Ha ha, he answers. Very funny.
‘Long time no see, old-timer. Did you get lost?’
Me? No. What about you?
‘Totally,’ I answer him. ‘I thought you’d disappeared on me.’
I am disappeared. I don’t exist at all. You do know that?
‘Is that a fact now? Can you prove it?’
He just nods and asks, How was the trip? How are things with the other Flannery girl?
‘The trip was mighty, Bob, and things are very good with the other Flannery girl. But Cora said something once when we spoke about this old war of ours. She said, “I know the cause is right. But then, at the same time, it’s not right.” I know now what she meant. That is how I feel about Aisling Flannery.’
All the same, Bob says, looking at me with one eye wide open and one partly closed, like some sort of lunatic inquisition, it didn’t slow you down too much.
I laugh and Bob laughs, and we walk together towards Castletown Cross, where the country lane meets the main road.
The next day I decide what I shall do, so I sort out the finances — I am still on sick-payment since the accident and can survive well if I spend cautiously — and I go to see Aisling. I leave the Renault with her and she thinks me crazy, and I make a plan and buy boots and gear and stuff and a lightweight tent, and then I pack a rucksack and leave Dundalk, walking north. It is the first of April. It is April Fools’ Day. Bob strides along beside me.
‘All right there, old-timer?’
I am fit to burst, Johnny. We are on our way now, son. ‘Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.’
‘It’ll be a long road,’ I tell Bob.
It will make new men of us. Reinvention is better than cure. ‘Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.’
I look to him and laugh.
I have no definite route to follow — only a loose plan to walk around the island. And why? I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything anymore. Am I looking for something? I don’t know. I don’t think so. Am I trying to lose something? I don’t know that, either.
Approaching the border, I pass Peadar Neary’s farm, a thirty-five acre strip of useless, boggy, land that straddles the frontier, and has thereby — by fortunate alignment of geography, politics, and differing tax regimes — created a fortune for the landowner. To create wealth from such a poor inheritance requires a special talent, but it is something that men like Peadar Neary are made for.
Neary commands the local IRA battalion in an area where no real law exists, and his business is smuggling livestock, fuel, cigarettes, alcohol, and any current or popular merchandise. In part, Neary’s enterprise is a result of my own efforts: police, army, and custom officials will not patrol the northern border through fear of being shot — by me. And, well, that hurts. Neary is all that is wrong in the IRA: the corruption, the intimidation, the self-serving, and the profiteering. Delaney insists that Neary is a necessary ally. Better in than out, he says. Delaney says that Neary’s expertise and cunning serves us well for the moving of men and ammunitions, and that Neary would do what he does in any case — that the smuggling and swindling would occur with or without the war. Delaney insists that it serves the greater good to have him within the walls of the movement, and that Neary’s reach is limited. Maybe. But it still hurts.
Neary is an odd-looking man with an unusual build and gait. He has a large, heavy torso, but he has short legs. As a result, he walks with a hurried, forward leaning, with his little legs struggling to keep up. His prominent chest is thrust forward below a dark, inquisitive, and suspicious head that bobs about in constant alert. As a result, as a boy, he was called Pigeon. But when he was fifteen he put an opposing footballer in hospital — apparently, for over-enthusiastic and defamatory use of the reference — and no one has called him Pigeon since. At least, not to his face. That he could play football at all with the handicap of such a physical construction was early proof of Neary’s determination, a quality he has since put to profit.
Peadar Neary is married to Conor Rafferty’s aunt, and together they have produced a boy called Ciarán. And everything that is bad in the father is good in the son. How can that be? I don’t know. It just is. Conor insists that the boy takes after his mother, and so is a product of the good Rafferty genes. And, once more, I think that Conor may be right.
Ciarán Neary is four years younger than his cousin, and I only got to know him during my last two years at secondary school. Conor made sure to take care of the young boy in the schoolyard, and so Ciarán spent many of his breaks with us. He was a sweet kid, and I saw the same innate kindness in him that I knew in Conor. Although Ciarán was an athletic boy — he was a talented footballer — he had the gentleness of Conor about him. And along a border territory like this, and with a father like Peadar, that can lead to vulnerability. I was forever concerned for him.
I haven’t seen Ciarán for some time, so I call into the farm. An imposing, large, two-storey house sits on the southern end of the land, and is entered through two tall, stone pillars, and approached on a neat gravel drive that circles a fountain that fires spurts of water high in the air. There are no gates between the pillars. Everyone in the area knows of Neary’s role in the IRA; his success, and his intimidation of the local community, depends on it. So having no gates is his show of having no fear.
‘Johnny Donnelly,’ Ciarán shouts as he opens the door. He is thin and pale, and though he is delighted to see me and hugs me in welcome, there is an absence of that sporty and joyful bounce he always moves with. He does his best to be cheerful, but I see he carries the weight of hidden troubles, and I know something is wrong. We settle to tea and toast in the kitchen as we catch up, and I tell him of my plans for my walk and I let him get to his tale in his own time. It is two pots of tea and over an hour later when we get to the story.
‘I was working the Sunday stall for Daddy, at the Jonesborough market,’ he tells me. ‘You know, where we sell the sweets, biscuits, and lemonades.’
I nod. There isn’t a trick that Peadar Neary doesn’t pull in his drive to squeeze every profit possible from the border, and any minor goods that can be bought wholesale in the north and retailed to southern customers for a return are sold at the market. Mam is a great supporter of the Jonesborough fair, convinced there are bargains aplenty to be had there. But then, so is half of Dundalk. And they all overlook the fact that they are thereby responsible for the racketeering that allows hoodlums like Peadar Neary to prosper and bully.
‘Then, about two years ago, the market got a new stall,’ Ciarán continues. ‘It was a mother and daughter. They were from Ethiopia, and had made their way here via England. The father had died in Africa, and they met with a bad man in England; he did bad things to them, so they came here to get away from him. It was a priest over there — a friend of Father Brian, our local priest — who suggested they come here. And the market attracted them; it was a chance to start over. Father Brian gave them a small house in the village. Can you imagine that, Johnny? To escape the hunger of Africa and a violent man in England, and then to end up here? Some people have no luck at all.’
We both laugh at that.
‘The girl is Demeku. She was fifteen when they came. Jesus, Johnny, she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Father Brian gave them some money to get them on their feet — he had spent years on mission work in Africa, and he said he felt obliged to look after them. I think he thought they were sent from God, and I think he fell in love with them both. It wasn’t hard to do. Father Brian asked me to help our new arrivals get settled, to sort out the house, and to set up a stall in the market. I sourced Ethiopian goods through England: beads and woven bags, rugs, shawls, and scarves. It was
great. And I spent every possible minute I could with Demeku. I loved her from the moment I saw her. And she loved me, too, Johnny. She really did. Mad, isn’t it?’
‘Mad stuff altogether,’ I tell him.
‘Everyone thought that we were just friends, that I was just helping them settle. But we made plans, you know, silly stuff — that we’d run off together, or go to college together, or open a shop or a café together. She was learning to weave here. She has a great eye for that stuff. I like it, too; I love the feel and detail of the cloth. We wanted to open our own business.’
‘So what happened?’
‘One day, five months ago, Daddy caught us together.’
‘Together?’
‘Together. You know.’
‘And?’
‘And the next week, she and her mother were gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Nobody knows. Father Brian and I have been looking for them since. Two months ago, we each got a postcard. The cards came from Ethiopia.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know,’ he answers, now crying. ‘It makes no sense at all.’ But both of us knew that it did.
We stroll around the house. All the rooms are large, bright, and expensively furnished.
‘There must be great money in a small farm these days,’ I say to Ciarán, and he brightens as we both smile.
In the centre of the house, behind a wide front door with the family crest carved into the wood, there is a large, tiled, open space — more a grand atrium than a domestic hallway. And in the middle of this space there is a glass cabinet some four foot square and seven foot high. In the glass case, and on a single glass shelf just below eye level, there is a football with scribbled markings.
‘Daddy’s pride and joy. Daddy is football mad. This is a match ball of the 1967 European Cup final. The year Celtic won — the Lisbon Lions, they’re called. He paid over a hundred thousand for it. It cost more than the house. It has the signatures of the entire team. And no one has a key to that cabinet, and no one cleans it, but him. Not even Mammy touches it.’
I stay another hour with Ciarán, promising to help find Demeku, before I return to my walk north.
Tailor made for a solution with that gun of yours, isn’t it? Bob says, as I stroll away from the farm. I bet you can’t wait to put a bullet into Neary. That would solve a lot of things. And you can be the hero and bring the girl home. Mind you, Neary, like him or not, is one of your own. It’d be another slide on that slippery slope.
I ignore him and walk on.
‘If you were sitting at home reading a book,’ I ask Bob, after we walk across the border into Northern Ireland, ‘and a madman burst in and attacked you, would you be wrong to fight?’
No, Bob answers. Such acts are governed by the laws of nature. Everyone has a right to protect self, family, and home from attack.
‘If you were living peacefully in a country and it was attacked by an invader, would you be wrong to fight?’
I suppose it is the same thing, so the same laws of nature must apply.
‘Isn’t right and wrong a matter of opinion?’ I continue. ‘And isn’t it all down to time and place?’
How do you mean, son?
‘Well, those who fight invaders are heroes. But that label only survives if the invader leaves or loses. If the invader doesn’t leave or lose, the hero of today is tomorrow’s rebel. And tomorrow’s rebel is next week’s criminal. And next week’s criminal is next month’s terrorist. Those are very different labels for the same act, and the only difference is who wins, the passing of time, and who’s doing the labelling.’
Yes, but these are the labels of man, Johnny. God will judge who was right and who was wrong.
‘God? God help us all from God. And even if there was a God everyone would be dead before anyone knew anything. In the meantime, like now — when we are still alive — how do we know when to fight? How do we know what is right?’
I don’t know, son. I think we are governed by the laws of nature, that we are born with values, just as we are born with arms and legs, that we all know what is right and what is wrong. But history tells another tale.
Through familiar country, I walk north to Newry, and I pitch the tent by the canal — the same canal we drove alongside on the day we were stopped, the day the gun went into Dad’s mouth. That night, I think about Ciarán and Demeku, and how bastards like Peadar Neary get to be what they are, and do what they do, because of what I do. But I’m not sure of what I can do to help, so I push it away, trusting an idea will come. On the second morning, I continue north and east through the high, pointy rock of the Mourne Mountains to a forest park in Castlewellan where Mam and Dad used to take us for summer family picnics, and I stop beside a lake and eat lunch under a great, twisted oak. Afterwards, I walk through the trees and around a silver-grey castle, and then, as the rain falls, I decide that I’ve venture enough for the day and so I make camp. In the morning, I leave known terrain to march north. I walk to Downpatrick, where I stop and pitch the tent, and search for the grave of Saint Patrick; in a small graveyard in a hillside grove overlooking the town, I find a large stone slab inscribed ‘Patrick’ among the McCartans, Maxwells, and Olpherts. The next day, I walk on to the port at Strangford, taking a small, blue ferry over the narrow water to Portaferry, and from there I head north up the green peninsula through Portavogie and Donaghadee, staying in bed-and-breakfasts, or pitching the tent if it is dry and clear.
After a week, I arrive in Belfast, where the inner-city residential street pavements and walls and lampposts are decorated in tribal colours. Among the rows of tightly packed terrace houses, murals to the fallen and the fight adorn every end-gable and facade. But the more affluent outer suburbs I walked through were mostly free of such declarations. Tribalism, it seems, belongs predominantly to the poor.
‘Would you look at this mess?’ I say.
Love and pride, Bob says. They are two blind bastards.
I look to him. ‘I don’t approve of that sort of abrasive language, old-timer.’
Yeah, well, he answers. We tend not to be so puritanical when we’re dead.
I find a hostel near the city centre, and go to bed early and read a novel I select from a small collection left there by former guests. I leave Belfast before dawn. I walk again through the inner-city areas denoted by ethnic colours, and see how the markings intensify at the tribal edges and fences, in the same way that wild things urinate at the reach of their territory. But the colours and markings here are flags of insecurity; the tribes of Belfast have no solid ground beneath their feet.
The din and grind of a powerful motor approaches — the growing growl loud in the quiet city morning, foreboding, threatening. I keep a steady, easy pace as an armoured-police Land Rover passes and continues away from me, the heavy sound hanging about the street long after the vehicle has gone. They would have taken no notice of me. To them, I am just another curious tourist, one of the many that the city attracts, here to sample the conflict and to bring home photos of murals and barricades and burned-out cars. The police do not see me as their most-wanted. Camouflage, as the Chief so often has told me, does not necessarily mean hiding.
I leave the city and spend the next few days walking to the north-east corner of the island through Carrickfergus, Larne, Carnlough, Cushendall, Cushendun, Ballycastle, and the whiskey village of Bushmills. I take the distillery’s last tour of the day, and try a couple of samples before I leave.
‘I understand the attraction of whiskey,’ I tell the tour guide, putting an arm around him and holding the sample high. ‘I appreciate the intricacies of the making; I value the joy of the single malt.’ I take a sip and pull a sharp face. ‘It’s just that I don’t like whiskey.’
That night I lodge in the home of a retired British army captain, and in the morn
ing I am offered kedgeree for breakfast. I have never heard of it, but a breakfast of curried rice, smoked haddock, and boiled eggs is too good to pass up. It is as delicious as it is odd.
‘Learn that on service in the Raj, did you?’ I say to my host, joking.
He laughs as he pours himself a mug of tea, and then he joins me at the table and gives me his full military history. If only he knew, I think as we talk.
My legs are suffering — the joints and tendons are sore and tight, especially in the mornings, and the pain is getting worse day by day. My host notices me hobbling from the breakfast table, and insists on binding each of my knees with wide bandages.
‘It isn’t just the impact from the walking, my good man,’ he says. ‘Though it is that, too. But it’s the new and unusual weight on your back that has distorted your centre of gravity. The body will take some time to adjust. Keep these on for a few days. Carry only what is necessary, drink plenty, and take it easy for the next week or so.’
He gives me a box of col-liver oil tablets as I pack to go. ‘Take a couple of these every day,’ he says. ‘They should help. And, yes, I learned that, too, in the Raj.’
‘Thanks, soldier,’ I tell him as I leave, and he waves me off.
I think about things as I go. How an enemy soldier is welcoming and kind, and how one of our own is self-serving, racist, and cruel. How Neary banished that girl. How he didn’t want his only son married to an African. How he broke his son’s heart, and didn’t care. How he didn’t want the local shame and ridicule. And I think on how I allow him to do it. But what can I do about it?
Two weeks have now passed on the island walk, and I leave Bushmills with a full belly and strapped legs, and stroll the two miles to the Giants Causeway and watch tourists scamper across polygonal slabs of basalt rock. It is raining and cold, and the sea spray stings as I turn west to walk along the top of Ireland through Portrush, Portstuart, Limavady, and on to Derry, where I rest for three days in a hostel reading newspapers and novels, and drinking mugs of hot coffee. The binding and the rest have worked, and my legs are fine, and in the fourth week I walk back into the Republic, into Donegal, camping in Newtown Cunningham before continuing my pilgrimage into the grey town of Letterkenny —where I don’t stop — and march north again into the Fanad Peninsula to stop and camp by the water’s edge in Ramelton. I sleep long into the day, and the next mid-afternoon I continue north along the long shore of Lough Swilly. I arrive in the village of Rathmullan, and book into a bed-and-breakfast as the sky clears of cloud. After I shower and rest and eat, I walk on the shore as the evening cools and darkens, and a million stars prick through the night.
A Mad and Wonderful Thing Page 21
