Herself Alone in Orange Rain

by Tracey Iceton

  ‘That’s why I took off last night but it’s dealt with.’

  He leans back. ‘Jesus, Caoilainn, you do my head in sometimes. When you’re good you’re better than most but when you do shite like this it terrifies me.’ He taps his fingers on the table, Morse-coded thoughts. I pray silently. ‘Fine, get back to your unit. I’ll have to tell Rory, but it’ll stop between us this time.’

  I tell Rory myself, and apologise to Ciaran, saying that it was a family thing. They are too nice about it. We’re settling in to watch the six o’clock news when Danny appears.

  ‘Caoilainn, have you a minute?’

  I look up. Briege is hovering behind him in the doorway. I go to her without a word, taking her into the kitchen.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ she says. Her face is pale, making her red hair flame against milky skin. ‘I’m not quitting the Movement. They’ve said they’ll put me in the education department. I can run training lectures until the baby comes then take as much time as I need. Afterwards Connor’s said he’ll take over with the wee ’un and I’ll be back to work, maybe intelligence.’ She rushes the words out. ‘I know it’s unusual but Connor said this way we’re both helping and he needs that.’

  She believes my anger is at her putting something else before the Cause. I can’t tell her what it really is: the wrong shade of green.

  ‘I thought you’d be happy for us.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like it.’ Tears brim her eyes.

  I feel like a proper bitch but it’s suddenly very raw and I can’t heal it; if I don’t amputate it’ll kill me.

  ‘There’s just a lot going on here. I haven’t time for fussing over you having a baby.’

  Briege bites her bottom lip. ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Get Danny to walk you back.’

  Time doesn’t ease the pain but practice makes it easier to ignore. I blinker myself to the grief, knowing it’s still there.

  The days count down through November and into December. Ciaran pins an advent calendar above the fireplace in our latest safe house. Behind the first door is an empty manger, the second reveals a heavenly star, the third is an angel with feathery wings. I dread the fourth.

  Belfast—4th December, 1984

  A year ago today I was unaware the end of the world was coming. It’s my first thought when I wake up hours before dawn, uncertain I was sleeping. I stay in bed, smoking and staring at the ceiling, trying to conjure Aiden’s face in the curls of vapour that drift away from me, wondering if I’ll be able to go to his grave later.

  The door bangs, Ciaran leaving for his lunchtime shift. Alone now, I struggle up. In the bathroom I stand under a cold shower, numbing myself. It doesn’t help.

  I sit at the table, tea going cold, suffocating in the silence, eyes flicking from object to object, mind fighting itself to remember and forget.

  There’s a knock at the door.

  One of the Fianna lads is on the step in his St Michael’s blazer.

  ‘Mrs Murphy says there’s a Brit sniper across the way from her.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  ‘It’s break. What’ll I tell her, about the sniper?’

  ‘Get to school, Eoin.’

  ‘Aren’t you gonna do something?’ His freckly face screws into an angry scowl.

  His rage is infectious. I see Aiden, crumpled, bloodied: dead.

  The IRA volunteer acts most of the time on his own initiative.

  ‘Leave it with me.’ I slam the door, press up against it and rub at the tight band constricting my forehead.

  Minutes later I’m walking up the road, an empty rucksack over my shoulder, heading for the butcher’s.

  Fred acknowledges me with a nod as I cross the shop, pushing through the door to the back; queuing housewives throw curious glances my way.

  I dodge the dangling carcasses in the cold store, moving out to the slaughterhouse in the yard. Fred doesn’t do his own slaughtering anymore; the shed is our emergency weapons dump.

  Inside the windowless shack fluorescent strip lights judder awake, illuminating the gore-stained floor. The stench of old blood, fishy and rotten, makes me gag. Squatting in a corner, I prise up the floorboards and rake around the hole until a plastic bag rustles in my fingers. Hauling it out, I peel back the polythene keeping the damp from an AR-15 and a half full magazine. Broken down, it’ll fit in my rucksack. Fingers shaking, I drag bloody air into my lungs, exhale and recite the drill: check the chamber; shoot the bolt; press the pins through; pull from the other side; click the barrel free. I do the rear take down pin but fumble the front pivot pin, not pulling it through far enough to release the barrel. Jesus, a recruit two days into basic training can do this. I put the gun down, take another breath; get it apart.

  ‘Managing, love?’ Fred asks from the doorway.

  ‘Yeah. Any chance of me borrowing your car?’

  ‘I took it round to Mick’s yesterday, brakes are knackered. If they’ve sorted it help yourself.’

  The garage is a two minute walk away; the Divis Flats, where Mrs Murphy and the Brit sniper are eyeballing each other, is twenty. Even if Fred’s car isn’t drivable there’ll be another I can borrow. Urgency rakes my chest with jagged claws. I have to get the bastard: for Aiden.

  At the garage Fred’s Vauxhall is on the forecourt. I poke my head into the workshop.

  ‘Mick?’

  He emerges from the loo, fag dangling.

  ‘Hiya, Caoilainn, everything alright?’

  ‘Fine. You sorted Fred’s brakes?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Grand. I’m just borrowing it for a wee job. He said it’s OK.’

  Danny rolls out from beneath a Beetle. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing. Go back to work.’

  He peels off his overalls.

  ‘I said go back to work.’

  ‘No.’

  He charges past. I chase but he’s already in the driving seat when I emerge into weak winter sun. Yanking the door open, I seize his sleeve.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘No.’ He grips the steering wheel.

  ‘Jesus, I’ve not got time for this.’

  ‘So get in.’

  ‘You best do it if you’re in a hurry,’ Mick advises.

  Fuck sake. I get in the passenger side. ‘You’re to stay in the car or I’ll have you bollocked for disobeying an order. Divis Flats.’

  Danny nods and starts the engine.

  He parks in front of Mrs Murphy’s block.

  The lift is knackered again; I pound up the stairs. She opens the door as I’m running down the walkway.

  ‘Caoilainn, grand, it’s yourself. Away in.’

  She’s a fierce old Republican. Her husband was anti-treaty during the Civil War and pity help Dev’s immortal soul when she gets to heaven. She leads me to the bedroom. Net curtains swish and billow at the open window.

  ‘He’s across the way. I saw him moving about and knew something was up; that flat’s been empty this past month. Here.’ She offers me a pair of field glasses, her Dermot’s from his flying column days.

  Adjusting the focus, I see the sniper stretched out on a table at the window, squinting through the scope of his rifle.

  ‘Can you get him from here?’ she asks.

  I gauge the distance: six hundred yards at least.

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘Good girl.’ She pats my arm. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ She slips out.

  I check the sniper again, making sure he’s not about to wrap in and go. He’s motionless in his firing position. Calmly, I dig the rifle from the bag and reassemble it without fumbling. In a minute he’ll be dead and next 4th December there’ll be two of us waking up alone, grief suffocating us.

  ‘There you go.’ Mrs Murphy sets a china cup and saucer on the windowsill.

  Clicking the magazine into place, I stare at her.

  ‘I’ll not
put you off, will I? Sure, I’d like to see you hit the so-and-so.’

  My cheeks flame at the thought of Mrs Murphy witnessing this killing. I bollock myself. He’s an enemy soldier: a legitimate target. She knows it’s my duty as a volunteer to shoot him. He knows it too. But the hungry gnawing inside me that wants him dead and someone else aching with emptiness makes me know it’s not duty or patriotism or faith with the Cause that will have me pull the trigger today.

  ‘Are you alright, love?’

  I can’t not do this, for all the right, and the wrong, reasons.

  ‘Fine.’

  I crouch at the window, bracing the rifle against my shoulder and resting on the sill. The sight isn’t telescopic so I take another look with the binoculars for reference, then aim and fire.

  My shot cracks the air, singeing a blackened hole through the net.

  ‘Did you get him?’

  I snatch the binoculars but before I raise them there’s a reply to my shot. We duck; the bullet crunches into the wall above and to the left of our window.

  Shit.

  He knows I’m here; he’ll be on the radio: ‘Shots fired.’ Half the BA could be kicking Mrs Murphy’s door down in minutes. Protocol says I get out now.

  ‘Shite, Caoilainn, you can do it,’ Mrs Murphy encourages.

  I sight along the barrel, centring the sniper’s window in the standard sight: fire again.

  Two shots crack back. The second shatters the window, spraying me with glass.

  ‘Fuck!’ I recoil, glance at Mrs Murphy. ‘Sorry for the language.’

  ‘Have a drink of tea,’ she suggests. ‘My Dermot was after saying you need to steady yourself for these things.’

  Hand shaking I get the cup to my lips, blistering my tongue on the scalding liquid. I should already be gone. When I set my cup down tea slops into the saucer.

  I rub my sweaty palms onto my jeans. Either I get him or he gets me, nothing else is viable now. Mrs Murphy steps up beside me, training the field glasses on the opposite window.

  ‘I’ll direct you,’ she offers.

  I fire.

  ‘It hit the brickwork. Go a smidge lower.’

  I fire again. The bullet flies from the muzzle.

  I fly with it become it spinning and diving across the space between the flats air rushing past me the velocity making me feel like I’m boring through solid rock the world blurs into blue sky grey concrete the target rises up I close on it details emerge the pale lines of cement between the bricks a green window frame the paint flaked patches of dry dead wood exposed a face smeared with camouflage paint the eyes young straining I strike the forehead between them with a jolt and spin down into the warm moist brain tissue coming to rest against the back of his skull my energy dissipated by the distance and the impact.

  ‘Got the bugger! Maith thú!’ Mrs Murphy whoops, lowering the binoculars.

  I sit up, listening for boots thumping towards us, the crunch of a door splintering, voices screaming, ‘Hands up!’ There’s only a post-apocalypse silence. My mouth is dry; I drain the teacup.

  ‘Do you want another, love?’

  ‘I best go.’

  Sitting cross-legged below the window I unload and disassemble the gun before wiping off any prints and packing it, crushed by a tightening circle of urgency.

  Two minutes later I’m running to the car. Tossing the bag in the boot, I open the driver’s door.

  ‘Shove over.’

  Danny clambers across.

  ‘Did you get him?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Grand.’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s go.’

  I u-turn in the quad between the blocks, pulling onto the main road.

  Two Saracens are parked snout to snout across the street. I jam on the brakes.

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Are they for us?’ Danny’s words quiver.

  ‘I didn’t get him with the first shot. He must’ve radioed backup,’ I confess.

  Two foot patrols flank the car. A soldier, captain’s epaulettes, climbs from a Saracen clutching a loud hailer.

  ‘Get out of the vehicle with your hands up.’

  ‘What’re we going to do?’ Danny whimpers.

  ‘Unless you’re wanting to be shot we’re gonna get out.’

  ‘But the gun?’

  ‘What gun?’

  ‘In the boot, you…’

  ‘What gun?’ I repeat. ‘As far as those bastards know we’ve been visiting a wee ould woman, taking her shopping, in a borrowed car. Whatever’s in the boot’s nothing to do with us. That’s what you tell ’em, Danny. Mrs Murphy’ll back us. Apart from that you say nothing, not a fucking thing, OK?’

  ‘Get out of the vehicle now. You have five seconds before we open fire.’ The captain’s words echo robotically.

  ‘Caoilainn?’ Danny bleats my name.

  ‘They can only hold us a week. Get through it with your mouth shut and that’ll be the end of it.’ I forbid myself to think about what’ll happen when they realise he’s an O’Neill.

  ‘Get out of the vehicle. This is your final warning.’

  ‘And for Christ sake, keep your hands where they can see them. Don’t give them any excuse, Danny.’

  Swinging open my door, I throw him a final look. His face is white but his jaw is tight, the muscle along it flexing under the strain. I mouth, ‘sorry.’ He nods and opens his door.

  Half a dozen squaddies have drawn up to my side of the car. I plant my feet so I can stand without hands to propel me up and, arms raised, climb out.

  The squaddies are in full battle dress, aiming their SLRs at our heads. I run my eyes over each of them; they blink their surprise at the sight of a wee lassie, her hands raised. For five seconds we’re locked in a tableau. Then one of them steps forwards, gesturing with his weapon.

  ‘Hands on your head. Get on the ground.’

  I lie in the road, grains of tarmac grazing my cheek. As soon as I’m down boots stampede over. Hands grab my arms, twisting them behind my back. I’m dragged off the floor and over to the nearest wall, thrown, face first, against it. A boot kicks my legs apart. They pat me down, rough hands pawing me; I remember Colm’s tentative frisking the night I was Green Booked. A year ago today he was going about things with Aiden in East Tyrone.

  My jacket is yanked off and tossed away. I hear the buttons click as it lands on the pavement. My right leg is hauled up, my boot unlaced and tossed too, then the left. The paving slabs are marble-cold through my socks. Someone turns me so I’m facing the road.

  A crowd has gathered, wives with wee ’un on doorsteps, men hanging from windows; witnesses preventing us being shot in the street. I’m grateful for their protection but wish they weren’t seeing what a balls up I’ve made of today.

  Squaddies search the car, one looking underneath, two more crawling inside. A third opens the boot. He retrieves the rucksack.

  ‘What’s in this?’ he yells to me.

  I shrug and look for Danny, see him further up the road, also against the wall, also stripped of his boots and jacket.

  ‘You, what’s in this?’ The squaddie points at Danny.

  He copies my shrug. The private takes the bag to his captain who peers inside for one full second before striding to me. He hold the bag under my nose. Gunpowder fumes assault my nostrils.

  ‘This yours?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This?’ He pulls out the lower half of the gun.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The car?’

  ‘No.’

  He goes to Danny, repeats the questions, gets the same answers. The bag is thrust onto a private and the order barked:

  ‘Get the RUC out here.’ He crosses back to me. ‘Name?’

  I don’t reply.

  ‘Name?’

  I say nothing.

  ‘You find her ID?’ the captain asks the private who searched me.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ He leans towards me. He had something garlicky for tea
last night. ‘What. Is. Your. Name?’ The words are loud, well spaced, how Brits speak to foreigners. ‘We’ll find out at Castlereagh so just tell us now. It’ll make things easier.’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘If you weren’t hiding anything you’d tell us. We will find out,’ he threatens.

  I have no file, no paperwork in the north saying I was married to an O’Neill or that I even exist. The only way they’ll find out is if someone tells them. Guilt crushes air from my lungs. If I won’t say who I am they’ll try beating it out of Danny. But our mission now is resistance, our weapon defiance. I have no choice.

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  He glares at me. I smile politely. He huffs over to Danny and reels off the questions. Danny doesn’t reply either but for him it’s token resistance; the peelers’ll recognise him, match his prints. I look away.

  Five squaddies surround me. One glances to his captain, sees him busy with Danny and grabs me round the throat, pressing me almost through the wall.

  ‘You fucking shot him, didn’t you, ya Fenian bitch?’ His hand chokes words in my throat. ‘I could fucking smell the gun.’ His mouth twists into a snarl, his eyes are wide, wild.

  I can’t defend myself against his angry grief; it’s our common ground.

  The others have closed round us, shielding him as he throttles me. I shift my gaze, fixing on the houses across the road.

  ‘Leave it, Gaz,’ says another, tugging his mate’s sleeve. ‘She’s not worth three days in the glasshouse. Anyway, her boyfriend’s to blame.’

  The pressure round my neck eases. Gaz drops back into line. I turn my head to check on Danny. The captain is strolling to the nearest Saracen; Danny is lost behind a scrum of soldiers. Dull thuds, punctuated by groans, rise from the melee. They think he’s the sniper; I was driving, that’s all. The scrum folds in on itself as they knock Danny over, land kicks, belt him with their rifles. I can’t see properly but I know that’s what’s happening. I step forwards. A muzzle is jabbed in my side.

  ‘Don’t, hinny. I dinna want to have to shoot you, like,’ says Gaz’s mate in a Geordie accent that takes me back to somewhere I’d forgotten I’d ever been.