A Star Called Henry (28 page)

There were no corners out there in the country, no names or measurable street lengths. I had sixty-odd miles to travel but I’d no idea what that meant in effort. I rode between the hedges, and later the hedges trapped the night and disappeared. I kept going through the black. There was nowhere to stop, nowhere to see. I looked ahead for light to aim at but, unless a cloud got shoved aside or a small town’s light gathered above its roofs, there was nothing. I’d travelled through blackness before but I missed the help of river water, the solidity and closeness of the cave walls. The rivers out here were overland but hidden. I could hear them in the dark, running beside me, laughing. I could feel their draughts on my ankles. And the whip of bending branches. There were animals out there that should never have been in Ireland, their paws and teeth tearing at my tyres. I could hear it all but I couldn’t see a thing.

—What are you fuckin’ gawkin’ at? I yelled at the clearest of the little stars that had just been freed by the shifting wind as I rooted around in thick ditch water for the bike I’d just cycled into it.

I was drenched and half-broken but I gave the Arseless a pat and a kick to shake the running filth off. The second my soaking arse hit the soaking saddle the clouds knit together again and took away the stars. I shut my eyes and pedalled into the wind. That was the direction for the next three years, always - straight into the wind. Even when I was cycling east, home to Dublin, even when I was passing under the Spa, my chin on the handlebars, the prevailing winds abandoned me and let the freezing stuff from Siberia push me back. It was a battle all the way.

I crossed a bridge somewhere early in the second day. I looked down at the river and hoped to Christ it wasn’t the Shannon because, if it was, I’d ridden too far.

—Where am I?

—Mullingar.

—Am I on the right road for Granard?

—There’s no right road for Granard, sonny.

—Will I get there if I go this way?

—You will, God help you.

I rode into Granard at noon, along the road from Castlepollard, a day and a chunk after robbing the bike. I climbed the last fuck of a hill and sailed into town on its steam, and left onto Main Street. I scooped the sweat and dirt out of my eyes and looked around.

—Where’s the Greville Arms, pal? I asked a thick-looking kid who was holding up a pole. He had the hair and eyes of an old man but he wore short trousers that bit into his legs.

—Where it always is, he said.

He wasn’t being snotty, I could see that. He was nodding down the street. I followed his forehead and there it was, the Greville Arms Hotel, my destination.

—Thanks.

—For what? he said.

—Thanks anyway, I said.

—For what? he said.

I thumped some of the dust and harder dirt off myself and the Arseless before I walked the rest of the way to the Greville Arms. Now that I was off the bike the wind had gone away and it was suddenly a very hot day. I wanted to take my coat off but it was the only thing hiding my gun so I put up with its heft and sweat for a while more.

Sinn Féin had won five by-elections since 1916: Plunkett’s father in Roscommon, Joe McGuinness in Longford - Joe the Jailbird.
Put him in to get him out
. He hadn’t wanted to run but Collins had ignored him - de Valera in East Clare, Cosgrave in Kilkenny and Arthur Griffith, another man in jail, in East Cavan. And now there was talk that the sitting M.P. for nearby Leitrim was on the way out, an oul’ lad who’d been old even when Parnell was his boss; the gout was spreading from his feet, nibbling at the outskirts of his brain. Collins wanted to be ready for the by-election that would follow his funeral, and the general election that might come sooner, when the war in Europe ended. I was carrying orders direct from Collins for the men from the Midland and Con-naught constituencies who were meeting in the Greville Arms to discuss strategy, tactics - and gun running, when the democrats among them had gone off to bed.

I lifted the pedal and parked the Arseless against the bottom step of the hotel and I took the cap off my dripping head for the first time since I’d put it on, a few hours before I’d robbed the bike.

—Is that sweat I see on your forehead?

It was Collins, on the top step.

It made no sense.

—How—?

—The train, Henry, he said.—It’s quicker than the
rothar
but it’s not nearly as good for you. You’re looking well, boy.

I moved slightly to the right, to get the sun away from my eyes.

—Why—?

—You didn’t think I could let these bucks have a meeting all on their ownio, did you?

—Why me?

—On the bike, d’you mean?

—Yeah.

—It was a bit of a test, Henry, said Collins.—You were fast, boy, I’ll give you that. You didn’t stop on the way, not once. Don’t ask. I know. You even wee-weed off the side of the bike, fair play to you. And most important. Most important, you didn’t mess with the stitches in your coat and you never once took your arse off the saddle to see what was in the envelope under it. I knew you wouldn’t. I knew it all along; you’d come through for me. Will I tell you what was in the envelope now, will I?

—Nothing, I said.

—Right you are, boy.

Even now I didn’t run up the steps to kill him. Because I knew that that was part of the test as well.

—Right you are, he said.—And you’re not the bit annoyed with me.

He jumped the steps and thumped me onto the street. He followed me. Luckily, the traffic was scarce and slow, a few drays keeping up with the sun. Collins was playing. He loved his horseplay. As long as he was the horse. You had to be careful. He liked a bit of ear. He bit when he was winning and turned nastier if he was losing. I thumped him now, so that it wouldn’t hurt too much. He laughed and grabbed my neck. I laughed and grabbed his. I’d never had much time for this kind of cod-acting, unless I actually intended strangling the neck’s owner. But I was adaptable. The bossman liked a mill, so I gave him one, enough to let him think he was winning. I slapped the back of his neck. And laughed. He whacked both sides of my face with open palms. He laughed. I made to kick the side of his arse, then thumped him nicely just above his belt buckle. I’d let him play for a few more minutes. It gave me time to think. He drummed his fists into my coat and raised all the dust.

I really had been tested. I’d been watched all the way. In the pitch dark. When I’d cycled into the ditch. Right through Kildare and Westmeath. When I’d slowed down for directions. When I’d shouted into the sky at my twinkling brother.

I got out from under Collins. He grabbed from behind and lifted me.

I was rattled. I hadn’t been trusted. Not enough. Until now. And where was Jack? Was I trusted now? And enough?

I filled myself with some of that fresh air, and Collins had to loosen his grip as my chest grew. I turned and grabbed him on my way back down. I wasn’t angry. Or hurt. I searched for those feelings and anything like them as I turned on the street and brought him with me headfirst, and the speed and strength of my turn knocked him onto his knees.

I was delighted, that was what I was. Thrilled. I’d passed. The big test. A bit hysterical, to be honest. Not that far from angry. A real test, a true test of my loyalty and strength. I was in now.

I got behind Collins and pushed him the rest of the way to the street. I’d forgotten that I should have been losing. And I sat on his back.

—D’yeh give up?

He was a great man. I loved him. But I wanted to hurt him.

—I can’t hear you. D’you give up?

He grunted.

I stood up and got out of his way. I took my coat off and draped it over the handlebars; I’d forgotten about the gun on my back. I didn’t know when I’d accepted his grunt as surrender that he was being watched - or thought he was being watched - by Kitty Kiernan, from one of the hotel windows. I found out about her later. She ran the Greville Arms with her sisters and Collins was in love with her and probably one of the sisters. Big savage kid that he was, he thought that knocking the living shite out of me would impress her or, going back thirty seconds, the sight of a dusty messenger boy from Dublin sitting on his back would definitely not impress her. He got up slowly and shook himself. Then he stretched. He laughed.

—The best of men, he said.

Then he punched me.

I woke up in a bed in Roscommon.

In a dark, windowless room, with the immediate knowledge that one of my eyes was missing.

I sat up and shouted.

—Good, good, good.

There was someone else in the room.

—Who’s there? I said.

—Good.

—Who are you?

—Ah, good.

A woman. It was in the voice. And her age was in the cracks between the words. She was very old.

—We were worried there, young fellow. We thought it might be one of those coma occurrences and not right sleep at all.

I heard a chair groaning as weight came off it.

—But then himself told us that you’d bicycled all the way from Dublin in the one sitting and we knew that it was only sleeping you were doing after all. Even with your eye the way it is. Your gun is under the pillow. With the leg.

—What about my eye?

—You’ll be grand. It’s just gone black. Is the black one as handsome as the good one?

—I’ve been told it is.

—They weren’t lying who told you.

I could see her now. It wasn’t so dark. There was an oil lamp on the floor; its light rose from somewhere in front of the bed. It was an attic. I could see and smell the thatch.

—It won’t be the first shiner you’ve worn, I’d say now. Am I right, young fellow?

—You are, missis.

—There now. Good. I’m not going to ask you your name because then, when they ask me for it, I’ll be able to say I don’t know and it no lie.

—Who’ll be asking for my name?

—Ah now, she said.

She was small and ancient, and partly hidden in a shawl that might have had more colours than black.

—But you’ll be wanting to call me something, she said. —I have a name and it’s no secret. I’m Missis O’Shea.

She dropped the shawl to her shoulders. Her grey hair was in a bun.

A bun.

I leaned forward quickly; I felt my sore eye shift and protest but it didn’t matter at all: I had to know.

—D’you have any daughters?

—Awake two minutes and he’s already thinking of the girleens. The men, men, the men. They’re desperate animals altogether. Good. Good. I’ve a power of daughters. And granddaughters as well coming along after them.

—Are any of them teachers?

I prayed to the thatch above me.

—Not a one, she said.—You’ll have a dropeen of soup now. To put some colour into those sad Dublin cheeks of yours.

I heard her climbing down the steps as I lay back on the bed and waited for my cheeks and neck to stop burning and for my eye to stop hopping. She’d seen my blushes, she must have, even in this gloom; that was why she’d denied their colour. I inhaled deeply - I could smell turf smoke coming through the boards from below - I inhaled and hauled my soaking heart back to its proper place. I’d almost seen her, Miss O’Shea; I’d been so close. For a second or two I’d been looking at her mother.
Brown eyes and some slivers of hair that had escaped from a bun that shone like a lamp behind her head
. I’d been under her roof, on the bed she’d been born in. Where she’d sucked on her mother’s tit, against this pillow, on her mother’s tit, and grown. Her hair, skin, her neck. I’d felt them here, for just that second. They were still here. Fading, going.

There was nothing.

I heard feet on the ladder.

—I’ve two of them nuns with the Little Sisters of the Poor and one a housekeeper in Mullingar. I’ve another a nurse beyond in London, a big handful of farmers’ wives and another one married to a man with a shop in Castlerea. And I’ve the youngest one that’s loose in her head still here with me. And there’s the granddaughters all around and scattered, married and not, up to everything.

I lifted myself in time to see a bowl of soup rising out of the floor, held high by two claws. Folding steam grabbed at the dust, followed by the rest of old Missis O’Shea. Her mother, but just for a cruel spit of a second.

—But none of them school teachering, said old Missis O’Shea.—Good. My poor knees crack on those steps. Two knees, seventeen steps. It isn’t a fair fight. Sit up now, young fellow, till we feed you.

I sat up, slowly this time, aware now that my sore eye didn’t want movement and that my erection was making a mountain of the blanket.

—But the men, the men, said old Missis O’Shea, looking only at the soup and the spoon and its journey to my mouth.

—I can do it myself, I said.

—Then what’ll I do?

She pulled the spoon from my closed mouth and I’d never tasted anything like the soup she’d left behind. It was vile.

—Good, she said.

More joined it. A shattering mixture of the raw and the rotten, and scalding with it, and I had to swallow the lot. I’d grown up on bad food but nothing as fundamentally evil as old Missis O’Shea’s soup and I ate it without a whimper because she’d nearly been my lover’s mother.

The house was on a farm. The farm was forty-odd lumpy acres of cow fields and bog, divided by low stone walls. There was no sight of a hedge.

—What’s all the yellow stuff? I asked.

—That’ll be gorse, she said.

I stood at the half-door the morning after I woke up from Collins’s thump and looked out at the rain running across the yard.

—Where am I?

—Rusg, she said.—The bog, it means. It’s a nice name but not fair. It only describes the half of it. And the next parish is called Rusgeile. The man who gave out the names in this part of the county had only the one good eye and it was only the bad he saw with it. Mind your own eye going over the bumps, young fellow.