Michael had been driven to the funeral by Brother Zozimus, whose principal task was to read the mail of the seminarians in pursuit of any impure thoughts, words, or deeds. He took up a place at the back of the church, kneeling on the stone floor throughout the Mass, while the Mountjoy warder lingered just inside the church’s arched double doors, smoking his way through a pack of Silk Cuts. The brothers sat side by side in the first pew.
At the end of the Mass, the pastor trod down the aisle and the mourners followed in his incensed wake. On the front steps, a crowd gathered, many of them locals who had attended the funeral out of obligation to the man who had educated their children. Others had come out of simple peckishness for any break with the routine of a Tuesday in May. Among the mourners were a fair number of strangers, hard-looking men who had sat apart from each other, scattered around the church as if magnetized against contact. The warder watched the sluggish procession and grew gradually more agitated as neither of the Dempseys passed through the low-slung arch. One of the strangers, a man with red-blasted cheeks beneath a flat black cap, told him the boys were lighting a candle in their father’s memory before an image of the Sacred Heart. Another said the priest had asked Michael to retrieve another censer from a cabinet in the sacristy. The crowd milling about the doors seemed in no hurry to transport the coffin to its final resting place. The minutes ticked by, punctuated by the tolling of the bell overhead. The only two who seemed impatient for the reappearance of the Dempseys were the warder and a young woman dressed all in black. Both craned their necks to see over the heads of the throng and into the shadowy vault of the church.
Inside, a group of the hard-looking strangers drifted to the front of the church and formed a knot around the Dempsey brothers. The condolences were brusque—“I’m sorry for your loss,” each said in turn—but the men stared at the boys with an intensity that was hard to ignore, scanning the brothers as if seeking to square the cast of their eyes or the shape of their noses with memories of their father’s own face.
One of the men leaned in to Francis and in a raspy stage whisper said, “Sure you’re not going back to that jail, are you?”
Francis thought the man was trying to lighten the mood with a joke. “Have you got a better offer?”
The other men laughed grimly, but no sooner had Francis spoken than a plan began to take shape.
“Say good-bye to your brother and go,” the man said. “We’ll slow down that screw.”
“Go how?” Francis said.
“The Brother’s keys are in his car,” Michael said. “But you’re not going without me.”
“Good man!” one of the strangers spat.
“Your father’s sons!” another said.
The first man pushed a folded paper into Francis’s hands. “I drew this up during that frightful eulogy. It’ll take you to a safe house where you can sort out your next move.”
“Where are you sending him?”
“Not the place in Ardagh? It’s been donkey’s years since anyone—”
“No, no—”
“Not Westmeath? That was a shithole twenty years ago. Can’t imagine what it’s like—”
“Will you cut it?” the first man said. He stabbed the paper with a stubby finger. “Follow the map.” A network of pencil lines, boxes, arrows. “That’s Limerick, that’s Glenagoul, and that line’s the road to Cork. Take the turn for Castletownroche, and when you’re halfway there, look for the broken arch, the white barn, the red door.”
“A red door? He’ll never—”
“Take it and go!” He pushed the map against Francis’s chest, then burrowed in his pocket for a handful of coins and a few banknotes. “Come on, lads,” he said. “For the orphans’ fund.”
The eyes of the men were aglow. They were on a mission—an escape, a rescue operation, call it what you will. It was a return to younger days when they had all been soldiers and believed that a better, brighter world was one well-placed shot away.
“WHO WERE THESE men?” Martin said. He was hunched forward on the sofa, following every word.
“That’s just it,” Francis said. “Had to be friends of Da from the Cork days.”
“Da was never the having-friends type.”
“Well, there were a lot of them—tough-looking yokes, too.”
“They must have been from the university. Old professors, come to bury one of their own.”
“They didn’t look like teachers.” Francis spun the Scotch in his glass, contemplating its movement. “I have to ask, did you ever wonder if Da was involved in any IRA business?”
“Da hated politics. And politicians even more.”
“I’m not talking about politics. I mean fighting. Things got awfully hot in Cork.”
“Mam was mad about speeches and rallies, but Da? He was no soldier.”
“You’re sure of that? You’d remember best.”
“Not a chance,” Martin said.
“Wait till you hear the rest.”
FRANCIS AND MICHAEL were bent double, picking their way through the headstones behind the church and making for the line of cars along the road. Both saw the mound of fresh dirt, the newly cut sides of the hole where the coffin would soon be lowered. “I’m not dropping you off at the seminary, so you know.”
“I’m done with all that,” Michael said. “Didn’t you get my letters?”
They found the seminary’s automobile, a black Vauxhall Cadet polished every weekend as part of the students’ regular contribution to the upkeep of St. Columbanus. Francis ducked into the driver’s seat and quietly pulled the door shut. Michael lingered outside, peering over the roof at the throng outside the church doors.
“Come on,” Francis said. “Now or never, Michael.”
Michael spotted Eileen on the fringe of the crowd, and as soon as he saw her, she turned and looked him full in the face, as if she’d heard him calling her name from someplace deep within. It had always been that way—from the time they were tykes right up until the moment she told him that there was no hope for them, that it was settled, that she would marry that old codger Doonan. But now his eyes were on hers, just like in the days before, and her mouth formed a single word: Go! For his sake and for hers. Go!
Francis echoed the same word—Let’s go!—and then Michael was in the car and the car was moving and they were off.
In the commotion that followed it was discovered that Francis or Michael or some co-conspirator had nicked the keys from the warder’s automobile as well. He tried to commandeer one of the other cars to begin pursuit, but none of the locals had driven to the church—Ballyrath was no bigger than a postage stamp, and few people owned cars—and after the out-of-town mourners hustled to their cars and fidgeted with their coats and trousers, they reported that their keys, too, had been stolen. After an hour’s delay, the warder finally waylaid a truck used for the delivery of peat and set off in pursuit. The head start alone was sizable enough but the Dempsey brothers also had the advantage of having grown up among the lanes and hedgerows around Ballyrath, and they drove like madmen drunk on the prospect of the freedom that lay ahead.