The Whore-Mother (26 page)

“You know?”

“I thought so. He missed me. She helped me.” What did it matter? “You'd have to kill somebody, wouldn't you?” he said bitterly. And, “You're that kind of scum.”

It didn't bring retribution. “He killed her fella too. Broke his neck up the Glens.”

McManus said nothing. He was trembling. How did he kill Maureen? His mind was the color of blood.

“He choked your sister to death.”

So they were going to drag out his entrails before they killed him. They were like that. Jesus Christ, they'd killed a Catholic truck driver from Newry. The man wouldn't join them, wouldn't use his job to spy for them, wouldn't use his truck for them, wouldn't pay tribute to be left in peace. So they jumped him one night, took him across the Border, broke all the bones in his face, shot him down both arms, four times in each, shot him in the knees, then in his stomach, and only then in the head. The last sweet ounce of venom was squeezed out of his death. McManus couldn't imagine cruelty like that. That sort of cruelty was beyond imagination. But he could imagine his parents' pain. That was in the mind, in the head. His own death would be his own release. A queer little thought came into his head: If he was a Christian, was he supposed to be aware, after death, of his parents' suffering? It was queer, he thought, that with his Catholic upbringing, in a Christian country, he should think of his death as escape from the knowledge of his parents' agony.

The man behind him knew about the mind.

“She was found in Evish Lake.”

He could hear the man's breathing.

“She was naked.”

McManus was crumbling in the long silence between. He wanted to scream.

“He raped her.”

“Don't, mister, don't.” He was huddling among the ferns, hot needles in his nerves.

The man struck a match. “Look at me, son.”

He was holding the match under the brim of his tweed hat when McManus turned his head. “I'm Val Cleery,” he said. “I need help and I'll get it from you.”

He was Cleery. The shape of his big gun stared into McManus's body. “Powers shot down Danny O'Connell, McManus. I'm here for him,” Cleery said.

McManus turned his head away. Sweet relief ran in him. The lights of the bus came up the road from Schull and stopped at the three houses. She was coming. He got up and walked round Cleery, sat down again on the side of the hill facing the house, and paced her along the lane. She would take less than four minutes, with her stride.

“She's not right in the head,” Cleery said.

“Who?”

“The woman. Thomas Burke's widow.”

“What do you know about her?”

“The man in the shop at the corner told me. You've been in there all the time, haven't you?”

“Yes. I was sick. She looked after me.”

“You were down at the foot of this hill the other night with her.”

“Yes.”

“I was up here, listening. What's she doing? Playing mother to you?”

“Yes.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're not that young, McManus.”

“You're dirty.”

“Oh, it's not me, boyo. It's the man in the shop.”

“He doesn't know I'm here.”

“That's right. But he knows about the last young lad she had.”

“I know nothing about her.” He said it lamely, hating the man.

“They do, over the hill. Two years ago this summer this young lad came wandering this way with a pack. He took a notion to stay around here the rest of the summer till the university started again and nobody along the road wanted him for that long. He came down the road she's walking on this minute and stayed there. The doctor and her sister had the great rows with her about it.”

“People take summer boarders.”

“Not when they've only one bed in the house. The shop says she's not always right in the head. Never speaks to them since that time, he says.”

“Who says . . . ?”

“Oh, they know at the crossroads. Every damn thing about everybody. They know everything she's got in the house. But I know anyway. I've been in when you and her were down on the shore.”

“Well, I sleep in my sleeping bag, if it's any of your business.” It sounded childish, even to him.

“It's none of my business. You're right. Powers is my business. . . .”

He heard the gate squeaking on its hinges. The lights went on in the house. The back light went on in the yard and the back door opened and she was there.

Cleery touched him on the arm with a pair of night glasses. McManus took them. He watched her in the garden, looking about, looking up to the hill. She pushed through the fuchsia hedge into the field, looking about. Then she went back into the garden, into the house. The yard light went off. All the lights went off. She had looked for him and he was not there. Poor woman. He felt a warm tenderness for her, pity maybe; he didn't try to analyze it. He wanted back to the house. Poor lonely soul. He stood up.

“Sit down.” It was harsh.

McManus sat down. “What do you want?” he said.

Cleery took his binoculars and put them in his pack. “Powers is here, son.”

“Where?”

“He was with a wee runt by the name of Kiernan from the Bogside and another man, trying the chemists and doctors in Skibereen and Ballydehob. I didn't know why, but if you were sick, as you say, they know it. They have their Bantry men beating the bushes for you, coming this way.”

“They won't find me.”

“Oh, but they will, boyo, they will.” It was more than expectation. It was conviction. He didn't say he would see to it, and McManus didn't hear that in the man's certainty. Daniel Sorahan would have heard it, Kiernan would have heard it. McManus let it slide over his mind. “When he does, I'll be waiting for him.”

“How did you find me?”

“By accident. You weren't the kind, son. You shouldn't have been with the Provos. You should have been with us. So I went and talked to your mother and told her why, straight out. Son, your mother wants Powers dead.”

He could believe it. In his months in the Belfast ghettos he had come to believe that the killing would stop when the terrible warlike women of Ulster decided it must; not before. They conceived hatred and vengefulness as they conceived children, and passed the venom in their blood. He could believe that his mother wanted Powers dead.

“She told us your family used to spend the summers at Goleen, up the road from here. She said we wouldn't find you on any dung heap.”

That was his mother all right. He was running for his life, but she knew he wouldn't do anything low-class. Like any middle-class Ulster Protestant, she was implacably better-class.

“We tried the cottages for rent, the let ones and the empty ones, from Goleen to Mizen Head, and watched all the good houses. I was watching this one with the glasses a couple of days ago and you came out the back door.”

“We?”

“There's three of us. Danny O'Connell's brother and Danny's eldest son. Danny's widow said the boy had to come. They're away keeping track of Powers and his dogs.”

Forty years from now somebody would still be taking vengeance for these days, and Irish Christians disdained the Moslem Arabs and their blood feuds. I have to go from here, McManus thought. “I can't help you,” he said.

“You'll help. You'll remember your sister. We promised your mother we'd get you out. The price we didn't tell her because we didn't know. We know now. He'll come here for you and I want to be in the top floor of the wee stone barn at the back. The one with the hens on the ground floor.”

“It's her home. I can't promise you anything.”

“Then we'll just have to go down and talk to her.”

“She's not in this.”

“She was in it from the minute she took you in. She'll stay in it till I kill Pat Powers. Go on away down now.”

They went carefully down the rocky hill, across the little field and through the fuchsia bushes into the garden.

Cleery stopped him. “You're going to help, McManus. Go in and tell her what we want. And you remember this, you'll get nothing for nothing. Your mother wants Powers dead. Danny's widow wants him dead, and I want him dead. And I'm not codding you, you get that woman to agree or I'll come in and do more than talk. I want the top part of the barn, and I want food and water up there and I want her to bring it. You'll stay in the house. If you want help to leave here alive, you'll get me all I want from her. Go on in and don't take long. If she's not out to talk, and right quick, by God, I'll come in.”

McManus went into the house.

He switched on the kitchen light. She was not there. There was no sound in the house. “Mrs. Burke?” She did not answer. He looked into the bedroom and didn't see her at first. She was sitting in the dark room in an armchair pushed back against the wall.

“Mrs. Burke.”

“You only went out.”

“You were long.”

“I had reason.”

“What's wrong?”

“I thought you were away.” She got up and came to him, standing in the doorway. Her rough fingers touched his face. “We'll have to be careful, child.” She squeezed past him sideways into the kitchen, her fingers lingering on him. “It was dangerous to go out by yourself. We'll have to keep the windows shut and snibbed. When I go to the hen house or the garbage you'll have to lock the door behind me and I'll knock to get in. You're not to look out the windows. We have tons of food and we can do without milk and I got Springtime evaporated milk for our tea. . . .”

He watched her pace the kitchen as she talked and for the first time noticed the crammed rucksack on the floor by the table. He hefted it. It must have weighed forty pounds. He cut in on her chattering. “‘You could have hurt yourself carrying that. . . .” He had never seen her like this before, without cold composure. He had never seen her smile as she did now, her face paler, her eyes excited. Or nervous? He didn't know enough about eyes or states of mind in middle-aged women to know. He saw only the brightness, and the smile, and they made the narrow face almost handsome.

“Och, no! I'm strong,” she said and lifted the rucksack from the floor. “I'll lock up,” she said.

“No.”

The smile went. Her cheeks seemed to sink. Standing under the light, the bone structure of her face shone. “What's wrong, child?” It was her kindergarten voice.

“There's a man outside. . . .”

“They're here?” It was a little cry.

“Who?”

“Them that's after you.” It was the most Irish she'd sounded since he first heard her voice. This time he understood: her schoolteacher's control was slipping.

“What happened in Schull, Mrs. Burke?” he said. He wondered how much longer Cleery would wait outside before he smashed in waving his big gun.

“Kate,” she said. He couldn't tell what was important to her. She was flitting now; thing to thing in her head.

“Kate.”

“Them that's after you. They were asking Seamus. A big fellow, rough, red. . . .”

“Powers.”

“. . . and a little man. His trousers were too big for him. And another one I knew, Dan Sorahan of Bantry. . . . Seamus said they described you . . . this big man did, down to your eyebrows, your tweed suit, your pack, your stick, and your sickness. . . .” She locked her hands. “. . . and a girl that was with you. American, they told him.” She sounded huffy. “Where's she now?”

“I don't know. I only saw her on the coach. I can't even remember her name.”

“Brendine Healy, they said.”

“That's it. Mrs. Burke. . . .”

“Kate.”

“Kate, please. There's a man. . . .”

“Sorahan said she left the bus with you. . . .”

“She didn't. There's a man. . . .”

The man opened the back door, waving his big gun. “What the hell's taking you, McManus?” he said.

“This is the man,” McManus said to her. She stood very still, looking. She didn't appear to be thinking, merely staring, as if something bad had happened to stun and empty her mind.

“What does she say?”

“We hadn't got to it yet.”

“Jesus Christ! You've a lot to talk about. Tell her now.”

McManus told her. Nothing about her changed. Her face was empty, her stare not steady but fixed.

“And then you'll get him away?” she said to Cleery, when it was all told, and her voice was empty.

“If we can.”

“All right,” she said. It was spiritless, as if it had no meaning, as if she had not understood what was said to her or what she said to them. “All right.”

Cleery was crisp, commanding. Sandwiches, he said. A flask of coffee. Two if she had them. He turned out her groceries on the table. Sandwich spread, that'll do fine; Brand's beef spread, that'll do; cooked ham, that'll do and hurry it up. Butter some soda bread too, and a cup of tea now. He sat at the kitchen table and drank his tea and ate soda bread as she buttered it.

She buttered more as he ate, wrapped what he did not eat, put his coffee in a flask, and his bread and sandwiches in a paper bag, and walked into the bedroom. The door closed behind her.

“I'll take your sleeping bag,” Cleery said, and tucked it under his arm.

“You're going to wait for all these men with an old .45?” McManus asked him.

“Jesus, no. We've had the new ironware stowed up in her barn loft for two nights, son.” Cleery was amused. “We'll be in for our breakfast in the morning—early,” he said.

“We?”

“Aye. They'll be here as soon as Powers and his tame tigers start beating the bushes on this side of Schull.” He went out, leaving McManus to close the door.

She was lying on the bed in her gray flour-sack dress, her broad shoes on the floor, her glasses on the dressing table. It was the first time he had noticed that her eyes were deep brown. Whether she saw more than the ceiling she stared at, he couldn't know. “Coming to bed, child?” she said at the ceiling.