by Nick Laird
Geordie nods. He tries, gently, ‘I suppose he just wants an easy life.’
‘Yeah well, the life of a turncoat is pretty easy. Pandering to the English while they betray his country. He’s been bought.’ Ian brought his arms from behind his head and folded them across his chest.
‘He’s been in England for years. I don’t see how the English betray…?’
He was cut off by Ian sitting forward suddenly, and raising his voice, ‘Of course they fucking do. They think they can walk all over us, that our rights as British citizens are some kind of fucking gift from them. You did well to beat the shit out of him last night. Look at this place. Look at his friends. Who the fuck does he think he is?’
‘Right.’
‘He’s just some fucking twat from Ballyglass. Did you hear his poncy accent? Sounds like he was fucking born and bred in Kent or somewhere.’
Ian was getting himself exercised into a fury now. Geordie sat quietly and watched. He took a couple of slow breaths through his flaring nostrils and the rage seemed to subside. Watching him it was apparent to Geordie that this was a technique Ian used for controlling his anger. He must have learned it at her Majesty’s pleasure in Maghaberry or the Maze. Ian leaned back on the sofa, and smiled, reasonable again.
‘The way it goes, Geordie, is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. You know it, I know it, and the Irish Republican Army certainly fucking know it. And how they’ve squeaked. Squeak squeak squeak. Well we should squeak for a while. Our turn.’
‘Okay.’
‘You see I’m a contractarian, Geordie.’ He waited, staring, until Geordie nodded.
‘As I see it, the state has a relationship with its citizens, whoever those citizens are, Protestants, taigs, blacks like those ones last night,’–he waved a hand expansively–‘or whoever. The point is this…’–suddenly noticing he hadn’t touched his tea, he leaned forward and carefully picked it up. ‘The point is this, a right is a right and not the gift of whatever government’s in power. Our loyalty’s to the Union, not to the English…and that Union’s defined as people united not by religion, or race, or whatever, but by recognition of the authority of that union…Are you with me here wee man?’
‘I am. I am, Ian. You’re on to something there.’ For God’s sake go, Geordie thought.
As if he’d heard his thoughts, Ian suddenly seemed embarrassed to still be there, and talking so volubly. The anger flicked back into him like voltage.
‘I’m trying to educate you. Someone like you could have been something, instead of a snivelling feckless little thief. You could have made a difference.’
‘Yes.’ Geordie nodded, agreeing to everything to get him to leave.
‘Anyway, you are what you are. Pity.’
Ian stood up and Geordie did too. Then Ian shrugged, a minuscule relaxation of his ox-shoulders, and Geordie mirrored the action. He was like Ian’s wobbly skinny reflection in a playground mirror. Geordie had a momentary urge to offer his hand, feeling obscurely that their transaction had been a success.
‘I’ll see myself out.’ Ian nodded at him, workmanlike.
‘Okay.’ Geordie sat back down on the chair. He folded his arms, feeling shattered and oddly embarrassed.
On the street a female black parking attendant was standing by Ian’s van. She was wearing a too-big official jacket and a cap that came down low on her head. It made Ian think of a child dressed up in her father’s livery, or those African women called up to fight who have to wear a male uniform. She was writing the registration details of Ian’s van into an electronic clipboard. Ian slammed the front door behind him and walked over to her. He was smiling broadly.
‘All right? Just had to nip in there for a second, bring some groceries round to my nan? Yeah? She’s very sick. Can’t walk.’ He touched his right leg as if to confirm it.
‘Sir,’ the traffic warden sounded tired but spoke very precisely, ‘your car has been parked here for over fifteen minutes. I first noticed the vehicle parked at 8.32 and it’s now,’ she tapped her pen against the LED display, ‘8.48 a.m.’ Ian strode up to her, stared in her face, menacingly at first, before switching to an unpleasant grin. He said, ‘Fair enough. The law’s the law,’ and gently took the ticket she was holding out before getting into the van.
Black cabs are to cars as cathedrals to houses. It is partly the vaulted roofs, the spare air and the silence, but most importantly it’s the meditative aura they encourage. They provoke an impulse not to do but to be. When you get in a cab you’ll find out what’s bothering you. It will rise to the surface. And Danny was snared in contemplation. Staring vacantly out at a London so quiet it was as if the mute button was pressed. He’d dropped Clyde off at West Acton. His black eye, in the clean light of outside, had shifted to a predominance of primrose and violet shades. His face was an amateur flower arrangement. He picked at a dried fleck of food on his tie. He hated his job.
Each of the other check-in queues for British Midland was inching forward and when it became clear that he’d chosen the wrong one and should change lines, someone else would appear and bustlingly join the queue he was about to move into. One of the lines was disappearing so fast it seemed to be staffed by Mr B. Midland himself. Danny’s queue on the other hand, chosen for its apparent shortness (the first mistake!), was behind a desk manned by a very stoned twelve-year-old with numeracy issues. Three times the couple at the head of his queue had repeated No, three bags to his wide-eyed and pitted face. They were a beautiful couple, all glossy like something from an advert, and had now turned sideways to the desk, allowing Danny to watch them in profile. The husband was standing behind his wife, whispering into her ear. She giggled like a geisha, shyly, behind her hand.
Danny had arranged to meet Ellen in the check-in queue at terminal one but had seen when he arrived that there was more than one line, and that they weren’t all within sight of each other. He had to keep leaving his bag and ducking out under a red velveteen rope to get to a clear view of the others. Standing out in the open he heard Ellen before he saw her, a repetitive clipping sound on the marble floor. She was pulling a neat black bag on wheels behind her and looking very seriously at him.
‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning. You look very smart.’
‘I’m worn out. Oh your eye’s awful. You look like a hooligan.’
‘I don’t feel too clever either.’ Danny moved towards her to kiss her on the cheek but she’d bent her head to retract the extended handle on her bag. Danny found his nose an inch or so from the top of her skull. He could see the line on her scalp where her hair was parted. It wasn’t quite straight. He pulled back.
‘No, I don’t expect you do.’ She looked up again at him, puzzled at his nearness, and then glanced around her. That bored thing again. Danny followed the direction of her stare but saw nothing distracting.
‘So, have you got the files? Shall we check in? My suit bag’s already in the queue.’
‘All in there.’ She nodded at her own bag, now brought to heel.
On the plane they’d independently decided to sleep. This solved the problem of discussing last night, any of it, and they were both exhausted anyway. Danny had been careful to let her have the arm rest but in the event she’d simply leant against the window and dozed off immediately. He imagined she was the kind of person who never had any trouble sleeping. He could hear her breathing soften into a regular rise and fall. It struck Danny as oddly intimate to listen to it. He looked over at her, keeping his face angled forward as much as possible in case she should open her eyes. She was wearing a trouser suit, black with a faint chalkstripe, and under it a pink shirt, the wide double cuffs of which poked out from under her jacket sleeves, emphasizing the slimness of her wrists. A thin gold chain lay loosely round her throat and her hair looked polished, delicately straight, as if touching it would break it. Her lips had the plush sheen of gloss on them and were in a petulant pout. Her nose was wide and trimly flat and her lashes thick. Mascara, Dan
ny thought and remembered Olivia had put some on his eyelashes once. They’d been getting ready to go out to a New Year’s Eve party, laughing in his bathroom. He’d been quite taken with it. He glanced back over at Ellen’s figure, feeling a tinge of guilt for doing so but knowing that just looking at her would block out the thought of Olivia. Her thighs were slim but solid beside his own, and almost as long as his. He picked up the British Midland magazine and looked at an article on basket-weaving. There was no way he could sleep.
At Belfast City Airport it was raining heavily. Behind the Avis desk sat a fat woman with short black hair and a skinny bald man. They were each about fifty and sitting, through necessity, very close together. They looked like an unhappily married couple waiting to get in somewhere, a divorce court perhaps. As Danny and Ellen walked over to them Danny had already, in his head, christened them Jack Sprat and his wife. The lady, who could eat no lean, hauled herself up when they got to the desk, evidently excited to have customers.
‘Hello. It’s under Williams. We’re to collect a car until tomorrow.’
‘I’m Jackie and if you have any questions about…’
Danny had accidentally knocked her speech off course. She gave a tiny grimace and looked at her desk.
‘All right. Can you fill this out please?’ She pushed a pink form across the counter. Her fingernails were a darker pink against it and were too raised from the skin to be real.
The car was a silver Ford Focus and seemed in good nick. Danny had forgotten how the Northern Irish registration system worked so he couldn’t figure out how old it was. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember. He used to sit up straight in the back seat and tell his candidly uninterested parents the county and year of each car going past. Danny hated forgetting things, something he knew was due partly to his upbringing: memory being much more prized in Northern Ireland than intelligence.
Danny got behind the wheel without hesitation. He had been thinking about driving at home on the plane and was looking forward to it. Ellen put her bag in the back and got into the front. Maybe he should have asked her whether she wanted to drive. He looked over to offer but she was pulling her seat belt across and humming some tinny pop song that had been playing in the terminal. The first time they’d been in a car together. Again he felt that odd twinge of chance intimacy. The seat belt was pushing against her breasts. Danny briefly imagined that this was his wife and they were driving home from their honeymoon. He felt deflated suddenly and wound the window down to let a little air in.
When they had circled the car park twice and still couldn’t find the exit Ellen started giggling. After their third orbit Danny asked her to stop. She nodded and bit her lip, but little bubbles of laughter kept escaping. She almost seemed to be nervous. He needed to get out onto the road and turn the radio on. Getting to Lisamore should be pretty easy–through Antrim and follow the signs. A man appeared in front of them suddenly, dressed entirely in yellow waterproofs and a yellow plastic fisherman’s hat. His outfit inexplicably caused Danny to think of ducks. He waved them frantically towards a gap in a row of parked cars and pointed. Danny waved back, ‘They don’t want us to leave. That’s Northern Ireland all over.’
In the car they listened to Cool FM, the province’s premier popular music station. Danny had spent years in his bedroom listening to Cool Goes Quiet every evening with the lights out. It was an hour of saccharine love songs between eleven and twelve. Danny hadn’t liked it for the music but instead for the maudlin stories that lay behind each of the song requests. A million different case histories. Sean has been cheated on by Sharon but he is leaving her anyway for Jennifer. This is from Jen to her man Sean. ‘I’m not in love…so don’t forget…’ That kind of thing. Sometimes people rang up and recited their tragic histories down the phone, times and dates of heartbreaks at the ready. Fifteen years later and Cool FM was now a dance music station with a DJ who shouted and laughed continually. Mary J. Blige came on and Danny noticed that Ellen was doing a tiny shoulder shimmy to the music. She leaned forward and turned the volume up.
AFTERNOON
The rain had stopped by the time they arrived in Lisamore and found Ulster Water’s headquarters. It was a squat grey building surrounded by pebbledashed houses, and had the evening shadow of a large tarmacked car park, empty now except for seven or eight cars clustered by the entrance. They were all Mondeos and Astra Estates, vehicles for mid-ranking executives, and each sat neatly by a low signpost planted in the grass verge. Danny pulled into the first spot lacking a sign, beside the Deputy Finance Director’s empty space, and turned the engine off. He looked out through the windscreen at the sky. It seemed to hang precariously low over the drab office block. Danny opened the back door and removed a slim leather business folder he had brought in his suit bag. Across the seat from him Ellen had opened the other door and was sorting out files.
‘I hope the Deputy Finance Director hasn’t gone too far. I might want to see him.’ Realizing how arrogant this sounded, Danny added, looking up at her, ‘Although I’m sure his secretary’ll do.’
‘Or hers,’ Ellen said brightly.
‘Of course, or hers.’ Danny stood upright then and placed the documents folder between his knees in order to perform what Albert termed the preliminary shooting of the cuffs: he pulled one white cuff down below the sleeve of his pinstriped jacket, as far as it would comfortably go, and repeated the manoeuvre with the other cuff, this time pushing his chunky diving watch under it. He fastened the middle button of his single-breasted. Ellen was beside him, having put her coat back on. They looked well-mannered and ruthless, although Danny’s shiner tinged their efficiency with a surreal Clockwork Orange atmosphere. As they walked across the tarmac to the door, Danny suddenly pulled Ellen to a stop by the elbow. ‘What’s the name of the MD again?’
‘Shannon, Jack Shannon.’
‘Of course. Good, good.’
Danny’s nervousness could appear aggressive and he had to remind himself before he went into any meeting, never mind a hostile company’s headquarters, that these people were just, as he was, doing a job. But he was going to be firm and professional. His first trainer’s mantra, Never apologize, never explain, ran through his mind. Wetting his lips as a preliminary to speech, he pushed open the glass door. To business.
Mr Jack Shannon was in a wheelchair. This was the first surprise, although it shouldn’t have been, as Ellen reminded Danny, or at least no more of a surprise than that registered by Mr Shannon when a black woman introduced herself to him. He blinked twice and was late with his smile. The second surprise was how fast Mr Shannon’s wheelchair could go. He whizzed along the corridor in front of them, shouting incomprehensible orders. Danny couldn’t tell whether the instructions were for them or the workers sporadically dotted in offices along the corridors. It was all he could do to keep him in eyeshot.
‘Mr Shannon, excuse me…’
Danny was praying they’d hit some stairs soon. That would slow him down. At one point it seemed they’d lost him but he suddenly glided alongside them, now with a large bottle of Ballygowan water nestled in his lap. He disappeared again after finessing a tricky chicane made by two piles of boxes but when they rounded the next corner there he was, halted outside two silver lifts. He was twisting around in the wheelchair and staring irritably over his shoulder at them.
‘I have to go in one of these. You can take the staircase. Fifth floor.’
‘We’re happy to go up with you,’ Danny said amiably.
‘No room.’ He had pushed his chair right up against the lift and was staring straight ahead at the metal door. They started on the stairs.
‘So you two work for Syder, do you?’ said Mr Shannon. He was sitting on one side of a huge round desk, flanked by three other men. All four were facing them. Ellen and Danny, nodding hello, had just entered the room. Having climbed the five floors Danny could feel each of the cigarettes he’d smoked the night before unionizing against his lungs. He felt overheated. Ellen had reset
into her default mode of inscrutable composure.
‘Not for Syder, no. We work for Monks & Turner, Syder’s solicitors.’
‘In Belfast?’ Shannon again.
‘No, in London actually.’
‘We had some Australian here for a couple of weeks looking through files. He was from Monks & Turner. But you’re a local boy, aren’t you?’ The three other heads made tiny nods of agreement.
‘I am. Ballyglass.’
‘My wife’s from Ballyglass.’ The pleasant-looking forty-year-old to Shannon’s right had spoken. He had an unfashionable moustache and reminded Danny of a footballer from the nineteen-eighties, though he couldn’t think which one.
‘Oh right.’ I don’t want to have this conversation, Danny thought.
‘What’s your name?’ Shannon again.
‘I’m Danny Williams and this is Ellen Powell.’
‘Williams. Do you know it?’ Ignoring Ellen, who had started to say hello, Shannon turned to the footballer.
‘Well there’s quite a few Williamses around Bally…’ Danny started to say but the footballer cut him off, ‘Anything to the estate agent, Mark Williams?’
Danny nodded, fourteen again, caught mucking around by an adult.
‘I’m his son.’
‘He sold my father-in-law’s house. Nice man. Very helpful he was. But you’re in London are you?’
‘I am. I’ll let my dad know you said hello, Mr…?’
‘McManus, though he’ll know my wife’s family, the Connollys. Her father’s Tom.’
‘Tom Connolly,’ Danny’s voice had unexpectedly pitched itself at castrato. He hastily dropped it to gruffness. ‘Sure I know him myself. He used to take us for Scouts on a Tuesday night.’