World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  “The real!” Johno shouted.

  Dermot heard quick footsteps coming past the back door of the saloon. He watched the front door. Deirdre came in front of it, looked in, saw Dermot and smiled, but did not come in.

  “I’m going to go for a while,” Dermot said.

  “What the hell do you want to hang out with all the cowards for?” Canavan said.

  “Stay around and meet some men,” Johno said.

  “And some real women, not goddamned Communists,” Canavan said.

  “I’ll see you later at the hotel,” Dermot said.

  “He’s good company, Canavan is, isn’t he?” Deirdre said.

  “What is he?” Dermot said.

  “A bully,” she said. “If they ever made things better around here, he’d shrivel up and die. He can’t wait for it to get worse and worse.”

  “Is he the boss of an outfit?”

  “The boss of wee small boys who do the fighting,” she said. “Trouble is, if the government do not recognize that people need jobs, then everybody will join the Provos. A few men like Canavan will become everybody. Christ, someday you could have everybody who is standin on corners now goin’ around pulling triggers.”

  “What’s stopping them?” Dermot said.

  “Us, as little as we are,” she said.

  Dermot bumped against her. He could feel her body under her coat. They went a few more steps and he put his arms around her and he stopped walking. He held her and had his face in her hair. Stale cigarette smoke, some sort of ink from the posters, and excitement She laughed and pushed him into walking again. She said she wanted a cup of tea. They went around a corner into the three-quarter-light of a narrow street with shops on it Men doing nothing lined the sidewalks on each side. The buildings were three-story and then one-story and then two-story and here was a moviehouse that was closed. The cornices of each building, stone or wood, had lions’ heads or spouts or some other design that took time to form. They walked toward a cafe sign. Two waitresses in white uniform dresses had the door open. They stood in the cold air on the sidewalk talking to a guy with black wet hair. The guy walked a few steps away from them to a lamppost. The men standing on the sidewalks all stopped talking and looked at the guy. One of the waitresses held out a watch. A stopwatch, he guessed, because she looked like she was at the race track in the morning.

  Deirdre and Dermot came up and stood alongside the waitress. She held the cafe door with one hand. She balanced on one leg, body bent forward like a dance pose, to see through the men so she could do her timing.

  “All right,” the waitress said.

  “No, no, no,” one of the men on the sidewalk said. He pointed to the guy at the lamppost. “Push off the lamppost with yer right hand. Put your hand right on the lamppost and give yerself a shove to start off.”

  “Dead on,” the guy said. He got alongside the metal lamppost and put his right hand against it.

  “A wee bit closer,” the man said.

  “Aye.” The guy edged closer to the lamppost.

  “Elbow bent,” the man said.

  “Aye.”

  “All right,” the man said to the waitress. She held the stopwatch out. “Now!”

  The guy came off the lamppost and was in the middle of the street in one move. He stopped in a crouch. His right arm came up like he was throwing something. He headed back to the curb. His first two steps were sloppy. He ran with his body all over the place. But when he hit the curb he was tucking in his elbows. He flew through the door of a bookmaking shop, touching nothing. A man at the door to the bookmaking shop held his arm in the air and kept looking into the shop. Now the arm came down. The waitress clicked the watch.

  A man from the street came running over to the waitress. She held out the watch. “No good,” the man said.

  The guy with the wet hair was back out of the book-making shop.

  “Seven,” the waitress said to him,

  “Fookyesay seven,” he said.

  “Fookye. Seven.”

  “Six or better,” the other man said. “Has to be six or better or we’ve all had it.” He looked up the street at the pillbox in front of Chada Fashions. “We’ll break it off for a bit,” he said. When he looked at Deirdre, dislike gathered in his lips.

  They walked into the cafe behind the waitress. The owner stood behind the counter in a gray butcher’s apron.

  “I got a look at your knickers that time,” the owner said.

  “Did you, Eamonn, what color are they?”

  “Either pinky or off-white.”

  “Either? I thought you saw.”

  Well, by that I mean you were jumpin’ around so much.”

  Deirdre and De?not sat in a booth. “I don’t even want to know what that was about,” Dermot said.

  “Quite simple,” she said. “The Army comes at four o’clock every day and parks an armored personnel carrier outside on the street here. The soldiers come bounding out of it, lifting people, searching everybody, pushing us around deliberately. It can’t go on any more. We’ve been attempting to tell them. And while they’re busy not listening, here’s a young man outside rehearsing every day. The bookmaking shop has a back door to it, you know. Brings you right into the Bogside, you know.”

  “There’s only one hand grenade in Derry,” Eamonn, the owner, said. “They won’t let it be used unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “But in the meantime the lad is out there learning his part,” Deirdre said.

  “Absolutely,” Eamonn said. “I’ve nothin’ to do with it. I’m totally against violence.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Deirdre said. “Have you not cleared the operation with Eddie Canavan?”

  Eamonn pretended not to hear.

  A man in a gray smock came into the shop. A dark mustache twitched as he spoke very rapid rising-and-falling Derry. He became more agitated. Deirdre made room for him in the booth. He sat down and looked at his hands. “Now what in actual fact did they say to you?” she said. He started talking. Dermot leaned over, but could only hear pieces of words. He asked what he was saying. The man in the smock shook his head and said something. “No,” Deirdre said, “tell him. It’s more important than you think it is.”

  “Well, I’m Johnny Killeen. I’m a binman, you know.” Dermot looked right at him so he could make out the words. “I pick up the dustbins. Refuse, you know. There’s five of us go out. A lorry-driver binman and four binmen. I’m a binman. The lorry-driver binman is a better job, you know. Pay is one pound four a week more than a binman’s. The lorry-driver binman gets the scram, you know. He’s the man in charge of the truck, you know. Therefore he gets all the scram. Any bits of copper and brass, ye can sell them and have a little extra. Three times they promised me I was going to be the lorry-driver binman. I’ve been a binman longer than anybody else on my lorry, you know. I want to be the lad drivin’ the lorry. Sit up front and direct the others. They told me I was going to be the lorry-driver binman beginning today. So this mornin’, I come down to the garage. The wifey and three wee ones was with me, you know, I was goin’ to get in there and drive out right past them, you know. The wee ones were all excited about me drivin’ the lorry. But when I do get to the garage this mornin’ they say to me, it’s all right, we’ve a man to be the lorry driver. Dead on. Then this Prod lad, Hunter, gets into the seat. They made him the lorry-driver binman. He’s hardly worked three years you know, and they put him right in there. The wifey and the three wee ones is standin’ there and expectin’ to be wavin’ to the father. Here comes this Prod lad, Hunter, drivin’ the lorry out past them. With the father still a binman, clingin’ clingin’ to the door like I always done. She rightly would like the money, the wifey. She really wanted the wee children to see me drivin’ the lorry out past them.”

  “Come on,” Deirdre said. She stood up. “Well go across to the corporation.”

  “Oh, I have to be back on me lorry.”

  “After the corporation.”

  They walk
ed to the Guildhall. Deirdre led the way down a hallway and into an office. A man sat at a wooden desk cutting strips of paper with a penknife. Rimless glasses gave an extra pinch to his face.

  “Yes,” he said. He did not look up.

  While Deirdre spoke to him, the man tilted his head and watched the penknife cut the paper in a straight line.

  “Well, that’s up to Mr. Montgomery,” he said through his nose.

  “Could you not ring him up and discuss the matter with him?” she said.

  “Well, I really don’t like doing this sort of thing on the telephone. I prefer putting it in writing.”

  Deirdre took quick drags of a cigarette, the smoke going in the man’s face. Her thumb kept flicking against the cigarette. The ashes dropped on the papers on the desk. He reached out and brushed the ashes away.

  “Yes, well, but the man here does not have the time. He would like to have an official explanation of this matter. He is quite concerned.”

  She took two quick drags on the cigarette to develop an ash. The thumb hit the cigarette again and the ash fell on the papers.

  The man looked up. She stood and smoked in his face with her scarf dragging on the floor and the ripped coat hem hanging.

  “I am worried about our standards,” he said. He looked at the guy in the smock. “You are supposedly employed as a binman. Yet you are here in this office rather than working.”

  “He is supposed to be working as a lorry-driver binman,” Deirdre said.

  “I said I prefer to put this matter into writing. It is not for us to discuss here.”

  The penknife began to cut through the paper again.

  “Would you please send us a copysheet of what you write?” she said.

  “Oh, we really don’t do that.”

  “Well, this time you might. You see, we intend to raise this as an issue in the elections. After the elections we shall have a member of Parliament who can discuss this further in London, you know.”

  He looked up through his rimless glasses just for a moment. Deirdre’s thumb hit the cigarette again. The man breathed in. Slowly his hand brushed the ash away. He went back to the penknife.

  “Be careful,” Deirdre said to him.

  He looked up. “How’s that?”

  “I wouldn’t want you to cut off one of your fingers with the knife.”

  She dropped the cigarette on the floor. She stepped on it and walked out of the office. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning for the copysheet of your correspondence,” she said.

  “Oh, you can’t do that,” he called to her.

  “Fookye!” she yelled as she walked down the hall.

  Johnny Killeen followed her out. On the street he asked her, “Do ye think I could lose me job?”

  “They don’t do things that way,” Deirdre said. “They are most interested in serenity. Your man there would be highly pleased if you were to remain a binman, with no fuss, for the rest of your life.”

  Killeen shrugged. He walked across the square to an outdoor cigarette machine. He stood at the machine with his hand up to drop in the change. He had the hand up, but it was not moving. He stood there.

  “This is our lot,” Deirdre said.

  “There’s nothing you can do about it?” Dermot said.

  “We’ve twenty per cent of Derry Protestant,” she said. “The Unionist Party controls one hundred per cent of the jobs within the city corporation. No job is too insignificant for the Unionist Party. Nor is any job too large for them to control. There’s a man sitting inside who owns a hundred fifty flats. He collects four pound a week for each. His job inside is to oversee housing. He has prevented the building of any new housing in order to protect his rents. Nobody says a word. It is just another part of the system.”

  Behind the building, cattle or cows, sounding as if their bodies hurt, made deep calls. Dermot went to the corner of the building and looked down to the wharves on the water. Men with sticks were herding cattle onto a gangplank going up to a freighter with a black hull. The men wore rubber hip boots and slapped the cattle with whittled tree branches. When the last steer started up the metal gangplank, the men started walking up the open area around the wharves. The open area was a couple of blocks long, ending at a gray wooden warehouse. A head looked out the warehouse door. There was a yell. The big sliding door was pulled open. Cattle started coming out of the warehouse at a stupid lope. A couple of young guys with sticks ran with them, twisting and looking back to make sure the cattle kept coming out of the warehouse. There were about fifty cattle in this group, the men half running alongside with their rubber hip boots flapping and their sticks waving. When one of the cattle began to veer away from the herd, heading into one of the streets running to a dead end at the wharves, all one of the men had to do was to get near him and shout and wave the stick and the steer, head nodding, these fat bloody eyes seeming to see nothing, changed direction with his short clumping front legs and went back with the herd. The metal gangplank was covered with green slime from the shit of the ones who had gone up before. The cattle came packing together at the foot of the gangplank, their bodies shuddering while they gave thick tongue. The men only had to yell or wave the sticks or throw in a few slaps to have the cattle go up to the gangplank. They went up eagerly, nose to rump. Straight up the gangplank to the deck of the freighter, then turn and go down a steep gangplank into the hold. The line of cattle up on the ship had to be held for a moment. The cattle on the wharf kept pushing onto the gangplank. They jammed themselves so tightly on the gangplank that heads were tossing from side to side, trying to find room.

  There was another yell from up at the warehouse. The next group came running out. Two or three of them got loose on the side nearest the water. One of the young guys was on them yelling and waving his stick and the cattle pushed back into the herd. Another one broke off on the other side. An old man was too slow in turning around. He did not get his stick up in time and the steer clopped past him. Neck skin shaking, head down trying to find a trail, the steer was heading for the start of the street running up the far side of Guildhall.

  “Run for your life,” Deirdre yelled to the steer.

  The steer turned away from the opening to the street and now he was running back from the shed.

  “Not that way,” Deirdre said.

  A man came running out of the shed, hitting, and waving his stick. He was running directly at the steer and the steer was running directly at him. When they were about ten yards apart the steer’s legs began to chop and his body began to turn. Now he came around, heaving, a vibrating moan coming out of him, a face shaped to be fierce but showing great fear, and he lumbered to the foot of the gangplank and threw his head between the rumps of the last two steers trying to get onto the gangplank. The steer pushed so hard that a man had to wave him back with a stick until there was space for him to go up the gangplank and onto the boat to the slaughterhouse.

  “I tried to help him,” she said.

  Dermot took her hand. Her fingers spread to fit in his. The cattle were up on the freighter now, moaning while they went down into the hold.

  “I wish they’d all come running out and then go straight on up the street and never be caught.”

  “They’re too afraid.”

  “That’s what I detest. One lad with a stick in his hand having all that power over anybody. Animal or man.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Jesus, it’s even worse with people here. They don’t even have to use sticks on them. You saw the poor man. One word and he was half running out of the office. He was frightened that somebody would take up a pen and run a wee line through his name.” She sighed. “All you can do is try, I guess.”

  “Try what?” Dermot asked.

  “Try to make them realize that they have legs to stand on. And they should get up off their knees.”

  The men left the gangplank and were running to surround new steers coming out of the warehouse. Dermot let go of Deirdre’s hand and put his arm aro
und her and pulled her into him and kissed her on the side of the neck. She put her hands behind his neck. Her eyes made little darting motions, side to side, but never really moving, tiny jig steps.

  “You’re a pretty girl.”

  She put a hand through her hair. “I look like a hag, actually. That’s an old trollop, you know.”

  She said it with softness, without any sharp ridges on her voice. He drew her into him and she put her face into his shoulder. He kissed her on the side of the neck again, where the neck curves into the shoulder, where the softness tells the mouth of more softness, and the feeling was different from anything he knew. So he held her and said nothing.

  Her eyes seemed even brighter now. “That’s about the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  Her body came away. “That’s just about the last thing we need any more.” The words had ridges on them again.

  She tucked her hands into her coat and they started walking away from the wharves. He had his hand on her back and he guided her onto the hotel side of the street. At the front of the hotel, he took her left arm and gave half a pull toward the door of the hotel. She pumped her arm back and forth to make him let go. When she got her arm free, she grabbed his arm and jerked him straight ahead. She tugged so hard, he went off balance.

  “You’re trying to keep the people down,” she said. “Every time something important happens and we need people, we can’t find anybody. We have to suspend the revolution because they’re all off havin’ a fook.”

  They went through the wall and up the steep street. They came to a shopping square called the Diamond, then went onto a busy street of shops which were on the ground floor of three- and four-story stone buildings. The windows above the stores were bare, but you could tell people were living there. Next to a pub called the Diamond was a scarred doorway. Deirdre went into it and up one flight of stairs. She pushed in an unlocked door. A man was sitting in a chair staring at television.