1999 (16 page)

But Barry and Ursula did not come home.

As the first boarders straggled in one reported, “Dublin looks like Berlin in the last days of the war.” Another elaborated, “There's wreckage all over the place, and the ambulance drivers are picking up body parts.”

Barbara caught him by the arm. Her urgent fingers would leave bruises. “Did you see Barry down there?”

“Didn't see anyone I know. Or if I did, I didn't recognise them. You can't imagine what it's like.”

She couldn't, but McCoy could.
Barry,
he kept thinking.
Ursula. Ursula!

The boardinghouse was one of the few in the neighbourhood that had a private telephone. Soon people were coming to the door and pleading to ring the hospitals. “It's no use,” McCoy had to tell them. “I've already rung all of them and they aren't giving out information yet.”

For those waiting desperately for some news of their loved ones, the evening of May seventeenth lasted for a hundred years. A police cordon around the Talbot Street area did not prevent a huge crowd from entering the Pro-Cathedral to pray.

That night Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave appeared on RTE to say, “I want to express the revulsion and condemnation felt by every decent person on this island at these unforgivable acts.” Then he solemnly promised the country his government would do everything possible to see the culprits brought to justice. The minister for justice held a press conference at government buildings to announce the Gardai were launching a huge manhunt. Within an hour the Gardai issued their own statement, reporting the RUC had established that two of the cars used in the bombings had been hijacked in loyalist areas of Belfast that same morning.

It was the last report on the matter that the Irish government would release to the nation.

However, the British government received a report from the British ambassador to Ireland, Sir Arthur Galsworthy, in which he commented with satisfaction that the bombings had hardened attitudes against the republican movement, and given the Irish people an insight into the views of northern Protestants.

The ambassador concluded, “I think the Irish have taken the point.”
³

On May eighteenth RTE informed viewers and listeners that the Dublin death toll was the largest for any single incident since World War Two, when German bombs dropped on the North Strand had killed forty-three people.

The
Evening Press
described the scene at Dublin City Morgue. Hundreds of distraught relatives had viewed the bomb-mutilated corpses, hoping they would not find a beloved face.

Several papers carried a quote from Sammy Smith, the press officer for the Ulster Workers Council: “I am very happy about the bombings in Dublin. There is a war with the Free State and now we are laughing at them.”
¹

On the nineteenth of May Merlyn Rees declared a state of emergency and flew to Chequers to talk with the British prime minister.

 

A new song was making its way up the charts. From the hit musical
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat
came “Any Dream Will Do.”

 

Far, far away, bees were droning in the clover. It must be summer then. Summer on the farm. Aunt Eileen would be gathering the honey. If she was a very good girl she would be given a piece of honeycomb.

Ursula smiled in her sleep.

The droning grew louder; turned into a mumblevoice. Disturbed her pretty dream. “Go away,” she thought she said.

The irritating mumblevoice turned into intelligible words. Words pulling Ursula away from the fragrant fields in spite of all she could do, dragging her into a tunnel of roiling clouds where she soared and spun helplessly until she was tumbled onto something solid.

When she opened her eyes she saw only a haze. Then her vision cleared.

She gasped. “You can't have him!”

Father Michael bent down. The head on the pillow was swathed in gauze, all he could see were two grey-blue eyes. Young eyes. “Have who, my child?”

“My baby. He's not ill…illegitimate,” she said with an effort. Pain had seized her; was shaking her in relentless jaws. “I'm not illegitimate. We are…legitimate human beings.”

“I'm sure you are, my child.” The priest straightened up. Turning to the doctor who had summoned him, he said, “Last rites may be premature.”

“That's good news for her son.”

“Where is he?”

“Asleep on a bench in the waiting room.”

“His relatives must take him home at once!” said the priest. “One can't have infants sleeping on benches in the waiting room.”

The doctor gave a weary chuckle. “Some infant. He's six and a half feet tall with the constitution of an ox. This is the first time he's slept since we brought her in. I was going to waken him once you'd given her last rites.”

“Let him sleep a bit longer,” the priest advised.

After an hour a nurse woke Barry to tell him his mother had regained consciousness. He rushed to the ward she shared with five other victims of the bombings. Ursula was in the bed at the far end of the room, immobilised in a cocoon of plaster and bandages. Only one hand was free. It lay atop the sheet like an injured bird. When Barry took it in his, her eyes rolled toward him.

“I'm right here, Ursula, and I'll be here as long as you need me. Don't try to talk now, just get better.” Without relinquishing her hand he sat down in a chair beside the bed. She gazed at his face until she fell asleep again—a natural sleep, the nurse assured him.

He left Ursula's side long enough to use the nearest telephone. McCoy answered on the first ring. Barry's relieved voice rang down the line. “She's regained consciousness, Séamus!”

Barbara and McCoy took turns visiting the hospital so one of them would always be in Harold's Cross with little Brian. Barbara came by taxi and brought fresh clothes for Barry. “You should have phoned me Friday night,” she scolded; not for the first time. “I nearly went crazy worrying about you.”

“I was looking for Ursula,” he explained yet again.

“You could have stopped long enough to get to a telephone.”

“Everyone was fighting for telephones, there was no point. Besides, I thought they would take her to Jervis Street so I kept going back there. It was Saturday morning before I learned she was here in the Rotunda. That's when I rang you.”

Barbara was not really listening. “I was terrified, I imagined the most awful things had happened to you.”

Barry put his arms around her and rested his chin on top of her head. “I'm all right, sweetheart. Don't you remember? They couldn't kill me with an axe.”

When McCoy arrived he told Barry, “Paudie Coates located a duplicate key, so he took me to collect your car. We found it right where you said, with your cameras still in the boot.”

“I don't even remember putting them in. Where's Apollo now?”

“Parked out front. I'm driving it.” McCoy braced himself for an argument.

“That's all right then,” Barry said absently.

“Any chance of me seeing Ursula?”

“Not yet, Séamus. Right now they won't allow any visitors but me.”

 

While Ursula fought for life in her hospital bed Northern Ireland underwent its own crisis. The UWC strike paralysed the province and temporarily destroyed its economy. Men marched up and down the streets brandishing placards; other men shouted vehemently into microphones and television cameras. The climax came when extremist politicians, loyalist paramilitaries, and trade union activists from the Harland and Wolff shipyard joined a vast parade of farm machinery to clog the great avenue leading up to Stormont.

Unwilling or unable to face down such intransigence, the British discarded the power-sharing initiative. The Sunningdale Agreement, which had offered so much hope only five months earlier, collapsed.

 

Ursula's first coherent question to her son was not about her own condition. “Is the baby all right?” When he assured her little Brian was fine, she said, “What about my horses?”

“Don't worry, I've already contacted Paul Morrissey. He's going to manage the farm until you're home again.”

“Paul Morrissey?”

“You remember him, Ursula,” Barry said patiently. “He owns the farm just north of yours. Four big strapping sons. Horse-crazy twin daughters.”

She forced herself to concentrate.
Forget the pain. Wipe it away. Think. Think!
“Dorothy and Eleanor. They're…fourteen.”

“They are.”

Ursula gave a satisfied sigh and went back to sleep.

The next time she awoke Father Michael was at her bedside. When she saw the dog collar she closed her eyes again. The priest stayed where he was.

A dark presence hovering. Like death. Well, I'm not ready.
“I don't want you,” she said aloud.

“You need me,” he assured her.

“I need a doctor.”

“My concern is not with your bodily health, but your immortal soul.”

“My soul's fine,” she said peevishly.

“Are you in a state of grace, my child?”

“I seriously doubt it.”

The priest frowned at her chart. “You
are
a Catholic, are you not?”

Her reply shocked him. “I believe in the creator of the universe. I don't believe in organised religion.”

Barry rented a furnished room within yards of the Rotunda. He used it for sleeping; the rest of the time he was at the hospital. He never went out, and he had no desire to photograph the devastation the bombs had caused. The camera had served as a filter between himself and many dire scenes, but it could not filter out his imagination. He knew he would see his mother lying in the rubble.

The anger was growing in him again. Growing, and growing.

 

The Ulster Volunteer Force denied any responsibility for the bombings, yet within hours of the events reliable informants had reported that two cells of the organisation had been involved. One group had driven down from Belfast to attack Dublin. Others, from nearby Cavan, were responsible for the bombing in Monaghan.
²

The sophistication of the four bombs far exceeded the technology of the loyalist paramilitaries. Experts in the Republic had realised very quickly that the bombings could not have been carried out without collusion on the part of the RUC—and possibly elements of British Intelligence as well. To make such a claim would be to accuse Britain of having bombed another sovereign nation. Under international law, that was an act of war.

When notified by the British authorities that several suspects were being held in custody in Northern Ireland, the Irish government did not react. The RUC invited members of the Garda Siochana to come north and sit in on interrogation of the suspects, but they declined.

Instead of bringing the full force of the law to bear in finding the murderers and bringing them to justice, the Fine Gael/Labour coalition set out to use the atrocity to further its own anti-republican agenda. Conor Cruise O'Brien, minister for posts and telegraphs, blamed republicans for “provoking” the loyalists.

The bombings disappeared from the media headlines. Few of the victims' families were even offered condolences by their local politicians. No national day of mourning was announced. The national flag was not flown at half-mast. No fund was set up for the dependents of the murder victims, nor was any support or counselling offered to them.

The Department of Justice files on the bombings went missing, never to surface again.

In a reverse of the IRA slogan, “One bomb in London is worth a hundred in Belfast,” the loyalists had proved that one bomb in Dublin was worth a hundred in Belfast. The Irish government was so frightened by the events in Dublin-Monaghan that they would turn their collective backs on the north for years, preferring to act as if the Six Counties and their problems did not exist.

 

Ursula hated hospitals and everything to do with them. Most of all she hated being helpless.
Trapped in a plaster mummy case!
When she sneezed and a nurse enquired, “Do we need to blow our nose?” Ursula replied coldly, “I wasn't aware we shared a common nose, but if you need to blow yours, go ahead. It's big enough.”

On Wednesday night the Usual Suspects met in the Bleeding Horse.

“Every dog and devil knows it was the UVF what done it,” said Patsy.

Luke added, “This is one atrocity they don't dare beat the drum about, though. It might turn their supporters in Whitehall
^*
against them.”

“Unless Whitehall had a hand in it,” Danny muttered darkly.

“The bombings made the international papers,” said Brendan. “I usually purchase
Le Monde
at the news agency across from Trinity, but with the streets blocked off I had to walk for half a mile to find a copy. They're calling this ‘a Protestant backlash.'”
³

Danny was clenching and unclenching his big fists. The gnarled knuckles resembled the roots of some ancient oak tree pushing up from the earth. “If I was five years younger I'd go north tomorrow and give 'em the same as they gave us.”

“We already have,” Brendan reminded him. “It was called Bloody Friday. We bomb and shoot them and they shoot and bomb us. Where is it going to end?” He shook his head wearily. “Where is it going to end at all?”

Ursula begged her son for news of the outside world. “They won't let me have a radio,” she complained.

“They're trying to keep you quiet for your own good. Listen here while I tell you about Brian instead. He's amazing; not yet a year old and he's trying to stand up. Barbara says he's precocious.”

“Talk to me about Talbot Street, Barry.”

“Absolutely not!”

“I can't believe it happened again,” she said, with wonder in her voice.

He wished he could see the expression beneath her bandages. “What do you mean ‘again,' Ursula?”

“British artillery blew Dublin to pieces in 1916. Síle was holding my hand and we were trying to get away.” Her breathing grew laboured but she was determined to go on. “I heard a strange whistling sound, then everything went black. I heard the same sound in Talbot Street, Barry. The
same sound,
” she stressed.

“Ursula, the bomb in Talbot Street used gelignite; I could smell it. Believe me when I tell you it couldn't have made a whistling noise.”

“But I heard it. I heard it!”

When McCoy arrived as he did every day, Barry said, “Will you stay with her while I have a little chat with her doctor? Don't be surprised if she rambles a bit, Séamus, she took a frightful knock on the head.”

He found the doctor he sought in another ward, surrounded by anxious relatives all trying to talk to him at once. Barry waited with barely controlled impatience until he was able to get the man's attention. “My mother seems confused today.”

“Ah…yes. We need to talk, Mr. Halloran.” Taking Barry by the elbow, the doctor steered him into the corridor and around a corner. “Your mother's mental state is due to her concussion and the medication she's on. There is a more serious problem. We're able to deal with her lower-body injuries, but she also has suffered damage to the spinal cord.”

“Can you operate?”

“Not in this case. We simply don't know enough about spinal cord injuries.”

“Will it heal on its own?”

The doctor allowed his professional mask to slip just enough to reveal the human beneath. “I wish I could say yes, but that would be giving you false hope. I'm afraid your mother will never walk again.”

When Barry returned to the ward McCoy glanced up. “Your face is as long as a wet winter, Seventeen.”

Barry gave a tiny nod to indicate he wanted to speak to him outside. Ursula's sharp eyes noticed the gesture. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong,” Barry assured her. “It's just some business about the boardinghouse.”

McCoy followed Barry into the corridor. He listened with his head down and his arms folded across his chest; as stolid as an ox waiting for the axe to fall. “You sure you got it right, Seventeen? Maybe you didn't understand the medical jargon.”