Inch Levels (11 page)

The outside world, and the domestic world too – the world as a whole, which one day placed its boot, its heel against the windows of the house and kicked, and sent shards of glass flying through the air. And in the process sealed a relationship – in blood, in dreadful gravity; and with manifold consequences.

*

It had rained the previous evening, and after the rain frost – and now, on the following afternoon, the pools of water by the side of the road were still iced over. Patrick set his heel on one of these pools; the disc of ice moved slightly. He brought his heel down on the ice: though it did not shatter, fine, white cracks radiated out from the point of impact.

‘You could go skating on that,’ he told Margaret, ‘if it was big enough.’

She nodded. She was distracted – and with good reason: there were crowds clustered all around them, they were being jostled a little as they walked – and they were walking slowly, with thousands of people behind them and thousands in front. The march was bigger, apparently, than anyone had anticipated.

Which was good.

And something else. It was good craic too. ‘This is good craic,’ Patrick murmured and again Margaret smiled, nodded. People were having a laugh as they walked: the air filled with buzz, with chatter. This wasn’t what he’d expected.

His first march.

Not Margaret’s first march, of course. She’d been to some, up in Belfast. Not good craic at all, those ones, she said – and Patrick could well believe it, Belfast being Belfast. They walked slowly downhill, in the midst of the crowd. They passed the cathedral, they passed the swimming pool, they passed terraced houses burned out now, they passed the snapped trunks of saplings, planted in a fit of unrealistic optimism, they passed the derelict bakery. And now the atmosphere began to alter: he could feel the change sweep rapidly through the crowd. The clatter of the helicopter – invasive, unpleasant, but of course expected, anticipated. It wasn’t the sound of the helicopter that caused electricity suddenly to charge the air, the chatter of voices to die to a murmur. He sees faces glancing up and over: a sea of heads snapping up to the left and staring and then snapping back again, snapping straight ahead. He looked to the left himself, and saw snipers, armed, lying rigid on the roof of the Sorting Office building. He looked away, he saw Margaret look away – in disdain, and in fear.

Amazing, how rapidly loud chat could fall away, how rapidly tension and fear could sweep through a crowd. He could feel it. He didn’t say much and neither did Margaret: instead, they continued to walk slowly. The sun had long since reached its zenith and was now, on this late January day, beginning to sink in the sky: already, long, thin shadows were stretching from the edges of the crowd. They walked slowly and he took in this new electric charge.

‘Don’t go,’ their mother had said. Especially to Margaret: let Patrick go if he must, but Margaret should stay at home. But no: the days when Margaret would stay at home were long past. She was a university student, she was old enough to make her own decisions. She was nineteen years old.

‘I’m going,’ was all she said. Their mother pursed her lips at that, but said nothing more. Cassie watched silently from the kitchen door as they donned scarves and hats and winter coats; low winter sunlight glinted red on the copper bowl on the shelf in the hall. They walked slowly into town – a long walk from their suburban home, though not unpleasant on this fine day – in time to blend with the middle of the crowd as it snaked down Creggan Street. The place was packed.

Speeches were to come a little later. They arrived at the corner of William Street and Patrick looked south and saw the road blocked, the usual makeshift arrangements in place: a stage set up on the back of a parked lorry, festooned with placards and banners; and more crowds on the far side, a sea of dark clothing and white faces. He looked east and saw the narrow mouth of William Street blocked by a barrier where it met the city centre, sealed by more soldiers with helmets, more guns. He looked north and saw Little James Street blocked by another barrier, by more men, helmets, guns, by the high wall of the Sorting Office. He looked away and then behind, to the mass of dark clothing and white faces that filled the street behind.

Not trapped, no question of a trap. Yet his instincts began to tighten, to whine, a shrill noise on the edge of his hearing; and he took Margaret’s hand. Just in front, the flats rose on one side of the road: three high-rise buildings, incongruous in this flat landscape of small houses and small terraces. The flats were sheer, jerry-built, grouped around a dismal car park. Beyond them, in the distance, the hill crowned by grey buildings jumbled in behind the line of the city walls. There were figures moving on the walls itself: soldiers, of course, with binoculars and cameras and more guns, manning their observation post up there, taking in the scene. He glanced up, and then away. Let them look, he thought brazenly: much good may it do them.

The multitude was still moving behind them, packing the streets still more tightly. Patrick felt crowded, suddenly: his shoulders jostled, Margaret jostled. He loosened his grip on her hand, and took her elbow instead, and they shoved their way out a little from the crowd, stepped towards the nearest entrance to the flats complex: a narrow, shadowed slot between two of the buildings. For a breather. There was another barricade set here – in fact a mass of rubble, three or four feet high, set up this time by the people themselves – and here they stopped, lodged in shadow between the rubble and the sheer wall and a phone box. For their breather.

Patrick turned to his sister.

‘Maybe we should go home.’ His instincts were singing still higher now: a thin, shrilling whine filling the inside of his skull.

Margaret paused.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s just wait, why don’t we, and listen to the speeches from here.’ She gestured to the coal lorry in the distance. There would be loudspeakers: they’d hear every word from here. And they had the wall as a sort of shelter. Not too many people would congregate here, not many would want to, most of the marchers would want to be in the thick of it, wouldn’t they? ‘This is grand,’ she said. They agreed to wait here, in this narrow slot. ‘Happy birthday to me,’ she said.

*

They were huddled, twelve or fourteen or sixteen of them now, behind the phone box, beside the wall: neither phone box nor wall nor rubble barricade nor the great frowning side of the block of flats could provide anything like adequate shelter, of course – but nor could anywhere else. There was steep Chamberlain Street, just ahead, a route up and away to safety – but no, because an immensity of ground lay between it and them. Not that there was shelter anywhere from the snipers, not from the bullets slicing through the air, coming from this direction or that direction, nobody could tell from where. From every direction, maybe: for the air was crackling with rifle shots, crackling with tension, crackling with a dreadful, infectious fear. No: no shelter anywhere, but they must stay here, beside this phone box, beside the wall. They dared not make a run for it.

This is all my fault, Margaret thought as she cowered there, on her knees behind the phone box. If Patrick is killed today, it will be my fault.

The air was poisoned too. She could smell the gas – they could all smell it, for there was coughing all around, retching combined with screaming, and gunshots and the deafening clatter of a helicopter overhead. From time to time, people ran past, making a bolt for it – but where? She stayed there, then, on her knees on the stone-strewn footpath, with Patrick on his knees in front of her, and an inferno of smoke and poison and the reports of gunshots filling the air.

The destined bullet found its target in front of her. A man, a man she did not recognise, had straightened up beside her: he had been sheltering there with her, part of this terrified group in the lee of the phone box – but now he straightened up beside her and took a step, two steps away from what seemed to be safety. She saw why: there was another man lying there, perhaps ten feet away – no more – on open, rubble-strewn ground. He’d been shot, but was clearly still alive, for he had moved a little now and again in these last few frightful minutes. And now: ‘I can’t stand it anymore,’ her companion said: and he straightened up and took a step, two steps, and died, the bullet entering through one side of his head and exiting at the other, just at his right eye. The eye exploded outwards – Margaret saw this happening only a few feet from where she crouched by the phone box – and blood and matter flew in the air and struck the wall; and the man fell to the ground. Now there were two bodies on the ground in her direct line of vision; and the sound of human screaming was louder than ever; this and the sound of the helicopter overhead filled her brain. And she reached out and grasped Patrick’s shoulder and pulled him back, hard, as he in turn made as if to lunge forward to help the dead man. ‘He’s dead, he’s dead,’ she hissed. ‘He’s already dead.’ She pulled Patrick back, hard – and now he was flat on his back, and the women in the crowd gathered around his prone body as though to shield him, or to sit on him, to stop him making a second attempt. They formed a phalanx, though there was no need: Patrick stayed on the ground and made no further attempt to move. The whole world was constricted now into these few feet of grey pavement, strewn with rubble and marked with blood and shadowed by the bleak wall of the nearest block of flats. It was only a temporary respite: they were coming for her and for Patrick; to pump bullets into her head too and into her brother’s head. This grey pavement is where we will die, this afternoon; and it will be my fault.

*

The tea trolley rattled in the corridor. A sister rapped an instruction, a nurse turned with a squeak of a heel and clipped away. The door opened.

‘Tea, love?’

But there was no movement from the blue bed, no acknowledgement.

‘Or is it coffee?’ A pause.

What did their mother imagine, how did she feel, that day in Derry as the news began to spread out across the city, from street to street, from house to house? Easy enough to guess: the point is, though, that they
had
to guess, Margaret and Patrick, because their mother never said. They were obliged to guess. She never described or articulated. Not a word, in all the years that followed.

And Cassie, following her lead, said nothing either: she merely looked and watched and listened.

An aggrieved sigh, and the door closed again. No tea this afternoon.

*

The front door opened, and closed. There was a short silence – and then the rustle of coats and scarves being shed. Cassie moved first, from the kitchen where she was stationed, looking out into the empty back garden, twisting and twisting a tea towel in her hands. The news had spread. A telephone call, and the flurried arrival at the front door of a neighbour, another neighbour. The distant wail of sirens and the clatter of a helicopter: all noises par for the course – but the neighbour had got wind of something more, today, something greater. Sarah looking and looking again at the front door: though what did she think she would see? Nothing to see, Cassie thought. But useless to say anything: better to stay quiet and wait for the news to come in.

And then the front door opened and the children appeared, and took their coats off. Cassie dropped the tea towel, she felt herself move forward, as though on wheels: through the kitchen and into the hall and she herself said nothing, thought nothing, only felt a wash of relief course through her. Her head was light, her heart was beating painfully.

‘We’re alright, Cassie,’ said Margaret and she took Cassie’s hand and tried to lead her back into the kitchen, to sit her down. Everything was alright now, wasn’t it? But Cassie could see the expression in her eyes and the whiteness of her skin, and now she glanced back at Patrick, and his expression and pallor were the same: set, fixed with shock and horror. ‘We’re alright, Cassie,’ said Margaret again. But Cassie felt now a pulse of – something, of terrible recognition. A gust of her own memories: and now she sat, and Patrick, responding, rattled the kettle and familiar sounds took over; and now Sarah bustled down the hall and into the kitchen and asked if everyone is – and you need a cup of tea – and what happened? And the story began to be told, and Cassie closed her eyes. I know what happened, she thought. She thought: it is always the same story.

She kept her gaze on the floor, for fear of what she might see if she looked up, and at Sarah.

And when on the following day, on the Monday morning when the man arrived to deliver and hang the new living-room curtains – yellow-gold, and heavy, handsome curtains – Sarah threw him out of the house. She gave him his marching orders: and only Cassie there as witness.

If the children had only been in the house, if they had only been there to see and hear this for themselves, they might have changed their minds about poor Sarah. A little, anyway: they might have given her more credit.

‘Served them right,’ said the man. ‘What were they doing there, anyway? Looking for trouble, that’s what. They had it coming to them, so they did.’ Brazenly. Cassie’s head swam.

Sarah had ordered the curtains at vast expense. ‘They’ll last us a lifetime, Cassie,’ she’d told her, a little defensively, ‘they’ll have to.’ But she looked now at the man standing on his stepladder – the department store made the curtains to measure, and lined them, and delivered them, and hung them too, bringing their own stepladder, filling the room with a golden glow; it was a full service – and now suddenly she took the man’s metal measuring tape that lay nearby and flung it into his face; and he teetered, there on the ladder.

Well, what did he expect?

The man uttered an oath, but he had no time to say anything more, for Sarah’s tones stopped the words in his mouth. ‘Take your curtains, and get out of my house,’ she said, ‘and don’t come back.’ The man descended the steps, and she took them and pulled them through the hall, and opened the door and flung the ladder out of it; and the folded curtains after them; and the man said not another word and was gone inside two minutes.