‘It’s too bloody cold now, so it is. We’ll do it again in the summer.’ Noticing Coogan, Sean corrected his posture and stood the way he always stood when there was a man in the house, straight-backed and facing him as if wanting to see official papers. Brendan Coogan offered his hand. Sean looked at it.
‘Brendan has come up from the Republican Press Centre to have a word about Sean,’ said Kathleen. She was stood there in tight jeans and with her shirt wet. Her hair was only partly tied back. She saw her husband assess her first; then he took the man’s hand.
‘I knew your daddy. You take after him, so I hear. Sure wasn’t I only with the boys last night and they were telling me how you were the young man to get the thing straightened out, you and that Tommy McEvoy.’ He made to dismiss Kathleen. ‘Some tea love, a biscuit for Brendan here.’
‘I’ve had a cup thanks.’
‘Now your father and I were in the same crowd back in the early sixties. We were both in what was to become the Stickies, but we were always Provies at heart, so we were.’ Sean reached for the pack of cigarettes on the mantelpiece and offered one to Brendan. ‘Even before they was invented! Take one,’ he insisted. ‘Go on with you!’ he winked.
‘They’re American. Best in the world.’
‘He came here to talk about your son,’ said Kathleen.
‘Sean? On the blanket, so he is. Give the man a cup of tea love. I knew he would. Chip off the block that way. He’d never have said a word but I knew he was in the Provies. Of course, I was caught in a difficult position when it came to the split you see. I had friends in the Stickies and in the Provies.’
Brendan appeared to submit to Sean’s enthusiasm and sat down on the settee. He glanced over at Kathleen, kept his smile folded. Sean took the chair.
‘Go on and make the tea, Liam,’ said Kathleen, giving her son a shove towards the kitchen. He curved his back to suggest she’d hurt him.
‘Well you remember how it was in ’69? No guns and the IRA was “I ran away”. Did you know a man name of Finbar McNamee? He was in it with me, right since after those shenanigans with the flag and Paisley, back in ’64. We got no guns, I says to him. We’ve got to have guns. Even then I could see what it was coming to. I was in the Merchants, back and forth from Australia and New Zealand, making a fair bit of money on the side.’ He winked heavily. ‘Bought her mother a pair of canary birds one time. When I went round to see this one, they was laying in the cage, feet up. She’d never fed them.’
Aine had sat down on the carpet with her chin on her father’s armchair seat. She shook her father’s arm.
‘Is it true?’
‘We stopped in Genoa in ’66 and I walks into a shop and says to a man, I want to buy a gun. He started speaking Italian, yabber, yabber, yabber, leads me to understand he wants to see my passport. I brought out a wee photo I had of me in my pocket and I shows that to him and pointed at it saying “that’s me”. He gave me the gun and it cost four pound so I says I’ll have another seven. Lugers and 45s. I brought them back and took them down to my cousin in Omeath. You’ll have heard of Shorty O’Hagan. Aine, will you let go of my arm if you don’t mind. Of course it’s true. It’s all true.’
‘No I’ve not heard of him. But there’s always been men, like yourself, willing . . .’
Kathleen was standing shaking her head by the kitchen. When the kettle could be heard boiling and rattling the loose cutlery on the kitchen counter, she told Liam to turn it off. Two more tea-bags into the bin, thud, thud. Genoa sinking . . .
Liam came out with two mugs of tea, one for his sister, one for himself and his mother followed, gave Brendan Coogan the mug he’d drunk from just before, offering him the handle.
‘That’s what you call a clean cup,’ he said, glancing at her chest. ‘Do you always take a bath when you do the washing-up?’
‘She, herself there, the wife, she was ever the good Republican.’ Sean sat up as his wife came to him holding his mug by the handle and offering him the body of it. ‘Aye, it’s a Republican family in this house, no bones about it. Jesus shite that’s awful hot Kathy! She won’t say as much but she’s as strong a Republican as anyone. When it came to the curfew, off she went with the other women, all with their prams loaded with bread and milk and what have you, singing, hundreds of them weren’t there, and when she was going down Leeson Street they pulled the pram into a doorway, grabbed our Aine here out the pram, put guns in underneath her and sent the missus down to Divis with it loaded up. She didn’t bat an eyelid.’
‘Well and that was a cockup. Some was bringing guns out, some was taking them in.’ She looked over at Coogan and made a face.
‘I was sitting on guns? D’ye hear that, Liam? I was sitting on guns.’
‘You more than likely pissed on them and rusted up the mechanisms.’ Liam stood, hands on hips, chest out, waiting to be seen.
‘Kathleen, get a drink for the man,’ said Sean, edgy with all the interruptions.
‘We’ve no drink in the house.’
Sean started to stutter, chicken-necked, bum sunk, ‘Oh now, don’t come that with me. You manage to find some for your fat-arse sister, but there’s none for your man here.’ He turned to Brendan, raising a finger and slowing the moment as if to allow the man an important insight into his life.
‘I won’t take a drink thanks,’ said Brendan.
‘Aye, well I never did myself when I was on an operation.’
Kathleen snorted and laughed, glanced in the mirror, glimpsed the lipstick lying below it. Her fingers rolled it, covered it, concealed it in the palm of her hand. She looked again at Brendan who smiled warmly, complicit.
‘We goes back down to Omeath, me and Finbar at the end of ’69. We was living in Ardoyne then. Finbar’s sister lived on Bombay Street. Don’t they say now the Orangies had more than a hundred-thousand guns! What did we have? One or two. What they did to defend St Comgall’s that alone would have got medals . . .’
‘I was there myself that night.’
‘Were you? Were you there too? I knew it! I myself was there for the early part. Any chance of another cup, Kathy? More than twenty years and she still short changes me and never thinks to put in the sugar. Well, now Finbar and I takes his car and we goes to this cousin of mine and we get the floorboards up and get the stuff out. My cousin O’Hagan was the man himself in Omeath. He’d got a lot of hardware there and he says, sure you lads are suffering take what you need. There were two bags of gelignite . . .’
‘Away!’ Kathleen pointed to the stairs. Liam and Aine protested, then went. There were exaggeratedly heavy footfalls on the stairs and then the sly creaking noise as they tiptoed back down.
‘I didn’t like blowy ups you know. Not like you young boys. I say wait it’s wet, and I opened it with a knife and it was weeping something awful so we decides to ditch it in the river. I says to him, be careful, go steady like. He says I’ll take it as he knew my wife was pregnant then with our Aine and the kids were young; his were all grown up. It must have gone out to sea. I put the rest of the stuff in bags, revolvers, rifles even some hand grenades. He comes back and says to me put one in your pocket for yourself, so I did. I knew a thing or two about guns, so I had no problem with that. We drives up to the border and I says to Finbar, if he stops us we’ll have to shoot him, so he’s shiteing himself and the fella says – a customs officer, nice man – he says, Where’ve you fellas been? I says we’ve been doing our Christmas shopping but couldn’t find a thing. All so dear. He says, I could have told you that myself, so I could. Mind, it was pitch black and we’d only been an hour or two over there. We drive back up the Dublin Road and then we can’t get into bloody West Belfast for all the barricades with soldiers and RUC and what have you. We drives up Clonard and this fella comes up to me and says, Where are you coming from? and I says it’s none of your business and he says, Open the boot. Just an ordinary lad, younger than us. No sense. We says open your gate and Finbar puts a gun to his head and he says, Sure, there’s nothing wrong with yous.’ Sean laughed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hands. ‘Sure, there’s nothing wrong with yous! He says. We were only bringing in an arsenal!’
‘I’m sure half of it has a grain of truth to it,’ said Kathleen.
‘Don’t listen to her. Now the reason I’m telling you this, Brendan, is historical. We were supposed to take it over to the Stickies. But I says to Finbar I’ve changed my mind, we need to use this stuff, not bury it. So we goes round to this man I knew was gone over to the Provisionals, Calhoun. You know him, he’ll tell you the same story. My heart was with the Provisionals, you see. Even then. His mother came out and I says, send Mickey out I’ve got some stuff for him. He looks in the back of the car and I says, take what yous need. He took what he wanted and the rest I took round to the Stickies. Just a couple of rifles. See the Stickies didn’t know their arses from their elbows when it came to guns.’
Brendan nodded, swallowed the last of the cup and rose. ‘I’m away now.’ Kathleen took his mug from him. ‘Thanks for the tea,’ he said.
‘Well that’s how the Provies were founded really because they couldn’t have been doing anything without guns.’ Sean was following him to the door. ‘There’s a history to it.’ He touched Coogan on the shoulder and put his head next to his saying in low tones, ‘This has always been a good Republican home and always will be. I’m still a fit man. Now Sean’s away, they’ll be taking their eyes off us a wee bit, what I’m saying is, it’s a safe house, if you want to pass that on to the boys.’
‘You’ve done your share, Mr Moran.’
‘Can’t do enough. My boy Sean. Same cloth as me. I knew when he got involved. I come in one day and hear, click, click, click and I knew what that sound was, I went upstairs and looked through the crack of his door, he’s sitting on the bed, taking a gun to bits, putting it back together. I said to him, I know what you’re about, watch yourself. He said to me, I’ll die for a united Ireland, Daddy, I’ll die for it.’
‘That’s a powerful feeling.’ Brendan was looking down at his feet.
Sean looked pleased. ‘Let me get you a bap to take with you. I’ll bet you’ve not eaten your dinner.’ He went back in the house calling for Kathleen.
‘I have to be going.’
Kathleen came back to the front door saying, ‘Let me ask him then.’
‘No, I don’t want anything, thanks.’ Coogan dropped his voice to say to her, ‘Thanks for the tea there. I hope I’ve been some help. I’ll keep an eye out for your Sean, Kathleen.’ Then in a louder voice, ‘Thanks for the yarn, Mr Moran.’
‘Good to see you. Look after yourself,’ Sean called back, offering a wave and then hurtling up the stairs in pursuit of the sound of screaming and swearing and then his own screaming and swearing took over. ‘FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WE CAN’T HAVE FIVE MINUTES OF GROWN-UP CONVERSATION WITHOUT THE PAIR OF YOUS . . .’
Kathleen stepped out after Brendan. It was chilly. She crossed her forearms under her breasts ready to watch him away, but he turned and faced her.
‘Just a thought but Sheila McCann and her brother, across the way there, well I’m sure you know, they’re very active in the Relatives Action Committee. You said you wanted to get more involved. Well, we’re having a meeting there Wednesday night. Would you be interested in coming along, maybe helping out?’
She looked across the road at the McCanns’ house. A cold wind whipped up through her porch way and sent her hair all over her face. When she had unhooked it from her ears, eyebrows and nose, pushed it back behind her ears, she opened her eyes and saw that he was waiting for her answer.