This Human Season Read online

  Aine’s nose went long and narrow, her teeth bunched on the inside of her lips, her eyes were on the ground.

  ‘I can’t wait for the day you leave home, I can’t take any more of you and your moods.’ How far could she go? Could she destroy something inside of her daughter to leave her submissive? She took her cigarette packet out of her bag and fumbled for a lighter. ‘We should think about you going to live elsewhere, with your auntie. For a while.’

  Aine’s shoulders rounded, and her hood came slowly further forward until Kathleen could not see her face at all. She was just a pale purple anorak, with legs and feet. White socks, grey from the foot up, in the summer’s sandals.

  Kathleen lit her cigarette, took a drag and sorrow went through her; a gut-tearing feeling like the first day of her period, a falling away, an irrevocable loss. She put her hand beneath her daughter’s chin to lift it to see her face.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Why do you always smoke in front of me if you say I shouldn’t do it? It will kill me you say, so why do you do it, when you know I’ll do the same things as you?’

  ‘What the hell are you going on about now?’

  ‘You want me to go away. You and Auntie Eileen say that Granny was all for the boys. Well and so are you. I miss Mary, we used to talk. You don’t even see me! I might as well be dead!’

  Kathleen sat down on a small mound of dirt by the side of the pavement, feeling the damp land seep through the arse of her jeans. She took another drag and looked down the hill into the estate in which they lived, grey and white, and beyond the red-brick estates in rows that went all the way down to the slug of a river that didn’t bother to make its way out to the ocean but lay stagnant in marshes, with the round industrial gas works and warehouses about it.

  ‘Sit down on the anorak; it’s me who’ll wash it. Sit down.’ The hood dropped back.

  ‘Look Aine, I’m not asking you to respect me, but these are hard times for all of us. We’re all busy, we’re all worried and you don’t know the half of it. You’ve got to think about what others are going through.’

  ‘And that’s what you do?’ Aine looked at her mother with her blonde lashed eyes, heavy-lidded, the face that reflected more of her father’s side.

  ‘You don’t really know enough about me to judge. That’s the job of Him up there, Him alone. Yes as a matter of fact, I do try to do that. Else I would have gone off a long time ago.’

  ‘Not with Sean or Mary here. Not with them at home you wouldn’t have.’

  ‘I love Sean and Mary, but no more than either of you.’

  ‘That’s not true. Sometimes I think you’re good and sometimes I think you’re a bad person. Let’s go home.’

  Kathleen was stunned.

  ‘Listen, Aine, maybe I’m not the best mother in the world. But I’m all you’ve got, so I am.’

  Her daughter looked away, considering this. She didn’t answer.

  ‘Come on love. Let’s be friends.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Aine, getting up and putting her hands back in her pockets, facing the city. She was starting to build the boundaries of her life, choosing the areas of silence.

  As they went to cross the road to go into their own street, Kathleen put her own hand in Aine’s pocket and felt the cold strength of the girl’s fingers, so alien to her.

  ‘I love you so much, Aine,’ she said, suddenly in great need of her daughter.

  They stopped outside of a house, to look in at the tall white Christmas tree in the window with its blinking fairy lights. The girl’s teeth were chattering as she withdrew her hand, crossed her arms and fixed her eyes upon the Christmas scene.

  ‘If there’s one thing I could do for you, Aine, what would it be?’

  ‘Love my Daddy,’ said Aine, and her eyes and her mouth fell, and Kathleen saw the habit of sadness in her daughter that ought only to have been acquired, not accepted. She had no need to think of breaking something in her daughter. It was already done.

  The Christmas scene stirred. The door to the house opened, there was music and an old pinkish-haired lady came out saying her goodbyes, and with the rain abating, it all fell into place. Kathleen saw clearly.

  Whether it was Sean Moran or anybody she was married to, she’d be the same, she’d need to be loved by other men. It was her who was wrong. She ought to tell Sean, let him off the hook.

  Chapter 40

  The Lingards lived on Malone Road. They both came to the door. Janet Lingard wore a long multi-coloured dress with a gold belt at the waist, and Carl wore pale slacks, an open-necked shirt and a cravat. Their house smelt of cheese.

  John was tense. ‘I shouldn’t have worn jeans,’ he said to Angie out of the corner of his mouth, his hand out to shake with Mrs Lingard.

  ‘I told you.’ Angie squeezed his bum.

  Janet Lingard put a hand on John’s right shoulder and kissed him on either cheek. He was baffled and knew that Angie would be too. Turning he saw Angie stiff as a board, while Janet repeated the act.

  * * *

  He hadn’t wanted to come. Lingard had caught him in the block the day before and reminded him. Keen not to be seen with him, he’d hastily agreed they’d be there.

  He’d asked Angie to find their number in the phone book to call and make an excuse. She was appalled at the idea. What would she say?

  ‘How about saying I’m ill?’

  ‘It would be a lie so it would and he’d see you at work the next day. He’s someone important at the prison, John. He won’t ask us again.’

  He and Mark were on the couch, watching the rugby. ‘Tell him I’ve just found out I’ve got a kid and we’re a bit surprised, we’d been hoping for a girl.’

  * * *

  There was a dining room as you went in that opened out into a bookshelved front room with a large bay window and a brown leather sofa that looked old and uncomfortable.

  ‘We’ve packed the children off to watch telly in the upstairs sitting room.’ Janet was a tall woman with two competitive front teeth and important breasts. Her hair was piled up high in a grey and blonde bun.

  ‘Drinkies?’ said Carl Lingard, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘I’d love a beer.’

  The Lingards looked at each other.

  ‘I told you to get some beer,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Sorry John. No beer. Sherry or white or red?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wine, you great fool,’ said Angie.

  ‘Whatever you’re having.’

  ‘Do you have children, Angela?’ Janet asked while her husband went off to get the wine. Before Angela could reply he came back brandishing a thin dark bottle. ‘Piesporter,’ he grinned.

  ‘You’re a big chap aren’t you, John? We’re having a fondue tonight. No kids then? My oldest Thomas is at Campbell College. We like it, don’t we Carl? I would recommend it to anyone, put your name down the moment the child’s born. I suppose all the prison officers are big men. Or should I say “screws”. That’s what they call you, don’t they?’ Her necklace broke away and fell on to her cleavage. ‘Oh balls.’

  ‘Can I give you a hand dear?’ Carl tapped John on the arm. ‘I say, I used to be a gynaecologist you know . . .’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Now I just like to keep my hand in!’

  ‘It’s a bit early for that, Toggles, give them a chance to warm up . . .’ Angie looked at John. He gave a slight shake of the head, his eyes stretched wide, his mouth buried in the glass.

  When they sat down to eat the fondue, there was some banter over whose long fork was whose with Carl refusing to have the pink-ended one, crying out, ‘I’m a boy, I’m a boy! I can’t help it. I like it.’

  The conversation turned to the prison. Angie, red faced from the heat of the fondue and a few glasses of the wine, told them she found the smell hard to take.

  Janet let her breasts settle on the tabletop. ‘Do you think that subconsciously, Toggs, they’re basically children playing u
p? Tom wouldn’t crap in the potty, but Anthea would you see. And he was just testing me, trying to show me who was boss.’ On the end of her fork was a large gherkin, laden with stringy cheese.

  Toggles was flushed too. Two bottles of wine had already been drunk and he’d placed the empties on the left-hand side of the dining room window-ledge. ‘We’re going to get that filled tonight,’ he said, pointing at the dusty expanse. She’s not really interested in my work of course. I don’t blame her.’

  ‘I can’t be doing with it. I don’t watch the TV either. Oh this Afghanistan thing! Africa! I can’t bear to see those bloody mothers with all their babies. You’d think they’d stop having them.’

  Angie agreed.

  ‘It makes you cross. They blather on about the poverty but it doesn’t stop them having seven kids does it? We’ve never asked for a handout in our lives. Wouldn’t dream of it. Pass the little pickled onions, Togs?’

  ‘I’m not kissing you after those.’

  ‘Sounds like a good deal to me. They ought to just get on with it, like the rest of us, instead of moaning. It’s the same here. Do you know,’ she said, laying a hand either side of her plate. ‘The governor’s wife, Penny, she’s a friend of mine, she said all that Bombay Street stuff was a load of rubbish. Half of them burnt their own houses. For the money.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ John said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Carl, frowning. ‘Quite.’

  ‘Well let’s not talk about it. It’s depressing. We get too much of it. Especially with his job. I do support Oxfam though. I buy the cards. We must get your address. They do a lot of good in Africa and Asia. Are you going on holiday next year, Angie?’

  ‘We’re getting a new car.’

  ‘We might.’

  ‘We said we were.’

  ‘I’m a Rover man myself,’ said Carl. ‘Classic British quality.’

  ‘We were thinking of a Datsun,’ said Angie.

  Janet laughed abruptly then apologized. ‘There’s gateau to follow.’ After dessert, Janet took Angie through her holiday brochures, giving general opinions. The overhead lamp swung as Janet’s bun tapped it each time she came across a resort with which she was familiar.

  Carl and John were in the front room. ‘I’m going to talk to Brendan Coogan tomorrow.’

  ‘Toggles, was it Corfu or Crete we went to with the Walkers?’

  ‘Corfu.’ He lowered his voice again. ‘I called him and asked him to come in and see me on Thursday. He said all he needed to know was that as AG of a protest block I’m clear on the five demands. I said, “Clear as crystal. And what’s more I’m willing to talk.” You see, everyone needs respect, that’s a key motivator. I give this chappie the time of day and already you see we’re getting places.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘I want a face-saving compromise for everyone, John. As I said before, I’m a man alone on this.’

  Angie’s head was bowed over the magazines, legs pressed together, one shoe behind her ankle. She looked back over her shoulder at him, smiling a full and natural smile. He saw her as if for the first time, saw who she was, saw how her tendency was towards the good. She was kind to the woman, in spite of the woman, because she was kind, not for any other reason. He decided he would ask her to marry him. After Christmas.

  ‘What would you say the IRA strategy was, from what you overheard?’

  ‘Carl, I just caught a few words, two men talking.’

  ‘A continuum, right, Warrenpoint, Mountbatten, external pressure and then what?’

  ‘The prison officers.’

  ‘Right and then what?’

  ‘Well I suppose they think they’ll get their five demands.’

  ‘And if they don’t? Where does the continuum go?’

  ‘The hunger strike.’

  ‘And that is where it stops. It’s the last card. Listen, John. I’m after the straw that broke the camel’s back. If I can find that tiny straw and,’ he put his fingers together in a pincer movement to demonstrate, ‘gently extract it, before the back breaks, then I think I will have achieved something small – but very, very significant.’

  Angie was looking at him, quizzically. She must have overheard some of their conversation and wondered what they were talking about.

  ‘Are you a chess player, Dunn?’

  ‘No I’m not as it happens.’ John couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘No? Never mind. My strategy is checkmate. There are two routes across the board as far as I can see. Either way you start with the pawn. That’s Coogan. I’m going to push Coogan, and topple the rest. Here’s what I mean. Game number one, let’s take the first demand and let’s concede it, apparently, let’s give the minimum to satisfy their notion of a “concession” which is, after all, all they really want, and for the Government nothing substantive has been transacted. Everyone’s happy. No one’s dead. The main thing is that Coogan looks like he’s the big man in his community. Are you with me? After that we can move on to other things. One step at a time.’

  ‘I’m with you Carl. But I don’t buy it, to tell you the truth. They spelt it out pretty clearly. They want the full five.’

  ‘So here’s my other thought. Game two, we push them to the hunger strike. Push them to play the card they can’t play. If we make it known to them, to Coogan, that it’s a waste of their time killing prison officers, that they can carry on with that till the cows come home and nothing changes, that like with kidnapping, we can’t come through with the goods because it will only encourage that kind of thing, then they will be forced to go along the continuum to hunger strike. Now, we have good reason to believe, from that little note you brought me, that at that point, they’ll pull off. Thus we’re saving prison officers’ lives by forcing their strategy to a conclusion and there’s no hunger strike either.’

  ‘Carl, this is way beyond me and to be honest I don’t like to talk about it. I was just a soldier, you know.’

  ‘Right. Right, a soldier thinks, who’s going to die here, them or us? And in this strategy, worst case scenario is that some IRA prisoners die. Worst case. We should get them to play the card they can’t play, won’t play. It’s just a ploy. Just as with nuclear deterrence. No one would press the button.’ He looked composed enough to sign a cheque, a letter, an order, anything at all.

  John glanced up at the shelves. ‘You’ve read all these have you? You shouldn’t be talking to someone like me about this, Carl, you know.’

  Carl looked affronted. ‘Well, any man in any situation has to seek for himself what’s right, or what will work best for him . . .’

  John shook his head. ‘Those men aren’t interested in appearances, in saving face, in compromises or concessions and I think they’re ready to give their lives. Like I said though, I’m just a soldier. Not a general. I’d rather we didn’t talk about it at all. If you don’t mind.’

  Lingard sat, looking askance, one arm extended along the back of the couch, his fingers drumming.

  ‘I’ve talked Angie into thinking about Madeira for next year,’ said Janet.

  John nodded, he wanted to get home. They shouldn’t have come out, not with Mark staying for just a few days on his first trip.

  When he’d left the prison that evening, his empty Tupperware box in his hand, it was night-time but the prison compound was well lit, bright, even dazzling in places, and Frig had said to him in the stark light at the main gate, ‘When I get out of here at night, mate, I don’t think about it again, that’s that.’

  ‘Janet and Carl have got a new porch you know, part of security measures. Courtesy of the Northern Ireland Office.’

  ‘Bullet proof!’ trilled Janet. ‘It can be whatever they want; I was just pleased to get a new porch. Next stop a bullet-proof conservatory!’

  ‘Oh you can’t worry about all of that, can you?’ said Lingard, coming to. ‘You’d go bonkers. You can’t get paranoid. Otherwise you’re just caving in to the thugs. I don’t bother with checking under the
car. Rees, the AG on the other protest block, he does, his bloody suit’s always covered in oil. Do you know, he’s more likely to get it than I am because he antagonizes the fellas, you see and I don’t do that because for me it’s not personal. Rees, you see, he’s a local. He takes it too far. Actually, I had to have a word with him. We were taking a walk around one of the protest blocks and the prisoners start shouting abuse at us and bloody Rees goes berserk, leaping about giving them the finger!’

  ‘You can’t blame the man,’ Angie laughed.

  ‘It’s personal for a lot of people,’ said John gravely.

  ‘What about you, John?’ asked Janet, pouting a little.

  Everything’s personal he wanted to say. It wasn’t before. Maybe it was when you had a family that everything became personal. He put his arm around Angie.

  ‘No, not for me. When I leave the place, I leave it, I don’t think about it,’ he said, borrowing Frig’s lie.

  He shook hands with Carl Lingard as they left and said to him, again, ‘Forget about that note, Carl. Seriously.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Angie in the car. ‘That Janet hugged me when we left, like we were best friends. Apart from that though weren’t they just like something off the telly? You wonder what people like that are like in real life. On their own.’

  Chapter 41

  She met him on the far side of Andersonstown and they drove down towards the prison together. He dropped her off in the town of Hillsborough at a very British pub, The Marquis of Downshire.

  ‘Aye well no one we know will see us here,’ she said and got out.

  She sat at a round table near the paned window, underneath a row of silver paper bells, smoking and drinking a glass of lager. She read the paper. There was a young lad behind the bar and a few people came in for a lunchtime pint and stood talking with him. Coogan hoped to be back just after one.

  All the way there she’d had half his face, serious and closed when he spoke about his work, teasing when he talked about what had happened between them the other night, then wholly formal when he turned to her, saying, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Kathleen, but what’s going on with us here, I don’t know how long it can go on for. I wouldn’t want anyone to see us together.’