The Heart's Invisible Furies



In the early autumn of 1959, Max Woodbead wrote an article in the Irish Times condemning éamon de Valera—a man he despised—and his government for relaxing its policy on the internment without trial of suspected IRA members. End their imprisonment by all means, he wrote, his words appearing next to a particularly obnoxious photograph of him sitting in the garden of what had once been my home, wearing a three-piece suit, a luxurious white rose spilling out from his buttonhole while he studied a plate of cucumber sandwiches that lay before him, but rather than letting an assortment of misguided patriots and uneducated thugs roam the streets to cause carnage with their guns and bombs, it might be more beneficial to simply line them up against a wall and shoot them, just as our erstwhile overseers did to the leaders of the Easter Rising when they dared to challenge the divine authority of His Imperial Majesty, King George V. The piece received extensive coverage across the media and as levels of outrage increased he was invited onto Radio éireann to defend his position. Butting heads with a rabidly Republican interviewer, he claimed that it had been a dark day for Ireland when the country had severed its ties with England. The brightest minds in Dáil éireann, he claimed, would never be as sharp as the dimmest eggheads in Westminster. Those who were taking part in the Border Campaign he condemned as cowards and murderers and, in one of his more self-satisfied moments (and one that he had surely rehearsed in advance to ensure maximum provocation), suggested that a sustained Luftwaffe-style blitzkrieg of the border along the counties of Armagh, Tyrone and Fermanagh would put an end to the terrorist activities of the Irish people once and for all. Asked why he possessed such fervently pro-English views when he had been born in Rathmines, he almost burst into song as he pointed out that his family had been one of the most prominent in Oxford for centuries. He seemed truly proud to admit that two of his ancestors had been beheaded by Henry VIII for opposing the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and that another had been burned at the stake by Queen Mary herself—unlikely—for tearing down signs of Roman idolatry at Oxford Cathedral.

“I was the first of my family to be born in Ireland,” he said, “and this was only because my father moved here to practice law after the end of the Great War. And as the Duke of Wellington, who I think we would all agree was a magnificent man, said: Just because a man is born in a stable, this does not make him a horse.”

“Maybe not a horse, but an ass for certain,” declared Father Squires the following day in class, haranguing Julian for Max’s treasonous sentiments. “Which makes you a hinny or a mule.”

“I’ve been called worse,” said Julian, not looking in the least affronted. “The thing is, there’s no point trying to equate my father’s political opinions with my own. He has so many, you see, while I have absolutely none.”

“That’s because your head is empty.”

“Oh I don’t know,” he muttered under his breath. “There’s a few idle thoughts in there somewhere.”

“Would you, as a proud Irishman, at least condemn him for the things he said?”

“No,” replied Julian. “I don’t even know what you’re so incensed over. I never read the papers and I don’t own a radio, so I have no idea what he said to cause all of this fuss. Was it something to do with ladies being allowed to swim at the Forty Foot? He does grow enraged whenever that subject comes up.”

“Ladies being…” Father Squires stared at him in disbelief, and I wondered how long it would be before his stick appeared to make mincemeat of my friend. “This has nothing to do with ladies being allowed to swim at the Forty Foot!” he roared. “Although it’ll be a cold day in hell when that is allowed to happen. That’s nothing more than a bunch of shameless hussies getting their kicks by parading around half naked.”

“Sounds all right to me,” said Julian with a half-smile.

“Have you not been listening to a word I’ve been saying? Your father is a traitor to his own people! Do you feel no shame for that, no?”

“No, I don’t. Isn’t there something in the Bible about sons not being put to death for the sins of their fathers?”

“Don’t quote the Bible at me, you bloody West Brit brat,” said Father Squires, storming down to our table and standing over us so I could smell the sweat that followed him around like a guilty secret. “And what it says is that they shall both be put to death for their own sins.”

“That sounds a bit harsh. And I didn’t quote it anyway. I paraphrased it. And obviously got it hopelessly wrong too.”

This was the type of back-and-forth which seemed to annoy most of our classmates, turning Julian into a rather unpopular figure, but the way he challenged Father Squires delighted me. He was arrogant, certainly, and had no respect for authority but he made his pronouncements with such insouciance that I found it impossible not to be charmed by him.

So vocal was Max, however, on his condemnation of the IRA that perhaps no one should have been too surprised when, a few weeks later while leaving Dartmouth Square one morning for an appointment at the Four Courts, an attempt was made on his life. A gunman, hiding in the center of the gardens—Maude would not have been happy—fired two bullets in his direction, one lodging in the woodwork of the front door, the other skimming past the right side of his head, tearing his ear off and coming perilously close to what I suppose would be considered his brain. Max ran back inside screaming, blood pouring down the side of his face, and barricaded himself in his study until the Gardaí and the ambulance arrived. At the hospital, it became quite clear that no one had any sympathy for him whatsoever and even less interest in tracking down his intended assassin and so, when he was released, half deaf and with an inflamed red scar where his right ear used to be, he hired a bodyguard, a burly man with the look of a more muscular Charles Laughton and who went by the name of Ruairí O’Shaughnessy, a surprisingly Gaelic title for one in whose hands Max was placing his life. Wherever Julian’s father went, O’Shaughnessy went too, and they became quite a familiar pair around Inn’s Quay. Unbeknownst to any of us, however, was that, having failed to kill him for his verbal insults, the IRA had decided to try something a little more imaginative next time to punish him. A far more daring project was in the works, where Max was not the target at all.





Borstal Boy

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