It was four years before Johnny saw Sean Bourke again. He was in 5th Year in school and he and a few friends were ensconced in a public house in the city one warm night towards the end of June. They were young to be drinking alcohol, but as far as they were concerned that fact just added a bit of excitement to the proceedings. By closing time they had decided to grab a burger, and head for a disco in one of the local Rugby clubs, there to continue their heated discussion on the various occurrences of note during the School Year just gone, in between chasing after any young ladies present at the proceedings. They made a somewhat rowdy exit from the pub, turned right and headed en-masse up the street, some singing, some shouting, some arguing loudly in a bunch, and one or two stragglers quietly chatting and bringing up the rear.
Johnny and his friend Willy, comprised this rearguard. They hadn't taken five steps when their way was blocked by a boisterous group of adults issuing forth from the door of the neighbouring pub, Ma Hogan's, as it was known. The two lads walked quickly around them to catch up with their friends. As he walked past Johnny looked curiously at these extremely drunk people. He was not being rude or even nosey. To think so would be a mistake, rather he was possessed of a keen interest in people, and such keenness and enthusiasm allied to his youth's lack of subtlety must stand as reason enough for any false impressions gained thus. It was people, people of all shapes and sizes, from all walks of Life, that earned his eye's attention. He would watch them, trying to find reasons for their behaviours, to see inside their minds, to feel or at least try to identify the emotions they were experiencing. In short, people fascinated him, but in a warm, human way, not coldly or clinically as an objective scientist might perhaps approach his prey.
A pair of bloodshot eyes caught and held his, then looked away quickly, almost guiltily, as if ashamed of the state they were in. Recognition hit him like a bolt. It was Sean. Sean Bourke, surrounded by his drunken courtiers. Johnny was astounded. Noticing his friend's step slowing, Willy grabbed him firmly by the arm, saying "come on you drunken bum or we'll never catch up" and bustled him up the street. Johnny, too preoccupied to resist, moved with his friend. Yet as he did so, turned his head to look back. Sean was looking at him, with that mocking half-smile of his and grinning still he shrugged his shoulders as though saying in a mysterious, silent language, known only to the two of them, that things were out of his control, and he was caught up by forces greater than himself which would decide his fate,regardless of his desires . It was the last time Johnny would ever see him alive.
Some time afterwards Johnny mentioned the incident to his father. "He made a lot of money out of the book he wrote on the escape from Wormwood Scrubs and his time in Russia," his father said with a shake of his head, "and he has acquired a load of fair-weather friends' who are helping him to drink it all as fast as they can. It's all in the way of good fellowship, of course," he concluded with an angry sarcasm. Johnny wondered how you identified such people amongst your friends, and queried the point with his father, who was one of his most important sources of information and advice. "You only know them when the chips are down," came the cryptic reply from behind the morning paper.
Johnny finished his breakfast, threw on a duffel coat and left the house. He walked down the street, turned right and then left, to emerge into a large, open, square known as Pery's Square. It was more like a long rectangle than a square really, with the People's Park on one side and a row of graceful,old,red-bricked houses on the other. "The People's Park," Johnny thought with a wry smile. "Long live the Revolution, Comrades!" He entered a grey, stone building on the park side of the square, the City Library. After a short while, he found what he was looking for and approached the librarian's desk. He handed the girl the book and his library ticket. "You're very lucky, y'know," she smiled at him. "It's a very popular book, and rarely on the shelves as we don't have too many copies left. Usually there's a waiting list as long as your arm for it, but demand has slackened off in the last few days." "Why so few copies left?" he asked curiously. "Stolen," she replied in an offhand way, preoccupied with checking out his book to him. "Oh, well I've got a day or two to kill before I go on my holidays, so it'll fill the gap just nicely," said Johnny, smiling as he tucked the book under his arm.
He left the library, collected a few messages for his mother in town, and returned home. Thinking on his way home how "collecting the messages" in Limerick was "running errands" somewhere else in the world and considered how such a simple task was differently described in most vernaculars. Now that the sun was higher in the sky, the early coolness had gone out of the morning, so Johnny put on a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt, went out into their spacious back-garden with a deck-chair, sat down and started to read Sean's book.
Sean had been sent to Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London for allegedly sending a letter-bomb to a British policeman. While in prison he took an active part in the organized activities for the prisoners. He seems to have been a good prisoner and was editor of the prison magazine. One day towards the end of his sentence he was approached by George Blake, a pleasant enough fellow Sean had gotten to know reasonably well. Despite being convicted of betraying his country, Blake was not disliked by the other inmates, his charm and apparent friendliness helping in no small way. When he had satisfied himself that they couldn't be overheard Blake made his request: "I am asking you, Sean, to help me escape. Think it over for a few days." Sean stopped abruptly and turned to face him. "George," he said, "I don't have to think it over. I'm your man."
Why did Sean agree so readily? After all his own sentence was almost over. Why mess things up now when freedom was so near? Various factors appeared to have influenced Sean's decision. He liked Blake and they got on well. The lengthiness of Blake's sentence was also in his favour as the length of one's sentence is an important criterion for determining one's standing and the measure of respect one receives in the prisoners' social hierarchy (i.e. the longer the sentence, the greater the standing, respect, and indeed sympathy one receives from other prisoners). Another important point in Blake's favour was that in Sean's eyes he was not an ordinary criminal, but a prisoner of conscience, a man imprisoned for acting on his political beliefs. Sean's main reason however, was that he saw the dangerous attempt as an opportunity to strike a blow against Authority, against that centralized control of Society, whose attempts to shape the behaviour of the individual took the form of codified norms, rules and laws; things with which Sean would always come into conflict, as by their very nature they would try to fetter the wild and free spirit that defined him. Blake's plight also appealed to that innate love of causes, lost or otherwise, that runs deep in some of the more adventurous and passionate members of the Irish race, to which Sean was certainly no exception.
Sean could drink 12 small ones in the space of half an hour, and his first day on parole, he did exactly that. He had 6 double whiskeys and a meal chaser. The second day out he drank a full bottle. The day after he called to his girlfriend, (who apparently hadn't once written to him in prison ), to discover that she was married with a son. He told her that she would probably never know how lucky she was. From then on there were no obstacles to deter him. He began to plan the escape. It was a simple and effective plan and though parts of it went horribly wrong, luck and Sean's devil-may-care audacity were on their side .
Sean's writing seemed stiff and carefully structured at first, as though some publisher's editor had stood over him with a grammar book and whip making him re-write. Yet one could almost feel Sean's pen relax as he recalled the week he spent in Limerick immediately prior to the escape attempt. Bawdy humour and mirth filled the pages of the hitherto neat but cold narrative. It was a bittersweet mood, though , tinged with that sadness, that fond objectivity that haunts our emigre brothers and sisters on their return. It is the price exacted from them, in return for permission to leave and seek a better life, that when they return, those of them cursed with the intelligence to see are forced to compare the reality in front of their eyes with their memories; their perception of one mercilessly destroying their vision of the other, the reality of the present Ireland obliterating their tender, nostalgic remembrance of the Ireland of the past, their past.
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