Blood-Dark Track by Joseph O'Neill Page B

when he got home, he was disappointed. His father and brother were in bed, fast asleep.
    The next day, water bailiffs found the nets Brendan had stowed in a ditch two fields south of the river. Salmon scales in the net were sent for analysis to Dublin, where they were identified by Dr Wendt as the scales of two salmon. Uncle Jim was summoned to court and charged. He didn’t comply with the summons and on the day of the hearing was in West Cork, looking for guns for the IRA campaign in the North. He learned about his convictions on four charges – poaching, possessing a net, and possessing parts of two salmon – and his fine (£21 10s. 10d.) from a headline in the Evening Echo .
    Uncle Jim, on his wages of £7 a week, was unable to pay the fine. He wrote to the Minister of Justice, explaining that he was the eldest of ten children and his earnings weren’t his to keep. The Minister replied that the best he could do was grant Jim an extra three months in which to pay the fine.
    Three months was all Jim needed. Three months took him into the next fishing season. On the first night of the new season, they caught enough salmon to pay the fine and plenty more.
    My uncle Jim’s decision to draw the bailiffs to himself was not a spontaneous self-sacrifice but the implementation of a plan that, whatever else happened, my grandfather was not to be caught: two years before, Jim O’Neill Senior had picked up a conviction and a large fine for poaching, and a second offence would have had very serious consequences. The irony was that his conviction arose from an entirely innocent visit to the river. My grandfather, at that time, was working at the ESB marina power station, where he befriended a man from Donegal, Jimmy McCloughlin. Jimmy was set on buying a car, even though he couldn’t drive. My grandfather said to him, ‘I know where there’s a nice little car for you; and I’ll teach you to drive.’ So Jimmy bought a 1946 Hillman Minx for £40 and my grandfather obtained full use of the vehicle for the duration of the driving lessons. In the course of one such lesson, they decided to go for a spin in West Cork. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, and the two men were accompanied by their wives. The lure of the river was always with my grandfather and as usual he couldn’t resist casting an eye over it. The day-trippers were sitting on a bank of the Bandon, admiring the scenery, when bailiffs appeared and asked what they were doing. ‘I’m out showing these Donegal people West Cork,’ my grandfather truthfully answered. Nevertheless, the next day there was a raid on the O’Neill house. By chance they uncovered two coal bags with scales of two salmon in them. Jim O’Neill was convicted and fined £48. It was a massive penalty, but it was the first and last time they ever caught him.
    The time my grandfather was arrested was the only time his son Kevin, my father, saw him drunk. My father (the third oldest son, after Jim and Brendan) said that he was occasionally taken poaching. ‘I hated it,’ he said. ‘It scared the hell out of me. For me, West Cork was about ambushes and murders and the Black and Tans. It was a bloodstained, haunted kind of place – spooky. The roads and fields were dark and isolated. Men were shot and buried there. I wasn’t like Brendan,’ my father said. ‘Brendan was fearless, as crazy as my dad.’
    Jim O’Neill wasn’t frightened in West Cork. He was at home there day or night: at home in townlands around Enniskean like Curraghcrowley, Desertserges and Farranasheshery, and at home, too, in further-flung Clonakilty, Kilbrittain, Drimoleague, Skibbereen.
    To my ears, these place-names continue to have the lyricism of the unfamiliar, even though I’ve now been to the villages and small towns they identify; and although I’ve seen the bunting that overhangs their streets and seen their houses sunlit in fresh coats of coral and mustard and avocado, and noted, furthermore, the signboards