World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  Oliver Toolan held up the jacket and brought it to the judge. The judge barely looked at it. The judge was sitting with his chin in his hands. Toolan said the priest was available to make a statement. The judge’s eyes went up and he smiled to himself.

  The prosecutor stood up with his hands against his fat ribs. You still could not hear his questions, but you could see Deirdre sitting forward to grab the questions as they came to her. She couldn’t wait to answer. She answered with one-word yeses or noes. Each time the prosecutor stood there and said nothing and waited for her to say something else. But she was too smart She answered each question, did not elaborate, and left him there holding his fat ribs. The prosecutor looked up in the air and asked her something and the judge’s face broke into a broad smile and the two soldiers at the prosecutor’s table, the private and the corporal, laughed out loud. Oliver Toolan was up yelling.

  She did not move or change expression. She sat there, with this long cream neck and the head held up high, and the judge told her to answer the question. He waved Toolan to his seat

  Deirdre said, “No.” She said it slowly, with great coldness, staring directly at the prosecutor and her eyes made him and the soldiers stop laughing.

  Two women got up and said Deirdre had been on the corner at ten that night.

  The priest came on as a witness about the meeting and the cigarette hole in the jacket. The prosecutor got up and said loudly, not looking at the priest, “No questions, your worship.” The judge’s eyes went up and he smiled to himself as the priest got down.

  The blonde came up. The blue vinyl dress squeaked as she moved. Her head rocked and her body squirmed each time she answered a question, the dress squeaking loudly. The judge kept his eyes up and a little smile on his mouth.

  “The soldier who arrested you,” Oliver Toolan said, “did he in fact go past you?”

  “Oh, they ran way past us. They couldn’t catch anybody. The wee ones ran fast, you know. Then the soldiers came back. Oh, they were mad, you know.”

  “Have you ever seen the soldier who arrested you?”

  “Oh, I know him.”

  “And how do you know him?”

  “I was at a dance and a soldier came up to me and he asked me if he could take me home. I said no, I didn’t like him.”

  “Which soldier was that?”

  “That one there.” She pointed at the corporal. The back of his neck went red.

  “He arrested me because I would not go home with him, he did.”

  The prosecutor was up and the judge had his face out of his hands. “Don’t answer unless you’re asked a question,” he said sharply.

  The corporal had his head turned away from her. His face was flushed.

  Deirdre was talking to Oliver Toolan, and the lawyer kept nodding while she talked. He got up and began his summation.

  “I wouldn’t your worship, rely on the soldier’s social record with the girl, of course. But, your honor, he being young and fairly good looking and hurt by the rebuff, being charitable, your worship, this is clearly a case of mistaken identity.”

  The prosecutor got up with his hands against his fat ribs. He started talking in his dull voice. This time you could get pieces of his sentence. “… Private Williams … never lost sight of her …”

  The judge had his chin out of his hands. He was writing in a school composition book.

  When the prosecutor finished, the judge said thank you to him. The judge began turning the pages of the notebook and talking to himself out loud. “Now, let me read the notes on the evidence that I’ve taken. Oh, dear, now let me see, this is simply evaluating two separate sets of evidence. The Lecky Road, came down to Rossville Street …”

  Still looking down he said, “Well … oh dear, I think I’ll have to convict. Six months each.”

  The woman with the baby in her arms was up screaming. The two girls were screaming and covering their faces with their hands. Deirdre got up slowly and started to point her finger at the judge. Ronald took her arm. He had his eyes closed and his face twisted and he held his head against Deirdre’s shoulder. Everywhere in the room women were screaming and sobbing. The sound always is the same. In a courtroom, at an accident, on a doorstep when you come with the accident slip. The judge had his chin between his hands. He looked at the soldiers near Dermot and gave a smile and shrug. Dermot caught a black visor out of the corner of his eye. It was a matron in a deep-green uniform. He was into the aisle, blocking it so she couldn’t come down after Deirdre. Two other matrons were starting down from the doorway, clomping with wide-legged walks in black shoes with laces. Dermot went down to the pit. A cop tried to block him. Dermot went through him and stood blocking the table. He touched Oliver Toolan’s arm. An angry face came around. Dermot had his hand out with money in it. He had to shout the word bail. The lawyer cupped his hands to Dermot’s ear. “A cash bond isn’t required. That’s if you’re released.”

  The judge slapped his hand on the bench. Oliver Toolan began waving the people to sit down. The woman with the child standing and sobbing. A small boy, crying loudly, ran to the table and the blond girl took him by the arm.

  Toolan got up and began talking through the noise about an appeal.

  The prosecutor was up. “Your worship,” he said so loudly everybody could hear him now, “are we to allow these people out on the streets again? We have just come through a night of terror. One terrorist gunman was killed. At great peril to Her Majesty’s troops. Are we not entitled to preserve the peacefulness of the community by having convicted people removed from the streets?”

  The judge looked through papers and put his chin into his hand again. He looked up at the ceiling. “Oh dear,” he said, “first conviction for one, two convictions for another. Oh dear. Four convictions for this girl. Oh dear, I’m afraid that Miss, ah, Miss …” he looked at the papers. “… Miss McLaughlin is going to have to remain.”

  “Your worship,” Toolan said.

  “Oh dear, no, she must go to jail.”

  The woman with the baby was into the pit and fell on her knees next to her daughter, who was bent over with her face in her hands. The blue vinyl dress creaked as she sobbed.

  “What does he mean?” Ronald said.

  “Deirdre and Eileen here are released on appeal, and Mary must go to jail,” Toolan said flatly.

  “Oh,” Ronald said. He blew out his breath. Trouble dissolved in the corners of his eyes.

  The blond girl in the vinyl dress looked up from her weeping. Her eyes were tearless and her lips curled. She turned to the row of soldiers.

  “Black cunts!”

  The other girl turned and snarled something. She hadn’t been crying either.

  Deirdre took the baby out of the woman’s arms. “Come on, mother, well discuss this outside.” The woman on her knees looked up at her. “Come on,” Deirdre said. “Mister Toolan has things to do for your daughter and he can’t do them here.” The woman got up.

  Toolan shoved papers into his briefcase. Everybody started up the aisle. The judge smiled and nodded to the matrons. They came around Dermot and tapped the girl on the shoulder. The dress squeaked as. she stood up. Stood straight up, her eyes on fire. She walked to a door behind the bench with the matrons. Deirdre carried the baby up the aisle. The mother lumbered after her.

  Outside, Oliver Toolan asked Dermot for a cigarette. “Ah, there’s your British justice,” he said. “It’s fine in a textbook, but it doesn’t count if you’re a member of a minority.”

  “How could anybody believe the soldier?” Dermot said.

  “How could he not believe a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces? A man in uniform never would lie.”

  Deirdre sat on a bench next to-Ronald. He was hunched over, his hands between his knees. She bent over to hear him,

  “But I’m not going to jail right away,” she said. He kept his head down.

  “What does the appeal take, a year?” Dermot asked her.

  She smiled and shook her
head. “Ah, they give rather quick legal service. A month, perhaps two months.”

  “We’ll lose it as sure as we’re fookin’ here,” Toolan said.

  Ronald whispered something else. Deirdre bent down. “I know, I know. But it isn’t today. It isn’t today.” Ronald’s eyes became easier.

  The woman with the baby sat dumbly across from her. “Deirdre.” Deirdre had her head down listening to Ronald.

  The woman in the tan coat slipped into a space alongside Deirdre. “Could we go see them now?” she said. “Before the lunch, you know.”

  “Deirdre,” the woman holding the baby called again.

  Deirdre looked up. She closed her eyes. “Let me think for a wee moment.” Ronald whispered something else. She put a hand on his arm.

  Oliver Toolan picked up his briefcase. “Let’s get out of here and have a cup of tea. So I can think, you know.”

  Out on the street, everybody, there must have been a dozen people, began walking toward the Diamond. The woman in the tan coat stood alone. “Deirdre, ye gon’ the wrong way. I’m back here, you know.”

  Deirdre turned around. Ronald was telling her something. The woman in the tan coat was almost ready to cry.

  Dermot took the woman off to the side. “I’ll catch up,” he said. Deirdre looked relieved. “Well be at the cafe,” she called back to him. He told the woman he had to go home to New York. She grabbed his arm with both hands.

  “She said she was going to take me to the welfare office. It’s just a wee walk. To see about another house for me, you know. The people where I live say they’re goin’ to set us afire at night.”

  “Can’t you go yourself?”

  She did not answer. She kept looking at him. Watery eyes coming out of sunken cheeks.

  He started walking with her.

  “And what’s your name?” he said.

  “Oh, I’m walking around stupid, I swear to God. Mrs. Ann Frances McCausland. I’m not livin’ with my husband in a state of marriage, you know. When I met him, he was washin’ up in a bar. The Great Northern Railway Bar. Moved over to be a barman at the American base. He always was chattin’ up the girls. He took up with this one wee girl. At the American base she started a row with a Yank and my husband took her part. He was fired. Hasn’t worked since. He got mad because I got to fightin’ with the girl. She wanted to be sleepin’ all day. She said the wee children bothered her. We’ve four, you know. So I said to her, ‘Too bad the wee ones bother you.’ He walked out of the house with her. I hasn’t seen him since, you know.”

  They went through the arch in the wall and into the gloom of the Fountain section. On the side of a house facing an alley was a mural of a man in a uniform, the eyes looking like fried eggs, his hand on a long sword. Underneath it, the old printing said THE LANDING OF WILLIAM III AT CARRICKFERGUS, JUNE 14, 1690. After the alley was a set of houses with boarded windows. She pushed open the door of the first house. It swung on one hinge. The door-frame was splintered. Inside, the floor was covered with a linoleum so old and caked with dirt that it stuck to your feet. She stepped into an empty room. A bare bulb hanging from the ceiling on frayed cord was turned on. A girl about three years old stood in the corner of the room, holding a cat against her dirty dress.

  “Is she not a good girl?” the woman said. “I told her to stay right here. For all this time she stayed right here.”

  In the next room there was an electric stove with two burners and a black pot. Dermot asked where they slept. She took him into a room in the back. There was an old bed with a green mattress covered with urine stains. “I put two at the top and two at the bottom. I sort of squeeze in here on the side, you know.”

  The window was broken and had no board over it. The gray-stone wall was only inches from it. She nodded at the window. “At night, you know, they stand up on the wall drunk and they say, ‘You Fenian, you’re next.’ Sometimes they urinate through the windows. It frightens the wee ones, you know.”

  “Where’s your bathroom?” he said to her.

  “Just before five o’clock every night I send the wee ones over to the welfare office, it’s just across the street, so’s they can use the toilets and clean themselves out for the night. It’s the weekends is bad because the welfare offices don’t open. I wait in the doorway here with the wee ones. When I see nobody on the street I let them run out to the curb. The one wee boy is afraid to doin’ that now. Sunday night, this big man comes runnin’ down the street and swats him while he was goin’.”

  While they were crossing the street to the welfare office, Dermot asked the woman what Deirdre was supposed to do for her.

  “Some papers you know. Deirdre have it all in her mind. Meself, I’m walkin’ around stupid, I swear to God.”

  A sign on a gloomy red-brick building said it was the Londonderry County Borough Welfare Office. Dermot held the door for her, but she didn’t go in. The little girl clung to her. “Could I stay out here?” she asked. “I’m in a terrible nervous state.” He made her come in with him. They walked up one flight. She stopped in front of an office that had a counter as you came in. A man was sitting at a desk by the windows. “He told me he’d be back at four-thirty yesterday afternoon and I waited and he never come,” she said. Dermot went up to the counter. She stayed outside in the hall.

  The man glanced up. He had a line for a mouth.

  “I’m just here from New York. This woman; Mrs. O’Donnell, is my cousin. Somebody was supposed to come back at four-thirty yesterday to see her, but nobody came. Can you do anything about her now?”

  The man craned his neck and saw the woman out in the hall. He smiled to himself. Then he cleared his throat to put some authority into it.

  “Yes, I see, Mrs. O’Donnell. Uh huh, I’ve her papers right on the top of my desk, you know.”

  “She was waiting for you yesterday,” Dermot said.

  “Aye,” he said.

  “She wants a place where she can live like a half a human being, and you were supposed to be around to see her yesterday. You never came. That’s why we’re here now.”

  “Oh, we’ve so many requests for houses, you know. We just have no houses, you know. But our decision had been that we do feel Mrs. O’Donnell should have the children placed in an institution, you know. Until such time as, you know.”

  She had come as far as the doorway. “Gee, not now,” she said. “Not after thirteen years. I couldn’t give ’em up now.”

  He held out his hands. “Well, you know.”

  “I came here to get her a place to live,” Dermot said. “Let’s keep the conversation on housing.”

  “Oh, but I have nothing to do with housing,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, but I don’t. That is the province of the housing council. We are merely the welfare department. We investigate and make recommendations. But we do not control the housing council, you know.”

  “What room is the housing council?”

  “Oh, over at the Guildhall, you know.”

  “Could you call them and save me the trip? We can stand right here and see what we can do for this woman. My cousin. I’ve seen what she’s living in. I don’t want her another hour in there. Could you give somebody a call?”

  “Well, emergency housing, that’s up to Mrs. Simpson, you know.”

  “Could you call her please?”

  “Call Mrs. Simpson?”

  “Why not?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “What do you mean, what good would that do?”

  “Well. Everything to Mrs. Simpson must be in writing.”

  “You can’t call her on an emergency?”

  “Oh, no, it all must be in writing, you know.”

  “Write out something and I’ll take it over to her.”

  “Right at this moment I’ve got to have dinner. And I’m certain Mrs. Simpson will be gone from her office for her dinner by the time you get there.”

  He got up from the desk and came to
the counter.

  “Where are the children now?” he asked her.

  “Oh, the three are in school. But the other’s just outside now.”

  “Alone?”

  “Oh, nobody’s with her.” She hesitated. “Should I go out with her?”

  “Yes, you go with your child.”

  She went down the staircase. The man left the counter. He opened a door leading into another office and he was gone.

  “Hey, you cocksucker!” Dermot yelled.

  There was no answer. He slapped the counter hard. He was standing there in an empty office. He walked into the hall and looked around. There was a door a few steps down. He went to open it. It was locked. He rattled the knob and knocked on the door. No sound came from inside. The building seemed empty. Dermot walked outside. She was on the sidewalk with the little girl. He took them across the street and left them in the doorway. He said he’d go up and see Deirdre and find out what to do and be back.

  “Can I be able to keep the wee children?” she said. “After thirteen years, I can’t be givin’ them up, you know.”

  She stepped into the house and came out holding a can of black shoe polish and a shoe brush. “I try to send them to school neat.”

  He walked through the somber streets, going away from the Bogside. The street curved and took him in a semicircle that came out of the rows of houses and into the emptiness of the street with the hill of dirt covered with garbage and the whitewashed saloon, McCann’s, next to it.

  When Dermot walked in, his father was talking to two men who had pints.

  “He was there with us,” Dermot’s father said to the men. They looked at him and laughed.

  “How much did ye drop?” one of them said.

  “Oh, Christ, forget it,” Dermot said.

  “The dog must be on the dinner table today,” Dermot’s father said.

  “Won’t be the first,” the other man said.

  “I wonder what a dog tastes like?” Dermot’s father said.

  “I know they better cook him good and slow, ’cause he’s a slow fookin’ dog,” the first man said.

  Dermot stood at the end of the bar. His father was waiting for him to come up and sit with the two men. Dermot stayed at the end. His father walked down to him. The yellow-stained fingers were at the mouth, holding the cigarette. The father rotated his head against the pain of talking. He seemed to be pulling himself together.