The Whore-Mother (3 page)

“Och, no, sur, nothin of the sort, sur,” he said, “we're just gonta tuck them away where there's no harm. Poor oul souls. Och, that poor wee girl. They're a right parcela fuckin cunts, thon boys.” He looked uneasily at the officer. “If you'll excuse that class of talk, sur.”

McManus wrote his letter to his sister on his scraps of soiled newsprint in the dark, under the covers. It said:

1. When 2. you 3. get 4. my 5. next 6. letter 7. please 8. do 9. exactly 10. what 11. it 12. says 13. or I'm 14. dead 15. Johnny.

B
OTCHED
operations have to be explained. Simple operations that are badly botched have to be explained away.

Powers stood stiffly before the kitchen table in the house in Andersonstown and cast a cold eye on the three men who sat stiffly behind it. Their voices lapped about his ears; one part of his mind listened for sudden questions; the rest of it swam in a pool of obscenities that were the only words he could find to fit his judgment of his judges.

McCann glowered up into Powers' muscle-tight face and said, “It was a plain wee job. Four trained men and the Springfield Women's Revenge Committee had to tar and feather one wee hoore five feet to the top of her skull and six-stone weight. Christ, one of youse coulda done it handcuffed. The wee girl's oul man was let get her away and her wee limpin oul mother shot the arses off half the committee and spread Kelly's guts all over the street. There'll be an accountin. . . .”

Powers stared straight back at him and thought, “. . . bigmouthed arse-hole. When was the last time you handled a gun? What are you, anyway, stickin out your poor wee chest. . . .”

There were blocks of silence in the small kitchen. They isolated words and thoughts in sharp metallic channels, enlarging them in the mind, barbing them in the air that was sour with malice and suspicion and jealousy.

McCandless was on the right behind the table. “It's a pity, Powers, a great pity,” he said in his high-toned way. “Whatever we do, however simple, even a small act of social discipline like this, has to be done properly. The Official IRA would like to see us back in their yard. You gave them a chance to laugh at us. An act of discipline botched by you and defeated by an old crippled woman. If the Catholic
community
laughs at us, let alone the Officials . . . where are we, I ask you, where are we? Done!”

Powers settled his stony face in McCandless's direction and thought, “. . . you're past it too, y'girnin oul woman . . .” but all that could be seen in his expression was the disciplined submission of a good soldier.

Clune spoke of propaganda losses, of the wee cripple who defied the power and authority of the Provisional IRA and made it a comic spectacle in the English papers. “They'll read about this in America too. Are you tryin to stop the money comin?”

Powers heard it out. He had no choice. The rules of evidence had no meaning here. There was no right to be heard. “Internment without charge or trial” was a good propaganda line in the
London Times
or the
New York Times
and in the French and West German and Swedish papers when it was made against the British, but it was a public bludgeon for the enemy; it had no relevance to these courts. They were “different.” They had right on their side; they were Irish; they were the courts of the wronged and the blameless; there was neither time, nor inclination, nor reason to apply the rules of evidence here. So Powers waited for the word.

“Well?” Clune gave him the word.

“Fair enough,” Powers said. “There's no word of a lie in what you're sayin.” He remembered the time an innkeeper from the West Country told him the greatest asset Ireland ever had was “the Irish smile that disarmed the world and made enemies think they were safe.” The three of them sittin there like the Holy bloody Trinity were ignorant has-beens but the innkeeper from the West had a word for them too: “Sure, tellin a bloody lie to an eejit is a sort of kindness.” “I'm the one that's to blame,” he said. “That's why I feel bad about makin a third bad report on McManus. I'm not sayin he's to blame about the girl. It's worse than that or I wouldn't be bringin it up again.”

“Well, bring it up.” That was Clune with the wee thin face and the hot eyes. He was born in the Markets and wanted no la-de-da's from universities and places like that in their ranks. Soft bellies and softer heads, he said.

Powers gave Clune his steady look and focused on his social envy. “He gets worse,” he said. “When we blew up the Carleton Restaurant” (seven dead and forty-five mutilated) “he said it was planned by a stupid fool,” (Clune planned it) “and done by a stupid savage” (Clune's brother carried it out).

He gave McCann his steady look. McCann's most recent planning exploit was the Chester Hotel (four dead, six blinded, four without arms, two with legs lost, and twenty more in the hospital). “He was screamin about that. He came here to fight soldiers, not commercial travelers and wee office girls,” he said. “He said it was thought up by a cowardly barbarian.”

“The girl, Powers. Get to the girl,” McCandless said. Let's stick to the point at issue, McCandless always, always said, like some fuckin professor.

“Yes, sir.” Powers got to the girl. “McManus was drivin,” he said. “When we got her to the lamp post I told him to keep his eye on the street in the direction of the girl's house. He didn't. He went and sat in the car.”

“He refused to do his job?” McCandless said.

“No, sir. He was against tarrin the wee hoore. He said he wasn't goin at first. Then he just didn't do his job. I had my hands full at the lamp post. I couldn't see through the crowd. It was his job to watch the rear. He just didn't do it. That's how the wee woman got in behind us with the shotgun.” He wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingertips. “He's not with us, sir,” he said to McCandless, and added his solemn judgment. “He's against us. He's weak. He's a danger. One of these days he's gonta try to run and if he gets away he's gonta run straight to the army.”

“You know that?” Clune said.

“Yes, sir.” He gave his mouth another wipe and said. “It's his talk. When the order was made to shoot Protestants in the street to try to make the Orangemen attack the Catholic districts, he said the men assigned to it and the men that ordered it shouldn't go to Long Kesh—they should go to the gallows, he said. We should turn them in, he said, they're nothin but common murderers.” That was the right fuckin line. Your father could rape half the women on the street and you could live it down, but if your great-grandfather informed, your great-grandchildren would pass the mark of it to theirs. Nothin set the nerves shiverin and the blood boilin like the fuckin thought of an informer. Questions? Proof? No fuckin questions, no fuckin proof—
they
took time and chances. Powers gave them all his steady look. “I'm askin now that you take him from me. I can't trust him. He cost us Kelly. Who'll he cost us next?”

The silence he got was the silence he wanted. He could feel the judgment in their personal spleen. He could see them translating it into justice.

Clune said through the festering air, “Away on out. We'll call you.”

Powers smoked a cigarette in the street and worked out the odds, his back against the wall of the house. McManus had been nine months in this army. Powers had been in from the firing of the first shot. His loyalty was clear, his zeal unquestionable. He had four soldiers and a policeman to his credit. He was born in the Falls and had never lived outside the district.

The children playing ball games and hopscotch on the street called to him. “Hullo, Pat,” they said, or “How're'y, Mr. Powers?” Wasn't he a hero in the Falls? The women on their doorsteps shouted, “Havin a smoke, Pat?” and, “Cuppa tea, Pat?” Didn't they thank God the likes of him were here to keep them safe from the Orange? And didn't the boys scare the shit outa them anyway? Who wanted it in the knees?

Mary Connors the widow paused on her way down the street and tried to look casual.

“The night, Pat?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Trouble?”

“A wee bit—maybe.”

“I'm fizzin—ready to be corked.”

“If I can, Mary.”

She walked on, under the women's attentive eyes. Anybody can give the time of day to one of the boys.

Powers didn't look after her. How the hell can she expect me to come up to her house with a hard cock and do her or me any good when I'm in this sorta trouble, he wondered impatiently, and got his mind back to McManus.

What was McManus with his la-de-da ways and his Antrim Road manners? Sure he was only a student, a middle-class Catholic brought up on the Antrim Road among middle-class Protestants. It had taken him at least three years to decide to offer his services to the IRA. That implied doubt and argued a lack of ardor or conviction. He was argumentative, talked fancy, and questioned the judgment of the leadership. He wasn't ghetto, he wasn't workin class, he wasn't safe. “Them,” said Clune of Ulster's middle-class Catholics, “they're just greedy fuckin Protestants that cross themselves.” Powers could depend on Clune in there. McManus finished his degree before he came to offer his services. That proved somethin. Ireland One Nation didn't matter a damn to him. First, he got himself ready to take a good job when the Border was burned off the Irish map; after that he came to help with the burnin.

When McCandless opened the door and called Powers, his balance sheet was in good order.

But it wasn't Clune who spoke. McCandless did the talking. “The purpose of the present policy of street assassinations,” he said in what to Powers was his pompous way, “is to make the Loyalists attack the Catholic districts so that we can keep the loyalty of the Catholics and tighten our grip on them. I don't need to tell you that, Powers.”

“No.” Then why the fuckin hell tell me, you puffed-up windbag?

“We've got to make them fight. The more chaos—civil war at the least—the more chance we have of getting the British out and the United Nations in, and the Border cleared away.”

“Yes.” Everybody knew that. Why the pompous bloody lecture?

“We've reached a decision. You'll carry it out.”

That was better. “Yes, sir.”

“You'll take Callaghan and McManus and shoot a brace of Shankill Protestants.” Brace, for Jasus sake. Say two, you stupid arse.

“Yes, sir.” That was all right. But what about McManus, you big windbag?

“McManus will be on the gun.” McCandless smiled like a thought reader.

Holy Jasus. You do the bastard up and they give him a gun.

“And if he doesn't obey orders—if he tries to get out of them
at all in any way
—take him up the Black Mountain and don't bring him back.”

Don't be eager. “Yes, sir.”

“And if he does the work—report how he does it.”

“Yes, sir.”

That was fine. They blamed him for the Mavis McGonigal business, but they still trusted him, as far as anybody trusted anybody, and that wasn't too far.

He was to sit in judgment on McManus. What he said about him would have the power of life or death over the la-de-da bastard. He couldn't have explained why he hated McManus. La-de-da. Everythin about him. He had no business in the Falls. The looks he gave them. The way he talked. The questions he asked. (The day after he came, “How do you get a bath around here?” for Christ's sake. In a district that hadn't a bath in it? “Y'go to the public fuckin baths like everybody that wants one.” La-de-da.)

He breathed the power and went back to their house. There was nobody in it. Hadn't he told McManus to stay in the house? He began to compose the report on McManus's performance on an assassination exercise that hadn't taken place.

He found Callaghan and McManus at the postbox not far from the house. They were stuffing the box with pages from old copies of the
Irish News
.

“I thought I told ye not to leave the house? What the hell d'you think you're doin?”

Callaghan looked sheepish. “Ony for fun, Pat.”

“Who thinks that's funny?”

“I do,” McManus said, and felt the blast in his face. His legs were weak. He felt transparent. “We only wanted to make the postman dig through this stuff to get the letters.” The best lie, their propagandists said, was closest to the truth.

“What letters?”

It sounded to McManus's guilty mind like an accusation based on certain knowledge.

“The letters in the box,” he said, and tried not to look back into Powers' accusing glare. He tried harder not to evade his eye and felt evasively cross-eyed. He rolled the rest of the newspaper and slapped his treacherous thighs.

Powers snatched the paper from him and dug demonstratively for matches. He lit the paper and reached for the mouth of the postbox. “Is that all they taught you at the university? Are'y tryin to make policy now, McManus?” It was a right good line. Hadn't he just come from Clune and McCann and McCandless and what did these blirts know about what passed there?

“Och, for Jasus sake, Pat,” Callaghan protested, “my oul woman put a letter in there a wee minute ago.”

Powers dropped the burning paper to the ground and a child darted in to pick it up. “Away on back to the house,” he said, and tried to read McManus's face. He was, he believed, a reliable reader of faces. Leaders need to be.

He believed also that he was a shrewd manipulator of men. They walked to the new car at seven o'clock and only Powers knew where they were going, or why.

Twice, Callaghan asked him what the job was. McManus did not, and Powers turned that over in his mind.

McManus thought about it too, and decided his silence was a mistake. “If the car's loaded with gelignite, I should be thinking about a good route,” he said carefully, “to wherever we're leaving it.” He had never needed to say that before. It was too careful without being casual enough. Powers didn't answer him. He couldn't immediately think of anything to say but he knew that silence is a disturbing weapon.