This Human Season Read online

  ‘We always talked about the Prods this and that. Och I knew there was something going on. Him and your Sean all the chat until you walked in. And then that fella Mickey, friend of yours, Sheila, up in Eammon’s room with him, the door closed. And him going away down south for a couple of weeks and me just praying they didn’t get caught. Well and I got what I wanted. He didn’t get caught.’

  ‘We have to defend ourselves round here,’ said Sheila. ‘Your Eammon—’

  ‘I wish he’d been caught.’

  There was nothing they could offer Mrs Lavery; their children were still alive. Sheila sat with her weak coffee, stirring it, her face discontented. Kathleen carried on spreading margarine on to baps, making each surface yellow and even with her knife, saying nothing.

  ‘You can’t expect anyone else to love your sons like you do,’ said Mrs Lavery. ‘You’ve got to do it yourself.’

  One of her grandsons put his head round the door. ‘Seems like it’s fine to go ahead, Granny, if you want.’

  ‘Aye,’ she said, and she took up her apron and hid her face in it.

  The boy came over to her. ‘Come on then,’ he said. He put his arms around her until she said she was fine and he asked her if she was sure and she nodded and they went out into the front room.

  Sheila put the coffee mugs in the sink. ‘If mothers hadn’t always sacrificed their sons for what was right, things would never have stood a chance of getting better.’

  ‘Wasn’t it you that night my Liam was taken off that said you should have moved away for the sake of the kids?’

  ‘We all get our weak moments.’

  The front room was dark, the curtains were closed and had been that way since the body was brought home the day before. The grandfather clock in the corner had been stayed and covered with a cloth; a mirror had been turned to face the wall. The young man was in an open white coffin on a put-up table near to the front windows. There was a candlestick at each end. At the bottom of the coffin was the tricolour flag with a black beret and black gloves neatly folded on top. Mrs Lavery stood by the coffin a while, one hand on it, like a mother at a cradle, looking out towards the mountains through a crack between the curtains.

  Martin Lavery, the father, went around with a bottle of whiskey, pressing people to take one; kindly eyed, worried that everyone had a drink. He fussed over those that had to take their drop from a mug, apologizing and saying, ‘It ought to have been a glass, if we’d had a moment to get ourselves together you’d have had a glass.’

  Sean went into the front room and drew the curtains closer together. Mrs Lavery started to sob and her hand was taken by one of her daughters and kissed. Her oldest son stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. Father Pearse asked whether he should begin.

  Liam and Owen were taking occasional glimpses behind the curtains. The grandsons chose to go and stand at the back door, watching. When one of them came and tapped Sean Moran on the shoulder, Sean stepped back out of the room, finger to his lips, ostentatious in his apparent desire to go unnoticed, and was heard to give hearty greetings.

  Four men entered wearing black sweaters, trousers, berets and dark glasses. They took their places, two at either side of the coffin. Father Pearse began the mass, a hand on Mrs Lavery’s shoulder.

  Kathleen saw Liam looking at the volunteers. Three more men entered, dressed in combat fatigues and balaclavas. Her husband was standing close to them, and thinking his son was looking at him, he gave him a dignified nod.

  Mrs Lavery’s elderly mother had a hearing aid that went off with a buzz and a whirr occasionally, and the group was trying its best to ignore both its noise and her loving chiding of the equipment. It was likely that she’d soon be coming to live with her daughter and son-in-law, going into Eammon’s room that was.

  As the father gave the mass, Kathleen looked over at Liam, his eyes moving between the window and the volunteers, almost oblivious to the corpse.

  She looked at the coffin, the pale, serene face of Eammon, his slim body in a suit that he’d never worn in his life. She looked at her neighbours and friends. She looked at her husband and then she looked back at Liam. She thought, ‘Who can I trust to love you like I do?’ No amount of death, no church, nothing could breach the gap between love for one’s own son and love for another’s. She looked down at the mother, whose hand was inside the coffin, fingertips on his collarbone.

  The mass ended abruptly. Sean looked at his watch. Father Pearse smiled with relief and went to bless Mrs Lavery who was on her knees crying with abandon.

  People moved apart and spoke in low voices. Mr Lavery asked everyone to help themselves to the food in the kitchen and then he went to find the whiskey for refills.

  The cortège would stop where the Whiterock met the Falls, Sean explained to the three men in fatigues. The coffin would be placed on a wooden stand on the roadway and on his signal they should appear from behind the shop at the corner and fire the volley.

  ‘You’ll see Bernie Curran’s sister, Gràinne, waiting where you come. The guns will be in her pram. She’s gone down ahead. The father will get the bullets to her now and she’ll load them up.’

  Pushing past him to go out to the kitchen and bring in some food, Kathleen bumped into Brendan Coogan in the hallway. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, zipped up, and his face was unshaven.

  ‘Hello Kathleen.’

  ‘It’s terrible, terrible for her, she’s broken up, her life’s over. How can any of it be worth it.’

  His face hardened as it had when she’d used the wrong word for the executions of the prison officers.

  She was forced towards him a little as someone passed behind her. She put a hand on one of his and moved her fingertips between the hard knuckles. She didn’t know why, afterwards. Then Eilish Purcell was upon them, a hand on each of their backs, asking if they would come to a meeting the next week.

  ‘We’ve got to press on with the youth centre. Young people need something besides the war. It’s occasions like these that make it all the more required,’ she was saying, and Kathleen saw Mr Lavery, who’d been making in their direction with his bottle, hunch his shoulders, wheel around and move off in another direction. Mrs Lavery was being steered through to the kitchen. Coogan excused himself.

  ‘I’ve got to be away now. I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Lavery.’

  In the front room someone stood on the cat’s tail and a screech rang out, causing a frisson of silence and a little relieved, tremorous, laughter and chit chat.

  Kathleen’s husband touched her lightly on the arm, asking her for a word. His breathing was laboured and he looked stressed. She wondered if it wasn’t that he badly wanted a drink. She followed him towards the back door and he stood in front of her, his hands at his sides.

  ‘I am not my father,’ he said. ‘I was always wanting to be the big man. Like my brothers. But now I don’t care about him or any of them at all.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Aye, that’s how it is.’

  ‘You’ve just to be yourself, Sean.’

  ‘That’s right, Kathleen, aye,’ he agreed, then asked her, ‘What do you want me to be?’

  Father Pearse came back into the hallway, shaking out his raincoat and trying to find the armhole in it, with Collette behind him trying to help him get it straight, the pair of them apparently at odds.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he was saying irritably. ‘We need to be getting a move on, Sean, I’ve to press ahead now.’

  ‘The bullets!’ said Sean to Kathleen, suddenly panicked. ‘I meant for the father to take them down with him. Oh Jesus, where did I put the bloody things? They’re in the fucking biscuit tin!’

  He leapt into the kitchen with Kathleen following. ‘What shall I put them in?’

  ‘Here,’ said Kathleen, picking up a carrier bag on the counter top. ‘I’ll stick a bap in it as well.’ Sean threw his handful of bullets in on top.

  ‘I’ll see you out, Father!’ called Kathleen,
going quickly after him with the bag. ‘I’ve got your dinner here!’

  There were two RUC constables on the doorstep, looking nervous. Father Pearse assumed an expression that was both supercilious and exasperated. ‘We must do the holy mass where we can these days.’

  ‘Would there be any paramilitary trappings in there?’ the older of the two asked, apple cheeked.

  ‘Ach, no, for God’s sake, no,’ the father protested roughly.

  ‘Now just you wait a minute there,’ said the younger one, hand out.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Kathleen was propelled forwards by those behind her. The four men in uniform emerged first, each in gloves, sunglasses and berets. The first of them had the tricolour folded over his forearm. The three men in combats and balaclavas followed. Sean Moran was behind, saying blindly, ‘All clear, lads, all clear.’

  The RUC men stood back, surprised, speechless, short on ideas.

  With a hand making a small wave, Father Pearse made his way down the street at a smart pace; in the other hand he held a carrier bag in which there was an egg bap and some bullets.

  Chapter 68

  The press was there waiting for them when they came out of the hospital in the early hours. It was a shock, flashes going off and questions being asked. The footage was replayed on the evening news, with a young reporter saying, ‘The latest prison officer to be killed . . .’

  And although they were quiet people with not many friends, throughout the weekend there were people coming and going, and the body was brought home on the Saturday and given the proper Irish wake.

  Her mother and father came and stayed, so she slept on the couch in the front room, with him. She couldn’t sleep and kept thinking of things to slip into the coffin with him – a couple of Panatelas, a wee note. She knew she wouldn’t have him for long.

  At the wake, there were a couple of old army friends who came by, men that she had only met the once or twice. Mark had got their numbers from John’s pocket address-book.

  Some of the prison officers came too. Hardy and Higgins? Foster? She was confused. Then they said, you’ll have maybe heard of Frig and Shandy, Skids? In the kitchen, Shandy, a big tussle-headed man in his too-tight suit, came out to help her but he had something on his mind, it was clear. She offered to make him something to eat.

  ‘We do the job and we bury our dead.’

  ‘It’s terrible.’ She handed him a sandwich.

  ‘It is,’ he agreed, taking it, absorbed suddenly by the two white slices and the ham between them.

  ‘Mustard?’ she said. He shook his head.

  The senior officer from the block, Mr Campbell, came by and took a whiskey, choking up with anguish as he looked into the coffin.

  ‘He was a quiet fellow, didn’t know him long, but you knew where he stood. He was a decent man.’

  Later, he stood in the front garden a while on his own, and after most of the others had gone he was still there so Angie went out to him. They exchanged the usual niceties, knowing they’d never see each other again, then as they went to shake hands he took her in his arms, and she felt him shaking and he started to weep, saying, to explain himself, ‘I lost my wife myself not long ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Do you have children?’

  ‘A son.’

  ‘That’s something.’ Then she said, ‘I might be pregnant. I hope I am. It would be something of him to keep.’

  There was a wreath from the governor, with his apologies for events that precluded his being there that day. Janet Lingard sent a note saying that her husband had been badly beaten and was in hospital recovering, and as she was up there most days she couldn’t come to the funeral, but she was very sorry for the news and would come by and visit if that was all right next week. Neighbours came in too and brought cakes and drink.

  A group of four Catholic women came up from the Falls Road and gave her some flowers, saying they were sorry. They wouldn’t stop for a drink. She stood watching them go, not knowing what to think.

  And the last night, before the funeral, when she was alone with him, whispering and smoking, from eleven to six in the morning, she told him about it all.

  ‘Your friend Roger came by, lives in Donaghadee now with his wife and a kid. Lovely man. Said, John did call me from time to time for news and that, he was never was meant for the army you know, he was a thinker, a loner. He said he’d lived with you in a small caravan in the hills in Cyprus. Then, just as he got his coat on to go, he tells me how when you were in Cyprus, one of the married men out there had a baby, and just a week old or so the poor wee thing died. His wife fell apart and they couldn’t get themselves to the funeral, so her husband asked you if you’d do it for them. He said you drove the coffin down through the hills and it was just you and the priest and the coffin. He said you told him how, when you were driving down there, you told that dead baby the story of the three bears. Jesus, John, I can see you now. Your funny flat voice and your eyes on the road.’

  Around six o’clock, Mark brought her in a cup of tea. ‘I’ll go and get washed,’ she said.

  She paused at the door on the way out to look at him by the coffin. He had picked up one of John’s hands, slipped the watch over it, and fastened it around his father’s wrist.

  She was losing the pair of them.

  New Year’s Day, 1980, Donegal

  Chapter 69

  They didn’t stop till they were at Letterkenny, the first town in the Republic, and there they went into a small tea shop and had two teas and a lemonade and a Coke, and he had a chocolate bar and shared it round, looking at the wrapping critically and saying, ‘There’s not much to that. Bloody English, Cadbury’s. I bet they’re mean with it when it goes overseas. I bet they say, don’t put so much in there, that lot’ll not know the difference.’

  Then they were back in the car, bumping over the topsy-turvy land on a narrow roadway, until they came across a two-pump petrol station and Kathleen got out and asked which way was Bunbeg. There was a stand inside the small room with a few loaves of bread on it and some buns, so she brought six iced buns back with her. It was a brittle winter day, but the car was warm with the four of them and they were happy going between grassy hills, following a single road that was inexorable, stupid, lovely. To the sides, set at disinterested angles, heedless of the road, there were single-room dwellings, some disused, some with smoke coming out of the chimney.

  An elderly woman out walking stopped in her tracks as she saw them coming, looked at the car as if it were romance itself and waved hard at them.

  When they came to a small village – a few homes and a lone pub – they were obliged to come to a standstill. There was an old man standing in the middle of the road, using his stick to indicate that they should slow down.

  ‘Would you be going in that direction?’ he asked at the driver’s window, pointing forwards. ‘I’m a wee bit out of sorts and I could use the lift.’

  Liam got out to let him in and once inside, the man sat bolt upright in the middle, between the seats, two hands about his walking stick, holding it proud, flagless.

  ‘And this is your car!’ he said, impressed by the Ford Escort. His tweed jacket was tied together with a piece of string. Liam got back in and slammed the door. The man winced.

  ‘We were lent it by our priest,’ said Kathleen.

  ‘You must be very holy,’ he said, smiling, steadying himself as they took off. He craned his neck to watch Sean at the gear stick and leant forward to watch his foot on the clutch. ‘Lovely gear change,’ he said happily, and nearly fell forward between the front seats.

  ‘You have a beautiful countryside out here.’

  ‘Aye we do that.’ He was squinting, one eye closed, his tongue drying on to his lip. ‘Just pull over some time on the right, down there, in your own time, Sir.’

  Sean pulled the stick into second, slowed to a stop.

  ‘’Tis a fine driver you are, Sir, may the Lord give you all you need in life.’

  He put a hand on eithe
r of the front seats both to congratulate them again and to lever himself up and out. Liam was standing outside, waiting. In a minute, he was back inside and the door was closed. The man was on the road behind them. On their knees, looking out the back window, the children watched him wave his stick, then head towards a little house on a ridge.

  ‘He was full,’ said Liam, fingers squeezing his nose. Kathleen cracked her window and Sean followed suit.

  There were small, white bungalows with thatched roofs dotted here and there on the peaty hillsides towards Bunbeg. Skirting the ocean for a while, they went up and down hill and came to the village itself with its couple of pubs, some guest houses, a post office, a general store and a single, rather maudlin, hotel, no lights on.

  ‘I feel comfortable here. In Ireland proper,’ he said to his wife.

  ‘It’s all Ireland proper. No one can say it’s not, the land is the land.’ When they got to the sandy beach, Sean stopped the car, and they sighed at the glistening flat sand and the sea that lapped and spread circles of glitter drops. Then he started up the car and drove it forwards on to the sand, with Kathleen exclaiming and the children drawing in great happy breaths of excitement.

  ‘Now it’s our beach,’ he said, stopping the car just at the water’s edge.

  ‘’Tis a fine driver y’are, Sir,’ said Kathleen, in their passenger’s voice. She opened the bag she had and handed round baps and then, steadying a bottle between her thighs and getting Sean to hold two mugs at a time, she poured lemonade. The children leant forwards to see what their parents had inside their sandwiches, looked at each other’s, put their own mugs between their feet and then they ate, the four of them, looking at the view up ahead and all around them, and at the marooned sailing-boat that had been abandoned in the harbour. The wind shook the car.