Eden Burning (26 page)

He had wanted Clara to look beautiful in death so that people would say that she looked as if she had gone straight to Heaven. She didn’t look beautiful in the coffin. Her blonde hair fell back on the white satin pillow like a wig. Her face was pulled in like an old woman sucking in her cheeks. Her lips were held in a straight line never to curve again into a smile. The bullet wound was lower down in her chest hidden by the white blouse. He imagined how it would be, probably the size of a coin in the centre of her chest with bruising all around it in circles like Saturn.

He could hear Frances now singing to Sean on the guitar in the room next door. She sang a ‘Song for Ireland’:

“
Living on your western shore, saw summer sunsets, asked
for more. I stood by your Atlantic Sea and sang a song for Ireland
.”

Her voice was strong and gentle. It filled the room with an ephemeral softness. Frances’s voice strengthened with the last verse.

Ciaran held Clara’s hand and wished that he would hear three loud knocks at the front door and that he would be bundled into a Saracen tank, pretending to struggle on the way down the hallway but really wanting to be taken away, interned in H-Block as so as he wouldn’t have to look into the eyes of Conor and Frances when they discovered who killed their sister. They would discover eventually.

As Frances finished her song, there were three gentle knocks at the front door. Ciaran dropped Clara’s hand, wondering if he had created this reality. Like King Midas whose touch turned everything to gold, maybe Ciaran had made this real by thinking about it. The army had come for him and he was ready to go. His time had come. The kids would be better off without him. He had filled their heads with a pack of lies. His sister Mary had more sense. She would make sure that they were well taken care of.

Sean tapped gently on the door of the bedroom. “Tom Martin has called to have a few words with you. Are you OK to see him?”

chapter 11

Monday 10th January 1972

R
ose didn’t go to school on Monday. The night before, Tom had asked if she wanted to go to Clara’s funeral and she shook her head. He looked at her in a mystified way but didn’t pursue the matter. He removed his glasses and wiped them clean with his cotton handkerchief in the way he did when he was confused. Lily held Rose’s face within her hands and gave her a big kiss.

“You don’t need to go to the funeral. Try to get a good night’s sleep.”

Rose held Lily tight, squeezing her, pressing her cheek against Lily’s soft skin. She kissed her before letting her go and giving Tom a kiss, feeling his stubble against her lips. Kissing Tom on the cheek before going to bed always sent ripples of pleasure throughout her body – small jolts of liquid electricity. Kissing Lily’s soft cheek was different. With Lily the kiss brought stillness and peace – like contact with a fragile petal whose beauty was empty of fear, empty of the churning and stirring of emotion.

“Good night. Sleep well.” Rose closed the sitting room door
behind her and heard Tom and Lily murmuring together as she climbed the stairs to the bedroom. There were no rioters outside on the Crumlin Road. The house was filled with an uncommon quiet which gave Rose the feeling that the very walls were watching her as she climbed the stairs – watching her with love.

Next morning, before getting out of bed, she opened the bedside table drawer and searched for the white envelope from Matt. She read his letter once more. She pulled on her navy skirt, white blouse, blue and yellow striped tie, pullover, and blazer with the Convent of Mercy emblem – a cross with the word ‘Mercy’ and the motto, ‘Truth in our hearts’. She read the letter twice. She didn’t say a word to Tom and Lily over breakfast about what she was going to do. Instead she put on her navy raincoat, closed the front door as normal and walked quickly up the road to a different bus stop where she joined the queue waiting for the number 57 bus headed for the City Centre.

Rose paid the fare and climbed the spiral staircase to sit upstairs in the smoking area. The bus trundled down the Crumlin Road, stopping to pick up three passengers outside 463. Mr Langley got on board. Rose’s heart beat faster. Mr Langley liked to smoke a pipe – maybe he would come upstairs. She quickly left her seat at the front of the bus and moved to the back where there was still an empty seat beside a woman wearing thick glasses. She need not have worried as Mr Langley stayed downstairs. She took a deep breath and settled comfortably back in the seat, feeling even more relaxed when Mr Langley got off the bus at Carlisle Circus. She watched him light his pipe and limp slowly towards the Antrim Road. She took off her school tie, hid it in the satchel and buttoned up her raincoat to hide the badge on her blazer. She took out Matt’s letter.

“Dear Rose
,

On Saturday 8th January, Eddie, Max and I have been commissioned for a special surveillance assignment which might give us a chance to meet – if not to meet alone, at least to we will be able to talk. At last! There are so many questions I have to ask you and so many things to tell you. More than anything, I want to be with you, to be able to look into your eyes for more than a few seconds without worrying that someone will see us. I want to hold your hand – to feel its softness which I can only now imagine. Believe me, I do imagine it constantly. Don’t mention to anyone where I am. Promise – not even to Tom or to Lily. I’ve drawn a map of the house we will be staying in for four days from Saturday. Try to come on Monday 10th January. I know we will be inside that day. Get in by the downstairs window to the left of the front door. I’ll leave it open. If you can’t make it – don’t worry – I’m back on school patrol again on Wednesday 12th. I have been told that at long last I will have leave in April. I’ll go back home to Cardiff. Maybe you will find a way to visit my family in Rhiwbina? We can see if Tom and Lily would be OK with that. I don’t see why not. I hope that you Tom, Lily and of course Lucky keep safe. See you Monday if not Wednesday. Love always from Matt xx”
.

Rose studied Matt’s map, tracing the direction with her finger along Matt’s line dotted from the cemetery to the house marked with an ‘X’.

When the bus arrived at Belfast City Centre, Rose caught a second bus heading for the Falls Road and got off fifteen minutes later at the cemetery. Rain started to fall heavily, bouncing off the pavement and the tops of the armoured police jeeps parked in a line outside the main cemetery entrance. Two women huddled under umbrellas and then linked arms and staggered through
the metal gates. They pushed their way through the middle of a large crowd of mostly black coated mourners, flowing together like a slick of tar towards the graveside of Mickey Hannah. Mickey had been shot dead for not stopping at checkpoint Charlie a few days earlier. Rose skirted the edge of more than a hundred mourners. She glimpsed an oak coffin draped in an Irish tricolour carried by four men wearing balaclavas, camouflage green uniforms, black berets and gloves. It hadn’t been Rose’s intention to stumble across Mickey’s funeral but now that she was here, she stopped as ropes were laid on the ground, the coffin placed on top of the ropes and the four men lowered the coffin into the hole.

Two IRA men standing beside the grave raised rifles into the air and shots crackled into the grey clouds. A helicopter rumbled into sight, dropping lower to take photographs of the mourners. The coffin inched its way into the hollow blackness. A handful of mud thrown on top clunked in a muffled way against the wood. A small girl wearing an emerald green woollen coat, yellow gloves and a black knitted bobble hat walked to the graveside. She looked around, reached a hand towards a thin faced woman approaching in a long black coat. The two stood side by side as the girl threw a worn brown teddy into the grave.

A pink rose toppled from the mother’s hand into the darkness. The priest opened the prayer book. The wind turned three pages which he turned back. “Dust thou art and onto dust thy shalt return.” His words were carried away on a stronger gust of wind, disappearing into the heavy rhythm of the helicopter propellers slicing at the low clouds.

The crowd started to quietly disperse, with Rose following those who turned left along a pathway leading out of the cemetery into a side street. The rain continued to lash against two yellow and black spotted umbrellas which turned inside out
ahead of Rose who tucked her hair into her coat and turned up her collar. With rain streaming down her face and then trickling down the back of her neck she pulled on a pair of navy woollen gloves. Then, lifting her head, she spotted the derelict building on wasteland about one hundred yards ahead on the right. She pulled Matt’s map from her pocket. It had to be that house. She stopped for a moment to check.

Two men ahead of her, hands in pockets, bumped into each other from time to time as they stumbled across the muddy rough ground. They were heading in the direction of the derelict buildings. Rose watched a gust of wind lift two tiles from one of the houses. The tiles flew through the air like clay pigeons before crashing and splintering onto the ground. The upstairs windows were surprisingly clean. The house which Matt had marked with an ‘X’ was the middle house. She saw the splintered front door and the slightly opened downstairs window banging gently in the breeze.

A woman with a spotty umbrella, wearing a red woollen coat, unexpectedly turned around and looked at Rose. She then looked in the direction in which Rose was looking. Rose crumpled Matt’s letter in her pocket. As Rose looked at the house, the sky suddenly cleared and the sun burst through the clouds sending a broad ray of sunshine into the upstairs window of the middle house. It glinted for a moment on what seemed to be a silvery object. The woman in red looked at the glinting light and then grabbed the arm of her friend and she shrieked at the three men walking ahead of them, “Have a look over there. They’re in there.”

The helicopter dropped height as if the soldiers on board had heard the woman’s words. The wind from the rotor blades swayed the tips of the tall Poplar trees edging the wasteland. Someone shouted.

“Get them.”

Taking his hands out of his pockets, a short legged man with broad shoulders ran towards the house, closely followed by others, women stumbling in high heels, tripping over the broken bricks and splashing through the pools of rainwater. One man threw a brick into the air, breaking the upstairs bedroom window. Rose started to sprint, overtaking the women and catching up with the men. She reached the front door as the first man threw himself against it with his right shoulder. It didn’t move.

One of the women shouted. “The downstairs window is open. You can get in the window.”

Two men turned left, towards the window. The smaller of the two joined his hands together and bowed towards his friend who stepped onto the joined hands and hoisted himself through the window.

Rose, clutching her satchel, reached the front door as the two men now both inside opened the door. She threw the satchel to the ground. A man wearing jeans and a loose white tea shirt which fluttered against his torso like a flag screamed.

“The fucking cowardly bastards are upstairs hiding. Get reinforcements.” He looked at Rose who ignored him; instead she squeezed into the hallway, past a smaller man with a varicosed face, while two women staggered in high heels across the wasteland into a nearby road and turned left out of sight into a terraced street. The helicopter hovered directly overhead, dropping closer to the roof of the terraced building.

Rose panted as she climbed the stairs behind three men and two women. Rivulets of sweat ran down the sides of her face. She felt as though she was going to vomit. The men reached the bedroom on the left ahead of her. Her hands visibly shook as she approached the open bedroom door. The short legged man, flanked by his two friends, walked briskly towards the three
soldiers, cornering them in the way a sheep dog presses sheep into a pen. The short haired men were unmistakably British soldiers in plain clothes with short hair, one wearing a tweed jacket and jeans, the other two wearing blue anoraks and jeans. Rose watched Matt in his tweed jacket scan his pistol across the three men.

He hadn’t yet seen Rose.

“If you come any closer I’ll fire. I don’t want to do that. If we leave the building now no-one gets hurt.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are giving orders you fuckin’ British bastard. You drop your fuckin’ gun on the floor.”

Max and Edward pulled pistols from inside their anoraks as Matt shot a warning shot into the ceiling. “We’re not joking. We leave here and no-one will be killed.”

Two more men pushed past Rose into the bedroom, rugby tackling Max and Edward to the ground. Matt watched for a second, his hand raised in the air, the pistol pointed again at the ceiling. A third man lunged forward, grabbed Matt’s arm and within seconds the three soldiers were disarmed, lying face down on the floor, hands clasped on top of their heads. Two men strode into the bedroom with pick axes and rifles. There were now seven men and two women in the room with Rose, Matt, Edward and Max.

Matt, Edward and Max lay on the floor. One of the women offered the men perched on the windowsill a packet of cigarettes. A path was opened in the room to allow the two newcomers to walk slowly towards the soldiers. They stood on either side of Matt and Max with Edward in the middle. The room was now silent. There was a pause as one man with a squint in his eye lifted the butt of his rifle and brought it down on top of Matt as though he was tenderising a steak. The second man thumped Max with edge of the pick axe which he then threw on the
carpeted floor. There was another pause, unbroken silence filling the room, mingling with an almost tangible aroma of anger and fear akin to the acidity and bitterness of CS gas. Before the silence shattered, Rose hurtled across the room, finding a gap between the two men and throwing herself on top of Matt. She placed her head on top of his head, her arms around his shoulders, each of her legs on top of his legs.