Ructions gave his beard a quick scratch, a sure sign that a breathtaking statement of profound academic learning was to follow. It was the beginning of hail Queen of the May 1968 and little girls in communion dresses were knocking on the shabby doors of the area in the hope of getting a few bob. Ructions was in the company of Frank Keane and O’Donnell in the Peacock as the night crept in.

 

“As far as I know,” Ructions explained, “the stoic philosophy spans a period of about five centuries in which time its doctrines underwent considerable changes.”

 

“Where did they get the energy from?” Keane laughed.

 

“Well, what apparently held the movement together was its ethical teaching, you know, fucking courage in the face of danger and suffering, fucking indifference to material circumstances....”

 

“Like Plopps,” said O’Donnell, jerking a thumb in the direction of the dilapidated figure of Plopps, who was almost a fixed appendage to the bar counter in the Peacock.

 

“Sloth! might be his virtue,” Ructions sniggered. “The stoic’s virtues would be more about an emphasis on endurance and detachment.”

 

“When you think of the theories of the classical age,” replied Keane, “well stoicism would seem to be a sort of insipid and austere discipline.”

 

“And for all that as a doctrine, it managed to attract a bigger adherence than did the doctrines of say Plato or Aristotle and it fucked up Plato’s emphasis on knowledge as the supreme good,” stated Ructions.

 

“I suppose the attraction of it to the Hellenistic kings and rulers was because they were men of action and was it Socrates who said something about philosophers must become kings and kings philosophers?”

 

“Yes he did,” agreed Keane.

 

“I haven’t really read on these,” admitted O’Donnell, “is there much stuff that survived?”

 

Ructions took a mouthful from his pint glass and then gave his frothy beard a swipe of his hand, “Fucking fragments from the earlier stoics though scholars have been able to piece together a skeletal account of their doctrines. Zeno, for instance, thoughts of what the fuck he was about, seems to be mainly ethical. Determinism and free will was and is the great problem of stoic philosophy and according to Zeno nature is strictly ruled by law.”

 

“I’d agree about the free will, just see how free it is when some young one jumps into bed with you. Fire an’ smoke!”

 

“There he is,” remarked Ructions to O’Donnell. “Always in some young one’s bedroom but it's funny you should say that because Zeno’s cosmological theory which was, in the main presocratic, held that fire was the original substance. All the other elements which evolved over the course of time came from fire.”

 

“Tommy Marsh would agree with that,” concluded Keane.

 

“Yeah, and the stoic line was that humans should blend with nature and not oppose it and then in the end everything is consumed in a huge bonfire, the pristine fire, if you like, and then everything starts all over again....”

 

“Like when the man comes around like him,” said O’Donnell as a man of average height and pallid complexion approached the three. They had never seen him before and as Ructions eyed him up and down he concluded that he was mid-twenties in age, and had a bit of an aura about him, perhaps an epitome of innocence.

 

The stranger introduced himself as Nick Royle. He said that Jer O’Leary, who was then in Mountjoy playing long ball up the middle in D wing yard, had told him to go to the Peacock and look for Frank Keane and Simon O’Donnell as they were important members of the ‘Movement.’

 

Ructions scoffed. “These two! Must be bowel movements yer gasbagging about.”

 

Keane leaned forward and flicked Royle’s grey casual jacket open. “Nothing to report,” he said to O’Donnell and then turning to Royle, “you’ve got the wrong people. You see we’re only the lads who are moseying around down in the foothills.”

 

“But this information is really top class,” Royle protested.

 

“Well so you say but we don’t know if the information is good or bad, false or true, out of date, it could be info that would be good on a Tuesday but out of touch on a Wednesday. You know this country is full of people who believe false information like the Virgin birth, who believe that the devil exists and not only fucking that but that he’s hiding under Tommy’s trilby and if he’s not there he’s cajoling around the dancehalls trying to get the country young ones to drop their knickers or he’s wandering around the Soviet Union. I mean every town and village is full of people who will believe anything a poxy politician will invent to win a vote and if they want to invade some country to steal its wealth, go to fucking warlike, well they’ll put out the call that the fellows on the far side of the mountain, fellows who never did anything on you, are your mortal enemies and must be slaughtered. And you’ll get them marching in their fucking thousands to murder people they’ve never met while they’re singing ‘It's a long way to Tipperary.’”

 

“A carnival of hysteria can be worked up before you could say Cathy Barry,” said Keane.

 

 “Exactly Frank,” agreed Ructions. “See, there’s this pal of ours, Frank Davis, a great fucking guy, one of the best. He’s a regular here. He’s sort of in the banking business and comes in here. Well, he had this very religious aunt who was getting a bit bet up on the pegs and she asked him to bring her to Mass this Sunday. So they were sitting up at the front of the church so that the aunt didn’t have to walk far to get communion. Frank is there just sitting, not standing or jumping up and down when the mumbo jumbo of the liturgy commands it and the oul padre must have noticed Frank’s indifference and he starts going fucking on about commies and the Soviet Union and he’s staring at Frank.”

 

 Ructions took another gulp from his dangerously low pint glass while Keane attracted Clarke’s attention for a three-pint refill as Royle’s eyes were glued to Ructions chieftain-like face.

 

“Well Frank got pissed off and he stood up and said to the Padre ‘What do you know about the Soviet Union?’ and yer man almost did a wobbler.”

 

“That took nerve,” said Royle.

 

“It gets better because yer man throws it back to Frank and Frank says, ‘I know that everybody there has free health, free education, a job, a house and a pension, that’s what I know.’”

 

“But they’re not free to leave,” the Padre countered.

 

“You mean, forced to emigrate to foreign countries like the thousands here because the state couldn’t get jobs for them. The Soviet Union looks after their citizens not like the creeps here whose only motive in getting into government is to see how many brown envelopes they can get out of it. The fucking Padre went ballistic. He ordered Frank out of the church. But before he could leave this burly fellow runs up from the body of the church shouting ‘ger out yeh commie devil’ he throws a fucking punch at Frank which caught him on the shoulder and threw him back and then he faced the congregation as if he was expecting an encore or something. Frank saw his chance and he stepped in and gave him such a kick in the bollocks that would have made Eddie Bailham of Rovers proud and he shot out the side door auntless!!”

 

“That’s a good example of the different kinds of information,” Ructions pointed out when the laughing stopped,”

 

“Honestly, this information is really top-class,” Royle pleaded.

 

“Well then you’d need to go higher up,” advised Keane.

 

“He would,” O’Donnell, agreed. “He’d need to go to the zenith, where the light comes in, to the top of the mountain to talk to the very few men who bask there.”

 

“But Jer said I was to give it to youse.”

 

“Don’t mind what Jer says, sure Jer would say anything if the humour was on him. Wasn’t he an actor and didn’t I see him in a play or two guffing on about Larkin in a bawl that would put the heart crossways in anybody,” said O’Donnell.

 

“That’s right,” confirmed Keane. “When Jer took to the boards in the Olympia, you’d hear him roaring up in the Featherbeds and scaring the shit out of the deer.”

 

“Well who would I see?” asked Royle, a note of desperation in his voice.

 

O’Donnell shook his head. “It’ed have to be somebody who is standing in the heavenly light. Somebody like an angel. Very rare but as luck would have it there’s two angels on the premises tonight.”

 

“From hell,” Ructions muttered.

 

“Yes you see the fellow over there in the trilby and the big fellow with the specs he’s talking to?” said Keane pointing in the direction of Tommy Marsh who was having a private chin wag with Ernie Bates of the far side of the pub. “Well you’d need to talk to them but before you do that what were you in the Joy for?”

 

“Drunken driving. I knocked down a gate pillar,” Royle replied sheepishly.

 

“Fuck! Sure that could happen to anybody. Is that an offence?” inquired Ructions,

 

“Yeah. They’re tightening up on it all the time,” O’Donnell warned.

 

“It's becoming a fucking police state.”

 

“Anyway,” said Keane to Royle, “go on over to those two and tell them that we sent you. What’s the driving like in Clare?” he asked O’Donnell.

 

“Ah, sure you know yourself, fairly fucking easy-going. Sure it has to be especially in summer. I mean a fellow is after cutting a field of corn with the big scythe, you know the big fucking bastard with the long blade...”

 

Keane nodded.

 

“....and he’s after been at that until near ten o clock at night.”

 

“That’s fucking work,” Ructions acknowledged.

 

“Fucking sure. And after that, any normal man would want to murder six or seven pints. Murder them. Now the pubs have the extension until about two to accommodate this late working in the fields in the summer.”

 

“Same as in Mayo,” said Keane.

 

“Right. So you get scrubbed up ‘cause remember you’ve been sweating yer bollocks off all day and been eaten by horseflies and then as the day closes in the fucking midges come out on the warpath. After all that you need your six or seven depth chargers or maybe more if you were a real big fellow.”

 

“Little buggers!”

 

Keane laughed. “Isn’t there a few here who could down that many without ever having been distracted by the shadow of work?”

 

“Bang on there Frank,” agreed Ructions, not realising that Keane had him in mind.

 

“Well then if there’s three people in a round and one is a superstitious character,” continued O’Donnell, “he has calculated that that is three sixes which in his mind is the sign of the devil, you know, six fucking six fucking six. That fellow will insist on calling a seventh round so that he won’t see the devil when he’s driving home. And if say there’s eight or nine in a round, well there’s often a fucker who when it's his turn will pretend that he’s after nodding off. And where there’s one of them there’s always the chap who will wake him up and demand he gets his round regardless of the state of the rest of the company.”

 

“Fucking civilisation,” remarked Ructions. “I’ve always said that if you wanted socialization the country pubs are way ahead.”

 

“So then you come out, maybe being linked by a neighbour who might have to help you to get the keys in the ignition...”

 

“I’ve seen that here,” Ructions nodded.

 

“You’ve never seen anyone leaving here drunk,” corrected Clarke from behind the bar counter.

 

“I apologise Jimmy,” Ructions replied in a mocking tone, “as truth holds within it all the uncertainties of space and time and in order to determine the location of an individual who is two fucking sheets to the wind we must begin to be specific about a region in which it is and in which it is not and from there, where ever it is, we reach the meagre conclusion that your good self has reached.”

 

“Well don’t let it happen again.”

 

“That’s the problem,” acknowledged O’Donnell. “Place and location. You get into the car, and you conclude, that the pub you’ve just left is that way and your home is the other fucking way. So you shunt off in first and then second gear and for safety reasons, you’re not much over twenty mph. Well, you really can’t go any faster anyway because your mind is not fully interpreting the information that your brain is sending and also to complicate matters your eyes are seeing fucking double, at least double, and you’re shouting like a madman at yourself to keep on the right fucking side of the double because you know that everyone else, going and coming against you is in the same predicament. And despite this and most of the country driving without any test which only came in a few years back...”

 

“Another fucking ridiculous idea that we imported from the British. Just a money spinner,” remarked Ructions.

 

“And an accident as rare as a blue moon. Now, on a very rare occasion, you could pass a neighbour with a sound of fucking scraping and tearing ringing out into the night to be followed by a burst of laughter and a shout of ‘Get up the yard yeh bollix yeh’. Then, an examination the next morning in the farmyard tells you that the lime green paint is owned by Larry the Horn who, like you, has no tax or insurance and, in fact, his driver’s seat is a plain wooden kitchen chair,”

 

“Proper freedom and common sense,” confirmed Ructions.

 

About ten days later Marsh and Bates met Keane and O’Donnell in the York Street flat where Bates had been taking photographs of Miss Reid. Marsh stepped up on a chair and from there onto the table. He reached up to the light bulb.

 

“What are you doing Tommy?” Miss Reid demanded.

 

Marsh glanced down and put a finger to his lips. He then removed the bulb and replaced it with one he took from his pocket as the others in the room watched on in silence.

 

“Switch it on,” he ordered, as he jumped from the table. He crossed the room and threw the bulb out the half-open window. It made a mini explosion as it burst on the pavement below.

 

“Bugs!” he snapped. “They can put the fuckers in bulbs now.”

 

“For fuck sake Tommy,” complained Miss Reid, “that was a 100 watt, this is only about 60.”

 

“It's all I could get, at least it isn’t recording everything we say and the listeners in the Castle taking fucken notes....well those who can write and then the glare from a bulb that bright could damage yer eyesight. Yer lovely eyesight.”

 

“One of your new theories I suppose,” Miss Reid laughed.

 

Marsh lit a cigarette as they sat around the table while Bates shouted to Miss Reid who was now in the kitchen.... “don’t forget to scald the pot!”

 

“I had Galvin on this Royle fellow for the last ten days,” Marsh announced. “Very positive conclusion.”

 

“Good,” said O’Donnell.

 

“Yeah. Very positive indeed,” he gave his teeth a lick with his tongue. “He was in O’Connells, left before the Leaving Cert and was into history. Played a bit of hurling, Raheny or someone. Has one sister. Father a plasterer. The mother is a Cork woman and does a bit of part-time work in a newsagents on Dorset Street. Oh yeah...they live on Clonliffe Road.”

 

O’Donnell shrugged, “sure we’re almost neighbours.”

 

“The interesting thing is after he abandoned the Christian Brothers he got a job in a warehouse in Finglas and the next thing is he took off to England, well Wales to be exact, and he joined the British army.”

 

Keane raised his eyebrows. “That sounds fishy! So what’s he doing here?”

 

Marsh smiled. “He deserted. Done a runner as they say.”

 

Keane and O’Donnell looked at him blankly while Bates went into the kitchen to help Miss Reid with the tea. “I don’t get why he wanted to talk to us Tommy?” said Keane.

 

Marsh took a glance at the Angela Davis photo on the side wall. “Some bird,” he muttered. “Relax. It sounds suspicious but I can’t say anymore because what it's about has to stay between him, me and Ernie. We have discussed it over and fucken over and its not really more than a three-man operation.”

 

“Well, once youse know what yere doing and not walking into some kind of set-up.”

 

Bates and Miss Reid emerged from the kitchen with the tea, cups and an Oxford lunch cake that Bates had brought.

 

“But I do trust him,” continued Marsh, “especially after Galvin investigated the drunk driving charge.”

 

“What’s the story there?” asked Keane.

 

Bates laughed. “He had a devastating row with his girlfriend after they got into company with a contingent of heavy drinkers. He, himself claims to be a moderate drinker.”

 

“Ireland sober, Ireland free,” quipped O’Donnell as he serendipitously directed Miss Reid to a chair beside him. Then he assumed the mandarin manner of a connoisseur and delicately sliced the cake.

 

“What I liked about him,” mumbled Bates, with his mouth full of cake, “is that he didn’t say what the row was about and blamed himself.”

 

“Unusual man,” remarked Miss Reid.

 

“He said that they were in a pub near swords, might have been the Coachman’s Inn, when this senseless contrariness took hold and she took off in her banger leaving him fucken stranded,” explained Marsh. “He broke into a car that was in the car park, hot-wired it, which he learned in the British army.”

 

“I’m sure when they teach them to steal the eye out of your head they may as well also teach them to steal your car,” concluded Keane.

 

“Why not! Said he didn’t realise how much he had until he hit the Whitehall Road. Said his driving was ‘perfectly horrible’. He managed to keep harm at arm’s length until just past the Cat an’ Cage. The car, which now seemed like it was trying to get away from him, mounted the footpath and dug itself into this gate pillar.”

 

Those at the table were laughing heartily.

 

“It seems,” continued Marsh, “that the owner who was sitting looking out his front window was none too pleased when after hearing a loud bang, he saw his left side Romanesque garden pillar with its cement lion on top ungainly lean into his front garden. He immediately took off out the front door in hot pursuit of Royle. He was soon joined by a garda patrol car from the nearby Whitehall station and Royle was apprehended outside the Tolka Park football stadium on Richmond Road and taken into custody.”

 

“The gas thing,” said Bates, “is that with overwhelming evidence he pleaded ‘not guilty’ which is why he got the month in prison rather than the possibility of a heavy fine for a first offence.”

 

“A foolish decision,” concluded Keane.

 

“That’s what I said to him Frank,” replied Marsh and his answer made me think more of him.

 

Miss Reid smiled. “I love your illogical logic, Tommy.”

 

“So what’d he say?”

 

“He said if I plead guilty I have no comeback. Case done and dusted. But if I plead not guilty and the judge makes any mistake in conducting the case or the courts make a mess-up with a warrant or whatever, I may get a habeas corpus release.”

 

“He knows a bit about the law,” remarked O’Donnell.

 

Bates shrugged. “He’s reasonably well-read ok.”

 

“You sure he’s not some kind of undercover cop?” asked Keane.

 

“We have our security architecture built in.”

 

“How?”

 

“He’s coming with us on this caper.”

 

The ‘caper’ only known to Marsh, Bates and Royle was a raid, well more a burglary, in a British Territorial Army barracks in Wales. Royle had been stationed there. He told Marsh and Bates that many of the building in it were wooden structures and one of these served as an armoury. A break-in was possible.

 

Marsh immediately thought about a large team to ‘clean the fucken place out’. Royle knocked this on the head saying that the armoury only held about thirty Sterling sub machine guns and three people could complete the job. Silence was of the essence as the sleeping quarter’s huts were all close to one another. The door only had a kind of shed bolt lock. One section could be unscrewed while leaving the padlock in situ. Once inside they would have to cut the steel chain which ran through the trigger section of each Sterling. This would have to be done slowly and as quietly as possible. The three of them would wear good leather belts with hooks to hold the shoulder stocks and they should be able to walk out with ten Stirlings each.

 

Royle suggested they climb into the barracks about 1am. This would give them nearly three hours to complete the job before darkness lifted. The security entailed a single sentry doing the rounds. He would pass them about every half hour. Bates would be on guard duty outside. He would lie in the substantial cavity between the hut and the ground. Once he heard, which he would in the night quietness, the guard’s approaching footfalls he would jump out like the ghost of Christmas Past and alert the others. Royle advised that all three jump under the hut until the sentry passed. If by any chance the sentry spotted that the lock had been interfered with they would still get away. If they were inside when the curious sentry poked his head in what then?

 

There had been a trip made to Wales a year earlier. It was to North Wales to the village of Llanfair talhaiarn near Abergele. Those on that trip were Casey, Keane and O’Donnell. It arose from contacts made in Dublin by Denis Casey and Noel Redican with members of the Free Welsh Army. The women members impressed O’Donnell but the men.....Keane said that they were unadulterated leeks with not a smidgeon of serious politics complicating the agglutinating nationalist clutter of their brains. There was a final meeting in September that year which Cayo Evans the Chief of Staff was to attend but he was unable to travel after one of his horses had an accident. 

 

The Caseys, O’Donnells, Redican and John Byrne, known to all as the Red Messer, brought the Welsh group to the All-Ireland football final at Croke Park where they saw Meath beat Cork in a close game. After the match, they headed for Bush’s pub on the top of Gardiner Street.

 

The pub was very traditional, all bare wood and mirrors and conceded no hostage to luxury.

 

The evening was going very well and the conversation in between raucous versions of ‘Molly Malone’, ‘The Boys of Fairhill’ and a lung bursting rendering of the Welsh nationalist song ‘Yma o hyd’, was stimulating. Did human beings possess any real power over themselves and all that sort of thing.

 

At about nine o’clock one fellow asked one of the Cork supporters, who had been there since the match finished, if he had his return ticket to Cork as the last train would be leaving soon. A bit of a tiff erupted but was quickly brought to heel. Then the owner, noticing this, announced that the pub would be closing for the night. There was uproar. It was as if he had announced the end of the world.

 

“Finish up now lads or have youse no homes to go to?” shouted the wizened barman who shuffled about behind the counter as if someone had rammed a crowbar up his arse.

 

“Or trains to catch,” shouted the fellow who had been in the altercation with the Cork supporter earlier. This encouraged some more jostling on a slightly larger scale.

 

Voices, hoarse from shouting at the football match earlier, were now making desperate pleas to the owner to relent and turn back on the taps. Voices of moderation shouting for calm and democratic debate above the bedlam were only succeeding in adding to the uproar. As fists began to fly and one fellow was knocked against the counter sending a number of almost full pints flying, reason went out the window. To make matters worse the owner shouted “Everyone of yis are fucking barred for life, d’yis hear me, barred for fucking life.” And the wizened barman, obviously feeling obliged to stand full square behind his boss, was shouting as loud as his small physique would allow, “Go on home to yiz whores of mothers yiz cunts,” and such like......

 

The moderate voices were now replaced by voices of anger. “Yih want to bar me yih fucker, well I’ll give yih a reason so,” and “It's only a shit house it is.” Stools began to fly across the counter and the sound of breaking glass added to the din.

 

“My car is outside,” said O’Donnell to the others. He had gone home earlier to get it as he was bringing the Welsh visitors and whomever he could fit into the Embankment pub in Tallaght. He especially wanted them to hear Frank Harte singing the ’98 song ‘Dunlavin Green.’

 

“Keep the fucking number plate covered,” he ordered as the rest of the company to run behind the car a little like soldiers do behind a tank in wartime. “Slow down, tell him to fucking slow down,” gasped the flanking Red Messer.

 

Royle got a good laugh about the story as Marsh relayed it while they were having a pint in the bar of the Holyhead mail boat nearly nine months later. After disembarking in Holyhead they hired a car, a Vauxhall. They then picked up a crowbar, a hacksaw and blades, an adjustable wrench, vice grips and a number of screwdrivers in a hardware and headed for the home of Mick Flood in Derby.

 

Flood was a fifties man from Meath. He was well built, had a fresh reddish face and a good head of grey-black wavy hair. He had been years in Derby and in continuous radio contact with Cathal Goulding. He was also close to Sean Mac Stiofain and loved to get involved with any militant activity whether it was sanctioned by the republican powers that be or not.

 

Flood appreciated being brought into the conspiracy and promised a safe house, also in Derby, to stash the arms. They would be stored there until Mr Brazil in the Peacock got his trawler contacts on the job. After a good meal the four, along with Flood’s daughter, headed to the local pub to watch the 1968 European Cup Final in which Manchester United became the first English team to win the trophy after an extra-time defeat of the Portuguese team Benfica.

 

The next morning was sun-drenched. Marsh, ever distrustful, scanned the sky looking for any hint of a cloud. “I hate driving in the rain,” he muttered to Bates.

 

“Relax, anyway I’ll do the driving down and back if it's wet tomorrow.”

 

Mrs Flood called them in for breakfast. Their eyes widened when they saw the table’s bounty in the small homily sitting room. Bates looked at the cluttered plates, “Jesus Mrs Flood,” there was no need to go to such bother...”

 

“I only did part, Elly did most before she went to work.”

 

It was the full Irish. Rashers, sausages, black and white pudding, fried eggs, tomatoes with a big dollop of Yorkshire Relish sauce on each plate and a plate of toast with the best of Irish creamery butter beside an old porcelain pot with a cracked lid brimming with strong tea.

 

“Get stuck in there, Nick,” ordered Flood, noticing that Royle was a slow starter possibly because he was slightly bashful as a stranger or because he was mesmerised with the savagery of Marsh as he wired into the food. While Bates humoured Mrs Flood, a Meath woman, about stories of his native Cahir and the Glen of Aherlow, Marsh’s plate looked like it once contained some kind of odalisque or blood-splattered human which had been slaughtered and brutally hacked to death in a fit of frenzied hysteria. “Best breakfast I’ve had in a long time Mrs Flood,” he mumbled through a mouthful of crushed food.

 

Bates had one good story which involved, according to Bates, a bank robbery in the Cahir region during the War of Independence. After Independence one of the raiders emigrated and became a lawyer in Liverpool. His daughter, an English conservative did likewise and became eminent in the legal field. Years later some of the IRA man’s old comrades decided to erect a bronze plaque to commemorate the man, who was now deceased.

 

The usual supine shits, according to Bates, got control of the ceremony, as they usually do and they wanted the man’s English-born daughter and lawyer to do the unveiling. This would fortify the respectability of the republican fight for freedom.

 

The daughter quite naturally had a blinkered view of her father’s struggle and she mentally thought of the War of Independence IRA as the finest of men. Men so pure that they would have been daily communicants, men who would only have sex for the purpose of reproduction and then only when almost fully dressed, men who would never swear and shout at a lorry full of Tans they were ambushing, “Take that yuz dirty heap of British cunts, yuz filthy fuckers!” These high-minded men would more than likely shout, “May the good Lord have mercy on your souls.”

 

“On your holes,” muttered Marsh.

 

The ceremony, completely scrubbed and cleansed of any visceral sentiments, finished with the Queen’s council pulling the string to reveal the plaque. At the same time, the door of the hall burst open. A bockedy man who looked to be in his nineties staggered in and approached the lawyer.

 

“Are you the daughter of Dick Forde?” he asked in a rasping voice.

 

“I am.”

 

“Well put it there, put it there,” he said, extending his hand. And as he shook her hand he shouted, “I always wanted to shake the hand of the daughter of the man who I guarded the door for the day he held up and robbed the bank in Cashel.”

 

The trio headed for South Wales after Flood took them on a bus tour of Derby. After going through Bermingham they were into open country.

 

“Its odd how O’Leary told me to only go to Keane and O’Donnell about this, like he said that they were the most important and they said they were only foot hills men,” Royle wondered aloud.

 

“I told you that they were the two biggest liars in the movement, isn’t that right Ernie?”

 

“Don’t be fucking talking. Sure didn’t Festy Spratt need special counselling after a bout of interrogating them? They told him such a heap of lies that after writing down the statements he became dyslexic.”

 

“That’s correct, started spelling his name Festy Spratt or something. And that night in bed after the interrogation he had a nightmare about it. Apparently, he kept seeing their faces real close up and sneering at him saying “where’s the spot on the wall Festy, where’s the spot Festy” and next thing he heard his wife screaming as he savaged into her with both fists thinking it was Keane and O’Donnell. She was a big hefty woman herself and she fought back like a tiger. Festy got bruises to his big sloppy mush but the poor woman was going around for two weeks telling people she had walked into a door.”

 

“Yeah. A big fucking mahogany door.”

 

“This bit of business would be too small for the likes of them. I mean its really a burglary. You know those fuckers would want to go on a real military operation, full fatigues, tooled up to fuck and bawling and roaring like madmen. That’ed be them. The rumour is that Keane is the chief of staff and he was pissed off with the number of effete revolutionaries who were fucken prancing around the scenery sticking out their chests like pigeons.”

 

“Chief of what? Is what I’d like to know,” said Bates, giving a sort of hysterical guffaw. He was driving. He turned to Royle who was sitting in the front passenger seat. “Once it was the Jim Larkin Liberation Front, then it was the North Leinster Brigade as a kind of subversive companion to Ritchie Behal’s South Leinster Brigade but now we don’t know what the fuck it is, isn’t that right Tommy?”

 

“Yeah, has us going round in circles wondering.”

 

“Wondering what?”

 

“Wondering fuck all, just wondering. Do yeh ever wonder?”

 

“Yes. Sometimes.”

 

“Well then yeh know what the fuck I’m talking about. I think O’Donnell claimed to have found it, whatever it fucking is, isn’t that right Ernie?”

 

“Something like that. Said it happened in the Peacock. Said he had a right sup on him and this brainwave hit him and then when he woke up the next morning it was completely fucking after vanishing from his brain, the same fucking brain. So he said that whatever it was that he fucking founded he had no intention of joining. Didn’t make sense to join something that you don’t know what it fucking is.”

 

“Said it was something socialist,” confirmed Marsh.

 

“Socialist!!” repeated Royle.

 

“What I said,” said Marsh. “It's a word the rich hate. Really fucking hate.”

 

“Do you think so?” asked Royle.

 

A burst of wild laughter came from the other two. “Are you for fucken real!!” said Marsh “.....do you fucken think so!!!”

 

“I read recently that in America in 1933 the government forced all of its citizens to give over their gold coins, bullion and gold certificates which led to the enactment of the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. This barred citizens from owning physical gold,” said Bates.

 

“The commies taking over the asylum,” Marsh laughed.

 

“Apparently this was to protect the currency system of the Federal Reserve Bank.”

 

“The dollar?”

 

“Exactly. But here’s the catch. The Federal Reserve Bank is a private bank. It is not owned, as you would expect, by the government.”

 

“Fuck!”

 

“Yep. Fuck is right! It is owned by large US banks and they are owned by the super-rich elites. Have you got that Nick?”

 

“Sort of.”

 

“Well, these fuckers will go to any extreme to destroy anyone or anything that threatens their wealth. They will wage any war against any socialist regime to destroy it. And they might, probably will be, talking in very refined accents with very good table manners in their posh houses but if you threaten their wealth you are suddenly confronted by sociopaths and psychopaths in ten thousand dollar suits. They do not care for anyone or anything except their own families and their own personal wealth.”

 

“Ernie’s right there Nick.”

 

“Remember Nick, that socialists who come to power have got involved in politics for one reason. To make a society that is based on egalitarianism and a fairer distribution of the goodies. And socialists will also fight to maintain that society which is eventually aiming at a sort of earthly paradise. Whether that’s pie in the sky or not it doesn’t fucking matter because that is the goal. But what are the super-rich elites who are trying to overthrow the socialist society aiming for? Simple. To get richer as a class and to control the world in their interests and, of course, they try to butter this up with lies and more lies about how making this elite class richer and richer and everybody else working longer and longer for lower and lower wages is somehow in everybody’s best interests. In their eyes their biggest fucking hell is to live in a socialist society and to stop this they will, if necessary, use nuclear weapons.”

 

“But they’ll kill everybody including themselves,” protested Royle.

 

“Not necessarily,” said Marsh. “Remember they all have bunkers a fucken mile underground that they will scuttle into in the hope that when they come up maybe a year later they will find a brave new world to plunder again.”

 

Bates gave a loud croak-like laugh. “You know what they’ll find Nick?”

 

“No?”

 

“They’ll find a fucking wasteland. And in this wasteland there will be, maybe, small groups of machine gun-carrying hunter-gatherers, suffering from various degrees of radiation poisoning. No hospitals or no one in what might be left of them to render any medical treatment but there’ll be no shortage of useable weapons lying around the nuked army barracks. Radiated weapons. These survivors will be killing off any other survivors they come across who might threaten their meagre amounts of canned food they have salvaged from the ruined supermarkets and factories. They’ll find their hell on earth Nick and they won’t last pissing time in it because they’ve always used those in their armies to do the killing and muscle work.”

 

“Fuck!”

 

“And remember America is fucken bloated with fundamentalist Christians. And lots of these fuckers are itching to press the nuclear trigger because they believe the world, especially the Soviet Union, needs to be destroyed and born again if you like...  They believe that God will save them if they do that on his behalf...”

 

“Jesus!!” Bates shouted some miles past Gloucester. “Did youse see that?”

 

A tall, elegant woman in a white bikini walked out of a field as a loud blast of a horn from a lorry filled the car. Bates looked up and saw the shocked face of a lorry driver staring down at him. Marsh, who was sitting behind Bates, sprang across the back seat and almost burst open the back passenger door. The blare of the horn died away as the lorry somehow missed the car which had crossed the white line as Bates had feasted his eyes on the bikini-clad beauty walking around the English countryside.

 

“Stop the fucken car,” Marsh roared.

 

Bates pulled in. “What?”

 

“Get fucken out,” ordered Marsh, “I’m driving the rest of the way.”

 

“There’s no need to be annoyed with me because you didn’t see her,” said Bates.

 

“Fuck you and her. Except for that lorry driver’s exemplary driving, we’d have been all going to Holyhead in fucken coffins.”

 

They arrived at their destination and had a meal in a small restaurant. Later they did a bit of reconnaissance they picked a spot where they would climb into the barracks. Then they did a spot of sightseeing in the beautiful weather. At 1am they climbed into the barracks.

 

In no time the three were crouched down underneath the hut which according to Royle was the armoury. They heard the sentry walk past. Bates then took the time until he passed again. 28 minutes. As they were waiting and listening there was continuous coughing coming from the various huts. Marsh was sniggering while whispering away to the other two. “If we have to run for it these fuckers won’t make it to the gate...have they all got fucken lung cancer or what...is it an army rule that all recruits have to smoke sixty Capstan full strength every fucken day....If we are caught we’ll say we did a citizen’s arrest on Royle the deserter in Dublin and we brought him back to collect the reward money and we’ll ask can we have it in Irish pounds...”

 

Royle got out with the shifting spanner and was back down in twenty minutes saying he had the door opened. They waited for the sentry to pass, which he did, as Marsh pointed out that the fucker was puffing a cigarette, then Royle and himself entered the hut.

 

Bates lay down below, his eyes glued to his luminous wristwatch. There was a lot of noise coming from above him. He was sure somebody would hear it in one of the nearby huts. With five minutes before the sentry was due past, he was up to warn Marsh.

 

Marsh was in a fury and calling Royle, who was in the hut above, every sort of name.

 

“What’s the matter, Tommy?”

 

“That fucker, that fucker,” he repeated pointing upwards as the sweat ran down his face. “The chain, the lock is all hardened steel. Need a fucken grinder to cut it. That fucker should have known that. The wall plates holding the whole thing have a plate on each side so you’d have to cut half the side away in two places to have a chance.....”

 

The sentry passed and Marsh was back inside. After about twenty minutes there was an unmerciful bang above Bates which sounded like something heavy crashing to the floor then there was silence. Bates peered out, surely somebody would have heard something .....Only some coughs broke the silence. Marsh came down again as Bates gave the warning signal.

 

“What the fuck was that bang?”

 

“Me. I tried to see could I get the whole fucken plate to come away and the crowbar slipped....”

 

“Don’t know how that didn’t wake up the whole fucking camp.”

 

Marsh went upstairs three more times and the bangs were getting louder as Marsh became more desperate. It was quickly getting bright and the birds were singing their hearts out. Bates said the job was a failure. There was no chance of unchaining the arms and he was calling the job off and for that, he was taking his authority from IT.

 

Three very dejected people headed back to the car and Holyhead. Marsh put the curse of the bones of Saint Therese of Lisieux on whoever made the chain and wished his hands to wither so that he would be unable to wipe his arse.