‘We’ve got a washing machine you know,’ said Angie, throwing her bags on to the kitchen table. She had been over to her sister’s for the morning and brought back her share of the food they’d ordered together from the Christmas catalogue. She took a quick look about.
The floor was clean and the cupboards looked like they’d been given a wipe. There was not a cup or a plate out although she’d left the dish rack full that morning. The boy had his sleeves rolled up, was pushing back his hair with his fingers. He was wearing a t-shirt and corduroy trousers, bare feet.
There was a short row of round wet parcels folded on the draining board. ‘I didn’t think you’d be home till later. I’ve just got to rinse these and I’m done.’
‘You don’t have to do your own washing,’ she said, taking off her coat. ‘Aren’t 19-year-old boys supposed to be out chasing girls? Your mother got you well trained, so she did.’
He emptied the plastic bowl and ran cold water around it, sluiced it out. She saw his reflection in the dark of the window over the sink. He was a lot like his father, physically, but where his father was tense, he was languid.
‘Did you clean this kitchen?’ She stood with her hands on her hips. Her fringe was flat to her head from the rain.
He turned round with a grin.
She took out her cigarettes. ‘You cleaned my kitchen and you’re a man, you couldn’t credit it. So you’ve been at this all the day, have you?’
‘No I got a bus into the city centre, had a walk round then I went out down the Falls Road in one of those black taxis.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ she sat down. ‘Now you really are having a laugh with me.’ He was squeezing out the white underpants and laying them flat on the draining board. She noticed his socks were on the radiator by the back door.
‘Do you have anything needs washing?’
‘I will do if you go telling me stories like that.’
‘It was very interesting, Angie.’
‘Mark,’ she said, putting her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘I should have had a word with you the day you got here. But we’re sick to the teeth with it and we don’t talk about it much, especially your father and I. But I’ve got to give you a wee welcome speech, so I have.’
He wiped his wet hands on his trousers.
‘Where do I start? Look, when I was a wee girl we played with Catholics. My parents taught me everyone was the same, Catholic or Protestant, but that didn’t stop them sending us out to kick the Pope on the 12th of July. We went to different schools. You never really knew them, like you knew your own.’
‘Different schools?’ He looked doubtful, slipped a cigarette out of his pack on the table, nodded at her lighter. ‘May I?’
She nodded and closed her eyes. He saw in the wrinkles of her eyelids the remnants of pearlized eye shadow, the mascara made five or six points out of her lashes.
‘The soldiers, well it was the Catholics that brought them over; it was them that wanted them. Of course they turned against each other and changed their minds then. Then there’s been a lot of things happen in these past ten years so’s most normal people’s lost their patience. See the thing with the IRA is that they would kill a hundred of their own to get one Protestant, they’ve no conscience, be it a teacher, a postman, a policeman. And the people round here said, well every time you kill a Protestant or plant a bomb we’re going to come out and shoot you and it doesn’t matter if it’s someone walking down the street or some fella going to his work we’ll get him.’
Mark had never heard an accent like hers. Her mouth moved, scarcely open, across the fabric of her world like a sewing machine, jolting and juddering at speed, with the needle going in and out, up and down, no time to spare and then suddenly she had it all sewn up. ‘But that’s stupid, Angie. I mean, you must think so, right?’
‘Aye. Welcome to hell.’
‘But people are people, I mean has no one ever sat the two sides down together to thrash it out?’
She burst out laughing. ‘I wonder sometimes if I was ever young! I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound patronizing like but you haven’t got a clue. There’s a lot of fear amongst the Loyalist people that the Catholics will overrun the place. They have six or seven kids, whereas we have the one or two. They don’t want to be British but they’re not above taking the welfare. They’re good at giving to their own, I’ll grant them that, better than we are, everyone round here is for himself. But we don’t want to live their way, and why should we? People don’t want nuns and priests running their lives, teaching their children. Just because a person wants a united Ireland doesn’t make him more Irish than me. You see the difference is we’re happy with our lot. We’ve got our own ways here in Ulster. What we have here, and it’s not very much, we’ve worked for, so we have. Why should we give it away? Let them go down south if that’s what they’re after.’
‘And what about you,’ he leant forwards, ‘couldn’t you go to England?’
‘And why should I? This is my home. England’s different. I couldn’t live there. Look, I’m just trying to tell you how it is and why it’s dangerous to go walking about on the Falls Road, you with your British accent and all, they’ll be after thinking you’re a soldier and you’ll be dead and it’s not a nice way to die. They’ll talk about the Shankill Butchers but when you hear what the IRA does, even to its own, it makes your blood curdle. In the news last week there’s a man killed because he’s the wrong sort of IRA. They kill each other all the time. In West Belfast, where you were today they bomb their own bars! There was this fella last year, they gave him drugs while they tortured him, to stop him from passing out, to keep him conscious. They took out his fingernails, they pulled his arm out of the socket, they cut off his genitals – for three days they kept the poor man alive and did that to him. And all you hear is the Shankill Butchers.’
What was it in her eyes? For a second, she looked proud. Excited. She had to hide her face, so she took out another cigarette and lit it, her face to the side. He had seen though. He had seen and she had to stop her mouth from smiling at the corners.
‘Why do you think we all smoke like chimneys? You see, Mark, they’ll take you for a soldier under cover. They’re always dragging off British soldiers. One they took not long ago, they went to shoot him in the head and he’s pleading with them no and the gun misfires three times and the IRA fella says he’s only shooting blanks and you know the poor man must have shit himself because when you think you’re being shot dead that’s what happens and then he must have been relieved that he was alive and then they went and fired again into his head and killed him. He was just a soldier lad who went drinking in one of their bars and he was clever, they say he had picked up a Belfast accent but they still picked him for a soldier because it’s a small place, Mark, everyone knows who you are. You keep your mouth shut and you stay among your own.’
‘I’ve never had my own. My grandfather believed in God but I don’t even remember whether he was Catholic or Protestant.’
‘Well now, he sounds like a wonderful man, love. Thank God he never had to come here, he’d have left his way of thinking before dinnertime.’
‘But you were all born here, you all breathe the same air. You need to sit down and talk about it. A big party, free beer.’
‘Och Jesus. That’ll never happen. Our lot’d get drunk and the Catholics would be moaning how they’d got less beer than the rest. Anyway I’ll get the tea on. Your dad will try and get home early tonight but who knows when it will be. He’s got the day off on Tuesday and we’ll have a nice wee run out. The poor man. He’s got a desperate awful job, Mark, so he has.’
But Mark looked puzzled and annoyed, as if he was being hood-winked. ‘Angie, the people on the Falls Road were all right. I mean I’ve got an English accent. I went into a petrol station and bought a chocolate bar and they were nice enough.’
‘Well you were lucky. Don’t do it again or I’ll, well I don’t know what I’ll do,’ she said with mock severity, standing behind him and squeezing his shoulders. ‘Your dad will do his crunch. He won’t have you come to Northern Ireland to get shot at, you daft sod. Sausage, beans and chips. Will that do you? So now, stick your undercrackers in the airing cupboard, will you love, at the top of the stairs.’
He looked troubled, still trying to work it out.
‘I’ve seen men’s underpants before, Mark,’ she said, ‘but I’ve not seen many men who wash their own.’