For my three sisters,

Oona, Denise, Enda –

my love as ever.

The bog lay in the bright, slanting morning light, the dew-drops sparkling like millions of diamonds. A large crowd of the local inhabitants had already gathered . . . They were tightly grouped in a ring around a dark-coloured human head, with a tuft of short-cropped hair, which stuck up clear of the dark brown peat. Part of the neck and shoulders was also exposed. We were clearly face to face once again with one of the bog people.

P. V. Glob, The Bog People

Ireland, near the north-south border 1981

Part I

FIRST LIGHT

One

THEY’D STOLEN A march on the day. The sky was like dark glass, reluctant to let the light through. The only sound was the chudder of the van skirting the lough. The surface of the water was colourless. The hills slumped down on the far side like silhouettes of snoozing giants.

Fergus yawned. It was still before five as they turned off up the mountain road. Uncle Tally chewed on nothing as the tyres lumbered over the ruts. Fergus cradled the flask of sweet black tea. There’d been no milk in the fridge that morning.

‘Too early for you, huh?’ mocked Uncle Tally, changing gear.

‘Too right,’ said Fergus. ‘When I go running, it’s not dark like this.’ His throat was furred up. The words came out stretched by a yawn. ‘It’s unnatural being up before the birds.’

They approached the border checkpoint and the van slowed. The soldier by the hut stood with a rifle but did not move. He was young-looking and pale, with freckles. He waved them on, tipping the butt of the gun, and they drove past without having to stop. Uncle Tally laughed. ‘I could have a truckload of Semtex for all that wee squaddie cares,’ he said.

Fergus grunted. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Deus would be delighted.’

Deus, Latin for ‘God’, was the local nickname for a rumoured bomb-maker, said to be active thereabouts.

‘So he would.’

‘Only you’d be going in the wrong direction. We’re leaving the Troubles, Unk, not joining them.’

Uncle Tally thumped the wheel. ‘So we are. We’re in the free state now. Free as a bloody bog-frog.’ They both laughed like clowns. Going over the border always had that effect. Without your knowing it, your jaw-bone would stiffen and adrenalin pump through your veins as the checkpoint approached. Then, when you were through, hilarity would erupt at the relief.

The van turned up onto a steep road with grass growing up the middle. The gorse got yellower as they climbed, the sky brighter. ‘The border. Even a nun would be nervous crossing it,’ suggested Fergus.

‘And we’ll be crossing back over it at the top.’

‘Will we?’

‘If you look at the map. You can see.’

Fergus opened the map and saw the dotted grey line, almost invisible, meandering across Ireland’s north, but leaving a thin tract of land to the west that was Donegal. ‘The most northern bit of Ireland’s in the south,’ he quoted.

‘One day, one day . . .’ Uncle Tally muttered like a mantra.

‘One day what?’

‘One day the only border will be the sea and the only thing guarding it the dunes and the only people living in it Republicans. One day, Fergus.’

‘Where will the Unionists go, so?’

‘They’ll be beamed to outer space, warp factor five.’ Uncle Tally drove round a loop of road, heading back to where the light was growing on the horizon. ‘Lucky them. Now, here’s the spot to park, Fergus. Get cracking. The JCB crew will be down on us before you know.’ He pulled up and they got out the shovels and bags from the back and walked over a track for a hundred yards. On either side, brown grass sprouted out of black, wet earth, and bright green weeds spread like mildew over the soggier areas. The first skylark of the day darted from cover. Fergus approached the JCB, which was still, abandoned. Earth was churned up all around it, the leftover diggings from the day before. But ‘earth’ was the wrong word. It was turf, rich foaming peat, made from the things that had lived here in millennia gone by and pressed by time into a magic frieze of the past. You could dig up wood from primeval forests, find resin with insects of another age frozen in it. And what you dug up you could burn as fuel.

And, as his da said, there was nothing like the smell of the turf on a hearth to bring comfort in a dark world.

A pink tint grew on the horizon as they dug and filled the bags with uncut clumps. Dawn intensified. The sky was clear and close up here, the mind uncluttered. Uncle Tally grunted as he shovelled, his taut, fit frame enjoying the work. Fergus held the bags open for him and then they swapped over. They’d sell the bags for ninety pence and Fergus was promised a cut of thirty per cent. But the JCB crew would be arriving soon and they’d have to be well gone by then.

A cry made Fergus swivel round. It was only a wild kid with a creamy coat, bleating at its mother fifty yards away or more.

‘Get the flask, Fergus,’ Uncle Tally said. ‘I’m parched. I’d a skinful last night.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes. Your da and Pad McGuire. They came down to Finicule’s for one. And you know how it is.’

‘Were you singing, Unk?’

‘We were so far gone we were singing Three Blind Mice. I ask you. And your da couldn’t get beyond See how they run. And it was only ten o’clock.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘OK. Maybe not quite so wild.’

Fergus went to the van and found the flask of tea. He brought it over and they strolled down to an outcrop of rock and shared a capful. The rim of the sun came over the mountain. A wind picked up.

‘Christ, it’s quiet up here,’ said Uncle Tally.

‘It’d be a strange place to live.’

‘You’d have to be a hermit.’

‘There’d be nothing to do but pray,’ said Fergus.

‘Aye. You’d have plenary indulgences made for every last sinner by the time you died yourself. And then you’d be whisked up straight to heaven.’

‘You should move up here.’

‘I would too. Only it’s a bit far.’

‘Far from where?’

‘The nearest bar.’

‘You could make your own distillery, Unk.’

‘But what would you distil?’

‘The prayers. What else?’

Uncle Tally clipped his ear. ‘You’re too sharp, Fergus McCann. Pass me the flask.’

After tea, they filled another ten bags. When there was no loosened turf left, Uncle Tally left the shovel prodded into the earth and they began to load the bags into the van.

‘Not a bad haul.’

Fergus wandered off to the other side of the JCB. He watched the skyline and listened to morning getting under way. There was a hum of insects now, small movements of birds and, far off from the floor of the valley, the sound of the odd truck. The sun was up, white and smooth behind a whisper of cloud. The track led back to the road, and the road truncated the bog-land and headed straight to the horizon. Up here was borderland too. He was looking back into the North, but behind him was the Republic.

‘Ferg, shake a leg,’ called Uncle Tally.

‘Will we do another few bags?’

‘What time is it?’

Fergus looked at the watch he was minding for his older brother, Joe. ‘Not seven yet.’

‘OK. But we’ve to make a fresh cut of it.’

A shovel apiece, they scrambled into the cut the JCB had made last thing the day before.

‘You work that end, I’ll work this. You’ve to ram the sharp side in straight and up in a line.’ Uncle Tally showed him how. ‘Then down along.’

‘Like a grid?’

‘That’s it. Once you’ve the first line out, it’s easier.’

It was slower going than working with the JCB’s leavings. But the smell of the fresh peat was clean and the springy consistency strangely satisfying to cut into.

Fergus finished a good-sized grid and worked down along the cut, away from his uncle.

‘Hiyack!’ he shouted as he brought the shovel hard down at a fresh angle. One inch from the wall of brown turf, he froze. A foreign colour stopped him, a dull, tawny glint. He let the shovel topple at his side and his eyes blinked. Then he stretched out a hand to touch the surface. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Or a stone. Or—

Whatever it was was hard.

He spat on his forefinger and wiped it. It gleamed a little, like a smile.

A coin’s edge. That was it.

Excited, he spat on his fingertips and rubbed it again.

No. It was bigger. A coil of metal, fashioned like a plait, chased itself round.

And as he stared, fingers, four of them, appeared below it. They were brown and lined and tiny. The skin on them was too big for the bones, drooping slightly. They reminded him of his mother’s, when she wore the extra-large Marigold rubber gloves.

They were beautiful, poised like a pianist’s getting ready to play, but only half the size of his own.

‘Jesus.’

Uncle Tally, hard at work down his end of the cut, didn’t hear.

‘Unk. Jesus, Unk. Come here.’

‘What?’

‘There’s something here. In the earth. A hand.’

‘What d’you mean a hand?’

‘A tiny hand. And a bangle on it. And some cloth stuff.’

Uncle Tally hee-hawed. ‘Hey, Ferg. It’s June. Not the first of bloody April.’

But he came and looked where Fergus pointed.

They stood in silence, staring at the wall of turf.

‘Shit,’ said Uncle Tally.

It was like a mural.

The legs were missing.

The side of a twisted torso covered in brown-stained cloth was visible above the hand. The shoulders, neck and head disappeared into the earth behind.

‘It’s a body,’ said Uncle Tally.

‘Dead right it’s a body,’ said Fergus.

‘You could say dead again.’

‘Is it the Provos, Unk?’

‘The Provos?’

‘Is it somebody they killed?’

‘Why would they bother burying a child like that?’

Fergus realized. Of course. The tiny hand: the body of a child. ‘Maybe it was an execution. A child of a traitor. Somebody who’d done the Cause a bad turn.’

‘Nah. That’s not the Provos’ style.’ Uncle Tally put his shovel so it matched up against the torso’s length.

‘It’s a girl, Unk,’ Fergus gasped. ‘A poor wee girl. Look at the bangle and the dress on her.’

‘Mother of mercy. Let’s get out of here.’

‘But Unk—’

‘Look, she’s dead, right?’

‘I know she’s dead, but—’

‘Yeah. And probably murdered, right?’

‘Murdered?’

‘So if we report it, we’re done for the turf-cutting.’

‘But, Unk, if the JCB crew arrive, they’ll just cut her up. Into ribbons. It’s a miracle they stopped when they did. And that I saw her.’

‘Fergus, nobody’s going to bring that child back to life.’

A clod of earth fell from the cut as he said that and an elbow appeared, small and leathered.

‘Jesus Mary.’

‘Oh, Unk. Please.’

‘What d’you want me to do, Fergus?’

‘Dunno.’

They stood still in the cut. The kid bleated from far away like it was lost. Fergus felt a tear forming. Furious, he bit his lip.

‘It’s a girl like our Theresa or Cath, Unk. We can’t just leave her to get mashed up by the JCB. It’s easy to miss her. She’s gone all brown with being in the bog.’

Uncle Tally sighed. ‘We’re in the Republic, I suppose. It’d be the Gardai I’d tell. Not the RUC.’ He picked up Fergus’s shovel. ‘I’m heading away back along the road and over to Inchquin. If the JCB comes, you were up here bird-watching.’

‘Bird-watching?’

‘And you made a covert of the cut and just happened to spot this. Got it?’

‘Yes, Unk.’

‘I’m away to get the guards.’

‘OK.’

They loaded the shovels and last two bags of peat into the back of the van. Uncle Tally got in and wound down the window.

‘And Fergus?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Don’t touch her. Don’t try to dig her out any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘Fingerprints. They’ll think you’re the murderer, stupid.’

‘Ha-ha.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘OK, Unk.’

‘And take this.’

‘What?’

Uncle Tally rooted in the glove compartment and handed Fergus some binoculars. ‘Bird-watching. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Stay away from that body.’

The van drove away. Fergus went back to the cut and waited above it, trying out the views through the binoculars. Half the time he stared at the magnified brown body in the bog. He could see lines on the finger-pads, as if the small girl had been alive yesterday. They looped and spooled like rivers. Some property of the bog had accentuated them. Then he noticed a grey-white bone, sticking out a fraction. It was where the JCB had cut through her lower leg. His stomach somersaulted. He whisked round and examined the view of the plain below, a great swath of County Fermanagh. But however hard he peered, he could have sworn the child behind him was staring into his back, her eyes needling his shoulder blades. He shrugged and pinched himself and looked through the binoculars to the far horizon. From up here, on the peaceful mountain, it was hard to believe that such unquiet existed amongst the people living on the plain below. Curls of smoke, swaying trees, cars flashing blue and red along the tarmac roads, all moved in silence. A sparrowhawk glided across his field of vision, swimming on a current of air, wavering. Then it swooped to earth and vanished from view. He crawled forward on the springy earth and lay flat on his stomach, spying down on the world. Behind him, the grass sighed with the sound of waiting.

Two

MAM COMBED MY hair every night and said how fine and tidy I was. So I grew, bit by bit like the stone icicles in the caves. She gave me jobs. I ground the grains up for the bread like she showed me and I swept the floor of the house almost as soon as I could walk. Dust from the day before flew out the east door every morning, and the dead in the shadows at the back curve of the house breathed again. In the afternoon, I gathered the berries and the kindling and other things from outdoors, and that was my share in the work, and as well I minded the baby who slept in the knotted shawl, tied over my back. She went where I went.

One winter day, I remember Da looking on as I swept around his chair. He laughed and trapped the broom between his feet and patted my head. He called me the child time forgot. And the joke stuck.

The voice in the dream stopped short. Fergus started awake, with the ground trembling beneath him. He must have nodded off. The binoculars had fallen to one side and the sun had climbed higher. He was flat on his belly in the bracken by the cut. He looked around and saw the JCB men, arrived already. The ground-shudders were from the machine. Kata-thurra-thurra-kat.

They hadn’t noticed him. The orange vehicle was reversing and the cutter section rose to full height, with its sharp edge poised as if to attack.

‘Stop,’ Fergus shrieked, springing up. ‘Stop!’

The man in the machine didn’t hear, but another man walking towards the cut jerked his head round and stared at Fergus.

‘Stop! Please.’

The second man made an arm signal, as if to say, You’re for the chop, and the JCB cut out. In the distance came the wail of a siren.

Fergus moved forward so that the man in the JCB could see him.

‘Stop,’ he called again. His voice carried around the bog-land. ‘There’s a body in there. My uncle’s gone to get the police. That’s them now.’

‘The police?’ said the man in the JCB.

‘Body? What body?’ said the man on the ground.

A police car came into view, then another. You could tell by their colours that one was from the North and the other from the South. They bounded over the mountain track and pulled up some distance away. Car doors slammed. Uniformed men got out and Fergus recognized Uncle Tally emerging from the back of the Gardai’s car. He pointed to Fergus and the JCB men, and the uniforms advanced over the bog-land, picking their way carefully, occasionally stumbling in the spiky grass. Uncle Tally trailed behind, his hands in his denim jacket as if oblivious to the treacherous nature of the ground.

‘Feck it,’ Fergus heard a guard say. ‘My boot’s wrecked.’

‘Bugger this,’ said an RUC man.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ said the JCB man. He’d climbed down from the machine.

Fergus pointed to the body in the bog, the point of elbow, the neat twist of gowned torso, and jutting bone. Against the brown of the earth, and with the way the light fell, it wasn’t immediately apparent.

‘He’s raving,’ said the man on the ground. ‘There’s no body.’

‘There is. See.’ Fergus dropped down into the cut. His finger traced the body. ‘That’s a hand. And, look – a bangle. Gold, maybe.’

‘Christ. He’s right, Mick,’ said the JCB man.

The police drew up, panting.

‘Uncle Tally and I,’ Fergus said. ‘We found her. We were up early, bird-watching.’

‘Bird-watching? Oh, yeah?’ said the man called Mick.

‘ ’S true.’

‘More like—’

‘Bird-watching,’ said Fergus. ‘And here’s her bone. Broken off.’

Nobody spoke.

Uncle Tally approached the cut and got a fag out but didn’t light it. ‘Somebody’s killed her and buried her here,’ he suggested. ‘And it’s thanks to Fergus that she didn’t get mashed up by your bloody JCB.’

‘OK, OK,’ said the man called Mick. He offered Uncle Tally a light for his fag and lit one himself.

‘How long d’you think she’s been here?’ said the Irish guard.

‘We can’t be sure it’s a she,’ said the RUC man.

‘But the bangle. And that gansey she’s wearing. Some kind of woollen nightie.’

‘Maybe it’s more of a shirt. A long nightshirt.’

‘I never saw a nightshirt like that on a boy. Not nowadays. It’d be pyjamas, wouldn’t it?’

‘And are we north or south of the border? That’s what I want to know.’

‘According to my OS map, there’s a stream hereabouts. And the North is one side and the South the other.’ The man who spoke was plainclothes, with an English accent.

Uncle Tally spoke. ‘Fergus and I’ve been up here a few hours. Watching the birds. But we haven’t seen a stream. Just bog.’

‘It’s been a dry spring. The stream’s probably dried up,’ suggested the Irish guard. ‘I’d say the body’s yours, though. Going by the map.’

‘And I’d say it’s yours.’

There was another silence.

‘Son, you’d better come up out of there.’ It was the English plainclothes, sounding quietly authoritative. He reached a hand down into the cut but Fergus shook his head. He flattened his palms on the top and leapfrogged up.

‘The poor wee girl,’ said the JCB man. ‘She looks about seven or eight. Less than my Mairead.’

‘We’ve a call out for the pathologist. But meantime, we’ll seal off the area. Is that OK with you?’ The Englishman spoke to the Irish guard.

‘We’ve a call out too. But our pathologist has to come from Galway.’

‘Galway?’

The Irish guard shrugged.

‘Well, ours will be here before yours. We’ve brought some tape. Can we seal her off?’

‘Seal away. Our tape’s the same colour. It makes no odds.’

The police shooed Fergus and the JCB men and Uncle Tally away.

Uncle Tally motioned with his head for Fergus to move off down the track some distance, so they could talk alone.

‘It’s a detail, Ferg. We’re stranded. I’d to leave the van in the town car park before I went into the guards. I didn’t want them nosing around our bags of peat. Then they made me escort them here in the police car. With the siren wailing, anybody who saw me would have thought I was off to Long Kesh prison. I ask you. And my van sitting in the middle of Inchquin, with thirty pounds worth of turf.’

‘You could walk back, Uncle Tally. Once off the mountain, you could thumb it.’

‘You’re joking. Who’d pick up a fella like me in a godforsaken place like this? Bandit country!’

Fergus laughed. ‘I can hear the drums over the next hill, Unk. The natives are getting restless.’

Uncle Tally grunted. ‘We’re bloody stranded.’

‘We could run down the mountain. Inchquin’s only ten miles.’

‘Away you go so, Marathon Man.’

‘Unk?’

‘What?’

‘Have you heard of any girl – or child – gone missing lately?’

Uncle Tally thought. ‘No. Not lately. Years back, there was a lassie that vanished over Dranmore way. But she was older. Thirteen. And it turned out she’d only run off to go on the game. The scamp. I reckon whoever murdered this wee one drove her body up here from miles away. She’s probably not local at all. Maybe not even Irish. Who knows?’

‘I’d say she’s Irish.’

‘Why?’

‘Did you see the bangle?’

‘No.’

‘The metal was twisted into strands. Like something Celtic.’

‘Never.’

‘It was.’

‘Poor wee mite. But tourists buy that tat too.’

The plainclothes policeman approached them. ‘We’ll need you to make statements,’ he said. ‘What you were doing, when you found her . . . that kind of thing.’

‘There’s not a lot to say. We were up here early, bird-watching—’ Uncle Tally began.

‘And then I spotted her,’ interrupted Fergus. ‘I saw her in the earth. It was like camouflage.’

‘Camouflage?’

‘You know. Soldiers in combat fatigues. Or birds in the field. Camouflaged so you can’t see them.’

The RUC man’s eyes flicked heavenwards. ‘I get the picture.’

‘I saw the bangle first. Then her hand. Then her body. And then . . . the bone. Cut off.’

‘And then what? Did you touch her?’

‘Maybe. Just on the cloth.’

‘And I drove down to Inchquin to alert the guards,’ said Uncle Tally.

‘Why Inchquin? Why not Roscillin, over?’

‘Well, we thought we were south of the border.’

The plainclothes man had a sharp chin and thick dark hair that flapped in the breeze. ‘And I’d say you were right. But Paddy over there says that as you crossed over from this bridleway to where you found her, you crossed back over the border, to the North.’

‘You don’t say?’

‘Are you Northerners yourself?’

Uncle Tally nodded. ‘We’re from Drumleash, Fergus and myself.’ He gave the officer their full names and addresses.

‘Are you still at school?’ the officer asked Fergus.

‘I’m on study leave. My A-level exams start soon.’

The officer tapped his pen on his notebook. ‘And you, Mr McCann? What do you do?’

‘This and that. Bar work. Work’s hard to come by these days.’

‘A fine fellow like yourself? You should join the RUC.’

‘I may be Irish,’ Uncle Tally said, ‘but I’m not a lemming.’ He guffawed at his own joke. After a moment the plainclothes joined in.

Another car drove right up to where they were standing. ‘It’s the pathologist,’ the plainclothes said. ‘He’s driven from Londonderry double-quick.’

A plump man in his fifties got out, carrying a battered holdall.

‘That was fast, Jack,’ said the plainclothes.

‘Hi, Duncan. Where is she?’

The two men walked away over the bog-land towards the body. Uncle Tally put a hand on Fergus’s shoulder.

‘I don’t like this police stuff,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Unk. No. Not yet. I want to hear what the pathologist says.’ Before Uncle Tally could stop him, Fergus wriggled free and picked his way to a few yards from the cut. He lay flat to keep out of sight and listened to what the officials were saying.

The doctor slid on some mud and swore. He’d trouble getting down to view the body. Then there was silence.

‘So how long do you reckon she’s been there, Jack?’

Fergus pushed the grass aside and saw an Irish guard drop to his knees at the side of the cut, as if in prayer. An aeroplane passed high overhead, a silent crucifix truncating the sky.

‘Bloody hell.’ It was the doctor’s voice.

‘How long?’

‘Poor child. And her skin intact.’

‘I know. She’s fresh. Is it days? Or weeks?’

‘Longer than that, Duncan.’

‘Not months?’

‘Centuries.’

‘Centuries? You’re having me on, Jack.’

‘It’s an archaeologist you need here, not the police.’

‘An archaeologist?’

‘There was another body, I recall. Found in similar terrain, down south. It turned out to be ancient. Iron Age.’

‘Never. Look at the state of the skin. The cloth.’

‘It’s a quality of the bog. It preserves things. Like a mummy in an Egyptian tomb.’

‘Christ. You’re pulling my leg. You have to be.’

‘Christ is right and no joke.’ The doctor’s voice was breathless as he struggled back up to the higher level. ‘Thanks. For all we know, this child might have walked the earth the same time as Your Man Himself.’

‘What man himself?’

‘Jesus Christ, who else?’

‘Jesus?’

‘We’re talking two thousand-odd years ago, Duncan. Maybe more.’

‘Which makes that bangle, the cloth, everything—’

‘Priceless. If I’m right, you’ve a sensation here.’

‘I knew she was on our side of the border. I knew it.’

Three

MORE POLICE ARRIVED and more arguments broke out about where the border was, but in reverse. The body of the girl had gone from a serious crime headache to a valuable find. Everyone laid claim to her. Fergus listened in silence; Uncle Tally kept his distance.

It was gone noon when a guard remembered them and gave them a lift down from the mountain. They collected the van from Inchquin and drove back over the border. A different soldier was on duty, a big, bald fellow who looked fit to down ten pints of beer in as many minutes. He asked for Uncle Tally’s licence and read it over, holding it at arm’s length as if it had fleas.

‘God,’ said Uncle Tally. ‘Someone must have jogged Lloyd George’s hand when he drew that bloody border and left Drumleash on the wrong side.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You’d have thought they’d put us Fenians in the Republic to be shot of us.’

They drove into Roscillin with the bags of turf and sold all but three to Uncle Tally’s mate Frank, who ran a hardware business. They stopped there for some cans of beer. It was nearly three when they hit the outskirts of Drumleash.

Da was filling up a posh blue Rover at the petrol station as they went by. Uncle Tally tooted his horn and Da looked up and raised his eyes to heaven. The village was peaceful otherwise. The modern Catholic church with its flying-saucer roof loomed like an abandoned UFO. Two sleeping dogs sprawled on top of each other outside Finicule’s Bar, the pub where Uncle Tally rented a room and served as barman.

‘I’m wrecked,’ said Uncle Tally. ‘I’ll drop you at your place but I won’t come in. Say hello to your mother and give her a bag of turf. Then she won’t be cross with me.’

They turned into the close at the far end of the village and drew up at Fergus’s family’s white bungalow. In the afternoon sunshine the place wore a cheerful aspect. The roses were out. Outside the front gate was a sign saying B & B. APPLY WITHIN. Fergus could barely remember the last time there’d been a taker. They’d had a few Americans visit, looking for their roots, but when the violence escalated, custom had dried up.

Fergus sprang out and heaved out a fat bag of turf. ‘Ta-ra, Unk.’

‘Fight the fight.’ Uncle Tally waved and drove away.

Fergus dragged the turf round the back of the house and found his mother there, peg in mouth, hanging out the washing. The wind whipped her blonde hair across her face as she glanced over to him.

‘Giv urs a hind with thus shoot,’ she said.

‘What?’

She took the peg from her mouth. ‘Give us a hand with this sheet.’

Fergus grinned. ‘Sure.’ He grabbed a flapping corner.

‘Where’ve you been all day, Fergus? You smell of beer.’

‘It was only the one.’

‘It’s always only the one.’

‘It was really only the one. Uncle Tally and I, we went to get the turf. I’ve a big bag of it there. But then we got delayed. We found a body, Mam. Up there in the mountain bog. A wee, tiny child.’

Mam stopped and stared open-mouthed, holding small Theresa’s dungarees to her chest. ‘A child?’

‘A child, Mam.’

‘God help us. She was dead?’

‘Of course, dead. Buried. But the JCB unburied her.’

‘Mother of God. Was she murdered?’

‘I don’t know, Mam. They think she’s ancient. Iron Age.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Iron Age. Two thousand years old or more.’

He poured out the story, helping her with the washing between breathless sentences.

‘They’re waiting for the archaeologists,’ he finished. ‘What d’you think of that?’

‘Remember to shake the shirts before you peg them, Fergus.’

‘ ’S that all you can say? They think she was alive when Jesus was.’

Mam hung up the last sock and her arms dropped to her sides. She sighed and started to cross herself. ‘A small girl like that, ending up on that godforsaken mountain. And her a pagan.’

‘She couldn’t have been a Christian, Mam, if she was born before Christ.’

‘I know. But it’s the thought of her, buried without a prayer.’

‘Maybe somebody did pray for her.’

Mam sighed. ‘And maybe He heard them. Or maybe not.’ She pegged up the dungarees. ‘I’m glad they think she’s been there all this time.’

‘Why?’

‘It makes it further away. Less to do with us. With now.’ She picked up the plastic laundry basket. ‘We’ve enough troubles on our doorstep.’

‘S’pose.’

‘We do. I’m just back from visiting Joe. So I know.’

‘You went to see Joe, Mam?’ Fergus put a hand to Joe’s watch. ‘How was he?’

Mam smiled. ‘He’s grown.’

‘Since last week?’

‘Not that way. I mean in his head. The way he speaks.’

‘Is he getting hassled in there?’

‘No. He’s been reading.’

‘Reading?’

‘Reading about science. About what happens when light hits a mirror.’ She smiled. ‘It bends, he tells me.’

‘It’s called refraction, Mam.’

‘Is that what it is? I didn’t understand. He’s mad keen to re-sit the science O level.’

‘Is he?’

‘He is. And look at you, Fergus. Brains to burn and the books unopened all day.’

‘I’ll do some later. Honest to God.’

‘Always later. Never now. You sound just like Joey. He promised me he’d get away to England for a job, if not next week, the week after. And now look. There is no later. Or none to speak of. He’s locked away for ten years.’ She flung down the empty laundry basket. ‘I’m worn out with the pair of you.’

‘Mam!’

‘You and Joe. Always up to mischief.’

‘Mam?’

‘I remember the two of youse trying to knock down the house. Banging at the back extension with spades bigger than yourselves.’

Fergus put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Hoodlums, the pair of us.’

She grabbed a shirt-tail from the line and dabbed her eyes. ‘Now look what you’ve done. If Theresa and Cath didn’t finish me off this morning, monkeying with my nail varnish, and you swanning off without a word and Joey locked away for a decade. I swear to God. I wish I’d stayed in Leitrim where I was born and never married into all this trouble.’

‘Oh, Mam. We’re a terrible brood. You should have drowned us at birth.’

Her hand was on his hair, moving over the wiry ends. ‘Please don’t go the same way as your brother, Fergus. Tell me you won’t.’

‘I won’t. I’ve no intention.’

‘Every last boy in this village wants to be a bloody hero. It’s a waste. But you won’t, will you?’

‘No.’

‘You’d know better, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, Mam. I would.’

‘Do your revision, then.’

‘OK, I will. But Mam?’

‘What?’

‘Can I go up the mountain tomorrow? With Uncle Tally? To see what they’re doing with the body? He says he’ll give me another driving lesson while we’re at it.’

‘You and your Uncle Tally. Like two peas in a pod. OK. Only put up the learner plates I bought for you this time.’

‘Do I have to, Mam?’

‘It’s the law.’

‘But it’s like telling the whole world in big letters, I’M A PROVO.’

‘What?’

‘A holder of a provisional licence, Mam.’

She cuffed him and laughed. ‘You’re a wicked tyke, Fergus. Now scoot and get cracking on those books.’

Four

THAT EVENING, DA came home as the table was being laid for a fry. He slammed the Roscillin Star down on the sofa and cursed, and his thick grey eyebrows scrunched together.

‘Was it a bad day at the garage, Malachy?’ Mam said.

‘No. We’d a fair bit of trade.’

‘So what’s eating you?’

‘You’ve not heard the radio? Two more dead,’ he said. ‘After sixty-one days of starving.’

‘Mother of God.’

‘They’re letting them all die. Bobby Sands was only the start.’

‘The Maze is a place accursed.’

‘It’s not the Maze, woman. It’s Long Kesh.’ He plumped down on a chair.

‘The Maze, Long Kesh. What’s the difference?’

‘You might as well call Britain the mainland, Pat.’

Mam pulled out the table from the wall. ‘I’ve a fry done.’

‘Is that all you can say?’

Mam got the fold-up chairs for the girls and arranged them between the wall and table. ‘Where are those two hoodlums?’ She went to the back door. ‘Th’rese, Cath,’ she hollered. Then she arranged the last knife and fork at Da’s place. ‘No point us starving too.’

‘Jesus. Women.’

‘OK. So the hunger strike’s a tragedy. All over a few old clothes.’

‘It’s not about clothes.’

‘It is about clothes.’

‘It’s what the clothes mean, Pat. If you don’t wear prison garb, you’re a political prisoner. And if you’re a political, you’re not a petty criminal. And that’s what the Brits make out they are.’

‘What matter is it what they think?’

‘Next you’ll be saying your woman Thatcher over’s right to let them die.’

‘I’d never say that. She should let them wear what they want, if it would stop the insanity. Now sit and have your tea.’

Da grunted and sat down. Fergus joined him. ‘I heard Uncle Tally say “the mainland” the other day, Da.’

‘Was he having a rise?’

‘Don’t think so. He was just saying how he was planning a trip over later this summer.’

Da chuckled. ‘You’d be tarred and feathered out of Drumleash if you were anyone else saying that but Tally. How he gets away with it’s a mystery.’

‘Da. Uncle Tally and I, we found a body. In the bog.’

He was just finishing the story of his day on the mountain when the girls burst through the back door.

‘I’m famished,’ Theresa wailed.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Mam got their plates from where they’d been keeping warm under the grill.

Fergus winked at the two of them. ‘You’re flushed like you’ve been running, Cath,’ he said.

‘We were playing “Save All” with the Caseys,’ Theresa said. ‘And Cath saved Seamus. And then Seamus kissed her. And I saw him at it.’

‘You did not.’

‘I did.’

‘Whisht,’ Mam said. ‘Eat your eggs before they set solid.’

There was a silence as everyone ate. Da put down his knife and fork and looked over at Fergus. ‘That was a strange day you had, Fergus. I wouldn’t be surprised if that bog child of yours turned out not so old after all.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘I remember an old story about another body being found up there on the mountain. Forty years back or more. It was the wife of a local man. Up until then, he claimed she’d left him for another man and gone to England.’

‘A body?’ said Theresa, her eyes wild with excitement. ‘Did you find a body, Fergus?’

‘I did.’ He’d to tell the story all over again.

‘I want to go and see it. Mam. Da. Can I? Please?’

‘And me,’ said Cath.

‘You can’t, either of you,’ Mam said.

‘Oh, but—’

‘No buts.’

‘We saw the Caseys’ granda when he was laid out, didn’t we, Cath?’

‘Yes. He was all waxy.’

Da thumped the table. ‘No buts. Like your mother says. This is a child, maimed and murdered. Not a decent body.’

There was silence. Cath’s face was an image of tragic loss, while Theresa made a grimace that would curdle cream.

‘What d’you make of the hunger strikers, Fergus?’ Da said to change the subject.

Fergus speared a sausage. ‘They’re very committed,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do it.’ He munched on the meat and swallowed. ‘I wouldn’t last a day without food.’

‘Thank God Joe’s not part of it,’ Mam said.

Da nodded. ‘It’s an odd thing, when you thank God for your son not having to make a sacrifice like that.’

Mam grunted. ‘Sacrifice? Some sacrifice.’ She reached over to Cath and forked a grilled tomato from the plate’s edge towards the centre. ‘Eat up, Cath.’

Fergus chewed on the last bacon rind and listened to the clock on the mantelpiece tick. Soon, it seemed to reassure, you’ll have the grades and be away. Over the roads and hills to the ferryboat. Across the sea and to the mainland. Away from this.

As soon as he put his cutlery down, Mam reached over to take away his plate. ‘Sacrifice is what Jesus did. He saved us all. Who did Bobby Sands save?’ she said. ‘Who?’

Nobody answered.

Five

AFTER TEA, DA