This Human Season Read online

  ‘I don’t really know if I can, if I’m strong enough.’

  ‘You’re a good mother.’

  ‘I’m not though. I don’t know if I can stop it.’

  ‘Yes you are, yes you can. Now, get away with you. I’ll see you tomorrow for Christmas dinner.’

  She held out the handkerchief. He looked at it.

  ‘I’ll wash it. And give it to you tomorrow.’

  When she was gone, the priest sat for a while. He didn’t go to God enough for guidance, he knew it. He didn’t hear Him speak any more. He heard the phone ringing, the door knocking, the chatter of the women in the office, the clock ticking, the kettle boiling.

  He sat praying, trying to force a place of quiet inside himself to allow the Lord to enter in and speak to him. It took a ferocity of effort now that it hadn’t before he came to Belfast.

  Chapter 46

  ‘Fellas, I want you all in my office. Right now, if you please.’

  Campbell straightened bodily, but his face was misshapen with anguish as he followed Bolton.

  Shandy was coming out of the toilets and Dunn gave him a nod.

  ‘PO wants a word. You all right there?’

  ‘Aye, we’re all in the same boat.’

  The men stood, arms folded. Bolton took off his jacket and perched on the desk. Dunn leant against the wall.

  ‘I’ve been asked to bring you together to remind you about personal safety precautions and to impress upon you the need for extra vigilance at the present time.’ He put on his glasses and picked up a newspaper. ‘I don’t suppose any of you read the Irish News but I’d like to read you the following statement issued by the IRA on the occasion of Officer Willard’s murder yesterday: “Once again we will remind prison officers that the campaign against them will continue until they desist from carrying on the failed policy of criminalisation. The continuation of this policy is the cause of extreme misery for Republican prisoners of war.”’

  Campbell made a noise and moved his foot like a horse at the race gates.

  ‘So are we going to get our houses bullet-proofed now, Sir?’ asked Shandy.

  ‘There’s no bullet-proofing for officer ranks. Only for the senior staff.’

  ‘Them that don’t need it like,’ said Frig. There was a tutting and shaking of heads.

  ‘All I said to you was what the policy is. Now there are things you know you can do to protect yourselves without getting too bloody paranoid.’

  ‘Number One Governor, Rimes, has got his own armoured vehicle,’ said Rabbit, looking round, stopping at Campbell.

  ‘The great tart,’ said Frig.

  ‘First, you alter your patterns. Good, not to drive here the same way every day; better, not to use the same car. Make as much variance as possible, travel with a pal, use the wife’s car if she’s got one. If you’re going to eat off site, don’t go to the same place day in day out; better, don’t eat outside. Get your wife and family to alter their schedules as well. Take the car, take the bus, walk, but whatever you do, do something different. Are you with me? Be smart about the house. Don’t let the missus hang your blue prison-service shirts out on the line, please lads. Check under the car if you want, some do, some don’t. Up to you. I know who’s who in the car-park where we do our shopping because I see them drop their keys by accident on purpose, to check underneath. Be careful your security doesn’t mark you out. By the by, I presume you’ve all heard the story of the week? I digress but we could use the laugh. Your man Dripper Dawson had his car blown up this morning – something about his tax disc and his plates not matching and it being parked in an unusual place. The army’s Christmas joke I expect. Anyway, Dripper got compensation so he’s a happy man . . .’

  Frig looked across at Dunn and then at Shandy.

  ‘Where was I? Yes, come and go at different times. Make sure your phone is not in the hallway or in line with a door or window—’

  Campbell turned round towards the others, his left arm outstretched, a trigger finger up at his eye. ‘Hello this is the IR fucking A. Goodbye.’

  ‘Aye well. You and your wife and family, keep to people you know and trust. Don’t make new friends. Don’t tell people you don’t know anything about your life, be wary of questions.’

  ‘It can be people you know,’ said Shandy. ‘We’ve moved four times now and we’ll be moving again soon, more than likely. I went up the Prison Service Office and I says what about some protection, what about bullet-proof glass? My wife’s been threatened, my kids too, we’ve had the front door shot at, and they told me they couldn’t help me.’

  They had heard this before.

  ‘Tell your wives to be careful what they tell people, especially with phone calls when then they don’t know the caller; they can give away information without knowing it. You know about keeping your mouth shut inside the prison. Don’t get friendly with a prisoner, do not say a word.’ Bolton looked at Dunn.

  ‘What about handguns?’ asked Shandy.

  ‘I was coming to that. You have to apply for one if you want one.’

  ‘I did,’ said Campbell. ‘I’m still waiting.’

  ‘I’ve never had one myself. Not one of the officers killed so far had the chance to fire back, did they? But if it makes you feel better you are entitled to a .22 Starr, which you purchase yourself after you’ve applied to the police for a gun licence, then you do a firearms course with the police, a day-long thing. Let me know who wants to do it.’

  ‘Ach this is a total waste of time—’ Campbell began, meaning to take the floor, but Shandy spoke up.

  ‘I’ll do it. I’ve had enough of the shite we live with, so has the missus. If we’ve got that underneath the mattress we’ll feel a whole lot better.’

  ‘Can I ask a question?’ said Dunn. ‘Are we more likely to be followed out of here or to be staked out at home?’

  ‘Well, the way things have gone, you’re more likely to be followed. Of course they could get hold of information about where you live and that’s why I say to take care.’

  ‘How would they get our information?’

  ‘Your next-door neighbour would give it to them,’ said Skids.

  ‘Ach, shut the fuck up will you, you miserable son of a bitch,’ said Campbell. ‘Not on Sandy Row they wouldn’t.’

  ‘Your records are held securely. I have your phone numbers so that I can give you a good bollocking over the phone when you’re late in or pulling a sicky, but I keep my office locked for the most part. Right, lads, that’s it, let’s get on with it then.’

  Behind him the window had darkened, the rain was falling heavily and stray raindrops had saved themselves by clinging to the windowed spaces between the bars. They too succumbed.

  ‘Given what you say about varying our routes and the like, wouldn’t it be wise to have variable shifts?’ said Skids.

  ‘Your shifts are variable Skids, you’re either late or drunk. That’s it for now, lads.’

  ‘He likes to vary his women,’ Frig was muttering as they filed out.

  ‘Small tits, big arse, blonde hair, dark muff . . .’

  Bolton took his glasses off and sat down, rolling his sleeves back, hands on his desk. The small oat-coloured fruit bowl was empty, with a ring around the interior as if the tide had gone out.

  ‘What is it, Officer Dunn?’

  ‘Nothing, Sir.’

  * * *

  Dunn and Shandy were assigned to tidying the stores that afternoon. There were sheets and blankets screwed up in balls, some empty bottles lying around and toilet rolls, towels and prisoner bedding all awry.

  ‘Ah fuck,’ said Shandy, holding an empty bottle. ‘I remember this one.’

  ‘You all right, Shandy?’ asked Dunn, beginning to fold.

  ‘Where we live, we only had one of the Shankill Butchers two doors down from us all the while. He was lifted in February. Our girls used to play with his, still do, and his girls are all the time around our place. They’re nice girls, but it makes my skin crawl.’
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  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I saw him today. He’s on the Loyalist block that my mate Monty runs. I need to speak with him about the new year’s do, because I’m doing the chocolate log for it, but there’s no way in hell I’m setting foot over there.’

  Dunn stopped folding.

  ‘His girls you know, ach they’re only six or seven or so. We can’t think how to stop them coming across like. You try to give the kids a normal life, you know, whatever the cost. Well he makes them wee toys all the time in the workshops. Their mother’s only told them that their daddy’s got a job up at the prison. A doll’s house he’s made, and so my girls are after asking me, if Sarah and Sophie’s daddy can make one of them at work, why can’t you? I says, because I can’t in my line of work, and they say, sure you can if their daddy can, he works where you work. So then I knew he knew I was here. That was last week. We’ve got a mixed street where we are. There’s this fella, a Catholic, and he says to me, Harry, I moved out of Belfast to be safer and here I am living on the same street as a Shankill Butcher. It was my wife saw your man being arrested. She was stood by the window as they took him off and he pointed right at her. She’s terrified in case he thinks she’s the one that gave him away.’

  ‘Shandy, calm down. What can he do to you in here?’

  ‘Lenny Murphy got Mervyn Connor, didn’t he? In ’73, in the Crum, by hook or by crook. And they say the prison officers were in on it. If someone in here doesn’t like me? Cyanide in my custard, ground glass in my tea, or a simple bullet on my way home.’

  ‘Come on. What is it you normally say when there’s bad news? “Deal”. Let’s get this done, have a game of cards and a drink or two in the bar at teatime.’

  Shandy was biting at the lower knuckle of his thumb. ‘The thing is, John-boy, I know too much. I know too many people. I could know something that no one wants me to know. I might not be able to help it. I mightn’t even know what that thing is. But someone else might take a different view. This place is like a bloody ants’ nest, everyone crawling all over each other. And I can’t forget the things I do know. I wish I didn’t know some of the stuff I know. I know what people can do to each other, and I don’t think I could take it, John, I don’t think I could take being tortured. A bullet I could take but being tortured . . .’

  ‘Come off it, Shandy.’

  ‘It’s the kids you see. You worry.’

  ‘Cut it out, mate.’ He tried to sound friendly but he didn’t feel it.

  ‘There are some things you hear and you can’t forget and they stay with you and you wish like fuck you’d never heard them or never seen them. You were in the army. You must have seen some terrible things.’

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘You can probably take it better than someone like me. Back in the summer of ’72, there was this killing, a Catholic, name of Madden was killed by Lenny Murphy, do you remember reading about it?’

  ‘I was in Germany then.’

  ‘He tortured the man for hours and hours, chipping away at his skin with a knife, and a woman on Louisa Street heard a man screaming at four a.m., “Kill me! Kill me!” I think of that whenever I’m happy, like a curse. I can be in bed with the wife, knowing the kids are tucked up and safe and I think of that and it just about ruins everything.’

  Dunn went back to folding with effort and speed, first shaking out, then shoving half-folded blankets further back on the shelves.

  ‘To beg to be killed. And what if it’s not me screaming? What if it’s one of my kids? What if because of what I’ve done my own kid’s screaming out to be killed?’

  ‘There’s a reason people don’t talk about that shit.’ Dunn threw down the folded blanket and walked out.

  Chapter 47

  On Christmas Eve the prisoners were given tea and a digestive biscuit each about seven. The mugs were returned empty and no biscuits with them. Lights were turned out just after midnight, as normal, and with their door slit uncovered, there was some light from the neon strips on the wing corridor ceiling. Before lights out, the prisoners had stood up at their cell doors to talk through the slits.

  That night they had two smokes each; they swung the line early on. They were smoking the tobacco that had been passed to them by the orderly. The screw on duty that night was known as ‘Béal Mor’, or ‘Big Mouth’. He was from England, he had a thick Birmingham accent, but he was not one of the worst.

  For Christmas ’78 an entertainment had been organized that had become legendary, with songs written and performed, and prizes for contestants. It had gone on until sun up. But 1979 had been rough. Another year had passed and the protest was more than three years old. They were much more than a year older. This Christmas the entertainments were barely considered.

  When ‘Béal Mor’ came back on to the wing, a casual warning went up from Hughie Kearney but the lads carried on smoking. Gerard was up, offering just the one entertainment; he and Sean had written a Christmas quiz. He said it was going to be funny. There was some derisory noisemaking from down the block, but for the most part apathy.

  Suddenly, they heard the screw saying, ‘Excuse moy gentlemen.’ In his Birmingham accent, fat with apology, rippling with nerves, he went on,

  ‘I would like to play for you a record that I got in Belfast. It’s by Pink

  Floyd.’

  Gerard stepped back from the door. Sean sat down on his mattress.

  Chapter 48

  Kathleen went up The Fiddlers on Christmas Eve while Mrs O’Sullivan watched the kids. She was going to meet Collette Heaney there. It had occurred to her that there was every chance Brendan would be there that night. She’d mascara’d her eyes.

  She remembered how they’d ended up laying on the dirt in a small clearing out near Long Kesh, his head on her shoulder, his cock beating inside of her. ‘Don’t go falling in love with me,’ he’d said.

  If she felt the beggar when he said these things, it was her fault. She should do the right thing, and finish it with him. He reminded her of who she wasn’t.

  Nevertheless, she was walking up to the pub with him in mind.

  ‘I’ll have to drop you up by Lenadoon and you can get a cab from there,’ he’d said, pulling his trousers up as he stood. ‘I can’t take the chance of being seen . . .’

  ‘That’s fine.’ Hands trying to make sense of her tights.

  Driving back, few words had passed between them. As she went to get out of the car, he’d said, ‘Kathleen. It wasn’t just about the sex.’

  ‘Now why did you have to go and say that?’

  Every time after being with Brendan, she was miserable. There was a reason adultery was forbidden, that it was a mortal sin akin to suicide; it killed you from the inside out. She’d been feeding something that ought not to grow and now she had to smother it.

  When she’d stepped out, Mrs O’Sullivan had been reading to the children. If it was her there she’d have had the TV on and be telling them to be quiet, wishing them away.

  She walked into The Fiddlers and saw that it was all men at the bar and she stood, a little awkward, and then when the widest man of the group turned round and opened a space at the bar to which he invited her, she smiled formally.

  ‘Me-eeh, ee-eh, and missus, missus Mo-ran . . . We got a thing going on . . .’

  ‘Hey Sean, it’s your other red-head,’ called out Flinty at the optic. Sean came across. ‘Well hello, young lady,’ and his breath was as rich as Christmas itself for he’d been on the brandy.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I’ll have a glass of Martini and lemonade.’ There was a chorus of exaggerated approval and some mimicry.

  ‘Oh fuck way with yous,’ she said, putting a pack of cigarettes on the bar and causing laughter.

  ‘Mr O’Hanlon here is just after saying goodbye to his dearly departed mother-in-law.’

  ‘God rest her soul, I’m sorry for your sadness,’ said Kathleen, raising her glass.

  ‘What a wasted life,’ said O’Hanlon.

  �
�Och, shame. Did she suffer long?’

  ‘Did she fuck. It’s mine I’m talking about. When I see a fine-looking woman like yourself, I can’t help thinking what a waste to have spent my youth and looks on one woman. Wasn’t I Paddy the lad when I lived over in New York with my cousin, going with every girl, Italians, Costa Ricans, Jews – you name it, they were all after my Irish eyes . . .’ A laugh went up. ‘Back in the fifties there, when I was no more than a lad. Though I did have—’

  ‘Ladies present!’ shouted Flinty.

  ‘And my fiancée back in Belfast, my Margaret, she wrote me a letter saying, You must come home and we’ll get married for my poor mother is dying and it’s her dearest wish. And I come back and the old cow’s abed, back on Kashmir Street, and we got married and I moved in with them and that, as they say, was the beginning of the end. Last week the old baggage passes on at last, after twenty years in bed giving orders. Oh, but she could hop up to get herself a wee drink when she thought yous weren’t there! Teeth in a glass and “Oh I heard the most terrible noises in the night, thought yous were killing each other, what was it yous were after doing?” Seventy-nine. And good riddance! Now I can start living.’

  There was a toast. ‘To Fergal’s new life . . .!’

  ‘Now I never went with an Italian girl myself,’ said Sean, leaning on the bar. ‘After I met this lady here I had eyes for nobody else—’ the men turned to look at Kathleen. ‘But I spent some time in Italy.’

  Kathleen knew the story that was coming. ‘I’ll have another drink.’ She looked across at the mirror over the bar. She saw Collette and her husband coming across talking to people. In the corner she saw Brendan Coogan, rising from amidst a group, getting up to come to the bar.

  ‘Is your Dominic all set for doing the Santa then tonight?’ she asked Fergal. He nodded.

  Her husband cleared his throat exaggeratedly in her direction. ‘As I was saying, I says to your man, pointing at the wee wedding day photo, there’s me, and he has a good look at it, and he gives me this look.’ Sean nodded with his lower lip jutting and his eyes wide. The group laughed.