by Stina Leicht
Sitting down across from her, he could hardly contain his excitement. He hoped he would get it right the first time and without hesitation. “Dia dhuit, a Maire Cháit. Ar mhaithleat dul amach?” Hello, Mary Kate. Would you like to go out? He hoped she wouldn’t press on much further as he’d just run through the extent of his hard-earned vocabulary—unless she wanted to talk about the weather, of course.
She leaned across the table and trapped him in a fierce hug. “Oh, Liam. That’s wonderful!”
The guards burst from their corners and yanked him away from her. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare.
The guard with the red hair said, “Visit is over.”
Liam said, “We’ve a half hour!”
“You, shut your cakehole,” the red-headed guard said. Liam recognized him as the one Frankie called “Gingernut.” He had a reputation for being strict, particularly if there wasn’t any profit in being otherwise.
Gingernut turned to Mary Kate. “Go on. Get on home.”
“What did we do?” Mary Kate asked.
“No fucking Irish,” Gingernut said, forcefully shoving Liam across the room.
Liam staggered into the wall. “I won’t do it again! I’ll tell you what I said! I only asked her—”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Gingernut said.
Liam patted his pockets for anything he could give the man but wasn’t quick enough. The guards dragged him through the door. Furious, he fought them with everything he had.
Liam opened his eyes and found himself on an infirmary cot. Jack was at his side, sitting on the floor. Liam wasn’t surprised. When the doctor wasn’t on duty other prisoners took on the role. Jack’s face was a sketch in concern. “Which guard did this to you? I’m filing a report.”
“I’m done.” Fervor passed through Liam’s clenched teeth. He wanted to scream his conviction—he didn’t care who would hear, but the agony in his sides stopped him. His ribs were broken. The words came out in a fierce whisper instead. “I’m joining up.”
Jack leaned close. “This isn’t you. It’s only the anger talking. You’ll calm down—”
“Fucking mean it.”
Gingernut had ordered a cavity search, and Liam couldn’t stop them from carrying it through. It’d taken three guards to hold him fast while it was done, and they’d laughed and made lewd comments in the process.
With a deep breath, Jack settled on the floor and brushed dirt off his knee. His shrewd brown eyes scanned the infirmary walls until at last he said, “Truth is, I wouldn’t have you, son. Not in my brigade.”
“Why not?” He knows, Liam thought. He knows about the monster. They transferred someone from the Kesh. He’s heard the stories.
Reaching into his coat, Jack pulled out a note. “Can you tell me what that says?”
Accepting the slip of paper, Liam opened it. The words were written in blue ink—in cursive. It was then that he understood it wasn’t the monster that Jack had heard about, but something else. Shame burned Liam’s face with the force of an unexpected blow, and he turned his head. Before he knew it, the heat of embarrassment became a tingling sensation in his chest which crawled down both arms and gathered in his clenched fists. Liam wanted to punch Frankie for not keeping his word. For not keeping his mouth shut. That’s what he got for trusting the likes of Frankie. After all the months of careful self-control, Liam was on the verge of ripping something apart. Anything. He wanted to smash the note in Jack’s smug face. He wanted to run. Only he couldn’t run; he was stuck in the infirmary with two broken ribs because he’d been too stupid not to fight the guards. Too stupid—
I won’t, he thought. Won’t have another goddamned teacher tell me I can’t do something. Fuck teachers. Fuck Jack. “Mike Cusack can’t read, and he’s in. What does that have to do with anything?”
Jack nodded. “Mike Cusack is a good man.” A long pause stretched out, and for a moment Liam didn’t think Jack was going to continue, but then he sighed. “We don’t need more heroes to die for the cause. If the British could be repelled with a wall built of dead heroes, Ireland would have been free long ago,” he said. “The Brits are getting smarter. Look around you. They’re filling up the prisons with Republicans so fast they can’t keep up.
So, they dump us in improvised shite holes like this. If we’re to survive, we must change too. We must think.” He poked an index finger at Liam’s bruised head.
“You won’t have me because I’m stupid.”
“You’re far from that, I promise you,” Jack said.
“Then why?”
Gently placing a hand in the center of his chest, Jack pushed him back down on the cot. “Calm down, son. Don’t hurt yourself after Murphy went to all the trouble of patching you up.”
Liam closed his eyes, and the moment he did, he recognized the tingling sensation for what it was and how far it had gone. The monster was dangerously close, and if he didn’t do something quick he’d lose it, and Jack would be the one to pay the price, not the fucking screws. Grabbing the iron cot frame under the covers with his right hand, Liam fought for control. Inexplicably, metal seemed to help. Not always, but enough that touching bars and aluminum walls had become a habit when he was angry or upset. He focused on the canvas-covered iron under his palm. He couldn’t let the beast go. Wouldn’t. Stupid. Doing so now would only prove him unfit—although not for the reasons Jack thought. Liam was dead certain that no matter what the English said, Provos didn’t recruit monsters.
He bit down on his anger, and hissed for air through his teeth. Pain shot into his head from his bruised jaw, giving him a nauseating headache.
“Suppose we did take you,” Jack said. “What of the others? Their lives will be in your hands just as yours will be in theirs.”
“Frankie told you.”
“He didn’t.” Jack raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been in secondary education for twelve years. Do you not think I’m capable of noticing differences in students’ handwriting? Not that the differences are that subtle in your case.”
“Fine. I’m stu—”
“Still, I couldn’t think of how you were managing to read out loud in class,” Jack said. “Waited two weeks and watched for a pattern. Then I had it. Frankie would kick you just before you’d read. That was clever. Had me thinking he was pushing a reluctant student. Hell, you must have memorized whole chapters to pull it off.” He sighed. “So, I keep asking myself, what’s stopping you? You’re certainly not lazy. There are far easier ways of muddling through. Perhaps it’s a lack of sufficient motivation? I don’t know. Regardless, you’ll have to work it out. Get through your O-Levels without cheating. Do that, and I’ll recommend you myself.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, and you will. Not for me, and not for the cause.” Jack shook his head and sighed. “But because if you don’t you’ll lose that girl of yours.
And from what I’ve heard, you don’t want to go and do that.”
Liam took long, slow breaths, pain warning him to take care. He wanted to listen. He had to listen. The prickling sensation began to recede along with his anger.
When he had told Mary Kate he was thinking of taking fifth year, she had given him a kiss that had kept him up nights for a week. It had been why he had stuck out the classes, no matter how badly he wanted to quit. She only thought him a little slow. She didn’t know he was practically illiterate, and he never wanted her to know. While there was no real shame in not being able to read where he came from—Bogside was full of men who couldn’t—Mary Kate and her family held education in high regard, and she was at Queen’s University, surrounded by learned men who weren’t in prison and weren’t fakes and liars.
“I’ll do everything I can to help, Liam.”
Turning to face the wall again, Liam swallowed. “I’ll do it.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Less than a week later, two of the guards who’d put Liam in the infirmary met with bad ends. One was shot by a sniper i
n the car park outside the prison, lost a leg and his job in the bargain. The other burned alive in a house fire. When Gingernut vanished the rumors started up again—mistreat the scrawny kid from Derry and bad luck is sure to follow. The prison scéal had it that Gingernut had been in a terrible car accident and had broken both legs. He wouldn’t be walking for months, and thus, wouldn’t be back at Malone for some time. None of the prisoners were sorry to hear it—Liam in particular.
When he was released from the infirmary, he was glad of it. The place was filthy and stank of death. Most of the time there was no doctor, only Murphy who’d once been a medical assistant at a hospital in Belfast. Two prisoners died while Liam was recovering. One expired in the cot next to him and no one came for the body for two days. Liam had to pull the covers over the man’s head himself. He didn’t know a proper prayer for the dead. So, he said an “Our Father” and hoped it’d be enough. The other died on the way up to the treatment room. The guards abandoned the dead man in the stairwell, and since Murphy hadn’t been able to make it back to the infirmary for almost a week the body wasn’t removed until the stench became unbearable. Liam begged Murphy to let him go back to his cage, and as soon as he could move without wanting to scream, Murphy relented.
Liam returned to his school work, spending most of his time in the study huts with Frankie. It took him the remainder of his stay at Malone to pass the exam without cheating—more than two years—but pass he did, and when Liam was released in February of 1975, Jack kept his end of the bargain. Six weeks later, the Provos arranged for Liam to begin work as a cab driver in Belfast.
When he got the news he called Mary Kate. He was in the kitchen, and his mother was just around the corner in the sitting room, watching television. It was the best time to call. The little kids were outside playing, and his stepfather wasn’t due home for a whole hour. He could hear Eileen in the next room listening to her Bay City Rollers records. A muffled version of “Angel Baby” filtered through the wall for the third time in a row. He waited while one of Mary Kate’s many flatmates called her to the phone.
“Liam? Has something happened?”
“I’ve good news.”
“What is it?” She was shouting to be heard over her flatmates who were arguing over whose turn it was to make a call. It sounded like there were fifteen of them and all of them were hopping mad.
Les McKeown was permitted to reach the end of his song and then doomed to repeat it for a fourth time. Liam wished Eileen would let the damned album go to the next song.
“I’ve work,” he said.
“That’s wonderful. Look, can I call you tomorrow?”
“No,” Liam said. His heart was now pounding in his ears fit to compete with the ruckus on the other end of the line. “I’ve a question to ask you. It’s important.”
“Are you sure it can’t wait?”
“I’m sure!”
His mother appeared, giving him a look that said, Do you have to shout?
“Will you give me a half moment?” he asked Mary Kate. “This is not the kind of question you rush.”
His mother blinked.
Mary Kate paused. “Hold on.” Her hand must’ve gone over the receiver because he heard muffled screaming and then everything went quiet.
“Okay. You can ask now.”
He swallowed. “It’s about the work. I’ve a cab. The job is in Belfast.”
“Oh.” Mary Kate sounded disappointed. “Are you coming here?”
“Yes,” he said. His heart was really going at it now. Was she unhappy about him moving to Belfast? Is that what he was hearing? Had she met someone and simply not told him? “I was wondering if you’d….” His voice gave out on him.
“If I’d what? Liam, I can’t hold up the line. It’s not my day for the phone and—”
“I was wondering if you’d… still want to marry me.” He got the last out in a rush.
His mother screamed.
“What?” Mary Kate asked on the other end of the line.
“Marry me. Do you still want to marry me?”
There was only silence on the other end of the line, and his heart stopped jumping about and then dropped somewhere around his ankles. Between his mother’s hysterical cries he thought he could make out what sounded like weeping.
“Mary Kate?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”
“I thought you’d forgotten.”
It was his turn to gape. “I said I wanted to get work first. I’ve work now. Have you, have you met someone?”
“No. Oh, Liam.”
“No, you won’t marry me? Or no—”
“Yes! I mean, no, I’ve not met anyone. Yes, I’ll marry you!”
His knees turned to jelly. “Oh, thank God.”
“What did she say?” his mother asked.
“She said yes, Ma. She’ll marry me.”
There was an entire chorus of squeals on the other end of the phone. “When?” Mary Kate asked.
“When would you like? It’ll have to be soon if we’re to have it at St. Brendan’s. But if you’d rather—”
“Let’s set it for the moment I get home from Uni for the summer. I don’t want to give you a chance of getting away from me again.”
“When?”
“A calendar! I need a calendar! Hurry!” He heard a chorus of giggles and shuffling and pages being flipped. “Here. May. Got it. All right. How about the 11th?”
“Sure.”
“What did she say?” his mother asked.
“Can you not wait until I’m off the phone?” he asked her.
His mother’s lips pressed together in a hard line. “I must know. How am I to get the planning started?”
“The 11th of May,” he said. “It’s a Sunday.”
“No. No. No,” his mother said. “Not May!”
“Ma says it can’t be May.”
“What? Why not?” Mary Kate asked.
“She wants to know why not?”
Frowning, his mother said, “May is a terrible month to get married. It’s a bad omen, it is. I’ll not have it.”
“Ma says—”
Mary Kate sighed. “I heard her. You tell her this is our wedding, and we’re getting married on the 11th of May. Liam, it has to be. I don’t want to wait. We can’t wait. We’ve waited long enough.”
“I know. I know.” He moved the receiver from his mouth. “Ma, it has to be the 11th of May. Please. It means a lot to Mary Kate.”
“Marry in May and rue the day,” his mother muttered. She sighed. “She’s the bride. It’s her wedding.”
Liam decided he didn’t care what his mother said. He was twenty years old, and it was one of the happiest days of his life.
Chapter 11
Londonderry/Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland
30 April 1975
Liam found Father Murray in front of the parochial house. The priest was on his knees and digging in a flowerbed under a window. The sun was out, and it was warm. Liam had gone for a run earlier and as a result felt more relaxed than he had in some time, and yet the tension between his shoulder blades wouldn’t let up. He didn’t understand it. This was without a doubt one of the happiest times of his life. Still, he couldn’t sleep, and his stomach had been in a knot for three days. He was happy to see Father Murray enjoying the weather, though. The air smelled fresh and clean with a hint of the ocean. Liam decided he was going to miss Derry when it came down to it. For a moment he wondered if Belfast was going to be as beautiful in the spring.
“Hello, Father.”
Father Murray turned, looking over his shoulder. “Ah, it’s you, Liam. How are you on this fine day?”
“I’m well. You’re in a good mood.”
“I am,” Father Murray said, returning to his digging.
“Do you have a wee bit of time, Father?”
“Is it going to require vestments?”
“Not at the moment. Well, eventually, yes. Mary Kate and I are getting married, Father. And I was won
dering if you’d do the honours.”
Freezing, Father Murray didn’t move for what seemed a whole minute. Then he set the little spade he was holding deep into the earth. He didn’t turn around. “Married.”
“Yes, Father.”
“You’re quite sure about this?”
“There’s never been anyone else. You know that.”
Father Murray took a deep breath and released it. “And what does your mother say?”
“I’ve not seen her from the minute I told her. Spends her time with Mrs. Gallagher, and they’ve been on the phone with Mary Kate. I think between the three of them they’ve the thing planned already. As I understand it, all I’m to do is show up, and if they had a way to make a plan of that, they’d have done that too.”
Turning at last, Father Murray dusted off his hands. “I’m sensing a bit of frustration.”
“I spent three years in Malone, having almost no say over virtually anything you can name. So, why is it I feel I had more control over my life then than I do now?”
Father Murray smiled. “Let’s have a drink.”
Liam followed Father Murray inside. Standing on the runner, Liam looked into the sitting room. Father Michael glanced up from the book he was reading and nodded a greeting. Light from the window reflected off his reading glasses.