Sorj Chalandon

Return to Killybegs

PROLOGUE

Now that everything is out in the open, they will all speak in my place — the IRA, the British, my family, my close friends, journalists I’ve never even met. Some of them will go so far as to explain how and why I ended up a traitor. It incenses me that books may well be written about me. Do not listen to any of their claims. Do not trust my enemies, and even less my friends. Ignore those who will say they knew me. Nobody has ever walked in my shoes, nobody. The only reason I am speaking out now is because I am the only one who can tell the truth. After I’m gone, I hope for silence.

Killybegs, 24 December 2006

Tyrone Meehan

1

When my father beat me he’d shout in English, as if he didn’t want his language mixed up in that. He’d strike with his mouth twisted, yelling like a soldier in combat. When my father beat me he was no longer my father, just Padraig Meehan. War-wounded, stony-faced, Meehan the ill wind people crossed the street to avoid. When my father had been drinking he’d batter the ground; shatter the air. When he’d come into my room, the night would shift. He wouldn’t light the candle. He’d breathe like an old animal and I’d wait for the blows.

When my father had been drinking he’d occupy Ireland the way our enemy had. His hostility was widespread. It extended from under our roof, across his threshold, along the lanes of Killybegs, over the bog and the edge of the forest, covering day and night. Far and wide, he’d take over areas with sudden advances. You’d see him from a long way off. You’d hear him from a long way off. He’d trip over his words and movements. In Mullin’s, the village pub, he’d slide from his barstool, approach tables and slam his hands down flat between the glasses. That was his response when he didn’t agree with someone. No words, his fingers in the spilt beer and that look of his. The others would fall silent, caps lowered and eyes hidden. Then he’d stand up straight again, challenging the room with arms crossed, waiting for a response. When my father had been drinking he’d frighten people.

One day, on the lane down to the port, he punched George, old McGarrigle’s mule. The coalman had named his animal after the king of England so he’d be able to boot him up the backside. I was there, following my father. Still intoxicated from the previous night, he walked with jerky, staggering steps and I scurried along in his wake. On a street corner, opposite the church, old McGarrigle was struggling. He pulled at his motionless donkey, one hand on the saddle, the other on the halter, and threatened him, calling him every name under the sun. My father stopped. He watched the old man with his baulking animal, the distress of one, the obstinacy of the other, and he crossed the street. He pushed McGarrigle aside and stood facing the donkey, talking to him roughly, as though speaking with the British sovereign. He asked him whether he knew who Padraig Meehan was, if he’d any idea who he was dealing with. He was bent over him, forehead to forehead, menacing, waiting for a response from the animal, a movement, surrender. And then he struck, a terrible blow between the eye and nostril. George swayed and keeled over on his flank. The cart tipped out its pieces of coal.

—Éirinn go Brách! shouted my father. Then he pulled me by the arm. Speaking Irish is resisting, he murmured once more. And we continued on our way.

As a child, my mother used to send me to fetch him home from the pub. It would be dark out. I’d be too afraid to go in so I’d wander back and forth in front of the pub’s frosted door and its windows with their curtains drawn. I’d wait for a man to emerge so I could slip in to the odour of sour beer, sweat, damp overcoats and cold tobacco.

— Looks like you’d best go home for your tea, Pat, my father’s friends would joke.

He’d raise his hand to me behind closed doors, but when I entered his world he’d welcome me with open arms. I was seven. I’d lower my head and stay standing against the bar while he finished his song. His eyes would be closed, one hand on his heart; he’d mourn his divided country, his dead heroes, his lost war; he’d beseech the Great Legends, the 1916 rebels, the funereal cohort of our defeated and all those who came before, the chiefs of the great Gaelic clans and Saint Patrick to boot, with his curved staff for driving out the English snake. And I’d watch him from below. I’d listen to him. Observing the other men’s silence, I was proud of him in spite of everything. Proud of Pat Meehan, proud of that father, despite the marks from his brown belt across my back and my hair torn out by the fistful; when he’d sing about our land, heads were held high and eyes filled with tears. Before becoming mean, my father was an Irish poet and I was welcomed as that man’s son. As soon as I came through the door I felt the warmth, too. Hands on my back, a squeeze of the shoulder, a man-to-man wink though I was only a child. Someone would let me sip the ochre froth of a Guinness. That’s where my bitterness began, and I had a taste for it. I drank that mixture of earth and blood, the thick blackness that would become my eau de vie.

— We drink our earth. We are no longer men. We are trees, my father would sing when he was happy.

The others would leave the pub, putting their glasses down and their caps on their heads. Not him, though. Before passing through the door, he’d always tell a story. He’d capture their attention one last time. He’d get up, slip his coat on.

Then, we’d go home, he and I. Him staggering, me telling myself I was supporting him. He’d point out the moon, its light on the path.

— It’s the light of the dead, he’d say.

Under its pale beams we already looked like ghosts. One foggy night, he took me by the shoulder. Before the swirling mists he promised me that after life everything would be like this, calm and beautiful. He swore to me that I’d no longer have to fear a thing. Passing in front of the crossed-out sign, ‘NA CEALLA BEAGA’, which marked the edge of our village, he assured me that they spoke Irish in paradise. And that the rain there was soft like this evening, but warm and tasting of honey. He laughed and pulled up the collar of my jacket to protect me from the cold. Once on the way home he even took my hand. I felt ill, knowing that this hand would become a fist again, would soon change from tenderness to metal. In an hour’s time or tomorrow and without my knowing why. Out of malice, pride, fury, out of habit. I was a prisoner of my father’s hand. But that night, with my fingers curled into his, I made the most of his warmth.

My father belonged to the Irish Republican Army. He was a volunteer, óglach in Irish, a simple soldier of the Donegal Brigade of the IRA. In 1921, he and several comrades opposed the ceasefire negotiated with the British. He refused to accept the border, the creation of Northern Ireland, the tearing in half of our homeland. He wanted to drive the British from the whole country, fight to the last bullet. After the War of Independence against the British, we had the Civil War amongst ourselves.

— The traitors, the cowards, the sell-outs! my father would hiss when he’d talk about his former brothers in arms who had supported the truce.

These felons were armed by the British and dressed by the British. They opened fire on their comrades. The only thing Irish about them was our blood on their hands.

My father had been interned without charge by the British, sentenced to death and pardoned. In 1922 he was arrested once more, this time by the Irish who had chosen the compromise camp. He never told me about it, but I knew. After six years he found himself back in the same prison, the same cell. After mistreatment by the enemy he received the same from former comrades. He was knocked about for a week. The soldiers of the new Irish Free State wanted to know the whereabouts of the last IRA combatants, the insubordinates, the dissenters. They wanted to find the rebel arms caches. During hours, days and nights of violence, those sons of bitches tortured my father in English. They steeled their voices with the enemy tongue.

— Are you English? an old American asked my father one day.

— No, the opposite, my father replied.

When my father beat me, he was his own opposite.

In May 1923, the last of the IRA óglaigh laid down their weapons and my old man grew even older. Our people were divided. Ireland was cut in two. Pat Meehan had lost the war. He was no longer a man but a failure. He began drinking a lot, roaring a lot, fighting. Beating his children. He had had three of them when his army surrendered. On 8 March 1925, I joined Seánie, Róisín and Mary, all of us crammed together like sardines in the big bed. Seven others were still to emerge from my mother’s belly. Two wouldn’t survive.

I witnessed my father’s courage one last time in November 1936. He was coming back from Sligo. He and some old IRA members had attacked a public meeting of Blueshirts, the Irish fascists, who were going to fight in Spain under General Franco. After the pitched battle of bare fists and broken chairs, my father and his comrades had decided to join the Spanish Republican cause. For several days, he talked of nothing but leaving for combat. He was handsome, standing tall, feverish, marching around our kitchen with great soldier’s strides. He wanted to rally the men of the Connolly Column of the International Brigades. He said that Ireland had lost a battle and that the war was still being played out over there. My father wasn’t just a Republican: Catholic by happenstance, he had fought his whole life for the social revolution. He believed the IRA ought to be a revolutionary army. He revered our national flag but admired the red of the workers’ struggle.

He was forty-one, I was eleven. He had packed his bag for Madrid. I remember that morning. My mother was in the kitchen; they had been talking all night. She had cried. He had his face of stone on. She was peeling potatoes and saying our names one after the other, whispering them. It was a prayer, a sorrowful litany. She was there, at the table, her body gently moving back and forth, reciting us like the beads of a rosary. ‘Tyrone… Kevin… Áine… Brian… Niall…’ My father stood at the front door with his back turned to her, his forehead pressed against the wood. She told him that if he left we would go hungry. That she’d never be able to look after us all. She told him that without her man, the earth would no longer provide for us. People’s eyes would turn when we passed. She told him the Sisters of Notre Dame of the Compassion would take us away. That we’d be sent to Quebec or Australia on Father Nugent’s boats, along with the street children. She told him that she’d be alone, would let herself fade away. And that he would die, would never come back. And that Spain may as well be farther away than hell itself. I remember my father’s movement. He punched the door, just once, as if calling on the fallen angel. He turned around slowly and looked at my mother with her lips shut tight, at the table covered in peelings. He took up the bag he’d made ready for the next day and hurled it across the room, into the fireplace. The fire itself seemed surprised. It drew back under the blast of air, and then the blue flames enveloped the cloth pouch and you could smell the peat and the fabric.

My father was transfixed. He sometimes lashed out like that, without grasping the meaning of what he was doing. One day he kicked me in the small of my back and then looked at me lying on my stomach, my arms folded under me, not comprehending what I was doing on the ground. He set me back on my feet, brushed down my legs grazed with gravel. He took me in his arms, telling me he was sorry, but that everything was my fault all the same, that I shouldn’t have looked at him with a challenge in my eyes and that smile on my face. But that he loved me. That he loved me as best he could. Another time, he saw blood in my mouth. I recognized the acrid taste and let it run down my chin and made my eyes roll like someone about to pass out. I think he was scared. He wiped my lips and neck with his open hand. He repeated ‘My God!’ over and over, as if someone other than him had just hit me. Sometimes, in the darkness, after having struck me, he’d run his fingers under my eyes. He wanted to check whether I was crying. I knew he’d do this. From the first blows, I’d know it. He’d always conclude his punishments by ascertaining my grief. But I didn’t cry. I never cried. ‘But cry, why don’t you?!’ my mother would beg. While I protected my face, I’d slide my fingers into my mouth, wet them with saliva and smear my cheeks. Then he’d take my spittle for tears, sure that his devil of a son had finally learned his lesson.

That morning in front of the hearth he had that same surprised look on his face. He didn’t understood what he’d just done. He looked at his bag, all his belongings, his life. His trousers, his collarless shirts, his two cardigans, his spare pipe. It was an abrupt inferno. The bag was smothered by the flames. Spain burned, along with his hopes of revenge and his dreams of honour. My mother didn’t move, didn’t say another word. Silence. Just the sound of my father’s shoes crackling like wood. And his Bible, which gave off a very blue flame.

My father took me by the arm and pulled me out of the house by force. He dragged me along like that as far as the lane and then let me go. He walked, and I followed him in silence. We headed towards the port. His eyes were nearly closed. When we came across McGarrigle and George the donkey, my father spat on the ground. The animal was braying under the old coalman’s shoves.

—Éirinn go Brách! my father roared after hitting the creature. ‘Ireland Forever!’ The war cry of the United Irishmen, the sacred phrase decorating their green flag with its golden harp. It was Friday, 9 November 1936. Padraig Meehan had just raised his hand to an ass, and I had simultaneously lost a father and a hero.

In Killybegs, my father ended up ‘the bastard’, a nickname whispered when his back was turned. The senior IRA member, the legendary veteran, the magnificent orator, the evening storyteller, the pub singer, the hurler, the greatest stout drinker ever born on this Donegal soil. He, Padraig Meehan, had become a feared man, avoided in the street, ignored in the pub, abandoned to his forgotten corner between the dartboard and the men’s toilets. He had become a bastard, that is to say, in the end, a man of no importance.

Pat Meehan died with his pockets full of stones. That’s how they knew he wanted to end his life. He left us alone in December 1940. He dressed in his Sunday clothes under one of my mother’s endless silences. He left the house one morning to sit in his spot in Mullin’s. He drank as he did every day, a lot, and wouldn’t let anyone clear away his empty glasses. He wanted them to pile up, packed together on the table to show what he was capable of. He drank alone, didn’t read, spoke to nobody. That night, we waited for him.

At dawn, my mother wrapped herself in her shawl to protect baby Sara asleep in her belly. She searched the deserted village for her husband. I went to the pub. The barman was rolling beer barrels along the pavement with his hands. My father had left the pub towards one in the morning, one of the last. Just before closing, he had wandered between the tables, trying to catch someone’s eye. Nobody would look at him. The owner showed him the door with a tilt of his chin. When he went out, he turned left, headed towards the port. He bumped against the walls of his village as he walked. Two witnesses saw him bend down close to the quarry and pick up something from the roadside. It was very cold. They found him on the village outskirts in the early hours, on a road leading to the sea. He was grey, lying on the frozen ground, ice for blood. His left arm was raised, fist clenched as if he’d been fighting with an angel. Before moving him, the gardaí thought his death an accident. Drunk, fallen over, unable to get up again, sleeping it off till morning arrived.

It was only when they turned the body over that they understood. My father had died on his way to death. He had filled his pockets with rocks. They filled his trousers, his cardigan, his jacket, his blue woollen overcoat. He’d even slipped stones into his cap. These were the shards of rock he was gathering the night before in the quarry. He was walking towards his end when his heart had stopped. He wanted to die like the ordinary men of Donegal, to walk into the sea until the water took him. He was leaving, stuffed with his earth, without a word, without a tear. Just the wind, the waves and the light of the dead. Padraig Meehan wanted this legendary end. My father left the world a poor wreck, his face pressed against the frost, and his rocks, for nothing.

2

When my father died, people turned away. Misery was contagious. It was bad luck to watch us walk by. We were no longer a family but a pale, straggly herd. My brothers, sisters and I made a pitiful troupe, led by a she-wolf on the brink of madness. We’d walk in single file, each of us holding on to the next by the end of a coat. For three months we lived on charity. In exchange for cabbages and potatoes, we helped out at the presbytery. Róisín and Mary used to scrub the floors of the corridors on their knees. Seánie, wee Kevin and myself used to wash windows by the dozen. Áine, Brian and Niall would help in the refectory and my mother would sit on a bench in the corridor, baby Sara nestled against her, hidden between shawl and breast. I wasn’t miserable, or even sad, or envious of anything. We lived off the little we got. In the evenings, my brothers and I used to fight the gang led by Timmy Gormley, the self-titled ‘king of the quays’. A dozen young lads, broken like us, pieced together. They were nasty, hot-tempered, and about as tough as toy soldiers, shocked when their noses would bleed. They called us ‘the Meehan gang’. Father Donoghue used to break us apart with a hazel rod. He had no time for our laughter and was even less tolerant of our after-dark shenanigans.

In the winter of 1940, I went to work on the bog with Seánie. Every day for two months. We used to help cut the turf with a spade and load the mules in spring and at Halloween, but this was the first time we had worked in the cold. The farmer needed extra hands for bringing in the harvest. The mud no longer sucked our shoes off but the cold water and ice turned them into cardboard. There were about twenty of us young lads in the ditches. The farmer called us his ‘hired hands’. It was nicer than calling us his orphans. We were frozen and shaking, our sods heaped up in our arms, heavy as a dead friend. In return for the work, the boss would give us some turf, bacon and milk. No money. He said that money was for men and we had no need to be drinking or smoking.

Joseph ‘Josh’ Byrne was the bravest of us all and the youngest, barely six years old. For nine hours a day, he carefully piled up his frozen sods and then ballasted the tarpaulin that protected them. And he sang, too. He gave us a little bit of heaven. With his singing we became sailors, our hands working with his voice, cutting the earth as we would have hoisted the sail. He sang in step with arms crossed, under the rain, in the wind, in Irish, in English. He sang while tapping the ground with his foot. He hadn’t yet learned how to read or write, so his words would stray at times. He’d invent rhymes and words and make us laugh.

His father had run off and his mother was dead. Josh had been raised by his sisters, the only boy amongst muddy skirts and greasy aprons. He wanted to be a soldier, or a priest, something that would be useful to men. He was frail and needed glasses: he’d be a priest.

When he wasn’t singing, he was praying for us. Out loud, at the edge of the ditch, as though standing beside a grave. In the morning, before taking up the shovels, we would listen to him on our knees. In the evening, when the Angelus rang at St Bridget’s, he used to say the Hail Mary, his eyes wide with shock if our lips remained closed. Father Donoghue was fond of him. He called him ‘the angel’. Josh was his altar boy and despite his age, unsightly face, lumpy chalk-coloured skin, horse hair, crossed eyes and enormous ears, he was respected. The women used to say that a spirit had taken over his body. Mother saw him as a leprechaun or an elf, a pixie from our forests. One day, Tim Gormley swore God had afflicted him so he’d be made a saint.

— What a pity! I hope not, Josh had quietly replied.

And Gormley was left with his nasty remark, not knowing quite what to do with it, surrounded by his hyenas of brothers.

We left Ireland because of the Gormleys. Their cruelty was the final straw for our family. One evening in February Timmy and Brian cornered wee Kevin on his way home. My brother was carrying milk from the farmer to the house. He swung his milk can about him, spitting at the same time. Wee Kevin had always done that. When he was frightened or angry, or when his silence was disturbed, he’d bristle like a cat. With his red hair in his eyes, his lip curled, his black teeth, he would slaver down his chin and spit. This time the Gormleys didn’t back off. Timmy whacked my brother’s legs with a hurley. Brian smacked his ear with a closed fist. Wee Kevin dented the aluminium milk can against the low wall as he spat on the shadows.

My brother was limping and in tears when he got home. He was gripping the handle of the can, which had fallen to the pavement. Nobody told him off. My mother looked out the window. She was afraid the gang might have followed him. Seánie and I tore out the door, the taste of blood and milk in our mouths. Wee Kevin was drenched in urine. Those dogs had pissed all over him. We scoured the village, roaring out Timmy Gormley’s cursed name. Seánie smashed a rock through the window of the grocery where his mother worked. We killed no one. We gave up. We went home.

My mother was waiting for us at the door, her shawl over her head. Her brother, Lawrence Finnegan, had made her an offer she’d accepted. We could no longer continue to live in Killybegs, between the humiliation, the damp and the fighting. She was leaving, we were following. We were going to leave our Ireland, the land of my father. We were going elsewhere, to the other side, we were going to cross the border towards war.

— As long as I’m alive, my children will never see a British flag, my father used to say when he was drunk.

He was dead. His word had died with him.

Mother had decided to sell my father’s house. For weeks the blue and yellow sign remained stuck in the gravel of our path. But that dreary pile of stones was of no interest to anyone. Too cramped, too far from everything. And then death was prowling around there, misery, the grief of that widow with her rosary beads who spoke to Jesus as though giving her husband a piece of her mind.

One morning, very early, Uncle Lawrence came with his chimney sweep’s truck. It was 15 April 1941, two days after Easter. My mother had said we would go to Mass in Belfast the following day.

Belfast. I was frightened by that big city, that other country. Lawrence was like Mother, but with a coarse voice. A harder expression, too. But what stood out most was how silently he lived. He rarely spoke, never swore, didn’t sing. Lips, for him, were the doorway to prayer.

He counted my brothers and sisters as though listing off sheep to the buyer at market. It was a beautiful day, it wasn’t raining, there wasn’t even a threat of rain. The sea breeze came gusting into the house. We barely took anything with us. Not the table, the bench or the dresser, but we had the soup tureen from Galway that my grandmother had given to my mother. The mattresses were piled under the tarpaulin. Seánie, my mother and baby Sara were sitting up beside Lawrence, and the rest of us were crammed in the back, squabbling. An unsettling moment stuck in my memory. Mother was crying. She had closed the door and given it a kick. Then she asked her brother to make a detour so she could say goodbye to her husband.

We drove through the village. A woman crossed herself when we passed. Many others just kept walking. No friends or enemies, there was nobody to mourn or curse us. We were leaving our homeland and the homeland didn’t give a damn.

At the cemetery, our uncle dropped the truck’s tailgate. We walked towards the grave together, except for Sara who was left sleeping and Lawrence who stayed behind the wheel. Mother made us kneel down in front of the cross. And then she told my father that everything was his fault. That we’d never again have a roof over our heads or bread on the table. That she’d get sick and we were going to die one after the other, under the German bombs or the English bayonets. That she was truly suffering, that our cheeks were hollow and the edges of our eyes nearly black. She called on a woman smoothing gravel over her husband’s grave to witness.

— Do you see this, do you? Have you counted them? Nine! There are nine of them and I’m alone with the nine and not a soul to help me!

The woman cast her eye over our rabble and then she nodded in silence. I remember that moment because a seagull screeched. It was balancing in the wind above our heads, and it laughed at us.

I’d never seen an English uniform other than through my father’s hateful descriptions. The number of those soldiers he claimed to have taken by the scruff of the neck! To hear him tell it, half the king’s army had returned home with the mud from my father’s boot sole on their arses.

On the border with Northern Ireland, the British made us get out of the truck. I still didn’t know how to tell the Ulster Defence Volunteers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary or the Ulster Special Constabulary, those ‘B-Specials’ so loathed by my people. Lawrence didn’t utter a word, nor did my mother, as though some secret order forbade a Meehan or a Finnegan from addressing them. They were helmeted, their bunched-up trousers over their war boots.

The one who searched us had his shirt buttoned right up to the collar, a flattened helmet, a pack on his chest, his gun slung on his back and the bayonet my mother feared. It was the second time in my life seeing a British flag.

The first was 12 June 1930 in the port at Killybegs. The Go Ahead, an English steam trawler, made a stopover to repair some damage to the engine. It had two masts, dark-red sails and its chimney was belching black fumes. In under an hour, half the village was on the pier. I was five years old. I was holding Seánie’s hand, and my father was there, too. While the sailors lowered the gangplank, my brother made me read the boat’s registration, painted in white on the stern. I recognized the figures and I was proud. For a long time afterwards I even remembered the number — LT 534 — which I wrote down with Mother when we got home. Two harbour police went aboard carrying an Irish flag. The courtesy flag the captain had raised was stained and torn. So Killybegs offered them a brand-new Irish flag. It was hoisted on the front mast of the starboard. The police saluted the tricolour’s ascent. The crowd applauded noisily. Leaning against the bulwark, the English sailors smoked in silence. Their flag hung huge and lifeless behind, wrapped around its mast by our wind.

A long time ago, my father and his friends had burnt a Union Jack in our village square to celebrate the 1916 Rising. They had gathered in front of Mullin’s one Easter in honour of James Connolly, Patrick Pearse and all those who were shot. It had stopped raining. My father had given a speech, standing on a beer barrel with the furrowed brow and raised arms of an orator. He recalled the sacrifice our patriots had made and asked for a moment’s silence. Afterwards, a guy emerged from the crowd. He pulled a British flag from his jacket and my father set it alight with his lighter. It wasn’t a real flag. Not a flag made in England by the English. Ours was badly painted on the back of a white coat. The colour was running and spreading over the cross, but you could see what it was all the same. When it caught fire, everyone applauded. I was there. I was proud. I hit my hands together, imitating the crowd’s clapping. There were about fifty of us, and two gardaí who were keeping an eye on the gathering.

— For Christ’s sake! Don’t do that, Pat Meehan! Not their fucking flag! shouted the oldest man when my father set the fire.

— We’ll have trouble over this! someone else implored.

Ireland had been a free state for fifteen years, but people still thought the British army could come back over the border seeking vengeance.

The two guards ran across the square. My father and his friends shouted, ‘Grab the traitors!’ They were prepared to fight to defend the flaming flag. The women yelled and grabbed their children. And then Cathy Malone had a great idea. She took off her shawl, raised her head with brow bared, closed her eyes and launched into ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’, her fists pressed against her dress. Da and the others took off their caps, old soldiers standing to attention. The guards were flabbergasted. Stopped in their tracks by the first notes, they pulled themselves together as though summoned by a whistle. Stationary, side by side, they adjusted their belts with a thumb and lifted their fingers to the peaks of their caps. Not a sound could be heard: just our national anthem, our crystal pride, and Cathy Malone bawling her eyes out. The enemy flag was burning where it had fallen on the damp street, defied by a handful of patriots, a few women wrapped in shawls, ten children with grazed knees, and two gardaí in uniform. In my entire life, with all the huge commemorations and grandiose celebrations, I’ve never really recaptured the crude beauty and joy of that moment.

At the border, their flag was very small and worn. It was at half-mast, like washing hung out to dry. But this time it was a real one. And real British men. I had the impression that they were more smartly dressed than our soldiers. That might have been because they frightened me. Mother had told us to lower our eyes when they spoke to us, but I looked directly at them.

— Have you come to fight the Jerries? asked the soldier searching me.

— The what?

The fellow gave me a strange look. He had a weird accent, the same as Lawrence’s. He was a Northern Irishman slipped inside a British uniform. There was an insignia on his jacket, a harp surmounted by a crown.

— The Jerries? You know… the Krauts, the Fritz, time to wake up, sonny!

— The Germans, my uncle whispered.

The soldier patted down my back, between my thighs and under my arms, which were stretched out on either side of me.

— Don’t you know we’re at war?

— Yes, I know that.

He opened my bag and stuck his hand inside as though it were his own.

— No, you don’t. You know nothing, you Irish. Not a bloody thing! spat the soldier who was searching the truck.

He was the real thing. An Englishman from England. My father often used to imitate their way of speaking, upper lip stuck to his teeth and the same ridiculous intonation as the men on the radio.

— Don’t look me in the eye, you cheeky Irish brat! Turn around. Turn around all of you, hands in the air and face against the tarpaulin!

My uncle forced me to turn around. We put our hands up.

— Your thing is shooting us in the back, isn’t that it?

I sensed him behind me.

— Bet you were delighted when those IRA bastards declared war last year?

I didn’t reply.

— You know they plant bombs in cinemas in London, in Manchester? In post offices? At train stations? Have you heard about that? What do you think of that, you Irish?

— He’s only sixteen, my mother let out.

— Shut up, you! I’m talking to the little snot here.

— Let it go, the other soldier murmured quietly.

He made me turn around again, lower my arms. He gave me back my messed-up bag.

— You’re coming to help us win the war, is that it, snot-nose?

I looked at his muddy shoes. I thought hard of my father.

— Because if not, there’s nothing to see over this side.

I met his eyes again.

— Traitors are hanged. We’ve enough to be doing with Hitler, got it?

He raised his voice.

— Right! Listen to me. You’re entering the United Kingdom. There’s no de Valera here, no neutrality, none of your papist bullshit. If you don’t agree you can just turn right around now!

I met Lawrence’s silent look. It warned me to keep my mouth shut, forehead still pressed against the tarp, arms still raised.

So I lowered my head, like him, like Mother, like my brothers and sisters. Like all the Irish waiting on the roadside.

My uncle lived close to Cliftonville in the north of Belfast city. It was a Catholic ghetto, a nationalist bastion surrounded by neighbourhoods full of Protestants loyal to the British monarch. He was a childless widower and owned two houses next door to each other with an adjoining yard. The first was his chimney-sweep workshop and he lived in the second. I’d never seen streets as narrow, or such bleak, straight, endless rows of brick. Each family had its shoebox, strictly identical. A front door, two windows at street level, two on the first floor, a slate roof and a tall chimney. There were none of the coloured facades you’d see at home in those striking greens, yellows or blues. Just dark Belfast brick, dirty red in colour, and the window curtains that were the only friendly feature. Even the Virgins praying against the panes were the same in every house, blue and white plaster and bought from Hanlon’s, the local grocery.

We lived at 19 Sandy Street. My mother settled in with Róisín, Mary, Áine and baby Sara in one of the upstairs rooms. Wee Kevin, Brian and Niall took the other one, with the window overlooking the yard. Seánie and I had placed our mattresses in the living room on the ground floor. We tore up and down the narrow stairway, laughing, we took over the space. The glass was missing from the kitchen window and had been replaced with a piece of wood. Everything was damp, the wallpaper was peeling, the chimney drew poorly, but we had a roof over our heads.

For our first evening in Belfast, Lawrence had made a mutton and cabbage stew. From now on he’d stay in his workshop but would keep our key. People locked their doors in Belfast. We sat down on the floor, on the mattresses, in the armchair and on the couch, our plates on our knees. I was hungry. My uncle said grace in his own way.

— My Lord, let our plates be always full, and our glasses always topped up. May the roof over our heads remain solid enough. And may we get to heaven a wee half-hour before the devil learns we’re dead. Amen.

Mother raised her eyes to heaven. She didn’t like anyone joking about hell. We blessed ourselves. I immediately liked this man. He cut the bread and shared it out fairly.

— Thank Uncle Lawrence, Mother said as she cleared away our plates.

— Thank you, Uncle Lawrence!

He didn’t reply. He rarely replied. Wee Kevin asked him one day if his lips were glued together. I think he smiled.

Seánie wanted to go out but Mother asked him to stay in front of the house. I went with him. It was almost a soft evening, only a light drizzle. Groups of men stood talking, dotted all over the street, leaning against the walls. Every time someone passed, the others would greet him. They all addressed one another by their first names. It was the same in our village.

I’d just turned sixteen. And that evening, the first of my new life, in an Ireland that still wasn’t mine, I met Sheila Costello. She was fourteen and lived in the house to the left of ours heading up the street. She was tall. She had short, black hair, liquid-green eyes and that smile. For a few bob my sister Mary would soon be minding her sister in the evenings when their parents went to the pub. I kissed Sheila a few days later, one Sunday, in the dark, just after the Angelus. She had bent her head slightly so our lips could meet. She told me that a kiss was nothing, that you shouldn’t do it again or go any further. And then she called me ‘wee man’. That’s how she became my wife.

— Don’t you know we’re at war? the Englishman had asked me.

That evening, 15 April 1941, we learned it.

We had just gone to bed. Sheila’s image was flashing behind my eyelids when I closed my eyes. She said I had a ‘country’ accent. I wanted to try my best to imitate hers. I was sinking into my night, Seánie’s back against mine, pushing away his cold leg. Suddenly everything shook. There was an unholy din, a crash of steel, of smashed metal, very low above the houses.

— Fuck, those are planes! my brother said.

He got up, looked at the ceiling. He switched on the light. We could hear the screech of sirens. Panic on the stairs. A terrified rabble. Mother was grey, baby Sara in tears, my sisters in their night faces. Wee Kevin’s mouth hung open, Niall had a crazed look. Uncle Lawrence came in and asked us to get dressed quickly. The first bomb knocked Brian to the floor, just the noise. My brother fell flat on his back, his eyes rolled back in his head. Lawrence gathered him up in his arms. He spoke loudly and rapidly. He said we had nothing to fear. That the German planes had already come but that they didn’t bomb our neighbourhoods, that they attacked the city centre, the port, the stations, the barracks, the rich but not the destitute.

— Not the poor! Don’t kill the poor! my mother prayed, going out to the street.

We had reformed our pathetic caterpillar, each of us clinging to the other by the corner of a garment. Lawrence was at the head of the line. Families were spilling out, leaving their doors open. Fear distorted their faces. It was almost midnight. The moon was full, the clear sky had stripped the city. The planes were above us, below us, overwhelming our senses, roaring right inside our bellies. We didn’t dare look at them. We lowered our heads for fear of being struck by their wings. The city was burning in the distance, but none of our houses was alight.

— Lord spare us! my mother cried, pressing her cheek against baby Sara’s.

At the end of the street there was a huge explosion, a white burst of flame flowered in the chapel where we were going to take shelter. The sound of war. Real, staggering. The storm of men. The crowd was in chaos, suddenly on the ground, thrown, knocked down, heaped in screaming disorder along the walls. Some of them died where they stood, open-mouthed. Others collapsed helplessly.

We formed a ring of fear, our backs to the danger. Lawrence knelt down, Mother and the wee ones in the centre. Seánie, Róisín, Mary, my uncle and I were protecting them. We were wrapped around one another, heads pressed together and eyes closed.

— Don’t look at the flashes, they’ll blind you! screamed a woman.

We repeated the Hail Mary, faster and faster, tearing through the words. We were repenting. Mother was no longer praying, she had abandoned that familiar peace. Rosary wrapped around her wrist, a bracelet of beads, she was screaming at Mary the way you howl at the moon. She was calling out for her to protect us in the middle of the inferno.

We were never able to reach the O’Neill factory with its enormous basement. We stayed where we were until the war grew weary. The planes went away, disappeared behind the black mountains. And we returned amid the rubble. Our street was intact. Houses were burning just behind it. The entire northern section of the city had been demolished.

— The Protestants got what they deserved, growled a guy as he looked at the red and black sky above York Street.

— You think the Jerries can tell the difference? a neighbour asked.

The guy looked at him angrily.

— What’s bad for the Brits is good for us!

It was four in the morning. Everything stank of acrid fire. With the help of the Blessed Virgin, Mother put her wee ones to bed. She was speaking to her, thanking her in a low voice. My mother’s face: dreadful tears, smeared with snot and foamy saliva, hair tumbling. She pleaded with her. She should no longer turn away from our family. She needed to be there, always. Okay? Promise? Promise me, Mary! Promise me!

Lawrence took his trembling sister by the shoulders and folded her into his chest.

In the morning, I walked with Seánie and my uncle through Belfast for the first time in my life. The silence was shattered, the city turned upside down. All around you could hear the sound of glass, of shifting steel, fallen rubble. We stumbled amongst the blocks, the piles of bricks, the wood ripped away from timber structures. Beams blocked off avenues, lying between electricity poles and tram cables. The post-catastrophe dust lay over everything. White and grey smoke, fire flickering beneath the ruins. At the centre of vacant lots, bombs had hollowed out craters that were now filled with muddy water. We came across a car engulfed by a fountain of street. Men were wandering around, hands black, sooty faces, trousers and coats covered in ash. Others were standing at crossroads, beyond alone, speechless, their gaze devastated. There were very few women about. We heard the occasional uneven clopping of a horse passing, or a wheelbarrow. The locals clattered along on bicycles, matching the rhythm of the surrounding cacophony. Some students were standing in front of a building whose facade was missing, shovels in their hands. Four of them in medical-faculty uniform were carrying a wounded person.

And then I saw my first casualty of war, a few feet away. One arm was sticking out from under a blanket on a stretcher that lay on the ground. A woman’s arm, her nightdress melted onto her flesh. Seánie put a hand over my eyes. I shook him off.

— Let him look, my uncle told him.

I looked. The arm of the woman, her hand with its painted nails, skin hanging from the elbow to the wrist like a torn sleeve. We passed very close to her. The shape of the head underneath the fabric, her chest and then nothing, the blanket sagged from around the level of her waist. No legs left. In the street a newspaper vendor was selling the Belfast Telegraph. He was yelling about the hundreds dead, the thousand wounded. As for me, I saw an arm. I didn’t cry. I did the same as everyone else who passed. I touched my index and middle fingers to my forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder. In the name of the Father and all the others. I decided to no longer be a child.

On Jennymount Street there was a man playing the piano, sitting on a wooden chair. The instrument had been rescued from the blaze and pulled outside, with its film of ash and debris. A few children had drawn near, their mothers with them, and some soldiers, too. I knew that song. I’d often heard it on Irish radio. ‘Guilty’, a love song.

If it’s a crime then I’m guilty, guilty of loving you…

The musician was making faces. Winking. He was imitating Al Bowlly, the Killybegs girls’ favourite singer.

— Pity he isn’t Irish, my mother had said one day.

— Good job he isn’t, my father had responded.

And he would turn the dial on the radio that sat on the counter of Mullin’s. It was a game they played. My father would have challenged Bowlly at singing if he could, him with his gravelly voice, Bowlly with his honey.

— The voice of a eunuch, Padraig Meehan used to say.

He was wrong, and he knew it. But nothing British was allowed to offend our ears. Neither order nor song.

London was bombed two days after Belfast, on 17 April. Al Bowlly died in his home, blown up by a parachute mine. His ballad was aired on the BBC as a funeral hymn.

In front of a gutted house on the Crumlin Road, a crowd was gathered around several firemen. They weren’t wearing firemen shoes and their coats were drenched by the fire hoses.

— Those are Irishmen from Ireland! a man shouted.

Their captain was giving curt orders. I immediately recognized an accent from my country. I saw the Dublin Fire Brigade truck. Irishmen. Thirteen fire brigades had crossed the border in the morning, from Dundalk and Drogheda, too. The residents were offering them coffee and bread. Irishmen. I went closer. I wanted everyone to know that they were from my country. Each time a passer-by joined the crowd I would tell them the good news. The Irish had come to help. I could see the border soldier with his blond moustache and his thin lips. I replayed the scene.

— Have you come to fight the Jerries?

— You bet!

An old woman arrived with her arms in the air like a prisoner. She had mistaken the Dublin accent for a German one. She was removing debris from her house. She was groggy, covered in soot and bits of plaster. When people pointed out the Irish fire engine she sat down on the pavement, shaking her head, convinced now that the blast of the bombs had thrown her to the other end of the country.

The crowd was spilling into the street. A few soldiers broke it up. They pushed a journalist from the Belfast Telegraph away and confiscated his camera. Ireland was neutral and its presence here, assisting a combatant country, even just fighting fires, could embarrass the Irish government. Our firemen went back across the border the same day.

Our sadness turned to anger. I listened to the crushed city, the fragmented discourse. ‘I never did like washing the windows. Now I’ve a good reason not to do it any more,’ a shopkeeper had written on his cracked shop window. At the corner of Victoria Street and Ann Street, perched on a breeze block, a man was shouting that Northern Ireland was unprotected. That even the least important English town had shelters, anti-aircraft defences, troops, real fire services.

— Do you know how many anti-aircraft guns we have here, do you? shouted the man.

He was waiting for a response, but most people continued on their way, ashamed to lend him an ear.

— Twenty-odd in the whole of Ulster! And anti-aircraft shelters? Four! Only four, counting the public toilets on Victoria Street! And spotlights? How many? Eh? How many beams for tracking the planes? A dozen! There were over two hundred bombers last night, Fritz’s best, eh? Junkers! Dorniers! And as for us, what did we have?

— Damned papist! a guy passing yelled without turning.

The speaker shook his fist at him.

— Imbecile! I’m a loyal Protestant! British like you! A member of Coleraine’s Orange Order, so spare me your lecture!

And then he got down from his breeze block. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and put his limp hat back on while muttering once more:

— Imbecile!

A Protestant. It was the first time in my life I’d seen one.

3. Killybegs, Sunday, 24 December 2006

I have often come back to Killybegs, to my father’s house. Even now there is still no electricity or running water. I left the cottage as it was. In memory of my mother, crouched before the fireplace, rekindling the embers, hands cupped around her lips, and of my father, sitting at the table, fists under his chin, waiting for the rain to stop.

My wife Sheila never liked coming here with me. She used to say that the house was a tomb. That Padraig Meehan’s evil shadow flickered across my face when I was under his roof. My brothers and sisters never came back. United States, England, Australia, New Zealand. Apart from baby Sara, they all opted for exile. So I kept the key. I alone. I kept it as though protecting some scrap of memory. Since the Sixties it’s here I have always come to take refuge. To escape Belfast, the city, the fear, the British. To cross the border, find the Ireland that still belongs to our flag. I come from time to time, for a few days or a few weeks, to draw the water from the well, to shiver in front of the black hearth. To walk in the forest and gather the armful of wood for the night. To be startled by nothing but the crackling of the fire. I put a new coat of whitewash on the thick walls. I repaired the slate roof. I chopped down the old diseased elm tree, but kept the huge fir. Over all these years, with nothing to hurry me, fearing nobody, I came here on retreat. A hermit, a monk from our monasteries, a recluse.

I have often come back to my father’s house, but when I arrived here four days ago, I came to die. Without my wife, without my son. Alone, off a bus from Dublin. Sheila joined me two days later, for an hour. She brought me supplies, beer, vodka, Seánie’s hurley, and then she left again to go back to Belfast. I didn’t want her to stay. Too dangerous. Jack should be coming to see me in early January.

On the kitchen wall I drew a rough calendar in black pencil, similar to the ones we used to make in prison so as not to lose track of time: 24 December 2006. One stroke per day and a cross through each week. For the first three days I managed to stay inside. The cottage had become my den. I barricaded the door from the inside, blocking the handle with a plank. Sheila had sewn me some dark curtains. At night, I drew them carefully before lighting my candles.

My wife and son had begged me to avoid Mullin’s. They feared for my life. They were right, no doubt. After three days shut away in my father’s house, though, I gave up hiding.

That morning, I walked into the village to buy a notebook and some pens. I have the urge to write. Not to confess, and certainly not to offer explanations, but to recount, to leave a trace. Then I walked along the harbour, the bog, along the edge of the wintery forest. I was just an old man, cap down over my eyes and wearing a jacket that has seen better days. Nobody would recognize me as Meehan the traitor. Not even that bastard Timmy Gormley, who had never budged from the street he grew up on, and who would surely die one day crossing it with shuffling footsteps.

I called Sheila on my mobile phone.

— Someone will recognize you. Go back to the cottage, my wife begged.

She wanted to live with me here, in spite of everything. But I refused. Too risky. Belfast had become stifling for her, so she had gone to Strabane to stay with a friend.

— They’ll come, she whispered.

Of course, they will come. They had already come, for that matter. When I arrived here, I cleaned off the word ‘Traitor!’ that was smeared in black tar over the whitewashed wall. But what am I meant to do? Wait in Belfast, or here, behind the curtains of the house or in front of my pint in the pub, what difference will it make? They will come, I know that.

I had decided. Every evening, I’ll walk through the door of Mullin’s, drink the Guinness my father drank, sit at his round table against the wall, between the dartboard and the jacks. My father’s window, his doorway, his drunken front steps. Today, even my first pint was for him. I drank it with my eyes closed. And then I looked around the pub. Everything had changed; nothing had changed. It was smaller than in my schoolboy’s memory. The smells had lost their intensity. Posters had replaced the framed drawings on the walls. The voices were softer, the laughter absent. But on the floor, close to the table, you could see the mark from the old stove that used to be crammed with turf. The wooden floor still bore the scuffs of old footfalls, spilled drinks, cigarette burns. Shards of our past were everywhere.

I felt good. I took the sliotar out of my pocket, the hurling ball Tom Williams had given me sixty years previously. When he threw it to me one night in the middle of the street it was white, almost new. He had used it once, in a friendly match against an Armagh team. The captain from the opposing team was fifteen years old. He and his lads had hammered Belfast. As a tribute to the losing team they had signed the sliotar and given it to Tom as a gift. Today the names were worn away. The ball was the colour of slate after rain. The leather was flaking and the seams were split, like the wrinkled skin of an old man. Inside, the cork was black and hard as a peat briquette. It wasn’t even round any more, or smooth, or even a ball at that. A burst prune. The talisman of a condemned man.

I placed the notebook on the round table. It was a schoolchild’s copybook with an emerald-green cover. I stroked it with the flat of my hand for a long time before even opening it. I hesitated. I wanted to write ‘Tyrone Meehan’s Journal’ on the cover, but that sounded too pretentious. ‘Confessions’ didn’t have the right ring to my ear, either. Nor ‘Revelations’. So I wrote nothing at all on the front. I opened the copybook, pressing the central fold flat with my fist.

On my sixth pint, I wrote a few words on the first page:

Now that everything is out in the open, they will all speak in my place — the IRA, the British, my family, my close friends, journalists I’ve never even met. Some of them will go so far as to explain how and why I ended up a traitor. It incenses me that books may well be written about me. Do not listen to any of their claims. Do not trust my enemies, and even less my friends. Ignore those who will say they knew me. Nobody has ever walked in my shoes, nobody. The only reason I am speaking out now is because I am the only one who can tell the truth. Because after I’m gone, I hope for silence.

I dated it: Killybegs, 24 December 2006. I signed my name and then I left to go home.

I went back up the street, passed the village limit. I went back to the damp and pitch-black house, Tom’s sliotar gripped in my hand, inside my pocket. I wasn’t drunk, I was dizzy, relieved, uneasy. I had just started my journal.

4

With Great Britain at war, we knew that living in north Belfast would become difficult. It began in August 1941 with a few rocks being hurled at our door. ‘Irish bastards’ was scrawled in black graffiti across Lawrence’s workshop. One night in September, we doused a petrol bomb thrown through the living-room window. Farther up along Sandy Street, a Catholic family decided to leave for the Republic. And then two others followed them from Mills Terrace. Every night Protestants used to creep into our neighbourhood and smear insults across the fronts of our houses. ‘Papist traitors out!’ ‘Catholic = IRA’. Lawrence kept a club next to his bed. Seánie would slip his hurley under the mattress. But we weren’t prepared for battle.

The Costello family retreated to the Beechmount neighbourhood just after Christmas. They did it in three trips, taking their time. I kissed Sheila again. Their house burned the same night.

The Loyalists were cleaning their streets. They were Protestant, British and at war. We were Catholic, Irish and neutral. Cowards or spies. They used to say that in the Republic of Ireland the towns left their lights on all night to show the Luftwaffe the way to Belfast. They used to say that in Northern Ireland we were the fifth column, the craftsmen of the German invasion. We were accused of preparing secret landing fields for their planes and paratroopers. We were foreigners, enemies. All they wanted was for us to cross back over the border or stay in our ghettos.

But Lawrence refused to leave. In 1923, his parents had held out as they were gradually surrounded by deserted houses with gaping windows. One evening, Mother’s brother spoke more than he intended to. He said that every part of Ireland was our home, from Dublin to Belfast, from Killybegs to 19 Sandy Street. He said that they were the foreigners — the Protestants, the Unionists — those descendents of colonizers who had usurped our houses and lands thanks to Cromwell’s sword. He said that we had the same rights as them, and were due the same consideration. He said it was a question of dignity. And I listened to him. And I heard my father. I loved my father through my uncle’s anger. Lawrence Finnegan, he was Padraig Meehan minus the alcohol and the blows.

My uncle had stopped drinking ten years previously. His car had overturned one evening on his way back from Derry, hit a pole, then a tree and rolled into the ditch. He and Hilda were returning from the doctor’s surgery. The results of his wife’s tests were not good. They would not be having children, ever. Nothing but him and her, every morning, every evening, all the days of their lives. And that’s the way it would be until one of them died and the other followed. On the way home, they drank to forget. They crossed over the border in tears, shouting at the Brits through the open window. Long live the Republic! And there it was again at last! And he lost control on Irish soil. The car turned over. Lawrence lived. Hilda died. Since then, my uncle had replaced drunkenness with silence.

We were in the middle of saying our evening prayers when the Protestants entered Sandy Street on Sunday, 4 January 1942. They smashed through our door with an axe and threw lit torches into the hallway. Lawrence tipped the couch over to protect us. The girls came tearing down from the first floor, screaming. Mother was holding baby Sara by a leg, her head hanging down. Seánie had his hurley in his hand and my uncle roared at him not to move, not to try a thing, to hide with us behind the velvet cushions.

— You clear out of here tomorrow! shouted a man’s voice.

I didn’t see him. I saw nobody. I had my head between my knees and my eyes closed. My sisters, brothers and mother were all around me on the ground, our arms and legs tangled together. They came in. They broke the windows, tearing off the lattice of sticky paper that protected the panes from the German bombs. They broke the soup tureen from Galway. They tore up the photo of Pope Pius XII. They destroyed everything, trampled everything. They went upstairs, avoiding us, running past on either side of our shelter. There were eleven of us, all on top of one another, taking refuge under a sofa upturned against a wall. That is to say naked, exposed and defenceless. They could have killed us, but they didn’t. They stepped over us, ignored us. They didn’t speak. They vandalized everything familiar without a word. They only existed in the noise of their steps and their breathing. They even tore the head off Dodie Dum, baby Sara’s soother. They upset everything, and then they left.

— Tomorrow! the voice shouted again.

Seánie was the first to go outside, stick in hand and tears in his eyes. He was the oldest of the Meehans, the head of the family, and he had failed. He was the only one left to replace our father and he hadn’t done it. He was in the deserted street shouting at the bastards, his wooden stick useless. Lawrence was throwing buckets of water on the flames licking the living-room curtains. The fire was roaring in the girls’ room. We no longer had a choice. It was time. We had held on up until that point, a few months, a few days more. Most of our neighbours had given in. We were the last, or near enough. I can still see my uncle bringing Seánie back into our hostile house, a hand on his neck, telling him that what was needed now was to save what could be saved. And also that he, Seánie, had protected us. That protecting was better than killing. That we all owed him our lives. I remember my brother’s face. He looked at my uncle, trying to grasp what he had just been told. And then he rushed to the first floor to snatch some clothes from the inferno.

Later, while the roof burned, Seánie came back with the last bags. Áine, wee Kevin and Brian slowly circled him. My brother crouched down. He hugged them to himself, all wrapped up together, an armful of frightened children being told, ‘I love you.’

When Lawrence’s truck arrived in Dholpur Lane, the residents came out to meet us.

— The families from Sandy Street! a kid yelled.

It was four in the morning, 6 January. The front doors along the street opened almost simultaneously, as though the neighbourhood had been waiting for us. The women had slipped their coats on over their nightclothes. Men lowered the tailgate to help out a family in tatters. We’d been able to save two mattresses, four chairs, the kitchen table and some clothes.

I was carrying a mattress on my head. It was bending down in front and behind me, threatening to topple at every step and blocking my vision. Brian, Niall and Seánie were carrying the table. Róisín, Mary and Áine were laden with bags of clothes. Wee Kevin was dragging a chair along the street. Mother’s load was baby Sara, and also our plaster Virgin, which she held pressed against her child. A woman wrapped them up in a blanket.

Around twenty young lads rushed towards us with wheelbarrows. They piled up the bags, the table and the chairs. A young man was giving them short orders. They called him Tom. An officer deploying soldiers sprang to mind.

— You want some help?

I looked at Tom without responding. He was a tall, dark-haired lad, not much older than I was. He lifted the mattress off my head and we carried it together as far as number seventeen, a black and red door that had been opened for us.

My uncle was broken. I had never seen him like that. With his back against an orange streetlight, he was staring down at his shadow on the ground. He seemed indifferent to everything. A few men surrounded him. One of them placed a hand on his shoulder. Lawrence had brought us out of the inferno. And now that we were saved, he was trying to pull himself together. He was cold and afraid. His face was covered in grime and soot, like when he came home from work after battling chimneys. He was alone. He had lost everything.

Tom put the mattress down in a corner of the room. He had carried it on his own in the end and I had followed him. I looked at our new street, the neighbours’ faces, the reassuring Virgins against the frozen windows.

— It’s not big, but you’ll be able to breathe here, Tom said.

The guy had his fists on his hips. He was looking everywhere at once, as though surveying the street.

— There’s no need to be afraid of anything here, isn’t that right? my mother asked him.

Tom smiled. Here? Nothing would ever happen to us here. We were at home, in the heart of the ghetto. Protected by our numbers and our anger.

— And also by the IRA, our host added.

The IRA. I shuddered. Lawrence noticed. He shrugged and asked me to help him carry the table instead of standing around with empty hands.

The IRA. No longer three black letters, painted in a hateful smear across our wall. No longer a condemnation heard on the radio. No longer something to be afraid of, an insult, the devil’s other name. Now it was a hope, a promise. It was my father’s flesh, his entire life, his memory and his legend. It was his pain, his loss, the defeated army of our country. I’d never heard those three letters uttered by any lips but his. And here was a strapping young lad daring to smile about them in the middle of a street.

The IRA. Suddenly, I saw them everywhere. In that guy smoking a pipe and carrying blankets. Those women in shawls who wrapped us in their silence. That old man crouching on the pavement repairing our oil lamp. I saw it in the lads who were helping to ease our exile. I saw it behind every window, every curtain pulled to mislead the planes. I saw it in the air that was thick with turf smoke, in the day that was breaking. I felt it within me. In me, Tyrone Meehan, sixteen years old, son of Padraig and of Ireland’s soil. Chased from my village by misery, banished from my neighbourhood by the enemy. The IRA, me.

I offered Tom my hand. Like two men shaking on a deal. He looked at it, looked at me and hesitated.

And then he smiled once more. His palm was freezing, his fingers firm.

— Tyrone Meehan, I said.

We were in the middle of the street. I would have liked to have seen myself at that moment. I felt certain that this outstretched hand was my first manly gesture.

— Tom Williams.

He looked at me for a moment and then added:

— Lieutenant Thomas Joseph Williams, C Company, 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade in the Irish Republican Army.

He laughed at my wide eyes.

— I’m nineteen. Just call me Tom.

I joined the IRA on 10 January 1942, four days after we arrived in Dholpur Lane. Actually, not the IRA, not exactly. I was too young. Nobody in the area knew us. Being driven away by Loyalists was not enough to establish confidence. Like Tom before me and numerous IRA volunteers, I first joined Na Fianna Éireann, the Republic’s boy scouts. Since 1939 the Fianna were very diminished. They were forbidden in the Republic and in Northern Ireland, hounded and imprisoned on both sides of the border. Those who had tasted life in British prisons said that men in Irish jails had no reason to be envious.

Every Republican neighbourhood had its own youth unit. The IRA was divided into brigades and battalions. We were gathered into cumainn.

Our local meeting place on Kane Street was tiny and dark. It contained a table, a few chairs and a boxing ring. It looked like a sports hall, not a Republican headquarters. I spent my time between the ropes, fists raised in front of my eyes. We learned to punch without hesitating and to be punched without reacting. The lad in charge of us was called Daniel ‘Danny’ Finley, who showed no feelings or warmth and didn’t utter one word more than was strictly necessary. He was my age. His family had fled the Short Strand area after his twin brother, Declan, was lynched.

Declan was on his way back from secondary school in his Catholic uniform, with its green tie striped with ochre and the St Comgall coat of arms. The pavement was covered in rubble. He hesitated, then crossed the road, stepping over the invisible line that separated the two communities, and walked along the other pavement, on the Protestant side. He wasn’t trying to provoke anyone or start anything. He was making a detour to avoid a crumbling building.

A truck transporting timber drove past. Sitting on top of the stacked planks were a dozen Protestant schoolboys in blue blazers. One of them shouted, ‘Hey! A fucking Taig!’

Taig. Fucking Fenian. Filthy papist. The favourite insult of Loyalists in short pants. Declan raced back across the street and hit the kerb. He fell over, shouting. The blues pounced on him. He tried to protect himself by lying on his side, eyes closed, head between his fists and knees pressed against his chest. A child in his mother’s belly. They hit him with their knees, their fists. One boy jumped with both feet together on his head. Another threw a concrete block on his chest. And then they ran off, catching up with the truck at the crossroads and jumping back on, singing:

— At home! At home! This is our home!

A man cautiously opened his door, others moved towards the victim. A woman came out with a glass of water. All Catholic, all living along this street. Some adults looked on from the other side of the street.

Declan Finley died, his face crushed and his fists clenched. When the emergency services arrived, the boy’s spilled blood was brown, thick, mingled with the dust. With the aid of his walking stick, an old man crouched down. He dipped his right hand in the puddle and crossed the street, palm raised. On the opposite footpath stood a hundred silent figures. They parted. The nationalist carefully smeared the blood on their footpath. A man moved forward, two others held him back. The old man returned, turning his back to them.

The paramedics lifted Declan into an ambulance. On the other side, some kids were rubbing away the martyr’s blood by scraping their shoes on the ground.

That was just before the war. The Finley family left the ghetto to take refuge in west Belfast. Like so many others. Again, and again, and again. Coming from the north and the east of the city, Catholics were arriving in their hundreds and piling up in the brick catacombs.

I respected Daniel, but he frightened me. In the ring he punched like there was nothing to hold him back. One day, his nose bled in a torrent. He took off his gloves, wiped himself with both hands, then smeared the face of the guy who had dealt him the blow, his drenched, sticky fingers covering the terrified face. I was relieved to be on his side, on that of the Irish Republic, James Connolly, Tom Williams, on my father’s side. I sincerely pitied the guys who had to face us.

One Saturday in February 1942 I took part in my first military operation. For several months, the Northern Command had been collecting all available arms hidden in the Republic since the War of Independence. Some volunteers were crossing the border that night to hand the weapons over to the four Belfast battalions. We were children. We didn’t know much about this great countrywide relocation, and it was well after the war that we learned the scale of these clandestine transportations. Under the orders of the Republican Army Council, close to twelve tonnes of arms, munitions and explosives had been moved over fields on foot, in trucks, carts, on the backs of men and women, and without the British or Irish army suspecting anything.

That night, Tom Williams came to headquarters to pick out two Fianna.

— Can you whistle, Tyrone?

I told him yes, of course, since forever.

— Whistle.

I brought my two index fingers to my lips.

My father used to love my whistle, my mother hated it. In Killybegs, it was the Meehan gang’s signal for when we came across Timmy Gormley and his lot. Father Donoghue used to say that only the devil’s call could pierce the human ear in that way.

I whistled.

Tom didn’t look surprised. He simply nodded his head.

— In case of danger, I want them to hear you in Dublin.

Daniel whistled without his fingers. He rolled his upper lip and stuck his tongue to his bared teeth.

— Danny and Tyrone, ordered Lieutenant Williams as he headed out the door.

He and I received a dozen pats on the back. The other boys were pleased for us, and proud, too.

In the street, a woman and a girl were waiting for us to come out. I knew the first one, a fighter from Cumann na mBan, the IRA women’s organization. The girl probably belonged to Cumann na gCailíní, the Republican girl scouts. Tom walked in front, we followed in silence. Five shadows on the street.

— Tyrone.

The OC had whispered. Without stopping, he indicated the corner of O’Neill Street and Clonard Street with a jerk of his chin, tossing me a white sliotar edged in black. I caught it in one hand without thinking. A hurling ball signed by the Armagh team. Why? As a front? Of course, no question about it. You had to understand with a glance or stay back at headquarters. I took up my position and threw the sliotar against the wall so it bounced back into my palm. A kid passing the time.

Tom continued on his way.

— Danny.

Daniel Finley took up his position opposite me, on the other side of the road, facing Odessa Street. A bike was waiting for him, turned upside down against the wall, tyres in the air and the chain hanging off. My comrade knelt down, as though fixing it. The young girl went down as far as the corner of the Falls Road with her officer, and they stood there in a porch, like a mother and daughter.

Everything happened too quickly. Daniel was bent over his bike, the streets were empty. Then two cars pulled up. Eight men got out at a run, their arms weighed down. The IRA. Four turned into Odessa Street, the others passed in front of me.

—’Bout ye, Tyrone, a guy whispered to me.

I didn’t recognize him, didn’t even look at him. I was keeping watch over my corner of Ireland, my brick street, my wee soldier’s patch. I only saw the steel of the guns flashing in the light of a window whose curtains hadn’t been properly closed. Guns. Guns from the war. Republican arms. I’d never seen their metal, never imagined the wood of their butts, and there they were by the armload, flying past me within arm’s reach, wrapped in grey blankets.

Doors were opened. Men entered houses, backyards, tiny gardens. The cars left again. Tom came back alone. He passed right beside me. His face, his lowered eyes, his hurried profile. He was whistling ‘God Save Ireland’. He went back up towards Clonard Street. I was almost disappointed. I had imagined a wink or a word. Across the way, Daniel righted the bicycle and headed off as well. It was his eleventh time being a lookout. He knew how these things finished.

— You can call me Danny, Finley threw at me without turning.

So I left my wall. I put the sliotar in my pocket and went back to Dholpur Lane. I was walking differently. I was someone else. I passed a couple, a woman with her child, a young girl who was carrying her gas mask over her shoulder like a stylish bag. They didn’t notice me, even though I was a Fianna now, an Irish warrior. An IRA soldier, almost. In a few days, at seventeen years of age, I would join Tom Williams and the others. I’d be the one on the street, running through the cold night, weighed down for combat. I’d be brushing past an open-mouthed back-up Fianna in short pants. I’d secretly slip him his name. I’d be the one he watched vanish into our obscurity. It would be me, Tyrone Meehan. And I would be whistling ‘God Save Ireland’.

For the time being, though, either sitting on the ground or with my back against the ropes of the boxing ring, I was studying. I had left school to take up Republican education. Teachers used to move from cumann to cumann educating the Fianna. I had everything to learn about our country’s history. All I knew of our struggle was from my father’s stumbling drunken words and gesticulations. Though I knew the major dates and hallowed names, it was without having grasped their significance. My credo was infantile: ‘Brits out!’ I had inherited that certainty from my father, but nothing else.

One particular day, our class was tense and the group was divided. Our teacher was a woman. For an hour she had been explaining that the war currently devastating Europe was no concern of either our party, our army, or our people, but that perhaps we could gain something from it.

On the makeshift board consisting of some slates attached to a wooden surface, she wrote the phrase delivered in 1916 by James Connolly, the Irish trade unionist, soldier and martyr: ‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland!’ On that Easter Monday, while the British were fighting alongside the Americans and the French in the trenches of the Somme, and the Northern Irish Protestants who had joined the king’s army en masse were being cut to pieces in their thousands in the front line, the Irish Republicans were rebelling in the very heart of Dublin. A handful of brave men bearing arms. ‘Treason! You’ve stuck a knife in our back!’ the English had howled.

— Treason? But who had we betrayed? What had we betrayed? the teacher asked.

We weren’t allied with the British but occupied by their soldiers, tortured by their police and imprisoned under their laws. So this war was weakening them and making us stronger.

We listened as she recounted the takeover of the GPO by the insurgents, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed outside it, the savage crackdown, the crushing of the Rising and the execution post for each of our leaders, one by one. This bloody failure that wasn’t a failure. This badly doused flame that would set the entire country alight.

We had the right to ask questions, and it was Danny Finley who raised his hand. He suggested that there was a difference between 1916 and 1942, between an imperialist slaughter and a world war, between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler. He asked whether, along with the whole of Ireland, the IRA should reconsider its neutrality. I remember that moment. There were about twenty of us in the Kane Street headquarters.

— You want to lecture the IRA, Finley? asked another Fianna.

And they all started talking at the same time. Our role was not to criticize but to obey. The Army Council, the Northern Command, Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle, all these men knew what was right for Ireland.

I had taken out Tom’s sliotar and was rolling it between my palms. Danny didn’t back off.

— And what will happen if an IRA combatant kills an American by accident? Can you tell me what would happen then?

— Why would the IRA kill an American?

— Because there are thirty million of them, because they’re everywhere, in cities, in the countryside. Can you imagine it? A Republican combatant mistaking his target? An óglach aiming at an English soldier takes down a Yankee who’s handing out chocolate and biscuits to kids?

— You watch too many films, Danny!

I raised my hand. I came to his aid.

— My father was a socialist as well as a Republican and wanted to fight the Francoists in Spain. Now Franco and Hitler are hand in hand, but where are we?

— Do you know who was the leader of the Connolly Column of the International Brigades? the teacher asked.

Of course I knew. My father had never met him but he’d talked about him for a long time as our future leader.

— With Frank Ryan, we’ll crush the Irish fascists, the Blueshirts, all those dirty Brits! my father used to say.

For him, ‘British’ was synonymous with bastard. On the street or in the pub, any guy who wound him up was a Brit.

— Frank Ryan, I replied.

— And do you know where Frank Ryan is today?

No. I didn’t know. I imagined he was probably imprisoned in Spain or dead.

— In Berlin, the teacher continued.

I was flabbergasted. Frank Ryan, the socialist, the internationalist, the red, in Berlin? I sat there with my mouth agape.

— A problem for Great Britain means a solution handed to Ireland, our teacher reiterated.

We were just kids. I looked at my friends’ faces. We wanted to fight for the liberty of our country, to honour her memory, preserve her terrible beauty. Our treaties and alliances mattered little. We were ready to die for one another. Truly. And some amongst us would keep that promise.

I asked no more questions, and Danny kept his to himself.

He and I were going to wage war against the English, as our fathers had done before us. And our grandfathers, too. Asking questions was like laying down our arms.

At the end of February 1942, an IRA man entrusted me with my first pistol.

Tom Williams had posted us all over the quarter. As a sign of recognition, the girls wore green bows in their hair. The boys were all wore the red and white scarf of the Cliftonville Football Club. It was a weekday. The Belfast Solitude stadium was closed.

— There’s no match today, lads! we were told by laughing men when they saw us heading solemnly up the road.

The Republican soldiers could spring up at any moment. We were waiting for them, posted at crossroads. I was standing under a porch, leaning against the wall of an unfamiliar house. When the IRA man arrived, I jumped. He was running, his hand under his coat and his tie flying back over his shoulder. He handed me a gun. He had just wounded a soldier with a bullet in the neck. I took the weapon from him with both hands, stuffed it down my trousers, pressed flat against my belt. I crossed the road. My whole body was quivering. After a few metres a woman I had never met came up to me. She was carrying a football in a willow basket. She handed it to me without a word, then took my hand. I was slightly ashamed. I was a sixteen-year-old Fianna in active service being led along by this woman as though I were her small child.

— Someone will take you in charge. Let yourself be led, Tom had told me.

The armoured cars were surrounding the enclave. At the roadblocks, the police were searching the men, their arms in the air. A soldier beckoned us to come forward, the woman with her basket, me with my ball. In front of him the woman treated me like I was a good-for-nothing. In a very sharp, harsh and unpleasant tone she cursed the heavens aloud for having given birth to such an idiot. The British man hesitated. He threw me a sympathetic look, at once kindly and complicit — an expression of one unfortunate child recognizing another. He waved us through, and I smiled back at him, not to escape him, but to thank him.

This demonstration of humanity has haunted me for a long time. And bothered me for a long time. There couldn’t possibly be a man under that helmet, surely he was only a barbarian. To think the contrary was to falter, to betray. My father had taught me that. Tom used to reiterate it. I walked more quickly, still holding that woman’s hand, my mother in war, her child in combat. And I never spoke of that encounter to anyone, ever. Nor did I describe that look, or admit my smile.

We went to Donegal’s, a pub on the Falls Road. The room was packed. As soon as he saw us, the boss opened the security door that opened on to the backyard where two men were waiting for me, sitting on beer kegs. My arms were dangling. One of them opened my coat. When he saw the butt of the gun, he paled.

— Fucking idiot! he murmured, removing the handgun with care.

The other guy shook his head.

— What did I do?

The first man looked at me. It was as though he’d only just noticed my presence.

— Who? You, Fianna?

— Nothing, me lad, you were perfect, the other replied.

Then he turned back to the gun.

I found myself in the street, stomach bare, without that deadly weight between my skin and my shirt. My teeth were chattering. I’d had time to see the handgun. The IRA man had handed it to me with the hammer raised, ready to shoot. I had taken it from him carelessly, buried it in my trousers like a dirty magazine to show my pals. My finger had hit the deck plate, brushed against the trigger. The slightest pressure and it would have gone off. I had walked like that for fifteen long minutes, its barrel crushed against my member. Death was on the prowl. It had let me off, I must have made it smile.

5. Killybegs, Monday, 25 December 2006

This morning, two gardaí came to see me. They were embarrassed. I was drunk. I invited them in for a vodka, a festive drop. They declined. Their car was parked on the road, at the edge of the forest.

— Are you Tyrone Meehan? the younger asked.

I said I was.

The skin on his face was dark from some childhood illness. He took a notebook from his jacket. The other was looking at my cottage through the open door behind me. The large room with its bare walls, the sink with no running water, the gas lamp on the messy table, the candles, the smoke from the fireplace, the clay floor.

— You’ve come back to the country? the older one asked, searching my eyes.

I nodded. I had my hands in my pockets and had only a sweater on, no coat. I lowered my eyes.

— Are you intending to stay?

— I am staying.

The guard wrote something other than those three words, as though noting down his impressions.

— Are you living here alone?

Same nod of my head. What was I to answer? They knew that already, along with all the rest. From my first day, the Garda Síochána had been passing along the road and observing my hermit’s existence. They had seen Sheila bringing me supplies and beers. Yesterday they even took my photo as I was leaving the pub. I’d wondered when they would have the courage to come up the path and knock on my door. But now that they were standing facing me, I was disappointed. The younger one avoided my gaze and scribbled nonstop in his notebook. The other guard seemed to be counting the wrinkles on my forehead.

I took the old sliotar from my pocket, needing to do something with my hands.

— Are you… are you taking precautions?

That was how the young lad asked, biting his lip. I smiled without responding.

— That was a question, Mr Meehan, the other added.

— Are you afraid of having a corpse on your hands?

The younger man tried to protest. The older man said yes. That was it. Exactly. He explained that the villagers were starting to talk. I’d been recognized, first by the shopkeeper, and then by the guy from the post office. The owner of Mullin’s was wondering whether he should bar me. They weren’t judging me, according to the guard. Nobody was out to blame, or even to criticize me. They were simply afraid for themselves.

— Killybegs is a peaceful village, Meehan. Do you understand that? They don’t want to be caught in the crossfire.

Meehan. Not Tyrone, not Mister, nothing but my surname.

I stiffened. I started shaking. The leather ball hit the ground. The young cop picked it up and handed it to me.

This was the first time anyone had addressed me just by my surname since 16 December. That night I had been arrested by the IRA and taken in secret to the Republic to be interrogated. During the car journey, I was initially afraid they would execute me. A dirt track, one bullet, somewhere just over the border. They’d done it often enough. I’d done it, too. A bullet in each knee and a third one for the nape of the neck.

We were in two cars travelling in convoy. In the first were two officials from the Republican party, a member of the Belfast Brigade, and Mike O’Doyle. He was a decent lad whose birth I remembered from forty years previously, and who had made me godfather to his daughter. I was in the back seat of the second vehicle, squeezed between Peter Bradley and Eugene Finnegan, a lad of twenty-eight who thought himself a soldier. Pete ‘the Killer’ kept one hand on my left knee the whole way from Belfast to the outskirts of Dublin. Eugene ‘the Bear Cub’ dozed for the entire journey. I had often seen him in the Republican clubs, on lookout in our streets, marching during commemorations. He was a familiar and friendly figure. One Easter Monday he was parading with the 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade and I asked him to rectify his position. He was wearing the green uniform of the Irish Republican Army, a beret, black sunglasses, a belt and white gloves. Despite his balaclava, I recognized him. I called him the Bear Cub, like a father murmuring to his son. He lowered his eyes, taken aback by the sudden exposure. He was the warrior and I was his superior. And then, many years later on that December night in that car, when I had become a traitor and he had remained a soldier, he still used my Christian name. He was my tenuous thread, my last link with the living.

My guards were unarmed. The ceasefire protected me. Years ago, before everything changed, I had escorted a grass to be interrogated. There were five of us, dressed in yellow security outfits with grey reflective bands and piled into a van disguised as a road-service vehicle, with orange emergency lights and road-works signs piled on the roof rack. All the authorities saw were road cleaners, so they didn’t pay us any attention. We passed two armoured cars, Land Rovers belonging to the RUC, and were waved through a road block. The traitor was stretched out on the floor under a construction tarpaulin, blindfolded, his hands tied behind his back and our feet resting on his body. For miles I sat there leaning over him, the barrel of my gun pressed into the green fabric. A car led the way ahead of us. We were linked up by radio. A south-Armagh unit was waiting for us at the border. It was dark. The guy was led away by three men. His name was Freddy, he was nineteen. I read about it in the newspaper when the gardaí found his body.

When we arrived in Dublin, Eugene asked me if I wanted some water.

— That man isn’t thirsty, the driver answered.

— But Tyrone told me he was…

— Tyrone is dead, the other interrupted.

The Bear Cub put the cap back on the bottle. I still had my hand outstretched. Ireland was refusing me its water. I was smuggling its air. This country had nothing left to give me.

After dragging me through a press conference, the Republican party handed me back to the IRA. During the interrogation, I wasn’t tied up, I wasn’t blindfolded. I could look them in the eye. They were always unarmed, their faces uncovered. I knew they weren’t going to execute me, but I repeated it to myself over and over. Across from me was Mike O’Doyle, who was now acting as judge. An older guy with a Dublin accent was standing next to Mike behind the table. Mike called me Tyrone, the other just called me Meehan. It was at that point that I understood. First I had lost my country, and now I had also lost my Christian name, my fraternal identity. I was alone.

— What information did you hand over to the enemy, Meehan? the stranger asked.

A camera was watching me, and I decided not to respond. Not another word.

That’s the way the older Irish guard had just addressed me — frostily, like an IRA man. My first name still hovered timidly on the younger man’s lips, but the older man was already throwing my surname at me like an insult. I was no longer of this land, or this village, either. Padraig Meehan had given Killybegs a traitor. After the monstrous father came the disgraceful son. Our line was cursed. This guard would turn a blind eye when death came looking for me. He’d show death the way through the forest, open my door for it, point me out with a jerk of his chin. I disgusted him. He knew that I knew it. My silence clearly told him as much. The younger guy asked me three more feeble questions and the older man’s eyes never left me. He listened to my eyes, not my responses.

— What’s your name?

I asked him, just like that. My fear forgotten in the face of his contempt.

— Seánie, the guard answered softly.

— That’s my brother’s name.

He smiled. A real one, a lovely smile.

Then he handed me a folded piece of paper.

— Here’s the telephone number where you can reach us any time.

And all my impressions were turned on their head. His face was no longer the same, his brow looked troubled. He was worrying about me, quite simply. A gallant keeper of the peace, a country guard, harmless, genuine, wanting to get home to his loved ones. I had got it wrong. After so much lying I no longer knew how to read men.

— Be careful, Tyrone, Seánie said.

Everything lurched around me. My chin trembled slightly, barely noticeable. Just a leaf shaking on the end of a branch.

I went back in and locked the door behind me, pushed the latch across, habitual gestures. The fire was dying. I poured myself a large glass of vodka. The light was fading behind my curtains. I looked at my hands, I don’t know why. They were ruined after too much life. Battered, gnarled, rough and stiff. I feared time.

— With fingers like that, you’d be better off holding a gun than a violin!

I smiled. I thought of Antoine, the Parisian violin-maker I had met in Belfast thirty years before, that silent Frenchman who had one day declared himself an Irish Republican. He thought like us, lived like us, dressed like us and fought to make a place for himself between our dignity and our courage.

On Saturday, Sheila told me that he had called her. He asked her if he could meet me. What did the wee Frenchie want? To judge me? To understand me? Or to claim his portion of the treason?

6. Killybegs, Tuesday, 26 December 2006

The owner of Mullin’s had never been well disposed towards me. Since the gardaí’s visit, though, he has become hostile. Yesterday, after I left, he moved the round table where my father always sat and placed a coat stand in its place. The pub was packed when I went in this evening. The heads turned towards me, silently, the barman pulled an ugly, disgusted face. His crossed arms told me that this spot no longer belonged to me. My survival was at stake. This dark and sour chapel was Padraig Meehan’s final Station of the Cross. His last sanctum while still living. It was from here that he’d left to die in winter. If the sea had taken him, this dark corner would have been his grave. And I couldn’t let these people desecrate it.

I walked through the pub paying no heed to all the looks. I took off my rain jacket and hung it on the coat stand, then I moved the coat stand. I dragged it over to its usual spot on the other side of the room, scraping its curved feet over the greasy floor. After that I lifted my father’s table with my Meehan arms. The same as his, fists at the end. I took a chair from a pile by the door. I didn’t carry it, I dragged that along too, slowly. I propped its back against the wall, as it had been since my childhood. Then I took out my mobile phone and plugged it into the wall to charge. I took electricity wherever I found it. And then I went to the bar. Two Guinness straight off. Not a word. I just tapped twice on the Guinness tap with my index finger. The barman shot a questioning look at the owner who shrugged his shoulders before disappearing down to the basement to change a keg. So the barman carefully pulled my pints in two stages, the glasses tilted in his farmer’s hand. His eyes never left me. Over the thick liquid, the white frothy cream, our eyes locked. My forehead was raised but I wasn’t challenging him. I was Padraig and Tyrone, with the dignity of one and the weakness of the other. I was calmed. I went back to my father’s table and drank the first pint in one go, a hearty swig of earth.

Father Gibney was watching my reflection. Sitting on his barstool, back to the room, his eyes had followed me in the flecked mirror that hung over the bar. Séamus Gibney, a huge priest who did the rounds of the pubs every day after the Angelus to remind the men that there was Mass on Sunday. He had only to raise his voice to break up a scuffle, had only to tell each man off to get them to shake hands.

But that evening the priest didn’t have to raise his voice. After I arrived, nobody had touched the coat stand or the table, and none of those men had come to challenge me. The pub had gradually returned to its usual state.

Séamus Gibney was sitting in front of a forgotten glass of whiskey when the door opened. He instantly swivelled on his stool to face the door.

— Well would you look who it is! Joe McCann! Good old Joe!

The other slapped his cap against his thigh, cursing the heavens to have arrived in the pub at this particular time.

The priest’s loud voice was directed at the crowd.

— I’ve a good one for you, Joe, listen to this…

McCann knew what to expect. When a Mass deserter ventured into the pub, the priest would welcome him with his glass raised, call him by his first name, tell him the joke of the day and then the reproaches would begin.

— So here it is: Joe McCann’s walking out of the church and bumps into Father Gibney. ‘Did you like my sermon?’ the priest asks him. ‘Oh yes, Father. Thanks to you, I learn about new sins every Sunday!’

The priest burst out laughing, and the room with him.

— Come on, Joe… have a seat.

McCann moved towards the bar and the priest’s open arms, ready to be chastised.

— I was worried, Joe, you know? You have to check in from time to time.

The priest reflected while miming the pulling of a pint to the barman.

— It must be, what? Two, three months since we’ve seen you at the office?

A cheerful voice piped up from a corner of the pub.

— Maybe even longer!

— Maybe even longer, Joe. Maybe even longer.

The priest laughed and handed Joe his pint of Guinness. Then he clinked glasses with him. The sinner with his pint of ink, the priest with his glass of gold.

— And if you were to come to Mass tomorrow? If you were to come along with Nelly and the children? Hmm? What do you say, Joe? Isn’t that a good idea? And of course you’ll sit up in the front row because of your ear, okay?

The arm on the shoulder, a sugary smile, a quick glance towards the ceiling.

— And you know, I believe He’s been missing you, too…

Joe nodded and smiled dolefully before bringing the glass to his lips. I lifted mine. It was almost empty and the barman filled the next one.

That’s when Father Gibney got down from his stool. He took a chair and sat opposite me.

— May I?

— You may.

He had brought his drink with him. He drank it down in one go.

— An old friend wants to see you.

He spoke in a murmur, his elbows on the table and his hands joined in front of his mouth. He stared at me strangely. I was tense.

— To see me?

— And also to hear you.

I took a slow swig, my lips dipped in the creamy head. I was searching for something hidden deep in his eyes.

— To hear me?

— If you wish it, yes.

Hear me? I didn’t like that kind of listening. I had admitted my guilt and there was nothing else to say. I slammed my pint down on the wet table. I had understood.

— Are you referring to Josh?

My words hung in the air, my rasping voice.

The priest winked at me.

— Yes, Josh. He’s a Franciscan, lives in a monastery in Athlone.

— Josh, I repeated, and my heart felt as though it was held between claws.

— We call him Father Joseph Byrne now. He’s back home for two days.

Joseph Byrne, Father Donoghue’s angel. The kid who used to sing for our ragged wee troupe in the bog. Josh the leprechaun, the pixie who used to say grace, who prayed for us, who had stood up to the Gormley brothers without ever rolling up his sleeves.

— He wants to meet you. He told me to pass on the message.

— He wants to meet me? But why? What does he want?

My tone was getting aggressive. That was the anxiety.

The priest left my table. A meeting at St Mary’s tomorrow? It was an order. The day after, Josh would leave for Belfast. I said yes, no problem, of course. To see him, not to be heard. To be completely certain that God wasn’t making a martyr of him.

7

Uncle Lawrence died on 17 March 1942, St Patrick’s Day. A roof had abruptly given way under his weight. He slid and fell backwards, his eyes staring up at the sky and his arms wide open. The day he was buried, I had the impression that the whole of Ireland had turned up. Behind the bagpipe player in his kilt, Mother led the procession, a flimsy wreath in her hands. Then came Róisín, Mary, Áine, wee Kevin, Brian, Niall and Seánie. I was carrying baby Sara in the first row of men.

Lawrence Finnegan was not a member of the IRA, but the movement had done him the honour of flying the flag at his funeral. It was carried by a Fianna and it curled in the wind. There were hundreds of us. Many of those faces had come from elsewhere. Seánie and Tom Williams helped carry the coffin, but not me. It was passed from shoulder to shoulder without anyone beckoning me. I was too young, or too small, only good for accompanying the dead. I wasn’t sad, although sadness, in Ireland, is the last thing to die. I walked with the neighbours, the friends, the former prisoners. I followed the IRA soldiers, three long, black columns stretched along the avenue. I was proud of that crowd, content to belong both to the Meehan and the Finnegan families. Proud also of walking in the steps of Tom Williams, my leader.

Local mothers used to whisper that Tom Williams carried too much grief inside. Fathers said that faced with those eyes, death would recoil. His brow was always furrowed, lined with pain. When an emotion choked him, he would become tense. He was pained. He’d find it hard to breathe — a childhood asthma that used to choke him. I made him laugh once. I knew that wee Tom was hiding behind that melancholy.

The evening of the funeral, he and I talked of all the death in our lives, the misery that engulfed us all. He told me of the death of his sister, Mary, struck by meningitis at the age of three, that of his mother, also Mary, who left the world at nineteen years of age, giving birth to a daughter who died in turn six weeks later.

— It’s misery’s fault, not life’s, Tom said.

Then we spoke of misery, of the Great Famine, of children standing in the muck with no shoes on. Of the mouldy bread, seeping from the corners of poorly fed mouths. Of my father who had frozen to death. We had a common rage. We had hatred, too. Like our family, Tom Williams had fled his home. A Loyalist bomb had been thrown at a group of children playing in a park. Some of them were killed. Yet it was Terry Williams, his uncle, who had been imprisoned for defending his street, and not the Protestant killers. It was unjust. Everything was unjust. We were alone in the world, our war brushed aside for a war that was not ours. The whole world had turned its back on us. The only people we could count on were ourselves. Tom was on the dole, like all the local men. Like Seánie and I would have been if Uncle Lawrence hadn’t left us his business, his stiff brooms, his trowels, his chimney sweep’s brushes. There would never be work for any of us in this country.

He lit a cigarette, handed me one between his two fingers and thumb, the first in my life. So I took it. To blink through the smoke as adults do. He was watching the street, sitting on a front step. Like him, I had loosened my black tie and opened my collar. He spoke to me about Easter, and he was uneasy. He was only two years older than me but I couldn’t see that youth in him. Tom Williams had the worn face and stare of a widow. I would never again hear so much hurt in another man’s voice.

The British had banned any gatherings on Easter Sunday 1942, but we’d decided to disobey. Nobody was going to prevent us from celebrating the 1916 Rising and honouring the heroes of the Republic.

The IRA had planned three illegal processions in Belfast, protected by uniformed Fianna. When I asked him what we were to do if the police intervened, Tom smiled.

— We’ll keep them busy enough, my leader replied.

My eyes widened. I wanted to know what was planned.

— Do you want our command structure, too?

I blushed and shook my head, inhaling a huge, burning lungful of smoke to shut myself up.

— To everyone his role, Tyrone.

And then he got up. Fingertips to his temple, he saluted me as a soldier. Two óglaigh left their shadowy wall on the other side of the street to guard his passage.

— So long, Fianna! Tom Williams called over his shoulder.

I watched him head farther up Bombay Street, three shadows for a single person. He turned the corner. He was whistling ‘God Save Ireland’. I squeezed the white sliotar. I was afraid for all of us.

On Easter Sunday, Mother had us dress for Mass. I was wearing an old white shirt of Seánie’s, and Niall had on a pair of my old trousers. My Fianna uniform was hidden under Sara’s blanket in the pushchair. The street was deserted and tense. Friendly doors used to be opened to rebel scouts all over the nationalist enclaves. We would get ourselves ready in twos in people’s backyards, hidden in their wardrobes, behind workbenches, in school playgrounds, pub snugs. When we arrived in front of Costello’s grocery, Sheila opened the door. My family gathered around the pushchair as though trying to soothe the baby. They were hiding me. I slipped into Costello’s and the Meehans carried on towards the church.

Danny Finley was at the top of the stairs. He was dressing in silence under the gaze of a mournful Jesus. Sitting on the steps, Sheila watched me slip into my black shirt. I was blushing. I was in love with her. The times were too backward for making a move, and the parents of Belfast knew everything their children got up to. One hand taking another would mean dozens of pointed fingers. It was neither malicious nor derisive, but you could feel that there was always someone making a judgment behind a curtain. The British monitored our movements, the IRA monitored our commitment, the priests monitored our thoughts, the parents monitored our childhood and the windows monitored our romances. There was never anywhere to hide.

— Brits! Brits! shouted a young voice in the street.

Sheila was up in a flash and tearing down the stairs. Danny carried on buttoning his shirt. This calm was his way of panicking.

— Shit, there’s a button missing from the sleeve, my comrade grumbled. He had mended one of the knees of his trousers.

Outside, an armoured car with a loudspeaker was repeating that all gatherings were illegal. That demonstrating during wartime was an act of treason. Back when the hostilities with Germany had begun, military trucks used to roam our neighbourhoods calling on young Catholics to don the English uniform. Few responded to the appeal. In May 1941, more than 200,000 nationalists of fighting age had fled Belfast while thousands of others slept in the fields or hills around the city to avoid the recruiting officers. Our fathers, our mothers and our families took to the streets in their thousands, day after day, to protest against their sons having to die for the king. London abandoned conscription in Northern Ireland on 27 May, and only the Ulster Protestants were left to fight for their flag.

Mother had carefully ironed my uniform. A dark-green shirt, the jacket in the same colour with a closed officer collar, epaulettes, two rows of brass buttons, a white lanyard for attaching the whistle and an orange neckerchief. The Sam Browne belt was my father’s, and I had also inherited his shoulder strap. The enemy truck was moving off. I pinned the Fianna badge over my heart, the burning sun on a blue background. And then we sat down at the top of the stairs to await our orders. I’d put my slouched felt hat with its wide brim on my head; Danny had placed his on his knee. We used to steal ‘Baden-Powells’ by the dozen from scout shops in Dublin and Cork and dye them green. Ireland and Great Britain hunted down our secret army but they couldn’t outlaw our hats.

The Fianna exited on to the street almost simultaneously. Danny and I were standing behind the front door of the Costello house. Sheila was on the lookout behind a curtain she’d pulled back just a fraction. Her father had his hand on the door knob, waiting. There was a metallic whistling. Across the way, two doors opened and four scouts appeared. We left in turn. Danny got us to line up on the pavement. There were ten of us, and another dozen on the opposite side of the street, coming out of the alley. More again were arriving from Kashmir Road.

— Left! Left! Left, right, left!

An officer’s voice. We set off marching towards the Falls Road. I was trembling. It was pathetic. I was trembling and my teeth were chattering. I had dreamed of this epic moment so often. Dreamed of me, Tyrone Meehan, parading in uniform and in step. And here I was, afraid! Or cold. I could no longer tell. My hat was over my eyes and I didn’t dare push it back up. The Cumann na gCailíní girls were arriving from Leeson Street, with their green skirts and their hair tied up. Right arms, left arms, swinging in unison. We advanced along the centre of the avenue like an army of children.

Sheila was following us. She was carrying our civilian clothes in a bag. Every scout was followed at a distance by a mother, a sister or a friend. When our flags were raised, tears came to my eyes and I laughed with joy, feeling the shouts bubble up from my belly. The tricolour of our Republic was huge. It was the first time I had ever seen the green, white and orange floating freely under this sky. The Fianna’s standard was magnificent, fringed in gold, its sun splashed with sky-blue. A boy was carrying the national colours; a girl, the Fianna’s emblem.

We were taking over the street. We had snatched it from the English soldiers, we had taken it from the German bombers. It was Irish, this street, reconquered by kids dressed as soldiers. The people were waiting on the footpaths, in doorways. Around us, IRA men in civilian clothing were giving brief orders. When the flags moved forward, the nationalist population arrived from every direction. They were filled with emotion, concerned, simultaneously celebrating and worrying. A beautiful and dignified multitude. Women, hundreds of children, men, elderly people who fancied themselves officers, ordering the kids to form lines. A brass band was now leading the procession — a few flutes, three drums and accordions playing ‘God Save Ireland’ in time with our marching. I was on the side, between the street and the pavement, like the other Fianna. Our orders were to protect the crowd from Shankill Loyalists several streets away, and from British soldiers if they showed up. Older men were carrying hurleys in construction bags, studded sticks. Not weapons, they were just for defending, not for attacking.

When we arrived at the corner of Conway Street, we were ordered to disperse. An abrupt order. We were still a good way from the cemetery. Two men climbed on to a truck roof, arms raised, and roared at the crowd to leave the march.

— Back on the pavements! Immediately! Don’t go home alone! Join a group if you get split up!

— No more than five people together! shouted the other man.

I knew the elder of the two. He had taught us about the Great Famine.

I whistled with my arms outstretched to disperse the marchers.

— Pass the word along! Don’t run. Walk on the pavements!

Danny Finley scaled the truck.

— Fianna are to change here, immediately! And everyone get back to your cumanns!

Sheila came racing up to us. She upended the bag of clothes. We handed her our uniforms. Shirts, jackets, shorts. I was standing in my underpants on the street. I didn’t give a damn. She stuffed the rebel green into her satchel, crushing our hats. Around us, people were scattering and whispering. The street wasn’t frightened, it was worried. What had happened? Why stop the march in the middle of the commemoration? A young woman came briskly up to Sheila. She took her burden from her hands with neither a word nor a glance, then hid it beneath her coat and clung on to a man’s arm. They crossed the avenue. She walked with difficulty, one hand on her stomach like a mother-to-be while he appeared to reassure her. I didn’t know that woman, or that man, but I knew that our bag would be at our headquarters this evening, having got there circuitously, passed from strangers’ hands to other strangers’ hands.

Since my arrival in Belfast, those images would reassure me. They were simple, and beautiful. Like those doors that would open and aid our escape. That late-night cup of tea handed to us by a woman who’d stumbled on us sneaking through her garden. That mimed confession taken by a priest when the police had followed me into his church. That black sweater thrown over my shoulders by a neighbour while I was keeping watch on a November street.

— My son no longer needs it where he’s gone.

— Go raibh maith agat.

The man smiled at my thanking him in Irish. He looked at me more closely.

— Well now! A reinforcement from the Free State!

And then he laughed, tying the knitted woollen sleeves over my chest.

An English reconnaissance plane was flying overhead. The children gave it the finger, hoping it would crash into the barricade of tethered balloons that towered over the city. The Falls Road had returned to its usual sparse traffic. The footpaths were packed with families. In a few minutes there were no more Fianna, rebels or demonstrators to be seen. Only the residents hurrying home for their tea.

Tom Williams had just been captured by the British, along with five men from C Company. The 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade had just lost one of its leaders. We had assembled at headquarters around the deserted boxing ring. As a precaution, Danny had only lit a night light. News was flooding in from all over, spreading through the neighbourhood. Every new thing we heard was worse than what we already knew.

In order to safeguard our march, Tom and his soldiers had opened fire on a police patrol on Kashmir Road. Tom was wounded. He had given the order to retreat, but the police had chased after them like hunting dogs. In Cawnpore Street, our men took advantage of open doors. One policeman forced his way into a house. His name was Patrick Murphy and he was a Catholic. He lived on the Falls Road and had nine children. Everyone knew him. He was shot down in the middle of the living room.

— He was a dirty fucking peeler! shouted Danny Finley.

But all the same, he was a Catholic.

— A fucking traitor! Danny growled.

We nodded our heads, but our Fianna hearts were conflicted. The IRA had just assassinated one of our own. Or near enough. A Catholic who was feeding his family as best he could.

— By shooting us in the back, is that it?

Sure enough. But all the same. He was of our flesh. The British skin was an animal hide. Their blood wasn’t the same colour as ours. It was soldier blood. Thicker, darker, dirtier. By shooting at Murphy, we had just opened our own veins.

Danny shook me by the shoulders. He asked me to look him in the eye. Better than that! Directly in the eye! And what could I see there? A murderer of Irishmen? No! Of course not! I had to pull myself together, and to learn. I had to go back to the beginning again. This wasn’t a war between Catholics and Protestants! Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish Republicanism, was a Protestant. Well then, what was the difference? A Protestant could join the IRA, a Catholic could dress up as a king’s soldier. Well then, who was our enemy? The Protestant IRA man or the Catholic wearing the British uniform? Which one did we have to fight?

— Do you understand that, Tyrone Meehan? You’re fighting for the Irish Republic, not for Rome! You left those priests of yours on the other side of the border. So stop mixing everything up, please!

There were about twenty of us scouts in the room. Danny looked from one to the other to see if everything he’d said had been understood.

— There are fewer Catholics in the RUC than there are fingers on one hand. Those who join up know the risks involved. Murphy will serve as an example.

Then he straightened up, legs apart and hands behind his back. And he assumed his voice of command.

— Na Fianna Éireann, stand at attention!

We straightened up, arms rigid at our sides and chins raised.

— Na Fianna Éireann, on your knees!

We knelt in a single motion, solemn and dignified. All of us together on the cement.

He knelt in turn and closed his eyes.

— In the name of the Father, and of the Son…

And then we prayed aloud for the grey soul of Patrick Murphy.

The six IRA combatants involved in the incident were sentenced to death, but only Thomas Williams was executed. Before the judges, my friend claimed responsibility for the operation and for the fatal shots. Although he had been wounded and was choking, prostrated by an asthma attack, and although he had dropped his weapon, he assumed all responsibility. The Irish government appealed for clemency. The Vatican waited in vain for an act of mercy. Tom was hanged at nineteen years of age on 2 September 1942, in the courtyard of Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast. Buried like a dog inside the compound itself, on prison ground, without a cross, without a plaque, without anything personal. The British deprived us of his body.

— I met the bravest of the brave this morning. Tom Williams walked to that scaffold without a tremor in his body. The only people who were shaking were us and the hangman, Father Alexis had recounted to the inmates gathered in the prison chapel.

— Don’t pray for Tom Williams, the chaplain added, pray to him, for at this moment Tom is a saint in heaven.

So Tom guided us.

All over the city, groups attacked the police and the RUC with bricks. A police station was burned down. At Crossmaglen, thirty IRA óglaigh attacked the British army base to kidnap an officer and hang him. The operation failed, but a policeman was killed. Two others were shot in County Tyrone. A fourth died in Belfast while pursuing some men who were planting bombs. We were lost, maddened with rage, drunk on vengeance. On the front page of the Belfast Telegraph an outraged journalist wrote of how two Republicans had challenged some American soldiers by giving them the Nazi salute.

Father Alexis also told of how Tom was whistling on his way to meet death. He was whistling ‘God Save Ireland’, our old national hymn. The one we would sing at home, in the pubs, during marches, in stadia. The one we would hum softly when we passed British patrols. The one we would bellow until we were out of breath, our hands full of stones.

‘God Save Ireland!’ said the heroes!

‘God Save Ireland!’ said they all.

Whether on the scaffold high

Or the battlefield we die,

Oh, what matter when for Erin dear we fall!

My brother Seánie was interned in October 1942. No evidence, no trial, no sentence. They were isolating headstrong men. On 3 January 1943, it was my turn, and Danny Finley’s. For a week I had pains in my arms — the left one from being gripped by the policeman, the right from my mother clinging on to me. Hostility, love, two black stains bruising my flesh in equal measure.

They came in the middle of the night. I rolled down the stairs, dragged by the hair and by my shirt collar. I was sleeping fully clothed, I was waiting for them. Wee Kevin was crying, Brian and Niall were crying, baby Sara was howling in her cradle. A policeman whacked me in the eye with the butt of his gun a few times. He beat my mother on the arms and in the face to force her to let go. She fell, her hands clasped over her mouth. My mother on the ground and my first true cry of vengeance. The one that makes you get up and fight. That hits you in your gut when your heart hesitates. My mother on the ground. Her lips, my face, her saliva and my blood. She had pulled out her rosary and handed it to me with both hands. She was roaring at the Virgin as they carried me away. For the first time, I called on hatred to give me strength.

Farther up the street, facing the wall and with their hands above their heads, stood Danny and a few men. People were throwing slates from the roofs, hitting the metal of the armoured cars. We were forced into a truck, kicking, punching, enraged. Some police shot at the windows. They were the ‘B-Specials’, the worst of the lot, the assassins of our people.

We arrived at Crumlin, ten Irishmen, ankles and wrists shackled, walking one behind the other through the corridors.

Danny and I were the youngest there.

— Are the Fianna recruiting in playschool now? joked a prisoner.

It was in this prison that Tom Williams’s body had been desecrated. The place had been described to me. Brick walls messily smeared a greyish-white. The dilapidated paintwork in tatters, blistered, soiled by fingers, shoe soles and damp. The red hexagonal floor tiles underfoot. The metallic passageways, the footbridges, the spiral iron staircases, the arched ceilings, the narrow, never-ending passages. Our cells with their black doors. I knew about all of that, but I had never imagined either the noise or the stench. A nightmare of shouting, of protest, of orders, of human barking. The metal of high barriers, the clanging of doors, the grinding of iron against the floors, the walls, the heavy, clattering footsteps of the guards. People had told me about the solitude of prison, but not the cacophony. I was astonished. And everything smelt of sick men. Their sweat, their breath, their filth, their food, their shit, their piss. Arriving in the B wing of the prison, I brought my hands to my nose, pulling the chain from the others.

— That stinks of Irish pig, eh wee rebel? the warder spat at me.

— Don’t answer!

Danny’s order from where he was walking behind me.

— Doesn’t your mother smell a bit like that between her legs?

I looked at the dirty day through the skylights that were covered in wire.

— Reminds you of your pigsty, eh?

— He’s just a kid! Let him breathe, another prisoner said.

Without a word the screws threw themselves on him. He fell. We all fell. They were striking us and spitting on us. We tried to protect ourselves. I was lying down, kicking the air. Other warders arrived, yelling. There were a dozen of them running at us, batons raised. They lined up with their backs to the wall, facing each other with us in the middle. They attacked as one, all of them at the same time, like a line of woodcutters. They were crushing our arms and legs under their heels. I was crying out with pain. The others were roaring with rage. Invisible fists were violently pounding against the cell doors.

— IRA! IRA! IRA!

I could no longer smell the prison stench. I could no longer hear its metal. I had blood in my mouth and my ears were on fire, my nose smashed. The din was inside me. I thought of my father’s blows, my head turned to stone, blocking out the pain, my eyes burning and my cheeks smeared with saliva to make him think I was crying. A whistle was blown sharply. Two warders threw bowlfuls of freezing water at us. I was cold with fear when I arrived; now I was frozen with pain. We were jumbled in a heap in the middle of the line of cells, a mass of flesh and ropes. The screws were out of breath. They were watching us wordlessly, their batons dangling in their hands. A prison officer arrived. He lit a cigarette.

— Put them in their cells tomorrow. They’re not moving for now.

And then he turned away.

We remained like that the whole night, piled on the concrete that was sticky with blood and water. I was lying on my back, a guy’s foot against my throat, another’s cheek against my cheek and the dead weight of Danny lying on my legs. Someone had vomited. I closed my eyes without sleeping. I was shaking. That’s when I heard a voice, a thin thread.

— Tyrone?

It was Danny. He was whispering.

I had blood in my mouth and dirty, bloody foam caked on my lips.

— If you can hear me, move your foot.

I moved slightly.

— Are you listening to me?

I made the same painful movement.

— Well then, here you go. There’s an IRA unit waiting in ambush for an English patrol in the countryside outside Crossmaglen. The Brits pass there every day at five in the evening. At ten past five there’s still no sign of them. Captain Paddy looks at his watch and says, ‘Shit, I hope nothing’s happened to them…’

I convulsed. A laugh. Pains in my chest and stomach.

In ainm an Athar, agus an Mhic, agus an Spioraid Naoimh…

I recited the Our Father in Irish in my head.

And Tom Williams was praying with me.

The following day I was led to a cell, alone. My twelve-by-seven-foot space contained an iron bed, a bedside table, a slop bucket and a washbowl. There were two hooks on the wall for my clothes. There was an arched brick ceiling painted cream, a floor of caked blood and a high skylight through which the daylight would enter only to dissipate before it reached me on the floor. My first prison cell. And my first tears. They were waiting for a signal from me. Since I’d arrived I’d been too busy with pride and pain. But once the door was locked behind me and the walls closed in around me, I was just a seventeen-year-old. No longer a Fianna, no longer a Republican, not even Irish… a soldier of nothing and nobody. I cried, curled up on my bed, knees drawn into my chest and hands crossed under my chin.

At that moment, I understood that my life would be extinguished between these captive walls and my barbed-wire street. I would be coming and going from this place until my dying breath. Hands released, shackled, freed again to carry a gun while waiting for the chains once more, never knowing whether death would be waiting for me on the inside or on the street.

— No sleeping! Sit up or stand up! shouted a warder, his eye against the peephole.

So I walked. Three steps, two steps, lengthways, widthways, going, coming back, suddenly altering the rhythm to keep myself alert.

I turned eighteen on 8 March 1943. I had told a few friends. I heard their voices. They were roaring from their cells.

— Lá breithe sona dhuit, wee Tyrone!

Men’s voices, cracked from alcohol and smoking, worn out from shouting and from prison.

— It’s forbidden to speak in Irish! shouted the warder, banging on the doors.

Our language was a weapon. The screws knew it.

On Sunday, 14 March, during Mass, two prisoners approached me. One was huge, the other shorter. Father Alan had no control over his flock of sinners. Some of them were singing the hymns and responding to him, but the others made the most of the service to exchange news. While conversation between prisoners was prohibited, even during exercise time, the ruckus was tolerated here. The warders used to turn a blind eye. One hour of freedom so we didn’t lose the plot.

— You turned eighteen last Monday, isn’t that right? the big guy asked me.

A dozen other men suddenly drew around, turning their backs to us and forming a barrier. I was surprised by their surrounding us. I didn’t know the guy talking to me. I nodded.

— Yes, eighteen on Monday.

— You’re Lieutenant Seán Meehan’s brother?

Lieutenant? Seánie was a lieutenant?

— Yes.

They glanced at one another. I had been caught out. I acted as though I was in on the secret.

— Today, Fianna, you have a choice. Go back home when you get out of here, or join us.

— Nobody is under any obligation, the smaller man said. There are plenty of other ways to help the Republic.

— By studying, for example, the first guy took over again.

I shook my head. In Killybegs I had been a poor student. I had never understood much of what went on at school. Neither maths nor logic. I loved Irish, English, history. Nothing else. The priests used to pull our hair. My father would beat me for every bad mark. My mother struggled just to read her prayer book.

— I was under Tom Williams’s command.

That was all I said. Neither out of vanity nor insolence. I simply wanted those men to know that I hadn’t arrived from my village yesterday. The big guy pointed out the smaller with a jerk of his head.

— Joe was with Tom when he was arrested.

— Joe Cahill, the other murmured, offering me his hand.

Behind me, the priest was reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

—‘… but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened… ’

The wall of men tightened around me. I raised my hand.

— I swear allegiance to the Irish Republic and to the IRA, its army, the first prisoner prompted me.

— I swear allegiance to Poblacht na hÉireann and to Óglaigh na hÉireann.

— I swear allegiance to the 1916 Proclamation and vow to fight for the creation of a socialist Republic…

The chaplain was praying softly. He was trying to scold us. Father Alan was not Father Alexis who had accompanied Tom the martyr. This priest hated us.

—‘… professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man …’

His sermon was tremulous, my promise whispered. I knew he was addressing me. He knew his prisoners. He knew our tricks and our schemes. Every Sunday he would notice whatever passed from hand to hand, the notes, objects and signs. He knew what the absence of one or the presence of another meant. He had observed the men moving to surround me. He knew that in the middle of this closed group, a young man was swearing allegiance. That noiselessly a sinner was in the process of breaking his pact with peace and a soul was escaping him forever.

When it came to the Eucharist I was in my place, facing him.

— Let those who have no blood on their hands come forward, said the priest every Sunday.

And every Sunday I was the only one to kneel in front of him.

He watched me for a long time that day. I didn’t recognize his face. He no longer wore his smile. My hands were joined. He placed the host on my tongue.

— Body of Christ.

I held his gaze.

— Amen.

I was miserable.

When I got up again, he bent over to whisper in my ear.

— Do you know that you have just promised to kill?

My hands were still joined, the dry taste of the unleavened bread was still on my palate. I couldn’t say yes. There is no word to justify killing. So I simply maintained eye contact. I didn’t challenge him. I was leaving the door to my heart wide open.

— By following Barabbas you are condemning Jesus, the priest murmured.

He looked at the silent congregation. The prisoners were solemn, as though they knew every word being exchanged.

— Next Sunday, do not come forward to the altar for Communion. Stay with your accomplices.

And then he turned away from me.

When I returned to my seat a guy nudged my shoulder.

— A good quarrel with God beats loneliness.

And he laughed, while the priest removed his stole in a discontented manner.

I stayed in Crumlin Gaol for twenty-eight months. And I never went back to the chapel. I had fashioned a crucifix out of breadcrumbs, plaster torn from the wall, and saliva. It was every bit as good as the big silver cross Father Alan used to place on the altar for Mass. When I was released on 26 April 1945, the British had almost won their war. And we were worn out.

Seánie and I took up my uncle’s chimney-sweep business again. We found a little work locally, but the city centre and the Protestant neighbourhoods were off-limits. Clients would often pay by bartering: we would sweep their chimneys in exchange for food. Róisín was working in the local post office. Mary was helping out in Costello’s grocery. The little ones were trying to make the most out of school. And Mother was losing control. She spent her days between the kitchen and church. She prayed out loud while cleaning the house. Sometimes, she drew a crowd in the street. On the corner of Dholpur Lane, she’d put curses on passers-by, brandishing her rosary. I would take her by the arm then to walk her back home.

— We are isolated, Seánie said to me, sitting on the front steps one evening.

He was experiencing what our father had lived through when he had lost his war. When his country had been ripped in two, and his hopes buried beneath ashes. We were the offspring of that disaster. Not beaten, but distraught. We were the only people in Allied Europe who didn’t have a victorious flag hanging from our windows, who weren’t dancing in the streets. Their war was over. Ours continued.

8

I jumped the low wall at a run, not seeing the hawthorn bushes in the dark. The brambles tore at my forehead and hands. I stifled a cry. I was knotted all over with tension, my neck aching. The fear. Right behind me, Danny Finley threw himself head first into the gnarly bed of brambles.

— Shit! What the hell is that?

— We need to give the Belfast lads a course in botany, growled our captain, a British army deserter.

— They’re called thorns. They’re a bit like their barbed wire, answered a voice in the darkness.

— Very funny, Danny groaned.

There were around fifty of us lying behind the hedges, backs against black trees, or creeping over the frozen earth. Danny was bleeding, his face lacerated by the thorns. I threw him a sympathetic glance.

— Take a look at your own face, he growled.

It was four in the morning. We were about to attack the RUC station at Lisnaskea in County Fermanagh. At nightfall, a young Enniskillen priest had blessed our troops. Rome was threatening us with excommunication, but our priest forgave us our trespasses. We had gathered around him, on the bog, in the wind, one knee on the ground and our hands on the freezing wood of our guns. We were wearing civilian clothing. No uniforms, not even a flag. Coats, caps, waterproofs, woollen pea coats and city shoes. We looked more like militia than an army, or, rather, like our fathers during the Civil War.

Each óglach had to watch his partner’s back. Danny and I were covering each other. The explosives manufacturers had just placed four bombs against the wall of the barracks. We were with them. We had dived into the thorns after coming back to get under cover.

It was 14 December 1956. Two days previously, the IRA had launched its ‘Border Campaign’. Coming from the Free State, Republican units were striking British targets in Northern Ireland, then withdrawing across the border again. For the first time since 1944 we had taken up arms. Certain Belfast combatants were also deeply involved in the campaign.

— Open your mouths and lower your heads, our officer ordered.

The explosions were terrible. I was deafened. I grabbed Danny. Everything was flying around us — concrete, wood, tiny projectiles that whistled past like bullets. We didn’t have to go into the building, just strike it.

— Into position!

Alarm behind the walls. A whistle being blown, a siren, shouting. I lay down with my elbows on the ground and my cheek against the butt of my gun. It was a Mauser Karabiner 98K rifle. I’d tried it out during training, but never in combat. Each combatant had three magazines of five rounds. There was clearly no question of besieging them; we were simply announcing our return to combat. I shot my first bullet at nothing. A human shadow, perhaps. I was unsteady. I hated the sniper stance. Stomach pressed against the ground, the shock of the discharge against my shoulder, the crash against my cheek, a pain in my ear. I stood up.

— What are you doing? roared a comrade.

I shot four times, straight ahead, standing with my legs apart like during drills. I aimed at the moving chaos, the confusion facing us. I reloaded. I was thinking of nothing. Gut empty, head empty. Just the powder and the din.

— Get back on the ground, Meehan!

Danny came up to my level, standing, like me. A third got up in turn. I saw nothing. I made my weapon heard. We were shooting at the same time, calmly. When they returned fire, Danny dragged me to the ground. The police were firing back aimlessly. Lead wasps flew overhead. I engaged my last magazine. And then we suddenly heard the terrible voice of the Browning. Steel detonations, staccato, dry, violent.

— Look out, machine-gunfire! Fall back, ordered our captain.

We had no casualties, only the wounds Danny and I had received from the thorns. Our unit crossed back to the Republic just before daybreak. We were ordered to surrender without fighting if we were intercepted by the Irish army. The IRA Army Council had decided that our bullets were for the British enemy, not for our brothers from the Free State.

Across the border, at the edge of the village, a coalman’s truck was waiting for us. We gave back our weapons. I handed mine over with regret. A soldier is nothing without his gun, just a defeated man. Two men wrapped them up in black blankets and buried them under the coal.

Around us, the first of the early-rising residents were appearing. They lowered their eyes when they passed. No enthusiasm, but no hostility, either. I found neither the Belfast winks nor the wide-open doors. For many Irish from here the war had been over for more than thirty years. If it continued in the North, ‘on the other side’, it was none of their business.

Some members of the unit left for home on foot across the fields. They were farmers, local men. Others had left their bicycles in ditches. Two got into the truck, guns at their belts. The officer gripped our hands, Danny’s and mine. He wasn’t in any hurry. He wanted to show us that he had nothing to fear. That in this region, the Republic was sovereign. That’s when two gardaí appeared at the church corner. They spotted us. One stopped the other with his arm. Without a word, they turned on their heels and left unhurriedly.

— We’re not chasing you away, I hope? the IRA captain asked them out of earshot.

He laughed. A car arrived and he got in with four others. With his hand on the open window he shouted, ‘Éirinn go Brách!’

I shuddered. The last time I’d heard that cry was when Padraig Meehan had beaten George, old McGarrigle’s donkey. I was a child. I had been ashamed of my father, ashamed of that ‘Ireland Forever!’ And yet here I was today and it was my whole life.

Danny and I went back to Belfast by bus. We crossed the border separately. I hated the first British flag that appeared on the road, planted in a winter garden. I hated the Christmas decorations twinkling mockingly behind the white curtains of wealthy homes. I looked at my frozen country. Its beauty. Its misfortune.

I felt nothing. I was exhausted. I dozed. I wondered whether I had killed anyone during the attack. I was prepared to die, but not to kill. I hoped never to have to look a dead man in the face. I was on borrowed time. A victim on borrowed time, an assassin on borrowed time. That was really what we all were, every one of us. And I was very aware of it.

I was interned on 16 May 1957, at thirty-two years of age. Arrested along with hundreds of other nationalists from both sides of the damned border. Once again without evidence, without trial, and without so much as the hope of a conviction.

There were three of us in my cell at the Crum. British prisons no longer had the space for solitary confinement. The hygiene was beastly, the food excremental. We had no way of knowing whether we were there for a month or for ten years, imprisoned temporarily or locked up for life. So the weakest gave themselves up — the oldest, those without hope. In exchange for an anticipated release, around a hundred of our group renounced violence. Seánie was one of those. Captain Seán Meehan, my brother. He had been damaged by the battles, by prison. He didn’t like the socialist murmurings that had been running through the ranks since the end of the war.

— I’m an Irish patriot, not a communist! he would respond when we used to dream about a different country.

He no longer believed in our path. He said the IRA was a mosquito vainly circling a lion. He even ridiculed our weapons.

— Three men to a gun? We’ll go far with that!

He wasn’t afraid, that wasn’t it. He’d refuse to lift his arms up during searches and spit in the screws’ faces, not allowing them the satisfaction of seeing his pain when he was beaten. He was simply tired. He was letting go of the burden of our Republic. He didn’t want to be involved in any more combat. He was laying down arms. There had been Malachy Meehan, our grandfather, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who was killed by the British in 1896. And then Padraig Meehan, our father, dead from having lost a war. And then him, Seánie Meehan, and me, Tyrone Meehan. And who would be next? Who else would fill English prisons or die from a bullet shot from an English gun? Niall Meehan? Brian Meehan? Wee Kevin Meehan? Why not go ahead and offer up baby Sara?

We spent a long time talking. Hours. He gripped my head between his big hands, trying to get through to me. He was going to sign the pact. His surrender. He would go back to be with our mother. He would send those of our family who could be saved far away. He asked me to do the same. I said things I shouldn’t have said, dead men’s words. I shouted that a Meehan didn’t leave his country. He laughed viciously.

— My country? What country? And what is Ireland doing for us? What has it done for us, tell me? Your problem, Tyrone, is that you look at the world from the end of your street. When an old man winks at you crossing the road, or a kid admires you, when a door opens, you think that the entire population is behind you. Bullshit, wee brother! What is Republican Ireland, Tyrone Meehan? Two hundred Belfast streets and a few measly nationalist areas in Derry, Newry, Strabane? Scraps of villages! The Protestants are the majority in their Ulster and that’s the way it’ll stay. Dublin is no longer on our side. The Irish hunt us down with the same hatred as the British. We spend our time behind bars and when we get out, we can only cry in misery. And for what? Who is there to hear our cries? What country would defend us? Germany? Fantastic! What a great political lesson! Support everything our enemy fights? Is that it? The dance with the devil till the end of time?

I was crying, in distress and in rage.

— Open your eyes, Tyrone! Wake up! It’s not a battle that we’ve just lost, it’s the war. Our father’s war. It’s over, wee soldier! Over, do you understand? We are a few thousand trapped men surrounded by billions of people who are deaf to our cause. We have to give in, Tyrone, save what we have left — your life, our lives. I want to see Áine wearing a dress that doesn’t shame her for once. Do you understand that, Tyrone? I want laughter, new faces, streets without soldiers. I want nothing more to do with what we are, wee brother. Ireland has worn me out. She’s asked too much of me. She’s demanded too much. I’m sick of our flag, our heroes, our martyrs. I don’t want to exhaust myself any longer just to be worthy of them. I’m giving up, Tyrone. And I know that you will, too. One day, when you’ve suffered one wound too many. I’m going to breathe. Do you understand? I’m going to live like a passer-by on the street. A nobody. A hero of today. Someone who brings his wages home on a Saturday and goes to Communion on Sunday with his head held high.

My brother left Crumlin in October 1957. With my mother’s blessing, he sent Brian and Niall to the United States to an uncle on the Finnegan side.

In Easter 1960 when I was let out, he was a cop in New York and married to Deirdre McMahon, an emigrant from County Mayo. For St Patrick’s Day that year he marched along Fifth Avenue in uniform with his Irish colleagues, behind the green banner of the Emerald Society, an organization supporting Irish-American cultural understanding. Mother showed me a picture of him, posing before a wooden harp. With the tip of her finger, she stroked his face, his cap, his foreign uniform. She was neither proud nor sad, she was just empty. I put my arm around her shoulder.

I was thirty-six. I had been promoted to IRA lieutenant and married Sheila Costello. Jack, our son and only child, was born a year later, on 14 August 1961. Along with him and wee Kevin I was the only Meehan man left, surrounded by four girls. I knew that only my mother was holding us together. One day, after her death, Róisín would leave. And then Mary. And Áine. Wee Kevin and Sara would follow one of them like a mother. But already, while my mother was praying at the top of her voice, my sisters would avoid me so they could talk about Australia and New Zealand. Without ever admitting it to me, Áine was already dreaming of moving to England.

The Border Campaign was intended to liberate regions of Northern Ireland so as to lay the foundations for a provisional Republic. It was a failure. Once again, everything had to be rebuilt. Our army was in disarray, our movement in tatters, and our courage likewise. When the IRA campaign officially ceased in February 1962, eight of our men had been killed, six policemen had met their ends, and only our rivers ran free.

9. Killybegs, Wednesday, 27 December 2006

— Who am I sitting next to, Josh or Father Joseph Byrne?

— Who do you want to meet, Tyrone?

I smiled.

— It’s you who wanted to speak to me.

— So that would be Father Byrne.

— I’m in need of a friend, not a priest.

Josh made no reply. He had changed. I had left a chirping blackbird, a pixie from our forests, a face destroyed with pockmarks. Now I found a sickly and shrunken monk in a black habit before me. And I felt even older.

We were in St Mary’s of the Visitation, in the wooden front pew, facing the altar. Everything had been completely refurbished. I hated the pink fuchsia covering the choir stalls. There were no nooks or crannies, to escape the light. Josh looked straight in front of him, murmuring, playing with the white cord on his habit.

— You’re shaking, Tyrone.

— I’m thirsty.

Silence.

— Jesus wouldn’t have been able to embark on anything without Judas.

— Are you talking to me?

— To us.

I watched him. He had joined his hands.

— What are you looking for?

— I came to help you, Tyrone.

— Who told you I need help?

— You. That’s why you have come.

I looked behind us. A young girl was praying close to the entrance.

— Who sent you?

He smiled.

— The child that you were. It was he who sent me.

— Why don’t you drop it! There’s only you and me here.

Josh closed his eyes. Always that smile, the same he’d had when we were boys, the smile that said he knew more than me.

— Give me your forgiveness, Josh, and let’s be done with it.

He seemed surprised.

— Is that not what you had me come here for, Father Byrne?

— I’m not a dispenser of absolution, Tyrone.

— You’re a priest. Your job is to save my soul, not my skin.

— How you must have suffered, my friend.

He knelt down. I copied him, my knees hurting.

— I’m not going to stay like this. Say what you have to say.

He opened his eyes.

— I always knew that you were the bravest among us, and also the most loyal.

Now he was looking at me.

— It was in order to test that bravery and loyalty that Our Father gave you the gift of treason, Tyrone.

I stared straight ahead.

— Stop that, I told you.

— Your country needed to be betrayed as you needed to betray.

— Josh, you bastard, stop it.

— Jesus asked Judas Iscariot to leave the Last Supper, do you remember? He said to him, ‘That thou doest, do quickly.’

I got up.

— I’m leaving, Josh.

He placed a hand on my arm.

— As Christ had need of Iscariot, your country needed you.

I shook him off.

— The betrayed and the betrayer suffer equally, Tyrone. You can love Ireland by dying, or love her by betraying.

I looked at him.

— What are you saying?

— You betrayed to shorten this war, Tyrone. So that your country’s suffering could end.

I had rage within me.

— What do you know about my betrayal, Josh? What do you know about it, Father Byrne? You’ve read the papers, is that it?

— I know you.

— You know nothing! The last time you saw me, I was gathering turf and was fifteen years old!

— But you are fifteen years old, Tyrone.

I dropped back down on the bench. Josh was spouting monastery drivel. I was right to have been worried. The wee pixie had been given a rough ride by life, by the Church, by all the saints. He no longer looked like anything living. His robe was too big, too black. His feet were bare though it was winter. He had the silent eyes of a madman. His hair had fallen out, and his teeth. I had the impression that death was tugging at his sleeve.

— Could you do me a favour?

He nodded and gave me a blissful look.

— When you see Sheila in Belfast, tell her that if the wee Frenchman wants to come, he’ll be welcome.

— The wee Frenchman?

— Just tell her that. She’ll understand.

Josh rested his forehead against his joined hands.

— Give me a little bit of your pain, Tyrone.

He was speaking more and more quietly. — Share your ordeal. Do me that honour. Make me your accomplice.

He had closed his eyes once more.

— I didn’t speak to the IRA, or to Sheila, or to anyone. I didn’t keep it all in just to confess to a monk.

— You’re not in confession, you’re in affection, Tyrone.

— I don’t want your pity, Joseph Byrne. It’s not friendship I’m lacking, it’s dignity.

He looked at me. I moved closer and gently clasped his wrists.

— I’ve betrayed, Josh.

His eyes held the tears that couldn’t fall from mine.

— And betraying has been so difficult, inhuman. It’s been too much for me, Josh. So don’t ask me why. The why is all I have left.

For a long time he sat there watching my face, my expression, my hands that were trembling against his skin. He had his secret smile on.

— Thank you, Tyrone.

I released him and got up slowly.

— Thank you? Why thank you?

— By offering me your pain, you have requested my forgiveness. So I forgive you.

I sighed and shook my head. I left the pew without saying goodbye. Without genuflecting, without crossing myself. I was sick with his love.

— I will share your sadness, your loneliness and your anger as well, Tyrone.

His words followed me, my footsteps running away. It is only in churches and prisons that voices chase you.

I stepped out into the December rain and walked through the village.

I was sad. And lonely. And angry, too.

10

The kids arrived yelling, throwing rocks and smashing their bottles against the walls.

— The peelers are coming! They’re moving into our streets! shouted a wee boy in a football jersey.

He was smeared in soot and sweat. I stopped him. He was shaking.

— Let go of that, quick!

He looked at the brick he was holding in his hand and let it fall.

— And run! Get home to your father!

— My dad’s in the Crum! he shouted as he tore off.

You could hear explosions very close by. The police were throwing tear gas and firing tracer bullets towards the sky. The youths were surging back in greater and greater numbers, hundreds of them, milling chaotically, led by a few out-of-breath Fianna. They had been throwing stones at a police station and several armoured vehicles. They were being pursued. Usually, the police would give up the chase at the enclave threshold, but on that 14 August 1969 they were pushing right through.

— Bogside! Bogside! Bogside!

The crowd was chanting the name of the Derry neighbourhood where nationalists had been clashing with police for four days.

— Go back home! For the love of God, get yourselves under cover!

I was forty-four years old, standing with arms stretched out wide in the middle of the street, telling the children to stop running, to walk, to find shelter.

— And the IRA? Where’s the IRA? Why aren’t they defending our street? asked a woman in a dressing gown standing in her doorway.

— What are you doing standing there like that? Are you playing musical statues? shouted a young guy as he knocked into me.

— They’re coming! The peelers are here!

Residents were running about in every direction to protect their children. Some were carrying pick handles, hurleys, metal pipes. One woman was waving a ladle around in the darkness. In a few minutes Dholpur Lane was blocked off with a cart, mattresses, an armchair, junk dragged from a ruin and a cast-iron cooker carried over by some men. The first barricade of the night, just before the one on Kashmir Road farther up, and others after that in other streets. You could hear the noise of the riot everywhere. That clanging of scrap metal, broken glass, heavy thuds and shouting.

— Tyrone!

Danny Finley arrived at a run, a blanket under his arm, with six guys from C Company. He beckoned me over. He was out of breath. He knelt down.

— We’re taking the street, Tyrone! We’re securing it and taking it!

He wasn’t speaking, he was shouting. He was articulating each word loudly enough to be heard over the din, like a ship’s captain on a deck being pummelled by the wind. He unrolled the tartan blanket on the pavement, just behind the barricade.

A Thompson M1921 submachine gun, two Lee-Enfields, two Webley revolvers, a grenade, and ammunition in a paper bag.

— IRA! The IRA is back! a man shouted.

He was standing on a barrel, he jumped down and embraced me, laughing.

— The IRA! For fuck’s sake! Protect us! Show them who we are!

IRA! The cry travelled up the street. People were no longer pushing back, but turning around to attack with bare fists.

— Go back! Leave the street clear for the combatants! Danny ordered.

— IRA! IRA!

The neighbourhood paid no heed to our orders. Women were emerging from their houses, infants in their arms. Others were banging pots on the ground, frying pans, iron bin lids. A priest was running around between them, his Bible in his hand. The youths were gathering their discarded stones. A girl tossed a flaming bottle over the barricade. We were only six volunteers, but the ghetto was as enthused by our presence as if a liberation army had appeared. A few streets away, the sky was alight. Houses were burning on Bombay Street. When the gas canisters hit the ground, the crowd rushed forward to smother the smoke. Bowlfuls of water passed from hand to hand. Suddenly we found ourselves in broad daylight. The first armoured car had just turned the corner and its white headlight was pointed down our street. The chlorine of grenades and the smoke from the fires formed a thick fog. I was on my knees, my face protected by a tea towel. A young girl was cutting a shirt into strips and handing them out to the rebels to cover their mouths. Springing up behind me, a kid swooped down to grab our grenade. I snatched it away from him. He shrugged his shoulders and left at a run.

— Fianna! Evacuate the civilians! Danny roared.

The scouts formed a scrawny chain. There were a mere fifteen of them, moving back up the road step by step and begging the people to back away.

Then Danny let off two shots towards the sky.

— The IRA orders you to disperse!

The IRA orders you! We’re taking back the street! We’re finally going to fight.

On a grey wall opposite, an old slogan smeared in black mocked: IRA = I RAN AWAY!

For weeks, the Catholic population had been begging us to react. And we were unable to do so. We were more disorganized and isolated than ever. The police and the Loyalists were in control of our streets. Since the beginning of the campaign for civil rights, Catholics were being mistreated. What were we asking for? Decent accommodation, a job, to no longer be second-class citizens. One man, one vote! Equality with Protestants. We were empty-handed and our banners were made of torn-up sheets. For the British, this anger was insurrectional. For the Loyalists, each of our complaints was a war cry. They would never share power. They clamoured for the final confrontation, the great battle. They wanted to chase the papists out once and for all. Throw us over the border one by one. They had cleared out their own neighbourhoods. This time they were attacking our strongholds, our houses, our schools, our churches.

— A Protestant state for the Protestant people!

Their shouts in the night.

Startled by Danny’s shots, the crowd pushed back. The armoured car did the same, screeching into reverse and abruptly leaving us once more in darkness.

And then the first gunshot was fired from the other side. Followed by a second.

— Real bullets! The peelers are using real bullets!

I took up the Thompson and crouched behind the barricade. The bullets were shaking between my fingers, they slipped against the steel of the magazine. I loaded it till the spring nosed up. Twenty bullets. I counted what was left in the bag. Nine. Not even enough to reload up to the hilt.

They were still shooting. Danny sat down heavily beside me.

— It doesn’t add up. Something’s not right.

He was revolving his cylinder, replacing the two spent shells.

— What are they shooting with? Those aren’t their guns! Listen! It sounds like a hunting rifle.

The street was almost deserted, hundreds of residents having headed on foot for Ballymurphy and Andytown to find shelter. Others had hidden in their houses. An IRA óglach ran up to us, bent over double.

— It’s the Loyalists! The cops are chasing people and those bastards are coming along behind them. They’re shooting at us and setting the houses on fire!

Two streets away, a shot was fired. Danny lay down between a cart and a mattress. He fired twice, then turned around. With a flick of his finger he pointed to the corner of the street behind me, and with a few more quick movements he positioned the other fighters.

— Warning shots! Don’t waste them! Danny shouted.

We were crouched beneath a hail of rocks and steel bolts. They had catapults on the other side. Their petrol bombs were hitting the fronts of our houses. I got up. I held the Tommy gun against my hip and returned fire. Nothing. The shock of the steel. I lay down on my back. I had forgotten the safety. I raised the catch to ‘fire’. I was sweating, and shaking, too. I was a block of fear and hatred. They were facing us, I could see them. A small crowd with torches, shouting. The witch-hunters, the devils from the catechism. A shadow seemed to dance in the middle of the street, a rifle in his hand. They were breaking windows, doors. The police were letting them do it. I shot to kill. Four quick shots, almost a burst. Fired into that pile of living shadows. I was surprised by the violent jolt of the gun. It had slipped against my thigh. I moved it back up. From the other side of the street, our men were opening fire with rifles. Danny was on the barricade, aiming at the darkness above our heads.

Suddenly, gas canisters fell all around us. I drew back, surrounded by white smoke, eyes burning, stomach heaving, throat constricted. No more air. No more anything. The bottom of the water. I had my mouth wide open, thumping my chest. I was dying. This was it, I was dying. I should have kept some air in a corner of my cheek, in my nose, in my pocket. And then came the crash. A violent blow to my temple. Another in the shoulder. Bullets, stones, I couldn’t tell. I had lowered my Tommy gun. I raised it again. I wanted to steady it against my hip. I coughed. There was blood in my eyes. I pulled the trigger. I think. I don’t know any more. I heard my shots. I saw the spark from the gun. Danny fell. I was behind him. Twenty metres away. I shot three times and Danny fell forward. He picked himself up. He turned around, looked at me agape. He made a gesture. He didn’t understand. He was astounded. He dropped his gun. He brought his hands to his chest. He slid along the mattress on his belly, hitting the ground with his forehead. The white light of the armoured car splashed the street. I was standing. Danny was lying down. I fell to my knees.

— They got Danny!

The voice of one of our men, I no longer know who.

— And Tyrone’s been hit!

Arms lifted me. I’m fine. I’m alive. I’m fine. I was whispering to myself. A hand took the weapon from me. The armoured car was retreating behind the barricade with its engine roaring. No more shots. Not one single rock more. Just the breath cut short. The smell of fire. The grey ash floating in the sky. The cries of men and women.

— Murderers! Murderers!

Children’s rocks for nothing, pecking at the steel of the armoured car.

— Tyrone? Can you hear me, Tyrone?

I’m fine. It’s nothing at all. I had killed Danny Finley. I had closed my eyes. I let myself be taken away. I wasn’t wounded, not really. It was only rocks. I had caught my breath by now. I was dragged along the ground, carried by arms and legs, then hoisted up on someone’s back. A door. A living room. A couch. There was something under my waist, like a forgotten child’s toy. Somebody placed a cushion under my head. A hand behind the nape of my neck. A warm cloth on my face, water from a glass against my closed teeth. The icy liquid on my neck, running as far as my shoulder like a snake. I had killed Danny Finley. Fever. I started shaking again. In the street, a police loudspeaker was spitting out orders.

I saw Danny’s startled look once more. He fell forward. He’d been shot in the back. His brother had been killed by Loyalists, he’d been killed by a Republican. I had murdered Danny Finley, 14 August 1969.

It was the end of us. And also the end of me.

I stayed in bed for almost a week. Some Fianna and men from the Belfast Brigade took turns keeping a lookout on the street corner. Jim O’Leary, an explosives engineer from the 2nd Battalion, remained at my bedside night and day. When I opened my eyes, he welcomed me as though I was on his doorstep. Jim was a close friend. His wife Cathy loved Sheila like a mother.

On the third day, I drank a cup of tea and ate half a slice of toast. I wasn’t in my own home. Neither the room, nor Lise, the old lady looking after me, was familiar. On the fourth day, I found out that my mother, brother and sisters had taken the path of exile. Sheila had brought them to an aunt’s place in Drogheda, on the other side of the border. Róisín, Mary and Áine had been crying. They said they didn’t want to flee like that. Wee Kevin tried to hide in the workshop and Sara vomited on the journey. Mother told them that they wouldn’t go far. Swore. They had left Killybegs, they’d been driven from Sandy Street, from Dholpur Lane, and their Station of the Cross would end in Drogheda. When Sheila asked her if she’d go back to Belfast some day, once everything had calmed down, my mother crossed herself and said she’d only go back when Christ the King arrived in the city in all his glory.

So Sheila came back across the border alone.

There were riots across dozens of towns. For the first time since the war, London deployed the British army to Northern Ireland. Not the RUC, not the ‘B-Specials’, not the auxiliary Northern Irish armies, but the British, the real deal. The Royal Regiment of Wales had taken control of the Falls Road, my hostess explained to me. The residents there were offering tea and biscuits to the soldiers. I looked up at her.

— Tea and biscuits?

She smiled.

— They’ve got nothing to do with the killers.

While straightening my bedcovers, she said that they’d prevented the worst. That without them the Loyalists would have chased out or killed all of us.

My mouth was dry, my throat like cardboard.

— And Danny?

The woman locked her brilliant eyes on mine with a look of pride and compassion.

— He’ll be buried on Wednesday.

She sat on the edge of the bed. She was smiling sadly.

— There’s nothing left of Bombay Street. Everything burned. If our street is intact, it’s thanks to him and thanks to you.

The door opened and two men came into the room. I knew the taller one, an officer of our high command. Jim stood to attention.

— Leave us, Lise. And you, too, O’Leary.

He waited for the door to close. My stomach was leaden. I suddenly longed for a sea breeze. I thought of Tom and his asthma. The officer sat down on the bed. I looked at him. He was searching my eyes. He inhaled slowly.

— I know what you’re feeling, Tyrone.

I didn’t answer. I let the silence speak for me.

— When one of us falls, he who was by his side always wonders why he is alive.

He was looking around the small room. The dry palm fronds behind the crucifix, the picture of a white cat in a basket of wool.

— There is no justice in death, Tyrone. Danny died, it could have been you.

He looked at me again. His hand on mine.

— And he would be asking your questions now.

Then he got up, slowly. He went to the window, lifted the curtain with a finger. Turned his back to me.

— Do you know what happened on Dholpur Lane on that Thursday, 14 August 1969?

I killed Danny Finley with two bullets in the back.

— You don’t know? That night the IRA demonstrated that it was capable of defending an enclave. That it was once more necessary to count on our resistance.

I killed Danny. It was me. I was coughing, I couldn’t see anything. My head ached. My eyes were confessing. My visitor listened to nothing but his own voice.

— Live with his courage, not with his death.

Shut up. Leave. You and the other guy, too. Get out of here.

— Your combat will be your revenge, Tyrone.

He held out his hand to me. He didn’t know. Nobody knew. In the dark, in the smoke, in the uproar, only Danny and I were face to face. Nobody else saw his expression the moment he died. I inhaled all the air in the room, breathed in the street, my country as far as the salty drizzle from the quay in Killybegs. The officer lifted his hand and made me an elegant salute. Warm and fraternal. Something that told me I was alive. He would never know. Neither him nor the other one, who raised his hand in turn.

— You saved your enclave, Tyrone, said the second visitor.

— Is Danny a martyr?

What had come over me? Why had I asked that? Words without thought. My mouth remained open.

— He’s a martyr of the Irish struggle for freedom, yes.

The officer looked at me compassionately.

— And as for you, you’re a hero.

At first I refused. I simply wanted to be in the crowd, just another mourner amongst all the others. To carry the coffin, but not to be any more involved than that. During the procession some men from the unit came to see me. Their hands on my shoulder, their voices like prayers.

— It’s him! It’s Tyrone Meehan!

Murmurs, people trying frantically to get a look. Gestures of recognition. As I passed by, two old nationalists straightened up to pay me respect, fingertips to their temples. A young girl gave me the kiss of the survivor and another handed me a bouquet of snowdrops. On the pavement, a group of children were mimicking the Fianna’s rhythmic step. There were no British on the route. They were posted in the surrounding streets, behind the cheval-de-frise, with their ‘pudding bowls’ covered in foliage on their heads.

At first I refused to speak, but eventually I accepted.

I was applauded as I made my way towards the microphone. For a long time, as though being thanked. I had killed Danny. I was shaking. I hadn’t stopped shaking since that day. The crowd was dense and reverential. I brought my lips to the metal.

Hundreds of faces watching. His wife in the front row. Sheila. Jim. The others.

— Danny Finley is not dead!

Cheering.

— Danny Finley is not dead, because you are alive!

I looked at the teary faces in front of me.

— Danny Finley is not dead because last Monday, Mary Mulgreevy was born in Clonard Street. Because on Tuesday, Declan Curran was born in Crocus Street. Because this very morning, Siobhán McDevitt was born in Dunville Street.

Tremors. Women holding hands. In the first row, the officer who had come to see me had tears welling in his eyes.

— Danny Finley is not dead. His name is Mary, Declan, Siobhán!

Our flags were flapping at the foot of the platform. I looked out over the radiant faces.

I killed Danny Finley.

— Our revenge will be the life of these children!

A woman dressed in red stood up. She waited till there was silence. Dozens of empty bottles and pint glasses sat on the tables. I looked around me and I knew every one of them. Jim O’Leary, the bomb-maker who had watched over my bedside, and Cathy his wife. Pete ‘the Killer’ Bradley, the Sheridan brothers. Every time my eyes met someone else’s, a glass was raised to me. Mike O’Doyle, Eugene ‘the Bear Cub’, their faces drawn after years in prison. They left those cells only to go straight back in again. They were holding on between life and death.

The woman in red brought the microphone to her lips.

— A brave son of Ireland was shot on Dholpur Lane tonight…

The pints were left down on the tables. From the first few notes, the pub fell silent. Just that voice at first, then accompanied by dozens of others, like a crowd setting off together. The woman turned to face me. So did all the faces in the room. It was for Tyrone Meehan that the residents of the Thomas Ashe were singing ‘The Ballad of Danny Finley’, dead one year to the day. That song had been written a week after his passing, then published in the Republican papers and taken up across the whole country. Some friends had heard it in a pub in London, and even in an Irish bar in Chicago, where the Americans cried as they sang of exile. So I sang it softly as well.

At the chorus, the room stood up to sing ‘Farewell my friend’.

— Slán go fóill, mo chara…

I had pushed back my chair and was standing up in the centre of the big room, my arms straight at my sides and my fists clenched. Danny Finley had joined his dead heroes, Pearse, Connolly, Thomas Dunbar, Tom Williams. He used to sing about them often, but it was him we’d be singing about from now on. I felt Sheila’s hand on my arm. Jack was there beside me. He had just turned nine. He was watching me, watching the crowd. That image of pride is what I will keep of him my whole life.

I lifted my hand at the cheer and sat down. More pints were squeezed on to the table in front of me. The Guinness my father drank had the taste of tragedy. For the past year, I was like a dead man. My name had got around too much for me to take up arms again. I was retired. It was temporary, but necessary. During the day, caps were raised at my passing, people smiled at me, offered warm words. At night, Danny gave me that look. I had lasted one year. I would last my whole life. It was too late to talk. To whom would I confess? To Father Donovan? To the IRA? To Sheila? To Jim? To my son who lived for me? To whom? And for what reason? For my soul to find peace? Or my heart? Or my gut? I had killed Danny and I had hidden it. I carried his coffin, I honoured his name, I called for revenge. It was too late for dispelling the smoke from Dholpur Lane.

Towards midnight, Frank Devlin and his wife came to shake my hand. Everyone called him Mickey. He was smiling. He handed me a pen. Nobody understood this gesture, it was a secret, just between us. Mickey had caught me out twenty-eight years ago, and he was still taking advantage of it. It wasn’t out of malice, just a kid teasing. And I was blushing. He placed his hand on my shoulder.

— It’s been a long old road, eh? he said before going back to his table.

I raised my glass to eye level to say goodbye in turn.

It was at Crumlin, the day after I arrived. My first time in prison. Before being locked up, I had asked to go to the bog. I’d kept a stub of pencil in my sock, a dusting of lead wrapped in a splinter of wood. I don’t know what came over me. I must have believed I was still free, behind the closed door of a pub urinal. The wall was a dirty grey and I wrote ‘IRA’ in large letters. And then I went into my cell.

The following day, our division could talk of nothing else. The lads were in hysterics over it. But who had done it? Who could really have boasted about belonging to the IRA when everyone in the place was there for being in it? Who had thought they were in a Dublin public toilet? Who had shown off to frighten future bladders?

Mickey was in charge of our washing. He found the pencil, forgotten in the turned-up end of one of my trouser legs. I made him promise not to tell. So he promised. But for him, Tyrone Meehan would always be that kid from the Crum who boasted about the IRA on a toilet wall because he was the only one in the place who didn’t belong to the secret army. Frank was guarding the memory of my youthful foolishness.

That evening in the Thomas Ashe I felt like I was in their club. For the first time I wasn’t at home, but in their space. I felt I had intruded on the beauty of the brave.

— We’re going, Tyrone. Do you want your jacket?

Sheila was standing. Jack was asleep on the table, his head on his arms. The Thomas Ashe was emptying slowly.

— See you, Tyrone!

— Safe home, Meehan!

Chairs were being piled up and tables dragged across the floor; there was the sound of glasses being stacked, the iron shutter of the bar being noisily lowered. The murmur of drunkenness, of laughter, of beer, of overly loud voices. I put my jacket on. My cap. I staggered across the room. On a wall was a framed portrait of Danny, crossed with a black veil. I paused. The sudden neon lights splashed across his forehead and expression.

Lieut. Daniel ‘Danny’ Finley

1924–1969

2nd Batt. C Company

Óglaigh na hÉireann

His eyes were raised. He wasn’t looking at me. He had decided to leave me in peace. I felt Jack’s hand in mine. We went out into the night that smelled of rain. I raised my collar and looked at the street, the low houses, the dark windows, the heavy shadows staggering home drunk. I dropped Jack’s hand. I raised my fist and roared.

—Éirinn go Brách!

—Éirinn go Brách! shouted my son in turn.

And then I let out a long braying. A dreadful wail, the cry of the donkey.

11. Killybegs, Thursday, 28 December 2006

Jack came for nothing. He had promised his mother he would come, so he did, end of story. An icy visit. It was just two strangers in the room.

— How are you?

He raised his eyes from the ceramic mug he was holding in both hands to warm himself up. He looked at me. He drank the last drop of tea.

— Are you speaking to me?

I got up. The fire was dying with the cold.

— Are you speaking to Jack Meehan, is that it?

I turned my back on him and poked at some embers. My words were quiet.

— I’m speaking to my son.

— Your son? Do you mean that I have a father?

— You have a father, yes.

I placed a damp log on the flames.

Jack shouted.

— I had a father for twenty years, and then he died.

— No. He’s in front of you, he’s stirring the fire.

He pushed his chair back. It fell over. He brushed his mug aside with an elbow. A broken crash. He was standing.

— Stop it! You’re no longer anything to me, understand? Nothing! You’re a traitor! You’ve been a traitor for twenty-six years! You admitted it, twenty-six years! It was a traitor who came to visit me in prison! Do you remember when I got out? Can you remember? I was beside you in the car and you told me you were proud of me. Remember? Proud of me!

I took my place again at my father’s table.

— Proud of me? I spent twenty years in your British friends’ prisons! Twenty fucking years! And you’re proud of me?

— Do you want some more tea?

— You betrayed Mam, betrayed Ireland, betrayed every living thing close to us. You are my traitor. You no longer even have the right to be living here!

I looked at Jack. There was so much Meehan in him. I nearly smiled in weariness. I told myself that he was all that was left to me.

— How can you look me in the eye? Huh? How can you?

— I’m looking at my son.

— Never say that word again, never! I forbid it.

As a child, Jack loved Killybegs. He used to carry the water from the well, sit dreaming in front of the candles, make fantastic shadows against the walls in the light from the storm-lamp, walk down by the harbour and laugh delightedly at the boats. For hours on end he would climb up and down the bare hills, over endless low stone walls, battling with reddish-brown bracken that came up as far as his waist. He would dream of islands as far as the eye could see, rising like froth on the ocean. Sheila would want to go home after three days, but Jack would beg her to stay a little longer. For him, it was a house of trappers, of Indians, a cottage from before the Famine, when people hadn’t yet begun having to count the steaming potatoes on their plates. Even once he was a Fianna, he remained a child. In Belfast, he had the furrowed brow, hands calloused from holding bricks, he smelled of petrol and rage. I recognized the same intensity as Tom Williams in his eyes and I was afraid for him. But here, back in Killybegs, he’d throw a fishing rod over his shoulder, stalk mullet and come back along the bog, whacking the thickets with the branch of an oak to keep the bad fairies away.

One day in 1979 with Dave ‘Snoopy’ Barrett, Jack shot down a policeman on Castle Street. Jack was driving the getaway motorbike. Snoopy shot three times at the uniforms barring their path. Farther up on the Glen Road, they ran into some of the army’s armoured cars. Jack decided to spin off to the left, into a narrow street. A Republican taxi was following close behind. Snoopy stretched out his arm to warn the driver they were turning, the gun forgotten in his outstretched hand. The soldiers gave chase. Jack and Snoopy hit a kerb and surrendered without a fight. They waited there, faces against the ground and hands behind their heads. When they were arrested, the death of the policeman Jack had shot was not yet known. Dozens of residents had come out of their brick houses to watch. Snoopy shouted his name to the small crowd. Jack cried out, ‘Meehan! From Dholpur Lane!’ The British didn’t shoot. They left them alive. They were forced to try them. Because that day, in that little back street off Glen Road, dozens of nationalists saw that Dave Barrett and Jack Meehan had been arrested by the army. And that they had climbed into the armoured cars alive. The British would shoot to kill. That fact horrified some people on our side. Not me. I’ve never known the enemy to be honourable. I’ve tried to kill him, he’s tried to shoot me down. War has never been any other way.

My son was sentenced to a life behind bars: twenty-one years. He was freed in 2000 with the last remaining Republican prisoners and he left prison in a sadder state than he went in.

— Where’s our flag?

That had been the first thing to come out of his mouth. We were driving back from Long Kesh. Sheila was in the back seat and Jack was beside me. She was holding his hand over the armrest and we were silent. Ireland was welcoming my son home. A cloudless sky, a desert sun and a gentle breeze. Jack had his forehead against the glass. He would have to heal twenty-one barbed-wire years. And there on the side of the road, in a wire-fenced yard, in the shadow of a school, the British flag was rippling. Large and brand-new.

— Where’s our flag? Jack asked.

He was trying to catch his mother’s eye in the rear-view mirror.

— All of that for this?

Sheila murmured. The peace process, the negotiations, compromises. Our flag would soon fly freely. The important thing was that our children be set free and their fathers stop dying.

Jack looked at me. I kept staring at the road. All of that for this? I responded that it was a beginning. Everything had to have a beginning. There were no more armoured patrols on our streets, no more raids, no more checkpoints. The British were dismantling their barracks, and their watchtowers on the border. The police were putting parking tickets on badly parked cars on the Falls Road. Did he understand? Those slips under the windscreen wipers, like in London or Liverpool. And did he know that Jacky Nolan, John McIntyre, his pals from school, had joined the police? It’s not only Protestants any more, Catholics can wear that uniform, too. And that, well, that changes everything, didn’t he think? He raised his hand, asked me to be quiet.

For a long time Jack ate with his back to us, facing the wall. He found sitting down to a meal obscene. He had spent nine years in solitary confinement. He talked to himself at first. His movements were more limited than they had been. In his room, he put the mattress on the floor. He tried to build a life with Fiona, a childhood friend. Then with Lucy. Then with us. He came back to the house at forty-seven years of age. A lookout, then a Fianna, óglach, lieutenant, captain of the Irish Republican Army, and today he is a night porter in a Belfast pub. He separates drunken kids who ask him who he thinks he is. Who remind him that the IRA is no longer around to back him up. That he’s only a penguin in a black suit with a white shirt. A nothing. And he doesn’t reply.

Jack got up at last. He looked at me. He put on his anorak, his gloves. The hour wasn’t yet up. Sheila hadn’t beeped the horn from the road.

— At least wait till your mother’s here.

— My mother? For all those years she woke up beside a stranger, my mother. You know that? Do you understand that? She’s like a dead woman!

— I understand.

— No! You don’t understand anything. You don’t get anything at all. You can’t know what it’s like to find yourself without a father, without a husband, without anything any more! My father? He was Tyrone Meehan! The great Tyrone! Hero of fuck all, yeah! We gave you our love, our trust, our pride. We gave you everything! And you have betrayed those who loved you, those who protected you! You remember when I was a kid, every night I helped you to barricade our door so that those bastards wouldn’t get into our house? Those bastards, they were you!

— I understand.

— You know what they’re calling you in Belfast? ‘That man’. That’s all. Nobody will speak your name. We are the traitor’s relatives.

— I know that.

— What are we going to do, Mam and I? How are we going to cope?

— You’re going to carry on without me.

— There will never again be cheer in our house.

I lowered my head. Since that morning, an old question had been banging around in my head: ‘Is there a life before death?’ Tom Williams had taught it to us to keep hope alive.

Jack made for the door.

— I need you, son.

He stayed standing there facing the latch, the lock, the double chains I’d installed. His back was turned to me, his shoulders drooping. He sighed. Then silence. It lasted a long time, that silence. He placed his fist on the wall and buried his head in his arm. He didn’t cry.

— I can’t. It’s too painful. What you’ve done to us is just too awful, Da.

— I need you both.

He turned to me one last time. He was as beautiful as pure rage. I knew that once he walked through that door, he wouldn’t come back. I searched for a line, a word. He stepped out into the frost. Standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, tiny against the forest.

— Jack?

He shrugged his shoulders.

— I love you.

That was all I had.

He looked at me, flummoxed, head leaning to one side like he used to do as a child.

— I love you, I said again.

He frowned. He looked as though he didn’t understand. Backing away, he took the path leading back to the road. Without a word. He walked away from the house, his childhood, the old well, the soft flame of the candles, the pixies, the forest; he left the village of his ancestors, his father, all the Ireland I’d given him. He was walking with his arms spread wide, stumbling because he couldn’t see where he was going. My child, my son, my wee soldier. He was crying. His mouth was open in a mask of suffering. He was fleeing, running away from me. His steps crunched over the wood, the stone, the frozen earth. I placed a hand on the icy wall; there was nothing else I could do. Not for him, or for me. I wasn’t even a traitor any longer. I was dead. And so was he. And all of us. And all the others to come. I was no longer waiting for anything. And I still didn’t know where our flag was.

12

On 20 October 1979, I was sentenced to fifteen months in prison. A grass from the ghetto had informed on me. For security reasons, he was hidden behind a curtain when he testified before the judge. Just his voice condemning me.

— Meehan struck the youth while telling him that the IRA punish dealers. That if he came back to the ghetto with his gear, he’d put a bullet in his knee…

I closed my eyes. I knew that fearful way of speaking. Maybe it was Paddy Toomey, given a hiding by our guys for having made a mess of his wife after coming home from the pub. Or Liam Moynihan, who’d been forced to leave the ghetto after an attempted rape. I leaned forward slightly, trying to find out. A tweed shoulder, a shadow of an arm behind the curtain…

— Sit up, Meehan.

I shrugged indifferently. One after another, we passed through these Diplock courts. A single magistrate, no juries, hidden witnesses. To send me to prison for having threatened a dealer? The British were wide of the mark. Our army was restructured, organized into closed units. I was smiling at the magistrate. He was avoiding my eye. After having been the leader of the 2nd Battalion, then of the Beflast Brigade, I had just been appointed to the IRA Army Council. The wee chap in black hadn’t the least idea who he was trying. Fifteen months? A gift. And yet it turned out to be a nightmare.

Since 1 March 1976, the imprisoned Republicans and Loyalists had lost their status as prisoners of war. Overnight, through the violence of the Special Powers Act, we became bandits and were forced to wear the same prison garb as the common criminals. On 14 September 1976, when I arrived in Long Kesh, Kieran Nugent demanded to remain naked in his cell. He wrapped himself in his blankets. He was nineteen years old and he was the one who started it. A second followed suit, then a third. Frank ‘Mickey’ Devlin, the guy with the pen, was the ninth.

In March 1978, beaten every time they went to the showers, the lads broke their furniture and refused to leave their cells. In retaliation, the screws removed everything, leaving only the mattresses on the floor. Several days later they stopped taking out the slop buckets. When they overflowed, the Republican soldiers decided to piss on the ground, shit in their hands and spread their excrement on the walls.

When I entered H-Block 4 of the prison compound on Thursday, 1 November 1979, three hundred comrades had been naked in their blankets and living in their shit for three years.

I hadn’t trembled in a long time. In front of the five warders, I took off my clothes without a word, without a look. I thought of Jack, of my boy, who had entered this room five months earlier. A mirror was placed on the ground. I crouched down without them having to ask, opened my anus with my fingers. I was fifty-four years old. The screws were younger than me. One of them handed me the prison clothes, carefully folded, petrol-blue with yellow stripes. I looked the kid in the eye and spat on the fabric.

The warders didn’t like my gesture. I was beaten. They threw me naked into a cell with a final kick in the back. My forehead hit the ground, my cheekbone. I was lying on my stomach, I sat up with difficulty. My thumb was sprained, a couple of my ribs were cracked. I was bleeding from the mouth and nose. A burning trickle was rolling down the back of my neck. The top of my head was damaged. I ran my hand over it. A bite. A chunk of flesh was missing. My left leg started to shake. I hugged my chest. It was cold. I looked around the cell. In a corner lay a scrap of a man, buried in his mattress.

— Jack?

I didn’t recognize my voice. Like a creaking door.

I was afraid it might be him, and I hoped it wouldn’t be. But it wasn’t. It was someone else’s son. He turned to me, got up slowly from his corner of the room. He was very young, slender or scrawny, more grey than pale, with a chaotic beard, and hair to his shoulders. Without a word, he took the folded blankets from the free mattress, draped them over my shoulders and sat down beside me. Then I lowered my guard. I don’t know why. That gesture, maybe. That coarse gentleness, that watchful silence. Perhaps also his eyes meeting mine. I breathed in little jerks. I released the warmth of my urine. I was pissing. The warm, glistening pool expanded underneath me. He didn’t move back. It reached his bare foot, surrounded it, continued its path of piss under the bed.

He held out his hand.

— Aidan Phelan, West Tyrone Brigade.

— Tyrone Meehan, Belfast Brigade.

He smiled.

— Danny Finley’s friend, I know. And it’s an honour for me.

Then he lit a cigarette, rolling tobacco in a margin of his Bible.

— The guys say Matthew burns better, but I prefer the Epistles.

He inhaled an acrid drag and handed it to me.

— St Peter, St Paul, makes no difference…

We smoked in silence. I was looking round the dark room. Rotten food was piled up in mucous mounds along the wall. An accumulation of filth, of moist decay, of decomposition. And then the shit, spread right up to the ceiling. Finger marks. A crucifix hanging on the broken light switch. I shivered.

When they led me to the cell, the screws were wearing masks. The air was as thick as a sewer. I didn’t know that a smell could line the throat. By the time night fell, I had almost grown used to the stench, my sticky legs, the cold, the darkness, and all of our shit.

— Is cimí polaitiúla muid!

A voice from far off. The shout from a cell. My language.

— We are political prisoners! Aidan threw back, hobbling as far as the door.

— Táimid ag cimí polaitiúla! I roared in turn.

Up until that point, I hadn’t seen another soul. Only the screws’ hateful faces. And now here was this clamouring from my comrades, my friends, my brothers in arms. Dozens of furious, stony, beautiful voices. A magnificent din. Cries accompanied by raised fists, hammering the doors with bare flesh. I listened for my child’s voice in the heart of all that anguish. And then again I didn’t want to hear.

— Tiocfaidh ár lá! the first prisoner took up, roaring over the tumult.

— Tiocfaidh ár lá! the others responded. ‘Our day will come!’

— That was your first evening prayer, my companion smiled.

And then everything went quiet.

At night, Aidan would sometimes cry. He’d whimper like a child, pulling the blanket right up over his head. One morning I looked at him. He was sleeping on his belly, mouth open, cheek squashed. His arm was trailing on the ground. White maggots were wriggling in his hair and on the back of his hand.

After thirteen months, I looked the same as him. My hair was covering my ears and my nose in greasy clumps. My beard was long and messy. One face mirrored the other. I could see my gauntness in his drawn features, his dull skin, his eyes rimmed in black.

In his corner of the cell, he used to organize cockroach races. And I’d make him recite the thirty-two counties of Ireland.

— Meath… Mayo… Roscommon… Offaly…

I taught him Irish words. The prison essentials.

— Póg mo thóin!

— Kiss my arse! That was his favourite war cry, and he muttered it every time a screw opened the door.

We had decided to shit together, to make a ceremony of this private act and transform the humiliation into a shared ritual. He’d crouch down to the left of the door, I’d go in my hands. Then we’d smear our excrement over the wall with fingers spread wide, in big warm circles. In the beginning I used to vomit. The savagery of the image, the violence of the smell. And then, bit by bit, I learned to turn my disgust into rage. Fresh coats over dried coats, I spread the human rendering without feeling ashamed.

The prisoners had fashioned pipes out of rolled-up cardboard and they used to slide them into the cracks between the cell doors and the ground. At a set time, just after the meal, we would all piss into those tubes, spilling our urine into the corridor.

— They’ll never break us! my friend used to say.

We were forbidden visitors and post, locked up night and day without exercise. We had given up passing the time. We spoke little. We used to sit with our heads down for hours on end. Often, we wouldn’t even dare meet the other’s eyes.

— If we get out of here, we can never tell anyone about this, Aidan said one day.

— But everyone on the outside knows about it, I told him.

He shook his head.

— You think they know, Tyrone? But what is it they know, for Christ’s sake? Nobody can understand what we’re living through in here! Shit is just a word to them, Tyrone! It’s not matter! It’s not this filth that slides between your fingers!

One morning the warders opened our door, yelling, accompanied by helmeted police. They were running in the corridor, banging the walls with their batons. At the howling of the other inmates, we got up. Aidan pressed himself against me, back to back, nape against nape. We chained ourselves together, arm of one clasped through the other’s, fists clenched against our chests. We were bellowing at life, at fear. We shook with our fury. We formed a single body, which they broke apart with savage blows.

I was knocked to the ground, my blankets snatched away from me, then dragged by the legs into the corridor. The line of clubs. Protected by their riot shields, they were taking their revenge on these fucking Irish, on their blankets, on their shit, on their insults, on their contempt. They were beating naked men. Heads, legs, backs, raised arms. They were marking us. They were leaving their traces.

I was pulled by my beard and hair to the shower room. I struggled and shouted. I no longer hurt, no longer felt anything. The shouts from the others were intoxicating. For a moment, I thought they were going to kill us. Terror. There were three screws. They were keeping me on the floor. Arm locks, hands gripping my neck. I repaid them by scratching, spitting. And then I was lifted up like a sack and thrown heavily into a bathtub of freezing water. They were going to drown me. I threw my arms and legs about. A blow to my jaw. I fell back, head hitting the wall. They were washing me. They were scouring a year of resistance away. A screw was scrubbing me with a hard brush. My back, my arms. He was rubbing down a bad horse. Scraping the shit off a toilet bowl. He was puffing, mouth open, threatening my father, my mother, and all the pigs of my kind.

He shouted.

— That’s for Agnes Wallace, you filthy bastard! Does that mean anything to you, Agnes Wallace?

My howls were drowning out his voice.

— And William Wright? That means nothing, either? You IRA scum!

He was scrubbing me violently, scraping me clean. He held my hands on the lip of the bath and forced the bristles under my nails. He was barking names in my ear.

— William McCully! John Cummings!

He was whacking rhythmically with the back of the brush.

— Robert Hamilton! John Milliken!

Milliken. I remembered. A head warder of the penitentiary administration, shot by the IRA on his way home.

Good Christ! He was avenging his dead.

— Thomas Fenton, you scumbag! Desmond Irvine, you murderer!

The second screw had taken over. He was tearing my hair out. He ploughed into my skull with blunt scissors. He cut, he slashed.

— Micky Cassidy! Gerald Melville!

Then I responded.

— James Connolly! Patrick Pearse! Eamonn Ceannt!

I bellowed with all my might. Blood for blood, rage for rage, their victims for mine.

The scissors took away part of my ear.

— Albert Miles!

— Tom Williams!

— Nazi! shouted the screw with the brush. Filthy fucking Nazi!

I had blood in my eyes. The third screw was choking me. He had wrapped his forearm around my neck. He was squeezing. I could barely breathe. My mouth was open, tongue hanging out, I clenched my jaw in vain. Before my eyes, on his tattooed arm, the pole of a Union Jack pierced through the Irish flag.

— You killed Danny Finley!

They pushed my head under the water and kept it there, one hand on my skull, the other on the nape of my neck, legs hobbled by two arms and a boot on my waist. Until I passed out.

On the way back, we met spacemen. A dozen guys with protective gloves, boots, overalls, transparent masks and waterproof hoods. They were carrying cleaning equipment, power hoses, vacuum cleaners.

— Go back to Mars, bastard! growled a wounded prisoner.

I was returned to my cell by my regular warder. An odd guy, almost bald and older than the others. He always had a word or a look for us.

We called him ‘Popeye’. Every single time he brought us our evening mess he’d glance around our cell with a sorry look on his face. He’d lift his paper mask, as though wanting to share our ordeal, shake his head and murmur:

— Jesus Mary!

He must have been a Catholic.

One day, he asked me to give up the dirty protest. To accept the blue uniform. I was alone in the cell. Aidan had been transferred to the prison service to learn that his sister had died, killed in a fire. Usually Popeye would remain in the doorway. This time, he came in. He stopped in the middle of the room, away from the soiled walls. He placed my mess on the mattress.

— Even animals don’t live like this.

I listed out our demands. I chanted our slogans. And I felt bad for doing it. He was speaking to me man to man and I was replying like a robot. Because his colleague was waiting in the corridor Popeye whispered cautious words. He told me that the public couldn’t care less about our shit, that the British would leave us like that for a thousand years if that was what it took. He told me that outside of our ghettos, with their isolated circle of Irish Republicans, the world wasn’t the slightest bit interested in us.

— It’s been four years now. Four years, do you get it? And look how far you’ve got. It’s you who’s living in the shit, Meehan, not Margaret Thatcher.

Often the other screws took the piss out of him, so the prisoners used to stand up for him. There were some amongst us who considered his compassion a manoeuvre — the good cop, bad cop tactic. But one evening, when Aidan was crying over his sister, Popeye proposed delivering a letter to his family for him. He made him promise that it wouldn’t be political. A letter of commiseration, words of comfort from a son to his grieving parents. And Aidan accepted. It was a crazy act for both men, criminal under prison law. For Popeye, it was treason.

Aidan shut himself off, facing the wall. First he spent a long time choosing a passage from the Bible, then he tore out the page. He read it to me.

—‘A prayer for help against the foe’, Psalm 60. David addresses God:

Thou hast showed thy people hard things:

Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment …

He asked me what I thought of his choice. I made no reply. Yes, said Aidan, God has been making us see. And this ordeal was, for him, the proof of His presence. Then he spent a long time writing in the margins. Tiny script, cramped, the same used by prisoners before the blanket protest began, when we still had visitors. When we recounted our lives on sheets of cigarette paper folded over and over until they were no larger than a nail. Those stowaway secrets, enveloped in tinfoil and clingfilm. Those messages hidden in men’s cheeks in place of a missing filling. Those notes passed from one tongue to another in the visitors’ room at the moment of a kiss.

One evening after dinner the warder left with our two messes, and the message buried in some leftover white beans.

The astronauts were going into the cells. Popeye was carrying me, hugging me around the waist. I had my hand on his shoulder. I was whimpering, swallowing my saliva and my blood. Everything hurt. My knees were knocking with every step. My skin was burning, as though it had been burnt to a crisp by the sun and then rubbed with sand. Everything was spinning around me. I stumbled. I waited a moment for the ground to become still.

And it was at that instant that I saw Robert Sands. For the first and last time in my life. The prisoner who used to start shouting in Irish once night fell: that was him. People had told me about him on the outside, their voices full of respect. He was twenty-seven years old. Before the blanket protest he had been writing articles and poems for the Republican press, drawing, giving classes in Irish. Bobby Sands had been arrested in a car along with four óglaigh. There had been one gun between five of them in the vehicle. And he got fourteen years in prison.

— Your leader is in a bad way, Popeye murmured.

Bobby commanded the IRA within the prison compound. Two screws were taking him back to his cell. They held him under his armpits, one on either side, and they were dragging him carelessly along the floor.

— Don’t watch.

I closed my eyes. I just caught a glimpse of him, half-covered by his blanket. Behind my closed eyelids I could still see his white skin and the marks of the blows. His arms were dangling and his legs were jelly, bare feet sliding along the tiles. His head hung listlessly. A soul wrapped in a coarse shroud.

A shock awaited me in my cell. The floor was wet and everything smelled of Javel, ammonia, chlorine — a mixture of morgue, toilets and hospital. The walls had been cleaned. Nothing left of us but the dark shadow of our dirt. They had soaked our blankets and our mattresses. Aidan was in his usual spot, his wet blanket around his waist and over his shoulders. He had shorter hair on one side and a large white dent at the front of his skull. He was rubbing his knees. I joined him in his corner. From his side, you could see the whitish light from outside. It was raining. I was in pain. My skin, my head. My blood was pounding through my veins. At the back of my jaw, two teeth were broken. My tongue was a wound. One of Aidan’s eyes was closed, my mouth was hanging open. We didn’t fight the silence. We waited for the night, pressed up against one another wordlessly.

— Tiocfaidh ár lá!

— Our day will come!

A roar in the corridor. The last of us had got back to his cell. I had dozed off, back against the wall. I looked up. Aidan was questioning me silently. He was smiling in the dark. The warders still hadn’t turned on the lights. And then he got up. He went over and squatted next to the door, in his little corner, under the crucifix. So I got up. He shit on the ground, I shit in my hands. And we began to repaint our cell.

When I left the Kesh on 7 January 1981, I hugged Aidan. I squeezed him as I would Jack. Our beards, our hair tangled together, our soiled blankets, our pride. Bobby Sands was organizing a hunger strike in order to obtain political prisoner status. From cell to cell, we had reformulated our demands. We had five of them and they were pathetic. The right to wear civilian clothes, to associate freely with other prisoners and not to have to work for the prison. We wanted to receive one visit, one letter and one parcel per week. We also wanted full restoration of remission lost through our protest.

I asked Aidan not to add his name to the list of prisoners volunteering for martyrdom. He was nineteen and had a little girl aged two. Sentenced to barely five years, he would walk out one day. He’d take care of her.

Because we knew that this strike would be fatal.

The previous year, in October 1980, seven prisoners had fasted for two and a half months. In Armagh Prison, three women had stopped eating. London bided its time. Negotiating a halt to the movement, the British promised to re-examine prisoner status. The hunger strike ceased. Mary and the two Mairéads agreed to eat, as did Tom, Séan, Leo, Tommy, Raymond and John. As did Brendan, the IRA officer running the prison camp, who was later replaced by Bobby Sands. One month on, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins, went back on his word. The Republican prisoners remained common criminals.

Bobby had accepted bringing the first fast to a halt, so it was up to him to take the lead in the second. The anguish of having been deceived added to his determination. He began his hunger strike on 1 March 1981, others followed, one per week, and the living men took over from the dead.

But not Aidan. Not him. I don’t know why I made him promise. There, between those walls, I had no authority to give him orders. Officer on the outside, the barbed wire and watchtowers had made me a simple soldier. Nobody could ever persuade Bobby Sands to quit his hunger strike. Not the Irish Republican Army Council, not all our leaders, not all our priests, not all the prayers of the women in our streets, not his sister, not his mother, not the tears of Gerald, his seven-year-old child. And yet I was begging this young lad to live. I asked him to do it for me.

— You stay alive, I said to Aidan Phelan.

He promised me as a son. And he kept his word.

13

On 8 January 1981, at four in the morning, three of the army’s Saracen armoured cars, two British-army Land Rovers and a dozen soldiers invaded Dholpur Lane. It was me they wanted, nine hours after I’d been released. I was sleeping, Sheila woke me abruptly. They were forcing in our front door with a battering ram. I ran into the stairwell in pyjamas and bare feet.

— Tyrone Meehan?

It wasn’t my name. It was a challenge. The soldier was at the bottom of the stairs, cheek stuck to his gun butt. I nodded, my arms in the air, waiting to be searched. One policeman grabbed me by the hair, another by the nape of my neck. The door was smashed, torn from its hinges. Sheila was shouting.

— He only got out yesterday! For the love of God, leave him! He’s just got out!

I arrived on the street broken, arms twisted back and chin forced down against my chest. The grey armoured car was up against the front of our house, door open. Barely ten paces from my doorway to its wire-covered steel. Dholpur Lane rose up once again. The convoy departed amidst shouting, stones and bottles. I was pinned on the floor of the vehicle, hands bound at my back. A peeler slid a black plastic bag over my head. I panicked. I thought they were going to suffocate me. Three policemen kept me from moving with their shoes, crushing my neck, my legs and my back. I saw Aidan again, the cell, the putrid floor, our walls covered in excrement. I wanted to die. I didn’t want to go back to prison.

An officer knelt down, his mouth against my ear. He stank like a sewer.

— So, Paddy! Freedom nice, was it? A little too long though, no? You got out, what was it? Ten, twelve hours ago?

I didn’t answer.

Since crossing the border in 1941 with Mother and Uncle Lawrence, I had learned when to challenge and when to lower my head. One day when threatened by a patrol, my brother Seánie placed his arms in front of his face, wincing like a peasant who fears his master’s stick. The soldiers laughed. He had a gun and two grenades on him.

— The enemy underestimates us, that’s its weakness, he used to say.

When he’d come across British patrols, he’d often pretend to be retarded. He’d limp heavily, stick his lips out, jut out his chin, stare wide-eyed and put on the lantern-jawed look of Irish caricatures published in the English press. He’d do it for me, giving me a surreptitious look from the corner of his eye. And there was always a soldier who’d say to the others: ‘Oh that one! He’s perfect!’

We weren’t going to the holding centre in Castlereagh, the journey was too long. Neither was I going back to the Kesh. We weren’t on the main road, but small, winding roads. My right cheek was squashed against the ground. There were no projectiles hitting the van, no bricks or clods of earth. No sudden accelerations to shake off swarms of hostile children. We were in a Protestant zone.

I got out of the Land Rover blind, the bag still covering my face. There were hands supporting me, but not shoving me around. Men’s and women’s voices. A door, then another. No iron gates, no bolts slamming shut, no keys, either, a corridor of free men. I sensed the enclosed acoustic of a small room. The cell had taught me the sound of that space. A chair against my calves. A hand pressing down gently on my shoulder. A radiator’s warmth. I sat down.

When they released my wrists and lifted the hood, I kept my eyes half-closed for a moment. The neon light was unpleasant. On the walls were a flaking painting of a hospital and the poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds. The window was covered with wire. It looked out on unfamiliar buildings. The rain was pressing against the panes.

— Tea?

I was facing a large table and there were three of them. No uniforms: plain clothes. I recoiled. I had thought they were Loyalists at first but their accent was English.

— Coffee, maybe?

The one speaking took off his anorak without breaking eye contact. He had very red hair, a bushy moustache, and his left eye was sunken in its socket. The second guy was skinny. The third had white hair. He was looking out the window. Watching my reflection in the glass. Our eyes met.

— Why am I here?

I was accustomed neither to the chair nor warmth from my enemy. I had learned how to protect my head from blows, how to survive in prison, how to endure being insulted and shouted at. I knew how to bear their violence, not their calm. The skinny guy handed me a cup of tea. He was watching for my reaction. I drank, ignoring the queen smiling from the blue china.

— We know everything about you. Now it’s our turn to give you some information.

The man at the window turned around. He sat on the edge of the table.

— My name is Stephen Petrie and I’m an agent of MI5, British counter-intelligence.

I stood up.

— I don’t want to know anything.

He smiled.

— Sit down, Tyrone, everything’s okay.

He pointed at the man who’d served the tea.

— May I introduce Willie Wallis from the Special Branch.

The other man gave a slight nod.

— And this is Frank Congreve, officer of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Same polite gesture from the redhead.

— But to keep it simple, you can call us ‘the agent’, ‘the hunter’ and ‘the handler’. Or ‘the RUC’ if you want to be polite.

I had remained standing.

— I have no reason to know you or to call you anything. If you have nothing to charge me with, let me go.

I was surprised by how calm I was. They weren’t afraid of me, I wasn’t afraid of them. I felt we were on an even footing. The agent sat in an empty chair to my left. It was him talking.

— I’m going to tell you a fairy tale, Tyrone.

I crossed my arms.

— Children like fairy tales, don’t they? Elves, pixies, all that kind of thing…

The agent turned towards the red-haired handler.

— You’re from these parts, what do they call pixies around here?

— Leprechauns.

— That’s it, the leprechauns.

I absentmindedly closed a button on my pyjamas.

— And then when he grows up, the Irishman dreams of martyrs and heroes.

The agent pushed an ashtray towards me.

— Heroes are essential in this country, isn’t that right? Am I mistaken, Tyrone?

I didn’t answer. He looked at the red-haired cop.

— And what about you, Frank? Do you think the hero is important in Ireland?

— Vital, Stephen, vital.

— An Ulster Protestant’s word, the agent said.

He addressed the hunter.

— Willie?

The other tipped his chair back.

— I have the feeling that our friend is getting impatient.

The agent, the hunter and the handler were swopping roles, questions, geographical positions in the room. Sometimes one would finish the other’s sentence. Or they’d cut across one another. It was as if they had even allocated the silences. They were forcing me to look from one to the other, follow one question after another. I had to constantly turn my head to maintain eye contact. I was surrounded. I felt dizzy, with the nausea of rough journeys rising to my lips.

The agent looked at me. He nodded.

— We’re boring you, Tyrone?

— Is it over? Can I go?

I crushed my cigarette in the royal cup. The handler looked slightly annoyed. He sighed. He opened a leather satchel.

— Go? Of course we’re going to let you go. But before that, I’d like you to take a quick look at this.

He took a plastic bag from his satchel. A small transparent pocket that he placed in front of me. Inside, three crushed bullets, deformed from an impact, and a label tag folded in half.

I sat down. My legs wouldn’t support me.

— Take the packet, Tyrone.

I rubbed my hands on my thighs. I was sweating.

— Are you afraid of bullets? That doesn’t seem like you, Meehan, said the red-haired handler.

He emptied them out on the table.

— Go on, take one.

— To put my prints on them? What do you take me for?

The agent smiled.

— Do you know the calibre?

I shrugged, and held out my hand.

— 45 ACP, Tyrone. Ammunition from the Thompson submachine gun.

The handler got up and dropped a bullet in my palm.

— Are you beginning to get an inkling why you’re here?

I looked at the piece of copper. I shook my head. No. I didn’t understand.

Then he unfolded the yellowing tag and placed it in front of my cup.

Red handwriting:

Daniel Finley/Aug/14/69.

I let the bullet fall. It slipped between my fingers like sand.

— My God, I said.

I crossed my arms behind my neck, elbows raised, forearms pressed against my ears, eyelids closed. I lowered my head. My mouth was open, my jaw hurt. I was suffocating. I could hear my heart beating. I was in Dholpur Lane, in the smoke of the tear gas.

— Danny didn’t suffer. He died almost on the spot, said the redhead.

Our street. The barricade. His wide eyes. His surprise.

— Your first bullet was close to his heart. We pulled the others from his hip and his thigh.

— You know nothing, I murmured.

— Everything, Tyrone, we know everything. Our men were in the crowd. Two of them were there when you shot. They testified, the spy asserted.

— Stumbled and fired, added the handler.

— Yes, stumbled and fired. It was an accident, Tyrone. We know that.

My hand was shaking like it did in prison.

— Before we’d even retrieved the weapon, we knew, Meehan.

— And then there was that song, the agent came out with.

He turned towards the man from the Special Branch.

— How did that song go again? You remember, Will?

The other nodded.

— Sure I remember!

Then he sang softly:

Danny fell for Ireland

Shamefully murdered

But with his old Thompson

His comrade in rage

Sent the killers back to hell.

—‘His comrade in rage’! They did well to come up with that, grinned the agent.

— I have to be honest with you, when that ballad started doing the rounds, we had a good laugh, the handler told me.

The agent put his hands in his pockets.

— It’s true. It seemed strange to us to see Finley’s killer being applauded by his widow the day he was buried. But you know what? We decided not to interfere. We let it go. It’s important not to crumple beliefs.

— In fact, you created the ideal martyr and we helped you become the perfect hero, the handler added.

They laughed. I kept my eyelids closed.

— Pay close attention, Tyrone.

The agent’s firm voice.

— Look at me.

I opened my eyes again. Coloured dots danced in the neon light.

He crouched down, level with me.

— Either you leave here and you tell the IRA everything, or you decide, like us, not to interfere with this fairy tale.

The handler held out a glass of water. My eyes were fixed on the film poster. A realist drawing of a woman protecting her head and shouting, and the birds attacking her. ‘It could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made’, said the ad. Terrifying. I felt nothing, neither cold, nor hot, nor fearful. I was empty inside. I drank. The water bore through my stomach. The rain was hitting the window. I looked at my pyjamas, my bare feet on their floor. I was no longer anyone. They were all talking at the same time.

— To own up ten years later, that’d be taking some risk, wouldn’t it?

— It would be better to leave the martyr and the hero in peace, don’t you think?

I asked for another glass of water.

— What do you want?

My voice, throat dry and lips burning.

— To protect you, Tyrone.

— Answer me, for Christ’s sake!

— For you to help us.

— Never!

— Think of Sheila, Tyrone. A decent, vulnerable woman caught up in the war. I’m not so sure she’d enjoy Armagh Prison.

— And Jack? Your son, Meehan? A simple signature and we can send him to serve out his sentence on the mainland.

— Can you imagine that, Tyrone? An IRA man? A fucking Fenian? A killer of Brits flung into a Scottish cell crammed full of murderers?

— And as for you, do you really want to go back to your shit?

The agent got up. He gave the others a signal. The handler left the room, followed by the hunter. The agent stayed there alone with me, in front of the open door. He spoke to me very quietly. A low voice.

— The IRA keeps saying that it wants peace? Well, on our side, too, we want peace. So let’s make it together, this peace. You and us, Tyrone.

— I’m not a traitor.

— But who said anything about being a traitor? What you’ll be doing is the opposite, it’s heroic. You lot are always saying that you have to make war to have peace, and I’m proposing you declare war on war.

— This is bullshit!

— Think what you like, smiled the British agent. You’re fucked, Meehan. So instead of me finding a reason for you, you might as well find one yourself, okay?

— You dirty bastard!

— Filthy scumbag! Fucking bollocks! Dirty Brit! Knock yourself out. Though I will tell you that it never works with a guy who thinks he’s being forced. I prefer willing men. And you are willing, aren’t you, Meehan?

— Let me go.

— I’m offering you a brand-new conscience.

I closed my eyes. Jack’s respect, Sheila’s love.

— When you go to the trouble of becoming a hero, you may as well accept the Nobel Peace Prize, don’t you think?

The agent placed a hand on my shoulder. The pressure of his fingers. A moment both brutal and soothing.

— Regret spoils life, Tyrone. We will help you to rid yourself of it.

I met his eyes.

— And, you know, by lying about Danny’s death, you had already started down this path.

I put my head in my hands.

— I’ll leave you be a moment, Tyrone. Not to reflect, but to collect yourself. If you need us, we’ll be in the corridor.

14

There was a habit Sheila had had forever. Even when she was still at home with her mother, when her father was interned, she used to enter contests in newspapers and department stores. She’d fill out questionnaires to win promotional discounts, a fleece-lined dressing gown or the Christmas turkey. When I was locked up, my wife took up her pencil again. She’d tick off boxes, look up answers in the dictionary, slip her name into contest boxes. For her it was a way of waiting, of killing all that time without me. When I was in the Crum, she won a sewing kit in a wicker basket, a 24-piece set of silver-plated cutlery, a football, an alarm clock, chocolates and dozens of discounts. When I got out of the Kesh, there was a new armchair in the living room, first prize from Stewarts. One day, she won her weight in wool after answering five questions about knitting.

Sheila didn’t complain about her lot. She loved me because I was fighting and had prepared her son to fight. Women used to carry arms at our sides, transporting bombs or collecting intelligence, but Sheila had made a different choice. She was an activist, not a soldier. Along with Cathy, Liz, Roselyn, Joelle, Aude, Trish and so many others, they were the very heart of our resistance. They’d dress our wounds and sit singing in front of the wheels of armoured vehicles, they’d block the ghettos in their aprons, they’d search for their man at the back of the pub to make him get up again. When the enemy entered the area, they’d be the first to welcome them. In their dressing gowns, nightdresses, and often with bare feet, on their knees in the middle of the street, scraping their bin lids on the ground, they were our alarm. They protested tirelessly for Ireland’s freedom. In rows of three, without a shout, carrying the photo of their imprisoned loved one or the wreath of their dead. And they’d drive an army of prams before them.

To live with your husband smiling out of a commemorative frame, to tend to a son who doesn’t get home till the early hours, to hold your child’s hand as he takes his last breath and dies from fasting requires a barbed-wire heart. And Sheila was one of those women.

One evening, when I returned from the city centre, I placed a contest flyer next to the telephone with the pile of post. And then I waited.

It was 2 March 1981. I’d just brought in the coal scuttle from the shed. I was stoking the stove on my knees on the carpet.

— How does a little escapade to Paris sound to you, Tyrone?

I stopped in the middle of what I was doing. My heart seemed to stop.

— To Paris?

Sheila came into the room, she was reading my flyer.

— After all you’ve been through.

I raised a hand. We never spoke of the Kesh.

— Listen to this!

I turned around. She’d put on her glasses. She was beautiful.

—‘Is this your dream? Sanderson’s Store are about to make it come true. To celebrate the upcoming opening of our department store in your neighbourhood, we’re offering you the chance to win a weekend for two in Paris, the most romantic city in the world!’

I turned my back to her. I shoved the coal into the stove.

— Can you see yourself in Paris with me, wee man?

Wee man. Since childhood, she’d called me that when we were alone. Sheila was a head taller than me.

I closed the cast-iron door.

— There aren’t even any questions. It’s a draw!

She sat down at the table.

— Paris! Did you hear me?

She read it out loud again, and then she filled in the competition form.

I slipped into my jacket, put my cap on.

— You’re going out?

I told her I was. She never asked me where I was going or what time I’d be home. The war didn’t stop at our front door, she knew that. Every time I left her, we embraced without a word. Looking into each other’s eyes, her smile full of hope.

— If you’re passing a letterbox, could you pop this in? You don’t even need a stamp.

On the street, I unfolded the flyer. My wife’s writing.

Sheila and Tyrone Meehan, 16 Harrow Drive, Belfast.

Her small blue letters, the way she underlined our names. When I got to the Falls Road, I was no longer breathing. I had lit a cigarette and pulled the peak of my hat down over my eyes. I carefully tore our names from the flyer. I chewed the pieces of paper. Then I ripped the whole leaflet into pieces and threw them over the park fence. I went into the Busy Bee. The usual crowd. The faces, the looks. Friendly gestures, nods, a word in my ear, a hand on my shoulder.

They didn’t see the traitor. But how could they not recognize him? That word felt like it must be engraved on my forehead. I had decided to drink. I remained alone at the bar, sitting on a high stool. Above the counter, next to a tricolour, was a poster. It was a photo of a Republican óglach in a camouflage jacket, with a balaclava over his head and a Thompson in his hand.

Careless words cost lives

In taxis

On the phone

In clubs and bars

At football matches

At a friend’s house

Everywhere!

Whatever you say, say nothing.

I was well acquainted with these warnings. They were part and parcel of our daily existence. One day, I stopped a kid who was tearing one down. It turned out he wanted it for his bedroom, and the matter went no further. I drank my first pint almost in one go. And my second, and my third. Paul, the barman, was pulling the next beer when the first was only half-empty. I didn’t ask him for anything. He could see that this evening was set to be a drunken one. In a few hours, I was no longer capable of sorting out the change in my hand to pay for the last pint so he had to do it for me. We had been in a cell together in the Crum with Paddy Moloney, who was drinking his whiskey and reading the paper at the other end of the room. I met the gaze of the hooded soldier in the poster. I lowered my eyes.

All my life I’d searched out traitors. All my life, truly. Until now, I had a sentry’s heart. When I entered the club, I’d scan the room with my eyes. It was always my initial reflex. Sheila would go and join our table, and I’d stay in the doorway. She knew what I was doing. I’d look at the faces one by one, and the groups, the behaviour. Then I’d go to the bog and bang on the doors to find out the names of anyone in the cubicles. When a stranger came in, I’d send a guy after him. It would often be foreign supporters, tourists favourable to our cause who had come to experience the war close up. Then I’d sit with my back to the wall. Since I had arrived in Belfast, I’d never turned my back to a door or a window. It was Tom Williams who had taught us that.

— We should meet death head on, he used to say.

And the whole evening, I’d continue to watch. I’d be drinking, laughing, chatting along with the others, but my mind would be alert and my gut tense. I enjoyed that tension. And the more time that passed, the stiffer my body became.

Whenever the British entered the club, the Fianna would alert us.

— Brits!

I used to love when they’d come. It was a pure moment of defiance. The lookouts would have seen their armoured vehicles arrive. The doormen would leave them waiting a moment, under the white pub spotlights, behind the heavy iron grills. You could see them on the security screens, though not very clearly. While the electric bolt was slamming back into the striking plate, the glasses would rapidly change places on the tables. An IRA óglach on active service who had been sitting there bored by his orange juice since the start of the night would play the drunkard in front of the pints his neighbours had just slid over to him. The soldiers would observe all of it. The drinks, the interactions, the bags left on the ground. They’d move between the chairs, making out faces. They would look for the guys who had got away from them, the bad boys. We didn’t make eye contact. Sometimes they would poke a bit of fun.

— You’ve got rid of the moustache, Jim? You look better like that.

And Jim O’Leary would hold himself back from spitting on the ground.

When the band wasn’t playing, the club would remain silent. An absolute silence. Not a single word, no laughter, not one more rustle. Just the enemy’s footfalls on the floor. But when the music was interrupted by the entrance of the uniformed men, the singer would move forward to the microphone.

— Ladies and gentlemen, the Irish national anthem.

And the room would stand. The young, the old, the priest passing through, the wee girls collecting for the school fête, the grouchy nationalists, the Sunday Republicans, the Catholics whose only belief was the Resurrection, the soldiers of the Republic, the women in charge of the sandwiches, the barmen, the kitchen porters, those who had been on their way out and were already at the exit: everyone would stand to attention. Our enemies would brush past our soldiers. And they knew it.

Once, my eyes locked with one of them. A Scottish lad, wearing his forage cap with its red and white plume. His rifle was shaking. He was out of place, in the midst of silvery set hairdos, red lips, walking sticks, faded jackets, clenched fists, Saturday-night dresses. The serviceman gave me a long look and apologized with his eyes. I know it, I’m certain. He was sorry. He knit his brows and murmured something as he passed me by. His uniform looked like it was weighing him down. He was walking backwards, the way soldiers did when they were aiming at our windows. He knocked into a table. A glass fell. He picked it up. He joined the others, straightening his bulletproof vest.

— Dirty monkey! a woman spat.

I gave her a hard look. The soldier was black.

Paddy Moloney had offered me one for the road, the shot you throw into the end of your pint of Guinness when the owner says it’s time to go home. I was drunk. I pissed in the street, between two cars. I was overwhelmed by my bitterness. It was dark. The wind had picked up. When I passed the park, I saw the torn pieces of paper promising Paris lying on the grass. Sheila was going to win her trip, I knew that. In a few days, a telephone call would announce it. She’d have her photo in the Andersonstown News, radiant, our plane tickets in her hand. She would pack our suitcase, worry about everything and yet everything would delight her. Sheila had never been abroad. Neither had I. All we knew of the world ended where our street did.

I looked at the clouds on top of an Sliabh Dubh — the black mountain. Neither the city nor the sky was hostile. It was still my city and my sky. I could meet people’s gaze without having to lower my eyes. But I knew that in a few days, all that would end.

I wanted to turn myself in to the IRA. And then again, I was afraid. But not of dying. I was living in the wake of Danny’s death, and to confess would have been asking his forgiveness. If I could be certain that the IRA was ready to follow me, and therefore judge me, to destroy that symbol along with me, to tear a glorious page from our history book, I would have done it. But I was convinced the opposite would be true. Our leaders would not risk the truth. I remembered the Army Council’s visit to my sickbed. Danny the martyr, Tyrone the hero. Above all, don’t get in the way of our history’s progress. That’s what I was afraid of. Afraid of confessing the truth for nothing, of begging for leniency for nothing. My enemies were making the most of the lie? That was in their nature. But I didn’t like to think my OCs would do the same.

I would have found myself alone once more with the confession, without a soul to listen to it. The IRA would have kept me on a leash like the Brits were going to do. The Army Council would have forced me to collaborate with the enemy. It would have made me a double agent, lying to one side, lying to the other, in danger in both camps, and despised by both. That was my fear. To no longer serve the Republic out of conviction but due to blackmail. To go from soldier to victim.

For several nights, I couldn’t sleep. Then one morning, on waking after having rested at last, my decision was made. I was going to deceive my people so that the IRA wouldn’t have to do so. In betraying my side, I was protecting it. In betraying the IRA, I was preserving it.

— To accept the augur of betrayal.

I was repeating this phrase as I stumbled towards the house. It was the black bead of my new rosary. I passed Jim O’Leary at the bottom of the Falls Road. Three lads from the 2nd Battalion followed him closely, as if they didn’t know each other. They were in a hurry. On active service. A wink in passing.

I had to set the Brits conditions. No question of helping put Jim or those other three in prison. No arrests, no victims. I had to be contributing to peace, not suffering. I wasn’t a peeler, but an Irish patriot. I needed guarantees.

— Guarantees. I want guarantees.

I was speaking out loud. I felt the need to piss again. I shivered, thinking of the poster on the wall of the pub. This time, the words were referring to me. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor. I would have to find another word, or tell myself that a traitor was also a victim of war. I passed our front door, I kept going. Another walk around the block in the night. I heard the metallic crackling of a radio. The soldiers were lying in a garden, behind the hedges and the coloured dwarfs. They had smeared their hands and faces in shoe polish. Only their eyes glowed in the darkness. Hi guys. Welcome, my new-found friends.

— If you agree to work for us, it’s to save your reputation, not to save your skin, the handler had said to me.

He was right. I didn’t want to destroy the great Tyrone Meehan. I didn’t give a fuck about the IRA. That business of betraying so as not to betray was a fiction I was trying to tell myself. I took fright at the presence of the other in me. I disgusted myself. All my life I’d ferreted out traitors, never realizing that the worst of them all was hidden in my belly. I hadn’t seen that one coming. I’d never noticed him. With that face of his, his soft cap, his threadbare jacket. He was colliding with lamp posts. Laughing at nothing. Vomiting the evening up against a wall. Hurling abuse at the shadow who had come over to help him. He slipped and fell, getting up again with difficulty. He was singing the refrain of Danny’s song. He was already alone. He’d become a bastard, like his father. That is to say, in the end, a man of no importance.

Another couple besides us had won the trip to France. Frank and Margaret lived in Larne, a port town in County Antrim.

— Protestants, certainly Loyalists, but delightful, Sheila had said.

We all travelled together on the plane to London, and then on the plane to Paris as well. Sheila was beside the window, as was Margaret in the seat just in front of ours. Since takeoff, she’d turn and lean on her elbows on the back of her seat to talk to my wife. She’d say a few words, tell a story, sit down again, and reappear with a smile on her lips.

— She has a charming wee English accent, Sheila observed.

She was so happy that nothing else mattered. Through the window we had watched our city, our dreary streets, the Harland and Wolff shipyard, our sodden fields and the low stone walls disappear, and then came the wide open sea. She thought she was reaching her hand out to me, but it was I who was gripping hers. This was our first flight. Margaret had given her a sweet to suck for takeoff.

— So these two Belfast youths are on their honeymoon in Paris. One night, they’re walking along the Champs Élysées when, suddenly, four police cars, three fire engines and two ambulances appear with sirens blaring. The husband takes his young wife by the hand then and says to her: ‘Do you hear that love? They’re playing our song…’

Sheila laughed. It had been so long since I’d seen her laughing.

— If she’s bothering you, feel free to tell her, her red-haired husband slipped in. That’s how I’ve been operating for twenty years.

— Not at all, your wife is charming, Sheila replied.

Away from our street, everything was charming to her. The sandwich on board was one of the best she’d ever had. Tuna and mayonnaise, absolutely remarkable. As we were going to France, she drank white wine that came in a little plastic bottle. So delicious she wanted to keep the bottle as a souvenir.

— Call me Maggie, our travel companion suggested.

It was Thursday, 2 April 1981. For thirty-three days, Thatcher had been letting Bobby Sands die.

— I’m going to find that a bit hard, Sheila said, smiling.

The other woman took my wife’s hands in hers.

— My God, what was I thinking? Please forgive me!

Charming, really. They agreed then that we wouldn’t talk about politics during the trip, or religion, either. How about visiting Notre Dame with us? Margaret spoke loudly. She told Sheila that they ought to organize a girls’ night out. Just the two of them. She asked her whether she liked opera. Sheila smiled. Yes, maybe, she didn’t know.

When she discovered that she’d won the contest, Margaret had phoned her aunt who lived in a Parisian suburb. She wanted to find out what was playing on 4 April at the Palais Garnier opera house. It was Arabella by Richard Strauss, a lyric comedy she had seen performed in Germany on her honeymoon. In the last act, Arabella carries a glass of water to the man she loves. That’s how they proposed in Croatia. For weeks afterwards, Margaret carried a glass of water to Frankie, her husband. In the morning, in the evening, it was a private joke between them. When she found out that the same opera was playing in Paris, she asked her aunt to pick up two tickets, but Frankie’s response had been to inform her that he wasn’t going to Paris to lock himself up in a cinema.

— An opera, Margaret had corrected.

He had muttered a few words that amounted to ‘No’. So if Tyrone had no objections, and if Sheila wanted to, perhaps the two of them could go together while the two gents went to get some air in Pigalle or in a bar. Sheila gave the thumbs up. Yes! Definitely! Listen to music, see beautiful costumes, sets, lights, forget the bricks and the fear for a couple of hours.

Frankie was delighted. He was getting out of going to an opera and also we’d have a couple of hours, just us lads. He bought beers for everyone. The air hostess gave him his change in francs. He looked at a shiny coin and handed it to Sheila.

— You’re going to feel right at home in Paris.

Sheila didn’t understand what he meant straight away. She took the coin.

Republique Française.

— Keep it. It’s a wee peace offering, whispered the red-haired handler.

Sheila took off her safety belt. She got up and kissed him on the cheek.

— If that’s the reward, I’ll give you a ten-franc note!

He burst out laughing, along with Margaret, and Sheila.

My stomach was in knots. The big Sanderson Store lottery was a fraud, a war plan, a lure. No new department store would ever be built in our ghetto. Hundreds of fake flyers had been printed by the British, but the winners were fixed from the start.

The plane flying towards Paris had a Northern Irish RUC officer, a female Special Branch inspector, a future traitor and an honest woman on board. It was an MI5 idea. And I had accepted. When I arrived home, when I placed that flyer next to the telephone, I was betraying Sheila for the first time.

On Saturday, while the two girls went to the opera, I would become a British agent. I felt like the entire aeroplane had been chartered by the secret services. I saw spies everywhere, soldiers everywhere, traitors behind every newspaper.

— Our first real contact will take place in Paris. It’s safer, more anonymous. And it means you’ll get a holiday, the agent had said.

He also explained I’d have to go back there from time to time.

— Tyrone?

My wife’s hand on my arm. She was pointing out the ground, between the gaps in the clouds. She had tears in her eyes. The plane was banking over Paris. The city shimmered under the wing. I fastened my belt. Our eyes met. She was silently questioning me.

— Something wrong, wee man?

— Everything’s fine, tall woman.

She brought her lips close to my ear. A murmur.

— I love you.

And I said I loved her, too.

The British had decided that we’d lose ourselves in the crowd. They knew there were demonstrations going on in Paris that 4 April 1981. We joined the noisy procession. It didn’t look like one of our marches. No children, no funeral wreaths, no soldiers, either. There were balloons, whistles, songs. Some men were wearing girls’ hats, and some women had men’s ties around their necks. I wasn’t terribly comfortable, but neither was I embarrassed. With my cap, my trousers that were too short, my tweed jacket and my padded anorak, I was simply out of place in this city.

The red-haired handler was on my left, the agent to my right. We were speaking normally, our foreign language unnoticed thanks to the din. It was sunny. My two enemies were wearing sunglasses.

— You’re not in a position to negotiate, Tyrone. But we have reviewed your requests.

It was the agent speaking.

— Nobody becomes a good agent through blackmail or coercion. Those who have been threatened crack by their second assignment. We want to establish a different relationship with you.

— We want you to benefit from it, the handler added.

— Me to benefit?

I shrugged my shoulders. A boy was playing the trumpet as he marched.

— You to benefit, yes. I’m not suggesting you’ll enjoy it, but maybe you’ll find some satisfaction.

— Your collaboration will not lead to arrests or victims. Your information will serve to save lives, not to waste more.

— Is that a promise?

The handler looked at me.

— I promise, yes.

Two laughing youths blew me a kiss. I pulled my cap down low over my eyes.

— From now on, I’ll be ‘Waldner’. This will be my code name and the only one you’ll use, the agent said.

He gave me a sidelong glance.

— Repeat.

— Waldner.

— I’m from Liverpool. I came to Belfast a few months ago. I don’t know anyone in the ghettos and nobody knows me. It’s a safeguard. My anonymity will protect you.

The crowd was getting more and more dense.

— If something happened to me, your contact would be ‘Dominik’.

— Dominik?

Waldner nodded towards the red-haired handler.

— Frankie, whose name you’re also going to forget.

I was staggered. Anaesthetized. Docile. Lost in Paris, in the middle of incomprehensible banners and bursts of laughter. I was in the process of betraying. I was a brathadóir. An informer. Everything was being put in place. I had imagined this moment in a silent room with grey walls and here I was surrounded by colours.

— As for you, Tyrone, you’ll be ‘Tenor’.

— Like a singer?

— Like a singer.

— Waldner and Dominik are characters from Arabella, the opera our wives are going to see this evening, the handler added.

— Your wife?

— I got lucky with this mission! But no, we sleep apart.

I laughed. For the first time since my false arrest. It was a genuine laugh, a sudden hiccup. The agent and the handler looked at one another. I caught that look. They were relieved. There was no doubt I was safely in their trap, a deep hole with smooth walls. There was nothing that could ever bring me back up to the surface again. They had me. I was theirs and they knew it. Waldner nudged me with his elbow. Very soon, we’d go and have a beer and talk about something else.

By the time we arrived on the esplanade in front of the Beaubourg Museum, I knew everything. I had two telephone numbers to remember. It was up to me to contact Waldner. No information over the phone, ever. I was to simply say ‘Tenor’, a code word that meant we were to meet the following day at the time of that call. There were two meeting points, one for each number. The first was a small cemetery off Clifton Road, in the north of Belfast. For a Catholic it wasn’t a very safe area, but it was quiet. The MI5 agent came up with the idea while studying my itinerary. Every July every year for the past decade, I’d been speaking at commemorations of the death of Henry Joy McCracken, a Presbyterian and founding member of the Society of United Irishmen, along with Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet. I’d travel all over Ireland to honour his memory. One year in Dublin, the next in Cork, Limerick or Belfast, in front of crowds or sparse gatherings. It didn’t matter, my duty was to see to it that younger generations heard his name, and to remind people that the founding fathers of the Irish Republic were Protestant.

The British court had offered McCracken his life if he would testify against other Irish rebels, but he had refused. It was for that he was hanged, on 17 July 1978, and later buried in Clifton Street Cemetery. I used to visit his grave regularly to talk to him. I’d go alone. I’d talk to him about Tom Williams, buried like a pauper in Crumlin prison. I told him about Danny Finley. I asked him for advice. Helped by the whispering of the wind, Henry Joy McCracken would answer me.

My presence in the cemetery wouldn’t surprise anyone. Against the wall, hidden by the corner of a house, there was a shed. That was where we would meet. A traitor, on the grave of a man who had been killed for refusing to betray.

The second meeting place was the city-centre post office. More exposed, but more anonymous. Going into a post office is not a suspicious act. The cemetery would be used for exchanging information. The post office, for handing over documents without a word.

And there would also be Paris, where I would come to breathe a little. Where I’d be safe to speak about everything and nothing.

— What does that mean, about everything and nothing?

— About politics, Waldner replied.

— About politics?

— Tips about your party, dissensions, decisions. A decoding, if you like.

— I like nothing at all about it.

He made a wee knowing gesture.

— Will it be you in Paris?

— No, you’ll see ‘Honoré’.

— Honoré?

— Our embassy is on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. And I’m sure you’re going to like this guy, the handler said to me.

In case of emergency or extreme danger, I was to go home, call and say, ‘Tenor is hoarse’, and wait to be arrested. It was also arranged that I would be taken in for questioning regularly, as were all the men from our areas. Kept for seven days, as provided for in the Special Powers Act, I’d have a chance to breathe, take stock and then be released without arousing suspicion.

Suddenly, I stiffened. In front of me, two young girls were kissing mouth to mouth. I had never seen that. Nobody was looking at them. They were in one another’s arms and they were kissing.

— It’s a gay march, smiled Waldner.

— Gay?

I looked around me. Men holding hands, girls with raised fists, unknown slogans. As she was passing, a girl stuck a pink triangle on my anorak.

— Very fetching, said the redhead.

I tore off the sticker. I wavered. And then I put it back on.

— Don’t you want to take that off, all the same? Waldner asked early that evening, as we were finishing a beer on a bar terrace.

The redhead muttered.

— We don’t give a shit.

The march had ended hours before. Both of them seemed to be bothered by the looks the sticker was attracting. So I said no. Just that, not aggressively, not defying them. I didn’t give a damn about that triangle, but it told them that I wasn’t under their thumb.

— To our wives, our girlfriends, and may they never meet one another! said Waldner, raising his glass of beer.

— To Sheila, I replied.

That evening, I joined her again in the hotel. She’d had a terrific afternoon. I told her about the two women kissing. She crossed herself, laughing. And then she made me sit down in the armchair. She went into the bathroom and came out carrying a glass of water. And she handed it to me.

15. Killybegs, Saturday, 30 December 2006

Yesterday morning, I had a visitor. A car pulled in just after the little bridge. I was at the well, getting water for the night. I heard the car reversing. I placed the bucket on the edge of the well. A door slammed. I made my way towards the cottage, walking backwards.

All these years, I’d kept Seánie’s hurley, which was now hidden behind my armchair. I had plaited a rope handle and a leather wrist strap to keep it firmly in my hand. I was smiling as I strengthened it, imagining an assassin’s surprise when faced with an eighty-year-old man brandishing a second-hand bludgeon.

I drew back, my eyes on the clearing that opened up at the bottom of my path. I could hear heavy footsteps on the road. I was frightened for the first time since arriving.

Barely ten days earlier, the IRA was interrogating me in a Dublin suburb. Opposite me were Mike O’Doyle and an old IRA counter-intelligence guy I didn’t know. I admitted I was a British agent, simply, nothing more. I had said it to the press, I was repeating it to my former brothers in arms. The rest did not concern them.

Without the peace process I would have ended up with a bullet in my neck in a dump beside the border. But the IRA had laid down its arms, and my fate was part of that commitment. They would not kill me. They had the military capability to do so, of course, but not the political means. And I wanted them to take responsibility for what might happen to me. I had decided not to flee. I would remain in my country. I wanted them to know that.

— I’m going home to Killybegs, in Donegal.

— Shut the fuck up, Meehan! shouted the older man.

— Now you know.

— We don’t want to know anything.

Too bad. They knew. I had trapped them. I was no longer their soldier, or their prisoner, and I was placing myself under their protection. If I was killed, by a Loyalist, a Brit or an armchair nationalist with his hunting rifle, everyone would accuse the IRA. Nobody would believe their denials. And that would be the end of the peace process. If the Republican movement wanted to protect its negotiations, it would have to keep me alive.

— What do I do now? I asked.

— You fend for yourself, replied the IRA.

I was astonished.

— You’re signing my death warrant, Mike O’Doyle, you know that?

They turned off the camera that was recording my interrogation.

— You should have thought of that before, Tyrone. We can’t do anything else for you.

A guy was walking along the path. Short and stocky, with short grey hair and creased eyes. His hands were empty, a satchel over his shoulder. When he saw me, he froze and waved.

— Tyrone Meehan?

I stopped at the door.

— Are you Tyrone Meehan?

— Why?

— Jeffrey Kerr, from the Donegal Sentinel.

I motioned to him not to come any closer.

— How did you find me?

— A bit of investigating, adding up…

A journalist. The beginning of the end. He was looking at the house from a distance.

— May I come in?

— No.

— May I come a bit closer?

— What do you want?

— Are you going to hide here for long?

He was moving forward slowly, like a child stalking a bird. Because of his weight, he was stumbling over the ruts and breathing heavily.

— I’m not hiding. I just want to be left alone.

— Are you staying here or will you go elsewhere?

— I’m not going anywhere. Leave, please.

— People are talking about you a lot these days.

— Can you not see? I’m in the middle of nowhere and I’m doing no one any harm, so leave now!

He sniffed noisily, glancing at my door with the sorry look of someone not allowed in. He raised a hand, and dropped it again.

— Who gave you this address?

The journalist shrugged. He didn’t even turn around.

— Gave? You mean sold!

— Who?

— A friend of yours, Timmy Gormley.

I shook my head. Timmy Gormley. I repeated his name out loud, ‘King of the quays.’ I calculated. It was the first time in sixty-five years that I’d heard that name. When I left him, the pitiful gang leader was picking a fight with Josh Byrne, the pixie with the pockmarked face. After all this time, Josh had become an old priest, Timmy had remained a bastard, and I was no longer anything at all.

I waited for the door to slam shut. For the car to leave. I went back inside. The fire was nearly dead so I pulled on a second jumper. And then I was overcome with dizziness. I sat down at the table. I could see the journalist again in my mind’s eye, balanced strangely on the path, turned sideways, his left arm behind his back. Every time I moved, he had moved with me. I’d found it strange, suspicious. And suddenly I understood. The bag, his stance, his arm thrown behind him so as not to block the screen. He was filming. I’d been filmed. He had stolen the cottage, the fir tree, the surroundings, my unshaven face, my tired eyes, my trousers that were too big, my large jumper and my muddy shoes. It had occurred to me that he’d given up too quickly, but he hadn’t given up anything. He hadn’t taken out either a pen or a notebook. He knew well, in coming here, that I wasn’t going to confide in him. That he’d be going back to the office without confessions or regrets. It wasn’t my words he came to steal, it was my image.

I didn’t eat dinner. The Donegal Sentinel had no need to even make a film. The journalist would simply take an image for the front page and then sell the rest to television. I knew it. I was certain of it. I didn’t sleep, either. I stayed sitting at the table, my head on my arms, my anorak thrown over my shoulders, watching the flame of the candle dance.

This afternoon, I wasn’t able to walk through the door of Mullin’s. Two men turned to look at me when I arrived in Bridge Street. A woman crossed the road. The owner was waiting for me at the pub door. It was the time I usually came to drink and he knew it. My steps slowed. He placed himself in the doorway. I gave him a questioning look.

— We don’t want any trouble, Meehan.

— What trouble?

— You’re in the paper, on the television. We’re simple people, you know. That business is far too serious for our little town.

I put my hands in my pockets. I withdrew.

— Buy your beers in the shop and drink at home, it’ll be better that way.

The door opened. A man walked out. He put on his cap, said goodbye to the owner, avoided my eyes. Behind him, the bar was packed. My father’s table was no longer there, nor the coat stand. They’d moved the cigarette machine. It was in my place.

— Sorry, Meehan.

He wasn’t. I don’t think he was. He went back into his bar. I looked again, one last time, just the few seconds it took for the swinging door to close behind him. The dark panelling, the old counter, the gilded lamps, the high stools, the pictures, the black and red ceiling, the snugs down the back, the brass beer taps, the surge of warmth and the buzz of all those people. I didn’t leave immediately. I crossed the street and leaned against the opposite wall. I was waiting for the door to open.

— Come on, Tyrone Meehan! Come back in here! One last pint for old time’s sake. Out of respect for your father, and as a homage to your past. In memory of the kid who wouldn’t dare go into the place or walk across the room, who used to cough in the smoke, who’d sip the creamy head from the large glasses held out to him, who’d listen to Padraig Meehan sing, who’d come to look for him in his drunkenness, and take him back through his darkness, step by step. To you, Tyrone Meehan! Before all the Timmy Gormleys of heaven and earth come looking to kill you!

I bought a bottle of whiskey. I walked through the town. I went as far as the fortified tower. It was cold. There was frost over everything, the grass, the brambles, the trees, the low stone walls. My father had told me one day that my mother deserved to be living in a castle. That it was our fault if she was working herself to death. Ours, their children’s. It was the middle of summer. There was a light, salty rain falling. He took me to the tower. He was walking quickly, he wasn’t waiting for me. When we arrived, he sat on the rocks facing the ruin and told me the story of that keep. A very beautiful woman had lived there with her very happy husband. A count, a prince, I don’t know. Someone who had a job. When the first child came along, the first stones fell from the tower. With the second child’s arrival, more stones fell. And the bigger the family grew, the more the tower crumbled. One day, the prince left in anger and the princess died, crushed by an enormous block that had come away from the roof.

— And the children? I asked.

My father got up. He moved ahead of me, with his bigger, ‘father’ steps.

— The children? They turned into crows.

He pointed out a black bird in the sky.

— There you are, that one’s called Francis.

I was walking behind him with wee, fearful steps. I was crying softly. I didn’t want to ruin our house. I didn’t want Father to leave. I didn’t want Mother to die. I didn’t want to become a crow.

I was six years old.

16. Killybegs, Sunday, 31 December 2006

Sheila brought a white paper tablecloth from Strabane, where she has been living with a friend since I came here. She made our New Year’s Eve meal before coming over, a big dish of bangers and mash, which she heated up on my camping stove. She had added caramelized onions, mushy peas and thin slices of yellow apples to the sausages and the mashed potatoes.

I set the table. Our two plates, and mugs for glasses. She had left a bottle of white wine outside against the front wall. It would be chilled just in time for the meal. She had also brought six beers for me and some gin for herself. I cut the brown bread. Two slices each, with a square of butter. I watched her back, bent over the single burner. The smell of hot oil was warming the house. I listened to my wife’s silence. Her movements as if nothing had happened. When I caught her eye, she would smile. Not her girlish, motherly or warrior smile, but a very weary old woman’s smile that I had never seen before.

We hadn’t talked. When she came to join me here, after my interrogation by the IRA, she took me in her arms and closed her eyes. Then she looked at me, her hands in mine. She was looking for something that had changed in my eyes. I wanted to respond, tell her that her presence did me good. But she placed her hand gently on my mouth.

— No, Tryone. Don’t say anything. I’m not asking you anything, I don’t want to know anything.

I went to move her hand away. She moved it back.

— Please, wee man. You’re going to have to lie, so don’t.

And then she unpacked her big bag. Emergency supplies. Toilet paper, candles, cigarettes, bread, some tinned food. I asked if she’d brought the paper. She replied that it didn’t say anything good.

I had placed a fork either side of my plate and a knife either side of Sheila’s. She smiled. I’d never been too gifted in the kitchen. Then we sat down. She said a prayer, just three words, to thank Mary for having brought us together. She had bought a red candle with a golden star in Boots. She had decorated the table with pine needles and mistletoe. We toasted with the cold wine. It wasn’t a celebration, but a painful ceremony. The irritating noise of our cutlery, the battle of the fire against the damp wood, the candle flame.

— It’s good, I murmured.

She only answered with her eyes.

It was nine o’clock. The cold was taking over.

— I’m not going to wait up till midnight, Sheila yawned.

She was exhausted. She apologized.

— Neither am I. I’m going to write for a while, then I’ll join you.

— Who are you writing to?

— Nobody. Just things that are going through my head.

Her friend in Strabane had made an apple crumble, and she’d wrapped up half for me. It was almost the meal of a free man.

Sheila had been stopped by the Garda Síochána as she was arriving. From her description, I recognized Seánie, the old guard who had come to see me, and the younger man who didn’t leave his side. Their car was parked farther up the road. Dublin had not appreciated the article in the Donegal Sentinel and they had been mentioning Killybegs on the television.

— Thanks to that damned journalist, the whole of Ireland knows where your husband is hiding.

— He’s not hiding, my wife answered.

All the same, I needed to be on the alert going out, doing my shopping, coming into town. I had to be cautious walking the mile or so between Killybegs and my cottage. I should avoid pubs, gatherings, everything that could put the locals at risk.

— The locals? Sheila asked.

— This isn’t our war, the older peace-keeper had responded. We’re not accusing anyone or defending anyone. We just don’t want the killers skulking around.

I asked her if they had been unpleasant. No. Not at all. Just worried about what was going to happen.

She told them that the following Tuesday she’d be coming back with a visitor, a friend, a Frenchman.

The gardaí responded that it wasn’t the French they feared, but all the Irish the world over.

— Do you think that the IRA could give him trouble? the younger guard asked.

— No. They’ll neither give him trouble nor stop anyone else doing so, Sheila answered.

— So it’s bad, murmured the old guard.

We got up from the table. The washing up could wait until next year. Sheila hesitated, came over to me. I took her in my arms, my face buried in her grey hair. It was the moment for making resolutions. We stayed like that for a minute, our shadows dancing on the wall.

— Good luck to us, my wife whispered.

— Good luck to you.

Her warmth, her autumn skin, the wood smoke in her hair. I hugged her sobs against me.

And suddenly, her voice, loud and abrupt.

— My God, Tyrone! What have you done to us?

It was a grief-stricken cry, not a question. I wrapped her even closer into me. I was crying, too, though my body didn’t give it away. An orphan’s grief. With nothing left, no mother, no father, no home, not even the earth to nourish him or the heavens to protect him. A terrifying solitude, silence ever after. And the cold for all time, such cold. I was disgusted with myself. I was crying on my own behalf.

— What’s to become of me? my wife asked.

I told her that there was Jack, her friends, her country.

— You were my country, wee man.

And she pulled away from me, masking her sorrow with her hand. She lay down, still wearing my jumper and her socks, and turned to face the wall and search for sleep. We had both lost it, this sleep. Her for the past ten days, and me for twenty-five years.

17

Since my release from the Kesh, the IRA had decided to put me into retirement. I was too visible, too well known. The Army Council asked me to behave as a political activist. I participated in peaceful protests, joined the marches beneath pictures of the hunger strikers. I would walk alongside the crowds, my wreath in hand. For the commemoration of the Easter Rising, I didn’t march in the black uniform of our soldiers, but in the rows of prisoners’ families. In the eyes of everyone, I was a veteran of the blanket protest, a veteran of the dirty protest. A former combatant.

One day, when I was drinking with Sheila in the Thomas Ashe, a British soldier approached our table and asked me my name. His officer came over to me, smiling.

— Let it go. Meehan’s retired at the moment.

And Sheila put her hand on mine.

— Let whatever happens happen, the MI5 agent had told me.

I didn’t influence anything. I didn’t provoke anything. I let events unfold. I told myself that perhaps having accepted treason would satisfy them. I was an agent in their eyes. But I hadn’t betrayed. Not yet. I hadn’t said anything, done anything, denounced anyone. Just that Parisian conversation that they took for a pact. I had a crazy idea. I hoped that it would all stop there. That they’d never ask me for anything, ever.

Prison had changed me. That’s what people murmured behind my back. Before the dirty protest, I used to drink. I’d empty my pint glasses same as anyone else on this island. But since I’d got out, I’d taken to the drink. It wasn’t the same thing. I knew some army mates like that. They’d drink on the sly, farther and farther from their ghetto. They’d get other people to order their vodka, they’d send a youth to the off-licence and let him keep the change. They’d miss meetings, forget orders. As soon as they became a security liability, the party would let them go. Then they’d pour their drinks down the drain, they’d make promises. They’d wear Pioneer pins on their lapels to be recognized as teetotallers. They’d drink soft drinks with the look of a drowned man on their faces. And they’d often go back on the drink again.

I had pains in my stomach, my joints, my head. Every morning, I limped when I got out of bed before being able to walk normally. I shook. Beer was my water, vodka my alcohol. I had bought myself a green leather and metal flask, calculating how much it could hold.

Twice, the owner of the Thomas Ashe had discreetly asked me to leave. On the third time, I called the bar to witness. This bastard was throwing out Danny Finley’s friend. I tore off the tablecloth covering the big sandwich table. I threw it over my shoulders like a prison blanket. I shouted from the middle of broken saucers and scattered bread. Didn’t that remind them of anything? Really? Would they like me to shit on the ground to jog their memories? Some IRA guys intervened. Everyone was going to calm down. It was in the street we were waging war, not in our pubs. I left the bar. And I came back the following day to apologize.

The IRA had advised me to do so. Waldner had ordered me to.

Even before I became a traitor, I was becoming troublesome. The MI5 agent wondered whether I might not be doing that just to be rejected by my community. To render myself out of order, useless. He reminded me that nothing had changed. I had killed Danny, Jack was in prison and Sheila was still vulnerable. I had to quit the rowdiness. It was an order. So I made myself drink less, and less again. Then to drink like before, when I felt like it.

But I knew that I was no longer in control.

Bobby Sands died on 5 May 1981, after sixty-six days of hunger strike. As he lay there dying slowly, he was elected an MP in Westminster, but that wasn’t enough. Francis Hughes died on 12 May, aged twenty-five, after fifty-nine days’ hunger strike. Patsy O’Hara and Ray McCreesh both died on 21 May, at twenty-three and twenty-four years of age, after sixty-one days’ hunger strike.

On 22 June, when the IRA Belfast Brigade decided to shoot down a Long Kesh warder, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine were about to die.

There was a black shroud over the whole city. The IRA had a duty to react.

Frank ‘Mickey’ Devlin had joined us upstairs in a brick house in the Divis Flats area. There were three of us sitting on the floor in the small bedroom.

Mickey tapped me on the back, pleased to see me again. He nearly got out a pen to tease me, but didn’t bother in the end. Catching sight of the crucifix, he crossed himself. And then he gave the pope a wink.

On coming in, he had asked our hostess for some tea. She knocked on the door and Jim O’Leary opened it to take the tray.

— The street is quiet, she said.

Then she left again without a sound.

— Tea, Tyrone? Jim asked.

— Tea, I replied.

Mickey took a few photos from under his shirt. Five snapshots taken from a distance. He lined them up on the carpet like a game of cards.

I went to pull the curtains and turn on the light.

The others were bent over the documents.

— Weird-looking guy, Jim said.

— His name’s Ray Gleeson. He lives close to Cliftonville, in a mixed estate.

— A Catholic? Jim asked.

— Yeah. He’s fifty-three. He’s been working for the prison service since 1962 and in the Kesh for the past four.

Jim handed me a photo.

— A friend of yours, Tyrone?

Popeye.

My screw. In civilian clothes. An oversized suit, a shapeless shirt, his bald head, his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

I went over to the bedside lamp, using the darkness as a pretext, turning my back to them. Popeye. My heart was pounding, my head, an anxious drumming that everyone must surely hear.

— Do you know him?

— No, I replied.

I bent down. I looked at the other images. Popeye inspecting the underside of his car as a precaution, Popeye walking in the city centre, Popeye stopped at a red light.

— Why him? I asked.

The question slipped out. A crazy question. I stopped breathing.

Mickey looked at me strangely. Without knowing it, he helped me bail myself out.

— Why a Catholic, you mean?

— Yeah. Why a Catholic.

Jim shrugged vaguely. He answered that the mixed neighbourhood would make the getaway easier.

The younger guy spoke. I barely knew him. He had a know-it-all air I didn’t like. He told me that hunger strikes were our priority and that the IRA should respond on this terrain.

I looked at him. I smiled coldly.

— Terry? It’s Terry, isn’t it? You’re not by any chance in the process of explaining the situation in prison to me, are you?

He froze, surprised by my aggression.

— You want to teach us military tactics? Is that it?

— Calm down, Tyrone, murmured Mickey.

He put away the photos, his eyes on me.

— A screw is a screw. Who gives a fuck what religion he is?

I nodded. I needed to calm down. He was right.

— If your friends are looking at you strangely, it’s fucked, Meehan. That means you’ve said too much, or maybe not enough. If you get pissed off instead of laughing or laugh instead of getting pissed off, they’re going to have doubts. And doubts are lethal, Waldner had warned.

So I put on my Tyrone manner again, cursing the lukewarm tea.

— On Thursday, he starts work at eleven. It’s quiet in his area. He’s always done the same thing. He pulls off, arrives at the Clifton crossroads, and puts his seatbelt on while waiting for the light to turn green. We can get him there, Terry said.

— He doesn’t take any precautions, doesn’t change his route?

Terry smiled at me.

— Other than looking under his car, no. He does nothing.

— You’ll do it next Thursday? Jim asked.

— The sooner the better, I replied.

I’d taken control of my emotions once more. Mickey looked at me, nodding. Jim glanced at him from the corner of his eye. I could sense their relief. The old Tyrone Meehan had come back to them.

— Who’ll be on the job?

— Me, Terry, three guys from Divis, and a girl on a bike to collect the guns, Mickey replied.

— Jim?

O’Leary shook his head.

— You know me, Tyrone. I handle the powder better than the gun.

— Explain your presence here, so.

I was using my commanding tone of voice again.

— Procedure hadn’t been finalized. We had thought at first of booby-trapping his car, but as he checks it every morning…

I cut Jim off, my hand raised. I imagined the red-haired cop and the MI5 agent witnessing the scene. It was the first time my imagination had summoned them.

Curt tone.

— Mickey? Next time, you settle that in advance. This is a military briefing, not a public debate.

Mickey nodded. He got the point loud and clear. Jim stood up.

— The less you know…, he said as he left the room.

Jim O’Leary was a bomb-maker. ‘Mallory’, as he was called in the movement. He was a soldier, uninterested in politics. He considered that in every circumstance, the gun should command the party. He was against secret negotiation, dialogue, compromise. ‘Brits out!’ Like my father, those two words were the sum total of his agenda. He didn’t dream of peace in Ireland but of routing the British. He wanted to fight them, send them packing, humiliate them and, only then, negotiate the terms of their defeat.

Jim was a technician. Secretive, patient, hard-working, he spent his days and weeks developing increasingly efficient explosives. His creations were tailored to the job, booby-trapping cars, doormats, letters. A mine intended to blow up armoured vehicles while they were driving through the countryside was not designed in the same way as a bomb planted in a town, along the route of a foot patrol. The milk bottles sitting peacefully outside houses were a threat to the enemy, as were Belfast’s electricity poles, gas meters at leg height, even the smallest crack in a wall. The British were tearing down our flags? He would booby-trap the flag poles.

Jim O’Leary was wary of military explosives that came from Hungary or Czechoslovakia. He was a peasant. He preferred the crude contraptions used in our campaigns. A big bag of weed killer, sugar, acid, a little of Ireland’s earth, soap flakes to infect the wounds, bolts, nails, and the job was done.

He didn’t have any qualms. No regrets, ever. But he followed one rule dictated by our command: no civilian victims. The IRA gave half an hour’s warning before detonating a bomb. Sometimes, though, that wasn’t enough. I was sitting with him one day in a Republican pub. A passer-by had just been killed on the street in broad daylight by one of our devices. The television was showing the images in a loop. The IRA had warned the police, but they hadn’t evacuated the street.

— Fucking Brits! cursed a young lad, putting his glass down.

— It’s the bomb that killed him, not the Brits, Jim spat back.

The youth wasn’t from the area. He was mouthing off the way someone does when they want to be accepted.

— Without the Brits, there wouldn’t have been any bomb, asshole! the stranger retorted.

— Wrong. Without the guy who made the bomb, there wouldn’t have been any bomb.

— The IRA doesn’t like being lectured! the stranger snapped back.

He got down from his barstool. He wanted Jim to explain himself. He didn’t get within ten metres. Two of our boys stopped him. One of them took him by the neck, made him sit down again, the other spoke into his ear, indicating Jim with a nod of his chin. Jim was drinking calmly, his eyes locked on the young man’s. The kid discovered who he was facing. He was turning white as a sheet, his mouth hanging open, his large body sagged.

When the operation was risky for civilians, Jim would remain until after the explosion. Once, he had cancelled a detonation because of a wedding. The patrol and the newly-weds passed a few metres from the remote-controlled bomb, the soldiers were sheltered by the cheerful bridal party of long dresses and suit jackets. Another time, with an IRA woman, he went back to find a bomb on the first floor of a Protestant den, where some Loyalist leaders were supposed to be gathering. Their meeting had been cancelled. He recovered the packet of Semtex that was hidden in the toilets. He was stopped outside. Eleven years in prison.

— You’re a killer, Jim O’Leary, the priest had said to him on his wedding day.

— You take care of my Mass, I’ll take care of your country, he had replied.

Since that day, in support of her man, Cathy had never again taken Communion.

When Fiona Phelan got on the bus, I followed her on board. She sat down the back, I took the seat next to her. She was surprised. The vehicle was almost empty. She gripped her bag on her knees. I stuck out my hand.

— Tyrone Meehan, I was with Aidan in a cell in Long Kesh.

Her face changed. The blood returned to it, along with her smile. She took my hand as though I was her son.

— Tyrone Meehan? You frightened me, I’m sorry.

She took a better look at me.

— What are you doing in Strabane?

She wanted me to come to her house, see her son, her husband. She was as moved as if it were a romantic encounter. I had to go back to Belfast that same night. I was getting off at the next stop.

— Don’t tell anyone you saw me.

— Even my husband?

— Not even him, no. Nobody. I’m sorry about this.

She was worried. The alarm that comes naturally to nationalist women up here.

— What’s going on?

Her hands in mine.

— Nothing. All is well. I just wanted to know if you’d received a message from your son towards the end of last year.

She looked at me, astonished. A message? The message! The one and only. She opened her bag, her red wallet. Carefully, she took out the words her son had written, protected in a plastic cover. She smiled sadly.

— Still, tearing the Bible… you shouldn’t do that.

How had she got the note? Around Christmas, a man rang at the iron gate and she had looked at him through the window. He was outside, something small in his hand. He signalled to her and then threw it over the gate. Then she had shouted.

— My other son went tearing out, my husband right behind him. I thought it was a Loyalist, a bomb. The guy shot off down the street.

On the grass was a wee silvery seal on a keyring with a zip on its belly. Her son picked it up with the poker. Then he bent over, took up the toy and opened it.

— When the paper fell into his hand, he squeezed his fist closed to hide it. And then he threw a worried glance at the street.

He had spent eight years in Crumlin prison. He let out a joyful cry when he recognized the note.

— He closed the door, slid the bolt, the chain, pulled the curtains. Then he asked me to hold out my hand.

— News from our Aidan, my son said. And that wee devil was laughing to see me cry.

And the man, the one who threw the toy, had she seen him?

— Yes. Very clearly, thanks to the street lamp. He was short, not too young, and bald. I even remember having said to myself that if he wished us ill, he would have hidden under a cap.

Popeye had kept his word.

— Meehan?

— Don’t speak, Popeye, don’t ask me anything. The IRA is going to kill you on Thursday.

— What are you talking about, Meehan?

He was repeating my name as though announcing an astonishing event. I knew he’d be there, at the fête of the Belfast Docks kennel club. Popeye had a brown and white fox terrier. The IRA had considered staging the operation right here, bombing his car at the Fountain Tavern, but the crowd was too dense. There were women, children, dogs. To shoot Ray Gleeson on his way to prison was to kill a screw. Jim O’Leary had backed out.

I repeated the threat to Popeye. He had been located, spied on, followed, photographed. It was to be Thursday.

— I’m going to have to report you to the police, Meehan.

I looked at him. He could do what he liked. He had the face of the woman attacked by the birds on that Hitchcock poster. He placed his hand on my arm.

— Why did you come to tell me this?

I looked at him. Popeye, his dog, this Sunday crowd. The announcements over the microphone, the dancehall music, the smell of kennels. I was betraying. I had just betrayed. I shook him off, shrugged helplessly. Why? For me. Certainly. To protect myself. A woman bumped into me, her poodle beribboned in the colours of the British flag. She apologized, smiled at me, said hello to Popeye. I didn’t belong here and yet it was my place as traitor.

I ran as far as the bus stop. I was panicking. This wasn’t my neighbourhood. All over the walls were frescoes painted in homage to Loyalist paramilitaries. The street curbs were painted blue, white and red. I was in their space. In the enemy’s sanctuary. I dreaded bumping into one of their men. Someone who would have engraved my face in his hateful memory. Worse again, one of my own. An IRA unit in operation.

— Hang on… surely that’s not Meehan, over on the footpath there?

To be seen here would have been the beginning of my end. But Popeye had done this. He had slipped into the heart of Strabane’s nationalist area to deliver Aidan’s letter, so I was carrying my message to the heart of his home. He thanked me without understanding what was going on. I recognized his expression. It was that of a prisoner.

On the morning of 8 July 1981 I was smoothly detained and taken in for questioning at a checkpoint on Castle Street, which leads from the Falls Road to the city centre. In front of the double chicanes, barriers and concrete blocks that were obstructing the road, the police were checking the Catholics. Women and children lined up to the left, men to the right, several dozen people waiting to raise their arms to be searched. In their sentry box, soldiers had their weapons pointed at the crowd, eyes to the gun sights of their assault rifles. They were tense. The death of Joe McDonnell at five that morning had enraged our localities. He was the eldest of the hunger strikers, dead aged thirty, after sixty-one days of fasting. When I got to the sentry box I threw everything I had in my pockets on the table. The peeler asked me my name, my address, where I was coming from and where I was going. Procedure. His colleague called headquarters.

— Spelled: M.E.E.H.A.N. Tyrone, like the county.

I was told to follow them. In the crowd, some youths chanted out a slogan for me. I was alone in the armoured vehicle with the uniforms. Not a word, not an insult, not a blow. I wasn’t even handcuffed. The vehicle went back up the Falls Road, as far as the Glen Road RUC station opposite Milltown Cemetery.

Waldner was waiting for me in an office, along with the red-haired handler. No table, just our three chairs.

— Cigarette, Tenor? Waldner offered.

— My name is Meehan.

— Meehan is for the clueless lad who brought you in here. But for us, you are Tenor.

The two men sat down. Waldner was embarrassed. I met the RUC man’s eye and he reassured me with a wink.

— So here it is, Tenor. The reason you’re here is for a reminder of the rules.

I looked at the cigarette between my fingers.

— What you did for the screw was courageous. But it’s not what we want from you.

— You’re not a policeman, Tenor, Dominik continued. It’s not up to you to impose law and order in Northern Ireland.

— Law and order is our job, added the agent.

— What should I have done?

Waldner lit up.

— That’s the spirit!

— Leave him to die?

— But he’s going to die, this Popeye of yours!

I stiffened. I’d never uttered that nickname in front of them.

— And do you know why your Popeye will die? Because the people who want him dead are still here.

The redhead leaned towards me.

— We have relocated him and his wife. He’s safe now. But what will that serve? The IRA will choose another one and hit him whenever.

— If it’s not Popeye, it’ll be Olive Oil, Waldner smiled.

He handed me another cigarette from his fingertips, the way it was done in Belfast, rather than offering the packet.

— So if your friends are going to do it again, you let them at it. You simply tell us who is to be assassinated, when, where and how. We’ll look after the rest.

— The why doesn’t interest you?

The agent looked at me, fists tight, a hint of scorn in his eyes.

— Don’t play that game.

— No arrests! That was our agreement.

— These guys are as dangerous for you now as they are for us, the handler threw at me.

— I haven’t told you anything, or given you anything. I have nothing to fear!

Waldner got up. He grabbed my lapels with both hands.

— You’ve nothing to fear? Are you fucking thick or what, Paddy? You’re a British agent, with a code name and a handling officer. You’re dead, Meehan.

— Calm down, Stephen! I think he’s got the point, the redhead said.

The agent released me. He smoothed my jacket.

— Sorry, Tenor. We’re working crazy hours at the moment.

— Too damned many, added the other.

They got up. Waldner put a hand on my shoulder. He murmured.

— We want something on one of your guys. We think he’s co-ordinating an escape from Crumlin from the outside.

— Haven’t heard a thing about it.

— Don’t answer immediately, you have plenty of time.

— It’s not a question of time. I don’t know anything.

— You’ll think over it again. We know that Frank Devlin is fixing something and we want to know what.

— Mickey?

It slipped out. I was stunned. Lack of vigilance, the mistake of a novice. They had got me in a tired state. I wanted to rip my tongue out with my teeth. My lips were trembling.

— Devlin is Mickey? Waldner asked.

The handler slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand. He was beaming. The agent looked at me, smiling.

— Popeye, Mickey, you have some fucking imagination…

— I don’t understand.

His face hardened. Lips stony.

— You don’t understand? Well, let me explain it to you. We know that a certain Mickey was on to Popeye, that he was staking out locations, that he took photos. But nobody had made the connection between Devlin and him.

— Devlin, fuck! He was under our nose! Right under our nose, the handler repeated.

— Don’t touch Frank, for fuck’s sake! I was in Crumlin with him, he’s a friend…

— A friend? What do you mean, ‘friend’? You’ve changed friends, Tenor. We’re your friends now! the RUC man replied.

Then he looked at his watch.

— End of discussion.

— No arrests, I murmured again.

It was no longer defiant, it was a plea. In my head I was howling. My mouth was dry and I felt a desperate urge to piss. I was devastated, immensely sad. My reason was no longer functioning. I searched for a sentence, a word. I couldn’t even find an expression to serve as a response. When I arrived at the door, the handler slid an envelope into my pocket. I started.

— We’re not buying you. It’s to get home in a taxi, three times nothing.

— Your incidental expenses, if you like, smiled the agent.

He stuck out his hand to me. I ignored him. I headed for the sentry box.

— By the way, Tenor?

I turned around. The handler came towards me, his hand out.

— I’m sorry about Joe McDonnell’s death.

I was fragile, hyper-sensitive. In the stairwell, I felt old tears brimming. My stomach hurt. My teeth were chattering. I was so cold.

Then I took his hand. And the other man’s. And I squeezed them both.

I passed the Thomas Ashe on the way back. I’d decided to blow the £30 in the envelope. I drank two pints first, sitting at an afternoon table. Apart from three doleful faces, the club was empty. The voice on the television, a game of hurling, the dull cracking of pool balls from the next room. Then I stopped into the Busy Bee and Hanlon’s. A shot of vodka each time, standing at the bar like a man in a hurry. I bought drinks without toasting. I paid for two pints for a friend, another for a stranger. I hoped the word would spread.

— Tyrone Meehan’s pockets are full of money!

— Where’d you get all the dough, Meehan?

— Crisp notes? Not like the rags they slip us at the dole office!

They’d given me £30. The last of Judas’s thirty silver pieces. They’d done it on purpose, I was sure of it. I had decided to get myself caught. Or to die. I could throw myself from the top of the Albert Bridge over the Lagan: I don’t know how to swim. Or I could top myself in a car, it didn’t matter which direction, rushing towards a cliff in the dark. Or then again I could drink so much that my heart would eventually give up beating.

I saw myself in the mirror over the bar. I had kept my cap on, like a sheep breeder celebrating a sale. I was thinking of dying? Pathetic peasant. The poor have no time to think of that. I looked at my drooping eyes, that thatch of grey hair, those ears, those wrinkles ploughing through my skin. I looked at my crumpled jacket collar, my open shirt, the threadbare tweed of my clothes. I looked at my defeat. Leaning forward, I suddenly saw the great Padraig Meehan in the mirror. And all that space surrounding him, that silence at his approach, that respect, that embarrassment. I remembered the wood, the brass, the warmth and the golden darkness of Mullin’s. My father was there, returned within me. He was smiling like an imbecile, lifting my glass to toast his reflection. He was pretending to be sober. He was staggering. It was hard to watch. He had given up on his war, on Spain, on the Republic, on life. He had walked out on our winter roads, stones and earth in his pockets. He had wanted to die in the sea but he had died in the ditch. He had summoned the seagulls, the gardaí chased off the crows. He had nothing left, was neither father nor fighter. He was nothing but a pile of rags covered in ice.

Then I gave up the idea of dying. And of living, too. I would be elsewhere, between heaven and earth. I’d give them all grief! The Brits, the IRA, all those men who gave out orders! I could no longer stand this war, these heroes, this stifling community. I was tired. Tired of fighting, of marching, of prison; tired of secrecy and of silence; tired of prayers repeated since childhood; tired of hatred, of anger and of fear; tired of our grey skin, of the holes in our shoes; tired of our raincoats that were wet on the inside. My brother Seánie was roaring in my ears. I repeated word for word the arguments he had given me when he called it a day. What has the Republic ever done for me? The handsome ones, the great ones, the genuine ones, the Tom Williamses and the Danny Finleys, they had all died along with our youth! Buried with our history books, Connolly, Pearse and all those men in ties and round collars! We were mimics, imitators of glory. We replayed the old songs incessantly. We were made of soul, flesh and bricks, and were up against heartless steel. We were going to lose. We had lost. I had lost. And I wouldn’t offer Ireland another life.

— Kevin? Will you serve me a last one before closing your damned iron curtain?

I went to bed drunk and feverish. When I awoke, I had decided to divert them from Mickey. I would give them a piece of information. An unimportant one, but a piece of information. Maybe I’d throw them off that way and save him. I had to do my job as a traitor. Before the day was out, I would have crossed the line. It was like taking the oath to the Republic. No turning back on this road. I had started down it and I would lose myself along the way. It was too late for questions and doubts. And too late for answers.Jack had been out of solitary confinement for a week now. He had rejoined his friends and his cell. A present from Master Waldner to Tenor, his traitor. And me, I had thanked him.

— You’re a nice guy, the red-haired handler said to me on the way back from Paris.

That was it. Maybe a bastard is a nice guy who has given up.

I gave the British 23 Poolbeg Street. I met Waldner at the cemetery. He listened to me with his back to the wall, his eyes on the graves. He had a bunch of flowers that he asked me to put on Henry Joy McCracken’s grave.

Number 23 was an occasional hiding place, almost a ruin, used to store arms and money. Four months previously, we had cleaned it out. The street was too busy, the house too exposed. Kids were getting in through a broken window and smoking on the sly. Two of our lads intervened one evening just as a youth was searching the chimney flue. He had found a gun and some ammunition. He dropped his load and scarpered.

Waldner was looking at me. He was wearing a smile I didn’t care for.

— Number 23 Poolbeg Street?

I said yes. Poolbeg, at the bottom of the Falls Road. He nodded, recognizing it. He took me by the arm. We walked across the graves, like two old companions. He told me the story of Damian Bray, a fifteen-year-old who smoked hash in the same neighbourhood, and sold it as well, to make some pocket money. He and two older friends would get the stuff from Dublin, then play leapfrog over the border with their little bars sewn into their parkas.

— Oh, we’re not talking much, you know. Eight ounces here, a pound there. It could be useful.

He stopped in front of McCracken’s grave. He handed me the bouquet.

— One day, we arrested Bray. He was so scared he vomited.

I put the flowers down, one knee on the ground.

— A very decent family, the Brays. Father in Long Kesh, brother in the IRA. True Republicans, except for him. He was one of those kids who’d write ‘IRA = Peelers’ on walls, you know the type?

I knew.

— So we gave him an ultimatum. We didn’t give a damn about his toking. Likewise his petty trafficking. But we told him that if he wanted to leave the interrogation uncharged, he’d have to give us something in exchange. A little like you, you see?

The agent had started his slow walk again.

— And you know what? He slipped us an address. I’m sure you know the one.

I kept quiet.

— He’d been looking for a corner to stash his gear and he’d come across a gun. The IRA had caught him by surprise and he’d run away. It’s mad how much these brats hate you lot!

— What are telling me here?

— I’m telling you that by taking the law into its own hands in the ghettos, the IRA has made itself solid enemies of the louts. With us they get a judge, with you it’s a bullet in the kneecap. So, in fact, the Brits are the lesser evil for them.

— Why are you telling me all this?

— Why? Because after the young lad’s confessions, we placed Number 23 under surveillance, Tyrone. We saw your guys empty it out several months ago. And since then, there’s nothing there. Nothing. A desert.

He stopped beside the gate.

— You wouldn’t by any chance be taking the mickey out of us?

— Twenty-three was never under surveillance. You’re lying. Nobody has been arrested!

— Who would we arrest? The three Fianna and the poor fucker who did the cleaning? We want to hit the IRA, not make little heroes for you on the cheap!

He slid an envelope into my pocket. I didn’t protest.

— Later, Meehan. Call when you want.

He took a few steps, then turned around.

— By the way, Mickey talked. And you know what? He gave us the name of the next screw on the list, the location of the operation, everything.

He was watching me.

— And also… I’m sorry, but he also gave us your name. And that of your bomb-maker. You know? The one who shouldn’t have been there during your meeting.

The rain started to wash the sky. He lifted his collar.

— In any case, you were right to make him leave. You have to make people follow the rules, that’s the boss’s job.

Martin Hurson died on 13 July 1981, aged twenty-five, after forty-six days of hunger striking. Kevin Lynch went on 1 August, also aged twenty-five, on his seventy-first day. And Kieran Doherty went the next day, at twenty-six, on his seventy-third day of fasting.

As for Frank ‘Mickey’ Devlin, he was tortured for five days in the Castlereagh detention centre. He was deprived of sleep and made to stand naked for hours facing the wall, arms outstretched. He was beaten, electrocuted, choked, burned with cigarettes and smothered with damp cloths. Between interrogations he was thrown blindfolded into a soundproofed room. Those who have been subjected to sensory isolation say that even their cries were muted. Europe had described these treatments as ‘inhumane and degrading’. Waldner didn’t give a damn. In his view it was necessary to make the Republicans own up. Before another shot was fired, before another bomb exploded, before another Popeye should die somewhere in the city.

Did I understand?

— Imagine I’m your prisoner, Meehan. Your best friend is in our hands. Our men want to hit him. I know where and when. What do you do with me?

I understood.

The ghetto was distraught over Mickey’s arrest. His wife came to visit Sheila. They were both crying. I made them tea and left.

— Imprisoned is better than dead, I murmured to my wife when I came back.

I didn’t like the look she gave me. She was searching for the signs that I’d been drinking, but I hadn’t. Just two pints, in a bar that wasn’t my local. I didn’t want to have to face the despondency and the sorrow.

The British had arrested Mickey on 3 August after a punishment he had meted out to a rapist. The lad was a habitual offender who had been barred from the Divis Flats area for months. He had attacked a woman on her way home, hit her in the face and tried to drag her into the bushes. He was drunk, stumbling. She escaped and ran to the Sinn Féin office to lodge a complaint and give a description of her assailant.

The IRA had descended on his parents’ place during the night. He had secretly gone back to live in their house. He was sleeping off his beer, stretched out fully clothed on his childhood bed. Our men were wearing balaclavas. The mother intervened, shouting; the father took up a chair to defend his son.

— Don’t touch the parents! Mickey had ordered.

Two of our guys dragged the delinquent down the stairs. I was standing well back in the street. I wasn’t in charge of the operation. I didn’t like these punishments. We were an army, not the law. Our role was to chase out the British, not to give louts a hiding. But our people demanded safety on our streets.

Mickey was waiting at the door with two others. The mother pounced on him and lifted his mask. He pushed her off and she fell to the ground, pointing her finger.

— It’s Frank Devlin! I know you, Frank Devlin!

She was screeching.

Lights were being switched on all over the place. The guy was brought in a car to the little square beside his victim’s street. He tried to defend himself. Mickey smacked him violently in the temple with the butt of his gun. He tied him to a lamp post by the neck and the belly, his chest bare. A woman arrived, running, handed a sign that read ‘Rapist’ to one of our guys and then left as quickly as she’d come. The IRA hung the sign around his neck. His chest was smeared with cold tar. He seemed to be unconscious, his head dangling back. There were shadows at the windows, ghosts on the footpath, silhouettes on the steps of open doorways.

— Our country is at war! roared Mickey so he’d be heard by the street.

An óglach cocked his gun. The crack of metal in the silence. On the first floor of a house, a man put his fingers in his ears.

— We will not tolerate any attack against our community. Nor any violence against the women who are part of it!

The soldier shot twice. Not in the knees, but in the thighs. We had decided that the convicted man would walk again. He let out a long cry. His head fell back down.

— IRA! IRA! chanted a distant voice.

A combatant collected the burning cartridges with gloved hands and we withdrew.

The rapist’s parents were detested in the community. The postman would purposefully forget them, their bottle of milk would be smashed against their door in the mornings. The bars would refuse to serve the father, the bingo players would leave the mother sitting by herself at a table. They were the bad family of the street. They no longer had anything to lose. So they lodged a complaint with the RUC. And they gave them Mickey.

The mood of the city was black and forlorn as a raven. The sky, the expressions, everything smacked of sadness. Sadness for Mickey, for his wife. And I was sad, too. For the first time, I was disgusted to feel the effects of the practised British duplicity. Wherever I went, the conversations, the faces and the silences brought home the horror of Mickey’s torture over and over. But also, besides all that, the disappointing fact that Mickey hadn’t toughed it out. The British had let it be known that he’d talked. Their press had a field day with it. Waldner was protecting me. The handler was protecting me. They had diverted suspicion. Frank Devlin was arrested one month after I pronounced his name. An eternity. I hadn’t betrayed. I was exhausted. I treated myself to a respite. A last illusion of innocence.

In the third envelope, received on 5 August, were two plane tickets to Paris and an advance of £350 to pay for my first trip. I was to meet ‘Honoré’ at the riverboat wharf. I’d only seen him once, during that first visit to France with Sheila and the handlers playing the couple. He was a true Englishman, not even a gruff Protestant from our parts. He looked at me the way you look at a traitor. He didn’t shake my hand. He stayed the time it took to drink a beer, his eyes on my pink triangle. He wasn’t any more cordial with the MI5 agent or the RUC man. He was young, thirty-five at most. All he knew of Belfast was from flying over the city in a helicopter. He observed me, studied me. He told me he was interested in Sinn Féin, not the IRA. Our party, not our army. With his chin, he nodded at the other two, saying that bombs were their department.

— I don’t know much about politics, I told him.

— You know who thinks what in your movement. Which leaders are slowing down or in the process of gaining power. You know that, Tenor?

I shrugged. Yeah, sure. That I knew.

— Because that’s what interests me, you see. And since I find it a little difficult to attend your meetings…

Then he left the table, saluting us with his rolled-up newspaper to his temple.

I didn’t like him. I felt he was forcing his way into my story. The handler and the agent used to almost reassure me. We shared a common story now. They knew my ways, I knew their manners. We all knew where we stood. Not that there was understanding, but neither was there hatred. One day, the handler told me that he would oppose my ideas to the death, but that he respected them. As he gave me my tickets for Paris, Waldner admitted he would have liked to have met me in another place and time. Were they lying? Both of them? Probably. Those words may well have been intended to dull me, possibly pulled from their official handling manual. I didn’t give a damn. I was a prisoner, condemned to lies for life, and these two keepers of mine didn’t add humiliation to my loneliness.

Honoré wasn’t part of this story, he wasn’t even the same kind of enemy. He was a sheep stealer who takes advantage of an open gate. He was going to come along after the others and press me like a fruit. He had the pallor of a civil servant. He had ink on his hands, not blood. I could picture him under his desk lamp, drawing out flow charts with his mouth half-open and his tongue sticking out. For him, our country was a chart, our combat a statistic. We weren’t men and women but laboratory rats. The handler had us in his rifle sight, whereas Honoré observed us under a microscope. He called me Tenor. I hoped that he didn’t know anything about me, or Danny, or the existence of Jack and Sheila. That I remained anonymous. A synonym for traitor. A code name.

He was certainly going to make me hate Paris.

18. Killybegs, Tuesday, 2 January 2007

— Is that enough? Antoine asked.

— There’s never enough, I answered.

The wee Frenchman was laden down with wood. He was carrying the damp branches like a kid from the village. It had snowed during the night, but everything had frozen by morning. I looked at him for a moment, curved over a cumbersome branch as though afraid of damaging his clothes. I turned a log, he raised his head and our eyes met.

Earlier, when Sheila had dropped him in front of the house, he had looked at the big fir tree, my father’s house, my country’s sky, but he avoided my eyes and I didn’t search out his. I locked the door, turned my back on him and set off walking towards the wood, my axe at my shoulder.

— We’ll get some wood for the fire.

And he followed me.

I was dreading that look. And yet I was curious, too.

I hadn’t seen Antoine since 10 July 2006. I had brought him to the Kesh. Since the peace process, the prison camp had been deserted. Like Jack, the last prisoners of war had been freed six years earlier. What remained were the buildings, the watchtowers, the walls topped by barbed wire and the traces left behind by all of us.

Leaving Bobby Sands’s cell, the wee Frenchie had been deeply moved. I’d taken him by the shoulders and called him ‘son’. Thirty years earlier, I had christened him with that nickname. Blind drunk one day, he had told me that I was his Irish father. But this time the word had a different meaning.

— I love you, son, I told him in front of the prison door.

He looked at me. He wanted to answer, to whisper a word that would break the silence.

— I love you, I repeated.

Then he kept quiet.

My treason was drawing to an end. It was only a question of months, or weeks. After more than twenty years, I was no longer of any use to the enemy. It was going to let me go, to sell me. Antoine’s expression was one of the most beautiful ever directed at me, and also one of his last.

When the wee Frenchie used to look at me, I loved myself. I loved myself for what he believed about me, what he said about me, what he expected from me. I loved myself when he walked by my side like a general’s aide de camp. When he’d take care of me. As if his innocence could protect me. I loved myself through his devotion, the pride he had in me. I loved myself in that dignity he lent me, that courage, that honour. What I loved about him was all that his heart told me of myself. When Antoine looked at me, he saw the triumphant Fianna, Tom Williams’s companion, the Crumlin rebel, the unsubdued prisoner of Long Kesh. When he looked at me, Danny Finley was still alive.

But that day in Killybegs, that expression of Antoine’s had been extinguished. Him with his branches, me with my log. He was no longer seeing me. He was searching for the traitor. I smiled at him. I don’t know why. I built the fire. A white smoke was pushed back down the chimney by the wind.

— You can sit down, I said.

He took a seat at my father’s table, hands clasped between his thighs. I took off my wet cap and stuck it in my trouser pocket.

— If the Frenchman wants to come, he is welcome.

Father Byrne had passed the message on and here was Antoine, buried in silence.

— What do you want to know? I’m listening, son.

I turned my back, leaning over the bad wood.

— Nothing.

A tremor of a voice.

I served him his tea. He was looking at the wall, I was looking at the floor. Our eyes were no longer made for looking at each other.

— Do you want to know if Republicans died because of me?

— No!

He shouted, his arm flying up. He knocked his cup over, the tea burning his thighs. Not a cry, nothing. He moved his chair back.

— Do you not want to know?

He was watching the liquid dripping on the bare floor.

— You don’t want to know?

— I don’t know.

He didn’t know. He wasn’t angry, or sad. He was lost. A child deep in my wood. The IRA had warned him in Belfast. If he tried to meet me, he would be exiled. You turn your back on traitors, you don’t speak to them. You don’t cross the country to examine their faces. You don’t ask them anything. The traitor is ill. Those who have contact with him are infected. To see him is to understand him. To listen to him is to betray in turn.

— You know you can never come back to Ireland?

I was standing, back to the wall. He nodded. Yes, of course, he knew.

Since I’d bought him a cap the same as mine twenty years earlier, I’d never seen him without it. It was his Irish disguise. In Belfast, he thought it made him one of our own. In Paris, he used it to believe himself exiled. A farmer’s cap, the kind nobody wore any more, apart from old Tyrone Meehan and a few old men from postcards. With my cap, Antoine had become Tony. But this time it was a bare-headed Antoine who had come to see me. No longer wearing anything that tied us together.

The fire wasn’t taking. The smoke was clouding our expressions.

— And what about our friendship? asked the Frenchman.

Antoine stared at me at last.

— What about our friendship?

He lowered his head and I felt bad for having asked that. Answering a question with a question, the tactic of men without an answer.

He looked up at me again.

— Was it real, our friendship?

So that was it.

For a moment, I thought that the wee Frenchman had come here for me. To insult me or pity me. To tell me all the wrong I had done. To howl in disillusionment, anger, shame. But he had come for himself.

— I don’t understand your question, Antoine.

I turned back to the fireplace.

— Are you asking if I am your friend?

He nodded.

— That’s why you came this whole way, wee Frenchie?

Same timid movement.

I put my cap back on. His image of an Irishman.

— Look at me, and tell me what you think.

He shook his head.

— I don’t know any more.

— You don’t know much, huh?

He was disappointed. I was hurting. I don’t know which of us was the more wounded.

I could have answered him.

Reminded him that one day, in Paris, he’d met me in the metro. It was rush hour, the carriage was full. I was going to meet Honoré the bureaucrat in a café at Saint-Michel. At the Opéra station, I saw the wee Frenchman get on. His cap, his IRA badge, his endearing charms. I was astounded. Paris, more than twelve million inhabitants and I had come across the only one I wasn’t supposed to meet. God, chance, my bad conscience or his naivety made us take not only the metro, but the same line, the same direction and the same carriage on that day and at that time. I was sitting in a square of four seats. He was standing, facing me, gripping the rail with a challenging expression. In Belfast, I would have called him over:

— Antoine? Are you on operation or what, lad? Look at yourself, wee Frenchie, anyone would think you were mounting an assault! Unclench your jaw! Take a deep breath!

I shrank down in the seat. A woman across from me, a newspaper reader, a mother with a child on her knees. I was against the glass. I looked outside, a never-ending tunnel. He was observing the people. Our eyes met in the reflection. His eyes opened wide, his mouth dropped. He stiffened. He was astounded. It was he who received me in Paris, always. He who put me up, fed me, helped me to not get lost. I was his Irish resistance. Through me, he was fighting. He had the cap, the badges, but also the thrill of the secrecy. He asked me once what I was coming to Paris to do. I smiled.

— Are you working for the Brits now or what?

He blushed. Apologized. Never again would he ask stupid questions. He would come to meet me at the airport and take me back again. He didn’t have a driving licence, I used to pay for the taxi.

— It’s on the IRA, I’d tell him.

I’d take the bill and he’d be dead proud.

That Wednesday, I had no reason to be there without him in the metro, with the little overnight bag he’d given me. He came towards me, politely nudging around people’s elbows. I turned towards him, gave him a brutal look, put my finger to my lips, those sudden gestures that demand silence. He froze in the middle of the carriage. I gave a hint of a smile, reassuring him. He relaxed. He moved his head slightly, a silent acceptance.

— Understood, Tyrone!

I was in the middle of an operation, on a dangerous mission. He wasn’t supposed to know about my presence there. The IRA was protecting him. And this time I’d spare him. He was wearing his wee smile. His son’s smile. The one that always made my heart clench. The smile of one who understands without a word, who accepts without question. My wee Frenchie, my companion in silence.

In the space of one station, he had taken up the pose again, cap down over his eyes. He was no longer fighting, he was on the lookout. He had gone from soldier to sentry. I got up. He threw a long look over the crowd. He felt as though he was from another world, another history, part of a secret. He was at war, they were at peace. And his OC was there, protected by their unconcern. What pride.

I stepped on to the platform. He was keeping watch. His eyes murmured that everything was quiet, no danger. That nobody had followed me. When the train left again, he gave a slight nod. Barely a movement, a signal between the two of us. And I saw him in his crowded carriage, his cap on his head, that smile on his lips, so certain that he’d protected our Republic.

I thought about that exchanged glance for a long time afterwards. I didn’t even tell Waldner or Honoré about the encounter. A few weeks later, in Belfast, I took Antoine to one side. Under no circumstances was he to disclose my presence in France to anyone. Ever. Not even to our friends in the movement. That was the rule when he was putting me up in Paris, it was even more important this time. And he understood. Of course, obviously, he understood. He was listening to Tyrone Meehan with the same degree of attention as you give to the first notes of your national anthem. He didn’t try to understand my war, he was living his own.

I could have told him all of that. I owed him a portion of the truth. I owed him a different perspective, the real one, that of the corrupted man, the disloyal one, that of the infidel. I wanted him to confront those eyes, for him to know them. And also for him to know the weak and hounded man. Inviting him to my deathbed was a way of offering him what was left of me.

— Do you know that I’m going to die, son?

His silence told me he didn’t.

— My God! You really don’t know anything about this country.

I moved away from the whitewashed wall. Sheila had just beeped the horn. She didn’t want to come in. She was against this visit and didn’t understand why I had accepted the presence of a foreigner.

Antoine got up. He was cold, his lips grey. I went to the door, opened it for him. I suppressed my gestures. I knew they would be our last.

— You haven’t answered me, Antoine murmured.

I was frozen, as though my body were in a tomb. I was hurting. A sharp pain, a knife being dragged from throat to heart. And I opened my arms. To him, and to Jack, whom I was missing.

Without a word, he took refuge in my damp jacket, my old woollen jumper, my winter scarf, my frozen coat. I felt the shabbiness of the Kesh blankets. That sickening mix of sourness, man and dog. We remained standing like that a moment.

I could have answered him.

For me, he was simultaneously the foreigner and my people. He who had seen me and he who would never see me again. He was the wee Frenchman and the whole of that Ireland he followed step by step. He was a bit of Belfast, a bit of Killybegs, a bit of our old prisoners, our protests and our fury. He was Mickey’s look, Jim’s smile. He was our victories and our defeats. He had loved this land so very much that he was part of it.

Was that friendship? I didn’t have an answer. Had I betrayed that love? Of course I had betrayed it. I had hidden myself behind Antoine, behind his courage and his convictions. I was unable to feel either guilt or remorse for that. It was also too late for forgiveness or a sudden crisis of conscience. The traitor and the betrayed, in one another’s arms. Yes, the man from the Parisian metro had used him. And so? Did that change this gloomy embrace?

He wore his city coat and black woollen gloves. My back was bent, my hair a mess, my cap wet, my crumpled trousers stuffed into muddy boots. He gave me a look I didn’t want.

I turned my back to him, raised a hand to say goodbye.

They could come and death could take me. It didn’t matter.

19

I met Antoine in the Thomas Ashe in April 1977. He claimed I taught him to piss that night, but I have no memory of it. I saw him from a good way off, at the back of the room, sitting with Jim O’Leary and his wife, Cathy. Aside from two Basque sympathizers lost in the crowd, he was the only one wearing a Republican T-shirt. Everyone in the place was connected to the IRA, everyone except those who publicly glorified it.

At first, I took him for an American, the kind who shivers over his Irish roots, cries as he places his feet on our soil for the first time, and rushes off to buy a white Aran sweater and a tweed cap. The kind who loves everything about Ireland, from its mud to its rain, from its poverty to its misery. The kind who wants to make himself useful, asks for a gun, but is wary all the same of giving us his passport and declaring it lost at the American consulate.

And then I looked at his lips, their extreme mobility, that particular way the French have of elaborately chewing their words. He was speaking with his mouth open, the way people without secrets do.

I saw him again the following day, for the Easter parade. I was getting the Fianna to line up in the street when I caught his eye. He was crying. He was watching the crowd, our wives, our children and our men, and he was crying. Not the way a child or someone who is hurt cries, but silently, taking advantage of the rain to disguise his tears. When the hundreds of former prisoners lined themselves up in rows of three alongside widows carrying wreaths, and their children in their Sunday best, he turned to face the wall. The wee Frenchman wasn’t like the other visitors. He wasn’t observing our suffering, he was sharing it.

It was cold. We set off down the road and he followed us, one of the family now. A little earlier, I had called him ‘son’ for the first time. I’d positioned him on the corner of Divis Street, promising him a surprise. The IRA was my surprise. Several dozen fighters in parade uniform, wearing black berets and white belts. I looked at my men through his eyes. I felt his shudder. He had arrived the evening before and found himself plunged into the war. The helicopters, the armoured vehicles, our flags, our fifes, our drums. What did he see? Shadow soldiers, children without fathers, wives without anything left at all. Sad and weary, ours was a solemn portion of humanity, with our silent companions — poverty, dignity and death. Like him, my gaze was brushing over the worn coats, the muddy shoes. Like him, I looked at the rain-drenched hair, the exhausted faces. I glimpsed my bleak shadow in the reflection of a window. I couldn’t disown any part of these people. They were made of me as I was moulded from them. And Antoine stood there with his mouth agape. I was touched, and I was proud, too. My country was giving him a gift.

That April Sunday was the first and last time I saw Antoine cry. Much later, years afterwards, I asked him why. He simply replied that the tears had been his way of applauding us.

When I got out of the Kesh, I learned that Antoine had been used by the IRA. Appalled by my arrest, my laughable trial and sentence, and disgusted by the dirty protest, he had begged Jim O’Leary to find him a task, a role, some little thing he could do to help.

Ireland’s war is the business of the Irish. I have always distrusted foreigners who wanted to fight at our side. As for explaining our position to people in their own country, organizing information meetings, holding press conferences, mustering up demonstrations? Yes, of course, a thousand times. But I never considered entrusting them with a single round.

— That attitude will be the death of us, Jim used to say. Connolly taught us internationalism, not the cult of borders!

— The IRA isn’t an army of mercenaries, I’d reply.

He’d burst out laughing.

— Mercenaries, Tyrone? What do you mean by mercenaries? When your father wanted to fight for the Spanish Republic, was he a mercenary?

He got on my nerves. He was right, he was wrong, depending on my mood. I didn’t want a stranger to die in our war, or be taken prisoner. That was all. I imagined the British propaganda, the press, the Unionists. The IRA? A bunch of French, Americans or Germans looking for a revolution. The IRA? The newest attraction for Western leftists. Wake up, Ireland! Look who’s fighting on your soil in your name!

Jim made fun of me. He thought me a narrow-minded nationalist. One day, he asked me if I had even been out of Ireland. If I’d crossed the sea. If I’d heard a single foreign language in my whole life. If I’d come across a single viewpoint from elsewhere. If I had even the slightest idea of what Rome or Brussels was. If I’d even looked beyond my own backyard. He was hitting the nail on the head. I hadn’t yet betrayed Belfast for Paris. We were in the Thomas Ashe, ordering rounds. It was before the grass informed on me. Antoine was there, listening to us without speaking. They exchanged a quick, amused look. I said to myself that those two were up to no good. And I was right.

The wee Frenchman had made the most of my thirteen months under the blankets to defy me. Jim had arranged a discreet meeting between Antoine and an international affairs officer. Antoine was a Parisian violin-maker, probably unknown to British intelligence. Of course, he strode up and down our streets and drank in our clubs, but so did many others. He played the violin, that was his weapon. In the eyes of the police, he was an idealist looking for inspiration for his compositions.

Jim made enquiries. Antoine was living on a quiet street that led on to boulevard des Batignolles, the instrument-makers’ quarter. He had an unused utility room to which he gave Jim the key, on an anchor keyring. It became a hideout, with an inner yard and a simple low wall joining the neighbouring building. There were three metro stations at equal distances — Rome, Liège and Europe. It was an ideal, quiet location. Several of our lads stayed one after the other under this Paris roof. John McAnulty, Mary Devaney and Paddy Best. None of them ever met Antoine.

He also transported money to pay for somebody’s passage, and more money another time to assist several combatants on their way to Hungary. Twice, he hired cars with false French papers. He hid bulletproof vests in his workshop. He served as a translator. He accompanied an IRA officer on a night train from Paris to Bilbao. He didn’t ask any questions. Our reasons gave him a clear conscience and our suffering gave him conviction.

When I learned that Antoine had assisted the IRA, I went to see Jim. The exchange was heated and brief. I was his OC. I demanded the names, the places, the dates, the facts. The Frenchman was to be left outside all of that.

The following Saturday, I led the wee Frenchie into a room in the Thomas Ashe, a corner to ourselves, behind the bar. A man guarded the door. Antoine sat down and I remained standing. I threw his key on the table. The anchor.

— What is that?

He looked at me, flabbergasted.

— The key to my place.

— Who did you give it to?

He lowered his eyes.

— Who to, son?

He shook his head. He didn’t know their names. I was whispering. The clamour from the bar came to us in waves. On the stage, the band was playing ‘Danny Boy’.

— You are not Irish, Antoine.

I whispered it to him gently, the way you’d deliver bad news.

— What would you be if you weren’t Irish, the owner of Mullin’s had once asked.

— I’d be ashamed, my father had replied.

I leaned back against the wall as I told him that he was Antoine the violin-maker, not Tom Williams, not Danny Finley. He was a friend of Ireland, a comrade, a brother, but also a bystander. He had no ancestors who had died during the Great Famine, no grandfather who was hanged by the English, no brother who had fallen in active service, or sister who had been locked up. I told him that by indulging himself, he was putting people in danger.

Indulging? He gestured in protest.

— We’re not playing at war, we’re making it, son.

I told him that he couldn’t claim our anger.

And then I sat down across from him. I placed my hand on the table, palm up. I asked him to place his alongside. My farmer’s hand, his musician’s hand. Tyrone’s skin, Antoine’s skin. One worn by brick, the other polished by wood. Leather and silk.

— Promise me you’ll drop all that.

He looked at me.

— Promise me, I repeated.

I told him that he would remain our wee Frenchie, our violin-maker. He’d talk to us of maple, ebony, boxwood, rosewood. He’d place a cylinder of pale wood between our pints, swearing on his life that it was the soul of a violin. He’d play drunken jigs for us, the national anthem, a lament beside a grave to mourn one of our own. He would be our reflection and our difference.

— I promise you.

He had understood.

Then I leaned over the table and took his face between my hands.

— You wee insignificant volunteer.

Thomas McElwee died on 8 August 1981, at twenty-four years of age, after sixty-two days of hunger striking. Micky Devine went on 20 August after sixty days of fasting. He was twenty-seven.

That’s when the family of a hunger striker asked for an end to the suffering. A father and a mother, sitting at the bedside of death, warming up the hands of their lifeless statue with their own hands. Their son had fallen into a coma. They gave their consent to have him fed. Then another mother gave in. And another. And another. And another eight mothers who each refused to lose her child.

The hunger strike officially ceased on 3 October 1981 at half past three. One hundred volunteers were signed up to join the protest in turn. Some had secretly pushed their names up the list to start sooner.

Several days later, the prisoners were given authorization to wear civilian clothes, but not to claim they were political prisoners.

Margaret Thatcher never yielded, it was said.

Antoine had followed the martyrdom step by step. He was infuriated by his powerlessness. He observed our distress as a witness kept at a distance.

— You don’t think that the Frenchman might be useful to you?

I hesitated, looked at Waldner.

— Which Frenchman?

The British agent gave me a pitying look.

— Ah now, Tenor! None of that between us, come on.

I remained silent. I didn’t know what he knew.

— Antoine Chalons, the name doesn’t ring a bell?

We were walking along the street, sheltered under a large umbrella.

— Nobody wishes him any harm, this Antoine of yours.

He looked at me, smiling.

— On the contrary, in fact, Meehan. On the contrary.

I had my hands in my pockets. I was squeezing my left thigh between my thumb and index finger so hard I could have screamed.

— You were right to advise him to quit his stupidity, but that doesn’t suit us at all.

I looked at him.

— He has nothing to do with all that.

Waldner stopped dead. I met his gaze.

— Nothing? He’s hiding terrorists, he’s moving dough around, and you call that nothing?

— You’re bluffing! You haven’t any proof.

— The French police have everything they need. His workshop is under surveillance, and I’m suggesting to you that we place him under protection.

He had started walking again. I threw him a foolish question.

— What do you want?

Waldner lit a cigarette while keeping an eye on the street.

— The French are watching him but we’re going to reassure them. We’ll tell them that we need this guy. That they shouldn’t take him in.

That day, I refused to enter the cemetery. Pretending to pay homage to a hero in the company of the enemy was killing me. Waldner was courteous, as usual. He didn’t give any orders, he made suggestions. He asked me to use the end of the strike to appear to change my mind regarding Antoine. I’d have to see him again. Invite him into our secret circle. Ask him for his key.

— But you and you alone will make use of it, Meehan. There’s no question of him putting anyone else up or transporting anything. He will be your alibi.

— I have no reason to be in Paris for the IRA.

— You’ll find one, Tenor. Your imagination is already legendary.

Antoine arrived in Belfast two days later, on 11 October 1981.

I took him by car to the upper part of the city.

— Do you still want to serve the Irish Republic?

He looked at me. He was astonished. There was laughter in his eyes. Want to? Absolutely! Of course he wanted to! When? Immediately! Whatever I needed of him. I calmed him down with a look. We passed some armoured vehicles. He smiled at the helmeted soldier sticking up out of the open turret, cheek crushed against his rifle butt.

— Pan! Pan! Pan! the wee violin-maker kidded. Rapid fire in French, a good-humoured onomatopoeia uttered through the windscreen.

He would give me the key the next time he came over. No, he’d never ask me anything. Yes, he’d come to meet me at the airport and leave me back there at the end of each trip. It’s a promise, Tyrone. A secret between the two of us, Antoine?

— Not even Jim?

— Just you and me. A mission requiring the utmost trust.

He looked at me, suddenly anxious.

— You’re not going to strike in France?

Never, my wee toy soldier. You don’t spill blood in a country that supports your cause. You love it, you protect it, you respect it. The IRA would never touch your soil. It is sacred to us.

— Alright, son? Will we keep it like that?

We would keep it like that. Of course. If he had been less cramped, he would have taken out his violin to celebrate the great news. Antoine was entering our ranks once more. He was leaving his loveless life for the love of our lives. I felt strange, neither shameful, nor guilty, nor remorseful. I looked at him. I didn’t regret a thing. By using him, I was making amends for his foolhardiness. He would play at war without risk or injury. I was going to protect him. He had his eyes closed, his hands crossed behind his head. He was the picture of happiness. And I was happy for him.

— Pan! Pan! Pan!

Bent over the tape recorder, Waldner jumped. He gave me a questioning look.

— We were passing an armoured car.

He nodded, smiling.

— A real terror, your little Frenchman.

Three months before, they had installed a miniature recording device and microphone in my glove compartment. Every Saturday at the Castle Place post office I would write a postcard on the counter that was always covered in scraps of paper. The tapes were in a closed envelope, sellotaped to the inside of the Belfast Telegraph. Waldner would come in, approach the counter and take the newspaper. Not a word exchanged, not a glance. It was convenient. As if he wasn’t who he was, as if I wasn’t myself.

I became acquainted with Honoré. A little like the way you learn to recognize a French wine. I observed him for a long time before tasting him. He was different to Waldner or the red-haired handler, who had stayed behind in Belfast, with their military questions. When they met me, they were waging war. Honoré, on the other hand, was not a soldier, but rather a student who works hard at his course. And I was the subject of his study.

We met at the Jussieu Campus in Paris. Unlike Belfast, the gates of the institution were not guarded, the stairways were clear and the classrooms often left open. Only once, after violent incidents between students from the left and right, did campus police screen everyone. Honoré asked me for a passport photo to make me a university staff card in case that should happen again, but the guards had disappeared the following day. On fine days, we sat out on the flagstones on chairs borrowed from a classroom. I’d talk, he’d take notes. From a distance we looked like a professor and his student. In the cafeteria, at the back of a deserted amphitheatre or sitting on tables in a deserted space, we looked like the ghosts surrounding us. We would eat sandwiches and drink soft drinks. No alcohol during our talks. He’d asked me that as a favour. So I’d come to the meeting with my flask in my pocket and I’d drink behind the Englishman’s back.

The first time I saw Honoré, he was wearing a civil-servant suit, but in Paris, with me, he preferred jeans, polo-necks and trainers.

To begin with, he asked me unimportant things. I think he was warming up. He wasn’t interested in what the IRA was up to.

— What I want to know is what it’s thinking.

What the IRA was thinking? He wanted to get a picture of who gave the orders within the army, the politicians or the soldiers. If there were dissensions in that respect and who made up the different factions. He asked me questions about Irish current affairs. At the last Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, which public speaker had been wildly applauded by the crowd, and which had practically cleared the room when they took the platform? Why? And what impact did it have on the movement’s strategy? Discussing that kind of thing seemed fairly harmless. But his way of taking notes reminded me who he was. As he wrote, he didn’t stop watching me for a moment. He never lowered his gaze to his notebook. He’d scribble his letters by guesswork, instinctively putting sentences together. Between my eyes and his eyes was the thread, and he was afraid of breaking or losing it. He knew that while I was looking at him, I’d almost forget he was writing. From time to time, Honoré would nod, blink, offer me a sign of understanding. When I hesitated, he’d encourage me with a frown. Two friends chatting, the older seeming to captivate the younger. Never, in all my life, had anyone ever listened to me like that.

It is difficult to write, to say or even to understand, but little by little I came to enjoy these exchanges. My words weren’t killing anyone, making anyone suffer or sending anyone to prison.

— I’m sure you’re going to like Honoré, the handler had told me.

And I had shrugged disinterestedly.

Sometimes I even found him funny.

— You don’t consider that by naming a party ‘Sinn Féin’, Protestants will feel excluded? he asked me one day.

— Excluded?

— Calling yourself ‘We Alone’, yes, that’s going to cause feelings of exclusion!

I smiled.

—‘Ourselves’, Honoré. The words ‘Sinn Féin’ mean ‘ourselves’ in Irish. We will free ourselves by ourselves.

He made a note, pulled a face despite what I’d told him and circled the word in black.

— When I circle a word, it’s to check it, he informed me.

— You circle quite a lot of things.

— That’s true.

The British agent’s main interest was about our real attitude towards an eventual ceasefire. Our newspapers, meetings and demonstrations all called for a lasting peace. He wanted to know if it was a slogan intended for onlookers or an ideology that drove us.

— How can you advocate phrases such as ‘With a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other’?

So I’d explain, the way a man does to a child. I was patient and we had the time. Yes, the Republican movement was ready to discuss peace, but we needed a strong signal from London. Without this signal, our people would forbid us from laying down our arms.

— Even since the hunger strikes?

I looked him right in the eye. Contact between the IRA and London had never ceased. Never. Even during Bobby’s death throes, even after his death and those of his comrades. There had always been a means of communicating between the two camps. He knew it, I knew it. So why didn’t he quit asking his trick questions.

— What strong signal?

— A gesture for the prisoners.

— A gesture?

— Or a word, a phrase that would allow everyone an honourable way out.

— Too early.

— Well then, an Armalite in one hand…

He wrote, then crossed out that sentence. Like me, he knew that no military victory would ever be won in Northern Ireland. The IRA wasn’t strong enough to break up the British force. And after having fought our great-grandparents, our parents and us, the British were going to have to fight our children, and our children’s children. He nodded, looking at me. There was something in his eyes. Curiosity, interest, even sympathy, I searched for a long time without working it out. One day, he asked me why we were at war.

— God made us Catholics, the gun made us equals, I answered.

He circled the sentence to check it, just to make me smile.

In 1991, we swapped the Jussieu Campus for the red double-decker buses imported from England for tourists to take trips around Paris. In winter as well as summer we’d go up on top, in the open air, carefully choosing the passengers sitting close by. We’d pick Asians or Arabs. We’d listen to them, and if they were speaking English between themselves, we’d change seats. Honoré would always sit on the outside and I’d sit in the aisle seat so as not to be seen from the street. The tour had commentary included, with tourist information and music. Each passenger had headsets, so we could speak freely in low voices. Honoré would always get off at the Louvre and I’d stop at Opéra. No goodbyes. Until the next time.

When I’d get back to the hideout, I’d sometimes pass by Antoine’s workshop. I’d look at him from the street, through his ground-floor window, bent over a volute, knife in hand. Local residents would often stop to watch his work. He didn’t see them, but he would sense my presence. He’d raise his head. Just a sign, a wink, the code of a resistance fighter, before returning to his work. I could tell his heart was pounding. On the other side of his window stood the great Tyrone Meehan, secretly furthering his country’s struggle. What had he done? Transported arms? Checked places out? All that mattered was that he was safe in this city, this street, this hideout, and that he owed it to a French violin-maker.

Paris gave me the courage to brave Belfast. With Honoré, I had some influence. With Waldner, I skulked along the walls. My work with one justified my informing the other. After all, why not instruct the enemy about our politics? What had we to hide? Nothing. Sinn Féin spent its time calling for dialogue with the British, and there, in Paris, Honoré and I had initiated peace talks. For eleven years, he had been Margaret Thatcher, then John Major, then Tony Blair for me, and I had been the IRA for him.

But above all else, I was Tyrone Meehan, a Republican combatant. I wasn’t renouncing or corrupting anything. I had left the bastard on the curb of the Falls Road. In Paris, I wasn’t betraying, I was teaching. I was doing something useful, active, essential and probably historic. Something that hadn’t yet been attempted by anybody in the movement. Without my leaders’ approval, or even their authorization, I was in direct contact with the enemy through its ambassador, and we were preparing the future. It was dizzying, beyond intoxicating. I felt stronger than anyone or anything. Greater than our politicians, than the IRA Council, than Waldner, than the red-haired handler. So much more important than Honoré, this kid from Norfolk who wrote down what I dictated. I had never felt that power. In my whole life, I had never been so strong. I wasn’t obeying anyone’s orders. I was writing my country’s history. In secret, in silence, on the fringes of my world and people, I was serving my homeland to the best of my ability. I was so much more useful to peace doing this than I was firing some futile shot at a night patrol from a rooftop.

There was respect in the way Honoré looked at me. That distinctive brightness, that complete attention, beauty I couldn’t name, that’s what it was. Honoré respected me. He drank up every sentence I uttered. He still circled information to check, but less and less frequently. The word ‘fascinated’ hit me one intoxicating day. That was it exactly: I fascinated the enemy and he respected me. He no longer commanded me, it was I who had him.

One afternoon in June 1994, while our bus was parked at Trocadéro, Honoré’s respect for me was transformed to admiration. I had just told him that the IRA had decided to permanently cease hostilities. He looked at me without writing. For a long time, without saying a word. And then he turned his head. The Eiffel Tower, the laughing tourists, the souvenir vendors, the cloudless sky. When he turned back to me, I thought I saw a child.

— Are you sure, Tyrone?

Tyrone. Not Meehan, not Tenor. The name my father had given me. Yes, I was sure. I knew. Before the year was out. That summer, perhaps.

— A ceasefire, Honoré murmured to himself.

— No. The complete cessation of military operations.

He looked at me again, the way you’d fondly look at a friend. And then his eyes left mine for the first time. He was writing. His hand was shaking. It was as if he didn’t want to let that phrase slip away.

The complete cessation of military operations.

He reread the sentence. Contemplated it all the way to the Champ de Mars.

And he didn’t circle it.

The British would negotiate with the IRA. The Protestants would be obliged to accept us in the corridors of power, and then at the decision-making table. And one day Ireland would be united again. Then the border would be trampled over by thousands of laughing children. Then our women, our men, our daughters and our soldiers would run across the fields towards our brothers in the Republic. Then they would finally embrace, hug, kiss and cry with joy. Then the breeze would get up and the sun shine on our flags. Then we would suddenly be on our knees, and suddenly, from cities to villages, from Belfast backstreets to Dublin avenues, from Wicklow hills to the harbour in Killybegs, we’d be praying for our martyrs and thanking heaven. And our Protestant brothers would accept our outstretched hands. And war would be a thing of the past, and we would have peace for all time. And there I would be, in some dark corner, not even in uniform, without a medal, without friends, without cheers. I would be standing in the middle of my people, unknown, anonymous. I, who would have done that, all of it. Who could finally ask forgiveness of Danny Finley, of Jim O’Leary, and forgiveness of my dreams.

20

I dreamed of this day. For fifty-eight years I never stopped believing it would come. Hanged on 2 September 1942 at the age of nineteen and buried like a dog in a common grave within Crumlin Gaol, Tom Williams’s body was finally returned to us on 19 January 2000.

His family and last remaining brothers in arms were present when he was disinterred. Some companions had asked me to be there but I was unable to face it. I had been drinking the night before, all night. In the morning I was still drunk. Sheila dressed me for the ceremony.

— It seems strange to honour a guy who used to kill our boys while we were off fighting the Nazis, Waldner had said.

— Ireland is more important than everything else, is that it? Honoré asked me.

That was it, yes. I no longer wished to respond. Neither to him, nor to the other one. That day, at that hour, when I went into St Paul’s chapel in Clonard, I was suddenly just the kid to whom Tom had given his leather ball. I had it in my pocket when I entered the church. I was stumbling from all the alcohol in my system. They were there, all of them, sitting in the front row. Nell, his fiancée for all time. John, who had been condemned to death with him and then pardoned. Billy, Eddie, Madge and Joe, the members of his unit. Joe raised his crutch to me in greeting. He asked the others to push up a bit. I declined with a smile and a wave, miming a man drinking, hand around an invisible pint lifted to my lips. I’m pissed, my friends. Steaming. I have blood in my alcohol and I’m sweating beer. Joe looked at me sadly, shrugged and turned back. I sat beside the aisle, not quite in the last row, but almost: the appropriate place for a nobody.

Sheila didn’t come. She was waiting on the Falls Road, a flag in her hand, along with thousands of others. A guard of honour that would make up the funeral cortège.

— He who was lost has been found again, Father O’Donnell said during the funeral Mass.

Tom Williams, the prodigal son. It was here he was baptized. Here, also, as children that we’d come to speak of serious things while pretending to pray.

— Tom has come home again, and we welcome him joyfully…

I was looking at his coffin. It was wavering before my eyes in the dim light. The tricolour had been nailed to the pale wood. Sometimes priests would refuse to have Republican symbols, such as the black beret and gloves of the fighter, enter the church. Then we would have to negotiate, or chase off the priest and impose one of our own. But today, there was no need. Tom had been hanged for that flag. Ireland’s earth ought to welcome them together, and the Clonard priest was in agreement.

I lowered my head, closed my eyes and opened them again immediately to stop myself from toppling over. I could feel the embarrassed looks, the compassion, the nauseating fraternity surrounding me. On leaving the ceremony, dozens of hands were held out to me, like Hitchcock’s birds. Soft, firm, affectionate and timid handshakes, gentle nudges and brushings. I couldn’t feel my legs or arms. Inside my head I was screaming. The scream of a torture victim. When the coffin left, I cried. An old man’s dry tear. A trail of clear alcohol on my leather. The crowd was so thick it frightened me. I was miming, pretending to rejoice. I put on a victorious expression by imitating other people’s happiness. It was cold and dry. I had awaited this day for fifty-eight years and it was killing me. My face was inscrutable in the midst of all that celebration.

The IRA had laid down its arms. The first child to be born in peacetime was called Samuel Stewart. He arrived on 31 August 1994, several minutes after the ceasefire was declared. The last British soldier killed by our men was Stephen Restorick, cut down at the age of twenty-three by a sniper, in the final death throes of the struggle.

Our political prisoners had been released, all of them. Some had entered local councils, civil service and government departments. Smile, Tyrone, for God’s sake! Look at Tom’s coffin being carried on men’s backs through the city centre. How many times have you woken up wishing that dream would come true? What’s that? You’re suspicious? But of course you’re still going to feel suspicious! Everybody knows that, Tyrone. The fear that exists between the two communities? Yes! Naturally that remains. The difficult work of grieving, the anger, the hatred, even. And also the feeling of impunity that wounds the victims’ families. But regardless of all that, this is your father’s dream, Tom’s, Danny’s. Peace, Tyrone! It’s what you’re in the middle of experiencing right now!

In a few weeks, Waldner will return to England, the red-haired handler will be directing traffic at a crossroads, Honoré will be teaching Irish history, and everything will be over. Look around you, Tyrone Meehan! People are cheering you with their eyes. Nobody knows. Nobody suspects. You’re going to get away with it, my old friend! It’s been months now since you’ve given the enemy any information. And besides, what could you give them? There is no need any longer for a secret meeting place in a graveyard, for climbing up a double-decker bus. The war is no longer in the headlines, Tyrone. Yesterday your OCs were giving orders to bomb 10 Downing Street with mortars. Today, they’re having tea with the British prime minister. The old IRA members and the former Protestant paramilitaries are queuing in the parliament cafeteria, both of them demanding their extra bread. The last time you met them, Waldner was listening to you out of habit, and Honoré was glancing at his watch. You’re no longer of any use to them, Tyrone. That’s it. It’s done. It’s over. They’re going to forget you. You’re going to forget them. Everything can be forgotten.

I turned to face a wall and took a desolate swig of vodka.

— Tyrone?

They were asking me to carry the coffin. The veterans had already done so, our OCs had relieved them. Go on, it’s your turn now, Tyrone Meehan. Take the head of the bearers. Six of them, three on either side. Go on, Tenor, make your English friends smile. A photo in tomorrow’s newspaper? Danny’s killer bearing Tom. I wasn’t breathing. I have never breathed well. I always knew that the air would run out. Two young men helped me support the burden on my right shoulder. I was staggering a little. They looked at each other wordlessly. On the other side of the coffin was a man from Derry. He put his hand around my neck and I gripped his. We moved forward with slow steps under the weight. I could feel the sliotar through my trouser pocket. I looked up at the winter sky. I was in anguish. I hadn’t recalled the weight of the sorrow. I was looking at the crowd lining the streets, honouring us.

I knew every face. I could name them all. Tim, who had returned home after eighteen years of prison, now a stranger to his wife and children and experiencing such difficulty with finding himself a father again that he slept curled alone on the edge of their big bed. Wally, who spent his time explaining to kids on the street that they no longer needed to throw rocks at the armoured vehicles, ever, that that was before, when children used to die for throwing rocks. The McGovern brothers, officers of the 3rd Battalion who had returned to face unemployment with so much courage. Paul, who had stopped his hunger strike and who would cough, limp and fall into a doze while waiting for death. Terry, Alan, Dave, Liam, who were now taxi drivers, barmen, bouncers and carpenters. We weren’t a country, or even a city, just an intense family. I was returning winks, waves, nods. I tried to return to everyone the pride they were offering me. I was acting, cheating, lying. I no longer had the dignity left to respond.

I had awaited this day for fifty-eight years, and it ended up turning me into someone else. Even if everyone forgot me, I wouldn’t forget myself. After these few hours, there would be nothing else. I wasn’t walking with my people, I was leaving them. I was no longer from here, no longer one of them, no longer one of us. When I saw Sheila, looking so beautiful, I closed my eyes. Cathy, Liz, Trish: the fighting women were at her side. They would bless themselves at the passing of the coffin, their hearts racing. The children were there in school uniform in their hundreds, standing with their teachers, who would repeat Tom Williams’s name, spelling it out on the blackboard.

When they asked me if I wanted to give up my place, I refused violently. I pushed the next bearer away with a kick as I spat on the ground. Tom Williams was mine. He had settled my burned mattress in our new house on Dholpur Lane in January 1942. He had shaken my hand and asked me to call him by his first name. I kept watch over our streets, for him. For him, I had learned my country’s history, I had boxed in the ring on Kane Street, I had attacked the enemy. It was he who had placed the first bullet in the palm of my hand. It was with him that I had fought, with him that I had given up the coloured Fianna uniform for the bloody clothes of a soldier. So let me be. Let me carry him another while, a few more metres, leave me be! It’s not just Tom in that coffin. Nobody knows that, eh? One evening I went to bed a scout in short trousers. The following morning I was this old man. And between the two, almost nothing. A fistful of hours. The smell of gunpowder, shit, turf and fog. So clear off!

I carried Tom. I bore my leader on my back, my friend, my brother. I brought him home. I was going to open his bed of earth and throw my childhood into it.

21

On 2 December 2006, we were invited to Deirdre’s wedding. She was the granddaughter of Pat Sheridan, another Kesh veteran. Something wasn’t right from the moment I walked in, the silence behind some looks. When I arrived with Sheila, the young bride was dancing on a pub table, arm in the air and glass raised. The room was packed. I went to sit down at our usual table. Our places had been kept. On the stage, a band was playing Sixties tunes. We had missed the national anthem, the father of the bride and husband’s speeches, and I wasn’t wearing a tie.

When she saw me, Deirdre beckoned, laughing.

— Tyrone! At last! Ten minutes later and you’d have been attending my divorce!

I winked and gave her the thumbs up. I hadn’t wanted to come. I was actually about to go to bed when Sheila insisted. She had slipped into her green velvet party dress with white frills and cuffs, and pierced her grey hair with a large black comb.

— Nobody will understand, Tyrone. And besides, I don’t want to lie to them.

I had complained of a pain in my head, then in my stomach and then I’d given up. I simply didn’t wish to go. Sheila placed my grey suit on the bed, smiling the while. So I got dressed, and then I followed her.

The pub had closed its bar for the evening. Everyone had come with their own drink. In my paper bag were six cans of Guinness and a flask of vodka. Sheila had brought a small bottle of gin and a large one of tonic water. Fruit juices were lined up on the bar so people could help themselves. There were two people at our table, Divis residents. Chairs arrived for us, passed from hand to hand over people’s heads, brushing against the white paper flowers bedecking the ceiling. Several minutes after we walked in, Sheila took off her shoes to dance. Just like that, stone-cold sober, with a slightly ridiculous enthusiasm. She was catching up on the evening, her drunken friends. When I went to the jacks, I bumped into the groom’s brother. We had been imprisoned together.

— Some night, eh Gerry? I said out of politeness while pissing loudly.

He was doing up his buttons.

— If you say so.

Gerry Sheridan had never been too talkative. In the Kesh, the screws called him ‘the Oyster’. He didn’t give them anything, not a word. He didn’t speak to us, either. But his face was made for smiling. That evening, Gerry didn’t turn his head. It was the first time. Maybe he was making me pay for being late.

We had missed the Mass, and the cavalcade on the Falls Road, with a British Saracen armoured car to lead the bridal party. The newly-weds had been stopped on the steps of the church by four fake soldiers in English uniform. Then they were driven to the club like that, in the midst of laughter and cheering, saluted by beeping, hoisted on the open turret, shouting their heads off. I didn’t like these games. Ten years earlier, we were looking at these khaki cockroaches from the sights of our rocket-launchers, and here were our children paying to drive around in them. They’d decorate them with flowers and paper chains, hang the national flag from the antenna, install loudspeakers and tear through the nationalist areas pumping out rock music and revving the engine.

— This is peace, Tyrone, Sheila would say, when an armoured car decorated for a celebration would roar past us.

She’d take my arm, laugh, raise a happy hand.

— Unlike you, they’ve succeeded in taking it over without firing a shot.

She’d tease me and I’d shake her off just long enough to pretend to be mad. I’d shout ‘Long live the IRA’, shaking my cap at arm’s length.

When I emerged from the bog, I looked over at Gerry Sheridan’s table. The Oyster was talking with Mickey, head to head. He turned towards me, and then Mickey looked at me too, his lips white.

When Mickey got out of prison, we fell into each other’s arms. Of all the combatants brought together to kill Popeye the screw, I was the only one to have got away with it. I had sold Mickey, and Terry went down shortly afterwards as did Jane, the girl on the bike who was supposed to take our guns. Even the two lads from Divis, our reinforcements, had been imprisoned.

Mickey had talked under torture. It was because of him that everyone had gone down and nobody had ever held it against him.

One time he’d been drinking, he publicly expressed surprise that I hadn’t been taken in.

— Why? Had he given them something on me?

Mickey protested. He’d said nothing! They didn’t know anything, but I was known in the ghetto, so they could have guessed I was involved, that was all. I frowned. I remember that moment perfectly.

— You’re sure you’ve nothing to tell me, Mickey?

My friend started trembling, his lips and his hands. The batons had knocked out half his teeth, his arm was crippled. He didn’t know what I was talking about, he swore he didn’t. He was panicking. I felt like a bastard, despicable, worse than the devil himself. He was pitiful. He had told them everything about me, everything. He had betrayed me in the blood, described every one of my gestures, every thought I’d expressed. All the British had to do was gather me up like fallen fruit. For weeks, he’d been afraid of seeing me pass his cell door. Feared seeing my smashed face and the look I’d give him before asking for an explanation. Then, over the years, he’d hoped I’d be arrested. He’d prefer to face my anger than have doubts about me. And he’d waited for me. In vain. Then he understood that my freedom had had a price, and that he was the cost.

In one another’s arms, on his release from prison, we were bound together. He with his secret, and me with mine. We were going to have to confront peace, injured by this silence. Since then, we’d avoided each other. I am still Tyrone, he is still Mickey, but in laying down our arms we have buried the truth.

There couldn’t have been contempt in that look, surely? Not that, not for me. I must have stumbled into a painful conversation between the two men. Those late-night confessions that drunkenness demands. Mickey had been widowed only nine days previously. He said that without his wife and without his war, there was nothing left in his life. That was it. I had just stumbled over Mickey’s sorrow, his distress faced with grief and peace, that was all.

Later that night, I passed Mike O’Doyle. He gave me a look, too. He went back to his table and watched me closely over his glass. Fourteen days later, it was him questioning me. Him asking me my surname, my first name and my date of birth for some ridiculous ceremony. He who was trying to make me talk.

— Since when have you been betraying us, Tyrone?

Poor kid. Standing totally rigid beside the old combatant he was trying to impress with his questions and his looks. Did he know already, that evening? I never asked him. Sheila was tipsy. At one point, she knocked into her chair. Mike got up, laughing, twirled through a few steps with her, and then took up his silent observation once more.

They know!

And it was suddenly obvious. They knew, all of them. This wedding was a trap. Sheila had dragged me here to make me talk. I mixed her gin with the end of my beer. I looked around at the other tables, the half-emptied glasses. I would help get rid of all that, I’d drink these leftovers on the sly.

No. They don’t know anything. It’s just a bad night, another night that has haunted me for the past twenty-five years. I’m no longer able to read people’s eyes, I don’t understand what their lips say. I take an embrace for an elbow and silence for disdain.

And yet, that night in the club, the looks became unreadable. Not those of the women, of distant friends, of lads met along the way, but those of my brothers in arms. For the first time in my life, I saw the IRA the way one sees the enemy. Because it was still there, the IRA. Despite the ceasefire, despite the peace process, despite our weapons destroyed one after another, it was still there. At that packed table, behind that bar, in that murmuring group, at the door, in the corridors, in that dark suit or that pale shirt. It was there, hostile. I felt its distrust. I recognized its behaviour, its manner, its way of shunning a man. For my entire life, I have suspected men. So many men. I would mutter their names in a friend’s ear, I’d point them out with a finger. I’d get down from my barstool or cross the street and I’d stand there, right in front of them, letting the suspect know he should be on his way. And today that man was me, Tyrone Meehan. On that evening of celebration I was being watched, they were keeping an eye on me. Leaning on Mickey’s shoulder, the Oyster pointed me out. I drank from a glass that wasn’t mine. A bitter-tasting liquor. I was hot, cold, could no longer feel my stomach or heart. I wanted to get sick. I was afraid. Just as Deirdre came to my table, I got up.

— Quick! A glass for Tyrone Meehan or he’s going to desert! shouted the bride.

A guy handed me a pint of the black stuff. Five more were waiting, flat from sitting too long. The Sheridan girl sat on my knee.

— Why the long face, Sheila’s wee man!

From calling me that in front of people, my wife had managed to spread the word around the neighbourhood, then the city and perhaps even the whole country. I apologized. You know, young lass, I’m eighty-one years old all the same. The days are long when you near the end.

— The end? But sure you’ll live to a hundred, Tyrone Meehan!

She laughed, and hugged Sheila who was making her way back to the table. I met Mike O’Doyle’s unpleasant look. A hundred? I could swear he shook his head to say no.

The following day was a Sunday. My mobile phone rang shortly before eleven in the morning.

— Tenor? It’s Dominik.

I was in the living room reading the Sunday World. I spilled my coffee.

— Cemetery at midday.

Not another word. He hung up.

It had been a long time since I’d seen the red-haired handler. A long time, too, since I’d been to Henry Joy McCracken’s grave. I got up without a word. Sheila was at Mass. I no longer went. They had forbidden me Communion so I refused them my prayers. I took a taxi, not my car. Sunday. The rain, the grey facades of the city’s north side. I went around and around on foot, the newspaper in my hand to give me a role. I had put on my cap, my dark glasses and a scarf pulled up over my mouth.

On my third circuit of the neighbourhood, the red-haired cop was standing there against the railings. Once he saw me, he got into a car and opened the passenger door. I looked around, the misery of the seventh day. I got in and he drove off.

I instinctively lowered the sun visor to hide my face. He headed for the motorway. I was angry. We had said that I’d be the one to call. Me, always. No question of ringing for me like a servant. I wanted him to speak first. I turned towards him, he was watching the road.

— It’s over, Tyrone.

My breath was cut short.

— What’s over?

Still that absent gaze.

— You, me, Dominik, Tenor, all that shit.

I let myself sink back into the seat. I had forgotten my seatbelt, I put it on. I think I was smiling. Over. So that was it. I was going to live again.

— And why is it you who’s come to tell me this? Waldner isn’t around?

Silence. The cop jerked his head.

— You know, Tyrone, the English…

— What about them?

— He’s gone back to London. His mission is over.

— And Honoré?

— Gone back to his studies.

All the better. Two fewer of them.

— And me? What’ll become of me?

— We have a deal to offer you, Tyrone.

— A deal?

We were right in the middle of a Protestant enclave. The British flag was painted all over the walls. Pictures of William of Orange, conqueror of the Catholic armies in 1690. Some paramilitary frescos in homage to their battle cry: ‘No surrender!’

The handler stopped the car beside a park.

— Let’s walk for a bit, Tyrone.

My heart was in turmoil, my legs jelly. And I was so thirsty. My palate felt like cardboard and my tongue was rough. I had no voice left. I was waiting. I watched his slow steps, the way he lit a cigarette, handed me one, met my eyes over the flame.

— You’re going to have to leave, Tyrone.

— What’s going on?

A very old man’s voice.

— First, we’re going to put you under cover somewhere and then we’ll extract you.

— Answer me, for fuck’s sake. What’s going on?

The handler inhaled the smoke. He was buying time.

— We’re going to provide you with a new identity. You’ll also get a house and £150,000, to keep you going a bit while waiting.

I caught him by the sleeve.

— I don’t want any of your money. I’m Irish and I’m staying in Ireland.

— You don’t have a choice, the handler replied gently.

I looked at him. I’d never seen him so calm.

— My cover is blown, is that it?

— That’s it.

I whacked the park railing with my newspaper.

— Fuck! But how is this possible? What happened?

— The ceasefire has moved the boundaries…

I grabbed him by the shoulders. He was taller than me, younger than me, he could have thrown me to the ground with a look, but he let himself be manhandled.

— You didn’t do that? Damn it! You haven’t sold me?

— Not us, no. Not the Ulster police, Tyrone.

— MI5? That dog, Waldner?

The policeman shook me off. He put his hands in his pockets.

— What did you think would happen, Tyrone? Really? How did you think this was going to end?

— Why the fuck couldn’t you leave me in peace?

— Precisely because this is peace, Tyrone. You were useful during wartime, you’ll be useful in peacetime, too.

— I don’t understand any of this! Any of it!

I was shouting. He calmed me with a hand on my arm.

— Sinn Féin is reaping the fruits of the peace process. You’re scoring points everywhere, you’re going to become the first political party of Northern Ireland, and that, well, that’s pissing them off, Tyrone.

— What have I to do with any of that?

— London doesn’t like you, and neither does Dublin. You’ve laid down your arms, so they can no longer shoot at you, but they can still harm you.

— What are you saying?

— A traitor chucks a community’s morale out the window. It’s like a grenade exploding. It tosses out little splinters in every direction. Everyone is wounded when a traitor is discovered, and it’s difficult to heal those wounds.

— Fucking pigs!

— I came to warn you.

— When are they going to inform on me?

— It’s done.

I found it hard to breathe.

— They’ve sold me to the IRA?

— Not sold, Tyrone. A gift. And they’re also going to claim that they had three agents in your movement’s command.

— But that’s bullshit!

The handler smiled.

— Maybe, Tyrone, but the IRA aren’t going to content themselves with your opinion. Everyone will suspect everyone, and that will create disorder.

— You shower of bastards!

I turned my back and walked towards the avenue.

— Tyrone?

He caught up to me at a run.

— Don’t mess around, Tyrone. They’re going to come looking for you, you’ll be interrogated. You know well what they do with traitors!

— It’s the peace process. They won’t touch me.

I carried on but I hoped he’d catch up to me again, talk to me, explain how it had worked for the others. What do you do after treason? What becomes of you? Where do you go? Die in England like an apostate? Go into exile in the United States? Australia? False papers, false address, fake job, fake friends, fake life? And then, of course, the IRA finds its traitors. No matter where, it always finds them, even a long time afterwards. Sixty or so grasses had been executed, hundreds of others chased from our towns.

No! I wouldn’t do what they told me to any more. I was stopping everything. I was staying. This was my home. I had as much right to this land as all the other Irish put together.

I hoped he’d run after me. That he’d collar me, take me away by force, calm me down, protect me. But he didn’t move. When I turned the street corner, he had already climbed into his car. I didn’t see him again. I never knew if Frank Congreve was his real name. Or how his left eye had been wrecked.

— Tyrone?

I was sleeping. I sat up, mouth open, noisily starting to breathe again. A diver breaking the surface.

— Mike O’Doyle and Eugene Finnegan are here. You know, the Bear Cub…

Sheila was at my bedside table, her dressing gown gripped in both hands against her chest. It was stuffy, my temples were pounding, my forehead frozen.

— You have apnoea. You need to see a doctor, she’d often tell me.

I was still half-asleep, coming back from a very long way off. A dream bathed in sweat, shouting. I got up. I was shaking.

— Are you okay, Tyrone?

I slipped my bare feet into my shoes.

— Shall I tell them you’re sick? To come back tomorrow?

— Where are they?

— In the living room.

— I’ll go down.

— They seem annoyed, my wife whispered.

Before she even knew, she understood. The animal’s instinctive fear before the fire. Something was going to happen to her man. Someone was going to do him harm, her heart sensed it. She had known war too long to believe in this peace.

It was eleven at night on 14 December 2006. Two IRA men had called to the door. It wasn’t normal. They wore blank expressions and looked like the bearers of bad news. They didn’t smile at Sheila and refused her offer of tea. Her face was queasy with worry. I asked her to stay upstairs.

— Please.

She had nodded. How many times had she made the bed up for my return, praying all night that death would pass me by? She knew me too well. She knew my behaviour when danger was prowling around.

— What did you do, Tyrone?

I placed a finger on her lips, adopting the sign of the angel. I closed the door on her and went down slowly.

The Bear Cub was looking at the photos on the mantelpiece, Mike was watching the stairs. When I appeared, the first man took off his woollen hat. The second kept his on. I made a poor attempt at a smile, a forced contraction somewhere between sadness and defiance. I held out my hand, neither of them took it.

— Mike, Eugene…

I gave them a brief nod.

The Bear Cub looked at O’Doyle. There was an embarrassed silence.

— There’s a problem, Tyrone.

I smiled again.

— You have a problem?

— You have a problem, the Bear Cub replied.

I nodded at the armchair, the couch. They remained standing.

— There’s rumours going round about you, Tyrone. Bad rumours.

Mike O’Doyle had his hands in his pockets. He straightened up. A respectful movement. One point for me.

— What rumours, Mike?

— Would you kindly follow us?

I looked through the window. Badly hidden by the lace curtain, a car was waiting in the street with two men inside.

— Not like that, no. Not at night. If you have something to say, send me someone from the Army Council.

— You know well that’s who’s sent us, Tyrone.

— You’re wasting your time, Mike, I know the procedure.

— Get your coat.

My life was at stake. I was sure of it. Ceasefire or not, leaving the house now would mean rotting in a dump beside the border. I had to get them to leave. To come back later, during the day and without those faces on.

— Hurry up, Tyrone, the Bear Cub said.

— Good Christ, have you never got plastered or what?

The sentence came out like that, words carefully assembled to give them a nasty punch, thrown with force. Mike opened his eyes wide. Eugene frowned. I had them. Their surprise had tipped the balance. I couldn’t allow them a second, I had to snare them, like a rabbit in the wild.

— You want me to be sorry? Is that it? Okay! I’m sorry. But you don’t disturb someone in the middle of the night for that!

Nothing showed on the surface. Not even surprise. They were trying to understand. And as for me, I was performing. Deep down I was laughing, moving my pawns forward. I knew everything about their game, I had made the rules. Waldner believed he was the most powerful, Honoré the smartest. The handler always looked at me as though he was afraid to take the lead and me, I was dancing on a thread.

— Get Joe Cahill to come, all the others, and I’ll apologize publicly.

Mike O’Doyle took off his cap. He had suddenly remembered he was under my roof. He removed his hat before an officer.

The Bear Cub was pale.

— What are you saying, Tyrone?

— What do you mean, what am I saying? I’m sorry! I’m prepared to get up on the Thomas Ashe stage to kneel down and apologize and that’s not enough for you?

I went to the kitchen to get a beer. I drank it while looking at them. I was winning. Death was continuing on its way. They were tiny and the living room huge.

I lowered my voice.

— I shouldn’t have drank at Tom’s funeral. Shouldn’t have made a scene. I know that. There was no need to mobilize a unit, all the same!

— They’re saying you’re a traitor, Tyrone.

The Bear Cub had pounced first. I spat out my beer. I straightened up.

— I misheard you. What was that?

— A British agent, Mike O’Doyle repeated.

Death had just walked in. It had stalked around the block, scowled through the window, carried on, changed its mind, and here it was knocking at the door.

— Get out. Both of you.

— Tyrone… Mike began.

— Shut your face, O’Doyle! What do you know? What have they taught you since you joined the army? The Brits have two ways of waging war: propaganda and the gun!

— I know, Tyrone.

I was roaring.

— No! You know nothing! Absolutely nothing! We’re in the process of winning this war. They’ve given up killing us so now they want to pull us down! They’re tossing poison in the water and whoosh! Everyone’s swallowing it, you included!

I was enraged, genuinely. Blood in my mouth and fists clenched to kill. I was no longer acting. I was bellowing out my anger for the whole street to hear. I heard the upstairs door, Sheila’s steps on the first few stairs. I was shaking. My mouth was twisted, foam at the corners, my eyes screwed up to block out the glare. My whole body was like a barrier.

— And what else are they saying? How many other traitors are there besides me? Two? Ten? The entire city? And who’s to tell me you’re not a traitor, Mike O’Doyle? And you, Eugene Finnegan, spending your time asking questions?

The two looked at each other. Sheila was coming down slowly.

— Don’t you understand? You’re doing the Brits’ dirty work! Go on! They’re denouncing Tyrone Meehan! And then Mickey, too? And the Sheridan brothers and Deirdre, the wee bride? And Sheila while they’re at it?

I whirled around abruptly. My wife was pale, her bare feet on the bottom step, hands clasped together like Mother used to do.

— For Christ’s sake! Were you spying on us, Sheila Meehan?

— No!

The cry of a mouse.

I took her by the arm. I shook her so hard she lost her balance.

She burst into tears. She was scared. For the first time, I was hurting her. I felt nothing.

She fell, her dressing gown open on a flash of breast. The Bear Cub lowered his eyes. Mike came towards me.

— Tyrone, stop.

I had lost it. Sheila had given up. She was lying on her side in the middle of the living room.

Mike tackled me. The Bear Cub tried to lift her to her feet. She pushed him away. She fell back down heavily. I met her eyes. She was devastated. She lay on her side, turned towards the wall, neck bent over, hands covering her face, knees against her belly, in the position of an unborn child, or an old person close to death.

Padraig Meehan! I saw him, in the dresser mirror. A bastard with raised fist, ready to strike till tears fell. My father and his children. Wee Tyrone, wee Sheila, terrorized brother and sister. Mike pinned me against the wall. I was spitting.

— Look at her, you bastards! Look what you’ve done to my wife!

The front door opened. Two lads came in, former soldiers from the 3rd Battalion.

— The neighbours are getting worried, said the older of the two.

I shouted one last time for the night to bear witness.

— I am Tyrone Meehan, soldier of the Irish Republic! And nobody is going to stop me fighting for my country’s freedom!

One of the óglaigh gave a sign.

— Let him go, Mike.

The young man released me. I was standing up, legs apart, arms wide open. I had the look of a man who has broken his chains.

The Bear Cub went out first. Without a word, he turned his back on the dreadful scene. Mike put his cap on and looked at me. I held his gaze. He had that sorry grimace on him. He went out the door and death walked with him. The other two left the room. When they reached the pavement, the older turned back. Flanagan, I think his name was. I’d met him in the Kesh.

— You know where to find us, Meehan. But don’t wait too long.

And then he left.

I waited. The door was wide open. A neighbour appeared, scarf over her head. She gave a small wave, and then closed the door gently.

Sheila hadn’t moved. She was stretched out against the wall, hands protecting the back of her neck. Her body was shuddering, her left leg shaking with tremors. She was whimpering. I knelt down beside her, then lay down, curled around her back, spooning, like on Sunday mornings when we had the time. I wrapped her in my arms, squeezing her tightly. I had her hair in my face, her fingers between mine, her faint smell. My breath was waiting for hers so it could start up again. I was burning hot. She was frozen.

Her voice. A voice of suffering.

— What have you done, wee man?

22. In the morning, our milk bottles had been broken. Glass on the porch and the stone steps. Brady, the milkman, had belonged to the 2nd Battalion of the IRA. He was a decent man. I couldn’t imagine him smashing pints of milk against the wall of the house in the early hours

— Must have been kids, Sheila murmured.

Must have been, yes.

She went out to get bread and papers at Terry Moore’s wee grocery on the corner. Terry had been in Crumlin with me, and his son Billy had followed mine to the Kesh. Every morning for years and years, Terry put four daily papers aside for us. The main one was the The Irish News, the Northern Ireland Catholic community’s newspaper. Then the Newsletter, its Protestant competitor, and also The Guardian and The Irish Times, published in England and Dublin respectively. The local residents reserved their newspapers, it was the custom. Terry would carefully write the surnames in blue pen on the margin. At the end of the week, when he was in good form, he’d right ‘Ronnie’ or ‘Wee man’ on our bundle. A simple ‘Meehan’ meant that there was a problem between us, one too many words after one too many pints. It wouldn’t last long. The following day, he’d draw a tiny childish head on the paper with my first name, and something like: ‘Buy me a Guinness and we’ll not talk of it again.’ It was our way of making peace.

That morning of Friday, 15 December 2006, Sheila came back with the bread but no newspapers.

— What do you mean, he didn’t keep them?

— He didn’t keep them. That’s all he said.

— Nothing else? You’re sure?

Of course she was sure. She told me of the silence in the shop, of Erin’s look from behind the counter, Terry’s embarrassment. He served her the loaf of bread, eggs, bacon, sausages. When she reached out towards the pile of newspapers, sitting on the glass counter, the shopkeeper lowered his eyes.

— Not today, Sheila.

— Why not?

— You have food for your breakfast, you’re doing pretty well.

I got up from the table. I was furious. I wanted to go and see Terry the grocer, Brady the milkman and all of our neighbours one by one. What was the problem? Had we made too much noise during the night? Spoken badly about someone? Wronged someone? I was going to do a round of the neighbourhood, fists at the ready, when Sheila held me back. I fell into my armchair. She took me by the hand and knelt down facing me.

— If you want to talk to me, talk to me. If you don’t want to, I’ll understand. But I beg you, Tyrone, don’t lie to me.

And then she got up. She filled a basin with water. She picked up a brush and knelt down to clean the doorstep, slimy with milk.

I slipped my jacket on, tied a scarf around my neck, pulled my cap down to my eyes. It was raining. A December rain blowing in icy squalls from the harbour. Behind me I could hear the bristles scraping against the cement. When misfortune prowled around us, Sheila would wear herself out with household chores. She’d dust, wash and scour our little world, blessing each object in turn for being there.

I walked down the Falls Road alongside the hostile brick, gave a nod to stop a communal taxi going back up through Andersonstown. I knew Brendan, the driver. He was a former prisoner, like the majority of drivers in the Republican areas. The priest from St Joseph’s was sitting up front beside him. On the back seat was a young woman with her child on her lap, sitting between a schoolgirl in uniform and an elderly man. A youth was sitting on the foldaway seat on the far side. The other one was empty. The schoolgirl pressed it down for me. Not a word. Through the open hatch, I could hear the radio. It is raining in Belfast, the presenter informed us over a background of soft music.

— That we know, the priest smiled.

The driver switched off the radio. Silence fell over us again. I was finding it harder and harder to breathe. I watched the schoolgirl, the youth, caught a glint in the woman’s eyes. I wondered whether they knew. If all of them knew. If the news had spread from street to street as far as the port. If, on leaving my place last night, the Bear Cub and O’Doyle hadn’t stirred up the entire city. I smiled at the child. The young mother returned the favour. That graveyard quiet was for me. When I got into the car, everyone had been talking, I was sure of it. I think I even saw Father Adam turned around in his seat, laughing with the others. Now, we were stiff. A car full of statues.

We passed by the Sinn Féin headquarters, Falls Park, the Royal Victoria Hospital. The schoolgirl turned and tapped lightly on the glass partition with a twenty-pence piece. The taxi stopped. I met Brendan’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. I knew that look. That contempt reserved for the enemy. I smiled at him, a wink accompanied by a slight nod. It was a habitual gesture, a sign of complicity. He didn’t respond. Then he had some trouble changing gear. The engine protested violently.

— Bollocks! the driver responded.

The priest slapped him on the shoulder.

— Brendan!

— Sorry, Father, it slipped out.

His eyes brushed mine with a furtive glance, then cut me off again, his gaze locked on the rain.

I got off at Milltown Cemetery. On my way past the florist, I bought a bunch of dried flowers. I walked over graves, over friends. In the Republican patch I gave two yellow daisies to the hunger strikers, and one to Jim O’Leary, the great ‘Mallory’, our bomb-maker and my friend, who had died for Ireland on 6 November 1981.

Then I laid my flowers at random, like a child dropping pebbles for fear of getting lost. I murmured a word each time. Standing very straight, an old soldier at attention. Goodbye, Bobby. Goodbye, Jim. I sat for a moment at Tom Williams’s grave with its tragic headstone.

The clouds were hugging the hills tightly. The rain was scratching black on the sandstone statues. A glimpse of sunshine, three rays of light. Then the darkness once more. The sky closed up again like a gloomy curtain.

I went to the railing. I turned around. I said farewell to Milltown.

On the other side of the Falls Road is the municipal cemetery. A place of rest without this common history. There you die in grey, not in tricolour. The heads are lowered, the hearts don’t lift. Over there, they bury those who aren’t our men. And it is there that I will go because I am an other.

At nightfall, I decided to give myself in to the IRA.

Sheila was waiting for me when I got home, sitting in my armchair. The television was switched off, its silence hit me. I stayed standing, a last daisy in my hand. The flower was like me, its head drooping. Sheila got up. I handed it to her. I was going to speak, she pressed the end of her fingers to my lips. No lie. We had agreed on truth or silence. Silence suited her. I was going to go upstairs, gather a few bits of clothing. My bag was sitting against the armchair; she had already packed it. She didn’t know anything, but she suspected everything. On top was some money, an egg and onion sandwich and a bottle of water.

And the key to Killybegs.

The living room was dark, and the curtains were pulled. Sheila hadn’t turned on the little lamp that sat on the dresser, with ‘Paris’ written on the midnight-blue base. She slipped a photo from our bedroom wall into my coat pocket, the three of us smiling, with Jack aged six wearing a black, plastic London-Bobby cap. Then she retied my scarf. She handed me the woollen gloves that I’d left on the table by the front door. For one moment, I was afraid she would cry, but she didn’t. Not that, not in front of me. She even wore a pale smile, the gift to the dying man on his sickbed. I embraced her. She gently pushed me away, then took my hands. She kissed them, one after the other, her eyes looking deeply into mine. She sighed, fished for something in her cardigan pocket. She handed me the rosary my mother had used for praying, the black beads shiny like lead pellets.

Mother died in Drogheda during the night of 29 September 1979 with a smile on her lips. Up at five that morning, she had made it to the Phoenix Park where Pope John Paul II was to speak.

Baby Sara was forty years old, she had entered the St Teresa convent in County Meath. With the wee Sisters of the Visitation, she had made the journey by car and invited Mother to join them in prayer. The weather was glorious. They had prayed together under the sun.

In the evening, Mother had returned in a feverish state. She was praying in a low voice. Since she’d been living alone, neighbours used to visit her before she went to bed, taking it in turns. That evening, Mother had dressed herself for leaving. She had put on her Sunday best, black dress with a white collar, slipped on lace gloves and her patent-leather shoes. She lay down on the bedspread, the portrait of the Virgin against her chest and two candles lit on the ground. Her rosary lay on the night table, tucked into a blue envelope.

For Sheila Meehan, who will have need of it, Mother had written.

The neighbour had found her like that. The doctor said that she hadn’t died of anything. She was dead, and that was all.

— To die, all you have to do is ask, my mother often said.

When I opened our front door to leave, Sheila didn’t move.

Don’t turn around, Tyrone. Don’t look at another thing. Close your life without any noise. The night. My street. My neighbourhood. The first drunks making a racket in the distance. The litter being plastered against my legs by the wind and rain. The smell of Belfast, that delicious nausea of rain, earth, coal, darkness and misery. All that silence won back in the absence of weapons. All that peace returned. I passed my local pubs, my tracks, my footsteps. I pushed open the gate to the square where the memorial to the 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade had been erected. The flag took the wind as though flying from a ship mast. On the black marble was the list of our martyrs.

Vol. Jim O’Leary

1937–1981

Killed in action

I said his name aloud. And the others as well.

Engraved silhouettes stood either side: two IRA soldiers, heads high, hands resting on their rifle butts, a canon at their feet. With a finger, I stroked the stone to hear it. When I was a child I would listen, palm against the bark, to my father’s old elm tree and huge fir tree. I used to question the warm, blackened bricks of the fireplace, and the greasy pine that covered Mullin’s. I believed I was a sorcerer.

I rang. Mike O’Doyle opened the door. He saw my bag. He nodded.

— I’m coming, he told me.

He didn’t ask me in.

Through the open living-room door, I could hear him making a phone call. Abbie, my wee goddaughter, half-opened the curtain. She must have been kneeling on the couch. She saw me, recognized me, gave me a little wave, smiling.

— It’s Tyrone!

I could read my name on her lips.

Mike was facing the wall, telephone at his ear. He was pulling on his jacket with one hand. The wee one tapped the windowpane with her finger. She signalled me to come in, beckoning with her fingers. I shook my head. No, sweetheart. It’s late. I can’t. I pulled her favourite funny face, hand miming a telescope at my eye and a pirate’s grin filled with my ruined teeth. She laughed, turned around to tell her father. He raised a hand impatiently. Then she opened the curtain more. With a sweeping gesture, she showed me the Christmas tree that was set up in the corner of the room. It was twinkling slowly. I smiled, held back a sob. What a beautiful Christmas tree, wee Abbie. I stuck my thumb up. She clapped. Mike put away his mobile phone. He came over to his daughter, looked at me. Him in that warmth, that happiness so violent. And me in my frozen night, my winter. A pane separated us. A white lace curtain, held back by a child’s hand. Mike the darkness, Abbie radiant. He who knows, and she who doesn’t.

— Our revenge will be the lives of our children.

I had said that at Danny’s graveside. And it was done, Abbie.

When Mike pulled the curtain across, over his daughter’s eyes, I closed mine. I would keep that moment. That carefreeness, that innocence, and that love for me.

The first car had parked on the pavement, lights cut, between the O’Doyles’ front door and the street, the same way the British armoured vehicles used to do when concealing an arrest. I recognized Rory, a guy from the Short Strand area. He was behind the wheel. He had left the engine running. Beside him was Cormac Malone, a member of Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle and a friend from way back when. His presence reassured me. I was in the hands of the party, I hadn’t been handed over to the army. Neither of them turned around. They were looking straight ahead, as concentrated as if they were driving on a motorway in the pouring rain. Peter Bradley was sitting in the back: Pete ‘the Killer’, who had spent more time in English prison cells than in his living room.

Pete didn’t just fight the English, he hated them. For him, there was no difference between a soldier and a child. They were killing our kids? We should kill theirs. Blow for blow, grief for grief. He confused Loyalists and Protestants. Like the racists on the other side, for whom every Catholic is a potential IRA man, he’d say that no Presbyterian was innocent. Bradley was terrified by the idea of peace. War was his life. After the ceasefire, some of the other Bradleys took the dissident route, joining the handful who refused to lay down arms. He was tempted. He hadn’t done so. Even disbanded, the IRA was still his army and we were his OCs. So he just made a lot of noise in the pubs, invoking Bobby Sands and swearing that ‘those guys’ would have continued to fight.

On Friday, 17 May 1974, Peter Bradley and his fiancée Niamh were visiting Dublin. For the first time in their lives, they had crossed the border. He was twenty-one, she was nineteen. Their wedding was set for 14 September. They had visited the GPO on O’Connell Street, where Connolly and his men had proclaimed the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic at Easter 1916. They had kissed on the Ha’penny Bridge, the footbridge of lovers that straddles the Liffey. They had wandered up Grafton Street and dreamed they were rich and students. Pete had bought a pair of shoes and Niamh a white blouse. At half past five they were walking down Parnell Street when the first bomb exploded. The second blew up on Talbot Street. The third destroyed South Leinster Street. Niamh was blown to pieces, projected head first against a wall by the violence of the blast. When the firemen and the Garda Síochána arrived, Peter was comforting the dead body by trying to stick its arm back on.

One hour later, a bomb exploded in Monaghan, a town on the border. Twenty-seven dead in Dublin, seven in Monaghan. Amongst them were a pregnant woman, an Italian woman and a Jewish French woman, the daughter of camp survivors.

The Loyalist militia from the Ulster Volunteer Force had decided to bring the war to the Republic of Ireland. They had done so in their own way, without warning. They wanted to kill papists, and the British security forces were accused of having assisted them.

That day, sitting amongst blood and scraps of flesh, Peter Bradley became Pete ‘the Killer’. It would no longer be for Ireland’s liberty that he’d fight, but to avenge Niamh, his own youth and his mangled life.

Beside him in the car was Eugene Finnegan, the Bear Cub. He opened the door and stepped aside so that I could sit between them on the back seat. The warmth was stifling, but the smell of Cormac Malone’s aftershave welcomed me. It was an eau de toilette that I’d brought him back from Paris. I was clinging to the tiny details. To miniscule hopes. Why wear the aftershave I’d given him as a gift? What did he want to tell me? That I needn’t fear anything? That he was my friend? I searched out his eyes in the windscreen reflection. He had the absent gaze of someone you pass in the street.

A second car parked across the way. They exchanged a brief flash of headlights. Mike ran over and sat up front. The Bear Cub got in beside me. He jostled me, pressing me against Pete. The Killer placed a hand on my knee. He took hold of it with an animal grip. I was his prisoner and he was letting me know.

We drove through the heart of our enclaves, heading along the familiar streets. I knew them as well as you know a man. Each house had its history, every door its secret. They were giving me a sign. I was saying goodbye to them.

One evening in 1972, at this crossroads, Cormac Malone should have died. Since then, he’d close his eyes whenever he went through it. On this night, too, he turned away. The Loyalists had arrived from Shankill. They had fired at him through their open car window, driving at full speed, not concerning themselves with the old man talking to him. Cormac saw them coming. He threw himself on the old man, pushed him to the ground with his walking stick and his vegetables and covered him with his body, but it was too late. Three bullets in the back, two thousand people at the funeral. Cormac hated the survivor he had become.

In October 1974, under this streetlight on the Springfield Road, Cathy and Jim’s son Denis had been killed by a plastic bullet, shot through the embrasure of an armoured vehicle. He was going to get some milk from the shop. He died at the age of thirteen, on the pavement, a £5 note clutched in his hand.

At the end of February 1942, in that little garden, against that red Beechmount door, an IRA man had handed me my first gun.

We crossed the border at six in the morning on Saturday, 16 December 2006. Pete’s hand was tight on my knee. Cormac had slept, the Bear Cub, too — snoring lightly, his forehead against the pane. We were in the Republic of Ireland. I was returning home. The party had reserved the lounge of a Dublin hotel and booked a press conference. Sinn Féin wanted to demonstrate that the British were continuing their dirty war. After having tried to crush our resistance, they had infiltrated it and corrupted some of its members.

Everyone had put on a tie before leaving the vehicles. I was the only one with an open shirt, looking like someone who had been in police custody overnight. The room was full. I arrived on foot, freely, surrounded by the men. I was overcome with dizziness. The cameras, the microphones, all those journalists talking at the same time. What did they know about me? About our struggle? What had they come here for? To hear what? Find out what? Report what? For them, the war had been so easy to describe. The good British, the bad terrorists. Everything had already been said. They didn’t believe in the ceasefire. ‘Manoeuvre’, ‘tactics’: they drew their headlines from the big bag of doubts. When they had to admit it was really happening, they confused political volition and military surrender, then turned away from us. Peace? Uninteresting. Hope is harder to sell than fear. And suddenly, without any warning, here they had a traitor to sink their teeth into, a spy, a thrill. An old and lingering odour of war.

Cormac was behind me, accompanied by another Ard Chomhairle member. They were grave and sullen. When the microphones were held out, I confessed. Nothing more. That way the British would know that I had given myself up.

— My name is Tyrone Meehan. I am a British agent. I was recruited twenty years ago, at a vulnerable point in my life. I was paid for handing over information…

I inhaled deeply. The breath was coming back to me. There. It was done. That confession had been stuck in my throat for all those years. I had repeated it night and day. I had uttered it in a low voice in the streets, at pub counters, in the heart of tricolour marches. I had said it quietly with my eyes. To Sheila, to Jack, to my comrades, to my friends. I would have really loved someone to hear it. And I prayed so hard that nobody would find out. At night I wanted deliverance. In the morning I’d still partly believe I was the great Tyrone Meehan.

I confessed. The men led me outside, pursued by dozens of questions. I got back in my seat, between Pete and the Bear Cub. My hands were shaking slightly. The Killer didn’t catch my knee this time. They brought me to the countryside, a few miles beyond Dún Laoghaire, to be questioned by the IRA. They hadn’t understood that that soulless admission for the press was also addressed to my own side. I would remain silent. I had said too much. It was already past the time to stop talking.

I found myself back on the street on 20 December 2006 at nine o’clock, after four days of questioning. They didn’t touch me, or even mistreat me. They had given up.

— We’ll leave it there, Tyrone, Mike said to me after turning off the camera.

— I’m free to go?

— That’s right.

So I walked. Along the harbour, towards the city. I was wearing black sunglasses, and my cap was pulled low the way I’d worn it as a soldier. My photograph had been all over the newspapers. It was still hanging about, at the bottom of the page. Two faces placed side by side, the young Tyrone and the bastard. The bright-eyed kid, standing with other combatants, his cheeky grin in Crumlin Gaol. And the dazed old man between Mike and Eugene, grey, dishevelled, lips dry, gaze absent, surrounded by microphones like the guns of a platoon. A ball of anxiety. At that hour, from the north to the south of Ireland, loud-mouthed hardmen were dreaming of putting a bullet in me. The pubs were humming with my name, eyes were searching me out. Others were swearing to have known me. They were interviewed over and over on the national airwaves.

— You really didn’t suspect anything?

Sheila had hidden €150 in my bag. Three €50 notes, folded in a paper napkin with my sandwich. I took a bus as far as the city centre. My head and stomach ached. I had never felt comfortable in this city, I had become a threat to it. I decided to get to Donegal by coach. No station to get through, less moving around than on a train. Once you’re sitting down, you’re sheltered. The first Bus Éireann bus was leaving at one o’clock. I sat right at the back, on the left, to avoid the driver’s large rear-view mirror. I ate Sheila’s sour egg, onions and soggy bread.

Several seats away from me, I saw my photo spread out. I shrank back into my seat. I needed to sleep.

I closed my eyes in Navan. For a few minutes only. Virginia, Cavan. My country was flashing past in silence. At every stop I’d turn towards the glass, my hand shading my forehead. Ballyconnell, Ballyshannon. The driver was having fun with the sheep on the road, a fallen tree, and that American tourist who got on in Pettigo and took a photo of the inside of the bus.

— In Ireland, it’s a euro per passenger to take a photo! the driver muttered into the microphone.

She blushed, apologizing comically, before the laughter reassured her.

We drove through Donegal. It was getting dark. I could feel the boundaries of my childhood battering inside me. Almost five hours on the road.

— Killybegs! Upper Road, shouted the driver.

He was a short redhead, with funny blue glasses. A farmer, who looked like he’d borrowed them from a Trinity College student. I went up the aisle silently. My scarf was covering my mouth. I was the only one getting off. He hadn’t opened the door. I was forced to turn around, to look at him. He operated the lever.

— Good luck, the driver said.

I was on the step, I turned around. He was watching me. I nodded. You say goodbye to your passenger. See you. I hope we won’t have rain. But not ‘good luck’. I didn’t respond. He nodded and closed the door behind me.

I crossed the village. Walked towards my father’s house. I was bent over, pains in my legs, tired from everything. It wasn’t yet completely dark when I got to the path. The huge fir tree, the old slate roof. Thrown into the brambles was a tar bucket and a large brush.

Traitor!

The graffiti was scrawled across the wall.

Nothing had been forced. The key turned in the lock. I left the shutters closed and put on the latch and chain. There were still a dozen candles on the shelf, and a bottle of alcohol for a lamp. I lit the remains of a tall candle. I didn’t want anyone to see the light from the road. I didn’t get undressed. I left my scarf, cap and gloves on. The fire could wait until tomorrow. I lay down like that, with my shoes on, buried under our bedcovers and the ones from Jack’s bed. I opened my flask of vodka. Half-empty. I drank all of it in one swig. I listened to the silence. The winter of my childhood, with Christmas in the distance. I toasted my return. My mother’s misfortunes. My father’s fists. I could see my brothers, my sisters, all crowded into the big bed and on the ground on straw mattresses. I counted their shadows in the darkness. Cheers to all of you, my loves. The night is going to be long. The longest night a man has lived. And even if he wakes again, the day will never come again. Nor the spring, nor the summer, nothing else but night.

23

Killybegs, Wednesday, 4 April 2007

The explosion woke me at three in the morning. Violent, in crashing echoes. Lightning. A tree in the forest was struck. I was in a sweat. I rekindled the fire, slipped a cardigan over my pyjamas and drank a beer while watching the flames.

Yesterday evening, going to bed, I hummed to myself. My voice surprised me. I was sitting on the bed, a biography of James Connolly lying on the blanket. I strained my ears, as if someone else had come into the room. Beer, vodka, nervousness, drunkenness. I hummed to myself like one who has become detached from his mind. I lay down. I read. Just a page to help me find sleep. Wounded by the enemy and then looked after by the enemy, Connolly was unable to stand on the day of his execution. So he was shot in a chair. On 12 May 1916, the day of the killing, the surgeon who had saved his leg asked Connolly if he would be so kind as to pray for him, and for all those who were going to put him to death.

— Yes, sir, Connolly responded, I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights.

I reread that sentence, pronouncing each word aloud.

— … according to their lights.

Connolly had prayed for the executioners because they believed they were doing their duty. I got up, tore the page out and stuck it into my notebook. Then I drank a beer. The last one — the one that always comes before the next one. It was a lager light as water. I polluted it with the vodka. I drank it in pints, mixing the spirit and beer together in equal parts.

I went to bed drunk, then woke up terrorized. It wasn’t lightning. A broken cry, of steel and iron. Not far from the house, on the path, perhaps. I took up a torch and Seánie’s hurley, my hand clenched on its wrist grip. It was dark. There was nothing outside, just me. I circled the house. Noise behind me. The rustling of the forest. A fox, or a field mouse hunting.

— I’m right here!

I roared:

— Tyrone Meehan is at home!

My hair was flying about in the sea breeze.

— I’m ready for you, you bastards!

I looked at the sky. It didn’t look like a storm was coming. The moon was bathing the low stone walls and the tops of the hills.

I had been woken by a night explosion, a din from memory, remorse hitting me in waves, shattering my dreams.

I went back inside. I opened the bottle of vodka. Pour, pour, pour. There, that’s it. The bubbling of a can of beer opening. I mixed them right up to the brim. Still drunk from yesterday, already drunk for today. And who is there to judge me? I’m talking with the rats. I have woodlice for friends. I share my bread with the ants, my soldiers. Whole units of them, marching under my orders. In my father’s house, I am in charge. I opened the curtains and the window wide. I wanted them to see me in the middle of the night. In a few hours, a pale brightness would light up the horizon. The first birds. The forgiving morning. Another new day and I would be alive.

It was not an explosion that woke me, it was the echo of an explosion. Its eternal memory. Twenty pounds of a combination of ammonium nitrate, diesel and TNT, packed by Jim into an iron dustbin filled with nails, bolts, filings, shards of glass and steel balls.

It was the end of October 1981. The hunger strike had ceased several days earlier. We were aching for revenge. Jim had manufactured three similar devices, all of them hidden on the first floor of a ruined house in Divis Flats. The guy in charge of logistics had asked him for a remotely controlled device. The first bomb was supposed to explode on 11 November to disrupt the Remembrance Day memorial ceremonies. The IRA had decided that the attack would take place in an open-air car park several streets away from City Hall, during the reception being given there.

I have never liked bombs. To my mind, since World War II and the Blitz on Belfast, that word was German. I don’t like the idea of scheduled death.

— The bomb is the weapon of the poor, Jim would say in defence.

Drunk one day, he said that a planter of bombs was a planter of questions. The pub had laughed. I hadn’t. The bomb doesn’t kill, it desecrates the body. It dismembers and mangles it. I’m not even sure that the soul survives.

I called Waldner on 5 November 2006. Meeting at the cemetery, at our patriot’s graveside. I had something for him, but I wanted him to reiterate his commitments. He was looking at me with interest. No arrests? Okay. We had already spoken about that. Did he promise? He promised.

— The IRA are preparing something for 11 November.

The MI5 agent paled. Without thinking, he straightened the red poppy adorning his lapel, the paper flower honouring the soldiers who died during World War I.

— What, something?

— An attack. During the ceremony.

The commemoration was set to take place at eleven o’clock. The bomb would be detonated at half-eleven, during the speech. It wouldn’t hit anyone, but its noise would drown out the event.

— Where will it be planted?

— No. I’m not giving you the unit, just the bomb.

There wasn’t much risk involved. A ruined house at the bottom of the Falls Road. Three bins hidden under rubble. Even if the IRA had lookouts, it wouldn’t intervene. We didn’t engage in combat to save material.

— You’re not taking a risk? Waldner asked me.

I was touched. I was no longer simply a victim of his blackmail, but also someone for whom he felt concern.

— Don’t you conduct routine raids on ruins?

— Day and night, smiled the Englishman.

— The IRA will just think you’ve got some damned luck.

Waldner was in a hurry to be off. He was feverish. He held out his hand to me, genuinely. The way one treats an equal.

On leaving him I felt something strange. I have never admitted it to myself, but that day, and for a few hours afterwards, I had a feeling of pride. Giving three bombs to the enemy wasn’t threatening our future. I was fighting death, and reassuring those who thought they were in charge of me.

That evening, in the pub, I forgot the traitor.

— It’s a pleasure to see you on form, Tyrone, an old friend said to me.

When I got back, Sheila and I made love, laughing.

The following day, 6 November, I went to buy her flowers and one of the rose-scented candles that a Traveller used to sell on Castle Street. On the way back, I saw Jim with Manus and Brenda, two youngsters who had joined us during the hunger strikes. Jim gave me a wink. Manus had just got his driving licence. The bomb-maker wanted to try him out for the transportation. Brenda smiled at me. After Bobby Sands’s death, she had asked me how she could be of use. The three were heading towards the hiding place. If the British had operated during the night as planned, the IRA would find nothing but their boot marks in the dust.

I took a collective taxi. I was carefree. A schoolgirl asked me if I had a light. Then if I had a cigarette. I laughed. A kid from our way, shameless, chin high and fists on her hips.

I went back up towards the house. As I passed its door, a local pub whispered something to me that I liked the sound of. I was about to go in, my hand on the brass handle, when everything boomed. A huge crash, farther down on Divis Street. The street stopped. I was stunned. A black smoke was rising behind the towers. People started running towards the fire. Black taxis made U-turns while beeping at people to get in and come to the aid of any victims. In Belfast, people don’t flee from misery, they go and help those who have been hurt.

— A fucking bomb! cursed the owner of the pub as he stepped on to the street.

I wobbled. I saw the three of them again. Jim, Manus, Brenda. The attempt they were making to appear innocent.

No arrests, Waldner had said. And that bollocks had kept his word.

Jim O’Leary, Manus Brody and Brenda Conlon died welded together. Remains of their flesh that were stuck together in the fire had to be separated. The IRA explained that the person in charge of its unit had suffered a handling error. It wasn’t true. Our headquarters knew it, but didn’t want to acknowledge the technological reversal.

I was maddened with rage. I questioned Waldner, the red-haired handler, all the bastards who thought they employed me. The RUC officer talked to me. So that I’d calm down, continue to inform for them, stop making a racket. A bomb disposal unit had gone into the house during the night with four SAS agents. They hadn’t lifted the explosives, but simply studied their detonating device. They were expecting a complex modulation system, responding to encoded impulses. What they came across was an unprotected system, a radio transmitter you’d find on any remote-controlled car. The bomb frequency was open to interfering signals.

— Mallory is too sure of himself, that’ll be his undoing, a soldier sighed.

They put the equipment back, removed all traces of their footprints and put the house under surveillance from a Divis Flats rooftop. Then they waited for the unit to go back to work before sending out their transmitter, disguised as an ice-cream van. Linked to a helicopter that was hovering overhead, it scanned a large spectrum of radio frequencies, searching for the switch that would activate the device. The operation should have taken less than an hour. Any longer and the British had decided to withdraw. Too dangerous. With those mournful chimes, ice-cream vans are always stormed by children, but this one was driving around like a silent marauder. A guy painting his fence noticed it passing twice. The third time, he went over to question the driver.

That’s when the bomb exploded, triggered by the British. A thick black smoke. Shouting. And those projectiles raining down, crushing everything they hit.

— It’s not a handler like me who decides what to do with your information, the redhead said.

— You killed three people!

— It was their bomb. Not ours.

Waldner said the same thing. He was sorry. The British services had discovered that the IRA had never intended to put the device in a car park, but to break through the doors of City Hall with a car bomb.

— That’s fucking bullshit! You’re lying!

— Your word against theirs, Meehan. If you’ll forgive me, I grant more credibility to my intelligence services than to yours. We took zero risk, that’s all.

I didn’t refuse the envelope he gave me, £150 for my taxi and the inconvenience.

I walked for a long time. I went through hostile neighbourhoods, hoping to put an end to it. I took off my jacket, rolled up my shirt sleeves. I flaunted my tattoos like someone giving the finger. The Irish flag, the Celtic cross and the figures ‘1916’ in black letters.

Nothing happened to me.

I had killed Danny. I had killed Jim and two of our children. I was no longer a traitor, I was an assassin. It was over. And there was no going back.

I have a fever. The day is taking its time to arrive. I am still waiting for that hint of light. My country makes me shiver, my land makes me ache. I no longer breathe, I drink. The beer is streaming in tears down my chest. I know they’re waiting. They will come. They are here. I will not move. I am in my father’s house. I will look them in the face, their eyes on mine, the one being shot offering forgiveness to his executioners.

My God, Mother, help me.

I am so afraid…

EPILOGUE

Tyrone Meehan’s body was found by the Garda Síochána on Thursday, 5 April 2007, at three in the afternoon. He was lying on his belly, in the living room, in front of the fireplace. He was probably on his way back from the woods. There were branches scattered all around him. He was wearing his jacket and his scarf. His cap was on the ground.

His assassins forced the door open with a sledgehammer. He was shot three times with a 12-calibre buckshot rifle, a weapon used to hunt big game. The first blew off his left hand around the wrist, as if he’d tried to protect himself. The second hit him in the neck, taking off his right cheek and part of his shoulder. The third hit him in the abdomen.

The IRA immediately denied all responsibility for Tyrone Meehan’s death. And it was four years later, at Easter 2011, that a Republican group opposed to the peace process claimed responsibility for his ‘execution for treason’.

— He didn’t seem surprised to see us, recounted the two killers in balaclavas. He didn’t cry out, didn’t beg. He tried to run towards the bedroom, he slipped and fell. He was on the ground when we carried out the sentence.

Tyrone Meehan was buried on 14 April 2007 in Belfast City Cemetery, attended only by his family.

Today, Jack emigrated to New Zealand. He works in an Irish pub in Christchurch. And Sheila still lives at 16 Harrow Drive, Belfast.

AFTERWORD

‘A Wilderness of Mirrors’

Denis Donaldson has to be one the most famous (or should that be infamous?) spies of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. That is because of all the people in the IRA or Sinn Féin who might have been or are secretly working for the British, Denis Donaldson, a 35-year IRA veteran and a leadership loyalist of spaniel-type servility, would be at the bottom of most people’s list. And if Donaldson was a traitor then almost anyone could be. That was the message of his unmasking.

The circumstances of Donaldson’s outing as a spy in December 2005 suggest the British had thrown him to the wolves. Along with his son-in-law, he had been facing charges of involvement in a spy ring run by the IRA at the Stormont parliament during the final months of the peace-process negotiations. But the fact that the British chose to indict one of their own agents strongly suggests he was holding back vital intelligence. Bringing him to court was both an act of vengeance and a warning to others who might be tempted to follow suit. Once a traitor, always a traitor.

As the British knew full well when they charged him, the rules of evidence say that the prosecution had to share their knowledge of Donaldson with his co-accused and that included his career as a British spy. Once he was charged he was doomed. The spymaster turned traitor turned reluctant snitch was tossed into the sacrificial flames; it was the IRA’s very own wilderness of mirrors.

The delicacies and ambiguities of the peace process had, of course, shaped all this. Donaldson couldn’t be killed by the IRA because that would be a breach of the ceasefire and so instead he was exiled to a barren little cottage in the wilds of County Donegal with the hope that maybe some day he’d be allowed back. But someone wanted revenge. Four months later he was found dead inside the cottage, riddled with pellets from a shotgun, a weapon whose lack of ballistic singularity sparked a guessing game about his killers’ identity. Years later it emerged that IRA dissidents had been responsible but had stayed silent in the hope that their former comrades would get the blame.

And that, more or less, is all that we know about Denis Donaldson the spy. Why had he turned, how had he been turned? For how long had he worked for the British and what did he tell them? Which section of British intelligence did he work for and how much of all this did he tell his IRA interrogators? And what was it like to be Denis Donaldson in December 2005, exposed for all the world to see as a living lie? Lots of questions, but no answers.

French journalist Sorj Chalandon has gone where too many Irish writers fear to tread these days, on an expedition into the darker waters of the Troubles. A friend-cum-journalistic contact of Donaldson whom he met over the years of covering the story in Belfast for French media, Chalandon has created a fictional version of Denis Donaldson, a much older and in key ways different man than Donaldson, whom he calls Tyrone Meehan.

While Donaldson’s IRA life began in the sectarian cockpit of east Belfast in 1970, Meehan’s starts in Donegal from where he moves to Belfast as a youngster. There he gets caught up in the city’s sectarian strife and joins the IRA. Meehan is in his eighties when he returns to Donegal to meet his maker, nearly thirty years older than Donaldson, and that enables Chalandon to take the reader on a tour of all those Stations of the Cross that mark the journey to the genesis of the Provisional IRA, events that happened before Donaldson’s birth or while he was still very young — from the hanging of Tom Williams in 1942 to the burning of Bombay Street in August 1969.

So this is not an exact replica of Denis Donaldson’s voyage through life, more a skeleton upon whose bones Chalandon has hung some of Donaldson’s real-life experiences and invented others and then travelled inside the ill-fated IRA man’s head to try to answer some of those fascinating questions.

I must confess I came to this book in an unsympathetic frame of mind. I didn’t know Denis Donaldson as well as Chalandon evidently did, but what I did know, I didn’t like. I couldn’t see how anyone could make Donaldson a character worthy of sympathy. The last time I met him was at Drumcree in July 1997 when the Orangemen were allowed to march on the Garvaghy Road to the fury of local nationalists. Donaldson was there to keep an eye on things for the IRA leadership, which had just secretly decided on a second ceasefire and was clearly worried how this might go down with the foot soldiers. As the Orangemen marched through and the police batoned the nationalists into their ghetto, the crowd chanted, ‘No more ceasefires!’ But all I remember of Donaldson is him pestering me to drive over to the Orange camp to buy up Loyalist trinkets that he could sell to his Provo friends in Belfast at a handsome profit. A guy with an eye on the main chance, cynical, self-serving. Arthur Daley meets the IRA.

However, I came away from Sorj Chalandon’s book in a more satisfied mood, although I still don’t like Denis Donaldson. And I say that because Chalandon has managed to get inside the mind of an informer, to lay bare motives, rationalizations, lies and above all else fears that must daily live with such a person. And he reconstructs Donaldson’s mysterious entrée to a life of treachery using a very plausible real-life event as the gateway, which I won’t spoil for the reader by detailing. I don’t know if this was how Donaldson became an agent but it could well have been.

Denis Donaldson may be the model for this story but it is, at the end, a tale about all informers and that is its value. Such people helped shape recent Irish history as much as anyone. But it took a Frenchman to go where Irish writers will not. What a shame.

Ed Moloney

New York, January 2013

Content

Sorj Chalandon
Return to Killybegs

PROLOGUE

1

2

3. Killybegs, Sunday, 24 December 2006

4

5. Killybegs, Monday, 25 December 2006

6. Killybegs, Tuesday, 26 December 2006

7

8

9. Killybegs, Wednesday, 27 December 2006

10

11. Killybegs, Thursday, 28 December 2006

12

13

14

15. Killybegs, Saturday, 30 December 2006

16. Killybegs, Sunday, 31 December 2006

17

18. Killybegs, Tuesday, 2 January 2007

19

20

21

22. In the morning, our milk bottles had been broken. Glass on the porch and the stone steps. Brady, the milkman, had belonged to the 2nd Battalion of the IRA. He was a decent man. I couldn’t imagine him smashing pints of milk against the wall of the house in the early hours

23

EPILOGUE

AFTERWORD