Read Return to Killybegs for Free Online Page A

had stopped drinking ten years previously. His car had overturned one evening on his way back from Derry, hit a pole, then a tree and rolled into the ditch. He and Hilda were returning from the doctor’s surgery. The results of his wife’s tests were not good. They would not be having children, ever. Nothing but him and her, every morning, every evening, all the days of their lives. And that’s the way it would be until one of them died and the other followed. On the way home, they drank to forget. They crossed over the border in tears, shouting at the Brits through the open window. Long live the Republic! And there it was again at last! And he lost control on Irish soil. The car turned over. Lawrence lived. Hilda died. Since then, my uncle had replaced drunkenness with silence.

    We were in the middle of saying our evening prayers when the Protestants entered Sandy Street on Sunday, 4 January 1942. They smashed through our door with an axe and threw lit torches into the hallway. Lawrence tipped the couch over to protect us. The girls came tearing down from the first floor, screaming. Mother was holding baby Sara by a leg, her head hanging down. Seánie had his hurley in his hand and my uncle roared at him not to move, not to try a thing, to hide with us behind the velvet cushions.
    —You clear out of here tomorrow! shouted a man’s voice.
    I didn’t see him. I saw nobody. I had my head between my knees and my eyes closed. My sisters, brothers and mother were all around me on the ground, our arms and legs tangled together. They came in. They broke the windows, tearing off the lattice of sticky paper that protected the panes from the German bombs. They broke the soup tureen from Galway. They tore up the photo of Pope Pius XII. They destroyed everything, trampled everything. They went upstairs, avoiding us, running past on either side of our shelter. There were eleven of us, all on top of one another, taking refuge under a sofa upturned against a wall. That is to say naked, exposed and defenceless. They could have killed us, but they didn’t. They stepped over us, ignored us. They didn’t speak. They vandalized everything familiar without a word. They only existed in the noise of their steps and their breathing. They even tore the head off Dodie Dum, baby Sara’s soother. They upset everything, and then they left.
    —Tomorrow! the voice shouted again.
    Seánie was the first to go outside, stick in hand and tears in his eyes. He was the oldest of the Meehans, the head of the family, and he had failed. He was the only one left to replace our father and he hadn’t done it. He was in the deserted street shouting at the bastards, his wooden stick useless. Lawrence was throwing buckets of water on the flames licking the living-room curtains. The fire was roaring in the girls’ room. We no longer had a choice. It was time. We had held on up until that point, a few months, a few days more. Most of our neighbours had given in. We were the last, or near enough. I can still see my uncle bringing Seánie back into our hostile house, a hand on his neck, telling him that what was needed now was to save what could be saved. And also that he, Seánie, had protected us. That protecting was better than killing. That we all owed him our lives. I remember my brother’s face. He looked at my uncle, trying to grasp what he had just been told. And then he rushed to the first floor to snatch some clothes from the inferno.
    Later, while the roof burned, Seánie came back with the last bags. Áine, wee Kevin and Brian slowly circled him. My brother crouched down. He hugged them to himself, all wrapped up together, an armful of frightened children being told, ‘I love you.’

    When Lawrence’s truck arrived in Dholpur Lane, the residents came out to meet us.
    —The families from Sandy Street! a kid yelled.
    It was four in the morning, 6 January. The front doors along the street opened almost simultaneously, as though the neighbourhood had