White Church, Black Mountain
Thomas Paul Burgess
Copyright © 2015 Thomas Paul Burgess
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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For Mary.
As constant as the Southern Star.
And for my brother.
Contents
Cover
Praise for the Author‘
Quotes…
I was born…
1
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Praise for the Author‘
White Church, Black Mountain just sucks you in. Like Brian Moore given a make-over by James Elroy. Excellent stuff.’
Colin Bateman, Novelist
*
‘The voice of White Church, Black Mountain is authentic and the story gripping and haunting. Even more striking is the book’s humanity, for it deals unsparingly with what is so often dismissed contemptuously as ‘collateral damage’ - the ‘little people’ whose lives are casually destroyed when they are caught up in a brutal war of which they wanted no part.’
Ruth Dudley Edwards,
Historian, Novelist, Journalist & Broadcaster
*
‘Burgess effortlessly makes the transition from punk prophet to full-blown novelist, delivering a compelling account of life in the shadows of Belfast's Black Mountain. An outstanding debut.’
Barry McIlheney
CEO, Professional Publishers Association
*
‘Paul Burgess segues perfectly between different time zones, from the darkest days of the early 1970s into a jagged, fractured Belfast and on towards the uncertain present of post-Troubles Northern Ireland.
The Belfast-Ulster vernacular is more real; the atmosphere conjured up through memories of bad places more authentic; the storyline more believable than a library full of all the other Northern Irish thrillers that have gone before it… until now they have never truly captured the breakdown of this society due to the Troubles.
Burgess creates broken and traumatised characters who have emerged from the Northern Ireland conflict as complex but wholly believable figures. They are walking corpses, barely alive, weighed down by the crimes from the recent past.’
Henry McDonald, The Guardian
*
‘With White Church, Black Mountain Paul Burgess adds another string to his already impressive bow: punk pioneer, academic, social commentator and now accomplished novelist...
Playwrights beware, he’s coming for you next!’
Glenn Patterson, Novelist
Quotes…
If anyone saith, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
1 John 4:20 English Standard Version (ESV)
*
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I was born…
I was born at the crossing of the white church*
In the shadow of the black mountain.
Where the walls bleed broken bottles
And the barbed-wire binds the fountain.
I grew up with the promise of the chosen,
Shouldered the banners of the certain,
Was cut down by the falseness of prophets,
Abandoned by the truth everlasting.
Laughed in the faces of the fallen,
Was banished to the valley of not knowing.
Mad dogs, King Rats, Butchers,
Sheebeens of wickedness and of self-loathing.
I was born at the crossing of the white church
In the shadow of the black mountain
Where the wild things burn their young
And the sparks rise up to heaven.
* Shankill (‘Old Church’) was otherwise formally ‘the church of the white crossing’ (Ecclesia alba de vado).
1
When the smiling anaesthetist leaned over Eban’s scrubbed and prepped body, he asked him to count backwards from ten. The anaesthetic pressed down upon him in what felt like a relentless wave of shimmering, chemical subjugation.
A calm voice in his head told him that he was about to die for some short while.
But unlike Elvis, he would never leave the building.
Momentarily, a brief eddy of recent and long passed memories bled together.
But no corridor of light.
No celestial waiting room for him.
Just the clunk and hiss of pumps and tubes.
Pushing thin red lines down drip, up catheter.
Nothingness.
Not fear.
Nor regret.
Nor suffering.
Nor loss
Just void.
Until returning, dulled and sore, perhaps to touch her hand and see her face again.
10
9
8
7
2
Shankill Road,
Belfast, Northern Ireland
March 1970
The red brick back-yard wall of McGrew’s Pub looked daunting to such a small boy.
Looming above him and bristling with broken shards and slivers from the multi-coloured glass of bleach bottles and j
am jars.
Cemented deep in there.
Jagging up like shark fins and crooked crocodile teeth.
To repel intruders and ten-year-old misfits in pursuit of lost footballs.
*
Eban Winston Barnard was eleven.
And fully possessed of his reasons to climb.
3
Belfast, Northern Ireland
January 2014
It was a pattern he had imperceptibly drifted into.
Sitting up alone into the early hours.
Able to do so thanks to the power naps he took in the afternoons in Interview Room C. Left well alone by the junior officers who had noted his routine. If Detective Inspector Dan Watson missed his snooze for some reason, they agreed he was like a zombie with a grudge.
Channel-hopping at 1.30am with the sound down low.
Settling momentarily on Family Guy, Come Dine With Me or Amsterdam Nights, before flicking on. On to God knows what.
Fingering the ice cubes into the tumbler to prevent the telltale clinking in these silent early hours.
Splashing the Bushmills liberally from his hidden cache.
The good stuff.
The bottle ‘for guests’ still virgin and pristine in the drinks cabinet.
Then up at 5.30am again as usual.
Shave… shit… shower.
Making the effort not to wake Elaine, although both were now used to the futility of this.
Exaggerated sighs of annoyance and duvet-shifting.
A practised choreography of gestures.
The small of his back ached.
Had done for months now.
Not exactly muscular.
At fifty-one years of age, it could simply be his sedentary lifestyle.
Or it could be something much more sinister.
His last routine check-up from Dr Bryant the police GP revealed type 2 diabetes.
He was not alone.
A minor epidemic amongst unfit coppers with fat-roll waistlines and takeaway lifestyles had solicited an avalanche of preventive, self-help pamphlets from Human Resources.
Wankers! More concerned about sick leave than officer welfare, he thought. Wire-necked pen-pushing middle-management wankers! Creating a little empire for themselves.
Now he had to attend a diabetes clinic where the nurse asked him to close his eyes and say when he could feel a pinprick on his toes.
The toes were the most vulnerable apparently.
Then the feet themselves.
And perhaps ultimately the leg.
Christ!
Still, he knew that tomorrow he would still have his fried bacon and egg soda farl as usual.
And his massage.
His full body massage.
All above board.
No happy endings here.
He’d been going to Nicola, his regular massage therapist at the Sports Injury Clinic, for years now. He suspected she was a dyke but nevertheless prided himself on his ability to avoid an erection when she brushed against his inner thigh.
Mind over matter.
Even when his back wasn’t bothering him, he never missed a session.
He realised that – even if it wasn’t sexual – it was the only intimate touching, the only human contact from a woman that he’d had in a very long time.
It depressed the hell out of him so he chose not to think about it in those terms.
A gust of winter gale whistled down the chimney and into the dark, empty fireplace.
The curtains moved a little.
The central heating had long since clicked off.
On TV, two Dutch cops were arresting a punter who refused to pay.
The hooker complained – in subtitles – that his inability to get a hard-on wasn’t her fault.
He drained the glass and wondered – was it time?
The tentative climb.
The creaking stairs.
The spare room.
4
Belfast, Northern Ireland
January 2014
“Eban… can I have a quick word please?”
He had been moving stealthily along the landing, head down, damp towel balled under his arm. He had already passed the open bathroom door when she called him back.
Inside Rosemary stood with her hands on her hips, looking down at the toilet bowl disapprovingly.
Emily stood beside her, arms folded across her chest, gnawing on a broken nail. She moved uncomfortably from foot to foot.
“Eban…”
Rosemary’s tone as always was that of a boarding school matron; this late-forties career academic without a job. She had begun her thesis at Queen’s University on the Apartheid regime in South Africa as a bright young bluestocking and been totally absorbed ever since by the self-righteous liberal authority it seemed to afford her amongst her peers.
Prominent in boycott and fundraising groups, her Arran sweaters, rosy chipmunk cheeks and pageboy haircut rendered Rosemary popular with her immediate circle if somewhat asexual in the eyes of potential suitors.
It was a look that did not improve with age or weight gain.
It seemed to Eban that she resembled nothing less than a demonic Russian doll.
And South African society had a habit of bloody changing, didn’t it, and then – wouldn’t you know it? – Mandela is released and a democratic election is held and…
It all played merry hell with her conclusions chapter.
Submission dates came and went, and came and went again.
Fees were due.
College and university memberships evaporated.
But still Rosemary beavered away on her magnum opus in the largest bedroom at the rear of the old Victorian detached house in South Belfast.
The corners piled high with dusty folders of newspaper clippings and photocopied journal chapters. All now largely obsolete.
She prosecuted the role of senior tenant – by dint of her longevity in the property – with an unstinting authority and in complete denial of the growing suite of eccentricities that were apparent to all but her.
Now she was pushing the pink toilet rug around the cracking linoleum with the toe of her tartan carpet slipper, a look of disgust on her face.
“Eban, if I’ve asked you once I’ve asked you a hundred times. If you insist on shaking, then please wipe the toilet seat after you!”
She looked across at Emily, inviting her to join in the admonishment. “I mean, really…”
Emily looked uncomfortable. She bit her nail more earnestly.
A familiar power play in the subtle dynamic of the household’s relations was unfolding.
Emily knew that Rosemary was well aware of the on-off dalliances she had enjoyed with Eban over the last two years.
She understood how the other woman, perhaps due to her own frustrations, liked to humiliate them both – individually or better yet, together – when the opportunity arose.
Eban understood this also. “It might have been Pascal!” he blurted out, awkward, embarrassed and defensive.
Emily seemed momentarily emboldened. “Yes, Rosemary – how do you know it wasn’t Pascal?”
Rosemary turned slowly to face them both. Her indignation was operatic. “Pascal would never do such a thing! Pascal is a gentleman.”
*
Pascal Loncle was a PhD History of Art student from Rennes in France who had arrived at Queen’s University, Belfast via Trinity College, Dublin. Along with the others he completed the ensemble of 15 Donnybrook Avenue, Belfast 9.
There was no common social area in the house – save for the kitchen – as the entire downstairs floor was partitioned off and owned by a German Lutheran congregation who met twice a week for prayers and hymns.
This meant that the upper house was effectively divided into four bedsits, a kitchen and a bathroom.
Pascal had the room to the front of the house that overlooked the tree-lined thoroughfare and caught all of the splendid afternoon and evening sunshine.
It wa
s always immaculately maintained, the perfect venue for entertaining guests from the many societies he belonged to. Soirées would always feature superior wines, snacks and nibbles whilst the host – an accomplished pianist – for want of a piano, played passable Bach on the viola.
Rosemary – who was from the south of England – adored Pascal, believing ardently that he offered an oasis of culture amongst these ‘Hibernio-heathens’.
She pandered to every Gallic shrug, every request he made, often running his bath at weekends and preparing cold suppers for him should he return late from the library.
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