A Mad and Wonderful Thing (28 page)

‘ “Fill my cup”. I think it's an old Irish expression for “Come fill my dreams”. Why?'

I don't tell her.
Fill my cup
. That's mad. What could that dream mean? And was it a dream at all? But as I ponder, I begin to think that it wasn't Cora I met. I mean, not only Cora. I think the whole thing was Ireland. But, what would that mean?

It is the late afternoon of the next day when we arrive back in Dundalk.

‘We'll go to visit Cora, if you like,' Aisling says, sensing a new mood about me.

I think about it, but I can't get it to fit right. I leave Aisling and the Renault at Níth River Terrace, and I walk alone to Castletown Mount. I am unsure what to say to Cora. How do I tell her what I have done, what I do, with her sister? And all this after I preached the mighty sermon to Cora that a man can only love one woman, that love is commitment, and that commitment is to one and to one only? And, as I walk to her, I wonder if anything I said was true.

Pilgrimage

I SEE BOB BY THE GATES AS I AM LEAVING CÚCHULAINN'S CASTLE. I GREET
him as I jump down from the stile in the stone wall
,
‘The dead arose and appeared to many.'

Ha ha
, he answers.
Very funny
.

‘Long time no see, old-timer. Did you get lost?'

Me? No. What about you?

‘Totally,' I answer him. ‘I thought you'd disappeared on me.'

I am disappeared. I don't exist at all. You do know that?

‘Is that a fact now? Can you prove it?'

He just nods and asks,
How was the trip? How are things with the other Flannery girl?

‘The trip was mighty, Bob, and things are very good with the other Flannery girl. But Cora said something once when we spoke about this old war of ours. She said, “I know the cause is right. But then, at the same time, it's not right.” I know now what she meant. That is how I feel about Aisling Flannery.'

All the same
, Bob says, looking at me with one eye wide open and one partly closed, like some sort of lunatic inquisition,
it didn't slow you down too much
.

I laugh and Bob laughs, and we walk together towards Castletown Cross, where the country lane meets the main road.

The next day I decide what I shall do, so I sort out the finances — I am still on sick-payment since the accident and can survive well if I spend cautiously — and I go to see Aisling. I leave the Renault with her and she thinks me crazy, and I make a plan and buy boots and gear and stuff and a lightweight tent, and then I pack a rucksack and leave Dundalk, walking north. It is the first of April. It is April Fools' Day. Bob strides along beside me.

‘All right there, old-timer?'

I am fit to burst, Johnny. We are on our way now, son.
‘
Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.
'

‘It'll be a long road,' I tell Bob.

It will make new men of us. Reinvention is better than cure
. ‘
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.
'

I look to him and laugh.

I have no definite route to follow — only a loose plan to walk around the island. And why? I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything anymore. Am I looking for something? I don't know. I don't think so. Am I trying to lose something? I don't know that, either.

Approaching the border, I pass Peadar Neary's farm, a thirty-five acre strip of useless, boggy, land that straddles the frontier, and has thereby — by fortunate alignment of geography, politics, and differing tax regimes — created a fortune for the landowner. To create wealth from such a poor inheritance requires a special talent, but it is something that men like Peadar Neary are made for.

Neary commands the local IRA battalion in an area where no real law exists, and his business is smuggling livestock, fuel, cigarettes, alcohol, and any current or popular merchandise. In part, Neary's enterprise is a result of my own efforts: police, army, and custom officials will not patrol the northern border through fear of being shot — by me. And, well, that hurts. Neary is all that is wrong in the IRA: the corruption, the intimidation, the self-serving, and the profiteering. Delaney insists that Neary is a necessary ally. Better in than out, he says. Delaney says that Neary's expertise and cunning serves us well for the moving of men and ammunitions, and that Neary would do what he does in any case — that the smuggling and swindling would occur with or without the war. Delaney insists that it serves the greater good to have him within the walls of the movement, and that Neary's reach is limited. Maybe. But it still hurts.

Neary is an odd-looking man with an unusual build and gait. He has a large, heavy torso, but he has short legs. As a result, he walks with a hurried, forward leaning, with his little legs struggling to keep up. His prominent chest is thrust forward below a dark, inquisitive, and suspicious head that bobs about in constant alert. As a result, as a boy, he was called Pigeon. But when he was fifteen he put an opposing footballer in hospital — apparently, for over-enthusiastic and defamatory use of the reference — and no one has called him Pigeon since. At least, not to his face. That he could play football at all with the handicap of such a physical construction was early proof of Neary's determination, a quality he has since put to profit.

Peadar Neary is married to Conor Rafferty's aunt, and together they have produced a boy called Ciarán. And everything that is bad in the father is good in the son. How can that be? I don't know. It just is. Conor insists that the boy takes after his mother, and so is a product of the good Rafferty genes. And, once more, I think that Conor may be right.

Ciarán Neary is four years younger than his cousin, and I only got to know him during my last two years at secondary school. Conor made sure to take care of the young boy in the schoolyard, and so Ciarán spent many of his breaks with us. He was a sweet kid, and I saw the same innate kindness in him that I knew in Conor. Although Ciarán was an athletic boy — he was a talented footballer — he had the gentleness of Conor about him. And along a border territory like this, and with a father like Peadar, that can lead to vulnerability. I was forever concerned for him.

I haven't seen Ciarán for some time, so I call into the farm. An imposing, large, two-storey house sits on the southern end of the land, and is entered through two tall, stone pillars, and approached on a neat gravel drive that circles a fountain that fires spurts of water high in the air. There are no gates between the pillars. Everyone in the area knows of Neary's role in the IRA; his success, and his intimidation of the local community, depends on it. So having no gates is his show of having no fear.

‘Johnny Donnelly,' Ciarán shouts as he opens the door. He is thin and pale, and though he is delighted to see me and hugs me in welcome, there is an absence of that sporty and joyful bounce he always moves with. He does his best to be cheerful, but I see he carries the weight of hidden troubles, and I know something is wrong. We settle to tea and toast in the kitchen as we catch up, and I tell him of my plans for my walk and I let him get to his tale in his own time. It is two pots of tea and over an hour later when we get to the story.

‘I was working the Sunday stall for Daddy, at the Jonesborough market,' he tells me. ‘You know, where we sell the sweets, biscuits, and lemonades.'

I nod. There isn't a trick that Peadar Neary doesn't pull in his drive to squeeze every profit possible from the border, and any minor goods that can be bought wholesale in the north and retailed to southern customers for a return are sold at the market. Mam is a great supporter of the Jonesborough fair, convinced there are bargains aplenty to be had there. But then, so is half of Dundalk. And they all overlook the fact that they are thereby responsible for the racketeering that allows hoodlums like Peadar Neary to prosper and bully.

‘Then, about two years ago, the market got a new stall,' Ciarán continues. ‘It was a mother and daughter. They were from Ethiopia, and had made their way here via England. The father had died in Africa, and they met with a bad man in England; he did bad things to them, so they came here to get away from him. It was a priest over there — a friend of Father Brian, our local priest — who suggested they come here. And the market attracted them; it was a chance to start over. Father Brian gave them a small house in the village. Can you imagine that, Johnny? To escape the hunger of Africa and a violent man in England, and then to end up here? Some people have no luck at all.'

We both laugh at that.

‘The girl is Demeku. She was fifteen when they came. Jesus, Johnny, she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Father Brian gave them some money to get them on their feet — he had spent years on mission work in Africa, and he said he felt obliged to look after them. I think he thought they were sent from God, and I think he fell in love with them both. It wasn't hard to do. Father Brian asked me to help our new arrivals get settled, to sort out the house, and to set up a stall in the market. I sourced Ethiopian goods through England: beads and woven bags, rugs, shawls, and scarves. It was great. And I spent every possible minute I could with Demeku. I loved her from the moment I saw her. And she loved me, too, Johnny. She really did. Mad, isn't it?'

‘Mad stuff altogether,' I tell him.

‘Everyone thought that we were just friends, that I was just helping them settle. But we made plans, you know, silly stuff — that we'd run off together, or go to college together, or open a shop or a café together. She was learning to weave here. She has a great eye for that stuff. I like it, too; I love the feel and detail of the cloth. We wanted to open our own business.'

‘So what happened?'

‘One day, five months ago, Daddy caught us together.'

‘Together?'

‘Together. You know.'

‘And?'

‘And the next week, she and her mother were gone.'

‘Gone where?'

‘Nobody knows. Father Brian and I have been looking for them since. Two months ago, we each got a postcard. The cards came from Ethiopia.'

‘That doesn't make sense.'

‘I know,' he answers, now crying. ‘It makes no sense at all.' But both of us knew that it did.

We stroll around the house. All the rooms are large, bright, and expensively furnished.

‘There must be great money in a small farm these days,' I say to Ciarán, and he brightens as we both smile.

In the centre of the house, behind a wide front door with the family crest carved into the wood, there is a large, tiled, open space — more a grand atrium than a domestic hallway. And in the middle of this space there is a glass cabinet some four foot square and seven foot high. In the glass case, and on a single glass shelf just below eye level, there is a football with scribbled markings.

‘Daddy's pride and joy. Daddy is football mad. This is a match ball of the 1967 European Cup final. The year Celtic won — the Lisbon Lions, they're called. He paid over a hundred thousand for it. It cost more than the house. It has the signatures of the entire team. And no one has a key to that cabinet, and no one cleans it, but him. Not even Mammy touches it.'

I stay another hour with Ciarán, promising to help find Demeku, before I return to my walk north.

Tailor made for a solution with that gun of yours, isn't it?
Bob says, as I stroll away from the farm.
I bet you can't wait to put a bullet into Neary. That would solve a lot of things. And you can be the hero and bring the girl home. Mind you, Neary, like him or not, is one of your own. It'd be another slide on that slippery slope.

I ignore him and walk on.

‘If you were sitting at home reading a book,' I ask Bob, after we walk across the border into Northern Ireland, ‘and a madman burst in and attacked you, would you be wrong to fight?'

No
, Bob answers.
Such acts are governed by the laws of nature. Everyone has a right to protect self, family, and home from attack.

‘If you were living peacefully in a country and it was attacked by an invader, would you be wrong to fight?'

I suppose it is the same thing, so the same laws of nature must apply.

‘Isn't right and wrong a matter of opinion?' I continue. ‘And isn't it all down to time and place?'

How do you mean, son?

‘Well, those who fight invaders are heroes. But that label only survives if the invader leaves or loses. If the invader doesn't leave or lose, the hero of today is tomorrow's rebel. And tomorrow's rebel is next week's criminal. And next week's criminal is next month's terrorist. Those are very different labels for the same act, and the only difference is who wins, the passing of time, and who's doing the labelling.'

Yes, but these are the labels of man, Johnny. God will judge who was right and who was wrong.