by Colm Herron
Hardly in the door of the City Hotel when I saw her. Her. Disappearing round the corner into the bar. Didn’t see me. Hair different, cut short, dyed some kind of brown, first thing I noticed. Urchin look like Mia Farrow, face pale, what was it she was in? Rosemary’s Baby. Like Audrey. Exactly like Audrey. Tight black shiny. Jesus, it’s leather, that’s leather she’s wearing, two piece leather suit. Who’s she with? Who’s she with? I’ll go in there in a minute, go to the men’s first to think. How long ago was it she told me she wasn’t sleeping? She looks great. She looks fantastic. She looks happy. How can she be happy?
The man talking to the receptionist was unmistakable. Gray broad-brimmed hat, Zapata moustache. Big Vinny Coyle, chief civil rights steward, salt of the earth, stopped me being crushed half to death that time at the Armagh march.
“Ah she’s made it all right,” he said. “She commands amazing fees now you know.”
“I say she’s past her best.” Golden thickly lacquered crowning glory inclined towards him, adroitly he evaded with deft swerve of the head.
“Think so?” Vinny tilted the fedora back a bit. “I was reading there about her saying she wouldn’t get out of her bed for less than five thousand.”
Gurgle of laughter from the golden head nearly choking. “I wonder now how much she charges to get in.”
Vinny raised an admonishing finger. “Now Majella. A Catholic girl like you shouldn’t be coming out with them kinda things. That’s calumny. Do you know what calumny is?”
“I do not.”
“Do you not remember from your catechism? It means taking away a person’s good name, that’s what it means. And a Catholic girl like you …”
“I never knew she had a good name.”
Vinny turned his eyes to heaven and his head away and that’s when he saw me standing there rooted. “Ah hello Master Coffey. How you doing? Is the rain staying off out there?”
I moved my feet and went towards him. Who’s she with?
“Aye, it’s still dry. How you doing anyway? I never got thanking you right for what you did up in Armagh Vinny.”
Vinny blinked kindly. “Not at all Master. I trust you were okay after that? You were being sort of roughed up by our own side. What’s this they say? With friends like that? Did you see Aisling?”
“Who?”
“Aisling O’Connor.”
“I did. She was just across the road from me.”
“Naw, I mean, did you not see her in here? She just got back today. Wasn’t it terrible about that friend of hers?”
“Who?”
“That girl she was great with from Belfast. Did you not hear?”
“What?”
“She was killed in an accident up there when was it? It was just after the Armagh march I think, the day after or maybe two days. Did you not hear? I thought you’d have heard. Wall fell on her in the big storm, remember the big storm? Somewhere up the Whiterock Road as far as I know. Terrible thing. I thought you’d have heard seeing —”
“Would that have been? What girl?”
He half closed his eyes and directed his gaze above and beyond me, his lips moving slowly as he went over names in his head. The hotel lobby turned noisy suddenly as a crowd of people came rushing in the front door.
“Audrey I think her name was.” He was nearly shouting above the noise. “I can’t mind her last name but her and Aisling were very close. Real socialist so she was. She was one of the first ones to join the People’s Democracy you know. Big loss, she’s a big loss. Are you all right Master? Here, sit down. Look, there’s a chair there.”
He touched my elbow and ushered me towards an armchair near the door. “Do you not want to sit down? Why do they let in them sort of people anyway? You’d think they’d have somebody on the door so you would. Here, sit there a minute. Tell me this now. Do you ever get headaches after what happened on the fifth?”
“Fifth?”
“October. Fifth of October. Hospitality of the RUC. Do you get headaches do you?”
“Naw, I’m over that. Listen, thanks Vinny. I’m all right. I just got a bit of a shock. I didn’t know a thing about it. I think I’ll go into the bar for a while.”
“Aisling’ll be there. You’ll see her in there. Look out for that man teaches in your school though. Master O’Reilly.”
“Pearse? How do you mean?”
“I’d stay clear of him if I were you. He’s going to get himself thrown out the way he’s going on.”
“Sure Pearse is off the drink. He’s been off it since …” I couldn’t remember. She was there.
“Well he’s not off it tonight. He’s shooting off his mouth at everybody he meets.”
I didn’t see her at first. But I saw Pearse sitting with Michael Cole and I could tell right away he was off the wagon. He had a whiskey glass in his hand and there was something about the loose way he was holding it that told me it was far from his first that night. But after those few seconds it hardly fizzed on me, just this feeling of dull disappointment that was away in no time. I gave the two of them a vague nod and Michael nodded back and smiled but Pearse didn’t notice me. Then I saw her. She was at a table to the side of them with some girl I never saw before. I went and held out my hand and my fingers were trembling.
“Vinny Coyle was just telling me there about Audrey. I’m sorry Aisling. That was such a terrible thing to happen.”
It wasn’t anything like my voice I was hearing. She took my hand in hers. I wasn’t sorry. Was she? She held my hand tentatively and the softness and the warmth suffused me. The street was gray the last time I saw her, the night we waked Maud, the night the children’s swings in Bull Park got swallowed in the dew.
“Thanks Jeremiah.” She held onto my hand as I was taking it away. Just for that extra part of a second. Old time’s sake? Her eyes were on me, turquoise gleam, I tried to read them and couldn’t, waited for more, anything, an introduction to the one beside her even. Who was the one beside her? Bit of a welterweight, looked like a dyke to be honest, square-looking face the color of white chalk, eyes I couldn’t see, black polo neck, dark hair cut short like the military get done, more man than woman, made me think of some of these ones I saw on the marches, dressed like men some of them, feminists denying their femininity, this way of looking at you meant to make you shrivel. Was she Aisling’s comfort now in these mourning days and nights? No introduction. What did that tell? I stood on, five seconds, ten, I don’t know, and then I began to turn away and saw her lips parting, lips that kissed me everywhere, remembered her voice hoarse with wanting every time she saw me again.
“I’ll see you anyway,” she said. I saw my fingers detach themselves from the rest of me and reach out to the loose little bow at the neck. The whole thing slid down her shimmering back and was held for a moment, sweet moment, at the swell of her thighs until with barely a twitch she made it fall the rest of the way to the floor leaving her bottom and its bone-white furrow bare. “Now strap me up,” she whispered.
“The last tortoise I had,” Michael said. “Wee bugger. Honest to Christ you couldn’t take your eyes off him any length of time. You’d sit there watching him for ages and he wouldn’t move a muscle but do you see if you turned your back for one second, he was away on you and you never saw him again. I don’t know how many tortoises I lost that way.”
“Fuck off,” said Pearse.
“I’ll see you anyway.”
That’s what she said. I’ll see you anyway. She wants to see me again. I sat down beside Michael and Pearse, legs not there, rest of me light as a summer cloud.
“How’s tricks?”
“Not bad Michael. And you?”
“Not so good. Got shot down at the dance there and drowning my sorrows.”
“Droning your sorrows you mean,” said Pearse.
“Hey, Pearse is fierce hard on me tonight, no sympathy at all.”
“Why don’t you just fuck off Cole.”
Michael gave him a look then and put the glas
s to his mouth and swallowed the last of his drink in a rush.
“Must go. Best of luck anyway.”
He was still within earshot when Pearse said to me: “Eejit so he is. Empty-headed tithead.”
“I was thinking of going myself. Are you heading?” I’d go and then come back when I got shot of him.
“What are you on about? I’m only here twenty minutes. Why would I be heading?”
“Naw, I was just thinking —”
“I was in Tracy’s there and some musclebound thug on the door turfed me out and all I was doing was talking a bit of politics with this arsehole in a tweed jacket. Tweed fucking jacket. What would you say about a man wears a tweed jacket?”
“I don’t know. Maybe talking politics isn’t the best thing to do when you’ve drink in you.”
“What the fuck you talking about? Sure that’s all they do in this place here. Religion and politics. I’m getting out to fuck to Manchester anyway. Did you know this? Did you ever know this? The absent presence of God’s supposed to be the thing keeps the churches going and it’s nothing but an absence of course, all it is is a pretense of a presence that isn’t there at all. The whole thing’s a political smokescreen with vestments on. And the politics they talk here in this bloody town isn’t so much politics as shite. And you’d think to listen to them they were over on the left bank of the Seine. Some of this crowd think they’re real bohemians, you know that? See them two over there?”
“Who?”
“Right behind you, them two you were talking to a minute ago.”
He turned his head to look at Aisling’s table and all astir I followed his gaze. The black leather was tight on her breasts and shoulders. She was in rapt conversation with her friend and her face was so pale and her eyes were bigger and bluer than I’d ever seen them. Why was that? Was it the short hair did it, made her eyes look that way, gave her the waif look? Maybe she wasn’t eating.
“Listen to them, they’re still at it. I could hear them every time Cole drew breath. They’re all for justice and they wouldn’t know what it was if it hit them up the fanny. Say nothing, just listen to them.”
I said nothing and listened. I listened to her voice and tasted her again.
“I always thought it was a work in progress but Audrey kept saying it was a betrayal of socialist principles.”
“See what I mean? Shite.”
“Shh. They’ll hear you.”
“It was just the way we were treated differently from the permanent ones, you know, the kibbutzniks. They’d all these privileges. But Rome wasn’t built in a day. I tried to tell —”
“Aye,” said Pearse swinging round to glare at her, had more than enough of it from the look of him, “and it’ll take a few more days for the bastards to wipe out the rest of the Palestinians so it will.”
Aisling turned her head in our direction. I lowered my eyes.
“Sorry, were you talking to me?” she asked. She was shaken but she wasn’t going to let it pass.
“Naw,” said Pearse, “I was talking about you.”
“Oh?”
“Aye, oh deary me. I couldn’t help hearing your sanctimonious claptrap. You and this Audrina one that were in the kibbutz splitting hairs over the rights yous were given, out there following the fashion with your phony do-gooding. Social equality, isn’t that what the thing’s supposed to be about? What the hell were yous doing in that bloody commune when the ones that worked their land in Palestine for hundreds of years have no equality at all? How would you like your olive groves that have been there for yonks cut down every turnabout? How would you like your house knocked down and your land and water taken off you? How in under fuck can you sit out there in a fucking kibbutz that’s supposed to be about Marxist principles when the Palestinians are treated like shite? I never heard anything so fucking ridiculous in my life.”
Aisling’s eyes flashed. “Who do you think you are to be making judgments —”
“I’m someone can see the wood for the trees, that’s who.”
“Have you ever been there?” she demanded.
“Don’t have to go. Would I want to go to South Africa when I know what the whites are doing to the blacks? Naw, and I wouldn’t want to go to your precious Israel either. Listen missy, can you name me another country that’s not an island that hasn’t got a border?”
Aisling stared at him, mouth open, beautiful, bemused. “And you know why they’ve no border between them and the Palestinians?” he said half shouting. “Because there’s no limit to what they intend to take. Like all the land they stole in the six-day war they organized. Sure their whole bloody rule comes from grubby deals.” He was holding his glass so tight you’d have thought it was going to break. “Tell us this and tell us no more. How many Palestinians did you see working in that kibbutz? How many?”
Her face was even paler now and she looked as if she was raring to go the second he took a breath which he didn’t look as if he was going to do. “You know why you saw none? Cause the Israelis wouldn’t have one about the place. Like who was it, what do you call him, Brookeborough, the last prime minister in this place before O’Neill, that’s what Brookeborough said about us. I wouldn’t have one about the place.”
“It’s not the same kind of thing!” These words from the dyke. Funny voice, squeaky wee voice, like a boy’s voice breaking, not what you’d have expected to look at her. Big ugly Adam’s apple on her, up and down as she spoke. Could be a man trapped in a woman’s body. I’ve heard of that, genitals tucked away inside.
Pearse turned his head sharply to take her in. “Aw aye it is, dear, it’s exactly the same kind of thing. It’s the same as the Brits did here with their penal laws and their plantations. I’d say from the look of the two of you you’re out marching for Catholic rights. Am I right? Am I?”
The last two words were so loud some heads turned.
“Take it easy Pearse,” I said laying my hand on his arm. “Keep your voice down.”
He pulled his arm violently away. “What the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck has it got to do with you?”
“I happen to know one of them and there’s no call for you —”
“We’re not out for Catholic rights. We’re not sectarian. How dare you!”
This was Aisling. There was a haze around her. Maybe it was my eyes that did it but there was a haze around her. The thought of her touch settled on my heart. We lay together embraced laughing the morning after the night I took her to casualty, the morning she rang the school pretending to be Mammy.
“Crowd of crooked landgrabbers, racist government, and yous can’t even see. Typical City Hotel socialists sipping your vodka and whites. Take your hand away from me Jerry boy. You can go and fuck the two of them if that’s what you want. As long as you know they can’t see past their noses.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding his arm again. He stood up and my hand fell away. “Best of luck citizens,” he said picking up his glass and emptying what was in it down his throat. He knocked against me as he went to go and then he was away, weaving between the tables.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“Is he a friend of yours?” said squareface.
“Well he works with me. He’d given up the drink but he’s obviously back on it again.”
“Obviously,” said squareface needlessly, implying by her tone that I was some kind of accessory.
“He’s a good fella when he’s sober but he was way out of order there. I’m sorry he insulted you.”
“Why should you be sorry?” Aisling pointed out. “It wasn’t your fault.” Paused. “Why don’t you sit here.”
Mutely I did just that, lifting my chair over and putting it down beside Aisling and away from her companion. Mutely because I was trembling and didn’t trust myself to speak. The dyke didn’t look too pleased.
“When did you hear about Audrey?” Aisling said hoarsely.
I swallowed, coughed and swallowed again. “Just tonight th
ere. Vinny told me when I came in. What an awful thing to happen.”
“She was taking a group of children up for some activities in Saint Thomas’s school in the Whiterock when a wall started to collapse. She pushed them out of the way and those two seconds were what …”
She tailed off and put her hand to her forehead. When she was ready to speak again she said: “She was the most generous person I ever met. Oh sorry, this is Frances, this is Jeremiah.” Frances with an e or Francis with an i? Our eyes met, gooseberries eyeballing each other.
“What will you have to drink?” I asked. “Aisling? Frances?”
Aisling waved a hand over her glass shaking her head and her friend seeing this did the same.
“We were actually thinking of going,” Aisling said. “We just came in for the one.” She started to get up. Her black leather skirt rose from behind the table, tight, pleated, hugging her. Frances stood and so did I. Body all aglow now I said: “I was just about to go myself. Sure I’ll walk up with yous.”
+++++
Everything quiet on the William Street front. Somebody was singing round a corner somewhere as we negotiated the scattered bricks and stones. Yellow Submarine. He could sing whoever he was. Better than the Beatle that sang it anyway, the drummer was it? Ringo Starr. Others joined in each time he came back to the chorus but they weren’t so good.
“You wouldn’t think there was a revolution going on,” said Aisling. Her shoulder kept touching mine as I walked between the two of them.
“I heard it was like that in Paris,” Frances said. She moved heavy in the black Crombie that covered her shapelessness. There’s money there. Unless of course she got it from some penitent capitalist via the Saint Vincent de Paul. “People would be sitting eating and drinking at tables outside restaurants and round the corner it was all happening.” She really had an unfortunate voice, falsetto nearly, expressionless, awful. The sound of her would have annoyed me even if I hadn’t thought she’d been lying with Aisling. “Margarita was telling me that time she came back. Margarita was there for the whole thing you know.”
