1972 (17 page)

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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: 1972
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The classical beauty of the college took Barry by surprise. As he picked his way over the cobblestones he feasted his eyes on one magnificent Georgian structure after another. The College Chapel, the Examination Hall, the Old Library … Barry Halloran was falling in love again.
The atmosphere of Trinity was unlike anything in his experience. In spite of hundreds of people constantly moving about the campus, there was an overlay of academic serenity that affected Barry's troubled spirit like a soothing balm. He had arrived feeling like a fraud. At the end of the day he left seduced; seduced by ancient tradition and modern opportunity.
Ursula was waiting anxiously at the hotel. “How did it go?” she asked before he even took off his coat. “Did you give them your letters of reference? Did you make a good impression?”
“Not too bad, I think. Everyone was courteous to me and one or two were quite encouraging about my prospects.”
“You never told me, what courses will you sign up for?”
“It's academic until I'm accepted.” He smiled at his pun.
“I think you should concentrate on history and the classics. That would prepare you for a career in teaching and teachers can always find work.”
Why doesn't she ask me what I want?
“But you're right of course,” Ursula went on. “The important thing is to be accepted.”
“It isn't a foregone conclusion,” Barry warned.
“You will be. I know it.”
B
EFORE they returned to Clare, Ursula took her son on a tour of “her” Dublin. Although she did not notice, he paid particular attention to the architecture. The city's elegant Georgian heritage, which represented British imperialism in many minds, had fallen into decay. Many of the spacious red brick houses had been carved into multi-family tenements in the last century and were falling down from neglect.
Busáras,
the central bus station, was a different story. The first of Dublin's post-war buildings, Busáras with its cantilevered canopy to protect the buses had won major architectural awards and excited considerable controversy. Barry loved it on sight.
His mother was more interested in places connected with the Easter Rising. At the foot of the Mount Street Bridge she told her son, “Papa fought here.” She stood for a while with her head cocked to one side, as if she could hear the British troops marching up the Northumberland Road. “Papa and Mama dodged British bullets here,” she said at the Ha'penny Bridge.
At the General Post Office in O'Connell Street, Barry pressed his fingers into the bullet holes that still scarred the columns of the portico. But his eyes kept straying to Nelson's Pillar, only a few yards away.
The Pillar, erected three years after the Battle of Trafalgar, dominated Dublin's central thoroughfare. It consisted of a massive base of Portland stone supporting a fluted granite column in the Doric style, surmounted by a cylindrical plinth and a thirteen-foot-tall statue of Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson.
The Pillar was by far the highest structure in the street, towering over even the GPO. A landmark that could be seen for miles, it was the main terminus for public transport. As if Nelson
were the heart of Dublin, tram lines radiated from his monument like arteries.
For sixpence one could enter the base and climb an internal staircase of 168 steps to an observation platform below the statue. This provided an unparalleled view of the city. A decorative iron railing had been heightened by an addition after an ex-soldier committed suicide in 1917
1
by leaping from the platform.
Nelson's Pillar appeared on almost every postcard of Dublin. For generations it had been the unofficial symbol of Ireland's capital.
Barry had to tilt his head far back to look up at the statue. Imperious and aloof, Lord Nelson was staring with eyes of stone across a city he had never visited in life.
Monumental architecture at its most arrogant,
thought Barry.
Ursula said, “That monstrosity should have been knocked down ages ago. It's an insult to all those who died trying to win our freedom from England.”
Barry sometimes enjoyed taking an opposite point of view, just to watch his mother rise to the bait. “To be fair,” he said now, “as an island we're dependent on sea trade and Nelson rescued the international shipping routes by defeating Napoleon. Some might say he did Ireland a favour.”
“To be fair,” she mimicked, “Nelson was part and parcel of England's desire to rule the world. One of the Volunteers on the roof of the GPO during Easter Week nicked his nose with a well-placed rifle shot. I consider that lad more of a hero than the swaggering admiral ever was.”
“Would you not admit that's a rather prejudiced view?”
“I
am
prejudiced. On behalf of my country, my native land. And so should you be, Barry.”
“Prejudiced on behalf of Switzerland, you mean?” he asked mischievously.
“Of course not! You're Irish, blood and bone.”
“But I was born in Switzerland, and thanks to you I have a Swiss passport.”
“I went to a lot of trouble to get that for you, young man. During World War Two a Swiss passport was worth its weight in gold.”
“Surely you don't believe there could be another war? I thought the atom bomb made that unthinkable.”
“World War One was supposed to be the war to end all wars,” Ursula replied grimly.
A
T the farm a letter was waiting for Barry. “I apologise for taking so long to reply,” Claire had written in a schoolgirl's carefully formed script. “I had the most awful cold that went on and on. Aunt Miriam hovered over me like a mother hen. She kept me in bed for ages. She is a bit of a tyrant and I confess I am a little afraid of her. She has my best interests at heart, though. I hope your business will bring you back to Athlone sooner rather than later. I am longing for someone my own age to talk to.”
Someone my own age to talk to?
Barry was disappointed by her choice of words. The letter was less affectionate than he had hoped.
Perhaps she doesn't understand how I feel about her. Perhaps she needs more encouragement.
He took up pen and paper to tell her of his plans: “I've decided to go back to school and get a university degree. I plan to have a career that will enable me to support a wife and family and …”
Barry halted the impulsive flow of words and wadded the paper into a ball.
It's too soon,
he warned himself.
I might frighten her.
He started over, filling page after page with cheerful chat and amusing anecdotes. Keeping it light. Keeping it charming. With just a few fond little phrases tucked here and there, so she would understand he was more than just a friend.
Then he went to Ennis to buy a gift to accompany the letter.
Barry visited shop after shop, seeking the perfect present. It was not as easy as he had thought. Clothing, he concluded, might be too intimate—especially as he did not know her sizes. A piece of jewellery might be presumptuous. A book? He did not know if Claire even liked to read. They had never discussed books. If she did like to read, what books did she enjoy? He could not send a mystery to a girl who loved romances. Or vice versa.
He finally decided a scarf would be safest. But what colour?
Red, perhaps. Like her lips.
This necessitated a fresh search. There were so many shades of red! At last Barry found a pretty square of crimson silk, darker and richer than flamboyant scarlet. The salesgirl assured him it would be perfect.
As Barry was wrapping the little package he thought,
If it's that hard to find the right gift for a girl who's still just a friend, how hard will it be to please a wife?
In June the Army Convention would be held in Dublin. Séamus McCoy planned to go, he told Barry when they met for a pint. “They're going to try to rent a hall so there'll be enough room for ordinary Volunteers to attend. That's real democracy for you, Seventeen. Of course it also means there's more opportunity for disagreement. Not everybody's happy about the way things are going.
“Finances are worse than ever,” McCoy confided, coughing through cigarette smoke. “If the border campaign had gone better the Americans would be rowing in with buckets of money, but now they don't want to know us. Thank God I know we're going to win in the end. Otherwise I'd be worried.”
When Barry got home a letter from Trinity was waiting. Ursula was out riding and had not seen it yet. Barry tore the envelope open so hastily that he almost ripped the headed notepaper inside.
“Dear Mr. Halloran,
“Please present yourself at Trinity College Dublin on the date given below, prepared to sit your entrance examination. We wish you every success.”
O
VER his mother's objections, this time Barry would travel to Dublin alone. “Don't be making a holy show of me,” he told her. “I'm too old to go everywhere with my mammy.” The skin tightened around his eyes, warning Ursula not to argue.
T
HE entrance examination was difficult, though not more difficult than Barry expected. After he finished and turned it in, he was ready to put the next step of his plan into action.
The General Headquarters of the Irish Republican Army currently was located in a private house in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood. The well-dressed woman who responded to Barry's knock opened the door only halfway. “May I help you?” she enquired in an impeccable English accent. Thrown off guard, Barry hesitated before answering. “I'm looking for Éamonn Thomas.”
“There's no one here by that name. Are you sure you have it right?”
Undaunted, Barry said, “I called'round to the
United Irishman
office but it was closed, so I thought Mr. Thomas might be here. If he is, please tell him one of his subscribers, Barry Halloran, would like to speak with him.”
The woman took a step backwards and closed the door. After a minute or two a man in his shirtsleeves came trotting around the side of the house. A lively little man with exceptionally bright grey eyes and a merry, elfin smile. He was ten or twelve years older than Barry. A lingering trace of prison pallor made him look older still. Behind the bright eyes were memories of pain.
“It's about time you came to Dublin!” Éamonn Thomas cried with genuine delight. “Inside with you now, and meet some of the other lads.”
This time the door opened wide. In what miraculously had become an impeccable Irish accent, the same woman said, “
Failte isteach.”
t
Including Éamonn Thomas, three members of the Army Council were at headquarters that day. When Barry followed Thomas into the kitchen, Rory Brady and a middle-aged man whom Barry did not know were sitting at the table. “ … But the Belfast republicans are only interested in protecting the Catholics from the RUC and the B-Specials,” the middle-aged man was saying. “They don't have any commitment to a united Ireland.”
Éamonn Thomas cleared his throat. “Look who's here.”
“I know Volunteer Halloran already,” Brady said, jumping to his feet with a broad smile. “He was one of Seán Garland's lads, a graduate of the Brookeborough School of Hard Knocks.”
The other man was sturdily built, with thick, wavy hair turning grey. Putting down his cigarette, he extended his hand across the table to Barry. “Cathal Goulding. Éamonn and Rory and I are graduates of the Curragh Camp division of that same school.” Goulding spoke with the rapid-fire cadence of a machine gun. “Curragh Camp was a great place. No privacy at all and nothing to sleep on but wooden pallets. People tried for years to get me out of there but I just wouldn't leave. Where else could a fellow get free food and board and spend all his time with friends of a like mind?”
“Sounds brilliant,” said Barry. “I'd like to go there myself, but I heard it was closed.”
“Unfortunately,” Goulding replied. “What a tragic loss for us all.”
Eamonn Thomas chuckled at the deadpan exchange. “Cathal joined the IRA long before you were born, Barry. He's a hard man and no mistake. Claims to be a house painter but I never caught him at it. His father fought in the Easter Rising and his grandfather was one of the great old Fenians.”
“Sure don't we all come from republican backgrounds?” said Goulding. “It's in the blood.” He reached into his pocket for another cigarette.
Rory Brady remarked, “You smoke too much, Cathal, it's bad for your ulcer. You should put some food in your belly instead.”
“I'd as soon die of a bleeding ulcer as a bullet. At least I got the ulcer from my own government.” With a wink in Barry's direction, Goulding added, “A little memento of my treatment in Curragh Camp. Great fun, that. Just think what you missed, Halloran.”
“I'm despondent.”
This time everyone laughed.
“I assume you came looking for me for a reason?” Thomas asked Barry.
Before answering, Barry swept his eyes around the table.
Three ordinary men. If you passed them on the street you wouldn't notice them. Yet they're the Army, the only hope we have of getting our country back the way it was supposed to be.
Heroes.
He drew a deep breath. What he was about to do would require a great deal of courage. “I want to go off active service.”
Thomas looked surprised. The other two kept their feelings, whatever they might be, well hidden.
“Have you discussed this with Séamus McCoy?” Thomas asked.
“I have not, sir. I thought it would be best to come directly to you.”
“Because McCoy might talk you out of it first?”
“He might try, but my mind's made up.”
“You want to resign from the Army, is that it?” Goulding asked. There was no warmth in his voice now.
“Not at all. When I took the oath I meant it and I still do. But …”
They waited, sitting perfectly still. Men who had waited all their lives for something. Men who were determined to make it happen.
“I've too much imagination for a soldier,” Barry said. “I can imagine what a man feels when I shoot him.”
“We all can,” Goulding told him. “Some of us from experience. Is this your way of telling us you're afraid?”
Éamonn Thomas
had been watching Barry's face intently. “I don't think he's afraid, not any more than is good for him, anyway. No man could work with explosives the way he does and be a coward. It's something else, isn't it?”
Barry nodded. “I'm given this a lot of thought, and …” He met Rory Brady's eyes. “You once told me the Army needs educated men. I've applied to Trinity and taken my entrance exam. I don't know the outcome yet, but I'm reasonably hopeful of becoming a resident undergraduate there.”
“
Go raibh mile maith agat, Ruairi,
”
u
Goulding said to Brady. “You've lost us a damned good explosives man.”
“I didn't expect he'd do this.”
“You misunderstand, I don't want to resign from the Army!” Barry cried. “If I'm accepted at Trinity I won't be available for active service, but surely you can find something else for me to do. In whatever spare time I have,” he added rather lamely.
“This is the Army we're talking about,” said Brady. “If a man can't—or won't—fight, what good is he to us?”
“But you told me …”
Brady ignored the interruption. “We've never enough men in the field as it is.”
“There are other ways to serve the cause,” Thomas suggested.
“Politics? Politics was highjacked by the Free Staters long ago, Éamonn,” Brady said. “Fianna Fáil claims to be the republican party but they're just as bad as the others, they haven't the bottle to drive the British off this island once and for all. As for Sinn Féin, even you would have to admit they're so marginalised they have no power. Things have changed since the days when they provided the only government we had. The gun and the bomb, that's your only man now.
“Listen here, Barry. I told you that an education was important and it is. Someday we may be able to afford the luxury of seeing that every Irish child who wants one is offered a place in university. We're a long way from there right now, though. There are Irish children in the north who can't even get a primary education. Lemass has his hands full trying to create a viable economy; he's not worried about what's happening up there. But until that problem's solved and this island's reunited, all our futures have to be postponed.”
“I don't want my future postponed! I want to go to university and be part of the Army too.”
Cathal Goulding said, “You don't know when you're beaten, do you?”
The expression in Barry's eyes changed dramatically. It was like looking at a different man. A man who, if pushed hard enough, could explode like one of his bombs. “I'm not beaten.”
“We can't afford to lose this fellow,” Éamonn Thomas told the other two. “Let's approach this from a different angle. Tell us, Barry: What do you want to study at Trinity?”
“History. And the classics—for my grandfather as much as
for any other reason. He studied the classics with Pádraic Pearse. “
There I go boasting again. Careful, Halloran!
” But I'll also take courses toward a career in architecture. That's what I really want. The last time I was in Dublin I was impressed by the bus terminal that Michael Scott designed a few years ago, and—”
“The Army doesn't need a new bus terminal,” Brady snapped.
In a kindlier tone, Thomas said, “What else interests you?”
“Well, I like photography. I don't see myself making a career of it, though.”
“Photography!” Thomas beamed. “The very thing. We're having an uphill fight to win back support for the cause. Most people have forgot about Northern Ireland, they have problems of their own. But you know your way around the north, Barry. You could cross the border from time to time—on the odd weekend, say—and take photographs that would wake them up again. You know what I mean?”
Barry knew. Images of the sort that would remain with him forever.
Too frightened to cry, a little girl with the eyes of a wounded deer watching arson destroy the only home she had ever known. The fire brigade would never come. Her parents would have to seek shelter for their family with their own parents—in a cramped one-roomed flat. As they retreated up the road hugging their few belongings, a sectarian mob taunted them.
A frail old man being frog-marched out of a tenement to be thrown into jail on the word of an Orangeman. When Barry enquired what the charge was, he was warned to mind his own business “or we'll take you for good measure, Paddy!” The man's wife, who was badly crippled with arthritis, hobbled after them, protesting that her husband was blind. The constables ignored her.
A woman sitting on a kerbstone with her head in her hands. When Barry approached she looked up in sudden terror. She had been pretty before someone smashed her nose. Her upper lip was still smeared with dried blood. “Who did this to you?” Barry had asked as he crouched beside her. But he knew without asking. A favourite pastime for a certain type of loyalist was
to sally into a Catholic neighbourhood and force himself on one of the women. If his victim tried to resist she was beaten.
Such scenes occurred over and over again, year after year. No one in authority did anything to stop it. The Royal Ulster Constabulary was content to stand aside and let any sort of abuse be perpetrated upon Catholics. Meanwhile, Britain, whose “province” Northern Ireland was, turned a blind eye to the suffering of over 40 percent of the population.
“I know exactly what you want,” Barry told Thomas. “I've seen it for myself. What the eye can see, the camera can record.”
Cathal Goulding looked dubious. “Who's going to fund this little exercise? Cameras, film, all that class of thing. Our treasury's skint.”
Before cost could become an issue Barry said hastily, “I have a good camera already and I'll pay my own expenses.”
“Another question: Supposing they turn out the way you want, what are you going to do with the photographs, Eamonn? The
United Irishman'
s not equipped to publish them.”
“What about
An Phoblacht
v
?” asked Barry, referring to a weekly IRA newsletter that had been sporadically published in the twenties and thirties. There were numerous copies amongst Ursula's collection of republican periodicals.
“Dead and gone, more's the pity,” Thomas said.
“Could we not sell photographs abroad?”
Rory Brady brightened. “Now there's an idea. We could do something along the lines of the Irish News Agency that Seán MacBride established while he was minister for external affairs. He told the Dáil the agency's primary purpose was to gather news for export, but what he really envisioned was a propaganda agency to counter the unfavourable propaganda about Ireland the British were putting out.”
“I don't want to play the devil's advocate here,” said Goulding, “but bear in mind that things didn't work out the way Seán hoped. His original plan was to operate the agency as a co-op supported by the Irish press in return for furnishing them with material. For a while everybody who was anybody wrote for him, even Brendan Behan—that was before
Borstal Boy
made
Behan famous and he started swanning off to America. But the agency couldn't get enough support from the Irish newspapers. They saw it as competition for them; they were selling material abroad too. Seán had to turn the whole thing over to the government just to stay afloat. When the government decided to cut expenses a couple of years ago, they closed down the agency and that was that.”

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