Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (44 page)

She turned when they reached the hotel, a small but comfortable looking establishment and looked back down the road. The town sloped away from them towards the sea, pretty in the dark, the eggshell pinks, yellows and blues of its blistered and fading paint softened by night’s gentle arm.

She turned then into the arm of her own lover, following him into the lobby, no more than a sitting room really. But it had a fire of glowing embers and a warmth they were grateful for. A woman roused herself sleepily from an armchair in front of the fire, her head a tousled mass of graying curls.

“Will ye be after lodgin’?” she said yawning and crossing a cardigan over her flannel clad bosom.

“Finest room ye’ve got, an’ nothin’ less will do, Mrs. O’Neill.”

She peered at them and then a smile broke her sleepy features. “Casey Riordan ye wee eejit is it

yerself ?”

“ ‘Tis.”

“Have ye not a hug for yer Auntie Siobhan, then?”

“I do.” He engulfed her in a massive hug, swinging her off her feet and setting her down breathless and laughing.

She patted her hair and shook her head at the same time. “An’ who’s the girleen?”

He drew Pamela forward and introduced her. She shook the woman’s hand, just barely suppressing a yawn. “Ye look all done in child. I’ll put a fire in number six an’ it’ll be snug in no time. The sheets are pressed an’ there’s a lovely heavy quilt on the bed. An’ how many rooms will ye be needin’?”

“Just the one,” Casey said firmly.

There was a distinctly uncomfortable silence and Pamela was grateful for the dim light as it hid the scarlet hue of her face.

“Mmphm,” Siobhan made a disapproving sound and then sighed. “Ye’ve seen Dez then?” she asked Casey as she stirred up the fire with a poker and added another turf log to it. “Here ye wee eejit, take some of these,” she stacked his arms with peat logs, “an’ follow me upstairs.”

“I have been to see Dez,” Casey said, “an’ before ye ask, we’ve settled our business.”

“I knew ye must have if ye dared to show yer face here. Well I thank Jaysus above for it, he’ll be more bearable to live with now. He’s been miserable these last six years I tell ye, it right ruined Christmas for him too.” She paused near the top of the staircase to catch her breath.

“Are ye still takin’ the heart medication?” Casey asked, easily transferring the load of towels she’d carried upstairs from her arms on to the top of the peat he was carrying.

“I see yer still as meddlin’ as ye ever were,” she gave him an exasperated look and continued up the stairs.

The room was on the left hand side, its windows looking out over the town and beyond to the sea, a great shushing void in the night. And far, far in the distance was the hulked over form of Ben Bulben, casting its moonlit shadows upon the grave of the poet of the age or perhaps that of a nameless Frenchman.

Casey set a fire in the grate and within minutes, the chill was gone from the room. Siobhan yawning, said she was for bed and would see them in the morning. She kissed Casey on the forehead, the way a mother who’d seen him only yesterday might have done and patted Pamela companionably on the shoulder. “Sleep ye tight, child,” she said and then looking at Casey added, “ We’ve missed ye boy,” and went out the door.

They undressed and clambered under the great quilt that covered the bed, sighing with pleasure at the warmth of the sheets that Siobhan had slid towel-covered bricks in between.

“Ah, now there’s somethin’ more like it,” Casey said with a happy sigh, curling his body to hers in a manner that had become habit for the two of them.

Despite the events of the day and her previous exhaustion she found sleep didn’t come quickly and lay quiet, Casey’s hand warm in the curve of her hip, his breath coming deeper and deeper on her shoulder. They’d left the curtains open and it was one of those winter nights where the sky was clear as water in a bowl and it seemed as if she might stick her hand in it, carefully, each finger in turn and watch the ripples pour out into the universe, to the very edges of time itself.

“Maybe that’s why Harry came out of the water,” she said quietly not wanting to disturb Casey if he was asleep.

“Aye,” he murmured only half conscious, “why’s that?”

“To see the stars more clearly. Maybe he wanted to reach out and touch them and for that he needed a hand.”

A small creature, trundling out of water, feeling for the first time the true weight of his body, the crush of gravity on flesh, great gold eyes rolling back in his head, toward night to the twinkling lights in the heady darkness above and beyond him. Perhaps he’d felt the first longing for that which was unknowable, unreachable, a faint whisper in the night of need for something that could not be defined and even less touched.

“He should have kept his snout in the mud,” Casey said, lips brushing the back of her neck, “created a damn lot of trouble, reachin’ for stars, the rest of us have kept tryin’ but we’re no closer to touchin’ them, are we?”

“I think maybe it’s only the reaching that really matters, what would we do with a handful of stardust anyhow?” She watched blue Rigel blink on the lip of the window ledge and closing her eyes, made a wish in the form of wordless prayer. She was distracted from higher thought though by the feel of a large, callused hand sliding the length of her thigh and dipping round with obvious intent.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said on a sharp intake of breath.

“Not entirely,” came the answer, the owner of the voice sounding much more alert than he had a moment before.

“I’d have thought you were too stiff,” she rolled back as his body tipped over her own, in the beginning language of two bodies well suited to each other.

“I’d say stiffness was a necessary element to the operation at hand,” Casey nudged her knees apart to prove his point.

“You know,” she nipped at his neck, an action that had caused him, in the past, no end of sweet distress, “what I mean.”

“Ahhh,” it was half word, half groan as his body found the sanctuary of her own, “ye’d be referring to the back end as opposed to—sweet Jaysus do ye know what that does to me?”

“As opposed to?” she prodded.

“As opposed to the front—stop that... on second thought don’t stop—end.”

“You could...mm...injure yourself though.”

Casey snorted and threw the quilt back with one arm, “Well Jewel, if I do it’ll be in a good cause. Now if ye can’t think of a better use for yer tongue, can ye at least have the grace to keep it—ahhh that’s nice that is—silent?”

After that, conversation ceased and desisted for quite some time.

When approached with the notion that his brother was about to embark on yet another civil rights march, with the bruises and contusions of the previous one still in recent memory, Casey ventured the thought that Pat might very well have gone stark raving mad.

“If yer completely intent on killin’ yerself in this manner, there isn’t much I can do to stop ye. Ye’ve no need for anyone’s permission but if ye want my approval an’ support I’m not inclined to give it. It’ll be a bloodbath, the police won’t protect ye an’ the Paisleyites are gonna see to it that ye pay for yer cheek. It’s sheer madness.”

Three days into it Pat was inclined to agree with his brother’s less than charitable summation of the event. Things had started out mildly enough, some twenty-five of them gathered at City Hall on New Year’s morning, under the blankly haughty gaze of Queen Victoria, stamping chilled hands and feet, full of youthful fire and an uncompromising zeal to remember their goals and stick to a program of non-violence. To break beyond the boundaries of religious hatreds and show that they marched for the rights of all oppressed be they Catholic or Protestant. Their objectives were clear, simple and to the point—one man—one job, one family—one house, one man—one vote and a repeal of medieval repressive laws. In the three days it had taken to get from Belfast to Claudy, however, it had lost some of its straight edges and clear-eyed values. The lot of them had been kicked, punched, cursed, called a variety of inventive invectives plus all the old standbys: teague, taig, Fenian bastard and so forth. They’d been detoured off the original route three times, ‘for their own safety’ the police had sternly said, only to be led like lambs to the slaughter straight into an ambush. Everyone was exhausted and jittery from the tension. And today was likely to be the worst day of all. Today they were headed for the gates of Derry but first they had to cross Burntollet Bridge, where trouble, on a larger scale than what they’d thus far experienced, was expected. To further complicate matters, Pamela had decided to come with him and he’d felt a compulsion to keep an eye out for her. He’d also, since the Derry march, become, rather unwillingly, a sort of unofficial spokesperson for the civil rights movement.

On this last morning he stood, clutching a mug of lukewarm tea, wishing for something stronger to clear his head and tried to gather his thoughts into a stream of coherency. Pamela, yawning, sat cross-legged on the ground, rolling her own cup of tea between her hands trying to get the last of its warmth. In front of them the morning’s initial speaker was just wrapping up his pep talk for the day and Michael Farrell, generally acknowledged as one of the organizers and leaders, was giving Pat the nod to get on deck. Pat sighed, felt Pamela give his leg a nudge of reassurance and stepped forward.

He surveyed the higgledy-piggledy crowd in front of him, rumpled clothes, sleep-sticky faces, uncombed hair and an overall air of stubborn resilience that he was rather proud to be a part of. Since his one mad moment in Derry, they had come to see him as some sort of fire-eating nationalist, who would do what he had to for the cause and damn the consequences. That image bore no resemblance to the boy in the mirror but this morning these people needed a little inspiration, someone to galvanize them and spur them on for the last fifteen miles. He cleared his throat, took a last swill of tea and began.

“We’ve come sixty miles in these last three days and if ye see it as a journey of the soul as well as the feet, then I’d have to say we’ve come much farther. We cannot turn back now. There are people in this country who may not know us, who may not like us merely because they think they know what we are all about but we are marching for them, we are putting one foot ahead of the next for them, for our neighbors, our friends, and for those who would swear to be our enemies.

‘We don’t ask much, only for basic human rights. The right to have a roof over yer head, food on yer table, and to have yer vote count for something at the ballot box. We ask that laws that go against every aspect of democracy, laws which revile the democratic process be abolished. We ask that men not be imprisoned unjustly, tried unfairly, brought before kangaroo courts that are merely the shadow puppets for a police run state.

‘They tell us this march is irresponsible and misguided, that we should just be grateful for the opportunities we have, the things our generous government provides. Grateful for rundown council housing, grateful to live in an environment that breeds disease and despair, grateful for education that does not meet the poorest standards, grateful for non-existent jobs and homes and dreams that they’ve made us believe we don’t have a right to reach for. Well, I for one don’t intend to say thank you to the man who stands on my hope and grinds my dreams under his heel. They may subjugate our bodies, beat our minds with bloody rhetoric but no man owns my soul and no man in a fifty-guinea suit owns yers either.

“Today we wash our hands with the blood of our ancestors, with the blood of every oppressed man who ever stood and said ‘no.’ We walk in the footsteps of those chained, beaten, flogged and killed for merely uttering the word ‘no.’

“It is said that man is the only beast that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. Here today we know how things ought to be, we can see the future, it may be a distant light but we can see it.”

He paused for breath as the morning air rippled past his face, chill with the season and thought he felt, in passing, the warmth of his father’s hand upon his head.

“We all know what we may face today and that, regardless of provocation, we must hold firm to our policy of non-violence, it must be shown, in all our actions, how committed we are to these beliefs. They may stone us, beat us, rain down verbal fire upon our heads but today,” his gaze swept over the ragged crowd and he felt again the reassuring pressure of his father’s hand, “today we will be like Dr. Martin Luther King and we,” he reached into the air, reaching for the hand of a ghost, though the crowd roaring its approval took it as a thrust of empowerment, “we will fear no man.”

A rousing cheer greeted the end of his speech and smiling he nodded to the crowd, feeling a strange surge of emotion from them, a thing that gave to him and pulled from him at the same time.

The first leg of the morning’s march was relatively quiet. There was the occasional shout of ‘say yer rosaries now while ye’ve still the chance,’ from hostile onlookers, the usual name-calling and kids scampering about wildly waving Union Jacks.

“Fine an’ future upstanding lodge members,” Pat said to Pamela who walked to his right, closer in to the body of the marchers. “I have to say all this police presence makes me nervous,” he continued, only too aware that the police had come today in full battle dress, well-equipped for a riot.

“There’s a bad feel in the air,” Pamela looked crossly at a child who scampered past merrily singing, ‘Up to our knees in Fenian blood.’

“There’s always a bad feel in the air when there’s people like this about, ignore them, we’ll be in Derry for afternoon tea,” Pat said with a reassurance he did not feel.

The River Faughan lay seven miles out of Derry. To its left was a low-lying field, on the right the ground rose sharply and was obscured from sight by a ragged hedge. It was towards this hedge the police motioned the marchers, to protect them from any flying stones.