Rose paid the fare and climbed the spiral staircase to sit upstairs in the smoking area. The bus trundled down the Crumlin Road, stopping to pick up three passengers outside 463. Mr Langley got on board. Rose’s heart beat faster. Mr Langley liked to smoke a pipe – maybe he would come upstairs. She quickly left her seat at the front of the bus and moved to the back where there was still an empty seat beside a woman wearing thick glasses. She need not have worried as Mr Langley stayed downstairs. She took a deep breath and settled comfortably back in the seat, feeling even more relaxed when Mr Langley got off the bus at Carlisle Circus. She watched him light his pipe and limp slowly towards the Antrim Road. She took off her school tie, hid it in the satchel and buttoned up her raincoat to hide the badge on her blazer. She took out Matt’s letter.
“Dear Rose,
On Saturday 8th January, Eddie, Max and I have been commissioned for a special surveillance assignment which might give us a chance to meet – if not to meet alone, at least to we will be able to talk. At last! There are so many questions I have to ask you and so many things to tell you. More than anything, I want to be with you, to be able to look into your eyes for more than a few seconds without worrying that someone will see us. I want to hold your hand – to feel its softness which I can only now imagine. Believe me, I do imagine it constantly. Don’t mention to anyone where I am. Promise – not even to Tom or to Lily. I’ve drawn a map of the house we will be staying in for four days from Saturday. Try to come on Monday 10th January. I know we will be inside that day. Get in by the downstairs window to the left of the front door. I’ll leave it open. If you can’t make it – don’t worry – I’m back on school patrol again on Wednesday 12th. I have been told that at long last I will have leave in April. I’ll go back home to Cardiff. Maybe you will find a way to visit my family in Rhiwbina? We can see if Tom and Lily would be OK with that. I don’t see why not. I hope that you Tom, Lily and of course Lucky keep safe. See you Monday if not Wednesday. Love always from Matt xx”.
Rose studied Matt’s map, tracing the direction with her finger along Matt’s line dotted from the cemetery to the house marked with an ‘X’.
When the bus arrived at Belfast City Centre, Rose caught a second bus heading for the Falls Road and got off fifteen minutes later at the cemetery. Rain started to fall heavily, bouncing off the pavement and the tops of the armoured police jeeps parked in a line outside the main cemetery entrance. Two women huddled under umbrellas and then linked arms and staggered through the metal gates. They pushed their way through the middle of a large crowd of mostly black coated mourners, flowing together like a slick of tar towards the graveside of Mickey Hannah. Mickey had been shot dead for not stopping at checkpoint Charlie a few days earlier. Rose skirted the edge of more than a hundred mourners. She glimpsed an oak coffin draped in an Irish tricolour carried by four men wearing balaclavas, camouflage green uniforms, black berets and gloves. It hadn’t been Rose’s intention to stumble across Mickey’s funeral but now that she was here, she stopped as ropes were laid on the ground, the coffin placed on top of the ropes and the four men lowered the coffin into the hole.
Two IRA men standing beside the grave raised rifles into the air and shots crackled into the grey clouds. A helicopter rumbled into sight, dropping lower to take photographs of the mourners. The coffin inched its way into the hollow blackness. A handful of mud thrown on top clunked in a muffled way against the wood. A small girl wearing an emerald green woollen coat, yellow gloves and a black knitted bobble hat walked to the graveside. She looked around, reached a hand towards a thin faced woman approaching in a long black coat. The two stood side by side as the girl threw a worn brown teddy into the grave.
A pink rose toppled from the mother’s hand into the darkness. The priest opened the prayer book. The wind turned three pages which he turned back. “Dust thou art and onto dust thy shalt return.” His words were carried away on a stronger gust of wind, disappearing into the heavy rhythm of the helicopter propellers slicing at the low clouds.
The crowd started to quietly disperse, with Rose following those who turned left along a pathway leading out of the cemetery into a side street. The rain continued to lash against two yellow and black spotted umbrellas which turned inside out ahead of Rose who tucked her hair into her coat and turned up her collar. With rain streaming down her face and then trickling down the back of her neck she pulled on a pair of navy woollen gloves. Then, lifting her head, she spotted the derelict building on wasteland about one hundred yards ahead on the right. She pulled Matt’s map from her pocket. It had to be that house. She stopped for a moment to check.
Two men ahead of her, hands in pockets, bumped into each other from time to time as they stumbled across the muddy rough ground. They were heading in the direction of the derelict buildings. Rose watched a gust of wind lift two tiles from one of the houses. The tiles flew through the air like clay pigeons before crashing and splintering onto the ground. The upstairs windows were surprisingly clean. The house which Matt had marked with an ‘X’ was the middle house. She saw the splintered front door and the slightly opened downstairs window banging gently in the breeze.
A woman with a spotty umbrella, wearing a red woollen coat, unexpectedly turned around and looked at Rose. She then looked in the direction in which Rose was looking. Rose crumpled Matt’s letter in her pocket. As Rose looked at the house, the sky suddenly cleared and the sun burst through the clouds sending a broad ray of sunshine into the upstairs window of the middle house. It glinted for a moment on what seemed to be a silvery object. The woman in red looked at the glinting light and then grabbed the arm of her friend and she shrieked at the three men walking ahead of them, “Have a look over there. They’re in there.”
The helicopter dropped height as if the soldiers on board had heard the woman’s words. The wind from the rotor blades swayed the tips of the tall Poplar trees edging the wasteland. Someone shouted.
“Get them.”
Taking his hands out of his pockets, a short legged man with broad shoulders ran towards the house, closely followed by others, women stumbling in high heels, tripping over the broken bricks and splashing through the pools of rainwater. One man threw a brick into the air, breaking the upstairs bedroom window. Rose started to sprint, overtaking the women and catching up with the men. She reached the front door as the first man threw himself against it with his right shoulder. It didn’t move.
One of the women shouted. “The downstairs window is open. You can get in the window.”
Two men turned left, towards the window. The smaller of the two joined his hands together and bowed towards his friend who stepped onto the joined hands and hoisted himself through the window.
Rose, clutching her satchel, reached the front door as the two men now both inside opened the door. She threw the satchel to the ground. A man wearing jeans and a loose white tea shirt which fluttered against his torso like a flag screamed.
“The fucking cowardly bastards are upstairs hiding. Get reinforcements.” He looked at Rose who ignored him; instead she squeezed into the hallway, past a smaller man with a varicosed face, while two women staggered in high heels across the wasteland into a nearby road and turned left out of sight into a terraced street. The helicopter hovered directly overhead, dropping closer to the roof of the terraced building.
Rose panted as she climbed the stairs behind three men and two women. Rivulets of sweat ran down the sides of her face. She felt as though she was going to vomit. The men reached the bedroom on the left ahead of her. Her hands visibly shook as she approached the open bedroom door. The short legged man, flanked by his two friends, walked briskly towards the three soldiers, cornering them in the way a sheep dog presses sheep into a pen. The short haired men were unmistakably British soldiers in plain clothes with short hair, one wearing a tweed jacket and jeans, the other two wearing blue anoraks and jeans. Rose watched Matt in his tweed jacket scan his pistol across the three men.
He hadn’t yet seen Rose.
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“If you come any closer I’ll fire. I don’t want to do that. If we leave the building now no-one gets hurt.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are giving orders you fuckin’ British bastard. You drop your fuckin’ gun on the floor.”
Max and Edward pulled pistols from inside their anoraks as Matt shot a warning shot into the ceiling. “We’re not joking. We leave here and no-one will be killed.”
Two more men pushed past Rose into the bedroom, rugby tackling Max and Edward to the ground. Matt watched for a second, his hand raised in the air, the pistol pointed again at the ceiling. A third man lunged forward, grabbed Matt’s arm and within seconds the three soldiers were disarmed, lying face down on the floor, hands clasped on top of their heads. Two men strode into the bedroom with pick axes and rifles. There were now seven men and two women in the room with Rose, Matt, Edward and Max.
Matt, Edward and Max lay on the floor. One of the women offered the men perched on the windowsill a packet of cigarettes. A path was opened in the room to allow the two newcomers to walk slowly towards the soldiers. They stood on either side of Matt and Max with Edward in the middle. The room was now silent. There was a pause as one man with a squint in his eye lifted the butt of his rifle and brought it down on top of Matt as though he was tenderising a steak. The second man thumped Max with edge of the pick axe which he then threw on the carpeted floor. There was another pause, unbroken silence filling the room, mingling with an almost tangible aroma of anger and fear akin to the acidity and bitterness of CS gas. Before the silence shattered, Rose hurtled across the room, finding a gap between the two men and throwing herself on top of Matt. She placed her head on top of his head, her arms around his shoulders, each of her legs on top of his legs.
“Oh my God Rose. Get out of here.” Matt whispered. “I was insane asking you to come here.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Rose squeezed his hand.
Rose lifted her head into the air like a snake as she coiled her lower body around Matt. “Stop. For God’s sake stop.”
The man with the rifle indicated with a nod to his friend to retrieve the pick axe. Edward had turned on the floor to lie on his back. The head of the pick axe caught him mid stomach. He squealed, curling onto his side.
“Get out of the way or you’re dead meat. There’s no place for a soldier lover here.”
“Don’t you see what you are doing?” Rose slid off Matt onto the floor.
Edward clutched his stomach and started to sob. Max lay unconscious, unmoving on the floor. Matt moved his hand to try to touch Rose’s hand. Rose rolled onto her knees and from there got shakily to her feet and approached the man closest to her who was holding the butt of the rifle with his two hands. He was only in his twenties with thick dark hair falling over his eyes. Rose lowered her voice and almost whispered in a trembling stutter, “How does a country which wins freedom in blood know what freedom means?”
“Who do you think you are, you bitch? Mother fuckin’ Theresa? This is a war. These are soldiers. Didn’t we only an hour ago bury Mickey Hannah? Did they give him a chance when they opened fire on him? He wasn’t even bloody armed. It’s easy to be brave when you have a gun in your hand. Let’s see how brave they are now. They knew when they joined the British army what it’s all about. Get her to fuck out of here. I don’t care what you do with her. We’ll finish here what needs to be done.”
Rose knelt on the ground and took hold of Edward and Matt’s hands. Edward squeezed Rose’s hand in silence. Matt rubbed the inside of the palm of her hand with his thumb.
“If you want to kill them, kill me first.”
“Be careful what you ask for – you know they say that you might just get what you ask for.”
One of the men pushed forward to pull Rose’s hand free from Edward’s grip. Edward struggled to hold on, pulling himself into a sitting position as Rose was dragged away by her feet. Matt let her hand go gently. A man raised a rifle, pointing it first at Rose and then slowly moved it to the left and aimed it at Edward. He pulled the trigger. Edward’s head thudded against the bedroom carpet. His navy blue anorak, dripped with crimson blood onto the ground. Matt crawled onto his knees and attempted to stop the bleeding from Edward’s neck. A rifle butt lifted high into the air, swung like a golf club, clacking Matt directly on the left ear. Matt fell heavily on his right shoulder. Max wriggled on the ground towards Matt.
“Aaaaaaaagggghhhh!” A woman jumped from the windowsill, lifted the pick axe from where it had been thrown on the ground and hit Max across the back with the blunt side.
Rose closed her eyes as she was grabbed by the collar of her raincoat, then lifted like a cat and pitched onto the uncarpeted landing floor outside the bedroom. She fell hitting her head on the wooden flooring. Edward’s blood had mingled with hers seeping now into the unvarnished wood. A hand clutched at the roots of her hair. Her head was lifted six inches of the floor and then banged again onto the wooden floor.
“Maybe that will knock some sense into you.”
Rose couldn’t see what was happening now. Everything was blurred as she squinted to see who was now beside her.
“Come with us, you fucking soldier lover.” A woman hissed into her ear pulling her again by hair into a sitting position. Rose didn’t know how she got downstairs. She remembered her body thumping against the stairs and the banister. She had no idea how many women there were or how many hands pulling at her raincoat. One of her shoes came off and bounced downstairs, lying on its side near the open door. Three buttons burst open on her raincoat, scattering like sparklers left, right, one hitting the ceiling.
The next fully conscious moment Rose had was of stepping onto broken glass with her shoeless foot as she was dragged across the wasteland. Two women carried her by the arms. Her legs dragged behind. They let go of her arms and she fell heavily onto the frozen mud. “Walk, you bitch. We’re not carrying you.” A hand dragged her to her feet. She took a few steps and fell. She opened her eyes slowly and through a haze she vaguely saw two women looking at her.
“Give me a fag. We’ll be here all day waiting for her.” She saw a woman with peroxide hair, flared jeans, a long Afghan jacket, puffing on a Benson and Hedges cigarette. Rose struggled to her feet. The helicopter blades rattled overhead.
“That one on the corner will do.” A second woman wearing high black paten stiletto shoes with a pink bow on the front and no stockings, pointed to a lamp post on the corner of the street.
Rose raised her head to see where the woman was pointing. She saw the lamp post and sighed in relief. They are going to tar and feather me; not kill me. She struggled to her feet.
As she approached the lamp post, she couldn’t help herself falling again and as she fell she managed to steady herself catching hold of its thick metal trunk. It felt strangely comforting, solid and steady. She held it with two hands, breathing deeply as a dwarf sized, thick bellied woman, pulled a thick rope around Rose’s waist. The peroxide woman helped her to roll it higher around Rose’s chest and neck. Rose’s arms were at her side. Her head fell to one side.
“Scissors,” the dwarf woman demanded, taking a pair of large dress making scissors from the peroxide woman.
Rose heard the helicopter again hovering closer overhead. By turning her head only a few inches to the left, she could see it hovering closer and closer to the roof of the house. A soldier descended like an ant on a rope towards the roof.
The dwarf woman took the scissors and pulled at Rose’s black hair. She caught the few strands of hair from inside her collar and began hacking at the shiny black mass as the smoke from her cigarette wafted over Rose’s face. Rose felt the pointed tips of the scissors piercing her head as she watched handfuls of hair falling in clumps onto the pavement.
“The tar.”
Silence as a bucket of warm tar poured over Rose’s head. Rose closed her mouth and eyes, holding her breath as the tar slid down her face. She felt the edges of the plumes of the feathers smothered in tar gently
slither down her face almost as a caress when two high velocity shots rang out from inside the derelict building. There followed a splattering of machinegun fire.
Rose dropped her head onto her chest as the shots faded. She moved her head slightly to the left, coughed, spitting tar into the air as the helicopter landed. She took a deep breath.
The peroxide woman shouted “Good on you boys.” She spat at Rose’s face. “Job done – no thanks to you bitch. The next time there will be a bullet with your name on it if you don’t wise up.”
Rose closed her eyes feeling the tar cooling on her head and face. Crow’s feathers crawled along her neck. The crunch of the women’s steps on the gravel path grew fainter. Her heart thumped. She tried to swallow but could only cough, her chest quivering, then in spasm projecting tar and feathers into the air as her shoulders shuddered and her hands mottled blue. Rose consciously took a breath. The air felt pure, cold, and clear, like the first breath of her life. Her body started to shake more than quiver. It scared her how this body, which no longer felt like her body, would react to the next second, minute, hour. She could feel the air now entering her nostrils – finding itself a small pinprick of access to her throat. She focused on this point of contact, then the movement of the air and its rhythm rather than the sense she had before of being drowned in tar. The fact that she was breathing and could find this tiny path of access to air was a lifebelt.
Rose’s head hung forward, her arms tied behind her, her body roped to the lamp post. She was alone. She felt the coldness of the air congeal once again the tar around her nose. She struggled to breathe. She kept her eyes closed and heard the familiar drone of a Saracen approaching. Rain lashed against her head, sinking into the rain coat. The rain turned to sleet. Eyes closed, Rose felt a strange heat within her stomach, as though someone had lit a small fire from tinder in a rain forest.
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