Now and in the Hour of Our Death (37 page)

Once he got onto the straight after the bend, it was less than a couple of miles to the outbuilding at his cottage. He'd be there in another five minutes, and then, by God, he was going to get this bitch of a thing inside and cover it with a tarpaulin. The repainting job and fitting false number plates could wait. He was going to run into his cottage, chuck a heap more peat on the fire, get dry, have the cigarette he craved, make himself a fuckin' huge, hot John Jameson's whiskey, even if it was only about noon and he normally didn't take a drink before six o'clock, and then put his fuckin' feet up. He'd earned that. Bejesus he had.

Up half the night finishing making the explosive. When the storm had started, he had been truly thankful that the outbuilding
was
waterproof—a huge, cold raindrop was blown in and dripped down inside Sammy's collarless shirt—unlike the cab of this bloody tractor. He was tired, soaked, foundered with the cold, and wanted to get home.

The machine rocked and bounced over the pothole-pitted road. Christ Almighty, could the Tyrone County Council not send out a couple of men with shovels and a load of hot tarmac to fill in the craters?

Sammy had never in his whole life been farther from Tyrone than into County Donegal across the border. He'd heard about the motorway from Belfast and that England was crisscrossed with first-class roads. He'd like to see one of them, if they existed. Aye, if. Irish folks were powerful good at believing what they wanted to believe. Them as had fled Ireland on the coffin ships when they'd been evicted by English landlords after the Great Hunger had believed that the streets of America were paved with gold. The Irish back then would have believed anything.

They'd soon found out which end was up when the men, who hadn't a word of English among them, were met at the docks by an interpreter, offered an immediate job, three square meals a day, and a new suit of clothes if they'd just make their marks on pieces of paper.

Maybe the sidewalks of New York weren't golden after all, but getting a paying job right off a boat where half the passengers had died of dysentery or typhus must mean America was the promised land after all. Leaving their homes forever and facing the perils of the Atlantic crossing had been worth it.

Those that signed got the job all right, and the new suit. The suit was navy blue with a leather-peaked kepi and a .50 calibre minié musket as accessories. Most of the poor bastards who had, in all innocence, signed up for the Union Army never came back from the U.S. Civil War.

And that, he thought, came from trusting someone who seemed to care about you. The damnable thing was that even if Spud really didn't give a shite about Sammy, he was bloody good at giving the impression that he did. And Sammy had come in an odd way to like the policeman. He'd miss him when he delivered on his promise and Sammy was away to hell and gone from Tyrone, its fuckin' miserable weather, its rutted roads with hairpin bends like the one he was crawling round, knowing that the cottage, the fire, the cigarette, and the whiskey were almost in sight …

Fuck it. Fuck—it. There was a Saracen armoured car parked on the verge just after the crown of the bend, and a soldier in a flapping waterproof cape standing in the middle of the road waving at Sammy to stop. What had Erin said? We'll not tell you the target in case you get lifted. He was stuffed.

Yet Sammy was surprised to feel a sense of relief. If he was done for stealing a tractor, at least he'd be safe in a civilian prison for a couple of years. Maybe if they let him have a word with Spud, the peeler could get him off the criminal charge, just like the last time, listen to what Sammy had to say, and …

He braked and pulled the tractor to the side of the road just in front of the armoured car. He took out his wallet, started to remove his forged driver's licence, and recognized the uselessness of doing so. If the soldiers had the tractor's plate numbers, he was buggered and that was all there was to it.

He undid the catch, holding the side panel shut, making sure it was the one in the tractor's lee. He was wet and cold enough as it was without taking an unnecessary soaking. That Brit was dressed for the weather in his army-issue waterproofs. Let him get drenched.

Sammy waited for the soldier to draw level before lifting the side panel. He noticed that the man, although carrying a Belgian FN self-loading rifle, did so with its muzzle pointing to the ground. That would keep the rain out right enough, but Sammy knew from too much experience that getting the barrel wet didn't usually stop these shites from covering a suspect.

“Very sorry to bother you, sir, so I am.”

Holy God, the man had a thick Belfast accent. Sammy knew it wasn't unusual for Ulstermen to volunteer to serve with the British Forces. They'd done so for centuries. Old man O'Byrne, when he'd been alive, God rest his soul, was forever going on about England fighting her wars off the backs of the Irish.

“We've run into a wee bit of bother, sir. Maybe you could help us, like?”

It wasn't an arrest. Sammy didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed, and as for helping the British, he was an expert at that. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

“I'm only a buck private, sir,” the soldier said, hunching his shoulders against the driving rain. “It's right fuckin' embarrassing, so it is. I'm driving that yoke there”—he gestured to the Saracen—“and I'm lost.”

“You're what?” Sammy nearly smiled. “And you an Ulsterman? My God.”

“Aye, well. I'm from East Belfast…”

Protestant bastard.

“… I've never been out of Belfast in my puff until I went to England for to join up.”

Sammy did smile. Just like himself, who'd never been out of the country, but at least the soldier had been to England. “Where're you trying to get to?” Sammy knew only too well where he was trying to get to.

“Portadown, and then it's only a wee doddle on to Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn. I tell you, mate, I'll not be sorry to get in out of this fuckin' rain.”

“Me neither,” said Sammy, thinking of the big hot Jameson's. “Right,” he said. “Go a ways the way you're headed. About two miles.”

“Right.”

“Take the first right at the crossroads.”

“First right?”

“Aye. Onto the A5, and that'll take you to Omagh. Follow the signs from there to Ballygawley. Left there'll get you to the M1 Motorway.”

“That's great, so it is. Never mind Portadown. I can find Lisburn once we're on the M1.”

Sammy hoped he had given the man the right directions. He was simply repeating the route that he'd heard Erin say she used to go to the Kesh to visit Eamon.

“Thanks, mate,” the soldier said. “Sorry to hold you up.”

“Never worry. I wasn't going anywhere important.”

“Take you care now, oul' hand. There's all kinds of the bad lads on the run, so there is.”

Sammy watched the soldier jog back to the Saracen and climb in. He waited for it to pull out and pass the tractor, and it left a cloud of exhaust fumes to be torn apart by the wind. He put the tractor in gear and started to drive to his cottage. Easy as that, by God. The soldiers had just wanted to be told how to get home.

And Sammy had got himself all worked up over nothing. But maybe it wasn't nothing. Maybe he was like those soldiers, looking for guidance. Maybe, he thought, maybe those lost soldiers could think of a barracks in a hostile country as home. How the hell could he ever think of his wee cottage, Tyrone, Ireland, as his home? He could find his cottage, right enough, but was he safe there? No fuckin' way. He just wished he had someone to give him simple directions that would get him out of here.

 

CHAPTER 32

TYRONE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1983

“We'll be out of here once it's dark. We'll juke across that there hayfield, through the hedge, and then we're home, Father Davy,” Eamon said from where he and Davy and Brendan McGuinness lay at the edge of a pine wood. They huddled beneath a tarpaulin camouflaged by heaps of sodden, earth-smelling bracken.

Davy looked straight up into the branches of a solitary rowan tree, its clusters of red berries dark from the rain that splashed from them and pattered on the dripping leaves. “Home,” he said through chattering teeth. “Home … and dry.” He smiled at his weak pun. He was frozen and wet, and knew that the other two men were as well.

“Nice one, Davy,” Eamon said, grinning. “I'd not mind getting myself dry on the outside, but a wee hot wet inside would go down wheeker, so it would.”

Davy's smile broadened at the thought of having a hot Irish whiskey, sweetened with sugar, spiced with a couple of cloves, made piquant with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, the mug filled to the top with boiling water. It would be his first drink in nine years, and it might just bring a bit of heat back into his bones, which, at that moment, felt as ancient as the skeleton of a dinosaur he'd seen in the Ulster Museum on the Stranmillis Road.

Davy glanced at McGuinness. The man was ignoring them both.

Fuck you, McGuinness, you wizened-up wee git, Davy thought, and rolled onto his side, turning his back. At least Eamon and myself can squeeze a bit of humour out of the situation while we're waiting for the last lap. It would be dark by seven, so they'd about four more hours to wait here in the woods.

He stared ahead through the rain, over straight rows of mown hay, to a blackthorn hedge at the far side of the field. Eamon said their hidey-hole was down in a hollow behind that hedge. Beyond that was the back gate to a farmyard, in which Davy could see the glistening slate roofs of a farmhouse and its outbuildings.

A dog barked twice, and Davy enjoyed the sound. He'd never once heard a dog while he was in the Kesh, and it had been little things like that he'd missed.

He watched a curl of smoke rise from a chimney and slowly drift away, showing him that the gale-force winds had died almost as quickly as they had screeched in overnight.

Eamon's Erin would be in that house, maybe sitting by the fire. Davy imagined he could smell the peat smoke, and his picture of her close to the glowing turf warmed him. The poor girl must be frantic with worry. Eamon was meant to have got to her last night. She'd have no idea what had happened to him but wouldn't be human if she didn't imagine the worst.

Davy glanced over at his friend and saw how Eamon stared at the farmhouse. He was bustin' to see Erin, tell her everything was all right, and fair play to him for that.

Davy accepted that it could be weeks before he could get to Canada. It was about three o'clock here in Tyrone, 1500 hours as all armies, including the Provos, measured time. Vancouver was eight hours behind Belfast, so it would be … 1500 minus eight equals seven. Seven in the morning. Perhaps she'd be waking up beside the doctor fellah and making breakfast before the pair of them went to work.

Would Tim Andersen make Fiona a cup of tea the way Davy used to?

God Almighty, knowing the man's name made the whole bloody thing too immediate, too personal. Too real. Maybe if the doctor was important to her, seeing her was all Davy'd be able to do, just see her, talk to her for a wee while.

Then he might have to walk away, but Davy couldn't believe she'd be able to dismiss him so easily once she'd seen him. Once he'd kissed her. If she'd let him. But she would. He knew she would after all they'd meant to each other—and nine years apart wasn't all that long, not really.

Leaves above sagged under the weight of water and spilled frigid drops onto his head. He shook himself like a soaked dog, slipped farther under the tarpaulin, and silently blessed the now-dying gale for the cover it had provided when they'd made their break from Castlederg.

He thanked their saviours back there, the Donnellys. If it hadn't been for them, he'd be in the Crumlin Road Jail or back in the Kesh by now. He shuddered, and it wasn't from the biting cold. He'd be a lot colder but for the tarp Dermot had given them, and that wasn't all he and his missus had done.

Davy stretched out his legs to their full length, enjoying the luxury of that. He'd no idea how long he and Eamon had been forced to lie curled up under those floorboards, hardly daring to breathe.

They'd only been in the hiding space for twenty minutes when he'd heard doors being hurled open, the crash of hobnailed ammo boots, the shouting of foreign English and Scottish voices, of British soldiers on a house-to-house search.

He'd felt Eamon beside him tense as Davy had stiffened and frantically stifled a sneeze when footsteps thundered overhead and paused for what had seemed like an eternity until the clumping had moved away and finally vanished.

Neither he nor Eamon had dared to relax until Davy'd heard the front door slam and Mrs. Donnelly, who must have slipped in silently in her carpet slippers, call from overhead, “It's all right, they've gone, but youse'd better stay there 'til the morning.”

He wriggled farther to one side because the wee .25 in his pocket was digging into his hip. He'd rather have that discomfort than suffer the cramps he'd had through the long hours under the Donnellys' floor. When Mrs. Donnelly had come to let them out, it had taken Davy half an hour to get his legs to work properly, and by the way Eamon had groaned and massaged his calves, he wasn't in much better shape.

Davy glanced over to where Eamon lay. Good God, the man was asleep. Davy could hear him snoring, envied his friend's ability to snatch a nap, and wished that he, too, could drift off, but after the excitement of the last twenty-four hours, he knew he was far too keyed up. At least he wasn't hungry.

Mrs. Donnelly had made sure the fugitives were well fed. She had a huge pot of tea ready and must have been up for hours frying bacon and eggs, soda farls, potato bread, tomatoes, and black pudding.

Davy slipped a finger into his mouth and used the nail to dislodge a shred of bacon from between two teeth. He could taste its saltiness.