Carn (2 page)

Not long afterwards, the JCB crawled up the main street like a prehistoric beast. It took one step back and then one forward and when it retreated again, half the wall was gone. It didn’t
take very long to get rid of the rest. Some of the old people who were watching felt as if lumps of themselves were being wrenched away. Rumours spread like wildfire through the factory. Exotic
nights of drinkfilled promise appeared before the workers. The other publicans cursed him. But nothing would stop him now. He had been quick to notice the change in the people since he had built
the meat plant and given them money for their televisions and records and fridge-freezers and clothes. He knew the eagerness with which they watched detectives from the Bronx roar down highways
bigger than any roads they had ever seen in their lives. He monitored their speech which took its cue from the soap operas and the songs. That said something to James and his days in the Big Apple
had left him well-equipped to deal with it.

He lay awake at night with names racing through his head, highways and skyscrapers and skating waitresses merging into each other. Then one night he jumped up suddenly in bed and his wife
grabbed him as if he was making a suicide leap.

“The Turnpike Inn,” he cried triumphantly.

The minister who came to cut the tape stood in the midday sunshine smiling at everyone and tapping ash on to the mud the JCB had left behind. His stomach slumped over his belt
in despair, haplessly restrained by his striped nylon shirt. He drummed on his lapels with his fingers and waited for the people to ask him questions. When nobody asked anything because they were
too stunned by the speed with which James Cooney had completed the whole thing, the minister went on to make a speech. It started off being about Carn and the great railway junction it had been but
it went on to being about James Cooney. Men like him were the future of the country, he said. He gestured towards the Turnpike Inn. “A short time ago,” he continued, “this was
just a small, pokey little—no offence to the previous owner—smalltown bar. And now it is a thriving modern tavern-cum-roadhouse which will give employment to . . .” He leaned over
and whispered to James. “To ten people,” he went on. “This is indeed a marvellous achievement. Carn has come a long way in the past couple of years and long may this progress
continue. With men like James Cooney here, we need have no fear ladies and gentlemen that it will. I now pronounce the Turnpike Inn formally open!”

The sound of clapping filled the air as he cut the tape and when the furore was abating a woman tugged at his sleeve and asked him would there be any chance of a council house.

Half the town surged inside and marvelled at what lay before them. John F. Kennedy and Davy Crockett stared at them from the red-velveted walls. Two American flags criss-crossed on the ceiling.
Barbecued chickens turned slowly on a spit behind glass. In an alcove a monochromatic Manhattan skyline stretched upwards. The drinkers gawped at the vastness of the lounge bar with its sepia
photograph of a market day in the thirties which took up most of one wall. They sank into plush seats and stared at the rickety carts and herded beasts, perplexed. They kept waiting for some figure
of authority to come along and tap them on the shoulder, ordering them to move along. But nobody did any such thing. They stayed there until closing time and when they found themselves standing
half-dazed in the main street, they swore they would never drink in any other pub in the town of Carn as long as they lived. They raised uncertain thumbs upwards and tried to focus as they shouted
at the blue moon hanging above the railway, “James Cooney has done it again! He’s gone and done it again!”

After that the Turnpike Inn became the focal point of the community. Many groups came from neighbouring towns to hold their meetings in the lounge and the function room. Public representatives
hired out rooms on a regular basis. Older men left the grey interiors of bars they had frequented all their lives and came to sit with the eclectic clientele in the bright light of the lounge bar,
the sudden gunshots on the television and the smell of cooking food not seeming to bother them at all. The middle-aged men who had previously confined themselves to the dark, anonymous corners of
the hotels, now ventured forth with their wives who sat nervously beside them.

That was the town in the year 1966. The old people staring at the wreckage of broken beer bottles and squashed chip bags on the streets outside the Turnpike Inn and the Palace
Cinema (recently renovated and its display case adorned with a woman around whose half-naked frame the words
MONDO BIZARRE
curled provocatively), lying awake at night as the
men in the sequinned suits tuned up their guitars in The Sapphire, wringing their hands and feeling that their time had prematurely come as the young people pushed brusquely past them as if to say,
“There’s damn all you can do it about now. Why don’t you go off and tell some fool the story of the railway?”

And James Cooney stood in the doorway of the Turnpike Inn thinking of the day he left with his gaberdine and his suitcase in spite of all the locals who had vehemently dissuaded him with graphic
tales of misfortune in the predatory streets of New York. He shook his head and smiled to himself before going inside to finalise the arrangements for the Take Your Pick competition which would
have them packing in any time after eight.

II

The Dolans were well known in the town of Carn. Matt Dolan had been shot dead in a raid on the railway in 1922. His name was revered. The schoolmaster in Benny Dolan’s
class referred to him as “Carn’s true hero”.

But there were others who were not so sure. Benny first became aware of this the night the custom-hut outside Carn was blown up. Late that night when he was in bed, he heard voices downstairs
and thought perhaps it was his uncles who occasionally visited at a late hour but, as he stood on the landing deciphering, he realised that they were voices he had never heard before. And when he
saw the policeman holding his father by the arm and leading him towards the door, his first instinct was to cry out but he could not. When the door had closed behind them, he ran downstairs to his
mother and asked her, ma why did they do it? But she just held him and kept repeating, “He didn’t do it son, he didn’t do it. They want him for everything that’s done son,
they can’t leave him alone.”

In the newspaper the following day there was a photograph of the blackened shell of the custom-post. Above it in large black type
IRA ATTACK BORDER POST
.

When Benny’s father came home three days later, the uncles arrived late in the night. They stayed until the small hours conversing in taut whispers. Benny’s father related his
experiences in the police station in slow, deliberate tones. They had been watching him, they said. That he had met men from across the border. Northmen. They had information, they said. Why
couldn’t he sign the confession? It would go easier on him in the long run. The knuckles of his uncles whitened as they drank in every syllable. The fire flickered on their faces as they drew
in closer to share it with him. It was light when he had finished his tale. The uncles stood in the doorway and gripped his hand warmly. “You’re one of the best,” they said to
him. Then they set off down the road to catch the morning train to Derry. Benny Dolan didn’t sleep a wink after that, his dreams filled with burning custom-posts and running men, sudden cries
at the back of his mind.

After that, he became a hero in his class. He led schoolboy expeditions to the border where the northern police patrolled with tracker dogs. In the games after that, the blowing of bridges and
the storming of custom-huts were incorporated with enthusiasm. They scanned daily papers for photographs and varied their make-believe exploits with each new development.

When two IRA volunteers were riddled with bullets outside the town in September 1958, the boys worked themselves into a frenzy. They swore that they would invade Northern Ireland and kill all
the protestants. They would murder all the policemen. No military personnel would be spared. They listened feverishly as the details of the barracks raid were related over and over again in the
houses. The lorry had driven past the barracks by mistake and then reversed. A grenade had been flung and bounced back off the door, rolling in underneath the lorry. It had exploded and written off
the vehicle, the barracks remaining unscathed. Two of the volunteers, one a popular man who sold vegetables from door to door, had fled for their lives and made it to within feet of the southern
side of the border where they had been cornered by police and B-Specials. They had pinned them up against the wall of a barn and sprayed them with machine-gun fire. They had left them lying in
their own blood. None of the boys could sleep much that night, thinking of the young man, not much older than themselves, staring out of dead eyes in a deserted barn in South Fermanagh, his head
limp on his shoulders like a rag doll’s. Benny Dolan twisted and turned the whole night long.

The funeral cortege passed through the silent streets of the town. The Dead March played from an open window as the coffin was eased into the grave. The Last Post was sounded by a lone bugler
from the brass band. Benny felt his stomach turning over. The funeral was reported on the evening news and Benny’s father listened to it with his fist clenched. The town felt as if it was
about to come apart with anger.

For weeks afterwards, the teacher spoke about the two gallant young men who had been done to death by the authorities in the north. He took out some old copybooks which he had preserved for
posterity because of their excellence. He passed them around and read selections of poetry to the astounded students. They had been written as a boy by the youngest of the dead men. The students
listened, aghast. They could not believe that someone who had been shot dead on a raiding mission had once sat in the same desks as themselves. They clenched their fists and became red-cheeked like
their fathers. The teacher’s voice trembled.

But it did not last. A few weeks later, the frenzy had died down and people went about their daily tasks as before. Very slowly all trace of the event passed away.

Then something happened that was to change the atmosphere in the Dolan house for a long time to come. Little more than a year after the death of the volunteers, Benny was wakened in the night by
the sound of his parents’ voices downstairs. He stood at the top of the stairs and felt the blood drain from his face when he found himself confronted by the sight of his father standing in
the hall. There was blood on his trouser leg and his face was dirt-caked. Benny’s mother was trying to calm him down but he kept ranting about something and made no sense. “It’s
all right,” Benny’s mother repeated, “it’s all right Hugo.” When he saw the tears in his father’s eyes, Benny was shocked, it sent a dart of anxiety to his
stomach. “It all went wrong,” he said. “Joe’s shot. I had to leave him Annie. They got Joe. We—we blew the wall. But there was three of them upstairs. We called on
them to surrender. They weren’t supposed to be there—they came down firing. It all went wrong. I don’t know how it happened. Oh Christ . . .”

Benny went back to his room, his heart racing. All night long he waited for the sound of the police hammering on the front door. But it did not come.

In the days that followed, Benny’s father did not leave the house. He sat from early morning staring into the dead ashes of the firegrate, cups of tea going cold on the arm of the chair.
The abortive raid was reported in the newspapers, along with photographs of Joe Carron, one of the raiders who had been wounded in the attack and later died.

When people came to the house now there was no longer any chatter. Nobody knew what to do because Hugo Dolan would not talk to anyone. He just sat staring into the fire, his face grey. When they
said, “Joe Carron died a good man,” he looked up with eyes that had no feeling in them. When they castigated the institutions of Northern Ireland, he did not reply, their animation
followed by cavernous silences.