Country

by Michael Hughes

  The pair of them. The eyes of them.

  ‘But do you know what else again?’ says Achill. Over at the men now. Changing up to top gear, on the home straight. ‘Fuck this here shite! Do ye hear me? Fuck the whole lot of you! This isn’t my fight, and it never was!’ Scarlet with the fury, practically spitting fire. ‘Oh, it’s well known what we’re really doing here! Sure the dogs in the street know it, that’s the great laugh, even if he’s kept ye crowd of gombeens in the dark. Well I’m not afraid to speak it out. I’m afraid of no man, and if I was, it wouldn’t be him. So listen up.’

  Oh, this was trouble. This was crossing a line. But not a one budged till they saw what way the wind would blow.

  And besides, nobody wanted to miss a word. However the thing fell out at the heel of the hunt, this would keep them going for months. Years, maybe.

  ‘Ye all got the same word I did, one by one, scattered far and all that we were since the truce was called. Gear up the old squad, prep a big bang and end this here ceasefire. Tell the Brits they’ve pushed us as far as we can go. Pig made his case, and others like him, and the higher-ups called it. Enough is enough, and we’re the boys they picked to do the deed, as soon as we get the nod from Belfast. Pile the pressure back on the Brits, and bomb our way to the table. Blast them out of this green country once and for all.

  ‘Shite, plain and simple. This here operation is no tactical use of the armed struggle, making sure the Shinners get the most they can out of the talks. This here is pure personal vendetta, dirty country shite and not a damn thing to do with uniting this land. Pull all the long faces you want, Dog, but stand up and tell me that’s not true bill, and I’ll call you a liar to your ugly fucking face.

  ‘Do you not wonder, all of ye, why you were called back in, instead of using clean skins? Every man of us is a red light, some way or other. On the list, or on the run. But Pig wanted to swing his dick, and show off his pull, so here we all are, the cream of the crop, hiding like rats, risking our hides, for nothing but that man’s pride.

  ‘The wife left you, isn’t that right, Dog? Just upped and away. And the word is, she’s been screwing a Brit. Yes, a fucking Brit. You came crying to your big brother, and he went buck mental. The family name in tatters, him a laughing stock from here to Crossmaglen. Caring about nothing save his own fat self.

  ‘So he ordered this squad back in business to pull the plug on these talks and this ceasefire, and fling the whole country back into the dark old days, for no other reason than to get back at that there Brit, and every other Brit that thinks they can walk all over us. Teach them to come sniffing round our women. And then she’ll see what fearless warriors the pair of ye are, and she’ll come scampering on back to her darling hubby. Just like in the movies.’

  The face of Dog. Pure beetroot. The rest with gobs hanging open. Still Achill kept on.

  ‘But here’s what, Dog. No, just you stand your ground till I’ve said my piece. I don’t blame you one bit for wanting to get even. Not one wee bit. A man’s a man, and you have to do what you have to do.

  ‘But listen here to me. Personal is personal. You can leave me out of it.’

  He took a few steps back and showed them his two palms, up over his head, like a priest doing the consecration, or a TV robber about to get cuffed.

  ‘Hear me now, for I say this to all of ye. That Brit never done nothing on me. And I’ll tell you better than that. No Brit never done nothing on me. And if they had, then boo hoo, too fucking bad. A war is a war, and both sides have to do many’s the dirty doing to get the job done.

  ‘But don’t expect me to wipe up your mess. I fight for Ireland alone, not for Dog and his bitch. I pull my trigger for a thirty-two-county republic, not for bogman score-settling.

  ‘And do you know what else? Good for the young one, if you ask me. She has the right idea. Get out away from this fucking shower, and out away from this fucking hole. For that’s what I have a mind to do now. Head back west, to my own people, where at least I get a bit of respect for who I am and what I done in my time.

  ‘Armed struggle for Ireland is one thing, but you won’t get me fighting another man’s fight, to save his own rotten pride. Enough is enough. Right here is where I call it a day. I’m ceasing my fire, and decommissioning my weapons. There.’

  He pulled the short out of the back of his trousers, and dropped it on the straw in front of them.

  Tumbleweeds isn’t even near it. Nobody had the balls to think a thought, never mind speak a word, before Pig himself had his say.

  He let them all sweat a good minute, maybe two. Knowing rightly he was doing it, just out of pure badness. Then he spat, and laughed his ugly oul laugh. The words came flying out of him.

  ‘Good riddance,’ he says. ‘You’ll not get me begging you to stay, if that’s what you’re fishing for. I shed no tears if you want to sulk off, for there’s no room in this here outfit for back-seat drivers. Anybody trying to boss me will soon get a rude awakening.

  ‘You think you’re so smart, talking out of your hole about our target and our tactics, and proving only that you know sweet fuck all about nothing. As far as I’m concerned, any individual that gets in bed with the enemy is a traitor to their country, be it my own brother’s woman, or the West Brit Shinner suits and ties. But it makes no difference what this operation’s for and what it isn’t for. What I say goes in this unit, and that’s the only way to run a military organisation.

  ‘So you’re the great hero with blood on your hands? You done the operations that got us where we are today? So fucking what? Every man to his own. Them jobs were planned and run by volunteers with brains you’ll never have. Men like Sid here, the greatest schemer in the whole of the Ra. But he gets no credit from me for doing exactly what he loves doing, nor neither do you. And you love nothing more than putting dirty great holes in a man’s skin from half a mile away and watching the blood leak out of him and the life with it. So get away to hell out of this if you want. Whatever suits yourself. No loss, we’ll do just fine.

  ‘But I tell you this. I’m coming round to your place tonight, and that wee girl of yours is coming back with me, and that’s where she’s staying. End of. And you and Pat can get back to your good old bum-chum ways. Pair of fucking queers that you are.’

  Well Pig was right about one thing anyway. Achill loved to kill, when he thought it deserved, and for one gorgeous minute he was ready to pick up his short and put a dirty great hole between Pig’s two eyes, and let’s see the face on him then. Watch the rotten oul brains bubbling down his fat red snout. They can do what they like to me, thought Achill, but I tell you what, that picture would keep me warm in a cold H-Block cell for many’s the year.

  Except Achill knew he’d never get the length. He was very well aware how that story ended. He’d always known in his soul that his cards were marked, right from the very day he took the oath. But he was fucked if today was going to be the day, and this man the cause. So.

  ‘The day you have Brit blood on your hands,’ says Achill, ‘is the day you can tell me what’s what. The day you do yourself what you ask these men to do, put your own life up for grabs, deep in the hard country with the SAS on your tail baying for blood, is the day I take my next order from you, for I know well you never have in your puff.

  ‘But I promise you this, by all that’s holy, cross my heart and hope to die. The day will come, and very fucking soon, when you’ll be standing here like that Prod farmer, on your knees in the muck and the glar, begging me to come back, the tears tripping you.

  ‘And I tell you now straight, I won’t do it. These men will be lifted out from under you, informers every turnaround, fine volunteers shot down and blown to bits in the road because the Brits aren’t frightened to take you on any more, for you’ve no Border Sniper to hide behind. And I’ll be laughing. Fuck, yes. I’ll be laughing my hole off. Until the day them same Brits are south of the border, marching in my own land, I won’t lift another finger against them. You’re on your o
wn.’

  The only sound was the crows cawing. Still no man dared be the first to shift.

  Until old Ned. Seventy-five if he was a day. He got up on his hind legs now, and that was no small job, for they all knew better than to try and help him. But you could have cut the air with a spade while he struggled off the wee stool, and got up his phlegm. And then he barked out at the pair of them.

  ‘Children! A pair of children squabbling over jubes! I was born when this whole island was still ruled by the British Empire! I was on operations when you men were sucking bottles of milk, aye, and when some of your mammies and daddies were sucking bottles of milk! I pulled triggers in the Border Campaign in the fifties alongside men who’d fought in the GPO. I was moving families being burned out of their houses in Belfast in sixty-nine, and I brought the first weapons into the Bogside in the back of my own bread van. I was among the heads they came and asked in eighty-one whether to keep on with the hunger strike, or throw in the towel. And now I’ve had the Army Council drive up and ask me one by one whether to banjax these talks, or let the Shinners have their head. And all them volunteers listened to my spake then, when I had something to say, so you pair better scrape out your lugs and listen to me now.’ And they did.

  ‘Achill. Nobody argues you’ve bagged your share of Brits, and more than your share, and it’s thanks to you and nobody else that our whole place is a no-go zone for them and the peelers both. Any man disputing that would be a laughing stock. But you don’t go against the OC’s orders. You just don’t do it. This man here was put in charge for a reason. Wise the fuck up, and calm the fuck down.

  ‘Pig. Let Achill keep his girl. She went after him, not you, and that’s just the way it is. Tough shite. We need Achill, you know we do. This whole job is built around his cold eye, and his steady hand, and the fear of God he puts into the Brits. We’re royally fucked without him. So do the decent thing, hold up your paws and admit when you’re wrong.’

  Pig shook his big fat head. ‘Good man Ned. Always the right spake at the right time. I can’t fault one word of that, but here’s the thing. When it’s time to debate, we can debate, and argue the bit out, and I’ll welcome all views and opinions on that day, nothing held back. But not in the middle of an operation. Not when we’re on active service. Active means action, not words, and service means doing what you’re told. End of.

  ‘And here’s what else. OC means Officer Commanding, and commanding does not mean asking nicely where I come from, it means what the fuck it means. We’re fighting a war for a fair and decent democratic republic, but until we get it, we’re a cold, ruthless military unit with a simple chain of command, where the boss man’s word is law, judge and jury. If any man, never mind who, starts giving orders back up the chain, that’s the end of the campaign. We’ll fall into feuding like the INLA, is that the story you want? Fighting over drug money? Turning our guns on each other? Digging up gravestones of dead volunteers and fucking them through the front windows of the old men that plugged them, trying to scare them to death? No. However good a shot that man is, however many kills he has chalked up, does that entitle him to show me up in front of everybody, any time he feels like it? If I back down on this, what’ll be next? Not an inch, boy. Not now, nor never. I tell you what, the Jaffas are surely right about one thing. No Fucking Surrender is the only way to fight a war.’

  ‘Never a truer word spoke,’ says Achill. ‘What kind of a man would I be, and what would be said about me by these good men here in years to come, or by others coming after them, if I lay down and let you put your boot on my neck this day? Not me. Not this volunteer. Not now, nor never.

  ‘Easy come easy go, you take the girl. I give her to you. But that’s my own decision. And not a button else. Not one red cent of my share are you getting back off me.

  ‘But listen here to me now. If you have a mind to face me down, come on right ahead. I hide from no man. If you’re looking a chance to prove to these volunteers that there’s red blood instead of pish-water in them veins of yours, then I’m the lad to give them all a good look, right now this very minute. Just say the fucking word, boy.’

  And like a scissors cut the string in between, the pair of them heeled off and walked away. Before somebody said something they’d regret, as the man says.

  And that was the start of it. A terrible business altogether. Oh, it was all kept off the news, for the sake of the talks and the ceasefire. But them that were around that part of the country remember every bit.

  Wait now till you hear the rest.

  3

  Pig got word to Crisis Cunningham that the wee girl was on her way home, and Sid was sent to bring her in person, with wads of cash and new duds and the whole kit and caboodle, and all the honey his tongue was good for, to smooth things over. The da was all smiles, apologised for the misunderstanding, and any inconvenience caused. He’d get on to Mr Bright straight away and let him know it was a false alarm. All would be just as it was.

  But Pig himself wouldn’t listen to a soul. Dug the heels right in. He sent two young lads down to Achill’s place, hardly more than balloons, with a message for the young one Brigid. There’s a vacancy up here and you’re to come now and be the OC’s girl, for that’s the way it was done in them days, and Achill said not a word to them.

  ‘I don’t blame ye lads one bit. Do what ye were sent here to do. Pig is the only man my fury holds with.’ Pat woke the girl up, told her what was what, and she got herself dressed and went on with a big long face, a wee kiss on the cheek for Achill and that finished him off.

  One minute bawling and crying, the next minute red with the rage. Couldn’t hardly see, he was that stirred up. Stamping on the ground like he was trying to flatten it. Then he sat in the muck and the dirt, and took the shirt off his back, and tore it into wee strips, like it was a tissue. Mad stuff. Pat tried all sorts, begged and pleaded, but nothing would do him.

  Pat, now. You see, Pat owed Achill pretty much everything. They’d shared a cell in the Maze when Achill was in for membership, and Pat for possession, though he was a total innocent, doing a favour for a friend of his that he didn’t even know was involved. Anybody could see he was a green gawm, but something about him got to Achill. Maybe he had a glimpse of his own wee self before the whole thing got in round him. And he swore to himself he would take this boy in, for he had nobody else, and put him on the straight and narrow, keep him close indoors and away from Pig and the rest of them, teaching him what was right and what was wrong, same as his own teacher Mannix had him.

  Nobody dared say boo to Pat, for fear of Achill’s fury. Anybody that tried got their arm in a sling. There was something about that young lad made Achill feel that things were going to work out, one day, that the next lot coming up would find another way through it all, and a better way. He was what they were fighting for. There had to be something.

  If Pat was smiling, the sun was out for Achill. And if Pat was in bad form, then you may stay out of Achill’s way. That’s where the stories started about the two of them, and from them sharing a cell. But the only love between them was one man who needed a big brother, and another man who needed to be one. Brigid was bad enough, but if Pig had laid a finger on Pat, or even threatened to, it would have been High Noon for sure.

  But Brigid wasn’t the only girl for Achill. As soon as it got dark, straight out the door and up to the box at the crossroads and rang the one number he knew by heart. And fair play to her, she drove up, three in the morning on the wee back roads, and met him.

  Theresa Flanagan. A neighbour of Achill’s when he first moved north at the age of fifteen, after his da was locked up the first time, and she looked in on him often in them days, washed his clobber, made him his dinner. He had nobody else. Neither did she.

  Old enough to be his ma, but in them days she’d give him the odd blow job when he had nothing going on, and he kept the Ra off her back when she was told she’d be tarred and feathered or worse. For all said she was what they used to call a
good-time girl. A few quid and she’d do whatever you fancied. But then the Brits got hold of her, so the story went, and the word went round she was working for them too, a honeytrapper, getting the gossip off horny Ra men. Or that there was hidden cameras in her wee house and they’d get pictures of you riding her, to threaten to give your wife or your ma, to try and make you tout.

  Achill didn’t believe any of it, but he didn’t not believe it either. He knew she was in cahoots with the both sides some way or other, he’d always known that. But he knew to say nothing to her, and she knew not to ask. Except the very odd time, if another Ra man was doing his head in, he might mention the name in passing, so the boy would get hassled by the peelers for a couple of weeks, his house and his business done over, the wife strip-searched, car took apart.

  So the woman Theresa said she would meet him by the old creamery, and bring him up to a quiet spot she knew. Achill got in the back of the car and she drove before they were seen. He hunkered down with a blanket over him the woman had there for the purpose. The two never spoke till they came to a halt again, up by the reservoir. The woman Theresa had a key and let them in the gate. He locked it behind them, and they drove around behind the pumping station where none could see them but the herons and the gulls.

  He turned on the wee light above the seats and handed her a scrap of paper where he had wrote ‘TURN OFF THE TAPE OR I WON’T SAY NOTHING’. The pair of them looked at other for a full minute, two, three. Each knew what the other would be saying and was answering every silence by their own silence, and the other knew what that silence was saying too. Not a word out of one of them.

  She told him to get out of the car a second, and he did. Then she told him to get back in again and that there was nothing to worry his wee head about now. He said there better fucking not be. And then she sucked his dick.