Jimbo and Betty brought us to Peter’s pub for the Ireland v Romania match at 4 p.m. It was jammed, but Betty and Jimbo got stools and we all sat on the floor in front of the massive screen that was set up on a projector. The pub landlady laid on free sausages and chips and, weirdly, bucketloads of coleslaw!
‘Country people love coleslaw,’ Sumo said with an air of authority that he didn’t usually possess.
Walker nodded his head in agreement. ‘Fact,’ he said.
Play kicked off and it was really exciting to be sitting in front of a match among a whole village, ooohhing and ahhhing and with some fellas shouting words I’m not even going to mention.
‘Come on, lads, get into, will ye?’ one man beside us kept saying. There was a woman in the corner praying with rosary beads. During half-time she sprinkled holy water on the projector screen.
‘Will you keep the water away from the projector, Bernie? Almighty in heaven, you’ll spark the thing out.’
‘My dad’s right – everyone’s mad in their own way,’ I said to Charlie, and she laughed.
‘It’s brilliant though, isn’t it, Jeremy?’ she said.
‘Yeah, it is.’
I had worried that the others wouldn’t agree to come to the match, seeing as we’d all talked about keeping a low profile to avoid capture, but Jimbo told me to tell them that no one at the match would be looking at faces in the crowd. All eyes would be glued to the game. He was right. No one noticed us – we just blended right in. It didn’t matter though – even as the match started I knew that Jimbo had called the guards and they were on their way. I looked around at my friends and they were happy. I wondered how long it would be before they’d be happy again.
The game finished 0–0, and penalties were needed to find a winner. Each side scored their opening four, but then Ireland’s goalie, Packie Bonner, pulled off what everyone later described as ‘a brilliant save’ and it was down to a player called David O’Leary to score the penalty and take Ireland into the QUARTER-FINALS OF THE WORLD CUP! Everything and everyone came to a halt in Peter’s pub.fn1 The world waited. David O’Leary stood up and blasted the ball into the Romanian net. We’d done it. IRELAND WAS IN THE QUARTER-FINALS OF THE WORLD CUP!
The crowd rose to their feet, with arms in the air, screaming, laughing, hugging, crying, dancing, shouting and singing. What a moment, what a feeling! Sumo and Charlie were right – it was the very best of days. Jimbo shed a tear just, and Betty got up and danced a jig, kicking up her skirts to reveal the big bloomers she loved so much. Johnny J and Charlie danced a jig with her and then she showed them how to square dance. They spun around the room with a lot of others and they were enjoying every second of it and it didn’t matter that Johnny J was celebrating with Charlie and I was alone. I wasn’t jealous any more.
The pub started to empty out around 9 p.m. Betty drove us all back toward the farm.
‘Did you enjoy yourselves, boys?’
‘Deadly,’ Johnny J said. ‘Just deadly.’
We all said it was brilliant and we thanked them for their kindness and then we turned into the farmyard and saw the guards’ van with flashing lights in the driveway. I saw the panic in Johnny J’s eyes.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ Betty said in a calm voice.
‘Oh no. It’s too soon,’ Johnny J said, and his face paled.
‘They know about everything, boy,’ Jimbo said. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
‘They can’t. It’s not time. We need another week. We have to go. Let me out,’ he begged.
He panicked and started to try to open his passenger door. I tried to stop him. The locks on the car were manual. There was no central locking that Betty could press to stop a boy who wanted to exit a moving car from doing so. The door swung open and he nearly fell out, but I clung on to him while Betty brought the car to an immediate stop. The two guards came running in our direction. Johnny J struggled from my grip and crawled out onto the gravel driveway.
‘She’s done for,’ he said. ‘My mam is done for.’ Tears were rolling down his face.
In the car Charlie was crying too. Walker chewed on his lip and Sumo couldn’t stand to look at Johnny J, but he took off his Wookie mask and focused on the chickens. I got out of the car and bent down to Johnny J, who was on his knees in tears.
‘Just one more week,’ he wailed, and he was sobbing so hard it was difficult to hear him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
‘Jeremy,’ Jimbo said, ‘it will be fine.’ He then spoke to Johnny J. ‘Johnny J, your mammy needs you now.’
Johnny J looked up at me with a tear-soaked face. ‘You told him?’
‘It wasn’t like that, boy,’ Jimbo said. ‘Your faces are everywhere. Betty saw the paper.’
‘You knew they were coming for us,’ Johnny J said, and he was looking at me as though I was a stranger.
‘We have to go home, Johnny J,’ I said.
He pushed me away. ‘Go away. Go away, Jeremy,’ he shouted. He was kneeling on the ground, his head bent low, and everyone standing around him, and he sobbed his heart out. I couldn’t watch. My heart felt like a grenade in my chest, rumbling, about to explode. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen.
A few minutes passed before the two guards helped Johnny J to his feet. We sat in the back of their van in silence. It wasn’t a big van, but the others made a point of squeezing together to leave me on my own. Nobody wanted to be near the traitor. Johnny J didn’t look around at me once during the long trip home. He just faced the back window and watched the lights on the road. None of the others could look at me either.
The guards sat up at the front of the van. They didn’t ask questions. They were waiting till they got us back to Dublin. One of them threw in some bottled water and told us to go to sleep.
‘You might as well,’ he said. ‘It’s a long enough trip.’
No one spoke and no one slept the whole way home.