Field of Blood (42 page)

Out in the corridor, Sunray's door closed on them, the Chaplain said, `First‐class

idea of his. Your presence will be of great comfort to Mrs Tunney ... I like that, a caring battalion ... You'll be in good voice tomorrow night, Christmas Eve carols

in the vehicle park, another of the old man's good ideas.'

`He's not about to join the human race, is he?' Ferris smiled.

216

217

**Under the cover of darkness, Frankie Conroy entered the house on the

junction of the Drive and the Crescent. By torchlight he climbed the damaged staircase, testing his weight on each step. He had prised away the chip boarding

on the window.

He preferred to come at night, and he had prepared himself for a bivouac. He carried an Armalite rifle, a sleeping bag and a rucksack in which were two cartons

of milk, a dozen slices of ham, a loaf, and a supermarket fruit cake. At the bottom

of the rucksack was a can of Harp, for Christmas Day.

The bastard officer better come on Christmas Eve. A fucking good Christmas it would be, stuck in the house, if the officer didn't patrol on Christmas Eve.

On the landing he switched off the torch and groped his way into what had been

the front small bedroom.

230

He laid out his sleeping bag, and made the rucksack for a pillow, and propped the

Armalite against the dark, charred, stinking wall, and settled himself to wait. His

hands were damp wet under the rubber kitchen gloves that he wore.

17

The patrol moved out.

For a few seconds the gates of the Springfield barracks were opened sufficiently

to permit the soldiers to squeeze through. As the gates swung shut on them they

sprinted away up the Springfield Road. Ferris had taught his platoon always to run for the first fifty yards from the barracks' gates. He had learned that at Crossmaglen on the South Armagh border. At XMG the squaddies came out of the barracks like it was the Greyhound Derby, like they thought there was a chance of catching the hare. The departure from the barracks, and the return, were the two most vulnerable moments for the patrol, and Ferris had drilled the

message into the heads of his platoon.

They dashed for their first cover, for a lamp post, for a doorway, for a parked car.

They seemed to scatter without cohesion, but when those first crouched hiding

places were found the patrol had established its pattern. Eight men, four on each

side of the road, and the officer on the righthand side and third in thèbrick', and

Fusilier Jones behind him and walking backwards because the protection of the

officer's back was his first priority.

It was a few minutes after three o'clock in the afternoon. There were

no clear‐cut shadows for them because the sun hadn't been seen that day, and there was a light mist rain. The cars and vans had their sidelights switched on already.

Sometimes trotting, sometimes walking, sometimes stationary and watching,

the patrol covered the Springfield Road. They passed the Kashmir Road and Cupar Street entrances to the Nationalist enclave of Clonard; a bad place, a place

to be wary of if you hadn't celebrated your nineteenth birthday and you were wearing the beret and the red and white Fusilier hackle of 2 R.R.F. Past the Mackie's factory gate, the pride of the Protestant engineering industry, where the squaddies relaxed. On towards Nationalist Ballymurphy, and past the

barricades across the Springmartin Road that were in place to frustrate the attack routes and the escape routes of random sectarian assassins, whether they

were coming from Protestant Springmartin to prey on Catholic Ballymurphy, or

vice versa.

On and into Ballymurphy. Off the wide Springfield Road, and into the estate, into

Divismore Way and Glenalina Road, and heading for the Ballymurphy Bullring.

231

They'd have liked to have had a bloody British squaddy alone in their bullring, liked to have tossed knives and swords in his guts, and stoned him till he was bleeding ... Christ, and it was Christmas Eve, and he didn't usually think like that, didn't usually loathe the natives, one and all, and lump them together as if each

and every bloody one was a Provo‐lover.

`Been a sight better off in the rovers, sir.' Behind Ferris came the bleat from Fusilier Jones.

`You'll be back in time for the carols, Jones.'

`That wasn't what's bothering me, sir.'

`Chilblains playing up?

'Bloody footrot's playing up.'

'Footrot won't be your problem if you don't open your eyes and shut your mouth,

a bloody bullet up the arse'll be your problem.'

`Just so, sir.'

Hard enough to drill into the soldiers the need for patrolling, and harder still to persuade them that foot patrolling was more effective than riding in the

landrovers. Ferris reckoned that he and his squaddies could see and note twice as

much when they were on foot as they could from a vehicle. The bloody police were never out of their landrovers. The squaddies each had a sheet page of photographs for the week, to memorize. Mug shots of the top men on the

wanted list who might frequent these West Belfast estates. The photographs were pretty awful, and they'd all have grown beards or cut them off, but at least it was bloody trying ... Men wanted for the Maze escape, and for the kidnapping across the border, and for all the little jollies that kept them busy.

They were in the Bullring. They were surrounded by the grey walls of the estate's

houses, and the grey roofs, and the aerosol graffiti of

218

219

**Provo power ... The thought was a recurring tick in Ferris's mind. If he had lived in Ballymurphy, or Whiterock, or Turf Lodge, and the British army had come through twice a day with their cocked rifles and their swagger, then would David

Ferris have been a Provo ...?

There was a pretty girl coming past the patrol on the far pavement. She'd be fifteen, she still had her looks, she'd have faded in a few short years, she'd be bloody ancient at twenty if she stayed in the Bullring, Ballymurphy. He heard the

banter of the squaddies as the girl came past them. Crude little sods, David Ferris's squaddies.

232

`Will you bloody shut up,' Ferris shouted. He saw the faces of the soldiers spin to

him in surprise that gave way to resentment. `Just bloody concentrate on what

you're doing.'

Because he had shouted at them in the hearing of the girl and the woman who

was banging her front mat on the garden gate post and of the women who were

talking beside the leaning lamp post, they were coldly angry. But their eyes were

back on the rooftops and the upper windows, back on the street corners, and on

the car reversing on the far side of the Bullring.

`Do as your teacher tells you,' the girl cackled. `Do as he tells you, or the Provies'll get you.'

It had started to rain more heavily. The girl had gone her way, but her shrill laugh hung around the patrol. It would be the talk of the Bullring, that an officer had shouted at his men.

The patrol came out of Ballymurphy and into the Whiterock Road. Two police landrovers passed them, the rifles jutting uneasily from between the rear doors.

The squaddies ignored the landrovers, but each man was pleased to see them after the loneliness of the estate. The landrovers seemed to say to them that they were part of a larger brotherhood.

The rain ran from Ferris's beret down onto his nose, down across his mouth. It would rain, but it wouldn't snow. Not cold enough for snow.

He wondered where Gingy was and why Rennie hadn't telephoned him or called

by for him. Bloody silly, to feel as if he had been stood up by a girl, because Rennie hadn't called by, and he didn't know where Gingy was ... he reckoned that

Gingy McAnally's would be a black bloody Christmas, snow or no snow.

At the top of the Whiterock, the patrol P.‐checked a group of youths. They gave

their names. The names were radioed back to Springfield Road Ops Room, and

fed to the computer. Every name was clean.

The pace of the patrol quickened as they came to the northern end of Turf Lodge.

Downhill, half way through the bloody patrol.

He was almost certain of it. If he had been brought up in Ballymurphy or Whiterock or Turf Lodge, he would have been a Volunteer.

220

They hurried past the big Christian Brothers Primary School before swinging back

into the narrow streets of the Turf Lodge estate.

233

He had been in the house for twenty hours.

In the night a tramp had come and rattled at the back door to see whether it was

fastened, and not found the place where Frankie Conroy had made his entry and

replaced the chip‐board window cover. Other tramps had been in the house, the

smell told him, and the slime he had slid on at the top of the stairs. In the morning he had eaten a little of his food. He had been hungry and cold in his sleeping bag, but only a little of the food because he had determined to wait for

the officer, for as long as it took. Difficult to eat in the gloves that hid the points of his fingertips from anything he touched. At lunch time he had heard two young voices outside the kitchen door, and giggling, and after a few minutes he

had seen a girl slip away into the Crescent tucking her blouse into the waist of her skirt, and a boy followed her a minute later.

When he crossed between the small front bedroom and the bathroom he walked

on his toes, and with whatever care he took the boards creaked, and the sounds

seemed to him to scream in the empty house. From daybreak he had been

continuously on the move, between the two rooms, searching down the Drive and then down the Crescent, hunting for the patrol.

It was the half light now, the light that he wanted, the grey light. It would be right for him if they came at this time. He checked his watch. If they came within ten

minutes, fifteen minutes, it would be good for him. Not after fifteen minutes. He

wouldn't have the half light after fifteen minutes.

Backwards and forwards, between the two rooms, Frankie Conroy watched and

waited for his target. He could come close to the broken glass of the windows, where the chip‐board had rotted in the weather, because he had smeared his face with blackening from the damp charred beams at the top of the stairs. His

features merged with the darkness of the interior of the derelict house.

Each day since she had been back, her Ma had told Roisin that she should get herself down to Gingy's people. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve she had exhausted her excuses, which had nothing to do with her dislike of them at any

time and her unwillingness to speak to them at this time.

Mrs Chrissie O'Rourke had persisted. The McAnallys had the right to see their daughter‐in‐law, wasn't their fault that Gingy had done what he had.

221

234

**Her kids didn't need her for an hour, her Ma didn't need her in the kitchen, she

had no reason not to go.

The tree stood well in the living room, the lights twinkling into the gloom behind

the drawn curtains, and the tinsel was bright and glittering, and the fire was lit and the kids had the telly and were watching B.B.C. with the bloody Brit accents

and were sticking the links of a paper chain, and weren't arguing. Her kids didn't

need her. Her Ma was baking, and the kitchen wasn't big enough for two to be working there.

Her Da was coughing upstairs. Her Ma said that her Da might get up for Christmas lunch and try some breast of chicken.

She couldn't take her Ma lecturing. It was easier to go and see the McAnallys than

scratch another excuse together, and fight.

She had to walk the length of the Drive, almost to the junction with the Crescent.

She had to walk past her home. There had been workmen there the previous day,

making a start at sealing the broken windows. They'd come to her Ma's and then

they had gone down the Drive to Number 63. After the holiday she'd have to find

out when they could get her furniture back. She couldn't live with her Ma, not permanent. She'd have to get back to her own home after Christmas. It didn't look like her own home, not with the wood sheets guarding the windows and broken glass up the front path. But if she didn't go back into her own home after

the holiday then the house would be lost to her, would become like the house on

the junction with the Crescent that had been burnt and abandoned.

There were never any bloody men to be seen in the Drive, always only the women. There were two women struggling along the pavement, loaded with

their shopping, dropped by a black taxi on the Glen Road. They neither of them

noticed her, though she had to get off the pavement to let them by. They, neither of them, looked at her, smiled at her. Bitches ...

Frankie Conroy took me out the first night I was back, isn't that fucking good enough for you? Bitches ...

And it would bloody go on. If she had a legal separation from Sean, if she had a

civil divorce, she would still be known in the Drive as the tout's woman, and he'd