The Whore-Mother

by Shaun Herron

  “All right?” she said, looking shy and smiling.

  Was she asking for his approval? He remembered a Scotsman he’d taken through the Stranmillis Museum and who said “Very nice” to everything he saw. “Very nice,” he said, “thank you.”

  “You’ll take that cup of tea now, won’t you?”

  “Thank you very much.” He had no idea what to say to this woman. Not: Can you get me a gun? Not: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Not: I went among wolves like a romantic little boy and now I’m just a terrified big boy.

  “You’re not like some of them I’ve seen,” the woman said, putting things on a small lacquered tray.

  “Oh?”

  “No. You look ... how? Studenty?”

  “Oh. Do you think I could have something to eat now? Down there, near the door ... I was too scared....”

  “I know that. Ham again?”

  “Anything. I’m sorry, Mrs....”

  “Beddoes. Now,” she sat down to wait for the kettle, “what do you need?”

  “My sister ... the phone....”

  “You want to see her?”

  “No! She’s at work now. She works in an insurance office in Donegal Square.”

  “You’d like to call her there?”

  “No. You never can tell who ... no. Would you ... ?”

  “You’d have to tell me her name.”

  “Oh, yes.” The woman didn’t know his name; only that Ivor Jones wasn’t his name. He must be very easy to read, disasterously easy, vulnerable. “Her name’s Maureen McManus.”

  She got the phone book, the name of the insurance company, and the number, and said, “Now?”

  “It’s very important what you say. You can’t mention this place, or my name. But I want her to know who wants her. She’s to phone me here. She’s not to go home early from the office. Just, you know, go home at the usual time. So I have to give her a time to call me—one time, no other. You see?”

  “I see. Of course.” She looked mockingly reproving. “Lectures weren’t this complicated?”

  “No. Just say she had a letter a while ago on scraps of paper. The writer wants to speak to her. Will she phone this number. At seven tonight. No. Six. Six. She couldn’t wait till seven. Neither can I.”

  Mrs. Beddoes called the number, got the girl, and gave her the message. The girl was cold, precise. “Yes, madam,” she said formally after each point was made. “Yes, madam. I’ll just make a note of the number.” Then, “And he is well, madam?”

  “Safe and well.”

  The sister, Mrs. Beddoes thought, was tougher than her brother. “Make yourself comfortable here,” she said. “Sleep if you need to. I have to go back to the desk.”

  He was weary. He was a little farther along a rocky road. He slept. It was one way to escape the leaden burden of passing time. She called as the hands of the mantelshelf clock touched six.

  She did not use his name. “I love you,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”

  “You’ll get a letter tomorrow. Ignore it. I need the car. I need money. I need old clothes, the ones I wore when I painted the garage, my walking boots and my camping gear. Are you ready?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Dad has my £200 savings. I need it.”

  “He’ll have to get it from the bank.”

  “All right. I’m safe till then. Tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you still visit Elsie Parker? Take the car? Tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wear a big floppy brimmed hat and leave it in the car. Back the car into her drive. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t report the car stolen till after midnight. Can you stay there that long?”

  “Anything I have to.”

  “I’ll leave it at a place called Corrymeela outside Ballycastle. It’s an old YMCA camp Ray Davey uses as a conference center now. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just leave the money in the pocket, and, Maureen....”

  “Yes.”

  “Dad has a gun in the top left-hand drawer of his dressing table. There’s a box of shells. Put it all in the pocket.”

  “Do you think ... is it best ... ?” She wanted to argue and didn’t want to leave him defenseless.

  “Yes. It’s best. I’m not a dog.”

  “No. All right.”

  “They’ll be watching you. Just do everything normal tomorrow.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Do everything normal every day, after.... Go out with Jack the same as always ... you know....”

  “Yes.”

  “Kiss Dad and Mum.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  ‘We’ll all pray for you. We love you.”

  “I love you all.” It was a sheepfold phrase, gathering a million inexpressible thoughts and associations and now, longings, into an affectionate and inadequate commonplace. “I’ll be all right. And Maureen....”

  “Yes.”

  “Put ten pounds of my money in an envelope and send it to Major Beddoes of the Salvation Army—B-e-d-d-o-e-s.”

  “I see. Yes. Be careful. Don’t forget to say thanks.”

  “No. I love you.” He put the phone down to stop the talk and the tears that threatened. What are you at twenty-two? A little boy with a gun, behind a barricade? A little boy, without a gun, being hunted for his life, hiding behind women and soon, alone, behind bushes and hills? To want to cry and not want to—that’s what little boys are made of. He had to reach England. But not yet. Not till they stopped watching the ferries and the airports and began to comb the country for him. Then he’d get to England. And if they got his direction and found the car first they’d hunt for him a while in the North. He went into the tiny bathroom of the flat and cried anyway, and washed his face.

  When he came out the Major was there. He was a small tubby man with a Pickwick sort of face. It was all he could do to reach an arm around McManus’s shoulder. “All set?” he said, and patted.

  “Tomorrow night, sir. On the Malone Road.”

  “We’ll get you there in our van.” The cherubic little man chuckled. “I don’t know whether God approves of people like us mixing in this sort of thing, Johnny, my boy. I’ll take it up with Him once you’re away.” He sat down and picked up his Bible. “By the way.” There was some small thing he’d forgotten to mention. “There’s a fellow in the hostel who’s looking for his friend—they got separated in a brawl in a pub, he said.” All the time, peering into his Bible. “His friend was badly beaten about the face and hands. About six feet, the friend is, about twenty-two years old. His friend’s name is Johnny McManus, but he might not be using that name.”

  It was insulting. McManus knew he ought not to ask. He couldn’t help himself. “What did you say, sir?”

  “I lied.” He turned the page of his Bible.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The Major said, “We’ll keep the door of the flat locked at all times.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The man has a bed for the night. He said he’d stay in case his friend showed up. There’ll be others around. There always are on these occasions.”

  On these occasions. McManus looked at the door. Locked or unlocked, it was a fragile thing. Chance was a fragile thing: he looked afraid and studenty and out of place in a Sally Ann hostel and Mrs. Beddoes saw it and he was up here instead of down there in the dormitory with his “friend.” The Major was a fragile thing, plump and cheerful and gentle and soft. His wife was a fragile thing, sweet, good, and young-looking, waiting passively in a state of grace at the Salvation Army in Port Elizabeth for the blacks who ate the nuns to come and eat her.

  McManus sank down in his uncomfortable chair. He was fragile too.

  The news that night on the telly in the little flat was painful. A fifteen-year-old boy whose name was not being disclosed had been found unconscious in the gutter on the Falls Road. Around his ne
ck was a placard which said only,

  RAPIST

  His face was beaten to a pulp. All his hair had been pulled out by the roots.

  That night, McManus began to cough.

  SIX

  THE children of Ireland are wondrously beautiful, like wild flowers on a dungheap.

  They played hopscotch in front of one of the good houses that cut off sight of the golf course from the Antrim Road. The eighteen-year-old twin brothers of one of the children sat in a car in the lane that joined the Antrim Road to the Shore Road, along the western edge of the golf course. They were giving all their attention to the golfers.

  A speedy boy came tearing round the corner into the lane. “She’s away into the gareege,” he said.

  “Away on home the lot of ye,” the twin behind the wheel said, and pulled out into the traffic on the Antrim Road.

  They stopped to give the hopscotch players a bag of sweeties and enough money to get them back to the Falls on a bus, with something over. The beautiful children ran laughing to the bus stop.

  Maureen McManus stopped to let them pass across the driveway exit and stayed for a gap in the traffic and came carefully out into the stream.

  “Fancy-lookin bitch,” the driver said, “I’d like to have a good go at her.”

  His twin said, “I’ll tell ye whether I’d like a go at her when I see her other end.”

  That was enough for a while. They followed her into the city center and through it past the university to number 542 Malone Road. She watched the car that followed her all the way, backed into Elsie Parker’s drive, and called the number Mrs. Beddoes had given her. “Tell him not to come,” she said when Mrs. Beddoes came to the phone. “They followed me. They’re waiting for him.”

  “We’ll have a conference,” Mrs. Beddoes said. “Give me your number.”

  The twins settled a hundred feet from the house. “Gon back t’that phone booth an tell them,” the driver told his brother.

  An army of monitors listened to phone calls from and to specified areas of the city. The twin called a phone box on the Falls. “Malone,” he said. “Is Malone there?”

  “Can I give Malone a message?”

  “Aye. Tell’m the winnin sweep number is 542.”

  “Aye. Five-four-two? That’s for Malone? Did he win any thin?”

  “The fuckin lot.”

  “Aye.”

  The twin went back to the car. They waited and watched. In time a car stopped at the intersection a hundred yards in front of them to the right. It stayed there, just off the Malone. In five minutes another car came down the Malone and parked across from the intersection and a little beyond it. There were three men in these cars. They waited and did not seem to talk.

  The twins talked.

  “She backed it in,” the driver said, “he’s in there with her sure as hell. That’s where he hid, by Jasus. He’ll come out like fuck.”

  At eight o’clock the driver said, “He’s takin his time.”

  “Look. The front upstairs window. That’s her, watchin.” Maureen McManus disappeared from the window. “We’ll go round the street and come back. Park further back this time.”

  When they turned the corner around the parked car the man in the back shouted, “Keep yer station.” An old navy man.

  “She spotted us. We’re gonta sit further back.”

  “Hurry up.”

  This time they settled two hundred feet back, behind another car. They would be a bit harder to see.

  Nine o’clock. The driver said, “He’s gonta wait till it’s dark.”

  “A hell of a lota good that’ll do’m. He’s boxed.”

  Ten o’clock. “Anytime now,” the driver said. “It’ll be dark in half an hour. I wisht I had a gun. All we can do is get in his bloody road.”

  Ten-thirty.

  Major Beddoes came into the flat “They’re still there,” his wife told him, “but further back. He says he’s going anyway.”

  “Just how good a driver are you, my boy?”

  “They thought I was good, sir. I think so too. If I can get out of that driveway I can lose them.”

  “If they don’t hit you first. And if you lose them, where will you go?”

  McManus looked steadily at him. “England, sir,” he said.

  The Major nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. The English are a hospitable people. Not everybody here agrees. If the Germans were dealing with your friends, or the B Specials, they’d all have been dead or in Cork years ago.” He was nervous. “We’ll go down the back stairs. The van’s open at the door. Step straight into it and close the door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll need money....”

  “There’s money in the car. Thank you....”

  Mrs. Beddoes said, “Your cough’s so much worse, Johnny. Why don’t you wait?”

  “It’ll go away. It’s nerves.”

  “Have you any pain?”

  “Not much. Mrs. Beddoes, I’ve got to go.”

  They went down the back stairs, out a back door into a yard with a row of garbage cans on either side of the door. Mrs. Beddoes got in beside the Major. The van doors were wide open. McManus stepped straight in and closed them.

  They were moving. “You’re sure you can pick the house from the street behind it?” the Major said.

  “I know it very well, sir.”

  “Well, we’ll go in behind Malone from the Stranmillis Road. When I give the word, you’ll have to come forward and tell me which house.”

  “It’s two houses down from the corner where Stranmillis runs into Malone, sir.”

  “All right, my boy.”

  The Major was a good driver. He swung his little Salvation Army van in and out of the traffic like a getaway man on a devious course. In twenty minutes he called McManus forward. “I’m about to turn off Stranmillis into the street behind Malone. Second house?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll go through the garden into Parker’s garden.”

  “Which way will you drive?”

  “Back into the city.”

  “They’re facing away from the city. Does that mean they expected you to go the other way?”

  “No, sir. It means they have a car up the Malone facing the other way. Maybe two.”

  “Then why go? You can’t get away. They’ll have guns.”

  “Yes, sir. I didn’t want to tell you, Major. There’s a gun in my sister’s car. It’s my father’s, sir.”

  The Major shut off the noisy engine. “I think we should think, my boy. They’re watching for you here. If you use your sister’s car there’ll be shooting in the street. If you’re not killed, some innocent person may be. Come back with us and tomorrow I’ll drive you to Aldergrove.”

  “They’ll be there, Major.”

  “The Heysham boat?”

  “Everywhere like that, sir. They’ll be there.”

  “Johnny,” the Major said severely, “that cough’s a lot worse.”

  “I have to go, sir.”

  “You’ll be killed, child,” Mrs. Beddoes said.

  “But not like a dog, Mrs. Beddoes.”

  “Oh, us poor Irish,” she said.

  “Johnny,” the Major said cautiously, walking on eggs, “let me drive you to the police? Give yourself up. You’ll be safer. They’ll hide you.”

  “The police?”

  “Or the army. Why not?”

  “I’d have to talk, sir, or they wouldn’t hide me.”

  “Well?”

  “Inform, sir? Me?”

  “Why not? They’re going to kill you, Johnny.”

  “Inform? Oh God, no. You don’t understand.”

  “Other people are going to be killed on the street when they shoot at you. Think of them, Johnny.”

  “Inform? Oh God, no. No no no. Not that.”

  “Oh, us poor Irish,” the Major said. “God pity us.”

  “I couldn’t, sir. I couldn’t.”

  “Johnny, the Provos have killed the prospect of a united
Ireland for a hundred years.”

  “It isn’t that, sir. You’re a Protestant. You don’t understand.”

  “I suppose not. God bless you, anyway. I know He’ll forgive you.”

  Mrs. Beddoes kissed him quickly. “God guide you better now than He did before,” she said heretically. “You dear poor boy.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

  McManus closed the rear doors and walked across to the gate of the house behind the Parker’s. He did not think again of the Salvation Army Major and his wife. He thought only that now he was alive and in two minutes he could be dead. Or crippled and dying. He was shivering now. He sweated, then he shivered. It would pass. They trained him for this, to hit and elude policemen and soldiers, and he was alive and not crippled. Now he would see. He was not confident. Neither was he terrified. All he felt was a sort of stony fatalism. It was a matter now of good luck or bad luck. The Americans would have said, “The breaks.”

  He did not know that instead of driving on down the street the Major backed his van into Stranmillis and turned the corner into the Malone Road. McManus stepped onto the grass. There were people in the house; lights were blazing; there were three cars in the drive. Guests. Noise. He passed the house and hoisted himself onto the stone wall dividing this yard from the Parker’s.

  When he dropped to the grass on the other side of the wall, his nerves struck. The car was there, beside the house. The back door of the house opened. Maureen was there. Oh, no, God no. He didn’t need any emotional strain. He walked to her and she took him in her arms.

  “They’re still there. Mr. Parker says he’ll hide you, Johnny. Come into the house.”

  He held her hard. “You’d have to drive out in that case,” he said, not wanting his mind on anything but what it was set to do. “You can’t drive well enough. They’d riddle you before you were turned into the road. Go back into the house and don’t watch.”

  “Dad loaded the gun,” she said, knowing him. She had tried. “Will we hear from you?”

  “After a while. Maybe a long while. Go on in now.”

  “God curse Ireland,” she said. “Kiss me for Mummy and Dad.”

  He kissed her and the door closed behind her. He walked to the car. It was now. He was no longer shivering. He was trembling. He stood, taming his nerves. He opened the door and got in. The floppy hat was on the seat. He put it on. The gun was in the pocket with the ammunition. He checked it, started the engine, and tried the gun in his hand, tried his hand on the wheel with the gun in it, adjusted it to make it more comfortable, took off the safety, and settled himself. The tank was full. The engine sounded as if it had been tuned. It was now. He slipped down the driveway almost to the open gates, very slowly. If some pedestrian or a passing car crossed in front of the drive in the next second or two, the deaths would not be political. He put down the front windows, sank low in the seat, and put his foot down. It was now.