1999 (13 page)

 

John McCormack, a married Catholic with three young children, died in a Belfast hospital on the fourteenth of May. He had been shot five times in the head by members of the UVF as he walked along Garnet Street.
²
McCormack was a social security officer whose only crime was being caught on the street in a Catholic neighbourhood.

In the Republic the Cosgrave government made it obvious they intended to ignore the situation in the north in hopes it would go away. McCormick's murder went unreported by the media, with the exception of a few lines in the
Cork Examiner
that attributed the deed to “Protestant extremists.”

One of Barry's boarders was from Cork, and routinely bought the
Examiner
. After reading the article he wondered aloud, “How can people do such awful things?”

“They learn by example,” Barbara spoke up, “when they're very young. When it all seems innocent and they don't know any better.”

Barry was impressed by her perception.

In Northern Ireland he had seen young children watching enraptured as their fathers and uncles marched in the Orange parades. Small boys with shining eyes were eager for the day when they would strut behind the banners, bang the drums, be part of the pageantry, the glory! Accepting hatred as the price of membership in something larger than themselves.

Not knowing any better.

With the support of her husband Shay, her family, and her doctor, Mary McGee of Skerries had taken a case against the government of the Republic. She had argued that the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which banned the importation of contraceptives, breached her constitutional rights.

When she was thrust into the media spotlight she heard from a number of people who agreed with her, mostly women, and many who disagreed, mostly men. One of the latter condemned her actions in the strongest terms and stated that he himself had eighteen children. Mrs. McGee replied, “You did not have eighteen children. Your wife did.”

Mary McGee had lost her case in the High Court but went on to the Supreme Court, where in 1973 she obtained an historic decision in her favour. A woman had taken on the State and won.

A ripple of shock ran through Ireland—though not enough to shake the granitic foundations of the Church. Catholic women were still forbidden to prevent pregnancy by any means other than the so-called rhythm method. Or abstinence.

 

In June a loyalist group calling themselves the Ulster Freedom Fighters shot two Catholics—one a seventeen-year-old boy—in Belfast, then telephoned the
Belfast Telegraph
to boast, “We gave him two in the back and one in the head! There will be more.”

The IRA retaliated by shooting a civilian who provided sandwiches to the British army, and a Unionist candidate for the upcoming elections.

Since the partitioning of Ireland in 1922 most murders in the north had been committed by Protestants killing Catholics. But the pendulum had begun to swing.

A song called “Feel the Need” topped the Irish charts. Radio stations throughout America played “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree” as peace negotiators struggled to agree to terms in Vietnam.

 

In Northern Ireland people went to the polls to vote on an Assembly to replace the old Stormont government. After suggestions for a power-sharing executive consisting of both Protestants and Catholics had emerged, loyalists were vociferous in their condemnation of the arrangement.

The new Assembly was in for a rocky time.

 

Éamonn MacThomáis was arrested in July. He was charged with IRA membership on the strength of a sworn statement by a member of Special Branch, and certain papers found in his office—such as the newsletter of the National Union of Journalists. Douglas Gageby, editor of
The Irish Times,
was mystified. “Why didn't they arrest me?” he wondered. “I have the same material on my desk that Éamonn has on his. So does every newspaperman in Dublin.”
¹

Before the trial Barry visited his friend in a holding cell at the Bridewell. MacThomáis was unabashed by his predicament. “The judge will realise it was all a mistake and send me home,” he said cheerfully. “In the meantime, keep an eye on Rosaleen for me, will you?”

“I will of course. I can take her around to the shops in my car.”

“Now don't go spoiling my Little Girl, Barry. In a few days I'll be taking her to the shops myself. I'm eager to get back to work, there's a lot bubbling under the surface right now.” He tapped his finger against the side of his nose.

“Will you have an assignment for me?”

“Not this time.”

“A camera can explain things words could never convey.”

“Not this time,” MacThomáis reiterated. “Any photograph would be counterproductive. I can't write about the subject at all, in fact. You see, the number of informers in the IRA is multiplying. The Army doesn't know how they're being recruited, but they suspect MI5, the British Intelligence agency. When our lads find an informer he's summarily executed, and not too gently, either. Some are tumbled into unmarked graves where they'll never be found.”

Barry shook his head. “Brutal killings, unmarked graves—we're in danger of becoming the very thing we're fighting.”

“We won't,” MacThomáis assured him. He clapped Barry on the back. “We're going to turn things around; you, me, all of us working together, we're going to get our country back the way it should have been.”

Afterwards, Barry told Séamus, “I went to see Éamonn to cheer him up, but he cheered me up instead.”

“That's why I read
An Phoblacht,
” McCoy said. “No matter how bad things look, it reminds me that plenty of others feel the way I do about Ireland. Éamonn's right. We'll get our country back.”

Rosaleen MacThomáis was shocked when her husband was found guilty. “I can't believe someone from Special Branch would lie like that!” she said to Barry after the trial. “The man was under
oath
!”

MacThomáis was sent to Mountjoy Jail; one of a growing number of republicans being held in the Dublin prison. Governments both north and south were making an effort to put as many as possible behind bars. But the violence continued to escalate. Feeding on its own heat.

 

August brought a languid, sodden softness to the air, and a hint of amber and saffron to the wilting trees in O'Connell Street. Children abandoned breakfast tables to run outside and play the last wonderful games while there was still time. Their harried mothers anxiously consulted the family finances with an eye to buying clothes for school.

Dublin stretched, yawned, gathered herself for change.

 

In Northern Ireland Patrick Duffy, an unemployed Catholic man with seven children, was shot dead. His body was placed inside a coffin that was left in a car abandoned at the border. On the seventeenth of August the IRA put a notice in one of the local papers, saying that Duffy had been executed for giving information to the RUC Special Branch.

 

The Usual Suspects were amused at the uproar caused by the incident.

“I admit the Provos can be brutal to informers,” said Luke, “but since the IRA's being branded as a terrorist organisation, why should people be surprised by the methods they use?”

“They follow well-established precedent,” Brendan added. “The Army believes its struggle is a legitimate war against an occupying force, so informers are, ipso facto, traitors. After the Civil War, the victorious pro-Treatyites executed over seventy republicans—their former comrades in arms during the War of Independence—as traitors. How's that for setting an example?”

The hospital waiting room contained fifteen battered chairs, a wooden table decorated with ring marks, piles of disarticulated newspapers, ancient issues of the
Catholic Digest
and
Ireland's Own
, and a single dog-eared
National Geographic
that automatically fell open at a colour photograph of bare-breasted women in Borneo.

“A lot of history's been made in and around the Rotunda Hospital,” Barry said. “Did you know the Irish Volunteers were founded in these very grounds?”

“I did know,” McCoy replied patiently. “That's the fourth time you've told me today.”

“I must be nervous, I'm talking too much.”

“That's the second time you've said that. I'm a wee bit nervous myself, Seventeen, and she's not even having my baby.”

“I should hope not. I was hoping for a handsome son.”

“What makes you so sure it's a boy?”

“Ursula said it would be.”

“You talk to her recently?”

“I rang her shortly after we brought Barbara in. She's coming up to Dublin as soon as she can.” Had he been less distracted Barry might have noticed the sudden light in McCoy's eyes.

Hours crawled by with all the speed of time spent in a dentist's chair. Countless cups of tea grew cold on the table. McCoy read the same newspaper article twice before he realised it was about women's fashions. At last a beaming nurse beckoned to Barry from the doorway. “You have a son, Mr. Halloran. Nine pounds six ounces and a full head of hair. If you listen you can hear him; he has a great pair of lungs. Wait, Mr. Halloran, you can't go in there yet, you can't…”

Barry pushed past the woman and strode into the delivery room. When more nurses and a beefy obstetrician tried to block his way he brushed them aside like gnats.

There he is! That little red squirming creature is a brand-new person and this is his first day in the world.

Barry's brain had been prepared for the moment; it took his heart by surprise.

I have taken life; now I've given life.

Thank God.

He felt a powerful urge to fall on his knees and pray.

Instead he fell in love with his son.

 

Back in her room, Barbara was exhausted but proud. “The doctor called him splendid, Barry.”

He looked at the flushed face, the dishevelled hair, the seeping breasts wetting the front of her hospital gown.
You're splendid,
he thought. But did not say.

Brian Joseph Halloran was christened in the church where his parents had been married. The Cassidys were his godparents. Séamus McCoy stood beside Ursula Halloran for the ceremony, and glowed with pride when someone mistook him for the baby's grandfather. That night he drank far too many toasts to wet the baby's head. Barry had to carry him upstairs.

From the beginning Brian was a lusty, demanding boy. “He's going to be as big as his father,” Ursula predicted.

“How can you tell?”

“Look at his hands, they're huge. Puppies who have outsized feet grow up to be very big dogs.”

“My son,” Barbara said sharply, “is not a puppy.”

“He's my son too,” Barry reminded her.
I need not have worried about her being a good mother,
he told himself.
She's like a tigress with her cub.

Ursula stayed in Dublin until the infant and his mother were well settled in the new routine. Barry was surprised by her skill with the baby. “I never thought of you as a maternal person, Ursula.”

“I don't know why not. I reared you very carefully.”

“Funnily enough I seem to remember growing up wild, like some sort of wild animal roaming the countryside.”

“I suppose you were,” Ursula agreed, “until Séamus took you by the scruff of the neck and taught you military discipline. But I taught you to be brave and independent. If that's not being a good mother, I don't know what is.”

“Reckon your mother's good at everything she does,” McCoy remarked to Barry.

The following evening, after an argument with Barbara over something trivial that assumed gigantic proportions, McCoy suggested Barry accompany him to the Bleeding Horse. “The new adjutant of the Belfast Brigade is in Dublin visiting GHQ for a couple of days, Seventeen, and there's a chance they'll bring him along to the pub tonight. I'd like to meet him.”

“You mean you'd like to give him a chance to recruit me.”

McCoy looked offended. “It never crossed my mind.”

The pub was surprisingly empty when they arrived. Of the Usual Suspects, only Luke and Danny were seated at one of the tables. McCoy went to the bar for a round of drinks. While he was out of earshot Barry asked the other two, “Have you seen Séamus smoking lately?”

“Can't say I have. And even if he was,” Danny added with a wink, “I'm not one to inform on a pal.”

Luke said sharply, “Don't joke about that.”

Barry's senses were on instant alert. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong.”

“Be straight with me, Luke. Has something happened?”

Luke studied his fingernails. “We, ah, had some visitors a couple of hours ago. That is, the pub did.”

McCoy set the drinks on the table. “The young adjutant from Belfast Brigade? You mean we missed him? Damn it all anyway.”

“Not him,” Luke said. “Three middle-aged men; hard men from the look of them. Dundalk accents. I never saw them in here before and they didn't stay long this time. Just long enough to take a good look around.”

“What did they want?”

“Didn't say. They ordered one drink apiece and passed a few words with the bartender, all very casual. Too casual if you ask me.” Luke glanced over his shoulder, then dropped his voice. “Personally, I think they were looking for an informer.”