Field of Blood (37 page)

local West Belfast. A collection of priests, nuns, school teachers, doctors and principal tradesmen who were to be exposed to what Sunray called the Security

Force Point of View.

For the Fusiliers, the Chaplain would be high profile, collar and pealing laugh leading. The Intelligence Officer would be low profile, but flitting and listening because the Commanding Officer believed that there was good intelligence to be

gathered. Sunray would greet his guests at the door and then repair to the stove,

and his officers would mingle and make small talk and try to cut good figures.

Ferris hadn't changed from his patrol denims. He could smell his own armpits. He

was hardly kitted out for winning hearts and turning minds, and he didn't think

that the whole bloody thing added up to a row of beans.

He looked around him. He wondered why the guests had bothered to show.

They all looked scared half to death of getting pissed and compromised. After a

couple of gins, or a couple of sherries, they were all holding their hand over their glasses, and muttering about taking it slowly. The Mess Orderly found Ferris when he was still close to the door. Ferris took a whisky, and added the measure

from another glass on the tray as reinforcement and splashed in a little water. At

least the bloody drinks were on the battalion. He saw Sunray at the far end of the

Mess, talking to a young priest. Sunray saw Ferris.

`David ... To me, please.'

The bloody man ran a party as if he had the battalion out on Salisbury Plain.

Òn your travels, David, have you come across ... I'm bad with names?

'Father Francis, Francis Kane. Have we had the pleasure?

'David Ferris.' Ferris drained the whisky, looked behind him for more.

`David spends most of his waking hours in Turf Lodge. That's your patch isn't it,

Father ... ?T

'Father Francis ... Yes, Turf Lodge is in my parish.'

`So, you'll have plenty to talk about.'

Sunray was off.

They eyed each other, Ferris and Father Francis. They would have been close to

the same age. At once Ferris realized why he disliked the priest. He was used to

men in Northern Ireland dropping away from his stare. The hostility of the young

priest was overpowering.

Ì don't know why you bothered to come.'

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**`By coming I can understand better you and the likes of you,' Father Francis said.

Ì'd have thought that rather than avail yourself of our hospitality, you'd be busy

extricating the men of violence from your flock.'

Èxtricate yourself from my parish, Mr Ferris, and I'd have no men of violence to

contend with. You're the source of the violence, not my parishioners.'

`Nonsense.'

`The principal causes of violence are the presence of a foreign army and a sectarian police force.'

`You believe that?

'I know that.'

Ferris laughed aloud. `Do you give that line from the pulpit each Sunday?

'You're in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Go home, Mr Ferris, to where your

efforts are appreciated.'

His whisky was finished. Ferris's voice was growing. He was unaware of the hush

around him, of the darting glances of surprise. `We're forced to stay here because

your two communities can't live together in the same cage.'

`What you represent will never succeed here, Mr Ferris. Like all military solutions

in Irish history that have been imposed by the British it will fail.' Father Francis smiled sweetly. `Go home, Mr Ferris. May God speed your journey. And when you go, Mr Ferris, please take with you your tanks and your guns and your concentration camps and your supergrasses and your flag . . .'

Ferris laughed louder. `That's the one that hurts ... the supergrass, that's the one that screws your friends ...'

He saw the flush on the priest's cheeks. Ìt's an evil system.'

`Because it puts away the men of evil, is that why it's evil?'

Father Francis looked keenly into Ferris's face. He said quietly, `What's your interest in supergrasses, Mr Ferris?'

Ferris heard the murmur of uneasy conversation around him. Ìt's been a great pleasure to meet you, Father Francis,' he said. He felt that he teetered on a cliff

edge. He smiled briskly, and shook the priest's hand.

When he turned away he saw Rennie standing near the door of the Mess.

Rennie's overcoat was wet on his shoulders, and he was talking urgently with the

Commanding Officer. When he saw Ferris he beckoned him, as if Ferris was Rennie's bloody lapdog.

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Rennie was speaking urgently to Sunray.

`. . . So if I can have him tomorrow, that's when I need him. That's good, thank

you, sir.'

Sunray curtly nodded his consent.

Rennie said, `She's going ... Roisin's walking out on him. We're

not arguing with her. From tomorrow morning he's to be on his own.'

`But she's all that's holding him on his feet,' Ferris mouthed.

`Then we're in the market for something else to hold the bugger up ... I'll call for you in the morning at seven.'

Ferris drank the rest of the party away. He felt he had been separated from the

family of the battalion. He was thinking of Gingy McAnally and of Roisin and of

Young Gerard and Little Patty and Baby Sean when he became aware of the movement of the guests towards the door. He saw Father Francis waiting in line

to pump the hands of the senior officers. He saw the smile break on the clean scrubbed features of the priest.

`That was Mr Rennie I saw you speaking with, I fancy. Interesting man is Howard

Rennie. Not bad news he was bringing, I hope.'

15

At a few minutes after seven o'clock in the morning, Roisin McAnally and her children left by taxi from Thiepval barracks.

It had been the worst night of her life. The arguments were still ringing in her head when she woke, when she dressed her children. The arguments had gone on all through the previous evening, from the time that her man had come back

from Castlereagh and found the army nurse and the army doctor patching the scratches and anointing the bruises on Young Gerard's face and body. She had told him she was going ...

He could have his new life, on his own. He could make his new life how he cared.

Her life was Belfast. She had lived in no other city. She was buggered if she was

going to exchange what she knew for a new life in company with two detectives

and their guns.

When she had first said that she was going home, said it to Prentice as they were

bringing Young Gerard back to the house, then she had expected that he would

fight her on the decision. He hadn't. He'd not appeared to give a damn. Not a flicker of emotion from Prentice when she had sworn that she was going ...

Later Sean had come to the locked bedroom door, and tried the handle and found it shut on him, and he had banged with his fist on the door. He had shouted

through the door. She had heard the desperation growing in his voice, like he'd

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told the men downstairs that she was just upset, that if he could speak to her he

could change her mind, and she had lain in the bed fully dressed with her children

close against her

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**body, and she had squeezed the pillows over their ears to shut out the sounds

of his pleading.

She had slept hardly at all.

When she was awake her imagination latched onto thoughts and pictures of a new life amongst soldiers and policemen and shoulder holsters and armoured landrovers, a life without friends and without family. When she was asleep fast dreams overwhelmed her, dreams of Sean bleeding in the gutter, and sometimes

it was the Sean of today, and sometimes his hair was greying, and sometimes his

hair was thinning and white. Always the dreams ended with Sean in the gutter.

Whether Sean was shot dead this year, or in ten years, or in twenty years, he was

always in the end dead in her dreams. Now she neither hated Sean, nor loved him. She was apart from her man. She was separated by a locked door and by her

loyalties. She had chosen Turf Lodge and her family against her man.

In the morning she unlocked her door. From the landing she looked

down the stairs to the front door of the house. Prentice was sitting on

his chair. To her he seemed fresh, alert, as if he hadn't had trouble

sleeping. He ducked his head to acknowledge her.

Prentice smiled up the stairs at her, a grin that gave nothing. `Would you like some tea, Mrs McAnally? 'I've not changed my mind.'

Ì said, did you want some tea?

'I'm going home.'

She wondered what sort of home he went back to when he was finished with Gingy McAnally. She wondered what he thought of her, the tout's woman.

Ì'd like some tea.'

In the bathroom, she washed her face and hands. The water in the basin was wonderful, hot, and the soap bar was Camay and scented. She had bought the soap in the supermarket with Prentice's money. The shape of the soap was hardly

disturbed. She wouldn't have bought soap like that in Turf Lodge, not on the Supplementary Benefit. When she had washed she wiped the soap bar dry with a

towel, and took it back with her to the bedroom and put it in her bag.

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On tiptoe, hoping that she would not wake her man, she went into the main bedroom. The double bed was empty. She took their suitcase from out of the wardrobe and began to pack her clothes.

`Your tea . . .'

Prentice was in the doorway. She had not heard him on the stairs. He passed her

a mug.

`You won't forget anything,' Prentice said lightly. `You'd hardly want to come back for anything you've forgotten.' `Where's Sean?

'Sleeping on the sofa.' Prentice loved to smile. `He's out on a pill ...

So don't have any bright ideas of talking him into walking out with you. The pill'll last him through till after you've gone.'

,You don't give a shit for him, as long as he's your fucking puppet in the witness

box.'

Ì care for him enough to see that you don't take him home.'

Ì've the right to talk to my husband.'

Ànd last night you had the chance, and you turned the key on the chance ... your

tea'll get cold, Mrs McAnally.'

She heard him pad back down the stairs.

She wanted to scream, and she knew that if she screamed that no man would care, that her man would not hear her. She packed carelessly, shovelling the clothes into the case, indifferent to whether they would be creased at the end of

her journey.

Back in her bedroom she told the children that they were going home. She told

them that they would not be going home with their Da. Young Gerard said nothing, Young Gerard understood, and Little Patty cried and her Ma wanted to

hit her. She told her children that they would have their breakfast when they were at their Gran's.

'When'll we see our Da again?' Little Patty's small voice.

Ì don't know,' Roisin McAnally lied.

She looked around her. All her possessions were in the case and in two plastic bags. She led the children down the stairs. Prentice was shrugging into an anorak.

Ì've rung you a taxi. We'll walk to the gates.'

Goss stood bleary‐eyed at the open door of the living room. She stood on her toes and gazed into the room over his shoulder. She could see Sean's head on a

cushion on the settee. She could hear the snoring regular breathing of his sleep.

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Goss stayed his ground, blocked her. She thought she was looking onto the face

of a dead man, a dead man in the gutter.

`You bastards, for what you've bloody done to him.'

`Taxis charge waiting time, Mrs McAnally,' Prentice said.

Roisin carried Baby Sean, and she held Little Patty's hand, and Young Gerard walked beside her, and Prentice had taken the suitcase and the two plastic bags.

They walked from the married quarters, and away through the administration buildings and came to the main gates. The taxi was waiting, its engine chugging

quietly. Prentice opened the door for her, and she slid into the back seat and pulled Little Patty in after her and gestured for Young Gerard to follow, as if she

didn't want him to be in the front seat and away from her.

`Pity all your work in the house was wasted, but we're moving on. We'll have him

out of here.'

`What's that to me?'

Ì'm telling you so you can tell your nasty friends that Sean isn't in Thiepval.'

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**Ì'm not a tout.'

`Quite the heroine, Mrs McAnally. Just tell your friends that mortar bombs into

Thiepval won't touch Sean.'

Prentice slammed the door behind her, and then went to the driver's window and

passed him a folded note.

Ìt'll cover where Mrs McAnally wants to go,' she heard Prentice say. As the taxi

pulled away from the gates she turned and saw Prentice

through the back window. He watched them go, didn't wave.

It was a journey of several minutes, from the Lisburn barracks to the

Turf Lodge estate. She had crossed a chasm.

The houses in the Drive were still darkened when she came to her

mother's home.

She knew the driver was a Protestant because when he stopped he just leaned back and opened the door from the inside, and let her crawl out from it with her