The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) (12 page)

What are they anyway? Do they ever listen to themselves? My eyes fell for a moment on the worn carpet where she’d stood wet from the shower and the pink halter neck plastered to her skin. She’d shaken with laughter against me and I’d felt her damp in my shirt and trousers.

“Frances is doing a doctorate on Roger Casement you know,” she said.

That figures. That’s the boy got young black men to bugger him night and day.

“Right enough?” I said. “I did a bit on him.”

“Where was that?” asked Frances without interest.

“Ah, A-level history. And I’ve read newspaper articles about him since. Very interesting man.”

“A-level history?” Same deadpan squeak.

“That’s right.”

“Well this is an in depth study. It’s going to take me three years. I’ve just finished my Masters.”

Bully for you bitch.

“Frances knows just about everything there is to know about Casement,” said Aisling.

“That’s brilliant,” I lied. “What was it attracted you to him?”

“His evolution I suppose. And no matter what he did he put his heart and soul into it. You know about his time in the Congo don’t you? I expect you covered that.”

Not everything. Not the messy details.

“You probably remember that Leopold of Belgium turned the Congo into his own private colony and called it the Congo Free State. Well it was a million times less free than even the so-called Free State we have over the border here. It was a massive labor camp and I’m sure you know he murdered millions of people just so he could get a fortune out of the rubber and copper there. Do you remember learning that? His mercenaries burned thousands of villages and every single time they did that they trussed up the women spreadeagled in such a way they could be conveniently raped.”

I nodded mechanically as if all this was old hat. Was that relish in her voice? Yes it was. She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. Not a pleasant sight but out of the corner of my eye I knew that Aisling was gazing steadfastly at her. Admiringly? I didn’t want to look.

“They made the village men watch the raping going on and then they told them it wouldn’t stop till the men went into the jungle and brought back so many hundredweight of rubber from the wild vines. It seems this was a terrible painful thing to do and took forever. And usually of course they weren’t able to bring enough back and that meant they all got their throats cut, women as well as men. The children were forced to sit and watch all this and then they got the same. Throats cut,” she added helpfully.

“That’s awful,” Aisling said.

Frances was pleased with the impact. She smiled hungrily at Aisling, mouth gaping smiling but no smile in her eyes that I could see, hidden eyes hiding her thoughts. I thought how strange the human mind that someone of Aisling’s beauty and refinement could allow herself to be pawed by this monstrosity. Ones like her used to go away and stay locked in convents but there’s more of them at large now, more and more of them every time you turn round. Can’t get a man for love or money so they make friendships with lonely girls and before you know it.

“Anyway,” said Frances, “Casement was appointed by the British government to find out what was going on and his report put a stop to Leopold’s Free State.” She sighed a put on sigh. “If ever there was a misnomer that was it.”

It was then the nerves got to me because I didn’t think I could listen any longer to that freak whining out her data. “Casement’s time in Africa turned him anti-British, right?” I blurted.

“Well it wasn’t as simple as that,” she said to Aisling. “There were stages. He was sort of crazy mixed-up when he was a teenager. He thought British rule should be everywhere no matter what it took but Charles Stewart Parnell was his hero at the same time. And you can’t get much more crazy mixed-up than that. I’d say it was really the Boer war and the British concentration camps that changed him and of course straight after this he was sent to the Congo and that put the tin lid on it, he was an anti-imperialist from then on. What was it he wrote when the Brits sent him to South America?”

It wasn’t really a question. From her tone you knew you were going to have to wait for that particular piece of information. She breathed heavily while she remembered. Then it came. “I’m a queer sort of a British consul. I should really be in one of their jails instead of under the Lion and Unicorn.”

“Sounds like the name of a pub,” I said. Nerves again.

She stared at me, forehead furrowed with exaggerated irritation. “Do you know what the Lion and Unicorn are?”

“Well I used to drink in a place with a name very like that every payday the summer I worked in Forte’s Coffee House in Piccadilly. It was round the corner in Leicester Square. Now I think of it that was the name and all. Nearly next to the Mitre bar where Charles Laughton used to drink.”

“You don’t know what they are, don’t you not? They’re symbols of the United Kingdom, the lion and the unicorn are symbols of the United Kingdom.” She shook her head.

The bitch wasn’t getting away with it. I’d tell her a thing or two she didn’t know.

“Our history teacher reckoned Casement was unhinged,” I said. Bingo, better effect than I could have hoped for. Black sockets widened till they seemed to take up about a quarter of her face, mouth open like a dead flounder. So far so good.

“Aye, I remember him saying he was a typical Protestant convert to the Irish Nationalist cause. How’s this now he put it?”

I actually couldn’t remember how he’d put it but that wasn’t going to stop me. “Full of guilt,” I said, “for the way England treated Ireland and hadn’t a clue how the ordinary Prod felt about all these uprisings.”

She was speechless. I’d got her speechless. I was on a roll, no question.

“Do you know where he was captured?” I said this eyeing her steadily.

The dark pits were impassive but the mouth had started to move, still didn’t speak though.

“I was actually there.”

“Is that right?” encouraged Aisling nervously. “Where?”

“The Centre Spot restaurant up in Letterkenny. I’ve eaten there. Casement was caught in it by British forces. It was actually Laird’s Hotel then. He was sitting in French uniform having his breakfast and a guy that used to study law with him recognized him and informed.” Stick that in your fucking pipe dyke.

She didn’t just stick it in her pipe, she smoked it furiously and then knocked the ashes out on top of my head while they were still hot. “Really? Did you say you studied this? You’re about a hundred and twenty years and four hundred miles out friend. You’re thinking of Wolfe Tone. Roger Casement was captured at McKenna’s fort in Kerry. Christ.”

Aisling to the rescue. “Time for a refill,” she said and hurried to the worktop. “Here, give us your glass there,” and came over to me, hand outstretched, not taking no for an answer kind of way.

“Thanks Aisling. A tiny taste will do me.” I hadn’t intended taking any more but being a little shaken just then I didn’t argue.

She took my glass to where the bottle was and poured in far too much. “Oops. Sorry about that Jeremiah. I’m sure you won’t complain though.” She gave me the drink, eyes lingering, fingers lingering, fingers closing over my knuckles.

“Frances?” she said turning part of the way round to her friend sitting there with a face of stone on her, I’d say because Aisling’s hand was still on mine, absentmindedly like.

“I think I’ll go to my bed” was the answer she got and with that the black mass began to haul itself out of the armchair.

My
bed.
Her
bed. There was only one bed in the flat and that was through the door to my right.

“Stay where you are sure,” said Aisling quickly. “What’s your hurry anyway? Here, take a wee Bacardi.” And she took her hand from mine and went and pushed Frances playfully back. Relenting at the touch the gargoyle subsided.

“All right then, just the one more,” she said.

Drinks served, Aisling went back beside the lamp. I knew she was looking for something safe to say, something light that wouldn’t raise hackles. Not an easy thing to do because trivialities that keep the rest of us going half the time seemed to have no place on this bitch’s agenda, not even under any other business. The silence was long and getting longer when Aisling broke it.

“I don’t know how I’m going to go on the People’s Democracy march with Audrey not there,” she said. She put her hand quickly to her forehead. More than the ruby lipstick it was the light from the lamp now I think that made her paler even than she was. And made her dyed hair look flaxen too, like one of those Dutch girls Vermeer painted. Girl with a Pearl Earring, that was the one I’m nearly sure. The sultry wench who posed for as long as he needed. Except it was those big hoops Aisling had on, whatever they call them, like tarnished silver circles coming down nearly to her shoulders. Only ever saw her in earrings once before and she was beautiful in them, the night, yes, the night she had her hair up and I took it down and she let me undress her.

“Why, are you going to be marching again?” I asked.

“Did you not know? Sure it’s in the papers.” She picked up a newspaper from the floor, folded it and tossed it to me. “It’s on the front there.”

I scanned the front page.
STUDENT MARCHERS PLAN TO CUT A SWATHE THROUGH ULSTER – PAISLEY
. People’s Democracy activists are intending holding a four-day march across Northern Ireland starting from Belfast on the first of January and ending in Derry on the fourth.

“Taking John Bull by the horns?” I said. She’d be wanting me to go on it. I’d go. I handed the paper back to her.

Aisling smiled, tears shining. “You could say that. I think we’ve had enough of the half loaves our beloved prime minister’s been handing out and the way the media’s treating him like some kind of hero. This thing’s going to die the death if we don’t do something.”

“We can’t be naive about this,” added Frances. “Paisley’s right in a way for once. We know we’re going to provoke. We’re going to be marching through Protestant areas that Catholics never marched before. Which we’ve a perfect right to do by the way, seeing they’ve been coat-trailing through our streets all their lives. The time for us to stay in our ghettos is gone. The rednecks will react, they’ll be violent and the RUC will side with them. There’ll be Fenian blood spilled but it’s the only way the world’s going to see what sort of a place this is.”

“But what if that brings out violence on our side?” I asked and was right away sorry I’d spoken because I’d given her another opening to ridicule me.

“Well then you’ve got the revolution getting moving haven’t you? That’s how politics works you see.”

These words were said slowly, so slowly, as if I was an idiot or something. I wasn’t about to take that sort of ridicule from anybody, least of all this bloody fly in the ointment.

“So it’s orange versus green is it? You’re hoping to dig the IRA up out of their graves? How does this fit with all the socialist stuff you’re on about? All these intersections?” Good that, I thought.

I saw the anger building across from me and heard Aisling start to say something and then stopping.

“There are two things you have to understand,” hissed the dyke, nostrils widening. “Number one, I
am
talking about a socialist revolution here. And number two, to get the thing started you have to bring matters to the boil and then you lance the boil you see, bring out the badness.”

“She’s right Jeremiah,” Aisling said reasonably. “If this doesn’t come to a head soon it’ll go on generation after generation. It has to be dealt with. The other things can come later. All-Ireland socialist republic, integrated comprehensive education, nationalization of the banks, cancellation of the Third World’s debts.”

Jesus. I stared at her. “Do you really think, Aisling …”

She waited. Patient, raising her hand to quiet Frances who looked ready to let fly again. “What? Do I really think what?”

I lowered my eyes. “I don’t know,” I said. “It all seems so, I don’t know, inconsistent.”

“In case you didn’t realize,” said Frances, “no worthwhile political change has ever been brought about without violence. Do you think the people of Poland are going to get their rights by sitting on their backsides?”

“For Poles read Fenians?” I asked. Her face flashed with hate. I smiled bitterly at her sitting there themed in black like one of these freaks you’d see in the front of the National Enquirer or something. Was Aisling out of her mind or what going to bed with that?

“The word you should be using is imaginative, not inconsistent,” said that. “But if you prefer to live in some kind of armchair dreamland, well … all I can say is, your political ignorance is staggering.” And she turned her head away from me and shook it at the wall.

Aisling spoke, her voice a little shaky. “The march on the first is based on the Selma marches in Alabama. Sixty-five wasn’t it Frances?”

“March sixty-five. Selma to Montgomery. There were some broken heads there all right. Bloody Sunday the first one was on. The police laid into six hundred of them with their billy clubs. Sunday the seventh of March it was.”

“There’s one thing I’m not looking forward to,” Aisling said, “and that’s John Hume and these ones trying to hog the limelight when we get back to Derry on the fourth.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, unless there’s a blue moon those four days we’re going to get a rough ride all the way from Belfast. And the minute we land here you’ll have these middle of the roaders that haven’t an original political idea between them standing up spouting from the backs of lorries with the TV cameras on them and most of us will probably be in casualty.”

“Sure it’s the same all over the place, sure what do you expect?” said Frances. She seemed to weary then, the effort of going on talking not worth it anymore. She gripped the arms of her chair and raised her ugly bulk slowly to a standing position, then straightaway plodded to the toilet without another word. We heard the bolt noisily secured and looked at each other.

“Stay, won’t you,” she said softly pleading.

“How?”