And Blue Skies From Pain (24 page)

Authors: Stina Leicht

BOOK: And Blue Skies From Pain

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Liam stayed as he was for a moment or two.
Father Murray is alive.
Regardless of the hangover, his joints felt loose as if he’d downed half a bottle of the good stuff in one go. A vast weight had vanished from his shoulders in a flash, and he staggered under the rapid change in equilibrium. It was as if he’d been in the blackest of rooms, unaware of how terribly dark it was until someone had turned on the light. He was weightless—happier than he could remember having felt outside of a dream since Mary Kate’s passing.

He drew in a deep breath and then blew the air out of his cheeks to steady his rioting stomach.
Think.
First, he’d find a good hiding place. Store his things away, and then venture out for a few supplies—blankets, food, tea, matches and the like. Abandoned housing wasn’t the most comfortable in the dead of winter without water or electricity, but Frankie’s suggestion was as good as any other. It wouldn’t be his first Christmas alone in a derelict building. It wouldn’t be his last either, so he reckoned.

Retrieving the laundry bag, he turned and headed for the Falls Road. It took an hour but he was lucky enough to find a place that hadn’t been too badly damaged not far from the Clonard monastery—a red brick row house with an intact second floor, and a functional fireplace. Liam stared up at the patch of slate grey sky showing through the roof on the second-floor bedroom and breathed out a cloud of relief. Freezing wind laden with sleet pellets slapped him full in the face.
Functional for the most part,
he thought. The upper floor smelled of mold and damp. There wasn’t a whole piece of window glass in the place. The wind barged in and out through the empty windows. The toilet was smashed as was the sink. Work boots crunching on glass shards and burned decay, he could almost taste the ghost of the chemical accelerant that had been used to set the place alight back in 1969.
That’s fucking impossible.
He told himself he was imagining it.
No one has a nose that sensitive.
It wasn’t until he’d sneezed that the imaginary smell dissipated. Shrugging off a sense of foreboding, he stowed the laundry bag away in a dry corner and then headed downstairs.

He was on his way out when a shadow moved in a back room that had once been the kitchen. Liam froze and held his breath. Listening for sounds of movement, he tilted his head. There was nothing. He eased one step toward the back of the place, and the sound came again, louder this time—a shuffling footfall. Someone was in the house with him. His heart drummed a warning in his ears. The petrol taste in the back of his throat grew stronger.
Have they come back to finish the job?
“Who’s there?” Liam was startled and stopped himself from screaming when D.I. Haddock walked through the doorway. The half-strangled cry came out in a high-pitched yelp.

“Nice shit hole you got here, Paddy.”

“Fuck you.”

“You know, I wonder if your idiot mother is responsible for your pathetic vocabulary, or is it that you’re too stupid to learn any other words?”

Liam turned his back on Haddock, made for the door and slammed it behind him. The sound echoed down the empty street, and Haddock’s laughter upset a flock of pigeons.

You can’t last it, you fuck,
Liam thought.
Oran said all I have to do is wait you out.
Nonetheless, Liam hated the idea of living in the empty place with only Haddock for company. The memory of Haddock’s dead hand clamped down on his nose and mouth sent a clammy shiver down Liam’s back. Stomping down the overgrown walk, he desperately tried not to think about the near future or Haddock. His ears began to smart with the cold. So, he retrieved a black wool hat from the pocket of his anorak and jammed it on. Frozen rain slammed on the pavement, sometimes splashing, sometimes bouncing like a brick against corrugated tin. Little pin-pricks stabbed his exposed skin. People ran for shelter in the sleet. A group of British soldiers hunched miserably in their gear and attempted to take shelter from the onslaught against a brick wall. Someone shoved him from behind, and Liam landed on the pavement face-first. Luckily, he caught himself with his hands and knees before he smashed his nose again.

Haddock laughed.

“Fucking wanker!”

Several people fled past, giving him an odd look as he got to his feet. One of them was a woman with wavy light brown hair. His heart staggered.

Mary Kate?

As she got closer he caught her gaze. He blinked, and her image shifted. Her face wasn’t Mary Kate’s at all. Her hair wasn’t the same shade either. He searched for the resemblance he’d spotted earlier and found none. The young woman noticed him staring, and frightened, crossed the street as if to avoid him.

“What’s the matter, Paddy? Seeing things?”

Liam ignored Haddock’s fresh peals of laughter, jammed stinging hands in his pockets, and reconsidered his decision to leave Frankie’s place. With Frankie there, at least there’d be someone to help sort out reality from imagination, someone to keep him sane.
Bad idea, mate.
Frankie’s flat may have been warm and ghost-free, but given a choice between Haddock and Séamus, he’d have to choose Haddock.

I’m out of the war, and it’s out I’m staying. You’ll not have me. Not again. Not ever.
Given the things he’d done, he supposed Haddock’s company was a light sentence.

A Saracen armored personnel carrier lumbered past with its requisite complement of BAs.

“I wonder how we’ll pass the time, you and me?” Haddock asked. “Let’s see. How about I punch your teeth in, and you do the screaming? Sounds a fair distribution of labor to me.”

Liam shrugged inside his coat and whispered, “Fuck off.” He continued down the walk to the corner.

“Suit yourself. Must say. Life is rather boring on the other side. But lucky for me, I’ve got you for entertainment,” Haddock said. “And oh such fun we’ll have, you and me. Maybe I’ll smother you in your sleep. What do you think?”

The wind forcing its way through Liam didn’t touch the angry lump wedged up against the back of his tongue. It burned, tasting of bitter ashes. Again, he attempted to focus on something else—anything else. “You’re not real.”

“We both know otherwise. Oh, come on. You’re not getting into the spirit of things,” Haddock said and laughed. “Spirit. Good one. Did you get that?”

Liam turned away. The light wouldn’t last, and there wasn’t much time. He’d need to lay in supplies and then start up a small fire in the hearth to keep from freezing to death. He mentally counted off a list of what he needed as he reached the Falls Road, but it didn’t do much good. Torn between overwhelming dread and anger, he jumped at every shadow and every sound that might be another of Haddock’s attacks. Not paying attention to where he was walking, Liam bumped into a young man smelling of cigarettes and leather. There was another scent mixed in. It was old, smoky, and reminded Liam of church for some reason. The familiar tingling sensation crawled up his arms, but instead of anger or fear he felt at peace.
Safe.

The young man was wearing a black motorbike jacket and punk-clipped hair. He glanced in Liam’s direction as if to see if he was okay. His eyes glimmered silver for a moment, and he nodded as if acknowledging another of his kind. Then he muttered an apology and hurried off. When Liam turned to apologize in return he spied the words
The System Might Have Got You But It Won’t Get Me
inexpertly scrawled in white paint across the back of the black leather jacket. Underneath the defiant declaration, a row of home-made patches had been sewn onto the leather. Liam registered images representing The Clash, The Ramones, and Sex Pistols before both young man and leather jacket reached the next corner and vanished.

“Hey!” Liam trotted to the corner. “Wait!” Reaching the end of the street, Liam searched for some sign of the leather jacket. The freezing rain gathered more strength, pelting him hard enough to make him flinch. Others around him made good their escape. Across the street, a city bus stopped. Three passengers exited the back and fled—one, a young man using a cane, hobbled down the walk as fast as he could. Strangers sprinted for the bus, the punk in the leather jacket among them.

Liam felt someone push him into the busy street.

A car horn blared, and tires skidded across wet tarmac. Haddock’s laughter joined the cacophony. Liam dodged a Volkswagen’s bumper and a second car as well without any clear idea of how. Joining the queue to board the bus, he breathed in gasps while his heart hammered in his ears. Bus passengers stared down at him from the windows above in stunned disbelief. On the opposite side of the street, Haddock waved and chortled. Liam lowered his head, brought his shoulders up against his neck and fixed his gaze upon the bus’s step.

The scent of well-used upholstery fabric and diesel exhaust flooded his nose and throat as Liam boarded. Passengers muttered to one another. Change rattled against the steel collection box. He searched his trousers pocket for the fare and prayed Haddock wouldn’t follow. The driver waited until the offering was made and found adequate. Then Liam staggered down the aisle as the bus lurched forward. He passed two more passengers holding walking canes as he went.

A cluster of punks occupied the seats at the rear of the bus. It came as a shock.
Five of them, there are.
Of course, Father Murray had told him about the riot of Bedford Street. The Clash had been scheduled to play the Ulster Hall back in October. The city politicians had cancelled the show at the last minute for fear of trouble, and trouble was what they got. The RUC were called in, a riot resulted, and in the end, the windows in the Ulster Hall were smashed. Liam hadn’t known about any of it until recently because he’d been focused on other things at the time.

Killing that fucking bastard Haddock, for one.

Nonetheless, the story implied that there were others like himself—quite a few, in fact. He hadn’t thought about what that meant until this moment. The rest of the bus passengers sat in silence, obviously ill at ease. He could almost smell it. They avoided looking at the punks. Liam, in turn, didn’t gaze too long at the passengers’ faces for fear of spotting Haddock among them. Liam was hit with the sudden realization that the other passengers were treating the punks as he’d been treated for most of his life—with a combination of disdain and apprehension. Also, not unlike himself, the distinctions between the punks and the other passengers were small—a safety pin here, a torn shirt there—yet those distinctions were large enough to account for the sour aroma of unease inside the bus.

One of the punks had used pins to fix patches in place on his olive drab coat. Another was wearing a black and white checked scarf. The fifth was female—an option Liam hadn’t even considered possible. Long, shapely legs encased in black tights stuck out of the flaps of her long coat. One big brown work boot bobbed up and down in impatience. At twenty or twenty-one, the sullen young man wearing a spiked dog collar looked to be the oldest and most daring among the lot. Liam was pleased to note his choice of hairstyle almost matched his own. That is, it was, as Oran had once phrased it, “a post modern hatchet-job.” Of course, the other young man had someone who had managed to make it appear more stylish. Liam had to make do for himself.

The punk in the black leather jacket laughed at some private joke with the chubby lad next to him.

Now that Liam was facing them, he didn’t know what to say or do. It was the first time he’d seen proof that he wasn’t the only punk in all of Northern Ireland, let alone Belfast. Nervous, he settled for dropping into a nearby seat and tugging off the wool hat in order to show himself as one of them. They stopped talking and stared at his hair. He felt foolish and stupid and looked away, wishing he hadn’t removed his hat. In his rush, he’d blundered in where he might not be wanted.
I don’t even know where the bus is going for fuck’s sake.
His cheeks grew hot. Turning to gaze out the window, he determined the driver was headed east.

“In a hurry, are you?” the girl asked. Black makeup traced thick lines around her eyes in a fashion that made her look far older than her voice declared.

Unsure of what to say, Liam shrugged.

“Do you know who Joey Ramone is?” she asked.

“Of course I do,” Liam said.

“What about Joe Strummer?” she asked.

“You’re joking,” Liam said. “Who doesn’t know The Clash?”

“Going to the party tonight?” she asked.

Liam shrugged. “What party?”

“Daft Kevin is having a Christmas party,” the lad in the leather jacket said. “You know about him, right?”

“Daft Kevin?” Liam asked.

The lad in the leather jacket nodded, waiting with a good-natured expression pinned on his face. Once again Liam got that feeling of peace and safety.

That’s strange,
he thought.

“Well?” the girl asked.

Liam briefly considered lying but decided it wouldn’t be a good start if he was caught out. “Ah, no. Afraid, I don’t know him.”

“You going or not?” the girl asked. She seemed to be daring him.

“Wasn’t invited,” Liam said.

The girl huffed a small laugh. “It’s Daft Kevin. If you’re punk, you’re invited.”

The group stared at him, expectant but not exactly unwelcoming.