Cillefoyle Park

By Hugh Vaughan

Cillefoyle Park is a historical fiction novel based on the factual contact in the 1970 ́s between the IRA and the British Government. The Contact, Brendan Duddy was a Nationalist Derry businessman but also a pacifist. In contact with the local police commander and MI5/MI6 agents, he conveyed messages between the British Government and the head of the IRA in Derry. The barman in this book is based on Eamon McCann who is a socialist activist..

Cillefoyle Park is about a bar man torn between the possibility of politics and the violence exploding on the streets of Derry, Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles in the mid 1970’s. That’s the treacherous dilemma that Dermot Lavery finds himself in when an innocent friendship with a neighbour – a schoolteacher leads them both into a precarious web of secrecy and intrigue with all sides of the endless conflict. Caught in a nightmare world of secret negotiations for a ceasefire, his life spins on the edge of clandestine friendship, love, meetings and certain death at any wrong turn - a constant struggle with his conscience and the challenge of simply staying alive.

Research for this book includes Galway University sources- Brendan Duddy,s diaries, Niall Ó Dochartaigh ́s research papers, Eamon McCann ́s books, the CAIN archive at University of Ulster,and Hugh Vaughan ́s teenage years growing up in 1970 ́s Derry, attending school in the no-go area of Creggan. Other multiple sources were also used.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hugh Vaughan
• Release date: Dec 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781505626544

Hugh Vaughan

Hugh Vaughan was born in Ireland and currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. He lectured and worked in Information Technology in Northern Ireland, Wellington, New Zealand and Sydney & Melbourne, Australia

Book preview

Cillefoyle Park

By

Hugh M Vaughan

Vaughan is one of the most eloquent Irish writers to emerge in recent years.

Irish Emigrant.

Borderland is a series of dazzling views of what Vaughan saw and did.

Michael Downes, Irish/Australian writer

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

Cillefoyle Park does not exist.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Copyright Hugh Vaughan 2024

Hugh Vaughan was born in Northern Ireland and lives in Melbourne, Australia and has published five books. See his website for further details: hmvaughan.com. This version of Cillefoyle Park is an update. His latest books are Borderland and An Analytic Pub Crawl, Wanderings and Observations. His first book was A Bump on the Road, and during the Pandemic he wrote Fragments of an Analytic Pub Crawl. He has written many reviews and essays for a magazine. He has a Masters in Information Systems and has lectured and worked in Information Technology since 1980 until his retirement in 2017. Hugh has lived for four years in Alicante, Spain, almost four years in Wellington, New Zealand, and many years in Australia and of course, Northern Ireland. He is married with two children and has two beautiful grandchildren. See his website: hmvaughan.com

For Rosemary, with thanks.

What can I do but enumerate old themes?

W. B. Yeats 1865 - 1939

Cillefoyle Park is a fictional street in the city of Derry.

Foreword

Cillefoyle Park is a historical fiction novel based on the factual contact in the 1970s between the IRA and the British Government. The Contact, Brendan Duddy, was a Nationalist Derry businessman, but he was also a pacifist. He was in regular contact with the local police commander and MI5/MI6 agents. Thus, Duddy conveyed messages between the British Government and the head of the IRA in Derry.

Brendan Duddy made notes while being the Contact between the IRA and the British government. They are archived in the University of Galway. This ongoing contact laid the foundation for the peace process that led to a power-sharing executive. At the time of writing it is not functioning. It also laid the foundation for my book, Cillefoyle Park. The book utilises Duddy’s papers and other research material for a fictional account of negotiations for a ceasefire. It takes place in Derry of the 1970s: the peak of the violence, the fight for a university in the city, the civil rights movement, IRA Supergrasses and the activities of social campaigner - Eamonn McCann.

The last elections saw the two polar extremes, the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Feín of the Northern Irish conflict saw a reverse of fortunes, the toppling of the unionist dominance. Dr. Eamon Phoenix wrote, ‘The resulting loss of a Unionist majority at Stormont for the first time has shocked Unionism to its core’. A more recent council election saw Sinn Féin surpass the DUP. When final results were declared in Belfast City Hall Sinn Féin had won 144 seats, a 39-seat gain that more than doubled expectations. Its 30.9 per cent share of the vote marked a historic high, two points better even than the previous poll-topping Northern Ireland Assembly election — a performance that should have propelled the party’s regional leader, Michelle O’Neill, into the first minister’s chair for the first time. But O’Neill has been denied the chance to lead a cross-community executive, as the Good Friday peace accord intended, because the DUP have blocked the formation of any government at Stormont. The current rules of power-sharing require both Sinn Féin and the DUP to participate.

When Martin McGuinness resigned as Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, over a ‘cash-for-ash’ scandal, it forced the election. He later passed away from a rare heart condition. On one occasion during the years of Duddy’s role, McGuinness, then a Chief of Staff of the IRA, knocked on his door. Duddy had just finished a roast dinner cooked by Bernadette, his aide-de-camp for Duddy, his wife and Michael Oatley, a British MI6 officer. Oatley had secretly kept in contact with Brendan Duddy for almost 20 years and was about to retire. Just before his retirement, Oatley received a call from Duddy who suggested he come to Derry to meet someone. Oatley said the discussion with McGuinness was like talking to a ranking British officer from the SAS. Duddy was known as ‘the Contact’, Oatley – ‘Mountain Climber’. Another agent ‘Fred’ took over when Oatley retired.

Brendan Duddy was a Derry businessman, a fish and chip shop owner, but was also a passionate pacifist. He felt there had to be a way to forge an accord between the IRA and the British Government, instead of the continuing brutal violence on the streets of Northern Ireland. He developed a back-channel between them.

During 1993, a series of messages between the back-channel and the British Government led to a message, ‘conflict is over’. Supposedly from the IRA, and asking the British Government to help lay the plans for a negotiated settlement. McGuinness felt the ‘the Contact’ or ‘Fred’ overstepped their remit. It led to Duddy being ‘interrogated’ by four leading Republicans, McGuinness was the chief interrogator. Duddy felt, if he hadn’t convinced them that he was genuine in his attempts at developing a path for peace, and not acting as some sort of British agent, he would not have left the interrogation alive. The link was also used for a ceasefire in the mid-70s and, as stated before, during The Hunger Strike. This event prompted Sinn Feín to move towards electoral politics. Margaret Thatcher, the UK Prime Minister at that time, thought the IRA was playing their last card over the prison issues.

The interrogation is recreated in my book, ‘Cillefoyle Park’. Many storylines are recreated from such actual events. The protagonist, Dermot, a social activist and barman, is ‘the Contact’. This enterprise of the back-channel in the book falls apart due to an IRA Supergrass, again based on an actual Supergrass who also wrote a book about his experience and was found dead, alone in a flat in England. The meetings take place in an office, in my fictional Cillefoyle Park, hence the name of my book. I have attempted to show life in 1970s Derry, at the height of the Troubles, from various perspectives; a teacher, trying to keep his own family out of harm’s way while teaching the children of the IRA. Dermot is the activist, fighting for civil rights but a disinclined back-channel contact. A disillusioned IRA man becomes a Supergrass.

Interestingly, on an Irish radio interview, McCann, a leader of a housing campaign for Catholics in Northern Ireland, that led to the Civil Rights movement stated that the Aboriginal movement in Australia and the Black Civil Rights movement in America were an inspiration. This is weaved into the discussions with the Contact and Mountain Climber in my book. Dr. Niall Ó Dochartaigh, University of Galway, who has written extensively on Duddy and his notes, commented, ‘by 1968, the development of low-level collective action around housing had helped to build the strong networks and tactical experience crucial to the success of the civil rights campaign in the city.’

The terrifying confrontation between Duddy and the IRA is reflected in the research of Ó Dochartaigh. He analysed Duddy’s role as the back-channel, using his documentation, and including many interviews with the Contact. The Duddy Papers are now housed in Ó Dochartaigh’s university. Was Duddy an intermediator or mediator? The Derry meetings, of course, took place in the fog of war. It was not just messages being passed back and forth. Duddy listened to his contacts for the merest hint of a change in the British Government stance, so he could advance a peaceful solution. He could influence the outcome. He was trying to help them think their way out of the war. As Brendan Duddy discreetly commented: ‘You can’t pick out half a sentence. You can’t pick out half a day's work or an hour's work in 20 years.’ Ó Dochartaigh identifies the role of ‘the Contact’ as being analytically separated out from the role of the two sides who are seen as distinct and bounded entities, devising messages and strategies and then putting them in the post for delivery to their opponents. The fact that formal records are often dominated by those short written communications that are then passed from one side to the other, encourages historians and analysts to focus on the delivery of messages, and can obscure the hundreds and thousands of hours of human interaction, changing human relationships, and dialogue which generate these pieces of paper. I tried to reflect on this process, a slow burn, in my book, trying to create a path for peace.

Such messages to further the process can sometimes be jointly devised to facilitate movement at both ends of the communication chain. As Ó Dochartaigh further explains: this should not obscure the fact that this intersection can also be a space of deceit, of penetration, of surveillance, of manipulation, and a struggle for advantage, a space of ambiguity, obscure intentions and acts of bad faith. It was a case of building trust with all parties, bit-by-bit. The issues of who doesn’t want peace, or wants peace on their own terms, are also explored by Ó Dochartaigh and in Cillefoyle Park. But that space can also provide an interactive cooperative process, the building of trust, leading to the reshaping of relationships between those involved. The Duddy Papers provide a significant insight into the role of an intermediary in this cooperative process, illustrating that an individual at the centre of such contact can significantly become more than an intermediary.

Duddy’s role came to light by Peter Taylor, a BBC reporter in the 1990s, but it was in 2008 the documentary – The Secret Peacemaker – that Duddy was actually identified. O’Dochartaigh’s and Taylor’s work formed much of the research for Cillefoyle Park, including McCann’s writings and his books. Eamonn McCann’s quote below comes from the CAIN website, which was another valuable resource - Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland, based at the University of Ulster. It reflects the complexity and idiosyncrasy of the Northern Irish conflict that Brendan Duddy and Dermot, my character, were trying to address.

Eamonn McCann muses, ‘One of the strange things about Northern Ireland which recently occurred to me is that Catholics and Protestants in the North have never been more alike. The cultural background of people on the Shankill and the Falls has never been as close to one and other as it is now. That’s part of the globalisation of culture, the Americanisation of world culture, as well. While there are still distinct elements to the cultures of the two communities, nevertheless they share an awful lot.’

Dermot, the barman in Cillefoyle Park, is torn between the possibility of politics and the violence exploding on the streets of Derry, in Northern Ireland. It is at the height of The Troubles in the mid 1970s. That’s the treacherous dilemma that Dermot Lavery finds himself in, when an innocent friendship with a neighbour, a schoolteacher, leads them both into a precarious web of secrecy and intrigue with all sides of the endless conflict. Caught in a nightmare world of secret negotiations for a ceasefire, his life spins on the edge of clandestine friendships, love, meetings and certain death at any wrong turn. It is a constant struggle with his conscience and the challenge of simply staying alive.

Research for this book, much of it available online, includes: the Galway University sources, Brendan Duddy’s diaries, Niall Ó Dochartaigh’s research papers, Eamon McCann’s books, the CAIN archive at the University of Ulster, The Derry Journal archives, Irish Times, newspapers, books written about the Troubles and much more. The author grew up in 1970’s Derry, attending school in the no-go area of Creggan and socialising with friends who were in the IRA, unknown to him.

Cillefoyle Park

‘What are you doing up there? I am ready to go shopping.’

‘I’m watching two youngsters up to no good. They are back in the fire station’s garden again. I’ll be right down.’

‘Make sure you close the door. You left it open and all the heat from the house has escaped into the tower!’

‘Sorry, Marie, I’ll be right down. Just waiting to see what those two are up to.’

Harry O’Donnell heard the front door bang shut. He was in his tower surveying the surrounding streets in late December. The mid-afternoon curdled sky cast a violet twilight over the city as he watched the two young men at the end of his street. The streetscape beyond Cillefoyle Park fell to the River Foyle. People scurried about doing last minute Christmas shopping, rugged up against the damp raw wind. Solemn car drivers faced the streaming traffic.

Harry watched as his friend and neighbour, Dermot Lavery left his flat for work and walked down towards the Northland Road, towards the two suspicious figures. He adjusted his binoculars, and tried to identify them and was sure he had taught one of them, a few years ago. One was busy in the fire station’s garden. The other stood across the road, looking about, nonchalantly, hands in his pockets. A smile rose on his face when he saw Dermot approaching from a distance. The one in the garden stood by a wooden bench and bent down for a second. After a moment’s disappearance, he resurfaced, holding a brown package. He crossed over to his companion, zigzagging through the traffic, forcing the cars to brake to avoid hitting him. He gave the parcel to the other guy who put it underneath his zipped, black jacket. They talked a moment, laughed and then went south towards the city before Dermot saw them.

The wooden seat overlooked a grassy patch in the station’s garden and down the hill towards Clarence Avenue. The seat was used by nomadic older men or over-laden women collapsing under the weight of shopping bags and children. Harry suspected it had more clandestine uses.

Dermot wore his customary fashionable clothes: jet-black Wrangler jeans, with a slight flare, a Ben Sherman button-down checked shirt under a blue Wrangler denim jacket and a pair of well-worn highly polished leather brogues. Some people said he was vain, Harry felt it was an undeserved opinion. Yet, his unblemished face was youthful and pale for his twenty-seven years – he looked more like an eighteen-year-old, without the pimples. He maintained some facial growth to balance his seraphic features. Startling diamond blue eyes and his high cheekbones were bequeathed by his dandyish father, but the smattering of insipid freckles and pouting full lips belonged to his mother. Where his thick wind-combed mop of unruly black hair came from, no one knew – perhaps it had skipped a generation. He was a dapper slim figure – six feet plus, fitted snappish clothes, a noted handsome individual about town. Everyone said so. On closer inspection, his glacial eyes caught people’s attention, a disquieting gaze; its intensity unnerved anyone that took time to look. Few looked for very long.

Dermot meets the Eejits

Dermot never felt comfortable walking along the Northland Road. It always unnerved him – a lonely stretch of the road that made him feel vulnerable, especially late at night on his way home after a night on the town or after work. The route passed a huge stone wall bordering the estate of Dill House, the local big house, at one time. Sometimes the road couldn’t be avoided. The site proposed for a new university was behind the forbidding stone wall. Dermot, his fellow activists, local politicians and business groups were at the forefront of lobbying for the university status of Magee College, an established higher education institute since the mid-eighteen hundreds that was situated at the northern end of the wall. A garden nursery occupied the other end.

He was going to see a fellow socialist who lived at the cathedral end of it. Dermot looked down the road towards the city when he reached the junction. He preferred to walk down Lawrence Hill, towards the river, and then along the Strand Road to the city centre. Lawrence Hill was a steep thoroughfare, going and coming, but it also had cordial childhood memories of playing street soccer with his mate, Liam.

The nursery’s entrance, solid and ancient, was at the city side of the wall and was the side gate to Dill House. It was a magnificent arch, above carved in a lattice design, very Indian-like, thought Dermot. The protective crown provided an occasional refuge from the elements for Dermot and other Derry natives. An ornamental boot scraper took sentinel place at the gate lodge on its left with a window of lead light set in a similar arch, adding a pleasing attribute to the gaunt fortification.

To his consternation, he thought he had spotted Brendan and Mick at the junction earlier. Unhappily, they were in front of him, waiting. An aura of pallor hung over them, soon to engulf Dermot. They were the schoolyard bullies and his nemesis. Sometimes they drank at his work – The Inishmore Bar. Their agitated behaviour, constantly glancing over their shoulders, gave Dermot the impression they were in the middle of something illegal. They spotted him and he couldn’t avoid them as he strode towards the two, hiding his abhorrence with his head held high. It was an unyielding expression, in contrast to their smiles as big as Cheshire cats.

Strangely, there was little traffic on this dreary afternoon, even though the schools were finished for the Christmas holidays. The black-jacketed young man called to him,

‘What about ye, Dermot? Great to see you!’

‘Where are you off to, boys?’

‘Oh, just doing a wee job. Why don’t you come with us?’

‘No thanks, lads. Off to work. Your uncle Cathal wouldn’t be too happy if I was late.’

Their contempt for Dermot was obvious in their patronising smirks. They let loose their own contempt for themselves on the unfortunate barman. Mick’s uncle Cathal was Dermot’s boss, and he used his name frequently in conversations to remind them of the connection. Cathal was always remonstrating with the two cousins. With their palpable anxiety and the usual false bonhomie, Dermot knew something was amiss, and wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

Harry had mentioned that he had seen two men loitering in the fire station’s garden several times. It must have been Brendan and Mick. Dermot could see Mick had stuffed something under his zipped jacket. Dermot assumed the fire station’s little garden was a drop point. Brendan and Mick had picked it up from there, behind the bench in the garden. Behind the seat were bricks covering a secret space draped in protective ivy.

‘Now, Dermot, you wouldn’t want to annoy us today. We are busy boys.’

‘Well, sure then I’ll be on my way, lads.’

Mick tapped the front of his jacket. It was obvious they wanted Dermot to ask what it was, and what they were doing. Dermot didn’t care and wanted to get away from the pair’s mindless bravado. Mick had the eyes of a battered boxer, and kept looking about, his eyes darting up and down the road, probably looking for any security forces.

‘Oh shit! Look up there. We had better get going.’

Mick exclaimed as he nudged Brendan. As they had stood talking, an army patrol had gathered at the top of Lawrence Hill, and it was walking towards them. Momentarily, Dermot considered returning home to avoid being caught with the two boys, but that action too might draw the army’s attention – the soldiers may have seen them talking. They were caught in no-man’s-land in the middle of the dreaded stone wall. The boys became more nervous.

Dermot commanded: ‘Let’s walk.’

‘Who the fuck are you to give orders?’ asked Brendan.

‘If you have something to say, Brendan, raise your hand and place it over your mouth’, retorted Dermot,who then turned and marched on. If they could make it to the end of the wall, they could slip down the next street and vanish from view. However, he also saw some movement at the Asylum Road. The patrol was behind them and someone was in front. It was as depressing as a Sunday afternoon in Ballymena, the centre of Bible Belt Northern Ireland. Was it a trap set up by the security forces for Brendan and Mick? Had Dermot unwittingly walked into it?

Someone was in front of them, pressed into a privet hedge, opposite Asylum Road. Yet something was familiar about the figure. Being Derry, everyone was familiar. Dermot strode on, as fast as he could, without drawing attention, keeping an eye on the hedge, his breathing jagged. Brendan, whose legs reminded Dermot of a bandy-legged sailor, and Mick tried to keep up with Dermot.

Dermot was sure he caught the blurred sight of another pair of legs. A little head peered fleetingly over the leaves of the hedge. Were there two people hiding in the thicket? Mick also noticed and nodded to his companions. Both acknowledged with a slight twist to their heads, a familiar Derry mannerism. Mick bent down as if to scratch his shin and ran his finger over the handle of the gun taped to his leg. It was unloaded. Whoever may be waiting for him did not know that. The army patrol was advancing behind them. They had no choice but to go forward and face the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

They made it, relaxed a little and stepped out of sight of the patrol. Suddenly, a siren screamed. Dermot jolted and saw a couple of kids in the hedge opposite peer out. The fire station at the top of Lawrence Hill sped into action. The doors opened and the brigade pulled out, lights flashing. As the engine passed them, they saw the firemen inside the cab struggling into their uniforms. The army patrol stopped and watched the firemen too. This allowed the three of them time to cross the street and get out of sight – their eyes fixed on the activity in the hedge in front. Two kids jumped out and ran off up Asylum Road.

Halfway up Asylum Road, Brendan laughed: ‘I nearly shit myself. I was as scared as a turkey at Christmas. What do we do now, Mick?’

Before Mick could answer, Dermot said: ‘See you later, boys. Actually, I don’t want to see you two again. I am off to work.’

‘Dermot, you’re coming with us.’

Mick ordered, trying to be assertive, but his trembling voice reflected his panic.

‘You know Mick, you have a great future behind you. No, lads, I am going through Brooke Park, if the side gate is open. You two are going wherever the fuck you want. Just stay well away from me. Youse are up to something and I don’t want any part of it. So fuck off!’

Dermot strode off from the troublesome comrades. Brendan and Mick were immature young men. But the pair were dangerous lumps of nuisance, not only for Dermot, but also as members of the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. They were only fit to be foot soldiers, if that. Probably useful at times, providing they did what they were told and were under constant supervision. Mick fancied himself; his high opinion of himself was beyond a joke – it was toxic. Mick and Brendan, being Cathal’s nephews, seemed to have some sort of kudos, they were tolerated. After this escapade, Dermot had no doubts about them. Avoid them at all costs. They were banjaxed.

Mick grabbed Dermot by the arm. This was still a dangerous situation. Dermot turned quickly and pushed both of them into a nearby garden, out of sight of the patrol and anyone watching.

‘Do you not see them down there? They could come up here any time. This is not the time nor the place to play silly buggers.’

‘Never mind them, you are coming with us.’

Mick wanted to show everybody, including himself who was boss and throw his weight around. Dermot reckoned he had a gun. This was a dangerous situation. Mick wanted to frighten Dermot; he wanted to tear slices off him. Everything about Dermot, Mick despised his educated tone, his dapper clothes, his good looks, his friendship with his uncle and his socialist ideas. Mick bent down, pulled the Smith and Wesson from his ankle and stuck it into Dermot’s stomach. His face contorted as if he was smelling shit in the sun. Without a moment’s hesitation, Dermot’s knee was into Mick’s groin and he pulled Brendan’s hair so that his face met the same knee. Both fell onto the ground, and Dermot retrieved the gun, but felt something heavy under Mick’s jacket. It felt like another gun. The gun that Mick pulled on Dermot was empty and he threw it into a hedge, out of sight, for Mick to retrieve after he had left them.

‘You bastard, pulling a gun on me. So that’s why you were hobbling, the gun was taped to your leg. This is dumb shit. God, you guys never learn. It’s often a person’s mouth that breaks his nose, but you two? Fuck this, for a game of soldiers. Youse are two fucking eejits. I’ll be telling Cathal about this. Go! Get lost.’

‘Ah, me balls. Jesus Christ. I’ll fuckin’ kill you.’

‘Fuck off and leave me alone.’

Dermot left the two goblins of stupidity. Mick called after him, issuing all sorts of expletives and death sentences. Brendan said nothing. They then realised they were drawing attention to themselves. So after they got up, they retrieved the gun and hobbled across the street and up the hill towards Rosemount.

Dermot walked across a side street towards Brooke Park, still watching for any sign of the army patrol or the two jokers he left lying in the garden. ‘Póg mo thóin’ was the last thing he heard, but he wasn’t too sure if Brendan had found new confidence in distance and yelled it at him. When he looked back, they were gone. Dermot thought ‘up yours too, mate’ as he hurried away, thinking Northland Road was definitely a place to avoid.

When he took a side street to the park, he spotted Mick and Brendan entering a lane in front of him. On the spur of the moment, he decided to follow them. He crossed back into a lane and saw them shuffle up some side streets, getting away from any attention they might have caused. They entered a lane backing onto Brooke Park. Mick handed Brendan the parcel, who opened it and then placed the two guns into the brown wrapping and Brendan wrapped the paper around them. Mick staged for Brendan as he climbed over the wall with the package and appeared a few minutes later on the wall and dropped into the lane again.

Dermot positioned himself behind a fat oak tree as they came down the lane past him. He heard Mick speak:

‘Jesus, I’ll kill that bastard one of these days.’

‘I’ll kill for a drink right now.’

‘Naw, Brendan. If we arrive back with drink on our breaths we will be dead meat. A bottle of Club orange and a Kit-Kat may do us. There’s a telephone in the shop up here. Then we’ll see Cathal and tell him the craic. We need to get our story straight.’

They moved off and Dermot couldn’t hear any further conversation, but thought he needed to speak to Cathal before them. He went up to the garden gate where the guns were hidden and where the ‘drop’ was. He pushed the gate open after it jammed a bit. There was no need for Brendan to mount the wall. Inside, the gardener grew mountainous vegetables. It was full of all sorts – spud bags, pots, cloches, and a water drum sat in the middle of it.

Dermot closed the gate and walked towards Brooke Park side entrance. He went to work.

Inishmore Bar

The Inishmore in Bishop Street was a single-fronted bar, unchanged in decades, but had been nicely maintained. Dermot walked in. The bar was unattended. The lounge room’s door was closed at the rear. An old fellow sat perched on a stool to his right, glancing half-cocked at the television, up in the corner. He twisted his head slightly, nodded and returned to watching the television. Dermot greeted him.

‘Howdy John.’

‘Aye. What bout ye?’

‘Grand.’

‘Cathal was in looking for you.’

‘Oh!’

John rarely spoke. An agelast of distinction. The sort of a man if he went to a wedding, he’d stay for the christening. He wasn’t a regular source of optimism and joy so Dermot didn’t look for any further conversation. A door closest to the bar led to a narrow hall, a storeroom and office on the left and the rear heavy dirty brown door with its many locks. He looked outside, into the backyard. To the right was an urinal, against a cemented wall, often painted, rarely used but now flaking and the gutter ran into a drain. A pipe ran along the wall above the urinal connected to a cistern for the outside lavatory. Its chipped brown door was open, toilet roll scattered around the bowl. A stale acidic smell hung about the yard. His first job, when he started his shift, would be to clean up the place with a bucket of bleach. Above, a standalone iron roof provided shelter for all the toilets. Few ventured out there, only through necessity. There were toilets inside. Few women frequented the pub. It was a ‘man’s pub.’

The cellar door was open in the yard, its flap doors upright. A short ladder led down into the blackness. Grabbing its side, he called down. Surprisingly, the cellar was huge for the size of the pub. He was aware of others inside. A stale odour of musky clothes and a hoppy aroma rose from the airless bunker below. A faint but nostalgic smell of oil unsettled him, reminding him of the little cans of oil used on his bike’s chain as a child.

‘Cathal, are you there?’

‘I’ll be up in a minute’

‘No problem. I’ll start my shift.’

‘Hold on.’

Dermot heard shuffling down below. He felt worried and recoiled in defence. A light came on and he saw Cathal and somebody else, maybe his nephew. Someone sat on a bench under the ladder. The two eejits couldn’t have got to the pub any faster than he did. Cathal climbed the well-worn ladder from the cellar. Dermot knew every corner of the concrete passageway below, a dank space and on either side, sloping into various shades of gloom, was the residue of pub life: beer barrels, broken chairs and tables, numerous drink advertisements, decrepit with damp and age, and old rusty tools and pipes.

Cathal had a few papers in his hand when he stood beside Dermot. After a few minutes, he stopped fiddling with them.

‘I suppose you’re going