Michael Russell - The City of Strangers

‘Let’s see what you’ve got to say at the barracks.’

The soldier who had knocked the boy’s father down took his arm and dragged him towards the Crossley Tourer. The other soldier covered him with his rifle. The turret of the armoured car creaked slowly as the machine gun swept round the farmyard once more. The boy watched as his father was pushed into the back seat of the car. Neither his mother nor his uncle moved. They had seen it before; it was always the same; the same questions and no answers. He would come back, beaten and bruised, but he would come back. The soldiers got into the car. Then the Crossley Tourer and the armoured car swept round in a circle in the farmyard, through the mud and the dung, and drove up the track towards the road to Castleberehaven, the dog chasing behind, still barking and snapping.

The woman walked forward. She took her son’s hand and smiled reassuringly. It would be all right. These were the things they lived with, that they had always lived with. Even at seven years old he was meant to understand that. The soldiers who had taken his father away were traitors; men who had sold the fight for Irish freedom for a half-arsed treaty with England that was barely freedom at all. Traitors were to be treated with contempt, not fear. Then his mother turned to his uncle, his face white, his fists clenched tight at his side. The fear was gone; now his face was full of anger.

The boy had once asked his mother why his father seemed to have no fear and his uncle, sometimes, had to hide his shaking hands. ‘A man can only give what he has,’ she told him. ‘If he gives it all, no one can ask more than that.’ She was very calm now. None of it was new to them. Three years ago it had been the English Black and Tans; now the men in uniform were Irish, but the same sort of shite. Rage was to be nurtured, as it had been for centuries. There would always be a time to use it.

‘You take the bike and go up to Horan’s. They’ll get a message to Brigadier Sullivan. He’d better know. And we’ll finish milking the cows.’

The boy’s uncle nodded and walked quickly away. The woman and the boy went into the barn. For a moment, as his mother put her arm round him and squeezed, the boy smiled again. He did know it would be all right.

They waited all that evening, wife and brother and son. The rain had finally come just before dark, beating in from the sea, and the wind began to drop. As night fell a more welcome car pulled into the farmyard. The IRA brigadier said the man was where they expected him to be, in the police barracks in Castleberehaven, on the other side of the peninsula. The Crossley Tourer had been seen driving in through the gates around four o’clock. The IRA had someone inside the barracks; when the man was released they’d have the information immediately. He would be collected and brought home. The Free Staters had pulled in a number of volunteers that afternoon; it was the usual game; most of the men were already home. They only had to wait.

When the boy went up to bed there was no sense of anxiety in the house. The rain was falling outside, but the storm was quiet. Lying in his bedroom under the eaves, listening to the rain rattling comfortably on the roof, he drifted off to sleep thinking of the days when he would hold a rifle in his hand and fight the fight his family fought now. But when he woke abruptly in the early hours of the morning, he knew something was wrong. The rain still fell, but the house wasn’t at its ease any more. He could hear voices downstairs; his mother’s, his uncle’s, and others, a woman, several men. He could make out no words, but the voices no longer echoed the assured tones of the brigadier. There was anxiety; he knew what that was. The voices grew louder and then someone said something to quieten them; but the quiet wasn’t really quiet; it was a series of harsh, adult whispers that only intensified the anxiety.

He got out of bed and crept across the room. He knew where each floorboard creaked; he stepped slowly and carefully. At the door he turned the knob and opened it just a crack. The lamps were still burning downstairs. He didn’t know the time, but he knew these were the early hours of the morning. The voices were still unclear. The broken words and overlapping phrases that came up the stairs wouldn’t fit together. ‘Five fucking hours ago – they drove him out, he was in the car – it was ten o’clock – no, the ones at Ardgroom were from Kenmare – Gerry Curran didn’t even pick up a gun – they pulled him out of bed – they already knew where the explosives was buried – so where is he?’

The voices stopped. People were moving downstairs. The door into the farmyard opened. The boy tiptoed to the window. He pulled back the curtain and looked down. Two men were walking across the farmyard. They carried rifles. His uncle followed, a few steps behind; he stopped and turned back to the house. His mother was there now, standing in the rain. His uncle stepped back. He put his arm round her and pulled her to him. It was the same gesture of reassurance the boy had received from his mother as they walked to the barn to milk the cows, but everything about the way his mother stood now, unmoving, unaware of the rain falling on her, said that she wasn’t reassured.

His uncle picked up the bicycle that lay on the ground by the door. He got on it and rode away. Ahead of him the two other men were on bicycles too, their rifles slung over their backs, their hats pulled down on their heads. The three of them rode out of the farmyard and within seconds the rain and the darkness had swallowed them. The light from the open door shone on his mother as she watched them go. The boy looked down from the bedroom window. It seemed a long time before she turned away from the darkness, back into the house. The door shut. She did not come upstairs.

He let the curtain fall back across the window. He stood in the dark room. He could hear no sound from the kitchen below, but somehow he knew that his mother was standing, just as he was, and that she was crying, just as he was. He could feel the tears now. He understood nothing, except that there were reasons for tears, and reasons to be afraid. He walked to his bed and knelt. He crossed himself and clasped his hands together, closing his eyes tightly. ‘Holy Mary, be a mother to me. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Joseph, and all the saints in heaven pray for us to the Lord, that we may be preserved this night from sin and evil. Good Angel, that God has appointed my guardian, watch over my Daddy and protect him from harm.’

The rain stopped very suddenly, just before dawn. The sun had been up for over an hour when the boy woke. He wasn’t in his bed. He was sprawled across it where he had finally fallen asleep in the middle of the prayers he had repeated over and over again. He got up and walked to the window to pull back the curtains.

The sun was low in the sky but the morning was clear and bright already. Outside he could hear the familiar sounds of the cows in the barn, waiting to be fed and milked. The cockerel called across the farmyard, loud and urgent. But the only other noise was the shrill sound of gulls, flocking overhead. It was a moment before the anxiety of the previous night pushed the morning aside, and he remembered.

He ran to the door and downstairs. There was no one in the kitchen. The door to the farmyard was open. The door to the sitting room was open too, but there was no one there. He ran back upstairs and burst into his mother and father’s bedroom. It was empty; the bed had not been slept in. He knocked on the door to his uncle’s room across the landing, then opened it; it was empty too and the bed was unused. He raced down the stairs again. He put his raincoat on over his pyjamas and pulled on his boots.

The farmyard was empty. He stood outside and looked around him. It was as if everyone he loved had simply disappeared; for a moment it was bewildering rather than frightening. But he knew the emptiness around him meant that the darkness of the night had not been swept away by the dawn. He looked at the sky. The noise of the gulls was very loud now. A great crowd of them rose and fell on currents of air over the sea beyond the dunes, tightly bunched, angry somehow.