The Troubles (10 page)

     We come to a fast halt yet again. I can sense through Quinn’s muscular tension his weakening pace and I hear his ragged breathing as his cardiovascular system toils. I am physically subdued by the dragging of his leaden weight as the unforgiving hypothermic symptoms are beginning their pillage and hostile takeover athwart all three of our exhausted bodies. The systematic burning and consequent numbing has by now graduated past the smaller extremities of our feet, hands and ears and perhaps most perilously, the descending frostbite has made its way deeper to our vulnerable cores. 

     My hand assumes the ghastly illusion of a phantom’s hand as I catch the wall of a grey stone town home to my right. My android like fingers are becoming paralyzed with blue tinged fingertips giving way to my pale white palms, the red blood cells absent and obstructed to give life. My fingers have come to berth upon a sticky crimson red substance and I immediately recoil with animistic revulsion as I see dark blood clinging to the pillow pads. I quickly decide that where the blood has come from is of no concern to me right now for this is the time of ‘The Troubles’ in my land. Where my own apathy and managing counterbalance has risen from, is a dark depth in my soul. In my nineteen years I had not yet encountered this cool plateau as survival has an ironic way of absolving one’s fears in the wash of adrenaline.

     “We’re here. Let’s go inside. There will be help in the gaff,” I whisper with relief. We have reached the finish line and as much as celebration is the emotion most adequate, I momentarily fear the Catholics that await with drink, beyond the heavy mahogany wood doors. Bright lights blind me as darkness stealthily creeps beyond stairs, overtaking the welcoming glow with its shadowy boding. I finally fall into a comforting pillow as all goes black.

      ‘’That lad’s foot’s banjaxed! It looks bloody savage and broken.” The gossiping gasps of onlookers attempt to drown the imposing voice that discreetly says, “These fine girls must have been caught in the cold, rain earlier. They mustn’t have been mates look at them.” I can hear the conversation floating above me in fluctuating notes with broken incriminates of blank silence. “Quick get a blanket and put on a kettle.” A warm, maternal sounding woman assumes control and as though my mind can sense able hands, I peer into darkness yet again.

CHAPTER 15: Is ard ceann an fheidl sa chreachann (Lofty is the deer’s head on the top of the mountain)

     Alastar Taggart…What comes with the wind will go with the water. We have crossed the Northern Channel, which separates Northern Ireland from the west coast of Scotland and we now have encountered the Irish Sea, which is connected further south to the Celtic Sea by St. George’s Channel, which is making its way into the purview on the right of our morning’s drive. The mellow light of dawn is kissing the royal blue water of the sea as white crest caps of surf rhythmically fall onto muted pale sand and ash grey weatherworn rocks of the shoreline.

     “Mornin’ Alastar. Ya look a mighty fine mess this morn.’’ Lanary has rejuvenated from his long overdue rest and he is almost lyrical with his greeting as his crinkled eyes reflect his good mood.

     “Aye, Lanary. Ya all right? We’ve just past the town Drogheda and we’ll be arriving shortly to the north of Dublin.”

     “Let’s stop for a moment so I can relieve myself and we’ll switch so ya can get a minute’s rest.”

     “Aye, okay.” I slowly maneuver the vehicle into a humming purr to the side of the two-lane road rolling into a full stop as I clutch down. We have arrived at Portmarnock Beach and it’s at least 7 am, as the sun is peaking its bright head over the eastern horizon.

     “I’ll give anything for a bet to say we’ve arrived at the Velvet Strand Beach, eh,” Lanary declares, astutely recognizing the smooth pearls of sand that blanket the land and the white beads being the catalyst for this shores defining nickname.

     “Aye yer right on that, Lanary.” I engage the millennia formed rough terrain valiantly and begin a descent down the ragged rocks onto the famed silken sand. I can hear a sibilating of Lanary’s familiar bemused laughter.

     “Alright Son. Yer gatch is mighty foolish, be careful! Always acting the maggot, huh, Alastar.” I am breathing in the ocean’s mist that is vaporizing up from the seabed seeping into the green fauna that I am directly in front of. The pungent scents of salt and sea life shower the shore after such a night’s effort and the illuminating effects of the water’s salty shower refreshes and invigorates me from my night’s lack of sleep. 

     “Hear that, Lanary?’’ Soft, billowing notes of wooden pipes are being carried from the north on what must be a hefty gulf stream of wind, further enhancing the enchantment of the shoreline.

     “Ya know in me advanced age, me hearings not so fine, lad.” Lanary strains his ears anyway to the faint sound. The emoting, powerful octaves of the uillean pipes can be heard from afar as we simultaneously hear the melody of an Irish funeral tune in the wind from further up the shoreline at a more private beach.

     Respectfully, Lanary quietly observes. “Aye. I am remembering one of me most endearing memories of childhood when me Da, it must have before me mother had gone, was attempting, but failing to teach me how to play the uillean pipes. ‘Son’, he had said, to the letter, ‘uillean’ means 'pipes of the elbow’ not pipes of the shoulder. How do ya mean to inflate it with that hefty breath of yers if ya cannot hold the bag proper?” Lanary recounts his story with an open sentiment I am not accustomed to. 

     The Irish wake can be overheard in the distance coming to a grand billowing finale; the final act of the ceremony to be the burial of the departed. This wake is such an integral part of Irish funeral traditions but as the nation is contending with such astronomical numbers of the dead, the cities are no longer acquiescing to the ancient traditions. The countryside, as Lanary and I are discovering, is still observing the ritual of physically watching over the deceased from the time of their death to their burial. This observance, perhaps, a bit of Irish lore, has reasoning in that there were many people who had frequent lead poisoning caused by drinking stout from pewter tankards. The symptoms would resemble a catatonic state resembling death. Therefore to stand vigil by the sufferer’s side was a necessary one. If this was the truth or more folklore, to further establish our national pastime of alcoholism was now irrelevant, because the result was a wake that was an opportunity to celebrate the life and say goodbye in person. The delayed burial marked the departed member into the fabric of society and eternalized them in the memories of their loved ones.

     ‘’T’is lovely here, right now in this very moment, eh son.’’ Lanary has unceremoniously undressed, revealing his untold story upon his half naked body; there is a sickle shaped scar that has woven two sections of aging skin tightly together. Time has yearned to bury it along with Lanary’s shaded secrets, but gazing at the jagged etch across the shoulder blade making its way down his spinal cord to sit perfunctory upon his lumbar, I know the brutal mutilation must have been a near fatal one. He has dropped his final undergarment and briskly, with engrained military march, makes his way into the surf that is forcefully breaking perilously close to the shoreline.

     ‘‘Mind ye self, old man. I wouldn’t like to lose ya at sea.’’ Delighting in the revelry my companion was sporting this morning, I too undress, perhaps more slowly and shyly, but once I am fully naked, I strangely feel perfectly calm and shameless. “Aye here goes nothing.’’ I lunge into a break of unimaginably freezing surf and with grains of sand between my toes, I brace for the impact to take my breath.

  The pause has passed almost as quickly as any other mundane non-event in my humble life, but this bonding one I have locked away in my fortress of Celtic memories. The truly unique experiences that have entwined me with this fine land have been ebbed as though in iron ore deep inside my medial temporal lobe and as I have grown older, my storage of profound experiences become my refuge, when I cannot bear to witness to the calamity and turmoil that seems to be churning around every citizen, which ever religion, which ever class, the green fertile land hearths and provides altruistically for us all to live.

     We are finally in Leinster county, as the electric current that is felt before one even sees a city, both Lanary and I are experiencing, as silent glances between one another forge us into a companionship that I, at this moment, trembling slightly with anticipation in the passenger seat, am deeply thankful for. One never truly knows ones courage nor his comrades ‘til they are facing fear of death.

     “Ya all right Alastar?”

     “Aye just boggin’ on!” My voice cracks nervously and I know when I meet with Cathal Goulding I must will my ability to deceive and not reveal my cowardice at any cost. The green outer landscape of Dublin is at initial encounter, breathtaking, as it is of common local pride, that the city has more green space per square kilometer than any other European capital city.

     “I’ll keep on the sketch by the door while ye having yer chat.” Lanary asserts himself as my ranking caretaker as he perhaps more than anyone else understands the dangerous exposure we are both in, as we face our rendezvous. Not only are we entrenching ourselves fully with the Official Sinn Feinn Workers Party of Dublin which in this newly appointed leadership, appears to be precarious in itself like a poorly built house of cards, but if the location of the meet is not covert enough and the paramilitary sees us, we will be thrown without trial, into Her Majesty’s Prison Maze. The inevitable lethality that I would die there, in Northern Irelands’ most infamous Gulag, is exhibiting itself with the same noxious acidic bile that has burned my gullet periodically over the previous weeks. The encounter a few days ago, of witnessing Reardon’s dead body had pushed the searing liquid past my throat and this moment it seems that my reflexes are reflecting the same damning behavior.

     The A1 road, which is the major route in Dublin from the North, has now changed into the N1 road and shortly we will be travelling onto the M1 Motorway. Mary McAleese Boyne Valley Bridge is a squall of architecturally astounding form and to now have crossed it, symbolizing for me, traversing a moat of sorts and entering a lair of with which there is no escape.

     “We’ll take the next junction to St. Anne’s and we’ll be met by an associate. We’ll then be given directions and proceed.”

     “Aye, we must be covert and unassuming, Lanary.”

     “Always am, Alastar Taggart.”

CHAPTER 16: Beidh la eile ag an bPaorach (We will live to fight another day)

     Kiera Flanagan…There is a morphing face in the shadows as the faded dark shapes close in on me. I know this person before me as I am welcoming his lush, warm embrace. His lips touch mine, hot, I instantly wither and melt as though I have been seared. “Kiera, my love.” Breathless susurrates are coming from the shadows and with trepidation, revealed from them, are the living, vivid green eyes I prize.

     I am alive; I must be because if I were not I wouldn’t be in this much agony. My last visceral memory is having completely lost all feeling in my fingers and toes. My eyes are still shut and I worryingly question why can I not open them? I will them to open with all my might yet I cannot! Begrudging, I move on to my fingers and I agitate them with the same might I had willed for my eyes and they as though mechanically, with little fluidity, all bend and close. I bring my right hand to my face and with my fingers, as small torture devices, I instantaneously feel the blistering heat of my immensely swollen shuteyes. The pain dissipates from one body part to another allowing one crucial mystery to be solved, which I promise myself to deal with later. Methodically, and with consternation I rarely exhibit, I attempt to curl my strangely absent feeling toes. There is no movement and perhaps more fear inducing no pain as I question, am I paralyzed? Panicking, I cry aloud pitifully, “Help, dear Lord of mine! Ena are ya there by me side?” Tears are now fissuring like sprung leaks from my encased eyelids.

      I am anxiously growing impatient as nothing but silence greets me. The heat that my ear lobes are throwing off seem to be emitting a repetitive buzzing sound and I now, don’t know, whether I am deaf as well as blind. As I cry with presumptive fear for my future, a warm, tender hand takes mine and strokes it. It is Ena’s caress and a flood of joy and relief quickly absolves my terror. She and I are safe and whatever condition we are in, suddenly seems irrelevant. ‘’Quinn? Did he get his leg seen to?” I croak impatiently.

     “Aye Kiera. Patrick and Philomena McGurk have rung the doctor.” Her voice sounds strong as she emotes a commanding spirit. “We are all fine, but bloody knows these days with all the turmoil, it could be God awful worse!” 

     Warm compresses of castor oil work their medicinal wonders, as they lie encased over my eyes, which by now have reduced at least double from their inflammatory response to hypothermia. Blinking to relieve them from the slick of thick warm oil, I am somewhat more relaxed, as I take in my surroundings through a hazed circular vision. There is such poor lamp light in the pub that I have little spatial awareness, so to gather further information, I first attempt to sit up. My brain viciously throbs as though my body is attacking me and I’m exhaustively furious at my own physical symptoms. Why can’t my body just comply with my demands? I grit violently on my teeth but I have already let down my guard and shown what a poor patient and coward I am to these Catholics.