All the Colours of the Town

by McIlvanney, Liam

  At first I kept a look out for buses. But it hurt too much to keep craning round, so I just walked, one foot in front of the other, watching my toecaps through half-shut eyes. There were cabs around – they shushed past with their roof-signs glowing – but I knew well enough to leave them alone. The cabs were affiliated; probably there was some way to tell which ones were which, some arcane pattern of mudguards or spoilers, but I didn’t know the codes. And maybe word had gone out. Short dark hair. Six-two. Glasgow accent. No, a cab was too risky.

  I kept on up the road, moving like a busted bike. My toecaps alternated. It looked like a competition, some tightly contested race in which the lead kept switching. The streets spooled off on either side: Georgian terraces, pale and tall, South Belfast’s acres of rotten brick. Cracked pavements and rhododendrons. Wheelie bins numbered in white emulsion. Lime trees veiling the street lights. This was the nice part of town, the part that looked normal, right through the Troubles.

  I kept thinking the car was nearer than it was. Next junction, I’d tell myself, and then it wasn’t and then finally it was. Eglantine Avenue. I paused on the corner. There were cars down both sides of the street. The ones beneath the street lights shone like beetles. I could see the Forester, halfway down on the right-hand side. The street was deadly still. It looked posed and unconvincing, the cars somehow suspicious in their silent rows.

  A door opened halfway down the street and a man came down a path and got into his car. I hunched my shoulder as he slowed for the junction, buried my face in my neck. I was standing right next to a church. There were trees in the churchyard, great spreading evergreens, and I hobbled over the wall. The nearest tree was huge, with long drooping boughs; a great green dark gloomy bell. I ducked under a low branch and stood up in the heart of the tree. It was pitch-dark and safe in the soft blackness. I reached behind me and felt the rough ribbed bark. I couldn’t see my feet but I could see right out to the road, where the Forester squatted under the light. Tiny lime hyphens marked the numerals on my watch. I’d give it twenty minutes.

  Half an hour later I still hadn’t moved. The rain had raised the scents of the trees and a rich spicy musk rose around me. It might have been the Forest of Arden, a pastoral dell, if it wasn’t for the distant hiss of cars and the gentle tick of blood onto the grass. From the cut above my eye the blood kept coming, beading my lashes. Out beyond the leaves was the foreign city with its repertoire of hurt. Even now, someone might be watching, hard eyes trained on the Forester. There was no way to tell. No curtains twitched, no silhouettes shifted in the parked cars. I ran my tongue over swollen lips. I could have used a drink. A ball of Bush, a pint of stout. Things would look better then. The pains in my head and my shoulder and hand. The cold paste of fear in my gut.

  I left the tree and climbed back onto the pavement. The street was still empty. When I pointed my key the car gave its electronic yelp and the parking lights blinked and the locks shunked open with that slumping effect, like the car had been holding its breath.

  I eased myself into the seat and dug out my phone. I flipped it open, traced the buttons with my thumb while I pondered my options. John Rose had stopped taking my calls. I didn’t trust Hepburn. I could call the cops but what would I tell them? Or I could call no one at all, just drive to the ferry and shitcan the whole job. The way the pain sang in my skull and my shoulder, the way my ribs ached when I took in a breath, that seemed like the smart thing to do. But then I’d have no story. And what the pain told me, what the blood dripping onto my thigh made clear, was that somebody wanted me gone. I still didn’t know what the story was, but now I knew that there was one.

  I scrolled down my contacts and hit the button. Moir picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, when I’d finished telling him. ‘Shit, Gerry, you’re supposed to be home by now. What the fuck?’

  ‘Feel free to sympathise, Martin.’

  He asked where I was.

  ‘Eglantine Avenue.’

  ‘Right. Don’t go back to the hotel. Stay there, I’ll call right back.’

  He rang back in five minutes. I could stay with his parents. They lived in Antrim, up in the glens. They would give me a bed, get me cleaned up. I could take it from there. He gave me directions, his parents’ phone number.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘We’re supposed to be finished with this.’

  ‘But was it even them? Maybe it wasn’t. It could have been somebody else, couldn’t it? Something random.’

  ‘Of course it was them. Jesus, Gerry. “Take a telling”?’

  ‘But out of nothing? Not even a warning?’

  ‘Gerry,’ he said. ‘That was the warning.’

  I told him I’d phone when I got there. My eye was still bleeding. There was a box of tissues on the back seat. I lifted a handful and mopped the blood from my eye. There was a bottle of Volvic in the drinks holder and I got out the car, leaned over the gutter and sluiced the water over my hair and face. I got more tissues and wiped myself dry.

  My hand was on the key when I thought of something and snatched it back. Maybe they had found the car. Maybe they’d found it an hour ago. In a minute I was lying in the road once again, playing the flash on the undercarriage.

  Nothing looked blatantly wrong. But then I wasn’t sure what to look for. It was twenty years since I’d seen underneath a car. As kids we played street football after school. Around five o’clock, the dads would start coming home, and the street would fill up with parked cars. Austin Princesses, Ford Granadas. We played on, but the ball would get trapped under bodywork, wedged in the chassis. You had to lie on your side and kick at the ball till it worked itself loose.

  I moved the flashlight back and forth a final time. I remembered the sound it made, the trapped ball, a dragging rasp as you kicked it free.

  Fuck it. I eased out and smacked the grit off my jeans. I got back in the car, closed my eyes and turned the ignition.

  The roads were quiet. I took the Lisburn Road, heading for the city centre. I was having to clench my eye every couple of seconds to clear the blood from the cut, and the city lights flared white and loud on the throbbing nub of my headache. I couldn’t indicate – my busted hand was too sore – and I must have been twice the legal limit. If a cop car clocked me I was finished.

  I turned onto the Antrim Road, past the lines of sleeping houses. It was quieter here. I put the foot down, risking forty as the road spooled northwards out of the city.

  Blood was spilling now from the cut above my eye. It was running down the lid and pooling in the canthus. I kept wiping it clear with the heel of my hand but it filled straightaway. Salty and stinging. I waited for a lay-by and pulled in. The cut looked deep; black and gaping in the rear-view. I pressed a tissue to my eye and scrabbled around in the glove compartment. There’d been a box of plasters in there at one stage but it wasn’t there now. I pulled the handle to let the seat tilt back and let it recline as far as it could. Then I just lay there with my head tipped back. After a bit I put my fingers up to the cut, tapped it lightly; rubbery, it felt, like the yolk of a soft-boiled egg.

  When the blood congealed I set off once more, into the country now, through sleeping villages and darkened fields. I looked out for the turn-off. I hadn’t shaved since Thursday and my five-day beard was all gummed up with blood.

  I drove on. No villages now, just the narrow road and the flickering trees. Twigs licked the Forester’s sides and the shadows of branches crashed down on the hood. Before each corner I leaned on the horn. The headlights’ beam threw a curve into the verges and I seemed to be tunnelling, barrelling down through the soft dark earth.

  Then the sign flashed up and I tugged on the wheel and the car bumped onto a rutted track and here was a man stepping into the path with a hand to his eyes against the headlights’ glare and the other arm lifted in warning or greeting.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The water was close to the brim, hot as I could bear it. The heat caressed my arm, my ribs, th
e graze on my hip I hadn’t noticed till the water hit it. I closed my eyes, half-opened them again. My knees rose like atolls, stippled isles in a pine-fresh lagoon. The tub was deep. The heat kept me still. The slightest movement, the smallest flexing of my splayed knees, made me gasp. I slid lower down and the hotness flared, snapped at my skin like a testy dog. My mind soaked like a rag in a pail. I let it drift, lavishly blank. Only my legs remembered something, an ancient ache, some boyhood game of football and the long soak afterwards, caked mud lifting in flakes from my roughened knees, bruised shins and the soiled water cooling, the clatter of pots as my mother cooked lunch.

  A loud knock roused me, the door juddering on its hinges. I slipped, trying to right myself, and reared sharply up in a great sucking splash. Water shipped over the porcelain lip in glassy curves, hissing onto the granite tiles.

  ‘You OK in there?’

  I palmed the water out of my eyes. Half the bath was on the floor tiles.

  ‘Fine. I’m fine. No bother.’

  He paused. I could hear him shifting his weight, the floorboard’s groan.

  ‘The food’s about ready. I’ve laid out some stuff on the bed. Underthings. Socks. There’s some shirts of mine in the wardrobe. Trousers as well. They might be on the short side, right enough, but see what you think. We’ll be in the kitchen when you’re right.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, Mr Moir. I’ll be right down.’

  He sniffed. ‘Dead on.’

  He creaked off downstairs. I wallowed a little, sluicing the suds off my legs and chest, then I pulled the plug and stood up, steam clouding off my parboiled flesh. A rough towel hung on a hook on the door. I patted myself dry. My belly and thighs were a deep dull pink. I wrapped the wet towel round my waist. When I opened the bathroom door steam billowed out and the air of the landing felt cool and wet on my shins and the backs of my arms.

  In the spare bedroom there was underwear laid out on the floral duvet. A white vest and a pair of pale-blue Y-fronts and black ribbed socks side by side. I put on the Y-fronts and padded to the wardrobe. There were racks of shirts and trousers on wire hangers and above them was a hat. Sitting on the top shelf, an officer’s cap, dark bottle green with a red-and-gold badge. It was lighter than it looked, its greeny-black fabric soft to the touch. I hefted it by the lacquered visor and tried it on. It was too large; the visor hung low and only my mouth escaped from its sinister shade. The badge was a harp with a crown on top. In the full-length mirror, naked but for underpants and hat, I looked like an underground clubber, some militaria fetishist.

  I put the hat back on its shelf and flipped through the hangers. Woollen checked shirts and thick-ribbed cords in the colours of winter vegetables. I chose a shirt in a pale parsnip yellow with carroty checks. I hauled a pair of beetroot cords from their hanger. There was plenty of room at the waist but I threaded my own belt through the loops and pulled it tight. I stepped in front of the mirror. With my scrubby beard I looked like a farmer, some sly rural wiseacre, slow-moving, reticent. As I limped downstairs it was hard to shake the impression that this was my home, my wife turning from the oven with a plate gripped in a dishtowel, my well-scoured table at which I sat, my chair that scraped on the cold stone flag.

  One place was laid. Mrs Moir crossed and set the plate before me. A bottle top skittered to the floor as Mr Moir prised it off. He set the bottle on the table in front of me and fetched an empty glass and set that down too.

  I leant down and snuffed it up, the rich bland smell of the food. My glasses steamed up and I took them off and set them down on the scoured pine. I lifted the cutlery and suddenly my eyes were stinging and my throat dry.

  ‘Fantastic. Just … It’s fantastic. Wonderful.’ I gestured blindly round the kitchen with the knife and fork. ‘All of it. Really …’ I shrugged.

  ‘Eat. Don’t talk. We can talk after.’

  I bent to the food. Damp steam warmed my upper lip. Cabbage and mashed tatties. Rashers of bacon. That cabbagey smell. Thick, waxy wedges that squeaked in your mouth. The tatties fluffed and floury. The bacon thin and crispy, dark red rashers that splintered when the knife pressed down. I poured some of the beer into the glass and swirled it round and washed the bolus of food down my throat. I took another forkful, another swig of beer. I ate in silence while the man and the woman leant against the draining board and watched.

  When I finished Mr Moir lifted my plate and crossed to the sink. A pile of dirty dishes was stacked on the worktop. He filled the sink and squirted some washing-up liquid.

  ‘You want dessert, Gerry, some cake?’ He spoke over his shoulder, his voice raised above the splashing water, the clatter of plates. ‘There’s sponge cake, Madeira.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Let him be, Brian. Let his food settle.’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘No it’s fine. I’ll take another of these if you have it.’ I waggled the empty bottle by its neck. I was pleasantly drunk now, the beer mingling with the whisky and stout from before.

  He put a plate on the draining board and wiped his hands on a towel and stooped to lift a bottle from a crate beside the door. He opened it and set it on the table.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He went back to the basin, lifted a tea towel.

  ‘Three of them, Martin said. Is that right. Three?’

  ‘Brian! What did I tell you?’

  ‘Let the boy talk if he wants to. Do you want to talk?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course he minds.’ She slammed the oven door. ‘You’re not involved any more, Brian. It’s none of your business. You’ve no concern here.’

  His shoulders moved as he dried a plate.

  ‘I’m only asking, Deirdre. I’m asking the boy a question. He can answer for himself. He’s a big strong boy.’

  The food lay packed in my guts. I’d eaten too fast. I could feel the beer sluicing down, irrigating the packed mass.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, jerking my thumb at my sore eye.

  Mr Moir smiled. He was stooping to stow the plate in the space beneath the worktop but he craned his neck and smiled. There’s a gun in the house. That’s what flashed through my brain. Just as clear as if he’d spoken. There’s a gun in this house. Something in the gesture or the smile. I knew it as sure as I knew my own name. There’s a gun here somewhere.

  I poured some more beer and swirled it around and watched Mr Moir’s broad back. He was balding a little. The hat, I thought. The hat implied the gun. The hat vouched for the presence of the gun. It needn’t even be the gun from his uniform. It might be a different gun altogether. But the hat needed a gun to balance it. There was a gun in the house.

  ‘Where’d it happen?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. Behind the cathedral somewhere. I was in a pub, the John Hewitt, I think. Then I left.’

  I looked round the kitchen. The bread bin was too obvious. In a jar, then? One of the tins marked ‘Flour’ or ‘Salt’ or ‘Tea’? The drawer of the big wooden dresser?

  ‘It’s a hard town,’ he said. ‘Your town’s hard but Belfast’s different. You want to watch yourself.’

  ‘So they keep telling me.’ I took a long pull of the beer. It was cold and sweet and brown-tasting. I set the bottle down.

  ‘I saw your hat.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  He looked at me steadily, leaning on the sink with his arms crossed tight. I took another drink.

  ‘Ask it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ask me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything.’

  ‘Ask me if I’ve killed a man.’

  I held his gaze. I didn’t speak.

  ‘The answer’s no. Does that surprise you? I never killed anyone. I’ve seen people killed. I’ve seen that happen. But I never fired a gun in anger.’

  I shrugged. What did he want, a medal? I’d never fired a gun in anger either.<
br />
  ‘But I still carry one.’ I thought for a second he was about to produce it, fetch it from a saucepan under the sink. ‘I still carry one. D’you know why? Because the war’s not over. They’ve stopped bombing and shooting. For the most part they have. But do you think I feel safe? Down there?’ He gestured at the window, where the road to the village passed by. ‘Not a chance.’ He patted his heart with the side of his fist. ‘My war’ll stop when this does.’

  *

  Next morning he was still wired, still keen to talk about it. All through breakfast he moaned about the new regime, Provos in suits, killers with cabinet posts.

  ‘I’m not bitter, son. I’m not complaining. People died. Fine. I signed on in seventy-one: my eyes were open. I watched people die. Mates, guys I worked with every day. Watched them die for the uniform. For the badge.’

  He waited for me to speak. I sipped my tea and nodded.

  ‘Must be hard,’ I said.

  ‘Hard? Oh aye. And then they say, right, change of plan, guys. Thanks for all you’ve done but we need to switch things about a bit. We need to change the name. We need to change the badge. Because, you know, some people are upset. Some people have taken offence.’

  He frowned, his brow pursed with concentration.

  ‘And who’s upset again? Right, it’s the people who were trying to kill us. The people who shot and bombed us for twenty-five years. These crybabies. They’re big enough to put a pipe bomb under your car, but they faint away at the sight of a cap badge. Take offence? I should hope so. We sure as fuck meant to give it.’

  ‘Yeah but it’s not just them, is it? It’s not just the bad guys who don’t like you.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Moir waved his hands. ‘That’s what we’re good at, son. That’s our specialised subject. Everyone takes offence at everything. But once you’ve changed the name and scrapped the badge, once you’ve given in, given them everything they want and they’re still not happy and they go back to killing people, what do you do then? Sorry, guys, could you come back and start dying for us again? Good luck with that.’