This Human Season Page 14

  He’s nineteen himself now. I’d like it if he could come and stay. He’s in his first year of University at Bristol. Sorry about it all.

  Love, John.

  Then he left the folded note at the bottom of the stairs and tiptoed up to sleep in the spare room. He lay awake, remembered the things he used to think of to get himself to sleep when he was a kid, how he used to circulate the few benevolent images he got from the Saturday Pictures.

  Chapter 21

  Her visit with Sean was on the Wednesday. On Monday she got the tobacco, an ounce. On Tuesday she remembered the Clingfilm. She was shocked she’d not thought of it before. She went out to get it and she got another ounce as well, chiding herself in the lashing rain for not getting it all on the Monday. She’d put that morning by to write to Sean and now she was losing the half of it. When she got in, she made herself a cup and started thinking about her son; how the early years of the Troubles had hit him hard.

  Just a boy he’d seen the troops come in to take command, he heard the chaos the night they took away the men for internment, heard the stories that came back from interrogations. When his two uncles, Kathleen’s brothers William and Peader, were in Long Kesh, he was sent down to his grandmother’s every week with bits and pieces for the parcels. Back then, the prisoners wore their own clothes and cooked their own meals. After Kathleen’s father died in 1972, Sean’s grandmother, Anne Marie got on with it by herself but Sean lent a hand and went to the butcher’s for her when he could. ‘It’s not funny for Granny getting them parcels together,’ he said. Everybody was in the same boat, she’d replied, every other house in West Belfast had someone missing from it. The prisoners relied on those parcels. He brought back steak one time and Anne Marie cooked it and put it out on tin foil to cool. The dog ate it so his grandmother went to her purse and took the money out for him to get another steak. ‘And that’ll be the last.’ She’d cooked it again and when it was the old woman sat down on her doorstep. Her neighbour came out, shopping bag in hand, rain hat on, saw the old woman there and asked what the matter was. Then she gave Anne Marie the money from her purse and went back inside. Sean had gone over to thank the woman.

  ‘You tell Anne Marie that whenever I can help her I will and she’s only to ask,’ said the woman standing, and her husband in his chair, and Sean saw that they were having bread and sugar sandwiches with their tea.

  These were the things he kept to tell her when he got home. He was a mimic as well, her Sean, a natural storyteller. It was his grandfather, Paddy Moran, Sean’s father who coaxed him, pointing and insisting they all pay attention while Sean was describing the peelers or the Brits, the box-formation movement of the British soldiers with their loud-hailer, and taking off their voices, ‘Disperse or we’ll shoot!’ and the jeering of their neighbours. ‘Disperse – or we’ll throw stones!’

  In late ’72, Thomas, Paddy’s second-youngest boy, ‘Uncle Tommy’, was shot in the back by the Brits, climbing over a fence behind the Falls Road.

  Sean was twelve at the time of the funeral and he had stood awestruck and full of untravelled emotion as three men, with balaclavas and berets fired off over the coffin with its tricolour flag.

  Her husband had gone around asking for headache pills. ‘That’s five he’s got now,’ said Mary, eleven at the time.

  His grandfather, Paddy, had not shed a tear that day and he criticized the priest for going too fast such that the father turned to him and said out loud, ‘So tell me, what part did I leave out, Paddy?’

  ‘That oul’ bastard doesn’t care about Thomas being gone,’ said Sean the father.

  Young Sean made his own way up to his grandfather’s, coming back with the tales of Republican history. Then one day about two months after Thomas had died, Sean came in and said, ‘Granda’s hair’s dropped out.’ The next week he told them Paddy was moving to Dublin and that he’d said for Sean to say his goodbyes for him. And her husband went up The Fiddlers, came home blind-drunk and slept curled up around the small fern tree in the front of their house.

  In his early teens, ’73, ’74, Sean was the quiet patriot. Full of borrowed virtue. He read the history books and Irish writers that he got from the library. Kathleen heard the same songs played over and over. Now, when she put a Christy Moore on in the evenings and she heard that man’s tender, careful voice picking through his thoughts and feelings it brought to mind the afternoon she went through her dead mother’s things. Sean had been just fourteen then, standing by while she held this and that up to show him, a brooch, an envelope with a baby curl in it, a shopping list, a saying kept from the paper.

  Now she put the tray on her lap, straightened out the piece of toilet paper and pressed down with the black biro. The moment before she began was full of him. Sean, clear-eyed and true. Sean with his three-in-the-morning kisses, crouching, smiling . . . then gone. What could she write to him that was true? That would put things right?

  * * *

  Eilish Purcell stumbled in from across the road all worked up because Bernadette Curran had been arrested that morning and taken to Springfield Barracks for questioning. She’d got Bernie’s three kids with her and had come over to use the phone.

  ‘Go in, go in, go in,’ she was saying as if she’d three dogs with her.

  ‘That’s my day ruined.’

  She spent the morning talking about the plans for the street party next summer, smoking through her pack and occasionally commenting on what the three little ones were doing.

  ‘Leave that scab alone, Bobby, wait till it falls off. It is all right if they rip the newspaper? Sure they’ve no toys or nothing and I’m useless with weans now I’m out of the habit.’

  The oldest girl played apart, fiddling with her shoes and socks, humming and flashing a smile at the grown-ups. The two little boys were arguing about which of them was bad.

  ‘You’re both bad,’ judged Mrs Purcell.

  ‘Sure you’re all right to leave them with me and go off if you want.’ Mrs Purcell trembled before the temptation. She was always busy with various residents’ committees; she was building a youth club for Ballymurphy, raising money and enlisting help. Now she was waiting to go off with Mrs O’Sullivan to fetch for the co-op from the wholesalers. They’d converted an old Volkswagon camper van into a small shop – you couldn’t get anywhere to buy at a cheap price, so they had to bring it in.

  ‘No, I won’t go,’ she said, reflectively, exploring her back teeth with a finger. ‘We can get tinned spaghetti hoops at three pence less than him up there, sure isn’t tinned fruit a price but we’re getting it a wee bit cheaper than most, then I’m after some tinned rice pudding. It’ll be the RUC spoiling many a dinner round here today if that Bernadette doesn’t get back sharp.’ She was red-faced, fanning herself with her hand. ‘I think I’m going through the change.’

  ‘Take off your coat, Eilish.’

  ‘No I won’t, just in case.’

  By mid-afternoon, Bernadette Curran was round to get her children. She’d got a taxi from outside the hospital and found she had no money on her. ‘I went off in my slippers,’ she said, showing her feet, ‘and without my purse, but the taxi fella was a nice man from Lenadoon and he says till me, you just out of Springfield? and I says, Aye, and he says, No charge.’

  Kathleen made her a cup of tea and with her three children hanging on to her she told them the story: she was taken off at seven . . .

  ‘Half-six it was,’ said Mrs Purcell, touching the rim of her black-browed glasses.

  ‘So they says to me what’s the gun in the back yard for and I says sure yous are the ones as found it, I didn’t know it was there and I’ve complained before to this here barracks about the fences on my back yard always being tore to pieces by the Brits coming in and out, which is why anyone can get through. They ask me is it this and is it that kind of a gun. I says I don’t know. Anyway they bring this woman in to sit with us and she’s a bit on the large side and we gets to talking about that Unislim exercise program
me, well she asks what exercises work for the thighs and I try to tell her what you do and all and then I says to her hang on I’ll have to show you, so I get down on the floor and I’m lifting my leg up and down, hold on a minute.’ She lay down on her side and dipped a pointed toe before and behind her other leg. ‘Like this.’

  The children were pleased, and the two boys hung on to her, trying to ride her leg and the girl bent her knees and squatted to watch.

  ‘Och you did not,’ said Mrs Purcell, enjoying the joke, gobbling at her tea and dribbling it, laughing.

  Bernadette got up, hands on her thighs, leaning forward. ‘Aye, I did and your man says to me, that’s enough and I want to know about the gun and I says to him again, I don’t know about the gun then she asks me, being a Catholic what do we do for our stomachs after the kids so I says well there’s sit-ups and then they have my photo taken with two Red Caps and it’s the nicest photo of me I’ve ever seen so I ask if I can have a copy and he says to me, “Just go home.”’

  She lit a cigarette and gave them a broad smile. ‘So that’s been my day.’

  ‘Do you want me to give the kids something to eat, give you a chance to get yourself straight?’

  ‘No, thanks for everything, Kathleen and yourself, Mrs Purcell, but we’ll be getting home. Are seeing your Sean tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Kathleen, looking at the clock.

  ‘Give him our love,’ said Mrs Purcell, rising.

  When they had gone Kathleen put the dinner on and it wasn’t until the kids were in bed that she got to write her letter, though she’d been thinking of it all day.

  ‘Tell him he’s the only brother worth having,’ said Aine before she went to bed. There’d been a row over at the McCanns’ after school with all the kids over there and Liam’d come in murderous-faced, calling his sister ‘an embarrassment’.

  ‘You’re an embarrassment,’ Aine had cried at him when they got in, uncertain, wild.

  It was hard to pick which hurts mattered. Kathleen called Aine back down. ‘You’re my baby girl.’

  ‘Is Sean still your baby? What about Liam? He’s a baby.’

  ‘Come on now.’

  ‘Tell him Liam’s a nightmare. Tell him I miss him and wish it was

  Liam in there.’

  ‘I’ll give him your love.’

  One day, in ’77, a young man came to the door asking for Sean and she’d said to him that she’d not seen him for a day or two and he seemed relieved and said that she’d not see him for another couple of weeks maybe more as Sean had gone down to the Free State. She’d asked him whether it would be too much to ask him something. He’d looked regretful, and said I’ve a feeling I know what you want to ask me and I don’t know whether to tell you. The poor boy, standing on her doorstep.

  She’d said, ‘Tell me the truth, is our Sean in the ’Ra?’

  He said, ‘Don’t breathe it to nobody, keep it to yourself.’

  She went upstairs and cried, she didn’t tell her husband. A month or so later he himself heard Sean upstairs opening and closing a gun and came down crowing about his son being in the ’Ra. She’d wanted to punch his lights out.

  ‘And that’s all he is to you! He’s more than that to me.’

  When Sean came back, she was always nervous about the house, biting the skin around her thumbnails, and the house was raided twice and one time her husband went away with the soldiers. She could count on him for that at least. Between them they gave Sean a bit of time he’d maybe not have had otherwise. She had a cry every night in those days. Then one night her son, Sean, had come in and sat with her by the electric fire and seeing her gnawing at her hands he said, ‘Is something on your mind, Mummy?’

  ‘You’re on my mind.’ He said, ‘I’m all right.’

  She’d stood up and gone into the kitchen and cried and he’d come in and put his arms round her. ‘You know I’m in the ’Ra don’t you, Mummy?’

  She never told him not to do it. She said to herself he wouldn’t listen, and he was old enough to choose for himself. She could remember him aged three sitting by her as she made the tea, making his own version on the floor. And she’d looked at him and thought, Jesus, you’re going to die one day and she’d felt winter grasp her by the throat. Why hadn’t she told him not to do it? The truth was she was proud of him being it, she thought he’d get away with it, maybe she thought it would make her somebody.

  ‘I’m a stupid cow.’ But she wouldn’t let herself have the tears. ‘It’s not too late. You’re his mother. He loves you. Write to him now. And when you see him you can tell him.’

  When she wrote to him it was like she was speaking to the kernel of herself, the bit from which good things could grow. Darling Sean. The leisure centre was open. Theresa, as was once his girlfriend, was getting married. His brother was always at the rioting, his sister wasn’t coming back from England for Christmas, his father was the same as ever. Aine said to say he was the best brother and she missed him. She wondered if he couldn’t learn a trade for when he got out. She was going to be putting money by for him as soon as Christmas was done with. She wished it were her in his place so that he could have his life. She ought to have run away with him when he was a baby, they could have gone to the Free State. To America! To Hong Kong! Or Ceylon! It wouldn’t have mattered where. Anywhere but Ballybloodymurphy, Belfast, Ireland, the World, the Universe, as he used to write it. She was praying for him. She must close. Tomorrow, she would see his face. Wasn’t he always after saying to her, Mummy will you stop looking at me? She would be looking at him tomorrow, whether he liked it or not.

  Chapter 22

  Bolton stuck his head in the mess. He was wearing headphones, unplugged, the wire hanging at his side.

  ‘Just had a call,’ he said. ‘Only heard it because the needle got stuck on the second act of Carmen. Fluff. Where does fluff come from in here? They’ve rung through with a Special Visit for Seamus Nugent. It’s to go down as a family visit. It can’t be good news. Nugent hasn’t taken a visit in three years, he won’t put on the uniform.’

  ‘The hard man,’ Frig said, proffering a roll of fruit pastilles.

  Bolton looked sad. ‘Always the purple one,’ and popped it in his mouth. ‘Dunn, will you take him down for it? Shandy’s supposed to be visits runner but I expect he’s too drunk—’

  ‘Should I run it past SO, Sir?’ asked Frig.

  ‘SO is sleeping it off in the stores. Mr Dunn’s going to bring the prisoner up.’ He stood at the circle a minute rather than going back to his office. ‘Wait up, I’ll go down with you Dunn, to get Nugent.’ He went for his cap and the two of them strode together towards the wing.

  ‘Prisoner 3334 O’Brien and Prisoner 1052 Nugent . . . both called Seamus as it happens. Open the cell, Officer Dunn.’

  Dunn fumbled with the keys, opened the door, stepped into the space. One of the men was squatting in the corner; the other was standing at the window, his back to his cellmate. There was a different smell, an eggy aroma, warm, somehow at once cosy and sickening.

  ‘The prisoner is going to the toilet, Sir.’

  He had a recurrent dream; in it he was desperate to open his bowels but could never find a toilet and when at last he found one and was about to unburden himself with the sense of imminent relief that borders on pleasure, he noticed that the walls of the toilet were transparent and he was being watched.

  ‘Don’t go in there for a while if you don’t mind,’ he’d said formally to Angie the night before. She’d been coming up the stairs with two cups of tea as he emerged.

  ‘Prisoner 1052 Nugent,’ Bolton had his eyes on the ceiling of the cell.

  ‘You have been called for a Special Visit. I’d hazard a guess that it’s important. Family news.’

  The prisoner at the window did not turn. The light outside was dim. There were no lights in their cells. The prisoner who’d been squatting sat now on his piece of foam. He put his finger and thumb to his jaw line and stroked it, looked ove
r at his cellmate, waiting.

  ‘Mr Nugent,’ said Bolton, dipping his head and venturing inside the cell. ‘It could be important news. I don’t know what it is. But it might be about your mother or father. Your wife.’

  The prisoner remained as he was, looking outside.

  ‘All right, ok.’ Bolton stepped backwards, uncertainly, out of the cell. Dunn was let home early. ‘Why don’t you go home, Dunn,’ Bolton said. ‘We don’t need more than ten of us to watch locked doors.’

  * * *

  ‘That poor wee lad got shot on the Clifton Road, waiting for a bus to go to the Crumlin Road prison,’ said Angela, when he got home, turning off the TV and watching the image fade to a dot. ‘He wasn’t even a proper prison officer but they still shot him. Twenty years old. Married for just three months.’

  ‘Hello you,’ said John Dunn, standing in the doorway of the front room. She remained crouching before the television; she closed her eyes for a second. The way he said those two words, in his flat-vowelled Michael Caine voice, it turned her over. It was the caution of the man that thrilled her. How much he kept back.