The Bogside Boys

by Eoin Dempsey

  Melissa hugged Jason a little tighter than usual, and felt him squirming to escape her grasp. She leaned back, granting his wish as she pushed back a stray lock of hair that had fallen down across his forehead from his cowlick above. The first of Jason’s A Levels were days away.

  “You’re going to study tonight?”

  “Aye, Mam, of course I am. I’m taking this seriously.”

  “Your entry to college depends on the results of these exams. You need to take them more seriously than anything ever before.” He was a good student; more interested in sports, but had always done well. “Don’t get complacent, I’m depending on you.”

  “I won’t let you down,” he said, and reached over to hug her voluntarily. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.

  “I know you won’t,” she whispered.

  He got out of the car and bounded up the driveway to Jessica’s house. She was pretty. She would soon be a memory to him. Melissa felt the tug of guilt inside at uprooting him. She watched him as the front door opened. Jessica’s father waved out at her, a huge smile on his face. He went to walk out to her, but she waved him back inside. She had to get to college, didn’t have time to sit and smile, making polite conversation.

  The car hummed into life and her mind immediately turned to Mick. The red light at the end of the street gave her a chance to pull down the mirror and check her makeup. She’d never worn makeup to college until a few months ago. Now she wore it every week. The light went green and she pushed the mirror back up. The nerves began inside her. It was so ridiculous. What chance could they have together? College was over in a couple of weeks and she was leaving. The feelings she had for him were an irrelevance, no matter how strongly they gripped her. They had to be. Jason was the most important thing. The flirtations she and Mick were pursuing with one another were nothing more than that. It felt good to appear attractive to someone as attractive as Mick was. But she knew it was much more than that. It was the wonder of just being around him, to have him in her life again. Talking to him was like no one else. Perhaps if her family could sit down and talk to him, they could love him as much as she did.

  The setting sun was coloring the city orange, red, and gold. She pulled into her regular parking space ten minutes early so she waited in the car. It was hard to think about anything other than him. The feeling that she was about to lose him again choked her inside. She couldn’t go through that again, could she? But what was the alternative? How would Jason react? How would Mick react? She’d kept anything about Jason from him, afraid of what she might say or reveal if she spoke openly. Perhaps Mick could be a father to him. This could be the chance they’d be waiting for their whole adult lives. She tried to shake the visions of a future with Mick out of her head but they seemed stuck like limpets on the rocks of her mind. This would be their last Monday together. She knew he was thinking the same.

  Mick arrived late and took his seat. He glanced over at Melissa several times in the first few minutes of class, but never found her eye. Each time he found her looking straight ahead, her gaze a picture of sharp focus. A few minutes passed and he gave up trying. The class ended on time and the professor stood to receive a round of applause from the students, each standing to show their full appreciation. It was only then that she looked over at him, but not with the smile that he was hoping for. The applause faded and died. The class began to leave. Mick darted up the stairs, waiting for her at the door. A watery smile greeted him as her eyes met his. He ignored the outward signs and motioned toward the café. They walked together. Her beauty was dangerous now, like the flash of a drawn blade, ready to slice into him.

  “Are you doing all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m doing fine.” She lied and he wondered if he was going to have to go through the charade of asking her multiple times before she actually told him how she was feeling. They went on in silence, entering the café together in their practiced fashion. The impending meeting with Tony Campbell began to weigh on him and it was hard to know if the nerves he felt were about that or what he knew he had to say to Melissa. The cash register rang behind him and Melissa made her way over to their usual table. The cappuccino machine behind the counter seemed to take an age and she was sitting there for a couple of minutes alone before he arrived to join her. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds as he sat down. Her eyes squirmed around, eager to look anywhere but at him.

  “So this is it,” he began.

  She looked up at him at last. “I suppose it is.”

  “Are you ready for the exams next week?” he asked, and as soon the words sounded he berated himself for making the conversation too easy. He knew she was ready, and it was no surprise when she said so.

  “Aye, I’m a bit long in the tooth to be away off drinking when I need to get study done.” She ran a hand through her hair, patting it down though it was perfect. She was wearing makeup again, but this time she’d gone to even more trouble for him, had taken even more care over her already immaculate appearance. Knowing that she cared was enough to swell his heart.

  They spoke about nothing for a few minutes: the content of the course, some of the vagaries of their fellow students, the professor. Melissa felt her body grow more tense with every passing minute. She’d tightened up as soon as she saw him, having no idea what to say or even what she wanted. It was she who finally said something real after twenty wasted minutes.

  “This is our last class together.”

  “I don’t even want to think about that,” he said, the words slipping out of his grasp like water through his fingers. “I’ve been dreading the end of the course, the prospect of not seeing you anymore.” His eyes were completely earnest and she immediately felt her skin hotter, her breathing confused.

  “I know…. I enjoy meeting with you so much.”

  “It’s been fun. I don’t think anyone else in our lives would understand though.”

  “God knows what my parents would say.”

  “It’s good you’re not a teenager anymore isn’t it? I look forward to these Monday night meetings more than just about anything else in my life. Does that sound pathetic?”

  “Yes,” she replied and they both laughed. “You need to get out a little more.” It took them a few seconds to settle down. There was so much to tell him. “No, it doesn’t sound pathetic, because I feel the same way.” She shrugged. “Maybe we’ve become two sad old middle-aged bores together.”

  “That sounds just fine. Now that I’m thirty-seven I don’t care what people think about me anymore – one of the benefits of getting older.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize there were benefits.”

  “Come on now.”

  She brought the teacup to her mouth and drank some back. “No, I agree with that. I don’t care what most people think either.”

  “Most people?”

  “Well, there are certain people I’m wary of all the time, certain people whose feelings I have to take into account.”

  “Your son, your family?” He didn’t like where this was going now. It felt like the bad news was coming. He had the sudden urge for a cigarette, but fought it back. “What are you getting at?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  “I want to see you. I don’t want this to end. This shouldn’t end just because our excuse to see each other is gone,” he said.

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “You don’t think I know that? Nothing between us was ever easy except the time we spent together alone. That was the only easy part. I know you’ve got a son. I know you’re leaving soon.” The intense danger he was putting himself in came front and center into his mind. Could he go through with that and continue seeing Melissa? If she found out, they’d be finished. If Tony found out his true intentions, he’d be dead. One thing at a time, he told himself.

  “So what do you suggest?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to stop seeing you. We’ve always been good together. You have t
o admit that.”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “It destroyed me when you went inside. I remember watching you on TV, reading about you in the newspaper, knowing the truth, knowing that the things they were saying about you were wrong, that the things you admitted to were things you didn’t do. You were in my mind for years. You never left me.” She surprised herself at the candid nature of her comments. If he was shocked he wasn’t showing it. He just raised the coffee cup to his lips and took a sip before replacing it without saying a word. He looked on, waiting for her to continue. “I think it’s obvious that if there were no extenuating circumstances….”

  “What about your son?”

  The question cut her off, knocking the wind out of her lungs. Jason. She thought of him, thought of Mick and Jason together like she had so many times. She tried to come up with some kind of deflection where there was none, and knew she’d have to speak about him now at last. It was right.

  “Would you like to meet him?” Her voice was weak, almost as if half of her was trying to hold the words back.

  “I would love that.”

  She nodded and brought the cup to her mouth to cover her quivering lips. The teacup rattled as she put it back onto the saucer. She brought her hand to her head and stood up, pushing the metal chair back with a screech on the marble floor.

  “This was a mistake. All of it,” she said. Her voice fortified somehow, even though she was just as confused as she had been all night, all week, ever since she’d met him again. “You can’t meet him, you can’t come into my life, there’s just too much, your history, my family. We can’t do this.” She turned to walk away.

  His heart crumpled in a heap inside him and he sat motionless for a few seconds before gathering himself to bounce out of the chair and after her. He caught her just as she was walking out the door. Several people were looking at them.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he told her.

  She looked back at him through damp eyes, but didn’t speak, just continued out the door into the darkness of the night. He went beside her.

  “This isn’t going to be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. What we have is special. It always was,” he continued.

  She stopped and turned to him. “What do you mean what we have? We meet for coffee every week, nothing more,” she said and walked on.

  He realized she was deliberately trying to hurt him. It was the natural thing to do, to dismiss this. He wasn’t going to let her.

  “You’re wrong, and you know you’re wrong.”

  They walked together for thirty seconds in silence. She was desperately trying to hold herself together in front of him. The pain within her was the sort that only he could bring, and she reverted to the memories of how she’d felt seventeen years before. Tears were rolling down her face as they reached the car. She reached into her bag for her keys but dropped them to the ground, cursing out loud. He was still standing there as she righted herself. His eyes implored her, his face so honest in every movement.

  “There’s a lot more on the line for me than you. Are you going to come to London with us?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she didn’t let him. “I need time to think, to sort out my feelings for you. Let me just think it over. We’ll be in the same place next week for the exams. Give me your phone number. I’ll call you if I need to talk.”

  He nodded his head, taking a pen and piece of paper out of his bag. He wrote his address and phone number down before handing it to her. She took the slip of paper from him and placed it into her purse.

  “All right, you have my number, so use it.” He forced a smile.

  “OK. Come here.” She reached out and put her arms around him. He brought her into him and held her against him. The feel of her, the smell, and the brush of her hair against his cheek. It was the first time they’d touched in seventeen years. She drew back and away from him, managed one last smile and got into the car. He stood still, watching as she drove away. He had to meet Tony in ten minutes.

  Chapter 23

  Mick reached the corner of Rossville and Fahan Street just before ten o’clock. The street was dark, quiet. Most people were home on a Monday night. Sean had prepared him, had versed him on what Tony wanted to hear. He was ready. Minutes drifted past. It was a clear night and Mick looked up at the night sky, each star like a tiny diamond on an immense black velvet cloth. The spot where his father had died was less than a hundred yards from where he stood. This city offered no escape. The ghosts of the past were always close. He brought his eyes down from the calm above the earth to the mural of a British soldier smashing down a door with a sledgehammer and wondered what the stars thought of all this, all that this city had been through.

  The lights of a parked car flicked on a hundred yards down the street and started advancing toward him. It pulled up and Tony Campbell rolled down the window, motioning for him to get in the passenger seat. Tony was a huge man, well over six feet tall, his face thick with black stubble. He was around thirty, heavy and muscular, like an attack dog bred specifically for one purpose. Mick took a deep breath in through his nose and opened the door. The car smelled of cigarette smoke, the ashtray overflowing with gray filth and half-smoked butts.

  “Get in.” Mick did as he was told. Tony’s tone didn’t invite more conversation and he put the car into gear with a tattooed arm before pulling out. There was no traffic, no one on the streets. Tony didn’t look around, didn’t speak as he drove. The radio was off, an oppressive silence in the car. Tony drove for a minute or so before pulling off onto a side street Mick and Pat had played on as children, where Jimmy Kelly, who died on Bloody Sunday, two months short of his eighteenth birthday, had lived. Tony turned the engine off, leaving the car on. He flicked on the radio, a ridiculous pop song by an Australian soap opera star bouncing around the confined space of the car.

  Tony turned to him. “I hear you wanted to see me.”

  “Sean told me you needed good, reliable men, looking to make a difference in the fight against the British imperialists.” He hoped his lines didn’t sound too practiced.

  Tony took a few seconds to digest what he’d said before he replied. “We can always use committed soldiers. You’re an active member at the moment, aren’t you? What makes me so special, why do you want to see me?”

  “I’m afraid. Attitudes are softening. People are forgetting what happened to my father and so many others in this city. The subjugation of the Catholic population has lessened just enough for people on the street to lean toward talk of a peace that would bring us back to a time where we had no rights, where we were hardly better than slaves to the ruling Protestant classes. I’m afraid that the work that I’ve done over the last twenty-odd years, the work that I’ve dedicated my life to will all be in vain.”

  “Sean said that you were a good man. You were cellmates for how long?”

  “Three years.” Mick thought back to the day Sean had come into his cell. Sean had been a different man then, young and delusional; hypnotized by the propaganda he’d been fed his whole life. But Mick immediately saw the good in him, knew there was hope. It was difficult to harbor such hope for his brother.

  “He’s a good kid, needs a little help finding his own balls sometimes, but a good kid.”

  “He’s an excellent volunteer, someone who wants to make a difference, committed toward building a better, socialist future all the people on this island.” It felt bizarre to say those words, to have them come out as his voice.

  Tony offered a cigarette to Mick, before lighting one up for himself. The smoke seemed to fill the air in the car like water, permeating every space almost immediately. Mick thought to open a window, to try to catch a breath, but decided against it.

  “He’s got a big mouth is what he has. I suppose he’s told you about the fact that I’m planning something.”

  “Aye, but no details. I just wanted to….”

  “He doesn’t know any details. This operation is too important to be put at risk by touts.”
Tony almost spat the final word; tout - the slang word for police informants.

  “I’m no tout, and neither is Sean.” Mick’s indignant tone caused Tony’s eyes to flicker like a flag in the wind, but only for an instant.

  “I never said you were, mate, and I know my brother’s not.”

  “So what are we doing here?”

  “We’re getting to know each other, Mick, just getting to know each other. What about your brother?”

  “What about him?”