Malachy sought help from the IRA in vain

Malachy’s appeal to the IRA fails at a moment when his family has returned from America with no money and no secure place to stay. The episode pits his account of past service against an official’s demand for documentary proof, and turns a hoped-for source of support into another refusal. Its immediate result is not assistance but a walk back through Dublin, where a police officer becomes the first person to offer practical help.

The family’s need and the journey to Terenure

At the Dublin bus station, Malachy tells Angela that he is going to see an IRA man in Terenure. He promises that he will return with money and food, and brings Frank along to help carry what he expects to receive. Angela initially wants Frank to stay with her, but agrees when Malachy says he will need help carrying the money. The child’s understanding of his parents’ changing moods rests on small differences in address: when Angela calls Malachy “your Pop,” Frank takes it as a sign that she is in a good mood.

The journey itself makes the distance between expectation and reality tangible. Malachy walks quickly, holding Frank’s hand, and asks passersby for directions. In Terenure, a man with a patch over one eye recognizes the kind of appeal Malachy is making. He, too, says he did his bit, but recounts that his service left him with one eye and a pension too small to support him. His account offers a bitter counterpoint before Malachy even reaches the IRA contact: past sacrifice has not guaranteed material security.

The claim and the refusal

At the house, the woman who answers first says that Mr. Heggarty is busy. Malachy insists that he has walked from central Dublin with his young son, leaving his wife and three other children at the bus station, and says they will wait if necessary. The woman then admits them. Mr. Heggarty receives Malachy at a desk near a fire, where Malachy explains that he has returned from America with his wife and four children, has nothing, and fought with a Flying Column during the Troubles. He asks for help in his time of need.

Mr. Heggarty looks through a large book after taking Malachy’s name, but finds no record of his service. Malachy responds with a long account of where and when he fought, how he had to be smuggled out of Ireland because of a price on his head, and how he is raising his sons to love Ireland. The appeal therefore rests both on his family’s immediate need and on the patriotic service he says should entitle him to assistance. The missing record defeats the claim in the eyes of the official, who says he cannot give money to every man who arrives claiming to have done his part.

Malachy turns the refusal into a lesson for Frank, describing the new Ireland as a place of little men in little chairs and little bits of paper, and asking whether this is the Ireland men died for. Mr. Heggarty does not settle the dispute over Malachy’s past. He says he will look into the claim and let him know what turns up, but offers only coins for the bus back into the city. Malachy asks whether the amount can be increased to the price of a pint. When Mr. Heggarty challenges the request, Malachy insists that one pint is hardly drink and says walking never killed anyone. Mr. Heggarty orders him to leave, threatens to call a guard, and says the IRA will not support the Guinness family.

Return to the bus station and immediate consequence

The refusal leaves Malachy and Frank to walk back without the promised money. Night falls as they pass streets where children play, mothers call from doorways, and families eat at home. Frank is tired and hungry and wants his father to carry him, but reads Malachy’s fixed expression as a sign that asking would be useless. He runs to keep pace while Malachy holds his hand.

At the station, Angela and the three boys have fallen asleep on a bench. When Malachy tells her there is no money, she sobs and asks what they will do. A uniformed man approaches, learns that the family is stranded without money or accommodation and that the children are hungry, and offers to take them to the police barracks as he is going there to report for duty. The IRA encounter thus ends not with the promised financial aid but with a different, immediate form of assistance from a Dublin police officer.

Narrative and thematic significance

The scene links a political history of sacrifice to the administrative test of a written record. Malachy presents himself as a veteran whose service and family’s need warrant help; Mr. Heggarty consults a book, finds no entry, and withholds the money. The contrast gives Frank a sharply embodied introduction to the gap between national ideals and the institutions that administer assistance: the father speaks of men who died for Ireland, while the official’s practical response is limited to bus fare and a warning to leave.

The episode also keeps the family’s need concrete rather than abstract. Malachy brings one child on the long walk to make his appeal, while Angela and the other boys wait at the station; after the refusal, the family is again together, exhausted and without resources. The final offer comes from outside the political network Malachy approached. That turn does not resolve the family’s hardship, but it shifts the scene from a failed appeal to the next means of surviving the night.