World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  “I hope to Christ one thing leads to another,” Canavan said. “Leave them alone here.”

  Milk bottles clinked. Two boys came up pulling another wagon of petrol bombs.

  “Let’s get them out of here,” Michael said.

  “They stay,” Canavan said. He tugged on the front of his jacket. His shoulders shook inside the jacket He wanted to get the suit just right over his shoulders.

  The three men stood behind him, staring at Michael and Liam.

  Deirdre spoke very softly. “Will you not be the first to throw the petrol bombs at the soldiers? Or do the wee small boys get the honor?”

  “Fook off,” Canavan said.

  “You fook off,” Deirdre said.

  Johno clapped Canavan on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s stop the bullshit with these humps. I’ve seen better fights than this one here. Let’s get a drink until they start doin’ some important things.”

  Canavan smiled. “We’re just helpin’, you know.”

  While they were talking, kids came pounding up to the wagons and Michael and Liam were trying to stop them from grabbing petrol bombs, but two or three hands grabbed bottles and got away and Michael and Liam saw it was too late.

  Canavan stepped aside as the kids grabbed the bottles. Canavan had his hands out to protect his suit He walked back into the darkness.

  “You comin’?” Johno said.

  “I don’t know,” Dermot said.

  “You’re a sucker if you stay,” Johno said. He left

  Michael and Liam and Deirdre stood in the street Michael was shaking his head. “The only way to stop the fooker is to shoot him,” he said. “Christ, I don’t know. Are we gettin’ close to that?”

  The next time the kids came flying around the corner with the soldiers after them, seven or eight petrol bombs came through the air. The petrol bombs hit the street in a splash of flame which came up waist-high and then went out. The soldiers ran back up William Street. The kids followed them and stood in the darkness on William Street and threw petrol bombs up the block. Soldiers shouted to each other as the flames jumped out of the pavement near them.

  Boxo’s girl was standing out in William Street. She was singing a rock tune to herself and her hands tugged absently on a lock of hair covering the right side of her face.

  “You better not stand there, Kitty,” Michael told her. “Petrol bombs. They may shoot now.”

  Kitty didn’t answer.

  “They may shoot,” Michael said.

  Kitty shrugged. She kept looking into the darkness on William Street and singing her rock tune while her fingers tugged at her hair.

  Three soldiers raced from behind a building on the other corner of Rossville Street. A small kid was running without seeing them. One of the soldiers chopped at the kid’s head with his club. The kid went down. People started to rush at the soldiers. The football-team formation came from the other side and the people had to back up and throw petrol bombs. They could not get at the three soldiers dragging the kid away. A woman screamed and tried to run out after them. She couldn’t get through. Petrol bombs hit the street. The woman screamed and collapsed. Michael glanced back and kept walking. “She’ll see him in a year,” he said.

  “He was only nine or ten,” Dermot said.

  “They give a fook?” Michael said. “Borstal, see him in a year,” he said.

  A truck came careening out of the Brandywell and onto Rossville Street It was a flatbed truck with men standing on the back, waving their arms. The truck made a turn and ran up on the sidewalk and came back into the street and began going in a circle, riding on sidewalks and street. The flatbed was loaded with beer cases. When the truck stopped, men attacked the beer cases. More came running up. Like locusts, they were going through the cases until the floorboards showed. Johnny Killeen in his gray smock from the garbage job came running to the beer truck.

  It was a block party at Free Derry Corner. They were talking excitedly, forcing bottlecaps off with rocks, then jamming the foaming tops into their mouths to lose as little as possible. The beer truck was racing around the street. Two guys stood on the back, hands in the air for balance, while the truck started going in circles. One of them fell onto his knees. He grabbed two cases of beer left on the flatbed and clung to them while the truck went around in circles. Up Rossville Street, at the corner, the fire from the paint store waned. But the light from a petrol bomb went through the air. The kids were still at it.

  Michael leaned against the hood of a car talking to a couple of young guys wearing James Connolly buttons. One of them, with a round baby face but deep nervous eyes, spoke between drags on his cigarette.

  Johnny Killeen was with them. He lurched and held a beer bottle out as if it were a pistol. He pointed it up at the wall. Finbar had the bottlecap off another bottle of beer. His mouth came down on the foam like he was ducking for apples. Finbar handed the bottle to Johnny, who took his empty bottle and threw it in the air. It landed on the start of the incline to the wall. He began drinking the new bottle of beer.

  “Anybody want one?” Finbar called out. He had two cases of beer on the street.

  Dermot didn’t answer. Nobody else said anything. “Well, I’ll have one,” Deirdre said. Finbar reached down and grabbed a bottle and took it over to her. Johnny Killeen was out in the street with the bottle up. Draining it, he lurched a little and went to Free Derry Conner with the bottle in his hand. He stood under the streetlight and held the bottle out and pretended to be shooting at the wall. The back of the gray duster billowed out as the shot came through him and he flopped on his back in the street.

  The bar was dark when Dermot got back to the hotel. He had a headache and his legs were wobbly from all the running. When Johnny Killeen was hit, the soldiers sent an armored car down the hill from Butcher’s Gate. Michael told everybody to get out of there, the Army would lift anybody near the body. Dermot saw Deirdre get into a car. He ran up Wellington Street. Somebody opened a door and told him to come in. He kept going.

  He went up to the room. The room smelled like goats from all the whisky. Two girls were in one bed. Johno was in the other bed, on his back, snoring off a drunk. His shoes were sticking out from under the blankets.

  Dermot went downstairs to the sitting room and flopped on a worn couch against the wall. He put his legs over the arm of the couch and fell asleep. The day porter shook him at six-thirty. He went upstairs and banged on the door. One of the girls opened it. She was already dressed. The other one was in the shower. Johno was still stretched out like a traffic victim. Dermot took off his shoes. The girl giggled. He smoothed the bed and got on top of the blanket and used the bedspread as a cover. He never saw the girls leave the room.

  15

  THE GUILDHALL CLOCK WOKE him with its half-hour chiming at nine-thirty. In the shower, he stuck his face up to the nozzle and tried to wash the night away. He reached out for the toothpaste and brush and did his teeth in the shower.

  Johno moved his head but didn’t open his eyes while Dermot was getting dressed.

  “Stay there, I’ll be back,” Dermot said.

  “I’m fuckin’ dead,” he mumbled.

  In the dining room he ate oysterettes while he was waiting for the girl to bring bacon and eggs. He wondered how they all could fight so much. Nobody ever ate. He was in front of the hotel asking the porter for directions to court when the clock started the ten-o’clock toll. He walked through a very early spring day, the sky bright, the air clean, the sidewalks sparkling. The court was on one of the lifeless streets almost into the fountain, the Protestant section. The policemen stood in front of the two-story court building. Four soldiers walked along the far side.

  Deirdre was on a bench in the lobby. She was leaning over for the last drag before dropping the cigarette. Liam stood in front of her. Ronald bent over whispering to Deirdre while she finished the cigarette. The eyes in his ferret face darted from side to side.

  When she saw Dermot, Deirdre put a finger to her lips. L
iam took Dermot’s arm.

  “I was in bed early so I could be fresh for this morning,” she said. “You look fit yourself.” Liam pressed Dermot’s arm.

  “I feel good myself,” Dermot said.

  A cop, pink cheeks sticking out from under his black hat—Christ, Dermot said to himself, the cops in Northern Ireland do look like pigs—had come up behind the bench. Smoke ran out of his mouth and came up around his eyes a little.

  A thin woman with sunken cheeks dropped onto the bench alongside Deirdre. The woman clutched the front of an old tan cloth coat.

  “Ye have a cigarette?” she said to Deirdre.

  Deirdre shook her head yes and went into her coat pockets.

  “I’m walkin’ around stupid, I swear to God,” the woman said.

  “Aren’t we all?” Deirdre said.

  “How long will ye remain here?” the woman said.

  “Oh, ah dunno. Hour or so.”

  “Should I go home and wait?”

  “Ah dunno.”

  “Well, should I?”

  Deirdre closed her eyes. Ronald leaned past her to speak to the woman. “This child must walk into a courtroom as a defendant within the next thirty minutes. Will you please let her compose herself?”

  “It’s all right,” Deirdre said. “You’ll have to decide. I cannot leave here.”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m walkin’ around stupid, I swear to God.”

  “That’s all right,” Deidre said.

  “You see, they’re in school. Saint John’s Convent Primary School. Now, they do not know where I am if they was to come lookin’ for me.”

  “I see,” Deidre said.

  “I left the wee girl home with the cat.”

  “Yes,” Deirdre said.

  “Well, what should I do?”

  Oliver Toolan, in lawyer’s gray, came out of the courtroom. Feet scraped around the lobby. Two young girls came over and stood with Toolan. A woman carrying a baby and another one trying to hold on to two little boys lumbered after the girls. Deirdre got up and went to Toolan.

  “I believe we’re about ready to go in,” Oliver Toolan said to the circle of people.

  “How’s the humor inside?” Liam asked quietly.

  “Christ, in Heaven, the only thing missing is the hangman. After last night, they don’t want to know ye.”

  “Mother of God, stop talking like that,” Deirdre said. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “If six months doesn’t mean anything to ye,” the lawyer said.

  One of the girls was tiny and had huge eyes. The other, a blonde, had on a blue vinyl dress that squeaked like a door. The woman carrying the baby was her mother. She said, “Mister Toolan, do we need more witnesses?”

  Toolan smiled. “We’ve enough of everything except justice.”

  “I thought you told me this was nothing,” Dermot said to Deirdre.

  She waved her hand. “And it is, it is.” She started walking to the courtroom. “Let’s get on with it, Oliver,” he said to Toolan.

  When the lawyer started for the door, Dermot got next to him. “Is there anything I can do?”

  The lawyer smiled. He held the door for Deirdre. The woman in the tan coat called after Deirdre, “What do ye think I should do?”

  The courtroom was a small theater. A balcony with two or three rows of benches ran around three sides of the room. People hung over the balcony’s wooden railing. There was no jury box downstairs. The spectator rows started back under the balcony and came down one step at a time to the pit in front of the judge. Deirdre and the two girls sat two rows behind the defense table. Everybody looked too white. The pale light coming through a skylight gave the room the look of a scene from something two hundred years ago.

  The room was crowded. Liam and Ronald got into a middle row. The women and children were moving around looking for empty seats in the front Dermot slipped into the first open space, one or two rows from the back. The row on his right was filled with soldiers. Young kids with short haircuts and smooth faces, sitting with a fat officer who was in his fifties. The officer had file envelopes balanced on his knees.

  The judge had a long gray face propped up by his hand. He put on rimless glasses and cleared his throat. He put his face almost into the papers in front of him.

  “These summonses,” he began. He whistled through false teeth when he hit the s’s. Not a low whistle. The word “subsection” came out like he was calling a dog.

  The prosecutor had a chubby face with a streak of meanness through the eyes and mouth. He stood, hands in the watch pockets of his vest, and began speaking in a voice so low you could hear only a few stray syllables. The judge listened to him closely. In the row behind Dermot, the fat officer was rustling papers. “Now you have it?” he was saying to somebody, “The girl never left your sight.”

  A soldier stepped out of the row and went down the aisle and sat in the witness stand as if he was going to watch television. The judge said hello to him. The prosecutor waited until the soldier looked toward him before he began questioning. The soldier called out his name, Private Emory Williams, in a strong voice. It had to be his first time ever in court.

  You still couldn’t hear the prosecutor. The soldier called out, “I was on duty on the night you say. I was in a Saracen car assigned to clear the Rossville Street area. I was on Rossville Street at approximately ten o’clock.”

  The soldier listened to another question. “Well, we came onto Rossville Street. They was all throwin’ rocks and bottles at us. There was this one large crowd in front of the high flats. We approached the crowd to disperse it. As we come up to the crowd, this one certain person remained there throwin’ the rocks at us. It was this girl. Wearing a red raincoat. That’s how I could follow her so easy. I was climbin’ out of the front of the Saracen when she threw a rock what just missed my head. Corporal Woodcock was gettin’ out too. He chased after her first. Caught her trying to go into the flats. The arrest was made and there was nothin’ else.”

  Oliver Toolan got up. “Now, as you were the first to apprehend this girl,” he said.

  “Yes, I was the first to apprehend the girl.”

  “I thought you just said Corporal Woodcock was.”

  “Well, I said he was runnin’ first to get her.”

  “Now, on this particular night you came by armored vehicle?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “As I said, there was this crowd all throwin’ rocks.”

  “Did you see anyone in particular?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you mind pointing her out?”

  He pointed to the blond girl. The three girls started to laugh. Women in the back of the courtroom picked up the laugh. The judge began looking through his papers.

  “That is the wrong girl,” Oliver Toolan said.

  “Well,” the judge said, “as far as I can see, the policeman who recorded the arrests has the names mixed up.”

  Toolan showed the soldier a sheet of paper. The soldier said it was his handwriting.

  “The official arrest record,” Toolan said to the judge.

  “Well, it was this girl,” the soldier said, pointing to Deirdre. His voice was strained. “Never left my sight, she did”

  “You state on this,” Toolan said to the soldier, “that you apprehended this particular girl as she tried to enter the high flats?”

  “Yes, that’s where they was throwin’ things. She never left my sight.”

  Deirdre followed him to the stand. She had on a dark-blue sweater and slacks. She had run a brush through her hair. Sitting there composed, a long cream neck and the head held very high.

  “The evening you had been arrested, where were you prior to the arrest?” Oliver Toolan said to her.

  “To a peace meeting at Liam Quigley’s house.”

  “Who were you in company with?”

  “Nell Cassin, Frances Doyle, and Father John O’Reilly, CM.”

  Sh
e spoke to the air, not to Toolan, so the whole room could hear her answers. There was assurance in her voice as she slipped from listening to Toolan’s question to answering it immediately.

  “And whom did you hear speak at this meeting?”

  “John Hume.”

  “How long did the meeting last?”

  “Two hours and forty-five minutes. I know it to be exactly this time because Liam Quigley said he wanted to see the ITN news at ten and Father O’Reilly looked at his watch and said that we had best hurry, it was twenty-five to.”

  “How did you leave for home?”

  “I walked.”

  “What route did you take?”

  “I knew there was trouble down the town. To avoid it, I walked down Southway into the Brandywell and then over the Lecky Road to go up Fahan Street and home. I did this so I would be sure to avoid the areas where there was trouble.”

  “When did you become aware that there was trouble?”

  “I knew there was rock throwing earlier. To make sure I would pass safely to my home for the ITN news, I took this route. Kept me well away from the trouble, you know.”

  “At what time approximately did you reach the bottom of Fahan Street?”

  “About five to ten. I took the short cut through the high flats and the two girls here, they were just standin’ there before going inside and go to bed, you know. Soldiers come along chasin’ wee children. The soldiers were too slow to catch anybody. By the time they got down to us they was puffin’. They went past us a little. Big Jimmy was standin’ out in the street. When you see him, you know, it means the stage of danger has passed. The soldiers gave up chasin’ the wee children. On the way back they noticed us and they immediately took us in. For no reason. And this particular soldier here in court today did not arrest me. He did, not tell the truth here today. He never did arrest me. He is lying to earn his pay.”

  “What were you wearing that night?”

  “A green jacket.”

  “Were you wearing any red?”

  “No, my color was green that night. Father John O’Reilly, CM., happened to touch it with his cigarette and put a small brown hole in the sleeve.”