The Death of an Irish Lass Page 10

  “All the way from Shannon,” said the boy’s grandfather, who was sitting on the back stoop smoking a pipe filled with Yachtsman, a dark, pungent smoke that after O’Connor’s expensive cigar smelled to McGarr like scorching donkey cack. “Yerra, I wish I was young and had me choice of all the women in Ireland of a Saturday night. Had I that,” said he, “I’d look no farther. Evening, ma’am.” He tipped his cloth cap to Noreen. He was toothless. A small portable radio next to him was playing a reel and he was tapping a heavy boot in the dirt. A glass by his side held an amber fluid. “Can ye dance?” He stood and nearly fell. He reached down and turned up the radio. He reached out for Noreen’s hand. She took it and they danced a bit, moving only their legs and feet. It was like a tap dance, only less mechanical. The old man’s brogans beat a tattoo in the dust, and a lit coal sputtered from his pipe and fell on his sleeve. He batted it off and stopped. “I’m tuckered. That was grand.” He wrapped his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “If I could wipe the slate clean of fifty—no, sixty—no seventy years you could forget those two gombeen men and we could make a night of it, girl.”

  “Go on with you,” she said. “Forty, thirty, or twenty is more like it.”

  He released her and stepped away from them. “’Tisn’t. James P. Creon is ninety and two if he’s a day.”

  McGarr said the compulsory, “Sure and you don’t look sixty-two.”

  “Hear that? Hear that, Midge?” he roared into the open back door of the house.

  Somebody swore inside.

  McGarr tried to place a fifty p. coin in his hand. “Cripes,” said the old man. “How could I take that from you after you letting me dance with your pretty sister?” He gave Noreen a buss on the cheek. “If it was up to me I’d let the whole world park out here.”

  “You bring that money right in here, J. P.,” a sharp old voice called out from the kitchen. McGarr could see a gray head bent over the sink.

  “It’s my daughter,” he whispered. “A shrew. Can’t dance a step.” He put the coin in his pocket and sat.

  Once a movie theater, the dance hall had a long stage at one end and a level wooden floor laid over its formerly sloping aisles. It was as hollow as a drum and roared under the dancers’ feet.

  Looking around at the meticulously coiffured hair styles, high shoes, tight pocketless pants, and open-neck shirts, McGarr believed he could well have been in London or Paris or Rome, but when the young people began to dance he knew he could be in only one place, for their step was little different from that of the old man where they’d parked the car. What was more, everybody seemed to be dancing together. The whole crowd moved up and down as one.

  McGarr said, “I wonder if this building has been inspected recently.”

  Many of the young men standing near them were darting glances at Noreen. One girl nudged her friends and turned her head toward O’Connor. Another rolled her eyes.

  “Do you dance?” Noreen asked O’Connor.

  “I don’t feel like it tonight, thanks.”

  “Oh, you’ll not be able to refuse the girls here so easily.” She took his hand and led him out onto the dance floor.

  For a moment McGarr was a bit miffed that she hadn’t asked him, but he realized the situation was best for the business at hand. After inquiring at the bar for the manager of the dance hall, he was led up a circular iron staircase to the former projection room of the building. The bar girl pointed to a door at the end of a dark hall, then slipped back down the stairway.

  McGarr could hear muffled voices behind the door. The hallway smelled sour, like cigarette smoke and old tea.

  When he knocked on the door, the voices stopped short. He heard somebody push back a chair, approach the door, then hesitate before asking, “Yeah?”

  “I’d like to speak to the manager.”

  “What about?”

  “About Barry Hanly and Max Schwerr.”

  McGarr then heard several more chairs slide back and he wished he had brought more with him than the folder of money he had gotten from Schwerr. He took several steps back from the door and said, “I’m standing far back from the door, in the middle of the hall. I have my hands raised over my head.”

  He heard somebody within the room say, “I know that voice. Let me handle it.”

  A few seconds later, the light under the crack of the door went off and the door opened slightly, then farther, then a man stepped out. McGarr could barely see him in the darkness. He wasn’t any taller than McGarr. He carried the tobacco and tea smell with him. Beyond that there was a sweet reek of porter and the bodies of many men. “Is that you, Peter?”

  “Yes, it is. Who are you?”

  “I was half expecting you, once we heard you’d lifted Hanly. What’s this about Schwerr?”

  “Who am I talking to?” The door was wide open now, and McGarr could hear the shuffling of feet in the dark room. He could also have sworn he heard the click of a hammer being eased back from the cocked position on a large-bore pistol. Or was that just his imagination? He knew his own figure was silhouetted on the yellow glimmer up the circular stairwell in back of him.

  That was why, when the other man struck a match and held it to the end of his cigarette, McGarr said with somewhat more than usual enthusiasm at seeing his old friend, “Phil! Good to see you.”

  “And you, Peter. How’s your missus?” Dineen had come to McGarr’s wedding and they had been boyhood chums. Dineen had gone into the British army and risen through the ranks to become a major before he had a change of heart. He was a quiet man with thin features and the gentle demeanor of a pastor, which masked well his present activities. Dineen was the man who planned many of the Provo maneuvers in the North and elsewhere. In the past, McGarr and he had talked, argued, almost come to blows about the use of terrorist tactics. They were still good friends, however, in the way one feels very special about a person with whom he has passed the carefree days when the world was just revealing its sunny side. They had explored Dublin together, ducked under the fence at Croke Park, swiped apples on Moore St. and golf balls at the Royal course on North Bull Island. Once they had hopped on a C. I. E. coal barge together and taken it to Mullingar, where a Garda gave them, each in turn, the first lift back toward Dublin, on the toe of his boot.

  “Fine. Noreen’s downstairs dancing.”

  From inside the room McGarr heard a sharp report like a hand slapping the back of a head. Somebody whimpered, then a gruff voice said, “Get your arse down to that door or I’ll pound the tripes out of you.”

  “But he’ll see me.” The voice was young.

  “Let’s hope his luck is better than that,” said yet another voice.

  “I know what it is,” said the young voice. “You got me muney and now you chuck me out.”

  McGarr imagined they’d been playing cards.

  “Pardon me a moment,” said Dineen. He walked into the room and shut the door. McGarr heard a groan and the sound of somebody being driven up against the wall. Suddenly the door opened again and a form fell into the hall. That person scrambled past McGarr.

  The glowing coal of Dineen’s cigarette appeared in the hall again.

  The whole building was rocking with the sound of the band and dancers below.

  “Let’s go in here and let the boys continue their game.” He opened another door on the hall, stepped into a room, and switched on an overhead bulb that hung from the ceiling by its cord.

  Although the light was dim, McGarr could see Dineen had lost a lot of hair since the wedding three years before. At that time McGarr had just taken the job with the Garda and necessarily he and Dineen could not continue to meet each other socially. What was more, Dineen had been implicated as an accessory in several I.R.A.–related crimes. In spite of their longstanding friendship, McGarr’s approach to Dineen was little different from his approach to other I.R.A. members: many of the things Dineen and his cohorts did McGarr abhorred, but he looked upon their actions as mostly political. If no innocent party wa
s hurt, he tended to turn a blind eye to them. McGarr disliked politics. It made things too simple, either black and white or good or bad. It ignored the fact that people are complex and various. In short, he wished his friend Dineen had had more sense than to involve himself in a cause that so often had been responsible for killing and injuring many innocent persons in Britain, the Six Counties, and in Ireland itself.

  Dineen motioned to a chair around a large circular table the top of which was mottled with cigarette burns. He sat next to McGarr and produced a bottle and two paper cups. He half filled each. It was poteen, and very good at that.

  “So,” McGarr said, “how’s the life.”

  “Any day now I’ll grow a goatee and they’ll start calling me the Ho Chi Minh of Connaught.” Dineen smiled. Unlike many of his comrades, he had a pleasant sense of humor.

  “Better than the British army, though?”

  Dineen looked away. His eyes were hazel. McGarr noticed that his neck was getting scrawny. “Bridie wouldn’t say so—no steady pay, no pension, no sick leave, no dispensary.” He looked around. “Nothing but the back rooms of dance halls—if you’re lucky; and a few pounds tax free to send home in a plain brown envelope. That’s twice yearly. I haven’t seen my family in a month of Sundays.”

  “Having second thoughts?”

  “No man is without them.” He glanced at the door, then said in a lower voice, “I can’t say I agree with everything that’s going on.”

  “You mean the infighting.” Factionalism had long been the special curse of the I.R.A. In recent months it had led to open fighting. Over a dozen men had been assassinated, and they were the lucky ones. Several others had lost their kneecaps or other parts of their bodies. McGarr knew of a man who had been crippled from the neck down by a bullet that had been fired purposely into his backbone.

  “That and the bombing.”

  “But you knew about the bombing plan when you joined.”

  Dineen’s expression was more than pained; it was agonized. McGarr could tell he was in a quandary and wanted to talk. “I thought I was joining at the least a paramilitary organization. I was approached by a certain ex-officer who shall go nameless. He’s quite a bit older and couldn’t carry on anymore. He’s got money and said he’d pay my rank and allotments and such and, in spite of my grousing, he’s done it after a fashion. He said he was buying leadership, but here I sit, smack on my duff in some outback ‘garrison,’ trading in smoke and shadow. Every day I pick up the newspaper I’m embarrassed. Some nut has chucked a bomb into a crowd of civilians in the name of the cause. My cause. It makes me sick.

  “Then the other news is the way we’re chopping each other up, when all along I thought we were fighting for the same thing.”

  McGarr took a sip of the poteen. It was clear, colorless, and had a peaty flavor he enjoyed. “And what would that be, Phil?”

  Dineen looked up at his friend. “Don’t you know?”

  McGarr returned his gaze. “I’d like you to tell me.”

  Dineen blinked once. “A united Ireland, of course. And a functioning egalitarian democracy.”

  “And you think fighting can bring that about?”

  “Everything else has failed. The way the Stormont government had it, Ulster was the South Africa of Europe, only it was Paddies like you and me, Peter, who were the niggers. We could only work the most menial jobs, if we were lucky enough to get one. We had to carry passes, couldn’t go into certain areas, either were kept from voting, or had our electoral districts so devised that our votes wouldn’t count. And at every turning we were insulted and vilified—had an army of bigots armed to the teeth marched through our neighborhoods on King Billy’s birthday, and him the very one who first installed those mercenaries here three hundred years ago. And us native sons and daughters in our own country!” There was a flush in Dineen’s cheeks now.

  “But hasn’t everything you’ve done only made the majority more sure that’s the way they want it?” McGarr asked, referring to the clause in the Act of Union that committed Britain to maintain Ulster’s firm relationship until a majority in the Six Counties should vote otherwise. The I.R.A. contended that Ulster was a part of Ireland and thus the majority of all the Irish people should determine its political destiny.

  “Which just makes what we’ve done the more necessary, doesn’t it? When England disallowed any other political solution, she must have wanted us to have no alternative but violence. The Act of Union is a political dead end. What other option have we?”

  McGarr tilted the paper cup and looked down into the poteen. To him the I.R.A.’s policy was as blind a dead end. They were demanding nothing short of a united Ireland. The majority in Ulster would sooner see a civil war far hotter than the present hostilities there. The Dublin government hadn’t gone out of its way to make itself attractive to the North, and some people in Ulster were more determinedly English than the English themselves. Some middle ground had to exist—another intermediary and independent Six Counties in which social, political, but also economic rights were guaranteed to all and time, the great healer, could bind the new wounds opened during the current spate of violence. Then perhaps years and years later some other political accommodation might be made.

  McGarr said, “It seems to me you’ve got to identify the opposition. I don’t think the I.R.A. has ever done that. The British people aren’t your opposition, nor British politicians, nor even the British army. Most Englishmen wouldn’t bat an eye if Ireland, all thirty-two counties of her, sank into the sea. And the R.U.C. and the U.V.F. and the B Specials aren’t the opposition, either. The real opposition is the habit of mind that thinks of us,” here McGarr meant Irish Catholics, “as the enemy, and vice versa. Then we’ve got to realize that the habit of mind is a form of ignorance, that there’s no beating, bullying, or bombing it out of existence. If anything, that makes matters worse. What we’ve got to do is appeal to the better sides of the people who feel that way. And we’ve got to give them an alternative to our way of thinking, some middle ground. And if not to them, then to their children.”

  Dineen was smiling now.

  And McGarr felt foolish. He knew the question Dineen was going to ask.

  “And what middle ground is that, Peter?”

  “An independent Ulster.”

  “Ah, yes—that old tuppenny upright, an Independent Ulster. Ulster itself wouldn’t have her. Dublin wouldn’t allow her out of the back alley.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not a politician. We’ve talked about this before. I just hate seeing you all jammed up here.” He glanced about the empty room. “Like this. Involved with a bunch of hooligans and psychotics.”

  “You mean you’d prefer to think of me as Major Dineen, your officer friend in the British army.”

  Now McGarr was feeling uncomfortable. “Yes, if you must know, that would be preferable.”

  “Well then, answer me this, Peter. Is it because you yourself feel guilty, being ensconced in your swell job in Dublin Castle, knowing what’s going on in the North and knowing that people like me have thrown over similar cushy posts to do something about it?”

  McGarr finished the drink of poteen. His job was neither swell nor cushy, but maybe Dineen had something there. To be very honest with himself, McGarr did feel guilty about what was happening in the North. But his guilt wasn’t so much involved with not having joined in the I.R.A. fight as it was in not having done something about his idea for a middle ground. True, McGarr disliked politics, but he had not been a good citizen. He was perhaps as well informed as anybody in the country, he had an opinion about what should be done, but he had neither contacted his T.D. to let the man know his position nor had he tried to convince others of the rectitude of his plan. He had rationalized that by saying he could be a much more effective police officer if his political opinions were not known. That was true, but did he not have another obligation to his country as well? At least Dineen had come to a conclusion about how events should proceed in the Nor
th and was doing something about it. “Could be,” he said sheepishly. “Could be.”

  Dineen pulled the bottle from his overcoat and added to the cups. “Does that mean you might be willing to help us in the future?”

  McGarr said, “Consider my not having roused the Galway barracks tonight an act of assistance that contravenes the very spirit of my commission in the Garda Soichana.”

  “Touché,” said Dineen.

  “And my face is tired from winking at the antics of some of your hooligans.” McGarr took another sip. A warm glow was making him forget his responsibilities. “And then, what other Garda officer would hand deliver all that cabbage,” he said, pointing to the fat brown oak tag envelope.

  “Anyone who was in need of a bit of information, I suspect. You mentioned Hanly and Schwerr. Hanly I know about. This is Schwerr’s delivery. What happened to him?”

  McGarr then told Dineen about May Quirk’s murder. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a simple case of homicide if”—he tapped the folder—“I can keep these other complications out of it. That’s why I’m here.” McGarr met Dineen’s gaze and held it.

  Dineen said, “Hanly was acting under orders. Not to go and drink himself stupid, mind you, but to keep an eye on Schwerr. He’s a new boy and, you know, something of an ideologue.”

  McGarr cocked his head.

  “Wait—all of us are ideologues, I guess, but Schwerr had no real stake in the army.”

  Again McGarr seemed to object.

  “I mean—he’s wealthy, a kraut, been educated all over Europe. I wondered why he chose our cause. At first I had the idea his approach was romantic, so we gave him some pretty rough jobs.”

  McGarr didn’t care to inquire what the jobs had been.

  “He acquitted himself well. So we gave him the cash funds job with an eye to his replacing Hanly. Schwerr was just right—nobody would connect him with us—and Hanly is having big troubles with the devil in his throat. He’s a good man, loyal and trustworthy when sober, but drunk he’s different entirely.”