‘Anyway, the Turk said you carried home around inside you. It was more real there than when you went home. It didn’t change and you weren’t changed seeing it.
‘It was some week when Shay was broke and spent each night sitting with him. Your man used to scorn the younger Turks for drinking and looking at whores at night. Time went too slow that way he claimed. He’d sleep instead and every hour slept was a victory. He said he was cheating time, making it work for him so he could go home sooner. I told Shay that Beano who did six months in the Joy once said that was what the old lags did as well.
‘But no matter what you did this old Turk said, when you went back to your village you were a stranger inside and always would be. You know, Shay’d repeat that like he was bitter, then just look out the window and wait for you to come home, Hano. I don’t know what the fuck he was remembering but it was like he’d forgot I was there. Jesus, he’d look so old then, sitting in the shadows, the cigarette burnt away to nothing at his elbow, just waiting for you. I’d curse you Hano, whatever you knew that kept him apart from me.’
Hano remembered the silence in the kitchen when he’d opened the door, Katie’s bitter eyes turning to stare at him. How many lifetimes ago did it seem? Once you left home you could never go back. They lapsed into silence, waiting for darkness, to blunder forth, knowing that nothing lay ahead of them.
At dusk a golfer took them to the main road. He chuckled at Katie’s dishevelled hair, taking them for teenage lovers returning to face the music after a night sleeping rough. A van brought them to Balbriggan half an hour before the booths closed. Cars sped down the main street with loudhailers, party workers desperate to get each last vote in.
Hano and Katie queued for chips in The Pop Inn, the crowd joking about the air of frenzy outside. It had been two days since he had eaten anything hot, and now the smell of the boiling grease made his stomach turn. An election agent poked his head in, scanning the faces for somebody. A policeman passed. Hano lowered his head, trying to keep the tremble from his legs. The few late voters were jostled by the canvassers as they made their way to the booths in the town hall. Nobody noticed them as they walked through the square except the punks who sat on the court-house steps with bottles of cider in plastic bags at their feet. They whistled after Katie. Hano grabbed her hand when she seemed about to shout back and steered her off the main street through the terraces of houses by the closed-down hosiery factory. Ornate plaques high on the wall commemorated medals won at trade fairs in Vienna and Paris before the turn of the century. The names of rock groups were sprayed on the brickwork below. A few boats were tied up at the small harbour, coloured lights reflected on the water from the disco bar on the pier. On the hill the lights of the new estates glowed over empty concrete streets. They passed again into darkness and began walking along the Drogheda road.
A farmer picked them up not far from Gormanstown. He was returning from voting in the city.
‘Could you have not voted closer to home?’ Hano asked.
‘I did, I did,’ he chuckled. ‘This afternoon. But the brother always gave his number one to Patrick Plunkett and sure there’s no reason Plunkett shouldn’t have it now just because me brother’s dead. Especially this day, the poor man. A fierce fire that was. Ah, but you can be sure the Brits were behind it. And you know why? The Plunketts were the men to stand up to them, like their grandfather did, that’s why.’
The booths had closed when they reached Drogheda, the town looking like a dancehall car-park after a holiday weekend. The pubs were jammed. The only faces left on the streets stared from election posters on lamp-posts and leaflets piled like autumn leaves along the ground. There was little traffic. Unloaded trailers of lorries were parked on the quayside beside the crumbling Victorian warehouses. They climbed on to the back of one, stretched on the bare boards and stared at the railway viaduct spanning the mouth of the Boyne. Katie’s head rested tiredly against his shoulder. He stroked her hair, closed his eyes and leaned back against the tail-board. The flashlight came from nowhere. Both knew it was a garda before he spoke.
‘Hey! What are you at up there? Come here to me!’
He was running around the side of the trailer before they had jumped to the ground. They heard him call as they dodged through the narrow cobbled streets by the storehouses. The lights of a car turned the corner and bumped down towards them. Hano froze, waiting for the siren to come. Katie pulled him on as the headlights sped past, catching the figure of the garda puffing and slowing down as he cursed their backs.
They didn’t stop till they reached the darkness of the Slane road. They rested in the gateway of a field watching the lights of occasional cars heading for the town. When lights came the other way they pressed back against the bushes, afraid to hitch now. To their left the Boyne ran sluggishly towards the sea, silvered occasionally by rocks. They walked on, listening anxiously for the noise of an engine behind them. Twice they pressed themselves flat against the ditch as cars passed, cursing their fear when they were plunged back into darkness in their wake.
They had travelled over a mile before Katie stopped and listened carefully.
‘It’s a lorry Hano. Fuck it, we’ll take a chance.’
The lights were higher off the road, the noise of the engine deeper. Katie placed one foot on the tarmacadam and thumbed it. It roared past and they had cursed the driver before it skidded to a halt twenty yards in front of them. The driver was in his early thirties. He grinned down at them as they climbed into the warmth of the cab. He was returning to Sligo, having driven since seven the previous evening from Belgium through France and then up from Rosslare. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t want conversation. He just drove, grey eyes ringed from lack of sleep, smoking cigarette after cigarette as he manoeuvred through the narrow streets of each small town—Slane, Kells, Virginia, Stradone, Ballyhaise, skirting the border beyond Belturbet, before moving down through Ballyconnell. He offered them cigarettes and large bars of continental chocolate, talked about the traffic police on the continent, the rigs of the other drivers waiting in the ferry port. Tomorrow his brother would take the truck to Galway to collect a load for Ostend. He would rest for two days till the truck returned. His wife would still be at home, the two children put to bed. Four years more was all he’d drive. The regulations were stricter now, spies in the cab regulating the hours you were supposed to drive, strikes among dockers, the same hassles always with the customs in England. Where was the profit for a haulier now? Missing the children growing up, feeling a stranger at times in your own home. But the bungalow he’d built from it, that was the best in the district. Last year he’d taken home a fireplace from a shop in Brussels. This time it was a chandelier, the only thing left in the back after unloading in Drogheda. Hano thought of it swaying absurdly from the ceiling of the container behind them, the young woman waiting at home with the firelight flickering and all the lights turned down. The driver wore a stained blue jumper with no shirt underneath.
‘You can’t beat it,’ he said. ‘Going home.’
Katie’s eyes stared ahead, her lips moving each time they passed a road sign. The driver pressed a switch on the dashboard and country music began to play. In Dublin with Shay, Hano remembered mocking the corny three-four playing of the Irish country bands. But now, as the headlights swept along the low bushes and stone walls bordering the road far below him and Katie curled warm against his side, the awkward lyrics were magical. Stories of wedding rings and lost love letters, of crossroad meetings, of blankets laid beside rivers. He closed his eyes, never wishing the journey to end. The driver sang along to himself. They passed Bawnboy and Glengevlin in silence and were only miles from Dowra when Katie tugged his hand urgently.
He looked down but she seemed afraid to speak. Her fingers were pulling at his jacket as if trying to tear it off.
‘Here,’ Hano said uncertainly. The driver stared across at him.
‘You sure? It’s the arse end of nowhere.’
Katie nodded slowly and the man shrugged his shoulders. He braked and bumped the wheel up against the loose gravel. The air rushed in, freezing when Hano opened the door. Katie jumped and he followed her down. The driver reached under his seat and threw another large