by John Lynch
She goes, squeezing his forearm gently as she passes.
For a while he just sits with her, watching her faraway sleeping face. Then he takes his father's photograph from the holdall and slips it beneath the pillow, below her sleeping head. He watches as confusion ripples across her brow, before giving way to a tiny smile. He looks at her for a moment and then around the walls of her room, his eyes scouring their plainness. Then, very softly, he leaves.
When he reaches the border he smiles to himself as he sees the familiar congregation of lorry drivers hovering around the open hatch of the mobile café, the steam rising into the air like small kidney-shaped clouds. He passes the familiar RUC Land Rover parked in its lay-by, and sees the figures of two policemen through the horizontal slats of its windows. He is sure they are making a note of him, but he continues to stare at them as he passes, with the hard eyes of a man who has nothing to lose.
He orders a coffee at the hatch, and smiles as the lady remembers him, saying, ‘Hello, stranger,’ in a teasing way. He takes his cup and moves across the road to sit on the same bollard, scanning the lorry drivers between sips, and watches as one walks over to talk to him. ‘Long time no see.’
‘Yeah … I've been away.’
‘Young Lavery from Carrickburren, isn't that it?’
‘Aye.’
‘What brings you up here in the middle of the holidays?’
‘I'm looking for a lift.’
‘Where to?’
‘Dublin.’
‘Dublin no less. Is she pretty?’
James looks down at his empty cup and resents the hotness he can feel beginning in his cheeks.
‘I'll be leaving for Rosslare in half an hour to catch the midnight boat to Cherbourg: I can drop you in Dublin, if you like.’
‘Thanks.’
‘No problem, son. Any relation of Conn Lavery is a friend of mine – and you know what they say. All roads on this island lead to Dublin. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.’
‘Half an hour?’
‘Yeah, half an hour. Be there or your head's a marble.’
He watches as the man ambles back to join the other drivers. He thinks of all the deaths he has collected since he was younger, of how he has stored them like hard bright shelving amid the clutter of his thinking, and of how he now had one more to add to them. One that will cause all the others to fall away. One that will be with him until he himself dies.
‘Are you right?’
He looks up to see his lorry driver waving him over.
‘I forgot I have to fill her with diesel.’
He hears the roar of the engine as it growls into life, as if it is challenging the air around it. He climbs up into the cab.
‘Frank O'Donnell.’
‘James.’
‘Vamos.’
James watches as Frank thrusts her into first and sees the tarmac of the border post fall away. He looks in the huge door-like mirror at its bold depiction of the world around him, and smiles as the beast of a lorry begins to carry him south.
Letter to Mammy
On the Road
Somewhere Between Newry
And Dublin
(Drogheda, I think)
Dear Mammy,
You are asleep and I'm thinking this letter as you sleep. It's a trick Dad showed me. I know you will receive it, not all of it, maybe, but some of it, I'm on my way to Dublin to see Cathleen, You haven't met her yet, I was going to tell you about her when I got home, but then … Well, you know … Don't worry about me, I'm OK … and you will be too when you wake up. You will be better and stronger. I left you Dad's photograph. You weren't supposed to know I had it, but now I think that's wrong. You seemed to know I had put it under your pillow because you smiled, as if everything was all right. That's why I think you will get better.
I'm sitting in a big lorry. A man called Frank O'Donnell is giving me a lift – he says he knew Dad, I can think these things now, and I think I could even say them to you if you were here beside me.
This is what I've always wanted, to be sitting in a big lorry, moving within a big iron bear, flying past cities, and whizzing down lanes, watching all the houses go by like little boxes. But it doesn't seem important any more, not after what's happened, not after what I've been told.
Now all I want to do is stay still, to see everything slowly, in my own time, in my own way. I love you, Mammy. When you wake I want to curl up beside you and listen to you breathe.
Love, James
29. Dublin
Frank drops him at the top of O'Connell Street, and tells James to give her one for him, then winks and drives off. James watches the lorry swing back on to its route, then looks around for a phone box.
‘Where are you?’
‘I think I'm on O'Connell Street.’
‘You mean you're not sure?’
‘No.’
‘What sort of an Irishman are you?’
‘I don't know.’
‘There's a cinema half-way down on the left-hand side as you walk towards the Liffey. Wait there and I'll come and get you.’
‘OK.’
He finds the cinema and stands outside beneath its candyfloss neon, watching the faces of the people as they pass him.
‘Hello, James La very. Eyeing up the talent?’
‘No, only you.’
They walk along the banks of the Liffey, their bodies a breath's distance from each other. Eventually she stops and turns to face him. Behind her he can see the black skulk of the Liffey's surface and the dance of reflected light on its fringes from the amusement arcades across the river. She places her hands on the collar of his denim jacket and gently eases herself towards his lips. In the moment of the kiss he feels every part of him rise to meet her mouth. And for a second he feels solved.
He then thinks of his father lying in his grave. He thinks of what Teezy had told him, of the damage that the dead can do in the hearts of the living, and of the living that die in trying to reach the ones who are gone.
His hands start to tug at her clothes, tearing away at their thin layers, his fingers slipping hungrily on to the softness of her breasts. He hears her gasp in surprise, but he is oblivious to her: his hands are now in the dirt that embraces his father, ripping deep into the damp soil, pulling back the earth in a frenzy to reach him.
He feels her back arch and she tries to push him away, but he continues to maul her, grasping hard at the slats of her ribcage, at the bony husk of his father's shattered body, his fingernails blackened with the grave's secret earth.
‘Stop, James! No!’
Her words reach him as though through water, as he flails in the vacuum of his father's tomb, his hand reaching deep between her legs, deep into his daddy's memory, ripping and clawing at it like a vicious cat.
‘Stop! Please stop! Stop!’ She wrenches herself away, and stands in front of him. ‘What the hell do you think you're doing?’
He sees the anger in her eyes and hates himself.
‘I thought you were different, James Lavery.’
They stand there, the air between them heavy with what has just happened, his head hanging forlornly, his hands shaking by his sides. She turns to go.
‘My mother tried to kill herself last week.’
He sees her body stiffen as his words reach her. Her folded arms fall to her sides and dangle there.
‘She took one of Sully's razors and ripped it across her arms.’
Slowly she turns to face him. ‘Who's Sully?’ she asks.
‘Her … boyfriend. He's an arsehole.’
He doesn't realise that he has been crying until he feels her finger track the long line of moisture working its way down his face. ‘Is that why …’ she asks.
‘I'm sorry.’
She holds him, reaching up to pull his body into the warmth of her embrace. ‘Poor baby.’
That night he sleeps in Cathleen's father's car, a small Morris 1100. Before she goes inside to bed she sits with him for a whi
le. ‘You had me worried,’ she says.
‘Why?’
‘I thought I'd teamed up with an animal.’
‘I'm sorry.’
‘Hey … hey … it's OK.’
‘I don't want to go back there.’
‘Won't they be worried?’
‘I don't know … Don't care.’
‘She's going to be OK, you know.’
‘Yeah.’
As she leaves the car to go inside, he stops her, his hand firmly grabbing her in the crook of her arm.
‘I've got to go.’
‘I know … I know.’
‘I'll come and wake you before my dad gets up for work, or there'll be hell to pay.’
‘Come away with me.’
‘What?’
‘Come away with me for a couple of days.’
‘You're cracked, James La very.’
‘I know … Please.’
‘No … Where?’
‘I dunno … Anywhere … Arranmore.’
‘We've just been there.’
‘Let's go back, just for a couple of days.’
‘No.’
‘Come on! We can get a bus to Donegal Town. Let's go back.’
‘Why?’
‘Because …’
‘I can't … I just can't.’
He watches as she sneaks back into her parents' house and smiles as she turns at the back door and blows him a kiss. He pulls up the collar of his jacket around his ears and drifts to sleep.
He is awoken by a sharp rapping noise on the car window. At first he thinks a small bird is hammering on the side of his skull, but when he opens his eyes he sees Cathleen's face beaming at him. She has a rucksack slung across her shoulder and her hair swept back off her forehead. ‘Come on, then.’
‘What?’
‘Let's go. We've a bus to catch.’
Death by Incendiary
She watches as he plays with their child, trying hard to quell the panic she feels rising in her chest. He had told her the night before as they had lain in bed together. It was just after the moment when she had tried to coax him to make love, her hands running up and down his hard body. He had suddenly sat up, swung his legs off the bed and told her.
At first she didn't want to believe it, quietly asking God to turn the world back thirty seconds and to take her husband's words away. But his statement had hung like a fiery storm in the blackness of their bedroom.
Many times he had promised her that he was through with it, through with the violence. She hated him for it. She hated him for the leer he wore on his face whenever he spoke of Ireland as if she was a whore he could mount whenever he pleased.
She hated the so-called foot soldiers. She hated Byrne and Duffy. She hated John Farrell from the houses at the back of the estate. She hated the way they eyed her up whenever they were in the house. Above all, she hated the way they twisted Conn round their little finger, calling on him to do his duty, to fight the good fight.
She hated the searches in the middle of the night, the ignominy of clutching James to her breast, his crying ringing through the house, her husband being thrown around his own home like a distempered dog. She hated the coldness in the soldiers' eyes, the brutal high-handedness and the cold, calculated violence.
Someone had let them down. The target was a bar in a Protestant area a few miles away. They needed someone to go in, drink a pint and leave, forgetting to take the holdall of explosives with them.
‘A few less Protestants would do us all the world of good,’ he had said.
‘It's not funny.’ she had told him.
She had told him no, she had screamed it, she had pleaded it, until she had woken little Jimmy in the next room. Teezy had arrived early that morning. She had bought James a special suit for their friend's wedding and was eager that he try it on.
Before they left, James had wanted to play with Conn in the back garden so she watches as father and son chase each other, giggling and braying with delight. It is as James starts to pretend ‘kill’ Conn that fury rises in her throat like a hardening fist.
She watches, trembling, as James shoots him – his body buckling like crumpled tin on to the ground – and then spears and gores his writhing body. Teezy, who has joined her at the window, asks if she's all right. She nods through her falling tears, biting hard into the back of her hand.
She strides down the garden, pulls James away from his father and yanks him towards the house. ‘Come on, you've to get dressed.’
‘heave him be, Ann. We're only messing.’
‘He has to get dressed and that's an end to it.’
She drinks a lot that afternoon, grabbing whatever is offered to her. At first it lifts the gloom in her and she tells herself that she is overreacting, that he has always come back from a job before, his mouth spread wide in a big, boyish grin. She has been drinking more in recent years, especially since James arrived and Conn became more and more the hard-man Republican. The gloom deepens later that afternoon when she starts on the brandys. It brings a hard frost to her eyes and an aggression to her speech.
She corners him just after the wedding cake has been cut: he is standing sipping lemonade and lime, watching the happy couple share a blissful kiss. I'll call the police.’ she tells him.
‘Piss off, Ann.’
‘I promise you I'll call the police. I'll put a bloody stop to this.’
‘If you call the pigs, I'll be first in the queue to do you.’
There was that look again – that hard-man Irish leer. She stands her ground, returns his hard-man stare and begins to scream. People stare, the bride and groom shoot concerned looks at her, and in the background, through a sea of heads, Teezy begins to make her way over.
She is still screaming when Conn grabs her, scoops James up in his other arm and barges his way to the garden exit. As the air hits her she stops screaming and begins to goad him. ‘You think you're fucking hard – you all think you're so hard! Bullshit!’
‘Shut up, Ann.’
‘Big man Conn. Big man, little dick.’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘Make me shut up – hard man.’
She doesn't notice the small colonies of bees hovering from flower to flower, or the gust of rose petals that sprays into the air as they pass through the finely tended gardens. She only sees the cold rejection in his eyes and the attentive way he leads James to the edge of the ornate garden pond. She watches as he whispers in their son's ear, his hands tenderly stroking the back of the boy's neck, and wonders where his touch for her has gone of late.
‘I've got to go,’ he says, when he returns.
‘Well, don't come back.’
‘Don't be like this, Ann.’
‘I'll be whatever way I please. It seems to suit you fine … Go on, off you go, off and save the world … Or destroy it – whatever fucking way you want to look at it.’
‘Fine.’
She watches as he strides back up the garden, his head bowed, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
‘Don't go. You promised,’ she whispers.
⋆
The holdall exploded soon after Conn had sat down with his pint. He was the only one killed: two others were injured, one badly. John Farrell calls to tell her, She hangs up half-way through his pathetic speech about Conn being a hero and a true Irishman, The police call round and tell her what's happened. One smiles.
They won't let her see the body, or what's left of it, There's nothing to see. He's gone and there's no bringing him back, Teezy tells her. For hours she sits by their window, ignoring James, who tugs at her dress. She sits and smiles, a big fat grin, I was right, she thinks. He wouldn't fucking listen, and I was right.
‘Shouldn't you try and rest, pet?’ Teezy says.
‘It'll be a closed coffin, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it … I knew it,’
30. Torn Water
As they leave Dublin they watch the fields roll by like unfurled
baize, their faces turned towards the western hills. Once or twice she holds him, curling her arms round his neck and running her hands across his chest. In Donegal Town they wait for a connection to Burtonport, eating limp tomato sandwiches in a local café, then boarding the bus for the next leg of their journey. In Burtonport they stand on the familiar quay, with its webs of discarded fishing nets and odour of rotting fish. They smile as they watch the ferry-boat bounce and jostle its way between the skiffs and yachts, then come to rest against the quayside wall.
As they chug towards the island, they watch the deep, hidden water rise to cut the nose of the boat, and the clouds above them sail in a sea of sky. They see the island rise out of the ocean ahead of them, as if a giant is raising it from the depths only for their eyes.
He thinks of the quayside they have just left, of how small and frightened Sully had seemed when he had stood there with Manus only a week before. He sees his mother's body held by the man of light. He sees Teezy's sorrow as she had told him his parents' story, which had held them together in silence all these years.
They wave impulsively at the fishermen who sit on Arranmore quay, their match-thin roll-ups in their mouths, eyes fixed far out to sea. As they step on to the concrete of the dock Cathleen pulls on his arm, jolting him into a run, pulling him up the road past the café and out towards the far side of the island.
At the top of the first hill they slow as the wide lift of the horizon comes into view, and stop to watch. James imagines them flying through the thin seam where the sky meets the sea, for ever held in the misty world of birds and building rain.
They run down the hill, their rapping feet beating out their enthusiasm for one another, their heads lifted high by the sudden gusts of wind. The sun is lowering as they reach the headland, throwing soft, crimson light on to the underbellies of the clouds. They slip quietly down on to the beach, their feet welcoming its soft give.
They find a rock pool and sit by it, watching the foraging of small crabs and the lilting sway of seaweed: fascinated by the completeness of its world, by the sealed fervour of its life, from the pinhead shrimp to the pincer-waving posturing of the larger crabs. James watches as they break from a nook of rock and scuttle to the middle of the pool, stirring up small plumes of sand, then threaten the vast mystery of the world above with their lofted claws and disappear once more. He looks at the flies on the surface of the pool, their long legs drawing elegant patterns on the water.
