Post by brianm on Jan 27, 2015 17:59:33 GMT 7
This is a short story that I originally wrote a few years ago for a creative writing module in an Open University course. I'm in the process of revising it with a view to publication. The full story is more than Marion's 2000 word limit (and maybe this site's word limit, too), so I'll cut it short. Here we go ...
It was the year of the three popes, the year silenced guns were being used around the hills of South Armagh. In our street workmen were laying down pipes and knocking through walls, tramping muddy boots over flowers in the wee gardens. Outside my house they were shovelling cement into a mixer, throwing up choking clouds of white dust. Inside, my da was decorating, stripping paint off wood with a blowtorch. A stench of burning paint mingled with an aroma of fried bacon and boiled cabbage.
I’ve just arrived home when my ma comes rushing from the kitchen, wringing her hands.
Don’t go out tonight,’ she pleads. ‘Promise me you won’t go.’ She squeezes my arm so tightly that the veins in her hand bulge as though they’re about to break through the skin.
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘There’s murder on the streets.’
‘Is that all? For a moment I thought that little green men were laying siege to the City Hall – or that the Smiling Pope has turned out to be a grumpy old man.’ Then I notice she has been crying.
‘Mum, what is it?’
‘Your Uncle George … Last night he was found in the boot of a taxi. You remember his big mop of curly black hair? It had turned completely white.’
I stare at my ma with disbelief. I don’t have an Uncle George. He’s a distant relative of my ma, a third cousin or one even further removed, but all her cousins get called auntie or uncle. Sometimes they’d drop into our house; sometimes I think my ma’s related to half of Belfast. But years have passed since I last saw George, and I’m wondering about this business about the white hair. I’d swear his hair was grey, going white, the last time I saw him. Many people exaggerate, and my ma exaggerates a lot. Anyway, I‘ve no intention of staying in: me and Gerry have plans.
I sit in the kitchen drinking tea with my ma, while my da carries on stripping off paint. She tells me about George, and again begs me not to go out. I reassure her that I’ll be okay, that I can’t stay locked up at home forever; I lie that I’ll only go to our local for a pint.
‘You’re even more stubborn than your dad,’ she says with a shake of the head.
I smile at the ludicrousness of that idea, and then blank out the fear that I see in her eyes.
‘’Bout ya!’ Gerry thumps my shoulder and signals to Jimmy for two pints. ‘Hey, you going skiing or something?’ he asks, stroking the fur-trimmed hood of my tatty parka coat as though it was a kitten. His bulky frame is squeezed into a faded Wrangler jacket that’s small enough to be his kid brother’s.
‘You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face tonight when we’re waiting to get a taxi home.’
‘Big eejit – it’s summer, for Christ’s sake.’
Over drinks I tell him about George. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t go tonight,’ I suggest.
‘You kidding? Look outside, fuck’s sake. Concrete barrels. Wire mesh. Steel gates. Security cameras.’ He takes a deep slurp of Guinness. ‘Listen’ he says, wiping off a creamy moustache, ‘it’ll be far, far safer over in west Belfast.’
Our plan: walk the short distance from Jimmy’s to the city centre and from there hop into one of the black taxis that shuttle up and down the Falls Road. Gerry has heard there’s great craic in the west Belfast Republican clubs. He’s also heard they heave with crumpet.
‘Look around,’ Gerry says. ‘You really want to stay here all night?’
The pub is almost empty and the atmosphere non-existent. We knock back our pints and head off to Paradise at the top of the Falls.
Later, inside the club, the drink and music are in full flow, though we’re disappointed to discover there are few unattached females among the crowd. The low price of the pints, however, is some compensation, and we’re content to enjoy an evening of music and cheap drink.
After a break, the musicians come back on stage and the pace of the reels ratchets up a notch. We grab a few more pints and move to another table to get a better view of the concertina player. She’s wearing a short skirt across which her instrument squirms like a fat caterpillar. The room is wide and open-plan, and by the end of the night everybody is trying to talk above everybody else, yelling to their friends at the same table. Yeah, isn’t the music great, and, yeah, wasn’t it great last week too, and, yeah, isn’t that concertina player a bit of hot stuff, and, yeah, the streets are getting a lot more dangerous, and, yeah – no – you certainly would not want to go far to get home tonight.
I notice a guy at a table close to us. An odd smirk is draped across his face like Twelfth of July bunting. Along his left cheek runs a three-inch scar. He is staring at us. His mates are staring at us, too, hard and straight. I think it might be an appropriate time to leave. I catch Gerry’s eye and nod towards the exit.
We make our way back to the main road and sit on a low wall to wait for the taxi shuttle. After a few minutes one pulls up. The door opens and two men alight; two other passengers remain seated in the back. The taxi has room for at least five, so we start to get in, flipping down the two rear-facing, fold-up seats. Then, the men who had just got out pile back in on top of us and slam the door. ‘Taking a wee ride ...’
As the taxi accelerates away I’m thrown onto the back seat with Gerry right on top of me. We’re jammed in between the two men who’d stayed in the cab, and I can barely move a muscle. The pair who had bundled us in face us on the fold-up seats. I feel Gerry tremble through his denim jacket as he whimpers, ‘Please, lads. For the love of God …’ and try to wriggle free from under the weight of his body and his elbows that are digging into my ribs, while struggling to breathe in air that’s warm and stale and stinks of sweat and smoke and petrol fumes. My head’s spinning, and I hear my ma’s pleading, don’t go out tonight son, there’s murder on the streets, her words turning like the mixer the workmen were shovelling cement into, as she sobs and tells me about George, who all of a sudden I remember sitting outside his house in the sun, reading the sports pages and asking me who I fancied in the three-o-clock hurdle. And my ma’s voice carries on, that wasn’t the worst of it, she says, and I’d like to cover my ears, but I can’t because I’m sandwiched in the back seat, my arms pinned under Gerry. That wasn’t the worst of it, she repeats, her words tumbling as my chest heaves in and out trying to suck in air, my mouth dries up and my tongue feels coated in a dusting of cement.
The taxi races back in the direction from which we’ve come. Any second now I know it will turn sharply and drive towards the other side of the city, the side I don’t know well, but know that if you’re taken there you won’t be coming back.
‘Take it easy, lads. You’re going to be all right.’
I look at the speaker. On his cheek a three-inch scar glistens in the headlights of a passing car. I begin to feel safer.
The taxi pulls up behind the club that we’d been in earlier. We’re pushed out and taken through a rear entrance. We’re led into a small storeroom that’s dimly lit by a single bulb dangling from a length of wire.
‘OK lads, who are you? Where’re you from? ID? Why were you here?’ The questions are shot at us by Scarface who appears to be the leader.
As we fumble for driving licenses or some kind of membership cards we try to explain our logic of travelling across the city for a drink in a place that neither of us has ever been to. One of our abductors scribbles notes, while another takes Gerry’s driving license and waits while I try to extract a student card that has slipped through a ripped pocket of my parka and disappeared into the depths of the lining. I manage to thread it out and hand it over.
‘Wait here,’ Scarface orders. ‘We’ll run some checks.’ Then all of them leave, and the door is locked.
We try to convince ourselves that we’ll come to no harm – sure aren’t we among our own? – and that our captors will reappear at any minute apologizing for our mistreatment.
Thirty minutes pass and the place is eerily quiet save for sporadic gunfire, some distant, some close. Then the door is thrown open and Scarface reappears. He slings our identification back at us. They land on the floor. ‘Pick them up and get the fuck out. Never come back.’
I wonder what’s bugging him, making him so angry. Maybe he’s been deprived of giving somebody a good beating, or a knee-capping, or maybe even he’s been deprived of – who knows? – putting a bullet into someone’s head, but Gerry and I glance at each other, and I see that he, too, doesn’t really want to hang around to chat with Scarface about his personal deprivations. I pick up my fake student card, while Gerry picks up his driving license, and it occurs to me just then that I don’t remember Gerry ever passing his test.
On the way back to the main road we start to relax a little. We joke about Gerry failing his driving test for a third time, while four years after finishing college I’m still carrying a student card in order to get travel discounts.
Gerry laughs. ‘Maybe you should use your card to buy a new parka.’
Then something starts to gnaw at me. ‘Who to hell does Scarface think he is?’ I ask, feeling bitterness mounting. ‘He doesn’t own the club – we’re every bit as entitled as him to be drinking there.’
‘Sure,’ Gerry says. ‘But I’m now thinking that Jimmy’s isn’t too bad a place for a quiet pint.’
I stop walking. ‘I’m going back to the club.’
Gerry grabs my furry hood as I turn. ‘Are you off your trolley?’
‘Scarface must have a commanding officer – I want to have a word with him.’
‘You’ll dig yourself into deep trouble, boyo.’
‘I’ll be fine. Sure haven’t they checked us out? Don’t worry – I’ll be nice about it.’ As I stride back towards the club, I’m getting angrier with every step, building up a head of steam as Gerry pants along behind, doing his damnedest to talk me out of returning.
I’m about to kick the back door for a third time, when it opens and a head peers around the edge.
‘Hey! What’s up?’
I recognise the voice. ‘I want to speak to the boss,’ I answer, trying to sound confident.
The door opens wider until Scarface’s bulk fills the frame. He looks left down the street and then up to the right. He ushers us in, frisking us before leading us along a corridor. He points to a room. ‘Wait in there’.
THE YEAR OF THE THREE POPES
It was the year of the three popes, the year silenced guns were being used around the hills of South Armagh. In our street workmen were laying down pipes and knocking through walls, tramping muddy boots over flowers in the wee gardens. Outside my house they were shovelling cement into a mixer, throwing up choking clouds of white dust. Inside, my da was decorating, stripping paint off wood with a blowtorch. A stench of burning paint mingled with an aroma of fried bacon and boiled cabbage.
I’ve just arrived home when my ma comes rushing from the kitchen, wringing her hands.
Don’t go out tonight,’ she pleads. ‘Promise me you won’t go.’ She squeezes my arm so tightly that the veins in her hand bulge as though they’re about to break through the skin.
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘There’s murder on the streets.’
‘Is that all? For a moment I thought that little green men were laying siege to the City Hall – or that the Smiling Pope has turned out to be a grumpy old man.’ Then I notice she has been crying.
‘Mum, what is it?’
‘Your Uncle George … Last night he was found in the boot of a taxi. You remember his big mop of curly black hair? It had turned completely white.’
I stare at my ma with disbelief. I don’t have an Uncle George. He’s a distant relative of my ma, a third cousin or one even further removed, but all her cousins get called auntie or uncle. Sometimes they’d drop into our house; sometimes I think my ma’s related to half of Belfast. But years have passed since I last saw George, and I’m wondering about this business about the white hair. I’d swear his hair was grey, going white, the last time I saw him. Many people exaggerate, and my ma exaggerates a lot. Anyway, I‘ve no intention of staying in: me and Gerry have plans.
I sit in the kitchen drinking tea with my ma, while my da carries on stripping off paint. She tells me about George, and again begs me not to go out. I reassure her that I’ll be okay, that I can’t stay locked up at home forever; I lie that I’ll only go to our local for a pint.
‘You’re even more stubborn than your dad,’ she says with a shake of the head.
I smile at the ludicrousness of that idea, and then blank out the fear that I see in her eyes.
‘’Bout ya!’ Gerry thumps my shoulder and signals to Jimmy for two pints. ‘Hey, you going skiing or something?’ he asks, stroking the fur-trimmed hood of my tatty parka coat as though it was a kitten. His bulky frame is squeezed into a faded Wrangler jacket that’s small enough to be his kid brother’s.
‘You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face tonight when we’re waiting to get a taxi home.’
‘Big eejit – it’s summer, for Christ’s sake.’
Over drinks I tell him about George. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t go tonight,’ I suggest.
‘You kidding? Look outside, fuck’s sake. Concrete barrels. Wire mesh. Steel gates. Security cameras.’ He takes a deep slurp of Guinness. ‘Listen’ he says, wiping off a creamy moustache, ‘it’ll be far, far safer over in west Belfast.’
Our plan: walk the short distance from Jimmy’s to the city centre and from there hop into one of the black taxis that shuttle up and down the Falls Road. Gerry has heard there’s great craic in the west Belfast Republican clubs. He’s also heard they heave with crumpet.
‘Look around,’ Gerry says. ‘You really want to stay here all night?’
The pub is almost empty and the atmosphere non-existent. We knock back our pints and head off to Paradise at the top of the Falls.
Later, inside the club, the drink and music are in full flow, though we’re disappointed to discover there are few unattached females among the crowd. The low price of the pints, however, is some compensation, and we’re content to enjoy an evening of music and cheap drink.
After a break, the musicians come back on stage and the pace of the reels ratchets up a notch. We grab a few more pints and move to another table to get a better view of the concertina player. She’s wearing a short skirt across which her instrument squirms like a fat caterpillar. The room is wide and open-plan, and by the end of the night everybody is trying to talk above everybody else, yelling to their friends at the same table. Yeah, isn’t the music great, and, yeah, wasn’t it great last week too, and, yeah, isn’t that concertina player a bit of hot stuff, and, yeah, the streets are getting a lot more dangerous, and, yeah – no – you certainly would not want to go far to get home tonight.
I notice a guy at a table close to us. An odd smirk is draped across his face like Twelfth of July bunting. Along his left cheek runs a three-inch scar. He is staring at us. His mates are staring at us, too, hard and straight. I think it might be an appropriate time to leave. I catch Gerry’s eye and nod towards the exit.
We make our way back to the main road and sit on a low wall to wait for the taxi shuttle. After a few minutes one pulls up. The door opens and two men alight; two other passengers remain seated in the back. The taxi has room for at least five, so we start to get in, flipping down the two rear-facing, fold-up seats. Then, the men who had just got out pile back in on top of us and slam the door. ‘Taking a wee ride ...’
As the taxi accelerates away I’m thrown onto the back seat with Gerry right on top of me. We’re jammed in between the two men who’d stayed in the cab, and I can barely move a muscle. The pair who had bundled us in face us on the fold-up seats. I feel Gerry tremble through his denim jacket as he whimpers, ‘Please, lads. For the love of God …’ and try to wriggle free from under the weight of his body and his elbows that are digging into my ribs, while struggling to breathe in air that’s warm and stale and stinks of sweat and smoke and petrol fumes. My head’s spinning, and I hear my ma’s pleading, don’t go out tonight son, there’s murder on the streets, her words turning like the mixer the workmen were shovelling cement into, as she sobs and tells me about George, who all of a sudden I remember sitting outside his house in the sun, reading the sports pages and asking me who I fancied in the three-o-clock hurdle. And my ma’s voice carries on, that wasn’t the worst of it, she says, and I’d like to cover my ears, but I can’t because I’m sandwiched in the back seat, my arms pinned under Gerry. That wasn’t the worst of it, she repeats, her words tumbling as my chest heaves in and out trying to suck in air, my mouth dries up and my tongue feels coated in a dusting of cement.
The taxi races back in the direction from which we’ve come. Any second now I know it will turn sharply and drive towards the other side of the city, the side I don’t know well, but know that if you’re taken there you won’t be coming back.
‘Take it easy, lads. You’re going to be all right.’
I look at the speaker. On his cheek a three-inch scar glistens in the headlights of a passing car. I begin to feel safer.
The taxi pulls up behind the club that we’d been in earlier. We’re pushed out and taken through a rear entrance. We’re led into a small storeroom that’s dimly lit by a single bulb dangling from a length of wire.
‘OK lads, who are you? Where’re you from? ID? Why were you here?’ The questions are shot at us by Scarface who appears to be the leader.
As we fumble for driving licenses or some kind of membership cards we try to explain our logic of travelling across the city for a drink in a place that neither of us has ever been to. One of our abductors scribbles notes, while another takes Gerry’s driving license and waits while I try to extract a student card that has slipped through a ripped pocket of my parka and disappeared into the depths of the lining. I manage to thread it out and hand it over.
‘Wait here,’ Scarface orders. ‘We’ll run some checks.’ Then all of them leave, and the door is locked.
We try to convince ourselves that we’ll come to no harm – sure aren’t we among our own? – and that our captors will reappear at any minute apologizing for our mistreatment.
Thirty minutes pass and the place is eerily quiet save for sporadic gunfire, some distant, some close. Then the door is thrown open and Scarface reappears. He slings our identification back at us. They land on the floor. ‘Pick them up and get the fuck out. Never come back.’
I wonder what’s bugging him, making him so angry. Maybe he’s been deprived of giving somebody a good beating, or a knee-capping, or maybe even he’s been deprived of – who knows? – putting a bullet into someone’s head, but Gerry and I glance at each other, and I see that he, too, doesn’t really want to hang around to chat with Scarface about his personal deprivations. I pick up my fake student card, while Gerry picks up his driving license, and it occurs to me just then that I don’t remember Gerry ever passing his test.
On the way back to the main road we start to relax a little. We joke about Gerry failing his driving test for a third time, while four years after finishing college I’m still carrying a student card in order to get travel discounts.
Gerry laughs. ‘Maybe you should use your card to buy a new parka.’
Then something starts to gnaw at me. ‘Who to hell does Scarface think he is?’ I ask, feeling bitterness mounting. ‘He doesn’t own the club – we’re every bit as entitled as him to be drinking there.’
‘Sure,’ Gerry says. ‘But I’m now thinking that Jimmy’s isn’t too bad a place for a quiet pint.’
I stop walking. ‘I’m going back to the club.’
Gerry grabs my furry hood as I turn. ‘Are you off your trolley?’
‘Scarface must have a commanding officer – I want to have a word with him.’
‘You’ll dig yourself into deep trouble, boyo.’
‘I’ll be fine. Sure haven’t they checked us out? Don’t worry – I’ll be nice about it.’ As I stride back towards the club, I’m getting angrier with every step, building up a head of steam as Gerry pants along behind, doing his damnedest to talk me out of returning.
I’m about to kick the back door for a third time, when it opens and a head peers around the edge.
‘Hey! What’s up?’
I recognise the voice. ‘I want to speak to the boss,’ I answer, trying to sound confident.
The door opens wider until Scarface’s bulk fills the frame. He looks left down the street and then up to the right. He ushers us in, frisking us before leading us along a corridor. He points to a room. ‘Wait in there’.
