The Dead Republic

  There was no blame. My daughter had kissed my forehead. I’d invented a place where that could happen. Ford had invented a place where the Irish could be at rest. Where fists didn’t hurt, where drink did no damage, where there was no real pain to hide. A monstrous fuckin’ lie, but a nice one.

  There were the usual bits of business now. It was a film set and Ford was directing. The bell lids were lifted off the trays. He showed them how to pour the coffee. The butlers watched and learnt.

  I got out of the bed - they didn’t look. I came down the steps; I’d slept with my boots and leg on. I grabbed a full cup.

  —Thanks, lads.

  I heard myself; I was in the fuckin’ film. And I was happy to be in the film. I went back up the steps.

  The lads closed the big door very quietly and Ford carried my tray up to the bed. I watched him take the steps carefully; I could hear his determination. I took off the boots but I left the leg on. He put the tray across my lap.

  —Good man.

  —That enough?

  —Looks alright.

  He went back down and got his own tray.

  The plate was huge and white. Sausages, rashers, black and white pudding, a couple of eggs, fried bread - even the food came out of The Quiet Man. I was loving my country.

  Ford had just climbed onto the bed, pushing his tray ahead like he was holding onto a lifebuoy.

  —That fit the bill? he asked.

  —It’s alright.

  I was eating one-handed. Our forks, his knife, tapped the plates and the old men swallowed as quietly as they could. The edge off the hunger, I asked him a question.

  —Why me?

  —What?

  —Why did you bother dragging the story out of me?

  —It’s part of the process.

  He was fussing with the fat on the rashers, cutting it away from the proper meat. I leaned across and took his fat up with my fork. I shook it at his face.

  —You’re not fuckin’ Irish.

  He looked caught for a second. He was thinking of taking it back, grabbing it off my fork.

  —I knew that, he said.

  —My arse you did.

  —I was saving it.

  —You said it was part of the process.

  —Fine, he said.—I won’t repeat myself. But here. We started out with your story. And we got that down. We blend it in there with the Walsh story. And we’re ready to roll. But then the question arises, and the question gets bigger and more insistent. Wait.

  He picked up his coffee. He pulled most of it into his mouth. He rolled it, and swallowed.

  —Jesus, he said.—The question. Is this. What exactly is Henry fighting for? Or Seán. We have to see it. This place that’s worth dying for. See, that’s what’s great about Monument Valley. The most desolate place on earth and yet it’s worth the fight. The sheer fucking size of it, and the sense that this is the worst land in the world, so the land behind the Apaches and beyond that horizon must therefore be the best. It’s all America. Right?

  I nodded.

  —So, he said.—Is it Dublin? Is there one fucking brick worth fighting for in that town? It ain’t a city. Well?

  It had never been about bricks - I’d wanted to demolish the place.

  —No, I said.

  —So we get you out of Dublin.

  He nodded at the window.

  —And you’re right outside there. Now it’s worth it. It’s God’s own country and it’s been taken from you. The lake out there and all that Technicolor green. The castle with the wrong people in it. It’s worth fighting for. We’re all with you.

  He held his tray, leaned out, and lowered it to the floor. Then he straightened up and sat back.

  —You let it happen, Henry.

  —I know. I’m thinking of going back to sleep. I might give it a bash.

  —Good idea, he said.—A bit of shut-eye. We’ve a busy week ahead of us.

  I pushed the tray to the end of the long bed. I could lie down without shoving it over the side.

  —You understand? he said.

  —What?

  I stretched out. I thought about taking the leg off.

  —The war, he said.

  They weren’t the words I’d expected.

  —What war?

  —Well, both wars, he said.—The War of Independence, then the Civil business.

  —You didn’t want to put them in, I said.—I heard you the first time.

  I was going to sleep.

  —But that’s what The Quiet Man is actually about, he said.—It’s what happened after we won the war. Paradise.

  —Who d’you think you’re codding? I said.—I’m only back a few days but it isn’t fuckin’ Paradise.

  I was just talking, counting the sheep.

  —But it could be, he said.—The real thing. The emigrant’s dream.

  —Rural, Gaelic, the simple life.

  —That’s right.

  —Remember the piece of paper? I said.

  —With your name on it. Smart, Henry. Sliding over the polished desk.

  —That’s right, I said.—My execution order.

  —That would have been a hell of a scene.

  —That’s the shite they said they wanted, I told him.—Jack Dalton and the boys. A rural Ireland, the simple life, spouting fuckin’ Irish. That’s what they hid behind. I’ll tell you what you’re up to and then I’m going asleep.

  —Give it to me.

  —You’re taking the war to Ireland, I told him.—Your fuckin’ Cold War. You’re making Ireland part of America and you’ve sent in John Wayne. Ireland will be the land worth dying for.

  I was talking through my hole, but I believed every word. I was back there, in my heyday, selling freedom and hooch in brown paper bags.

  —So fuck you and the Ireland in your head, I said.

  —Maybe you’re right, he said.—But it’ll bring in the tourists.

  —I’ll be waiting for them.

  —The rebel.

  —I’m going asleep.

  —Me too.

  I drifted for a while, aware that I wasn’t asleep. I wanted to talk some more, make it up and convince myself. There were things ahead of me now. Years, life, people I could find. There was no fight; there was no one I wanted to kill. I was a happy man, freed by the cranky old cunt beside me.

  He spoke.

  —Asleep?

  I didn’t answer.

  —Henry? You’re awake. There’s more to it.

  I woke.

  He was asleep, and loud with it. His neck was at a bad angle; I could see the strangling I’d given him earlier. I got out of the bed. The tray tipped over the side. The noise woke the world. But he stayed asleep. I put on the boots, laced them up. I rubbed the dust off them with a corner of the sheet. It was early evening outside; the cast and all the crew would be coming back soon. Wingate Smith would be marching down the corridor, the posse right behind him.

  I came out of the castle, past the two lads who’d carried the trays earlier for Ford. They studied me slowly and kept their fags in their mouths. But they stood back.

  —Taking the air, sir?

  —Something like that, I said.

  I stood at the top of the steps and saw the convoy heading towards me, turning in at the hotel gates, the black cars, the vans, the trucks, more of them squeezing slowly through, filling the narrow road. The black cars and the big people in them - I didn’t want to take them on, or to see them recognise me. I didn’t want to look at Maureen FitzSimons. I’d let her down; she wasn’t going to fight for Ireland.

  I turned to the lake and walked. Lough Corrib. Fifty years later it poisoned Galway. But that day, as I strode in and sank, it welcomed me and took me under. I climbed back out twenty years later.

  But those days were gone. There was no more magic. I swam; that was magic enough for a one-legged man with a broken hand - out of the castle’s gaze. I climbed back out on the far bank, into the rest of the sun. I walked into the trees and fou
nd the castle wall. I climbed it easily enough. I dried quickly as I walked. I heard the leg creak and shrink.

  I walked.

  PART TWO

  7

  I felt the bomb before I heard it. I didn’t know what it was. I was in the air, smashed into the wall, when the noise came. This was something new. The dust, the screams, the shredded metal - I’d seen them before. But it was the size of the thing, the depth of it. This was a bomb that didn’t care about numbers. I couldn’t move. I was still on the street. But the street was gone. The air was dirt and screams. I knew who I was. I was Henry Smart. I knew where I was. I was on Talbot Street. Where Talbot Street had been.

  I lay there and waited.

  I had cash that dried quickly in my pocket as I walked away from Ashford Castle. I was going right across the country, to Dublin, but I wasn’t going to walk. There were green buses now. There were trains. I wouldn’t be hiding.

  I got off the train at Kingsbridge and wandered. I listened for voices, looked out for faces. But that stopped; I copped on. It had been more than thirty years. I walked until I knew again where I was going. Some of the streets had new names - Pearse Street, Cathal Brugha Street - men I’d known and sneered at. Other streets had been demolished. Not just the street, the line, the streets off it - the whole area was gone, replaced by a shape I’d never known. And that was grand. I wasn’t coming back; I was arriving. I cried out for nothing.

  The slums were still there, like broken teeth in a rotten mouth, but far worse now because I’d been away and seen different. I walked past some of the steps my mother had sat on every night. I walked past gaping doors that had brought me safety and women. Piano Annie’s house was roofless, the front door and the windows bricked up. I walked past men and women I might have known once, but I didn’t examine the crumbling faces. Gracie, Lil, Alexander. I didn’t look too carefully.

  I stood at the railings and looked in at the school that had given me my two whole days of formal education. This was on the fourth day back. I saw young teachers, grim-looking girls, but no old ones. I stayed an hour, and left it at that. Two and two? She was dead.

  I stood on Gardiner Street and looked through the gaping hole of a door - the skylight glass was gone - at the peeling wall and the black pram parked against it, and the big stairs leading up to darkness. I heard the noises, laughter, the bawling, the final coughs, exactly as I’d left them, still floating around in there, and constantly kept fresh. Consumption was killing some man on the second floor. A young one was crying behind the door to the backyard. A gang of kids came tumbling out, down the steps, and all around me. Some wore canvas shoes - runners - but there were others who had nothing. Bare feet slapped the pavement. This was 1951.

  I made my mind up: I’d stay away from the old places. I’d stop feeding the anger.

  I walked down Marlborough Street - some street names had stayed the same - and I found a line of the green double-decker buses, on Abbey Street. I got on one. It took me north for twenty minutes, and I got off it in the village of Ratheen. I didn’t know it; I’d shot no one there. I’d stay.

  I got work that became steady, and a cottage that became my home. I cut grass in the gardens of the big houses that stood on both sides of the long Main Road. I bought an old bike and went from door to door. I didn’t cycle - I couldn’t, unless the hill was steep and I could freewheel down it - but I tied a stolen rake to the crossbar, and a spade I’d found leaning alone against a gate. I put an old sack across the handlebars, and I pushed my new office along the Main Road, to where it came out at the coast. I cut grass and came back and cut it again, and waited to be asked to do more. Two months after I’d cut the first grass, I took the spade down from the crossbar and began to dig. I became Henry, and Old Henry, and How’s Henry, and, at the back doors of the Protestant houses, I became Dear Henry.

  And that was it for years. A living. The outdoor life. I’d kneel on the sack and pull away at the plants that looked like the weeds, and I was never wrong.

  —You’re a jewel, Henry.

  —Thank you, missis.

  Did I see the beauty that others saw, in the years that I tended the Northside’s bigger gardens? I did like fuck.

  —What would I do without you, Henry? Your own fuckin’ gardening, missis.

  I pulled the weeds - none ever got away from me. But, really, I could never tell - I couldn’t feel - the difference between the weeds and the flowers.

  But the life was good. The work was steady, and more than steady in the summer and autumn. I took it easy in the winter. I had my own name, and no one looked at me twice when they heard it. I was Henry Smart, dear Henry, the gardener. And then I was Henry Smart, the caretaker. I was Henry Smart and I never had to think about it.

  There were shoes in Ratheen; there were no gaping Georgian doors. The black prams were pushed by well-fed mothers, and they were pushing babies, not coal. No one begged, no one hugged the walls. There were huge green trees that stayed there, swaying but solid, as the building took off and continued, and filled the fields behind the Main Road and gave me more grass to cut and weeds to murder. I had two suits now, and boots I wore only for work, that killed me by the end of every day because they’d be muck-heavy and twice the weight of the wooden leg I was already carrying. I went through six or seven pairs in the twenty years, but the alligator boots stayed fresh, under the bed six days a week, because I only wore them on Sundays, to mass.

  I went to mass.

  The city followed me out to Ratheen. The City Corporation took over a large tract of land near the sea, surrounded by everything good, and built houses for the people. The sons and daughters of the corner boys I’d had to fight and batter came out with their mattresses and prams. A good house for each family; a house full of kids, and a brand new school just up the road.

  I began to wonder if my fight had really been a total waste. The city centre - I’d begun to think of Dublin as town - was still the kip I’d climbed out of. But here, twenty minutes away, the children had parents and coats. There were bedrooms and electricity, the certainty of dinner. Women stopped and chatted to each other, and none of them stood at wet corners, waiting desperately for business. Men came home from work at the same time every day. It was boring, but maybe freedom was supposed to be boring. I was home, myself, by six o’clock every evening.

  There was one day, too early in spring, too damp, too cold, I got up off one knee, the one that carried the wood, but I couldn’t manage the other. The knee had locked; I was stuck. I watched the knee sink deeper into the muck, and it started to fuckin’ rain. This was March the 21st, 1963. I was only sixty-one, but my gardening days were over. I knelt in the front garden of one of the flat-roofed German houses - called German by the locals because the houses didn’t look Irish. The rain made the ground even softer; I could feel the water seeping in between the wood and the meat of my leg. I knew I was in for hard pain. But I couldn’t get up. The rain got heavier and the hole got quickly deeper. I was being swallowed - I fell forward.

  And that was how the oul’ one saw me. She was looking out the window, checking to see that she was getting value for her money and she saw the gardener trying to turn over onto his back, so he wouldn’t drown in her flowerbed. Both of my knees were bent, my feet were in the air - an ancient baby trying to stand up in its cot. What about me! She came straight out. I heard her squelch across the lawn. She had ten years on me, but she still managed to pull me out of the muck and carry me to her kitchen, around to the back of the house - she didn’t mind a bit of rain but she wasn’t going to let me dirty her hall. She carried me, my arms around her neck and one of hers under my knees, all the way, right over the fuckin’ threshold. I could tell immediately I wasn’t the first dead man she’d carried.

  She sat me down in the kitchen, on a white-painted chair. She put old newspaper under my feet. She lifted each foot, no bother, and didn’t flinch or even pause when she held up one hard leg and realised what she was holding. She put it back dow
n on the paper, and stood up without grunting. I looked around me while she went off somewhere for a towel - I knew; she’d gone looking for an old one - and I saw the photograph. I could just about see it in the hall, past the open kitchen door. A young woman, in the Cumann na mBan uniform.

  She came back in with a thin, grey towel. I dried my head; the towel nearly fell apart on my face.

  —What happened you?

  She wasn’t a Roscommon woman, or she hadn’t been in a long time.

  —My knee, I told her.

  I looked at the water still running off me, onto the Irish Press at my feet. The print was going to stain her lino.

  Her name was O’Kelly and she’d been married to the man I’d seen her walking with, past my door, every Sunday afternoon, until just before Christmas the year before. The Widow O’Kelly, still dressed, I noticed now, in black.

  I looked at her.

  She’d never been Miss O’Shea.

  —Did it lock on you? she asked.

  —It did.

  It did, I’d said, and not just Yeah. I was in The Quiet Man. (There were cinemas near enough to me, in Sutton and Killester, but I’d never gone to see it.)

  —It happens to us all, she said.—All you can do is wait. You’ll have a cup of tea.

  I didn’t tell her I never drank it. The cold was in me; I could still feel the muck on my lips.

  She came back with some of her husband’s clothes. A pair of corduroy trousers, a jumper and a flannel shirt.

  —What do you think?

  —Thank you, missis.

  —He’d be glad you have them. He thought the world of you.

  —He was a good man.

  —Ah, sure.

  She stepped out of the kitchen. She brought the door with her.

  —The kettle will be ready by the time you’ve changed. Bending down was a killer. The laces put up a fight; they were soaked fat and ignorant. But I got the boots off and managed to keep them on the paper. The trousers were tricky - the kettle was boiling, starting to rattle; she was right behind the door. My knee was still locked, so I had to change them sitting down. The kettle steam was getting into the corduroy. The fuckin’ things were wet before I got them on.