1999 (6 page)

In the short time since Bloody Sunday, information had leaked out of Northern Ireland like water from a sieve. It emerged that representatives of the British government had made private commitments to northern unionists regarding the civil rights march.

One or two southern newspapers dutifully reported that a Protestant prayer meeting organised by Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party had been scheduled at the Guildhall Square in Derry on the twenty-ninth of January. A huge crowd had been expected to pour into the square, causing major disruption to the adjacent Catholic community. Worried civic authorities had cancelled the meeting to avoid heightening sectarian tensions.

In response, an angry statement had been issued by the Democratic Unionists: “We have been assured that the civil rights march scheduled for tomorrow will be halted by force if necessary. We are prepared to give the government a final opportunity to demonstrate their integrity and honour their promise, but warn that if they fail in this undertaking they need never again ask loyalist people to forfeit their basic right of peaceful and legal assembly.”
¹

Word of the British intention to use force against the civil rights marchers, coupled with the DUP's threat if they did not get their own way, reached the Republic. The sparks of fury were ignited.

 

On the national day of mourning a green Austin Healey carrying two men left Harold's Cross in late afternoon and headed for the Baggot Street Bridge. Crossing the canal, they drove to that area of Dublin where, amidst government buildings and art galleries and large, grassy squares protected by wrought-iron railings, the professional class of Dublin occupied shabby-genteel Georgian terraces.

The streetlamps had been turned on. If this were an ordinary Wednesday their pale golden light would fall on men in suits returning from a day at the office, and smartly dressed women laden with purchases from the shops in Grafton Street. On this particular evening the normal pedestrian traffic was swelled by members of every social class who were pouring in from throughout the city. Some of them carried hand-lettered placards condemning the British. “Avenge the Martyrs of Derry!” one urged.

Ahead lay Merrion Square.

Already a large crowd had gathered outside the British Embassy on the south side of the square. The embassy occupied an immaculately maintained terrace of red-brick Georgian town houses. Four storeys over basement; elegant fanlighted doorways; tall windows luxuriously curtained. Polished brass flagpole flaunting a large Union Jack.

Facing the embassy from across the square was the hotchpotch of buildings that housed the Irish government. Collectively known as Leinster House, they centred around the slowly decaying former residence of the earl of Leinster, which was flanked by equally run-down neoclassical buildings badly stained with coal dust. The Irish tricolour that fluttered from the roof needed a good washing.

The crowd was growing larger every minute, threatening to overwhelm the unarmed Gardai. Dublin Fire brigades were being summoned to help control the protest. As Barry urged the car forward he saw men in IRA uniforms directing traffic.
This is where they should be. This is where we should be.

When the Austin Healey was tucked into the last available parking space in Stephen's Lane, the two men got out. Barry put the car keys in his pocket, then hesitated. Went back to the boot. Hesitated again, shook his head, joined McCoy.

“Forget something?”

“Nothing that won't keep, Séamus. Come on.”

There was no mistaking the mood of the crowd. It growled like an angry animal. The lights were on in the embassy but the curtains were closed. Barry saw someone on the second floor pull the heavy draperies aside and look down into the street, then hastily let the curtain fall again.

Others observed the gesture too. “Yuh bastards, yuh filthy bastards!” screamed a woman's voice. “Come out here and let us see yez!”

The curtains remained closed.

A single stone, hurled by an angry arm, was followed by a veritable fusillade of stones and bricks that clattered against the front of the embassy.

“Bloody murderers!” a man shouted.

The crowd roared in agreement.

People emerged from the side streets and laneways that surrounded the square, bringing more missiles. Barry and McCoy were handed bricks by a hot-eyed teenaged boy whose face was wet with perspiration in spite of the cold. He stayed with them to join in the attack.

Inside the embassy a possible evacuation order for all personnel was issued. A telephone call requested that an airplane be put on standby.

With an accuracy perfected in his boyhood by throwing thousands of stones at wasps' nests along the banks of the Fergus, Barry hurled a brick at the fanlight above the door of the embassy. Glass and timber shattered. The boy who had given Barry the brick cried gleefully, “Kill 'em, kill 'em all!”

At those words Barry's flashback returned. Ten terrible minutes in Derry that had seemed to last a lifetime. Again he saw the civil rights campaigners—a three-hundred-yard stretch packed with marchers—approaching Free Derry Corner, singing “We Shall Overcome” and holding their banners aloft.

Once more Barry watched, frozen with horror, as hundreds of heavily armed troops from Her Majesty's Parachute Regiment One swarmed into the no-go area marked out with portable barricades. The paras were shouting encouragement to one another and profanities at both the marchers and the spectators who had gathered to cheer them on. Then from one of the paras came a shocking, adrenaline-charged cry: “Kill 'em, kill 'em all!”

And the shooting began.

Blood. Fountains of blood, rivers of blood.

Women and children screaming.

Bodies falling.

 

Séamus McCoy had to shout to be heard above the crowd. “You reckon they're evacuating the embassy by a back door, Seventeen?” When Barry did not answer, McCoy turned towards him.

He was not there.

McCoy swivelled around, craning his neck. The streetlights surrounding the square flooded the area with light. Barry was a head taller than the average man; with his bright hair he should be easy to spot.

Yet he had vanished.

Séamus McCoy had been a soldier for too long to condone recklessness; the sort of wild and crazy courage that could make a man a hero—or get him killed. Barry Halloran had that sort of recklessness. This, McCoy feared, was the sort of situation to bring it out.

Shortly after joining the IRA Barry had taken part in the Border Campaign, intended as the first step toward forcing the British out of Northern Ireland. In January 1957 he was part of a small company of Volunteers assigned to attack the Royal Ulster Constabulary at Brookeborough, County Fermanagh. Because of his inexperience Barry had been posted as a lookout, but when his comrades came under sustained gunfire he had abandoned his safe position and rushed through the hail of bullets to be with them.

His best friend, Feargal O'Hanlon, had died in his arms.

Séamus McCoy was aware of the lasting effect the incident had on Barry. Almost overnight he had changed from a spirited boy to a deeply, quietly angry and unpredictable man.

Unpredictability was what made him dangerous.

“Damn it, Seventeen,” McCoy muttered under his breath, “where the hell are you?” He recalled Barry's hesitancy at the boot of the car.
Could be he went back for his cameras. Or…

Barry drove straight from Derry to his mother's farm, when he could have assured her he was safe with a phone call. There was only one thing at the farm he would want bad enough to go so far out of his way.

“Damn it, Seventeen!” McCoy exclaimed aloud. “There's hundreds of police here. Don't be daft!” He tried to push his way through the crowd, hoping to intercept Barry in time. He made little headway. The mob was focussed on the British Embassy and oblivious to anything else. They surged back and forth like a tide, carrying McCoy with them in spite of all he could do.

In his mind's eye he pictured Barry running back from the car, carrying the rifle. As furious as he had been at Brookeborough; as out of control. Perhaps he was already in the laneway behind the embassy. If he shot a British diplomat…

A fog of despair enveloped Séamus McCoy. Some things were beyond a man's control. If he had been a religious person McCoy might have said they were in God's hands, but his faith had faded away over the years. He had seen too many crimes committed in the name of God.

God.

Clinging to the word, he tried to recover the God of his Catholic childhood. The loving, omnipotent Father. Would it be possible at this late date to make a bargain with Him?
Take me, not Barry.
McCoy tried to think of a persuasive enough prayer, but nothing came.

“Look! The flag!” a voice cried.

Almost as one, the crowd looked.

They saw a man scrambling along the brass flagpole. His bright hair was unmistakable in the light from the streetlamps.

Barry Halloran tore the British flag from the pole and flung it to the cheering throng below. Within seconds the Union Jack had been ripped to shreds.

A man close beside McCoy said, “That was worth the walk all by itself.”

McCoy craned his neck, trying to keep Barry in sight. “Where'd you walk from?”

“Swords.”

“Helluva long way to go for a stroll.”

The other man said, “There's demonstrations going on all over the country. Factory workers in north County Dublin downed tools at two this afternoon and met up in Swords. Some of the lads had hammered a coffin together, and we draped it with an Irish flag and marched through Swords carrying it on our shoulders.”
²
The man's voice rang with pride. “Swords isn't much more than a village, but every person in town turned out to cheer us. We brought that coffin all the way here, it's over in the square if you want to see it.”

“Good on you!” said McCoy. “Here, let me shake your hand.”

A few minutes later Barry, looking flushed and triumphant, appeared. The crowd parted in respect to let him through. “Did you see it, Séamus?” he asked eagerly. His eyes were shining.

McCoy pretended to be looking in the opposite direction. “See what? Oh, there you are, Seventeen. I wondered where you'd got to.”

“You knew bloody well where I was, you must have seen me with the flag.”

“I did of course, you great eejit. I thought you'd gone for your…cameras. You took me by surprise.”

Barry noticed the slight hesitation. “I took myself by surprise, Séamus,” he admitted. “When my mother was young she tore down the British flags that had been put up in Grafton Street to celebrate the birthday of King George. This evening I decided it was important to keep family traditions alive. Would you not agree?”

“With a heart and a half,” McCoy replied.

The crowd continued to grow, overflowing the streets around Merrion Square. They broke open the padlocked gates of the fence that protected the square from “undesirable elements,” and filled that too, while the police watched helplessly from the sidelines. Some members of the Gardai were not above throwing a stone or two themselves.

Then the first petrol bombs appeared.

February 2, 1972

BRITISH EMBASSY IN DUBLIN BURNED BY ANGRY MOB

Oil portraits of the English nobility fed the fire as readily as did the costly antique furniture. When the blaze was at its height a number of spectators expressed regret for the destruction. Although some left, the majority lingered until well after midnight.

By dawn on the third of February “the little bit of Britain” that had occupied the south side of Merrion Square was reduced to ashes and rubble.

 

Barry Halloran did not take the photographs of the burning embassy that would appear in the newspapers. When the first television cameras arrived McCoy had insisted on going back to Harold's Cross. “Tomorrow the government's going to try to put the blame for this on someone, and you don't want your face all over the telly, Seventeen. It was one thing to be caught by accident in Derry; it'd be something else entirely to be seen as part of a mob burning the British Embassy. How many times have you told me that a journalist has to appear objective?”

“What about you, Séamus? Do you not want to see the place destroyed?”

McCoy cast one long, deeply satisfying look at the burning building, then turned away. “Reckon I've seen enough.”

 

By six o'clock it was pitch-dark and bitterly cold. In the kitchen at Harold's Cross Philpott was preparing a casserole, sending the aroma of meat and onions and Bisto gravy wafting through the house. The boarders returning from work sniffed appreciatively. One by one they drifted into the parlour to listen to the evening news on the large cabinet radio while they waited for their meal. There was no television in the house. Barry's most recent expenditure had been to have his red Austin Healey painted Irish green.

Just as Barbara entered the room to summon the boarders to table, a news reader announced, “We have been informed that the demonstration at the British Embassy is out of control. A crowd estimated by police to be over fifty thousand has set fire to the embassy, and the building has been evacuated.”

The boarders responded with expressions of alarm or approval, depending upon their politics. Their overriding concern was the hot meal waiting for them in the dining room.

Barbara did not follow them to the table. She remained in the parlour, staring at the radio. Neither Barry nor McCoy had mentioned where they were going when they left the house, but she felt certain they were part of the crowd that was out of control.

Barry's taking this whole Derry business too seriously,
she told herself.
What did it have to do with him anyway, aside from a chance to take pictures? I know he talks to Séamus about it, so why won't he talk to me? We used to tell each other everything.

At least I did,
she mentally amended.

The first time she saw Barry Halloran she had been ten years old and he eighteen. He and his mother had come to America to attend the funeral of Barbara's grandfather, Henry Mooney. Barry had not paid much attention to Barbara then, but she promised herself that someday he would.

And he had.

Soon after their affair began she had remarked, “You're awfully sensual for a Catholic.”

“Catholics are as sensual as anyone else,” he had replied. “You certainly are. But maybe it's stronger in the Irish because we have to keep the lid on it. In this country the Church tries to repress any sexuality outside of the marriage bed. When I was sixteen my parish priest began asking me if I ever had any bad thoughts.” Barry laughed. “I was sixteen! I had nothing
but
‘bad thoughts.'

“Dances were held almost every weekend somewhere around Ennis and I loved to dance, but being so close to a girl invariably gave me a huge erection. It was a common problem among young lads. We tended to stay on the other side of the room from the girls because we couldn't bear to be embarrassed.”

“But you're not embarrassed now,” she had said. Reaching for him.

 

Abandoning the parlour to the boarders, Barbara went to her room to write a letter to Isabella Kavanagh.

Barbara reread the letter before putting it into an envelope.
That's terribly shallow. Those people who were shot on Sunday wouldn't think it was urgent to have fancy underwear.
She tore the paper into tiny bits and threw them into the wastepaper basket.

When she heard the front door open she ran out onto the stair landing. The voices of two men carried up to her.

“Are you not going to bring your gear inside, Seventeen?”

“My cameras are safe enough where they are. They'd be safe around here even if I didn't lock the boot.”

“I wasn't talking about your cameras. I meant the rifle.”

“What makes you think there's a rifle in the car?”

McCoy gave a snort. “I didn't come down in the last shower, Seventeen. Not just a rifle,
the
rifle; the one you called to the farm to collect.”

Barbara shouted down the stairs, “You're not bringing a rifle into this house, Barry Halloran!”

He turned abruptly and went outside.

Séamus McCoy bolted for the parlour.
Sometimes a man has to keep his head below the parapet.

Barry came back carrying the Lee-Enfield. Barbara was waiting in the hall with her fists on her hips. “I told you I don't want that in here.”

“This is my house and I do want it here. For sentimental reasons.”

She eyed the rifle as if it were a rattlesnake. “How could anyone be sentimental about a gun?”

Barry propped the weapon in the corner behind the coatrack, out of her sight. Drew a deep breath; organised his thoughts. Began his campaign. “Barbara, I once asked if you knew a rebel song called ‘The Old Fenian Gun.'”

“And I'd never heard of it. Why, is it important?”

“This rifle belonged to my grandfather, Ned Halloran. He called it his Fenian gun, though strictly speaking it wasn't a Fenian weapon; the Fenians as such predated the First World War, which is when Granda's rifle was manufactured. But he carried it in the IRA and even took it with him when he went to fight on the republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Ned Halloran's ‘Fenian gun' is a big piece of history, Barbara. It's my legacy from him. That and his notebooks and—”

“What sort of a legacy is some old gun?” she interrupted.

“One beyond price. Can you not understand?”

There was no mistaking the passion in his voice. Barry's potential for passion attracted Barbara more than anything else about him. Yet whatever volcanoes raged within him—and she was certain they were there—never came to the surface with her. He was tireless in bed, tender and demanding by turn, yet she always sensed he was holding something back.

Until he lost all control and became the primal male of her secret fantasies she could not have the satisfaction of taming him.

As he spoke of his grandfather, Barry had displayed deep emotions to which Barbara had never been given access. She was eager for more. “I'm trying to understand; really I am,” she said. “But…well for a start, I don't even know what ‘Fenian' means.”

Barry prided himself on his knowledge of Irish history—another legacy from Ned Halloran. “The word comes from ‘
fianna
,'” he explained, “a band of heroic warriors in Ireland in pre-Christian times. In 1858 a secret society was founded in America with the goal of establishing an independent Irish republic. Borrowing the name of those ancient warriors, the new group called themselves the Fenian Brotherhood. When they organised in Ireland they became known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or IRB. The role of the Fenians in America would be to provide funds and weapons; ‘the sinews of war.'
¹
In Ireland the IRB was to organise and field an army to put an end to foreign domination once and for all.”

Barbara widened her eyes. “Are you saying the Irish Revolution originated in America?”

“To a certain extent, it did. The first Fenians were Irish-born men who fled to the States after yet another failed attempt to overthrow British rule here. A number of prominent Irish Americans joined their organisation and pumped money and enthusiasm into the project. A Fenian bombing campaign in England caused certain notoriety, but nothing conclusive.

“Then early in this century the IRB infiltrated Sinn Féin, which was a small, nonmilitant political party that had an intellectual following. It was also a good place to recruit philosophical republicans. The IRB was behind the founding of the Irish Volunteers in Dublin in 1913. The Volunteers were a direct reaction to the rise of a heavily armed Protestant militia in the north called the Ulster Volunteer Force. The UVF are still around, as a loyalist paramilitary organisation.

“In 1916 the Irish Volunteers and James Connolly's Citizen Army joined together for the Easter Rising. Their commanding officer was Pádraic Pearse—a member of the IRB. But it was Connolly who named the combined force the Irish Republican Army. The IRA exists to this day because the island of Ireland still hasn't won total freedom.” Barry lowered his voice. “It's unfinished business.
My
business, Barbara.” His whole body vibrated with those words.

To her dismay, she realised there was a wider chasm between them than she had suspected. She knew that both Barry and McCoy were, or had been, members of the IRA, but months ago she had explained to Barry that Irish republicanism in all its forms was anathema to her. She had thought he understood. She believed he had “given all that up” for her sake.

I was wrong. Barry's telling me he and the rifle are inseparable. Take one and I take the other.

 

At the final count, fourteen innocent civilians died as a result of being shot by members of Her Majesty's army on Bloody Sunday. British prime minister Edward Heath and his government became the targets of international opprobrium. The carnage in Derry could not be swept under the rug; the world had seen. Something must be done to make it appear that the government was taking swift and decisive action—though not against its own army.

As if a line had been drawn in the sand, Bloody Sunday changed the island of Ireland irrevocably.

It changed the IRA overnight.

In the early 1940s the Irish Republican Army had seen itself as a resistance movement in the mould of the French Resistance during World War Two. Bolstered by this heroic self-image, many of the older Volunteers seemed content to let the corps fade into history.

The sense of injustice refused to fade.

In the late forties the IRA had undertaken to reinvent itself. Most of the senior staff with their wealth of experience were gone. Their successors were too young to have fought in the Civil War, much less the Easter Rising. The noble ideals that had inspired the leaders of 1916 were perceived to be outmoded. Two world wars had changed perceptions about the glory of battle.

The IRA tried to reinvigorate the unfinished revolution but could not gather enough support in a country that was struggling to survive hard times. So the Army had limped along, outlawed, reviled, striking at the British whenever possible. Every company had to raise money for itself, often through illegal means. The weapons acquired were as various as their sources. Handguns were smuggled into Ireland from supporters in the United States. A limited number of new 303s from New Zealand were bought through a Canadian gun dealer. Another provider was found for the MI carbine, but the rifle was notoriously difficult for a left-handed man to use because the clip could hit him in the eye. A few men who had previously worked in construction put their experience to use in making explosive devices.

But no ambush, no skirmish, no booby trap, was sufficient to persuade the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The IRA was simply too small and underequipped.

Then came Bloody Sunday.

Within days there was a huge upsurge in young people, both male and female, clamouring to join the Irish Republican Army. In private houses, in schools and shops and pubs, in quiet country laneways, they gathered to repeat in determined voices, “I do solemnly swear…”

Across the Republic people of every age and background told one another, “We're all IRA now.”

 

The atmosphere in the boardinghouse was strained. Having made his position clear, Barry left the next step up to Barbara. In that part of his mind where his emotions were being held under lock and key, he knew he was in love with her. But his position was nonnegotiable.
I am what I am, what my ancestors and circumstances have made me. If she can't accept that, we don't have any future together.

Barbara vacillated between demanding a showdown over his IRA membership or accepting it.
If I insist on a showdown I'll lose him. If I accept without a struggle I'll still lose. He'll never take my feelings into consideration after that.
In desperation she adopted the policy she had heard described as “an Irish solution to an Irish problem.” She did nothing and hoped the problem would somehow go away on its own.

Following the burning of the embassy the Irish government cracked down on anti-British protests—very cautiously. Feelings about Bloody Sunday were still running high. If the government was seen to be taking a pro-British stance at such a sensitive time the political repercussions could be dire.