IT WAS the middle of Wednesday afternoon before I got around to reading that morning’s newspaper. And I was proceeding sedately through it until an item on Page 8 shattered my calm. The story was about the lack of women in Irish politics and a plan that aimed to change this. About which plan, Lucinda Creighton was quoted as saying: “It literally puts a bomb under political parties to force them to get their act together.” My blood froze.
Even as I was reading the paper, I also had one eye on the TV coverage of the opening of the new Dáil. And watching all the excited deputies gathered in the chamber, many just starting their careers, I gulped at the thought that there could be a bomb under them.
Of course I knew Lucinda hadn’t meant it literally. Or at least I thought I knew. Not even the most passionate advocates of greater female involvement in politics would resort to such a desperate Guy Fawkes-type plot, surely. But what if I was wrong? There was no point ringing anyone in the chamber: they would all have their phones switched to silent. So panic rising, I thought of an old friend – we’ll call him “Mick” – who works undercover for the Army bomb disposal unit. Luckily I still had his mobile number. And when I rang, by another stroke of fortune, he was having coffee in the Shelbourne, just around the corner from the Dáil.
I explained my dilemma. “It’s probably nothing, Mick. A lot of people now use the word ‘literally’ as a mere conversational intensifier, when they mean ‘figuratively’. But in this case, I wouldn’t want it on my conscience if I was mistaken.” Mick assured me I had done the right thing. “Leave it with me,” he said and hung up.
Minutes later, I saw him on TV, now disguised as a Dáil usher. He was incredibly discreet, almost blending in with the background. Yet whenever he was in picture I could see him furtively checking under benches, while pretending to hand notes to deputies or to pick up his pen, which he kept dropping on the floor.
There was a moment during Enda Kenny’s speech when his voice faltered and I wondered if he, at least, suspected what was under his seat. But in fact, nobody noticed. And soon afterwards, Mick was back on the phone. “It’s clean,” he told me. I heaved a sigh of relief and again apologised for troubling him. “Better safe than sorry,” he quipped, adding that he would be in Ryan’s of Parkgate Street later if I fancied a pint.
SO IT WAS that around 9pm on Wednesday, we had just arrived in the pub. And we were half-watching the TV, on which the new Cabinet was pictured setting out for Áras an Uachtaráin in a minibus, when my blood froze again. Visions of Dennis Hopper and Keanu Reeves passed before me. “Oh my God!” I said to Mick. “THE BOMB IS ON THE BUS!” Within seconds, he was on the phone to Garda Headquarters. “Tell the driver not to stop in any circumstances!” he barked. “And tell him, whatever speed he’s doing, not to go below it. Then tell the outriders to remove any obstacle in the bus’s path, by whatever means necessary. When you’ve done all that, ring me back.” Three minutes
later, we were urgently rummaging through a skip nearby, where we found a rusting baby buggy and some scrap metal that could be fashioned into a hook. Two minutes after that, we had located an OPW manhole on Chesterfield Avenue, just inside the entrance to the Park. And following another phonecall to give the necessary instructions, Mick – with hook and buggy in hand – lowered himself into the hole.
Tense moments passed. Then, thanks to the skill of the driver and outriders alike, the bus made the right-hand turn into the park, smoothly and on all four wheels. It passed over the open manhole exactly as planned. Whereafter, unknown to most of the occupants, it continued towards the Áras with my friend underneath, being dragged along inches above the road on his improvised sled.
I followed in a Garda car and watched as the bus reached its destination all too soon. Mick had still not given the all-clear as it approached the doorway of the Áras, where President McAleese and her husband stood waiting. So the order again went out to the driver: “Don’t stop!”. And to the President’s bemusement, the bus sailed past and proceeded to do six laps of the lawn before Mick finally gave us a smiling thumbs-up and it could stop.
Back in Ryan’s, half an hour later, I raised a pint to my fearless friend and apologised yet again for all the trouble I had caused: although, as I said in my defence, “It goes to show the confusion that can arise when people misuse words”. It had been a stressful evening, at least for me. But for Mick, it was all in a day’s work. “You know the old saying”, he told me, as we tapped glasses, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
* fmcnally@irishtimes.com