Authors: Brian McGilloway
‘Once I did get pregnant, but we lost the baby early on. I was about five months gone.’
Penny watched her mother as she spoke.
‘But, then we had you, so that made everything perfect.’
‘If you’d had the first baby, would you have had me then?’
Debs shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Penny considered the implications of the response. ‘Do you think about the baby you lost?’
Debbie looked at me, surprised by Penny’s interest.
‘Sometimes I wonder what he or she would have been like. You and Shane are so different, that that baby would have been a completely different person, too. But I’ve never regretted
that I had you and Shane.’
‘What happened to him?’ The voice came from the doorway. I looked across and realized that Shane had wandered across and was standing watching us.
‘What, love?’
‘What happened to him?’
Debbie considered how best to express herself. ‘He wasn’t well. The doctor told us that he’d be very sick when he was born. God must have decided that he was too good for this
world.’
‘So where did he go?’
‘He went back to God before he was born.’
‘He just disappeared?’ Shane said.
‘Kind of,’ I said.
‘What was he called?’
‘We don’t know whether it was a boy or girl, honey,’ Debbie said. ‘It was too early to tell. He or she didn’t have a name.’
The room was quiet. Shane looked from Debbie to me. ‘I need help with my maths,’ he said finally.
‘No problem. Then afterwards, what about a movie night?’ I suggested. Debs smiled, though I could tell the conversation was playing on her mind.
We sat that evening and watched a film and ate popcorn, Debs, Shane, Penny and I, with our phantom child somewhere between us, alive again in our minds for the first time in many years. Debbie
had not told the children the whole truth. She had not explained to them that the doctors had told us that our child would suffer severe disability. She did not tell them of the terror that thought
had held for us, only married a few years. Nor did she tell them of our resolution to face the future with our child no matter what, and the subsequent heartache that we had felt at his loss. And I
had never told Debbie, or anyone else for that matter, that my heartache at his loss had been tempered with a degree of relief.
And that I had felt nothing but shame for the unworthiness of that reaction ever since.
Nor could I easily dismiss the thought of the child on the island, the pleading of the hollow eyes, the fragility of the skull. A child deprived not only of sacred burial but even its name.
I was not the only one who had been thinking on our earlier conversation. I piggybacked Shane up to bed after his supper. After he had said his prayers, I tucked him in and kissed him on the
forehead. I was turning out the light when he called me back.
‘The baby that Mummy lost? Do you really believe that he was too good for this world?’
‘I think he was, buddy,’ I said, going across and sitting by him.
‘Does that mean that I’m not as good as him?’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘What I meant was that he was too fragile for life. You’re a healthy trout,’ I added, laughing lightly.
He was not to be deflected from his questions, though. ‘Would you have loved him?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘More than me?’
I started and sat again beside him. ‘Of course not,’ I repeated.
‘But you love Penny more than me,’ he said, slyly, watching me from the corner of his eye, even as he pretended to be settling down for sleep.
‘I don’t love Penny more than you. I love you both exactly the same, Shane.’
‘You pay more attention to Penny. Mummy even cut her hair the same.’
I laid my hand on his shoulder, but he did not turn towards me. ‘Shane, we almost lost Penny when she had the accident. It made us realize how important she is to us. And how important you
are, too.’
I’m glad the baby didn’t come along,’ he said, twisting towards me. ‘Then I’d have had to be third instead of second.’
‘Shane, look at me.’
He turned towards me fully, but his eyes did not meet mine, settling instead on my shoulder.
‘You and Penny? You’re both the same to me. Don’t ever think differently.’
He considered the response and smiled quickly, but I could tell that it did not reflect a deeper acceptance of my argument. Then he turned from me again.
Though Debbie and I sat and watched TV together, I couldn’t dismiss the island child from my mind. Finally I decided to visit my old boss, ‘Olly’ Costello. He
had been a garda in Lifford for almost forty years prior to his retirement. If anyone knew about the island being used for burials, I suspected it would be him.
He had aged considerably since last I had seen him. He had been the superintendent in the area for years, until the death of his wife during a murder case prompted him to retire. Neither of us
had ever discussed that the case had thrown up his possible involvement in the murder of a prostitute in the 1970s.
I had visited him sporadically in the months following his retirement, but our conversation tended to be limited to my reporting what was happening in the station, and I gradually realized that,
far from making Costello feel still part of the Guards, it served only to frustrate him and remind him that he was no longer a member of the force. In recent years I had visited him infrequently
and was, consequently, a little surprised by the change in him.
He had lost much of the weight he used to carry, his trousers hanging baggily on him when he answered the door. He had not shaved for a few days and his grey stubble seemed to annoy him, for he
scratched at his cheek often as we spoke.
‘Benedict!’ he said. He leaned forward as if to embrace me, but the movement became muddled and instead we moved briefly closer together and patted one another awkwardly on the
shoulder. His breath was stale and smelt of illness.
‘How’re things, sir?’ I said, offering him a bottle of whiskey I had picked up in the off license on the way.
‘God bless you, son,’ he said, taking the bottle, then waving me into the house. The hallway was in semi-darkness, the blinds half pulled. Costello’s wife, Emily, had been
incredibly house-proud and, in the months following her death, Olly had done his best to keep the place in shape. Over time, however, he seemed to lose interest, particularly when his daughter,
Kate, moved to England to work. The carpet in the hallway was faded and threadbare in places. A stack of old newspapers sat beside an old bookcase at the end of the hallway, the shelves of the case
buckling under the weight of books.
‘How’re Debbie and the children?’ Costello asked, moving into the kitchen. ‘Drink?’ he added, raising the bottle before I had a chance to reply.
‘No thanks. They’re fine. Penny’s recovering well.’
Costello nodded. ‘The accident. I forgot. That’s good.’
He lifted a glass from the sink and rinsed it quickly under the tap, before pouring himself two fingers of the drink.
‘You’ll take tea, Benedict,’ he said. Costello is one of the few people I know who insists on calling me by my full name, rather than just Ben. He drained the glass, then set
it down and filled the kettle. While he waited for it to boil he set out a cup with a tea bag in it, then poured a second measure of whiskey for himself, which he cradled as we spoke.
‘So, Patterson hasn’t destroyed the place yet?’ he asked leaning against the kitchen counter. Superintendent Patterson had taken over running the district following
Costello’s retirement. At the time of his appointment, neither Costello nor I had been wholly convinced about his suitability to the task.
‘He’s not the worst,’ I said. A typical Irish compliment; never quite a positive.
‘And what’s going on there now?’
‘The Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains are doing a dig for Declan Cleary on Islandmore.’
‘So I believe. Have they found him yet?’
‘Not yet. They did find a
cillin
on one side of the island. They also uncovered a child’s body on the other side today. There were possible signs of violence on the
body.’
‘Is it not part of the
cillin
?’ Costello asked.
‘It’s on the wrong side of the island, apparently. And there are aspects of the burial that don’t fit the pattern of the
cillin
burials. I’m told we can’t
investigate it anyway, because of the legislation governing the digs for the Disappeared.’
‘I’ve never known something like that to stop you before,’ Costello said, laughing. He added, ‘What about Cleary?’
‘Nothing yet,’ I repeated.
Costello nodded absently as he sipped at his drink. ‘I remember Cleary going missing. The RUC contacted us to be on the lookout for him, but he was already dead at that stage.’
‘How did you know?’
‘It was after the bridge shooting; Jimmy Callan’s boy.’
‘Jimmy Callan?’
‘A bad bastard, Benedict. He was in and out of jail like a yo-yo during the seventies and eighties. He got early release under the Good Friday agreement. Last I heard, he was back in
Strabane and was keeping his head down. He’d not have featured on your radar; his time is past. His boy, Dominic was caught on the river in ’76; the Brits executed him; said he was
smuggling guns across to the North. Jimmy complained that the cops found nothing on him, but if the son was anything like the father he was up to no good under there. Cleary went the next day; the
rumour on our side at the time was that he was passing information to a cop he was friendly with; someone saw him hanging around the RUC station in Strabane. That was the story, but no one ever
really pushed it too much. Those things happened then; it was part and parcel of the way things were, you know?’
‘Do you think that’s what happened to him?’
‘God knows. Those people never explained themselves to anyone. Who gave the information to the Commission?’
‘I don’t know. Someone told them that the body was near Tra na Cnamha.’
‘Not Innis na Cnamha?’ Costello said, his eyes steely.
‘No. Definitely
Tra
. The guy from the dig said it held them up because there was no record of the area being called that.’
‘There wouldn’t be. The island was called
Innis
– the Isle of Bones – because they used to bury the wee limbo babies there, way back before even the border
existed.
Tra
is a different thing. There’s only two groups of people who’d use that name: smugglers and net men.’
‘Fishing men?’
‘Aye. The netters would have run their nets across from the island to the shore after the bridge was brought down there. The smugglers used to have to bring the cattle across the river
there, for it was the shortest distance into the south away from checkpoints. If any of the cattle lost their footing in the water, though, they’d never get them back up again. The carcasses
would wash onto the shoreline of the island, under where the bridge used to be. The stretch of shore would be covered in rotting cattle bones; it fair ruined the water and the fish stayed clear.
Even when all the flesh was gone, the bones and shingle would mix, so as you’d not know which was which. The net men used to talk about it; ‘the Beach of Bones’, they called it;
Tra na Cnamha.’
He raised the glass to his mouth, then paused. ‘I’d bet you your tip-off came from either a smuggler or a net man from those days. They might be able to help you with that wee baby
you found, too. Try John Reddin; he’s in Finnside Nursing home, on the border. He’ll be able to help you out. Bring him one of these.’
He raised the glass in salute, then drained it.
‘I’ll get you that tea,’ he said, burping softly as the drink went down.
‘John Reddin,’ I said. ‘Which was he; a smuggler or a net man?’
Costello smiled. ‘Both,’ he replied.
The storms of the weeks previous had abated now, though the first chill of the approaching winter had already sharpened to such an extent that the car windscreen was hoary with
frost by the time I left Costello’s. On the way home, many of the lampposts I passed bore badly weathered posters advertising a Rally on Lifford Bridge on the 2nd of November, in
commemoration of the river shooting which Costello had mentioned. I had already heard more of the details of the incident than Costello had told me.
Dominic Callan was caught in a boat on the river, supposedly carrying guns from the Republic over to the North. He had taken a smuggler’s boat and floated downstream, hiding amongst the
rushes along the banks of the Foyle. He’d made it almost as far as the Northern side when he was ambushed by a team of Special Branch officers and soldiers who’d been waiting for him
along the shoreline.
Those living in the houses along our side of the river, who had an unrestricted view of the scene, said that the boy wasn’t given a chance. It was claimed, by those close enough to see,
that Callan surrendered, raising his hands above his head. Despite this, he was still shot a number of times in the lower half of his body. He was then left in the boat for three hours until, the
army claimed, it was safe to approach. All along the shore of the Foyle his cries could be heard as he died. He was offered neither medical assistance nor last rites.
While the army disputed a number of these claims, there could be little doubt of one salient fact: they had been waiting for the boy, had known that he would be there. Someone had informed on
him.
‘How was Olly?’ Debs asked when I got in. She was already upstairs, getting changed for bed.
‘Fine.’
‘Could he help you with the baby?’
‘He suggested I talk to an old smuggler who used the island as a crossing point after the bridges came down. I’ll wait for the post-mortem first, to see if there actually is a crime
to investigate. Then I might have a word with Harry Patterson and see what he thinks in terms of following it through.’
‘Even if there’s not a crime involved,’ Debbie said, ‘you’ll want to give that child a story, or a name. Something that can be written above them when you bury them
properly, so they don’t just disappear.’