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split, like the wrinkled skin of an old man. Inside, the cork was black and hard as a peat briquette. It wasn’t even round any more, or smooth, or even a ball at that. A burst prune. The talisman of a condemned man.
    I placed the notebook on the round table. It was a schoolchild’s copybook with an emerald-green cover. I stroked it with the flat of my hand for a long time before even opening it. I hesitated. I wanted to write ‘Tyrone Meehan’s Journal’ on the cover, but that sounded too pretentious. ‘Confessions’ didn’t have the right ring to my ear, either. Nor ‘Revelations’. So I wrote nothing at all on the front. I opened the copybook, pressing the central fold flat with my fist.
    On my sixth pint, I wrote a few words on the first page:
    Now that everything is out in the open, they will all speak in my place – the IRA, the British, my family, my close friends, journalists I’ve never even met. Some of them will go so far as to explain how and why I ended up a traitor. It incenses me that books may well be written about me. Do not listen to any of their claims. Do not trust my enemies, and even less my friends. Ignore those who will say they knew me. Nobody has ever walked in my shoes, nobody. The only reason I am speaking out now is because I am the only one who can tell the truth. Because after I’m gone, I hope for silence.
    I dated it: Killybegs, 24 December 2006 . I signed my name and then I left to go home.
    I went back up the street, passed the village limit. I went back to the damp and pitch-black house, Tom’s sliotar gripped in my hand, inside my pocket. I wasn’t drunk, I was dizzy, relieved, uneasy. I had just started my journal.

4
    With Great Britain at war, we knew that living in north Belfast would become difficult. It began in August 1941 with a few rocks being hurled at our door. ‘Irish bastards’ was scrawled in black graffiti across Lawrence’s workshop. One night in September, we doused a petrol bomb thrown through the living-room window. Farther up along Sandy Street, a Catholic family decided to leave for the Republic. And then two others followed them from Mills Terrace. Every night Protestants used to creep into our neighbourhood and smear insults across the fronts of our houses. ‘Papist traitors out!’ ‘Catholic = IRA’. Lawrence kept a club next to his bed. Seánie would slip his hurley under the mattress. But we weren’t prepared for battle.
    The Costello family retreated to the Beechmount neighbourhood just after Christmas. They did it in three trips, taking their time. I kissed Sheila again. Their house burned the same night.
    The Loyalists were cleaning their streets. They were Protestant, British and at war. We were Catholic, Irish and neutral. Cowards or spies. They used to say that in the Republic of Ireland the towns left their lights on all night to show the Luftwaffe the way to Belfast. They used to say that in Northern Ireland we were the fifth column, the craftsmen of the German invasion. We were accused of preparing secret landing fields for their planes and paratroopers. We were foreigners, enemies. All they wanted was for us to cross back over the border or stay in our ghettos.
    But Lawrence refused to leave. In 1923, his parents had held out as they were gradually surrounded by deserted houses with gaping windows. One evening, Mother’s brother spoke more than he intended to. He said that every part of Ireland was our home, from Dublin to Belfast, from Killybegs to 19 Sandy Street. He said that they were the foreigners – the Protestants, the Unionists – those descendents of colonizers who had usurped our houses and lands thanks to Cromwell’s sword. He said that we had the same rights as them, and were due the same consideration. He said it was a question of dignity. And I listened to him. And I heard my father. I loved my father through my uncle’s anger. Lawrence Finnegan, he was Padraig Meehan minus the alcohol and the blows.

    My uncle