Carn (16 page)

The litany began again—nightfeed, lactations, colic . . .

But this time she heard none of it. Benny was delighted and gave her more flowers. Joe Noonan sent her a card. “Another wee Dolan stalks the land Sadie,” was written on it.

But that was as close as either of them came to the child for Benny was too embarrassed to over-involve himself. To him it was women’s work. Her work. In the street, he touched the buggy
uncertainly with one hand, his awkward fingers buttoning the baby clothes half-heartedly.

The child was born but this time the admirers did not linger. “The second one is different,” her mother said. “People have their lives to lead Sadie.” That was the way it
was and the way it was going to be for Sadie, and she knew that.

And now there were two of them.

At the back of her mind the future unrolled itself in a fog for Sadie did not want to stare at it

There’s nothing I can do about it now
, it was saying.
There’s nothing left now. Just forget about everything, everything belongs to them now
.

She went outside to leave out the milkbottles. A light snow was falling. Children’s toys lay abandoned on lawns. A car turned into the estate, churning slush onto the sidewalk. A woman in
a powder-pink tracksuit waved. Lights glimmered in the living rooms. At the end of the estate a sign read
Please Mind Our Children Drive Slowly
.

The lights of another car rose up. Sadie sighed. A neighbour turned a key in a door, looked awkwardly in her direction, then went inside. A neighbour. Like Mr Galvin years before.
But times
have changed Mr Galvin, neighbours like ghosts now, you catch them on a summer day in the back garden if you’re lucky. Nothing now only the click of the plug next door and Saturday morning
car talk
.

Is that you Sadie? Sadie Rooney?
said Mr Galvin looking up from his ridges.
I thought you’d be halfway across the world by now. So you’re still in the town of Carn. Well
boys oh boys. Lord above isn’t the world a strange place and me here thinking all the time you were in Carnaby Street or some place
.

No. I never bothered going to London, Mr Galvin. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to make it now that I have the pair of them
.

Sadie, daughter, don’t tell me you have your own now?

I have, Mr Galvin, Tara and Darren, moving on now the pair of them
.

Well doesn’t the time pass, eh? Wee Sadie Rooney. So you never went to London. Isn’t that a good one now?

I’ll hardly make it now, do you think so Mr Galvin?

No, I daresay you won’t but aren’t you as well off above there in Abbeyville Gardens? I hear you have great neighbours up there
.

Neighbours is right. The best of neighbours. Mr JR Ewing and Dusty and Sue Ellen and Blake Carrington and Alexis and Jeff and Cliff Barnes and Jason Colby and Bet Lynch and Hilda Ogden, they
all live up beside me Mr Galvin. Did you never hear of JR Mr Galvin? Of course you did
.

Sue Ellen?

Yeah
.

You lawv me Sue Ellen?

Shuah Jay Aw
.

You shuah you lawv me?

Shuah Jay Aw
.

You kin have anythang, anythang you want
.

Oh Jay Aw Jay Aw
.

Oh to tell you the truth Sadie, I wouldn’t know what the hell a lad like that would be talking about
.

You know what the woman next door says Mr Galvin?

What would that be Sadie?

She says, “You know I think they’re as good as any neighbours those programmes. And they don’t nosey into your business like some people. Even though you can spy all you
like on them.”

So they’re your neighbours, Sadie. Isn’t it well for you has neighbours the like of that
.

Well for you.

It was true, wasn’t it?

No one else complains, thought Sadie. And as her mother had said long ago, who did she think she was—someone special? Who did she think she was—JR Ewing?

She went inside. Outside another car passed, its lights swallowing up the room. Then all settled back to silence. A plug clicked in the wall next door. The snow drifted past the window pane and
Sadie sat where she was, staring into space as the tears rolled down her cheeks and a frenzied voice in the corner of her living room, uncertain of its origins, wavered between American and Irish
inflections as it promised more than a lifetime’s service from a new brand of motor car . . .

XI

Maisie Lynch looked up from the packed crate and called to Benny Dolan, “I saw them below at Cooney’s new discotheque last night. Every one of them full of drink,
and the women the worst. Hail Mary full of Grace my backside Benny, lie through your teeth, keep up the front and rob your neighbour blind.” Then she closed one eye and leaned across
whispering, “Did you hear about this terrible business last night? They tried kill that fellow from Belfast. Drove up to his house and tried to shoot him stone dead in his own house.
You’ll remark there’s no sign of him today. That’s what happened, did you not hear? But I’ll have nothing to do with it. Say nothing, that’s the best policy,
they’re all a bad crowd Benny. They’re all mixed up in it, these northmen. Your father was a good man, there’s nobody can say any different about Hugo Dolan. Wasn’t he up on
the platform with the minister the time of the commemorations?”

Benny heard nothing she said. But the incident had been on his mind all morning. The man concerned had only recently come from Belfast to work in the boning hall and was staying with relatives
six miles outside the town. Benny pieced the uncertain fragments together. He had been playing cards with an old couple who lived nearby.
Scots accents
, it was rumoured,
and a Brit,
upperclass, officer
. Benny knew the area well. He could see it. The car driving silently across the unapproved road. Four, maybe six men in the car, nobody could know that yet. A house
somewhere on the Carn side where they collected their weapons. The car parked in a layby. Up ahead lights burning in a cottage, a gate swinging in a field, the car door opening and the men making
their way across the field to the cottage. The front door kicked open, the old couple staring at them in horror. The northman producing a gun from nowhere and diving for the back door. The would-be
assailants stricken with panic, the old couple huddling in a corner waiting for their death. A Scottish voice shouting out into the night. The wall sprayed with bullets. Then chaos, the car door
slamming, the engine revved off towards the nothern side. There had been rumours since the summer of an organised gang carrying out raids on the southern side with back up from the British army. A
number of local men had disappeared. One of them had been mysteriously transported across the border and his hooded body found weeks later in a culvert. On every occasion there had been a mention
of English and Scottish accents.

The northman had escaped, but was badly wounded in the stomach. The early morning news bulletin had described it as an internal paramilitary feud.

“Do you agree with me?” quizzed Maisie, looking into his eyes.

The hooter sounded for break. Benny lit up a cigarette and sat on a crate with his sandwiches. His rib twinged again. It had been cracked the previous week at the march. He had said nothing
about it to Sadie. What was the point in her knowing, only upset her. Joe had been lucky, got out clean as a whistle.

“That’s only a scratch, Dolan,” the policeman had said bitterly. “Next time I’ll fix it for you good and proper.”

Benny had gone with the northmen from the factory, standing in a field waiting for the helicopter to land with the coffin of the dead hunger striker. Beneath the whirring rotor blade, four
special branch men had appeared with the coffin on their shoulders. They carried it across the field and over a wall into the churchyard. Their colleagues watched with Uzzi machine guns slung by
their sides. The shuttered streets were lined with blue-clad policemen, figures from a futuristic film with visors and riot shields. They stood ominously in front of sweetshops tapping batons as
the protestors strained towards the steel barriers. Suddenly the barriers had buckled and Benny found himself swept along on a wave of bodies and in a split second pinned down by his arms as a
baton resounded thickly against his ribs. The white face of the young policeman stared tensely down at him, the baton shaking in his hand. Later they had marched morosely past the closed pubs and
curtained windows as a piper played a lament and the colour party moved, in dark glasses and berets, at the front. As they stood in silence in the cemetery, an army helicopter droned overhead,
soldiers dotted the surrounding hills like dolls wound up and ready for action. A young notherner, overcome, had broken from the crowd and confronted a policeman crying, “Free State
Pigs!” to be dragged off cursing to a waiting van. This was too much for some of the northmen and vicious scuffles broke out between them and the police. Stones were thrown. A tricolour and a
Union Jack were simultaneously burnt. Joe Noonan spat at a soldier, “Imperialist scum.”

The crowds in the town did not disperse until well after dark. Police reinforcements arrived by the hour.

On the coach home, the exhausted marchers sang
The Boys of the Old Brigade
.

The radio carried an appeal from a bishop to all the young men of Ireland. He called on them to renounce violence. He castigated patriotic songs and said they spoke of nothing but guns and
bloodshed. We have had enough of this revolutionary mythology, he said, far too many young men of twenty had gone out to die. He called on everyone north and south not to be afraid to stand up and
be counted. We must root out this Frankenstein of evil in our midst. After all, they cannot shoot us all.

The bus cheered loudly as the bishop concluded and another song was struck up with renewed gusto.

The police called at Benny’s house on two occasions after that, “making routine checks”. The detective smiling and saying as they left, “I knew your father Hugo well. Did
you not see me at his funeral? Me and him used to have long chats below in the barracks. I’m sure he’d be pleased to see you’re following in his footsteps.”

As the hooter sounded, Benny tossed the bread-wrapper from him and went back to the machine where Maisie Lynch was already getting into her stride for the afternoon, announcing that the only
hope for a solution in Northern Ireland lay in three weeks non-stop prayer, prayer morning noon and night.

“Prayer will out,” she said authoritatively. “Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”

He finished up early that evening and went for a drink in the Turnpike Inn. Through the doorway of the extension a number of cardplaying factory men greeted him. The huge video
was playing a blue movie, the men rigid as statues beneath interlocking bodies. In the corner pool balls clacked. Somewhere else a television blared. A fruit machine choked on coins. Benny was on
his second drink when the northman came in and joined him at the bar. They knew one another well and stayed drinking together until closing time.

They did not broach the subject of the previous night until they were safely home in the northman’s house on one of the council estates that had been recently built to accomodate the
influx of northerners. His wife brought them tea and sandwiches. The northman tapped his thumbs and looked at Benny.

“They’ve been operating on this side of the border for over a year. It was them shot McCarney.”

McCarney was the man whose body had been found dumped, shot through the head.

“They snatched him and took him across. It’s the same outfit. UVF—the army are helping them.”

Benny nodded.

“But they couldn’t get across with the gear. They’re picking them up this side.”

“You’re sure?” said Benny.

The northman nodded. “They have to be.” He sipped his tea. “Somewhere near where it happened last night.”

Outside a car passed, throwing shadows on the wallpaper.

“There’s someone from the town helping them.”

Benny shifted uneasily. The northman drew his breath and thought long and hard before he said, “We think we know who it is.”

“Who?” said Benny sharply.

“I can’t say. Not yet. I’ll fill you in for definite tomorrow. He’s being checked out. They’re nearly a hundred per cent. He’s known from a long time
back.” He paused. “The pigs this side won’t touch them. They can do what they like. But it has to be stopped. McCarney was a good man. They nearly finished Quigley last
night.”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to need local men. We’ll need back up.”

“Yes.”

“If you’re needed . . . you might not be . . . can I rely on you?”

Benny replied, “Yes.”

“Good,” said the northman. “I’ll talk to you when I know more. But we’ll be moving soon.”

They finished their tea and Benny set off for home. As he climbed the stairs, Tara cried out in her sleep. He hesitated on the landing and then, satisfied that all was well, crept in beside
Sadie, but did not sleep until the first light of dawn was touching the frosted window.