'… What I was told to say was that there's a powerful anger here about it. There's people talking on the radio about being ashamed to be Irish. Army Council, Chief of Staff, nobody likes that.'
The woman was making the call because the man who would otherwise have made it believed himself to be under close surveillance. They were uncertain in the Organisation as to the capability of the telephone engineers working for Five to trace calls made from pay phones.
There was a queue waiting to use the box. She had turned her back on them so that she could not see their impatience.
'… And I was told to say that next time round they're expecting you to be double certain that it's the target, not his wife and not his kids. They said to tell you they're going to put an apology into An Phoblacht. They said you should know that they don't like having to do t h a t… '
She didn't know the face or the name of the man, and he had said nothing beyond the codeword.
'… They also said that what you done up to this last one was just brilliant… Oh, and the new money's coming through, and they said like can you spend it a bit slower. It's difficult to come by. That's all that I was to tell you.'
She put the telephone down and the handle of the receiver glistened.
She felt the sweat in her palm. She was nothing in the Organisation but her brother was in his twelfth year of a life sentence and she was happy to be used. She was sweating because she had had to allow the telephone to ring out at the far end for a full two minutes before it was picked up, before the codeword was given her, and then she had to repeat the message that they had given her. As far as she was concerned, any man who had worked on the mainland was a hero. She thought it quite wrong that he should be slagged for what he had done.
She walked away up the Andersonstown Road of West Belfast.
His enemy were the retired and the elderly who walked on the esplanade with their lap dogs that were wrapped against the sea weather with little monogrammed coats, and the teenagers who smashed what they could not steal, and the fishermen off the trawlers who were waiting for the doors of the bars to open, and the driver who took the empty bus from Torquay to Brixham, and the man who stood beside the heaps of his Sunday newspapers that were covered against the spray by plastic sheeting. They were all his enemy. He had chosen this out-of-season resort town, and it was the only place he felt safe.
Never truly safe, God knows, and among his enemies he would never be content. And on Sunday always more alone, more keenly missing his Kevin and his Attracta. In far too long he had had no word from his Attracta, not heard her voice.
He felt such an ache of homesickness, of longing to be with his boy and his Attracta, it was a physical pain.
The newspaper seller was smiling at him, friendly. He pointed to the papers that he wanted and he searched out the exact change from his pocket. He spoke as rarely as was possible, and never engaged in conversation with anyone he didn't know. He could change his face and his hair and his clothes, his accent he could not alter. The newspaper seller, his enemy, wished him a good morning and thanked him, and made a remark about the weather brightening from the west. He read the headline of the paper on top, and saw the photograph of the destroyed Volvo. Under it was a quote from a retired Secretary of State, one of the worst of the bastards: 'These terrorists are addicted to the adventure and thrill of killing.'
His fingers were clasped tight. They knew nothing of him, the pensioners and the yob kids and the bus driver and the newspaper seller, and they would lap up the shit that he was 'addicted to the adventure and thrill of killing'. They knew nothing… And they didn't know much in Dublin and Belfast, the bastards who had a bit of a girl speak to him on the phone like he was a wee brat who had messed his pants on the first day at school and a complaint had been made by the nuns to his Ma, and he a man on their business hunted by every policeman in their enemy's country, by all the detectives of the Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Special Branch, and by the faceless bastards of M.I. 5. That was close to pleasure, the knowledge that they all hunted him, and failed. He would never be complacent, no. But if he were not complacent and never careless then he believed himself impregnable.
But the shits in Dublin, they were something else. So, the kids had got blown away… What was the big deal? Legitimate tactic of war to spread fear in the enemy. Let them show him the army officer, the civil servant who hadn't cringed over his morning paper, or the wife or mother of an army officer or civil servant who wouldn't have been shaken rigid by what the zombies in Dublin and Belfast were going to issue an apology for… Jesus!
A lone figure, wreathed in the mist of the sea fog, wet from the spray of the climbing waves that broke on the sea wall, walking back to the room that he rented behind the open-air swimming pool that was drained for the winter. It was a terrace of old houses. The Bed and Breakfast and the Vacancies signs rocked in the wind. God, and he missed his Attracta… He let himself in. As he closed the door she came out of the kitchen at the back of the hall. She was small, she would have been blown away with a slap. She was his landlady.
'Oh, Mr Robinson, I'm so glad you're back. Would you do me a favour? It's the back door, brand new this summer, and I suppose it's warped. I'd be ever so grateful…'
'I'll get my tools,' Jon Jo said.
'You're very kind. And there's something I'd like to say to you. This business in the papers, about the Irish, about the bombs and things. I just wanted to say how sorry I feel for all of you good and decent Irish people. I don't lump you ail together. I have a great respect for all of you hard-working Irish people who are prepared to come over here to find work so that you can keep your families, a very sincere respect. To me, they are the real Irish and not these awful guerrilla creatures. I just wanted you to know that.'
'I'll bring my tools down.'
Everybody on the mountain had a brother, cousin, friend, neighbour, who was skilled as a brickie or a sparky or a chippy or a painter/decorator. There was never money involved. A brother, cousin, friend, neighbour, did the work that was his trade, and the work was paid for in kind. Mossie Nugent was a painter/ decorator. He had repapered and repainted the two big bedrooms and the living room of the farmhouse, and he hoped that by Christmas he would have little Kevin's room done. In the freezer, in the garage beside the bungalow, he had the greater part of a quarter of a beef bullock from Attracta Donnelly's stock, and each week Siobhan was given free- range eggs. It was the way of the community.
Siobhan had her eggs, and if she didn't like him going down, most Sunday afternoons this past year, to the Donnelly farm, then she could go feck herself.
She was a great girl, Attracta Donnelly and pretty still, and going short because her man was across the water. Up his ladder, scraping off wallpaper, he listened to her quiet song as she washed the plates and saucepans from her lunch.
'An outlawed man in a land forlorn, He scorned to turn and fly, But he kept the cause of freedom safe Up on the mountain high.'
He had thought her a great girl since the afternoon that he had finished the first room, her bedroom, and she had climbed the step ladder, stood above him, and stretched up to rehang the curtains. Ankles, knees and the back of her thighs and her blouse riding up the small of her back.
And he had known Jon Jo Donnelly all his life. Jon Jo had been better at school. Jon Jo had been in the gaelic team, always on the bus for away games when Mossie had been left in his day on the substitute side-line, won more praise from the Father. Jon Jo had been big in the Organisation since he had left school and taken on the farm because of his father's arthritis when Mossie was in the Kesh and serving two and a half years for possession of firearms, won more praise from the big men than ever Mossie had had. And Jon Jo had Attracta, who was a great girl, and Mossie had Siobhan who was a hard bitch.
'It's your decision, of course, Bren.'
'Yes.'
'You are under absolutely no pressure to accept.' 'No, Mr Wilkins.'
'It's really a rather good career opportunity for you.' 'I see.'
'It's the sort of place a young officer gets noticed.' 'I appreciate that.'
'Every older man in Five, who's on a plateau, wishes to God that he could roll back the years and do a real job like this one.'
'Do they?'
'You'd be on secondment from us to the Belfast end. Hobbes runs things over there… Day to day you'd be working with Parker…'
'I don't know Parker.'
