Brian Liddy, ContributorHave you none of your own language? What are they teaching you in that school beyond? When I was a boy, they'd beat it into you. Do you hear me? Beat it into you, they would.
MY GRANDFATHER fought in the Easter Rising. No. It was the troubles that followed he was involved in. They hid IRA men in all the corners of the house, under beds, beneath the stairs. Guns were found sporadically throughout my youth. Found in old disused barns. One was found in the hay shed by my brother; it had been wrapped clumsily in an old coat and buried halfheartedly in the dirt. That was before I was alive, and my brother never asked whether it had been fired or not. It never crossed his mind to ask if it had been used, either on the English or on our own during the Civil War. I fancied in my childhood that it had been used on some English agent. It had been drawn by the leader of one of the flying columns and discharged with all the accuracy of a just cause. Later, maybe it had been used at Beal na Bla. My people were Dev-men. Munster Republicans.
Here's a shilling, Darragh. Come on and I'll drop you to school. What time did your father get in last night? That late. Jesus, he's a martyr for that stuff.
My name was never Darragh. My grandfather refused to call me by any other name. He said I should never have been christened the name I was. He said it was an English name and that they'd had enough influence over our lives. Evenings, he'd come down to the house and sit in the kitchen with my mother, telling her time and again that she was an unusually patient and loving woman, that she deserved better than his son could ever hope to offer. The dog would sit by him, tail brushing the lino, head tilted toward the tall figure of my grandfather, who rarely touched the animal. The dog, too, suffered the ignominy of my grandfather's stubborn refusal to call anything by foreign names. Every dog in the neighbourhood responded to his call, for he called them all Bran. Why did he call it a shilling?
They shouldn't have done that. We'd never have done that in my time. Sometimes you'd nearly think they were just thugs, not running a war at all. Missiles and time bombs, how are you. Women and children, and no regard for the Church.
At school, we'd deny their importance when teachers were present. They are not the same organisation at all, our History teacher would tell us. No comparison. The old men had principles. Now they're just murdering people. Night after night the BBC news would talk about them, and it sent a warm feeling through me to hear the words repeated over and over again: Ireland. The Irish. The Dublin Government responded. Sophisticated terrorist organisation. My grandfather would pretend to ignore the television, saying that he'd heard enough about the mayhem that went on in those parts of the country. He'd have the newspaper opened, obscuring his line of vision, but he'd never turn the page. The harsher words of the announcer would be met with a rough crackling of the newsprint and a deep clearing of the throat. My grandmother, a small-framed woman forever dangling from the end of a More cigarette, would gaze as if transfixed by the colours and images that flickered on the screen. It's hard to have sympathy with them sometimes, she would mutter, but sure, war's a funny thing.
Saturdays in town they'd stand outside the Church near the city centre in groups of four or five. The newspaper would be held aloft, large red letters spelling out the Irish: An Phoblacht. Time and again I watched their faces, wondering if they'd ever killed a man. What was it like to kill a man?
They shouldn't be here. We don't want to hurt anyone, but they shouldn't be in our country. They've been here for hundreds of years. What are they if not Northern Irish? Where can they go? They should have thought of that before.
I'll never forget when we heard them banging in the door. We made a rush for the window. Flannery got out ahead of me. My feet hadn't even hit the ground when I heard the shot. We couldn't hang around to find out, but we knew they'd got Tadhg. We found out later that they'd shot him in the back. Murdering bastards is all they were, and I hope they suffer an eternity of tortures for what they did to us. To think of it, had I been sitting one chair to my left I'd have been the last to that shagging window.
Week after week I'd stand on the opposite side of the road. I'd tell myself that all it would take was a bit of guts and why should I be afraid? I give them the money, take a newspaper and walk away. What could be easier? Instead, I'd start talking with the other crowd, the Marxist Militants who sold their newspaper at the next corner. We're not an organisation, they'd tell me; if anybody ever asks we're not an organisation. They'd arrest us. They have all our names. Paranoia ran deep amongst them and they believed that the moment of international revolution was on the horizon. I'd read their newspapers, but they were full of harsh-sounding political words that made the most simple adventure sound like a scientific formula. My mother would curse me from a height for bringing Bolshevik literature into the house and she'd take it from me. Days later it could be found soaking up the dog's urine, and an occasional headline would stick in my mind from where it lay near-glued to the lino. In all our years, we never had a dog that was house-trained. The smell of stale urine wafted through the house, a familiar fragrance that became part of our environment.
Once, and I'm not proud of it. It had to be done. I had little or no choice in the matter. Can you understand that, Darragh? It's not something that I'm proud of. It's not something I'm proud of.
I gave him the coins and took the paper from his hands. He watched me carefully for a moment but said nothing, and when I walked away I felt his eyes following me as I moved. Cover to cover, I read it. In the bathroom, I read it. The black print came away on my hands and the blood boiled and burned beneath my skin. Why could I not have been born back then? It seemed so much more clear-cut then; an Irishman had a duty. But the cause is the same, I thought. They are fighting for the same goal, fighting to unite a country that has been beaten and plundered since time immemorial. I convinced myself that I supported the struggle, brought the newspaper to school and watched as the eyes of my friends popped. Where did you get it? You didn't. You're done for now. Did they ask for your name? Were the guards watching? I bet you anything the guards'll have your name. Like the leader of a flying column, I dismissed the worries of my classmates. To hell with the guards. Free Staters.
Ah, Collins was a good man till he went astray. He should never have signed that treaty. Never. Dev knew. What was Collins anyway, only a great killer. He never had the skills. Do you understand me, Darragh? Never had the know-how.
I never bought another copy. I went once more and stood gazing across at the sellers. A tight sensation in my stomach and the distinct desire to empty out my bowels prevented me from approaching them again.
Enniskillen hurt me. I remember sitting there in the house, my eyes on the television, and watching as an old man told how his daughter, a young nurse, had been blown to bits in the blast. I remember watching him, and I couldn't dismiss what he was saying as propaganda. Something in his voice, in that face laden with sorrow. His daughter dead, and no curses from his mouth. He had a Northern Irish accent, and I couldn't tell if it were Shankill or Falls. My grandfather looked up from his newspaper and stared trance-like at the tube. Gangsters, he said, and left the room. Numbed, I went upstairs and thought about ripping up the newspaper that lay hidden amongst old schoolwork in the back of the wardrobe. What good would that do, I thought, and hid it away in the attic instead.
Once, and I'm not proud of it. You have to look at the symbol. Do you understand me, Darragh? You have to look at the symbol. If you think of the person, if you look on him as an individual, you're in deep trouble. Never think of the person, only what he represents.
When he died, it was an ordinary affair. He slipped away quietly enough. Took to a bit of whiskey to numb out the pain he was feeling and wondered once why he hadn't discovered its wondrous powers years ago. The priest was charitable. The old man had been a great churchgoer. Even when the health failed him, a priest would come to the house and give him communion. It's a great religion, he used to say, especially the confessional. Takes away the sins of the world. I never heard of a will of any kind. My grandmother gave me his medals and left me to run through the books that were stacked high in his musty old room that smelled heavily of moth balls. There was a tricolour present at the funeral, but no ceremony of any kind, save the low mumbling of the mourners and a word or two heard here and there about Republicanism; somebody said something about deValera, but I couldn't catch it. As we walked away from the cemetery, toward the cars that had been parked at a distance, I saw my grandmother being helped down the gravel path. It wouldn't be long, I remember thinking, it wouldn't be long now.
As she sat into the car, her eyes caught mine. There was no terrific sorrow in them; a resigned look lay upon her as she stared directly at me before the door closed, and she was gone.
The house was filled with a restrained jollity. Stories went around, exaggerated stories that resembled no truth that I'd ever heard from his lips. Later, much later, somebody sang a rebel song, and, trembling like a leaf, I hummed along with him.
