At first Tommy’s da didn’t want us to get involved in the Ra. Get a paper round, he says to us, do something decent with your life. His own da had been involved but then he got hit by a taxi when he was coming home half-blocked and that was the end of that. Tommy’s da was just as bad. You should have seen his record. Years later I sent away for it and I get it on a flappy disk out the archive: drunk and disorderly, refusing to do the dishes, no-shows, punch-ups in the canteen. I never knew the Ra used to have canteens, but there you go.

Tommy’s ma was alive and well but she was even less of a presence than his disembodied da. A big brooding face with big brooding lamps like big brooding coals plus she was tied to that sink and that stove. I never saw her outside the kitchen except for once at a funeral and once at a hospital visit, but wait till I tell you. I guessed that she must have slept in there beside her man. The toilet was out the back so as there was no need to go ganging up the stair or into the front room. I don’t even know if there was a front room. And allow me to correct a well-known fallacy: everybody thinks that Catholics, and certainly Republicans, and definitely members of the IRA, hated the Queen, but that could not be further from the truth, my friend. 1977 was the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and Tommy’s ma was collecting stuff about her. She had a memorial biscuit tin on her shelf and a mug with the Queen’s face on it and a badge, as well as a souvenir magazine that she kept in a drawer and that she would pull out when the guests came around. It made no sense to me because Fuck the Queen was my motto. But the mums loved her. My own ma was crazy about her. Even as her friends and neighbours were getting burnt out their homes in her name. The fucking Irish, you want to tell me about it.

Now, so there was a rumour that Tommy’s da knew the location of an arms stash in Armagh, and not just any old arms stash, but one that was supposed to have come from Libya or Saudi Arabia – don’t ask me, how would I know – but a big one, by way of some of the big boys, was what they says. Tommy didn’t want to bring it up with his da but then Mackle McConaughey leans on him. Don’t end up like your da, Mack says to him. Do something with your life, Mack says to him, which is exactly what Tommy’s da was saying to us, only the reverse. Personally, I’ll take liberating a Libyan arms stash for a bunch of street-fighting nationalists over delivering The People’s Friend to your agoraphobic ma and I says as much to Tommy but he was touchy about his ma, they all were, so as I dropped it. But he eventually agreed to bring it up, under the stipulation that I did all of the negotiating and that if it was going to bring any heat down on his da then we would make out that the whole story was bollocks and we would say that it was a result of wee dafties talking their gobs off and that there were no arms really, to speak of, and that the whole thing had been nothing but a masquerade.