He came to the buildings very slowly, bent double He had come down from the mountain where he had made his sleeping place. Crawling the length of the hedge behind the field that backed onto the buildings.
He was soaked to the skin. There was a dull light in the hall, where it had always been at night. Crawling again by the barn and the low stone wall that protected the patch where Attracta grew her vegetables he could stay beyond the range of the light. He passed the frame of the swing that he had concreted into the back yard for Kevin. He came without sound.
Suddenly, from the kennel, the raucous and angry barking. Jon Jo whistled low. The barking died. The dog came to him. He knelt in the pitch darkness and he rubbed his hand on his dog's throat, and the dog lay on his back and thrashed his tail.
The key to the kitchen door was in the kennel, where it had always been.
'The dog barked,' Cathy said. 'Jon Jo's dog.' 'You meant it?' 'What did I mean?'
'That it has to be body to body, at close quarters?' She mocked him. 'You going to be around?'
18
She had not slept well since the first house search, and hardly at all since they had come the last time with the helicopter. The dog had barked and that had pulled her from what sleep she had found. It was past two o'clock on the luminous clock radio at her bedside.
Attracta knew every one of the house's sounds. She knew where the bats nested in the roof, where the mice ran in the walls, and which floorboards creaked under pressure, worse since the soldiers had ripped them up.
She heard the scrape of the key in the kitchen door.
She stiffened upright in her bed. There was the murmur of a voice that carried softly up the stairs. She kept a short length of gnarled blackthorn under the bed and her hand reached down to it. There was the scratching noise of the dog's paw nails on the kitchen linoleum. She swung her legs off the bed and she eased her weight onto her feet and she stood beside the bed holding tightly to the weapon. Again the murmur, like a command, and then the steady approaching sounds on the stairs. The sleep had drained from her. She was alone in the house, with the small boy, just with the blackthorn stick. If she screamed then only Mossie Nugent might hear her, and his bungalow was a hundred yards away She faced across the room and watched the slash of dull light from the landing that came through the opened door…
The dog came first. The dog bounded at her in pleasure. The shadow figure came after the dog.
'It'me, love.'
The voice she knew, she loved The voice that was in her dreams, the voice that was in her mind when she was driving to the school, going to the shop, going to the barn to get fodder for the cattle. The fear spilled from her. The blackthorn clattered onto the floor. The dog jumped in excitement at her then turned back to the figure in the doorway. She felt only a great weakness overwhelm her.
He held her in his arms. She shivered away from him as the wet mud of his clothes pressed against her nightdress but he pulled her back and against him. His face was rough, for days unshaven. The dog was leaning against her legs. Only at the first moment did she hold back, then she crushed herself against him, against the slithering mud of his clothes. The anguish ebbed from her. She kissed his mouth, she felt the drive of his tongue between her lips and teeth.
She held his head in her hands. She looked up into the shadow of her man's face.
'How much time have you got?'
'Till when?'
'Before you have to go?'
'I've come home…'
'How long?'
'I've come back home. It's to stay.'
She held the cheeks of his face and his hands were on her hips and their bodies were apart. The wet and the cold of the mud had seeped to her skin. Her head shook. Surely he knew? He was as she remembered him. Perhaps thinner, perhaps with less weight in his arms. It was all so obvious to her.
'You can't stay, Jon Jo. They's searched the house three times in two months. They'll be listening to the phone. The post takes an age. I think they open the letters. They watch for you.'
'I'll lie up.'
It s not safe for you here.'
I'll lie up on the mountain.'
She fell away from him. She could feel the love and the warmth of him, and the yearning. She sat on the bed. She huddled her arms around the chill of her shoulders. There had been soldiers in this very bedroom, their sneering and hostile faces. Three times her house raped. And in little Kevin's room, great bastard brutes in their protective armour, with their guns and their sledge-hammers and crowbars.
'You can't come back…'
She felt him flinch.
'… It's just daft to think you can. They'll know you're here in a day, everyone'll know. You think there's secrets here? Jon Jo, no, no.
There's no way you can come back…' She felt his hands come to rest on her arms. '… I couldn't take it, Jon Jo, to know that you're back.'
'It's you I came back to, love.'
She tried so hard not to cry. She heard the whisper of her words.
'I could take it when you was away, because I didn't know where you were, not each hour, each day. I knew what you'd done. I knew what you did because the soldiers came. It was awful, but I could take it
… If you were out on Altmore, then I'd worry each living minute.. .
They'd not have shot you dead on the mainland, here they'd shoot you.
I couldn't take that, Jon Jo. Don't you see…?'
He said, 'It's all I dreamed of, coming home to you and Kevin.. .'
'You were better gone, that's God's truth, you were better away. You want to know, I'll tell you… The Devitt boy was shot by the soldiers, two others with him, he's buried not two weeks. He was touted. The Riordan boy was taken in, young Patsy, and he was killed for touting.
That was idiot. Patsy Riordan was simple, he knew nothing… You hear what I'm saying, Jon Jo. There's a tout on the-mountain. That's why you're better away…'
'They told me Altmore was clean.'
'What do they know, that would kill Patsy Riordan? I went to tihe Deviit boy's wake, Jon Jo. They shot him down, but they had finished him with a bullet in the head. I saw the wound, everyone did. They wanted us to see the wound… It'll be the same for you. Jon Jo, the army'll shoot you like a dog and they'll finish you with a bullet in your head, and it'll be a tout's word that kills you. That; s God's truth…'
‘’ If there’s a tout I'll find him.' . She said, 'You're best gone.' She hated herself.
‘’I thought you'll want me back.'
She had thought it through so many times. Jon Jo's homecoming.
Him back at the farm and her loving him. Her man at his home again and their loving and their laughter. She had never thought that she would tell him that he was best out of the house, far far away. He seemed to reel from her. She didn't know how she could have said it more kindly.
He was gone out of her bedroom and not looking back at her. The dog was at her feet and eyed her, his tail was bent between his legs, uncertain.
Jon Jo held the boy in his arms. The boy babbled in fear, as if still in the grip of a nightmare.
'You shouldn't be here, Da… if the journeymen tailors see you, Da. .. they'll tell the dragoons… they'll ride on the mountain after you, Da… all your bullets'll be spent… the dragoons'll hunt you and ride you down…'
'Where did he get this shit?' he snarled at her.
All the misery welling in her, all the pain. She thought the boy was waking, that his dream would finish.
'It's a story…'
