Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  And now Brennan was tasting the bitter fruits of that encounter. The fear and trepidation grabbed hold of him again. That ridiculous episode, him sneezing and miming words, and Tom checking out the basement, and Tom going in there again and making a bollocks of it with the ceiling and the dust. And had Tom been pointing the gun, unintentionally, at the dear little secretary? Had the poor soul really thought he was threatening her? Threatening to kill her? And how had the police come to identify Brennan? How closely did he resemble Tom, if Tom’s face was mostly hidden by a hood and scarf? There was a vast difference in age, but Tom said the light in the corridor was dim. They were pretty well the same size, with black hair and dark eyes. The police must have learned Brennan’s name after the shooting of Ronan. And they’d had a good look at him that night. But that was two months ago. Why now? How long would he be in this dreadful place? Could he really be convicted of any of those charges? Convicted and banged up here for years? Reddy O’Reilly tried to sound reassuring, but Brennan was far from reassured.

  Back in the cell, Brennan pulled one of the two chairs as far as he could from the head of the man still lying uncovered on the lower bunk. The fellow appeared to be in his mid-twenties, with unruly dark brown hair and a few days’ growth of beard; he was dressed in a grubby blue sweatshirt over a pair of baggy pajamas. Brennan was still in the clothes he’d been wearing when they arrested him, blue jeans and a light grey cotton sweater that was now soiled and stained with his blood, shoes that he had thrown up on. He was in desperate need of a change. And he needed to have a slash; could not avoid it any longer. And there it was, his fucking piss pot. He had to beat down the temptation to unzip his jeans, stand at the bars of his cell, and piss all over the floor of the Crumlin jail. God knows, the floor looked as if it was no stranger to bodily fluids. But he took a deep breath of the fetid air and stale smoke, dismissed all thoughts of dignity, and pissed in the pot.

  The other fellow stirred in the bed, then awoke with a jolt. “Wha? Who are you?”

  “I’m your partner in misery.”

  “Lots of that to go around.”

  “My name is Brennan.”

  The young fellow got up off the bed and said, “Dónal. Who did that to you?”

  “Peelers in Castlereagh.”

  “Fuck! They had my wee brother in there. One of the Orange peelers kept jumping on his leg. The bastards broke his fuckin’ leg!”

  “God save us. If this was happening in some other part of the world . . .”

  “Like El Salvador or someplace! The death squads they had down there! The U.S. would be sending in the marines!”

  “Em, no, the death squads and the Salvadoran military and the U.S.A. were all on the same side.”

  “Jesus! They’re as bad as the Brits being on the side of the Red Hand Commando!”

  “I know. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But I take your point. When all this torture and abuse —” a streak of pain shot through his groin, and he had to stop himself from crying out “— was being carried out by the Russians in the Soviet days, we heard about the evil of it, no end.”

  Brennan assumed there was a protocol discouraging one prisoner from asking another what he was in for, so he searched for another topic of conversation. He spoke of the matter uppermost in his mind. “Dónal, I’d like to have my shower now. How do I get the screws to come and take me to the shower room?”

  “Did you say you’d like to have your shower, Brennan? Now?” Dónal’s face registered incredulity, then softened to pity. “You’ll likely be waiting several days for that.”

  “What?!”

  Then he began to pray, for deliverance from this nightmare and for the strength to endure whatever was to come. His prayer, as it often did, took the form of a hymn, and on this occasion it was the “Ave Verum Corpus.” He sang it softly to himself. Brennan noticed, halfway through the piece, that his cellmate’s eyes were on him, wide open. But Brennan finished his hymn to the true Body of Christ: “Esto nobis praegustatum in mortis examine.”

  “You’ve a fine singing voice, Brennan. What song was that?”

  “It’s Mozart’s setting of the ‘Ave Verum Corpus.’ It says, ‘Be for us a foretaste in the trial of death.’”

  “Yeah, we need all the help we can get for the trials we go through in this place.”

  “Exactly.”

  Brennan climbed up to his bed and tried to get comfortable on the damp-smelling, lumpy mattress. He willed himself to turn off all his thoughts and fears, so he could fall asleep. Of course he knew that telling yourself you have to sleep is a surefire recipe for a sleepless night. But, somehow, he drifted off late, late in the night. When he awoke at the crack of dawn, he craved a cigarette and a shower. He knew he wasn’t about to get either. But one thing he did know: he had to squat over his chamber pot. And he was going to have to slop it out.

  Chapter XXXII

  Brennan

  Brennan had to endure long hours of excruciating boredom in his cell in the Crumlin jail. There was exercise time and time allotted for associating with other prisoners, but this was limited by the fact of self-segregation. Republican and Loyalist prisoners, mortal enemies in the streets outside, did not mix within the prison walls. A few years ago, he learned, Loyalists had fired upon a bus carrying Republican prisoners’ families in for a visit, and two wives were injured. A few months after that, Republican prisoners managed to detonate a bomb in a C wing canteen when the Loyalists were having a meal. Two were killed, several others injured. Sometime later Loyalists retaliated by launching a rocket-propelled grenade at the Republican wing from outside the prison, but it failed to detonate. Little wonder the fellas who had committed run of the mill, everyday crimes were known to the authorities here as ODCs. Ordinary decent criminals.

  With only so many hours slated for time in common areas, and two groups who did not associate with one another, the out-of-cell time was severely restricted. So Brennan found himself wasting away in a tiny concrete cell with another man. A complete loss of privacy, showers limited sometimes to once a week, and — Brennan tried and failed to shut out the memory of what he had seen scuttling around some areas of the old Belfast dungeon — cockroaches. These revolting creatures infested his nightmares; he had images of them hissing and scrabbling over his body and in his clothing, and he often awoke batting at himself and his bed and the walls, trying to fight the imaginary vermin off. And they weren’t just imaginary in the daytime.

  * * *

  Ronan and Gráinne came to see him in the visiting area and brought him a change of clothes. Ronan was distressed about Brennan being jailed after doing a favour for the family, and he was apoplectic about the way Brennan had been mistreated after his arrest. Gráinne tried to be as encouraging as possible about his eventual acquittal and release. Ronan turned to his wife and said something Brennan couldn’t hear. Gráinne stood up, said her goodbyes, assuring Brennan of her love and prayers, and left the two men alone. Ronan said then, “Tom is gutted about your arrest, Brennan, absolutely distraught. I hope he’ll be in to see you, but em, I’m not sure . . .” Brennan waved that off. “He’s confident, though, Tom is, that you’ll be acquitted.” Then Ronan mouthed the words, “After all, there is no evidence connecting you to the gun.”

  Brennan’s visitors brought him cigarettes. This was of great interest to his cellmate. “You’ve the snout and I’ve the papers.” Dónal produced the papers and suggested that he redistribute the snout, the tobacco, into skinny, prison-style cigarettes. Brennan hoped it wouldn’t come to the point where this would matter. But he suspected it would.

  A few days later he got word of another visitor. The MacNeil! He felt a momentary flash of elation, but it was followed immediately by a spasm of anxiety. No. He had been reduced to a dirty wretch who lolled about in a prison cell accompanied always by the smell of shite. Gráinne had brought him fresh jeans and a dark blue sweater, but it w
asn’t long before the clothing took on the grime and stench of his surroundings. Maura MacNeil had come all the way from Dublin, but he simply could not allow himself to be seen by her. Even worse was the mortification he felt about taking part in that stunt with the pistol, even though he had only acted as a decoy. He remembered reasoning it all out beforehand: he would not be touching the gun, would not be seen with it. And he had done it for Ronan’s son, and for those parents in the Netherlands who had no idea what had befallen their boy. The point remained, though, that Brennan had taken part and had been caught. Like thousands of other dim, doltish offenders. He could not look the MacNeil in the eye. He told the warder no, he would not be seeing any visitors.

  Monty

  “Monty, you’re not going to believe what’s happened here!” That was Maura on the phone to Halifax, and she wasn’t wasting any time on small talk.

  “What is it?”

  “Brennan has been arrested!”

  “Arrested?! For what?” He tried to process this information. “Was there more to that Duane and Ruby night at the bar than I was told? Did you get involved in something else there? Are you yourself —”

  “Monty, listen to me. He’s been arrested and charged with a string of offences relating to a gun. Possession of a weapon, attempting to pervert the course of justice, uttering threats. It’s unbelievable.”

  “Brennan wouldn’t do anything like that, for Christ’s sake. Are these some kind of trumped-up charges relating to his family over there? Was he present for something they did?”

  “No, it’s just him apparently. I went to talk to Reddy O’Reilly.”

  “He’s representing Brennan?”

  “Yes.”

  Monty remembered the last time he had seen O’Reilly. The solicitor had turned down the chance to represent the Flanagan family in their suit against the UDA man, Davison. And he remembered the eerie warning from Carrick. Monty would rather have his fingernails pulled out than admit he’d received a warning and laughed it off. He felt more and more uneasy as the conversation went on.

  “Reddy told me what Brennan was charged with, but he wouldn’t say much more. Which is only right. So then I went to the Crumlin jail —”

  “Brennan in the Crumlin jail? This cannot be happening. Is he going to get out on bail?”

  “Yes, the Crumlin jail. No, he’s not going to be released. I went to arrange a visit. And he wouldn’t see me!”

  Monty didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “Why not?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  Brennan

  Brennan’s nightmares became more extreme and terrifying as the days went on, and he fought not only against the ugly creatures that invaded his consciousness but the ugly fact that his deterioration was partly the result of something he had always refused to acknowledge about himself. Sure, Brennan Burke was fond of a jar. Anyone could tell you that. Fair enough. But he could not recall ever being physically and psychologically debilitated by going a few days without a drink. To be honest, he could not remember the last time he had gone a few days without a drink. Even in the abbey, he had a bottle or two on hand. Now, though, he could not avoid the suspicion that the shakiness he felt, the disrupted sleep, the nausea, the sweating were caused by withdrawal from alcohol. A few days ago, one of the lads — Frank, a heavyset man with the broken facial capillaries of a heavy drinker — had slipped him a quart bottle of poitín. Homemade, smuggled in, or concocted somewhere on the premises of the jail, Brennan didn’t know. He had bought it from the man in exchange for a fistful of skinny, prison-grade, hand-rolled cigarettes — yes, it had come to this, that he was jealously guarding hand-rolled cigarettes to satisfy his own cravings and to use as currency. He had taken the bottle of homemade brew and tried to make it last, by taking little sips. The delicate sips of a gentleman in his club. But then he simply opened his gullet and poured the stuff down. He spent the night after that boaking up all over his bed. Poor Dónal was a saint about it. Not so the screw on duty that morning. “Clean that filthy mess up, you fuckin’ drunken Taig bastard!” There weren’t many Catholics on the prison staff, so it was a slur heard frequently by the prisoners, one of many instances of humiliation and intimidation the inmates were subjected to by the staff of this wretched place.

  His symptoms continued to worsen in the wake of the bad brew. Never one troubled by stress or doubts in the past, he now found himself riddled with anxiety about every little sound or rumour or alteration in the routine of the prison. His heart raced, he had the shakes, he had headaches, he felt sick to his stomach, and he was bathed in sweat. And had to wait for days before he could shower it off. He was hardly better than the bugs and grotesque creatures that populated his booze-withdrawal hallucinations. A fine sight he must have been trying to stumble through his daily, solitary Mass with a scrap of prison-issue bread and cup of apple juice — apple juice for the sacramental wine!

  His image of himself was confirmed when, unshaven and grubby, he received more visitors at the Crum. Father Alec Reid on one occasion, Lorcan and Gráinne’s sister Éilis on another. And the Reverend Clark Rayburn. Brennan saw how they reacted to his appearance and tried to cover their reaction. Clark Rayburn prayed with him and did his best to utter words of encouragement. Brennan was more grateful than he could ever express for the Protestant minister’s kindness to a Republican prisoner in the Crumlin Road Gaol. Molly flew over from London again, followed by Terry and Patrick from New York. They could not mask their shock at the look of him. Patrick, the psychiatrist, was clearly alarmed at what he saw. Brennan was relieved about one thing, anyway: at least he had not shamed himself by wheedling his family into trying to smuggle whiskey in for him.

  Then he had another caller. The MacNeil, trying again, not giving up on him. He felt the same impulses warring in his soul again this time. The mortification over what he had done and what he had become in prison battled with his longing to see her face, hear her voice, glom onto her and . . .

  How soon would she be here? Was he still going to have the shakes when he was sitting across from her? Would a cigarette fix him up? He had only three left. Should he have one now, and one closer to the visit? If he smoked them both before, he’d only have the one for the letdown after her departure. And Christ! He was grimy and sweating and he hadn’t had a shower! Or a shave. This was almost as horrible as those weeks on the ship that had taken him from Ireland to America as a child, that storm-tossed, vomit- and shite-sloshing journey across the Atlantic when he nearly jumped . . . This visit couldn’t happen. The MacNeil couldn’t see him like this. But he got the word: she was here and she wasn’t leaving.

  He was escorted to the visiting area, and there she was, her brown hair shining, her summery yellow blazer and white shirt immaculate. As soon as he saw her, he had the urge to run into her arms and cling to her, weeping. Naturally, that was not on, and he liked to think he was still, barely, man enough not to do anything so needy and pathetic. Not to mention the fact that any contact with him, with what he was now, would leave her contaminated. He knew instantly, from the look on her face, what she thought of the state of him. Her mouth opened, no doubt to make a wisecrack of some sort, but it closed again without emitting anything but a stifled little cry. For the first time since he had known her, Maura MacNeil of the quick, sharp, lacerating tongue was without words. That alone spoke volumes to Brennan.

  “Professor MacNeil. Have you come to study the Norn Iron justice system at firsthand?”

  “Brennan, you don’t want to hear me on the subject. What in the name of God have they done to you?”

  He knew he had lost weight. How long had it been since his arrest? Three weeks? It felt like three centuries. The bruising in his face had gone from black and blue to a bilious green; it was fading but still visible. He said to Maura, “I can tell you this: anything that’s been done to me in this place, or the place I was before, has not been done in the name of God.”<
br />
  “What has Reddy O’Reilly said about getting you out of here?”

  “You’re the law professor, MacNeil. And this is Belfast. So you know I’m not getting out of here. And who knows when in the hell my trial will be. O’Reilly tells me it can take a year, or even longer, to get to trial.”

  Once again, Maura MacNeil could think of nothing to say.

  “Entertain me here, MacNeil. Tell me something that will make me forget for a few minutes where I am, and what I’ve become.”

  He watched as she made the effort to come up with a couple of stories about the children, Normie and Dominic, and tried to keep up a line of patter for the duration of the visit. He told her a bit about his life in the Crum. He looked at the lovely face, listened to the familiar voice, and wished the visit would never end, regardless of what she was saying. When she was gone, he had never felt so lonely in his life.

  Monty

  “I went to see him in the Crum.” It was Maura on the line.

  “Jesus, Maura, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  “You can’t believe it? I saw him and I can’t believe what that place has done to him! I hardly recognized him when they brought him in. His face has obviously been battered. His hair is dirty — Brennan with dirty hair! — and he hasn’t shaved for days. He looks like either a God-crazed saint or, well, what he’s accused of being: a stereotypical Irish terrorist! I’d be terrified of him if I met him in a dark street. He just sat there with a hollow look in those black, black eyes.”

  Her voice broke, and Monty tried desperately to find something positive to say. “It’s an awful situation, for sure, but you know Brennan, how strong he is. He’ll tough it out. He’ll be saying Mass for the other inmates, ministering to them the way he does in his prison ministry here in Halifax . . .”