The Whore-Mother

by Shaun Herron

  “You’re a wee bit near them,” Callaghan said.

  “You watch this. Come on in.”

  They went into the ice-cream shop. It was a tiny place and four adults crowded it. Maureen McManus ordered a vanilla cone with a Cadbury’s Milk Flake bar stuck in the ice cream. The young man ordered the same. Powers turned his back to the girl and ran the palm of his hand quickly over her hips. She jumped and spun. Powers turned to her and said mournfully, “I beg your pardon, miss. There’s not much room in this wee place.” To her young man he said, “It’s a grand day for a spin round the coast.”

  “Yes.” He was slender and not made for angry reprisals.

  Powers tried the Irish smile. “Are youse gain all the way round?” “No.” It was curtly dismissive of a working-class intrusion on a middle-class right to privacy.

  Callaghan ordered the same for Powers and himself and while they waited they watched Maureen and her friend get their raincoats from their car, juggle the cones while they put on the coats, and cross the road to sit on the seawall.

  In the car again, Powers sucked his cone and munched on his Milk Flake and said like a greedy boy, “Jasus, this is nice.” Then, waving his cone towards the shop, and grinning like a naughty boy, “Did you see what I did in there?”

  “No. What?”

  “She has a nice soft arse. I had a wee feel at it.”

  Michael Collins could have done that. When Powers did it, he felt like Michael Collins standing by his bicycle on the edge of a Dublin crowd that watched the police searching the house from which Collins had just escaped. Powers’ Irish history was learned in the streets, in the songs, and in the paperback editions of Irish exploits like Dan Breen’s “My Fight for Irish Freedom” or Bernadette Devlin’s “The Price of My Soul,” though he didn’t understand much of what Bernadette wrote in that one. A month ago when Powers was talking about these books McManus said the best book by an Irish hero was “My Big Ego in the Fight for Ireland’s Freedom.” Powers felt there was something wrong with that, but he didn’t know what it was. He said that if he could write a book he would call it “My Fight for Ireland One Nation.”

  Callaghan liked the joke about Maureen’s bottom. “Maybe that fella’ll give her another wee feel up the Glen,” he said.

  “A wee feel up the what?” That was another good joke. So good that Maureen’s young man looked quickly from the wall to locate the laughter, looked quickly out to sea, said something, and hurried the girl back to his car.

  Powers and Callaghan went after them, a hundred yards behind. The road was serpentine. As often as not their prey was out of sight. That didn’t matter. In less than half a minute they were in sight again around the bend the same hundred yards ahead. So Powers brooded on a dull drive.

  The road wound. The rain threatened but did not fall. The rising wind blew off the gray dreach sea shaking the car. The expression on the face of Maureen McManus’s young man as he hurried her to his car had suddenly fixed itself in Powers’ brooding mind. His hands were tight on the wheel, his foot heavy on the pedal. He came round bends and found himself within twenty-five yards of the car in front. “Stupid shit. Can’t drive. Can’t keep the same speed. . . .”

  “It’s you, Pat. You keep puttin your foot down. . . .”

  “What the fuckin hell d’ya mean, it’s me?” A screeching anger sawed in his head. He held the wheel hard to keep himself from backhanding Callaghan’s face. “You saw his face when he shoved her into the car. You’da thought he was gonta vomit, lookin at me . . . lookin down his fuckin nose at me. . . . By Jasus, he’ll learn. . . .”

  “Slow down or you’ll climb up his back!”

  “Shut your fuckin gub!”

  Callaghan sat hard against the car door making his small frame smaller, telling himself not to speak not to speak not to speak. He had seen Powers leap from morose silence to almost hysterical geniality to screeching rage. Sometimes he thought he had a sorta softenin of the brain. Sometimes, though, he was very stiff, very soldierly, very stern, the oul head up and the shoulders back and the chest out. Secretly, Callaghan thought sometimes that Powers would have liked to be in the Paratroop Brigade and worn their berets and their mottled camouflaged uniforms and their military boots, but he was careful never to say so. Secretly, he thought sometimes that Powers would have liked to be the Major he shot a couple of months ago leading a sweep through the Falls. He’d said afterwards, when they talked about the ambush: Now if he’d done this and this and this and come up here and went down there he coulda . . . and there were things you had to be careful about, with Powers. Callaghan looked out to sea to keep from looking at Powers, and remembered the night in one of the pubs in Dublin when they were down there for a rest—it was a long narrow pub where the musicians came to play—and Powers sat back on his stool, blocking the narrow aisle and keeping it blocked till every man who tried to push past him read the smile on his face and said, “Excuse me, please,” in a nice voice. And then the well-dressed business-lookin fellow came down the aisle and wouldn’t say it. He said, “Sit forward a bit and let people pass.” “Och, just stay there for a while. I’ll be leavin myself in another hour,” Powers said, and the man shoved him. It was funny. He was in great form after he smashed the fellow’s face in . . . laughin, jokin. . . . He hadn’t realized the memory made him laugh.

  “What’re ya laughin at?” said Powers.

  “I was thinkin about the night in Dublin thon fella wouldn’t say please.”

  “Aye. I’ll bet you his oul mother still doesn’t know him.”

  They came round Garron Point into the long sweep of Red Bay and the road was empty. No car. No girl. No girl’s young man. “Jasus Christ!” Powers lifted the car and went round the bay and through Waterfoot flat out, screeching the tires on the cold summer road at the sharp right turn out of the village. But the road was still empty when they reached Cushendall and Powers was sure they hadn’t traveled at his speed: they were up Glenariff. He went back, still roaring over the road, and turned up the Glen. And his anger was different anger now. It was cold, level, and malignant. “He tried t’make an arse-hole outa me,” he said. “He musta went like buggery t’get to the Glen Road before I turned Garron Point. Right y’are! Right y’are! Right y’are!”

  The young couple’s car was parked across the road from the official entrance to the Glen. Powers turned in the lay-by and went back a quarter of a mile. He parked his car hard against the bank.

  Glenariff is a beautiful wooded fairy-gorge through which the Glenariff River tumbles and twists to the open fields below. Its rough descent to the sea has been tamed by a complex of rustic stairs and bridges and rails that confine the public to a narrow path. The sun, when it shines, is filtered through the foliage, and there is a magic about the place that is compounded by the sound of little waterfalls and the chatter of the stream. The sound makes talk impossible. Roger Casement used to walk here because the sound shut out the voices of men and left him free to brood on their iniquities, or to weave fantasies of his own.

  Powers and Callaghan came into the Glen down the steep bank of trees and bushes and ferns above the stream. They found a rock ledge above a noisy little waterfall. The path down to the next level was a series of twisting steps that passed directly below the ledge. They sat down to wait, unable to see or hear the approach of their prey. They watched, instead, the rustic steps immediately below them. Maureen and her young man would simply appear there. Presently Powers stood up. He had decided how to handle this thing. The drop below was, he thought, about twelve feet, and he weighed more than twelve stone, bone and muscle.

  The couple stepped suddenly into sight, hand in hand. The young man was carrying the picnic basket. Powers stepped out from the ledge and pushed off. He landed with both feet on the young man’s shoulders, his heels striking on either side of the base of his neck, and rode down, well balanced on the falling body. He shoved Maureen with his left hand as he passed her, sending her sprawling on her face. He took th
e rail with his right hand as the body hit ground. He did not fall but stepped off the body onto the stairs, like a circus performer. He scarcely heard the girl’s screams above the sound of the water and Callaghan was down and had her pinned to the ground. He was sitting astride her with her head pulled back and her mouth covered firmly with both his hands. The picnic basket was intact by her head.

  The young man did not move. Powers turned him over. His eyes were wide open. His neck was broken. He was dead. Powers picked him up and heaved his body through the sheet of water across the rail. It disappeared from sight except for its lower right leg and the foot that hit and stayed on a polished brown rock. The rest of the body was under and behind the waterfall. Powers considered going over the rail to lower the foot into the water. He looked at his boots. No: he’d get his feet wet. “Up the bank,” he yelled, and they dragged Maureen McManus to her feet.

  She tried to fight and was slapped savagely across the face. Powers rammed the muzzle of his .38 police revolver against her screaming mouth and it froze open, and silent. He pointed up the steep, bushy bank. Callaghan dragged on one of her arms, Powers put away his gun, rammed his open right hand under her hips and shoved, his big blunt fingers probing. He had the picnic basket in his left hand.

  The road was empty. Callaghan sat beside her in the back of the car, his gun against her belly. Powers turned the car again and drove up towards the high and desolate land.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, “tell the wee girl t’givus a piece.”

  Terrified, Maureen gave them sandwiches. “Jasus, they’re nice,” Powers said. He looked back at her. “You’re nice too.” He was grinning.

  “You killed him,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Him.” She couldn’t say his name. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was a pathetic instinct still to protect him. She knew he was dead and disposed of and she had not yet absorbed his death.

  “Aye,” Powers said, and left the unfenced road. He drove across the tufted grass, around the base of Evish Hill and up its west side. They were out of sight of the road here. The tires spun on the polished grass and he gunned the car forward, swinging it about to avoid big stones. They went over the rim of a wide hollow. Evish Lake was below them, a tiny body of water with a bare hut on its shore.

  “Away on in w’her,” Powers said, and Callaghan pulled her from the car, waving his gun.

  The hut was little more than a shelter. It had a window at each end covered with plastic. There was straw in one corner and a three-legged stool lying on its side in the middle of the dead-grass floor. The door closed when it was pushed hard. It had to be lifted a little. Hill farmers sheltered here when the weather was bad and they came with their dogs to gather their sheep. There were three hill farms. They were far away. So were the sheep.

  “Y’can sit on the stool,” Powers said to her, and set the stool on its legs. The ground was uneven and the stool teetered. She steadied it and sat down. The high wind whistled around and through the hut.

  “Take off your Burberry,” Powers said.

  She clutched her hands together in her lap. “I’m cold,” she said. He was dead. It was beginning to sink in. This man killed him. She was trembling.

  “Where’s Johnny?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Powers was very quiet. There was a terrible gentleness about him. His big peasant face was soft.

  “I’m not gonta sit here all night listenin t’lies,” he said. “Y’gave him your car. Where was it found?”

  What was the harm? If Johnny drove the car north it was because he wasn’t going to stay in the North. “Ballycastle,” she said.

  “Then where did he go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He could scarcely hear her above the wind. “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” The stool tottered. She had to scramble to stay upright. Her knees opened. Powers eyes opened with them.

  “He sent you word he was well away. Where from?”

  “There was no word. Honest to God, mister, there was no word. We don’t know where he is. He never said. . . .” She was rattling on and he listened.

  “I’m ony gonta ask you one other time,” he said softly. “Where’ll we find him?”

  “Mister, God be my witness, we don’t know. He never told us. Please, mister, we never had word from him.”

  “Callaghan,” Powers said. His voice was low and gentle. “Away up the hill and see. Walk all round the lip and then walk round it another time. Don’t come back till I call you.” He did not look at Callaghan. He was looking straight into the girl’s face. “Away on.”

  “Right y’are.” Callaghan went out. The wind whipped into the hut. The girl pulled her coat about her. Callaghan closed the door, looking at her till the door shut her from sight. His look was gluttonous.

  “I’ll give you one more chance, miss,” Powers said. “Where’ll we find Johnny?”

  “In the name of God, believe me, mister. I don’t know.”

  “Y’know somethin.”

  “I know nothing.”

  Powers took off his jacket and threw it on the floor. “Your time’s done,” he said. “Take off your Burberry.”

  “No.”

  He unbuckled his belt. “Take it off.”

  “No.” She stood up suddenly, the stool in her hand. She gripped one leg in both hands. “I’ll brain you if you try to beat me with that belt.”

  “I wouldn’t use a belt on you. You’re a nice wee thing. Take off the coat.”

  She backed to the wall and raised the stool. Powers didn’t take off his belt. He opened his fly. “Look, that’s what I’m gonta beat you with. Take off the coat.” He dropped his trousers around his ankles and she charged and swung with the stool. It was a vicious swing. All her frantic strength was in it. It was too strong. He bent under it and yanked an ankle from under her. She went forward and her head hit the door. She was stunned but not out. Her struggles were weak and to weaken them more he rapped his knuckles against her jaw and ripped at her clothes. It was difficult, for she fought as she could, half conscious; and his anger rose with every difficulty. Clothes wouldn’t tear. He thought of a knife and couldn’t reach his pocket, in case she reached the door. He dragged and tore and threw her about. Her cries were met by the wind and thrown back at her. She had to be naked. It roared in his head. The whiteness of her maddened him. When everything she had on was shredded and scattered about the hut, he threw her on the straw.

  By the time he got his boots off because his trousers prevented him in his frenzy from getting at the laces, she had staggered to the door and had it half open. He brought her down with a rugby tackle and rolled her back on the straw, driving his knee at her clamped thighs. She was still stronger than he had imagined, and his nails drew blood from her thighs as he tore them open and pinned her down.

  “Fight, you wee white bitch. Go’n—fight me. Gimme a fightin fuck. . . .” He closed his hands around her throat. Her body was stiff and hard. All she could do was spit and he slammed his mouth onto hers. She tried to bite and he tightened his grip on her throat. He took his time and told the hut and the hills and the girl of his pleasure.

  Then he rose off her and put on his trousers. He sat on the stool to tie his laces. She lay curled in a ball on the ground, moaning and wailing. He put on his jacket.

  “Thank you very much, miss,” he said gratefully. “That was good.” He gathered up the shreds of her clothes and wrapped her shoes in them. Then he opened the door of the hut and waved Callaghan back from the rim of the hollow.

  “Away on in,” he said. “I’ll get rid of these.”

  He spent an hour on the hill, gathering stones and building a cairn on the heap of tom clothes and the shoes. Somewhere up here, he didn’t know quite where Ossian was supposed to be buried. Ossian, Cuchullain, Diarmud, Goll McMorna, Finn—Jasus, if there was any truth in the oul stories, they were the boys that could put a woman down. And what
women! Big, strong, the stories said. The Champions of the old time musta had many’s a fightin fuck they remembered all their lives. The storytellers remembered some of them. The old Gaelic days must’ve been bloody great. He was sorry he knew no Gaelic—Irish they called it now, because it was a sort of invented language. But he’d built a cairn to a good fightin fuck like the oul ones got. When he went back to the hut, Callaghan was tying his shoes outside the closed door.

  “She gave me a wee bit of a wrasel the first time,” he said, and tried to light a cigarette in the wind. “The second time she never bothered.” He asked Powers curiously, “D’you think they get t’like it that way?”

  “I never gave it a second thought.”

  “How’re we gonta do it?”

  Powers didn’t tell him. He went into the hut and closed the door. “Where’s your brother, miss? It’s your last chance.”

  She was curled in a corner, silent, half conscious. Her white body was covered with bleeding scratches and discoloring bruises. She didn’t take her last chance. He knelt over her and took her by the throat. There was no struggle.

  They threw her into Evish Lake.

  “There’ll be roadblocks,” Callaghan said when they were close to Ballymoney.

  “We’ll dump this car and take a bus.”

  They rode the bus to the Belfast depot and walked to the Falls. The streets were empty. The streets were never empty on a summer evening, unless there was an ambush. The stillness was not the stillness of an early Sunday morning before first Mass. It was a deserted stillness. There were no soldiers.

  It had been raining in Belfast. The street surface was dark and wet. The air was heavy. From somewhere, but from what direction it was hard to say, the sound of a voice brushed against the stillness. Shouting? Not shouting, but loud and far away; or muffled by the little houses, half drowned by the heavy air. A man’s voice. And not shouting. But persistent. Making a speech? That was it; making a speech. They stood in the street, listening.

  Then a massive sound rolled over the stillness, a familiar sound but different; a higher pitch than the familiar sound, a collective roar, like a football crowd, but filtered by women’s voices, a roar that whirred and shrilled.