Inch Levels

by Neil Hegarty

  Patrick turned to his sister.

  ‘Maybe we should go home.’ His instincts were singing still higher now: a thin, shrilling whine filling the inside of his skull.

  Margaret paused.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s just wait, why don’t we, and listen to the speeches from here.’ She gestured to the coal lorry in the distance. There would be loudspeakers: they’d hear every word from here. And they had the wall as a sort of shelter. Not too many people would congregate here, not many would want to, most of the marchers would want to be in the thick of it, wouldn’t they? ‘This is grand,’ she said. They agreed to wait here, in this narrow slot. ‘Happy birthday to me,’ she said.

  *

  They were huddled, twelve or fourteen or sixteen of them now, behind the phone box, beside the wall: neither phone box nor wall nor rubble barricade nor the great frowning side of the block of flats could provide anything like adequate shelter, of course – but nor could anywhere else. There was steep Chamberlain Street, just ahead, a route up and away to safety – but no, because an immensity of ground lay between it and them. Not that there was shelter anywhere from the snipers, not from the bullets slicing through the air, coming from this direction or that direction, nobody could tell from where. From every direction, maybe: for the air was crackling with rifle shots, crackling with tension, crackling with a dreadful, infectious fear. No: no shelter anywhere, but they must stay here, beside this phone box, beside the wall. They dared not make a run for it.

  This is all my fault, Margaret thought as she cowered there, on her knees behind the phone box. If Patrick is killed today, it will be my fault.

  The air was poisoned too. She could smell the gas – they could all smell it, for there was coughing all around, retching combined with screaming, and gunshots and the deafening clatter of a helicopter overhead. From time to time, people ran past, making a bolt for it – but where? She stayed there, then, on her knees on the stone-strewn footpath, with Patrick on his knees in front of her, and an inferno of smoke and poison and the reports of gunshots filling the air.

  The destined bullet found its target in front of her. A man, a man she did not recognise, had straightened up beside her: he had been sheltering there with her, part of this terrified group in the lee of the phone box – but now he straightened up beside her and took a step, two steps away from what seemed to be safety. She saw why: there was another man lying there, perhaps ten feet away – no more – on open, rubble-strewn ground. He’d been shot, but was clearly still alive, for he had moved a little now and again in these last few frightful minutes. And now: ‘I can’t stand it anymore,’ her companion said: and he straightened up and took a step, two steps, and died, the bullet entering through one side of his head and exiting at the other, just at his right eye. The eye exploded outwards – Margaret saw this happening only a few feet from where she crouched by the phone box – and blood and matter flew in the air and struck the wall; and the man fell to the ground. Now there were two bodies on the ground in her direct line of vision; and the sound of human screaming was louder than ever; this and the sound of the helicopter overhead filled her brain. And she reached out and grasped Patrick’s shoulder and pulled him back, hard, as he in turn made as if to lunge forward to help the dead man. ‘He’s dead, he’s dead,’ she hissed. ‘He’s already dead.’ She pulled Patrick back, hard – and now he was flat on his back, and the women in the crowd gathered around his prone body as though to shield him, or to sit on him, to stop him making a second attempt. They formed a phalanx, though there was no need: Patrick stayed on the ground and made no further attempt to move. The whole world was constricted now into these few feet of grey pavement, strewn with rubble and marked with blood and shadowed by the bleak wall of the nearest block of flats. It was only a temporary respite: they were coming for her and for Patrick; to pump bullets into her head too and into her brother’s head. This grey pavement is where we will die, this afternoon; and it will be my fault.

  *

  The tea trolley rattled in the corridor. A sister rapped an instruction, a nurse turned with a squeak of a heel and clipped away. The door opened.

  ‘Tea, love?’

  But there was no movement from the blue bed, no acknowledgement.

  ‘Or is it coffee?’ A pause.

  What did their mother imagine, how did she feel, that day in Derry as the news began to spread out across the city, from street to street, from house to house? Easy enough to guess: the point is, though, that they had to guess, Margaret and Patrick, because their mother never said. They were obliged to guess. She never described or articulated. Not a word, in all the years that followed.

  And Cassie, following her lead, said nothing either: she merely looked and watched and listened.

  An aggrieved sigh, and the door closed again. No tea this afternoon.

  *

  The front door opened, and closed. There was a short silence – and then the rustle of coats and scarves being shed. Cassie moved first, from the kitchen where she was stationed, looking out into the empty back garden, twisting and twisting a tea towel in her hands. The news had spread. A telephone call, and the flurried arrival at the front door of a neighbour, another neighbour. The distant wail of sirens and the clatter of a helicopter: all noises par for the course – but the neighbour had got wind of something more, today, something greater. Sarah looking and looking again at the front door: though what did she think she would see? Nothing to see, Cassie thought. But useless to say anything: better to stay quiet and wait for the news to come in.

  And then the front door opened and the children appeared, and took their coats off. Cassie dropped the tea towel, she felt herself move forward, as though on wheels: through the kitchen and into the hall and she herself said nothing, thought nothing, only felt a wash of relief course through her. Her head was light, her heart was beating painfully.

  ‘We’re alright, Cassie,’ said Margaret and she took Cassie’s hand and tried to lead her back into the kitchen, to sit her down. Everything was alright now, wasn’t it? But Cassie could see the expression in her eyes and the whiteness of her skin, and now she glanced back at Patrick, and his expression and pallor were the same: set, fixed with shock and horror. ‘We’re alright, Cassie,’ said Margaret again. But Cassie felt now a pulse of – something, of terrible recognition. A gust of her own memories: and now she sat, and Patrick, responding, rattled the kettle and familiar sounds took over; and now Sarah bustled down the hall and into the kitchen and asked if everyone is – and you need a cup of tea – and what happened? And the story began to be told, and Cassie closed her eyes. I know what happened, she thought. She thought: it is always the same story.

  She kept her gaze on the floor, for fear of what she might see if she looked up, and at Sarah.

  And when on the following day, on the Monday morning when the man arrived to deliver and hang the new living-room curtains – yellow-gold, and heavy, handsome curtains – Sarah threw him out of the house. She gave him his marching orders: and only Cassie there as witness.

  If the children had only been in the house, if they had only been there to see and hear this for themselves, they might have changed their minds about poor Sarah. A little, anyway: they might have given her more credit.

  ‘Served them right,’ said the man. ‘What were they doing there, anyway? Looking for trouble, that’s what. They had it coming to them, so they did.’ Brazenly. Cassie’s head swam.

  Sarah had ordered the curtains at vast expense. ‘They’ll last us a lifetime, Cassie,’ she’d told her, a little defensively, ‘they’ll have to.’ But she looked now at the man standing on his stepladder – the department store made the curtains to measure, and lined them, and delivered them, and hung them too, bringing their own stepladder, filling the room with a golden glow; it was a full service – and now suddenly she took the man’s metal measuring tape that lay nearby and flung it into his face; and he teetered, there on the ladder.

  Well, what di
d he expect?

  The man uttered an oath, but he had no time to say anything more, for Sarah’s tones stopped the words in his mouth. ‘Take your curtains, and get out of my house,’ she said, ‘and don’t come back.’ The man descended the steps, and she took them and pulled them through the hall, and opened the door and flung the ladder out of it; and the folded curtains after them; and the man said not another word and was gone inside two minutes.

  They managed without any curtains for a few weeks and Sarah made an excuse to the family, and the story was never told. I wish she would tell it, Cassie thought. It might change some minds.

  *

  Cassie.

  Well, of course Patrick was thinking about Cassie.

  He thought about her each time they came through the wards with the tea, the coffee, with the Digestive biscuit balanced on the saucer: tea and coffee and Cassie went together with an absolute inevitability. She provided layers of – something in his childhood. Of what? Strangeness and comfort combined. Strangeness, for she seemed to put something of a spoke in the wheel of a nuclear family: mother and father and two bright children. Although that was an exceptional fact in itself: that was a strange sort of family, at that time and in that place. What? – only two children? Catholic families tended to aim for the stratosphere when it came to children, with six, seven, ten the usual numbers; Cassie’s presence, then, provided just one more layer of strangeness to an already strange situation.

  But comfort too: always there, always rattling around. Making up for what their mother could or would not provide.

  She was an orphan: he and Margaret knew this. She had been slotted into their mother’s family – ‘placed’, they would say now – back in the summer of 1937. She was sixteen at this time, their mother some years younger. This much of the story had they pieced together over the years: slowly, looking through paperwork and gleaning the occasional slender fact from their mother herself. Her own mother had died in the spring of the year: her father would normally – this was the Irish way – have been expected to find himself another wife, and fast, with the resources of the community placed at his disposal to locate one and seal the deal as soon as could be arranged.

  But it turned out that their unknown grandfather wasn’t in the mood. He didn’t want to find himself another wife: he had been more than satisfied with his first one, and didn’t much care for the idea of a substitute. His house needed a woman’s touch though, that was certain, and his own daughter was still too young to do what was needed.

  These were the facts, put together slowly.

  ‘The nuns sent her,’ their mother said: and Patrick and Margaret, whispering and imagining, came to see a huddle of nuns, all habits and wimples, crape and veils, black and white, cooking up a conspiracy between them. This solution? – to pluck a likely-looking girl from the county orphanage and establish her in their grandfather’s house as cook, housekeeper, washerwoman and general help. Someone not uppity, someone who could be relied upon not to get ideas above her station. They imagined that to the nuns who ran the orphanage, their grandmother’s early death must have been quite a blessing, no two ways about it.

  Cassie would do! Cassie was immediately lined up to step in. What an answer to prayer! Sure, what else would she be fit for?

  Cassie: a little slow, a little dreamy, and a dab hand with pastry. The children loved her: she was their fixed, calm centre. They exploited her every opportunity that came along: exploited her goodness to the hilt, running rings around her, demanding she make cakes and soup and sandwiches. She existed to service their needs.

  Although sometimes they bit off a little too much.

  *

  Patrick placed his hands on the counter-top – and sprang, lifted himself. Then knelt and reached for the biscuit cupboard. His mother had slipped something in here earlier – something: a packet of biscuits, of chocolate, he’d watched her from the doorway. Now she was gone, away for an hour or two. ‘Back in an hour, Cassie,’ he heard her say. Gone to the butcher?

  Gone, anyway: now the coast was clear. Now he and Margaret had the place to themselves. Cassie wouldn’t mind, Cassie didn’t count.

  The package was there. Blue, with white stripes. Sweeties. Maybe mints? They were new: he’d never seen them before. The Rich Tea tin was there too, but he knew already that there was nothing to be found there. Only old, soft biscuits. Nobody would want them.

  He felt Margaret behind him and turned, precarious on the counter-top; his knees hurting already from the press of the hard surface on his kneecaps.

  ‘You’re not allowed,’ Margaret told him piously – but he had his answer, flourishing the contraband package; and she moved forward, rapidly. ‘What are they?’ She examined the package. Goodies. ‘What are Goodies?’

  ‘Let’s open them and see.’

  In a moment, the package was ripped open. Little discs of chocolate, with an odd powdery bloom – but chocolate just the same. And now they heard Cassie in the hall. Her soft slippers flapping on the wooden floor, as always. She shuffled through the hall, she came into the kitchen.

  Very short, very small. Patrick was almost taller than she was, already; Margaret was taller, definitely. They measured their height, last week, then measured Cassie – and how they had crowed with triumph.

  Now, they didn’t bother to hide the package of Goodies. Cassie wasn’t their mother: she wouldn’t snatch, she wouldn’t raise her voice, she wouldn’t skite them across the legs. Most likely she wouldn’t do anything at all.

  ‘We found them, Cassie,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Goodies,’ read Cassie.

  ‘Do you want one?’ he asked generously. But she shook her head and smiled a little.

  ‘I’ll have a cup of tea instead,’ she said, and she flapped softly across to the sink, filled the kettle, looked out of the window. The garden was alive.

  *

  The garden is alive. There’s the sun shining on the water in the bird bath that she filled early that morning, when she had the house to herself, the garden to herself, the birds shrilling and singing. Now the afternoon garden is silent, but still alive. The sunlight is white, thought Cassie, on the water; and green through the leaves. I’ll make some tea, she thought, and go outside for a few minutes; and leave them to it. And suddenly she laughed: she laughed and laughed, there at the sink, until a tear rolled down her cheek.

  The children stared. ‘What are you laughing about, Cassie?’

  She shook her head. She made her tea, still laughing, and went outside.

  *

  The chocolate buttons – the Goodies – tasted… strange. But definitely chocolate.

  Later, they were sick: both of them, just a little. ‘It’s your own fault,’ said their mother, ‘for sneaking around the kitchen the minute my back’s turned. And it’ll teach you to ask before you eat.’ She had given the Goodies to Roger, the black Labrador who lived over the garden wall. She had a soft spot for Roger, who was plump and friendly and glossy and who didn’t answer back; and she often bought him dog treats. The Goodies were new, but Roger liked them already. ‘You should have asked Cassie,’ added their mother, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves to clean up the little bit of vomit on the floor. ‘Ask next time.’

  *

  Sarah, who came to visit once or twice a week. Who ate grapes and crunched on the seeds. Who was very much alive: who had become the sort of person who was determined never to grow old, never die, who was determined to outlive the whole world.

  Patrick was trying to make sense of this, too. He was trying to make connections.

  His mother would outlive him. That’s pretty definite, he thought. That’s looking like a good bet. The rest of the world, he thought, I can’t speak for.

  She moved about these days in disguise. On a permanent basis. She had gone in for fleecy pastel wools in her widowhood: not quite shawls – that would be too weird – but cardies and scarves. Yes: to act as a disguise. And it seemed to work too. People treated her like
a sweet lady. In the past, she’d had an eye for expensive, hard-wearing tweed suits: the sort the rain would run off, as though it were metal-plated. It stood out, in a place like Derry: people would look at you, and that was presumably the point.

  Now, though, the nurse took one look at her pale blue or pale pink wool and rushed to fetch a cup of tea, to make a fuss of her. Patrick kept his eyes closed and refused to say a word. And prayed – in vain, needless to say – for the end to come: death, he thought, would be preferable to this.

  The day before, she had been on top form.

  *

  ‘Tea,’ said Sarah. ‘Tea would be lovely. If it isn’t too much trouble.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ he heard the nurse say. He heard her leave the room: he heard the door swing open, he heard it close, he heard shoes squeak into the distance. He kept his eyes shut. Other senses took over: he heard his mother sigh and settle herself in the high-backed chair; he smelled her disguise, her perfume of jasmine and rose.

  The disguise, he thought, is absolute. The room was silent.

  Presently, the nurse returned. A clink of a cup, a saucer, the tinkle of a teaspoon. The nurse was – she must be – busy: but his mother ensured, now, that she stopped what she was doing, that she follow up the cup of tea with conversation, with her time and energy channelled in a new direction. Any news on my son? – the first, polite question. No: the only one, for his mother held information at arm’s length: even now, in this extreme environment, where questions and the needs of others must be paramount. She sipped her tea and focused on her own concerns; and he heard the floor squeak and squeak again, as time ticked on dreadfully, as the jobs mounted up, as the nurse – he could sense it – grew more and more desperate to get away.