Afterwards

by Rachel Seiffert

  Joseph put up the new wallpaper at David’s on Thursday. The old man made him a cup of tea when he arrived, but went out soon after he’d brought it in to him. Put his head round the door to say goodbye and then didn’t come home until the room was finished, and Joseph was packing up in the garage.

  – You’ve done a fine job.

  – I put all the furniture back where I remembered.

  – Yes. It all looks very good. Thank you.

  It was drizzling a bit, so the old man stood just inside the garage doors, nodding while Joseph got his things together.

  – I hope the weather’s kinder to you up in Scotland. Joseph smiled. He’d thought at first David might invite him into the house, but the old man was just saying goodbye. In his awkward way.

  Joseph smiled. He’d thought at first David might invite him into the house, but the old man was just saying goodbye. In his awkward way.

  – I’ll see what jobs I’ve got on when we get home, give you a ring. Get the rest done in a oner if I can.

  Not in the mood for a cup of tea and a story. The old guy could see that. Probably why he spent the day out too: left Joseph to get on with it. All the stations were playing crap today, so he’d turned the radio off for a change. The old man’s garden backed onto empty playing fields, and there was a golf course at the end of the street. No through traffic, no buses or people on the road outside, and it all felt very still. Just the odd train passing, or a plane overhead, a few birds singing. Joseph didn’t stop for lunch, worked through the day and was glad of the quiet.

  Over three years in the army and Joseph didn’t think he was ever, not ever, by himself. A fly wank in the bogs once in a while, or a sly fag maybe, but nothing else, not even alone at night to go to sleep. Six in a room over in Armagh. Not like any base he’d known before, more like a bunker. It had been the village police station once, before the army came, but Joseph only knew it covered in barbed wire and reinforced concrete. Thinking back, it was like the place had no windows: nothing that would leave them open to incoming mortars. Everything done together, washing, eating, working, cleaning, TV, pool table, bar. Knew each other’s smells and sounds better than their own. And all that talking: someone always mouthing off, always asking something, pissing themselves or whingeing all the bloody time. Joseph remembered walking corridors, trying hard to find a place where no one else was. Sat on the toilet and could hear the others cracking up about him, his slow bowels, but at least it was a small room just for him, for a while.

  Always tired. Sixteen hours on, eight hours off and waking up all the time. Always too hot in his bunk, they kept the heating on constant, and Joseph woke at all hours, dry eyes and parched, tongue pasted to his teeth, like a hangover without the drinking. Learnt to sleep when you could. Was a relief when you were sent to get your head down, but you could kip anywhere after a while, anytime you were waiting. If your patrol was on standby, even on quick reaction, sitting there in all your kit at thirty seconds’ notice, just close your eyes and you’d be dreaming. Mad things, twenty different stories and all in the space of seconds. People talking, noises outside your head making their way in: awake and asleep mixing together. A phone ringing somewhere in another room and in your dream you’d be patrolling, walking down the road and into a house to answer it. But there’s no phone when you get there, just an Irish family in the front room watching telly, all getting up and heading for the door when they see you and your rifle. Only it’s not them heading for the door, it’s your patrol called out and moving, and so you’re up and running too, outside sometimes before you were awake again.

  Drumshitehole was what the outgoing soldiers called it. A main square and five roads off it. Three took you north and east, into fields and hills, the other two ran south into bandit country and west to the border. Down three streets, turn the corner and you were back where you started, everything still just the way you left it. Phone box, post box, chip shop. Joseph could remember how they joked about it, saying the Provos had left the shitehole to them, all fucked off over to England:Warrington, Bournemouth and the NatWest Tower all bombed the same year Joseph was in Ireland. A small place and it was quiet for weeks on end. More Protestants there than Crossmaglen, and it was nothing like the mad, bad days of the seventies, but they shouldn’t be fooled, Jarvis said. Ops room full of photos, known operatives, suspects. Sometimes felt like half the town was up there on the walls, even girls and grannies: no one you didn’t need to be watching. B Company had ninety men to cover the place and the eighty square kilometres around it. A crossroads between the province and the republic.

  – Smack bang in the IRA’s fucking back garden, and that’s not potatoes they’re planting.

  Joseph’s Corporal again. He said the people spoke better down there, it wasn’t like Belfast barking, but Joseph still got to hate the voices. Wound him up, even years later, hearing them again on Streatham High Street, or London buses. Prods would look at you while they were talking, that was the theory, how you could tell the difference. Joseph never thought that worked: everyone spoke at the back of their throats, out of their noses. Like they were talking past a mouthful of something they wanted to gob at you.

  One of the sangars, where they did their guard duty. Big fuck-off cage of a place, metal fortress on a bogstandard street full of houses. All black steel and razor wire. You froze your balls off in there in winter, a sweat box in the summer weather. Nothing to do, just waiting and watching and sod-all happening. Old guy in the house next door had a garden. Big lawn with trees in it, flowerbeds round the edges. He was a pensioner, Joseph thought, because he was always out there, never working. Trousers ironed into creases and grey hair combed sideways, but you could still see his bald patch because you were always looking down on him. His grass was the thing Joseph remembered. Great black sangar and the watchtower on the hill behind it, mad spikey poles in the sky of the transmitters and receivers. And then this garden, just next to all that, this lawn like a big patch of velvet. Snooker-table green and perfect. Old man with a paunch and grey moustache, raking it clear of moss, aerating it with a fork. Beautiful and soft, rain keeping it lush.

  The Troubles had been going on for years already. Over twenty, plus the hundreds before, which the army told them about and Joseph had forgotten most of before he even got on the ferry. He could still remember he was one of 18,000 British soldiers in the province. An extra battalion deployed; early nineties and the Irish were busy killing and maiming each other. Semtex, Armalite, Red Hand Commando. Nationalist, Loyalist, Paramilitary. Words Joseph knew from the telly and the papers, and then he was over there, and in the middle of it all.

  Only knew about the IRA before. Got sent to Ireland with a whole new bowl of alphabet soup to swallow: UFF, UDA, UVF, UUP. One of them was a political party, but he could never remember. Riots in the cities, the summer he arrived, and the police attacked by Loyalists, which Joseph didn’t understand at the time, because the RUC were Prods too, weren’t they? Though you weren’t supposed to say that.

  Belfast was the only part you ever saw on the news: all burnt-out cars and huge murals on the gable ends, a long coil of razor wire they called a peace line and kerb stones painted sectarian colours. Red white and blue, green white and yellow. Or gold, they called it. Joseph never knew that Ireland would be beautiful. Days in Armagh when it didn’t rain and you could see the high mountains away to the south. The country below was riddled with fields and grey stone barns. Lanes only just wide enough for two cars, hedgerows growing high along the sides, like green tunnels, twisting as they pelted down them, gaps in the branches letting flashes of day across the windscreen. Joseph remembered the wet ground out there, shivering grass and sunshine on his skin. Held the backs of his hands up under his nose to get the best of it, breathing that warm smell of them in. The only colours were brown and green and blue, but the shades were better than any he’d seen. Loved it then, being out on Ops. No one ever had to beast or bully him into getting moving, the tabbing miles on
end that he’d hated in training. More soldiers killed there than anywhere else, but there were days when Joseph forgot all that, or it didn’t seem to matter. Sleeping out and seeing the first light in the trees, hearing the sound of a stream before you got to it. Still days and sky, cold air, sparrowhawks flying. A few bright minutes by the lough: last white flare of sun on grey water before evening and the rain came on again. Feeling afterwards like his head had been cleaned out and his lungs been filled. Lying in his bunk and searching out the bruise on his arm where his rifle butt kept knocking; that great tired ache in his legs and shoulders; the strange calm that meant he was almost sleeping.

  Joseph was there six months. Summer to winter. First part in Omagh, then down to the shitehole and all the Tullies and Ballies and Killies around it. That spring, a soldier from the outgoing company had been blown up at the border. Sniper near Forkhill got his fourth a few days after Joseph got there. Not someone he knew, from another company, but for days after he could feel it at the back of his neck, between his shoulders. Reminded of it anyway, every time he put his flak jacket on and his helmet. Not war but terror. Protection felt like an invitation over there: they were Green Army not special forces. Uniform target with a porcelain breastplate. Tail End Charlie, last man on patrol always walking backwards. A woman gave sweets to soldiers at Christmas: a two pound tin packed full of plastic explosive. They all pissed everywhere, against cars, trees, walls: like dogs, Joseph thought, marking out the province. On foot patrol, they found a body in the morning. Cold and just getting light, and there it was between the waste ground and the garages. Punishment beating, legs twisted under, lying among the dog shit and clumps of grass. Sometimes the whole place felt like that, all quiet and cruelty.

  Eight

  Joseph’s train was late coming up, so their lunch in town ended up being a cup of tea in the platform café. They only had a short time together, but it was good all the same, Alice thought. Her mum, and Alan especially, seemed to like Joseph a lot. There was a cold week forecast and they joked together about Joseph having packed his tent, and whether he could use Alice as an excuse not to camp out. Alan’s father had taken him camping when he was a kid, like Joseph’s, and they agreed it was at least half about their dads wanting to get out of the house. Grab a few days’ peace, away from the family. But it didn’t always work out that way, of course, because they had to haul their sons along.

  – Not that we didn’t have our uses.

  Alan remembered a hailstorm and a night in a hotel, and how the additional expense was blamed on him after they got home.

  – He told Mum I’d been unhappy in the tent when the weather turned nasty. But the way I recall it, the hotel room was my Dad’s idea.

  Alice watched Joseph smiling, slipped her hand under his knee, under the table, and let it rest there, beneath the solid warmth of his leg. His hair was long again, curling over his ears. She’d been the last to cut it, a warm Sunday morning in his kitchen with the radio on, a couple of months ago already, must be. A week away from him, and she’d surprised herself, thinking about those days, early on, when he’d stopped phoning, and they didn’t see each other. They’d spoken almost every day while she was at her mum’s, so she didn’t know why. He’d given her no reason to worry over the phone, and most days it had been Joseph who’d done the calling, because dinner conversation usually went on for a while with her mum and Alan, and she’d lost track of the evenings. Alice thought, we still haven’t known each other long. Eight, nine months or something. She was happy to see him.

  They’d booked into a bed and breakfast their first night, and arrived just as it was getting dark. Joseph sneaked them a fish supper each up the stairs and then they got into one of the soft single beds together and stayed there. The curtains were thin, and there was sun in the room when Alice woke. Joseph had moved across to the other bed at some stage, probably when it got light, and it looked like he was still sleeping, his top pulled off, the sleeves knotted around his eyes.

  They walked a lot, ate their lunches in empty tearooms or on windy beaches. It wasn’t summer any more, but not cold enough to put them off. They followed her grandfather’s coastal path the first day, and then kept on over the next few as well, moving from village to village, on foot and with the local buses. When it rained, they sheltered in shop doorways and under trees, and Alice liked this best: not moving, not doing, just still, the two of them. Good and tired, wet salt air blown into their faces, no need to say much about anything, Alice enjoyed all of being with Joseph that week: the twenty-four hours of it, the seven days long, and she let herself relax again. We’re doing fine.

  The evening skies were pale from their guesthouse windows, and they ate pub meals, sipping their pints amongst the other walkers. Alice listened to the locals, accents like her grandmother’s: memories drawn out of her like teeth.

  On their last day, Alice took Joseph to the village where Isobel was born. They’d planned it that way, to save it up, and Alice had been aware of it coming, through the week. She was unsure of what she felt when they were there and walking together through the rainy streets. Past the squat houses, the granite school building where her great-grandfather had taught. Along the riverbank, and under the high stone bridge from where you could see the beach already: sand and grey waves. Alice hadn’t been there before, only heard about it. Her gran’s childhood memories of fishermen and ceilidhs, her mum’s of teenage boredom on holiday at her elderly grandparents’. Alice told Joseph about them while they stood under the bus shelter, waiting for the latest shower to ease off a little.

  – It was dull for Gran here too. Maybe not when she was little, but later. She did well at school, she was expected to, probably, the schoolmaster’s daughter. But a lot of the other expectations didn’t sit so well with her. She hated learning the piano. Said it was all part of a pattern, even if she didn’t really know it at the time. Music lessons and a suitable marriage. Children and a well-run house.

  Alice watched the rain fall on the puddles in the road, and she told Joseph that her gran used to read books up at the piano sometimes, instead of practising: propped them open on the music stand. If she heard her mother coming, she’d pull the sheet music over them and start playing, always somewhere in the middle of a phrase, as though she’d been stuck, working out the fingering, and that’s why the piano had been quiet.

  – Gran told her music teacher that she didn’t want to get married, and she was going to study medicine. I think she was fourteen then. Very earnest about it. Her teacher wasn’t married and lived on her own, so Gran said she seemed like the right person to confide in. But the teacher reported back to Gran’s parents, in front of Gran and Celie, her big sister, and they all laughed.

  Joseph winced, and Alice said they weren’t being unkind, not the way Gran had told it, just not taking her as seriously as she did herself, and she was mortified.

  – Did she carry on her lessons?

  – Yeah. But Gran said she did more reading than practising after that. She used to like telling that story, I reckon. Because she notched up two husbands, as it turned out. That was her punchline. Never went back to nursing either, looked after my Mum instead, and then me. Taught me piano. She enjoyed it. She was good at it too. Gave lessons to the kids down the road after we moved out.

  Joseph stood close to her, listening, and Alice thought about her gran: the way she’d laughed about her teenage ambitions, as though she enjoyed remembering them. Hard to say now, if she’d minded that they were unfulfilled.

  – Gran never told my Mum she should marry my Dad. It was his parents that were keen on that idea, I think. My Mum wasn’t, and my Gran didn’t try to persuade her. Thinking about herself at fourteen, probably.

  Alice shifted a little. Now that she’d said it, this felt like an unsatisfactory explanation. Too neat a connection. She shook her head, self-conscious.

  – I don’t know, though. I’m just guessing, aren’t I?

  Joseph returned her smile. It wa
s the most Alice had said all day, and it felt strange afterwards, the quiet under the shelter. Gusts of wind spattering drops onto the roof from the trees. Not raining any more. The timetable said the last bus was at three: too soon for Alice. They’d been in the village just under two hours, and there wasn’t much left to see, but Joseph said he liked it, and that they should spend their last night there, even though it would mean getting up early for the only bus out in the morning.

  – There was a B&B down at the harbour, had vacancies in the window. I’ll shout you.

  They’d paid for a night back at their first guesthouse already, were due to get a train out from there at lunchtime tomorrow. Alice looked at Joseph, the rain on his face and his smile, his nose and cheekbones pink from the wind.

  – You don’t mind?

  He shrugged:

  – No, this is a good place. A bit damp, but it’s peaceful.

  They stayed late in the pub next door, but Alice wasn’t tired when she got into bed. Lay with her eyes open and saw not the ceiling, the wallpaper, just her grandmother’s hands lifting off the piano keys, the corners of her mouth, teeth showing gold when she sang or smiled. Felt the loss of her: permanent, final. She dozed and then later she cried. Tried to be quiet about it, thought Joseph was sleeping in the other bed. But then he reached over in the dark and found the crook of her arm, rested his fingertips there. A bit later he took her hand and held it until she stopped crying, and longer. It wasn’t what she’d expected, Joseph didn’t come into her bed, but it was gentle, soothing somehow, and Alice was grateful to have him lying awake with her. They got up with the alarm for the first time in a week and dressed slowly, without speaking. Handing stray socks and jumpers across the beds to one another, packing and tidying. Sun just rising and they could see each other in the halflight, both puffy-eyed.