This Human Season Page 19

  Lingard was already smoothing out the paper with his fingers.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. You’ve done the right thing Dunn. Sorry. I’m on the inside of the Northern Ireland Office, if you know what I mean.’ He looked up and gave Dunn a film star smile. ‘I’m on the political side of things. Right. Now I’ve got something on you and you on me. Okay?’ He looked over the top of his glasses. ‘A Chara,’ Lingard started to read. ‘That means dear friend, In response to comm. of 29/11 got to tell you that hunger strike is number one on our agenda in order to secure our main objective vis a vis the Brits and exposing all aspects of their imperialism in this country, criminalisation, normalisation, Ulsterisation. As this affects us. He could mean criminalisation da-dee-da as this affects us or he could be starting afresh, hard to tell the writing is perishing small. God knows how they write them. It’s a piece of that bloody bog paper you know, like wax paper; we don’t get much better up here. Doesn’t absorb, fingers go through it. The hunger strike is the most effective method at our disposal and the most credible to rebut the strategy of criminalisation. The Billy McKee hunger strike of 1972 got political status from Whitelaw. Who knows with the Brits but you’ve got to think they won’t let prisoners die, due to international protest. At the least, it will speed up the talks. You wrote that we might pull off the hunger strike before the final days. Think this is a dangerous thought. Have not communicated it. The level of commitment is running high. There would be no half measures. Well, that’s about the heap for now, slán. Kevin.

  ‘Well. That’s really something. Hunger strike. Now I need to consider the information. What would you say was key in there, John?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Sir.’

  ‘The dangerous thought. Dangerous for them is good for us. I mean, strategically speaking. This letter states that the hunger strike is their last card. He asks Coogan, their public representative, to play it. Now that’s important. There’s something in this, Dunn. I just need time to think it through. We all have our part in the game, don’t we, John? You’ve played yours. Now over to me. Although I’ve got orders, they’re probably not what you’d think of as orders, I’ve got a free hand in some ways. But the truth is I’m from over there, and I have a certain way of looking at things. Justice. This is not my war. I’m here to try and stop it, to foul it up if you like. Put the brakes on. Personally, I don’t like killing. I believe in putting killers away and hampering those still on the outside. The IRA have been trying to kick up a big bloody fuss over this place. Making heroes. They’ll be creating merry hell about a bloody hunger strike. You said you were a chess player?’ Lingard’s space heater started to buzz and he tapped it gently.

  ‘No, Sir, I am not.’

  ‘Ah, shame. You see if we know that their Achilles heel so to speak is this dangerous idea, that they might not go through with a hunger strike, that their last card is a bluff, then we might pursue a policy of shall we say . . . brinkmanship.’ He looked at the theatre poster.

  ‘Nobody wants a fellow to die which ever way he dresses, but that’s not going to happen, not unless there’s a major cockup. That’s what this letter here is telling us. So Dunn, there will be no dying, no suicide pact. We have a number of options. We can subtly communicate to them that it won’t work and that will be an end to it. They’ll pull off and no one will die. We might even manage a little popular support to dampen the bravura of the whole thing. Funny how it’s only the Catholics seem able to mobilize themselves that way, but maybe we can get the ones who’re more for peace coming out and saying “No to dying”.’

  He seemed roused, failing to register Dunn’s growing expression of disbelief.

  ‘Oh, I’m just speculating, John. I’m a visionary in here. The only one. No, they’d never do anything as low as to get any public opinion working for them. Good God no! Not the Northern Ireland Office. No, I’m an outsider on the inside.’ He laughed shortly.

  Dunn looked at his watch. It was comfortable sitting in that warm room far from the cell block, and he wouldn’t have minded staying longer if Lingard hadn’t been spouting on. Dunn hated to hear men talk at length that way. It was only pardonable in drink. He had more than likely made a mistake in giving the note to Lingard. He had hoped to clear the decks, to set himself straight. But things were never straight. The noose just tightened. This mess was of his making and he wanted to move away from it, physically, now.

  ‘Sir,’

  ‘Mr Lingard at a push, if you must, but not ‘Sir’ for gawd’s sake.’

  ‘Having just been on those protest blocks for just a few weeks, I’ll tell you, I’ve seen those young lads in there, I’d say they’re quite capable of dying on a hunger strike no matter what anyone says.’

  Lingard held his pen up at his lips. ‘Would you, John, would you? Still this letter is entre amis, as they say, between friends. I think we have to take it at face value. I think they’d know their own minds. Won’t keep you, but very, very impressed. You did the right thing with this.

  Anything else comes your way, you bring it to me. Between us . . . well, if there were more men like you . . .’

  Dunn took his cap off the desk. He stood up and his new set of keys, for the block, swung on their chain against the desk. He put them back in his pocket.

  ‘You and those bloody keys, eh? That gave me a laugh I’ll tell you. You’re not like the others are you? What’s your story, I wonder. Listen, the wife and I like to have people round for drinks from time to time, casual you know, Martinis and jazz music, that sort of a thing. Would you and yours care to come for a drink and a bite? I’ll have to check the diary, hold tight.’ He held the diary open with one hand and ran a finger down the other side. ‘All the bloody Christmas piss-ups. Hang on, Wednesday 19th we’re free, would that suit?’

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate it but I’m bound to be working.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have a word with the duty officer. Can’t promise of course.’ He hopped up and gave Dunn a pat on the back as he went to the door. Dunn shrank away and ducked out.

  ‘The only safe place for them to live will be in jail.’ How much did his own safety matter to him? After half an hour in Lingard’s world, it seemed unimportant, nothing worth dying for.

  * * *

  It was the day of Prison Officer William Benbow’s funeral; all visits were cancelled, so the mess was charged with bored anxiety. At unlock, the young kid, Moran, had head-butted Rabbit this time. He was making a name for himself. He’d been put in cell twenty-six again while the PO arranged for someone to come down and issue the order for his transfer back to the boards. He’d only just come back to the block.

  ‘He ought to get it into his thick skull that being on the protest is enough of a qualification.’ Bolton was standing in shirtsleeves outside his office doo, peeved, when the deputy governor arrived. ‘Come in for a moment, Mr Lingard, we’ll have a chat while one of the fellas brings the man up.’

  Rabbit offered and went off.

  In the mess, Dunn had out the AA pocket map of Northern Ireland that Angie had borrowed from her office. He was studying it ostensibly for directions for the day out with the boy, but he’d become quite gripped by the motoring information, especially the mileage chart. He felt like a whole new vista was opening.

  ‘Listen to this. Me and the lads have cooked up a great fucking scam.’ Frig was holding the door handle behind him. ‘The scam to end them all. My old Ford, the engine’s fucked. Can’t shift it. Tomorrow we’re going to park it round where the army patrol comes haring in the morning, up past Main Gate. Just round the bend, on the wrong side. We’re running a book on the compensation. You in? What about a pound on flattened and full comp to the market value of the car? Any takers?’

  ‘A pound says they stop before they get to it.’

  ‘A pound says you can’t get it started to get it there,’ said Shandy, stirring a mug of Ovaltine.

  ‘You’re a bunch of misery gutses. You’ll change your tunes when I get that com
pensation.’

  Shandy tuned the radio, ‘Simply having a wonderful Christmas time . . .’ When the disc jockey announced the time, Dunn and Skids adjusted their watches.

  ‘I gave him another kicking.’ Rabbit came in, breathless. ‘He gave me a fucking headache, that little Fenian cunt, so I gave him ballsache.’

  There was no one in the TV room. It was Songs of Praise from Portadown. The door cracked and Skids shuffled in, sat right him, too close again.

  ‘I’m seeing this woman in Lisburn. Did I tell you? She’s married, but she’s cracking looking. We’re meeting in a pub tonight.’

  Dunn said nothing.

  ‘I ought to leave my wife. I’d do the right thing and give her money for the wean. I shouldn’t be carrying on like this, this’ll be the third time I’ve seen her. The thing is, like if I start thinking about her and her old man in bed, having sex, it makes me feel sick to my stomach so it does. I was thinking of telling her to get him to use a rubber johnny. I don’t want to go in where he’s been.’

  Dunn excused himself and went off to the privacy of his toilet. ‘My church,’ he thought, trousers round his ankles.

  Chapter 29

  ‘Mummy. There’s a lot going on and we’re all working hard right now to get the five demands out. We’ll be counting on all of you to do your part. See I’ve put at the bottom of the letter what they are, so see if you can’t write some letters yourself to politicians telling them what it is we want. We’ll see this thing through together whatever we have to face. I know it was hard for you last time so I won’t be asking for you to come up next time. It’s for the best. God Bless. Your loving son, Sean. Here follows the five demands.’

  The words that followed were etched in capitals, proud and painstaking as a poem. She put a fingernail between her teeth and ripped the side of it off. It came away unevenly, leaving an orange triangle of pain. She folded the piece of paper and put it in a jar in a cupboard. Then she switched off the overhead light in the kitchen and sat in the dark with her arms folded.

  Her husband came in early about ten, sent back as no use, no doubt, and he gave her a swaying greeting from underneath the light in the hallway.

  ‘Rioting up over New Barnsley. Good mind to go up myself and give the boys a hand.’

  She watched him from the dark as if she was at a cinema. She told him the children were already in their beds and not to make so much noise. He went up swaying and bracing himself, as if he was mounting the stairs in gale-force conditions. When he was abed and snoring she got up and put on her coat and went out.

  It was a quiet night; the moon was a slither of a smile up-ended. You could see the light coming from a few of the shops on the Falls Road. A black taxi-cab came past from time to time. There was a Saracen parked on the corner of the street, near the door to the pub. A couple were saying a long goodnight outside the newsagent’s, sharing a cigarette. She made her way up the slight incline, passing the hospital and heading towards Clonard Street, thinking of Sean, then thinking of the young soldier, Frank, both of them nineteen.

  ‘I’m losing my mind over you,’ Frank had said, on top of her, touching the hair about her face. ‘It’s your eyes.’

  ‘There are plenty of other older women, she’d told him, the last time she met him at Colin Glen. Her own world – the family, Belfast, the war – was accelerating, about to take over. She’d struggled to come up with a good reason for leaving the kids with Eileen for a day, in the midst of the raging uncertainty in autumn ’69. Off she’d gone, passing some neighbours who were carrying their settee down the street.

  It was the only time in her life she’d made love outside. They’d been on the ground, with twigs poking at her backside, his knees scuffed, out of breath. She’d put her legs around his back. He had looked into her eyes all the time they made love, his mouth taut, almost fearful, as if he was falling. The sun had been just behind his head. With the circles upon circles in his eyes, and the light between the trees, and the focus of his concentration, she had been suspended in time, just breathing, watching. And then when he was through, he fell across her. She’d lain there, weighed down, with him still inside her and she’d wept.

  The time before, they’d been in the house, upstairs, in the afternoon. Mary came home from school early. There’d been nothing for it but for Frank to go down the stairs and walk right by her, with a stupid hello. She’d come down herself and started to make up a story but Mary went off next door, to see her friend. They’d never spoken about it. Nearly ten years later, when Mary was aged eighteen and leaving for England, Kathleen cried she needed her, these were difficult times with Sean just lifted. When Mary seemed indifferent, Kathleen grew angry.

  ‘There’s your brother, giving up his young life to defend us and you off to the very country he’s fighting.’

  ‘Ah listen to my mother the great Republican!’ she’d said. ‘Well maybe I fancy a nice young Brit myself.’

  She let her husband go with Mary to the ferry. Her oldest daughter had grown up, quietly judging her mother, become the woman herself, delivered her blow and left home. Kathleen put the girl’s things away in the attic and was irritable on Sundays. By then, Sean was on remand in the Crum.

  Now she stood in the dark outside the Republican Press Centre, belted trench coat, and she banged on the door as if she meant to break it down. She held the door frame on either side, raised her knee, and booted the door with her heel. She heard the sound of the stairs going. Coogan opened the door.

  ‘I thought it was the Brits.’

  ‘Why did you not think to mention the hunger strike to me?’

  He ushered her in and closed the door behind her, locking it in two places. He stood in a short hallway, in front of some stairs. There was a door to his left, marked ‘Doctor’s Surgery’.

  ‘“Ach the protest marches will change everything for our boys, so they will.” Will they fuck. I reckon yous are just getting us to do them to make ourselves feel better! The truth is they are going on a hunger strike and it’s your lot who’s got them indoctrinated to it.’

  ‘Calm down, will you?’

  ‘And they’re still being treated like shite, tortured, beaten. My Sean’s on the boards again, God knows what for and I’ve got a note saying he doesn’t want me to come again. He’s being brainwashed! And you lot, you’re getting Father Pearse to get us ready for losing our sons to a hunger strike next. Well it won’t be my son!’

  ‘Calm yourself down!’

  ‘No I won’t!’

  ‘Yes it’s true they’ve talked about it, they’re talking about it. It was always an option, it always has been. Yes, they’re saying that if they don’t get the five demands they’ll go to a hunger strike. Indoctrinated? That’s bullshit, Kathleen. We don’t want them to die. They’re our friends, our brothers, our cousins, our uncles too, you know. But Christ, we’re not in there, they are. If they ask us to support them, to make sure it’s not for nothing, what are we supposed to say to them? No? Look, Kathleen, you want us to defend you, you want us to get you out of this, but you don’t want to pay a price for it. An army is made up of people’s sons. I’m not responsible for what your son does. He’s a grown man. You know how it is round here. He’s been reared here.’

  ‘You’ve no idea how he’s been reared. I love him!’

  ‘I know you love your son. You’re not alone. But you should be proud of him too. He wants to do what’s right.’

  ‘I don’t care about what’s right. Not if it means losing him.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘No you don’t know! That’s the trouble with you and your kind. It’s easy for you. Until you’ve got kids you’ve no idea what love is.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Someone like you, you just want to win, at any price.’

  ‘Aye, all right. No, you’re right, Kathleen. That’s true as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Right then!’

  ‘Right. Now come on upstairs. We’ll have a drink an
d a talk. Come on.’ He went up, calling behind, ‘We’re opposed to it, you know. We’re going to do everything we can so it doesn’t come to that.’

  She ought to go home.

  Instead she went up into the office space, with its high ceilings and loose window frames; it was cold in there. There were cardboard boxes everywhere. She sat down on a box, her knees together, feet apart.

  ‘We’re about to move offices. We’re packing up. We’ll have a few days at least before the new address is known so we’ll be taking a break from the midnight abuse.’ He gave her a wary smile. Then he went around the counter and came back with a bottle of Irish whiskey. ‘Here have a drink.’

  ‘No. No thanks.’

  He stood looking down at her, his tie loose, his shirt hanging outside of his trousers. He took the stopper out of the bottle with his teeth, then spat it over the back of a box behind him.

  ‘Well now you’ve got to help me drink it.’ He handed the bottle to her.

  ‘Go ahead and have a smoke if you want. Kathleen, we’ve all lived in the same streets. What we’ve got going for us in this community is the way we pull together. There’s no choice, not for any of us. But they won’t beat us.’

  She took a swig; it burnt, hateful and necessary.

  ‘No they won’t beat us, we’ll all be dead though.’

  ‘You’re not dead yet.’

  ‘I might as well be.’

  ‘I wish I could see you smile.’ She gave him the bottle.

  ‘Do you know the first time I saw you? You came round for that bag for your brother and I was packing it and I kicked myself after that I should have chucked my stuff into a couple of carrier bags and given it to you.’ He had deep wrinkles either side of his eyes when he smiled.

  ‘I’m surprised you remember that with what was going on that day.’

  ‘You were wearing a short pale dress that showed your knees.’