—You were holding a wooden leg, she said.
—That’s right.
She was looking at my feet.
—Not that one, I told her.—Another one.
She knew the story; her mother would have told her.
—Do you have to do it? she said.
—Yes, I said.—I do.
There were nine candidates, nine big constituencies. The candidates were prisoners, four of them on hunger strike. I was their ancestor, their breathing link to the pure days. I was the rightness of their actions. And they ran me ragged.They dragged me through the wild border counties where, north of the line, the British ruled the air but none of the land, where, south of the line, the locals rode their livestock and smuggled out of principle. I had to stop shaking hands because my own hands and arms were loose in their sockets. I couldn’t hold a soup spoon. I couldn’t put on my own coat. There was rioting every night in Belfast and Derry, and tension you could lean on in the south. Ireland was dead, a failure, a third world country in Western Europe - I heard this every night. And we knew why, and who to blame. People voted for starving men because they hated Thatcher. She’d done this to us, in Cavan/Monaghan, in Sligo/Leitrim, in Dublin North-Central, in Kerry North.
Two of the men were elected, Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew.
They carried me on their shoulders, because there were no elected candidates to carry. The heroes were dead or in Long Kesh, so they carried me and Dinny Archer.
I finally met him.
Under a streetlamp. Two old men on the shoulders of the young. Right under the lamp. Someone just arriving would have thought they were going to hang us. We faced each other, under the yellow light. I knew him first.
—Dinny, I said.
He was older than me, and blind.
—Who are you? he said.
—Yeh cunt, I said.—You know who I am.
He was sharp, and fleshless. He must have been well past ninety. There was no blood working under the skin; the mouth was a rip across a yellow skull. He was a better-looking hermit than I was. And he was terrified.
He knew me, alright. And suddenly I knew - now, under the yellow light, it clicked: he was as big a chancer as I was. I knew why he hadn’t exposed me as the fake M.P. and insisted on his own status as the only surviving real one. Because if he got me, then I’d get him. The republican legends would bring each other down.
We stared across at each other, two trigger men who wouldn’t be drawing their guns.
When I’d come down the stairs from Jack Dalton’s office, onto Mary Street, Dinny Archer had been there on the other side of the street, waiting to execute me.
And that was it.
Now, in June 1981, on a damp night in El Paso, County Louth, I laughed into his face. And he, the blind old fucker, knew exactly why.
He’d been on the wrong side.
Jack Dalton had been clearing the way for the new respectability. That was why I’d been destined for the ditch with a bullet in the back of my head. He knew there was a treaty coming, and he knew there’d be the compromises that men like me would never accept. If he’d listened, if he’d wanted to know, I’d have told him that I didn’t give a shite. My war was over, and I only had one man left that I needed to kill: Alfie Gandon. (But Gandon was going to be part of the new respectability too. Gandon was actually their first respectable man.) But Jack hadn’t wanted to know. There’d be the Treaty, and the split. I’d be on the wrong side, so he’d get rid of me a few months early, before it got really busy. Jack would be on the pro-Treaty side; I’d be against it. So my name came at me on a piece of paper and his executioner, Dinny Archer M.P., was downstairs, waiting for me.
Myself and Dinny had been together before. His credentials were impeccable. We’d been together when I shot Detective Sergeant Smith, of G Division. We’d gone into the same hotel room in the Gresham, on the morning of Bloody Sunday, and we’d shot the man we’d gone there to shoot while, in other hotels and bedrooms, other men did the same. The young lads holding us up knew all about that day and our part in it together.
I laughed again.
—Good man, Dinny.
Somehow, after I’d lost touch, after I’d sailed away to a new name, Dinny had changed sides. No one alive knew that he’d once been a hit man for Jack Dalton and the other men who betrayed the Republic. No one except me.
—Been down Mary Street recently, Dinny? I asked him; I shouted across the noise and polished heads.
He didn’t answer.
Commandant Denis Archer. Some time after Mary Street, he’d changed his mind. Dinny had converted to diehardism and, as the other diehards died off, he’d become the last of the breed and the one surviving member of the only legitimate Dáil and, in the eyes of the faithful, the true Republic’s only elected representative. He even claimed to be the man who’d put the last bullet into Jack Dalton. (Although he wasn’t the only man who claimed that one.) In 1938, Dinny and the few other diehard T.D.s had handed over their authority to the I.R.A. Army Council. The I.R.A. became the legal and lawful government. All other parliaments were
illegal assemblies, the willing tools of an occupying force.
In 1969, when the others were all dead, Dinny endorsed the Provisionals’ break from the Official I.R.A. The Provos became the true government - because Dinny said so.
—The cat got your tongue, Dinny?
For the last six months they’d been using myself and Dinny, the holy relics, parading us up and down the country, at candle-lit vigils and election rallies. And, now, finally, we were face to face. Maybe by accident. But maybe deliberately - we were always watched; no one in the republican movement was trusted.
They separated us now, the fat and skinny lads who were holding us up, and they brought us back, and did it again, and brought us back.
Ooh-Ah - Up the ’R.A.!
Then we were side by side, like the chariots in
Ben Hur
. Two old men on the shoulders of the Republic’s sweating future, doing a lap of the square. We were neck and neck most of the way, our legs bashed and rasped.
Ooh-Ah - Up the ’R.A.!
Wood collided with bone. Did sparks fly when the dead met? I saw them that night.
And I won. I was waiting for him when the lads got tired and dropped us to the ground. I watched the face, the uncertainty that his blindness couldn’t hide, as he was held in midair, and lowered.
We were being watched. Eyes, and eyes. And other eyes. And ears.
I put out my hand.
—Good to see you, Dinny, I said.
He was genuinely blind. He wasn’t Ford, who hadn’t needed his eyes to see. Archer couldn’t see a thing. He couldn’t see my hand. A younger hand, much younger - a grandson’s? - took Dinny’s and brought it to mine. The younger hand let go, and Archer now felt mine. He felt me grab it slowly.
I leaned closer to the face, and the big ear - the streetlight shone right through it.
—Will I tell them now, Dinny? I said.—Will I tell them all about Mary Street?
I got away from the ear, to watch the face. Nothing changed there, but the grip did. He was suddenly the man doing the holding. My grip became his, and he was leaning across to me as the pain climbed up my arm and ate into my shoulder. I felt his breath. I smelt it - he’d had an egg for his tea, and some chips.
—You won’t, he said.
His other hand found my head and pulled it even closer to his mouth.
—You were never anything but a renegade, he said.—We’ll say nothing.
I might have broken his fingers but they were still all set to break mine.
—We’ll call a halt when I count to three, he said.
His face hadn’t budged. Mine hadn’t either - old nerves were slow in registering the pain.
—One, two. Three.
We both let go, and the night was full of clapping hands and whoops. The young hand that had guided Dinny’s hand to mine now took his arm and stirred him away. It belonged to a girl, not a boy, and she looked back at me and smiled. I wanted to be Dinny.
The man with the beard was beside me.
—That was extraordinary, he said.
I nodded.
—Great to see Denis again, hey.
—Ah, yeah, I said.
I’d survived. I was still the last of the rebels. But so was Dinny.
—Denis Archer once changed his mind?
—Yeah.
—For the one and only time in his life, said the Clare man.—Jesus.
He looked at Campion.
—You know what we have here, don’t you? he said.
—A brand new historical fact, said Campion.
—If it’s true.
—It’s true, I told them.—He was on the pro-Treaty side. He’d have shot me if I hadn’t been quicker than him.
—Pro-Treaty, said the Clare man.—But before there was a Treaty. But, fair enough now, let’s not quibble.
—We could bring them down with this, said Campion.
—The whole shooting gallery, the Clare man agreed.—We could go home to our beds.
They looked delighted, giddy, kids with a frog in a jar.
We were on the bus again, the only passengers. The Clare man looked at me.
—We could end it now with what you’ve told us, Henry. You’re a fraud. And now Archer’s a fraud as well. The republican religion is built on two whoppers.
Campion patted my back.
—But Dinny
was
an M.P., I reminded them.
—But he changed his mind, said the Clare man.—He’s tainted. Think of all those gobshites who adore him. Literally fuckin’ adore him. O’Brádaigh. O’Connaill, with his fuckin’ trenchcoat. The priesty fellas. They’d be devastated if they ever found out. Archer changed his mind. Imagine. Changing your mind. It’s the mortal sin. It’s worse than compromising, sure.
He laughed.
—A few words with our colleagues in the Garda press office. Or, better yet, a chat with an eminent historian who’d write something erudite for the
Irish Times
. ‘Archer Changed His Mind.’ Or, ‘Archer Shot Opponents of the Treaty.’ We’d have Adams and wee Danny running for the dictionary, looking for a new definition of ‘legitimacy’. And where would that leave you, Henry?
I shrugged.
—The last man standing, he said.
Campion patted my back again.
—But a quiet word from one of our inside men, ‘Smart wasn’t in the First Dáil, check it out.’ And that leaves them with no one. No rock left on which to build their church. They’d whack you, Henry.
—No, they wouldn’t.
—Why would you think that? Of all people?
—Bad press, I said.
I was wide awake, enjoying myself. I’d just spent two hours with my daughter.
—Killing an old man, I said.—They wouldn’t do it.
—You’re naïve, Henry. After all these years.
I shrugged - I tried to.
—No, I said.
—Sure, they wouldn’t give it a second thought, man. They shoot housewives, they kneecap children. They don’t care about bad press. They’d shoot the journalist.
—I couldn’t give a shite, I said.
—If they whacked you?
—No, I said.
And then, there, I meant it. They could shoot me, or do me in with a mallet. I’d lived a life. I was full and happy enough.
—They’d hurt you, said the Clare man.
He meant
he’d
hurt me. The old man in the jar.
I shrugged.
—They’d be able to get at you, Henry, said my pal Campion.
I shrugged again. And I knew I’d overdone it.
The Clare man looked at me like he was delivering a promise.
—A pillow over your wife’s face while they made you watch, he said.—That would hurt, I’d say.
—Take it easy, said Campion.
—Or your daughter, said the Clare man.
His face was right in front of mine, so close I couldn’t see him. —They’d blow her brains out right in front of your eyes, he said.
He took a smoke from his pack. I had to wait till he lit it.
—Just as
we
get to know each other again, he said.
He was quoting my daughter, saying exactly what she’d said to me an hour before, as we sat beside Miss O’Shea. The room in the home was bugged and I was a clown.
—And they’d rape her first.
—They wouldn’t, I said - I managed to say.
—Wouldn’t they now?
—They wouldn’t do that.
—You’re right, he said.—Faith and family, isn’t that it? They’d strap her to a fertiliser bomb but they’d never touch her where they shouldn’t touch her. Because that would be a sin. But killing her clean, because she’s the blood of your bad blood. They’d talk their way around that one.
He smiled.
—So, Henry, he said.—You can’t die on us just yet. We’re depending on you. And so is someone else.
He patted my cheek - he slapped.
—Okay?
—Easy, said Campion.
I nodded.
—Good man, said the Clare man.—But d’you know what? We still don’t know the answer to the question we really need the answer to. Why you? Why have they canonised you? When they already had Archer. They go and bloody manufacture you. They had to make you up. Why?
I had an answer.
—The hunger strikes and the elections, I said.—It’s too much for one man.
—That’s possible, he said.—But it’s not enough. It’s not the answer.
He patted my shoulder.
—I want the answer. Or we’ll just have to give up on it and move on. Are you with me?
—Yeah.
—I want the answer, Henry. I’ll even tell you what I think.
He waited until I looked straight at him.
—There’s more than one man changed his mind in this, he said.—That’s my theory.
She’d talked for hours.
No one came in to check on her mother. There’d have been no point. She was as stubborn as she’d always been, and solid now as well. She looked like she’d been carved from lovely wood. She was dead but she’d outlive us.