Born & Bred (17 page)

Danny smiled and tried to wriggle free but the man wasn’t finished. “Fought for Ireland, we did.”

“Would you leave the poor lad alone?” one of the politicians implored seeing the look in Danny’s eyes. “He’s just buried his grandmother.”

“You’re right,” the ruddy-faced man agreed as the realization of Danny’s plight had a sobering effect on them all. “C’mon then, we should be hitting the road and give these people a bit of peace.”

“Stay,” Jerry mumbled from the depths of Granny’s favorite chair. “Stay and have another drink.”

“Ah, now Jerry, it’s getting awful late.”

“Late me arse. Are you mice or are you men? Stay, for Christ’s sake, and have a drink.”

They all rose from where they sat and looked at him dubiously. “No, Jerry. It’s late and I’m sure your missus has had enough of us and besides, we drank all the whiskey.”

“The hell we did. Jacinta? Jacinta get us another bottle, will ya, pet?”

Jacinta stood in the doorway and pulled Danny toward her. “I think these gentlemen want to leave now, Jerry. It is getting late.”

“You’re right Missus,” the gentlemen agreed. “C’mon,” they encouraged each other. “Let’s go home to our wives and our warm beds.”

“Never mind that,” Jerry rose unsteadily and tried to embrace them all. “Stay and have another little drink—just a night cap. Jacinta, would you ever go and get us another bottle?” But his enthusiasm flagged and he crumbled back into his chair and began to sing: “We’re on the one road . . .”

“Goodnight now Missus and thanks very much.” The gentlemen filed past toward their cars, arguing about who should drive. And in the spirit of their recent détente, the Boys agreed with the Special Branch to make it a late morning—so they could all sleep it off.

“Do you see that?” asked the last of the politicians as he steadied himself to pass through the doorway. “Drink can be the unification of this country—or the ruination!

“Will he be all right?” he added nodding his head toward the living room where Jerry was slumped in the chair. “He won’t be a bother to you now, will he?”

Jacinta assured him that it would be fine; that she would get him up to bed and that he would sleep it off. She closed the door and smiled at Danny. “Thank Christ that’s over.”

**

After the funeral party had dispersed, Nora stood in her kitchen, wanting, but unable to touch all that was once her life. The house grew quiet but still reeked of cigarettes. She wanted to rearrange what the nuns had misplaced. Not that she blamed them, God love them, but they could hardly be expected to know how things were done in a normal house where normal people lived.

She had spent years of her life here, cooking and cleaning and sipping cups of tea but she didn’t want it to be the place where her family would come to remember her. She wanted somewhere more dignified. Bart had the Garden of Remembrance as the place he could be recalled. She would have to find her own.

“Nora? Shall we be off, then?” Bart had asked from the warm glow that beckoned.

“I’m not ready, Bart. I can’t go yet.”

“C’mon,
a chroi
, there’s nothing more for us here anymore.”

“I can’t, Bart. They’ll need me yet, for a while.”

When he smiled at her he looked so young—like when they first started to walk out together.

“They’ll have to find their own way from here on in.”

“I can’t. Don’t you see?”

His smile saddened as he faded into the gloom, leaving Nora alone in her darkened kitchen as the whole house slept.

***

I did the right thing
, Danny repeated, over and over, as he hurried toward home. But he couldn’t really convince himself. He was falling further down the long slippery slope his granny used to go on about. He had been slipping since just after her funeral.

It wasn’t really anybody’s fault
, he decided as he hurried past the cinema in Terenure, lightless as it lingered.
Things just happened
.

There never was any real reason—no divine plan—just the muddle of competing interests and haphazard events as people went about their lives.

They all had their reasons, too; they were just fighting for what they believed in—or just trying to protect what they already had.

He had also figured out that nobody liked to talk about any of that. They were too busy putting bread on the table—or drinks on the counter. “It’s all very well for you. You’re still young and have me and you mother to look after you,” his father used to argue whenever he tried to talk about it, something Fr. Reilly had advised him to do.

“It’s all very well for the priests to be talking the way they do. They don’t have to go out and work like the rest of us. They never have to worry about being laid off, or having their hours cut back. They are insulated from the reality the rest of us get to live our lives in.”

His mother always told him not to pay any attention to his father when he was like that, but she had no answers either. She used to say that that was the way of the world and he better just get used to it.

He did. He also figured out that everything that he had once found warm and comforting was buried with his granny.

He felt better when he looked at things that way and lit another joint. It all made sense when he was stoned. Then he could sit like a yogi, aloof and detached.

He’d been left to find his own way. Nothing he had been taught had any value anymore. It had all been lies; well-meant lies that children were told so that they wouldn‘t wander off.

As the smoke curled inside of him he relaxed. He had to stop letting it get to him. He just needed to stay cool and let it all blow over, just like he and Anto had agreed.

He had agreed to talk with Fr. Reilly again, too. It would look better for him if he looked like he was trying to change things, and, in time, when the cops had someone else to deal with, he could get out and start his life all over.

He’d do things differently this time. He’d be much smarter.

He took another hit and floated away to a much happier time, though it hadn’t started out that way.

CHAPTER 9

A few days after Granny’s funeral, as Jerry walked on Talbot Street, the city exploded.

The blast knocked him into a doorway, unhurt but dazed. He watched as shock and horror gave way to frenzy. Bombs had exploded all over the city, killing and maiming Dubliners on their way home from work.

As emergency crews rushed in to sort the casualties, one of them checked Jerry. He told him he was in shock and should wait for someone else to attend to him.

After they did, he went to a pub and drank whiskey to warm the chill in his guts and to blunt the shards of memory that were poking through: images of twisted and blackened bodies lying on a carpet of broken glass, and him sitting in a doorway, crying like a baby as braver men rushed forward to help. There was nothing any of them could do but at least they tried. He just sat there rocking and crying until someone found him and cleaned his face of dirt and tears.

He would never let anybody know about that, and, in time, even he would remember it differently: he had been one of those who rushed forward to save lives in the inferno of it all—with no thought for his own safety.

But for now, his thoughts grew darker as a small flame sputtered inside of him. The man on the news said that the UVF were blamed but everyone knew that they were just the puppets dancing on the end of British strings.

As the flickering flame grew, he could see his mother, rising from her cold damp grave, pointing her long white finger at him. Where his father had stepped forward, Jerry had cowered in a doorway.

He started to shake again until he couldn’t take it anymore. He finished his drink and stepped out into the night, still filled with wailing sirens punching holes in the fog of shock that muted the whole city. But he could sense growing anger, too. Soft at first, but liable to erupt into flames beneath a passing breeze.

It was time for him to start doing his part.

**

As the whole country mourned and beat its chest—mea culpas and tribal drumming’s—Jacinta kept herself busy packing away all traces of Nora Boyle.

She took some small pleasure from it, that it was she who was packing the old woman’s effects and not the other way around.

Yet she was becoming nervous and fidgety, too. The entire city was on edge. It was one thing for the fighting to happen in the North but now it had been brought home to them all. Some wanted to cower away, not wanting to revisit the bad old days when fighting had ravaged the whole country.

Others raged and spoke of bringing the fight to the British homeland; to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Even Jerry was affected. The death of his mother and the bombings seemed to meld inside of him and he never mentioned one without the other.

Jacinta noticed something else, too. He now spoke of his mother in reverent tones that Jacinta couldn’t agree with, though she kept her thoughts to herself.

Granny had overshadowed her life since she met Jerry. For years she had walked a narrow path through the greyness with only Granny’s clucks and tut-tut-tuts to guide her but now that the old woman was gone, she felt terribly lost. She was going to have to make it on her own. Jerry would be of little help. He would get lost inside of himself again, just like when Danny was born. She would have to be the strong one now—for Danny’s sake.

So she had decided that it was best to keep herself busy and organized her packing into stuff that she would go through with Jerry and stuff she would keep for Danny; stuff that could be given away, and stuff that could be stashed to fetch good money from the pawn. Granny didn’t need it anymore and it could come in handy on a rainy day.

Granny’s solicitor had called and asked that they attend the reading of the will—all of them, including Danny. He also mentioned that Martin would be there and that became a billowing cloud in Jacinta’s mind.
What could they want with him there?

**

“Maybe she left him something, too. She was an awful generous woman and Martin was a great help with Danny.” Jerry decided it was grounds for celebration and poured from one of the whiskey bottles they had hidden from the wake. “An awful generous woman,” he smiled as he raised his glass and downed it in one.

“Don’t be counting your chickens . . .”

But he couldn’t be deflated and poured himself another before she could step between him and the bottle. He drank as he watched her put the bottle back in the cupboard. He had another hidden in the sideboard in the dining room and another in the garden shed. It was for when everything became too much for him—when his grief and his fear bubbled up together. A quick belt or two brought everything back into focus and settled him again. But he had to be careful; too many and he would evoke Granny from her grave, rising like a sidhe calling him out to war.

“Now Jacinta, let’s not be thinking ill of the dead.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that I get nervous around solicitors.”

“And when did you spend time in such illustrious company?” He grinned and drained his glass.

“When I was committed—something we’ll have to do with you, too, if you don’t stop your tippling.”

“Ah, c’mon now, Jass. I’m still in mourning, you know?”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“Do you know what I’m going to do?” he asked as he sidled toward the bottle again. “When we get the money, I’m going to take you over to London—on holidays. We can see Big Ben and Piccadilly. Then we can have afternoon tea with the Queen and have our dinner at the Savoy.”

“Don’t you think that it would be wrong to go to London after what just happened?”

“I suppose so. I suppose we could go somewhere else like . . . Paris or Rome. We could go and have . . . spaghetti with the Pope!”

“But we don’t speak . . .” It didn’t really matter. They both knew it would never really happen. Something would always get in the way but it was nice pretending. “You’d have to buy me a new dress then because I can’t be going around in this old thing.”

She moved a little so he could reach past her to the whiskey.

“I’ll buy you more than that.” He winked as he poured himself another and left the bottle on the counter.

“I’ll need new shoes, too.” She casually turned and put the bottle back. “And a purse.”

“We’ll get you the lot, and a big diamond on your finger.”

“Jeeze, Jerry, my sisters will all die of envy.”

“Well that settles it then. As soon as we get the money we’ll go. We’ll fly, too. First class and drink champagne all the way.”

**

Afterwards, they stood in the rain on Dawson Street as all their plans melted and dissolved in the pitter-patter, splattering on the ground and rushing off down the gutter. People looked nervously at them as they passed. The city was still edgy.

Jerry threw his cigarette butt into the gush and lit another, the match flickering in his trembling fingers and the spitting rain. “The fuckin’ spiteful old bitch of a hag!”

“Jerry! Not in front of the child.”

“He may’s well hear the truth now. She’s been lying to him long enough.”

“Maybe,” Martin intervened, “I should take Danny and give the two of you some time to yourselves.”

“Don’t be going to the pictures now, or anywhere else they might be planting bombs. Just walk around for a while—and stay away from crowds.”

“Jass, we’ll be fine. You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to Danny. You know that, don’t you?”

Jacinta nodded but Jerry just looked mean. “Why are you even asking us? Didn’t you hear what the solicitor said? You’re going to be running the show from now on.”

“Now Jerry, let’s go for a drink and Martin and Danny can catch up with us later.”

“Drink? And where are we going to get the money for drink? Are you going to scrimp on the household monies? Well don’t let Martin catch you or we’ll be up in the ‘Joy’ for embezzlement.”

“Go on, the two of you,” Jacinta pleaded with Martin. “Do you have money on you?” She hesitated.