The Journeyman Tailor (15 page)

He was away down at the 'widow' Donnelly's . . .

Little Francis passed her the Building Society account book.

The scream was silent in her throat. She turned the pages.

"And there's this, Ma."

Little Francis passed her the plain steel box, the size of a cigarette packet, with a red plastic button recessed into the face.

Jon Jo walked the headland. It was where he came when he could no longer abide to remain inside the small room in his landlady's house.

Hard, impossibly hard, to believe what he read in the papers, that the target was alive and was already classified as "stable".

On the headland he was closest to his Attracta and to his Kevin.

Dusk on the headland, grey light merging grey cloud with grey sea.

It was good to look out over the seascape. He thought that it brought them together. They were across the water from him, away to the west. He watched the gulls wheeling, the cormorants diving, the guillemots perching on the sprayed rocks.

He would have wanted his hand to hold Kevin's, and his arm to be round Attracta. He would have tried to give them his love. He wanted for them to be here too.

His enemies, policemen and soldiers in their thousands, those who had studied the file, would not have short-changed his intelligence. He assumed that long ago they had access to the school records at St Patrick's Academy that would have designated him as bright, good potential. There had been a question of University, something the Headmaster had once told his mother. Not to be, he had been diverted.

Jon Jo knew that to come to the headland and to gaze over the sea and to think of his Attracta and his Kevin was just indulgence . . .

He was a creature of the mountain, born and reared there. But then so too was his brother. The mountain was not his brother's war. He had chosen to be the man who would move the rock up the mountain, to push forward the progress of the war. He believed in a future for his people, and the future was to be earned by the war, by sacrifices too. He came to the cliff edge to dream of his loved ones, and to think of the future. In the peace and beauty and relative safety of the headland he could begin to come to terms with the truth that in other places, in the greater loneliness of the big city, was close to overwhelming him: that only at the very end of the war would he be at peace with Attracta on the mountain.

How long . . . ?

Christ, how long . . . ?

He turned, he wiped the wet smear on his face. He would spend the evening with his plans, maps, that were under the floorboard of his room. It was never done, it was never finished. Not till the bastards had packed up, gone with their foreign soldiers and their prisons, would it be done and finished.

"What did he mean . . . ?"

They were almost back in to Belfast.

"... Your Colonel Johnny, what did he mean . . . ?"

The oncoming lights were into his eyes. She had shifted in her seat, shown him she had woken.

"... What did he mean by 'being paid to harass women and kids'?"

"Does it matter?"

He had thought of it all the way back from Dungannon. He had waited for her to wake. "It just seemed a pretty peculiar thing to say."

"He’s a good man," Cathy said.

"Which means...?’’

"It
means the
lucky bugger, that he has still retained a stroke of decency, in this

pig sty. It means that he can see a

difference between a bad boy and a bad

boy’s family. He's still a human bring "

‘’Keep going.’’ The sleep was out of her voice. Her face was close to his. On his face was the warm whisper of her breath.

‘’ Everything who comes here, they all think it won't touch them, but it does. It touches everyone except good old Colonel Johnny, and at the end of the
day he
too does what he
's
told to do , , Bren asked, "Does it touch you?"

"Don't be tiresome, Bren,"

He drove on. He came down the Malone Road.

Cathy said, "Tomorrow evening you'll meet Song Bird."The boy didn't cry and Attracta didn't scream at them.

They held Mossie upstairs, in Kevin's bedroom, with his dust sheets and his paint pots. He sat on the floor beside the ladder and all the time he was watched by the barrel of a rifle. From his own home Mossie had seen the two previous times that the army and police had come to the Donnelly farm.

He thought this was different. It was like it was cold. They seemed to him to be just clinical. No swearing, no fast talk. Like they were programmed. His Siobhan would have raised the roof, his kids would have been bawling and little Francis might have been trying to kick the skin off a soldier's shins.

Did the beggars have no charity?

Like it was just a job, like what they were breaking was not the home of a woman and a child.

Mossie sat on the floor and he asked the soldier if he could smoke, and each movement that he made, taking out the packet, taking out the cigarette, striking the match, putting the match into the ashtray, putting away the cigarette packet, was followed by the rifle barrel.

The noise of the breaking of the house would have been easier to stomach if he could have heard their protests, Attracta's and Kevin's, or their swearing, the soldiers' and the policemen's. Only the sounds of splintering furniture and the screech of lifting floorboards.

After they had gone, with their guns and the jemmy and the sledgehammer, after the shattering thunder of the helicopter powering away from the field beside the cattle shed, Mossie helped Attracta to clear the damage. They collected everything that was broken from the front room and the kitchen and the dining room and she threw them out through the back door into the rain. Small tables, chairs, the television with the back off it, the electric fire with the front off it, plates from the kitchen, the vinyl roll from the floor of the dining room that had been torn to get at the floorboards, all of it out into the rain. Mossie brought a blanket down from upstairs, from where it had been pitched out of the airing cupboard, shook off the feathers from a ripped bed bolster, and used it to cover over the cuts in the upholstery of the settee. The boy was on his knees, sweeping glass into a dustpan. She hadn't spoken, nothing, and the kid hadn't cried. Mossie would have gone to his grave for the both of them. She had the framed photograph in her hand. She carefully picked the shards from the frame, and put it back onto the mantelpiece, He watched. Her lips brushed the torn soft-focus face of her man. He saw the pride on her face and the way that her son came to her and hugged her. Only the idiot Brits would have believed they could break her.

She said that she would make tea for him, but he had no more business in the house.

He would never be loved, not as Jon Jo was loved by Attracta Donnelly. He thought she leaned on him more now than before. She seemed always to have another small job he could do about her house.

But Jon Jo was never spoken of. She was sharp, she could put the numbers together and come to the answer. Jon Jo was the hunted man.

They never let up in the hunt for a killer, he would be hunted for ever.

Siobhan called her the "widow Donnelly". Siobhan had it right. Attracta and the face in the photograph had nothing ahead of them.

He made his excuses.

He hadn't his key in the door before Siobhan had it open.

She had him by the collar and she marched him through to her bedroom.

He saw the wild anger in her face.

"You bastard, what's you at?"

7

She saw him flinch from her.

Siobhan Nugent held the Building Society book out in front of her face, in front of his eyes.

"What's this?" Her hand trembled in her anger.

It was only a spitted whisper because the children were in the sitting room across the hall. There was a moment when she thought he might try to snatch it away and then she saw that he was afraid.

"I can't . . ."

"You feckin' well will."

"Don't ask me."

"What's this? It's £500 a month, first of every month. It's interest paid every year. Two years and more ..."

"Don't ask me."

"It's money we don't dream about. It's more than fourteen thousand feckin' pounds. When did we have fourteen thousand feckin' pounds?

When did we have £500 paid in each month, clockwork?"

"Siobhan, don't ask me."

"Correction, not 'we'; when did Moss Aloysius Nugent have fourteen thousand pounds and more?"

"It's not for talking of."

"I want to know, I've the right to know. I darn the heels of your socks. I turn the collars of your shirts so's you can go on wearing them. I buy cheap. Damn you, I've worried myself sick about money, and there's fourteen thousand feckin' pounds . . . Who's paying it?"

"You don't need to know."

"Why's they paying it?"

It was the twelfth year of their marriage. Her own mother, rest her soul, had told her she could have done better. A new life, a good life, in England, six years of it, and then he had insisted that they come back to bloody Ireland. Nearly six more years of living cramped in his mother's bungalow, because they had no money for a place of their own, and the Housing Executive list stretched away above them because they had been away and lost places on the ladder.

"I want to know, damn you." She stood her full height. She felt her lips against her teeth.

"Best you don't ever know."

"Is that your last word?"

"You can't be told. You'll not be helped by knowing, believe me.’’

She heard the pitch of her own voice rising. "What do I believe?' 1 find a Building Society book that has been kept a secret from me, fourteen thousand feckin' pounds. What should I believe...?’’

There was the click of the front door. There was his mother's voice, and the babble of the kids and the loud laughter from the television. She saw his face lighten, as if his rescue had come. His hand reached out and he took the building Society book from her.

His face seemed to say that he was safe, that he had seen her off, that she would not raise her voice now that his mother was back. He slid the Building Society book down into the hip pocket of his trousers. Her hand was in the pocket of her trousers. Her fingers were round the shape of the box. His mother called out, to let them know she was back, that she was putting on the kettle. He went to go past her. She stood in front of the closed door of the bedroom. His hand was on her shoulder and she felt the gentle pressure as he eased her sideways.

"And what's this?"

She held it in front of his face.

They were very close, almost touching

She held in front of him the small steel box that was the size of a cigarette packet.

"What's this, then?"

The blood colour running from his face. ‘’Give it me.’’

Her thumb rested over the red button that was recessed into the box.

"Tell me, what is this?"

"Don't, for the love of Christ, please, feck you, don't . . ."

There was his mother's voice again, penetrating into the room, telling them that their tea would be ready in a minute.

She felt her power.

"What happens if I press this . . . ?" Her thumb lay across the red button.

"Don't . . ."

"Is it a bomb switch . . . ?"

He shook his head. It was as if his voice had died, and him never short for words.

"Is it a warning bell . . . ?"

She saw the fear in his eyes.

"Do they come running? Who'll come? The slob that you bloody jump for? The Devitt boy? The half-wit Riordan kid? The little Brannigan bastard . . . ?"

Again the shake of his head. The smoothness of the red button was under her thumb. He would have known that he could not wrench it from her, not before she had pressed the button.

"Who comes running when little Mossie presses the button . . . ?"

His mother was outside the door. Siobhan leaned against it. His mother said that the tea was poured. The door was pushed against her back.

Siobhan's weight took the pressure. She called, the loving daughter-in-law, wheedling voice, that they would be out in a moment. She heard the footsteps shuffle away.

"Who comes running?"

"Please, Siobhan, you can't know."

"Or I press the feckin' thing . . ."

"Don't!"

"I press it."

She held the steel box right in front of his face, where it would have filled his eyes. He was breathing hard. His face was white.

"You don't know . . ."

"I press it,"

He crumpled against her, pushing her against the door. The steel box was driven into his cheek. She had destroyed him. She did not know how, nor did she know why. Her arms slipped round his neck. She held the box against the frayed collar of his shirt.

His voice was in her ear, in her hair.

"It's the army that comes running, or the police. I'm theirs, I
belong
to them ..."

For a long time she held him, fearful for herself, fearful for him. His breathing had slowed and steadied.

"You're a tout?" she said, still not believing it. "You tout for the Brits?"

"Since way back." She wondered if, before, he had ever been near to telling her.

She had no more anger, only fear.

"Jesus, Mossie, you get killed for touting."

Siobhan gave him back the steel box. She put it into his hand and closed his fingers round it. She had seen the helicopter land in the field that evening between her home and the home of Attracta Donnelly. She had seen the soldiers bent low under the flailing rotors, running to the farmhouse. The box was her husband's link to those soldiers. There was a woman in the village, and her son not more than ten years older than her Francis and the boy had been shot dead by the army. And she knew the woman and made small talk with her after Mass or in the queue at the Dungannon supermarket cash desks. There was another woman in the village, Her husband had been killed by his own bomb, detonated by the electronic sweep of the army. She knew the woman, and thought she was lovely and brave, and talked with her at the school gate before Doloures and Patrick came out.