Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (26 page)

He began to spend more time at home than was good for the condition of his soul and to clean with an obsessiveness that bordered on the unhealthy. Pat, on one of his rare appearances, caught him cleaning the washroom grout with an old toothbrush for the second time in one week and voiced the opinion that perhaps he needed to find an alternative activity to occupy his time.

“’Tis easy for ye to say,” Casey said scratching at the tip of his nose with one rubber-gloved hand, “yer not stuck in this damn place day after day.”

“Nor are you,” Pat pointed out, “ye’ve been unemployed before an’ managed to find something to do, this is no different.”

“In fact,” Casey said ignoring altogether Pat’s last statement, “yer never here. Ye breeze in, grab a bath an’ fresh clothes an’ breeze back out.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously, “Just where do ye spend all yer time?”

“In Oriental massage parlors, where do ye think?” Pat retorted acerbically and left his brother to his grout.

Casey caught up to him in the kitchen. “Will ye be around for dinner? I’ve made stew and dumplins’, the little ones with apple that ye like.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pat said on an explosion of breath.

“What?” Casey asked, all innocence, wooden spoon in hand.

“Would ye listen to yerself? Yer like some nittin’ broody hen.”

“What are ye tryin’ to say?” Casey slapped the spoon down.

“I’m not tryin’, I’m bloody well sayin’ it! Christ Casey, I’m beginnin’ to feel like the flea that couldn’t get rid of the dog.”

“Well thank you very much,” Casey said peevishly, picking up the milk Pat had poured and left on the counter and wiping the ring of condensation under it.

Pat sighed and rubbed his neck, leaving a smudge of ink in the wake of his fingers. “Listen, I’ve got to go down to Tom’s tonight. We’re to finish up the pamphlets an’ then we’ve got to leaflet an area of about five square miles.”

“For what?” Casey said, tone lightly disinterested.

“We’re picketin’ the Housing Trust in the morning. Five houses have gone to Protestant families with one or no children an’ they’ve been bumped over Catholics who had larger families an’ greater need.”

“Such is the way of our world,” Casey said laconically.

“So we should just let it stay so?” Pat asked, grabbing an apple and some bread and stuffing it in his pockets.

“No, I’m just sayin’ I’m not certain it’ll lead anywhere all this protestin’ and pamphletin’.”

“People can respond to things other than the sound of a gun,” Pat said quietly.

“D’ye think I don’t know that?” There was a transparency in Casey’s words, a desperation that made Pat halt for a moment, even though he was already late.

“Tom’s uncle has offered us a few weeks work peat cuttin’ out west. Why don’t ye come?”

“Can the revolution survive yer absence so long?”

“It’ll manage,” Pat said, fighting not to rise to his brother’s bait.

“An’ what about Declan, doesn’t he need yer stout slingin’ skills over the next bit?” For Pat had taken a part-time job as a bartender at Declan O’Ryans, a comfortable if not trendy establishment known for its good food and showcasing of local talent.

“He always closes down for a few days durin’ the height of marchin’ season an’ he decided to close for three weeks an’ make a holiday of it, he’s taken the wife an’ kids to Greece.”

“Oh,” Casey said, turning and giving the stew a dejected stir.

“Come, why don’t ye?” Pat infused the smallest bit of wheedling into his request.

“Out west, eh?” Casey said and leaning against the counter faced his brother once again. “Is it to be ‘to hell or Connacht’ for me then?”

“It’s beginnin’ to look that way,” Pat said smiling.

“Aye well, perhaps I’ll try Connacht. I’ve been to hell an’ didn’t find the temperature to my likin’. Now go on, ye can’t leave the revolution in Tom Kelly’s hands for too long, he’s like to lose it in the first five minutes.”

Casey sat after Pat left, ate three bites of the stew he’d ladled out for himself and then pushed the bowl away with a heavy sigh. It was no good pretending. He didn’t want to eat, cared little for sleep and was about as settled as a dog with an arseful of porcupine quills. He could have pointed to any number of reasons and likely even convinced himself of their validity. The stagnation in the Republican rank and file, the fact that his brother seemed like the whirlwind at the center of some exciting event while he felt awkward, alone and an outsider in his own community. While it was true that in their neighborhood almost every household held a Nationalist sympathy or a Republican under the bed there were still those who walked past him in the street without a word. People he’d known since childhood, mothers who’d fed him bread warm from the oven. One old lady had actually spit at his feet the other day. Sometimes he wondered if he’d be able to leave prison behind. There were still moments when he thought he could smell the place on his skin, feel the grit of it under his nails and the darkness of it in his heart. All the hot water in the world wasn’t going to get rid of that. But when he’d held Pamela in his arms the other night, when he’d touched her face and kissed her, he’d felt a lightness inside, he’d felt clean, as if he held no taint from his past, no weariness that did not belong in a body so young. She’d felt like salvation, a fine and good thing that he could protect and care for, a beauty that would save him from himself.

He stood, took his bowl to the sink and faced himself in the merciless reflection of window and dark night.

‘To hell or Connacht then,” he whispered to himself and found it difficult to smile.

In May of 1968, a great concrete and steel edifice was erected in West Belfast. It was the first of its sort there, though unfortunately it wasn’t to be the last. It was called by the rather uninspired name of Divis Flats and it would rip the heart out of a neighborhood, opening vital arteries that would bleed despair and disillusionment for decades. It was also monumentally, undeniably ugly.

The architects of the monstrosity hailed it as an opportunity for a new community, a time for the society of West Belfast to recast itself around the advantages of modern living, stating that having ‘a bird’s eye view’ would give the people who were fortunate enough to live there a ‘new and more meaningful social relationship between communities.’ The architects, of course, did not have to live there. There had been nothing wrong with the community of the old West Belfast, the housing had been rundown and needed replacing, but as far as the ties that bound one house to the next and one street to another, even the most stringent social planner would have been hard put to find a stronger, more densely woven population. People knew their neighbors and moreover, quite often liked them. They knew who was about to be born and who was about to die, whose father had fought in the war and whose had not. Whose paycheck was blued on the dogs or the drink, whose arthritis flared up in the winter, whose nerves were being lost on kids and bills, who was falling in love and who was falling out. They needed new homes, warm, clean, properly plumbed, well-built homes, what they did not need was a government imposed eyesore about which they were given neither choice nor vote.

It was typical and they were used to it. The older generation had seen it in myriad ways; aspirations had come to ashes before and would again. There was no trial and error as far as the government was concerned there was only the trial of error upon error. The bottom line was the largest number of housing units for the least amount of money and to hell with a sense of community or security. The government had taken it upon themselves to make decisions for a section of the population they had no connection to, no understanding of and no fondness for. It was the way of things in Northern Ireland and had been for as long as anyone cared to remember.

The young, mercifully or unmercifully, have no memory. And the youth of Northern Ireland were no different from their counterparts around the globe; they saw discrimination and sought to right it. They were, however, different from their predecessors in that they were the first generation of Catholics to have access to higher education and a hope at something more than a marriage with too many mouths to feed and the occasional flutter at the track to look forward to.

To them, life had to be more than a mill that sucked you in and ground you down, spitting you out the other end soulless and hopeless. Life just had to be more than that.

Pat, standing in the street and eyeing the block of concrete, felt as if he were shouldering a good deal of the weight of it. Over the last few weeks, he’d heard his father’s voice in his head a lot. ‘Don’t expect life to be fair an’, Paddy, for God’s sake, don’t ever give all yer love to just one thing.’

It had seemed simple enough advice at the time and he’d followed it as best as he was able and he’d certainly never expected life to be fair. The result of which was he was in love with a girl his brother had boldly taken from under his nose, a girl who apparently didn’t understand Catholic guilt, at least not the debilitating Irish form of it. He was up to his neck in a movement founded on hope and youthful illusion and he
had
found another love and her name was freedom. It was true that he hadn’t gotten the girl. But he knew he had found something, his father’s way, his brother’s way were not for him, there were other avenues and he thought perhaps he’d found his.

Community activism didn’t quite have the romance of televised protest but Pat found it more to his liking. He was good at organizing small groups, at listening to individuals, at ladling out hot soup along with sound advice. It was democracy on a small scale but even peaceful revolutions had, he surmised, to begin somewhere. Stuffing envelopes, writing and distributing pamphlets, teaching people that they’d a right to expect better than the miserable conditions imposed upon them by a cold-shouldered government, making thermoses of hot tea and chocolate to survive long days of illegal squatting in untenanted homes formed the backbone he knew of the larger protest. It made him happy, it gave him, if not the blaze that resided in his brother’s belly, then at least a warm glow that was less likely to damage himself and those he cared for.

There was no money for a base camp, not even a hole in the wall but Declan let them use the pub after hours and a small backroom during business hours. The pamphlets Pat composed at home on a typewriter that had mysteriously appeared on his doorstep one day. He’d a fair idea where or rather from whom it had come. His little group had no official name, no anagram for the history books and he’d no idea where they were going or what they might achieve.

For now, it was enough.

A slim crescent of moon lay on its back in a drift of cloud, floating effortlessly across the sky. Its colors—gold, silver, pewter and powdered white were appreciated from the vantage point of a small but snug craft, drifting itself on a rippling plate of silver.

“Pass the milk over, would ye?” Casey said into the warm night air.

“Pass it over yerself,” came the reply, “it’s been up by yer head for the last hour.”

“So it has,” Casey said companionably, after a long and satisfying draught on the thick-lipped bottle. “Where’d ye get it?”

“Nicked it off Old Misery’s doorstep,” Pat replied easily.

“That’s thievery, I tell ye this summer in the wilds has brought out traits in ye that are shockin’.”

“He only leaves it to sour anyway. Eight bottles of milk like clockwork, week in, week out an’ he leaves them to sour on the porch. I’m only puttin’ it to the use it was intended for. Besides he still owes us for the peat, tight old bugger.”

“So we’re takin’ our payment out in milk, are we?”

“It would seem so,” Pat said and shifted slightly in the boat, an action that caused it to rock precipitously for a moment before it settled back to its gentle, meandering drift.

“D’ye think,” Casey paused for a protracted yawn, “the fish are sleepin’?”

“I’m so tired that a sturgeon could bite an’ I’d not take notice.” Pat gave his rod, tied with an elaborate set of knots to the side of the boat, an unenthusiastic wiggle.

“I’ve muscles I wasn’t aware of possessin’ before this summer. Christ even my arse hurts,” Casey complained around a mouthful of brown bread.