round the square. The bakelite shattered into jagged fragments. He laughed at the thought of McGuffin’s discomfort, lying like a dog under the van while some maniac took potshots at the ice-cream cone above. Eugene set the rifle down and groped for a cigarette. He’d loose off a round or two more and then call it a night.
There’d been wild rumours in the bar earlier that the Donatists were heading for the town looking for trouble, but there was no sign of them, thank God. Magee wouldn’t be bothering them any more tonight either. He’d seen the butcher and his cronies, bad-looking bastards, heading out of town and into the hills earlier. They’d be ransacking the high ground, plundering isolated farms, as much to vent their anger as in any hope of finding the runaway. He lowered his head before striking the match. From the bar below came the muffled sounds of querulous drinking, but it was oddly peaceful in the attic. At his side the figure of the Dancing Madonna silently surveyed the rooftops with a vacant, enigmatic stare.
Only two people in the whole of Ireland, himself and the Patriot, knew of her hiding place. Muire na nGael, Mary of the Gael, the Patriot had called her. She had been there since the night Frank’s father had returned with her from the Antrim plateau, the Patriot decreeing that she would never be subjected to such ignominy again. She would stay under his roof till her mission became clear. Some day, if you believed the prophecy, she would call the people together, planter and dispossessed, and we would be a nation once again. It was the Patriot’s last great hope, to be spared to see that day.
She was a small statue, crudely carved from weather-beaten timber, yet with a hauteur that distinguished her from the thousand other representations of the Virgin. It was hard to think sometimes that a thing so small, so insignificant, so patently manmade could be the cause of so much conflict. But it was ever so. The icon had long ago become what every man wanted her to become. To one side a symbol of the unbroken line of their faith, a repository for their aspirations. To the other side an object of fear and illicit fascination.
Eugene finished his smoke and carefully stubbed the butt out on the joists. There’d been enough fires in the town that night already, he didn’t want to go starting another one. Carefully he eased open the skylight and scanned the town below. All was quiet. He fired once more, in the general direction of Scotch Street, and ducked down. He waited five minutes. There was no return fire. The sniper who had pinned down the head of the town must have been disposed of all right. He fired once more and waited. All was quiet. He lifted the one-legged statue and slid it under the skylight. ‘Be a good girl and keep an eye on things for us for a while,’ he said, ‘while I oil, strip and grease the rod.’
Frank pedalled homeward through the darkness, sticking as best he could to the back lanes that wound up into the hills. He hadn’t dared leave till the rioting had died down. Even then there was no way through the Shambles, for there were snipers in Scotch Street covering every corner. Rumours of the unrest had been reaching the palace all afternoon, of three or four dead and others injured. He had heard it on authority that Magee had led a crowd into Irish Street, further up than they had gone in years, burning the Catholics out before them. Marooned on the hilltop he heard the sporadic crack of the Armalites, and saw the dull glow where the houses were ablaze. At midnight he decided to risk it. He would take a detour out by Blackwatertown and bypass the town through the maze of lanes his father had taught him, heading for the safety of the hills.
It was a dark night, the moon only a sliver, obscured behind angry clouds, but he didn’t dare risk even the flickering light of the dynamo. For an hour he had wandered through the Dark Lonen, unsure of his bearings, terrified of rousing the brutes of dogs that lurked behind each gateway, petrified of God knows what might be waiting for him around each corner. In the distance he could still make out the sounds of battle, the rattle of hailstones that he knew was automatic fire, the dull thud of grenades and incendiaries.
The scream of a gearbox! Dogs frantically giving chase! A sudden commotion on the narrow road a mile behind him! A car was coming through the darkness! More than one, at speed! Frank threw himself into the ditch and pulled the bicycle on top of him. In the nick of time, for round the corner raced a cavalcade of dark motors, one, two, three of them, at full speed, kicking up gravel and dirt, the tyres squealing on the narrow bends, rasping on the ditches and the overhanging bushes in the darkness. They roared past him. He lay without moving, listening till the noise of the engines had faded on the night air. When he was sure they were gone he quietly picked himself up. The bike was buckled but there were no bones broken. He threw it into the field and with a prayer to the Sacred Heart for protection, started to make his way on foot over the treacherous fields towards home.
In the darkened interior of the car, Father Alphonsus also said a prayer to the Sacred Heart, his protector and benefactor. Dear Heart of Jesus, don’t let this prize, so unexpectedly bestowed, be plucked away from me at the eleventh hour! The driver was gunning the limousine like a maniac, tearing through the countryside in the dark, trying to keep up with the bodyguards in front. Dear Jesus don’t let him crash! Don’t let him put us over the side of the ditch, where we’ll be easy pickings for the loyalist gangs who are everywhere this night!
Alphonsus couldn’t believe his luck. Five years earlier, when Schnozzle had recalled him from the sunshine in California to the horrors of the ghetto, he had thought his days in the sun were over for ever. And here was a second chance! Twenty-four hours ago he was dying on hunger strike, sunk in despair of ever escaping. And now, like a man in a dream, he was hurtling through South Armagh, dressed in civvies by command of the boss, a wad of dollar bills in his pocket, guarded by a dozen armed Sisters of the True Faith, with a pair of one-way tickets in his hand and Chastity McCoy sobbing beside him. He crossed himself and shouted out His praise, shouted it loud above the screaming of the engine on the mountain road. Alphonsus McLoughlin would never doubt the goodness of God again! He tried to calm himself, to recall what they had told him. All arrangements had been taken care of. Inspector O’Malley of the Garda Síochána would meet him as soon as he cleared the border and escort him to the plane. Fidelma Sharkey, the Taoiseach’s wife, would be waiting on the tarmac to see them off. The red carpet would be laid on; there would be no hitches. The authorities on the other side had been squared too. There would be no trouble with entry visas or residence requirements. Alphonsus started another decade of the rosary, and the girl, through her sobs, joined in. If only he could survive the next hour he would be home and dry. Magee and his lot would never follow them beyond the borderlands. If he were spared he would carry out his orders. He would deliver Chastity to the land of her ancestors, back to the Indians in the mountains of the new world. See her safely ensconced in the convent where she would spend the rest of her days.
And then what? Return to Armagh? Report back to Schnozzle that the mission was accomplished? Return to the grim despair of the ghetto, to live day after day among the unwashed?
The car was still climbing, up through the foothills and into the mountains that separated Ulster from the rest of the country. Alphonsus gingerly opened the window a crack and sniffed the mountain air. He lit a cigarette and started to relax. Chastity was crying now, openly weeping as she left the land of her birth. He put his hand on her knee and squeezed conspiratorially. All the same, he didn’t put the beads away completely, nor reach for the Jameson, till they had crossed the Black Pig’s Dyke and had started to descend again, down into the great dark central plain, and he was sure that the province of Ulster was firmly, and he hoped irrevocably, behind them.
The Irish News, with its blurred pictures of His Grace, all nose and teeth, posing with the cruet poised over Chastity’s forehead, wasn’t long in reaching the four corners of the province. No one doubted that serious trouble could be far behind. The shopkeepers boarded up their windows, the farmers locked their barns, the women ordered their broods of children in
