“Where then?”
He considered. Ana was looking at him. He met her eyes. “It was a restaurant, one of
those posh places where ladies go for tea and buttered scones. They'd never been there before; it was a treat.”
They continued along the beach. Hungry gulls screeched and wheeled overhead, and high on the cliffs black cormorants dried their wings. Thomas was still throwing stones into the sea. Ana yelled back at him, “Come on, Thomas.” She turned back to Declan. “Do you want to tell what happened? You don't have to, you really don't, but . . . “
As they walked, he told her the whole story.
His ma and Mairead had been sitting at a window table in Ford's Tea Room. It was Mairead's birthday, and she was drinking tea with her ma and eating a chocolate eclair, taking care not to drop any chocolate or spill any tea on her new white wool sweater. She was a happy, normal little kid of ten, taking a day off school and shopping with her ma on her birthday.
“How do you know they were sitting by the window? And how do you know Mairead was eating a chocolate eclair?”
“I don't. I wasn't there; I was at school. But that's usually the way I see it.” He
frowned. “Her white sweater was a birthday gift. Sometimes when I go over it in my head, the details change a bit: sometimes Mairead is eating ice cream with a spoon, and my ma is talking to her and waving a piece of strawberry cheesecake on the end of a fork.”
By this time they had reached the dock where the boats were tied up. Declan felt the sun warm on his face. They sat together on the bottom of an upside-down herring skiff.
“The bomb went off at about ten o'clock in the morning,” continued Declan.
Six people, including Mairead and their ma, Mary Doyle, were killed instantly; two more died on the way to the hospital; and twenty-two people were injured, eight of them seriously.
“Who did it?” said Ana.
“The dirty Prods!”
“The Protestants?”
“That's right.”
It was the police who came to the school with the news. He was called out of his last period history class to go to the headmaster's study. As he walked along the corridor and down the stairs, he wondered what he had done to arouse the interest of the Head.
This of course was before he joined the Holy Terrors, when his worst sin up to then had been thinking impure thoughts about Bridget Fahey, the most beautiful girl in the school, though he didn't tell this part to Ana.
“You joined a gang?”
“That's right.”
“Why?”
“Because the Holy Terrors are sworn to fighting the British. And fighting the Protestant militants. And fighting the police too. We have three enemies: the Brits, the Prods and the police. We're freedom fighters.”
When he saw the policeman standing beside the headmaster's desk and the headmaster himself sitting with his head bowed, the first thing Declan thought was that he was about to be accused of something he hadn't done.
The policeman told him quietly about the bomb, and the headmaster said he was sorry and to let him know if there was anything he could do to help. Was there anyone else at home? No, his da was dead; there was only the three of them: Mary Doyle, Mairead and himself. He would be all right, he told the headmaster; there was Mrs. O'Malley next
door if he needed anything. They wanted to send someone with him, at least to Mrs. O'Malley's. He said no.
He had gone home to an empty house.
When he had finished talking, Ana sat a little closer to him on the bench. “When did your father die?”
“About ten years ago. I was only three. They killed him too. With a gun.”
Ana flinched. “Declan, you'd be crazy to go back there. All that killing. You really would. You gotta stay here; you can't go back!”
He shook his head. “You don't understand. The Irish people have been fighting for their freedom for hundreds of years. Just like the blacks in America. I'm needed. I've no choice. Besides, I want to get themâI've got to get themâfor my sister and my ma. I've got to go back.”
“Oh, I understand all right,” said Ana, her voice heavy with irony, “I understand that you want to go back to all that killing. Look, I feel sorry about your family, Declan, but you've still got your own life to live. Killing people isn't the answer!”
“It's my life,” he said angrily.
“If you call hating and killing a life!”
“I should have known you wouldn't understand!”
Ana bristled. “Maybe I'm younger than you, Declan, but in lots of ways I'm much older. I understand a lot more than you think I do!”
“You understand nothing!” He jumped up and started back along the beach toward the house.
Thomas ran. “Wait up, Declan!” he called to Declan's stiff back.
“Stay with your know-it-all sister!” yelled Declan.
When Declan got back, he found his uncle in the old clapboard garage, bent over his workbench, tinkering with a television set.
Declan looked around. The garage was full of old toasters, TV sets, electrical appliances of all kinds. Many had been cannibalized for their spare parts. There were bicycles and parts of bicycles and junk of every description; in the corner where Matthew had his workbench there was an electric heater.
Matthew looked up from the TV set.
“So this is what you do? Repair TV's?” Declan leaned on the end of the workbench.
Matthew nodded and waved a hand around the cluttered garage. “I fix things.”
“People too? Do you fix people too? You fixed me right enough, dragging me over the top of the world and setting me down in your British Prison Columbia. You're the great pair of fixers, you and my aunt!”
“We made a bargain. Your sentence expires in just over three months. When the time comes, you are free to go. I will pay your way as I promised.”
“Three months! You sure sucked me in with all that talk of six months. I see now the pair of you had it all planned. âMake it after Christmas.'” Declan mimicked his aunt.
“A bargain is a bargain.”
“I'm beginning to regret it. How can I trust you? Didn't you have me kidnapped? And any man who would leave poor Ireland to solve her own troubles is not a man to be trusted.”
“In Ireland they kill one another. Killing solves nothing, Declan. Blood begets more blood.”
“Swear an oath on the death of my da!”
Matthew sighed and raised his big hand. “I swear on the death of my brother Liam, your da.”
“That you'll pay my way back home after Christmas.”
“Home after Christmas.” Matthew turned back to the TV set.
Pender was a small school. Mr. Taylor, the principal, said they would start him in grade nine and arrange for his records to be sent from Ireland.
“Don't bother,” said Declan. “I won't be here long.”
“Where will you be?” Mr. Taylor was a stern man with piercing blue eyes and a way of tilting his head slightly to one side when he asked a question.
“Back home.”
“Ireland is still your home? But I understood you have no relatives living there.”
“No relatives, but Ireland is my country and the Irish are my people.”
Mr. Taylor studied the form on his desk. “You are now living with your aunt and uncle in Otter Harbour?”
“Until Christmas.”
Mr. Taylor smiled. “Give us a try. I think you will like it here, Declan.”
Declan scowled. “Will there be anything else?”
Mr. Taylor placed the form in his desk tray. “That's everything. Let me know if there's any way I can help you settle in.”
“Thanks, but I've no intention of settling in to anything British.” He got up and grasped the knob of the door. “Especially your British Conundrum Columbia!” He did not wait for a reply, but closed the door behind him, and wandered down to the school cafeteria where he saw Ana chattering with two girls.
She saw him and came over. “I'm sorry I lost my temper yesterday, Declan.” She smiled. “Kate is right; she's always telling me I shouldn't poke my nose into other people's business.”
Declan shrugged his shoulders.
Ana introduced him to her friends. Declan nodded at them both briefly and went to buy a sandwich. When he got back, the trio had grown into a group, all girls, gathered around Ana's end of the table. As he hovered at the edge he heard, “ . . . really good-looking, but . . . “
“But what, Leah?” Ana's voice.
“Well, he's awfully serious.”
“So what's so bad about serious?” Ana again. “It's better than some of these clowns who never stop grinning and smirking.”
“And he acts kinda . . . stuck up, don't you think?”
“No, I don't think, Leah. He's just . . . shy. It will take a while for him to get used to things here.”
They saw him and started talking about one of the teachers.
A few of the boys made fun of his accent, but Declan ignored them, and soon, after a week or so, they let him alone. All except a hulk of a boy named Lyle Dybinski who was in grade eleven. Dybinski had small, mean-looking eyes and thick rubbery lips. He was a bully, using his weight and height and his
tough, aggressive appearance to get his way with everyone. He glared threateningly at students and teachers alike. He was so big and mouthy that even some of the teachers tried to stay out of his way. “What language is that, eh?” he would ask his two followers, Al Barber and Leo Quiller, whenever they overheard Declan talking to someone. “Irish, I guess,” one of them would say. “Sounds to me like pig grunts,” Dybinski would say with a sneer. Or he would ask, “What did the Irish kid say, guys?” and Al or Leo would dutifully come up with some appropriate insult like, “Sounded to me like he was puking, eh?” They would all laugh. Barber and Quiller were small in comparison to their leader, Dybinski, and followed him everywhere like a pair of tiny, parasitic fishes under the belly of a killer shark.
Declan controlled his anger and tried to hide his growing distress and frustration.
At other times Dybinski kept his friends amused by yelling rude remarks like, “Well if it isn't the IRA kid. Look out for bombs in your lockers, eh?”
On the Thursday of the second week, Declan's lab partner in Science, a dark, silent boy with the strange name of Joe Iron Eagle,
glowered at him and said, “You're no help. I might as well do the work alone for all the good you are.”
“Huh?” said Declan. Iron Eagle had black hair and glittering eyes, and a nose like an eagle, hooked and mean-looking. Maybe that was why eagle was in his name. He looked tough.
“You watch me do all the work,” said Iron Eagle quietly, “then you let me write it up. Sometimes you don't even watch: you read your book.”
Declan shrugged. “So complain to the teacher, why don't you?”
Joe looked at him levelly for a few seconds. Then he turned back to his work.
The next day, Iron Eagle said, “Dybinski is getting to you, right?”
Declan said nothing. He couldn't tell if his lab partner was about to ridicule him; besides, he had no intention of discussing his problems with this mean-looking, potentially dangerous character, who had said practically zero to Declan in the week or so they had been together.
Iron Eagle asked no more questions. He was silent.
In the third week, Declan said to Iron Eagle, “Give me that. I'll write it up for you.”
“Don't do me any favors.”
“I won't.” Declan took the pen and notebook and started writing.
“Ignore him,” said Iron Eagle.
“Hmmnn?”
“Dybinski. Don't let him see he's getting to you. He'll soon quit.”
The next day, Dybinski and his two friends followed Declan to the cafeteria, talking in loud voices so Declan and everyone else could hear. “It's the Irish kid,” said Dybinski in mock surprise. “I thought by now the little runt would've quit school, his language problem being what it is.”
“Not necessarily,” said his friend, Quiller. “We've got a very good ESL class for foreigners.”
Barber joined in with, “That's right. Irish will be speaking English before the summer, wait and see!”
They laughed loudly and jostled each other.
In Science that afternoon, Joe said, “Stay cool. They'll soon give up if you ignore them.”
But they didn't stop.
By the end of the fourth week, Declan decided he'd had enough of Dybinski's so-called humor, so he waited until he saw him walking along the empty hallway on his way to the washroom during a class period, and slipped out of his own class to follow him. He caught up to him at the water fountain.
Declan said, “No more of your crude jokes, Dybinski, okay? You've had your fun, but now's time for it to stop.”
Dybinski grinned and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Crude jokes? Me? Who d'ya think you're talking to, Irish?”
“My name is not Irish, it's Declan. Lay off me, that's all.”
“And if I don't?” Dybinski puffed out his chest and drew himself up so that he was a full head and shoulders taller than Declan.
Declan looked up at him. “I'm asking you politely with nobody else around, to leave me alone.”
Dybinski's thick lips curled in a sneer. “You cowardly little turd!”
Declan clenched his fists so tight they almost squeaked. “Don't push me, I'm warning you.”
“Cheeky Irish trash! Nobody threatens Lyle Dybinski, nobody, eh! I could tear you in two and rip your balls off.”
Declan said nothing more, but turned on his heel and returned to class.
At the end of the day, Ana was waiting for him outside the school. So was Dybinski, Barber and Quiller by his side.
“It's the IRA kid!” yelled Dybinski so everyone could hear. “Look out for a car bomb! Check under your hood before you drive off, eh!”
Declan walked over to him and jerked his head. “Come on. Let's get this over with.” He turned toward the football field.