It’s my fault. I should burn for this.
83
The boy slept.
She stepped to the wardrobe. His shirts. His beautiful shirts she’d spent years collecting, thousands and thousands of pounds. For him. An immaculate soldier, but a scruff in civvies. She was going to show him. She would make him the man he could be.
None of it mattered. Had it ever mattered? Had anything? She couldn’t tell.
She heaped them all up, at the back of the garden. She had dragged them, still on the hangers, over the wet grass and stone. Piled them high.
What now? Light a match? Nothing. Hopeless.
She tried to remember how to do it. Paraffin, and kindling.
She took her time, built it up. Not thinking. Just doing. Her body knew how.
Whoosh. The heat of it. The rage, the fury.
She watched it burn. She watched it all burn.
84
Monday night. Pat’s wake.
They all turned up at the Ships in twos and threes, filing in and standing about, balancing a plate of egg sandwiches and a cup of stewed tea. The women were buttering and cutting like the blazes, but nobody was eating. There wasn’t much chat either.
Here’s why. The coffin was empty.
Achill had set Pat up at the bar, a flat pint in front of him. Slumped down like as if he was having a snooze. Achill sat beside, hand on the shoulder, dead sober, but talking to Pat as though he could hear him.
‘I did what I swore I’d do, Pat. The Brit is dog food. He’s here, but. I have him in the jacks, dumped in the drain, and he’ll be soaked in the piss of every man among us before the night is done. Nothing is too low for that cunt. He’ll be minced up the same as Nairac this time tomorrow. Butchered like a nag. I’ll feed him to his own dogs. If I could, I’d feed him to his bitch mother, that brought him to this earth to end my joy.’
Sid stepped in with a soft hand on the arm.
Achill jumped, like as if he’d thought he was on his own.
‘Come on, now, Achill. You need to get cleaned up.’
‘The fuck I will. Not until Pat is in the ground. I’ll wear the blood of his murderer, to show this boy it was me and nobody else. But go on you, open the bar there and let the men drink their fill.’
Nobody stinted, for they all knew somewhere deep down they needed to get stocious drunk so that this madness might seem like the right thing to do.
And that’s what they did.
They slapped Pat on the back and told him there was nobody like him. One by one they sat beside him and told him what they’d done these last days and weeks, the whole yarn. Nothing was lost in the telling.
Watching them, Achill felt the ache in his heart ease just a wee bit, to know he had done what he said. And before he knew it, he was sleeping himself, head on the bar, just like Pat. The two of them snoozing away.
In his dream, Achill saw Pat lift his head from the bar, and speak.
‘What do you think you’re at? Do you not know I’m lying here bound in Purgatory until you put my bones in the sacred earth of my own country, and I can move off to be judged and find my soul’s final resting place? Take my hand for the last time. There’s no more Pat and Achill, making plans for when peace comes at last. There is no peace waiting for you, nor for me. Our peace is finished with. For I’m dead, restless in hell, and you’re soon to follow me. A bloody killer is coming for you. But you know that well. The only thing I ask is that they bury us together. Will you do that?’
‘Do you need to ask? But don’t say the last time yet. Let me hold you once now again, and another time after that, the friend of my heart, so I can feel the life beating in your chest, and a wee hint of the living joy I’ve lost.’
He reached out, but there was nothing, only cold waxy death.
Achill shouted out, and the whole place leapt like a bomb went off. He looked about him, mad in the eyes, wide awake. And he saw the ugly face of a bloody killer coming for him, just like Pat said.
He drew his short and he would have put three rounds in the man’s face.
‘Achill! Achill, Jesus sake!’
It was the looking glass behind the bar. The bloody face was his own.
85
There was a plait Achill was growing at the back, hanging down over his collar, what they called a rat’s tail. He’d swore before he left the west that he wouldn’t cut it until he was back living in his own home place. He sliced it off now and threaded it between Pat’s hands, where the rosary beads would go.
Achill called for Pig now, though his heart still hated him.
‘Do this for me now, and I’ll ask you nothing else. Order the stone. Get all ready at the republican plot to bury this man. He never took another life, but place him there as a marker for the days to come, that a man of peace can be honoured as a true Irish patriot. None of us wants to kill. We only do it to bring about the day when no Irishman needs to.’
But the wake was only getting going.
Achill was something more like himself now, for the first time in weeks. The head was getting settled. Still he wouldn’t take a drink, and every one that was poured for him, he emptied out the window to run into the soil, and said it was for Pat. The tears never stopped running from his eyes, but his face didn’t once crease in a sob, and the odd smile was there, as he watched the antics of the men around him.
For the drink was flowing now.
Oh, the quare crack. The quare stories.
Still Pat was propped at the bar, getting the odd slap on the back, but the tales the men were telling had shifted into a bit of slagging, and who was better at driving the getaway. How fast they could go, how tight on the bend, and which of them would end in the ditch.
Achill got tired listening to it. All the stuff Pig had give him was laid out on the back table, like a wedding, and Achill said the men should shut up their slobbering and settle it right here and right now, and he would give a prize off the table for the winner.
The men were on it like a hoor in a monastery. They needed somewhere to put all the jizz was in them this night.
First the circuit was drew up, and argued over, and drew up again, the two miles past the chapel and back to the Ships, twice around. Four of them were up. Diamond McDaid, Dumbo Lynch, then Anthony, Ned’s son, and Dog himself.
Ned stood in close to his boy, whispering tactics.
‘You know well how to take a bad corner, I’ve nothing to teach you there, but your car hasn’t the power of the others. So you need to use the head. The man in a powerful motor will take the corner wide, trusting his engine, but with a weaker engine you need to hug in close. The stone up ahead, the Badger’s Toe, is where you turn. I want you close enough that you could reach and touch it, but don’t scrape the car or you’ll slow yourself down and do damage. If you can pass on the inside there, nobody’ll catch you.’
All piled outside. Pat was carried out and propped agin the wall. The men gunned the engines and ripped off, leaping over the wee hills and near on two wheels at the bends. Dumbo went in the ditch at the end of the first lap, and gave his face a desperate whack. Diamond skidded off, but he got back on the road and made it up, though he left most of his back tyres on the tarmac. They came to the spot where the road was too narrow to pass, just as Anthony was side by side with Dog, trying to cut him up. ‘Fucking maniac!’ shouts Dog, and he wasn’t joking. Anthony wouldn’t hold back, so Dog had to shift down and take the rear.
At the Ships they could see little enough. The Other Jack and Domino were squabbling over who was in the lead, cash passing back and forth in quick wee bets. But Achill knocked heads, and told them to whisht.
Diamond came in first and claimed his prize, with Anthony next, then Dog. Dumbo, who they all knew to be the best driver, walked up the track with a big long face on him, and a lump the size of an egg on his noggin.
Achill felt awful sorry for him.
‘Come on here and we’ll let you have second pick, for all knows you’re bette
r than the men that beat you.’
But Anthony was having none of it.
‘Away and shite. I came second, and second pick is me. If you want to give him a prize, do it out of your own pocket, for you have plenty of stuff of your own beyond to give away.’
This time there was no fury in Achill’s heart.
‘Good man Anthony. You’re dead right, fair’s fair. I’ll sort him out, and here’s the keys of my pick-up for you.’
But Dog was raring up now.
‘Wise the bap, the lot of you. Anthony, what the fuck was that show? Your oul wreck would never have beat my wheels in a fair race, but you played it dirty. Some of the rest of you speak up, for fuck sake, before I’m accused of being a sore loser. Youse all seen it. Come on here, Anthony, and swear on the Bible that you never meant to pull that trick on me.’
Anthony, fair play to him, shook his hand.
‘Dog, nobody would argue that you’re not a better man than me, for I haven’t the years nor the miles put in. You know yourself the young have hot heads, and do things in the spur of the moment they shouldn’t. So I’ll let you have the truck, and if there’s anything else of mine you want, to make it right, just say the word and it’s yours.’
And he threw the keys across to him.
Dog near caught them in his mouth, he was that surprised.
‘You’re a decent skin, Anthony. Although you pissed me off, you’re a level-headed young fella the most of the time, and we’ll chalk this one up to experience. All the same, learn your lesson. There’s no other man here would have dared try that number on me. But what your family haven’t given to the struggle isn’t worth talking about, so here’s the keys back.’
The grin on Anthony. Dog wasn’t finished, but.
‘The truck is mine still, officially, and I can take her out any time I want, right? But I’ll let you keep her, and drive her, so as nobody can say I’m a sore loser.’
And there was one more prize, a lump of cash, that Achill gave to Ned.
‘All know you’d have beat us flat at any sport in your day, and it’s only the years holds you back. So take this, that you’ve something to remember this night by.’
‘A good spake, Achill, and I thank you. And it’s no lie you tell, for at the Easter Rising commemorations in 1966, there was a quare lot of sports got up, and mine was the first hat in the ring for all of them. A few of the men got up a bit of boxing, and I wiped the floor with all comers. Throwing too, though I was bested in the horse riding.’
Achill was on his feet again.
‘I won’t have it said that we didn’t honour Pat with the same as any of the greatest martyrs of our cause, so come on then and we’ll get up a few more events. Boxing it is.’
The two barmen went at that, for they were known for having bouts above. They gave it some welly, and the older one knocked the younger clean out, and a good few teeth as well.
Then somebody said they wanted to see Sid at it, but he said he wasn’t stirring, and they may find him something he could do sitting down. So Budd plonked down beside him and said it was arm-wrestling.
Well that gave a smile to all, but good man Sid, he said he’d go for it. And to give him his due, the two men never left twelve o’clock for a good few minutes, though you could see the veins bulging black in their arms. But Sid hadn’t the strength of Budd, and both men knew he would tire, so Sid relaxed the grip all of a sudden, which surprised Budd that much he did the same, and then Sid was all ready with a big push to slam him down. Some trickster. He got him within an inch of the table, all heads down around it to see was it touching. But Budd pumped up the muscles and inch by inch he raised him back up to due north and then down the other side. But now Sid held him there, grunting and snorting, and if he didn’t start to inch him back up. Well, Achill stepped in then and called it a dead heat.
‘We need have neither of you pair ruin your trigger hands for a bit of sport. The same prize for both men.’
And they took five bundles of twenties each, a cool thousand cash.
Running next, and Sid and Budd still had power in their legs at least, and a graw to beat the other, for both stood up, along with young Anthony again. They were off, with Budd taking an early lead round the first bend, but Sid was in tight behind him, Budd could nearly feel the man’s breath between his shoulder blades, that close he ran, all the way around the pub till they skirted the farm. And there it was that Budd put his right foot in a fat cowpat and went on his arse in the shite, so that Sid crossed the line ahead of him, though Budd was back on his heels and a close second, spitting out lumps of dung and straw. ‘That man Sid. Even the cows take his side. I swear to God.’ And another good laugh was had.
Anthony took last place with good grace.
‘The only man who could beat Sid, though he’s far from the youngest here, is Achill himself, the best sprinter among us.’
Achill opened his own wallet and gave him five twenties for that.
The men called out for one more event, the throwing. Pig and Merrion stepped up, but Achill hushed them, knowing what it would likely turn into. Not today, thank you.
‘The only man here who hasn’t a prize, and well deserves one, is Pig himself. He’d bate the lot of us any time he chose. So let you take the honours, Pig, but hand them on to Merrion, like the boss man should, thinking only of the men under him, and nothing of himself.’
Pig nodded his fat head, and did just what Achill said.
Because, what else do you do?
86
A wee crack of light was on the horizon when they all started drifting home. There was some twangy country shite playing, and them stumbling around trying to find coats and keys.
‘Nobody’s to drive,’ says Sid. ‘I’m giving lifts.’
There was only Achill left in the place. And now he was on his own, he let rip his grief. The face crumpled up, and big heavy sobs came rolling out of him. Choking and wailing. The gasps and the snotters. Retching and shuddering. The whole thing. Now he’d started, he couldn’t stop.
He’d get up now and again and into the jacks and try and piss on Henry, but he had nothing in him. So he hoiked the body out of the gutter and gave it a kicking. But he was too tired to do any damage. In spite of the dragging and the bullets and the beatings, the man still looked like himself.
87
Words were being had, at the highest level. They’d kept the details off the news so far, but only just, by threatening head honchos with dirt-digging in the tabloids and big cuts in the next Budget, and then buttering them up with promises of future gongs.
But the army were champing at the bit. As far as they were concerned, this meant war. They were going to get the body back, hell or high water.
The unionists were up in arms too. Our friend in particular. Mr Paul Bright.
Strings were pulled in Whitehall. It found its way to the top. And I mean the very top.
‘Relax, Mr Bright. I have someone on the ground who owes me a favour.’
London had her notified. The wee secretary Iris sent word, for she knew just where to find her. And the woman called in on the same number, got put through in the very same way.
‘This is Theresa. I have nothing to say to you, but.’
‘Really? Then allow me. You owe me, I believe was the phrase.’
‘Fuck you. I’m not in the mood the night. And I think you’ll find we’re quits.’
‘Under the circumstances, given how things have played out, my view is that the price paid has been a little higher than anticipated. After this, let’s agree we’re all square.’
‘You’re asking an awful lot.’
‘You misunderstand me, my dear lady. This isn’t a request. It’s an order.’
So down she drove again to the Ships, to see her own wee boy.
‘Can you not eat something, or take a rest? Will I not come in for the night and keep you company? A woman’s body is great cure for all ills. You should try and enjoy whatever of life is le
ft, for a man like you might not have long.
‘But one way or another, you have to give back that dead soldier. It’s not right. It’s not natural. I’m hearing it’s causing all kinds of ructions. Think of the poor man’s family, the grief you’re putting them through. Let them say their goodbyes, the same as you have yourself. You can’t live your whole life in fury.’
‘You were sent, weren’t you?’
‘Whether I was or I wasn’t, this is what has to happen.’
He thought about it. It was finished. He didn’t actually give a fuck any more.
‘If it has to, then it has to. But I’ll not shift. Let them come and get him.’
88
The call came back through to Iris, while she was taking five, munching at a tray bake. She dusted the crumbs off her skirt and went right away, leaving the bun half ate.
In to Bernard, sitting there among them, the ruin of the last night’s disco.
He looked shocking. He hadn’t shaved. Like filth round his neck and his face, as if he’d smeared on black ash from the grate.
‘Sir. A message from London.’
He squinted at the paper, shook his head.
‘I can’t focus. Tell me what they want.’
‘You’re to go and get the body back, sir. Someone from the Det will get you over the border, and up to the pub where O’Brien has him.’
‘That’s their plan, is it? I ask politely for the corpse, and because he’s a wise, thoughtful, moral individual, he hands it over out of the goodness of his heart?’
‘I think that’s the idea, sir.’
‘Brilliant. The sheer calibre of our civil service never ceases to astonish.’
But he did his duty. Lifted the phone, to Henry’s mother.
‘It’s Bernard. How are you bearing up?’
‘I’m not. It’s unbearable.’
‘They’ve asked me to cross the border and recover the body.’
‘From whom, exactly?’
‘From his killer.’
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