White Church, Black Mountain

by Thomas Paul Burgess

  Eban let a laugh escape his lips. He stood up, rubbed his numb buttocks and seemed to be reaching for a memory.

  “Ah, the watch before the city gates depicted in their prime, golden light all grimy now…something…something… the something Captain and his squad of troopers standing fast.”

  It was the most he’d said for a long while. Anto was perplexed. “You what?”

  “It’s a poem; a song… about a painting by—”

  Ruairí suddenly cut across him, barking out aggressively, “Rembrandt… it’s by Rembrandt; the Dutch masters, right? Do you think we’re all stupid around here?” he sneered.

  Anto grinned from ear to ear, beaming with pride.

  “He was the smartest in our class; wins all the pub quizzes. Ruairí, what was it you told us to say if the Provos get hold of us… if they question us, like?”

  “I’m Spartacus.”

  “That’s it – that’s it! Spartacus.” His dark features pulled into a puzzled frown. He looked at Eban, puzzled. “Who is Spartacus?”

  Ruairí suddenly leapt to his feet, and standing on Eban’s chair, climbed up onto the table top. He affected an orator’s pose: eyes closed, thumb in belt loop, the other hand outstretched mid-air.

  He bowed low at the middle and all applauded and laughed, relieved by the unexpected nature of the distraction.

  “Aristophanes’ ode in praise of Socrates. Are you impressed Mr Barnard?” inquired the young man.

  Eban was taken aback and nodded enthusiastically.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be.” It didn’t sound self-deprecating. More like an admonishment to Eban for drawing upon easy clichés regarding his charges.

  “My da taught our Frankie and me that when we were kids. They used to get us up on the kitchen table at parties to recite it; it’s my party piece, you might say. Trained monkey stuff.”

  He leapt down from the table and scooped up a sleeping bag.

  “And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I’m off for some kip.”

  He disappeared through the curtain and into the sacristy.

  Eban was left open-mouthed.

  Sinéad smiled. “Don’t mind him Mr Barnard, he’s a sarcastic git most of the time.”

  Anto could not let this slight on his absent captain pass.

  “Aye, it’s you has him that way, so it is.”

  Sinéad turned on him threateningly, seemingly emboldened by Ruairí’s absence.

  “Don’t start with me, wop!”

  Anto bristled but did not speak.

  Again Eban sought to break the tension.

  “So how is it that Mrs Connolly is able to come and go as she likes; I mean, through the crowd outside?”

  Sinéad answered. “Ruairí has three wee sisters that need looking after. It’s only because of the goodness of Ruairí’s Aunt Mary that Mrs Connolly can be in here at all with him.”

  Anto sneered. “It’s because of Frankie.”

  “His brother?”

  Sinéad picked up the thread. “Sledger and them, they worshipped Frankie. He was a top man in the organisation; they’ve a wall muriel of him in the estate and everything.”

  Eban didn’t correct her.

  Anto was dismissive. “A lot-a-good it did him.”

  Sinéad seemed stung.

  “He died on hunger strike… he’s a martyr. He died for what he believed in…”

  She looked at the young man, who had begun to do press-ups, and said caustically, “What do you believe in, Anthony?”

  “Getting my end away and getting out of my head, and don’t ever fucking forget it, right?”

  She turned to Eban,

  “You see Mr Barnard, that’s the quality of the people you’re in here with. That’s why we’re in here in the first place. Ruairí could have made something of himself, with his family connections and that. It’s hanging around with wasters like that” – she turned her nose up like a bad smell was coming off him – “that held him back.”

  Anto pushed himself up and began a cycle of squat thrusts. Slightly out of breath, he countered, “Oh aye… sure the Provos just love Ruairí! That’s why they’ve been waiting for months to do him… do him good.”

  Sinéad crossed her arms and moved her head from side to side. “It’s you and the other two they want; it’s not Ruairí.”

  Eban could see things accelerating, but was not adequately following. He appealed. “Slow down… I don’t understand.”

  Anto was breathing more heavily from his exertions. He stopped and hunkered down.

  “Look mate, Ruairí has been a disappointment to the lads ever since Frankie died. He’s no interest in them and tells anybody who’ll listen what bastards they are. Because he’s smart, like; he really gets under their skin – they had him all fitted up for a Sinn Féin rising star in a couple of years. He told them to stuff it. Don’t listen to her… they fuckin’ hate him!”

  Eban had heard something that piqued his interest. “And his brother… was he close to his older brother?”

  “Hated him… when he got older, like, and realised what was going on. Before that… well… we all thought he was the bee’s knees when we were kids… like you do with hard men.”

  Sinéad threw a magazine across the room, narrowly missing him. “That’s a load of crap Anto; you’re making it up cuz you’re scared yourself.”

  Anto lifted the magazine, rolling it up into a tight tube. He rolled it tighter and tighter as he spoke.

  “Scared? Yer fucking right I’m scared! I went along with Big Jamsey when he got done – for support, like; to phone the ambulance afterward. Let me tell you how it works, in case you didn’t know. You agree a rendezvous and time – punishment by appointment. Jamsey’s usually a cocky bastard, but he was a bag of nerves that night, slugging on vodka all day. We have to wait patiently until the back door of the club swings open; four come out with masks on, but you know who they are anyway. Two grab his arms and legs, while the third holds the gun to the back of his knee. The fourth is keeping watch. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”

  He slammed the table with each word, making the others jump.

  “Both knees, both thighs.”

  Sinéad seemed cowed. “Okay Anto… that’s enough.”

  The young man ignored her.

  “They sprint off and leave me to get him to the hospital, and like there’s blood starting to collect in pools under him, and he’s laughing, the mad bastard – laughing!”

  “Enough!”

  “He didn’t laugh for long, though. You see, it can go wrong, Eban. Bone or nerve damage if they’re a fraction out or the gun’s too high a calibre. Jamsey was a great hurler; could have played for the county – have a look around the area on your way out of here tomorrow, Eban; see if you can count the young fellas under thirty getting around on walking sticks.”

  Sinéad screamed, “ENOUGH!” She was close to tears. “I’m gonna wake Ruairí and tell him what you’ve been saying!”

  “It’s Ruairí I’m scared for most! They’re bound to do a crucifixion on him: hands, feet, knees and elbows, and maybe with breeze blocks dropped on him instead of the gun.”

  “SHUT UP!”

  “You wouldn’t do it to an animal.”

  “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

  “HE’S MY BEST FRIEND!”

  “You’ve a funny way of showing it!”

  “It takes two to tango!”

  Anto stopped abruptly, as if he had said something he did not intend to.

  He looked to Eban to see if anything might have registered.

  Sinéad’s face was purple.

  He spoke directly to Eban, nodding in Sinéad’s direction. “I can’t look at her anymore; I’m going for a lie down as well. Do you think you’ll be safe enough on your own with her, Eban? She’s a man-eater…”

  Eban found himself blushing as Anto followed Ruairí into the sacristy with a blanket.

  Sinéad called after him, giving him the finger as she did.

&nb
sp; “Fuck off, dago; you smell. Have a wash; do us all a favour for Christ’s sake.”

  Then there was quiet.

  The racket from outside seemed to have abated somewhat.

  Maybe they were getting tired.

  *

  After the malice of the exchange, both Eban and Sinéad drank in the hiatus, each content to dive into their own thoughts.

  Eban Barnard had been shocked and unsettled by what he had heard.

  Not because it affronted his sensibilities.

  Quite the opposite.

  This intimidation. This bullying. It was all too close to home.

  The feeling was back, and it was strong.

  The powerlessness.

  His weary mind turned to a brilliant blue sky and the tinny jingle-jangle tune of an ice cream van.

  Arriving home from his first job.

  His first pay packet in his hip pocket.

  A rite of passage realised.

  He’d frozen at his parents’ garden gate.

  There, halfway up a ladder, a pair of puffy, white, hairy arse cheeks cracked over a denim jeans waistband.

  Some tattooed thug was tying on red, white and blue bunting to the drainpipe outside his bedroom window.

  Looking into his room.

  It was the Loyalist marching season and this wanker hadn’t even asked permission.

  Instead he had just planted his ladder in the middle of his mother’s begonias and was peering now into young Eban’s inner sanctum.

  His Thunderbirds pyjamas.

  His Charlie’s Angels poster.

  The soiled tissues.

  The titty mags.

  He wanted to scream at this braindead usurper, ‘You don’t know me… I’m not one of you. Take it down; take it all fucking DOWN!’ To grab the ladder and shake it until the fat fuck crashed to the ground.

  But of course, that would not happen.

  No-one would say or do anything.

  Not if you wanted to keep your windows intact, you didn’t.

  Later that year, he wretchedly watched the same fat fuck from his bedroom window, bouncing up and down on the bonnet and roof of his first car.

  The little secondhand yellow Vauxhall Chevette stove in like a metal eggshell.

  He had sat there for the third night running, observing the crowd banging bin-lids and smashing car windows, intending to lure the police into the area.

  To provoke a conflict.

  He fell on his bed, bent double; felt real pain, anguish, biting his fist and grabbing at his guts with the dreadful futility and frustration of it all.

  Mob rule.

  Gun law.

  Then as now.

  Nothing’s changed.

  *

  Eban rubbed his eyes absentmindedly.

  When his vision cleared, he found himself looking at Sinéad across the room.

  She appeared so young and fragile.

  A pretty girl. Too young to be a mother. Still only a child herself.

  Her baby, like her, an unoffending soul ravaged by the indifferent lottery that determined place and time of birth.

  By choices made… and by no choice at all. No place to bring up a kid, he thought.

  Sinéad saw him look at her.

  Her handbag rested on a chair and she pulled it closer with her foot, reaching in to take out a pack of cigarettes. She proffered the box to Eban, who refused. Lighting up, she tossed aside the lighter and smiled at him. “Well Mr Barnard… two’s company, eh?”

  Eban swallowed dryly and spoke.

  “Yes, right… is that a good idea?”

  He motioned at the cloud of smoke she had blown into the air, now hanging above her head, and then patted his gut. “I mean…”

  Sinéad’s shoulders slumped.

  “Oh Gawd… don’t you start. I can only smoke when she’s not around. Look, you might as well know: I didn’t want this kid, right. I’d have been on the boat but the Connollys have this big religious thing going on. I mean, that’s one of the reasons we’re all in here in the first place. But the bloody priests don’t want the two of them here either… oul Ma Connolly just won’t admit it to herself.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right… it’s none of my business.”

  Sinéad took another long pull and threw her head back, tossing her long hair.

  Defiant.

  Exhaling the smoke directly at him.

  Luxuriating in it, in what Eban thought was a provocative, almost promiscuous gesture.

  He caught the smell of nicotine infused with her breath and the vapour that had been deep within her now entered his own nose and lungs in what seemed a wilfully intimate act.

  She pouted. “Besides, I thought you were a man of the world. I can’t keep calling you Mr Barnard… what’s your first name again? “

  “It’s Eban. Most people get it wrong.”

  She crossed her legs, “ Oh, Eban – very posh… like a film star, or a lord.”

  “Hardly. I grew up in a place much like yours.”

  “Just on the other side, eh?”

  “We moved around a lot. When I was kid, in the 70s, it was bad then… random car bombs; the lot.”

  He felt surprised by how freely he was speaking with her.

  “When has it not been bad? Just depends whether it comes to your door or not.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  She pulled her hands through her hair. “The 70s you say? You’re giving away your age there Eban. Still, you look quite well on it… for an older man I mean.”

  Eban was sure now she was flirting. He felt flattered but suddenly self-conscious. “Oh, I don’t know… I could loose a bit around here.”

  The minute it escaped his lips he felt like an idiot. Like some coy adolescent.

  She saw it.

  “You and me both.” She patted the bump in her belly, placing him at ease again. They both laughed.

  “Are you a married man, Eban?”

  “Separated… she’s in England.”

  “These things happen.”

  She waited a moment, slowly rotating one big hoop earring between her thumb and finger.

  “Do you miss her?”

  “No, not really. She got to know everything about me; then force-fed it back to me… some of it was hard to swallow.”

  He heard himself say this and again marvelled at how candid he was being with this young girl, a stranger until only hours ago.

  “You should keep to your own, Eban. The English… they’ll never understand; they’ve never wanted to. We’re all bogmen to them.”

  Eban felt a wave of recrimination rise in him and was momentarily swept up in it.

  “I can hear her like it was yesterday: ‘Are you happy now?’ ‘Is this what you wanted?’ ‘Are you making a difference?’”

  He was chastened by how bitter he sounded, and sought to draw back. His voice dropped. “Anyway… we all have our demons…”

  Sinéad pointed a finger at the wall where a large crucifix hung. “Well, you’ve come to the right place.”

  After a silence she asked, “So who keeps you here in this shit hole? Girlfriend?”

  “There was someone… it’s complicated.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “I’m not gay!” He winced. Why did he feel the need to say that?

  She laughed, surprised. “I never said you were. Parents?”

  “Both dead.”

  “Don’t tell me: you were an only child.”

  Eban was suddenly conflicted. For the first time since they had begun to speak he sounded faltering, hesitant, awkward.

  “Yes… well… no. I had… I have an older brother.”

  Sinéad seemed amused. “Well, make your mind up.”

  He shot back aggressively, “I have a brother. His name is Alex, alright… okay?!”

  Sinéad was taken aback. “Jesus, don’t eat me! You’re just like Ruairí when they talk about Frankie. Nobody can look at him sideways.”

 
; Eban frowned, disappointed in his lack of self-control. “I’m sorry.”

  But Sinéad had moved on already. Now she was laughing. Maybe that was why he liked her. “We have twelve in our family. How would you like breakfast time in our house?”

  “I’ve never had those kinds of… connections.”

  “Is that why you went to England?”

  Eban looked at her open, honest face. Somehow it had become younger, fresher. Like some of her cares had for the moment left her, if just for a short while. Maybe just for an instant.

  He smiled. “Christ, you ask a lot of questions.”

  “I like people. So, is that why you went to England?”

  “Amongst other things. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been moving around forever. Do you know something – I’ve never owned a bed that I’ve slept in; isn’t that crazy? At my age, I mean!”

  He laughed wryly to himself, but she could see a glimpse of something broken inside. She teased him, “So you’re a bit of a ladies’ man then?”

  Eban ignored her. This back-and-forth banter had passed on to something more personal, more confessional for him now.

  “I try to remember all the bedrooms I’ve slept in – where the door was; the window – to get to sleep at nights… like counting sheep, you know?”

  Sinéad stubbed out her cigarette. “You have trouble sleeping as well?”

  He smiled and nodded at the sound of snoring coming from the sacristy. “We can’t all go out like a light.”

  She fished in her bag for another cigarette. She looked older again.

  “I’ve to take tablets, with my nerves, except I’ve had to stop… with the baby and all, although God knows I could be doing with them now.”

  “Do you need them to sleep?”

  “I need them for the dreams. I have bad dreams… worse since I got pregnant.”

  She stood up and walked across the room, then reached across Eban to pick up a box of matches. He smelled her strong perfume, her shampoo. When she sat down again, it was next to him.

  “Ruairí doesn’t get it… he doesn’t understand how nice it can be to snuggle up to somebody… how it can make you feel safe.”

  Eban drew back instinctively, immediately. He tried to make it seem casual, walking around behind her chair.

  “What do you dream about?”