Carn (18 page)

There is no other way for me now,
thought Josie,
there is only one way I can win now. I said I’d do it before and I will do it I will
.

Her hands were shaking as she took the tube of tablets from the shelf and emptied a handful of them into her mouth. She left the door open behind her and went out into the snow. She walked until
she came to the bank of the lake. She stood there and brought all the voices back to her mind. She slowly waded into the water and hoped she’d faint. Three times she immersed herself but each
time it became more difficult and when she saw herself as one of the bodies, with white bulging cheeks and a bloated stomach floating through the semi-opaque water, the fear took complete control
of her. She could not break the surface the fourth time. She cried helplessly as she struggled back to the bank. She felt the strength going from her legs.

When she awoke it was dark again and the cramps tore at her stomach. A water hen skitted in the reeds. The white fields stretched into the distance where a churchbell rang.

When she got back to the house, the gas fire had burnt itself out. Pat Lacey had gone, the bedclothes still in disarray. Josie clutched at the door to steady herself. When she saw the three
twenty pound notes under the saucer she felt nothing. She just stood there staring into space, her wet nightdress flapping at her heels.

Far off in the town she heard the first rumblings of what she took to be thunder.

XIII

The explosion rocked the town.

The fire engine raced up and down the main street as if it had lost its way. The waitress in the Railway Hotel was hysterical, screaming help me help me. The siren skirled out into the night.
The Christmas tree had toppled over and crashed through the Hypermarket window. The tarmac had cracked open and a burst watermain sent up a fountain of water like a huge orchid. A policeman in
oilskins called nervously through a loudhailer, “Please go to your homes. There is no need to panic.” But the more he appealed, the more people appeared in doorways, wandering through
the streets in a daze. It was as if the place had fallen victim to an eerie mass hypnosis. They stared at the cables which criss-crossed the street with glazed eyes. The policeman became frantic
and cried out, “Will you please go home! Those cables are live!”

But nobody listened to him. A plume of smoke went up over the Vintage Bar. Flames licked at the tangled mass of metal, the tyres melting on to the kerb. The water from the burst main swirled
into the gutters. “There may be more devices,” called the policeman. “Please go to your homes.” A rafter tumbled and a window caved in. Slates fell from the roofs and
frightened dogs howled.

Eventually police reinforcements began to arrive. Water hoses stretched the length of the street. The police ushered the dumbstruck people away and lined the kerbs with no-parking buoys. They
cordoned off the area and stood straddle-legged at each end clutching two-way radios. The waitress in the hotel was taken away with a number of others in an ambulance. Rumours bred and run amok. A
child in a bedroom in the house opposite the pub had been blinded. The chief of staff of the IRA had been in the bar. A farmer had lost his legs. Nobody knew what to believe. The crumpled wreck of
the Austin 1100 was towed away. Volunteers began to sweep away the water and debris. The shattered clockface of the church looked down forlornly at the chaos on The Diamond. Stretcher bearers
waited anxiously at the town hall praying there would be no work for them to do. Families checked the recent movements of their own and made frantic phone calls. The firemen went to work on the
interior of the Vintage Bar. It was not long before they found the first body. Word shot through the streets like wildfire. Who was it who was it, they asked, someone local, was it was it? The face
was blackened with smoke and the body charred but it did not take the fireman long to identify the dead body.

It was Joe Noonan.

The other man was a stranger.

The only other casualty was the barman who had escaped with minor injuries and was now in a neighbour’s house in shock.

The people of the town shook their heads in disbelief when they heard. They stared out of their windows trying to make sense of it all. The labourers prepared themselves for a busy night as the
clip of hammers rang out and the blackened façades were boarded up. Signs were placed at either end of the street.
DANGER
–
STAY AWAY
.

The water orchid shrunk and the firemen rolled up their hoses.

Patrol cars cruised the whole night long.

In the days that followed, the town filled up with journalists and visiting politicans. They packed the hotel and interviewed many of the locals. Joe Noonan was described as “one of the
nicest lads about the town”. Pat Lacey appeared on national television and spoke of “the perpetrators of this dastardly deed”. It became a sort of jamboree as everyone scanned the
screen hoping for a glimpse of themselves or their house.

Then out of nowhere, it all stopped. The microphone wires were gathered up, the suitcases packed and, almost immediately, it was as if they had never been there. The lounge of the Railway Hotel
emptied and the waitress was back on duty as usual. The patrol cars became less frequent. The crack in the main street was filled in and the clockface repaired. The locals slowly went back to their
ordinary lives as if they were emerging from a drug-induced trance. The proprietor of the Vintage Bar nailed up a notice
Business As Usual
on the door.

At Mass, the priest gave out the details of Joe Noonan’s funeral. As the dust settled, the people of the town tried to get the incident into perspective. The question that burned in their
minds was, “Who had done it?”

Certainly not the IRA who were hardly going to bomb the town where fifty years before Matt Dolan had led the raid on the railway and put Carn in the history books as a republican and nationalist
town. The debate raged and new theories were advanced by the day but it all came to an abrupt end when, in a phonecall to a Belfast newspaper, a protestant paramilitary organisation claimed
responsibility for the action and said that there would be repeats if the supporters of the IRA in such towns did not withdraw their support for the campaign of genocide against the protestant
people along the border.

At first the reaction to this was one of fury and indignation. It brought out the worst in many, who said that if that was their attitude, they deserved all they got. Vengeful plots against
protestants living in the area were spoken of but none were taken really seriously and evaporated almost as soon as they were mentioned. They swore that they would not be frightened and intimidated
by these thugs, that they had a right to walk the streets of their own town without fearing for their own safety. But as time went by and they thought more deeply about it, the more anxious they
became.

What if there was a repetition? They might not be so lucky next time. Carn was a small town. What if the bomb was even bigger next time? Any of them could wind up like Joe Noonan, hauled away in
a zippered bag. They thought of their children lying dead beneath blackened masonry, trapped in burning cars.

For the first time it dawned on them that they were no longer talking about pictures in history books and images on a television screen.

Then the local politician went on the radio and said that the blame for the bomb could be laid fairly and squarely at the door, not of the protestant people, who were a decent and God-fearing
people, but of everyone in Ireland, both north and south, who had ever promoted violence or turned a blind eye to it. He said that we should never forget that nearly a million people in the fourth
green field did not see themselves as invaders or strangers at all. The architects of the terrible deed were in fact the Provisional IRA and their supporters. It was they who should be reviled and
cast out from the community. It was these agents of the devil who, indirectly, had bombed Carn.

This speech seemed to have a tremendous impact in the town. The politician was a well-respected man. When arms were found in a disused farmhouse outside the town and more police and military
were drafted in, the people began to whisper that the town had seen enough trouble. They averted their eyes when the trucks rattled up and down the main street. They did not want to be implicated
and did not want their town blown up again. They sought refuge now in a feigned naivity. “What’s it all about anyway?” they said, in the hope that a new found innocence would
reduce the chances of violence returning to their streets.

When Francie Mohan was arrested and beaten up in the police station for singing a republican song in the Turnpike Inn, they took no notice of it and said that, knowing Francie, there was
probably two sides to it, he had probably assaulted the policeman.

A committee which had been formed before to plan the next year’s Easter Commemorations quietly disbanded itself. They stored the tricoloured flags and bundles of proclamations of
independence in a back room in the town hall and wrote to the various politicians who came every year saying that they would no longer be required to speak in Carn at Easter, that it was thought to
be “indiscreet” to hold the commemoration this year.

Whenever Matt Dolan’s raid on the railway came up accidentally in casual conversation, or was alluded to by a stranger, they cut the discussion short by saying, “That was a long time
ago.”

And when Francie Mohan drunkenly shouted the speeches of Patrick Pearse and Wolfe Tone across The Diamond every Saturday night, they steeled themselves and tried not to hear but when it became
too much for them they turned and looked away redfaced, as if he were some kind of imbecilic relative who had turned up out of nowhere at an important family wedding.

Benny had called at the Noonan house as soon as he heard the news. Joe’s sister, inconsolable, had told him how her brother had driven herself and the kids to Dublin for the day and on the
way home had gone in for a drink while he waited for them to get chips in the Yankee Doodle. Her face was red-raw as she said over and over again, “It was me asked him to wait, Benny. What
will we do without him? I loved our Joe so much, Benny.”

Benny stayed with the family the whole night, reliving parts of Joe’s life as if they felt that enough emotional intensity on their part would somehow bring him back.

When Benny felt his own tears coming, he went to the bathroom and stayed there for over an hour. By the time the gentle tap came at the door, the sorrow in him had passed and in its place there
was bitterness and anger, deeper than any he had ever imagined he could contain within himself.

XIV

The mourners stood on the hill overlooking the town. The surplice flapped in the priest’s face as he struggled with pages of the missal. The drone was carried off by the
wind. Joe’s sister broke down and threw herself on the coffin crying bastards the bastards, her mantilla falling from her face. The priest averted his eyes compassionately. They lowered the
box into the ground and she clutched Benny’s arm. The fistful of clay tumbled on the wood and a lively babble began as they slowly drifted towards the gate of the cemetery. They went to the
Vintage Bar which still bore traces of the explosion. Faded black streaks scored the ceiling and there was a shattered wall lamp in the corner. They began to drink frenziedly as if they feared they
were now about to go the way of Joe Noonan. Benny and Sadie sat together out of the way. Clichés were exchanged with vigour. So young. We never know. Cut down in his prime. The Good Lord
does His harvesting and He leaves none behind. Benny felt as if he were floating over their heads. The whole town seemed to be in the pub.

Many of them made their way over awkwardly to them and pumped Benny’s hand, bleary-eyed. They shook their heads and looked away as if they had forgotten how to speak. Others leaned over
and whispered furtively, “I know you and him felt the same way. It’s time this business in the north was sorted out once and for all.”

Eventually as the drink went in, they forgot about Benny Dolan. Then they more or less forgot about Joe Noonan. Sadie leaned over and said morosely, “Sometimes you’d wonder Benny.
It’s not much of a way to remember anyone, is it?”

The floor was littered with cigarette ends and broken glass. An argument over a long forgotten football match rose above the din and others lent their voices to the fray. Racing blared out.
“One hundred and eighty,” shouted a darts player. Sadie stroked the back of Benny’s hand absentmindedly. The notion of someone as vivacious as Joe Noonan lying dead in a wooden
box just wouldn’t make itself real to her. She felt nothing, only guilt for feeling nothing.

Coming towards closing time, they began to congregate about Benny once more as if they felt he was the most authentic representative of the dead man. “The bikes,” they said to him.
“You and Joe and the bikes. The two of you were wild in those days, eh?”

After a while Benny heard nothing.

Outside in the street Sadie said, ‘Well that’s that. That’s it all over. Rotten, isn’t it?”

“What can you do?” replied Benny. “Unless it’s their own nobody gives a fuck. That’s the long and the short of it.”

They got into the car and drove off in the direction of Abbeyville Gardens. They turned into the driveway to see a neighbour standing under their porch lamp. She signalled to them anxiously.
Sadie ran over to her. There was a crumpled body lying at her feet.

“She’s been lying there all evening,” said the neighbour, distraught. “I’ve been keeping watch on her. She just lay down there. I didn’t know whether to call
the police or what. I didn’t know who she was. The children were all around her. I mean, it’s not good for them is it? She was ranting and raving to herself. I think she’s been
drinking all day.”

The woman shook her head, mystified. “I don’t know what the world is coming to,” she said. “The like of that.” She turned on her heel and crossed the road to her
own house. Other doors quietly closed.