Ordinary Decent Criminals

  The guide detailed the news grandly, taking his time. In the midst of Remembrance Day services, a bomb had gone off by the town cenotaph and blown out a gable wall. Nine, ten people dead, maybe more. Civilians every one. A bollocks. And injuries galore …

  “Why, Angus,” Farrell noted. “If it isn’t a mistake.”

  “Bleeding cretins,” MacBride puffed. “Freaking Provo barbarians—”

  “Come on,” Farrell prodded. “Use scum. I know you save it for special occasions, but sure this counts as one.”

  There was much commiseration and head-shaking. They were both relieved when the guide was gone. All that indignation was exhausting.

  Angus dropped the twisted brow when the guide turned the corner.

  “Does it ever strike you,” asked Farrell lightly, “that the Provisionals are quaint? Really. The Iranians blow three hundred air passengers with a briefcase. At current levels of technology, massacre by the dozen expresses considerable restraint.”

  “Grand,” said MacBride. “I can see myself launching into the BBC with that one. I would just like to say that I thought Enniskillen was quaint.”

  “Handy, this,” Farrell observed.

  “Bastard of a thing,” said MacBride. “Bastard.”

  As the two men whisked toward the Antrim Arms to find a TV, their step sprang, hands played with keys in pockets. Farrell began to whistle and stopped himself. Angus jostled against the taller man’s shoulder and kicked schoolboy at stones, the mood of both gentlemen unquestionably bolstered.

  chapter two

  Roisin Has Enthusiasms

  Why couldn’t he nip in the back? Would he blink like a red light?”

  “Blamed if I know, Roisin, you’ve never said who you’re talking about.”

  “Lord, I can’t, Con. It’s not I don’t trust you. But matters being as they are—”

  “Spare me how matters are.”

  A little snippy, Roisin thought. “I’m only saying, so he was recognized, where’s the harm? He might shake my hand and say how very much he enjoyed it and smile and only the two of us the wiser.”

  “Why risk it?”

  “I want him to hear me read!”

  “Then curl up in the coverlet and recite with your man on the next pillow. That way no one’s the wiser.”

  Roisin bit her lip over the receiver. “Connie, you understand far better than you’re letting on.”

  “So do you. You want your toy boy to see you all tarted up in that blue dress, in front of a whole crowd of eejits queuing for signed copies of The Dumb and Frumpy Cows—”

  “That’s The Brave and Friendly Sheep! And it’s inhuman of me, when I see his own bake big as life on the telly every night?”

  “… On the telly, now?”

  “Forget I said that.”

  “A fine way to get me to remember.”

  “Seems to me, just,” Roisin went on nervously, “he might slip into one reading, who would point a finger.”

  “Such a TV star, why not? The English Lecture Theatre’s hardly the King’s Hall … What show might he be on, now?”

  The biggest show in town. Roisin smiled. The only show. “I’ve name enough by now, he’d only display decent public relations, attending a do for a major Six County poet.”

  “A Republican poet.”

  “I’m not a Republican poet.”

  “Wise up! With your father and those brothers in the Maze, write a donkey’s years about birdies and butterflies, or for that matter, join the UVF, burn your own house as a bonfire on the Twelfth, and go up with it, sure you’ll still get your name engraved on the County Antrim Memorial, with a full IRA cortege strung out to Lenadoon.”

  “For years in my work I’ve tried to—”

  “Doesn’t matter a jot, Rose,” Constance interrupted with the impatience that was beginning to characterize this entire call. “You are what they say.”

  “What has that got to do with Thursday?”

  “He’s a Prod, sure that’s no secret.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Och, no! You’re bumping the daylights out of Bill Cosby.”

  “Stop stirring me up! I said he was known, that’s all—”

  “And enough times.”

  To the injured silence on the other end, Constance continued. “I’m sorry, Roisin, but I can’t hold with this carry-on month after month about your famous man this, your famous man that—it’s a bit much, love. You’ve put the man terrible high up and there’s your problem. He can’t be as fancy as you figure, and if you could stare that down, maybe you wouldn’t let him wipe his shoes on your face. There’ve been times if I’d not seen the marks I’d swear you were making him up.”

  “He’s not a cruel man, and it was only those two times. And I’ll not have you run him down or make out he’s some wee Prod—”

  “If you’d stop exaggerating to me, you might stop exaggerating to yourself! So he’s some councilor or other—”

  “Angus MacBride is no councilor.”

  “You don’t say,” said Constance gravely.

  “I haven’t said.” Roisin spoke with reserve, her dignity restored. “Now do you see why?”

  “One of the bigger plums in the pie,” Constance conceded. “And you’re both better off he stays clear of the Thursday reading and every other.”

  “I’d not mind if it were only politics,” said Roisin, already growing sullen, though with herself; her stomach felt glutinous, as if she’d eaten too much potato bread. “Truth is, he’s not mad for poetry, even mine. Claims he doesn’t understand it.”

  “Fair enough,” said Constance. “You don’t understand politics.”

  Roisin was too sickened now to rise to the charge. “I’ve to sort out my selection for tomorrow, so I’ll ring off. But, Connie—”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep quiet. All the same—” Constance paused. “You shouldn’t have told me his name, love.” The receiver clicked in Roisin’s ear like a full stop at the end of any other simple, true declarative: The sky is blue.

  It was, and it shouldn’t have been; it should be bucketing. Roisin fidgeted from the phone and, to keep from ruining her well-kept nails, frantically hoovered the carpet. Well, obviously the only way to prove once and for all to Constance Trower just how big a secret she was keeping was to give it away.

  The hoover was full of cat hair, and filled the room with pet smell; Angus hated the cat and despised the smell. She kicked off the machine.

  Loose Talk Costs Lives.

  She’d pinned the poster at the entrance to the bedroom not long after she’d first started up with MacBride.

  In taxis

  On the phone

  In clubs and bars

  At football matches

  At home with friends

  Anywhere!

  WHATEVER YOU SAY—

  SAY NOTHING.

  While Seamus Heaney’s advice was clearly lost on Roisin, every party in the Province followed the slogan to the letter.

  I have a story you’ll like,” Farrell announced, with that long stride she had learned to keep up with. “Enniskillen. Now, the way bombs are handled in the Provisionals now, one cell makes the device, those that plant it are different lads altogether, no one ever meets anyone, correct?”

  “That’s the conceit—but Fermanagh? Sure they’re all first cousins and play on the same hurley team.”

  “Well, that’s what the Prods think—that every Taig knows who did it and won’t tell. But bear with me—”

  Constance smiled. The Prods, not you Prods. After so many years she had earned herself out of her people. From Farrell, that was a compliment.

  “—So the bomb was assembled weeks ahead of time. Now, it blew by the cenotaph smack in the middle of nurses and schoolteachers, and that’s why it was a mistake, right?”

  “Giant PR black eye. A real shiner.”

  “They forgot about daylight saving time.”

  “I don’t follow.”

&nbs
p; “One hour later, there would have been only soldiers by that cenotaph—everyone knows the ceremony, it’s the same dirge every year. But the boyo who made the bomb set it to go off at 11:45 a.m. on November 8, and forgot that in the meantime the clocks would change!”

  “Who told you this?”

  “A little bird with a balaclava.”

  “I think it’s a story you like.”

  “Well, yes. Perverse. Anarchic. Absurd. Their devices are so much more advanced than in my day—”

  “It’s not your day?” She sounded disappointed.

  “I don’t think I’d know where to begin with the contraptions they put together now. Microcircuitry, long-range radio control. But I could tell the bloody time.”

  “How is Enniskillen likely to affect your referendum? You figure it’s really given the place a taste for reform and that? Enough is enough, let’s get off our bum?”

  They were crossing the Lagan on the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, and stopped to lean over the river. It was only 3:30, but in Ireland’s stingy December already the sun was setting. Samson and Goliath, the two Harland and Wolff cranes, dipped the foreground, gold birds taking water. From here Belfast glowed, a vista never broadcast in news clips—a low city, its horizon stitched with spires. The light alchemized even Eastwood’s Scrap Metal with its Midas touch; hulks of burned-out City Buses mounded the shore, pirate’s treasure. Constance hoped the sunset was doing the same job on her face—projects of equal challenge, she supposed.

  “I’ve been sniffing the wind, and it smells, as usual. The Prods are already getting resentful that the wet-nosed ecumenists have hijacked their tragedy. Pretty soon they’ll want their atrocity back. And Gordon Wilson’s getting to be a regular celeb—forgiveness as song and dance. There are churches in the States now that want to fly him, all expenses paid, to get up in front of their congregations and repeat for the umpteenth time, I forgive the men who murdered my daughter. So they can all feel warm and gooey. There’s money in grace. The man should get an agent.”

  “You’re one godawful cynic, Farrell O’Phelan.”

  “No, it’s sad, really—I did rather admire him. I’d never be able to pull the line off with a straight face myself. But as soon as he’s seen as successful he’s dead. All Gordon needs is the Nobel Prize and the North will have him deported.”

  Constance sighed. “Poor Betty. She’s in Florida now.”

  “I’ve tried to warn MacBride—if he does win that bauble, this mean-spirited backwater will have his head.”

  “But can’t you use it, Enniskillen? Peace PR?”

  “Not really. We’re unlikely to get this referendum together for a year yet. I predict? Gordon Wilson jokes. In a year all of Fermanagh will detest him, even the Catholics—for not having the integrity to detest them back. And once the hand-clasping hoopla clears, the Prods will look around them and notice, Bloody hell, those wankers took out eleven of our side. They’ll feel vengeful and persecuted, as always. Constance, how many times have you heard, these are the last caskets we will carry, now we’re all going to be matey and damp-eyed? Now we will understand one another, albeit from separate schools and different sides of town? Of course you murdered my whole family last night, that’s perfectly all right, you were just doing your job? The Peace People may have we-shall-overcomed the multitudes but without Taigs or Prods to bash we’re at each other’s throats after six months; now the office barely limps from week to week with American volunteers. No, Enniskillen will have no effect on the North whatsoever. Like everything else in the last twenty years.”

  “Including you?”

  “Oh, aye. Especially me.”

  “Then why are we working eighteen hours a day?”

  “I do not believe anything I do will make the slightest difference. I do it anyway.”

  Then you understand me, thought Constance grimly. Why I phone the same number hours on end until I get through because you said “imperative.” Why I meet your planes on early Sunday mornings. Why I bring you cups of hot water and filled rolls you let dry out. Why I clip your piles of newspapers when you’re finished not reading them, why I collect city council minutes from Derry and Strabane when normal women are shopping for pumps: I do not believe any of this will make the slightest difference. I do it anyway.

  She took his hand; that was permitted. They had sorted out the rules, even stretched them—he could put his arm around her, kiss her cheek. In tight spots with only a single available they had slept side by side in the same bed. He would curl against her. It was nice. She didn’t even find it painful. And they often held hands.

  “I have a story you’re not going to like.”

  “Shoot.” He did not sound nervous. Farrell preferred bad news to no news. He loved a turn of the wheel.

  “You know Roisin St. Clair?”

  “The name.”

  “Don’t be coy. Why didn’t you tell me she was doing the nasty with Angus MacBride?”

  Farrell pulled up sharply. “Says who?”

  “Says herself.”

  “You’re right, I don’t like this story.”

  “And I’m hardly her best friend, Farrell. Lord knows who else she’s told. For all we know, she’s leaking like a Divis tap.”

  Farrell dropped her hand and paced off the bridge. The sun ruddied his face; his eyebrows looked on fire. Now it was hard to keep up with him.

  “I have warned and warned him!” Farrell railed. “How are we to kick this place into shape if he’s splayed in a two-page spread in the Sunday World? Look at Papandreou! Carrying on with that blonde is toppling his whole government!”

  “You figure Unionists care that much about a wee bit of philandering?”

  “Are you serious, it’s all they care about! The North is 64 percent Protestant, 36 percent Catholic, 100 percent gossip. As MacBride knows perfectly well, and still the bugger gropes over Antrim as if he were on holiday in Hong Kong. You must have noticed, he even flirts with you!”

  “Even me,” said Constance. “Is the trouble that he’s married, or that she’s Catholic?”

  “Either is dangerous, both are poison.”

  “Find yourself another softhearted Prod.”

  “No, I need the UUU behind this referendum, or it won’t fly. Angus MacBride is the UUU. He’s been coddling the party toward power-sharing for years. Half the lot will balk because they’ll boycott any initiative unless the Agreement is scrapped. And when we’re through lacing the proposition with Nationalist perks, there will be enough links with the South that the right-wingers in the UUU could easily label it an all-Ireland solution.”

  “Bye-bye, Border Poll.”

  “Better believe it. And it’s Angus keeps that rabble together; they do as he says because they like him. But he’s got to keep his nose clean. Bollocks—!”

  “You’re not overreacting?”

  “I take my prediction back: a year from now Gordon will be old hat. Angus MacBride jokes in the back pages of Fortnight are passing before my eyes.”

  “Cross your fingers. Nothing’s in public yet.”

  “When you have a leaky pipe, you don’t turn up the radio and pretend everything’s all right. People lose whole basements that way. No, the problem must be plumbed. Caulked tight.”

  “How is a woman like a kitchen sink?”

  “That’s the riddle, my dear. Now, tell me about Roisin St. Clair. What’s she like? Pretty?”

  Wouldn’t that be the first question. “Rather. Well preserved, anyway. Thirty-five or so. Brilliant with clothes. Thin; I’d say from nerves. And if that lady ever hits the big time, some psychiatrist has it made.”

  “Because of her father?”

  Constance shrugged. “That’s the easiest answer. But it’s the mother she whinges on about. Roisin’s the only daughter. And the family is—old-fashioned.”

  “Low expectations?”

  “Where have you been? No expectations. Considering, she’s done well.”

  “She a good poet?”
br />   “Lord, I couldn’t say. I can’t bear any of that palaver, you know that. But at least it’s her one original interest, and she’s followed through.”

  “In contrast to—?”

  “Roisin St. Clair is one of those people with enthusiasms,” Constance explained. “A bit of a dabbler. I met her when we were setting up that integrated entrepreneurial support scheme with Father Mahon. Och, she threw herself into it with a right frenzy—late nights helping Catholics stuff teddy bears, Prods bottle mayonnaise. Then one day she disappeared.”

  “What happened?”

  “I suppose they broke up.”

  “With Father Mahon—!”

  “No, no, she and whoever gave her the idea. Roisin goes through phases, so she does—”

  “You mean men.”

  “I suppose the interest is genuine enough once it sparks. But your woman never lights her own fire.”

  “Romantic history?”

  “Nightmarish, protracted. She takes a long time to get the message.”

  “Politics?”

  “Reactive. Depends on whom she’s browned off with—and sooner or later, that’s everyone she’s ever laid eyes on. I’ve wondered if she’s carrying on with MacBride to spite her mother. She’d never tell her ma outright. But it might satisfy Roisin if the news slipped under the back door.”

  “Republican?”

  “You’re not getting the picture. Sure, stuck on the right boyfriend, she’d smuggle bazookas in her boot across the border with the best of them. With Angus I expect she’s stitching Union Jacks for the Apprentice Boys.”

  “You don’t seem to think much of Miss St. Clair.”

  “I’m getting catty. It isn’t attractive, is it?”

  “No, it’s entertaining, but I’m beginning to wonder what MacBride sees in her besides the obvious. And the affair’s been on for a couple of years.”

  “She is nice to look at. She’s no dozer once you get her intrigued. And with all that resentment, well—she can get scrappy in a corner. I imagine Angus likes a good fight.”