Now and in the Hour of Our Death (54 page)

Cal sighed.

“You're not getting cold feet are you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good. We're too far along to turn back now.”

“I know,” he said, and stared ahead.

She saw the tractor indicate to turn right into a field and waited for it to swing across the road and for Cal to accelerate.

The van picked up speed the way all her plans had in the last few days. Erin had learned in history class that once the European powers had mobilized in 1914, no power on earth could have stopped the juggernaut that became the “war to end all wars.”

The statesmen of the time found they had no more choice about changing course than—than the old trams that used to run in Belfast. She felt the same sense of inevitability. She must fight and go on fighting for her country, and for Fiach, and she must rest content with that decision, the consequences be damned.

She listened to the rain, heavier now, rattling off the van's roof, and was vaguely aware of the pungent odour of damp dog, Tessie's smell, clinging to the van's upholstery. She'd miss the collie, even miss that bitch of a cow, Margaret.

The road wound past water meadows, where cattle huddled at the hedges, heads to the rain, coats sodden, jaws working as they chewed the cud. Stupid animals trying to ignore the weather, hoping it would soon clear up, just as most of the people here in the north hoped the struggle would go away so they could get on with the rest of their lives.

Cal turned onto the farm lane. Fuchsia bushes slipped by her window. Their red and purple flowers drooped in the rain, as if they, too, were sad, and she knew that, wherever she and Eamon went, she would never again see a fuchsia bush without thinking of Fiach. She'd heard a line about a man not being dead as long as someone remembered his name. I'll always remember yours, Fiach, she thought as the van jolted into the farmyard.

The whole dairy herd was milling round. “What the hell's going on, Cal? Stop the van. Where's Sammy?”

She piled out, forced her way past the animals, heedless of the mud splattering her raincoat and the hem of her dress, and ran to the barn. In the dim light she saw a pair of moleskin-trousered legs sticking out from an empty stall. Erin strode over, fell to her knees, and bent her head over Sammy's face. His lips were slatey, but he was breathing. “Sammy. Sammy.” She shook his shoulder and was rewarded with a groan.

Erin yelled, “Cal. Cal. Get in here. Sammy's hurt.”

She put an arm under his shoulders and managed to have him half-sitting when Cal appeared at her shoulder. “What…”

“Never mind. Take his feet. We have to get him into the house.”

“Right.”

She was surprised how light the wee man was. In minutes, they had carried him to the farmhouse and into the kitchen. “Lay him on the table,” Erin said as she unbuttoned Sammy's raincoat, jacket, and collarless shirt, scarcely noticing the darker V stretching from his collarbones to the middle of his pigeon breastbone, where days working in the sun had tanned him. The rest of his chest was white as the skin of a corpse, except for livid bruising on the left side.

She felt the grating underneath her hand there each time he hauled in a wheezing breath. She'd felt that often enough in a hurt horse. “His ribs are broken,” she said.

“Should we take him up to Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry?” Cal asked.

“No,” she said, thinking fast. “He's got the detonators. He's to teach you how to make a fuse. We'll have to keep him here until he wakes up. Go you and give Doctor O'Malley a call. Ask him to come out here.”

She heard the telephone's “ting” and Cal speaking. She held her breath until he said, “He'll be here in an hour.”

“Good. Now go and get a blanket.” Erin struggled to get Sammy's clothes off, tutting at the sight of his urine-stained underpants.

Cal returned, and she snatched the blanket from his hands.

“Here.” She took the blanket and covered Sammy. “Just a minute 'til I get the kettle on so I can fill a hot water bottle. Then we'll cart him along to bed.”

“I'll do the kettle.”

Erin waited. She remembered how Ma had stripped Da, burned his bloodstained shirt the night he'd been wounded, the night the peelers came. Dear God, would Irish women ever be able to stop binding up their menfolk? Yes, she told herself, when the Brits had gone—and any doubts she might have had earlier about the raid fled.

“Take his feet,” she told Cal and helped her brother carry the blanket-wrapped Sammy along the hall. She tucked the little man under the sheets and eiderdown and, as a mother would with a sleeping child, gently used one hand to smooth his sparse hair from his forehead.

Apart from the hot water bottle, she couldn't do much now until the doctor arrived. “Come on,” she said. “Let him rest.”

The kettle had boiled by the time she and Cal returned to the kitchen. “Get the tea things ready, Cal. I'll make us a drop in a minute.”

She sat at the table as Cal busied himself. Now what? There was no way Sammy could travel to establish his alibi. Maybe sending him to hospital would be best. But if the doctor didn't think it was necessary, she could nurse Sam here and … and if she could get old O'Malley to come round on Saturday, he could testify that Sammy had been too sick to leave the farmhouse.

She heard the kettle boiling and filled a rubber hot water bottle, moulded in the shape of a collie dog. It had been Fiach's.

“Erin?”

“What?'

“You said Sammy has to show me how to set the fuse. What'll we do if he's not well enough?”

Think, she told herself as she screwed the stopper into the neck of the bottle.

“I'll take this to Sammy and keep an eye to him. You drive over to his cottage. He told me he keeps the fusing stuff in a knapsack hidden in his coal house. Find them and bring them back here.”

“Right. But, Erin, even if I get the gear, none of us knows how to use it.”

Erin shrugged. “I'd not be too worried. Davy McCutcheon was an armourer in the Belfast Brigade for years. We'll get Davy to show you.”

 

CHAPTER 44

TYRONE. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1983

Davy limped after McGuinness and Eamon. The latter two carried an ArmaLite rifle in each arm, taken from the cache in the old grave, one weapon each destined for Eamon, McGuinness, Cal, and Erin to take with them to Strabane tomorrow. Eamon had had enough wit not to ask Davy to help. As he trudged across the dark farmyard, the light leaking from the curtained farmhouse kitchen windows gave direction.

It had been a long three days cooped up with Eamon and McGuinness in the old grave. Davy was no stranger to McGuinness's antipathy, indeed found it simpler to deal with than his unexpected offer of a truce. It had been more difficult living close to Eamon and feeling the tension between them.

By tomorrow, he'd be out of the tumulus for good and finally on his way, away from Ireland and away from all the Provo hard men.

The smell of gun oil still clung to his sweater, but he'd taken no part when Eamon and McGuinness spent the afternoon stripping, cleaning, oiling, and reassembling four of the semiautomatic rifles from the arms cache. Davy knew the ArmaLite had a muzzle velocity of 3,250 feet per second and its .223 round could penetrate a British flak jacket or the skin of an armoured vehicle. It was a deadly weapon for close-quarter use.

He stumbled on a rut, clutched for support, and grabbed for Eamon's arm. “Sorry. This bloody leg of mine.”

“It's all right,” Eamon said, moved ahead, then stood waiting.

Davy rubbed his thigh, the one he'd nearly blown off when, as a boy, he'd been training here in Tyrone, the one he'd smashed jumping from the farmhouse window in Ravernet. He limped to where Eamon stood.

“Look, Davy,” Eamon said, as he'd tried to say several times since Wednesday, “I'm sorry about me having to rope you into this.”

“So am I, Eamon.” His regret was as much for a lost friendship as it was for knowing that tomorrow he was going to be part, no matter how distant from the action, of a Provo attack. “But let the hare sit.”

Light streamed out through the open door.

“Come on,” said Eamon, “let's get inside.”

“Right.” Davy walked on. He had no desire to sit through the final preparations, but the photographer who'd come to the grave on Tuesday had promised that Davy's forged documents would be delivered today, and he wanted to be sure they had arrived; otherwise, he'd have stayed alone in the old grave and let the rest of them plan to their heart's content. He walked into the kitchen and waited for Eamon to close the door.

“Evening, Davy,” Erin said from where she stood at the range pouring boiling water into a teapot. “Cup of tea? No? Then make yourself at home. Sorry the place is a bit cluttered.”

Davy looked around and saw a pile of anoraks, overalls, gloves, and balaclava helmets on the tabletop. Provo uniform for any attack. Once the firing was over and the attackers safe, the outer garments would be discarded along with the weapons. No residual traces of burned gunpowder would cling to the clothes or hands of the assailants.

Three bulging rucksacks stood beside the kitchen door. Erin pointed to them. “You'll be taking those in the van tomorrow, Davy. We'll all need clean clothes and toilet things once we get to Dublin. The one nearest the door has a clatter of ham sandwiches and some bottles of ginger ale.”

Jesus, she sounded as if she'd been making preparations for a picnic. Some bloody picnic. If they managed to escape the devastation of that bomb blast, he wondered if they'd have any stomach for sandwiches and ginger ale. Still, when they opened the bag with the food in it, the van would be on the way to Dublin. Davy couldn't help but smile.

He looked over to Eamon and saw him staring at a khaki army-surplus knapsack covered in what looked like smudged coal dust leaning against one of the table's legs.

“Would you take a wee look at this?” said Eamon, handing Davy the knapsack. “Sorry, it's a bit grubby, but Cal had to pick it up from under a heap of coal.”

Davy took the bag, undid the strap holding it shut, and opened the flap. “Holy shite.” Inside, he could see an ammeter, wires, a battery, the handles of a pair of wire strippers, and a flat wooden box. He'd seen enough of those boxes in his time. Fulminate-of-mercury detonators. Fuse-making equipment. “Here.” Davy thrust the bag at Eamon. “I want no part of this. That's your armourer's job.”

“He can't do it, Davy,” Erin said quietly. “He's in hospital. He got crushed by a cow last night. Doctor O'Malley came out, said Sammy had a punctured lung, might have pneumonia. He's in Altnagelvin in Derry.”

“It's nothing to do with me.” Davy stepped back. “Not a bloody thing.”

“But,” Erin said, moving closer to Davy, “you're an armourer. You can build a fuse, show Cal how to set it.”

“I can,” Davy said, wondering how many fuses he'd made, how many lives his bombs had destroyed, “but I won't.”

No one spoke. He saw Erin stare at Eamon.

You can stare away, girl, Davy thought. I'm not budging. He answered his own question about how many. He could identify by name or by their faces only a handful of individual people he'd killed; but it was the faceless others, the ones he'd used to think were no business of his because he only made the devices, which haunted him more.

“What do you mean, ‘you won't?'” McGuinness snarled. “You'll do as you're bloody well told.”

Davy's eyes narrowed.
“No.”
He'd not make another bomb. He'd not. “
Do you hear me? No.
” He was panting.

Christ, if they tried to force him by saying they'd not help him get to Dublin unless he made the fuse, he'd get there by himself. It didn't matter if Eamon said it would be nearly impossible to go it alone. Davy'd said he'd drive the van. He'd made that compromise. He wasn't making any more, no matter what that decision cost. He'd promised Fiona the raid on Ravernet in '73 would be his last, and he'd never broken a promise to her. If he did, all his telling himself he'd changed was meaningless. He'd have changed all right, but with his last shred of integrity gone, he'd not be the man Fiona could love.

His breathing slowed. “I mean it,” he said more calmly. “I'll not do it.” If the attack couldn't go ahead, he'd not be one bit sorry. “Gimme my passport and let me be.” Davy waited to see what would happen.

“It's not here yet, Davy,” Eamon said. “The fellow should be bringing it any minute.”

“I'll wait,” Davy said.

He saw Erin look at Eamon and Eamon shrug. After three years in the same cell, he must know how bloody-minded Davy could be. Cal seemed to be smiling. Was that because he'd realized if Davy wouldn't make the fuses, the attack couldn't go ahead? Davy wondered just how much the man's heart was in the thing, how much stomach Cal had for killing.

McGuinness's voice was cold. “I told you I didn't care what you did after we got to Dublin.”

“That's right.”

“You're for Canada, aren't you?”

Eamon must have told him. Davy stared at the man. Mind your own business, McGuinness. Keep out of this.

“And you think there's no Provos there? That we couldn't find you? You and whoever you're going to see? Jimmy Ferguson that housepainter friend of yours? Some woman?”

Davy felt a vessel in his temple start to throb. Was McGuinness threatening Fiona? Davy's fists bunched. He stepped up to McGuinness. “I'll kill you.”

“I thought you'd given up killing,” McGuinness sneered. “You make that fuse or…”

“Or what?” Davy's hand shot out and grabbed the front of McGuinness's sweater. “Or what?” He felt someone's hand on his arm.

“Back off, Davy.” Eamon, still holding the knapsack in one hand, thrust himself between Davy and McGuinness, who sidled out of range and toward the door. “Sometimes Brendan gets carried away.”