If Tim O’Malley was right—that Canadians were rich—then Matthew Doyle must be the only exception, thought Declan, for in the hundreds of late-model cars in the airport parking lot, the 1962 Ford truck stood out like a dinosaur.
Matthew started the ancient motor with the gearstick in neutral and the truck shuddered to life. It seemed to Declan that his uncle leaned an ear toward whatever it was the engine was trying to tell him, and after a few seconds, apparently satisfied, he stopped listening and reached across Declan and pulled open the glove compartment from which he took a roll of mints. He held the roll out to Declan. “Mint?”
Declan tried to shake his head but the effort was too much for him. He sat in a collapsed silence.
Matthew took one for himself and tossed the roll onto the dash where it joined a mess of pens, string, coins and faded yellow-and-blue parking violation tickets.
His uncle persuaded the gearstick into reverse, backed the truck out of the slot, and they were soon on the road with the Ford engine singing a sad requiem all the way to the city of Vancouver. The only windscreen wiper that worked was Matthew’s, which did not bother Declan, for he was not interested in the journey anyway.
The truck rattled over the Lions Gate Bridge into West Vancouver and onto the Upper Levels Highway. Declan looked down at Howe Sound, gloomy and pensive in the mist and rain. “You don’t live in Vancouver then?”
Matthew shook his head and pointed up ahead.
Declan looked and saw nothing but the narrow mountain highway and sheer rocky walls. “You live in a cave in the rocks?” he said sarcastically.
“Otter Harbour,” said Matthew.
His uncle was no great talker.
The rain stopped. The sky brightened. Horseshoe Bay was high mountains and mists, and ferryboats huge as liners. He wanted to ask his uncle if they were waiting to board one of the towering ferryboats, but as soon as he thought of the question he forgot it. Ten minutes later they boarded, not one of the big ships, but a very ordinary little ferry. His uncle switched off the engine and they sat in the truck with the windows rolled down as the ferry chugged out of the bay.
Matthew pointed a finger and spoke his sixth word. “Eagle,” he said.
Declan watched the eagle, forcing his eyes to focus. He had never seen an eagle before, only on TV. It circled slowly over the hills. Declan could not take his eyes off it. Such freedom! To fly so high and swoop and glide in the streets of silent air!
The ferry landed at a place called Langdale, and away they drove again along a winding country road in a journey that seemed must go on forever. Declan was reminded of a place he had read about at school, a place that was all mountains and mists and magic, that was lost in the shadows of time. It was called Shangri-La, he remembered. But that was only in a book. Besides, this place was not really like Shangri-La. If it were, he would feel happy, and he felt awful.
“Won’t be long now,” said Matthew.
Declan said nothing, but kept his eyes to the front, staring straight ahead; he did not care how long it took, it was all the same to him. Two could play at the game of silence.
School.
There was a time when he had liked school—he had enjoyed history, especially Irish history with its brave stories of Ireland’s heroes and patriots—but he had stopped going there after . . . after the bomb.
He had joined Brendan Fogarty’s gang instead. None of them went to school. Brendan, sixteen, was the oldest. At eleven, Kevin Payne was the youngest. The Holy Terrors. Their number varied between seven and ten members, depending on whether the school inspector or the police managed to catch some of them and force them back to school for a while.
Rebels with a cause, that was the Holy Terrors.
The way Brendan Fogarty explained it was this: “In the North of Ireland it’s a war between them and us, between the Brits—the English—and the Catholics. The British soldiers are supposed to be in Ireland keeping the peace between us and the Protestants. Which is fine, except the way it works out is the Brits are on the side of the Protestants. And it’s us, the Catholics, who get the house-to-house searches at three o’clock in the morning, battering down our doors and pulling us from our beds and destroying everything they can put their filthy hands on while they pretend they’re searching for a gun or a bomb.”
Kevin Payne, as young as he was, said, “The English have no right in Ireland! Let them go back to their own country!”
“That’s the good lad,” said Brendan.
So they became rebels with a cause, and the grim, narrow streets in the Falls Road and Shankill areas with their dirty, crumbling nineteenth century houses, became their jungle and their battleground. They threw stones at British soldiers; they hurled gasoline bombs at the British Land Rovers and armored cars under the cover of night; they helped the young men, all unemployed, make nail bombs. They became young terrorists.
And as well as their British enemies, they also had the Irish Protestant militants and the Ulster Police, who were mostly Protestants, after them. And if that wasn’t enough, their own IRA, the Provisional branch of the Irish Republican Army—or Provos, as they were called—might take it into their heads to kneecap them for the mischief they got up to. Kneecapping meant you were crippled for life. Not that they had ever shot the knees or ankles of a child (ankles were a more popular target nowadays because of the greater pain and disability), but you could never tell—they seldom hesitated to impose their own brand of law and order among their own, even if it was the milder punishment of having a heavy concrete block dropped on your arm or leg until the limb snapped. Life was brutish and cruel.
His uncle drove on.
How many miles were behind him to be retraced? Declan wondered. How would he ever find his way back? The farther they drove, the more impossible seemed his escape.
The road began to wind through a great forest; there were trees everywhere Declan looked, evergreens, he knew that much, but what kind they were he did not know and did not care. He felt tired and . . . lost. The dark, brooding forest seemed to him a secret, unknown world, impenetrable and dark, and he was filled with the terrible numbness of despair.
They emerged from the forest into the brightness of sea and sky, but he closed his eyes and saw very little of it.
The road now twisted around coves and bays. Purple-gray rocks, jagged and dark, thrust themselves into the shining sea, but he merely glimpsed it. He sat with his eyes half closed, exhausted. It was as though all the past weeks he had been fuelled by a special kind of hatred that had pumped up his muscles and his sinews to a constant, explosive pitch, and only now had he let go, only now had his strength collapsed. He felt totally worn out. His head ached from the thioridizine; it felt like his brain was being crushed. His tongue was dry and swollen. He cared about nothing. He thought he would like to die.