This Human Season Read online

  ‘I’ve never had such a dress.’

  ‘You did have. It was August. Your legs were suntanned.’

  ‘And Bombay Street was burning.’

  Outside there was the noise of a man tapping on the door and shouting ‘Tiocfaidh ar la!’ as he went past.

  ‘A well-wisher. Makes a nice change.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think any more.’ She slumped down. ‘I love my son.’

  He took a draught of the whiskey and sat down on the ground opposite her, passing it across again. ‘No one knows where it’s going to end. But we’re all in it together.’

  ‘God almighty, if he dies, I shan’t care about any of it, fuck it all.’ She took a swig. ‘Slàinte.’ She pressed her fingertips to her lips, tears in her eyes.

  He took the bottle back from her and set it down on the ground, then he knelt up, put his hands on the sides of her face and, holding her hair tight over her ears, he kissed her. The box gave way and caved in.

  Chapter 30

  John Dunn was in his car at the end of his driveway, looking at his home. It was after eight. Mark Wilson would have arrived by now with a bag of things from his own life.

  When John put the key in the door, he heard the sound of Angie chattering. Normally it would be on the phone but now he knew she was talking to Mark Wilson. He stood on the threshold. He cleared his throat and Angie piped up, ‘Well, this will be your father, Mark.’

  She came out of the kitchen and stood in the hallway. ‘He’s nice.’ She mouthed.

  A tall thin lad stood in the door of the kitchen, behind her. He had a tight v-neck sweater, thin-legged black trousers, and a long nose. Mousey, straggling hair. His eyes were friendly.

  ‘Well?’ said Angie.

  John put his bag down. He held out his hand.

  ‘I’m John. Sorry I smell so bad, it’s a long story.’

  ‘The protest,’ said the boy, shaking his hand. He was about his height.

  ‘It’s good to meet you.’

  John emitted a wintry laugh. ‘Just got to pop up to the bathroom,’ he said, and went upstairs.

  ‘Well. Another cup of tea, Mark?’

  The young man looked up the stairs after the prison-officer boots.

  ‘He’ll be down in a wee minute, he’s not very good at meeting strangers. Not that you’re a stranger.’ She put a hand on his arm.

  The boy followed her into the kitchen and looked outside into the dark. ‘Have you always lived round here, Angela?’

  ‘In Belfast? No, Belfast isn’t my cup of tea. I’m a wee country girl. But I’d sell my soul to live somewhere warm.’ She laughed. Then she changed her expression to be more motherly. ‘Now what is it you’re studying?’

  He became quickly involved in explaining his degree, moving his hands on the table as if he had a tennis ball between them and she nodded as he talked but she was wondering whether John was coming back down at all.

  When she heard him on the stairs, she jumped up, told them she was going off to do some bits and bobs, tidy around. ‘Give you two the chance to get to know each other.’

  ‘Have a cup of tea with us, love,’ said John, stricken.

  ‘I’ve had three waiting on you.’

  ‘Would you like one, Mark?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Well then it’s just me.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Angie.

  ‘Well, this is strange,’ said Mark. ‘Meeting you.’

  John leant on the kitchen counter, back to the boy. ‘Yes, likewise. So you’re at university then? I was never much of a one for the books.’

  ‘Angie said you were doing a law degree.’

  ‘That? I didn’t finish it. Started it but couldn’t finish it.’

  ‘Law’s pretty complicated.’

  ‘I’m not stupid or anything, I’m just more of a doer than a thinker. That’s why I’m in this job,’ he said, reaching for the sugar tin. ‘When I was your age I was already in the army.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Yup.’ He poured the boiling water shakily.

  ‘Was that over here?’

  ‘All over the place. Cyprus, Aden, Germany. Yes, here too, three times . . .’

  ‘You got to see the world then. That’s something I’d really like do when I’ve finished.’

  ‘No I didn’t really see the world, just went where I was sent, following orders. I was a technical storeman. Joined the REME, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers that is. I was attached here and there, you see. Blues and Royals was the last one.’

  ‘Really? That’s a good one, isn’t it?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by good.’

  Upstairs he had popped into the spare room where the boy’s bag was on the bed. He’d taken a look around, to see what the boy had brought with him, to see what he was like. One anonymous bag, not big enough for more than a few days, as yet not unpacked. He’d spotted the empty half-soap-dish in which he’d stowed the pill-shaped note. Pink plastic, ridged with white detritus like the in-between of teeth. He put it away in the bathroom cabinet.

  ‘This was always going to be difficult,’ Mark said now.

  John had an aversion to adolescent boys, he always wanted to knock the softness out of them, he couldn’t help it; with their doubting looks and school-book way of talking. There was a whole world between them; him and this university student. The boy’s features were fine and as he looked aside, John noticed his eyelashes. Maybe he wasn’t his son.

  ‘Would you rather we hadn’t decided to do this?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. Just had a bit of a day. I’m a bit out of sorts.’

  ‘It sounds like it’s a hard job. Mind if I smoke?’

  John got up to get an ashtray from the kitchen cupboard. He placed it in front of Mark who was leaning to one side, withdrawing a pack of ten from his trouser pocket. John reached for the matches from the stove.

  ‘Thanks. Want one?’

  ‘I’m fine for now, thanks.’ He looked at the cigarettes. Marlboro. ‘It’s not much of a job. Don’t know about hard.’

  The boy lit up a cigarette, shook out the match with the gesture of a conjuror, squinted through one eye and exhaled. John sat, rolling back and forth a biro that he’d taken from the small bowl on the table that contained keys, saving stamps.

  ‘So did you like being in the army? What’s it like? Did you drive a tank?’

  John cracked a sardonic laugh. ‘Yeah, I did as it happens, once or twice. It was the right thing for me. My old man left when I was six you see. He came back for a summer, but before that and after that I never had a father. My mother remarried but I never really could call it home. Not a sob story but not exactly the days of my life. Anything was an improvement frankly.’

  ‘I didn’t have a father either, so we’ve got that in common.’

  John looked at him, poker-faced. ‘No, you didn’t did you. Did she not marry, your mother?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Would you like a biscuit or some crisps or something? I’ll go ask Angie where she keeps them.’

  ‘No thanks.’ Mark’s arm pivoted at the elbow, a flat wave. His fingernails were bitten. Dunn had never bitten his nails, he cut them squarely and kept them clean. ‘I had a bite at the docks.’

  ‘Was Angie late then?’

  ‘No, I was early. Had my first taste of champ.’

  ‘Good on you.’

  ‘Yeah it was great. Really liked it. Got chatting as well. People seem to be pretty friendly here in fact, despite what you hear.’

  John nodded absently. ‘Mmm. Well, you know, I’m sorry.’ He swallowed.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’m not much of a find.’

  ‘You could feel the same way about me.’ The boy stubbed out the cigarette. ‘So you served in the army over here then?’

  ‘Yes, Three tours. ’69. ’74 and ’76.’

  ‘And you stayed on? Bit of an odd thing to do isn’t it? Can’t be the run
of the mill?’

  Where had he learnt his manners, his mannerisms? Who did he take after? There was the sound of canned laughter from the living room. Angie had put on the television. The laughter was a spasm of affected delight. John wondered if it was the Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em repeats. He and Angie liked to watch them and she usually called him as soon as the piccolo music started up.

  ‘Listen, Mark. What are you hoping for? From me, from this?’

  ‘Well, I wanted to see what you looked like, see who you were. See if you were like me or I was like you.’

  ‘What, and then we both go on our separate ways?’

  ‘If that’s what we decide to do.’

  ‘That’s not very realistic, Mark.’ John thought of the bag upstairs still packed. ‘Still, you’re welcome, Mark, you’re welcome here, you know.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He tapped his cigarette on the saucer then put it out. ‘So why did you stay on here rather than come back to England?’

  ‘Met Angie didn’t I? You taste her champ and then you’ll know why. You hungry?’

  John got up, opened the fridge door, glanced inside. It had been cleaned. There was a small corner of cheese in its wrapper. He took it out and bit into it, then corrected himself, showing it briefly to Mark. Mark waived it. John took another bite, swallowed again, passed his tongue over his teeth. More extravagant hilarity from the sitting room.

  ‘Do you like Frank Spencer?’

  ‘Yes, he’s pretty good.’

  ‘Very funny. He’s very talented that bloke, what’s his name, like cheese biscuits.’

  ‘Crawford, Michael Crawford.’

  ‘Yes that’s it. No it wasn’t for Angie’s champ. By the end of all of that I was an old hand here. You know the other blokes were always asking me, What’s it all about Johnno? and all I could say was, it’s hard to understand and when you think you know, you don’t. They’d be coming up to me every day saying, ’Ere mate, is it about the Pope? and I’m saying, no. Then it’s, Is it about the marching? and I’m, no, and then they’d be saying, Is it about land? and all the time all I could say was no. No one can put a finger on it. But then, after a bit, you just sort of accept that’s the way it is. And before you know it you’re part of it.’

  Mark nodded his head in staccato, studious, attentive, absorbed.

  ‘It is a different country, that’s the first thing you have to get straight.

  To be honest with you, I’ve got a lot of time for the Catholics. The decent ones. Not the IRA. Although you see their discipline when you work in the prison. Anyway I like it here, I like that it’s a hard place. England’s not for me, it’s all white bread and keeping the lawn trimmed. I like the people here, for the most part. Some of them are bastards – but you get that everywhere.’

  ‘And then you joined the prison service after the army?’

  ‘Well, I’m someone who takes orders you see. Maybe you’ll be someone who gives them.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Well you’ve got to be one or the other.’

  ‘Not me. That’s not me at all.’

  ‘You’re from a different generation, I suppose. Your mother did her best for you, then? Good woman is she?’

  ‘She never told you about me.’

  ‘No. Well, she wouldn’t have. We never did speak. After we broke up. If you can call it that.’

  There was silence before a lorry changed gear on its way past the house, wracking its engine, then the tail end of the noise and the creaking of Angie’s footsteps, making off to bed.

  ‘Did she say nothing about me then, to you? Your mum?’

  ‘She said that it didn’t work out. She said you were both young and didn’t know anything. That you were just a kid.’

  ‘I was twenty odd. I’d been in the army five years!’

  ‘Her dad, Ronnie, my granddad, he said she could do as she liked about having the baby. He didn’t care what people said. She said you were nice looking but, well, not . . . very deep.’

  ‘Deep! What sort of a word’s that? Talk about bloody hippy! Deep. That’s another word for wearing sandals isn’t it, and moaning a lot.’

  ‘She said it wasn’t your fault.’

  Appeased, John moved his head from side to side. ‘Well yeah, that’s true. Still, I should have been more careful.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mark, the lightest of smiles, too weak to persist. There was a citrus ring around the very centre of his eyes, then North Sea grey-blue. In the hollowing of his cheeks, John glimpsed all the thinking he’d done, this kid, all that thinking that had brought him here, to be sat across from some stranger, a table between them, in a linoleum-floored kitchen in a rented house in East Belfast.

  ‘I’m not very good with words Mark; I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m coming across like a right prick. I just meant that it was reckless. If I’d known I had a son, I would have been a father. Like when it came to paying for what you needed. And whatever else.’

  ‘We didn’t need money. We were all right. My grandfather was like a father to me. Ronnie. He died last year and Mum told me what she knew about you. She said I look like you, or how she remembered you.’

  ‘You poor bloody sod!’ John brought the cold tea up to his widening mouth and as he drank it, he started to splutter, laughing. ‘Christ who’d have thought it? And yesterday we didn’t know each other from Adam. Bloody hell.’ John shook his head, got up and poured the remainder of his tea into the sink. ‘Well look, Mark, I’ve got to be out of here just after five in the morning, but Tuesday we’ll have the day together. My Angie, she’ll look after you. You ask her if you need something. You don’t know us but we’re all right. Have you got everything you need, for now?’

  Mark stood up.

  ‘Skinny great sod, aren’t you?’

  ‘Likewise.’

  John crossed the room between the table and the fridge, tendering his hand. He shook the boy’s hand, then touched his forearm. ‘Good man.’

  Chapter 31

  The lights were on at Mrs O’Sullivan’s and the Dohertys’, and her own front door was wide open. Kathleen hesitated and then she ran. There was a group of people on the front step of the O’Sullivans’.

  Sheila McCann broke out from among them, angular, angry. ‘For fuck’s sake! Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Where are my children?’

  ‘Aine’s in with our Una. They’ve taken Liam away! Sean is in our house with Sammy, making phone calls.’

  There was Roisin and her husband Patrick, both in their nightclothes and Mrs O’Sullivan in a tracksuit and Wellington boots.

  ‘Who? Who has taken him away?’

  ‘The Brits, the peelers.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was up over New Barnsley . . .’

  ‘He was in bed!’

  Roisin looked up the road towards the hills, to the New Barnsley estate. ‘He must have gone out, Kathleen.’

  ‘I’ll take you round the barracks, Kathleen,’ said Mrs O’Sullivan. ‘I’ll get the wee car out just now. You wait over at Sheila’s with your husband.’ Sean was sat in the McCanns’ front room with a cup of tea watching Sammy talking on the phone.

  ‘There you are.’ His mouth was flat, his eyes yellow. ‘It was young Owen that came and told me Liam was taken. He came right up the stairs and shook me in my bed. I thought it was you.’

  ‘I can’t leave my house half an hour!’

  Owen came out of the kitchen. He had dried blood under his nose, and a great red mark on the side of his head.

  ‘What in God’s name were you thinking of you, the pair of you?’

  ‘There was a riot up Springfield. The Prods was shouting “Death to the Taigs” and they set fire to Mr Gianelli’s ice-cream van. Donny McArdle came round here telling us to get up there and help. So I went and got Liam up . . .’

  Sammy McCann put a hand over the receiver, ‘He told me he was going to help him with his homework.’

  ‘Liam had som
e petrol bombs in a box so we took them up with us. By the time we got there the peelers had come in and they’re taking their truncheons to all of us lot and the Prods are still shouting and firing stuff. One of the peelers gets out his handgun, like this, and puts it to this wee lads head just to make him cry. So Liam threw one of his petrol bombs. It wasn’t even lit.’

  There was a small and pretty trill from the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, it was midnight.

  ‘We all ran off then but the peelers must have grabbed Liam.’

  ‘We’ve rung round the hospitals. He’s not at any of them, Kathleen.’

  ‘The wee lad had shat himself. I said to him how he’d better go home but he says he couldn’t go home with a mess in his underpants, so I helped him take them off quick and then I went back up there to look for Liam but there was no one there. I went back up for him. Are they going to put him in prison now?’

  There were tears in his eyes. Sheila went to him. ‘What am I thinking of? Is this any way for children to grow up? We should have moved down south years ago!’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Owen.

  Sammy replaced the receiver. ‘They won’t give out anything.’

  Mrs O’Sullivan arrived with a small business-like rap on the open door. ‘Ready?’

  Sean stood up. He had his pyjama bottoms on and his cardigan. He put his hand behind Kathleen’s back without touching it. ‘I’ll come with yous.’

  ‘You’re better off at home. I can call you then if I need to. It’s better if I go.’

  She wouldn’t look at him so he just stood nodding, nodding, not saying anything. Then, becoming once more aware of the others, he extended his nodding to them, and there he stood as she brushed past him, smiling a smile he didn’t want on his face, his hands reaching for pockets he didn’t have.

  * * *

  Mrs O’Sullivan threw the passenger door open for Kathleen. ‘We’ll make a quick tour of the barracks shall we, love?’ she said, putting a hand on the gear stick and shaking it.

  Going in Mrs O’Sullivan’s car was usually like taking a trip in a horse and cart; her driving graced the road, she went along at the pace of country life, merely rolling to a halt. But now her hair was awry and she started the car with her foot pumping on the pedal, shoved the gear stick into first and they careened down the hill on to the Whiterock.