The Dead Republic (23 page)

—You’re too old to be Romeo, she said.—And I’m much too old to be anyone’s Juliet.

She was looking at me now.

—I won’t have it.

She was angry, furious that the neighbours might think that she was rubbing against the hired help, and furious too with herself.

—I’ll stay away, I said.

I meant it; I didn’t give a shite. Fuck her and her snobbery. What the fuck had she fought for, when she’d worn the uniform? I wasn’t going to ask.

—You can get someone else to look after the garden, I said.

Ratheen was full of old men.

—I can, she said.

—What’re you baking? I asked.

But she didn’t answer.

—I’ll see you on Saturday afternoon, she said.

—Grand.

I went out the back door.

 

 

 

I couldn’t move. The air was dirt and screams. I was still on the street. But the street was gone. I knew who I was. Where I was.

Another bang, another bomb, from further off. People near me screamed and ran. I couldn’t see them. I could smell fire in the air. I was under bricks, and looser stone. Big dust still landed on me.

—There’s one over here.

I heard the voice, but I couldn’t see the man.

—Over here! Jesus, his leg!

I tried to tell him. He was forty years too late if he wanted to save it. But I couldn’t talk - there was no real air.

I could feel hands now. Lifting weight from off me. I could hear feet, and gasping.The screaming around me didn’t stop.The crying, gulping. The smell, the noise, of burning. I could see a face; a handkerchief covered the mouth.

—You’re still with us.

I tried to nod. I tried to move.

—You’re grand, stay still for a bit.

He wasn’t a professional - a doctor or an ambulance driver. I could see that through the dust that caked him and his uniform. He was a postman.

—Bomb, I said.

—Bombs. All over the place.

I could hear sirens.

—I can’t see much, I told him.

—Mister, he said.—Believe me. You’re lucky.

He was crying.

There were more men now, and a stretcher.

—I think this wall is going to go.

—Let’s get him out of here. Jesus, this is terrible.

He wasn’t talking about me. I could see that. He was looking around, trying to find a door out of the nightmare.

I tried to get up.

—No, no, stay still. We’ll do the work.

They’d thrown rubble out of the way; the stretcher was right beside me. They grabbed my feet and shoulders and started to lift me - the leg slid out of my trousers.

—Oh, fuckin’ Christ—

—It’s grand, I said.

I could talk; I sounded fine.

—It’s a wooden one. I’ve had it for years.

—Are you serious? said the poor fucker holding the leg.

—Yeah, I said.—A train went over me.

—Fuckin’ hell, he said.—And now this.

They’d dropped me sideways onto the stretcher; the man with the leg couldn’t get a proper grip. But they moved fast, through hard dust, through the walking and the dead. I watched as they carried me. It was worse than anything I’d seen. It made no sense. This was Dublin, in 1974. A warm day, late afternoon. I’d been thinking about taking off my jacket. And the whole thing, the place and everyone around me, had disintegrated.

I was gone from there before the smoke had cleared. Thick walls of grey and yellow smoke. I didn’t see much - I couldn’t, although some of what I had seen hit me days, years, later. I’d wake up in it again; the smoke and grit would be at my mouth and nostrils, in my own bed. Sleep scared me, for a long time.

I heard the crunch of shoe leather going over broken glass. It was ankle-deep where the shop fronts had once been. I heard the groans and screams, of pain and disbelief; bodiless noise, last words and gasps, still hanging there after death. The fierce breath of men who didn’t want to breathe. The sirens that couldn’t get nearer.

I told the lads carrying me to go back for my leg. But they wouldn’t stop. They were brave, as long as they could keep moving. That was the fear; there’d be more bombs. I’d heard two more explosions, one of them quite close, while I’d waited for the stretcher. (Weeks later, I saw the pram. When I was thrown, a black pram had passed my face. I waited to see the baby, or the mother. Every time I closed my eyes, I expected the baby. But he or she never flew or landed. Babies died that day, but I only saw the pram.) They didn’t stop, and I couldn’t blame them. I wanted to get away; this was my past. I wanted to go home.

They kept going. It wasn’t far, but they were moving through mangled cars and people. I was one of the first to be brought out of the smoke. A harmless old man, with his leg blown off.

—It was gone already, I told the photographer, who was on his knees beside me.—There’s no blood; look it.

He didn’t hear me. He didn’t even look at me. I was sure I was talking; I could hear myself. I thought we were on Amiens Street. But it was hard to tell - I never knew. It was years before I’d go back there.

—What’s his name? I heard the photographer.

Now he was looking at me.

—What’s your name? he asked.

—Henry Smart, I said.

He heard me.

I lay there for hours. There were no more explosions; the ground stayed solid. I lay beside other stretchers. I spoke to no one. I stopped listening.

It had been a beautiful day. I still remembered that, and the street and women with their jackets off - before it all disappeared. It was night now. There were lights, torches, camera flashes.

I was lifted.

—You’re grand, said a voice right behind my head.—You’ll be grand. We’re just bringing you to the hospital.

—My leg, I said.

—It’s not too bad, said the man right behind my head, carrying the stretcher.—Someone cleaned it up nicely.

—I left it back on Talbot Street.

—You should see what’s left back there, he said.—It’s unbelievable. There’s more than thirty dead.Three bombs here. And another one in Monaghan.

—Who did it? I asked.

His face was even nearer now, because himself and the young lad at the front were lifting the stretcher into the back of an ambulance.

—The U.V.F., he said.—That’s what they’re saying.

—Who are they? I asked.

I’d hadn’t paid attention to the Troubles; I’d been living in my own contented republic.

—The U.V.F.?

—Yeah.

—The Ulster something or other, he said.

—Ulster Volunteer Force, said the other lad.

He was strapping me to a plastic mattress.

—Unionists, I said.

—God, yeah. Our own lads wouldn’t do something like this.

—Not down here, an’anyway, said the other man.

—My leg, I said.

—Be brave.

—My fuckin’ leg.

I always wore the good boots when I was getting the bus into town. (I remembered, years later: the buses were on strike. That was why I’d been on Talbot Street, on my way down to get the train home.)

—I need the boot, I told them.—It’s alligator skin.

I lifted the other leg - I tried to. But I was strapped down. They were shutting the back doors.

—Like this one, I said.

I was alone.

But I wasn’t. There was another mattress beside me, on the other side of the ambulance. I could touch it; the upper strap was across my chest but they’d left my hands and arms free. I could move my head, turn enough to see that I was sharing the ambulance with a dead body. Man or woman, I couldn’t tell. Adult, I could. The body under the blanket used to be a grown-up. I stopped looking.

I was taken out of the ambulance, and carried into the noise made by people trying to climb out of their wounds.Trying to forget, to shut down, get back to the weather and the afternoon and the promise of the night ahead, a bag of chips, a woman or a boyfriend. A priest stood beside me. A young lad who’d shaved just before he’d got the call. I could smell the aftershave. He prayed - I think - said things in Latin, put an oily finger on my eyes. I let him do it; I said nothing. He was getting me ready for death. I didn’t object.

I didn’t know the hospital. I don’t remember if I ever found out. It could have been the Mater or the Richmond, or Jervis Street. The Rotunda, the maternity hospital, was even taking in the wounded. The Northside’s newborns dropped into hell that night. I don’t remember leaving the hospital. I never knew how long I was there.

People came looking. Mothers, husbands, daughters. I wanted to be the one they were searching for. I wanted to take the terror from their faces. I watched them pass, and leave. And others came too. They saw the shape the absent leg gave to the bedclothes, and they sat beside me.

—What was it like?

—Dreadful, I said.

The word seemed feeble - all the words were. But it was the best I could do. It sounded right.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

—You’re Henry, aren’t you?

—That’s right.

—It must have been a shock.

She was a young one - very young. Too young to be sent off to interview the dead.

—Dreadful, I said, again.

—Henry Smart, she said.

—That’s it.

I’d been Henry Smart since I’d come home, more than twenty years before. I hadn’t hidden.

—I’ve heard all about you, she said.

—Is that right?

I couldn’t sit up. I knew who I was but I couldn’t feel the pain that everyone saw when they glanced at me.

—Did it remind you of 1916? she said.

—You know about that, I said.

Was I pleased? I was fuckin’ delighted.

—Yes, she said.

I tried to sit up.

She put down her jotter and she leaned over; for a second I thought she was going to climb up onto me. I fell back on the bed, to give her the room. I actually did think that I was in for my first big ride since the late 1930s, with a young one who hadn’t even been born back then. In a ward full of broken men who were trying hard not to die.

It was a bit of a shock when it didn’t happen. When one of her hands held one of mine, and the other one cupped my elbow, and I looked and saw her sympathy and some of her disgust, and I let her help me sit up. She thumped the pillows behind me, and I could smell whatever perfume or deodorant she’d sprayed on before she’d run out of her flat to meet me. I could see the flat too. She was showing me around - I was some fuckin’ eejit.

She’d picked up her jotter and pen again.

—You were in the G.P.O., she said.

—That’s a long time ago.

—What was it like?

—You’ll need more than that jotter if you want to know.

She smiled.

—Go on.

I crammed a big week into five minutes. I got to watch as she filled the pages with her shorthand. And I got to feel guilty too, quickly. She was a kid, doing her homework. This was her break. So, I talked. I filled her jotter for her. She looked up and smiled, and nodded.

—Go on.

And I did. I went through it day by day. I told her how the place had started to burn from the inside, how the melting glass of the dome had dropped onto the men and women beneath it.

—That’s amazing, she said.

—It didn’t seem that way at the time, I said.—It was just one of the things that happened.

—Still, though.

—You’re right, I said.—It was amazing. But I think we were all a bit mad by then.

—With the bombing?

—And the rest of it; yeah.

—Like now.

—Am I mad now?

She didn’t answer that one.

—You still had your leg then, didn’t you? she said.—After the G.P.O. and that.

—Yeah, I said.—But that’s a different story. A long time ago too.

—I knew it, she said.—They said you’d lost it in the bombing. You know, a week ago.

A week? There were men all around me who were moaning like it had been an hour ago. I couldn’t go back the seven days; I could only account for one. But that was nothing new; I’d been dead before for weeks, and much longer.

—Who said that? I asked her.

—Everybody, she said.—But I could tell. By your face.You didn’t have your leg amputated six days ago.

—No, I said.—It’s been gone a while.

The triumph was gone from her face. She looked a small bit angry.

—It’s a bit awkward, she said.

—What is?

—I’m supposed to talk to the old I.R.A. man who lost his leg last week. After all he’d -
you’d
- been through.

—No, I said.—I lost the leg in America. Sorry about that.

—Still though, she said.—It is a bit much, isn’t it? To be blown up again. At your age.

I slept - I must have.

She was gone. It was dark. Injured men moaned less in the dark. I’d been in the bed for six days, she’d said. I wondered now how long I’d been sleeping. She’d have looked up and seen my head falling back. I hated that, even when I was on my own, at home. Falling asleep before I was ready to - like dying. I wondered how long she’d waited, and I lifted my hand to my chin, to check if I’d been drooling.

Something was immediately different.

I felt it when I lifted my arm. The slight shift, the rearrangement - there was something on the bed, something had just rolled against me.

I sent my hand under the sheet. I went slowly - I didn’t like this - but it didn’t take long to hit the thing. Wood - my fingers knew it. Metal - smooth, cold. And leather.

There was a leg tucked in against me. I knew before I saw it: it was new.

 

 

 

I woke.

The priest was beside me. He’d been given a chair with arms. There was a cup on his lap, and half a biscuit sitting on the saucer.