This Human Season Read online

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So maybe this is the last time. Now that’s not something you normally say to a woman you want to have sex with.’

  ‘Well, you’re honest at least. Maybe I should just catch the bus back, I’m not sure this is a good idea myself.’

  ‘Well, now, look; I won’t be long in the Kesh. I’m to have a talk with some eejit of a Brit from the office side of things. It’ll take me no more than a few minutes. With nothing to offer they’ve always something to say.’

  Alone at the round pub table, she turned another page she hadn’t read, glanced at the clock. She rolled forward on the seat. She wanted to be with him again. It might be the last time, like he said. There was no way he could have both the IRA and a woman in his life. But a married woman was not really a woman; asked for nothing got nothing. She just wanted to kiss him again.

  She sat swilling the sour golden drink around the glass. When he was with her she was keeping him from his war. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if women kept the men who ran the wars from getting there? What about if there was some woman assigned to keeping Paisley erect? He couldn’t go about ranting and raving with his trousers out front like a tent. He’d have to stop in. That’s what the women’s movement should be about.

  She went up to the bar and asked for change for the cigarette machine. She bought a pack of B&H as it was all they had and she pulled the wrapper off and opened the box and looked at the slim, firm cigarettes, side by side and obedient. Her fingers smelt of tobacco. She could be anybody. She looked over at the bar, bald heads conferring, insistent repetitions, the conformity of their shouts of laughter.

  About half-past one he came into the bar, nodded at her, taking a quick look down and around and to the sides. He ordered a pint of Guinness for himself and a half’un for her. The lunchtime crowd went back to work and it was just the two of them with the lad at the bar talking to a girl.

  ‘Did it go off all right your meeting?’

  He wiped his mouth. ‘Aye, we’ve got a couple of hours all to ourselves. What do you want to do?’

  ‘Well they’ll be closing here soon.’

  ‘Will we finish these and go for a drive?’

  * * *

  Sat in his car, her empty stomach was hovering like a balloon, buoyed with anticipation. Her mind was soft, drugged by the alcohol. She felt as if she could undo herself. There was no need to be anyone at all.

  He drove the car down a country lane, pulled into a lay-by, turned off the engine and started to kiss her. Then he said, ‘Wait there.’ He got out and came round to her side of the car, opened the door and knelt down. He told her to take down her tights and underwear. When they were at her knees, he pulled them down around her ankles and pushed her knees apart and leant into her until his dark hair was at her belly.

  Her head filled with visions. She went between memories, seeing herself all the times she was beautiful. She was breathing, she was taking more than her share. She didn’t want a god, she wanted a man. She wanted him inside her. She could feel his arms struggling as he tried to undo his trousers.

  I could love you, I could kill you. I want this. This is how I make my mark, this is where I plant my flag, this is how I stake my claim, this is how I deny you, this is how I claim you, this is what you owe me, this is what I am taking, this is how I know I’m alive.

  Chapter 42

  Prisoner 1880, Callaghan, was up for a visit, as was Sean Moran. Dunn was visits runner for the day and he took Callaghan down in the morning and Moran in the afternoon. Both submitted to the mirror-search without too much fuss. Skids gave just a cursory glance and said, ‘Fair enough.’

  Patsy Callaghan was a big man in his thirties with hair sprouting out of his upper arms and neck. The jeans he chose were small for him; when he emerged the crotch was gaping on them where it had been ripped out by a previous wearer. Skids swore under his breath as if he were going out for the night with a friend who dressed badly. It took Dunn close to twenty minutes to get Callaghan round to the visiting block. The prisoner wanted to take his time, enjoy the walk.

  He stood by while Callaghan greeted his girlfriend reservedly. She seemed an odd choice. She was an English woman in her early fifties. Dunn noticed she had a shaved upper lip, her hair was tightly permed. She didn’t seem the sort of woman to be the lover of a ‘rough, tough Provie’. Callaghan had spent three years on the run, one of them in Canada buying weapons, allegedly.

  He had little to say and the woman did most of the talking. Dunn could hear snatches of their conversation, news, the campaign and so on. At the end of the half hour she asked him when she’d be seeing him again and Callaghan said he didn’t know. When they kissed goodbye, Callaghan was unwilling, like a boy with his auntie.

  After asking Moran if he wanted the visit, Dunn took the boy to cell twenty-six to change and Skids assisted again with the mirror-search. Moran braced himself, closed his eyes, but it was soon clear that the search was a mere formality. Bolton was standing out on the circle. He nodded when he saw Moran emerging peaceably from the wing wearing prison-issue trousers and boots and an orderly’s dirty sweatshirt.

  ‘Good job, Mr Dunn.’

  Moran was walking in a strange way; either the lack of exercise had affected his gait or he had a substantial collection up his arse. It was not Dunn’s business. As they made the cold long walk through checkpoints and grilles to the visiting block, Dunn thought about Christmas, about presents for his son, about a good dinner and whether he should ask him about coming to study at Queens.

  ‘See the football?’ asked Moran, suddenly.

  ‘No, no chance. I’m in here all the time.’

  ‘Aye. Same here.’ They both laughed.

  Moran was a handsome boy, his smile sure. He was different to the boy who had raged in the exercise yard, he had taken some quick lessons. Dunn dropped behind as they entered the visiting block, noticed the slope of Moran’s shoulders as yet unmade, like his own son’s.

  Waiting at a table was a tall young woman who was stretched about the chair, leaning on one elbow on the table, addressing tart remarks to the officers who stood nearby, ogling her. She wore an Afghan-style fringed mauve coat, and at the end of long legs that reached across the corridor, entwined like a mermaid’s tail, were high-heeled boots. Her hair was flicked back, a little Farrah Fawcett in style, and her eyes were dark.

  When Moran approached, she stood up and put her arms around his neck, pulling his head to hers, giving him a long kiss. Dunn saw the hollows of their cheeks as their heads moved and Moran’s hands going inside the coat. Two of the officers were gawping. Jaws rapped the desk at the back of the room and Dunn asked them to break it up. The young woman used the side of her thumb to wipe the lipstick from Moran’s mouth.

  ‘Hello Sean Moran. I’m Nancy Costello.’

  ‘Hello Nancy. Everything okay?’

  ‘Everything’s just fine,’ she said, looking at him and nodding slowly. There was some sort of understanding, more than likely an exchange had taken place. Moran’s hands were under the table.

  ‘Nails wants you to tell Kevin it’s still a no. Keep the letters on the five demands coming, he says. It’ll all work out Sean, so you keep eating your dinners. You’ve got the Christmas present there you know.’

  ‘I thought I’d just had that. I’m glad I told my mother not to come now.’

  Nancy dropped her coat on to the back of the chair, pivoting a little at the waist, her breasts moving from side to side.

  ‘Did you manage to bangle it all right? Is it your first time?’

  ‘I’m getting used to it. I’d like to conceal something in you, Nancy. Now I know why they rip the crotch of the jeans.’

  Dunn saw her slip a little in the seat and drop her shoulders, her hands were underneath the table.

  ‘You’re very driven by the cause,’ he said.

  Jaws banged on the desk again and called out.

  ‘It’ll all be over if you don’t pack that in
kids,’ Dunn said. ‘Five more minutes.’

  ‘I only needed about thirty more seconds,’ said Sean. The girl gave Dunn cat’s eyes.

  ‘What’s the football scores then?’

  ‘You’re the typical bloody man, so y’are, sex and football. I’ll bet you’re itching to get back to the lads now to tell them you got felt.’

  ‘Two minutes in the act and two hours in the telling.’

  ‘I don’t know about the football but I’ll make sure I find out for next time. Sean, I don’t know you but you seem like a really nice fella. I’ll tell you something from me, from Nancy, if you lads go on hunger strike, you’ll die. I know it because it’s a woman we’re talking about. Thatcher, she won’t give in, she’s a bitch.’

  ‘I know that Nancy.’

  Dunn saw Jaws tapping on his wristwatch. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Two minutes and time’s up.’

  ‘Will I see you again Nancy? Will you write to me?’

  ‘Aye, on both counts.’

  She stood up, and they kissed again with Nancy’s hands in his hair.

  ‘Do me a favour Sean, have a shower next time will you?’

  Dunn began to lead the boy away to the back. Moran turned around, pointing his finger at her.

  ‘One day I’ll have a bath, with you Nancy! I will!’

  She was stood, arms crossed, not listening to the prison officer who wanted to get her out. Sean gave her a last wave.

  ‘I think I’m in love with you Sean Moran!’ she shouted out. Sean gave her the thumbs up and was gone.

  * * *

  On the walk back, tired of the sound of gravel, Dunn said, ‘How old are you Moran?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘You ought to be having a normal life, going out with that girl, going down the pub. And here you are, just a kid, mixed up in all of this.’

  They went on together in silence. He supposed the boy had been handed this, just as he was handed his life. But the army was a good life. Even in Northern Ireland in the beginning. He thought about the girls who danced with them in their camp at Dundonald in the summer of ’69 when they were welcome in Belfast. All those Catholic girls, pale legs and dark voices. Probably he’d danced with someone who knew this boy’s family, maybe he’d even danced with the boy’s mother. By the end of the summer things had changed. A girl he’d been out with came up to the wire fence of their camp, one day; her arm was in a sling, her hair was cropped off. She told him she couldn’t see him again. ‘Come away from the fence, Corporal Dunn!’

  ‘I’ll ask the orderly to tell you the football score,’ he said as they approached the block.

  * * *

  When John Dunn got in that night, the light was on in the spare room and he popped his head in. They sat for a while with John asking Mark about his childhood and about life at the university.

  ‘Are you worried about the IRA getting you?’ said Mark, out of the blue. ‘Angie worries.’

  ‘It’s her I’m afraid of, not the IRA! Come on, pal, let’s get downstairs and have a cup of tea down there, before we’re in the shit for keeping her awake with our jawing.’ He went loopily down the stairs, jumping from one foot to the other with exaggerated ‘shushes’, turning back to grimace at his son.

  Suddenly John saw the image of his father doing the same to him, the clown’s face, calling back to John’s mother as they made their way down the steps from the hut in Mote Park, creeping off to the pub together. And then the comic false trip, his dad stumbling forwards, and the boy worried, arms out, fooled. ‘Had you there, son.’

  Chapter 43

  Kathleen and her sister were side by side on Saturday night. She was about to show Eileen the Christmas presents. They were remembering the Christmas their mother made each of them a small set of drawers out of cardboard wrapped with printed material. In each drawer she’d put some treasure – be it a whistle, a balloon, marbles, a hair slide or some cigarette cards. When they opened their presents, their father used to take as much interest as they did, lifting them up for admiration, praising his wife to the skies. They were sentimental, the pair of them. Their mother used to egg their father on to tell a story, or sing a sad song:

  ‘In the street, he envies all those lucky boys,

  Then wanders home to last year’s broken toys.

  I’m so sorry for that laddie;

  He hasn’t got a daddy,

  The little boy that Santa Claus forgot.’

  When William started up with that song last Christmastime they’d all hushed him.

  ‘Give it a rest, Billy.’

  ‘For the love of Mary . . .’

  He kept going though, enjoying himself, doing the part where the lad sent a note to Santa for some soldiers and a gun and ‘it broke his little heart when he found Santa hadn’t come’, but they shouted him down. There were enough boys who hadn’t got their daddies at home not to need to sing about it.

  They were a couple of innocents her parents, do-gooders. When she was just seventeen their mother, Anne Marie, heard that a baby boy down the street was being given away and as her parents had just lost an infant son, her father told her, ‘Go you down there and bring back the babby, tell them there’s a home for it here.’ The baby came with a piece of paper upon which was its birth date. In fact the boy, on closer inspection, was revealed to be a girl. ‘Och the poor wee lad’s got no mickey,’ quipped Anne Marie’s mother. Anne Marie raised the baby girl. She called her Fay, after Fay Wray. She was seventeen and the talk was that it was her own child.

  It was through Fay that she met Kathleen’s father. Michael O’Leary was born in Kerry but his parents had moved to Sailortown for the work. He did a bit for the St Vincent’s charity and he used to chat with little Fay and bring her sweets now and again. He got talking to Anne Marie, and after a while they got married.

  The two of them were buried in Milltown, their mother joining their father two years after him in ’74. They all clubbed together for a white stone and an angel to look down over them.

  Their parents never had much in life, they never managed to save a penny. They had a lot of faith. Kathleen reminded Eileen how their parents said the rosary together every evening.

  ‘Jim and I pray at nights too. He prays we do and I pray we don’t.’ Kathleen showed her the Sindy doll she’d got for Aine with a fur-trimmed leather raincoat hat and boots.

  ‘Look at her tits,’ said Eileen, jabbing at the doll with a dirty-nailed finger. ‘She’s not a breastfeeder.’

  Kathleen had a small Panasonic cassette recorder with a microphone for Liam.

  ‘He can go about recording trouble instead of making it,’ said Eileen.

  ‘If only we’d had all girls. Maureen McGuigan had seven girls and not a peep out of them, except for the wee second to last one who looks like a boy and beat the crap out of my Ciaran once.’

  ‘This is for Sean.’ Kathleen opened a jeweller’s box and inside there was a long slim, silver crucifix with a waif-thin Jesus figure wrapped around it. ‘They’re allowed their crosses you see.’

  ‘It’s beautiful. You’ve done them all proud. The kids’ll be made up. You’re not letting your man Santa deliver this lot I hope? Who’s doing it this year?’

  ‘It’s Fergal O’Hanlon’s brother, Dominic again. He started off all right last year, he had all the presents, one for each kid, all labelled up by their mummies and daddies, and he was up the top there, about six-ish, making sure the kids got a chance to look at him. Then he takes a wee drink at each home so that by the time he gets down to us, he’s mad tore. The pedal was off of Liam’s bike where he’d ridden it himself. I told Liam, look Santa’s had a few, that’s why it’s broken like. He wouldn’t come round to fix it when I got Sean to go and ask him, giving off about Santa not giving out guarantees.’

  ‘Francie Keogh used to do it so nice.’

  ‘Aye he did that.’ Kathleen lit a cigarette for Eileen and one for herself and they sat smoking. Kathleen put her fingertips to o
ne eye, then the other.

  ‘What is it, love? Have you news about Sean?’

  ‘It’s all this about a hunger strike. You know how it is round here, the talk builds and builds and you think it’ll go on and then suddenly the thing you’ve all been talking about has happened. I feel sick all day with the worry and then I pray at night that it won’t be my Sean, it won’t be him as goes on the hunger strike. It’s a terrible thing to pray that it be someone else’s son.’

  Eileen was a hard-looking woman with a soft heart. She overate, swore like a man and surrounded herself with sentimental ornaments, pretty photo frames, mottoes. She put a hand on her sister’s.

  ‘I was going to talk to Father Pearse,’ said Kathleen, ‘but did you know he’s coming out for the hunger strike and saying how we’ve got to support the boys who’s going on it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what he’s thinking of, that man. The church is coming out against it. You turn to the church, Kathleen, it’s always been there for us before now.’

  ‘And what if I can’t?’ Kathleen took her hand away.

  ‘Of course you can. Don’t talk stupid, Kathleen.’ Eileen followed her sister into the kitchen. ‘Whatever are you saying that for?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m just tired and worn out with it all. Who isn’t?’ She shook the tea tin. There was barely any noise to it. ‘I’ve spent a fortune on presents and such. I took out a loan I’ll be paying back until after next summer, just before I take out one for the next Christmas. But you say to yourself, I might as well spend all I can lay my hands on because next year who knows whether we’ll all still be here.’ She looked out over the back yard. ‘Fucking Christmas. Coming along every year, to make it all worse.’