Anthony Francis Gatusso seemed to possess the ability to move between states of high excitement and anxiety, to complete comatose REM repose at the drop of a hat.
If people did not know him any better, they might have assumed that his capacity to slip into sudden dreamless sleep suggested the clear conscience and easy demeanour of a complete innocent.
Now he sat propped up on his elbows inside his sleeping bag, blowing smoke rings into the air above his head. Seemingly oblivious to his plight and to all those around him.
Eban’s eyes stung from the smoke and the exhaustion.
He flicked through the well-thumbed copy of The Pan Book of Horror and Ghost Stories that one of his predecessors had left behind.
The cover showed a severed head in a bucket.
Looking at Anto, he wondered at his charge’s apparent indifference to his plight.
He wondered how that might feel?
No baggage. No regrets.
Burn it all fucking down. Laughing all the while.
Ruairí sat on the couch, going through Sinéad’s rucksack, apparently looking for something. The girl emerged a little unsteadily from the toilet area, wiping her mouth.
Eban surmised that she had just thrown up again.
The outside noise seemed to have abated somewhat.
There was an almost peaceful silence, the first time he had consciously noted this since his arrival.
The radio droned on, on low volume. Talking heads mumbling incoherently.
Suddenly the moment was shattered by the blaring, self-important theme tune that indicated news at the top of the hour.
Anto reacted first. “Eban, mate… turn that up will ye?”
Eban reached across and twisted the dial. It was BBC Radio Ulster. The local bulletin.
No-one spoke.
No-one needed to.
*
By the time the weather forecast had begun and before Eban could turn down the volume, all had in some way made their peace with the updated news.
The forces reigned against them had conceded nothing.
Instead they had ratcheted up their campaign another notch.
If either of the men were wounded by this, they did not show it.
Ruairí Connolly’s face was a stone mask of concentration on nothing in particular.
Anthony Gatusso continued to blow smoke rings.
Only Sinéad Farran seemed moved by the reports.
She winced as if someone had struck her across the face and returned to ravenously gnawing on her fingernails.
Eban was lost for something to say.
Instead he moved over to the large stained glass window and looked below.
Ruairí saw him. ‘Eban, stay away from the window.”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the room detonated.
Four hammer-blows fell heavily on the outside of the door.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
For a moment the whole interior seemed to sway like a ship in a storm, then right itself again.
All three young people looked instantly terrified.
First at the door.
Then at Eban.
He felt the weight of their fear and expectation and it rocked him back on his heels.
Sinéad grasped at her belly. In terror. In protection of her unborn.
Eban moved slowly, tentatively, falteringly toward the door.
He paused before placing his hands on the large metal bolt that held it closed. Leaning forward, pushing his whole weight against it.
“Who’s there?” His voice was shaking.
“It’s me, Mr Barnyard; Ruairí’s mother. I’ve some groceries!”
The relief was real.
All physically deflated. As if a stopper had been pulled on them and the air rushed out.
Anto cackled with mock bravado.
Ruairí said, “Christ, Ma!” rebuking with his tone.
Sinéad let out a little whimper of respite.
Eban smiled and pulled the loose sleeve of his shirt across his brow.
He took a deep breath and with both hands began to slowly slip the heavy bolt back.
It squealed with grating compliance.
“I’ve someone here with me.” Her tone held enough uncertainty to freeze Eban’s actions instantly.
Both Ruairí and Anto bounded toward him, shouting, “NO, EBAN… NO… HOLD IT!”
Eban stood like a statue, petrified.
Eventually he found his voice.
“Who’s out there?”
A conciliatory voice responded.
“It’s Father Sean Cudden, son – the family priest – and Councillor Molloy. Look… we want to help.”
Eban was momentarily perplexed.
His thoughts were colliding.
All the actors in this tableau seemed to know one another.
To know what was going on.
Except, that was, for him.
He had felt at a constant disadvantage since he’d arrived.
It had irritated him.
It had made him impatient.
As if this whole affair was some elaborate choreography being played out by performers who knew well their parts. Knew the boundaries. The acceptable and unacceptable modes of behaviour. The lines that could and could not be crossed.
It made him angry, and in this moment of fear and panic and hesitancy, he greedily fed off it. Righteous indignation replacing indecision and dread expectation.
He needed to take control of himself and the situation.
He did so by ignoring those around him for the first time since he’d arrived and – taking a deep breath – continued slipping the bolt back slowly.
Bracing his shoulder against the wood.
Cracking the gap a little.
On the other side of the door stood Councillor Terry Molloy, still in Armani pinstripes.
Beside him a stick-thin man, head-to-toe in black.
An almost spectral figure, wearing clerical garb, completely bald and with piercing blue eyes.
Mrs Connolly had her gaze cast down to the floor. A reluctant stooge and penitent. A Trojan Horse.
Eban stepped away from the portal, allowing them entry.
The priest quickly swept over the threshold.
He wore a full-length cassock in the traditional style, buttoned from neck to hem, and clenched a rosary wrapped tightly around his knuckles.
Sensing the indecision in the company, and seeing his chance, Father Cudden immediately claimed authority over the circumstances.
“Ahhh, Mr Barnard, isn’t it? I’d like a word with you.”
He made it sound officious.
Accusatory.
He abruptly motioned to Eban to follow him to the corner of the room.
There he stood, arms folded and demeanour solemn, inviting a conspiratorial parley.
Terry Molloy followed a few steps behind him like a bullwhipped puppy.
Eban noted this as it seemed somehow absurd. Incongruous.
Ruairí Connolly moved as inconspicuously as the cramped conditions would allow to the fringes of the gathering.
The priest spoke first, reinforcing the notion that he was indeed on home ground.
“I’ll come straight to the point, Mr Barnard. In the absence of any senior church authority here, I have been asked by local residents to bring this situation to a swift conclusion.”
Eban somehow sensed that the man was bluffing. That he was acting unilaterally. He gathered his courage and spoke up to call his bluff.
“I’ve been given strict instructions not to leave these lads unaccompanied until my colleagues arrive tomorrow morning.”
Cudden let out a snort of derision. He looked across at Councillor Molloy and both smiled with intent.
“The presence of these two lads in this cathedral is a blasphemy, pure and simple… and as for that one” – he gestured with his head toward Sinéad – “carrying one of their litter out of wedlock… they shouldn’t be here and that’s all there is to it!”
Eban was taken aback at the man’s bitterness.
At how he spat out the words.
He felt he should say something in Sinéad Farran’s defence.
“Steady on Father… Suffer little children, eh?”
The priest, who had been looking around the room with an expression of extreme distaste, suddenly focused on him. The man was seething. His stone-cold blue eyes boring into Eban.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” he demanded.
It sounded like a challenge.
In that moment, Eban was positive that he abhorred this individual.
For he recognised in him the kind of man he had come to revile throughout the entirety of his frustrating life in his sorry homeland. The browbeater, the tormentor, the oppressor, the bully.
“I see very little to laugh about here.” Eban’s mouth was like a sand box, but he said this with an unmistakable tone of defiance.
Of challenge.
Of confrontation.
It was not wasted on the priest.
He theatrically took a step backward and methodically looked him over, head to toe, with all the qualities of a bone-deep scan.
“Do I know you?” he remarked, running his long, bony fingers over his smooth pate.
“I doubt it, but I think I know you… or the likes of you.”
Molloy stepped in threateningly. “Careful, friend… you’re out of your depth here.”
The priest leisurely raised a hand to placate Molloy, the man now searching for and drawing from some well of pseudo-magnanimity.
He turned to Eban, grinning.
“Look, what we have here are two bad boys, right? Now myself and Councillor Molloy have had a word with…” he paused for effect, “certain interested parties, and they tell me that if these two come out now and take their medicine like men…” – he shrugged – “then that will be the end of it.”
He smiled like a polecat and shrugged and raised his open-palmed hands in offertory.
The most reasonable man in the world.
Eban’s face flushed. He clenched his fists by his side.
“Am I to understand that you are negotiating on behalf of the IRA?”
Again Molloy moved forward threateningly. “Oh, is that the way you want to play it?”
Father Cudden held out an arm, barring his way. He spoke like he might to a child.
“Terrance, huusssh now… shuusssh… that’s a good fellow.”
All the while, he never broke his mesmeric stare on Eban, his tone more pragmatic now.
“Look, didn’t I baptise one of them myself? All I’m saying is… it would be over very quickly and things would be back to normal again – sure, isn’t that what we all want here?”
“I don’t think it’s what they want.”
Eban nodded to Ruairí, who had now moved closer to the three men. “Is that what you want?”
The priest could see that his opening gambit was not working.
He had not expected this night watchman, this babysitter, to prove so obstinate.
His agitation was showing and for a brief moment the mask slipped.
He leaned closer to Eban and spoke in a lower tone, conspiratorially. “Look… sure, what’s a bullet in the leg? They’d be out of hospital and home in a couple of days and—”
Ruairí was standing close behind the priest now. With all the sarcasm he could muster, he spoke.
“Huh… Man of God.” He made it sound like an indictment.
Cudden spun around, outraged. “What? What did you just say to me?”
Eban stepped in front of Ruairí. “Will you do it, Father? Will you do it yourself… will you pull the trigger? Would you like that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cudden was stung.
Unnoticed by the men, Mrs Connolly had also made her way to the fringes of the group.
She had been listening. Knowing her place.
Waiting to announce her presence when appropriate to do so.
But on hearing the priest’s comments she elbowed her way into the centre of things, where she fixed Cudden with an accusatorial gaze.
“Yes, yes he would… I wouldn’t put it past him!” she announced, emboldened by this turn of events. She stabbed a finger into the man’s chest.
“You – you call yerself a man of the cloth?”
She turned to face Molloy now.
“And you – you’re supposed to be for the working man… murdering fathers and cripplin’ teenagers!”
Her unexpected outburst served as a catalyst.
Without doubt, the tide had turned.
All knew it.
The momentum was for the first time with the besieged.
Ruairí was momentarily dumbstruck.
Seeing his mother – a devout, lifelong Catholic and obsequious, unquestioning devotee of the clergy – so readily take on this small-town demagogue galvanised him.
He placed his face close to the priest’s.
The merciless tension was at breaking point.
“Is that it, Father… you’d like to do it yourself, would ye, eh?”
Father Cudden didn’t flinch.
Instead, he was savouring his anger. Rolling it around his mouth and over his tongue.
He slowly smiled. His malevolence palpable.
When he spoke, it was in a low, malicious hiss. “That’s right… yes; yes, maybe I would.”
Fionnuala Connolly looked like she’d been slapped hard across the face. An oppressive presence seemed to fill the small room.
“God forgive you!”
Ruairí did not step back. He stood on, breathing heavily, almost nose to nose with the priest. He whispered something. It was hardly audible.
“False prophet.”
Again the priest smiled. He changed tactic again, assuming the authority of his station.
“Look, I’m telling you for the last time: they can’t stay in here. This is God’s house!”
“The Cardinal says we can.” It had escaped Eban’s mouth before his brain had engaged, for he did not know this to be true.
Father Cudden’s smile grew broader. He instantly saw the bluff for what it was.
“The Cardinal is saying precisely nothing… nothing at all… and when he does I’ll show him a petition with three hundred parishioners’ signatures all wanting you… abominations out of their cathedral.”
Eban’s dread was rising.
The priest seemed to possess an almost supernatural presence, foul and intimidating.
Despite this he steeled himself and rallied.
“I’ve heard enough, Father… you’ll have to go now.”
He moved to place a guiding hand on the small of the man’s back.
No-one budged an inch.
Unnoticed, the noise from the crowd in the street had picked up and at that moment seemed to surge. The swell seemed to energise the priest. To infuse him.
He looked directly into Eban’s eyes, withering him.
“Take your hand off me,” he snarled imperiously.
Abruptly there was a noise on the other side of the door.
All eyes turned, drawn in that direction.
A dull, low thudding.
Like someone was kicking against it.
It was clear in that moment that the bolt had not been sufficiently engaged.
Each hit loosened it more.
Making it shift a little each time from its position.
Two blows more and it would unfasten.
Mrs Connolly was the first to react.
She moved toward it.
Hand at her breast. Fearful. Petrified.
“Who is it?Who’s there?”
She looked over her shoulder to the others for guidance.
Eban felt drained, but somehow exhilarated.
Strangely resigned.
Almost fatalistic.
Felt like he wanted all this to be over.
Wanted to confront whatever had been stalking them that whole night.
Maybe their whole lives
“Open it, open it for Christ’s sake!” he heard himself moan.
Anto came to life. “NO! It’s a trick; those fuckers have set us up!”
The stress in the room seemed to cause it to creak and moan.
The wooden timbers cried out and the floorboards seemed to blanch.
A pained, spiralling banshee wail broke from Sinéad and rose into the air.
It began as a whimper and ended as a siren.
“Noooooooooo… don’t let them in!”
She clutched defensively again at her unborn child.
Terry Molloy pushed by Mrs Connolly, sliding the bolt back fully and violently throwing the door open.
It crashed against the wall, shaking loose puffs of white plaster and masonry.
Both women screamed and pushed back flat against the opposite wall.
Anto had armed himself with a billiard cue, whilst Ruairí had picked up a bread knife.
They crouched, coiled, waiting… waiting… nothing.
Then footfalls scurrying off down the stone stairway.
Laughter and shouts fading away… off into the distance.
The scene was fixed. Unmoving. Like some medieval montage picked out on a tapestry.
As if no-one knew what to do. What to say.
Ruairí spoke first “It’s alright… it’s okay, it’s kids… it’s only kids.”
The hex had been broken.
Eban reacted more quickly than anyone, his body language decisive.
“Father, I think you’d better leave. Anto, get the door locked after them.”
Father Cudden screwed up his face with disdain and barely concealed revulsion.
“Oh, we’re going… the stink of this three-ring circus is turning my stomach.”
Mrs Connolly’s adrenaline was racing.
Denunciation from the pulpit be damned. She turned again on her parish priest.
“You’ve some cheek… you’ve locked us out of every other room; a pregnant girl with only a sink to wash herself in… I was married in this church but it’ll be a cold day in hell ‘til I’m back at Mass again in it, I can tell you that.”
Councillor Molloy couldn’t resist a parting barb. He spoke over his shoulder. “No amount of soap and water will scrub her clean.”
Cudden moved toward the door, pointing at Ruairí and Anto as he did.
“I want them out of here and on the boat out of this country.”
The two men exited.
Anto ran to the top of the stairs, shouting after them. “Molloy, tell your brother he’s a fucking pervert!”
Unseen, from around the curve of the staircase came the echoing, incandescent reply. “Say it just once to his face; just once you greaseball bastard. JUST ONCE!”
Anto chuckled to himself, happy in the knowledge that he had gotten to the man. That he had riled the Molloy brothers and that the message would go back to Tootsie.
Laughing, he locked the door again and turned to find all inside glaring at him disapprovingly. The young man appealed theatrically, incorrigibly, shrugging with arms outstretched.
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?”
The group fell into laughter.
Desperate, eager, insane laughter.
The laughter borne of abject relief.
Of being shot at with no consequence.
Of teetering on a precipice but falling backward.
*
After several breathless minutes the general hubbub ensued as each recounted what had just happened, all at the same time.
Eban felt somehow vindicated. Like he had been tested in fire and had by some means come through. He felt closer to his confederates than before.
Bizarrely, more close to them now, these strangers, than to anyone at that moment he could remember.
“Well, that’s the Cardinal against us for sure,” he said.
Anto was stoked. He tugged hungrily on a cigarette and blew out. “That’s no loss. He was always against us anyway.”
Similarly, Ruairí was enthused by the residue of adrenaline. He playfully counted out on the fingers of his hand.
“Let me see: the Roman Catholic Church… the Republican Movement… is there anybody we haven’t offended recently?”
Only Mrs Connolly and Sinéad seemed sober. The older woman was gathering up dirty clothes again.
“I’m gonna speak to those children’s people… running wild at this hour of the morning… do they think this is a playground for their amusement or something?”
She was preparing again to leave on the laundry-and-provisions run.
“I’ll pick up some sandwiches when I’m out.”
Sinéad pleaded, “No bacon sandwiches, Mrs C… they’re cold by the time they get here.”
“What do you want me to do, hold them under my oxters?”
“I know, but the fat, it…” She pulled a face. “What is it, Ruairí?”
“Congeals.”
“Aye – the fat congeals and it turns my stomach.”
The girl raised her hands to her mouth at the thought of it and exited for the toilet.
Mrs Connolly looked concerned. “Ruairí… away and see if the wee girl’s alright.”
Ruairí raised himself up from the couch, but it was Anto who pushed him down again and followed the girl out of the room.