Suddenly, gas canisters fell all around us. I drew back, surrounded by white smoke, eyes burning, stomach heaving, throat constricted. No more air. No more anything. The bottom of the water. I had my mouth wide open, thumping my chest. I was dying. This was it, I was dying. I should have kept some air in a corner of my cheek, in my nose, in my pocket. And then came the crash. A violent blow to my temple. Another in the shoulder. Bullets, stones, I couldn’t tell. I had lowered my Tommy gun. I raised it again. I wanted to steady it against my hip. I coughed. There was blood in my eyes. I pulled the trigger. I think. I don’t know any more. I heard my shots. I saw the spark from the gun. Danny fell. I was behind him. Twenty metres away. I shot three times and Danny fell forward. He picked himself up. He turned around, looked at me agape. He made a gesture. He didn’t understand. He was astounded. He dropped his gun. He brought his hands to his chest. He slid along the mattress on his belly, hitting the ground with his forehead. The white light of the armoured car splashed the street. I was standing. Danny was lying down. I fell to my knees.
— They got Danny!
The voice of one of our men, I no longer know who.
— And Tyrone’s been hit!
Arms lifted me. I’m fine. I’m alive. I’m fine. I was whispering to myself. A hand took the weapon from me. The armoured car was retreating behind the barricade with its engine roaring. No more shots. Not one single rock more. Just the breath cut short. The smell of fire. The grey ash floating in the sky. The cries of men and women.
— Murderers! Murderers!
Children’s rocks for nothing, pecking at the steel of the armoured car.
— Tyrone? Can you hear me, Tyrone?
I’m fine. It’s nothing at all. I had killed Danny Finley. I had closed my eyes. I let myself be taken away. I wasn’t wounded, not really. It was only rocks. I had caught my breath by now. I was dragged along the ground, carried by arms and legs, then hoisted up on someone’s back. A door. A living room. A couch. There was something under my waist, like a forgotten child’s toy. Somebody placed a cushion under my head. A hand behind the nape of my neck. A warm cloth on my face, water from a glass against my closed teeth. The icy liquid on my neck, running as far as my shoulder like a snake. I had killed Danny Finley. Fever. I started shaking again. In the street, a police loudspeaker was spitting out orders.
I saw Danny’s startled look once more. He fell forward. He’d been shot in the back. His brother had been killed by Loyalists, he’d been killed by a Republican. I had murdered Danny Finley, 14 August 1969.
It was the end of us. And also the end of me.
I stayed in bed for almost a week. Some Fianna and men from the Belfast Brigade took turns keeping a lookout on the street corner. Jim O’Leary, an explosives engineer from the 2nd Battalion, remained at my bedside night and day. When I opened my eyes, he welcomed me as though I was on his doorstep. Jim was a close friend. His wife Cathy loved Sheila like a mother.
On the third day, I drank a cup of tea and ate half a slice of toast. I wasn’t in my own home. Neither the room, nor Lise, the old lady looking after me, was familiar. On the fourth day, I found out that my mother, brother and sisters had taken the path of exile. Sheila had brought them to an aunt’s place in Drogheda, on the other side of the border. Róisín, Mary and Áine had been crying. They said they didn’t want to flee like that. Wee Kevin tried to hide in the workshop and Sara vomited on the journey. Mother told them that they wouldn’t go far. Swore. They had left Killybegs, they’d been driven from Sandy Street, from Dholpur Lane, and their Station of the Cross would end in Drogheda. When Sheila asked her if she’d go back to Belfast some day, once everything had calmed down, my mother crossed herself and said she’d only go back when Christ the King arrived in the city in all his glory.
So Sheila came back across the border alone.
There were riots across dozens of towns. For the first time since the war, London deployed the British army to Northern Ireland. Not the RUC, not the ‘B-Specials’, not the auxiliary Northern Irish armies, but the British, the real deal. The Royal Regiment of Wales had taken control of the Falls Road, my hostess explained to me. The residents there were offering tea and biscuits to the soldiers. I looked up at her.
— Tea and biscuits?
She smiled.
— They’ve got nothing to do with the killers.
While straightening my bedcovers, she said that they’d prevented the worst. That without them the Loyalists would have chased out or killed all of us.
My mouth was dry, my throat like cardboard.
— And Danny?
The woman locked her brilliant eyes on mine with a look of pride and compassion.
— He’ll be buried on Wednesday.
She sat on the edge of the bed. She was smiling sadly.
— There’s nothing left of Bombay Street. Everything burned. If our street is intact, it’s thanks to him and thanks to you.
The door opened and two men came into the room. I knew the taller one, an officer of our high command. Jim stood to attention.
— Leave us, Lise. And you, too, O’Leary.
He waited for the door to close. My stomach was leaden. I suddenly longed for a sea breeze. I thought of Tom and his asthma. The officer sat down on the bed. I looked at him. He was searching my eyes. He inhaled slowly.
— I know what you’re feeling, Tyrone.
I didn’t answer. I let the silence speak for me.
— When one of us falls, he who was by his side always wonders why he is alive.
He was looking around the small room. The dry palm fronds behind the crucifix, the picture of a white cat in a basket of wool.
— There is no justice in death, Tyrone. Danny died, it could have been you.
He looked at me again. His hand on mine.
— And he would be asking your questions now.
Then he got up, slowly. He went to the window, lifted the curtain with a finger. Turned his back to me.
— Do you know what happened on Dholpur Lane on that Thursday, 14 August 1969?
I killed Danny Finley with two bullets in the back.
— You don’t know? That night the IRA demonstrated that it was capable of defending an enclave. That it was once more necessary to count on our resistance.
I killed Danny. It was me. I was coughing, I couldn’t see anything. My head ached. My eyes were confessing. My visitor listened to nothing but his own voice.
— Live with his courage, not with his death.
Shut up. Leave. You and the other guy, too. Get out of here.
— Your combat will be your revenge, Tyrone.
He held out his hand to me. He didn’t know. Nobody knew. In the dark, in the smoke, in the uproar, only Danny and I were face to face. Nobody else saw his expression the moment he died. I inhaled all the air in the room, breathed in the street, my country as far as the salty drizzle from the quay in Killybegs. The officer lifted his hand and made me an elegant salute. Warm and fraternal. Something that told me I was alive. He would never know. Neither him nor the other one, who raised his hand in turn.