Now and in the Hour of Our Death (22 page)

Eamon dropped a slow wink. “I'll tell you later.” He inclined his head in the direction of a man on the opposite side of the track. “You walk on, Davy. There's Bic McFarlane over there. I'll just nip over and tell him I need to have a word with him tonight. After the film show.” Eamon started to move away, then turned back to Davy. “I'll bet you don't know what film they're showing us tonight?”

“I don't care.”

“You should. It's
Escape from Alcatraz
.” Eamon grinned. “There's an omen for you.”

“You're joking me.” Davy had to laugh.

“No, I'm not,” said Eamon. “
Escape from
fucking
Alcatraz
.” Eamon guffawed, then said, “Right. I'm off. I'll let you know what Bic says later, and I'll tell you what I have in mind for the other things.”

“Thanks, Eamon.”

“And don't forget, ‘chucky air la,' ould hand.”

Davy watched Eamon stride away. “Our day will come?” For the Provos? Perhaps it would, but Davy didn't think so. And anyway, he'd more on his plate to worry about now. Would Eamon be able to fix things? Would he be able to get to Canada? If he did, would she even want to talk to him?

He tramped on, watching the rise and fall of the shoes of the man ahead. Just like that Kipling poem Fiona had taught him, ‘Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again…' She'd been a great one for the reading, Fiona. And she'd taught him a lot.

At first, it had worried him that he was a man with no schooling since he was sixteen. She'd been far better learned than him. How could their wonderful thing last? One day she'd meet someone smarter than him.

Davy slowed his stride to avoid bumping into the two men ahead.

It had lasted because she was who she was.

He remembered the time she'd come home from school, her kids' exercise books under her arm, kissed him, and dumped the homework on the kitchen table.

“What's this?” she'd asked, picking up a book that he'd dropped on the table.

The picture was so vivid in his mind that Davy could read the gold print on the blue clothbound cover,
Treasure Island
. He could still see the outline of a man with a crutch, an eye patch. There was a parrot on his shoulder.

“A storybook.” He felt himself blushing. It was one of hers that she used at school.

“It's a damn good story.”

“Och, it's only for kiddies.”

She sat on one of the kitchen chairs. “Sit down, Davy.”

He sat, and she took one of his hands in hers. “It bothers you, doesn't it?”

“What?” He looked at her eyes, deep, full of softness.

“That you left school early.”

“Aye, well…” He tried to look away, but her gaze held his. Her grip on his hand tightened.

“A lot of people did.”

“You didn't.”

“That's right. I got an education, and there's no reason
you
shouldn't.”

That was one of the things he loved about her. She never beat about the bush.

“Me? Right enough. I can see myself up at Queen's University. ‘Please, sir, I'd like for to study philosophy, so I would.'”

“It's, ‘I'd like to study.' You don't need the ‘for.'”

He tried to pull his hand away.

“No, Davy. Listen. Please.”

“All right.”

“You don't need to go to university. I can teach you. I'd like that. I really would.”

He thought about what she'd said. She was a teacher. He wasn't stupid, just unlettered, and if he couldn't show his ignorance of books and things to Fiona, who could he trust?

“Maybe,” he said.

She sat back, still holding his gaze. “Do you know what I say to a new class the first day I meet them?”

“No.”

“I ask them, ‘Are you here to learn?' ‘Yes, miss.' ‘Can you learn something you already know?' They always look a bit puzzled then, just the way you look puzzled now.”

“Well, I…”

“So I tell them the answer. ‘Of course you can't. So not knowing something is nothing to be ashamed of, if you want to learn the things you don't know.' And it's not, is it?”

He shook his head.

“Right then.” She bent across the table and kissed him. “Will we start tonight?”

“I'd like that.”

“So, tell me about Jim Hawkins.”

“You mean”—he lifted the book—“in here?”

She nodded. “What kind of a boy was he? Why did he like Long John Silver at first?”

Davy started to answer her questions, hesitantly, but with more confidence as she gentled him along. They were still in deep discussion as dusk fell and the shadows filled the little kitchen. But it was only the fading of the daylight. In that evening, in himself, Davy felt a new dawn. He paid attention to every word she said.

He was not paying attention to where he was going. His foot tapped against the heel of the man in front.

The man stumbled. “Watch where you're going.”

“Sorry.” Davy shortened his stride. Watch where you're going? He knew bloody well where he was going. Out of here. To Canada. To Fiona. If Eamon could fix it.

*   *   *

The film ended. Davy walked back to his cell. Jesus, but it had been a great movie. That Clint Eastwood fellah was terrific. Funny they'd show it tonight of all nights. He wondered what Eamon thought about it.

Davy turned into cell 16. No Eamon. He'd said he'd have a word with the higher-ups after the movie. Davy started to pace. Come on, Eamon. Come on. The men who'd been selected were going to break out tomorrow, Eamon had said so, and Davy knew—he just knew—that he was going with them. What would happen after he'd no idea, but Eamon had said he'd worked out what to do. How he'd get things like a passport, Davy wasn't sure, but the Provos did have forgers. Maybe Eamon knew one. Maybe—

Davy felt someone come in. He turned. “Eamon?”

Eamon stood at the doorway, hands on the door frame.

“Well? What did he say?”

“What did who say?”

“Jesus Christ, Eamon. McFarlane.”

“Bic?”

“
Eamon
.”

“Oh. Bic.” Eamon moved into the cell, sat on his cot, and looked up at Davy. “Bic says … Bic says … you're in.” He grinned widely, then started to laugh. “You're in, Father Davy. Tomorrow. After the two o'clock head count.”

“Jesus, Eamon. You had me going there. I thought you were going to say no.”

“It nearly was no. McGuinness didn't want you. Said you're too old and that bad leg of yours might hold us up.”

“Bastard.”

“Bic stood up for you. Bobby Storey wasn't so sure. He's worried about your leg, too.” Eamon stood. “I told them I'd do a James Garner.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You ever see that film
The Great Escape
? Your man Donald Pleasence went blind. James Garner took care of him after they got out. I'll be doing the same for you.”

“If I remember right, Donald Pleasence got shot.”

Eamon laughed. “Jesus, Davy, cheer up. We're going together. You stick with me, and we'll be in Tyrone before you know it.” Eamon held out his hand.

“Holy Mother of God.” Davy grabbed Eamon's hand and shook it, then Davy McCutcheon, that dour, taciturn man, laughed in his eight-by-eight cell and danced the steps of a jig, slipped his hand into his inside pocket, felt her photograph, and whispered, “I'm on my way, girl. I'm on my way. Tomorrow.”

 

BOOK TWO

FUGUE

 

CHAPTER 19

THE KESH. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1983

Davy noticed a patch of rust on the frame of a .25 revolver that Eamon was deftly assembling from parts he had retrieved from under the tank lid of the toilet in their cell. A plastic bag of bullets lay on Eamon's cot. Davy hoped the lands and grooves of the rifling were clean. If there was dirt inside the barrel, the gun would burst when fired. Another good reason for Davy to hope that he'd never have to use the weapon.

“Gimme them bullets,” Eamon growled.

Davy lifted the plastic bag and wondered why it was so slippery. He tipped six brass-cased, lead-tipped shells into his palm. They clinked in Davy's hand. How tiny they were, these .25 messengers of death. “Here y'are.” He handed them to Eamon.

Davy remembered a line from a book of Kipling's poems Fiona had given him. “Two thousand pounds of education / Drops to a ten rupee
jezail
…” He'd had to ask her what a
jezail
was, and her vivid description of the long, brass-bound, Afghan musket had stayed with him. He'd had sympathy back then for the Pathan hill men who had been fighting the British occupation forces in their country just as he was in Ireland. She'd stood there in their kitchen, patiently explaining and smiling with her eyes as she talked. He loved her eyes—eyes that still shone from the photo he'd tucked into his inside jacket pocket along with Jimmy's letter.

He heard the “snick” as Eamon slid each bullet into the cylinder, the “click” as he closed the cylinder, the “whirr” as he spun it in the frame.

Eamon grinned. “Works like a charm. Now stick that there in your pocket.”

Davy took the weapon. It was light in his hand.

“It's double-action. All you'll have to do is cock the hammer…”

“I've handled plenty of guns.”

“We know that, Davy. That's why we're giving it to you. Shove it in your pocket.”

Davy did and saw a bulge. “Jesus, Eamon, it's sticking out like the Cave Hill.”

“Put on your cleaner's coat.”

Davy took a brown nylon coat from a hook behind the cell door. He shrugged into it, and thank Christ for that, it did hide the bulge.

The revolver was cold against his thigh, but Davy knew it wasn't the chill of the metal that was giving him goose bumps. It was the prospect that in less than an hour he was going to have to stick the .25 in Mr. Smiley's face. He might have to shoot Smiley, not at long range like the Pathans had done, not in anonymity as he had killed people when others set the bombs he had made, but face-to-face with a man he knew and, in a funny way, liked.

Eamon said, “Remember the time I told you Erin was bringing me a wee present? That there's it in your pocket.”

“How the hell did she get it in here?”

“Never you worry about that. I want you to tell me what you've to do with it.”

Christ Almighty, that was why the plastic bag had been slippery. Erin must have hidden it the way he'd heard that other women smuggled things past the body searches and into the Kesh. She'd have had to put it right in herself. Just thinking of Erin hiding the gun brought back memories of Fiona lying naked on their bed. The gun pressing against his thigh and his balls, his certainty about where it had been, took his breath away. He felt the heat in his crotch, a stiffening …

“
Davy,
would you pay attention?”

Davy cursed himself for letting his mind wander, and was Eamon shouting because he was exasperated, or was he afraid about what was going to happen very soon? Davy looked into Eamon's eyes. They were cold and hard as a pair of agates.

“I'm sorry.” Davy couldn't blame his friend for being frustrated with the wanderings of an older man's mind. Jesus, he wasn't that old, but at that moment he felt about ninety.

“‘Sorry' be damned. Tell me what you've to do.” Eamon's words were clipped.

“I was thinking about…”

“I don't give a shite
what
you were thinking about.
Tell me what you've to do.
”

Davy spoke like a child repeating a litany learned by rote. “Once head count's over, I've to go and clean the corridor. Get close to Mr. Smiley. Maybe chat with him.”

“Right.” Eamon could have been a priest at a Sunday school preaching to the boys about their catechism. “And you'll not be the only one doing that. There's others, and each one of them has an assigned guard. Five lads have guns like yours, and the rest have wood chisels.”

“That's why you wanted the chisel?” Davy glanced at the still-red scar on the palm of his hand.

“You can kill a man with a chisel.”

“I don't want
nobody
getting killed.”

“What do you want more, McCutcheon … out of here, or a clear conscience?”

Eamon had called him, “McCutcheon.” Not “Father Davy.” At that moment, he wasn't Davy's friend; he was a Provo commandant issuing his orders, and expecting them to be obeyed.

Davy's old training took over. He came to attention and banished the last flickering images of young Erin O'Byrne pushing his gun into the damp folds of herself, of Fiona soft beneath his hands. It was laughable. Here he was minutes away from making the break and letting himself be distracted by those kinds of thoughts. Whether he liked it or not, whether he truly believed in it or not, once again he was a volunteer with the
Óglaigh na hÉirann
, a soldier, and he'd do well to remember that. “I'll do what needs done,” he said, as much to himself as to Eamon. “I want to get out of here as much as you.” More, he thought. Somehow—once he was safely away—somehow he would get to Canada, and to Fiona.

Eamon smiled, clapped Davy's shoulder. “I know you will, Father Davy.”

The smile and touch comforted Davy, and he listened closely as Eamon explained the plan again, just as he'd done last night after lights-out. “You concentrate on Smiley. Some of the other lads'll be doing the same to every single floor guard and every single gate guard in H-7. There's twenty-six of them. One of the boys with a gun'll take over the central control room, the Communications Centre, so the screws can't lock themselves in there, slam all the electric gates, and activate the alarms.”