1972

by Morgan Llywelyn

  In the autumn of 1959 he read one that disturbed him greatly.

  “After Síle died I went mad for several years,” Ned had written. “I did not know I was mad. My reality was as real to me as a sane man’s is to him. I cannot say what made me well again, only that it happened gradually. My return to sanity was made up of small things.

  “Is killing a fellow human being a sign of madness? I most certainly killed men while I was of unsound mind, yet I also killed men before Síle’s death, when I was, I believe, sane. And was, I believe, fighting in a just cause. Was the man who killed Síle insane? Or was he sane when he drove his bayonet into her stomach? Did he think he was acting in a just cause?”

  That night the terrible Brookeborough nightmare Barry thought he had escaped returned. Except this time it was not the face of the RUC man he saw but his own, glaring at him down the barrel of the rifle. He watched incredulously as the other Barry’s finger tightened on the trigger. Worse still, he felt the shock as the bullet struck him.

  Then he was not the RUC man but Feargal O’Hanlon with the bullets tearing into his body. He was Seán South, he was Paddy O’Regan. He was …

  A nameless person on a nameless street, walking along minding his own business. Suddenly there was a violent explosion and he was thrown to the ground. Debris rained around him. Looking down at himself, he saw that his body was blown apart. After a moment of absolute disbelief he felt terrible pain … and knew that he was dying.

  Barry awoke rigid with horror.

  WHEN the latest issue of the United Irishman arrived he took it to his room without opening it and sat on the bed for a long time, holding the little monthly in his hand. If I don’t look I won’t have to …

  He flung open the magazine like an act of defiance. Fifteen slips of paper fluttered to the floor.

  ON the last day of January, 1960, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts announced his intention to run for the presidency of the United States. He was young and wealthy—and an Irish American Catholic.

  Kennedy immediately caught the imagination of the Irish people.

  HER name was Claire MacNamara and she was exceptionally pretty.

  On a blustery March day Barry found himself in Athlone on his way home from the north. He decided to have a hot meal at the hotel before continuing his journey. As he walked along the high street a customer emerging from a sweets shop allowed a mouth-watering fragrance to escape. On impulse, Barry went in.

  And there she was, behind the counter. Her skin was very white; her lips were full and red. When she asked the usual shopkeeper’s question, “Are you all right there?” she spoke with a lilting Cork accent.

  A creamy girl, a silk-and-lace sort of girl. “I am. I mean I will be. As soon as I make up my mind.”

  “About which sweets to buy?”

  “About which sweets to buy,” he echoed, watching the curving fullness of her lips. “What brings a girl from Cork to County Westmeath?”

  Casual conversation did not come easily to her, but there was something about this young man she could not resist. “How did you know I’m from Cork?”

  He smiled. “Just a guess. Forgive me, I shouldn’t have asked such a personal question. We haven’t even been introduced.” He thrust out his hand. “I’m Finbar Halloran. And you are Miss … ?”

  She lowered her eyes. Her eyelids, Barry observed, were moist. He wondered what it would be like to kiss them. “MacNamara.”

  “MacNamara’s a County Clare name.”

  “My father’s people came from Clare originally,” she said. “I suspect that’s why I was called Claire. I was the runt of the litter and my parents had run out of names by the time they came to me.” When she laughed, her laugh was the most beautiful Barry had ever heard. It rippled; it chimed.

  She broke off with a delicate little cough and charmingly covered her mouth with her hand.

  If she were mine I’d dress her in silk and lace. “You were reared in Cork?”

  “In a house that used to belong to my grandparents. It’s at the very top of the hill.” She sounded homesick.

  Barry had a sudden, vivid image of her standing on a hill with her frock moulded against her slender body by the wind. “What brought you to Athlone, Miss MacNamara?”

  “One of my father’s sisters was married to the man who owned this shop. He died last autumn and she’s still in mourning. They have no children to take over the shop, so I was sent to help out until my aunt decides what she wants to do.”

  “What a coincidence!” Barry exclaimed with an enthusiasm the circumstances did not warrant. “I’m on my way home for my aunt’s sake. Well, not really my aunt, she’s my mother’s aunt, but she’s old and she hasn’t been well. I’d like to take her some chocolates.”

  “How kind,” the girl murmured. Raising her eyes. Meeting his full force. It was like an electric shock.

  Barry purchased the most expensive chocolates on offer. He bought a large assortment of boiled sweets, two pounds of the toffee known as “yellow man,” and various other confections. He loathed liquorice but spent long minutes trying to decide between the red and the black. Taking an inordinate amount of time making his selections allowed him to linger in the shop until it closed. By then he and the lovely shopkeeper were on a first-name basis. When Barry offered to walk Claire home, a delicate blush rose up the slender column of her throat and flooded across her cheeks.

  She’s adorable, thought Barry.

  “It’s only fair to warn you that my aunt lives three miles out the Ballinasloe road.”

  “I walk all the time,” Barry assured her. “Three miles is nothing to me.”

  The dying day was turning cold. As they stepped outside, he whipped off his scarf and wrapped it around her neck. Claire gave a delicious little shiver. The wool was still warm from his skin.

  Peeping through net curtains, Miriam MacNamara Fogarty watched them come up the road. “Now who’s that young man?” She had talked to herself ever since the late Declan Fogarty stopped listening to her early in their married life. “Like bees around the jam jar, young men are.” A cluck of the tongue. “And would you look at the clothes on her, you can see her legs almost to the knee. In my day the only one who saw a woman’s ankles was her husband.” A disapproving shake of the head. “I’d best let her hems down straightaway.”

  MIRIAM opened the door and stepped outside so they could see her waiting. “You took your time,” she accused. Wrapped in a dark shawl, she loomed in front of them like a boulder in their path.

  Claire went pink again.

  I think I’m in love.

  “I’m only after closing the shop, Aunt Miriam. This was my last customer, so he offered to walk me home.”

  Miriam’s face pleated into the familiar folds of a deep frown. “Just who is he?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Aunt Miriam, this is Finbar Halloran.”

  Barry whipped off his cap and tucked it under his arm.

  “And who’s Finbar Halloran when he’s at home?” the older woman demanded to know.

  “I’m a photographer, Mrs. Fogarty. I live on the family farm, but I travel around the country taking pictures.”

  “Thank you for your courtesy to my niece, Mr. Halloran. Now if you’ll excuse us …” Interposing her bulk between Claire and Barry, Miriam took the girl by the elbow and steered her toward the house.

  At the door Claire turned and looked back. “Will I see you again?”

  “I’ll be in Athlone for several days,” he decided on the spur of the moment. “I have lots of things to photograph.”

  “Hmmmph,” said Miriam Fogarty. She drew her niece into the house and slammed the door.

  Barry was waiting for Claire the next morning when she opened the shop. He had been afraid her aunt might come with her, but she was alone. “Aunt Miriam doesn’t leave the house yet,” Claire explained.

  “She came outside last night.”

  “Just onto the path; she won’t come as far as the ro
ad. What would the neighbours think?”

  Barry laughed. “‘What would the neighbours think?’ is an Irish obsession. My mother’s the only woman I know who doesn’t care.”

  “Does she not? That hardly seems possible.”

  “You don’t know my mother. Ursula specialises in the impossible.”

  Since he could hardly spend the entire day in the shop, Barry wandered around Athlone. He had been there on several occasions but never explored it through the eye of the camera. Like all Irish towns, Athlone was scarred by long poverty. The first vestiges of change were creeping in, however. There were more motorcars in the streets than a year ago, and several abandoned shops were reopening.

  Barry devoted part of the morning to photographing, from every angle, the bridge that spanned the Shannon. He found great beauty in its worn stones and graceful arches; in the lichens that clung to the mortar; in the pair of swans who, as indifferent to the weather as himself and Claire, sailed along the river’s surface, admiring their mirrored images.

  As they were sharing a lunch of brown bread and egg salad in the shop, Barry told Claire, “Speaking of coincidences, my middle name is Lewis. While I was exploring Athlone Bridge I learned about a legend concerning a namesake of mine.”

  She clasped her hands together in a curiously childlike gesture. “Oh, do tell me!”

  “There’s an inscription carved on a stone tablet under one of the arches, relating to a man called Peter Lewys. He’s said to have been an English monk who converted to Protestantism. He was sent by Sir Henry Sidney to supervise the building of the original bridge during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Mind you, at that time all the rats in Ireland were still Catholic.”

  Barry had expected Claire to laugh. Instead she was watching him wide-eyed, totally credulous.

  He began illustrating the story with gestures and grimaces. “An old Irish rat resolved to punish Lewys for being a turncoat and set out to haunt him. If he was trying to eat, it jumped on the table and dragged its long tail through his food. At night it crept onto his pillow and breathed its foul breath into his nostrils until he woke up.”

  Claire gave a little shriek of revulsion.

  “Lewys was invited to preach before a large congregation in St. Mary’s, so the rat placed itself directly in his line of vision and mocked him with its glittering eyes. At last Lewys could stand no more. He snatched a soldier’s pistol and tried to shoot his tormentor. But before he could fire, the clever rat leapt onto the pistol and gave the man’s thumb such a savage bite that he died of lockjaw.”3

  “Oh, Barry, did he really?”

  “I told you, it’s a legend. But …” he lowered his voice, “I personally believe there’s a seed of truth in every legend.”

  “I don’t know any legends.”

  “Surely you’ve heard of Cuchullain, or Fionn Mac Cumhaill?”

  “They were pagans,” she said with distaste.

  He gave her a pitying look. “Is that what your priest told you? I’m sure they were, but we were all pagans at one time. It’s part of our history, Claire, part of what we are. And some of it was wonderful entirely. Let me tell you …”

  He began spinning out stories he had known since childhood, recounting the great tales of heroes that were embedded in folk memory. Soon Claire was as caught up in them as Barry was. When customers came into the shop she tore herself away long enough to serve them, but almost shoved them out the door so that she could return to Barry. She was a wonderful audience, absorbing every word like blotting paper.

  When he was with Claire, Barry could forget the terrible pictures imprinted on his brain. In her blue eyes the world was born fresh and new.

  Chapter Sixteen

  MIRIAM Fogarty thoroughly disapproved of her niece’s burgeoning friendship with the tall young man. It was not that she disliked Barry. She simply disliked the idea of Claire marrying anybody.

  Marriage was the end of everything.

  The man she had married was the proverbial “street angel, house devil.” His many male friends had known him as a jolly, generous individual, a regular attendee of Mass who would always loan a pal money or stand the bar to a round of drinks.

  When his wife went to the market, she often wore an old felt cloche pulled down almost to her cheeks. The deep brim had helped to hide the bruises on her face.

  A drunken husband who beat his wife was all too common amongst Miriam’s acquaintances, but for most of the women there were compensations. God had not seen fit to bless her with the children she longed for, however. After Mr. Fogarty died she had only nieces and nephews to knit mufflers for at Christmas. The arrival of Claire on her doorstep had been the first happy event in years.

  She was not about to surrender the girl to a fate like her own.

  BARRY spent several days in Athlone. He waited at the shop every morning for Claire, but when the first customer appeared he made himself scarce. In this way he became well acquainted with the laneways of the town.

  They all led back to Claire.

  She was a quiet girl, too shy to say much. Barry, who had schooled himself to be quiet, was forced to carry the bulk of the conversation while she listened with flattering attention. He never mentioned the Army. Instead he talked about growing up on the farm, about his mother and Eileen and the Ryan brothers, about horses and cows and boyish exploits. When he described his trip to America, Claire was fascinated. From the questions she asked, Barry realised that her knowledge of America was even less than the Americans’ knowledge of Ireland.

  He walked the girl home every evening, bravely confronting the frozen face of the aunt on the doorstep. Then he went back to the Prince of Wales Hotel to spend a restless night. Tossing and turning. Trying not to think about Claire that way and inevitably thinking about Claire that way, until desire became a torment. Against the demands of his body he had little defence. The heat that enflamed his groin spread upward and outward until it reached his brain and usurped all thought. Demanding relief.

  HOWEVER, Claire was a nice girl, a devout Catholic girl, with all that implied. Nothing short of marriage would unlock her virginity. And Barry could not imagine ever wanting anyone else.

  In April I’ll be twenty-one, and someday I’ll inherit the farm. But until then … I’d need something else to offer a wife. To offer Claire if she’ll have me.

  Suppose she won’t?

  A girl would be crazy to marry me, given the life I live. He had not yet told her about being a Volunteer; there never seemed to be the right moment.

  She’s from the Rebel County but that doesn’t mean she’s a republican. Maybe her people are Fine Gael. Maybe they hate republicans. She might ask me to give up the Army.

  Or suppose she accepts my proposal but Ursula doesn’t like her? They certainly have nothing in common. Where would we live if not on the farm? I’d have to buy a place for us, and that would mean asking Ursula for help. She’d give me the rough side of her tongue, but would she give me the money?

  His biggest problem had been to avoid killing while remaining true to the oath he had taken. Then he had wandered into a shop in Athlone … and found a whole new set of problems. Sleepless nights, vivid imaginings. While he grappled with them the fire within him raged and burned.

  AT last he had to tell Claire, “I have to go home, I’ve put it off as long as I can. It’ll only be for a few days, though. I promise I’ll be back soon.”

  “To take more photographs?” she asked innocently.

  Barry cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face up toward his. It was the first time he had touched her. “You know that’s not the reason, Claire.”

  The sudden blush and the lowered eyelids were already familiar. And inexpressibly dear. “Is it not?”

  “No.”

  “I’d best kiss you good-bye, then,” she said. Standing on tiptoe, she brushed his cheek with her lips.

  BARRY made his way to the farm with a light heart, hitching rides most of the time, but walking in b
etween. His feet not touching the ground. He could not say if it rained or the sun shone. He whistled, he hummed. He even touched his cap to a passing garda patrol car.

  The United Irishman was waiting for him when he got home. A veritable blizzard of notes fell out when he riffled through the pages.

  Barry spent the evening composing a letter to Claire. Revising, crossing out, starting again. And again. The words simply would not come right. He sounded either too stiff or, when he went the other way, too soppy. Before he settled on a final draft the floor was littered with paper snowballs.

  “My very dear Claire,

  “I’m sorry to tell you that I can’t come back to Athlone right away. For the next few weeks I shall be fully occupied with business.” He did not specify the nature of the business. “I hope you’re as disappointed as I am. Just know that you are very much in my thoughts, and you will see me again soon. In the meantime we can write to each other. No matter where I am, my postal address will be the farm.”

  He was eager to receive a letter from her. Perhaps on paper Claire would be able to express feelings she had been too shy to say to his face.

  I wonder what sort of letters Síle wrote to Ned Halloran.

  That night Barry dreamed not of Claire but of a woman with slanted eyes and a voluptuous mouth.

  ON active service somewhere in Northern Ireland, Barry Halloran caught himself looking at his hands. Really looking at them. He always watched his hands when he was working with explosives, aware that the slightest mistake could be fatal, but now he observed them as if for the first time. Long, nimble fingers bent a tiny wire and fitted it into place with a precision that bordered on artistry. Those fingers could accomplish anything he chose. With training they could even design buildings.

  Instead …

  “Do you have any idea what a bomb can do?” Ursula had asked.