Shambles Corner. Edward Toman

      Packy Hughes, the name by which he was known to the Crown Authorities, or Peacai Mac Aoidh to give him the only title to which he would now answer, or the Patriot, the name by which he was best known to both sides of the house, was a giant of a man, over six foot tall and as broad as he was long. It was not for nothing that he was called the Patriot, for no living man had suffered more for his country. As a boy he had been interned on the ship in Belfast Lough, and as a young man he had seen the inside of every prison in the country. But where others had whiled away the long lonely nights dreaming of hot meals, comforting drinks and the pleasures of the flesh, the Patriot had kept his vision intact. On the rotting hulk he had taken a vow never to cut his hair till Ireland was free. It hung now to his waist, lank, grey and greasy. On formal occasions, as when he led the march out past the cathedral to the cemetery to honour the glorious dead, he would tie it into a ponytail held in place with a rubber band. Not many men in Armagh wore ponytails. But no corner boy jeered after the Patriot as he shuffled to the head of the colour party. When they were sure he was out of earshot, the people of Irish Street would say to each other that he was a right psycho and no mistake, and thank God with a chuckle that at least he was on their side. The people of Scotch Street would say, as his silhouette passed, that he was a right psycho, and, lowering their voices, question why something hadn’t been done. It wasn’t for want of trying. His limbs still bore the scars of a dozen attacks; his barrel chest still showed the wounds where they had taken the bullets out of him. Bullets fired at a range that would have killed a normal man. But the Patriot was no normal man. A month after they had left him for dead at the back of the Martyrs Memorial, he had been back behind the bar. He had been shot, stabbed, garrotted, blown up, drowned and half hanged, and every time the Patriot had pulled through. Martyrdom had eluded him down the years.

      He had taken a second great vow when he was in the Crumlin. He had enrolled in an Irish class on the wing; in the first flush of enthusiasm he foresaw Ireland Gaelic again and the forgotten sounds of the language echoing once more through the streets of her towns. The young teacher from the Falls Road would speak nothing but Irish, and after Lesson One, the Patriot took a vow that he would do the same. Sadly the classes hadn’t lasted very long. The Movement split when they were still on Lesson Five (the first declension) and the Falls Road teacher had taken a wrong ideological turning that ended in Milltown cemetery. But an oath is an oath, especially if taken by a soldier of the Republic. Armed with the Christian Brothers’ Grammar, the Patriot spent the next six years struggling with the intricacies of the subjunctive and the complex vocabulary of field and shoreline. His labours were only partially successful. By nature a solitary person, his habits had been reinforced by years on the blanket. But lack of language was no handicap. His truculence and dourness and his reluctance to be drawn too deeply into political debate were useful tools for survival; in due course his long silences and curt utterances gave him an air of authority, an authority reinforced by his stature and reputation as the man they couldn’t kill.

      So when the Patriot got to his feet and addressed himself to the problem in hand, even Joe knew that the crack was over and that he might as well see to the pigs outside. The Patriot rose to his full height and ran his fingers through his lank locks. ‘Caidé tá cearr?’ he demanded in a quiet and reasonable voice. What is wrong?

      ‘Nothing wrong at all,’ answered Joe, likewise adopting a quiet and reasonable tone. ‘In fact I was just this minute hoping to attend to a small business matter that I fear can’t wait any longer.’

      ‘Time and tide wait for no man,’ agreed his erstwhile companion, edging his way to the door.

      But the Patriot roused to speech was reluctant to let the matter drop. He had managed to form a sentence, albeit one that was grammatically suspect, and he didn’t feel like wasting it on one airing. ‘Dúirt me caidé tá cearr?’ he demanded. I said what is wrong? The grammar was even more suspect but the meaning was clear enough. A note of menace had entered his voice. If everyone else could treat his place like a rough-house, it seemed to imply, he was going to have some of the action. He thought for a moment but no new words came to express these thoughts. So he contented himself with a third rehearsal of the original sentence. This time the intonation had been modulated; it was no longer an interrogative or an assertion, it was a threat. A threat directed at the person of Joe Feely, pig farmer. It spoke of blood in the nostrils and ribs in need of splints, of lost front teeth and eyes that wouldn’t open, of pain and humiliation and the mockery of his peers. All this and more, the Patriot conveyed in the same few words. There was only one way out and Joe knew it; only one way to prevent the Patriot, his word store depleted, from vaulting the bar and getting stuck in. Joe summoned all his resources and addressed the giant in the language of his forefathers.

      ‘Tá muid all okay, ar seise, in fact tá muid’ – he faltered for a second – ‘ag dul abhaile.’ We are, he said, on our way and he indicated the door lest the Patriot have any difficulty with the pronunciation or mistake his intentions. But the effect was instantaneous. The Patriot’s face broke into a smile. He reached across the bar and grasped Joe’s hand in his own huge paddle. Words, not for the first time, failed him. But there was no mistaking the emotion of the moment. The English had come marauding to this ancient spot seven hundred years ago, planting it with their settlers; since then the only language the Shambles had known was rough Béarla, the tongue of the oppressor, unnatural in our mouths. The Patriot and his comrades, and ten thousand more before him, had all but driven the invaders out at last, but they had left their language as a mocking legacy. But when he heard the sweet sounds of spoken Gaelic in his house he felt that our day was at last coming.

      Joe knew that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. He stood silent now, content to have his hand roughly shaken by the Patriot, instead of his body broken by the same party. The fat man from Tyrone, meanwhile, managed to fill the silence. From the depths of his unconscious he dredged up what was left of his Brothers education. Only one sentence came to him but, as luck would have it, it was the one to do the