Field of Blood (33 page)

unacceptable, which meant it was God‐awful, which was why it was available.

The kitchen window was broken, and the rain had come in and cracked the linoleum. The roof had a quota of tiles dislodged and the main bedroom's wallpaper peeled from the wet plaster. The furniture was chipped or torn or frayed, and most of what was portable had long since been `possessed' by army

women. They had been let into the house by an obese captain, who hadn't thought it necessary to apologize for the condition of the premises. The house was in the heart of the old barracks' married quarters, its similarity with the one

in Palace Barracks began and ended with its siting at the end of a cul‐de‐sac.

Later that morning the captain had returned with a van‐load of crockery and cutlery and bedding and a television, and he had required Prentice to check the

items and sign for them on three different forms.

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That first morning Goss took McAnally to Castlereagh for a session with the Branch. They went in the back of an armoured police landrover, and the

supergrass was fitted out in a flak jacket.

Bloody good thing to have got rid of him, Prentice thought. He'd looked bloody

helpless amongst the mess in the house. As that morning drifted on Prentice felt

he was right in his judgement of the debris family of Sean Pius McAnally: if there

wasn't another disaster they just might come through. She hadn't spoken to her

husband in the house, but she had held his arm, and when he had gone, and when the van had brought the crockery and cutlery and the bedding, then she had started to work.

Baby Sean fed and asleep, Little Patty with the morning television babbling in front of her, Young Gerard with his mother. She started on the kitchen floor.

Prentice found her with a bucket of hot water ‐ there was hot water which was a

miracle ‐ and with a brush that was worn down to a stubble. Prentice caught the

mood, and he rang the number the captain had reluctantly given him, and

demanded plywood

to cover up the smashed kitchen window, and portable heaters to blast out the

upstairs damp.

More signing of white and yellow and mauve flimsies. The soldiers who brought

the three gas heaters and the plywood and the saw and hammer and nails

weren't admitted to the house, were packed off with their chitty. Prentice carried

the heaters upstairs and lit them, one for each bedroom, and he went outside into the rain and hammered the plywood that he had cut to size over the broken

window. She had stopped her scrubbing of the kitchen floor and looked up as he

had come through the kitchen door, and she would have seen him lock it after him, and pocket the key. She smiled ruefully at Prentice, and dropped back to her

work, and her trousers were tight on her backside, and her jersey had ridden up

to show the smooth pale skin at the base of her spine, and Prentice thought she

was as good a looking woman as the one who had booted him out of the

bungalow in Glengormley.

He found a vacuum cleaner in the cupboard under the stairs, and took the plug

off a standard lamp in the living room, and made the vacuum cleaner operational,

and he curtly set Young Gerard to work on the carpets upstairs and downstairs.

Prentice laughed to himself when he was upstairs in the small bedrooms. He moved all the beds back from the windows before laying out the sheets. The Provies had blown it. That was his belief. The bullet had been too much.

`You didn't have to do that.'

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Roisin was leaning against the doorway. Her hair was streaked down over her forehead, the sleeves of her jersey were pulled up to her elbows.

`The cleaner's out of a museum, but it goes.' Ìt's standard police training, getting vacuum cleaners to work,' Prentice said.

She smiled quickly, as if forgetting herself.

`There's no food in the house.'

Ì'll get some down here ... if Gingy's back we'll run you into the supermarket in

Lisburn, fill a basket.'

She said simply, Ì didn't know.'

`What was in the handkerchief, I know you didn't know.'

`You called me a bitch of a woman.'

Ì think I got you wrong, Mrs McAnally.'

He spread a first blanket over the single bed that filled the room, smoothed it down, and tucked in the bottom and the sides.

When he had finished the bed, admired it, he turned to the doorway for approval.

She was gone.

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**Frankie said, Ì can't bloody say what'll happen ... I just know that last night was bloody good ... McAnally got himself shaken. He'd have to have had ear plugs not to have heard the tape. His woman ends up in fits of tears with her Ma,

'cos the old lady gives it her thicker than gravy. I don't bloody say it'll happen today or tomorrow, but that woman's his strength, and we've damaged her good

and true ... That's all I can bloody say.'

Sharp, nasal voices swam around the ears of Frankie Conroy.

`You had a hell of a crowd of men out last night, you won't get the likes of that

again in a hurry.'

`They put them in the birdie. Who's to say where they've lifted him. Could be to

Aldergrove and a flight out.'

`What're you going to do now, Frankie?

'How're you going to squeeze him, Frankie?'

Frankie sighed. Ì bloody found him and damaged him. I don't know

how I'm going to get to him again.'

Opposite Frankie in the private room of the bar in Clonard was a veteran of the

movement. He had done time as an Internee in the '5662 campaign, and again after the '71 lifts, and he had been imprisoned in Portlaoise gaol in the South for

membership in '76. He was a man who was listened to.

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`You've gone for a big crack, Frankie. You've come in and you've chucked your weight all over. Your crack'll have to hurt, Frankie.'

`Would you be wanting the Chief and thirty others to rot away in the Kesh?

'Just telling you, that it's best you keep the ideas coming,' the veteran said calmly.

Ìs you saying we should forget the Chief, and the Brigade staff, and the Battalions. Forget the Chief and Ollie and Joey and Tom?

'You don't listen well, Frankie. And don't you tell me what you think I'm saying.

Listen hard. You've got it going, you have to keep it going. If you don't keep it going then it's bad for all of us, Frankie, and that's bad for you.'

`Don't fucking threaten me.'

Ì didn't threaten you ...' There was a cold emphasis in the veteran's voice.

Frankie stood. His knees clipped the table skirting, shook the glasses and spilled a sea of beer. The Organization was deep with divisions on the policy of the war.

There were those who called for political advancement and ultimately the black

saloon cars that would take them to the negotiating table, and there were the fighters. The Chief was a fighter, and Frankie was the Chief's man. In his mind he

saw the veteran in his wedding suit, or his funeral suit, smiling at the cameras as

he stepped into the black car for a trip to the sell‐out table. Soft old bastard ...

There were those who would have dry eyes if the Chief and thirty

of his fighters went down for Tenners and Fifteens and Twenties.

Frankie stared out the faces round the table, at the doorway.

`My crack'll hurt,' Frankie said.

Frankie went out and into the street, and he gulped the air, as if what he had breathed in the private room had been poison.

Ferris felt as if he had crawled through a hedge. He felt the dirt on his

body and the beard gathering on his cheeks and throat and chin. He

should have washed and shaved before entering the Mess, even if just

for a fast coffee. Post was always on the sideboard, the sideboard was

always his first stop. Bloody good ... he saw his Sam's handwriting on

a smart blue envelope. Big bold writing that could be read across a

room, about all they'd taught her that had stuck from school. There

was a bank statement and a letter from his mother. His mother wrote

every week, about nothing, but had a notion of duty that she should

write even if it were only to list the progress of the neighbours' kitchen

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extension.

He came from the sideboard with the letters tight in his hand, and

went to the coffee urn. He heard Sunray's voice.

`You're just back, David? 'Yes, sir.'

`From your extra‐ordinary duties? 'Yes, sir.' Ferris hovered by the urn.

Ànd been up all night, with the mortar business? 'Yes, sir.'

`Your ordinary duties, here, will, I hope, permit you time to bath

and shave.'

`Yes, sir.'

`Cook Corporal will keep coffee by for you, so that you can have

coffee after a bath and a shave.'

`Thank you, sir.'

The Bravo Company commander and the Battalion Adjutant and the

Quartermaster Captain were watching him. Sunray was by the urn,

holding his own cup and saucer.

`How's your man? 'He's fine, sir.'

`The opposition's getting the better of you.' Pompous arsehole, Ferris thought. Ì

hope not, sir.' `David . . .'

`Sir?

'I've a few of the locals coming for a drink tomorrow evening, Lis

burn's latest on winning hearts and minds is to pour sherry down their

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**throats. You've become very close to the ground, so I'd appreciate your presence, sixish.'

`Thank you, sir.'

He searched out his Platoon Sergeant, heard that a two‐vehicle mobile patrol was rostered for mid‐day, and cried himself off it. The Platoon Sergeant gave Ferris a fast eyes only inspection, and his face seemed to say that in the state the officer was in they'd be better off without him.

The water was tepid. His towel was damp, which meant bloody Wilkins had used

it the previous evening.

He crawled onto his bunk bed. There were three beds in the cubicle, standard for

junior officers. No comfort, no privacy, for Ferris and Armstrong and Wilkins.

Some idiot would say that it was good for the moulding of character. Junior officers weren't expected to sleep. Junior officers were supposed to be traipsing

the streets of Andy'town and Whiterock, keeping the bloody peace, keeping the

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heathens from each other's throats. He meant to read his mother's letter first, then his bank statement, then finish on a high note with Sam's. Bloody good thinking, bloody poor execution.

Ferris slept for an hour. The Cook Corporal came in search of him with a tray of

toast and coffee and found him stretched out, snoring lightly, grinning like a cat,

with his girl's letter unopened and lying on his chest. The Cook Corporal let him

be. It was a dreamless sleep without trouble. He'd thought of Sam when he'd closed his eyes, it had been his last thought before he crashed out.

There were two teenagers and an older man, past thirty, in the A.S.U. One of the

teenagers, armed with a Mauser handgun, held the widow in her kitchen. The other teenager and the older man went upstairs to her bedroom. The older man

carried an Armalite rifle, the other teenager carried a five‐gallon petrol can, and a short stave at the end of which had been wrapped a torn string vest and the striped sleeve of a pyjama top. The other teenager unscrewed the top of the petrol can, while the older man, once and briefly, flicked back the window curtain

to check his view of the front gates of the Springfield Road barracks.

The widow's bedroom soon stank of the fumes of the can's petrol and the paraffin that had been splashed on the rags around the stave.

Ferris woke.

The long‐stay soldiers said it was the mark of a good young officer that he could

steal an hour in an army bunk and make it count like a night at the Dorchester.

He felt good. No bloody right to, but he felt good. A bit before twelve. Must have

been the combination of the shower and the shave and the shit that had knocked

him out. There was a sweet scent close to him ... Bloody Sam. She'd tipped some

perfume on the envelope. He must have smelt like a hanging pheasant before he'd cleaned himself up, why he hadn't noticed Sam's scent.

He read his mother's letter ... his mother was well, his father was well, the bank

his father managed was well, the garden his mother tended was well. They had

driven the previous weekend to Windermere and walked on the lakeside with his

aunt and uncle, and they were well. When they had returned from Windermere,

they had gone to Evensong at St Peter's and St Paul's, and the vicar was well, and

had asked after him ...`We seem to go to church more often since you went over

there. The Rev. Davies knows you're in Belfast and he said a prayer for all "our boys" who are at risk to keep us safe. Your father and I thought he did it very well.

We take comfort that there has been nothing on the news since the judge was 183

killed. Your father tells me, and he showed me a map, that you would have been

in quite a different part of the city to where the poor man was murdered. Your father says there's no end to it until the army are allowed a free hand. Ernie, you

remember our milkman, says Ulster should be given to the Royal Air Force as a