1999 (15 page)

“How are the boarders supposed to go up and down with that contraption?” McCoy queried.

“Well, they can step over it, can't they?”

McCoy complained to Barry. “I don't know what's got into the woman, but we can't block the stairs in a boardinghouse. Say something to her, Seventeen.”

He did. Barbara accused him of not caring about his son's safety.

Once again the argument was loud and long, but in the end the gate was put away.

 

On the night of April twenty-sixth Rose Dugdale rang the doorbell of Russborough House, an elegant mansion outside of Blessington in County Wicklow. The owner of Russborough was Sir Alfred Beit, a multimillionaire financier and renowned art collector. Sir Alfred was at home that evening. When the butler opened the door four men rushed out of the darkness and knocked him down. The gang then took Sir Alfred, Lady Beit, and the household staff into the library, and tied them up with nylon stockings.

The gang left with a massive haul: nineteen paintings, some of them virtually priceless, including a Vermeer, three Rubenses, a Goya, and two Gainesboroughs.
²
The subsequent ransom demand included the release of republican prisoners in the north, but was never met.

 

Barbara invited her mother-in-law to a celebration of their second wedding anniversary. She did not invite her own mother. “I know Mom puts up a big front,” she told Barry, “but she really can't afford to fly over here for every little thing.”

“If our wedding anniversary is a ‘little thing' why are you arranging such a big party?” he asked. “You've invited everyone who came to the wedding and the world and his wife as well. I don't know how we're going to fit them all in.”

“We could if we had a larger house,” Barbara replied airily.

Ursula travelled to Dublin a couple of days early to combine business with pleasure. A wealthy man from Wicklow who was interested in buying young hunters was driving up to meet her, and she planned to take him and his wife to dinner. To the delight of Séamus McCoy, she asked him to join them. “A dinner party goes much better with four than three,” she explained. “They're landed gentry, they probably vote Fine Gael. But no one else has any money.”

“I'll hold up my end,” McCoy promised.

He hurried to Arnott's Department Store to buy a new suit.

Barry teased him unmercifully. “Some republican you are. Giving yourself airs just because you're going to dinner with the gentry.”

But Barbara assured him he looked “very nice indeed” in his new suit.

The dinner was a success. While Ursula and the husband talked horses, McCoy noticed that the wife looked a little lost.
She talks like Brendan,
he thought,
so she must have had a fancy education.
Turning toward her, he said, “I'm not much into horses myself. Books are more my line.”

She brightened at once. “Oh, really? What do you read?”

Anything about war or the IRA but I'd better not say that.
“All sorts,” he replied nonchalantly. “In fact, I collect old books.” A wild exaggeration; only four or five of his battered assortment predated the twentieth century. But it was enough. The wife began telling him about the extensive library she had inherited. “You really must come down to us sometime,” she enthused, “and spend a few days browsing. Do you know, we have some signed first editions of Dickens!”

Once or twice Ursula glanced across the table at the dedicated republican and the daughter of the Ascendancy deep in conversation.
There's more to that man than meets the eye,
she told herself.

After dinner she and McCoy took a taxi back to Harold's Cross. Ursula was in a buoyant mood. The man from Wicklow had arranged to meet her at the farm the following weekend—chequebook in hand. “I really need that sale,” Ursula admitted. “For years I've been hanging on by my fingernails, like most people are. Now things seem to be going right at last. Little Brian, Barry, and Barbara…although just between us, Séamus, there was a time I would not have given tuppence for their marriage lasting one year, never mind two.”

McCoy had entertained similar feelings, but kept them to himself. “Why not?” he asked.

“They're too different in some ways. And too much alike in others.”

“You have that right. They're as stubborn as each other.”

“I know. They're both incapable of compromise and compromise is essential for a good relationship. Of course, what do I know about relationships,” Ursula added with a self-deprecating laugh. “I've never been married.”

This was news to Séamus McCoy.
Seventeen never mentioned that little detail. She must have loved someone sometime, though, because she had his son. And reared the boy all by herself!
He was filled with admiration for her courage.

On the first of May Barbara not only produced a lavish anniversary party but starred in it as well, holding centre stage with accomplished ease. At Barry's request she sang two Thomas Moore songs and a selection of jazz numbers. She received numerous compliments on her voice and went to bed that night in a radiant mood.

“I think 1974 is going to be our lucky year,” she whispered to her husband. In the dark she reached out for him.

In the dark he tangled his fingers in her hair.

The Ulster Workers Council and a number of Unionist politicians combined with loyalist paramilitary groups, such as the UVF and the Ulster Defence Association, in an attempt to undermine the Sunningdale Agreement. Prominent among the enemies of any form of power sharing was the Vanguard Party. At the forefront was Ian Paisley.

On the fourteenth of May the UWC called a general strike for Northern Ireland. Paramilitary intimidation was employed to force working-class Protestants to take part. Masked men in camouflage jackets appeared around the Northern Ireland Office. There were rumours that MI5, the British internal intelligence force, was supporting the anti-Sunningdale faction. When the British army refused to break the strike the hand of the extremists was strengthened.

Brian Faulkner and Merlyn Rees seemed powerless to handle the situation.

In London Harold Wilson's government began secretly drawing up a Doomsday Scenario in readiness for a possible British withdrawal from the north of Ireland.
¹

 

The man from Wicklow bought all six of Ursula's three-year-old hunter prospects. She hired a horse van and delivered them herself, then drove up to Dublin to tell her family, “He never blinked at the price!” Her eyes were dancing. “It means we'll be able to put a new roof on the big barn now.”

Barry persuaded her to remain at Harold's Cross through the weekend and get a bit of rest before driving the van back to Clare. Barbara was still in a good mood from the success of her party. The two women chatted like old friends; Ursula even helped her daughter-in-law with the washing-up.

The seventeenth of May was a mild, occasionally showery day in Dublin, with long spells of radiant sunshine. After lunch Ursula expressed a desire to go into town to buy a present for the baby.
And something nice for Barbara too,
she decided.

There was a bus strike in the city, so in midafternoon Barry transported his mother in the Austin Healey. At her request he left her in O'Connell Street. “Get your messages,”
^*
he said, “and I'll collect you in front of Clery's around six. Until then I'll be taking photographs in the Phoenix Park.”

Ursula stood watching until the little green car was swallowed up by traffic, which was heavier than usual due to the strike. Mention of the Phoenix Park had struck a responsive chord in her.
The last time I was in the park was with Finbar Cassidy. Can it really have been more than forty years ago? So much has happened since then. My years with Radio Éireann. Switzerland and the League of Nations. Barry. The Second World War.

She gave herself a mental shake.
Stop maundering and get on with it, Ursula. Look to the living.

Others might patronise the fashionable shops in Grafton Street, but Ursula preferred the north side of the city. Prices were lower because the residents were poorer. Yet there was a yeasty flavour to life north of the Liffey; a stubborn zest for living in spite of hardship. Northsiders spoke a colourful language of their own, peppered with profanities so wittily crafted they did not sound profane.

As she went from shop to shop Ursula listened for the word play that had inspired her own creativity with language. Sadly, it was getting harder to find. The language of the streets was coarsening; degenerating into unimaginative vulgarity.
Every other word seems to be fuck,
she thought in disgust.
If the people were poor at least their speech was rich. What are we losing?

She was no longer certain she remembered being rescued by Ned Halloran and she recalled nothing of her life before then, neither the tenements where she had lived nor the mother who had abandoned her. But the grimy, littered streets captured her feet the way the ruts in the farm laneway captured automobile tyres.

How well she knew this place!

The mingled smells of cheap clothing and homemade cigarettes. Red-faced men drinking quantities of porter. Mothers pushing shabby prams their infants had outgrown, now piled high with coal or pawnable goods to exchange for enough money to feed their families this week. Thin children in hand-me-down clothes.

And the colourful cries of the women selling fish and fruit in Moore Street.
When I worked in Radio Éireann I had a furnished room above the greengrocer's shop in Moore Street. There was a faded blue door, and a gaslight. One night Finbar and I climbed those stairs together…

Finbar Cassidy. Dead all these years, yet today he had walked back into her mind. Once or twice she even glanced around, half expecting to see his warm brown eyes smiling at her.

Is there still a greengrocer in Moore Street these days? With flats above? Is the door painted blue?
With an effort she resisted the temptation to enter Moore Street. Instead, when her shopping was completed, Ursula went to the Venezian Café in Parnell Street for a cup of tea. On a sudden impulse she ordered a scone as well.
Louise made such wonderful scones at Number Sixteen.

Louise Kearney, Henry Mooney's cousin, had once owned a boardinghouse at Number Sixteen Gardiner Street. A little girl called Precious had lived there with Ned and Síle Halloran.

Ned and Síle. And Uncle Henry.

Gathering up her parcels, Ursula left her cup of tea going cold on the table.

Does everyone look backwards with such longing?
she asked herself as the door of the café closed behind her.
Why do we not appreciate the time we're in? The future is the problem. We keep looking ahead instead of looking around.

She began walking. Following familiar pavements.

If only I could return to the Dublin I knew with Ned and Síle; Dublin dear and shabby and innocent in a way that no city is innocent now.

Does it all still exist somewhere like a gemstone set in a ring? If I follow the ring all the way around will I come to the stone again?

She walked down O'Connell Street toward Clery's Department Store, joining a heavy stream of pedestrian traffic. It was Friday afternoon and the shops were closing. People were eager to go home.

So was Precious.

When she came to the corner of North Earl Street she could see the big clock in front of Clery's.
Not yet five-thirty. There's enough time, then.
She turned left into North Earl Street, which became Talbot Street and would take her to Gardiner Street. Her steps quickened.

The past seemed very close now. She could almost reach out and touch it.

Talbot Street was busy from the bus terminus at one end to the train station at the other. Pedestrians thronged the pavement and a number of cars were parked along the kerbs. As Ursula approached the junction with Gardiner Street she heard a huge
thump
in the distance; somewhere behind her, she thought. Glancing around, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Some of her fellow pedestrians hesitated. A woman with three children turned and started back toward O'Connell Street.

Ursula resumed walking toward Gardiner Street.

She thought she heard a whistle followed by a thunderous roar. Then past and present collided, and the wall beside her exploded into a deadly rain of bricks and mortar.

Three bombs exploded almost simultaneously in Dublin with no warning given. The first and largest was in a car parked in Parnell Street. Another car bomb was left in South Leinster Street beside the perimeter wall of Trinity College. The third was in Talbot Street. Their combined death toll would be twenty-six; over three hundred were injured. The dead and dying, intermingled with building wreckage and unidentifiable human remains, lay on both sides of the Liffey.

Ninety minutes later another bomb exploded in the town of Monaghan, close to the border with Northern Ireland. Seven more people died. May seventeenth would prove to be the bloodiest single day in the bloody history of the Troubles.

 

Barry enjoyed his afternoon in the Phoenix Park. The deer that roamed the park allowed him to come quite close as they grazed. Curious fawns stared at him with big bright eyes, unconsciously posing for their portraits. He followed them on a long ramble across rolling meadows and through sun-dappled woods, taking numerous photographs. He could not remember when he had felt so peaceful, so at one with the universe.

Barbara can't call these pictures sad. Maybe we'll frame the best of them to hang in Brian's room.

He was about to return to his car—and cursing himself for having wandered so far, because his bad leg was aching—when he heard the first bomb.

Barry knew instantly what it was. The explosion came from north of the Liffey, probably somewhere around the GPO. He began to run.

He was halfway back to the Austin Healey when he heard the next bomb go off.

By the time he reached his car the city's rarely used alarm bells were ringing. At the park gates he discovered that traffic was already jammed along the quays. Refusing to back down for anyone, Barry nosed the Austin Healey into the mass of automobiles and lorries headed towards O'Connell Bridge.

Dublin's main hospitals were already on standby. The first ambulances were on the road sixty seconds after the alarm bell was sounded, and off-duty staff was being recalled to help with the dead and injured. Following the second explosion Dublin's one-way street system was abolished. The Dublin Fire Brigade and the Stillorgan Ambulance Service arrived at the bomb sites within minutes. Makeshift emergency centres were being set up around the city. A decision was made to take victims from Talbot Street to the dancehall in the basement of Moran's Hotel, which was within yards of the blast.
²

Barry was able to drive no farther than the Ha'penny Bridge. From there on, nothing was moving. He swung his little car onto the pavement at the foot of the bridge, leaped out, and sprinted to O'Connell Street. Dublin's main thoroughfare was thronged with frightened, hysterical people. Looking over their heads, Barry could see the major congestion appeared to be around Clery's.

He began working his way toward the big department store.
She must be there somewhere. Maybe she was already waiting out front when it…when the bomb…
He slammed a door on the mental images. He could do nothing if he surrendered to them.

Uniformed members of the Dublin police were forcing the milling crowd back in order to let ambulances through. Barry tried to get information from someone; anyone. “Did you see a small grey-haired woman in front of Clery's? Do you know what happened to her?”

Too many people were asking similar questions. No one had answers.

At last a harried policeman paused to tell Barry, “There was a bomb in Talbot Street. Call to the hospitals. If she was injured she'll probably be sent to Jervis Street or the Rotunda, they're nearest.”

“Jervis Street,” Barry repeated numbly.
Is that an omen?

“If she's dead,” the policeman continued, “sooner or later they'll take her to the—”

“I know.” Barry interrupted the man before he could say “morgue.” Taking advantage of his towering height, Barry forced his way through total chaos step by step. Until he entered Talbot Street.

And saw what the bomb had done.

 

Philpott was growing a little deaf. He turned up the radio in the kitchen to a level Barbara found almost unbearable. She warned him he would wake the baby sleeping upstairs but he paid no attention; perhaps he could not hear her. Exasperated, she stopped peeling potatoes and turned down the volume herself.

“Did you hear that?” she asked suddenly.

“Sorry?”

“It sounded like a fire alarm.”

“I didn't hear anything. Are you ready with those potatoes? I need them for the stew.” He turned the radio up again.

Barbara suffered in silence for a few minutes, then lowered the volume until it was almost inaudible. “Now leave it,” she ordered.

When the six o'clock news came on she only heard snatches of the newsreader's voice, but enough to alarm her. Reaching past Philpott, she spun the volume to full on.

He protested, “I thought you said…”

The voice blared into the room. “We repeat, there have been several large explosions in the centre of Dublin within the last half hour. We will give further details as soon as we receive them. Meanwhile people are being urged to avoid the areas around O'Connell Street and Trinity College.”

Barbara gave a shriek and covered her mouth with both hands.

McCoy berated himself for not accompanying Ursula into the city. “Thank God you didn't,” said Barbara, “I need you here.” She had run upstairs to get the baby and was holding him tightly clamped against her breasts. Too tightly; little Brian wriggled valiantly in an attempt to gain his freedom.

For Barbara's sake McCoy kept his worries to himself. “Whatever's happened, Seventeen'll deal with it. He's mighty altogether in an emergency. They'll both be home soon, he told me they'd be here for tea.” He forced a smile. “You and Philpott best get the meal ready.”