The Whore-Mother (12 page)

The couple stepped suddenly into sight, hand in hand. The young man was carrying the picnic basket. Powers stepped out from the ledge and pushed off. He landed with both feet on the young man's shoulders, his heels striking on either side of the base of his neck, and rode down, well balanced on the falling body. He shoved Maureen with his left hand as he passed her, sending her sprawling on her face. He took the rail with his right hand as the body hit ground. He did not fall but stepped off the body onto the stairs, like a circus performer. He scarcely heard the girl's screams above the sound of the water and Callaghan was down and had her pinned to the ground. He was sitting astride her with her head pulled back and her mouth covered firmly with both his hands. The picnic basket was intact by her head.

The young man did not move. Powers turned him over. His eyes were wide open. His neck was broken. He was dead. Powers picked him up and heaved his body through the sheet of water across the rail. It disappeared from sight except for its lower right leg and the foot that hit and stayed on a polished brown rock. The rest of the body was under and behind the waterfall. Powers considered going over the rail to lower the foot into the water. He looked at his boots. No: he'd get his feet wet. “Up the bank,” he yelled, and they dragged Maureen McManus to her feet.

She tried to fight and was slapped savagely across the face. Powers rammed the muzzle of his .38 police revolver against her screaming mouth and it froze open, and silent. He pointed up the steep, bushy bank. Callaghan dragged on one of her arms, Powers put away his gun, rammed his open right hand under her hips and shoved, his big blunt fingers probing. He had the picnic basket in his left hand.

The road was empty. Callaghan sat beside her in the back of the car, his gun against her belly. Powers turned the car again and drove up towards the high and desolate land.

“I'm hungry,” he said, “tell the wee girl t'givus a piece.”

Terrified, Maureen gave them sandwiches. “Jasus, they're nice,” Powers said. He looked back at her. “You're nice too.” He was grinning.

“You killed him,” she said.

“Who?”

“Him.” She couldn't say his name. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was a pathetic instinct still to protect him. She knew he was dead and disposed of and she had not yet absorbed his death.

“Aye,” Powers said, and left the unfenced road. He drove across the tufted grass, around the base of Evish Hill and up its west side. They were out of sight of the road here. The tires spun on the polished grass and he gunned the car forward, swinging it about to avoid big stones. They went over the rim of a wide hollow. Evish Lake was below them, a tiny body of water with a bare hut on its shore.

“Away on in w'her,” Powers said, and Callaghan pulled her from the car, waving his gun.

The hut was little more than a shelter. It had a window at each end covered with plastic. There was straw in one corner and a three-legged stool lying on its side in the middle of the dead-grass floor. The door closed when it was pushed hard. It had to be lifted a little. Hill farmers sheltered here when the weather was bad and they came with their dogs to gather their sheep. There were three hill farms. They were far away. So were the sheep.

“Y'can sit on the stool,” Powers said to her, and set the stool on its legs. The ground was uneven and the stool teetered. She steadied it and sat down. The high wind whistled around and through the hut.

“Take off your Burberry,” Powers said.

She clutched her hands together in her lap. “I'm cold,” she said. He was dead. It was beginning to sink in. This man killed him. She was trembling.

“Where's Johnny?”

“I don't know.”

Powers was very quiet. There was a terrible gentleness about him. His big peasant face was soft.

“I'm not gonta sit here all night listenin t'lies,” he said. “Y'gave him your car. Where was it found?”

What was the harm? If Johnny drove the car north it was because he wasn't going to stay in the North. “Ballycastle,” she said.

“Then where did he go?”

“I don't know.”

He could scarcely hear her above the wind. “Where did he go?”

“I don't know. I don't know.” The stool tottered. She had to scramble to stay upright. Her knees opened. Powers eyes opened with them.

“He sent you word he was well away. Where from?”

“There was no word. Honest to God, mister, there was no word. We don't know where he is. He never said. . . .” She was rattling on and he listened.

“I'm ony gonta ask you one other time,” he said softly. “Where'll we find him?”

“Mister, God be my witness, we don't know. He never told us. Please, mister, we never had word from him.”

“Callaghan,” Powers said. His voice was low and gentle. “Away up the hill and see. Walk all round the lip and then walk round it another time. Don't come back till I call you.” He did not look at Callaghan. He was looking straight into the girl's face. “Away on.”

“Right y'are.” Callaghan went out. The wind whipped into the hut. The girl pulled her coat about her. Callaghan closed the door, looking at her till the door shut her from sight. His look was gluttonous.

“I'll give you one more chance, miss,” Powers said. “Where'll we find Johnny?”

“In the name of God, believe me, mister. I don't know.”

“Y'know somethin.”

“I know nothing.”

Powers took off his jacket and threw it on the floor. “Your time's done,” he said. “Take off your Burberry.”

“No.”

He unbuckled his belt. “Take it off.”

“No.” She stood up suddenly, the stool in her hand. She gripped one leg in both hands. “I'll brain you if you try to beat me with that belt.”

“I wouldn't use a belt on you. You're a nice wee thing. Take off the coat.”

She backed to the wall and raised the stool. Powers didn't take off his belt. He opened his fly. “Look, that's what I'm gonta beat you with. Take off the coat.” He dropped his trousers around his ankles and she charged and swung with the stool. It was a vicious swing. All her frantic strength was in it. It was too strong. He bent under it and yanked an ankle from under her. She went forward and her head hit the door. She was stunned but not out. Her struggles were weak and to weaken them more he rapped his knuckles against her jaw and ripped at her clothes. It was difficult, for she fought as she could, half conscious; and his anger rose with every difficulty. Clothes wouldn't tear. He thought of a knife and couldn't reach his pocket, in case she reached the door. He dragged and tore and threw her about. Her cries were met by the wind and thrown back at her. She had to be naked. It roared in his head. The whiteness of her maddened him. When everything she had on was shredded and scattered about the hut, he threw her on the straw.

By the time he got his boots off because his trousers prevented him in his frenzy from getting at the laces, she had staggered to the door and had it half open. He brought her down with a rugby tackle and rolled her back on the straw, driving his knee at her clamped thighs. She was still stronger than he had imagined, and his nails drew blood from her thighs as he tore them open and pinned her down.

“Fight, you wee white bitch. Go'n—fight me. Gimme a fightin fuck. . . .” He closed his hands around her throat. Her body was stiff and hard. All she could do was spit and he slammed his mouth onto hers. She tried to bite and he tightened his grip on her throat. He took his time and told the hut and the hills and the girl of his pleasure.

Then he rose off her and put on his trousers. He sat on the stool to tie his laces. She lay curled in a ball on the ground, moaning and wailing. He put on his jacket.

“Thank you very much, miss,” he said gratefully. “That was good.” He gathered up the shreds of her clothes and wrapped her shoes in them. Then he opened the door of the hut and waved Callaghan back from the rim of the hollow.

“Away on in,” he said. “I'll get rid of these.”

He spent an hour on the hill, gathering stones and building a cairn on the heap of tom clothes and the shoes. Somewhere up here, he didn't know quite where Ossian was supposed to be buried. Ossian, Cuchullain, Diarmud, Goll McMorna, Finn—Jasus, if there was any truth in the oul stories, they were the boys that could put a woman down. And
what
women! Big, strong, the stories said. The Champions of the old time musta had many's a fightin fuck they remembered all their lives. The storytellers remembered some of them. The old Gaelic days must've been bloody great. He was sorry he knew no Gaelic—Irish they called it now, because it was a sort of invented language. But he'd built a cairn to a good fightin fuck like the oul ones got. When he went back to the hut, Callaghan was tying his shoes outside the closed door.

“She gave me a wee bit of a wrasel the first time,” he said, and tried to light a cigarette in the wind. “The second time she never bothered.” He asked Powers curiously, “D'you think they get t'like it that way?”

“I never gave it a second thought.”

“How're we gonta do it?”

Powers didn't tell him. He went into the hut and closed the door. “Where's your brother, miss? It's your last chance.”

She was curled in a corner, silent, half conscious. Her white body was covered with bleeding scratches and discoloring bruises. She didn't take her last chance. He knelt over her and took her by the throat. There was no struggle.

They threw her into Evish Lake.

“There'll be roadblocks,” Callaghan said when they were close to Ballymoney.

“We'll dump this car and take a bus.”

They rode the bus to the Belfast depot and walked to the Falls. The streets were empty. The streets were never empty on a summer evening, unless there was an ambush. The stillness was not the stillness of an early Sunday morning before first Mass. It was a deserted stillness. There were no soldiers.

It had been raining in Belfast. The street surface was dark and wet. The air was heavy. From somewhere, but from what direction it was hard to say, the sound of a voice brushed against the stillness. Shouting? Not shouting, but loud and far away; or muffled by the little houses, half drowned by the heavy air. A man's voice. And not shouting. But persistent. Making a speech? That was it; making a speech. They stood in the street, listening.

Then a massive sound rolled over the stillness, a familiar sound but different; a higher pitch than the familiar sound, a collective roar, like a football crowd, but filtered by women's voices, a roar that whirred and shrilled.

“Celtic Park,” Callaghan said. “What's on there?”

“A meetin?”

“What meetin?”

Powers walked to the end of the street and looked down the intersection. The same deserted stillness. Con Casey's was on the corner. He walked into the pub. Casey picked up a handful of clean glasses and put them in his sink. Head down, he washed them. “Pat,” he said.

“What's up, Con?”

“Nothin up w'me, Pat.”

“The Park, Con. What's on at the football field?”

“A meetin.”

“What meetin? Just get it out, Con, from start to finish. What's up?”

“All right.” Casey looked at him as if he had reserves of courage and was ready to draw on them. “The night, on the telly. The Protestants put up barricades for a no-go area. . . .”

“Och! And the army tore them down?”

“Aye. But you shoulda seen it, Pat. Christ, them men. They were a fuckin army, Pat. An army. You shoulda seem them march. They're trained, Pat—they're a fuckin army. . . .”

“Maybe we're not?”

“There's thirty thousand a them. Holy God, y'shoulda seen them, Pat.”

“D'you think we're gonta run from them?”

“No.” Casey seemed about to say more, and decided not to.

“What's this meetin, Con?”

“The women saw the Protestant army on the telly. The priests saw it too. The word went round like forked lightnin, then people were headin for the Park when your boys opened up on an army patrol Two wee girls an their mother was killed . . . twins, five years old. The father's dead. The whola the Falls is at Celtic Park, Pat.”

“The army killed the wee girls?”

“No.” Casey had said enough. Then he said too much. He said again, “No.”

“Who?”

“Your boys.” He almost raised his head.

“The army killed them, Con. Did ya hear that?”

“The army killed them, Pat.”

“Y'heard that?”

“I heard it, Pat.” He looked into his sink. “But nobody believes it. They're goin outa their minds.”

“Up you.” Powers stormed out, trailing Callaghan like a small shadow. They trotted all the way to Celtic Park.

The Falls was in Celtic Park, men, women, and children. The great host filled the playing field. The priests were in Celtic Park. They were there from the Falls, Ardoyne, Andersonstown, and Springfield districts. They packed the stands. The telephone monitors must have had a busy time. They must have heard and reported a lot of what the phoning priests said to one another. Whatever it was, it justified the army being pulled back to let them at it.

They were at it. They had gathered together loudspeakers and a microphone. Father Murphy had its stem by the throat and was speaking quietly. “Two babies,” he said. “Two babies and their widow mother, shot down in their own street by their own people. Shot dead in their own street. Shot to bits and not a soldier anywhere near them.

“What were they shot for? To protect you. To protect us. To protect us from the British army. To protect us from our Protestant neighbors.” His preacher's voice teased their ears. “The people that protect us all shoot us dead in our own defense . . . I saw this one happen,” he said, “and there wasn't a soldier within a hundred feet of that wee widow and her babies. Are they goin t'tell us our protectors can't shoot better than that? Are they goin t'tell us the British army did it? The soldiers hadn't fired a shot. What
are
they goin t'tell us?” He paused and his voice growled harshly. “That while Catholics are dyin we need them to protect us, even if they have to kill Catholic widow-women and their babies to convince us? An end of it! That's what I say to you. In the name of Almighty God, an end of it. There are better ways. In all the centuries these men never won any thin for us. They always lost for us when there were other ways to win. They are in our hands. We're not in their hands. Who covered and protected them? We did. Whose children kept the soldiers from takin them? Yours did. They're in our hands. Without us they can't go on—so in the name of the Son of God and his Blessed Mother, make an end of it.