Joe shook his hand as if to say not to worry. The coughing subsided. ‘The strike, Fergus. It’s worked.’
‘If it’s worked, can’t you come off it? What more can you achieve?’
‘Special category status. Remember? The whole point.’
‘You’ll never get that, Joe.’
‘Wait and see.’ Joe moved in his chair as if all the bones of his body were sore with pressing on the hard seat. ‘I might not live to see it. Others will.’
‘Oh, Joe.’ A terrible thing was happening to Fergus. His shoulders convulsed and a great sob came from him. He was crying like a woman. Like Mam. Here, in this place, in front of his brother. He buried his head in his hands. ‘Joey.’
There was silence. When he looked up, he saw a tear gathering in Joe’s eye.
‘Fergus.’
‘What?’
‘You know. Love. That stuff.’
Fergus scrunched his fists to make the crying stop. ‘Yeah, I know.’ He forced the crying feeling back down his throat. He sucked his lips between his teeth and bit the flesh, hard. He felt like a toddler crushing the jack-in-the-box back in.
A bleak silence fell on them both.
‘Tell me, Fergus?’ Joe rasped.
Fergus swallowed. ‘What?’
‘How’s your man with the van?’
‘Who?’
‘Uncle Tally.’
Fergus smiled. ‘Uncle Tally? He’s grand. I saw him yesterday. He said to send you his…“greetings”.’
‘ “Greetings”?’
‘That was the word.’
‘I miss him,’ said Joe. ‘But this prison–it’s not his scene.’
Fergus shrugged. ‘Whose scene is it?’ He looked around at the hard, cold floor, the Spartan plainness of the place. ‘D’you want me to tell him you’d like to see him?’
Joe seemed to consider this. Fergus thought he heard a sigh. ‘No.’
‘No?’ It was on the tip of his tongue to ask about the Cindy affair, but Uncle Tally had said not to.
‘Just tell him something,’ Joe said. ‘From me.’
‘What?’
‘Tell him, “It was all for the best.”’
‘ “All for the best”?’
‘Yes. Tell him that. Those words.’
‘I will.’
Joe shifted in his seat. ‘Any more news from Drumleash?’
‘Not much. I saw Dafters earlier. On the bus.’
‘Dafters on a bus? What’s happened to his TR7?’
‘Nothing. It’s in the garage.’
‘That Dafters. His eyes always on the main chance.’
If that’s how you remember him, thought Fergus, good on you. ‘He said to send you his best.’
‘His best? You know what Dafters’ best is?’
‘No.’ A brown jiffy bag. Crammed with explosives. ‘What?’
Joe hummed a tune.
Fergus made out the air of We Three Kings. ‘Jesus. Not that again.’
Joe stopped humming and laughed softly. ‘Those were the days, Ferg. You, me and Michael. Wassailing Drumleash. D’you remember what we did with the money?’
‘No. What?’
‘We bought three giant-sized bottles of cider. And you were sick.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You were. You threw up all over Dafters’ shoe.’
‘You’re having me on.’
‘I’m not. You were too drunk to remember.’
Fergus shook his head. ‘I’m off out boozing tonight, Joe. I’m going out with Padraig, down to Finicule’s. We’re celebrating the end of the exams.’
‘The exams?’
Fergus nodded. ‘They’re over.’
‘Of course.’ Joe flicked his wrist as if to say exams were part of another world. ‘I should have asked. How were they?’
‘So-so.’
‘That’s what you always say. Then you come top.’
‘Not this time. They were so-so. Honest.’
‘You’ll be fine, Ferg. You could do those exams standing on your head. You crack on with the study, Dr Fergus. The first McCann ever to go to university. Mam and Da–they’re that proud.’
Another spasm came over Joe. His eyes dilated and he retched. Then he doubled over, grabbing his guts. Fergus got a whiff of something stale, like a breadbin that badly needed washing out, mixed with something chemical, like pear-drops.
‘You’d better go,’ Joe gasped.
Fergus realized he’d exhausted him. Slowly he got up. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Never better.’ Joe looked like torture itself. ‘Only, Fergus?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t come back. I’d rather not see you again.’
Each word was a stabbing.
‘D’you understand?’ Beads of sweat formed on Joe’s forehead.
Fergus nodded. ‘S’pose.’
‘Nothing personal.’
‘OK, Joe. I won’t come in again. Not until all this is…over.’
Joe rocked on his seat. ‘Not until then, Ferg.’ His face grimaced with another spasm. ‘Christ. Goodbye, Ferg. Fight the fight.’
‘Bye, Joe.’ But he couldn’t move. Joe looked up in anguish. The whole eighteen years of their lives together were in his face. ‘Go on, Ferg. This will pass.’
‘Joey.’ Fergus pressed his palm to the glass panel. With an effort, Joe pressed his palm up to the other side, so that their hands matched. Fergus noticed his own hand was now the larger. Joe’s hand shook a little, then fell back to his lap.
‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’
Fergus stumbled from the booth, towards the other end of the room. The floor lurched like a boat in a bad sea. The guard reached out to steady him at the door. ‘Bye, Joe,’ he called again as he left the room. He followed the signs to the exit, retracing the steps Mam, Da and he had taken earlier. As he walked the weary corridors, the thought that he’d never see his brother alive again pressed on him with numb certainty. The words of the Lennon song careered around in his head:
In the middle of a cloud
In the middle of a cloud I call your name.
He dragged his knuckles along the peeling paint. There was all his life till this moment and that was the past. There was all his life after this moment and that was the future. He could hear the mouth organ, jauntily playing the tune, the piano bouncing along. Oh Yoko! Oh Yoko! The present was the fulcrum, holding all of time. Old war planes took off from the old aerodrome, men banged the bars of their cages with bedpans, weeds of the future grew through the crumbling concrete. The piano died away. Only the mouth organ was left. It too faded into silence as he emerged from the H-block into the blinding whiteness of the sun.
Twenty-seven
It was gone tea time when they got home. Felicity and Cora hadn’t returned from Omagh. Mam sent Fergus over to collect the girls from playing at the Caseys’. Theresa helped Mam put out some bread and cheese. They snacked on that with quartered tomatoes.
‘Mam?’ Cath said.
‘What?’
‘How thin has Joe got?’
Mam looked over at her. ‘No thinner than you’ll be if you don’t eat your supper.’
There was silence.
‘Mam?’ said Theresa.
‘What?’
‘Did you tell Joe about my part in the panto?’
Mam smiled. ‘I forgot. I’ll tell him next time, Theresa. Promise.’
Fergus looked up from a doorstep sandwich he’d been eating. ‘What panto?’
‘The end-of-term panto, Fergus. We’re doing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And I’ve the best part.’
‘Not Snow White?’ He gaped at Theresa’s flaming red hair and freckles with mock horror.
‘No. I’m the evil stepmother.’ Theresa leered. ‘Mirror, mirror…’ She gave a hideous cackle and scratched the air under Fergus’s nostrils with her fingernails.
‘Whisht,’ Mam said.
Fergus shielded his face. ‘I get the picture.
What are you, Cath?’
‘I’m a dwarf,’ she said, skewering a tomato quarter.
‘Not Grumpy?’
‘No.’ Cath pouted at the tomato. ‘I’m Sleepy.’
‘Go to bed, then.’
Theresa chortled and scratched the air with her fingernails some more. Cath stuck out her tongue.
‘Don’t wind them up, Fergus,’ Mam scolded.
Fergus munched through his sandwich and made another. ‘Mam?’
‘Now what?’
‘I said to Padraig he could come over tonight. We’re off to Finicule’s to celebrate.’
‘Celebrate? What in God’s name is there to celebrate?’
Fergus shrugged. ‘The end of the exams. Uncle Tally said he’d buy me a pint.’
Da looked over at Mam, who was frowning. ‘Pat,’ he said. He put out a hand. It hovered, but didn’t land on her wrist. ‘Let him go. Let him leave off some steam. He deserves it.’
Mam’s eyes went up to heaven. ‘OK, Fergus. Only don’t be talking about–you know. Not to anyone.’
‘No, Mam. I won’t. Can Padraig sleep here? I’ll put the sleeping bag out for him in my room.’
Mam smiled. ‘No. I’ll make up the bed in Joe’s room.’
Everyone fell silent. Joe had moved out when he was eighteen, after getting a job in a brewery in Newry. Then, a few weeks before his arrest, he’d moved back in. He’d said at the time it was just until after Christmas. Perhaps he’d already known the RUC were onto him. Nobody had slept in there since the night of his arrest.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Fergus offered.
Mam nodded. ‘OK. You can get the sheets down from the press.’ She and the girls started to clear away. Da handed Fergus a fiver, putting his finger to his lips, then shuffled out into the garden, jangling the loose change in his pocket.
Fergus found the bed linen and went into Joe’s old room. The bed was stripped bare. The place was full of his things. Soccer albums, clothes, Airfix models, the mandolin he’d never mastered, the schoolbooks he’d hardly opened. His green-and-white-striped Celtic football scarf was draped over the back of the desk chair. Fergus sniffed. There was a faint odour of old trainers, a whiff of Joe’s familiar sportiness.
He went and stood at the window, pulling back the net curtain. If you looked out sharp to the west, you could make out a fold of hillside, a patch of meadow with sheep grazing. On the sill he found some old conkers Joe must have kept since last autumn. He’d always been fond of conkers, Fergus recalled. He’d had some crackpot theory about how the life trapped in their shells gave you magical energy if you carried them round in your trouser pockets. Aphrodisiacs, he’d called them. They were dusty and wrinkled, nut-brown.
He scooped them up one by one and polished them with his sweatshirt. He thought about pocketing them, but somehow it didn’t feel right. He put them back on the sill in a neat ring.
‘There, Joe,’ he whispered. ‘There.’
He opened the window to air the room and set about making the bed.
Twenty-eight
There was a good crowd in Finicule’s. Padraig and Fergus sat propped up at the bar, two beers in. Uncle Tally was behind, mopping the glasses, pulling the pints, juggling the custom like a pro.
Padraig drained his off. ‘I’ve a wicked thirst on me.’
‘Me too. I’m parched.’
‘If it was pints of water, we wouldn’t be that fussed.’
‘We wouldn’t.’
‘The lure of the beer. What the hell is it?’
Fergus held up his glass. ‘It’s the amber light, Padraig. It sends you off in a trance.’ He drained his off. ‘I’ll get another.’ He flashed Da’s fiver over the counter. Uncle Tally grinned and pulled another two. He refused the cash. ‘Save it for the next round,’ he said.
Glasses recharged, they re-examined the amber. ‘Bottoms up?’ suggested Padraig in a posh English voice.
‘May we all be alive this time next year,’ Fergus responded. He thought of Joe and winced. Padraig clinked his glass and together they took a good slug.
Fergus slooped some spilled beer off the counter with his beer mat. ‘D’you know our Theresa and Cath?’
‘Yep?’
‘They’re in the school panto. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I ask you. You’d think they’d put on something pacier.’
‘Like what?’
‘Dunno. Grease?’
‘That’s way too advanced for Drumleash.’
‘OK. The Sound of Music. Wouldn’t the nuns like that?’
Padraig giggled. ‘That reminds me.’
‘What?’
‘I know this joke about the seven dwarfs.’
‘I’ve a pain in my belly starting.’
‘Honest. ’S funny.’
‘Go on.’
‘Snow White sends the seven dwarfs off to convent school, right? So they can learn to read and write. And while they’re there, they all go off on a school trip to the Arctic Circle.’
‘The Arctic Circle?’
‘Yeah. To find the North Pole. See the Eskimos. Whatever.’ Padraig swallowed some beer. ‘Anyway, Grumpy goes up to Sister Mary. She’s the class teacher, right? And really pretty, if you can imagine her out of her habit.’ He sketched an hour-glass shape with his hands. ‘The works. “Sister Mary?” goes Grumpy. “What, child?” “Did Dopey spend last night with you?” ’
Fergus chuckled.
‘And she says, “No, Grumpy. Don’t you know, I’ve taken a vow of chastity.”’
‘Hi-ho, hi-ho. Then what?’
‘Grumpy goes back to the other dwarfs. “Hey, Dopey,” he goes. “I’ve bad news for you.” “What?” goes Dopey. “That wasn’t Sister Mary you screwed last night. It was a penguin.” ’
Padraig slapped the bar and waddled on his stool and hooted. Fergus laughed, even though he’d heard a million variations of the penguin-nun joke. Padraig was practically off the barstool when Uncle Tally came over with two whiskey shorts.
‘What are these?’ said Fergus.
‘They’re chasers. They’re not from me. They’re from Mr Casey over there. For the exams. He says good on you, the pair of you.’
‘We haven’t passed them yet. We’ve only finished them.’
‘He said to give them to you anyway.’
Fergus swivelled round on the barstool and raised the whiskey glass to Jim Casey, who shook his head and smiled as if to say, It’s the least I can do for the brother of a hunger striker.
Soon after, Padraig went off to the porcelain receptacle, as he put it.
‘Uncle Tally?’
‘What?’
Fergus beckoned him over and leaned over the counter. ‘I saw Joe,’ he whispered. ‘Today.’
Uncle Tally looked around to check nobody was listening. ‘How was he?’
‘Awful.’
‘God. I’m sorry.’
‘He asked after you. So I gave him your “greetings”.’
‘Thanks, Fergus.’ Fergus was about to give him Joe’s message, about it being “all for the best”, whatever that meant, when a customer approached the bar, a man Fergus didn’t recognize. Uncle Tally picked up a cloth to wipe a glass.
‘Can I have two pints of Guinness, Thaddeus?’ the man said.
Fergus smiled. Nobody around Drumleash ever called Uncle Tally by his real name. The man must have dropped in from another planet.
Padraig came back. Together they downed the chasers, then returned to the beer.
‘D’you wanna hear one about the three pigs?’ Padraig said.
‘Christ. Spare me. OK.’
Padraig was halfway through the joke when Michael Rafters came in. Fergus nearly choked on his beer. He swivelled round so as to have his back to the door and grabbed Padraig by the wrist.
‘Let’s move to that snug,’ he said.
‘OK. If you insist.’ They shuffled over. Fergus settled into the shadowy corner, praying Rafters wouldn’t come near him.
‘W
here was I?’ asked Padraig.
‘Something about the wolf. Huffing and puffing.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ The walking encyclopaedia of jokes finished that gag and three more besides when Uncle Tally came over with another round of beers.
‘Who are these from?’ Fergus asked.
‘Michael Rafters. He says they’re for Mr Marathon Man and his friend.’
Uncle Tally put them down. Padraig burped. ‘There’s a powerful mood of generosity in Finicule’s tonight,’ he said. He leaned out of the snug and caught Michael’s eye. ‘Here’s to the Incendiary Devices!’ he roared. The whole pub laughed.
Fergus sat back in the shadow of the snug, all mirth evaporated. He was exhausted suddenly. His stomach churned and his limbs had shooting pains. He remembered the spasms of Joe, the stale-breadbin smell of starvation.
‘And the angry neighbour goes, “You should be damn well hung, you bastard.”’
‘What?’
‘The punch-line, get it?’
‘Oh, yeah. Damn well hung. Ha-ha. ’Scuse, Padraig.’ Fergus got to his feet, pushing his beer to one side. He lurched to the door at the back of the bar and made it to the gents just in time. Everything he’d eaten earlier and drunk in the pub got thrown up in three violent retches.
Afterwards he splashed water on his face. His brain tilted. The urinals rocked.
‘Jesus,’ he moaned, gripping the porcelain edge. He retched again, his throat and mouth stinging with the acrid taste of nothing.
He splashed himself again and rinsed his mouth out. The seismic shifting of the tiles and urinals slowly settled. He breathed in and out and dried his face, feeling better. Then he slipped out of the toilets, down the passage and out the back of the pub. The night was fine and cool. There was a freshening breeze off the mountain. His heart was pumping. His collar felt tight. He undid the top button of his shirt. Stars pulsated overhead.
‘Good job,’ he heard a voice say.
He looked around. There were two men talking out by the parked cars. He didn’t recognize them, but their voices carried over in the stillness.
‘Give it here.’ He saw one man pass something that glinted in the dark to the other. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ They got in a car and drove off.
When Fergus got back to the bar, another chaser had appeared alongside Michael Rafters’ pint.