MEARA – FRANCE 1990

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Séamus Faolán McQuaid hears the moaning of the wind as it rushes up the valley. It is reminiscent of the low mournful keening of the bereaved after the first violent weeping has subsided and full realisation of a loved one lost sets in. The valley is blanketed in white and low cloud leaves moisture clinging to his face and clothing.  He pushes forward, eyes downcast, wary of accidentally stepping off the edge of the narrow track and hurtling into a swirling mass of nothingness.

He had expected, at the very least, spring sunshine, a valley filled with grape vines, mild hiking weather. Glancing at his watch, which is shockproof and waterproof to a thousand feet, he sees it is at least twenty minutes since he left the well-trodden main path and took to this more dubious track. He will have to make a decision soon, either to continue on and hope he doesn’t lose his way or find shelter and wait until he is able to actually see where in hell he is.

A faint sound peals up through the thick fog.  It takes a moment or two for him to realise it is the ringing of church bells muffled and distorted by the white barrier of cloud.  He listens carefully, trying to judge direction and distance. Then shakes his head in frustration knowing the cloud barrier makes it useless trying to do so.

The sound, however, has awoken a memory deeply buried.  He tries to push it away but finds that he can not.  He sees his mam fussing over Meara, brushing her hair until it shines black as a raven’s feathers, and then carefully plaiting it with numerous fancy bows and ribbons.  It is Sunday.  His mam is getting them ready for mass, Meara aged five, and he aged seven. His brothers, much older, have left for church on their bikes already. Two are altar boy’s and two sing in the choir. His mam seems happy singing gaily as she dresses them. She is often like this just before his father is due home.

When they are ready, they walk out of the front door and along the path and are almost at their gate when a neighbour, Mr Parnell, calls out that he will join them on the walk to church. Like them, he has on his Sunday best.  And, like them, his Sunday best is long overdue for replacement.  He remembers Mr Parnell’s sad brown hat with its scuffmarks and the brim drooped tiredly.  Mr Parnell wears a long coat, for the weather has a chill in it.  He walks companionably beside his mother and he remembers wishing it were his dad.  They were about the same height, but his dad always walked with a spring in his step, whereas Mr Parnell looked weighed down with worries.

The church is on the other side of a field.  They are about halfway across, his mam humming the hymns they will sing in church.  Then the church bells begin to peal and simultaneously shots ring out from the trees. The loudness of them eclipses the noise of the bells; the sound echoing and echoing across the valley, through his head and through him and around him and he is screaming.

One of the bullets hits his mam. Remembering the burst of blood arching from her neck, he thinks now it must have been the carotid artery.  He sees her blood hanging in the crisp air, like a fine red mist . The memory of it stops him on the track and he closes his eyes.  Still he sees it.  Sees her fall, the arc of blood going down with her.  Remembers turning to Mr Parnell crying out for him to help his mam but he too is on the ground. Blood is everywhere.

That scene is so ingrained in his mind it never leaves him. Nothing before or after will have the same impact, of that he is sure.

Mr Parnell’s face is a mess of blood from a gunshot wound to the temple.  It’s on the front of his shirt and on his sad brown hat, lying in the grass beside him.  It is only later that he would understand Mr Parnell had been mistaken for his father. There is blood on his sister and he recalls thinking she too had been hit but then realises, as Meara turns to look at him, that it is his mother’s blood, for she had been holding Meara’s hand.

Meara and he sink to the grass, very quite like, staring at the adults lying between them, too young to know what to do. The church bells are still pealing out their welcome.  He recalls looking up and seeing the sun break free of the clouds directly behind the church steeple, creating an aureole around the tower so the church stood bright and superior in relation to the huddle of cottages alongside it, out of which people are now pouring and running across the field towards them.  But it is too late.  He knows they are dead.  His mam and Mr Parnell are both dead.

Stones give way beneath his feet and he realises he has stepped off the path. He feels himself going into a slide and twists his body violently, trying to lurch back onto the path but it is useless; the weight of his rucksack pulls him over the edge.

Feet first, he slithers in a shower of loose stones, rapidly gaining speed.  His attempt to halt his progress, to find some purchase by digging his fingers into the rock face, only succeeds in shredding skin off his fingertips and ripping his nails apart.  He falls a good ten feet in his estimate, before coming to an abrupt halt against something solid.  The impact folds his body at the knees and knocks the breath out of him.  He lies stunned for a minuet or so.

When he regains his breath, he sees he has landed on a large boulder that juts out from the mountainside.  He tests it for firmness, to make sure his weight is not about to dislodge it, sending him along with the boulder hurtling even further down the mountainside.  It appears firm enough.  He looks around but sees nothing promising.  Certainly, no means to enable him to climb back up to the path.   He looks down and notices that the boulder he is on forms an overhang above a ledge.  He edges forward, constantly testing the boulder for movement.

He is right about it being an overhang for now he can see the ledge clearly and it looks more solid than the boulder.  It will also give him shelter of sorts.

Séamus carefully removes his rucksack.  Similar to the bergen he normally carries on assignments, it contains pretty much everything his bergen would have contained, except for the explosives.  Some of the equipment is his but most he purchased on arrival in France. Under his hiking jacket, coiled around his abdomen, is a thin mountaineer’s rope.  He unwinds it now and from his rucksack takes out a spike and hammer. He looks for a suitable spot, finds one and hammers the spike into the rock.

Carefully removing his jacket, he slips on a harness, loops a rope through the metal ring of the anchor and feeds the end through the ring on his harness. Shrugging back into his jacket, he replaces the rucksack on his back and gives an experimental tug on the rope.  Working his way carefully around the rock, Séamus hammers in another spike further out, to insure the rope doesn’t snag on the jagged edges of the boulder. He makes the descent and swings in.  His boots grip the surface of the ledge and he lowers himself onto it.

The cliff face has been blasted away by the winds making a cave-like indentation in the mountainside just below the boulder.  Nothing fancy.  In fact, barely wide enough for him to sit in but protection at least against the rain. More importantly, it gives him a secluded place to rest until the cloud lifts.  He will worry about getting down the mountainside, once it does.

He removes his rucksack and from it pulls out a portable propane gas stove, no larger than a thick book. He takes out a tin mug, tea bags and a tube of condense milk for the making of tea.  While the water is boiling, he munches on chocolate wholemeal biscuits. Then, with his thirst quenched and his hunger partially satisfied, he makes a conscious decision to catch up on sleep whilst he has the opportunity. There is no knowing when he will next get a chance.

Around midday, Séamus awakes to a valley so intensely bright and clear that the glare burns his eyes. Slipping on his sunglasses, he looks down and what he sees sets his heart pounding so forcefully that he decides on another mug of tea while he considers his options. He cannot believe his luck.

The convent lies a little over a thousand feet below him.  It is surrounded by vineyards and orchards full of healthy mature trees.  He reaches into his rucksack for his binoculars.  Keeping a low profile, he zooms in until the black dots he sees moving about turn into clearly defined humans in long brown garments, some with cowls.  Even the donkeys and other animals become better defined as he pans the area.  His body begins to tingle with excitement as he sweeps the binoculars from one group to another, scanning the figures, wondering if by some small miracle he might actually recognise her.  He soon realises how impossible that would be from this height and puts the binoculars aside in frustration.

Besides, he hasn’t seen Meara in over twelve years and realises he may not even recognise her standing face to face, especially if she is dressed in one of those garbs of unbleached sackcloth.  It is a sobering thought but he will worry about it later. For now, considering his luck has held and he’s in the best possible location for an observation point (OP), his top priority is to monitor the comings and goings in order to establish the daily routine of the convent. Once he knows how they operate he will work out a way of getting to Meara.

It takes two days before he is happy that he has established the routine of the inhabitants as they attend to the gardens, the vineyards and the orchards. The quiet times sees maybe half-a-dozen wandering around the enclosed kitchen garden reading or talking while the others remain encased in the buildings. When the bells toll towards evening, garment clad bodies hurry from the orchids and vineyards towards the convent and, he presumes, to the chapel.

On the third day, Séamus packs up his rucksack. To insure no trace of his occupation is evident he removes every last visible particle, though it is unlikely anyone will drop by the ledge for a visit, positioned where it is.  Even so, the importance of leaving no trace behind, not a paper wrapping, not a discarded match, not a footprint, is part of his training.  Nothing should be traced back to him.

In the two days spent observing the convent Séamus has worked out a way of getting himself back up to the path. He attempts it now by clinging to the cliff face and edging along parallel to the ledge for twenty feet or so, until he reaches a section that looks promising.  He tilts his head back to scan the rock face and sees it is passable.  Finding a foothold in the uneven surface, he starts his ascent, using small crevices and jutting rocks and the odd tree, that is growing out of the cliff face, to pull himself upwards.

In less than twenty minutes he is back on the path. He packs his climbing gear away and hopes anyone he meets will take him for a hiker.  From his observation of the convent he knows that at six every morning a detachment of nuns, sisters, novices… whatever rank they hold, head for the fields.  There is a small wooden bridge they cross, normally in pairs, before dispersing into the various sections of the commune to attend to a myriad of tasks. He knows exactly where he will position his next OP to enable a closer look at the nuns as they cross the bridge.  Had they had dogs with them it might have made it more difficult but the only dog he has seen so far is a black and white hugely overweight mutt that must surely belong to one of the kitchen staff, for it spends its entire day sleeping in the sun in the kitchen garden.

Normally his surveillance of an area would be to check for escape routes and easy access. This time there is no need as he plans to approach the convent openly; a hiker who has lost his way and is in need of fresh water to replenish his supply. He hopes the good sisters will not refuse him. He will try and get into conversation with whoever attends his needs but he believes this to be a religious order that has taken a vow of silence. He’s not sure how much communicating they do with the outside world but he presumes there has to be someone who does so.

As he strides along the path, he tries to recall the last time he and Meara had any form of communication.  He had received two, maybe three letters, from her in the last twelve years.  He had written regularly in the beginning but with the lack of response and his own problems to deal with, the letter writing had slowly petered out. He doesn’t even recall the tone of her last letter, only his last conversation with her.

On turning fifteen, she had found home life unbearable, if home was what one could call living with a religious fanatic like his Aunt Gertrude and a Scottish step-father who’s only objective in life was to climb as high up the military and political ladder as he could and no one, certainly not two wayward Irish brats, was going to stand in his way. Especially ones with an embarrassing background such as themselves.

He too had left home at age fifteen when Lord Willam Morton, his step-father, had forced him into the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME).  It was that or jail, according to his guardian. Two years later, with Meara gone willingly to a convent in France and he firmly ensconced in the REME, the two millstones stifling his military and political career conveniently out of the way, Lord William Morton had been free to fly to the fuckin moon and back and so he did… he certainly did.

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Chapter 3…

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