This Human Season Read online

  Campbell put his hand on to the old man’s head and grabbed a handful of hair. He pulled him forwards with such a force that the man let drop his blanket.

  The cells went berserk, tin to brick, tin to brick, ‘Bastards!’

  Campbell pulled the naked man by his hair up towards the mirror, sweating and grinding his teeth.

  ‘Forget the fucking towels, bring them out naked!’

  While Campbell and the others went back for the next one, Frig told the first prisoner to squat over the mirror. The old man said no, he would not. Frig stood behind him, hands on his shoulders, kicked his legs apart. The prisoner’s body was shaking. Skids and Owen grabbed him, bent him forwards over the table, shoving his head down towards the floor and Dunn was to hold him there while they pulled his legs further apart. Dunn stood holding the man’s shoulders down, tensing to hold the weight that was being propelled forwards time and time again as the man resisted – wriggling, clenching, raising his head, then moving his face to try and bite – when the two officers grabbed a knee each and forced them up alongside his waist. The man let out a long wail.

  ‘Oh mother of God, oh sweet Mary . . .’

  ‘Fucking shut up and keep still,’ said Rabbit, shifting in closer. ‘Keep him still, Johnno. I can’t see a thing.’ He put his two thumbs between the man’s arse cheeks and the man’s head surged forwards and he let out a shout. Dunn braced, holding the man’s head against his stomach.

  Dunn felt bile rising the wrong way up the centre of his body creating a channel where there should be a void. In his mind he saw the midday grey of outside, smelt the earnest fragile sickness of the humdrum rain and longed to be in it, walking under his own steam, headed any which way. I never liked school, I never liked football, I never liked the army.

  Then Rabbit was done. He brushed his red flaking brow with his forearm, stepping backwards. ‘You take him now Skids. Put him against the wall. Bring the next.’

  Skids got behind the naked man, lifting him bodily, his arms in a lock under the man’s rib cage, almost wearing him across to the other wing.

  ‘Dead weight,’ he panted, pushing him up against the wall. ‘Keep your face to the wall.’

  One by one the prisoners were brought up. Campbell didn’t wait for a refusal but grabbed each one by the hair and dragged them. Some of them tried to remain in a sitting position and the other guards weighed in to help Campbell. As they got them to the table, Campbell would assert his mastery, kneeing a prisoner from behind, delivering blows with his stick.

  The grille opened and four or five more prison officers came down the wing with visored helmets, shields and batons and as soon as a cell door was open they went in with their sticks out, grabbing men.

  Rabbit took a breather to bid the reinforcements a good evening. He relaxed into the task now, saying to the prisoner before him, ‘Would you please bend over it, Sir? No? Right! Get the bastard lads.’ With the man held down, and Rabbit’s two fingers inside him, the others started to laugh, a slow laugh at first, then turning aside to give vent to their fullthroated laughter. Pitt and Owen were keeping watch over the searched prisoners against the wall and those who turned to look got a blow.

  Dunn could hear O’Malley shouting. All the time the din coming from the cells was building. It sounded like a full-scale riot. Bolton must surely be hearing the noise, but he did not come out of his office.

  Campbell was angry, excited, out of breath. ‘Get a fucking move on!’ he screamed at Rabbit. He strode up and down the wing, stopping outside of O’Malley’s cell.

  ‘Who’s the fucking OC now, eh? Who’s the fucking King of the Wing now, you Fenian scumbag.’

  Dunn had a prisoner’s head between his hands. He looked up to see

  Campbell’s face, a mixture of rage and joy.

  The other men were shaking their heads and cracking up. Frig was smiling on the side of his face nearest them. Skids was standing back with his hands on his hips; whether it was a physical pain on his face, or just breathlessness, Dunn couldn’t tell, but he looked awry.

  There was some frustration from the surplus officers, those who were standing outside the cells or up with the prisoners, and they were calling out to those who were handling the prisoners, ‘Come on, come on, you lot.’

  ‘Bloody hell take all day!’

  ‘Hey Rabbit, get your finger out, Rabbit!’

  ‘Yeah get your finger out!’

  The grille officer was standing behind his locked door, looking bitterly wise like an old soothsayer, muttering, ‘This isn’t working right.’

  The block door guard had his fingertips on the first grille and was peering through.

  Skids had one of the younger prisoners and was bringing him up the wing, baton in the small of his back. It was the artist. One or two of the prisoners against the wall tried to turn and say something to him and got blows to their shoulders. He leant across the table.

  ‘In there then,’ Skids said.

  The prisoner’s head went limp. Dunn had no need to hold it but he put his hands either side anyway.

  Rabbit scowled as if he were preparing an animal. Dunn recalled Rabbit saying before, ‘They’re not like you and me are. They choose to live in their own shit, you know. They don’t mind the filth, the Taigs, they grow up with it.’

  Dunn looked down at his boots and saw a small wet drop on the toecap of his left boot, widening. The boy’s eyes were screwed up, his mouth open.

  Three or four officers were staggered around a cell door, trying to get Moran and McIlvenny out. Skids was holding a single towel. Shandy was standing aside, hands over his forehead, calling out, ‘The fucker’s nutted me!’

  It seemed that Moran had jumped out from behind the cell door and cracked Shandy across the bridge of the nose. The other officers went quickly down to join him. They tossed the scrawny, academic looking McIlvenny on to the concrete and set about giving him a kicking while Campbell himself held Moran, shaking him, and making him look at McIlvenny.

  ‘See that, that’s because of you he’s getting that.’ He pulled Moran’s head close to his. ‘You know where I live, do you? You know where I live?’ McIlvenny had his hands over his face, knees up at his chest, while the prison guards booted him in the stomach, the back, and the arse. Moran was held with his arms behind him and Campbell was still shaking him – not entirely of his own will – he was shaking in spite of himself. Dunn saw how their expressions matched, Moran and Campbell, as they looked at the man on the floor being kicked. They were both gripped as if watching a disaster spread, a fire or a flood. The men who’d been doing the kicking stood back from their effort, wiping their noses with their arms, taking a look at each other to see if it was done.

  ‘Let’s get the rest of them out of their cells and get this job finished.’

  ‘See who else wants to fuck around.’

  ‘You all right there Shandy?’

  McIlvenny’s neck stretched and he put a hand out and felt for the towel beside him. He pulled it across his backside.

  ‘This one can go on the boards again,’ Campbell offered Moran to Owen. ‘Stick him in twenty-six. Some fucking use your OC is to you now.’

  There were just two cells that remained. One was occupied by O’Malley and his cellmate, the other had a single prisoner. With an ear each two officers pulled the single prisoner to the table. His hair fell forwards over his shoulders in two pieces. Rabbit put his fingers up the man’s anus. The man’s body tensed and he moved his head to the side, his entire face clenched.

  ‘Let’s just check the mouth,’ said Rabbit, moving around the man and forcing the same fingers into the man’s mouth. The group of officers standing by, the grille guard too, fell about laughing. Rabbit looked up at Dunn. ‘Get the last ones out, Johnno.’

  ‘Aye, give me a break now,’ said Campbell.

  Frig and Dunn went over to O’Malley’s cell. Frig opened up. Dunn went inside with towels. O’Malley’s cellmate was standing, blinking in the corner of t
he room, his hands holding a towel around his waist. His chest was moving. O’Malley was beside him.

  ‘All right,’ said Dunn. ‘All right, let’s go steady, just come with me, come on.’

  The younger man refused to squat. One of the officers came forwards. He was forced down in any case and given a cursory check before being taken over to the wall.

  O’Malley stood outside the cell with Dunn behind him, surveying the scene. Many of the prisoners against the wall tried to look at him.

  ‘Bend over,’ said Rabbit, indicating the table.

  ‘No.’

  A few of the prisoners managed to look round.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Campbell suddenly, rolling his sleeves back down.

  ‘We’ve made our point. Take him away; take the lot of them over to D wing. Let’s call it a day.’

  Afterwards, most of the officers went off for teatime, for a good drink. Dunn went into the TV room to be apart from the others. He could hear the crescendo of opera from the PO’s office, at full volume.

  He didn’t want any company; the noise of the TV was good enough cover. He was watching it without hearing a word that was being said, without seeing at all what was being shown. Skids came in, offered him a cigarette. He shook his head.

  ‘Those wing-shifts aren’t easy,’ said Skids, shuffling forward his chair to be close to him. ‘I think your man Rabbit takes it too far.’

  ‘Need to take a leak.’

  Dunn got up and went out into the dark privacy of a toilet cell. He saw in his mind’s eye McIlvenny’s hand reaching for the towel. He sat for a while with his head in his hands. The letter to his son creaked in his inside pocket.

  Foot above pedal, the charging of the gears, feeling the vehicle starting to pull; then foot to pedal and the wheels turn.

  His chest surged and he cried out. He wept for a few minutes, his chest on his knees, then he sat up, wiped his eyes with the sharp-edged toilet paper, flushed the toilet, and went back out.

  Skids was in the mess now, alone, smoking, his chair pushed away from the table, his legs planted wide.

  ‘I was looking for you.’ He greeted Dunn with gratitude, and a touch of real happiness – as if they were friends. ‘Wondered what you were about. I don’t like the nights in here over much.’

  Then he took his cigarette from his lips, and holding it like a pen, pretended to study it. ‘I wouldn’t let anyone do that to me.’

  Chapter 19

  On her way up to the Ballymurphy Credit Union to sort out the loan plan for Christmas, Kathleen stopped in at The Fiddlers at lunchtime and Aine begged to be allowed to stay, as there was no school.

  ‘Bring her back sober,’ she said from the door.

  Aine was straight up on a stool at the bar with a lemonade and some crisps, treated like a queen, smiling when she couldn’t follow the joke. She sat with a pen and a beer mat, doodling, or playing hangman with one of the men, usually Fergal O’Hanlon, who was in there while it was open, going off labouring for the council when it wasn’t.

  ‘I see your gorgeous redhead’s back, Sean.’

  The pub was a kinder place by far than school and a world without women, wives and mothers was a place without guilt or drudgery, drawing on ancient loyalties, brimfull of men with their red eyes sentimentally inclined, tobacco-stained skin, sagging mouths.

  After closing, when the doors were shut, and a group of big-handed, slow-eyed men close by, Fergal took out his harmonica and played across the landscape of melancholy.

  With his head on the tilt, the old loose skin on his hands falling back, one hand fluttering before the small instrument like a pigeon wing, he addressed himself to Aine. He had an eye closed, an eye open, and the eye that was open looked smeared with the dark but in the centre of it, there was light. The other men fell quiet and looked on; they had become a congregation. Occasionally as well-known chords surfaced, voices would step in with words and then fall away again.

  She saw her father stand by Fergal, transported, his eyes closed; finding privacy. He put a hand softly, tenderly around Fergal’s back, resting it on his shoulder, and moved his chin to the harmony, marvelling.

  Of a sudden, Fergal stopped, both eyes snapped open and he took the harmonica from his mouth and turned his head to look at Sean’s hand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ asked Sean. Then following the direction of Fergal’s stern look, he saw his own hand, reddened and removed it.

  The group of men roared and hearing the sounds of each other encouraged them to hoot and wheeze all the more.

  ‘“What?” your man says.’

  ‘“What?” says the other.’

  And Sean was grinning at himself and Fergal shook his head and put the harmonica to his mouth again.

  Sean winked at his girl on the bar stool in the middle of it all, the girl with long red hair, who was beaming at him, more in love with Sean Moran than her mother had ever been.

  Chapter 20

  When he got home from work the night of the wing-shift, Angela was smiling her secretive smile that revealed more than it hid. Her boss had lent her the Datsun for the weekend, to try it out. He was offering it at a good price.

  ‘What else is he offering,’ said John Dunn, deadpan, pulling on his jeans. He’d had a shower. ‘I said, what else is he offering?’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Are you slabbering, John?’

  ‘No, I’m chewing a brick,’ he mimicked her. He was buttoning his shirt. He pulled it at the collar, took a quick look in the bathroom mirror and smoothed down his hair.

  ‘Will we take it for a spin, then, John?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘Jesus, you’re home for once, it’s Friday night, we’ve got a brand new car . . .’

  ‘It’s not ours.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, so I don’t.’

  He lowered his head as he came out of the bathroom and looked her in the eyes. ‘When was the last time we slept together?’

  Frowning, tawny hair and freckles, she was sweet looking, sober and clean, the real thing. But with just the one drink in her, and people around, her eyes bulged, her mascara smeared and she looked not so much tarty as needy, and he disliked this recollection.

  ‘You know what I mean Angie. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play-act.’

  ‘For Christ’s sakes John. Why are we even talking about it? We’ve never had to talk about it before. You’ve barely been home!’ She put her hand across her middle and held her arm. She was stood in the corner of the stairwell at the top of the stairs.

  He looked past her to the small useless frosted-glass window from which the paint was peeling and which he’d been meaning to do something about.

  ‘I’ve got the money now to make this place better and not the time. What’s the point in that? What do you do of an evening now? Work late? Go for a drink with your boss? Go for a drive?’

  ‘I’ve no secrets from you, John,’ she said. She was wearing eye make-up and lipstick that looked as if it had just been put on. For him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you.’ She made her way down the stairs. When she got to the bottom step she looked back. He had his fingertip under a piece of loose paintwork at the window frame.

  ‘Another letter came for you today from England.’

  ‘Let’s try out that car then.’ He came trotting down the stairs, putting his hands on her hips, guiding her to the front door. ‘What about that promise you made me?’

  ‘You’ll be lucky.’

  ‘Yup.’

  He opened the front door, let the dark in. Angie switched on the porch light.

  ‘Smell it!’ she said, the car door open, leaning in, her feet almost out of her slippers, nose to the dash. ‘It’s got that new car smell, it smells of coconut.’

  He went round to the passenger side, got in.

  ‘What does it do to the g
allon?’ he said dubiously, his finger on the button for the electric windows.

  ‘I’ve never had electric windows,’ she said, swinging her legs inside and closing the door. She started it up. He gave a half-nod of modest approval, closed his own door.

  ‘Go and lock up, Angie, and let’s take it for a spin.’

  With the radio playing the slow and curious sound of ‘Walking on the Moon’, they made their way through East Belfast, alternating the windows. One down, one up, one up, one down. After the junction that lay between Castlereagh Road and Ballygowan Road, Angie put her foot down and the silver Datsun flew along. John lowered his seat.

  She pulled into a lay-by, flicked off the lights and turned off the engine.

  ‘Right then Mr Dunn. Now for the rest of my test.’

  He leant over and kissed her, putting a hand on her breast. Then he took her own hand and put it down between his legs. She unzipped him, and bent forwards.

  When he closed his eyes he saw a man with his head forced to the side, his eyes wide – the image had come up on him from behind, like a knife to his neck. He put his hands on her head to stop her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, sitting up and putting on the light over the mirror.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s not you. I don’t know. Let’s get back home.’

  * * *

  That night, when she was asleep, he crept back downstairs and read the letter she’d left on the table. Mark was going to come over, as soon as the university term was finished. He’d more than likely be staying for Christmas, then. Jesus. That was a bit heavy going. How was he going to cope? Christmas. He’d felt relieved that with the job he wouldn’t have to go to Angie’s family. What did the boy want?

  John took another leaf of paper from her writing block on the shelves in the front room and he sat down, pen in hand. He looked at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. It was after one. He was on early unlock.

  Dear Angela,

  I should have told you this before. When I was nineteen, in said she’d deal with it and not to worry. That was that, I thought. Then fourteen years on I was back in Tidworth and so was this mate of mine from the early days. I bumped into him in the Naafi and he told me how he’d been in Andover and run into that girl and that she had a teenage kid now. Looked like me, spit image. I thought he was joking but I was going to go and see for myself except I was sent back out here the next Monday. In the summer of ’75 I went over for a break and I went by the pub he said she worked in and I got to speak to her. We had a few drinks and she told me that it was true, her son was mine. Her dad had more or less raised the boy. Mark Wilson is the boy’s name. We agreed it was best to leave things how they stood for the time but she told me where I might find the boy, just to see him, not to talk. She told me he earnt a few bob doing the milk round in the town. I saw him then. There was something about him that was like me that was true. Those letters from England are from him. His mother told him about me and he says he’d like to get to know me.