‘I took three packets in the Kesh with me yesterday afternoon, gave them all out, and when I got out I hadn’t even the one for myself to smoke.’
Kathleen gave Father Pearse a cup of tea and offered him a cigarette from her pack. He fumbled as he tried to take one. She took it out herself, lit it between her lips and handed it to him.
‘We had the Brits in this morning. My first thought was to get Sean out the back door.’
Her living room was a mess. Where the plaster had come through and hit the floor, there was grey dust in the pile of the carpet, and the ceiling was still gaping, with bits falling every time one of them was walking upstairs. She closed the exercise book next to her; she’d been working backwards and forwards through their money problems when the priest called in.
‘I haven’t had a chance to get any fags today. Been up at the Royal.’ The priest was shaking, cigarette ash falling into a fortunately-placed dustpan, settling on top of bits of white plaster.
‘You’re a bag of nerves, Father,’ said Kathleen. She was thinking, ‘His pay covers the rent at eight pound and leaves us forty-two pound for bills and food, which is just over ten pound a week and I can carry on doing part time at the butcher’s but I might still have to take out a loan from the Ballymurphy Credit Union . . .’
‘No, I’m grand. I like my days up at the hospital. They all know me there now and I get a good dinner in the canteen at staff price.’
She placed the packet on the arm of the chair and tapped them.
‘You keep them,’ she said bravely. It was about two-thirds full.
The priest was sitting forward on the armchair, his round collar open, his tummy over the top of his trousers, his jacket creased. His fingertips bore dark brown stains. He removed a rolled-up newspaper from behind him and smoothed it out on the armrest; it fell down on to the carpet, settling noiselessly.
The father shook his head, stuttering a little before coming to the point.
‘Well now. When I was up the Kesh, Kathleen, ah, yesterday was it, well, you see now, I was giving confession to the boys and I saw your Sean.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ she said and sat down.
He put both hands out. ‘He’s all right, Kathleen, he’s all right.’
‘Lord have mercy. I’ve been praying for all I’m worth, Father.’ She glanced at the Christ figure on her mantelpiece. It was propping up a small square photo of Sean standing next to his grandfather’s Hillman. In fact, her prayers were short, angry, cheated, and they had been that way since two men came to their door one evening two years before, asking for Sean and not leaving their names.
‘How is he? Is he bad? What was it like, Father?’
‘He’s in a cell with a nice fellow from Andersonstown who used to be a teacher, Gerard McIlvenny. He came to one or two of the ecumenical dos, wouldn’t know a stick of gelignite from an altar candle! A nice lad. We all had a chat together like. Well you see there’s not the space for what you call privacy.’
‘Were you able to give Sean his confession?’
The father shifted on his seat. He put his forefinger and thumb up to the bridge of his nose underneath the frame of his glasses. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t do it unless they bother me for it. I never feel it is for me to act as if I was better than them. It’s an awful place, Kathleen. Every cell, filthy like, your feet stick to the floor and the smell knocks you for six. They’ve got a foam mattress each on the floor that gets smaller every time I see them, with them ripping a handful off every day to use for putting their shite on the walls. The smell! Words can’t describe it. And the food is served to them on the damn floor.’
‘Lord have mercy.’
‘Aye.’
‘And what about the boys in there, how are they, in themselves?’ Father Pearse took a sip of tea and looked at the mantelpiece, gesturing at the figurine. ‘Half naked, thin like, with the blanket on you know. Longhaired most of them, beards on those that can grow them. They’re all so young, Kathleen. And it’s “Sorry Father for the smell and the mess.” That’s what you get from them. I always say to myself, if they can stick this for three years I can stick an afternoon. “Yous have no need to apologize to me, boys,” I tell them. “It’s the perfume of Christ himself I’m smelling.” Well, they laugh at that, you see. You’ve got to make light of it.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and took another one from the pack she had left by him.
Kathleen got up to give him the lighter.
‘They’re concerned for you on the outside, like. They ask after their families.’
‘Well you tell him he’s no need to worry for us. I’m down to a couple of mornings at the butcher’s, but I’ll get something else after Christmas and Sean is working at the Fiddlers near every day, drinking most of his wages, but we’re getting food on the table so you can’t complain. There’s some that can’t.’
‘Well now he said to tell you he knows why he’s there. He’s very firm on that. He said to tell you not to worry they’re looking out for each other. They’ve got their rosary beads and they know their Bible inside out. It’s the only book they have to read.’
‘Still I’d like him to be getting his confession.’
Father Pearse shook his head, exhaling brown smoke. He seemed to be absorbed by the pattern on the carpet, looking at it the way people look out of a window. ‘God help me, Kathleen, sometimes I wish it was me with the gun.’
‘I know, Father. I know. My Sean, he’s all right, though?’
‘Aye, aye, he’s dead on, Kathleen. He’ll manage. They all stick it, God knows how they do.’
There was the sound of the front door slurring against the doormat and Aine came in wearing a duffel coat.
‘We’re having a grown-ups chat the wee moment, Aine,’ said her mother, nodding at the kitchen. ‘There’s a couple of biscuits in there for you, then pop off down to Una’s will you and bring me back the iron her mummy’s borrowed.’
The girl’s hair had the netting of fine rain on it.
‘What about ye, Father. Mummy, I couldn’t find my pencils to take to school this morning. I was the only one as didn’t do the nativity in colour.’
‘Use your eyes to find them; they’re better than mine so they are. Would you like to tell me what’s the difference between me looking and you looking?’
‘You know where they are, that’s the difference.’ The girl dropped her heavy coat on to the side of the banister and went upstairs.
‘Would you like a biscuit, Father?’
‘I ought to be away.’
Kathleen went to the kitchen and returned with custard creams on a plate. She placed them next to the cigarettes on the armchair, then leant down to pick a piece of plaster out of her sock; it was like a child’s tooth.
Her son, Liam, came in, short of breath and told them that the Brits were out in the side alley. ‘What about ye, Father. Is it chips for tea, Mummy?’
‘No it’s not, it’s corned beef. You’ll be keeping in then, Liam!’
‘And how is young Liam doing?’ asked the father, looking after him as the boy took to the stairs.
‘Near the top of his class at St Thomas’s. The Lord knows how. I can only think they’re an ignorant lot in there. I’m always having to chase him round the Murph, if there’s rioting going on you can be sure he’s there.’
‘Any news from your Mary?’
‘No news is good news.’
Aine went past them into the kitchen and came out with a biscuit in each hand. ‘You go straight to Una’s, miss, and come right back. Get Mrs McCann to watch you back. What do you do if one of them soldiers speaks to you?’
‘Ask where my pencils is gone?’
‘You never, never speak to them. Mind you, Father, they took a Parker pen from this house one time, so they did. Off you go then, love.’
Kathleen stood at the door watching as the girl crossed over the street and went into her friend’s home. She was wearing her older brother’s football shirt over her jeans, it looked like a dress on her, she was so thin, with long dark-red hair that curled, like her mother’s.
Opposite the house, a Brit was crouching at the side of Mrs Mulhern’s, his gun across his lap. He looked over at Kathleen and she crossed her arms and closed the door, bumping into the stand with the phone on it. She picked up the receiver to listen for its heartbeat then put it back gently. ‘It’s a miracle the ambulances still come up here at all. They’ve got the army hiding out at Mrs Mulhern’s. Do they think she’s a volunteer now? Sure, there’s no sense to any of it.’
The father gave a dry laugh, felt for his handkerchief. ‘I sometimes feel like I’ve not a clue how to be a priest any more. Mrs Mulhern gave me a talking to the other day when I put my head in the door. She called me a rebel priest. This and that about not following the Church. They want the priests to come out against the ’Ra.’
The afternoon light flooded in through the back window. There was a small birthmark on Father Pearse’s forehead that looked like a sickle. He looked lonely there in the living room, not a part of her family nor of anyone else’s.
‘You’ve got to stay a little bit apart, Father. In your line.’
‘I’d have to be hard-hearted to do that. We live and breathe it, don’t we? I can’t help loving, no more can I help hating. That’s the cross. Well now I meant to bring you comfort and I don’t know if I have.’
‘It’s good to know that Sean’s all right, Father.’ She stood surveying the mess. ‘Well as far as he can be. We’ll all have to get used to it anyhow. There’s no use sitting here doing nothing, waiting for news, worrying and fretting. You wait and do nothing thinking it won’t be your son and then one day it is. Even if you just stop in and turn up the television it still comes right into your house. You’re already involved, aren’t you, just by living here; so you might as well try and do something about it all. That’s what I think.’
She tried to get him to take the cigarettes. He refused them.
‘Well thanks for stopping by with news of Sean, you know how much it means to me.’ She swept up the mugs and took them out. He waited there for her to come back, but when he heard the edge of sobs and short breaths from the kitchen he let himself out.
The priest took the side path by the Moran house to cut across to another parishioner whose mother was dying of cancer. It seemed incredible to him that cancer could still happen here with so much else going on. Across the playing fields he saw a group of boys gathering stones for the evening’s rioting. He trod unwittingly into some broken glass. Laying in the curved remnants of a jar were little pools of yellow liquid. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, shaking his shoe.