Tender and whenever she got the chance would relate the entire plot from beginning to end. She would savour every moment and work herself into a frenzy until tears came to her eyes as she spoke of the bullets hitting Elvis as he lay dying on the prairie with his guitar beside him. She spent her Saturdays locked in her room with stacks of his singles which she played repeatedly. Since she had begun to earn money of her own in Carn Poultry Products, her bedroom had become awash with colour. Cross-channel pop stars and Irish showbands covered every available inch of wallpaper. The St Martin De Porres picture which Father John had sent over from Kenya was barely visible. This didn’t please Sadie’s mother at all. She had been brooding over it for a long time. She felt that to have a holy man like St Martin in such dubious company was not right. She confronted her daughter and said, “It’s time you quit all this, the filth and dirt of the day put into your head by the likes of that Una Lacey one above in the factory.” But this made no impression on Sadie who had been quietly coming to the conclusion that if she was paying for her keep she had her rights too. So between herself and her mother there developed a tension which manifested itself in the flick of teacloths and sudden coughs. Finally one day her mother, tormented by a large fuel bill and the muddy boots of her husband, stormed into her room and cried, “You’ll not ignore me. I didn’t wash floors on my hands and knees, scrubbing out that kip of a school for fifteen years just to have the likes of you turn around and laugh at me. I’m fed up being walked on by you and him!” Then she set about tearing every picture in the room and didn’t stop until the wall was bare.

  “Maybe that will put a bit of manners on you now,” she said, whitefaced. “Maybe now you’ll listen to me.” Then she stormed out, stunned by the depth of her own fury.

  Sadie threw herself on the bedspread as she had seen them do in the magazines and films and pummelled the pillows bitterly. When the light had faded and a calm had at last descended, she managed to stir herself to gather up the remnants of a sorry-looking beach boys and dickybowed songsters. She had a restive sleep that night but in the days that followed, when her mother had pulled in her horns and reverted to her more traditional sullenness, Sadie set about rebuilding the wreckage and applied herself with diligence to the task. And no less than a week later, all were back in business, pouting and crooning and strutting for all they were worth.

  St Martin de Porres looked down as she flicked through True Romance Tales and dickeyed her hair up like the girls in the magazine. Her bedroom became a sort of theatre where all manner of fantasy popped out of her head and came alive. Sadie really wanted to be one of the girls in the magazine. The more she became familiar with their lifestyles, the more she became disgusted with the smell of chickens’ innards and the bloodstained overall she had to wash every night. She practised the way the girls walked, stepping back and forward in front of the bedroom mirror. She invented men in silk suits who came out of the same mirror and said to her, “Would you like to dawns?” There was no question of any of these men speaking in local dialect. They drove MG cars and took her for drinks in bars with brass pump handles and pictures of race horses. The magazine girls lay around all day doing each others’ hair and talking about “someone special”. Hearts came out of their mouths when they spoke about him. They said he was a “dream”. They said he was “fab”. When he came into the story in person he was usually a complete stranger in town. He had dark hair and a plaid jacket. He rarely spoke, but anything that came out of his lantern jaw was noted by the girls. There was always one of them lurking nearby. They trailed him and found out what kind of books he liked. Then they went and read those kind of books hoping they would get the chance to say something to him about them. They found out where he had his dinner too. Then they turned up there as well. Sometimes he gave them a distant smile across his newspaper. That drove them distracted. They argued among themselves which girl he liked the best. His arrival threatened to shatter the harmony which had previously existed in the flat. He was never a dustbin man or anything like that. Sometimes an antique dealer or record producer or big time insurance man. An odd time it turned out he was married. Just near the end of the story one of the girls would see this one in a feather boa taking his arm in the hotel foyer and then she’d spot the ring. This was the end of the world for the girls. They left their clothes lying in disarray around the flat and picked on each other for no reason, staring moonily out of the window chewing emery boards and twirling beads. Or another time he might make it his business to get to know the least pushy girl, the one that wasn’t quite as up to date as the rest. This was equally bad for they turned on her then. How dare she? She should never have been in the flat in the first place, they said. But all that didn’t matter fo
r he didn’t marry any of them anyway. They were always to be seen in the last frame swopping handkerchiefs by the dozen and asking themselves why oh why oh why.

  Then off he drove in his MG with his pipe stuck in his gob.

  But men such as this never seemed to include the town of Carn on their itinerary. In any case no MG was ever to be seen parked outside the Golden Chip café which was the stomping ground of the town’s male inhabitants. It was there Sadie Rooney spent her Saturday nights after she had the rows with her mother, hunched over coffee cups and drawing shapes in the smoke. There was bubbling fat and formica and the girls from The Park and Jubilee Terrace draped over the jukebox singing. They whispered among themselves, “We will get a man. And his name will be Julio. Or Clint. Or Jeff. And he will bring us to his beach house. To his beach house with French windows.” They spoke in asthmatic gasps about dreamboats and dishes. Every Saturday they scrubbed the smell of chickens from them, then ensconced themselves beneath the picture of Florence in the corner of the café, plucking hairs off Paul McCartney’s jacket, twisting on the tiles with Wayne Fontana and Scott Walker, one dream trying to outdo the next.