The Whore-Mother (13 page)

“We love our Protestant neighbors. Give them a chance to love us. Put away the guns. . . .”

He was heard in silence. When he had finished the silence remained, scratched by the small voices of children crying and laughing and calling to one another. There was no football roar for Father Murphy, but the set faces and the stillness of a great crowd had its own sense of dread. They were waiting for something else. The priests were helping it to the microphone.

It was Mrs. Machin of the little shop.

Powers and Callaghan were almost at the front now, walking around the edge of the crowd. “The Church was never for us,” Powers said to Callaghan with an air of angry exposition. “It was always for England.” He had heard a man say that at a meeting.

Nervously, Callaghan, who had heard this often, said, “I've heard that.”

“I'm
tellin
you.”

Callaghan wasn't sure that Powers knew much more about these high things than he did himself, but he knew the high and exalted look on his comrade's face, and kept his silence.

Mrs. Machin was ready, a priest at each elbow in case her balance failed her. Powers was directly in front of her now, standing beside Clune in the front rank of the crowd. “There'll have to be punishments for this,” he said strongly to Clune.

“Keep your mouth shut here.”

Powers' lighted face darkened. He turned it from Clune, whose one visible eye was fastened bitterly on Mrs. Machin.

“Priests can talk about lovin their Protestant neighbors,” she said, and a rustle that might have been quiet laughter went over the crowd like a light wind over barley.

“I don't love my Protestant neighbors. I never had any. I live in the Falls and there's none here.” They laughed at that, more openly but with restraint in the presence of danger and death. “But from what I know about them from livin in Ulster and the Falls all my life . . .
I hate the dirty bastards!”
The priests looked stonily forward.

The football roar went up. And down, quickly. But that was not what was on their minds or in their fears.

She spoke what was on their minds. “Did'ye see the telly the night? Did'ye see the lovin Protestant neighbors on the telly?” The silence in the field was dead. “They're ready!” she screamed.
“Did y'see them?
Thons a real army. Thon boys isn't English. When they start, there's gonta be no English MP's to tell them not to be too rough w'the poor bloody Papishes. An' whose gonta fight thon boys?”

She had seen Powers beside Clune in the front rank. All her rough eloquence and her instinct for drama and her fear leaped on him.

She raised a big fat arm and pointed.
“You
, Patsy Powers? Are
you
gonta fight them? That's the one that tried to tear the tits off me for wantin to post a letter for a wee boy—an luk at his face! Me, an oul fat woman near tore the face off him. Is that what's gonta fight the Protestant army?
That!”
She screamed it. “And you, Mr. Clune down there, you one-eyed bloody wonder, are you gonta lead your brave boys into the fight? Them that shoots at sojers and hits widow-women and their babies a hundred feet away? You heard the Father himself tellin you . .
a hundred feet away!

“Well, thon army's not gonta fight Provos or Officials. They're gonta come in here and burn us to the groun . . . the Falls'll be in flames and they won't give a damn who burns. Them that can get out'll walk to the Border and they'll niver be back. . . .”

They knew it. They received it in silence. There was nothing to roar about. It was a time for tears and fears.

But suddenly there was scattered dissent and Mrs. Machin, who had been tasting her eloquence and its effect on more people than she had spoken to in all her fifty years, responded to it with fury.

“Thon lot isn't coddin,” she shrieked. “They're sick of IRA bombs and IRA bullets and they're sick of us hidin them and they're ready to give it back. An they'll give it to
us
—you and me. We're gonta get massacreed and they won't want what's left of us in the bloody Irish Republic.”

Her instinct drove her to the point as the dissent grew louder. “There's women walkin among youse w'papers to sign—a petition for peace afore there's none of us left. Put your name to it . . . the night. . . .”

The word was out, the sources the press relied on had got to the phones, the reporters were arriving, and a BBC mobile television van. . . . With her own version of the Irish Smile, and the native instinct for the paying word, Mrs. Machin yelled for the reporters and the camera, “We love our Protestant neighbors . . . sign the papers for peace . . .” and the camera caught her raised arms and distorted face, the shotgun microphone caught her declaration of love, the fugitive scraps of paper on which verbatim reports appeared to be written, were being covered with Pitmans on peace.

The football roar went up for Mrs. Machin. The scattered dissent turned into scattered fighting.
“Sign for peace!”
Mrs. Machin roared.

“Let me go up there,” Powers shouted to Clune.

“What for? I'm goin up.”

“Here's Clune to tell you the shootin's not done yet,” Mrs. Machin jeered. “D'ye want to hear the wee man? D'ye want to hear wee Patch Clune?”

The roar was not a word, but it was “No,” and the fighting about the field spread. Women moved about to avoid it. Petition papers were torn and thrown in the air, and women blocked Clune's passage to the microphone. “We don't need you, Clune,” Mrs. Machin yelled at him, and the roar supported her. The women drove Clune back.

“I'll go up,” Powers said.

“Och, for fuck's sake shut your big mouth,” Clune said savagely. “There's gonta be punishments. The shootin'll not stop for a bunch a scared bloody woman. There'll be punishments for this.”

Petition-paper carriers were already being roughly handled and their handlers were being attacked by women. The Park was emptying. The press had the message: the Provinces and England would have it on the late news, the papers would enlarge on it, and the whole world would have it tomorrow. The Catholics plead for peace: Will the Protestants let them have it?

“Away on back,” Clune said to Powers.

“What house?”

“Joy Street.” Clune pushed away with his chosen after him. Powers followed. Clune saw him. “Not a fuckin crowd,” he said, and waved him away.

Sullenly, and scalded in his self-esteem, Powers took Callaghan and walked to Joy Street.

Clune was there, and McCann and McCandless and a dozen more—the Belfast Brigade staff—and three English journalists, from the
Sunday Times
, the
Observer
, and the
Guardian
. “The pipelines,” Clune called them contemptuously. “They're so fuckin eager to be nice they'll believe any bloody thing y'tell them.”

He was telling them. His voice was tight and harsh and high, and he spoke quickly, on the brink of eruption. He was angry, and afraid. The Catholics were slipping out of their hands.

“The war goes on,” Clune said urgently. “We want peace but not at any price. There'll be no peace till there's justice and there'll be no justice till the British gunmen take their guns and their armored cars outa here and back to England. . . .”

“Can there be justice till the shooting stops?” the
Guardian
man asked like an associate professor of political science.

“Thas all,” Clune said with a homicidal one-eyed glare. “Away on.”

Nervously, the journalists left. They would be brave in the papers. “Joseph Clune, interviewed in an IRA house in the Falls. . . .” Daniels in the lion's den. They left as they were bidden.

The Belfast Brigade got down to work.

“Powers,” Clune said from behind the kitchen table. “Did'ye get the girl?”

“Yes, sir. She wouldn't talk. She's dead.”

“McManus left her car at Ballycastle.”

“She said that.”

Screaming,
“I thought she wouldn't talk?”

“That's all she said.”

“He stole a car at the golf course. He left it at Sixmilecross. He left the one he took there in Francis Healy's field at Clady.” He pulled a pile of clothing from behind him. “Is them his?”

“Yes.”

“He crossed the Border at Clady.” Clune waved an impatient hand at a man in the circle. “Give them fifty pounds. Find him, Powers, and bring back the change. Away on, the two of youse, and don't come back till you kill'm.”

They went up the street to their bare house, and made some tea, and sat at the kitchen table in silence.

Powers was black in the mind. Clune lay in his head like a solid lump, obstructing thought. He was murdering Clune with every throb of his raging nerves.

“Pat,” Callaghan said tentatively, “thon wee girl was a nice piece.”

Powers nodded and heard only the sound.

“I never fucked one like than afore. She was all white.”

The head nodded, full of Clune. It was nodding at Clune.

“Pat?”

Powers raised his head, looked and saw after a while. “What?”

“What'y like best—fuckin or killin?”

“Och.” He stood up. “One's as good as the other.”

He went up to bed.

G
OD
be merciful to the young and clever. McManus knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

He awoke in the evening at nine and, in his middle-class way, went along the hall for a bath. At ten he went down to the small lobby and asked for a pack lunch to be prepared. It would be ready for him at breakfast time, the young man on the desk said.

“No. I want it tonight.”

“It'll be stale by the morning.”

“It'll be eaten by the morning.” McManus offered no explanation and the desk clerk looked at him with doubt and annoyance.

“I'll have to make it myself,” he said. “People don't work in the kitchen all night. And you'll have to pay for it now.” Why would a man sleep all day and want a pack lunch before he went back to bed at night? He didn't ask. His look asked for him, and fixed McManus in his memory.

At midnight, his pack on his back, McManus came quietly downstairs to let himself out. The small hotel seemed asleep. The young man was still behind the desk, staring at the pages of a paperback book. He did not look up but he was not reading. McManus watched his reflection in the glass porch and saw him raise his head to stare. He turned in the street to see the clerk standing on the steps, still staring, like a man reading a trail.

No matter: he was away again. He passed the church, paused on the bridge to look at the stars in the waters of the Finn. The night was cool. He crossed the bridge into Ballybofey and walked out of the town into the dark country where there were no lamps, only hedges and stone walls and, as he climbed towards the Barnesmore Gap, earthen banks bound by grass, and higher up, the rising moor on his right and the dropping moor on his left. And the moon, coming and going in a sky that clouded with every step; and presently the drizzling rain. He took his plastic poncho from his pack and went on. He had walked this road since his school days and had never been on it on a dry day, or night.

But the rain made no difference. He was away. He walked steadily, stopping for ten minutes' rest in every hour. Once he heard footsteps approaching and slowed his pace. A man came out of the dark, crossed to the other side of the road to pass him, and did not speak. McManus stopped to listen for retreating footsteps and did not hear them. He moved, and stopped, and heard them, running. Men are afraid of what they meet in the dark. This passing stranger's fears revived his own. He walked faster, took fewer rests, and in the false dawn climbed down under a bridge over a stream to wash his feet, dry them, and rub them with metholated spirits. He changed his socks, rinsed the old ones in the stream, and pinned them to his pack. Half an hour later the light was in the sky and Donegal town was below him.

With ten good miles behind and before him a sleeping town that would soon be crowded, he climbed the hill and made camp out of sight of the road. The pack lunch was still untouched. Chicken sandwiches, a solid lump of smoked cheese, a piece of heavy fruit-cake, a bottle of Harp Lager, and a plastic knife. They had given him what the tourists get, in spite of his clothes. He wasn't hungry but it was time to eat. He ate in his sleeping bag, the poncho on the wet grass under it, his damp trousers hanging from a loop on the tent peak. He was hot again, sweating again, and sleep would not come. The day came up, the sun came out, the wind rose, and he was still awake. He took the poncho to a rise on the hill and lay on it, watching the road.

The sleepless waiting in the day worried him. Ten miles in a night wasn't enough. The way he had chosen to do it wasn't the best way though it looked good when he first thought of it. He was well away, but not far enough away. His thinking was nervous. When this pack lunch was eaten he had to find more food to carry. That meant shops and cafés in towns, or nights in hotels. It meant people. What people? That was always the question. The word would be out on him, over the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Here and there some men wouldn't bother to look for him, but some would sniff the air, look in every face, watch the roads and the hills and the main routes through towns.

Down on the road cars passed occasionally now, going west down to Donegal town or east to Ballybofey and Stranorlar, or maybe up to Letterkenny, or maybe over the Border to Derry.

The wind died, the sun warmed. He went back to his tent. Should he see a doctor? He felt desperately tired now, light-headed. What doctor, where? His socks were dry and his trousers. He slept till noon, lying on his sleeping bag, then went back to watch the road. Busses passed, going east and west.

The coach tours were up and about. They passed up the road through the Gap, going counterclockwise round Donegal, carrying their quota of American tourists doing a circuit of the Republic. The English had stopped coming to Ireland since the British Embassy in Dublin was burned down. Not so many Americans came either. They didn't know the difierence between the North and the South, even when they were Irish-Americans full of wind and passion against the English.