Torn Away Read online

  Declan leaped towards the door, hurling the tray with its dinner plate of meat, potatoes and gravy at the guard as he moved. This time his aim was not quite so good, for the tray took Spyface in the knee, toppling him to the floor, but not preventing him from reaching out and getting a grip on Declan’s leg as the boy tried to rush by. Declan was half-way out the door, dragging his imprisoned leg and elbowing Spyface to the head to make him let go, but the guard was too big and strong for him. He pulled Declan down to the floor and dealt him a vicious blow to the stomach that made the boy gasp with pain. Then he threw Declan onto the bed and stood over him while the woman picked up the tray and the broken dishes.

  The guard was breathing heavily. “You young bastard!” he said.

  Then they left. They brought no more food.

  Declan had his usual nightmare, the one with the bomb exploding, waking in the early hours of the morning in terror, drenched in sweat and tears, yelling out, not knowing where he was. The guard, not Spyface, a new one, switched on the light from outside the cell and peered in. He did not go in. He left the light on until he saw the boy pull the covers up over himself, and then he switched it off.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, two men he had not seen before brought him a breakfast of cereal, poached eggs, toast and orange juice. Declan was sitting bent over on the edge of his bed. He was hungry. His stomach hurt from the blow the night before. One man stood at the door while the other put the tray down on the small table. Declan lashed out with his feet, kicking over the table and sending the tray and its contents crashing to the floor. The first man reached for him, but slipped on the eggs and juice and tumbled against the bed. Declan tried to duck under the second man’s arms, but the man, too quick and strong for him, threw him back into the room. The two men backed carefully out of the room and locked the door.

  A short time later, Sanford brought him a bag of clothing. The guard stood behind him at the door. Declan looked in the bag. “I don’t need your cold English charity,” he said, throwing the bag back into his face. Sanford caught it quickly. He looked around at the mess of food on the floor. “You’re not being sensible, Declan. How do you expect to keep up your strength if you don’t eat?”

  Sanford walked him aboard the airplane. He obviously knew about Declan’s earlier escape, for the steel bracelet was tight on his wrist. Unlike the Irish policeman, however, the immigration officer kept his handcuffed hand hidden under his flowing raincoat.

  As soon as they set foot on the 747, Declan began to protest in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Why do you have to have the handcuffs so tight, Seedy? My wrist is bleeding!” And he pulled his hand from Sanford’s pocket so all could see the cruelty done to a mere boy.

  Heads turned. Men scowled; women’s eyes and lips rounded in horror. Declan grinned at Sanford’s discomfort.

  They sat at the back near the washroom, the boy on the inside window seat. Sanford keyed his own cuff open and the ratchet stuttered as he locked it on the armrest so that Declan now had his left hand locked to the seat; his right was free.

  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  Sanford unlocked the wrist cuff and stood to let him out, blocking the escape aisle, and then followed Declan along to the washroom. “Don’t lock the door.”

  But he did lock the door. He ran the water in the sink until it overflowed; then he blocked the toilet with paper towels, and flushed and flushed until the water ran over the floor and out under the door.

  Sanford forced the catch off the door, but as he crashed in and fell up against the sink, Declan squeezed past him out the door and up the aisle, only to slither and slip in the river of water coursing along the floor. He almost made it out the emergency exit, but Sanford dropped him in a swift tackle and dragged him back and handcuffed him to his seat. Declan’s bruised stomach ached more than ever.

  The Boeing and its 465 passengers were delayed for twenty minutes while the maintenance crew came aboard and cleaned up.

  Declan watched out the window as the airplane arrowed up into the English sky. By the time they were flying over the northwest coast of Scotland and leaving the British Isles, they were six miles high.

  The flight attendant came around with drinks. He took an orange juice.

  He found it hard to believe he was leaving his native land. Ripped away from his roots. Kidnapped.

  If only he could somehow turn the airplane around and go home. Impossible. Hijack the plane. Also impossible. He was helpless.

  So that he could cause no trouble during the flight, the wily immigration officer had arranged for Declan’s orange juice to be doctored with thioridizine, a tasteless, odourless tranquilizer often used on unwilling deportees. Declan had spilled the breakfast juice, and the drug was wasted. But now the juice given him by the flight attendant was beginning to take effect.

  A deep depression settled on the drugged boy; his limbs felt heavy; he slumped in his seat and closed his eyes with leaden hopelessness. He was tired. He could fight no more. He was an animal caught in a trap.

  Twelve hours and thirteen minutes later, the giant 747 touched down at the Vancouver International Airport in Canada where the time was only a little past noon the same day, Saturday, September 12th. He had flown backwards in time. A light rain was falling.

  Sanford took him straight into the immigration office, where his uncle was waiting for him. Sanford asked the Canadian immigration officer, a dark, stocky man named Raghavji, to lock the door before he removed the handcuffs. Raghavji locked the door and introduced Sanford: “This is Mr. Matthew Doyle.”

  Matthew Doyle stood up and nodded at the English immigration officer without looking at him. His eyes had not left his nephew since the boy had walked into the room.

  Declan, still bleary from the thioridizine, rubbed his swollen wrist where the handcuff had left blue welts and looked coldly up at his father’s brother. The man he saw before him looked nothing like the young man he had seen in photographs taken in Ireland before he left for Canada. His uncle had the same brown hair and dark eyes of Declan’s da, but there the resemblance ended.

  Matthew Doyle was a big man, lean and spare and tall, with wide shoulders and long arms that dangled almost to his knees. The first thing Declan noticed about him, however, was not his bigness, but his sadness. Matthew Doyle had the longest, saddest face he had ever seen. He reminded him of one of those ugly, sorrowful dogs—he couldn’t remember the kind—with the suffering eyes and woeful expression. His hands were big and gnarled, with spatulate, half-moon nails, and he wore brown cords, brown boots, a green cotton shirt and a stained carcoat that might once have been beige. He looked like an odd-job man, which is what he was.

  He stared at Declan with his big sad face, not saying anything.

  Declan stared back at him.

  When the silence became so long that the two immigration officers had decided that neither the boy nor his uncle was about to speak, Sanford pushed a sheaf of papers across the desk and said, “Declan is now in your custody, Mr. Doyle. Please sign at the places I’ve marked with an X.”

  Matthew Doyle bent to sign the papers. Declan watched him. His uncle wrote his name and Sanford tore off a copy and gave it to him along with Declan’s passport. Raghavji unlocked the door.

  “Goodbye, Declan,” said Sanford, “and good luck.”

  Declan made no reply.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Doyle,” said Raghavji. “Goodbye, Declan.”

  Matthew Doyle nodded his big head and, without looking around at the boy, said, “Follow me.”

  Declan stumbled after him.

  They walked out of the airport terminal and across the parking lot in the soft September rain.

  Chapter Four

  If Tim O’Malley was right—that Canadians were rich—then Matthew Doyle must be the only exception, thought Declan, for in the hundreds of late-model cars in the airport parking lot, the 1962 Ford truck stood out like a dinosaur.

  Matthew started
the ancient motor with the gearstick in neutral and the truck shuddered to life. It seemed to Declan that his uncle leaned an ear toward whatever it was the engine was trying to tell him, and after a few seconds, apparently satisfied, he stopped listening and reached across Declan and pulled open the glove compartment from which he took a roll of mints. He held the roll out to Declan. “Mint?”

  Declan tried to shake his head but the effort was too much for him. He sat in a collapsed silence.

  Matthew took one for himself and tossed the roll onto the dash where it joined a mess of pens, string, coins and faded yellow-and-blue parking violation tickets.

  His uncle persuaded the gearstick into reverse, backed the truck out of the slot, and they were soon on the road with the Ford engine singing a sad requiem all the way to the city of Vancouver. The only windscreen wiper that worked was Matthew’s, which did not bother Declan, for he was not interested in the journey anyway.

  The truck rattled over the Lions Gate Bridge into West Vancouver and onto the Upper Levels Highway. Declan looked down at Howe Sound, gloomy and pensive in the mist and rain. “You don’t live in Vancouver then?”

  Matthew shook his head and pointed up ahead.

  Declan looked and saw nothing but the narrow mountain highway and sheer rocky walls. “You live in a cave in the rocks?” he said sarcastically.

  “Otter Harbour,” said Matthew.

  His uncle was no great talker.

  The rain stopped. The sky brightened. Horseshoe Bay was high mountains and mists, and ferryboats huge as liners. He wanted to ask his uncle if they were waiting to board one of the towering ferryboats, but as soon as he thought of the question he forgot it. Ten minutes later they boarded, not one of the big ships, but a very ordinary little ferry. His uncle switched off the engine and they sat in the truck with the windows rolled down as the ferry chugged out of the bay.

  Matthew pointed a finger and spoke his sixth word. “Eagle,” he said.

  Declan watched the eagle, forcing his eyes to focus. He had never seen an eagle before, only on TV. It circled slowly over the hills. Declan could not take his eyes off it. Such freedom! To fly so high and swoop and glide in the streets of silent air!

  The ferry landed at a place called Langdale, and away they drove again along a winding country road in a journey that seemed must go on forever. Declan was reminded of a place he had read about at school, a place that was all mountains and mists and magic, that was lost in the shadows of time. It was called Shangri-La, he remembered. But that was only in a book. Besides, this place was not really like Shangri-La. If it were, he would feel happy, and he felt awful.

  “Won’t be long now,” said Matthew.

  Declan said nothing, but kept his eyes to the front, staring straight ahead; he did not care how long it took, it was all the same to him. Two could play at the game of silence.

  School.

  There was a time when he had liked school—he had enjoyed history, especially Irish history with its brave stories of Ireland’s heroes and patriots—but he had stopped going there after . . . after the bomb.

  He had joined Brendan Fogarty’s gang instead. None of them went to school. Brendan, sixteen, was the oldest. At eleven, Kevin Payne was the youngest. The Holy Terrors. Their number varied between seven and ten members, depending on whether the school inspector or the police managed to catch some of them and force them back to school for a while.

  Rebels with a cause, that was the Holy Terrors.

  The way Brendan Fogarty explained it was this: “In the North of Ireland it’s a war between them and us, between the Brits—the English—and the Catholics. The British soldiers are supposed to be in Ireland keeping the peace between us and the Protestants. Which is fine, except the way it works out is the Brits are on the side of the Protestants. And it’s us, the Catholics, who get the house-to-house searches at three o’clock in the morning, battering down our doors and pulling us from our beds and destroying everything they can put their filthy hands on while they pretend they’re searching for a gun or a bomb.”

  Kevin Payne, as young as he was, said, “The English have no right in Ireland! Let them go back to their own country!”

  “That’s the good lad,” said Brendan.

  So they became rebels with a cause, and the grim, narrow streets in the Falls Road and Shankill areas with their dirty, crumbling nineteenth century houses, became their jungle and their battleground. They threw stones at British soldiers; they hurled gasoline bombs at the British Land Rovers and armored cars under the cover of night; they helped the young men, all unemployed, make nail bombs. They became young terrorists.

  And as well as their British enemies, they also had the Irish Protestant militants and the Ulster Police, who were mostly Protestants, after them. And if that wasn’t enough, their own IRA, the Provisional branch of the Irish Republican Army—or Provos, as they were called—might take it into their heads to kneecap them for the mischief they got up to. Kneecapping meant you were crippled for life. Not that they had ever shot the knees or ankles of a child (ankles were a more popular target nowadays because of the greater pain and disability), but you could never tell—they seldom hesitated to impose their own brand of law and order among their own, even if it was the milder punishment of having a heavy concrete block dropped on your arm or leg until the limb snapped. Life was brutish and cruel.

  His uncle drove on.

  How many miles were behind him to be retraced? Declan wondered. How would he ever find his way back? The farther they drove, the more impossible seemed his escape.

  The road began to wind through a great forest; there were trees everywhere Declan looked, evergreens, he knew that much, but what kind they were he did not know and did not care. He felt tired and . . . lost. The dark, brooding forest seemed to him a secret, unknown world, impenetrable and dark, and he was filled with the terrible numbness of despair.

  They emerged from the forest into the brightness of sea and sky, but he closed his eyes and saw very little of it.

  The road now twisted around coves and bays. Purple-gray rocks, jagged and dark, thrust themselves into the shining sea, but he merely glimpsed it. He sat with his eyes half closed, exhausted. It was as though all the past weeks he had been fuelled by a special kind of hatred that had pumped up his muscles and his sinews to a constant, explosive pitch, and only now had he let go, only now had his strength collapsed. He felt totally worn out. His head ached from the thioridizine; it felt like his brain was being crushed. His tongue was dry and swollen. He cared about nothing. He thought he would like to die.

  Chapter Five

  Now that the rain had stopped, Matthew leaned over and opened Declan’s window six inches. After a while, the fresh air began to revive him, and by the time they were near their destination, Declan felt a little better.

  Otter Harbour was more than a harbor, it was an entire village. There was Sawchuk’s General Store, a service station, a couple of churches, a hotel, a post office, and a liquor store. There was a telephone booth outside the general store. A man waved at the truck as they went by. Matthew waved back.

  The house was not far past the Catholic church of Our Lady of Sorrows. Matthew turned into a gravel driveway, stopped, switched off the engine and set the handbrake.

  Although the effects of the drug had worn off, Declan felt exhausted. He was sleepily aware that the truck had finally stopped, and that there was a girl about his own age or a little younger standing at the back door with a young boy.

  He climbed out of the truck and followed his uncle to the back of the house. By now, other people had come out to greet them. A tall slim woman, wiping her hands on her apron, walked down the wooden steps and threw her arms around him and pressed him to her breast. She had a blue smudge on her jaw, and smelled faintly of acrylic paint.

  “Ah! It’s wonderful you’re here, Declan. I’m your Aunt Kate, but call me Kate.”

  Declan stood, looking at her, his face expressionless. She had dark hair and
blue eyes and a creased, smiling face, and wore a white shirt and dark skirt. She stood tall, with her shoulders back and her chin high, looking at him.

  “Stand and let me take a look at you. Ah! It’s the feeding up you need, you’re as thin as a church mouse. Isn’t it terrible starved the boy is, Matthew?”

  His uncle stood, his long arms dangling at his sides. “Terrible starved, right enough.”

  “This is Ana,” said Kate. The girl stood, waiting. All Declan noticed was that she wore a huge pair of sunglasses.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling.

  Declan said nothing.

  “And this is Thomas.” Kate pushed the boy forward.

  Thomas’s way of welcoming Declan was to slap him several times lightly on the arm. He welcomed Declan like a puppy. “Hi, Declan,” he said in the voice of a five-year-old, though his age must have been nearer nine or ten, for he was heavy and almost as tall as Declan. He had brown eyes and hair and wore jeans and a white T-shirt with something written on it.

  Declan stared at Thomas.

  “Have ye no bag?” said Kate.

  Declan did not answer.

  “Ah! Then come on in. There’s dinner ready, and then you can rest. You must be destroyed for the want of sleep. It’s the long journey, so it is.”

  Kate led the way back in to the house. Declan heard her say to his uncle in a low voice, “Is it just tired he is? Or is there something wrong with the boy?”

  “They had to tranquilize him,” explained Matthew.

  So that was why he felt so terrible! Declan felt a stir of anger.

  “Is that the truth?” said Kate. “And the only clothes he has are the ones on his back?”

  The girl, Ana, showed him where to wash, and then took him up the high stairs to a room in the top of the house. “You can have this room,” she said, “or you can take the room at the back, one floor down, same floor as me. Kate says it’s whichever one you like.”