Torn Away (16 page)

“I know.”

“Your da knew for certain that the prison
would kill your poor ma. And what about the baby? The police were ruthless. They would let her go on one condition, they said. Your da would work for the police. He would pass on information about IRA activities. The police would use the information to save lives. That's what they said. They would cover him. No one would be arrested. Your da agreed. He had no choice.” Matthew stopped and looked into Declan's eyes. “Your da became an informer.”

Declan felt the rage rise in him. He leaped off the bench with clenched fists. “You're a liar, Matthew! My father was no tout for the police! You're lying!” he snarled. “I don't believe any of it!”

“Listen to me, Declan. I'm telling you the God's truth, and when I'm finished you can believe what you like.”

“What are you two talking about in there?” It was Ana and Thomas back from their swimming.

“Leave us be for five minutes,” shouted Matthew.

When they had gone, Matthew said, “Your da became a spy for the police. Nobody knew. Nobody guessed. He gave information
about IRA attacks on the Brits, information about bombs, everything. He couldn't get out of it. If he stopped the flow of information then the police would tell the IRA on him. And you know what that would mean. Instant execution. The IRA always kills informers as a lesson to others, always. No informer goes free. So far up to then they'd executed at least a dozen of their own men for informing on them.” Matthew gave a bitter laugh. “They've shot many more since.”

Declan could hardly hold still. He clenched his fists and clamped his jaw tight.

Matthew took his time. His voice was slow and deep. “The police kept their word at first. They arrested nobody. Then the IRA came up with a plan for a major hit on the British army. It was to be a big bomb. If everything went right it would wipe out half a battalion. Liam was the only one who knew of the plan besides the IRA Chief and the bomb squad, which included me. But the Brits were waiting for them. The bomb squad was stopped in the early hours of the morning, the bomb in their possession. Nobody escaped. The Brits should have arrested them—an automatic life sentence—but they
didn't. They put the four men up against the truck and shot them.

“There was only one way the Brits could have known. Somebody had informed. But who? The IRA picked your da up for questioning. He confessed. They kept him three weeks. Then they shot him.”

“That isn't true,” said Declan through his teeth. “My father was killed by a gang of Protestant militants! You made it all up! I don't believe it! My father was never a traitor, I don't care what you say!”

“It was no dishonor! He did it out of love for your mother, Declan. But they tricked him. They swore they'd kill no one. ‘It was to save lives,' they said. It was no dishonor to your da. They didn't keep their promises. If I had a family I'd have done exactly the same myself.”

Declan was trying not to let Matthew see him cry, but he couldn't help himself. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “And what were you doing in all of this, Matthew? Maybe it was yourself who was the tout! Not my da. Didn't you just finish saying you were in the bomb squad? Then how was it they shot them all—four men—shot up against the
truck you said—and you weren't there? How do you explain that, Matthew? Why weren't you there doing your job? How is it you're alive today if you were such a big liberation fighter?” Declan felt himself trembling.

Matthew shook his head sadly. “I was their first suspect, right enough. Your da saved my life, Declan, and that's the truth of it. He knew the bomb squad would be arrested and sent to jail for life—he never expected the Brits to kill though—and he came to me on the morning of the hit with a job to do. I was to go to Derry with a package for the Chief of Operations there. It was urgent, he told me. I went as ordered—your da was the number two man in Belfast, remember—and I delivered the package.

“When I returned to Belfast the next day it was in the papers. Four IRA men found with a bomb and shot while trying to escape. That's what the papers said. The Brits lied: the squad never tried to escape; how could they? They were surrounded! Later, when the IRA picked up your da for informing, I knew. I knew it was my own brother who had saved me, sending me away to safety on a fool's errand. He wanted to save me from
jail. He didn't know he was also saving my life. I knew then that he was the informer.” Matthew looked at Declan. “I should have died that day with my squad.”

Declan glared at his uncle. “You're alive today,” he said between his teeth, “because my da died.”

Matthew nodded. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, staring at the garage floor. “After your sister was born, we left Ireland, Kate and I, that very same year Liam was shot. We'd had enough of it. I didn't want the same thing happen to Kate that happened to your ma.”

“You were the cowards! You ran to save yourselves! And you're making it all up about my da! He was no informer! He was no traitor! It's you who's the traitor, Matthew! You!”

Matthew stood up awkwardly. “In God's name, will you listen to me . . . “

Declan tried to say more, but nothing would come out.

Matthew gripped Declan's arms in steel fingers. “They're both wrong, Declan, don't you see that? The IRA and the Protestants are both wrong! They're killing each other! What good does it do? Violence isn't the answer!
Don't go back there, Declan. Stay here with us. You'll never stop the madmen of the world from killing each other. You're not like them, Declan. You cannot go back to all that!”

Declan found his voice. He wrenched himself out of his uncle's grip and fled from the garage, screaming.

He ran blindly.

His heart burned with rage: rage for his uncle; rage for his own helplessness; rage for the lies and the hatred in the hearts of the adult world; rage for the insane absurdity of it all; rage for a merciless God.

He saw his uncle's truck, its keys hanging from the ignition, and he threw himself in and slammed the door. He pushed his foot down hard on the clutch and turned the key. The engine started. He pumped the accelera
tor. The engine stalled. In a black frenzy he snatched at the choke knob and tried again. The engine roared to life. He looked out the window. Matthew was running toward him. His foot still on the clutch, Declan pushed the gearstick forward into first and let out the clutch too fast. The truck leaped forward, and he was away, taking part of the cedar hedge with him.

He twisted the wheel wildly, heading out onto the road that led to the ferry at Langdale, the back of the truck fishtailing out of control. He wrestled the wheel, trying to steady the truck's erratic flight, but only made things worse. The engine roared. The truck bucked and leaped away from him, over the road and into the ditch, nose first, and came to a sudden and complete stop with its back in the air.

He sat stunned by the impact, chest jammed tight against the wheel.

The next thing he knew was that his uncle was pulling him out of the truck and dragging him up out of the ditch and onto the side of the road. He struggled against Matthew's grip. “I'm all right. Let me go!”

He straightened up.

“Are you hurt?”

“I told you. I'm all right.”

He looked at the truck angled down into the ditch, its nose submerged under two feet of water, its tailgate lifted high in the air. It would need a towtruck and a winch to pull it out.

He limped to the house and up the stairs to his room. The door had no lock, so he closed it and wedged the back of a chair under the knob so no one could get in.

After a while Kate came up and knocked on the door.

“Go away,” he said.

She tried the door. It remained firmly shut.

“Are you all right, Declan? Let me in a minute.”

“Go away.”

She went.

A few minutes later Ana knocked. “Declan, let me talk to you, please!”

“Go away!”

They left him alone until dinner time. Kate knocked on the door. He pretended to be asleep. “Declan, will you come down for your dinner before it goes cold?”

Silence.

“Then I'll bring up a bite of your favourite—mince pie and fresh cream.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Declan?”

“Leave me alone!”

She went away and left him alone.

He stayed there for the rest of the day, lying on his bed, his eyes closed against the pain in his heart, thinking over and over again what Matthew had told him. “Listen to me, Declan!” Matthew's voice: “Listen to me, Declan!

“The IRA murdered your da.

“Your da was an informer, a tout.

“Listen to me!”

Declan imagined the execution: his da with his hands tied behind his back, a bag over his head, the IRA executioner shooting him in the back of the head—Declan knew how it was done, he had heard the stories of IRA justice. Just one shot; that was all it took, they said. His da. Shot in the head. An informer (“Listen to me, Declan!”), a traitor to the Irish cause.

“Listen to me, Declan! Listen to me! I'm telling you the God's truth!” Matthew
defending his brother: “Liam Doyle put love for his wife and family first, before Ireland's struggle for freedom. So they killed him, a man with a pregnant wife. You've got to listen to me, Declan!”

Matthew had told him all this, and Declan believed it. He had to believe it. Why would Matthew lie?

But what was it he had said about the fighting? “They're both wrong, Declan, don't you see that? The IRA and the Protestants are both wrong! They're killing each other! What good does it do?”

Was he to believe his uncle Matthew that his da's death had been all in vain, that they were all wrong? All wasting lives? That their fight for what was rightfully theirs was achieving nothing but more and more hatred and unending violence? The Holy Terrors too? Wrong?

After a long time he fell asleep.

When he woke up it was dark, with a moon. He got up off the bed and sat, staring out the window at the black rocks and the ocean.

He came down to breakfast the next morning, his eyes puffy.

Kate touched Declan's shoulder. He wriggled away. “Ah, you must be destroyed with the hunger. Sit down and I'll make you some pancakes.” She pushed the jug of orange juice across the table toward him.

Matthew was sitting in his usual chair, reading a thick book. He looked up anxiously and nodded, and went back to his book.

Declan poured himself a glass of juice. He looked at his uncle. “Sorry about the truck.”

Matthew raised his head. “The truck can be fixed. It was yourself we were worried about.”

“I'm okay.”

Matthew nodded again.

Father O'Coonor poked his head in the back door. “God save all here!”

“Come in, Father, I've tea made,” said Kate.

“You're the hard-working woman, Katherine,” said the priest, smiling, and sitting down at the table. “Matthew,” he said to Matthew.

Matthew nodded. “Mornin', Father.” He
put aside his book.

Ana came down the stairs, her face dark with temper. “I'm fed up with him! He can go . . . ”

“What ails you, girl?” said Kate. “Say good morning to Father O'Connor.”

“Morning, Father.” Ana rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Thomas is acting up. He wants to wear a shirt with buttons instead of a T-shirt. Don't ask me why. He got the buttons fastened all wrong, and when I tried to fix them he pushed me away and started yelling and carrying on. And he says he won't come down to breakfast; he wants to stay in his room like . . . “ She looked at Declan and stopped.

“Sit down, Ana, and don't bother your head about the boy,” said Kate. “Sometimes it's best to leave him be. Buttons is only buttons.”

Thomas, on the top landing, leaned his head over the banister rail. “Piss! Piss! Piss!” he screamed.

Father O'Connor's cup and saucer crashed to the floor.

It snowed on New Year's Eve, starting in the morning and falling thickly. In the afternoon they built a snowman which Thomas said looked like Matthew because it was so big.

They stayed up late with the radio tuned to CBC and toasted the new year at midnight with some of Matthew's elderberry wine.

Kate said, “May the good Lord and all His holy saints and angels make the new year a happy one for us all!”

The next morning it snowed again. Ana and Thomas tobogganed using sheets of cardboard. Declan watched them for a while as they screamed and tumbled. Ana begged him to join in, but he shook his head, and went off alone in the snow.

All was white and new. New year. New snow. He took the buried path leading along the cliff, between the sea and the mountain, the snow in his hair and eyes. The going was hard and slow. He did not walk far, just far enough to be alone, away from the house, away from people, and he stood with his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets and listened to the ocean and watched the gulls, their cries muffled by the snow. He turned and scanned the high, snowy trees of the forest and
breathed in the cold clean air and the silence and peace of this land so far and so different from his own.

His own land. His own people. His own family dead. Wasted lives. He felt with his thumb the gold ring on his finger and remembered the plain gravestone with its three names in Milltown Cemetery. They were dead and he was alive and it was a new year.

He watched the snow piling up on the branches of the trees, bending them lower and lower with its weight. When it seemed that the overladen branches were about to snap, they sprang suddenly back, catapulting showers of powdered snow into the air.

He turned. The ocean stretched out in front of him, flat and glimmering under a leaden sky. He stood in the cold brightness of the snow and felt the vast strength and peace of the land melting into him.