I will start with my father. The relevant thing about my father is that he was a hero of the War of Independence and probably of the Civil War also although he rarely spoke of this second adventure. In one of the few Risings outside Dublin in 1916 my father, as a very young man, commanded a small company of volunteers based in the Mweelera mountains above Killary harbour. From this redoubt they attacked and occupied the police barracks on Westport. In an incident which has gone largely unchronicled my father then stood in the smashed bay window of the station and read out a self-penned version of the Proclamation of Independence to the bewildered township who had gathered in its square. The occupation of the barracks lasted till the weekend when military intelligence informed them that a Royal Irish Infantry detachment with artillery back-up was being deployed from Galway military barracks to lift the occupation. By this time word had come through of the almost total failure of the Rising outside Dublin. There was nothing for it but to withdraw. In the dead of night the volunteers stole westward along the Louisburgh road towards Killary harbour and refuge. Rounding a corner somewhere between Westport and Louisburgh they ran through a British Army checkpoint but not before Father, a front-seat passenger in the truck, stopped a .303 bullet with his chest. Somewhere in the Mweelera mountains a makeshift medical post was panicked by a wound classed somewhere between serious and critical. When the torrent of blood welling from his chest had been stanched it was quickly realized that there was not one among the volunteers with the skill needed to remove the bullet. It was decided to cleanse the wound as best they could, bind it and hope for the best. In nervous agitation, an effort to kindle some hope in those about him, a young volunteer recalled how he had heard stories of soldiers who’d carried bullets and shrapnel in their bodies for the whole of their lives with only minimal discomfort.
It was as if the telling of this story acted as a template for subsequent events because this was exactly what happened. After lying in a fever for ten days, during which time he was to rise in his bed several times, screaming and flailing his arms in the air, physically fending off death, the fever broke and my father lay on his back with steel-blue eyes gazing into the sky above Mweelera. His first words were, ‘So where am I?’ He carried that bullet in him the remaining seventy years of his life until on the two occasions of his death when my wife found him in the room lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, his eyes calmed like blue metal.
Up to the sudden change which took place in him six months before his death, nothing distinguished my son Francis. When he was born over nine years ago it seemed the right and symmetrical thing to do to name him after his grandfather. Now I ask myself was it here, in his naming, that the damage was done? As I have said, the child was ordinariness itself. Small, with his mother’s blond hair, he had the energy and cheer of any child his age. He was admired by visitors as a dote and spoke easily with them, never cheekily and even if so only to the extent which could be passed off as childish spiritedness. He was bright but not exceptional and his interests were similar to those of any child his own age and to the same degree: his bike, football, sweets and mischief. Up to those last six months he was a child like any other and we loved him as only a single child can be loved. I say that so no one can accuse us of having given our child reason to reject us. As you shall see – and remember I am putting down the facts – his change never consisted in a rejection of us. Never once did he accuse or express dissatisfaction. In fact, in a more world-weary way, he seemed as happy with us as he had ever been.
Lastly, before I speak of the change, I must talk of his relationship with his grandfather. It was quite simple. To Francis, Grandfather was a hero of some distant and, in his young mind, awesome conflict. He saw him as a solitary giant, a war hero who partook in great adventures, a treasure trove of great stories. Night after night he would sit at his feet and worry him with incessant questions till bedtime. In this he was the envy of his school friends. It also pleased my father. ‘He’s a good listener,’ he would say fondly. I ask myself again, was it here in the avidness with which he was listened to that my father found renewal? I do not know but as we shall see he did find a renewal of sorts.
About the change. Despite its surreal banality the incident itself is easily remembered. Six months ago we sat here in this kitchen eating. At this point I am tempted to speak of the weather, the time of day, the type of meal it was and so on in order to mark the incredible incident against a background of particular detail. But would that explain anything? I do not think so. It will suffice to say that the three of us were in the kitchen eating and Francis was carrying his mug from the table to the sink where my wife was preparing to wash up. As he approached the sink the cup slipped from his grasp – it will be the last time in this account that I will call him child with any certainty – fell to the floor and spun to a stop before the sink. My wife turned, on the verge of telling him to pick it up, but was struck silent by the intensity of the gaze with which Francis was looking at the mug. She would describe it later as a mixture of amazement and agony, the composite reaction of an old man who has seen many such troubled things in the past and the incomprehension of one to whom it was all totally new. My wife opened her mouth to speak but Francis took her forearm as one would a passing child and, in an unforgettably leaden voice, as if the memories and fatigue of a lifetime had come to rest upon him in that moment, he told her to ‘Bend down and pick that up like a good girl.’
In that moment and with those astonishing words he changed the whole complex of relationships in our house.
My wife, seconds before having been a mother on the verge of rebuking her child, was changed in an instant into a woman worried about the health of this old man. It is a measure of how complete and successful this reversal was for her because she picked up the mug in silent awe and handed it to him. After depositing it in the sink he returned to the table, and lowered himself gently into his chair, one hand on the table, groaning heavily, his bones apparently suffused with stiffness. A look of horror and astonishment passed between my wife and me. Despite ourselves we sensed some momentous change in our fortunes, some new beginning. Francis had resumed eating with a slow thoughtful relish far beyond his years. I decided to venture a question into the incredible silence which now reigned in the kitchen.
‘Are you feeling all right, Francis? You’re not sick or anything?’
‘A man of my age is always sick,’ he replied drily.
Again it is indicative of how completely he had changed that I did not dare rebuke what I thought might be left of the child on this now old man – one does not reprimand someone for saying something that is in all probability true. I had not a clue how to handle the situation. In fact it took all my powers of concentration to recognize exactly what was happening. The child Francis in outward appearance was still recognizable before me but his deeper identity had been supplanted entirely by the character of an old, jaded man. For a dread instant I toyed with the notion that there were actually two people before me. My wife stood at the sink, her mouth slung open and her eyes staring wide. Francis, or more correctly whoever it was that was now within Francis, sat spooning up the last of his meal, apparently heedless to the great change which he had brought about in his house. I realized instantly that for him there had been no change – one moment had been perfectly continuous with the previous one, there had been no slip sideways into someone else. It would therefore be ridiculous to start asking him what had happened. In any case he put an end to my thinking at that point by speaking grimly.
‘You’re right, I am tired. I’ll lie down for an hour. Wake me up when it’s time for the news.’ He walked stiffly from the room.
My wife broke immediately from her trance and began to sob hysterically. I went to her and held her in my arms.
‘What’s happened?’ she cried. ‘What has happened?’
‘I