Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  “Where’s Tim?”

  “Playing football.”

  “Right, okay.”

  Monty went back to lifting and lugging. On one trip out, while he was carrying a big stuffed chair, Monty saw two girls in the uniform of Katie’s old school, telling her they would miss her in the debating club.

  “I’ll not be winning another round as long as I live, if you’re not there to prop me up!” one of the girls said to her.

  “You’re the best,” the other one said. “It’ll never be the same without ye. Sure you’re moving house, but why aren’t ye staying in the club anyway?”

  “It’s too far. I won’t be able to get there. And I have to mind this lot.” She pointed to her siblings.

  Monty heaved the chair into the van and came out again, to see the girls in a big group hug. The other two went off then, down the street, their arms around each other.

  Katie was in the doorway, trying to stem her tears. “Mortgage is a nasty-sounding word,” she said.

  “It is,” Monty agreed. He formed a picture in his mind of the mortgage holder of Vaudevillian times, wearing a sneer and a black top hat, twirling his moustache as the family was thrown out on the street.

  Normie was doing her best to help the other children get their stuff out, reassuring them that they’d see their friends and their old neighbourhood again. She looked like someone suffering from shell shock.

  When Brennan and Monty had loaded the beds, dressers, chairs, table, dishes, two trunks full of clothes, boxes of books and toys and all the other accoutrements of family life into the van, it was time to arrange transportation for the human cargo. There wasn’t room for nine people in the furniture van. Monty’s solution was to call for an airport-type taxi designed for multiple passengers. It was time to make the call. But one more thing . . .

  Monty cleared his throat and said to Katie, “Time to get Tim.”

  “I know.”

  She turned and walked down the street. Normie, Monty, and Brennan followed along behind her. They stopped at the field where the Clarkson Terrace Celtics played their home games. There was a goalmouth scramble happening when they arrived, all the players wriggling in a heap in front of the far goal. It was a cool day and the ground was wet from a shower; the players had their team jerseys on over jackets and sweatshirts. They were covered in mud. The boys looked up and saw the faces of doom waiting at the edge of the field. All of them, to a man, looked away.

  “Timmy Flanagan!” Katie called to her brother. “Come on, love!”

  “Ach, no, not now!”

  “Have to go.”

  Timmy brushed some gobs of mud from his jersey and stood looking at his sister. Then he commenced his last, slow walk to the street. Whether planned or not, the rest of the boys formed two uneven lines, one on either side of him. A raggle-taggle guard of honour. They watched in silence as he walked, looking straight ahead. His best friend, Barry, stood at the top of the line closest to the street. When Timmy reached him, the two boys stood facing each other. Then Timmy gave a curt nod and said, “See ye.”

  Barry nodded back. “Yeah, see ye.”

  Timmy headed straight for the van. Katie reached for him, but he shook her hand away. He turned to the moving crew. “What are youse waitin’ for?”

  Normie looked on with anguish. She said to Monty and Brennan, “That’s his best friend! He’s moving away from him! If I had to say goodbye to my best friend . . . if I ever had to leave Kim, I wouldn’t be able to stand it!” She could no longer hold back her tears. “How come he didn’t — I don’t know — he just said, ‘See ye.’ How come they didn’t . . .” She looked Brennan and Monty square in the face and said, “It’s because they’re boys, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” said Monty.

  “Mmm,” Brennan agreed.

  “Men!” She pinned them with a look of disgust far beyond her years, condemned them with all the ancient authority of the wiser sex, the eternal feminine.

  All the Reverend Doctor Brennan Burke and Monty Collins, QC, could do was stand there and take it.

  * * *

  They timed things so the van and the big taxi would travel together. The taxi waited while Monty went into a take-out for fish and chips for all. But that did nothing to improve the mood in the van as Monty, Brennan, and Normie followed the family to the Heatherfield Villas housing estate. When they arrived, everyone scrambled out and took a look around. Monty was not in the least surprised to find that “Heatherfield,” not to mention “Villas,” turned out to be a misnomer.

  “A bunch of naff tower blocks!” Darren exclaimed.

  “Now, Darren,” his mother said.

  There were several high-rise apartment buildings on the estate. Other buildings, lower to the ground, sported Republican and IRA murals with warriors wearing balaclavas and brandishing machine guns. One of the older, more scuffed-looking images shouted “Up the Third Battalion!” Unwritten, but glaringly obvious, was “Deprived Area.”

  “All right, let’s see your new house,” Monty tried.

  “That one,” Katie replied, pointing at one of the high-rises.

  “House!” Dermot groused. “It’s a fuckin’ kip, so it is!”

  “Now, Dermot,” Winnie Flanagan said, “not everybody lives in a house. We’ll make a home of this place, you wait and see.”

  “We will in our hole!”

  “Dermot!”

  Katie had picked up the key to flat 705 the day before. Everyone squashed into the elevator, which wheezed and clanked its way to the seventh floor. The elevator walls were covered with graffiti, some of it Republican, some of it just plain obscene, some of it — Monty noted Brennan’s disapproving glare — misspelled. The elevator stank of smoke and weed and piss. When it clanged and shuddered to a stop, they all got out and trudged to door number 705. Katie opened the door and they entered the flat. The first thing you noticed was the acid green carpet, flecked with brown and yellow. Monty hoped the flecks were in the original design. He wanted to assume it had been cleaned, prior to the new tenants moving in, but it didn’t look it. Or smell it. There were three bedrooms. There had been five beds in the family home but one had to be left behind. There was barely room for four in the new place. Space and privacy had to be sacrificed along with so much else.

  “It’s manky in here,” Dermot complained, holding his nose.

  “Why do we have to live in a rubbish tip like this?” It was Clare this time. She was crying. “I’d be scundered to have any of my friends see it.”

  “No worries there,” replied Darren. “Our mates are too far away to find their way to this rat hole. We’ll never see them again.”

  “Oh, God!” Clare cried out and began sobbing.

  Then it was Dermot: “What will the school be like, if this is the house?”

  “Things will get better, lads,” his mother tried.

  On their way in and out as they unloaded the van and moved the family’s belongings inside, Monty and Brennan ran a gauntlet of hard-looking young people and kids, many of them skinny, shaven-headed, and tattooed. None of them spoke, but they watched the proceedings with a collective expression that bespoke boredom and contempt. Brennan looked ahead to the Flanagan children, scuffing along ahead with their toys. “God help them,” he muttered.

  On one trip in, after Monty had set up the kitchen table and chairs, Katie placed the red mixing bowl carefully on the counter. “I always have this out on display. It was my gran’s favourite bowl. She made cakes and other good stuff for us in it.”

  They ate the fish and chips. The children left the table in near silence. Their mother stood looking at all the items they had moved in, as if finding space for them was utterly beyond her.

  Brennan gazed around the kitchen and the rest of the flat, then took a gander out the window at the riffraff milling about in the dusk below. He made a furtiv
e sign of the cross and said, sotto voce, “Almighty and loving God, bless this house and all who dwell within it.”

  Normie stood to the side, trembling.

  When they were finished and had taken their leave, they headed for Andersonstown and turned into Ronan Burke’s street. Monty saw a car in front of the house. In the dim light coming from the houses, he could see the silhouettes of two men inside. Both of them sat bolt upright as the cargo van approached; both of them leaned to the right at the same time. Monty could picture their right hands going for weapons.

  “Let me hop out right here, Monty,” said Brennan.

  “Sure.”

  He brought the van to a gentle stop, and Brennan got out. He slowly raised a reassuring hand to the men in the car, and Monty could see their postures relax.

  “Goodnight, Mr. and Miss Collins.”

  “Goodnight, Father,” Normie replied.

  “Slán abhaile.” Safe home.

  Chapter XVII

  Brennan

  When Brennan returned from his shift at Holy Cross church on Tuesday, he was met at the door by the Teachta Dála, Dinny Cagney, just going out. The Dublin politician was all smiles, as was Ronan behind him in the doorway. Ronan reintroduced priest and politician and filled Brennan in on the purpose of the visit. Cagney had given the Dublin policeman, Sullivan, all the information Brennan had gleaned from Harold Tait in the U.S.A. The poster with “heathen” misspelled as “heather,” which had been taken off the market on May 15, the apparent presence of the faulty poster in the home of Brody MacAllan’s wife, and the conclusion that MacAllan had returned to Ireland before and not after the 1974 bomb attacks. And, Brennan was pleased to hear, the Reverend Tait had told Garda Sullivan that he would provide sworn evidence of all of this when the time came. God bless him. Garda Sullivan wanted to do some more work on the case file and when he had it all together, he would present it to his counterparts in the Royal Ulster Constabulary here in Belfast. Giving them the “good” news that there were now grounds to reopen the investigation.

  “Sure they’ll be overjoyed,” said Brennan.

  “They’ll be dancing a merry jig all round the barracks,” Cagney agreed.

  “The fact that the police on both sides of the border had evidence from day one and had never acted upon it is something that I just can’t . . .”

  “Let’s hope they’ll be shamed into acting now. Anyway I’m off, lads. Back to the Republic of Ireland, such as it is at this point in history.”

  “Don’t be rubbing our faces in it, ye messer,” Ronan said.

  “All right. Slán agus ádh mór.” Goodbye and good luck. “And,” he said, looking pointedly at Ronan, “mind yourself now, Ronan.”

  “I’m going to make a career in politics, Dinny. Nobody ever said politicians don’t take good care of themselves!”

  “Who’s the messer now?”

  He gave Ronan a quick embrace, nodded at Brennan, and went off.

  * * *

  But good news doesn’t come in threes in Belfast. Or even twos. While Ronan and Brennan were seated in Ronan’s office, Ronan scribbling notes in his file, Tomás came flying in the door.

  “Fuck!”

  “What is it?” his father asked, trepidation written all over his face.

  “She fucking caught me with the gun!”

  “Who caught you? What’s happened?”

  Oh, Christ, here it comes, thought Brennan. He and Tom had embarked on a desperate scheme to retrieve the pistol, Tom got caught, and this was the way Ronan was going to hear about it for the first time.

  “We . . . I went in for the gun.”

  “Jesus Christ! I told you to stay away from it. What in the hell were you thinking?”

  It was Father Burke’s turn to confess. “It wasn’t just Tom, Ronan. I was in on it. More than that, I came up with the plan.”

  Ronan Burke stood before his son and cousin, his face grey with shock. “I don’t fucking believe this.”

  Brennan had no choice but to describe the events of February 27, when he and Tom had gone to the church. Tom looked ready to explode with tension. His father turned to him and demanded, “Well? What happened today?”

  “I waited a few days, to put time between me and Brennan, and I waited for rain. Don’t have to wait long for that in Belfast. So I put on my rain jacket with the big hood over my head, and I had a scarf around my neck, in case I’d have to pull it up. I go over there well before half six, when the secretary said she comes in. It’s pitch dark out. I find a wee hiding place on Bryson Street and watch. She arrives, puts in the code and turns off the alarm. I wait until I see the light come on in the office, and then I walk over. Look around. Nobody there. I try the door. It’s open and I slip inside.”

  The young man was breathing heavily, living through it all again. His father was motionless, staring at him.

  “I open the cellar door. No worries there. I go down the stairs. I’m in the basement. All well and good. It’s as dark as the devil’s hole, and I can’t take the chance of beaming a torch about the place. So I know I have to be careful not to trip on anything. I’ll have to search by touch. I start by crawling all along the floor, even though I know the gun wouldn’t be lying there in plain sight. But I get to know the layout. Then I run my hands over the statues, feeling a bit like a pervert touching somebody up. No little hiding places carved into the plaster, so I move on to the obvious places. The filing cabinets. I open drawer after drawer. Nothing but papers, old books, and accounting ledgers.

  “Just when I’m pawing through the last of the cabinets, there’s a creaking noise. Someone walking just above me. Coming to the basement door? I freeze and try to figure out where to conceal myself if somebody turns on the light and comes down. But nobody does. I don’t hear the footsteps again, so that has me spooked. But after a few minutes I start again. Nothing in the last cabinet. I look up at the ceiling, which is made of tiles, acoustic tiles. Could somebody have stashed the gun up there? There are a couple of old broken wooden chairs, so I climb up on one and poke one of the tiles out of place. A big fucking shower of dust comes down on me and I’m nearly choking on it. It’s all in my eyes. But I keep on with the tiles. I move the chair from place to place, trying not to make a sound. Halfway through the room, I knock a tile out of place. Again the shower of dust. But I probe around with my hand and, buíochas le Dia, I feel it there. The gun. Slowly, carefully, I draw it out and get a good grip on it.”

  Brennan felt as if he were right there in the subterranean darkness with young Tom.

  “I’ve got the gun in my hand and I start to climb down off the chair, and one of the fucking chair legs comes loose and the chair clatters to the floor and me with it. And of course it’s the only noise in the whole silent building. I get up and run for the stairs and I’m pulling the scarf up to my eyes and I get upstairs to the corridor and it’s in semi-darkness. And there in front of me is the church secretary with her eyes out on sticks, looking at the gun in my hand, petrified with fear.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Ronan muttered.

  “And the poor wee woman doesn’t know what to do. She says, ‘Noise down there. I called for the police. They’re on their way.’ She’s babbling away and not making any sense. She could not have rung the peelers in that short a time. But I’m just as mindless, and I say something like, ‘No police’ and ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ and I turn and take off at a clip and it’s only a few short minutes before I hear sirens. She’s gone back into the office and called the peelers and they’re out looking for me!”

  Would there now be police sirens approaching the house in Andersonstown?

  Tom continued his sorry tale. “I’m out in the street running like a madman and I’ve got the gun in my pocket. My whole fucking purpose was to get the gun and take it out to the deep water of the lough, and now I haven’t a hope in hell of doing that. Can’t even
make it to the river. Can’t be caught with it. So I have to ditch it. I come upon a building site and I see one of those gigantic rubbish skips. There’s rubbish lying about, including some plastic sacs from the shops. I look around me. Nobody on the site yet. I take out the gun, stick it in one of the bags with some stones, tie the bag shut, and climb up the edge of the skip, lean down and bury it. Then I fuck off out of there. I can hear the sirens getting closer. I head deeper into the Short Strand, where I figure I can ask for refuge if need be.” The solid Nationalist enclave in east Belfast. “And of course the peelers come creeping in there in their cruiser. But I’m able to dodge them, running through people’s back gardens. If anyone in the Strand sees a fella hiding out from the peelers, they’re not likely to inform on the poor bastard. Anyway, I zigged and zagged all over the city. They didn’t spot me, and here I am. Without the Browning.”

  “And,” his father said, as if it needed saying, “with the peelers out there looking for the man who fits the secretary’s description of the man with the gun.”

  Chapter XVIII

  Monty

  It was during the week of March 13, 1995, that the scales — scales Monty didn’t even know he had, after more than two decades practising criminal law — fell from his eyes. This happened during the four days he spent in the Diplock court. His discussions with Reddy O’Reilly had convinced Monty that, even with all his courtroom experience in Canada, he and his clients were better off with a solicitor who was familiar with the peculiarities of the courts in Belfast. All the more so, given the short preparation time left to him. Monty was fully prepared to act as the more junior solicitor on the case, with a humbler slice of the fees payable by the clients. Ellison Whiteside had no problem with this; the firm just wanted the case file off its desk. So Monty attended court alongside O’Reilly on the IRA file he had inherited from Emmet Crowley. Three alleged members of a proscribed organization, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, were accused of bombing a bar to ruins and leaving three people dead. Monty and Reddy had briefed a barrister, Pearse McKendrick, who would argue the case before the judge.