This Human Season Page 18

  ‘What’s that?’ he said, aspirating the words.

  ‘ID, please, Sir.’

  The man raised an eyebrow and felt around inside his breast pocket. He produced a handkerchief and then a pass, which he handed to Dunn through the gate. Dunn scrutinized it. Carl Lingard, Assistant Governor. Cunnilingus.

  ‘You are going to let me in now, Officer . . .?’ He handed back the pass.

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid we’re asking every visitor today to comply with a security test.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I’ve not heard of this!’

  ‘Well, I’m going to give you a few instructions and if you fulfil them we can go on from there. It’s standard. Today.’

  ‘This place is getting more preposterous by the minute.’

  ‘If you could turn about and take five paces, Mr Lingard.’ Carl Lingard did so, muttering all the while.

  ‘Now three to your left, Sir.’

  ‘One, two three,’

  ‘Now bend down, Sir, and slightly to your right there you’ll find the keys to the gate.’

  Lingard picked them up. ‘You cheeky bugger. How the devil did they get there?’

  Dunn swung the keyring a little.

  Lingard broke into a resounding belly laugh. He handed the keys to Dunn who admitted him, thanking him and apologizing.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘John Dunn.’

  ‘You’re new. You were on Bolton’s block last week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, well, I thought so. New and English. That accounts for it. There’s not many of us in here who still have a sense of humour.’ He offered Dunn his hand. Dunn noticed the gold signet ring on his little finger. ‘Damned good show.’

  ‘Well thank you for that,’ he added, as Dunn showed him to the second gate. ‘I don’t think I’ve laughed here since 1976.’

  ‘Mr Lingard, last week you mentioned that if we ever needed to speak to you about anything you’d be available?’

  Lingard stepped back up to the fence. ‘To me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Sir.’

  ‘Well, what we’d do in that case – um let me think – is, well, when are you back on the block?’

  ‘Think I’ll be back on it tomorrow, Sir.’

  ‘Right well, Monday we’ll get personnel to call you up and then you can say you’re off to see them and discreetly pop along into my office for a chat. Present yourself at personnel and they’ll show you where to go. Just knock.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll make sure I can open my door!’ said Lingard, raising his fist in the air in a cheery salute, half Che Guevara, half Terry Thomas.

  Chapter 27

  Mrs Mulhern was standing at the door of her own kitchen, holding her hands, her lips moving long before she spoke. ‘I said, whatever do you think you’re doing now?’

  ‘She’s doing your cupboards out, missus.’ Aine was barring her entry.

  ‘Whatever for?’

  Kathleen was standing on a stool wiping inside Mrs Mulhern’s cupboards. She bent at the knees and ducked to see out the back window. She had Liam in the back yard picking up the litter.

  On Sunday afternoons, she and the kids more often than not came over to cook Mrs Mulhern her tea, have a clean up and give her some company if her own family weren’t about. She’d had fifteen children and now she lived alone and worried about them and anyone in any way connected with them or the idea of them. Watching the news she’d point out a female news reporter and get herself upset about her daughter who was in Armagh, the women’s prison. ‘She’s a girl, you see, like that one you see.’

  ‘There’s a load of shite in here from the nineteen-fifties.’

  ‘And it’s still good. I don’t want you in there.’

  There was a tap at the front window and Mrs Mulhern put her hand on her heart. ‘Lord save us.’

  ‘It’s Father Pearse!’ called Aine.

  Kathleen got down from the stool to look. She warned Mrs Mulhern as she went past, ‘Now you stay out of that kitchen.’

  The old woman went over to the packets and jars on the countertop.

  ‘All good!’

  ‘It’s you I’m after Kathleen,’ said Father Pearse. ‘Hello there Mrs Mulhern, all right are you?’

  ‘Aye I’m all right,’ came the grumble. The old woman put a hand on Aine’s arm. ‘I don’t like the modern ones. He rushed through my Paul’s funeral, rushed it through. I don’t care for his sort. And I don’t care if he has got a lot to do, my Paul was special to me.’

  ‘Was he the last one?’

  ‘No. No, he was one of the last though.’

  Father Pearse had come by with a letter from Sean, seen the note on the door and gone across the road to find them.

  ‘I didn’t see you at Clonard this morning, thought you might be up at the Kesh,’ Kathleen said.

  ‘Aye I was. Do you want to read it and I’ll wait on you. I’m sure you’re in a rush to hear his news.’

  ‘No, Father. That’s all right. I saw him Wednesday, that’s fast to have a letter back from him. No, it’ll wait. Father Fitzgerald gave a nice wee talk today. All about how Christmas might as well be no more than a fairytale if it doesn’t reveal the God of Love, about seeking the hidden God in everything. So I’m busy looking for him in Mrs Mulhern’s kitchen cupboards just the now.’

  Receiving communion, the wafer stuck to her tongue and was hard to swallow and the priest said, ‘do this in memory of me’, this is the body, this the blood shed for you. They kept the wound open; that was the faith, to stay with it, abide in it, not to deny it or to try to heal it.

  ‘Kathleen, Sean was on what they call the boards again when I went into the block this morning.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘So you didn’t see him at mass then?’

  ‘No, not when he’s on punishment.’ He took her hand in his. ‘It was Gerard McIlvenny as gave me the note. He’d left it with him before he went.’ He thought of McIlvenny’s stooping posture and winced.

  ‘Sit yourself down, Father,’ she said, indicating the armchair.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve to worry overly now about Sean. From what I understand he’s not hurt. He assaulted a screw again, so they’re saying. He’s had three days in the punishment block, should be back on the block this evening.’

  ‘He didn’t get a beating did he, Father, my Sean?’ The father shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Would you tell me if he had?’

  ‘Is there bad news, Mummy?’ Aine came in.

  ‘No, lovely, no. Well, aye, in a way there is. We just don’t know anything. The father here’s come to tell us about Sean. He’s on punishment again. Go put the kettle on for Mrs Mulhern. Help her make the tea.’

  Father Pearse looked tired and dishevelled, the black of his suit was grey and his shirt was grey too. A man without a woman. She saw that his shoes were filthy; they had dirt and rubbish stuck to them as if they’d been tarred and feathered.

  ‘I wonder what I’m doing wasting my time at the church with the praying,’ she said. ‘Och don’t listen to me. There’s the violence before and after the service. The church is filled with people. It’s not just us, the Proddies go to theirs. You tell me why, then? Are we getting different stories? Are they being told to kick the shit out of their neighbours?’

  ‘From the time of Christ there’s been violence Kathleen; St Paul persecuted the Christians until he saw the light didn’t he? It’s human nature. And the church is just humans. Well, now the church is very contradictory surely, there’s a difference in what it says and what it does; the church has been involved in bloodshed, of course.’

  ‘Why is it that Sean always has to be at the front of things? Why can’t my boys just hang back like them Purcell boys do? Some people hang back and they don’t suffer do t
hey? Is that not a sin, Father?’

  Kathleen heard the kettle straining over its own steam and Mrs Mulhern and Aine exchanging orders.

  ‘I wonder myself sometimes what is a sin, Kathleen.’

  ‘Well if it’s me you’re asking Father we’re both in the shite.’

  ‘What I mean is, how do we tell sin from what is breathing and eating and shitting even . . .’

  Aine had two mugs of tea. She stopped in her tracks. ‘A sin is a thing you know you oughtn’t to do because it will harm someone else. That’s different to using the toilet, Father. You can’t help that.’ She placed their mugs of tea beside them and went back out, returning with an ashtray.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Aine,’ said the father, taking the ashtray in his hands, balancing it on his knees and reaching around his pockets for his tobacco and papers. ‘But those boys, you see, they’ve nothing to gain personally. What we call a sin is something wrong which benefits you in a worldly way, but those boys they’re losing everything.’

  He put the rolled-up cigarette in his mouth, then took it out again, looking at the mantelpiece.

  ‘You need a wee break yourself, Father, you should go away down to the Free State for a few days, to your family.’

  ‘I can’t leave. How can the church ask me not to be involved with what’s going on round here? They might as well ask me not to be involved with Him,’ he pointed his cigarette at the semi-naked ornamental figure above the fireplace. He looked at Kathleen’s sympathetic face in the pale midday light, a lovely looking woman whose eyes were too lined, and felt sorry for himself. He knew it was indulgent, it felt like eating a cream cake. This too was wrong.

  ‘People is people, if He didn’t judge them how can I? Do you know the first year I was here there was one Catholic after another shot down round my way. That was ’71. I thought I was in hell. I got real fast with the wake masses. It changed my ideas.’

  ‘Only God can see into people’s hearts, Father, isn’t that the truth, only He can say why a person does what he does and whether it’s all right or not.’

  ‘So it’s said. But if that’s the case I don’t know why they ever invented the fecking church. Maybe they shouldn’t have. I wonder if it wasn’t a sin.’ He stowed his rolled cigarette in his top pocket, got up, wiped his hands together and started to move to the door.

  ‘Are you going Father, already, and your tea not drunk?’

  ‘I’ve just brought to mind a wee favour I said I’d do. The boys up the road asked me if they could use the car this evening. I said they’d more than likely find the keys on the front tyre and I’ve to go and keep my word.’ He stopped at the door. He looked back guiltily over the room as if he’d left a mess behind. ‘We have to support them, Kathleen, the boys are risking their lives for all of us.’

  ‘Aye, of course we do, Father. It can’t be easy for you,’ she said, and her face was so tender that he felt shame overwhelm him.

  ‘Och Jesus, God, Kathleen. You’ve got to be strong – there’s talk of a hunger strike. And it’s serious talk. Look now there’s nothing any of us can do to change their minds. They’re very firm on it. It’s the hardest thing in the world to have to tell a mother. The hardest thing in the world.’

  ‘And you’ve told them it’s all right have you?’ She felt a rush of anger; be angry or cry! Always the same choice.

  ‘It’s not for me to say . . .’

  ‘Well you’ve got to tell them it’s wrong. That the taking of your own life is wrong.’

  ‘You see, it’s not that simple. I can’t tell them that when it’s not the case. There’s the principle of Double Effect. From St Thomas Aquinas. An action can have two consequences, one is intended, the other isn’t. Like at the hospital if they give morphine for pain relief, but it has a second effect and it kills the patient, they’re not guilty of murder, do you see? The boys are trying to bring about change, political change, none of them is looking to die.’

  ‘Well I know it’s a sin! I know it’s wrong! Because I raised him, I raised that boy, he’s me and I’m him, he’s my life, there’s nothing left for me without him.’

  ‘Look Kathleen, calm down. Calm down. Isn’t Sean old enough to make his own decisions?’

  She had nothing to say; she opened the door for him.

  ‘This is a terrible thing, terrible,’ Father Pearse was saying and she wasn’t listening. ‘All of it, it drags you down and tears you apart and then it kicks you when you’re down there. Kathleen. Speaking as your friend, not as a priest, nor as anything else, just watch out for young Liam. One son’s enough.’

  The priest called out a farewell to Mrs Mulhern and received no answer. After the door closed she came out of the kitchen holding her cup in both hands, shuffling in her slippers towards the window.

  ‘The quick and the dead, that’s what seeing him brings to my mind. Rushing and dashing about. He moves too fast to do anybody any good. I knew he’d not stay over long. Well, it’s a blessing in some ways. He’s not what I call a real priest.’ Mrs Mulhern lowered herself into her chair. She cast a grim look through the kitchen to the back garden. ‘Lovely boy that Liam. It’s a name that’s popular enough but there’s something sloppy about it. Did you never think of Anthony? That’s a holy name. Are you going to close that door, Kathleen, there’s a terrible draught on my legs.’

  Chapter 28

  Lingard had his back to the window in his office. It offered a view of a cluster of administration buildings, felled oblongs that looked like polystyrene. A thin tree, not long planted, with a yellow plastic flag tied round its neck, was rattled by the wind. From time to time a soldier walked past. Not no man’s land but a nobody’s land.

  On the side wall was a theatre poster for a J. M. Synge ‘Playboy of the Western World’ performance in Belfast. Lingard’s desk bore a few gadgets: an address book which one dialled, a set of eight silver balls suspended by fine, almost transparent, threads. He had a leather-edged ink blotter and an ink pen. There was a framed photo of his family arranged by kneeling height; his hands on his wife’s shoulders, hers on the first child’s and that child’s on the next. This was positioned with precise nonchalance, facing the interlocutor as much as the deputy governor. His chair bounced and squeaked and railed at his movements. With hands performing a variety of limbering-up exercises over the terrain of his blotter, Lingard explained to Dunn how significant his visit was and how he hoped it might augur well.

  It was like being in with the headmaster. Part of the latest statement issued to the prison officers by the Provisionals came to Dunn’s mind,

  ‘The only safe place for them to live will be in jail.’ This took on a new light as he surveyed the yellowing room with its yellowing occupant.

  ‘Perhaps one or two more of your colleagues will see me as a resource and not the enemy itself! I could get you a tea if you like.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Ah! You’re a cut to the chase sort of fellow,’ said Lingard, alternating his expressions between humorous indulgence and serious attention. ‘Are you a Catholic?’

  He rifled in his drawer and produced a tin of boiled sweets with a fine dusting of sugar on them. He offered one to Dunn.

  ‘No. No, thanks.’

  Lingard took one, biting on it as if it were a problem. ‘Wondered. Motivation, you see. Anyway, you’re a man of few words. Why are you here?’ He broke through the sweet and his teeth collided. ‘Basically.’

  ‘Well, I’ve probably made a procedures mistake, Sir. When I was on

  General Duties I was assigned to visits.’

  ‘With our Mr Jaws. Oh yes, I know the nicknames. For all of them. Have you got one yet? You will do. I wonder if they give us lot nicknames? Do you think they do?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sir. I’m new here – still the outsider.’

  ‘Yes of course.’

  ‘Anyway a little rolled-up note, it looked like a pill to me, fell from the table and I picked it up and put it in my pocket. The thing
is you see, right before it happened I heard the prisoners talking about the prison officer murders and I was a bit taken aback. I wasn’t sure what action to take with the note thing.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ said Lingard, swallowing the last of the sweet. ‘I’m with you. Of course procedure is to hand it immediately to the PO of visits. But that’s beside the point now. I could count on one hand the number of occasions we’ve intercepted notes between the IRA and prisoners. So well done Dunn. No pun intended. First thing I want to ask you,’ he lay his hands flat on the blotter, ‘who was the prisoner and who was the visitor?’

  ‘O’Malley was the prisoner. Brendan Coogan his visitor.’

  ‘Really? Well, well. Where is the note?’

  ‘Here, in my pocket.’

  ‘Good. Mind if I see it?’

  Dunn slipped it on to the table and Lingard felt for his spectacles in his jacket pocket, never taking his eyes off the pill-shaped note. Dunn was reminded of the television programme that Angie enjoyed, Antiques Roadshow. He thought that Lingard might offer him an appraisal and a price too. ‘Long Kesh 1979, cellular clearly, HMP Maze, that is, been carried orally I’d say . . . Two pounds fifty.’

  ‘You haven’t read it then,’ said Lingard, touching it with his sheathed pen.

  ‘No, Sir, I didn’t want to.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I believe the prisoner is the OC for the block and I’ve seen his visitor on the local news, you see him giving the Falls Road side of things.’

  ‘Yes, Brendan Coogan, he does all the talking. The public face of the IRA.’ Lingard’s pleasure was evident. ‘I’m amazed that you haven’t been tempted to read it, Dunn. What forbearance. You must be a chess player?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Good, good.’ He gave the tiny white missive one final prod with the pen. ‘Well, let’s unwrap it, shall we?’

  ‘Well, over to you now, Sir, I’ll be off if you’ve nothing . . .’

  ‘Come on, Dunn,’ his fingers were at the Clingfilm. ‘I think I can trust you if you can trust me.’

  ‘Actually, I’d rather not be involved in any way, Sir, I’m just handing it in, that’s all . . .’