The Dead Republic (34 page)

—A bad business, he said.

—Yeah.

—Like in your day, Henry, eh?

—I never went without food, I said.—If I could help it.

I’d go for his head and knock out any doubts he had about me.

—I knew hunger all my life, I said.—And it was never a fuckin’ strike. Only the middle class could come up with starvation as a form of protest.

I stared back at him.

It worked. I could hear the big teeth grind. But it wasn’t anger. He was reversing, back-pedalling furiously, reassessing the oul’ eejit beside him in the silver Toyota. He’d have to be interesting now.

—I disagree with your analysis, he said.—I disagree fundamentally. But—

He didn’t hesitate, exactly. But he dropped the voice.

—There’s no persuading them, he said.—Bobby and the other boys.

He sighed, but the noise wasn’t theatrical.

—We have to make the most of it.

The smile was small now, shy.

—It isn’t the route I’d have wanted, he said.—Your class analysis is way off the mark, Henry. But I understand, you came out of different times. But the doing without food - there I agree with you.

I had my information. I’d made my day.

—What’s on in Bodenstown? I asked.

—The usual, he said.—And the unusual. We honour our republican dead. And we plant something too. For tomorrow.

—What do we plant?

—You, he said.—We plant you.

 

 

 

I was sitting in front of a window. It was mid-afternoon out there. I could feel the heat but I could see absolutely nothing. It was paint. The window had been painted black, recently. There wasn’t a scratch or a hint of the day outside.

I’d been told to sit there, facing the blackened window. There were men behind me. At least two of them. Probably more.There’d been quiet coming and going. The door behind me, to the left, had been opened and closed. Another door further away had just been closed.

Politely, firmly, I’d been brought to the chair. It was ready, alone, facing the black window. I looked for rope in the gloom, or straps. Strong hands told me to sit. I did, but I wasn’t tied down. Nobody said,
Don’t turn
. Nobody had to.

I waited for it to start.

Then a voice. I didn’t know it. Northern. How far north, or west or straight ahead, I couldn’t tell. In my day I’d have been able to pin an accent to a town and a street. I wished now that I hadn’t been so bigoted. The north had never featured. I never gave a fuck about the north, or the strangers up there. They were foreign then, and they were still foreign.

The voice. A smoker, in his forties, carrying his share of lost life. He was speaking for the benefit of other men. There was more than one other man behind me in the room, and the talker didn’t know them very well.

—So, Henry, he said.—Welcome. This is standard procedure, nothing to be concerned about. You understand? You have no need to fear.

—This isn’t Bodenstown, I said.

That got no reaction, at all - not a foot moved or a sock pulled. I was in a room with experienced interrogators.

—Give us your name.

—Henry Smart.

—Age?

—Seventy-nine.

—Where do you live?

—Dublin, I said.

—Exactly?

—Ratheen.

—What’s your line of work?

—I’m retired.

—What did you do before you retired?

—I was the caretaker, in the national school. The boys.

—You’re a fair age, Henry.

—I know.

—Why do you want to join the I.R.A.?

—I don’t want to join the I.R.A.

—That’s not what—

—I never left.

—What?

—I’ve been in the I.R.A. since 1917, I said.—I never left or resigned, or anything. And I was in the Citizen Army before that. Before there was an I.R.A.

The men behind me knew their history. They knew about the Citizen Army, and James Connolly. They’d read him and revered him. He was up on their walls, with Che Guevara. They’d be looking now at the back of my head and thinking,
He knew Connolly
.

I was in control.

The shout appalled me. Right into my ear.

—Why!

I’d heard nothing. No one had crept up on me. But he was there. I could feel his breath while the shout still burrowed into my head. He didn’t touch me but I couldn’t get away; I couldn’t lean away from his weight.

I couldn’t budge.

—Why?

I couldn’t talk. I wasn’t there.

—Why were you talking to the peelers?

I couldn’t talk - I’d have spilled everything. I was choking.

—Answer now.

My head was coming back to me.

—What did you talk about?

This wasn’t interrogation. It was a test. Say nothing - keep the mouth shut. That was the rule, and it wouldn’t have changed - since my day.

—Answer!

Say nothing, don’t listen. The shout was solid but it wasn’t a shock now. The real shock was the fact that I was still sitting, that I wasn’t being dragged across the floor. I hadn’t been touched. And that was the torture.

I decided to breathe - I had to decide.

They knew that the G-men had been at my door. I could talk my way out of that. Or they knew that I’d never been Henry Smart M.P., and they were working themselves up, to get past my age and history, so they could kill me. But there wasn’t enough sense in that. They’d have shot me already, or left me alone. This was a test. They had business in mind and they were checking to see if I was up to it. One of their big men had travelled here with me - wherever we were - in a silver Toyota. They weren’t here to execute me. He wouldn’t have gone near a condemned man.

—Stand up!

I didn’t know if I had the life in me; I expected the hands to pull me up.

—Stand up.

Refusing to speak was resistance. Refusing to stand was a sign of nothing but the probable fact that I couldn’t. I gave it a go. I left the chair, tried to make sure my legs didn’t knock it back. I could feel the man’s breath on the sweat that soaked my neck. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But I made it. I stood.

—Turn.

It was the difference. The stance. The difference between my time and theirs. The modern gunman, legs apart, the arms pointed straight ahead, at me, at my mouth. In the half-light, it took a while to see that there was actually a gun his hands. I hadn’t a clue what make it was.

I stared back at him, over his hands and the gun. At the man who had shouted into my head. The man who’d been driving the car. He was wearing a black balaclava but I’d seen his eyes in the rear-view mirror, when he told me the car’s colour.

He should have looked a bit thick or at least sheepish, because he wasn’t going to shoot me. But he didn’t. He stared at my mouth. Whether he shot me or not didn’t matter. I wasn’t there; he didn’t give a shite. I didn’t know why he bothered with the mask.

The first voice spoke again. I looked at him, and I let them know: the pointed gun wasn’t bothering me that much. It was still a test and I thought I was passing.

—Sit down again, Henry.

—Face to the window?

—Yes.

There was one other man. He was wearing a balaclava too. I could just about see him in the corner near the door; the light coming from under it gave his shoes a good shine. I didn’t stare at him. He wasn’t to be seen. My guess was he’d been sitting beside me in the car. He was two men, two roles. Two paths to Irish freedom.

I sat again.

More questions followed, because they had to be asked. They went through the catechism, even though I’d already passed, or failed.

Had I ever sung rebel songs publicly?

—Yeah.

Had I ever attended marches or republican funerals?

—Yeah.

Did I have a criminal record?

—Yeah.

Had I ever been arrested?

—Yeah.

—What for?

—Being Irish.

They loved that one; I heard them behind me. If I’d been in charge, I’d have slapped the head off the man who gave that answer. The sentimentality nearly made me puke.

—When was this?

—Well, I said.—That particular time would have been in 1916.

—Of course.

The shout was a bigger surprise.

—Why?

I was gone again, dead.

—Why did you talk to the fuckin’ peelers?

I found the words from somewhere deep; I could feel the slime on my fingers as I pulled them out.

—What peelers?

The wrong words - I knew it.

—Why? You cunt!

—Steady, said a different voice.

—Don’t fucking waste our time!

Hard hands were clapped beside my ear. Or it might have been the gun. There was no cordite. Did spent bullets still come with cordite? I didn’t know.

The glass in front was still black and intact. The day was still outside.

—Talk.

—I didn’t talk to anyone.

—They were at your house.

—I didn’t talk to them. I told them nothing.

I had my grip. I could choose the words; I was climbing, grabbing each one.

—I didn’t have anything to tell them, I said.—Nothing recent. They already knew about 1916.

I was sitting on the chair. I could feel it again, under me. I could feel it against my back. I shouldn’t have been talking. But this wasn’t the police. This was my side.

—They said they’d be back, I said.—I’ll tell them nothing then either.

I could hear a baby crying downstairs. Definitely in the same house, under me. It was a farmhouse. I hadn’t been blindfolded before we’d arrived. They’d let me see the lane, the new gravel - I’d have heard it hopping under the car if I’d been blindfolded - the wide yard, the whitewash on the walls. The walls reminded me of a photograph I’d carried for years. But I didn’t let it. I concentrated. There were two greyhounds tied to an iron ring in one of the walls. They had plenty of rope, but they looked bored and too skinny. There were slates missing off the farmhouse roof, and another dog, a mutt lying on the step at the back door. No one came out to greet us or see who we were. There was nothing going on in any of the outhouses. I’d got out of the car on my own steam. The man beside me had stayed put. The driver didn’t lay a hand on me, but he’d been right against me, straight in and up the stairs, into the room where I sat now, facing the black glass.

I could hear nothing behind me. Absolutely nothing. And I wanted to. Badly. I wanted to hear - I needed to hear a chair or a foot scrape, even another blast into my ear. Anything except the fact that they’d gone and I’d been talking to myself. Or they hadn’t been there in the first place.

I waited.

I didn’t look.

I heard nothing on the stairs. And nothing from downstairs. The baby was gone, or asleep. The radio was off. There was nothing being cooked, no livestock out there protesting, cows crying to be milked.

Nothing.

I hummed. No one told me to stop. I gave them
Kevin Barry
. I even sang the odd word.
In Mountjoy Gaol one Monday morning
. No one joined in, took the bait.
High upon the gallows tree
. I hated that song. I hated all songs.

I sat there until I could do nothing else. Until I heard steps on the stairs and the door behind me opened, and the voice told me that I could come and join them downstairs. I couldn’t turn and look.

The hand on my shoulder released me.

—Are you awake at all?

The hand, and the excuse. I could confirm his gentle suspicion.

—I must have dozed off, I said.

I sounded the part, cracked and slow. But the hand on my shoulder had broken the spell. I felt the loosening and the pain. I knew the aches, and I loved them. I could stand up. I could groan as I did it.

—Good man. Hungry?

—Starving, I lied.

The same man who’d brought me here, who’d sat beside me. I groaned again as I followed him to the door. I looked at his feet, at the shoes. They shone in the sudden daylight. He went slowly down the stairs, in front of me. His hair was thick, hard. He was fit, and considerate. Keeping pace with the old man. I wanted to grab his hair and pull it out of his head, pull him back and stamp on his face.

I wanted to hold his hand and go everywhere that he went.

He was off the steps now, in the little hall between the back door and the kitchen.

—Come in and meet the boys, he said.

—Grand.

I followed him in and sat down at the table and pretended I’d been out - checking on the cows, feeding the greyhounds - and had just come back in. There were no nods, or nothing - I was one of them.

—That’s a fair good piece of ham.

—Aye.

—Strong tea.

—Aye.

—This soup didn’t come out of a tin.

—No. Right enough.

There was no sign of a baby or anyone who’d obviously made the soup. I hadn’t touched my own bowl yet. I didn’t want the men to see the soup dance off the spoon. I picked up a sandwich and took a bite. The bread was soft - just as well - and the ham broke up without a struggle.

Eyes were waiting.

I nodded.

—Grand.

I took another bite. I even managed to get the spoon to my mouth. I was an old man; a bit of a shake was alright. As long as they wouldn’t have to trust me with a gun.

—You can’t beat vegetable, I said.

—Right enough, said the man who’d asked most of the questions upstairs.

The fuckin’ quizmaster. He was older than his voice, and somehow smaller. He ate between drags from his smoke; there was a packet of Major at his elbow.

—When it’s fresh, I said.

—Aye.