‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s better than it’s been the last few days.’ She looked at him.
Sergeant Peters muttered a sentence under his breath.
‘Now, then,’ said Donnelly. ‘Manners. If Bridget here doesn’t want us to come in, then we’ll conduct our business here on the doorstep. We’re all nicely wrapped up. Apart from you, Bridget.’
‘Mrs O’Neill,’ she said sharply.
‘Mrs O’Neill. I beg your pardon. Will you be fetching a coat or a cardy? You look frozen to the bone.’
‘I’ll live.’
‘All right, then, Mrs O’Neill. How’s your man doing?’
‘All right. No thanks to you people. He shouldn’t be inside in the first place. He’s innocent.’
‘Well, you’re entitled to your own opinion. I hear he won’t accept visitors.’
Bridget said nothing.
‘That’s a real shame, isn’t it? He could do you the service of seeing you every so often. Seeing as you’re standing by him. Or perhaps you’re planning a new life.’
‘I’m sticking by Francis.’
‘It’s a long time. A very long time. A woman such as you would have plenty of chances … Still, I didn’t come here to chat about you and your husband now, did I?’
‘I don’t know. Why did you come?’
‘We were talking of visitors. Had any other visitors recently?’
‘Me ma comes by when she can get a lift out. She’s not so good on her legs these days. Couldn’t do the walk, especially in this weather. And the priest drops by every so often, to see how I’m going on.’
‘And have you had any – special – visitors?’
‘Apart from you, no, I don’t think so.’
‘Are you sure now, Mrs O’Neill? Think hard.’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Word has it that Gentleman Joe was in the area just a couple of days ago.’
‘Gentleman Joe? What kind of name would that be?’
‘Fella by the name of Joe Geraghty,’ said Donnelly pleasantly. ‘Tall man. About my age, maybe a little older. Grey hair. Distinguished.’
‘And what business would it be of yours, Mr Donnelly?’
‘Every breath Joe Geraghty takes is my business, Mrs O’Neill. He’s one of the big noises up in Belfast, is Gentleman Joe. And I’m told one of his boys was at your house the other day. When Mr Geraghty’s on my patch it’s very much my business. When he’s here I own him.’
‘Told? By who?’
‘Ah, now that’s for me to know, isn’t it? What did you talk about?’
‘Well, my private conversations are for me to know about, aren’t they? Or are you accusing me of some crime?’
‘So Joe Geraghty’s boy did come and visit you? Heard you went off in a car with him. Off to see Joe Geraghty?’
‘I wouldn’t be telling you.’
‘I’m just trying to have a civil conversation with you, Mrs O’Neill.’
‘It doesn’t seem very civil to me, Mr Donnelly. Accusing an innocent person of lying. Or is that part of your job?’
Donnelly shook his head. ‘It seems I’ve outstayed my welcome, Mrs O’Neill.’
‘Oh no,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s nice to stand here chatting on the doorstep.’
‘Hospitality’s changed round these parts since the old days.’
‘Is that a fact?’
Donnelly and his team climbed into their vehicles and left.
Bridget drew the curtain behind the front door. She waited another hour or so before pulling on her winter coat, picking up her shopping bag and walking into the village. Before visiting her mother, she dropped in to the garage to see Anne-Marie.
‘The police come calling. Can you get Stevie to tell Joe Geraghty?’
Joe sat with Kenny in his office, the upstairs rooms of a well-protected terraced house along the Falls Road.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘It might have been Francis himself. Some deal with the Brits that’s gone tits up. Doesn’t add up, though.’
‘I know. It’s Francis who’s on the wrong end of a forty-one-year stretch.’
‘Hmm. Christ, I’m bored with this. Do we have enough to be asking Mikey a few questions?’
‘I think so, boss.’
‘You think so, Kenny? You think so?’
‘No. I’m sure. I mean, the arrest.’
Joe Geraghty sighed. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. But all right. Looks like you need to prepare for a little trip down south. Get Jimmy geared up again, will you? And a couple of vans. You’ll go down tomorrow. You know where Mikey is?’
‘Yes. He’s staying –’
‘I don’t need to know, Kenny. You just make your arrangements ahead of time. I suppose we’ll use the normal place in Donegal. You go over there while the others pick up Mikey. And Kenny …’
‘Yes?’
‘No foregone conclusions here. Tell Jimmy to treat him nice. I don’t want him harmed. You talk to Mikey yourself. Report back to me. We can take it from there.’
2000
* * *
17
It was raining heavily on Francis O’Neill’s last night in the Maze. He’d served six years of his forty-one. Driven by a swirling wind, the rain was flung against the window of his cell like gravel. In the office where the final formalities were completed, a Portakabin near the main gates, it pattered on the flat, felted roof as forms were completed and civility was just about maintained on both sides. No warmth, though. No fond farewells, no rueful humour, no sense in the eyes that at last it might be all over.
It pelted on the roof of the car like tin tacks as they drove away, for ever, the windscreen wipers struggling to clear the continuous line of water as it washed across the M1, the tyres sweeping through the surface water with a liquid swish. Through the window that he kept open in defiance of the rain and wind the air smelt dank. It was gloomy overhead and the light from the car’s headlamps smudged and spattered whitely.
Now as he lay on his bed the rain came in rhythmic waves across the roof above and water dripped from gutters that could not contain it.
He had chosen to come home rather than to run the gauntlet of a raucous reception at the Felons Club. There would be time enough for celebration. He needed to replicate his prison conditions just for now, to begin to adjust. He lay on the bed, as he used to lie in his crib, the door shut, looking up at the ceiling, though it was a different ceiling. Home.
She was downstairs. He could hear the sound of crockery and her moving about the kitchen. Quite unlike the hard metallic clanks of the prison and the sound of pacing boots at night. Apart from her and the sound of the rain, it was silent here. He was outside life, outside time.
He supposed he must go downstairs. He could not delay it for ever. He stood and ran his fingers through his hair. It was cold in the house and he felt somehow more vulnerable here than in prison. He missed the warmth of his cell and its self-contained security. Everything he needed had been to hand and, over the years, diligently organized in the limited space: his books, his radio, the small laptop computer he had latterly been permitted, his chair.
‘Will you have a cup of tea, Francis?’ she said as he entered the kitchen. It was warmer here, with the heat of the oven. She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘I’ve been doing some baking. A nice fruitcake. It’s still warm. Will I cut you a slice?’
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Not hungry.’ He looked at her and changed his mind. ‘No. I will, Bridget. Cut me a slice.’
They sat at the small table, a fold-out affair that took up most of the space. Francis ignored his tea and his cake and stared out of the window that looked on to the overgrown back garden.
‘Still raining,’ he said.
‘I was wondering what you’d like to have for your tea now. I bought some lamb chops. I know how you used to enjoy them.’
‘Aye. That’ll do fine.’
‘How did they feed you in there?’
‘Not too ba
d.’
‘Not like home, eh?’
‘No.’
‘Are you glad to be out, Francis?’
‘What kind of a question is that? Of course I’m glad.’
‘I suppose it’ll take time.’
He did not reply but sipped his tea.
‘That’ll be cold now. Will I make you another cup?’
‘No. I think I’ll get a bit more rest.’
‘All right, then, Francis. Will I give you a call when your tea’s ready?’
‘Aye,’ he said.
He’d been transferred from England to the Maze in early 1999. It had been clear then what would happen. At first he’d maintained his insistence that she should not visit, but later he relented. She was not sure why: it was possible that the counsellors they’d dispatched to the prison had persuaded him. His successful rehabilitation would depend partly on his being psychologically correctly set, his mentality appropriately reconfigured for a life beyond captivity, beyond the Troubles. It could even have been a stipulation of his early release, for all she knew.
She visited him monthly. It was invariably a dispiriting experience to sit with her husband and listen to the silence as he, head slightly cocked as if he were curious, looked beyond her to the window and the hills beyond.
His long sentence meant he was one of the last to be released. How had they come up with the dry arithmetic that governed these things? Had Joe Geraghty sat across a table from some faceless British mandarin and traded with these years of prisoners’ lives? Probably. She supposed this was the way such things were resolved. Compromises and fudges, all codified with careful language on bits of paper hidden away in government files in London and Dublin, their facsimiles stored faithfully by Joe Geraghty and his colleagues in their archive, all dutifully signed off, all painstakingly observed as the years crept by.
One saving grace of his late release was the lack of publicity. The first few had attracted celebrity and notoriety in equal measure, as Republicans whooped and hollered and the right-wing English press blustered and roared in indignation. Francis, despite his earlier momentary tabloid notoriety, had crept out under the radar.
He’d been home now for nearly five months. There had been the inevitable trip to Belfast and the celebrations there, during which, to her, he’d seemed uncharacteristically subdued. Not that he hadn’t accepted the backslaps and the beers, but there seemed a malevolent quietness about him these days.
The quietness came with a sullen glare that often scared her. The fear of this man that she had always felt was now different: less direct, more insidious. For the first three months after his release they had slept in different rooms. He had not asked for it but she’d judged he needed his space to recuperate and to reintegrate.
Then she had tentatively suggested he should move from the bedroom that was spare in furnishing and ornament, as well as being normally unused, to the one they had shared before his arrest.
‘Francis, are you all right in that little bedroom?’ she asked.
‘It’s all right,’ he grunted.
‘There’s nothing there but the bed and the chair.’
‘What more do I need?’
‘Won’t you come back in our room? I thought you might prefer to be on your own for a while. But it’s been a long time.’
The fact that he’d shrugged and acquiesced caused her more concern than had he baulked or shouted at her. Since that day they had slept in the same bed and she had felt his simmering, wakeful presence beside her. He would lie stiff, breathing softly, turned away. Now she regretted having invited his unsettling silence into her bed. Their bed, she corrected herself.
He remained in the house most of the time. Initially she’d thought it was to do with the winter weather and the fact that he was no longer accustomed to the open air. Before his sentence – even after his spells in the Maze – he’d been full of energy and, when he wasn’t away with the boys, enjoyed tinkering with the car or tending the vegetable garden at the back of the house. On his behalf she’d had to turn down all the invitations to go to the pub in Forkhill or Crossmaglen. Anne-Marie invariably suggested that Bridget go on her own, but she always declined.
‘It’ll pass,’ said Anne-Marie.
‘Yes,’ said Bridget. ‘I hope so.’
He stayed inside, reading his science-fiction books with their gaudy covers and watching the television with steady eyes and no emotion on his face. Since the sessions in Belfast he’d not touched alcohol. He rarely spoke. It had done him no good, her staying. She was as irrelevant to him now as she’d been before.
At breakfast Francis spoke for what seemed like the first time in an age. ‘I’ll be going up to Belfast for a couple of days tomorrow. See me ma and da and a few people.’
‘Oh aye,’ she said questioningly. ‘Will I come with you, Francis?’
‘No,’ he said, but not sharply. ‘It wouldn’t interest you.’
He packed his bag that night, ironing a clean white shirt and pressing his old wedding suit as best he could. The trousers were tight in the seams and the jacket could be buttoned only with difficulty, but it would have to do. He cleaned his best shoes and put them in his bag too.
He left at six and was at his parents’ house before breakfast time. His mother popped out to the corner shop for the makings and prepared him a large Ulster fry. His father raised his eyebrows in amusement.
‘Don’t get this treatment meself, now, Francis.’
‘Don’t be so silly, Sean,’ said his mother, sipping her tea. ‘It’s a special occasion, having our Francis here. Now are you here for anything particular, Francis?’
He smeared a piece of potato and bread with vivid yellow egg and bright red tomato ketchup.
‘This is smashing, Ma,’ he said. ‘Set me up for the day. Do youse two ever think of Liam?’
His father grimaced; his mother put her teacup carefully on its saucer and looked down.
‘Now, then, Francis,’ said his father. ‘We don’t want to be bringing all that up. Your mother …’
‘No, Sean. It’s all right. I do think of him. A lot. I wonder how I brought such a boy into the world. I wonder what we did wrong for him. I feel sad. But you can’t deny what he did. He knew the punishment.’
Francis looked in her eyes and said, ‘And you’re sure that’s the way you feel, Ma? You’re not in front of the neighbours, now.’
There was a gentleness in his tone that made her look at him.
‘Of course I’m sure, Francis. I’m not pretending. In a way I don’t blame him. It’s those British soldiers I blame. They killed Liam as sure as they killed Paddy.’
‘It’s all over, Ma. The RA is in the past.’
For a few moments the only sound in the room, aside from the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, was of cutlery on their plates as Francis and his father completed their breakfasts.
‘I’m going to look a few people up,’ said Francis eventually. ‘See if there’s anything I can do. Old pals from the day. There must be something for me.’
‘I’m sure there must be, son. What kind of thing?’
‘I don’t know. I read a lot in prison. I’ve had a lot of time to think. There must be something I can do. There’s plenty of others as have made the switch.’
‘Aye, son,’ said his mother. ‘And we’d be proud of you if you did.’
He made some telephone calls, arranged to meet old comrades over a cup of tea or a pint. Generally, they shook their heads and sucked their teeth.
‘Difficult,’ they said. ‘He’s a busy man, so he is.’
‘Well, just get word to him. He’ll make time for me.’
Eventually, he did. Francis was summoned from his parents’ home late one evening. He put on his suit and tie before leaving the house. He was driven to the office on the Falls Road, where the upstairs lights were still lit. In their youth, he’d been in the Belfast Brigade with the boy on the door. Boy: like Francis, he must be pushing forty now. Barry had b
ecome stout and his crew cut befitted his sentinel role. They smiled and shared a joke, and Francis submitted to the body search easily.
‘Sorry, Francis. No exceptions, the bosses say.’
In the outer office Kenny stood over a young woman in front of a computer screen. She typed while he dictated. Kenny looked up.
‘Well, look what the cat’s dragged in,’ he said with evident pleasure. ‘You’ve been keeping yourself to yourself.’
‘Aye,’ said Francis.
Kenny embraced him and Francis acquiesced. The human warmth felt pleasant.
‘How’s the wife? Now, wait. Bridget. Lovely girl. How’s she doing?’
‘She’s all right.’
‘Stood by you all these years. She’s a cracker, that one.’
‘Aye.’
‘Press release,’ said Kenny, looking over his shoulder at the woman typing. ‘That’s what we’re about these days.’ He said it with apparent mild amusement, not rancour. ‘The boss is looking forward to seeing you. Just go on in.’
He walked through into Joe Geraghty’s office, dark aside from the table lamp that cast a dim light around the room and bright light on the papers scattered over the desk’s surface. He did not see Joe at first, but there he was rising from a leather sofa to greet him.
‘Well, if it isn’t Mr Francis O’Neill himself,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you, Francis.’
They shook hands.
‘You too, Joe. You’re looking well.’
‘Thank you, Francis. You too. Put on a couple of pounds, but that’s understandable. After what you’ve been through you should allow yourself a few luxuries. And how’s the country life treating you?’
‘All right, Joe.’
‘And that darling wife of yours?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘We did our best to look after her while you were inside. We always do, but I made sure we took very good care of Bridget.’
‘Thank you, Joe.’
‘Don’t mention it. A wee drink, to mark the occasion?’ He held up a bottle of Scotch.
‘No thanks, Joe. I’ve given up the sauce.’
A Traitor in the Family Page 24