Call Me the Breeze: A Novel

by Patrick McCabe

  He clicked his fingers, then who comes in? Big Bertha, one of the wrestlers from the pub, and Boyle gets a hold of her. The pair of them having a great old time. The sort of time, though, best described as ‘private’. And on top of which it might not be such a good idea to go barging in wearing your big Joey Tallon size twelves. Which didn’t bother me in the slightest. Nope, not one bit.

  So fine, I thought, I’ll just be on my way then, and was about to do exactly that when the connecting door opens, and who’s closing it behind him only Sandy McGloin, pale and lean in his grey silk suit and obsessively flicking his cigarette. He took a pull of the fag and winked over at Boyle. But Tuite didn’t see him.

  They started giving him the information then. I could hear them going on about explosives and weapons. I heard Boyle saying: ‘Sandy knows where every one of these arms dumps is located. But he’d have to be paid. He’d be risking his life, as I’m sure you appreciate.’

  Then he pulled a wad of money from his pocket and waved it. As if to indicate: ‘This kind of money.’

  It was obvious Tuite was surprised and confused by these sudden and unexpected demands but he clearly wanted the information so badly that he was definitely giving serious thought to the proposition. They continued debating and arguing for a long time. Then, with a flourish, Sandy produced a bottle of whiskey. They had obviously come to some kind of agreement. The detective shook hands with Sandy. Then turned to Boyle to do the same. I was on the verge of going back to the car when I heard a laugh, and when I look in what seems to have happened is that all of a sudden Sandy McGloin has turned into a comedian, which was certainly not what you expected from him, I can tell you. In all my time in the bar I don’t think I ever heard him — a thin, cadaverous northerner, always on the alert, probably with good reason — crack a joke. But now there he was just chortling away, knocking back whiskey like it was going out of fashion and shaking his head, marvelling at how good this yarn of his was. A view shared by Tuite and Boyle, who kept passing the bottle back and forth. Then what happens? The connecting door opens again and in walks Rosa. Her and Big Bertha were a bit drunk you could tell, but not a bother on them, getting stuck right into their private show, with Tuite laughing a little bit shyly at first and raising his hands as if in protest. I could see him shaking his head and making as if to leave, with Sandy and Boyle dissuading him energetically. Then he was wavering as Boyle crooked his finger and Rosa came waddling over. Bertha’s blouse was first to come off as she continued grinding for a while in front of Boyle Henry, before moving on to the still-protesting Tuite. He tried to push her away but she just threw her head back and laughed. So did Sandy. Rosa started work on Boyle, opening his fly as he showered her in notes. ‘That kind of money,’ I could hear him saying. ‘That’d be what he’d require. Only the best for a first-class tout! Which is what you’re going to be, isn’t it, Sandy?’

  ‘No,’ replied Sandy, phlegmatically. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Henry! I’m sorry to say I’ve changed my mind about that.’

  Boyle, running his fingers through Rosa’s hair, laughed when he heard him. ‘Stop,’ he said to Sandy. ‘Be nice to the copper. He’s a Heavy Gang man.’

  ‘A Heavy Gang man, you tell me? Well, let’s see just how heavy!’

  Poor old Tuite was pale now, having realized too late exactly what was going on. Boyle Henry looked over at him and sighed. Then shook his head as if to say: ‘So how does it feel? Tell us, detective. Go on now, there’s a good boy. Tell the lads how it feels to be up the creek without a paddle!’

  Of course, no detective would ever have given serious thought to meeting a Provo on his own, even one who had supposedly ‘turned’, which was obviously the story they’d spun him. But Boyle Henry was different. Nobody knew for sure how involved he was — and you could imagine him using all his respectable councillor wiles to convince Tuite that everything would be safe and above board.

  I was so busy watching Boyle Henry — his body was rocking back and forth as he came in Rosa’s mouth — that I didn’t notice Sandy reaching into his jacket. The next thing I heard the gunshot and Tuite was buckling to his knees as Sandy looked pained, pulling the trigger again as he moaned: ‘No, not that heavy at all, Mr Henry! Not so heavy at all!’ A worm of black blood pushed its swollen head through the detective’s lips. A spot of it got on to Bertha’s white flesh. Just a paintbrush flick. She started crying but gave up, heaving on her knees as though realizing that any more sound was now completely beyond her. Unlike Rosa who started screeching and tearing at her hair. With the result that Sandy had to hit her with the revolver.

  It got very bad after that, so bad I had to hide my eyes. I saw Boyle kicking her as she curled into a ball and covered her face with her hands. When they were finished, Sandy sat in a chair staring at the gun. Rosa stood there with her eyes pleading: ‘What do I do? Can you please tell me what I’m supposed to do now?’

  Boyle, cool as ice, gave her his answer by smiling and gently placing a finger upon his lips. He blew some smoke rings as he whispered: ‘Let’s not think of doing anything silly now,’ and I never felt such melancholy as I thought of the smoke shaping her name: ‘Jacy.’ Saw those smoke rings forming the words ‘Jacy’ and ‘No. You didn’t get it wrong, Joey Tallon.’

  Because that’s what I had been beginning to believe. That I had been deceiving myself through bitterness.

  I hadn’t, though.

  For this was him all right. This was the man. The same one who’d been with her that day in the lounge and had followed her out to the car. Calling her name and making promises. A gloom descended on me then and, for some reason, I thought of the Garden of Gethsemane —I had always been fascinated by that story at school — when it’s at last revealed what it is that Christ must do and yet how part of him wants it to pass.

  ‘Let this cup pass from me’ were the words I remembered from catechism lessons. That was how I felt now. With a heavy heart I found myself uttering the words: ‘The beginning.’

  Then I looked inside again. For a few seconds or so, Tuite came to life briefly and tried dragging himself across the carpet before Boyle Henry accepted the pistol from Sandy and put a final bullet in the detective’s head.

  Instinctively, I found myself joining my hands and intoning her name. I kissed my fingertips and gave thanks without words for having been given this sign. Bertha stiffened her shoulders, about to cry out again, before Sandy spotted her. He waved his finger from side to side, frowning as he cautioned: ‘Woo woo!’

  Then Boyle went over and lifted up the poker, before shoving it in the fire.

  Jailbirds

  I suppose, to be honest, when I embarked on these few ruminations last night, I was secretly hoping to stumble upon a novel. Hoping that by going through my papers I might somehow be inspired so that at least something like the beginnings of a new work might emerge. By accident, I mean, for it was definitely never going to be by design. I’ve tried that approach a thousand times, each time without success, and if it didn’t work then it won’t work now.

  What I wanted, more than anything, was for the material to catch fire so it would go off and write itself, in the same way it happened that very first time, when I completed my book Doughboy in what can only be described as utterly adversarial circumstances. Miraculous being the only word to describe that experience.

  Nonetheless, I still have to admit it’s been quite enjoyable. Sifting through these piles of papers, eclectic meanderings, memos, correspondence and what have you. Bonehead has even pasted some newspaper articles dealing with my court case into a scrapbook. I don’t bother much with them, though — it almost makes me sick just to look at them — and tend to concentrate on my own petty ramblings.

  There is a mouse who inhabits this study (Bonehead has put his own name up on the door: Seccretary [sic!] P. J. Stokes — I mean, can you believe it?) and from time to time, you can see him poking his little rodent head out from behind the china cabinet, as though he’s checking to see everythi
ng’s all right. He’s a dead ringer for the fellow who shared the cell with the pair of us back in Mountjoy. Or ‘The Joy’, as it’s generally called.

  The first day I arrived there Bonehead offered me a bit of friendly advice. Sitting on the bunk and swinging his legs, he pointed to the mouse, going: ‘He’s the only friend you’ll ever have in here, Boss! That’s the kind of kip it is, and don’t go thinking different!’

  He told me his surname was Stokes but that that didn’t mean he was a traveller. He regarded that breed — tinkers and travellers and itinerant types generally — as being lower than ‘that mouse there’, well-deserving of their reputation as shysters and thieves and disreputable people to be dealing with generally. The only problem with that being that Stokes was a common tinker name. ‘I’m no tinker! Do you hear me?’ he roared out of nowhere, and hit the wall a thump. ‘I’m not a tinker! Nor a traveller neither!’

  I said that was OK and he calmed down then for a bit, puffing out smoke clouds from his rollie.

  ‘I have me own house!’ he barked again. ‘And don’t you mind what they tell you in here! There’s plenty o’ travellers in this dump, Joesup, but I’m not one of them! Pat Joe Stokes is a high-bred man!’

  He was shaped like a barrel and as bald as a coot, wearing this stripey jumper that made him look like a bumblebee. On top of that he had a severe hare lip, which was why, of course, he referred to me as ‘Joesup’. They’d put him in for — among other things (which, I later discovered, involved a fatal affray in which an itinerant had died) — stealing lead off a roof, which seemed a pretty traveller-ish thing to be doing to me (thieving scrap was their stock-in-trade), but you daren’t say that or he’d go completely insane.

  ‘You just remember, Joesup,’ he said, ‘I’m a businessman and not a tinker. Them fucking travellers — all they ever do is attack each other with rusty hooks. That’s no way to be carrying on with your life. Have nothing to do with them when you’re in here! They’ll only rook you for every penny.’

  One day a bona fide traveller shouted at him across the exercise yard: ‘G’wan, Stokes! Lettin’ on to be wan o’ the buffers and you wan of ourselves the whole time! You have no house of your own! That house belongs to Mannie Maughan!’

  Before the screws could do anything he had charged across the yard and had your man up against the wall battering the living shit out of him. ‘Say I’m not a traveller!’ he bawled. ‘I have my own house! Say that!’

  All you could hear before they managed to pull him off was: ‘You have your own house!’

  ‘And it’s not Mannie Maughan’s!’

  ‘And it’s not Mannie Maughan’s!’

  He dusted himself down as the screws pushed him past me. ‘I’m sorry about that, Joesup,’ he turned and said to me, ‘but I like people with manners. Us Stokeses was always brought up to have manners. Not like those ill-bred fuckers, effing gangsters and robbers!’

  I don’t know how long I’d been in there before my speech began to come back. Where it had gone to I hadn’t a clue — I guess I must have been in a state of shock. Which is not surprising considering the balls I’d made of the whole fucking thing. And all the shit the papers had written about it. The yellow press had completely gone to town. ‘One-Man Army Runs Amok’ was one of the headlines from the Irish Press. The worst of all was the Sunday World. They had a photo of Robert De Niro — the famous one with him blasting away as he’s coming up the stairs — and there right above it in bold black type: MANIAC!

  In retrospect, it is a very debatable point as to whether the return of my speech was a good development or not, for once he realized what had happened Bonehead wouldn’t leave me alone, making up for all those days and nights I sat staring back dumbly at him. He had gotten it into his head that every word the papers had written was true and started setting me up as some kind of hero. Shouting at the screws and everybody going past: ‘Youse think youse are smart but youse are fucking well not! Joesup is the man — the man with the eyepatch will sort youse out! Look at him! Haw! He’s like Moshe Dayan so he is! He’s the boy all right! Took them on all on his own! Good man, Joesup! You showed them coppers! It was just like a film so it was — I seen it all on the telly!’

  I used to go into a depression when he’d start all that even though I knew he didn’t mean any harm.

  One night I lost it and tore a newspaper into shreds. The article kept comparing me to Donald Neilson, the Black Panther who had kidnapped the heiress Lesley Whittle and kept her in a mineshaft, where she died. I just sat there on the edge of the bed, shuddering with grief as I thought of a motherfucker like that doing such a thing to a helpless young girl, and how they could compare me to him. For weeks I was so numb thinking about things like that that I thought the best thing to do would be to get a hacksaw, which I did. Using a trick I’d seen in the movies where you put one blade down your sock and slide another one up your sleeve. So that when they intercept the first one they’re so delighted at having nailed you they don’t bother their arses looking for the second.

  I went to work on my wrists but didn’t manage to execute that either. Getting nothing out of it except a couple of hours of blissful oblivion before waking in sick bay with Bonehead staring down at me. I think because we’d become such pals they’d started to think of us in there as queers, but we weren’t — there was nothing more to it other than Bonehead getting it into his head that I was ‘full of brains’ and sort of like ‘quality’ or something, I guess you could say.

  ‘Not like them fucking travellers!’ he said to me one day. ‘Hitler had the right idea, Joesup. People like that just have to be gassed-ed!’

  Another time in the workshop he announced that people like me sort of had to be looked after. ‘I read about youse boys, you know, in a book!’ he said. ‘Fellows like James Joyce and all! They’re special kinds of bucks, aren’t they, Joey? Brains and everything! I read books too, Joesup! Oh yes! My father was a great big book man! Tommy Stokes — could have gone to college if he’d wanted! What odds if he was an alcomaholic! But the drink did get him bad. He didn’t mind himself, you see. And that’s what you’ll have to start doing. You can’t just be carrying on like this. Look at the mess you’ve made of your arms! You can’t be going on like that! You hear me, Joesup? You’ll have to promise me now!’

  After that fortnight in sick bay, we became pretty much inseparable. His actual name was Pat Joe Stokes, but they just stuck the two of them together so ‘Pajo Stokes’ he became. Except not even that so very much either, mostly Bonehead. The more I got to know him, the more I really started to think you could trust him, and, for me, the way I was feeling in those days, that was a really big development.

  And, after all these years, it’s great to be able to say that I was right. I don’t know how many cups of tea he made me or how many cigarettes he rolled for me in those days when we’d tramp the exercise yard or lay about in that TV room, dreaming. Trying to forget. All I know is it made a hell of a lot of difference.

  ‘We’ve all made mistakes, Joesup,’ he’d say to me. ‘And after I get out I’m finished with thieving. People only get the wrong idea about you. They think you’re one of the Wards — or the Nevins. Or the “bad” Stokeses. And don’t get me wrong, Joesup — there’s plenty o’ them! Do you know what I mean? They think you’re lower class. So it’s no more lifting lead for me. I’m thinking of going into cigarettes and whiskey.’

  I told him all about Mangan, my tinker neighbour.

  ‘Hitler,’ he said as he flipped his rollie, ‘Hitler had the right idea about what to do with them boys. Oh aye, don’t talk to me about the Mangans.’

  The mouse came out then and he fed him some more bread. Eddie Gallagher he called him, after the maverick Provo kidnapper. Some of the papers had said that was where I got the idea. ‘Ah, good man, Eddie,’ Bonehead would say, as the mouse tore into the bread. ‘So what do you think of him, Joesup? Is Eddie looking good today?’

  Then he’d look at him and say: �
�You’re a good one, Eddie Gallagher, but you’re not as good as our Joesup. Joesup’s the best kibbernapper of the lot!’

  I used to hate him using that word but there was no point in me saying anything about it. Sometimes I’d just fall into a deep sleep and hope I’d never wake up. But even then you wouldn’t be safe, for there’d be pictures in there that seemed to come drifting out of a fog. Almost as soon as your eyes began to close you’d feel them slowly gathering and there’d be a depth of unhappiness inside that dream that you almost could not describe. Which is hardly surprising when you consider some of the things you were remembering.

  The Animal Pit

  They dug Tuite up out of the animal pit near the tannery a week or so after the night at the bungalow, and it wasn’t too long after that the rumours started. I think it was Austie got the one going about the detective’s head having been practically hacked from his body. But whether it was Austie for definite or not didn’t make an awful lot of difference, for pretty soon nearly everybody had patented their own private version, gravely setting down their drinks as they looked you right in the eye before declaring: ‘It was the Red Hand Commandoes did this one.’

  That was a made-up name employed by Protestant paramilitaries whenever they were involved in any casual killings. When settling old scores and things like that. Boyle and Sandy knew it would cover their asses no problem, people being only too ready to believe it.

  ‘They branded him, you know. They burnt UVF into his back at least thirteen times.’

  It was Austie who told me that the detective’s penis had been severed and stuffed into his mouth. ‘That’s the type of cunt you’re dealing with when it comes to these Protestant bastards!’ he said. ‘It’s not like the Provos, who’ll hit a legitimate target, go in for the quick, clean kill. With the UVF, no job is done till the flesh is cut to ribbons. That keeps them happy.’