A Mad and Wonderful Thing (20 page)

‘They might know they've been spotted, Chief,' I told him. ‘They might be gone.'

‘They might,' he answered, before turning to me, his grey eyes full of intent. ‘And they might not.'

We drove on for a while without talking, and I went over the plan in my head.

‘You have what you need,' he said to me, with a glance into the back seat.

I reached back and lifted a knitted blanket — the type you'd leave in a car for a picnic — and I saw my Armalite. It was the right weapon for this job: it was easy to handle, it didn't mind the rain, and it wouldn't let me down. ‘So it's just me and you, friend,' I said to the gun. I was excited; I had to force my breath and nerves to relax. But I wasn't afraid. I was sure of the ground. I was sure of the gun. I was sure of me.

‘They're not expecting you,' he said to me after we agreed the plan. ‘And you'll be on home turf. You know the ground well — it's where you walk that hairy dog of yours.'

‘How do you know where I walk my dog?' I asked, and he ignored me again as if he hadn't heard the question. I laughed. I knew that Delaney kept a very close eye on me.

We drove to Anaverna at the south-east edge of the forest. ‘There will be at least two of them,' he warned me. ‘Perhaps another two not far off. Find the southernmost man and take him. And do not get spotted from above. And watch your back. And know your routes out.'

‘Yes, Chief,' I told him.

I took low cover as the car rolled away, and I waited for one hour before moving. Then, carefully, I worked my way to the area where the man with the dog had spotted the soldiers. It took another hour to crawl there.
I hope he was one of us
, I thought,
that man with the dog
.
And I hope he is a good one — you can't be sure in this war
. I considered the terrain that I knew well, and I calculated where I would lie if I wanted to watch the road. There were options, but I knew which one I would choose: it was a knob of moss-covered rock surrounded by a thicket of tall pines, where I often sat as Che ran rabbit trails through the trees. If the soldiers were here, they would be among those pines.

Low on my belly, I worked my way in a slow arc to approach the rock from the east. I moved slowly; by the time I got into position, another two hours had gone and the low light of the grey evening was failing. I checked my watch, and knew that Delaney would now be busy on the road below. I had thirty minutes to find a soldier, kill him, and get out.

It took twenty of those thirty minutes to find him, and I was lucky. There are no perfect edges in nature: no straight lines and no concentric curves. And there is no black. The purpose of camouflage is to diffuse shape and colour, to break the symmetric form of the human body into the uneven randomness of the surroundings. This he did well, and but for the antics of Delaney below, who must have drawn his attention, I would never have seen him. But he made one mistake, one minute movement that brought my attention to that place, and then I saw it. It was a small crescent, no bigger than three inches by two. But it was a perfect curve, and it was black. And I knew what it was — it was the heel of a boot. I watched the heel for five minutes, and still I could not find his shape on the ground. But then he moved again, and I found him.

He was above me, near the higher rock; to make sure of the shot, I would have to stand. If the second soldier turned in time, I would be in the open. I worked my way to the nearest pine and took my chances. I stood up, fired three quick rounds into the body on the ground, and then dropped as fast I could and ran at a low crouch down through the trees. Shots exploded behind me, and bullets smashed through wood, but none into me. I jumped into a ditch I knew was there, and returned fire, and now I had the advantage. Though he was on higher ground, if the second soldier was to follow he would have to come through the sunken amphitheatre that led down to the ditch, all of which was covered from below. He could work his way down tree by tree; but that, too, would still give me the opportunity to take him. I knew he would not come. I hammered a dozen shots into the forest, and then I worked my way along the ditch, south and east, to meet up with Delaney.

‘And?' the Chief asked, as the wipers cleared a view through the rain.

‘I got one, and I left one. I didn't see any others.'

‘That's my boy,' he said. ‘It's a great day when we get one of those bastards. You did well, John. You did great.'

I nodded to him, but I said nothing.

‘We won't hear of that one on the News,' he told me, as he dropped me off in town. ‘The Brits will never acknowledge a loss south of the border.'

I waved him off and continued on through the rain.

I was on my way home from school that day, the day when Delaney picked me up for the attack in the forest, the day I first killed on my own. I was sixteen.

I walk through the rain the short distance from the Chief's house to the Market Square. I look across to the bench outside the courthouse before continuing north through Clanbrassil Street, Church Street, and Bridge Street, turning east at the bridge and walking along the river. To the south are the cold and windy school sports fields I used to avoid by sneaking away with Éamon to the snooker rooms of the CYMS; and to the north, oystercatchers, herons, and gulls feed in the mud. I think about him as I walk, the Chief.

Once, I asked him why he got involved, and he told me. It was 1920. It was mid-morning, and in a field outside the village of Toomevara, his father was digging a drill for potatoes. Inside the rented cottage, his young mother added a cut of turf to the fire and brought the flame ready for the pot. In a cradle in the corner, the three-month-old infant slept. The conception came before the marriage, and the young woman's family had relieved themselves of shame and responsibility by ejecting their daughter from the townhouse in Thurles. But the young mother was happy. She had a good man and a new baby boy, and the small cottage was a world away from the pious formality of the town. She was preparing the pot when a shot rattled the window and ran off over the land. In a panic, she scampered across the field to find her husband dead across the shovel. She heard the jeering from the road and looked up to see two Black and Tans waving their arms and rifles as the patrol truck drove off.

She moved to a tenement in Dublin, where she took a job cleaning and cooking. She had nothing to give her child but her selflessness and her insistence on his receiving an education. She drilled the boy on history, geography, mathematics, writing, and spelling. She worked day and night to put him through college, and it was the justification of life itself when he qualified as a teacher. He took her with him to Dundalk when he met Delores and married. ‘At least she had some comfort in the end,' he told me. ‘At least I could give her that. But, John, I'll tell you this, it was no life she had, only a substitute for a life torn away by that flying bullet.' He never forgave the British for that single shot across the potato field, and he dedicated his life to revenge. ‘He probably never saw the truck approaching on the road,' Ignatius Delaney said of his father. ‘He would not have heard the shot. He wouldn't even have known he'd been killed.'

He never questioned why I wanted to do what I do — not after he read my essay. We both knew that I was drawn to the battle as surely as an infant is drawn to its mother's bosom, as surely as a songbird must sing, as surely as a dropped stone must fall. From the age that I could know anything, I knew that I would fight for Ireland. A boy can give himself to cause long before the world would suspect him of vocation.

I continue along the river until I reach the port. I stop and sit on a stone bollard along the quayside. The tide is out, and I look across the wide estuary to the Cooley Mountains. The grey mud is broad, and, here and there, pockets of scrub and marsh grass have claimed some banks and islands. A single ship tied to the harbour awaits the evening tide. Beside it, on the quay, a tall, steel crane is locked and shuttered. Behind me, an old pub is long closed, the doors and windows shuttered behind bleached and unravelling plywood. The grain store is closed. I take a pack of Carroll's No. 1 from my pocket and light a cigarette. I gaze down at the mud. A purple BMW drives into the port and turns at the pub. It slows to a stop alongside me, and I hear the electric motor as the window drops. It is Callan, the owner of The Cooking Pot.

‘Hello, young Donnelly.'

‘Hello, Mark,' I say. ‘Are you lost?'

‘I wouldn't jump in there,' he suggests. ‘You could be stuck in that mud for hours before the tide would take you. It'd be a slow end.'

‘I'll keep that in mind,' I say.

‘A sound man,' he says, and he drives off.

‘Arsehole,' I call after him, as the BMW turns out of the port.

I leave the port, return along the river, and walk west on the Castletown road. I am cold and wet as I sit under the single oak. I look at the ground. I go to speak, but don't. What do you say to the most beautiful girl in the world who is two-and-a-half years dead? I walk down the path around the mound, through the fosse under the bare beech trees, and down the pebbled path covered in the fallen leaves of the previous autumn. I see her face as we danced, as I grabbed her two hands and swung her as we spiralled down to the gate, with leaves, pebbles, and two red boots flying through the dappled air. I climb the stone stile at the round pillar and walk into town. I slow at the corner of Castletown Cross, where the country lane meets the main road, where she thanked me for telling her those simple things.

I walk to Níth River Terrace, and I knock at number sixteen. As soon as the door opens, I step inside.

‘Let me in quick,' I say, as I hug Aisling. ‘It's freezing out there.'

‘In beside the range with you, Johnny,' she says, ushering me in, ‘before you catch your death of cold.'

I stand in the kitchen near the range cooker as Aisling adds two heavy pieces of wood to the fire box that already glows.

‘I thought you got rid of that old coat?' Aisling asks, as I hang the damp Dunn & Co on the back of a chair.

‘I kept it for a rainy day.'

‘You are a holy terror, Johnny. Where's that mad car of yours?'

‘Sometimes I need to walk and let the air in.'

‘Let's get the tea on first. Then you can tell me all.'

‘Thanks, I'm parched. I thought you'd never ask.'

‘You only just got here,' she laughs.

‘I'm only coddin'. So is it Doctor Flannery yet, or what's the hold-up?'

‘Not yet, Johnny. Why don't you come and see me in Dublin? You should. You can stay for a while, if you like. We can go places, do stuff.'

‘I might just do that.'

‘No doubt you are hungry, Mister Donnelly.' She winks, and moves a large, heavy, grey-metal pot over the hot plate on the range.

‘God bless all in this house,' I say, lifting the lid and taking a peep at a lamb stew that already begins to simmer. ‘You Flannerys make the best stew on the Mississippi. What would I do without you?'

‘We're not on the Mississippi, Johnny. How's all the family?'

‘Same as ever,' I reply, pulling a chair near the stove and sitting. ‘Still gathering on the Sunday. Peter, Declan, and the two wives; Anna brings Tiernan now; Aunt Hannah, of course. Eddie, too. Mam makes the pot of soup. You'd wonder at the stuff they think to talk about — it seems they grab at the nearest things to fill the spaces. I give it a skip as much as I can.'

‘If you ever lost her, you'd all miss that soup.'

That's the thing about Aisling — she can come out with clever things, as if she has given all these matters a good examination and has diagnosed some remedy, before administering the medicine in slow droplets.

‘You haven't taken the German girl home then?' she asks, raising an eyebrow.

‘No, not yet.' I don't ask how she knows. I guess Anna must have told her.

‘They're all well, anyhow,' I continue. ‘Still talking the same talk. Why is it they do that?'

‘Do what, Johnny?'

‘You know, talk about whoever isn't there, and bring unkind thoughts into unfavourable comment.'

‘That's just harmless gossip, Johnny. We all do that. That's how many people fix their place in life. That's how people work. That's how families work.'

‘Not this family here,' I protest. ‘And harmless, I don't know. It doesn't seem right. People can choose to be positive or negative with words. We all have that choice. It is a choice.'

‘It's not too wrong. Not everyone sees life as if it is being played out on some giant stage before them. Not everyone judges life from a distance.' Aisling turns and looks to me. ‘Not everyone sees life as a poet, Johnny. Not everyone is a dreamer.'

‘Is that me, Aisling? A dreamer?'

‘Maybe.'

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?

‘Let me guess,' she asks. ‘A friend of yours?'

‘A friend of Cora's, actually. She was a devil for the poetry.'