Return to Killybegs, Page 6

  Father Gibney was watching my reflection. Sitting on his barstool, back to the room, his eyes had followed me in the flecked mirror that hung over the bar. Séamus Gibney, a huge priest who did the rounds of the pubs every day after the Angelus to remind the men that there was Mass on Sunday. He had only to raise his voice to break up a scuffle, had only to tell each man off to get them to shake hands.

  But that evening the priest didn’t have to raise his voice. After I arrived, nobody had touched the coat stand or the table, and none of those men had come to challenge me. The pub had gradually returned to its usual state.

  Séamus Gibney was sitting in front of a forgotten glass of whiskey when the door opened. He instantly swivelled on his stool to face the door.

  —Well would you look who it is! Joe McCann! Good old Joe!

  The other slapped his cap against his thigh, cursing the heavens to have arrived in the pub at this particular time.

  The priest’s loud voice was directed at the crowd.

  —I’ve a good one for you, Joe, listen to this ...

  McCann knew what to expect. When a Mass deserter ventured into the pub, the priest would welcome him with his glass raised, call him by his first name, tell him the joke of the day and then the reproaches would begin.

  —So here it is: Joe McCann’s walking out of the church and bumps into Father Gibney. ‘Did you like my sermon?’ the priest asks him. ‘Oh yes, Father. Thanks to you, I learn about new sins every Sunday!’

  The priest burst out laughing, and the room with him.

  —Come on, Joe ... have a seat.

  McCann moved towards the bar and the priest’s open arms, ready to be chastised.

  —I was worried, Joe, you know? You have to check in from time to time.

  The priest reflected while miming the pulling of a pint to the barman.

  —It must be, what? Two, three months since we’ve seen you at the office?

  A cheerful voice piped up from a corner of the pub.

  —Maybe even longer!

  —Maybe even longer, Joe. Maybe even longer.

  The priest laughed and handed Joe his pint of Guinness. Then he clinked glasses with him. The sinner with his pint of ink, the priest with his glass of gold.

  —And if you were to come to Mass tomorrow? If you were to come along with Nelly and the children? Hmm? What do you say, Joe? Isn’t that a good idea? And of course you’ll sit up in the front row because of your ear, okay?

  The arm on the shoulder, a sugary smile, a quick glance towards the ceiling.

  —And you know, I believe He’s been missing you, too ...

  Joe nodded and smiled dolefully before bringing the glass to his lips. I lifted mine. It was almost empty and the barman filled the next one.

  That’s when Father Gibney got down from his stool. He took a chair and sat opposite me.

  —May I?

  —You may.

  He had brought his drink with him. He drank it down in one go.

  —An old friend wants to see you.

  He spoke in a murmur, his elbows on the table and his hands joined in front of his mouth. He stared at me strangely. I was tense.

  —To see me?

  —And also to hear you.

  I took a slow swig, my lips dipped in the creamy head. I was searching for something hidden deep in his eyes.

  —To hear me?

  —If you wish it, yes.

  Hear me? I didn’t like that kind of listening. I had admitted my guilt and there was nothing else to say. I slammed my pint down on the wet table. I had understood.

  —Are you referring to Josh?

  My words hung in the air, my rasping voice.

  The priest winked at me.

  —Yes, Josh. He’s a Franciscan, lives in a monastery in Athlone.

  —Josh, I repeated, and my heart felt as though it was held between claws.

  —We call him Father Joseph Byrne now. He’s back home for two days.

  Joseph Byrne, Father Donoghue’s angel. The kid who used to sing for our ragged wee troupe in the bog. Josh the leprechaun, the pixie who used to say grace, who prayed for us, who had stood up to the Gormley brothers without ever rolling up his sleeves.

  —He wants to meet you. He told me to pass on the message.

  —He wants to meet me? But why? What does he want?

  My tone was getting aggressive. That was the anxiety.

  The priest left my table. A meeting at St Mary’s tomorrow? It was an order. The day after, Josh would leave for Belfast. I said yes, no problem, of course. To see him, not to be heard. To be completely certain that God wasn’t making a martyr of him.

  7

  Uncle Lawrence died on 17 March 1942, St Patrick’s Day. A roof had abruptly given way under his weight. He slid and fell backwards, his eyes staring up at the sky and his arms wide open. The day he was buried, I had the impression that the whole of Ireland had turned up. Behind the bagpipe player in his kilt, Mother led the procession, a flimsy wreath in her hands. Then came Róisín, Mary, Áine, wee Kevin, Brian, Niall and Seánie. I was carrying baby Sara in the first row of men.

  Lawrence Finnegan was not a member of the IRA, but the movement had done him the honour of flying the flag at his funeral. It was carried by a Fianna and it curled in the wind. There were hundreds of us. Many of those faces had come from elsewhere. Seánie and Tom Williams helped carry the coffin, but not me. It was passed from shoulder to shoulder without anyone beckoning me. I was too young, or too small, only good for accompanying the dead. I wasn’t sad, although sadness, in Ireland, is the last thing to die. I walked with the neighbours, the friends, the former prisoners. I followed the IRA soldiers, three long, black columns stretched along the avenue. I was proud of that crowd, content to belong both to the Meehan and the Finnegan families. Proud also of walking in the steps of Tom Williams, my leader.

  Local mothers used to whisper that Tom Williams carried too much grief inside. Fathers said that faced with those eyes, death would recoil. His brow was always furrowed, lined with pain. When an emotion choked him, he would become tense. He was pained. He’d find it hard to breathe – a childhood asthma that used to choke him. I made him laugh once. I knew that wee Tom was hiding behind that melancholy.

  The evening of the funeral, he and I talked of all the death in our lives, the misery that engulfed us all. He told me of the death of his sister, Mary, struck by meningitis at the age of three, that of his mother, also Mary, who left the world at nineteen years of age, giving birth to a daughter who died in turn six weeks later.

  —It’s misery’s fault, not life’s, Tom said.

  Then we spoke of misery, of the Great Famine, of children standing in the muck with no shoes on. Of the mouldy bread, seeping from the corners of poorly fed mouths. Of my father who had frozen to death. We had a common rage. We had hatred, too. Like our family, Tom Williams had fled his home. A Loyalist bomb had been thrown at a group of children playing in a park. Some of them were killed. Yet it was Terry Williams, his uncle, who had been imprisoned for defending his street, and not the Protestant killers. It was unjust. Everything was unjust. We were alone in the world, our war brushed aside for a war that was not ours. The whole world had turned its back on us. The only people we could count on were ourselves. Tom was on the dole, like all the local men. Like Seánie and I would have been if Uncle Lawrence hadn’t left us his business, his stiff brooms, his trowels, his chimney sweep’s brushes. There would never be work for any of us in this country.

  He lit a cigarette, handed me one between his two fingers and thumb, the first in my life. So I took it. To blink through the smoke as adults do. He was watching the street, sitting on a front step. Like him, I had loosened my black tie and opened my collar. He spoke to me about Easter, and he was uneasy. He was only two years older than me but I couldn’t see that youth in him. Tom Williams had the worn face and stare of a widow. I would never again hear so much hurt in another man’s voice.

  The British had banned an
y gatherings on Easter Sunday 1942, but we’d decided to disobey. Nobody was going to prevent us from celebrating the 1916 Rising and honouring the heroes of the Republic.

  The IRA had planned three illegal processions in Belfast, protected by uniformed Fianna. When I asked him what we were to do if the police intervened, Tom smiled.

  —We’ll keep them busy enough, my leader replied.

  My eyes widened. I wanted to know what was planned.

  —Do you want our command structure, too?

  I blushed and shook my head, inhaling a huge, burning lungful of smoke to shut myself up.

  —To everyone his role, Tyrone.

  And then he got up. Fingertips to his temple, he saluted me as a soldier. Two óglaigh left their shadowy wall on the other side of the street to guard his passage.

  —So long, Fianna! Tom Williams called over his shoulder.

  I watched him head farther up Bombay Street, three shadows for a single person. He turned the corner. He was whistling ‘God Save Ireland’. I squeezed the white sliotar. I was afraid for all of us.

  On Easter Sunday, Mother had us dress for Mass. I was wearing an old white shirt of Seánie’s, and Niall had on a pair of my old trousers. My Fianna uniform was hidden under Sara’s blanket in the pushchair. The street was deserted and tense. Friendly doors used to be opened to rebel scouts all over the nationalist enclaves. We would get ourselves ready in twos in people’s backyards, hidden in their wardrobes, behind workbenches, in school playgrounds, pub snugs. When we arrived in front of Costello’s grocery, Sheila opened the door. My family gathered around the pushchair as though trying to soothe the baby. They were hiding me. I slipped into Costello’s and the Meehans carried on towards the church.

  Danny Finley was at the top of the stairs. He was dressing in silence under the gaze of a mournful Jesus. Sitting on the steps, Sheila watched me slip into my black shirt. I was blushing. I was in love with her. The times were too backward for making a move, and the parents of Belfast knew everything their children got up to. One hand taking another would mean dozens of pointed fingers. It was neither malicious nor derisive, but you could feel that there was always someone making a judgment behind a curtain. The British monitored our movements, the IRA monitored our commitment, the priests monitored our thoughts, the parents monitored our childhood and the windows monitored our romances. There was never anywhere to hide.

  —Brits! Brits! shouted a young voice in the street.

  Sheila was up in a flash and tearing down the stairs. Danny carried on buttoning his shirt. This calm was his way of panicking.

  —Shit, there’s a button missing from the sleeve, my comrade grumbled. He had mended one of the knees of his trousers.

  Outside, an armoured car with a loudspeaker was repeating that all gatherings were illegal. That demonstrating during wartime was an act of treason. Back when the hostilities with Germany had begun, military trucks used to roam our neighbourhoods calling on young Catholics to don the English uniform. Few responded to the appeal. In May 1941, more than 200,000 nationalists of fighting age had fled Belfast while thousands of others slept in the fields or hills around the city to avoid the recruiting officers. Our fathers, our mothers and our families took to the streets in their thousands, day after day, to protest against their sons having to die for the king. London abandoned conscription in Northern Ireland on 27 May, and only the Ulster Protestants were left to fight for their flag.

  Mother had carefully ironed my uniform. A dark-green shirt, the jacket in the same colour with a closed officer collar, epaulettes, two rows of brass buttons, a white lanyard for attaching the whistle and an orange neckerchief. The Sam Browne belt was my father’s, and I had also inherited his shoulder strap. The enemy truck was moving off. I pinned the Fianna badge over my heart, the burning sun on a blue background. And then we sat down at the top of the stairs to await our orders. I’d put my slouched felt hat with its wide brim on my head; Danny had placed his on his knee. We used to steal ‘Baden-Powells’ by the dozen from scout shops in Dublin and Cork and dye them green. Ireland and Great Britain hunted down our secret army but they couldn’t outlaw our hats.

  The Fianna exited on to the street almost simultaneously. Danny and I were standing behind the front door of the Costello house. Sheila was on the lookout behind a curtain she’d pulled back just a fraction. Her father had his hand on the door knob, waiting. There was a metallic whistling. Across the way, two doors opened and four scouts appeared. We left in turn. Danny got us to line up on the pavement. There were ten of us, and another dozen on the opposite side of the street, coming out of the alley. More again were arriving from Kashmir Road.

  —Left! Left! Left, right, left!

  An officer’s voice. We set off marching towards the Falls Road. I was trembling. It was pathetic. I was trembling and my teeth were chattering. I had dreamed of this epic moment so often. Dreamed of me, Tyrone Meehan, parading in uniform and in step. And here I was, afraid! Or cold. I could no longer tell. My hat was over my eyes and I didn’t dare push it back up. The Cumann na gCailíní girls were arriving from Leeson Street, with their green skirts and their hair tied up. Right arms, left arms, swinging in unison. We advanced along the centre of the avenue like an army of children.

  Sheila was following us. She was carrying our civilian clothes in a bag. Every scout was followed at a distance by a mother, a sister or a friend. When our flags were raised, tears came to my eyes and I laughed with joy, feeling the shouts bubble up from my belly. The tricolour of our Republic was huge. It was the first time I had ever seen the green, white and orange floating freely under this sky. The Fianna’s standard was magnificent, fringed in gold, its sun splashed with sky-blue. A boy was carrying the national colours; a girl, the Fianna’s emblem.

  We were taking over the street. We had snatched it from the English soldiers, we had taken it from the German bombers. It was Irish, this street, reconquered by kids dressed as soldiers. The people were waiting on the footpaths, in doorways. Around us, IRA men in civilian clothing were giving brief orders. When the flags moved forward, the nationalist population arrived from every direction. They were filled with emotion, concerned, simultaneously celebrating and worrying. A beautiful and dignified multitude. Women, hundreds of children, men, elderly people who fancied themselves officers, ordering the kids to form lines. A brass band was now leading the procession – a few flutes, three drums and accordions playing ‘God Save Ireland’ in time with our marching. I was on the side, between the street and the pavement, like the other Fianna. Our orders were to protect the crowd from Shankill Loyalists several streets away, and from British soldiers if they showed up. Older men were carrying hurleys in construction bags, studded sticks. Not weapons, they were just for defending, not for attacking.

  When we arrived at the corner of Conway Street, we were ordered to disperse. An abrupt order. We were still a good way from the cemetery. Two men climbed on to a truck roof, arms raised, and roared at the crowd to leave the march.

  —Back on the pavements! Immediately! Don’t go home alone! Join a group if you get split up!

  —No more than five people together! shouted the other man.

  I knew the elder of the two. He had taught us about the Great Famine.

  I whistled with my arms outstretched to disperse the marchers.

  —Pass the word along! Don’t run. Walk on the pavements!

  Danny Finley scaled the truck.

  —Fianna are to change here, immediately! And everyone get back to your cumanns!

  Sheila came racing up to us. She upended the bag of clothes. We handed her our uniforms. Shirts, jackets, shorts. I was standing in my underpants on the street. I didn’t give a damn. She stuffed the rebel green into her satchel, crushing our hats. Around us, people were scattering and whispering. The street wasn’t frightened, it was worried. What had happened? Why stop the march in the middle of the commemoration? A young woman came briskly up to Sheila. She took her burden from her hands with ne
ither a word nor a glance, then hid it beneath her coat and clung on to a man’s arm. They crossed the avenue. She walked with difficulty, one hand on her stomach like a mother-to-be while he appeared to reassure her. I didn’t know that woman, or that man, but I knew that our bag would be at our headquarters this evening, having got there circuitously, passed from strangers’ hands to other strangers’ hands.

  Since my arrival in Belfast, those images would reassure me. They were simple, and beautiful. Like those doors that would open and aid our escape. That late-night cup of tea handed to us by a woman who’d stumbled on us sneaking through her garden. That mimed confession taken by a priest when the police had followed me into his church. That black sweater thrown over my shoulders by a neighbour while I was keeping watch on a November street.

  —My son no longer needs it where he’s gone.

  —Go raibh maith agat.

  The man smiled at my thanking him in Irish. He looked at me more closely.

  —Well now! A reinforcement from the Free State!

  And then he laughed, tying the knitted woollen sleeves over my chest.

  An English reconnaissance plane was flying overhead. The children gave it the finger, hoping it would crash into the barricade of tethered balloons that towered over the city. The Falls Road had returned to its usual sparse traffic. The footpaths were packed with families. In a few minutes there were no more Fianna, rebels or demonstrators to be seen. Only the residents hurrying home for their tea.