either of you know anyone who works in a key position in an airport or in the docks somewhere?’
I didn’t.
‘I could try Cardiff, Graham,’ I suggested. ‘There are probably some old school friends of mine working in a freight department somewhere. I could go drinking in the pubs where dock and airport workers hang out. I’ll find someone who needs to supplement his income, I’m sure.’
‘Good idea,’ complimented Graham, but without much enthusiasm.
Charlie spoke up. ‘I’ve just met someone who I’m sure will be able to bring in some hash. I interviewed him for Friends, He’s an IRA guy. If he can smuggle in guns, he can smuggle in dope.’
Friends was an underground magazine. Its editor was a South African named Alan Marcuson. Charlie and his lady, Tina, lived in Alan’s Hampstead flat. Together with Mike Lessor’s International Times and Richard Neville’s Oz‚ Friends catered for the tastes and beliefs of 1960s drop-outs, dope dealers, rock musicians, acid-heads, and anyone with a social conscience. The underground press was unanimously opposed to the British presence in Northern Ireland. The IRA’s struggle was seen as championing the causes of the world’s downtrodden and poverty-stricken Catholics. How could one not sympathise? There were increasing doubts and worries, of course, about the violent methods used by the IRA, particularly the Provisional IRA, which had recently broken away from the Official IRA to form a terrorist splinter group. There was also discomfort about the IRA’s rather puritanical stance on smoking dope.
The current issue of Friends carried a very lengthy piece on the IRA, which included an interview with a Belfast member, James Joseph McCann. In the interview he admitted to a petty-criminal childhood in Belfast which led to an involvement during the 1960s with South London’s most powerful and feared gangster, Charlie Richardson. A spell in Her Majesty’s Prison, Parkhurst, Britain’s heaviest nick, had converted McCann into a poet and proponent of Irish nationalism. His poetry sucked, but his rhetoric seemed quite persuasive, especially when it took the form of explicit threat. McCann missed the criminal glamour and clearly felt there would be an even greater opportunity for money, deviousness, and deceit in becoming an Irish folk hero. He achieved this longed-for status by throwing Molotov cocktails at Belfast’s Queen’s University, declaring himself as an IRA man, giving himself up to the authorities, and subsequently escaping from Crumlin Road prison. It was the first escape from there since World War II. He was now on the run in Eire, presenting himself to press photographers in badly fitting military wear and brandishing a variety of lethal weapons, claiming to have smuggled them into Dublin. Belfast schoolchildren mocked and jeered at British soldiers patrolling the Andersonstown streets yelling, ‘Where’s your man McCann? Where’s your man McCann?’ He was a hero all right.
‘Would he go for it, though, Charlie?’ I asked. ‘You know what these guys are like about dope. They’d tar and feather someone for smoking a joint. They think it pollutes their youth. They aren’t going to help anyone bring it into Ireland, that’s for sure.’
‘Howard, Jim McCann actually smokes almost as much dope as we do. He’s got no problems with it.’
‘It’s a first-class suggestion,’ said Graham, this time with enormous enthusiasm. ‘Can you set up a meeting?’
A week later Graham and I landed at Cork airport, our first visit to Southern Ireland. We went to the car hire desk. It was called Murray Hertz.
‘Now! What are you?’ asked the Murray Hertz employee.
‘What do you mean?’ asked a very puzzled Graham.
‘Your profession. I’ll be needing it for my files.’
‘I’m an artist,’ stammered Graham.
‘Now! Tell me. Why would an artist be wanting a car on a day like this? And what about your man there? Will he be holding your brushes?’
We gave up and went to the Avis desk, where they tried harder. They gave us a car, and we drove through the misty night to Ballinskelligs, where some time ago Alan Marcuson had rented a fisherman’s cottage and placed it at McCann’s disposal. Its telephone number was Ballinskelligs 1, and it lay next to a former lunatic asylum for nuns.
‘Thank God you’ve arrived,’ said Alan, ‘but you mustn’t do anything with Jim, whatever Charlie said. The man’s a dangerous lunatic. He’s got a boot full of explosives in a car parked right outside, he’s stashed guns in the nuns’ nuthouse, he’s got me looking after this dog, he’s stoned or drunk all day, he keeps bringing IRA guys here, and every policeman in Ireland’s looking for him. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Humour him when he comes back from the pub, but don’t think of doing business with him. He’ll be busted in a flash.’
Jim McCann, drunkenly reeling and staggering, fell through the door and gave the sleeping dog a hefty kick up the arse. He ignored me and Graham, farted loudly, and stared at the dog.
‘Look at that fucking dog! What about you? You don’t give him any exercise, Alan. It’s wrong, I’m telling you. Look at that fucking dog!’
Alan, Graham, and I stared blankly at the still sleeping mongrel. So this was your man McCann. An Irish freedom fighter.
McCann’s eyes shifted from the dog to me. ‘You from Kabul, are you?’
‘No, I’m Welsh, actually.’
‘Welsh! Fucking Welsh! Jesus Christ. What the fuck can you do? Why are you here?’
‘I’ve got to help decide whether you could be of any use to us.’
‘Use to you!’ McCann screamed. ‘Listen. Get this fucking straight. I’m the Kid. The Fox. I decide if youse any fucking use to me. Not the other fucking way round. And youse better be of some fucking use. We need some arms for the struggle. You hear me, do you? Youse were followed from the airport by my boys. This place is fucking surrounded by the IRA. Any fucking around, and you’re gone, brother, gone.’
He turned and addressed Graham, ‘Are you from Kabul, then?’
‘Well, not exactly …’
‘Why have you brought me these two wankers, Alan? I thought you were going to bring me someone who could get me arms from Kabul.’
‘I’ve been to Kabul,’ said Graham, attempting to save the situation.
‘Can you get me some guns from there, then? Yes or no. Either shit or get off the pot. I’ve got John Lennon coming round here this evening. Time’s short.’
‘Kabul is not a place that sells arms,’ Graham explained.
‘What the fuck do you mean? Sell arms? I don’t buy fucking arms. I get given them for the struggle by people who want to insure their future when we finally kick you fucking Brits out of my country. What’s a fucking Welsh cunt doing selling arms anyway? You should stick to painting road signs.’
‘Jim,’ I said, ‘we’re a couple of hash smugglers. We want to know if you’re able to get the stuff in for us. We’ll pay you a lot for doing it.’
‘Where’s the hashish coming from?’
‘Kabul.’
