‘No,’ she said, checking, ‘it’s all right. Small mercies.’ She looked around. ‘Don’t suppose you happen to know anywhere I could have a quick sit-down, do you? Inside, out of this heat? I may have sprained my ankle.’
‘Why, I don’t, no,’ said Bridget, then reconsidered. ‘What am I saying? My hotel’s just back there.’
‘Oh good. You couldn’t possibly lend me a hand, could you? We could have a cup of tea if you like. On me. Or something stronger if you prefer.’
Bridget carried the papers as they made their slow progress back to the hotel. They sat at a table in the corner of the lobby and the woman rubbed her ankle while looking closely at the heel of her shoe. Bridget placed the papers on the table.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m Sarah by the way.’
Bridget looked at her properly for the first time. She was about her age, roughly her height, slightly overweight, ill-at-ease in her smart suit and dark stockings, it seemed to Bridget. Her hair had been carefully blow-dried and Bridget thought that her make-up was perhaps slightly overdone.
‘Bridget.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Bridget. It’s lovely to meet someone helpful in this city. Everyone’s so busy. They don’t mean to be unfriendly of course. It’s just the way of the city. It runs on 24/7 business. Now, what would you like?’
‘Tea would be nice.’
‘Me too. Now I must get to the loo to clean up. I’ll track down a waiter on my way.’
Sarah winced slightly as she stood and limped towards the toilets. Bridget was left on her own. She glanced idly at the papers. They appeared to relate to some kind of business meeting in Singapore but she understood it would be improper and discourteous to look at them longer.
Bridget watched as Sarah returned. She’d brushed her hair and walked more normally. For some reason she liked this woman instinctively.
‘It’s eased off,’ said Sarah. ‘Thank goodness for that. It’s an important week for me.’
‘Are you here for work?’
‘Yes. It’s the first time I’ve been abroad for the job. I’ve just got this promotion and the boss said I should come here for this meeting. So if I go back hobbling and unable to deliver the goods, then … Anyway.’ She smiled.
Bridget looked at her, quizzically polite.
‘Anyway,’ continued Sarah, ‘let’s not talk about my work. The least said about the engineering of small electroplated widgets the better in my view. You here on business too?’
‘No, a wedding.’
‘Ooh, nice. Beats what I’m doing. Though I am planning on taking tomorrow off to see the sights.’
‘You’re Irish?’ said Bridget.
Sarah looked at her quizzically.
‘Only you said. An Irish voice …’
‘Oh yes. Of course. I like to think of myself as Irish. I could get an Irish passport, I suppose. My parents went over to England in their teens.’
‘They’re Irish?’
‘Yes. They eloped when they were kids. It sounds romantic but it was because my dad’s Protestant and my mum Catholic. Neither set of parents approved.’
‘That still makes you Irish. If you want to be.’
‘I’m not sure I want to be anything in particular. I’m proud of my heritage – not that I see much of my relatives – but I’ve seen all the problems divisions can bring. I suppose I’m English when it comes down to it.’
‘Where did you grow up?’
‘A small village near Manchester. My father got a job in a brewery. They struggled to make a living. It certainly wasn’t an advantage, being Irish. So I had to be English in all things, my mother said, a sweet little English girl. I went to college and then a group of us went over to Dublin for the weekend and I fell in love with it. I hadn’t really thought about Ireland before, but since I’ve got to know it more I do like to think of it as home, in a way. You’re lucky to be Irish.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘But you are. I know, the Troubles and all that. But look beyond that …’
The tea arrived and Sarah fussed over serving it for a few minutes.
‘I don’t know why they promoted me, really,’ she said. ‘It’s a terrible thing to confess but I’m not at all ambitious.’
‘Why terrible?’ asked Bridget.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s expected of you I suppose. Even more of women. There are all those men there just waiting for you to trip up. Oh, ha ha ha.’
Bridget was puzzled for a moment by Sarah’s cackling laugh, then smiled. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘Seems I’ve proved their point for them. Thankfully only you to witness it. You won’t tell, will you?’
‘Tell? Of course not.’
‘Thanks. Listen. This tea’s lovely. But I do fancy something a little stronger. How about a little G and T?’
‘What about your meeting?’
‘I’ve got loads of time. And I’ll probably do better on the back of a stiff drink. How about it?’
‘All right, then.’
It was in fact three gins and tonic later before Sarah left. Bridget returned to the hotel room feeling more than a little drunk. She found she had agreed to meet Sarah the next morning. The room had been cleaned and she resumed her place on the bed, the television switched on to drown the air conditioning and provide comforting noise. She slept a while and woke at eight, groggy. The humid fog outside the window had closed in with the approach of night and the room was half dark. She took out her book and, to the crashing tones of the music channel and its strobing lights, read for a while. Eventually it became apparent that Francis was not about to return for dinner. She ordered again from room service, feeling as alone on this earth as she could. But somehow not despondent.
She waited until midnight before going to bed. She fell asleep quickly and slept deeply, to be disturbed only vaguely by Francis’s arrival at five in the morning. He crashed around a while and then she felt the bounce as his body landed on the bed. She smelt cigarette smoke and spirits on his breath and sensed no more until she awoke at eight.
The Russians had a term for it, he knew from his studies in the H-Blocks. Most of the boys stuck to obvious subjects like politics or sociology. He had decided on a module in Russian literature. For no particular reason he could remember, possibly for the hell of it. A bit like those bastards on Mastermind who mugged up on a certain subject just to show they could. Except for him it was a module in a degree course. And he’d passed with flying colours. And like those Mastermind bastards he’d forgotten it all now. Almost all of it anyway.
He hadn’t forgotten about prison, though. Beforehand, even on remand, he’d been sanguine about the prospect. It was just a rite of passage. A spell in the Maze was a badge of honour. To describe his arrival there as a shock did not begin to convey the shaking of his beliefs and his being, the more profound because he’d thought he could cope, eat shit and do the time quietly.
But the squalor. The cruelty, the sheer condensed, concentrated cruelty of the screws. The grind of routine. The stench and the filth. The beatings. The physical bars and the fences and the locks and the figurative but more real ones entrapping his soul.
For sure, it was an especially tough time to be there. The dispute over Special Category status became the Dirty Protest while he was in. He too smeared his shit over the walls and refused to be cleaned. He too went on the blanket, refusing to wear prison uniform and huddling inside the filthy wool, clinging on for dear life in a cell plastered with his foul excrement, fresh and wet smeared over dried and faded, all this for the elusive ethereal political status. Whatever doubts he and his fellow inmates had, they could not utter them but instead followed military discipline, a lesson that had served him on the outside ever since. Tolstoy, Gogol and above all Dostoevsky had sustained him, somewhat, but mainly it was his hatred that carried him through.
He’d have been on hunger strike himself had he not been released a week or so before the first of
them began. All that suffering and death and then that fucker Thatcher made the concessions anyway.
By that time all doubts had been erased. The H-Blocks had educated him and he had emerged with a new vigour and hardened commitment.
Zapoi. That was it. A continuous binge. He groaned with the memory.
He’d met up with Alfie, that cocky little sod from London with the spiky blond hair, in the morning and Alfie had taken him straight to his club in a high-rise. The place was done out like an imagining of one of those gentlemen’s clubs in London. They started off on champagne and pretty quickly moved on to Black Velvet in honour of his being Irish. Then to the hard stuff, trying the range of Irish whiskeys. By this time several of Alfie’s pals had joined them and the porters in the club had begun to look askance at them. Someone had a word in someone’s ear and before he knew it they were out in the heat again. It must have been about eleven. Alfie was buoyant. His tie had disappeared and his shirt was soaked in sweat or alcohol, Francis didn’t know which.
One of the crowd had an idea and soon they were in three taxis heading towards the harbour and a completely different kind of drinking club near the docks. Music pounded and girls cavorted in front of them, neither of which interested him, and there was hard liquor, which did. They spilled out into the thin daylight mid-afternoon, blinking, and began what Alfie called the millionaires’ pub crawl, with a hit list of the swankiest five-star hotel bars, beginning, of course, with Raffles. The rule was that you didn’t move on until security had been called and asked you to leave. Though Francis itched for a bundle with these muscle-bound nonentities, a remnant of inner prudence prevailed. At some point Tony had appeared and they were dancing like two fifteen-year-old girls in some nightclub to Soft Cell. Just as quickly Tony faded away.
Francis could recall Alfie hectoring him in the middle of the night. In drink his demotic London accent came out even more strongly.
‘Fucking shit place, Ireland. Fucking shit place the UK altogether, come to think of it. But you Micks. Ireland, it’s the arsehole of the universe. Get out is what I say. Look at old Tony. He’s done all right, hasn’t he? Come and set up here. He’d see you right. Or I would. See, I like you. Whassyourname again?’
‘Francis.’
‘Thass right. I like you. You don’t want to live there no more. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as patriotic as the next man. Rule Britannia and all that. No Surrender. Fuck the IRA. But it’s all going to shit. Can’t stand to be there. Get out while you can. Before one of those IRA bastards has you. Ditch the wife. I do all right, I can tell you.’
Francis was calm. ‘What if I told you …’
‘What? Told me what, Francis?’
‘Nothing. It’s just not as easy as you think.’
‘Of course it’s not easy. Nothing’s easy. Then again, nothing’s difficult. Just do it. Ain’t that what they say? Just fucking do it, man.’
Instead of following his instinct and taking out the smug little Brit there and then, Francis had smiled at him and ordered another round of tequila slammers.
Now he felt as bad physically as he could. He turned over in bed and looked at the clock. Ten fifteen. Bridget had gone, wherever. Francis didn’t care. Probably on that tour thing with the girls.
There was no point dwelling. He’d been out and done jobs feeling as bad as this. Perhaps not quite as bad as this. But despite his promise to meet Alfie in the lobby at eleven thirty, he was not about to spend the whole of this day with him too. He might just make the stag night, for a brief appearance. Maybe a little longer than that.
He forced himself out of the bed and went into the bathroom, defecating profusely and painfully. He stood in the shower with the water as hot and as fast as he could bear it. He drained the litre bottle of water that stood in the refrigerator in the room. He dressed in shorts and T-shirt.
In the lobby, he spoke to the concierge about day trips. Johor Bahru was mentioned and, without thinking or precisely understanding what was being said, he found himself being signed up for a trip.
Francis left the hotel comfortably in time to avoid Alfie. He could not bear another day with the English and nor did he want to spend it in an alcoholic haze. He was slowing down with age and wanted some time on his own.
He dozed as the coach wended its way through the streets and jams, leaving the glittering centre, passing through rather more shabby and authentic suburbs, before leaving urban Singapore altogether.
They stopped at the border and while the formalities were completed he disembarked with the other passengers. They were on a rise and looked over the causeway towards a city that seemed to Francis identical to the one they had left.
They were dropped eventually in the middle of an anonymous shopping mall, where they would be picked up again in four hours. This was not what he had expected at all and within fifteen minutes Francis was bored. He spent the rest of his time wandering aimlessly between the air-conditioned stores, stopping every so often at one of the food halls for a coffee or a Coke. He would rather have gone on another bender with Alfie and his pals. At least, he supposed, in the bustle and noise and garish glare of this place he could find some time for reflection. His conclusions were cold. His commitment to the movement, all his achievements, they were as nothing. How much closer to a united Ireland were they? How close were the English to surrendering? When would the Prods recognize them as human beings, let alone equals? It had been futile, his suffering. He was no less able than Tony and he too could be leading this empty but affluent life. Perhaps that’s what he was doing here. Showing himself what might have been.
Or alternatively this musing was the penalty for distance, he told himself, for dislocation from reality. The sensation of floating unreality was unnerving and he must find solid ground before he unravelled entirely. This whole trip was probably a mistake; possibly it was just a symptom of the loosening of his ties. Too much theorizing, he told himself. He was not a dreamer. It was all much more basic. Hangover and dehydration, they were the causes of this. Get yourself together, man.
By the time the bus turned back towards the border Francis was ready for the stag night. The passengers were asked to leave the coach to have their papers checked as they entered Singapore. At the desk his mind was on how much he might permit himself to drink tonight when he looked up to see two small men in immaculate blue uniforms and peaked caps staring at him. One held his passport.
‘Mr O’Neill. Would you please come with us?’ he said.
4
They met at the Botanical Gardens and entered by the Tanglin Gate.
Sarah said, ‘It’s a bit like bunking off school. Delicious but at the same time you feel guilty.’
‘I never truanted,’ said Bridget, then sensed she might seem self-righteous. ‘But I’d have liked to.’
‘The more distant you are from work, the less relevant it seems. All of those things you worry about back there seem so petty.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Bridget.
‘Don’t you agree?’
‘You have to go back to them sometime.’
‘You’re right of course. Things can look simpler and less bleak, though. Just for a while. Shall we?’
They walked, heading for the lake first of all. The sun was unremitting and the air was again humid.
‘Orchids,’ said Sarah. ‘That’s what I want to see.’
At the National Orchid Garden they paid their entrance fee and negotiated the steep incline to Burkill Hall, the colonial plantation bungalow built in 1886. They wandered on, inhaling the impossibly sweet scents among the sultry wet tang.
‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Sarah.
‘Yes.’
They sat on a bench. Rain was beginning to fall in a fine, warm mist. Neither woman moved.
‘All that … stuff going on out there. You wouldn’t believe there was a world, it’s so quiet.’
‘Yes.’
In truth the intermittent gaggles of tourists making their way thro
ugh the gardens created their own noise. But it was quite different from the constant mechanical grind and bustle of the city, and Bridget could hear birdsong too. They stood.
‘Shall we carry on?’ said Bridget.
‘Yes. Let’s.’
There were few people around them as they walked slowly.
‘Are you married?’ asked Sarah.
‘Yes. Are you?’
‘Was. It didn’t work out. His career. My job. That’s the way he saw it. And put it. But now my job’s turned into a proper career. Who’d have thought it? Children?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither. Never got round to it. Unlikely now. How do you feel about it?’
‘I don’t think about it most of the time. No, that’s not true.’ She was silent for a moment.
‘Sorry. That was very rude of me,’ said Sarah. ‘Intrusive. I’m afraid that’s me. If I take to someone I just talk about anything. It puts a lot of people off. I’m not a frivolous person, though. Honestly.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Bridget. ‘I’m just not used to talking. Especially about myself. To anyone. I try not to think about it too much, but I’ve always wanted children. That’s the truth of it. It’s not just that it’s expected of you. I love children.’
‘Then why not?’
‘It just hasn’t happened.’
‘Doesn’t your husband want kids?’
‘We’ve never talked about it as such.’
‘It’s difficult, I know. It was one of the things that led to my marriage breaking up.’
‘It’s not that we’re about to …’
‘Sorry. No. I didn’t mean that. It’s just really difficult.’
‘Yes.’
The expectations on her were immense, though not from Francis himself. Ever since the miscarriage – something that she was not about to mention to this virtual stranger – it had been tacit between them that there would be no children. And this made it harder. It might have been easier if he’d shouted at her and she’d eventually submitted to whatever his will was. But the conversation, like so many, was evidently off limits and always would be, she suspected. Meanwhile, apart from her mother’s occasionally caustic badgering, it was the other girls, looking sidelong at her as they talked about their own children, checking her reaction in sympathy rather than condemnation, or so she could only hope. She would never tell them about her child and would withdraw still further into herself. But that was not an option either. Denying the support and camaraderie of this close-knit group would have been regarded as a hostile act. She let it simply be assumed that she and Francis could not have children and allowed them to feel sorry for her. Poor Bridget.
A Traitor in the Family Page 5