“The highways and byways of sin in Omagh!” The amount of coughing dropped.
“Sins of the flesh! On the highways and byways of sin here in Omagh!”
There was complete silence now. “Sins of the flesh! The Devil’s personal sin!” The priest looked above them, stepping out now. “Teenagers are strolling on the highways and byways of sin. Strolling hand in hand down deserted lanes here in Omagh! Those still unmarried are doing it! You see them of an evening. And even on Sunday afternoons! The Lord’s day!” He closed his eyes and began tapping his hand on the pulpit.
“And I think… .” He paused.
“Yes, I think they are… .” His head shook with emotion, eyes still tightly closed.
“Yes, I think they are. I think they are. I think they are… .”
Everybody was shifting around. He shouted and slapped the pulpit hard.
“I know they are?”
“Even the widows are doing it!”
Dermot slid down the pew to the side aisle. He was behind a pillar, starting to step across the aisle, when the priest shifted gears casually.
“Now, dear Brethren in Jesus, here in Omagh we are at the very start of a secular exercise, an election of politicians, about which you will hear certain information from us on a regular basis. At this time, I merely would like to say that we are not fooled by any certain candidate who would live in sin in public in disdain for the Holy Mother Church. And who at the same time dares to call herself … herself … a practicing Catholic. Cast about for suitable alternatives. I am certain there shall be one.”
He turned to resume the mass. Dermot went out the door. He went down to the lunch counter and got his jacket. When he got back to the office, it was filled with young boys in fishermen’s sweaters with sleeves pushed up, carrying stacks of brown franked envelopes and printed sheets to tables in the back room, and young girls with big vaccination marks on their arms. Older women sat at tables. Children ran around the room. Deirdre was talking to them. “While you’re sittin’ home watchin’ TV and mindin’ children you can stuff envelopes for us. They used the big hall in this building for dancin’ classes Saturday afternoons. The teacher woman complains about us dirtyin’ up the hall. Father McCluskey put her on to it. So ye’ll best work at home.”
Deirdre and the candidate took some papers and walked out of the office. Dermot followed them.
“What did the priest say?” Deirdre asked him.
Dermot told her the priest had said nothing.
“Aye, nothing,” she said. “Only I hope you made it plain that the next time he says nothing again he’ll have insurrection during the offertory.”
They came around the side of the courthouse and almost into a circle of people standing in front of the steps. “Ah, here’s me good opponent,” the girl said.
Sunderland, the official Unionist Party candidate, stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyebrows working up and down rapidly, as if he had trouble focusing his eyes. He wore gray pinstripes and a vest. The other men around him stood with their arms folded. All hair was short, all shoulders squared. A woman came up and stood alongside Sunderland. The wife, it figured. A woman with beauty-parlor gray hair and a subdued glen-plaid suit, handbag held in both hands in front of her, standing with her legs slightly apart, English nature-walk stance. Her mouth might have been scrubbed with a lemon. Her pursed lips seemed to be saying, “Oh, no,” as she saw the girl’s group, cigarettes in mouths, slacks, wrinkled clothes, round shoulders, long hair, coming toward her. The girl had her chin down and gave Sunderland a dark look as she walked past him. “Thinkin’ up your wee election speech?” she said. His eyebrows stuttered in the shock of her talking to him.
They went toward a doorway alongside the steps on the ground floor. As they came to it, the door opened and a great laugh came out of the hallway. Philim Morrison stood there with a group of men, one of them a priest Philim threw his head back and almost shouted when he saw them coming. He held out his hand in a hello. Deirdre held hers out, palm up.
“Do ye have the twenty-five-pound donation for our wee election?”
He kept laughing. The others with him kept laughing. Philim had a sheet of paper in his hands.
“I see ye’ve got your wee receipt for your election deposit,” the girl said.
Philim kept laughing.
“I thought ye was a great believer in Socialism,” Deirdre said. “You were till the end of last night, anyway.”
“He runs as a Socialist,” the priest growled. “But not your kind of Socialist. He’s no Godless International Socialist.”
“And what is it that he is?” Deirdre said.
“Philim Morrison runs as a National Socialist,” the priest said.
The girl said to Philim, “Is that in fact the name of your official party organization? The National Socialist?”
Philim shook his head yes. Then he and the rest of them went away and Deirdre and the girl looked at each other and laughed. Deirdre stood next to Dermot.
“Are we ever going to get back to Derry?” he said.
“With us tonight. After the last meeting.”
“Who’s going?”
“Ronald, me, and you.”
“Let’s leave Ronald here.”
She didn’t answer him. Everybody got into cars, three of them, and they drove to a town called Sion Mills. Women sat along a low wall in front of a red-brick Presbyterian church. They turned down a street and drove under trees to a factory. The entrance was a road under trees with a parking lot on one side. At the end of the road was a yellow-brick wall with an arch over it. On it the year 1835 was inscribed. Inside the arch was a courtyard running into a four-story building with the windows painted over. As they parked the cars, a small black car with two men in it pulled alongside. One stayed at the wheel. The other, a tall guy with a blank face and eyeglasses hooked into his mouth came over to them. He was dressed for a country club, in brown plain jacket, yellow shirt, green tie, brown suede shoes. He still smelled cop.
“I’m Inspector Roundtree,” he said.
“Ah,” yes, I know you, Inspector,” the candidate said. She had her small crooked smile.
“Ah, you can’t, you know, go anywhere except, in actual fact, the parking lot here.”
“Aye. We’re law-abidin’,” she said.
His knees bent and his head went back in an icy imitation of a laugh. He tapped the end of his glasses against his front teeth. He itched his nose with the end of his glasses. He hooked them back into his mouth. The girl stared at him. “Very good,” he said. He took long strides back to the car and drove off.
At one end of the parking lot, a woman came out from under the trees. She had on a white knitted poncho and an orange dress. Blue eye make-up and blue-gray hair. She cocked her head. She pulled a trigger to start her voice.
“Where’s Her Majesty’s flag?”
Teen-age boys, crew cuts and dungaree suits, tall gawky kids with mean lines to their lips, gathered around her.
“Where’s the flag, you varmin?” one of them shouted. “The flag you get your dole under.”
“She’ll be under Her Majesty’s Service soon enough,” the woman in the poncho cackled. “Right there, that one there.” She pointed at Deirdre. “And the other wee bitch right after her.” The woman threw her head back and laughed. “Bread and water.”
A bell rang in the factory courtyard. A door in the factory building flew open and people rushed out, tumbling against each other. Over the heads of the people coming out of the door you could see the others jammed on the stairway inside, everybody lined up and straining to leave, just like grammar school. But nobody moving until the final bell. Some of them trotted down the road under the trees. Others stopped and drifted into the lot. Deirdre was standing in the road, calling through a bullhorn. The candidate got up on top of one of the cars in the parking lot.
When a crowd gathered, the girl on top of the car called out through her bullhorn, “People of Si
on Mills! Workers of the linen factory!” The voice poked at the people listening to her. It enraged the woman in the poncho. By now, there were other women and young girls around her. And more teen-age boys, and now men came out from the trees and stood with her.
The candidate started talking to the crowd in front of her, perhaps three hundred. “The people not listening to us are the same as the ones who are listening. It’s the government who won’t give them better housing. As it will not give it to us. They’re running out of here to vote for the government that keeps them destitute and in slums. Why run from me? I’m not the person who charges two pounds a week for council housing. I’m not the person who pays you ten-pound wages for a forty-eight-hour week. The factory owner who backs the government does that. I believe there should be a basic minimum wage of twenty pound for a forty-hour week. Does this in fact make me an enemy? Does this make me a dangerous Catholic? Does this make me a Communist? Or does this make me a person who speaks against a Unionist government which has fooled us all, Catholics and Protestants, for fifty years? And which has turned us against each other. Meanwhile, this man owning the factory here sends his linen thread to Belfast and becomes rich, and you go home to your wee houses with nothing. How much of the factory profits go to you? Enough money for you to live on isn’t enough money for your kids to live on.”
The first stone scaled at her was flat and white and it sliced badly and went far to the right. The next stone was a black rock and it banged off the top of the car at her feet with a loud noise. It brought a growl from the crowd around her. Across the lot, the crowd around the woman shrieked. You could hear the screaming curses. More rocks came. Up on the car, one of her legs came up as a stone hit her on the thigh.
Dermot came through the crowd. He got one foot on the back of the car, came up on the trunk, and got on the car roof. He stood with his right hand out, palm open. One rock came close and he slapped at it and the rock skipped off. The girl poked him. “You’ll have to move over so’s I can see what I’m about.”
Dermot didn’t move. The Protestant kids were throwing rocks with a sidearm motion, running up and leaning way back and throwing from just off the hip, the entire body spinning in a follow-through. A few of the rocks came short and the rest of them went wide. The four or five that were on the mark were easy enough to handle and there shouldn’t have been any worry. It was only rocks they were throwing. But it was the way they were being thrown that made it different. Young kids throbbing with rage and screaming things while the women with the one in the white poncho cheered and shook their fists.
The group in front of the cars trying to listen to the girl talk was much smaller than the crowd cheering the rock-throwers on. But a couple of young ones picked up rocks and turned around and flung them at the crowd of Protestants. And a girl, barelegged with a factory smock dress under her raincoat, turned and walked toward them, her head bobbing as she shouted things. A girl in a rainjacket and dungarees started out from the other crowd. Deirdre and Patsy grabbed the girl in the smock dress and brought her back. The Protestant girl stopped and went back to her crowd.
But the rocks kept coming, and Dermot took the candidate by the arm and they slid down off the car. The doors were open and they got in. Horn honking, they moved out through the crowd. A rock hit the top of the car. Another one boomed off the side. Dermot was in front with Deirdre. Sean drove. Dungaree suits were loping through the trees, trying to get footing to throw, and the car picked up speed and they had to run faster. The car had to go through a loose alley of people. Enough hands coming out to throw rocks to keep it dangerous.
Somebody in the crowd held out a black iron bar and Sean made the car swerve but the bar came at the window, kept coming right at Dermot, and he threw his arm over his face and over across Deirdre. The bar smacked into the windshield and the glass turned to greenish foam and the car skidded, righted, and rushed for the gates. Bits of green-white glass covered Sean’s hair like a mantle. Glass was all over the place.
When they got outside the town they stopped. They all got out and brushed thick bits of glass from their clothes. Sean took off his jacket and began swatting it on the seat.
“Just a little glass,” the candidate said.
Sean stopped brushing the seat. He looked at the windshield. There was a hole in it. “I hope glass is all it will be,” he said.
On the way back to Omagh, the girl said to Wilson, “You were all right, were you not?”
Dermot spun around, but Wilson dropped his eyes and Ronald looked out the window.
Omagh was empty in the early evening. Cars coming down the hill from the courthouse were too loud. The crows circling the courthouse began coming very low, their squawking sounding like shouts on the stone street. At the bottom of the hill, on a street coming out of the Protestant section, three cops in black raincoats stood motionless on a corner.
In front of the INF hall, the candidate got out and went up to Philim Morrison, the priest who had been with him earlier, and a couple of older men. Deirdre walked quickly into the discussion.
“I agree absolutely with what you say,” the girl said to the priest. “Neither of us shall attack each other with statements of a personal nature.”
“Aye,” the priest said. “In that way we can hold the Catholic vote together. It will not be split out of bitterness. Near the end, the candidate adjudged to be losing then can drop out in favor of the one with the better chance of winning.”
“Of course,” the girl said. She held out her hand. The priest took it. She held out her hand to Morrison. He took it and laughed. They broke up. The candidate went over and sat on the still-empty courthouse steps, a little girl with a bullhorn in her lap and a cigarette in her mouth. People were coming down from the streets behind the courthouse. They gathered in the space in front of the courthouse steps. There were twelve wide steps leading to a front of four pillars and stone lions. Down the hill, out of the street leading to the Protestant section, the gangly kids in dungarees formed in bunches.
Deirdre started up the steps. She turned and looked down at Dermot. “Oh, I forgot, in actual fact, to tell you. Ronald is remaining. So it’ll be just you and I going to Derry tonight.”
He came up after her. He got her by the arm and started pulling her down. She was laughing. “For Jesus’ sake, I’ve got to make a wee speech.”
He walked back to the sidewalk in front of the Melville. Down the street, the Protestant crowd was milling around in front of the Royal Arms Hotel. The Inspector was there, now in uniform. The three cops in the raincoats were coming up the street. The Protestants started up after them. The cops ignored them and kept coming. They stopped in front of the Melville.
“A wee election,” one of them said.
“Be over soon, I guess,” the one next to him said.
The crowd was getting bigger. Deirdre went up two steps and picked up the bullhorn. “People of Mid-Ulster! People of Omagh!” Philim Morrison, the priest, and two or three others were standing near the cops, listening to her.
“I want to welcome tonight into the election race the very honorable Philim Morrison of Omagh.” The men with Morrison clapped and a few others in the crowd followed.
“Actually, I do not welcome him into the race as much as the pub owner who’ll finally get paid when the Bishop gives Philim Morrison his bonus for running. However, I like Philim Morrison. I will defend Philim Morrison. I do not think that it is fair for people here to be talkin’ about the fact that Philim Morrison lost the farm his father left to him. He lost it backing horses that did not win. I think that is none of our business. I think Philim Morrison …”
Standing on the sidewalk, Philim Morrison appeared to be struggling against a stroke. The priest alongside him was thrashing his body in the circle of people around him. One of them bumped and shoved through the crowd. He got to the steps, waving his arm. The candidate saw him. She stood up and came down and leaned over to listen. She shook her head violently and pointed at Dei
rdre. She shrugged and followed the guy through the crowd to the priest. Dermot got right up next to them.
“You gave your hand …” the priest began.
“I said I would not attack Philim Morrison,” she said. “I intend to abide by my promise. I shall not mention him.”
“But what of this girl’s lies?” the priest said, the arm waving like a flag at Deirdre.
The little girl had her eyes half closed. “Oh, you must speak to her yourself,” she said. “I gave you my word. If you want hers, then you must get it from her.”
She went back through the crowd to the steps.
“Lastly,” Deirdre was calling out, “I would like you all to know the name of the political party Philim Morrison represents. It is a party formed by, and named by his good priestly backer. The name of Philim Morrison’s party is the National … Socialist … Party. National Socialist Party.”
Deirdre pointed at Philim and the priest and heads turned to look at them.
“The last man who ran as a National Socialist was Hitler!”
The crowd roared and the heads turned and the priest and Philim, heads down, went up the sidewalk toward the INF hall.
Dermot turned around and saw another priest standing in the doorway of the Melville. He drifted down the sidewalk and got next to him.
“What do you think, Father?” Dermot said.
“From America?” he said.
“Yes, I am.”
“I’ve got people there,” he said.
“Have you?”
“Cousin in the Bronx.”
“The Bronx? Good place, the Bronx.”
“They live on Gun Hill Road.”
“Gun Hill Road, I know Gun Hill Road.”
“There’s a wee place there, McChesney’s.”
“I went to McChesney’s all my life,” Dermot said.
“Aye,” he said. “Nice wee place.”
World Without End, Amen Page 36
