by David Hough
I enjoyed a drink or two with the old hacks the Sunday evening I arrived, catching up on the gossip, as journalists are wont to do. As always, I avoided the whiskey, but my old chums were less particular. The bar did well out of them. A young female reporter from the Daily Mail gave me a slobbery kiss and asked me if I was open to offers since my wife died. I was tempted – she was a beautiful twenty something – but common sense prevailed. Besides, I was far too old for her. If Annie had lived, we would now be coming up close to our twentieth anniversary. Twenty years! I had already made a reservation for one person at a quiet restaurant in Wimbledon where I would be able reminisce over the years we were together. Eating alone came a little easier as time passed.
The next morning I hired a car and drove to the prison in Armagh. It was where most women prisoners were held in those days, including Republican criminals. A year ago a prison officer was shot dead and three colleagues were injured during an attack on the prison by the INLA. Foul smells were more prominent on this visit. The Republican women were engaged in yet another dirty protest, smearing their cell walls with menstrual blood.
Sorcha took no part in the protest. She was waiting for me in the interview room and her instant smile told me this was likely to be another productive session. I glanced at the female warder standing behind her: a muscle-bound woman with a piercing gaze and a grim expression. She was the visual epitome of a German death camp guard, and she was probably very good at her job.
“I’ve been thinking about what I want to tell youse,” Sorcha said, getting down to business straight away. “I was remembering what happened that morning after I got home.”
My initial response was disappointment as I was anxious to learn more about the murders. Be patient, I told myself as I set out my notebook on the table and tried to sound enthusiastic.
“Your mother was away, as I recall.”
“Yeah, but me sister was there, so she was. She’d been on a night shift at the hospital, but she’d come home. Arguing with me as usual.”
“Tell me about it, Sorcha.”
***
Friday 21st July 1972
0745 BST
“There’s blood on yer jeans,” Bridie Mulveny said.
Sorcha sniffed. They weren’t her jeans. Last night, Brian Fitzpain had persuaded a prostitute to hand over some clean clothes on a promise of later payment. The dead peeler’s blood had spurted out and stained Sorcha’s own clothes, just as it had stained Brian’s serrated knife. He’d simply wiped the blade on his trousers. Not all the peeler’s blood was removed, but that was him all over. Not an ounce of sense.
It was the young rapist’s blood that later stained the borrowed jeans.
God, what a mess! What a bloody mess.
Sorcha shrugged. “I was changin’ a tampon.” A blatant lie, her period was not due for another week, but no other excuse came immediately to mind. Lies came easily to Sorcha when Bridie was around.
Her sister frowned as if she suspected something sinister was afoot. She seemed to have a knack of suspecting Sorcha of misdeeds, especially in those awkward moments when the younger sister was quietly berating herself for something she’d done wrong.
If it wasn’t telepathy, what the hell was it?
Bridie settled herself in front of her breakfast with a look that could have been acceptance or disbelief. She didn’t give away her deeper private thoughts too easily. She raised her nose and sniffed loudly before she spoke. “One o’ them filthy Prods got cut up and killed last night, so Old Edna told me. Standin’ on her doorstep when I got home, she was. Told me she heard the screams. Did youse not hear the noise of it, Sorcha?” Bridie scooped up a spoonful of porridge and shovelled it into her gaping mouth.
“Should I have?” Sorcha averted her gaze and shivered.
It was summer, on the verge of a warm sunny day, and yet the house felt cold; the sort of unearthly cold that crept up the River Lagan on a morning mist and sank deep inside her bones.
“They found the body in the alley. Our alley, would youse believe? Someone cut his dick off. They’re sayin’ he’s the same Prod what did the rape. Someone paid him back, so they did.” Bridie shovelled more porridge into her mouth, shutting off further comment. She glanced again at her sister’s jeans.
Sorcha shrugged. “Good riddance.”
“Now they’re waitin’ for the Prods to come and fetch the body.” Yet another spoonful of porridge slid into Bridie’s mouth. Her nursing uniform bulged at every seam.
They were they so different, Sorcha reflected. Not like sisters. When she looked in a mirror, she saw her own figure as slim and sensuous as any cat-walk model, but tainted with dull, mousey hair that hung around her shoulders like used dishcloths. Bridie, two years older, was fat and slovenly and gifted with the sort of lovely shiny black hair any model would be proud of.
Did they really have the same daddy? Well, it was an obvious question, wasn’t it? Sorcha was pretty certain she knew the answer.
“The Prods can bury their own dead,” she muttered.
Bridie sniffed dismissively. “Not that we should care. That one’ll be in hell now, just like all them other dirty Prods. Father O’Hanlon says all Protestants go to hell, so they do.”
Her voice had a coarse edge and a thick accent that marked her out as a product of a Belfast ghetto. Sorcha hated it and tried to inject a more mellow tone into her own voice, but she was unable to cast aside the worst of her Belfast idiom. She had tried to avoid saying ‘youse’ when she first knew Martin, but invariably she failed. It proved more difficult than she anticipated. Of late she didn’t bother. If only she wasn’t the product of such a shitty background.
What the hell did Martin see in her?
“Don’t talk such bollocks, Bridie!” Sorcha wiped a hand across her forehead, brushing aside an incipient ache. She had not slept, kept awake by lingering images of the castrated rapist. And the dead peeler. She drained the dregs of her coffee and left the mug on the mantelpiece. Mammy could wash it when she got back from visiting relatives in Ardglass village.
Bridie glanced up. “’Tis true. I heard Father O’Hanlon say so.”
Sorcha sniffed and sat down opposite her sister at the tiny, Formica-top table in the in the tiny, grubby parlour room.
What a ridiculous family they were! There had been no father-figure when they were growing up. They had only their mammy, a hate-filled despot who held the family together with harsh words and even harsher opinions.
And what a shitty pair of sisters they were! Bridie was the well-favoured one who brought in a decent wage, while Sorcha was the unemployed, good-for-nothing runt. She hated the way her mammy looked down upon her as if she despised herself for giving birth to such a pitiable offspring. Or did she despise the way her second daughter was conceived?
She never actually said, “I should have drowned you at birth,” but the inference was there.
It hurt.
And there were times, like this, when Sorcha regretted not taking that last final step into oblivion.
She said, “Don’t talk such bollocks, Bridie! Youse shouldn’t believe things like that. ’Tis just O’Hanlon’s holy crap.” She choked back her next thought. It probably wasn’t wise to point out that the priest was a raving poofter. If the rumours were true, he’d buggered half the altar boys at St Winifred’s Church. There were even rumours he’d been buggering the new curate. If anyone was going to hell it was Father O’Hanlon.
Bridie wasn’t convinced. “Mammy says youse’ll end up like them filthy Prods if youse don’t go to Mass, Sorcha. Youse’ll end up in hell like them.”
Sorcha stared past her sister at a faded print of Jesus with his heart exposed. There was a damp patch behind it and the old flowery wallpaper was beginning to peel. It was the sort of image she saw in most of these parlour houses in Mafeking Street. Sorcha saw it as a tired and depressing fairy tale image: homage paid to a human body pump. But her mammy crossed herself in front of it every morning. Was th
at, she wondered, a sign of a life resigned to simple beliefs that did nothing to answer complex everyday problems? Or was it just habit? She had no firm answer.
Maybe Martin was right in wanting to take her away from this. Wanted her to go to England with him, so he did. She was sorely tempted, so sorely tempted. So why didn’t she jump at the chance? So many sensible people had left already; the well-educated and intelligent ones who found it easy to get a new job across the water. Since the Troubles began England had done well out of Northern Ireland’s exodus. Why shouldn’t she follow the well-worn trail? Fear, that was why. Fear of moving to a land portrayed by Republicans as the closest thing to hell.
She stood up suddenly. She must force herself not to believe the mantra: all Protestants went to hell and so did the English. Why did it bother her that her sister believed such nonsense? She paused. Was it because she had once believed it herself? Not now, of course. She’d long since thrown aside all traces of that stupid brainwashing… or so she told herself. She no longer went anywhere near St Winifred’s on any day, let alone Sundays. But something lingered at the back of her mind, an understanding of how stupid she’d once been to allow such ideas into her head. And… as if to confuse the matter… there was just a lingering doubt about whether the priest might have been right after all. That’s what brainwashing did too you, she decided. It never let you go. Never really allowed you to think for yourself.
“Youse seein’ that secret boyfriend again, are youse?” Bridie’s voice cut into the momentary silence.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What’s he called?”
“Martin.”
“Martin as in McGuinness?”
“No. Martin as in Luther.” It was the first retort that came into Sorcha’s mind, but it was probably stupid.
Bridie put on a sneering tone. “Martin Luther was a Proddy.”
“And he was a priest before that.” Sorcha jutted her chin. How she resented her sister’s sneering. She’d grown up with it and she hated it.
“Don’t tell me ye’re being fucked by a priest.”
“God forbid.”
“He probably would. Mammy was askin’ when youse’re gonna bring yer man home. She wants to see what sort o’ person youse’re goin’ out with.”
“Well, she’ll just have to want, won’t she?”
“Shaggin’ youse on the quiet, is he?”
“None o’ your business.”
“Be more careful this time.”
“I always am these days.”
“Usin’ those filthy rubber things?”
“Why not?”
“It ain’t decent.”
“Does the job though.”
Sorcha looked away. Of course their sex was done on the quiet. It had to be because he was a Protestant. Catholic girls in this part of Belfast, even lapsed Catholics, didn’t drop their knickers for Prods. Not if they valued their lives. But Sorcha had broken that golden rule. There were shadowy hotels and bars in the city where they met for a drink without attracting too much attention, but they were careful not to take a room. A hotel room in Belfast meant checking in, showing some form of identification, and hotel registers could be scrutinised. Both the Provisional IRA and the UVF made such checks, searching for evidence to use against people they suspected of colluding with the other side. For sex, Sorcha and Martin went to a flat, rented by his mate, Ivan, in a street off the Shankill Road. They always went at night, when there was less chance of being recognised. It was a dangerous place for anyone from the Catholic Falls area, but she was getting away with it. And he was damn good in bed, was Martin. Tall, dark and incredibly handsome… as well as giving her damn good sex. He gave her orgasms more powerful than any other man had achieved, and something else… he made her feel like she was someone special. That was a whole new experience. At times, he acted… she found it hard to comprehend, but… he acted as if he was actually in love with her. Genuinely in love. And what were her inner feelings towards him? Dear God, that was a place she didn’t want to go.
If only he wasn’t a Prod.
If only she was as innocent as he seemed to imagine her to be.
And then there was Brian Fitzpain. If ever he found out she had been to bed with a Prod, he would go wild. If she was anyone else, she would be dead meat. No question about it. Other girls had discovered that punishment too late, just before they were tortured and had their throats slit. But she wasn’t anyone else. Brian would be mad at her, for sure, but there was no way he could slit her throat. Not with him being who he was.
Bridie finished her breakfast and heaved herself out of her seat, scraping the chair legs across the well-worn lino. “I’m off to me bed, so I am. Takin’ the train up to Derry this afternoon. Goin’ to see Aunty Aggie. Need some sleep first, though.”
And pop some pills, Sorcha thought. Many a morning after a busy night duty, Bridie resorted to sedative drugs. Did she really think no one noticed the signs? Most times she used Valium lifted from the hospital, more pills than were good for her. Hardly surprising. The things her sister would have seen in A&E, God help her!
Bridie didn’t often talk about the aftereffects of the bombs and the bullets, but when she did it turned Sorcha’s stomach. One boy losing his dick was gruesome enough, but what Bridie saw was violence on a conveyor belt. The television news showed little of the injuries, little of the real damage done to people. The worst of it was edited out from their films. But Bridie Mulveny saw it up close: bodies that might eventually be partially repaired, and minds which would never be the same again. Did it matter whether the victim was maimed by a bomb blast or knee-capped with a Black and Decker? Not much. Kneecapping usually did less physical damage than a bomb, but the psychological effect wasn’t much different. The trauma the victims suffered would last the rest of their lives.
Only the ones who died instantly had peace.
“Maybe youse should give up the job,” Sorcha once told her.
“And what other work would I get round here?” Bridie had an answer for everything. “It pays well, so what the hell? Anyway, the violence won’t stop. Won’t ever stop.”
“It will one day.”
“Bullshit. It won’t stop ’cos the next generation feeds on it. And the next one after that. Our lot feed on the Famine and the Easter rising, just like the Prods feed on the Battle o’ the Boyne and the Siege of Derry. It just goes on and on.” She had raised her voice to a squeal at that point. “Damn it, Sorcha! ’Tis people like me who have to deal with what’s left of the victims.”
Sorcha was surprised that her sister was able to conjure up such a deep insight. Intuition, mixed with emotional passion. Maybe she was too clever for her own good, and yet her philosophy allowed that all Protestants went to hell. Only in Belfast could such ridiculous contradictions exist. Only in Belfast could the underlying truth give rise to such unqualified hatred.
And Bridie was right. It would never end. For all her protestations, Sorcha saw that clearly.
She waited for the sound of Bridie’s bedroom door closing before she hurried up the stairs to her own room. She changed out of her blood-stained jeans and grabbed a coat. As a last-minute thought, she pulled out an envelope from her jeans pocket. Damn! She should have thrown it back in Brian’s face. It was just too dangerous, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Could she still off-load it back to him, tell him to make his own warning phone calls to the police? Or would it be better to keep her mouth shut and simply dump the evidence? She couldn’t make up her mind. In the meantime, she stuffed it into her coat pocket.
And she would not stay here on her own.
That was when the dustbin lids started banging on the streets outside; a cacophony of noise that was almost a Republican anthem. The local ‘mammies’ were warning people that British troops were in the offing. And something else was up. Was it a riot, or had the Brits discovered another arms cache?
Don’t leave the house, Fitzpain had told her, but not because of this. It
was common sense that urged her to stay indoors now, avoid the conflict out in the streets, whatever it was. But common sense rarely held her back these days. As for Fitzpain’s warning, that didn’t hold her back because she knew the locations that would be bombed this day. It was all there in that envelope. That list. She could avoid the hot spots if she wanted to, so sod you, Brian Fitzpain! And sod the British troops who would have to deal with the bombs! She wasn’t going to stay here like a prisoner. Tired though she was, she was going to see Martin.
Her impossible dream.
She couldn’t call him. The telephone call box round the corner had been smashed up too many times. No one bothered to repair it now. But she could waylay him when he went for his aunt’s morning paper. He did that most days soon after breakfast; bought the paper from a small shop that opened all hours. They could go somewhere for a coffee. It might help wipe away from her mind that lingering memory of the Protestant boy’s dick lying in a pool of blood. And the stench of his shit.
And the dead peeler.
She went to the front door, where Mafeking Street was alive with tension. The noise of the banging bin lids was much louder. Old Edna McRostie stood on her doorstep in a dirty wrap-around apron, curlers in her straggly hair, arms folded beneath her ample bosom, a cigarette glued to her lower lip. Her phlegmy cough was getting worse.
A gang of youths was busily painting graffiti on an improvised corrugated iron wall at the barricaded end of the street. The first ‘peace walls’ went up in 1969. The Mafeking Street barrier was erected a year later, after the end-of-terrace house was fire-bombed and the Kennedy family was killed. Shot by a Loyalist gang. Sorcha looked upon the wall as a hideous monstrosity, a memorial to bigotry and hatred. The more it was daubed with grammatically ignorant racist messages, the more hideous it became. It was intended only as a temporary structure, a barrier to contain the growing violence between Mafeking Street Catholics and the Kimberley Street Protestants.
