Kelleher was struggling to remember. He’d been walking for ages. Days? There’d been a wide river, a bridge, cars strewn across it, some in flames. Or had he dreamt that? There’d been towns, wrecked, as if a colossal foot had stamped on them. Fields, miles of them, just cinders. And his brain had just kept saying: go west.
Was he in shock? He’d hunger pangs, felt as numb as a corpse, and his mouth was dry, aching for a drop of water. And now before him a road with a line of stationary lorries, some kind of building, and the sea. Was it a ferry port?
At the entrance was a gaggle of humanity: fearful eyes, pinched faces, everybody seemingly distracted. Was that how he looked?
‘Irish citizens this way,’ a voice shouted. ‘The rest of you stay where you are. We’ll get to you in due course.’
A groan of disappointment. On autopilot he pushed his way to the gate. A red face in a uniform addressed him: ‘Irish?’
‘Suppose.’
‘Name?’
‘Seán Kelleher.’
‘Passport?’
‘Uh… lost it, I think.’
‘That an English accent?’
‘Well… maybe… but…’
‘Get back over there,’ the man said, pointing to the crowd.
He must try to remember. ‘I was born in Ireland. Folks emigrated to England when I was… two, was it?’
‘Over there. Now!’
‘Waterville’s my birthplace. Near the home of… what’s his name… the Liberator.’
‘I said: over there!’
Gaelic. Address him in that. Maybe it might convince him? Say something, anything. ‘Seán Kelleher is ainm dom.’
The red face studied him like a pedigree judge at Crufts, before saying: ‘Cén aois thú?’
What was his question? He must answer correctly. Cén: did that mean ‘what’? Aois? He’d heard that before. ‘Age’, was it? What age are you? That what the fellow was asking? ‘Forty-one,’ Kelleher replied.
The man sighed, like he’d lost a bet, nodded, and let him pass to the queue for the boat.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked a woman. ‘I think my memory’s banjaxed.’
‘Europe’s gone,’ she said. ‘Most of the world too.’
‘Gone? What do you mean?’
The woman didn’t want to talk.
‘Has Ireland gone? Or is it spared?’ She wouldn’t answer. ‘Is this a ship of fools we’re getting on?’
She turned to him, her pale features spectral, her gaunt cheeks little more than bones. She had the look of a messenger from beyond the grave. Was he in somebody else’s story?
‘Are we saved or are damned? Nobody knows,’ she said, then vanished.
There’d been an explosion. He remembered it now, somewhere back on his journey, a huge bang. Hot dripping flesh, eyes that had popped out of skulls and were laying on the ground surveying him, screams, cries from mothers of, ‘Take my child, look after her.’ He’d wanted to escape. Perhaps he’d died, perhaps he was dead.
Behind him the mob was trying to tear down the barrier, shouting, ‘Get us off this poisoned island! Save us!’ Yes, he was dead. Surely?
