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The Curragh is an alien planet, a sand plain of 5000 acres’ commonage, inhabited by sheep and gorse bush and the Irish army (picture not the military might of your own countries — instead imagine something more like grown up boy scouts).
I took fair Helene across the plain, across the thistle fields into the unrelenting but generally pleasant breeze. We picked mystery mushrooms and took shelter under one lonely tree before striking out for the edge of the army camp.
How to describe the bunkers? They are much like what you’d imagine defending the beaches at Normandy: concrete boxes buried entirely underground, with thin slits looking out at ground level. Invisible from a distance, sinister protrusions from the featureless plain up close. They were put in place for training purposes, but are now long disused. The bunkers are accessed through trapdoors in the ground, set back ten or so feet from the main room. Most were sealed with wooden trapdoors, but many of the doors had rotted or disappeared, leaving unannounced square holes dropping into gloom.
I stood over one of these holes contemplating the dark as Helene exercised herself some two hundred yards off (walking with herself is a little like walking a border collie). I clapped, listening to my clap’s echo in a fence a ways away.
Something baaed. A clear and loud baa from underground. From the hole. I called to H and beckoned her over. I clapped again, and lo: another baa. ‘There’s a sheep down there,’ we agreed. I put my head in the hole, and saw a white face staring at me from the gloom at the end of the short, low corridor. ‘This is commonage. No one will be seeking this sheep out in the immediate future. He will die shortly,’ we agreed.
I am not given to exhibitions to impress herself, but I am still not sure what I would have done was I alone. I was not alone, and down that hole I climbed. Cursing my sandals as I shuffled through the rotten trapdoor and junk that littered the corridor. I had to stoop almost double until I reached the concrete bunker.
A sheep stood there, trembling. He baaed once or twice, quietly. We were lit only by the gun holes at head height. Ultimately he was only a sheep, and I have handled sheep before, but in that four squared metre box he seemed big and wild and unpredictable in his terror. I saw bones and sheep skulls littering the floor, and this seemed like a terrible way to die, even for the stupidest of farm animals.
I moved towards the sheep with my hands held out, and he roared and ran into the far corners of the bunker, jumping blindly and butting his head against the concrete. Leaping almost to the ceiling. As I reached out he skirted me and ran up the corridor, standing under freedom, bleating. Not jumping.
Helene had me pause while she took a photo (pictured). I approached again, and he barrelled past me back into the room. I couldn’t grab him, he was too violent and I was too wary. He jumped and jumped again into the walls.
I found that speaking calmed both me and the sheep. I can’t remember what words I used, but Helene later reported that I repeated ‘Relax, you are just a sheep,’ over and over as I edged towards the trembling animal. He stood still, perhaps exhausted, and I got two fistfuls of his back. He bolted again up the corridor, and i trailed after him holding on. At the trapdoor I lifted, and he jumped, and Helene hauled, and he was out on the grass. His nose bloody from battering it on rough concrete. I followed him out and we watched him run away, pause to stare at us, then join the flock. They gathered around him in welcome, almost as if they were intelligent animals.
