Sorj Chalandon - Return to Killybegs

I was six years old.

Sheila brought a white paper tablecloth from Strabane, where she has been living with a friend since I came here. She made our New Year’s Eve meal before coming over, a big dish of bangers and mash, which she heated up on my camping stove. She had added caramelized onions, mushy peas and thin slices of yellow apples to the sausages and the mashed potatoes.

I set the table. Our two plates, and mugs for glasses. She had left a bottle of white wine outside against the front wall. It would be chilled just in time for the meal. She had also brought six beers for me and some gin for herself. I cut the brown bread. Two slices each, with a square of butter. I watched her back, bent over the single burner. The smell of hot oil was warming the house. I listened to my wife’s silence. Her movements as if nothing had happened. When I caught her eye, she would smile. Not her girlish, motherly or warrior smile, but a very weary old woman’s smile that I had never seen before.

We hadn’t talked. When she came to join me here, after my interrogation by the IRA, she took me in her arms and closed her eyes. Then she looked at me, her hands in mine. She was looking for something that had changed in my eyes. I wanted to respond, tell her that her presence did me good. But she placed her hand gently on my mouth.

— No, Tryone. Don’t say anything. I’m not asking you anything, I don’t want to know anything.

I went to move her hand away. She moved it back.

— Please, wee man. You’re going to have to lie, so don’t.

And then she unpacked her big bag. Emergency supplies. Toilet paper, candles, cigarettes, bread, some tinned food. I asked if she’d brought the paper. She replied that it didn’t say anything good.

I had placed a fork either side of my plate and a knife either side of Sheila’s. She smiled. I’d never been too gifted in the kitchen. Then we sat down. She said a prayer, just three words, to thank Mary for having brought us together. She had bought a red candle with a golden star in Boots. She had decorated the table with pine needles and mistletoe. We toasted with the cold wine. It wasn’t a celebration, but a painful ceremony. The irritating noise of our cutlery, the battle of the fire against the damp wood, the candle flame.

— It’s good, I murmured.

She only answered with her eyes.

It was nine o’clock. The cold was taking over.

— I’m not going to wait up till midnight, Sheila yawned.

She was exhausted. She apologized.

— Neither am I. I’m going to write for a while, then I’ll join you.

— Who are you writing to?

— Nobody. Just things that are going through my head.

Her friend in Strabane had made an apple crumble, and she’d wrapped up half for me. It was almost the meal of a free man.

Sheila had been stopped by the Garda Síochána as she was arriving. From her description, I recognized Seánie, the old guard who had come to see me, and the younger man who didn’t leave his side. Their car was parked farther up the road. Dublin had not appreciated the article in the Donegal Sentinel and they had been mentioning Killybegs on the television.

— Thanks to that damned journalist, the whole of Ireland knows where your husband is hiding.

— He’s not hiding, my wife answered.

All the same, I needed to be on the alert going out, doing my shopping, coming into town. I had to be cautious walking the mile or so between Killybegs and my cottage. I should avoid pubs, gatherings, everything that could put the locals at risk.

— The locals? Sheila asked.

— This isn’t our war, the older peace-keeper had responded. We’re not accusing anyone or defending anyone. We just don’t want the killers skulking around.

I asked her if they had been unpleasant. No. Not at all. Just worried about what was going to happen.

She told them that the following Tuesday she’d be coming back with a visitor, a friend, a Frenchman.

The gardaí responded that it wasn’t the French they feared, but all the Irish the world over.

— Do you think that the IRA could give him trouble? the younger guard asked.

— No. They’ll neither give him trouble nor stop anyone else doing so, Sheila answered.

— So it’s bad, murmured the old guard.

We got up from the table. The washing up could wait until next year. Sheila hesitated, came over to me. I took her in my arms, my face buried in her grey hair. It was the moment for making resolutions. We stayed like that for a minute, our shadows dancing on the wall.

— Good luck to us, my wife whispered.

— Good luck to you.

Her warmth, her autumn skin, the wood smoke in her hair. I hugged her sobs against me.

And suddenly, her voice, loud and abrupt.

— My God, Tyrone! What have you done to us?

It was a grief-stricken cry, not a question. I wrapped her even closer into me. I was crying, too, though my body didn’t give it away. An orphan’s grief. With nothing left, no mother, no father, no home, not even the earth to nourish him or the heavens to protect him. A terrifying solitude, silence ever after. And the cold for all time, such cold. I was disgusted with myself. I was crying on my own behalf.

— What’s to become of me? my wife asked.

I told her that there was Jack, her friends, her country.

— You were my country, wee man.

And she pulled away from me, masking her sorrow with her hand. She lay down, still wearing my jumper and her socks, and turned to face the wall and search for sleep. We had both lost it, this sleep. Her for the past ten days, and me for twenty-five years.

Since my release from the Kesh, the IRA had decided to put me into retirement. I was too visible, too well known. The Army Council asked me to behave as a political activist. I participated in peaceful protests, joined the marches beneath pictures of the hunger strikers. I would walk alongside the crowds, my wreath in hand. For the commemoration of the Easter Rising, I didn’t march in the black uniform of our soldiers, but in the rows of prisoners’ families. In the eyes of everyone, I was a veteran of the blanket protest, a veteran of the dirty protest. A former combatant.

One day, when I was drinking with Sheila in the Thomas Ashe, a British soldier approached our table and asked me my name. His officer came over to me, smiling.

— Let it go. Meehan’s retired at the moment.

And Sheila put her hand on mine.

— Let whatever happens happen, the MI5 agent had told me.

I didn’t influence anything. I didn’t provoke anything. I let events unfold. I told myself that perhaps having accepted treason would satisfy them. I was an agent in their eyes. But I hadn’t betrayed. Not yet. I hadn’t said anything, done anything, denounced anyone. Just that Parisian conversation that they took for a pact. I had a crazy idea. I hoped that it would all stop there. That they’d never ask me for anything, ever.

Prison had changed me. That’s what people murmured behind my back. Before the dirty protest, I used to drink. I’d empty my pint glasses same as anyone else on this island. But since I’d got out, I’d taken to the drink. It wasn’t the same thing. I knew some army mates like that. They’d drink on the sly, farther and farther from their ghetto. They’d get other people to order their vodka, they’d send a youth to the off-licence and let him keep the change. They’d miss meetings, forget orders. As soon as they became a security liability, the party would let them go. Then they’d pour their drinks down the drain, they’d make promises. They’d wear Pioneer pins on their lapels to be recognized as teetotallers. They’d drink soft drinks with the look of a drowned man on their faces. And they’d often go back on the drink again.