My hands weren’t tied. I wasn’t a real prisoner.
—I’ve been sick in here, I said.
No one answered.
I’d no real idea where we were; I’d been driven off my map. We weren’t heading east; that was the sea. And we weren’t going south, into town, because the van picked up some speed and didn’t slow down for quite a while. I was being brought away from the city, west - or north. The rest of the country.
There was only one other man in the back of the van. McCauley hadn’t come with us. I knew, and was pleased I knew: I hadn’t heard the van’s front doors being opened, at the school. McCauley hadn’t got in. There was me and the man who’d put the hood over my head, and the driver - and maybe a passenger beside him.
I guessed we’d been going for ten minutes. But I’d been stepping out of time all summer, since the bomb. Wandering in the dark. Waking up, not having gone asleep. I could have been in the van for hours. But the smell in the pillow was consistently desperate; it got no worse or better.
—I’m after vomiting in here, I said.
—Won’t be too long now.
It was a Dublin accent, and it wasn’t delivering a death sentence. I’d been kidnapped, but I was still being looked after.
—How long?
—Not too long. You’ll be able to clean up in a wee while.
It was a Dublin accent but it belonged to a man who’d spent time in the company of men who said
wee
. We were heading north, up to the wee six counties. We wouldn’t be stopping soon. Or, if we did, it would only be to change vehicles. The small bits of news I’d listened to in the last four years had been full of abandoned cars.
The van turned, and we were off whatever main road we’d been on. There was no real slowing down; I had to hold on as the van took the swerves and potholes of the smaller roads. My guess was North Dublin - Man o’ War, the Naul - wild places I’d known a bit more than fifty years before.
The puke was crusting, cementing my head to the pillow, sealing the pores of the cotton.
—I can’t breathe in here, son.
—We’ll be changing in a minute.
—Changing?
—Swapping cars - vans.
I was right: we were driving out of the Republic. I let go of the handle - whatever it was I’d been gripping.
—I’m taking this thing off, I said.
—That wouldn’t be wise, said the voice.
The words were plain, but there was no threat in the tone. I started to pull at the hood.
The van was still moving when I woke. My head was on the floor, bouncing as the van bounced. Beating the pain in deeper. I’d been whacked.
My hands were still free.
I thought I’d been whacked.
I managed to sit up. I wasn’t sure - my whole body was agony. Was it even the same van?
—That shouldn’t have been necessary.
I’d been whacked. It was official. Most of the pain was new, and real.
But the experience was old. I’d dragged men into the mountains. I’d hit them across the head with the gun-butt and told them not to struggle; it wasn’t necessary. Then I’d put the gun to the backs of their heads and shot them.
The same hand took mine and guided it back to the handle.
—Thanks.
—You’re welcome.
—Where are we going?
Get them talking.
No answer.
—Who am I meeting?
No answer. I went back to the easier question.
—Where are we going?
—Can’t tell you.
—How long?
—Not long. Nearly there.
—Where?
No answer. Then the voice.
—Don’t worry.
The van was slowing; the left-side wheels were off the road, on a ditch or something. It stopped.
The man in the back with me pushed against me - getting past me, I guessed. I still wasn’t tied. I heard the driver’s door open. One door. Only the driver. The passenger was staying put, or wasn’t there.The driver and the man in the back. I’d been whacked, and it hadn’t been a fist. I’d been hit with the back end of a gun.
Two men and one gun.
The back door opened. I felt the breeze. Sea air.
—Out you get.
He grabbed the wrong leg.
—Fuck, sorry.
—No problem, I said through the cotton and puke.
I was able to fumble my own way. I was given the space to do it. I felt soft ground under my foot. Had I been brought to a field? Or the edge of a wood? I could hear and smell the sea. But we weren’t in sand dunes. I was pretty sure we weren’t near mountains. It was a long drive to any mountains north of Dublin, and we hadn’t been going uphill. It was still a hot day. I could feel the sun burning through the hood. Heating the vomit.
—This fuckin’ thing, I said.
—Right.
The voice was new, and hard.
—You’ll have to keep your eyes shut, said the old voice, the one I’d travelled with.—It’s important.
—Okay.
I felt his hands - both hands: he wasn’t holding the gun - as he grabbed the cotton at my neck, about to pull.
—Here goes.
I screamed - I didn’t. The pillow did. It ripped as he pulled and took half my face with it.
—For fuck sake!
It was years since I’d heard myself laugh. I’d be laughing as they shot me.
I’d kept my eyes shut.
There was something against my hand, being pushed against it.
—Clean yourself.
The hard voice. The accent belonged to a man who’d spent long periods of his time in different places, or pretended he had. Belfast, England, the east coast of the States. They were in the layers of each syllable, and no layers were fat enough to hide the fact that this was a man who had killed and believed he’d done the right thing. It was a voice from way back, although the man who used it was young.
I put the cloth to my face, and kept my eyelids locked. It was velvety and thick, too heavy to be an old shirt or pillow. It felt like well worked leather. I smelt the polish before I buried my face in the cloth. It was a shammy, a chamois leather, for polishing a car or van. My quick guess was that it hadn’t come out of the van. The polish was fresh, still there in the leather. The hard man had been going at the paintwork while he’d been waiting for me.
I polished my neck and face. I stank of old Goldgrain and beeswax.
—We have to change cars, said the hard man.
—We didn’t have to do that in my day, I said back.
The silence was brief, respectful.
—Right.
The hard man.
—We’d better get going.
I held out the shammy. It was taken.
—Am I supposed to keep my eyes shut? I asked.—Or d’yis have a clean bag or a pillow?
—It’s for your own good, said the man who’d travelled with me.—The less you know and that. You know yourself.
The bag went over my head. A plastic bag.
—You’re fuckin’ joking.
—It’s all we have.
—It’ll smother me!
—I cut wee holes in it.
Wee
again.
A hand gripped my elbow, a gentle shove.
—It’s just over here. Flat ground, don’t worry.
The plastic bag was dreadful. It was a hot, wet lick every time I inhaled.
—No, I said.
I stopped walking. The hand pulled at my elbow, then stopped.
—Get into the car, said the hard man.
—No.
—Get—
—This fuckin’ bag.
—Get in first, and I’ll put something else over you. I’ve a jumper in the boot.
The car door opened. The hand protected my head, gently pushed me down, and in. I was their guest. The I.R.A. - I knew it was them.
I was out of touch, and I regretted it.
Someone climbed in beside me.
There were two I.R.A.s. The Provisionals and the Officials. There’d been a split - another one - a few years back. I knew that much, but that I was all I knew.
—Shut the eyes again, Henry.
He ripped through the bag; it fell away from my head. And he hung the jumper over my head. It belonged to a man who smoked forty a day.
—Can you see anything?
—No, I said.
I felt the engine fight, and the car moved; it was climbing off a soft slope. Then we were going. I didn’t know which I.R.A. had taken me. I didn’t ask.
—D’you like Planxty, Henry?
The hard man - driving.
The man beside me laughed. I didn’t answer.
—I have the album here, said the hard man - he was talking to the man beside me, talking to someone he knew.
—Good man, said the head beside me.
—I’ll stick it on, said the hard man.—See what Henry thinks. I heard a click - all clicks sounded like triggers being cocked. Then the car was full of diddley music.
—What d’you think of that, Henry? the hard man shouted.
I knew the right answer.
—Good.
The two lads laughed. By the time the hard man stopped the car I’d heard the thing, the whole long player, three times through. I’d given up trying to position the car on the map. I might have slept; it didn’t matter. They’d brought me north. Either that, or the north had come to me. I knew that much: the I.R.A. had migrated north since my day. And this was I.R.A. business.
The car had stopped. I heard the head beside me yawning. An elbow to his neck, and I could have been out of the car and zigzagging, running from the bullets.
But I didn’t want to escape. I couldn’t - and I didn’t want to. I was curious. More than curious. I liked these men; I’d missed them.
It was true. I felt good in the car. At home.
—Where are we? I asked.
I didn’t expect the answer, but I wanted to hear the voices.
—See if you can guess, said the hard man.
He opened his door.
The air that came into the car was cold. More sea. We’d hugged the coast, north. I was alert, wide awake.
I got out under my own steam; I pushed away the offered hand. I tried to stand straight, quickly. I managed it too. I knew I was being watched. There were new eyes there, new men watching the old man.
And I knew something else: I wanted in. I could feel it still down in me, still there. I’d been angry since the bomb; I knew that now.
But why did they want me?
I was still waiting. The men - I didn’t know how many now - had gone downwind. They whispered, spoke softly. Northern accents - I wasn’t sure of it.
The jumper still covered my face.The wind flicked at the sleeves but it wasn’t strong enough to lift the whole thing off me. I stood there for silent minutes. I’d been bombed, but I only really knew it now, and knew it as a rage I could master and depend on. A useful, easy rage. They’d nearly killed me. They’d killed thirty-three people. The loyalists, the U.V. - whatever the fuck they were. And the British - someone had whispered that, as I lay on the bed in the hospital. The British had been behind it. But I only heard it now, the voice of a girl. Meaning had arrived, months after the bomb.
I stood there and I didn’t doubt.
Shoes through grass. Fag smoke arriving. I was surrounded.
—Henry.
Another new voice. A Belfast voice.
—
A chara
.
—You can see me, I said.
The jumper was off, and I was looking at a tall man with a beard. I made sure I didn’t need to squint.
—My God Almighty, he said.—It’s great to finally meet you.
The smile was big, but controlled. Everything about him was under tight control. The beard, the eyes. The teeth were perfect, too big and even. I’d never seen teeth that white in a Catholic mouth before.
He’d smiled, and the other men smiled. Six men. I immediately spotted the ones who’d brought me. I’d been good at this before, telling a man’s worth by the shape of his head. The two Dublin lads were standing off to the side. They’d done their job; they weren’t the big men in this company. They smiled at me - old pals. I nodded back. They’d looked after me well, no hard feelings. I didn’t smile.
I looked back at the man with the beard. The strength was in his chest, inside the Aran sweater: here was a man who’d built himself while he’d done his time. Here was a man who’d been interrogated and had given them nothing. A man who’d had his teeth kicked out and hadn’t even bled. He’d got himself a bigger, whiter set and he’d smiled back at the fuckers the next time they’d pulled him in. He was young, in his twenties, but there was nothing young in him.
He held out his hand. I took it. The manly grip, all that shite. Big spades softened by gun oil.
(You think it was Adams. But it wasn’t. It was a different man. Adams was in Long Kesh, in Cage 11, becoming Gerry Adams. He’d be in there for another three years.)
—
A chara
, he said again.
They were probably the only Irish words he knew.
My friend.
My bollix - I pushed back the sarcasm; I didn’t want it. I looked back at him.
The other men drew a bit closer. I shook hands with them all, the Dublin lads at the back of the queue. In my day, Dublin had been the centre of the new place we were making. This wasn’t my day.
—Do you know who you are, Henry? said the man with the beard.
He didn’t want an answer. He had his own.
—You are our republican dead, he said.
No one laughed. No one smiled.
—Back from the dead, I said.
—Exactly, aye. The real thing.
—I’m not the only one still alive, I said.—There are hundreds of them. Us.
—Ach, but. Those lads have always been around. We grew up with them. Good men, many of them. But comical. Shrunken wee lads. It’s hard to separate the real thing from the chancers.
He smiled.
—But you’re Henry Smart.
—What do you want?
—See now? he said.—You’re not on for flattery. I can see that. You’re still active.