The Last Crossing

by Brian McGilloway

  Chapter Six

  ‘Another one,’ the steward called, gesturing that they should continue up the slipway into the belly of the ferry. He walked backwards, facing them as he waved with one hand, the other holding a walkie-talkie to his ear. Tony reckoned he was about eighteen and wondered absently if it was his first day on the job, he did it with such earnest concentration.

  Barr shifted the car into first to make the incline, over-accelerating while still holding the clutch so that, when the car did finally move, it shunted suddenly forwards and cut out. The youth cursed under his breath, his movements as he tried to shift the gear back into neutral agitated and imprecise, as if embarrassed to have made the mistake under Duggan’s glare.

  Tony twisted his head and looked back out across Belfast port and towards Black Mountain and Cavehill, looming above the grey city, the upper peaks wrapped in a mist which here, lower down, had dissolved into a miasma of rain that smeared the windscreens.

  The last time he’d headed across, he’d left from Larne and the ferry had been slower. He craned his neck to see down to the departure area. Karen was getting on as a foot passenger and meeting them on the boat; he wondered if he might catch a glimpse of her, though he realised that now, thirty years on, he might not even recognise her. He didn’t want to admit to himself that his real curiosity was whether or not someone would bring her to the boat; a husband or a child perhaps.

  Below him, he could see people embracing: a younger man sending off an older couple. He embraced each of them for so long, Tony wondered what was behind their parting.

  The ferry was quiet, those choosing to travel mid-week mostly middle-aged women taking a mini booze cruise across to Scotland. They’d not even disembark on the either side, but sit in the bar all day, have breakfast, lunch and dinner on board and be back home before midnight. Tony glanced across at one group, all women in their sixties, and, momentarily, he envied them their freedom.

  They’d taken a seat at the front of the ship, by the window. Barr was speaking earnestly about their plans for the next two days, but Tony wasn’t listening. He thought Karen would already be here, had found himself scanning the faces of every woman he passed on the way from the car, on the off-chance she was already waiting.

  He’d announced he didn’t think she was coming, to which Barr had replied that she still had twenty minutes to embark. Duggan seemed to have stopped listening to the youth too.

  Finally, as if aware that the older men had lost interest in him, Barr lowered his voice a little and gathered his hands in front of him, as if to signify something important was to be discussed.

  ‘The party appreciates what you’re doing, gents.’

  Duggan glanced at him askance. ‘Sean Mullan tell you that? That he appreciates?’

  Barr smiled, patiently. ‘We know some of you are a little resistant–’

  Duggan laughed derisively. ‘Time was, you put some fucker in the ground, you left him there. Not anymore.’

  ‘People like Martin are a source of embarrassment now. Our own that we stopped having a proper burial.’

  ‘A source of embarrassment?’ Duggan repeated. ‘Is that what we are?’

  Barr hesitated a moment, as if trying to find an appropriate angle from which to rephrase his comment.

  ‘That’s not what I meant, Mr Duggan,’ he said. ‘But someone like Martin, dead thirty years and his family never getting a chance to bury him; it doesn’t work well for the party.’

  ‘Doesn’t work well for the party?’ Duggan echoed, incredulous.

  ‘The optics aren’t good for us,’ Barr started, already flustered.

  ‘The only fucking optics you should be worried about are those ones behind that bar,’ Duggan snapped. ‘Get in a few whiskeys,’ he added, ‘and spare us all your bullshit about the party.’

  Barr nodded, took a moment to spare his own dignity, then got up and headed across to the service area, Duggan chuckling at his willingness to do as he was told.

  ‘So it isn’t you I have to thank for making me sit here listening to this crap?’ he asked.

  Tony shook his head. ‘Like I said, I thought it was you,’ he said.

  Duggan raised an eyebrow sceptically. ‘Why would I want that?’

  ‘Maybe it was Karen?’

  Duggan shrugged. ‘Who contacted you?’

  Tony nodded to where Barr stood, placing his order. ‘The young fella. You?’

  ‘Sean Mullan,’ Duggan said.

  Tony nodded. He’d not spoken to any of them in thirty years; had seen Mullan only once since Martin Kelly’s death and that had been a coincidence; Mullan had been canvassing during one of the elections and had called at his door, looking for his vote. It had been Ann who’d answered. She’d given him fairly short shift. Tony had heard the disagreement and had come to the door, tea towel over his shoulder from the dishes he’d been drying.

  Mullan had glanced at him, then looked a second time, more closely. Tony could see he was trying to work out how he recognised him, where he had last seen him. Then the expression softened, as he must have placed the younger man. He’d nodded lightly at Tony, thanked Ann for her time and headed back down the drive and on to the next house.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Ann had asked.

  ‘From years ago,’ Tony had said. ‘He came to Danny’s funeral.’

  ‘He gives me the creeps,’ Ann said. ‘All softly spoken and polite, wearing loafers.’

  Tony had laughed at the time. ‘I didn’t even notice what he was wearing. What have loafers to do with it?’

  Ann considered the question, her eyes wrinkling at the corners as she smiled at her own comment. ‘It just seems wrong. A man like him wearing something as ordinary as loafers, like a regular person.’

  Tony frowned quizzically.

  ‘A man who orders other people dead. You’d think he’d be recognisably different from the rest of us.’

  Tony had straightened a little, did so even now as he thought of the conversation.

  ‘That idea that you could be talking to someone and not even know that they’d once killed another person. That gives me the creeps.’

  She smiled, satisfied that she’d rationalised her thoughts to herself, then padded back into the kitchen. Tony followed slowly behind.

  ‘He’s Mullan’s nephew,’ Duggan explained now, nodding at Barr.

  Tony nodded his head a little, as if indifferent to the information. ‘I guess Mullan himself is a little too important to be wandering around woodlands in the middle of Scotland.’

  ‘He was always too important. That’s why he had the likes of me,’ he said, then added after a slight pause. ‘And you.’

  Tony smiled mildly, more at the pause than the comment. ‘How have you been?’

  ‘I’m still above ground and breathing,’ Duggan muttered. ‘What more can you want?’

  Tony nodded. He wondered whether the man was married, had children, grandchildren. But he also realised that he didn’t really care enough to ask and, more importantly, wasn’t sure Hugh Duggan would even want to tell him.

  ‘When did you come back home?’

  ‘A few years after you,’ Duggan said. ‘Once the heat over the guy done in retaliation for your brother had passed.’

  In all the time they had spent in each other’s company, all those years past, Duggan had rarely mentioned Danny or the policeman shot on the day of his funeral. Tony was surprised that he did so now, as if inviting him to question it further.

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘I was building for a while until the recession killed it all off. You?’

  Tony folded his arms. ‘I taught for another few years, then my wife took sick and I had to leave altogether.’

  ‘How is she now?’

  ‘She’s a … She passed away,’ Tony said, simply.

  Duggan nodded. ‘You’re lucky. My two ex-wives are both still alive and bleeding me for every fucking penny they can get.’ He cleared his throat, sitting
back in the seat, his arm stretched across the back of it and the seat next to him.

  Tony regarded the man, trying to find some redeeming feature. His lack of empathy over Ann’s death was unsurprising, but nonetheless hurtful. He remembered why, by the time he left Scotland thirty years ago, he’d despised the man.

  ‘Tell me this,’ Duggan said, leaning forward suddenly. ‘After the whole thing with Kelly, did anyone ever come after you? Were you ever questioned?’

  Tony was a little shaken by Duggan’s earnestness, could sense there was something else at play here which he could not yet grasp.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never.’

  ‘Never?’

  Tony shook his head. ‘You?’

  ‘Not for any of what happened,’ he said. ‘They got me for something else when I came back, but nothing over Kelly.’

  Tony nodded vaguely.

  ‘Do you not think that’s a bit strange?’ Duggan asked, leaning back in his seat, as if his point should now be evident.

  ‘Strange?’ Tony asked, but the question remained unanswered, for Duggan’s attention had shifted.

  ‘Here we go. You keep it in your pants, big man,’ Duggan added, nodding indicatively towards the entrance to the lounge where a slim figure stood, surveying the room.

  Despite his expectation of her arrival, seeing her still took him a little by surprise so that, instinctively, he exclaimed, ‘Karen!’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Karen,’ someone called. Tony watched as the girl in question twisted, raising her wine glass to indicate to her friend, who’d been standing in the doorway of the kitchenette, what drink she wanted.

  The room, which might comfortably have seated eight, throbbed with the heat of over thirty bodies crammed together, those standing bouncing in rhythm with ‘Pump Up the Volume’ which blared from a pair of tinny speakers on the flat’s windowsill.

  She noticed Tony and returned his gaze, once, for a second or two longer than necessary, before looking back at the girl next to her, who was in full flow of conversation. Tony felt his stomach twist a little, felt a tingling deep inside him at her glance.

  ‘Strange we both ended up here, eh?’

  Tony’s attention was drawn away from the girl, Karen, and back to Hugh Duggan who sat opposite him at the breakfast bar.

  ‘In Scotland?’

  ‘Aye, I suppose. And at this party,’ Duggan said.

  Tony had been across over two months. His father had arranged for him to live with his uncle and aunt in Paisley, just outside Glasgow. He’d headed into a bar in the Barras for a night out and met someone from Derry, who’d invited him back to a house party.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘What brought you across?’ Duggan asked.

  ‘My ma and da didn’t want me staying in Derry. I think they thought either the cops would keep at me, or else that I’d do something stupid and get involved or something.’

  Duggan smiled. ‘And would you have?’

  Tony frowned, the conversation moving faster than he could quite follow.

  ‘Would I have what?’

  ‘Got involved.’

  Tony glanced back at the girl again, hoping he might catch her eye. She was sipping from her wine glass, watching her friend intently. But she seemed to be aware of his gaze, for she straightened slightly, tossed her hair back from her face and, at the last moment, stole another glance at him, a smile playing on her lips for a second before she took another mouthful of wine.

  ‘Maybe,’ Tony said, absently.

  ‘Did they hold you long, that night?’ Duggan asked.

  It took a second for Tony to refocus on the conversation and realise to which night Duggan was referring.

  ‘Nah. I was out at dawn. You?’

  ‘A bit later than that,’ Duggan said. ‘They held me the guts of the three days.’

  ‘Jesus, why?’

  ‘They must have thought they’d get something on me eventually. Fuckers think they can wear you down.’

  Karen finished the last of her wine and, a little unsteadily, stood and began picking her way towards the kitchen. Tony drained his pint and stood. ‘I’m going to grab a drink. Do you fancy something?’

  ‘Not as much as you, obviously,’ Duggan said, glancing past him to where Karen squeezed her way through the mass of partygoers. ‘I’d keep it in your pants, big man. She’s a cold one.’

  Tony nodded in acknowledgment of the advice even as he dismissed it. He pushed his way through the group near him and made his way into the kitchen. Karen was standing at the sink, examining the boxes of wine set up there.

  He could see her better now. She was lithe, medium height, her brown hair loose and curling around her shoulders. She stood with her head cocked to one side, studying the choices in front of her. When Tony spoke, she turned to him, a smile already ghosting her lips, her eyebrows raised suggestively.

  ‘What kind of wine do they have?’ Tony asked.

  ‘It’s a Chilean Chardonnay,’ she said. ‘1986.’

  ‘I meant was it red or white,’ Tony asked, deliberately thickening his Derry accent.

  ‘You’re on the beer anyway,’ she said, laughing. ‘You shouldn’t mix the grain and the grape.’

  ‘I’d offer to buy you one, but it’s free. Can I pour you a drink?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m Karen,’ she said.

  ‘I know. I heard your friend calling you.’

  ‘I noticed,’ Karen said. ‘That was a subtle way of asking you your name.’

  ‘I’m a Derry man,’ Tony said. ‘Subtlety is wasted on us. Tony Canning.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Tony Canning.’

  Later, someone produced a guitar in the living room and, as the conversations died, they started singing rebel songs. Tony and Karen stood together at the entrance to the kitchen and listened. At one point, as she shifted to allow someone to pass her, she pressed against him, their arms touching, the heat of the skin of her arm electric against his, her hand hanging loose, her fingers brushing against his fingers. He looked at her and she smiled, though the contact did not go any further and, after a moment, she shifted wine glass from one hand to the other as she joined in the chorus of ‘The Ould Triangle’, her voice soft and light.

  After one, she told him that she had to go home.

  ‘Are you far?’

  ‘A mile or so,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the night bus.’

  ‘I’ll walk you,’ Tony offered.

  ‘The bus is quicker. And safer.’

  ‘I’ll come with, if you like. I’m out that way myself.’

  She raised a disbelieving eyebrow, then laughed lightly and nodded. ‘If you like.’

  The streets were busy, the bars spilling out their customers on to the streets, taxi queues stretching off the pavements, the air rich with the scent of spices from the kebab shop they passed. Police officers milled about in pairs, high-visibility jackets and soft caps. It still took Tony by surprise to see them unarmed, without bullet-proof vests and an army escort. This, he thought with a stab of resentment, must be what it’s like living somewhere normal.

  Karen walked beside him, her arms wrapped round herself for heat, the light jacket she wore no respite from the deepening chill of the early spring night. Tony walked close beside her, hoping to recreate the physical proximity of the party, but she hugged herself tighter. Finally, he took off his coat and draped it round her shoulders. She smiled, gratefully, staggered a little, whether with the wine, or her heels, or by design, and he found his arm around her, her body, still shivering lightly, close beside his.

  They waited for the bus together, sitting side by side on the plastic seat in the shelter. Once, he felt he might have a chance to kiss her. He’d told some story about a party at university, one that even he realised lacked any real punchline or relevance to anyone who had not been in attendance at the time. Yet she had held his gaze, her head tilted a little to one side, her brown hair falling across her eyes so that she had to try
to blow it away with a puff of her breath. He leaned towards her, saw an almost imperceptible change in her expression, then saw a more obvious shift as she stood. ‘The bus is here,’ she said.

  On the bus, she sat across two seats, her back against the window, her legs outstretched, her feet just over the edge of the seat. Tony swung into the seat behind her and, leaning on the handrail, continued their conversation. But the opportunity to kiss had passed. He’d paid for the bus for them both and now handed her one of the tickets. She took it, then returned it to him. ‘You can keep it,’ she said. ‘My gift to you.’

  ‘You’re all heart,’ Tony laughed, taking the ticket back, putting it in his pocket, his own balled up and lying on the floor.

  In the brighter light of the bus, he could see her better now and realised that her eyes were two different colours, one green, one a light hazel.

  ‘I’m a chimera,’ she laughed when he told her this.

  ‘I’m a Gemini,’ he said. ‘What’s a chimera?’

  ‘I’ve two sets of DNA. I think it means that I was to be twins in my mother’s womb but we merged or something. Or I ate my twin.’

  ‘That’s gross,’ Tony said, pantomiming disgust as he sat back in his seat, away from her.

  ‘My daddy used to say to me, to tell any boys I met when I grew up that I ate my own twin. That I was not to type of girl to mess with.’