The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next)

by Colm Herron

  I felt a tingle every time her shoulder touched mine. Halos round the lights of the lampposts, frost in the air everywhere, excitement pulling at me. Funny thing about the sky that night, you could still see stars even with all the lights. I was looking up as the dyke was talking, trying to fix my mind on something else, and there was this particular star above the trees in the cathedral grounds that kept winking away. Stellar something they call that. It was on The Sky at Night but I can never take in half of what Patrick Moore is saying because his face distracts me. He’s talking about gases in the atmosphere and stuff and I’m trying to understand but I’m looking at him staring at me with one mad eye and the hair everywhere. Stellar constellation, that was it. To do with turbulence and I don’t know what else. The nearness of what could happen quickened my heart. And above the trees the spire pointed skywards, reminding, sentineled over the city.

  “Watch yourself,” said Aisling and gripped my arm. Christ that was a near one. Bloody bricks.

  “You could break your ankle here if you’re not careful,” she said and held my arm the rest of the way up to her flat. Above the trees the steeple pierced the blackness pointing skywards. My heart quickened, soaring.

  “She was arrested,” explained Frances, “and when the judge asked her name she said Rudi Dutschke, you know the German student leader that was shot, and he says That, miss, is a man’s name. What is your real name please? And she says Janek Litynski and the judge thought she said Janet and so did the clerk of the court and the clerk wrote it down.”

  “Jan Litynski that led the Polish revolution there in January?” Aisling was laughing. “They never heard of him?”

  “Never heard of him,” said Frances.

  Did you ever feel you couldn’t relate to what people were talking about? You could understand what they were saying but you couldn’t relate to it? Well the way they started going on then Aisling and your woman obviously felt they’d some kind of kinship with these ones in Berlin and Paris and Warsaw is it, whatever the capital of Poland is. Not that I cared mind you, I was too busy trying to keep my heart in order. But I remember now it was Pearse went on to me one time about how the situations in these places weren’t like each other at all and weren’t like here either. Difference of night and day, he said, these doctrinarians are making an artificial connection. Why would they do that? I asked him. Because they’re wankers, he said. On the other hand, if you listened to Eamonn McCann you’d start to wonder, although the same guy could probably convince a lecture hall of academics that the nineteen forty phone directory for Dublin was the first draft of James Joyce’s unfinished masterpiece. I heard him one night in the Gweedore Bar coming out with some weird stuff, weird but plausible that is, everything McCann says sounds plausible, about six degrees of separation and this middle eastern philosopher boy called Oz Moses. At least that’s what I thought he was saying and it was only when I said to Pearse What do you reckon about Oz Moses? and he said Osmosis? Yeah, interesting concept, that I caught on it wasn’t a man at all.

  Pearse knows a lot, probably he knows too much and that’s what’s wrong with him, too much knowledge being a dangerous thing as I heard a Redemptorist priest saying one time he came to give a retreat in the cathedral. Osmosis is supposed to be, he said, Pearse that is, about picking up information without realizing you’re doing it but there’s a whole lot of hooey talked about it too of course, like you and the world combining and crap like that.

  “Would you like to come in awhile?”

  We’d got to outside her flat and we were standing there looking at each other and Frances must have felt a bit out of it. We were looking at each other and I couldn’t read her face because it was in shadow but I’d say she could read mine with the light of the lamppost behind her shining right on me. I don’t know what my expression was but whatever it was I would have gone up those stairs on my knees if she’d asked me to.

  “May as well,” I said.

  The first thing I saw when I closed the door of the flat was Kitty Birch right in my face swinging on the hook. Kitty Birch, instrument of divine torture. Spanking new, Aisling told me laughing the first time she showed it to me. And still framed on the wall outside the bedroom door were me and the Royal Ulster Constabulary with their blurred batons over my head, frozen at ten past four, fifth of October, and me still hanging onto the no waiting sign.

  “Sit down there and I’ll get yous something. Let me see. I only have whiskey. Hold on, there’s a bit of Bacardi left. And I think there’s Coke in the fridge. What do you say?” She looked at me first. “A drop of whiskey would be great,” I said. No harm loosening up. Only the one though. Any more and.

  “I’ll have a rum and Coke thanks,” Frances said.

  Her squeaky voice was really getting to me. Everything about her was off-key, hair sticking up now like a squaddie in shock, face so pale you’d have thought she dipped it in a bag of flour, like gothic or something, shoulders up to her ears, eyes away back in her head, shapeless black jeans to go with the black polo she kept pulling up over her chin. That would be anxiety. Her night’s plans disrupted. I knew from the set of her face she could have seen me far but at the back of it all she was probably settling for three in the bed.

  Aisling was stooped getting Coke from the fridge. “I see you still have the photo on the wall,” I said, heart going like mad. The pleated leather skirt had come up a fair bit showing most of the back of her legs as she bent and when she turned she caught me looking and blushed. “If I was a believer,” she said smoothing her skirt, “I’m sure I’d have Saint Antony or somebody like that up there but seeing I’m not …”

  “I was talking to a cop the other day,” I told her, “down at Kevin McLaughlin’s. You know, the car dealer down the Buncrana Road.”

  “Right?” said Aisling. She handed us the drinks and sat beside the table-lamp which she then lighted. Her face had got thinner, I could see that now, and it wasn’t just the urchin hair that did it. And very pale. Ruby lipstick she had on brought out the paleness.

  “Aye, friendly guy and all.”

  “Why, does that surprise you?” said Frances. “That he was friendly?” She was challenging me. Looking back on it now it wasn’t surprising. I was a man and a rival to boot and she’d probably made up her mind that I was an outsider of the left-wing loony club. I blinked at her with this perplexed look on my face trying to make her feel foolish. I might as well have been blinking at Lenin’s statue. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

  “You sounded as if you had them stereotyped, that’s all.”

  “Stereotyped?” Fuck her. I’d rather be doubly incontinent than heaving up against this one. “I don’t know where you got that idea from.”

  “That friend of yours down in the hotel. I gathered you were bosom buddies the way you were defending him. Well, birds of a —”

  “I wasn’t exactly defending him dear. I was explaining him.”

  Her eyes flashed at the dear and Aisling intervened.

  “Hey you two, take it easy. What were you saying Jeremiah? God it’s cold, isn’t it? I’m just feeling it now so I am.” She rose quickly and clicked the superser twice and then sat down again. The blue and yellow flame appeared, flickered and steadied. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

  “Naw it was just that I changed to a Beetle recently and —”

  “Oh I didn’t know you’d changed. What’s it like?”

  “Great except when you’re turning a corner it’s like driving a ten ton lorry.”

  “I heard that about them. But they’re very dependable aren’t they?”

  “I dunno yet. I haven’t had it long enough yet to know.”

  “But you were saying anyway.”

  “Aye. This fella was asking me how I was managing with it and I told him I’d a problem getting used to the dip switch on the floor. You know the way in other cars you’ve got it up beside the steering. Anyway he started advising me about the dip because he had a Beetle himself an
d then he said I’m a policeman, maybe you won’t want to be talking to me when you hear that. I was sort of caught unawares and I said Not at all. I was thinking afterwards he could have been one of those guys up there on the wall.”

  Aisling laughed. That tinkle again. The waves of heat quivered in the cold air and the faint smell of gas brought back our first time, the night of the fifth.

  “Do you see what I was saying there about Margarita and all?” piped up the dyke, effortfully changing the subject. “I don’t care what anybody says, there’s an energy in these things, it’s like a force, why else would all these movements be happening at the one time?”

  So much for me and the friendly cop. This was weighty stuff.

  “I agree,” said Aisling. “I think it’s going to be unstoppable. It’s like what Marx and Rosa Luxemburg dreamed of. What’s this it was she said? The socialist proletariat are going to be the gravediggers of world capitalism?”

  “That’s exactly right,” said Frances, blockhead up and down like a piston. “The socialist proletariat are going to be the gravediggers of world capitalism. Things that are fights for survival at the start turn into revolutions. And they all become connected. They intersect, that’s the thing.”

  What are they anyway? Do they ever listen to themselves? My eyes fell for a moment on the worn carpet where she’d stood wet from the shower and the pink halter neck plastered to her skin. She’d shaken with laughter against me and I’d felt her damp in my shirt and trousers.

  “Frances is doing a doctorate on Roger Casement you know,” she said.

  That figures. That’s the boy got young black men to bugger him night and day.

  “Right enough?” I said. “I did a bit on him.”

  “Where was that?” asked Frances without interest.

  “Ah, A-level history. And I’ve read newspaper articles about him since. Very interesting man.”

  “A-level history?” Same deadpan squeak.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well this is an in depth study. It’s going to take me three years. I’ve just finished my Masters.”

  Bully for you bitch.

  “Frances knows just about everything there is to know about Casement,” said Aisling.

  “That’s brilliant,” I lied. “What was it attracted you to him?”

  “His evolution I suppose. And no matter what he did he put his heart and soul into it. You know about his time in the Congo don’t you? I expect you covered that.”

  Not everything. Not the messy details.

  “You probably remember that Leopold of Belgium turned the Congo into his own private colony and called it the Congo Free State. Well it was a million times less free than even the so-called Free State we have over the border here. It was a massive labor camp and I’m sure you know he murdered millions of people just so he could get a fortune out of the rubber and copper there. Do you remember learning that? His mercenaries burned thousands of villages and every single time they did that they trussed up the women spreadeagled in such a way they could be conveniently raped.”

  I nodded mechanically as if all this was old hat. Was that relish in her voice? Yes it was. She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. Not a pleasant sight but out of the corner of my eye I knew that Aisling was gazing steadfastly at her. Admiringly? I didn’t want to look.

  “They made the village men watch the raping going on and then they told them it wouldn’t stop till the men went into the jungle and brought back so many hundredweight of rubber from the wild vines. It seems this was a terrible painful thing to do and took forever. And usually of course they weren’t able to bring enough back and that meant they all got their throats cut, women as well as men. The children were forced to sit and watch all this and then they got the same. Throats cut,” she added helpfully.

  “That’s awful,” Aisling said.

  Frances was pleased with the impact. She smiled hungrily at Aisling, mouth gaping smiling but no smile in her eyes that I could see, hidden eyes hiding her thoughts. I thought how strange the human mind that someone of Aisling’s beauty and refinement could allow herself to be pawed by this monstrosity. Ones like her used to go away and stay locked in convents but there’s more of them at large now, more and more of them every time you turn round. Can’t get a man for love or money so they make friendships with lonely girls and before you know it.

  “Anyway,” said Frances, “Casement was appointed by the British government to find out what was going on and his report put a stop to Leopold’s Free State.” She sighed a put on sigh. “If ever there was a misnomer that was it.”

  It was then the nerves got to me because I didn’t think I could listen any longer to that freak whining out her data. “Casement’s time in Africa turned him anti-British, right?” I blurted.

  “Well it wasn’t as simple as that,” she said to Aisling. “There were stages. He was sort of crazy mixed-up when he was a teenager. He thought British rule should be everywhere no matter what it took but Charles Stewart Parnell was his hero at the same time. And you can’t get much more crazy mixed-up than that. I’d say it was really the Boer war and the British concentration camps that changed him and of course straight after this he was sent to the Congo and that put the tin lid on it, he was an anti-imperialist from then on. What was it he wrote when the Brits sent him to South America?”

  It wasn’t really a question. From her tone you knew you were going to have to wait for that particular piece of information. She breathed heavily while she remembered. Then it came. “I’m a queer sort of a British consul. I should really be in one of their jails instead of under the Lion and Unicorn.”

  “Sounds like the name of a pub,” I said. Nerves again.

  She stared at me, forehead furrowed with exaggerated irritation. “Do you know what the Lion and Unicorn are?”

  “Well I used to drink in a place with a name very like that every payday the summer I worked in Forte’s Coffee House in Piccadilly. It was round the corner in Leicester Square. Now I think of it that was the name and all. Nearly next to the Mitre bar where Charles Laughton used to drink.”

  “You don’t know what they are, don’t you not? They’re symbols of the United Kingdom, the lion and the unicorn are symbols of the United Kingdom.” She shook her head.

  The bitch wasn’t getting away with it. I’d tell her a thing or two she didn’t know.

  “Our history teacher reckoned Casement was unhinged,” I said. Bingo, better effect than I could have hoped for. Black sockets widened till they seemed to take up about a quarter of her face, mouth open like a dead flounder. So far so good.

  “Aye, I remember him saying he was a typical Protestant convert to the Irish Nationalist cause. How’s this now he put it?”

  I actually couldn’t remember how he’d put it but that wasn’t going to stop me. “Full of guilt,” I said, “for the way England treated Ireland and hadn’t a clue how the ordinary Prod felt about all these uprisings.”

  She was speechless. I’d got her speechless. I was on a roll, no question.

  “Do you know where he was captured?” I said this eyeing her steadily.

  The dark pits were impassive but the mouth had started to move, still didn’t speak though.

  “I was actually there.”

  “Is that right?” encouraged Aisling nervously. “Where?”

  “The Centre Spot restaurant up in Letterkenny. I’ve eaten there. Casement was caught in it by British forces. It was actually Laird’s Hotel then. He was sitting in French uniform having his breakfast and a guy that used to study law with him recognized him and informed.” Stick that in your fucking pipe dyke.

  She didn’t just stick it in her pipe, she smoked it furiously and then knocked the ashes out on top of my head while they were still hot. “Really? Did you say you studied this? You’re about a hundred and twenty years and four hundred miles out friend. You’re thinking of Wolfe Tone. Roger Casement was captured at McKenna’s fort in Kerry. Christ.”
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br />   Aisling to the rescue. “Time for a refill,” she said and hurried to the worktop. “Here, give us your glass there,” and came over to me, hand outstretched, not taking no for an answer kind of way.

  “Thanks Aisling. A tiny taste will do me.” I hadn’t intended taking any more but being a little shaken just then I didn’t argue.

  She took my glass to where the bottle was and poured in far too much. “Oops. Sorry about that Jeremiah. I’m sure you won’t complain though.” She gave me the drink, eyes lingering, fingers lingering, fingers closing over my knuckles.

  “Frances?” she said turning part of the way round to her friend sitting there with a face of stone on her, I’d say because Aisling’s hand was still on mine, absentmindedly like.

  “I think I’ll go to my bed” was the answer she got and with that the black mass began to haul itself out of the armchair.

  My bed. Her bed. There was only one bed in the flat and that was through the door to my right.

  “Stay where you are sure,” said Aisling quickly. “What’s your hurry anyway? Here, take a wee Bacardi.” And she took her hand from mine and went and pushed Frances playfully back. Relenting at the touch the gargoyle subsided.

  “All right then, just the one more,” she said.

  Drinks served, Aisling went back beside the lamp. I knew she was looking for something safe to say, something light that wouldn’t raise hackles. Not an easy thing to do because trivialities that keep the rest of us going half the time seemed to have no place on this bitch’s agenda, not even under any other business. The silence was long and getting longer when Aisling broke it.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to go on the People’s Democracy march with Audrey not there,” she said. She put her hand quickly to her forehead. More than the ruby lipstick it was the light from the lamp now I think that made her paler even than she was. And made her dyed hair look flaxen too, like one of those Dutch girls Vermeer painted. Girl with a Pearl Earring, that was the one I’m nearly sure. The sultry wench who posed for as long as he needed. Except it was those big hoops Aisling had on, whatever they call them, like tarnished silver circles coming down nearly to her shoulders. Only ever saw her in earrings once before and she was beautiful in them, the night, yes, the night she had her hair up and I took it down and she let me undress her.