Echoland (15 page)

‘I prefer the egg,’ he said, reaching for one.

‘I know,’ she smiled and passed him another half she had just cut.

‘Any news?’ He poured milk into his tea.

‘Oh, I should’ve told Timmy. Pakie Kelly died this morning.’

‘He’ll hear about it soon enough.’

‘He’s in time for the wake anyway. Everybody’ll be there.’

‘Trust Timmy,’ he said.

She nodded and worked in silence for a moment.

‘Is it going to come here? The war?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘No one knows.’

‘We had a scare here the other night. Did you hear about it?’

He shook his head. There were scares everywhere every night. It was a full-time job just logging them all.

‘There were some planes heard overhead and word went round that the Germans had landed in Galway. They were supposed to be coming this way. The LDF put up a barricade at the bridge down the road.’ She packed the last of the sandwiches into the tin and pressed the lid down on it. Christmas Greetings, it said. ‘Do you want
another
one? There’s enough egg left.’

He nodded.

She buttered another two slices of bread and smeared the mashed egg onto them. ‘Your father insisted on going out with them,’ she said as she worked. ‘With his shotgun. I told him not to be daft. He’d be better off in bed saying his prayers. At his age. But he went anyway. Said he knew much more about fighting in ditches than all the LDF put together.’

‘He was probably right about that,’ Duggan said, as he took the extra sandwiches from her. Shotguns against Stukas, he thought.

‘I didn’t sleep a wink that night.’ She went to the sink and washed her hands and dried them with a towel. ‘I don’t think anybody in the parish slept at all that night.’

‘There’ve been a lot of scares,’ he said. ‘But nothing’s happened.’

She went out to the pantry and came back with a large jug of milk which she poured carefully into a clean whiskey bottle and replaced its cork. He finished his sandwich and tea and watched her take a rush basket from behind the door and put the bottle and the biscuit tin into it.

‘I won’t be on the barricades if anything happens,’ he said. ‘That’s the advantage of being in headquarters. We’ll be well away from any front.’

She stopped and stared up into his face for a moment as he stood up, knowing he was only trying to reassure her, not reassured. Then she handed him the basket. ‘You still know the way anyway?’

‘I do,’ he smiled.

He got his old bicycle from the hayshed, dusted down the saddle, and set off down the driveway with the basket hanging from the
handlebar
. The dog came loping around the house and ran down the
driveway
beside him. As he turned onto the road he stopped and told the dog to go home in a stern voice. It looked at him and then turned and walked back towards the house. He picked up speed quickly, feeling the warmth of the breeze in his hair and of the sun on his face and arms and hearing the cacophony of birdsong, and the countryside opened out around him, as familiar as his own hand. He knew who owned every field, noted every change in the crops, the houses that had been painted, the new outhouses, the fences that had been
mended
with new barbed wire, the trees that had fallen or been cut down. They were all areas he and his friends had roamed as children, a
playground
of infinite variety, changing with the seasons from crusted frost to soft green. The war seemed a million miles further away than it seemed in Dublin. He couldn’t imagine it coming here, tanks
brushing aside the puny barricades thrown up by the LDF; they’d hardly even notice the opposition as they pushed through, leaving them dead in the ditches.

The last couple of miles were down an unpaved road, two paths of beaten down sand and gravel separated by a line of rough grass down the middle. He kept a wary eye out for potholes and then swung onto the track through the bog. It was dry for a change, its ruts firm but crumbling under his wheels as he pushed forward. Overhead, the sky opened up even more and left him with the feeling that he was on top of the earth, nothing between him and the huge vast unbroken arc of blue. In the distance he could see his father and his friends working on their turf bank. They straightened up from the small heaps of turf as he approached, wondering who he was.

He left his bicycle against a clamp of turf beside their bicycles and walked across the springy heather towards them. He said hello to the other men and handed his father the basket. ‘I brought the lunch,’ he said.

‘All the way from Dublin,’ his father said.

‘Timmy gave me a lift down.’

‘You’re just in time. I was about to get the fire going.’

They walked back to the track and his father selected a couple of sods of turf from the top of the clamp, broke them up with his hands and set them on some kindling in a circle of stones enclosing grey ash. ‘It’s nearly ready to go home already,’ Duggan said, looking at the turf.

‘Another week of this weather and it’ll be done,’ his father said. He bent down and put a match to the kindling and passed his hand close to it after a moment to see if it was lighting. The sunlight was so bright it made the flame invisible. He took a bottle of water from a bag and poured it into a heavy blackened kettle which he set on top of the fire. They sat on the ground back from the fire and lit cigarettes.

‘I hear you were out on the barricades with your shotgun,’ Duggan said.

His father gave a short laugh. ‘Lot of good it would’ve been if they had come. But it was better to be up and out instead of lying in bed listening.’

‘It’s happening all over the country every night. Scares. People hearing planes, strange noises. Seeing parachutes, unexplained
shadows
in the air and at sea.’

‘The whole country’ll be in the asylum with nerves if it goes on much longer,’ his father laughed, unperturbed at the idea.

‘Do you think we can hold them back if they come?’

‘The Germans?’

Duggan nodded.

‘No,’ his father said. ‘Not if they want to take over the country. If it’s just a tactical diversion, maybe. We might be able to contain them then. But they can do whatever they want without much hindrance.’

They fell silent. Duggan watched a flame begin to lick the shaded side of the kettle. The breeze was warm and steady and carried the sound of the other men’s conversation across the heather towards them but they couldn’t hear the words.

‘How’s the new posting?’

‘Very different. Interesting. I like it. I think.’

His father laughed. ‘You’re beginning to sound like every IO I ever met. This is the situation. Maybe. But on the other hand, I don’t know.’

‘Nothing ever seems to be certain.’

‘Nothing ever is. But you’re learning the lingo anyway.’

‘It’s interesting.’

‘And important. Good or bad intelligence is often the difference between success and disaster.’

‘Did you ever do it?’ Duggan spotted an opening to ask about the
part of his life his father never talked about.

‘Me? Intelligence? No. Not as such. Everything was less organised, less structured then.’ He flicked his cigarette end into the fire.

Duggan waited for him to go on but he didn’t. After a while, he asked, ‘Was Timmy ever in west Cork in those days? With the flying columns there?’

‘No,’ his father looked at him in surprise. ‘What would he have been doing there? We were busy enough around here.’

‘I don’t know,’ Duggan admitted. ‘Just I saw a newspaper cutting about Kilmichael in his place recently.’

‘If Timmy was at Kilmichael you’d know all about it,’ his father laughed without humour. ‘The whole world would know all about it. Tom Barry wouldn’t have got a look in.’

‘I suppose not,’ Duggan laughed too. ‘He wouldn’t have played down his role.’

‘Why didn’t you ask him why he had it?’ His father said with a mischievous look.

‘Nuala had it really. Not him.’

‘Why didn’t you ask her?’

‘I couldn’t,’ Duggan took a deep breath. ‘She’s missing.’

‘Missing?’ his father stared at him. ‘What do you mean? Missing?’

Duggan gave him a short account of what had happened since Timmy had told him about Nuala’s disappearance. ‘You haven’t
mentioned
this to your mother, have you?’ his father asked when he had finished.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Don’t. She’s worried enough about you. If herself and Mona get going about Nuala as well they’ll work themselves up into a right tizzy.’ His father lit another cigarette and contemplated its burning tip for a moment. ‘You should keep away from Timmy’s
machinations
,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Duggan admitted, fishing out his own cigarettes. ‘But it’s too late now.’

The lid of the kettle began to hop up and down as the water came to a boil.

‘Can he afford the ransom?’ Duggan asked. ‘Five hundred pounds.’

‘Oh, yeah. Easily.’

‘He says it’s a year’s pay for a TD. More.’

‘A TD’s pay is the least of his incomes. That farm he has over there’ – his father pointed vaguely towards the west – ‘would give him more than that. Two hundred acres.’

‘Incomes?’ Duggan noted. ‘Does he have other things too?’

‘He has some properties in the town. And they say he has more in Dublin. I don’t know the details.’

The lid of the kettle was hopping up and down faster. His father stared at it but didn’t appear to notice it for a moment, lost in thought. Then he stood up and got a small paper bag of tea from his bag. He
lifted
the lid off the kettle with two sticks and dropped it on the heather while he poured in the tea leaves. He put the lid back and it began to bounce up and down again as he called to the men still at work.

‘I hope you all like strong tea,’ he said to the others as they drifted over towards them. ‘There’s nearly half a week’s ration in there.’

Timmy was more than an hour late collecting him the next day,
arriving
outside the house with an unnecessary blast of the car’s horn as he swung it around on the gravel to face back the way he had come. He left the engine running as he climbed out and Duggan and his parents emerged from the house.

‘Well, Con,’ Timmy said to Duggan’s father. ‘Did he tell you all about the V8?’

‘He mentioned it all right.’ Duggan’s father walked around the car, looking at its sleek lines, now dusty from the journey down. ‘He was impressed.’

‘He was all right,’ Timmy gave Duggan a wink. ‘Letting her rip on the way down when he thought I wasn’t looking.’

‘Don’t be driving too fast,’ his mother said to Duggan.

‘Well, I’m ready to meet my maker now if I have to,’ Timmy laughed. ‘Four Masses today, God bless us. Enough indulgences to get most of the parish straight out of purgatory. The ones that vote for me anyway.’

Duggan’s mother shook her head at him, in despair.

‘That new parish priest they have over beyond must be the most boring man on God’s earth,’ Timmy added. ‘Humming and hawing. Taking an eternity to say nothing.’

‘Timmy,’ Duggan’s mother warned, rising as always to the bait of his less than reverential attitude towards the church.

‘Right, young man,’ Timmy said to Duggan. ‘We’ll hit the road.’

Duggan gave his mother a cursory hug and he saw the tears well up in her eyes.

Timmy saw them too. ‘Now, Kate. Don’t be worrying about him. Sure the country’s in safe hands with the likes of him defending us.’

Duggan’s father gave Timmy a dirty look and took his mother’s hand.

Duggan got into the driving seat and Timmy sat in beside him and they drove off.

‘That was a great success,’ Timmy said. ‘You heard about Pakie Kelly dying?’

‘Yeah.’ Duggan turned out of the driveway. ‘You met everybody there?’

‘Everybody that mattered. Made the weekend for me. The poor old fecker was a Stater in his time but he saw the error of his ways and
brought the whole family over to our side. As loyal a supporter as you could get. Though you’d always have to have a bit of a reservation about a fellow that’d change sides. Do it once, he might do it again.’

Timmy gave him a rundown of all the news in the area. Who was poorly, who was arguing with his neighbours over fences, who got a good price for his calves, who was thinking of selling an acre or two, who was thinking of buying it, and who was looking for what council jobs. Duggan half listened as he drove, letting it all wash over him, knowing Timmy was more or less talking to himself, sifting and filing away all the local intelligence he needed to keep abreast of his
constituents
’ doings. When he had finished, he tipped his hat down over his eyes. ‘Don’t be going too fast now,’ he warned as he leaned back. ‘There’s no hurry on us.’

They were nearing Dublin and the traffic had thickened a little when he opened his eyes and sat up again.

‘This rationing doesn’t seem to be keeping anyone off the roads,’ he grumbled.

‘Not yet anyway,’ Duggan said, stuck in a slow moving convoy of cars.

‘Though from what I hear people ought to be saving their petrol now. Things will get a lot tighter next year. Be a good idea to put some away now.’

‘You think the war’ll go on another year?’

‘No. The English might see sense and do a deal now. Otherwise, it’ll only take a couple of months to subdue them. They might even cave in as quick as the French.’

‘So there’s no need to stockpile petrol then.’

Timmy glanced at him to see if Duggan was challenging his assumptions. ‘You never know,’ he said. ‘You never know.’

As they drove down by the Phoenix Park Timmy told him to
continue
on into the city centre.

‘You’ve decided to pay them,’ Duggan glanced at him.

Timmy nodded.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘What choice do I have?’

‘Call the guards.’

‘I told you. I can’t do that.’

‘They could drop an envelope into this place and watch it. You wouldn’t even have to put any money in it. Just some papers.’

‘I thought you might be able to keep an eye on it.’

‘What?’ Duggan said. ‘How can I do that? I can’t watch it
twenty
-four hours a day.’