Harry's Game (16 page)

'Someone you know?" he said when he sat down, shifting her coat on to the back of the seat.

'It's just they like to know who's who round here. Can't blame them. He wanted to know who you were, that's all.' 'What did you tell him?' 'Just who you were, that's all,'

Everything was subdued at this stage of the evening, but the

effects of the drink and the belting of the four‐piece band and their electrically‐amplified instruments began to have a gradual livening

effect. By nine some of the younger couples were ignoring the protests of the older people and had begun to pile up the tables and chairs at the far end of the room to the bar, exposing a crude, unpolished set of nail‐ridden boards. That was the dance floor. The band quickened the tempo, intensified the beat. When he felt that the small talk they were making was next to impossible, Harry asked the girl if she'd like to dance.

She led the way through the jungle of tables and chairs. Near the floor Harry paused as Josephine slowed and squeezed by a girl in a bright‐yellow trouser suit. It was striking enough in its colour for Harry to notice it. Then, as his eyes moved to the table where she was sitting, he saw the young man at her side.

There was intuitive, deep‐based recognition for a moment, and Harry couldn't place it. He looked at the man, who stared straight back at him, challenging. Josephine was out on the 78

floor now waiting for him to come by the girl in yellow. He looked away from the face that was still staring back at him, holding and returning his glance, mouthed an apology and was away to the floor. Once more he looked at the man, who still watched him, cold and expressionless‐‐

then Harry rejected the suspicion of the likeness. Hair wrong. Face too full. Eyes too close.

Mouth was right. That was all. The mouth, and nothing else.

The floor pounded with the motion of a cattle stampede‐‐as it seemed to Harry, who was used to more ordered dances at the base. At first he was nearly swamped, but survived after throwing off what decorum he had ever learned as he and Josephine were buffeted and shoved from one set of shoulders to another. Sweat and scent were already taking over from the beer and smoke. When the band switched to an Irish ballad he gasped his relief, and round them the frenetic movements slowed in pace. He could concentrate now on the girl close against him.

She danced with her head back, looking up at him and talking.

Looking the whole time, not burying herself away from him. She

was wearing a black skirt, full and flared, so that she had the

freedom to swing her hips to the music. Above that a tight polka dot

Mouse. The top four buttons were unfastened. There were no

osephines in Aden, no Josephines taking an interest in married

ransport captains in Germany.

They talked dance‐floor small talk, Harry launched into a series

of concocted anecdotes about the ports he'd visited when he was at

sea, and she laughed a lot. Twice a nagging uncertainty took his

attention away from her to where the man was sitting quietly at the

table with the girl in the yellow trouser suit, glasses in front of them,

eyes roving, but not talking. The second time he decided the likeness

was superficial. It didn't hold up. Face, eyes, hair‐‐all wrong. Before he turned back to Josephine he saw the mouth again. That was

right. It amused him. Coincidence. And his attention was diverted to

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the girl, her prettiness and inevitable promise.

The man too had noticed Harry's attention. It had been pronounced enough to make him fidget a little in his chair, and for him to feel the hot perspiration surge over his legs inside the thick cloth of his best suit. He had seen the door‐minder talk to the girl who brought

him in, and presumably clear the stranger. But his nerves had caved when he had seen Harry on the dance floor, no longer interested, but totally involved in the girl he was with. The man could not dance, had never been taught. He and his wife would sit at the table all evening as a succession of friends and neighbours came to join them to talk for a few minutes and then move on. Along the wall to the right of the door and near the bar were a group of youths, some of them volunteers in the Provisionals, some couriers and some look‐outs. These were the expendables of the movement. The teenage girls were gathered round them, attracted by the glamour of the profession of terrorism, hanging on the boys" sneers and cracks and boasts.

None of the boys would rise high in the upper echelons but each was necessary as part of the supply chain that kept the planners and marksmen in the field. None knew the man except by name. None knew of his involvement.

First through the door was the big sergeant, a Stirling submachine gun in his right hand. He'd hit the door with all the impetus of his two hundred pounds gathered in a six‐foot run. Behind him came a lieutenant, clutching his Browning automatic pistol, and then eight soldiers. They came in fast and fanned out in a protective screen round the officer. Some of the soldiers carried rifles, others the large barrelled, rubber‐bullet guns.

The officer shouted in the general direction of the band.

'Cut that din. Wrap it up. I want all the men against the far wall. Facing the wall. Hands right up.

Ladies, where you are please.'

From the middle of the dance floor a glass curved its way through the crowd and towards the troops. It hit high on the bridge of a nose creeping under the protective rim of a helmet. Blood was forming from the wound by the time the glass hit the floor. A rubber bullet, solid, unbending, six inches long, was fired into the crowd, and amid the screams there was a stampede away from the troops as tables and chairs were thrown aside to make way.

'Come on. No games, please, let's get it over with. Now, the men line up at that wall‐‐and now.'

More soldiers had come through the door. There were perhaps twenty of them in the hall by the time the line of men had formed up, legs wide apart and fingers and palms on the wall above their heads. Harry and the man were close to each other, separated by three others. At her table the girl in the yellow trouser suit sat very

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still. She was one of the few who wasn't barraging the army with a medley of obscenities and insults. Her fingers were tight round the stem of her glass, her eyes flicking continuously from the troops to her husband.

Josephine's table had been knocked aside in the scramble to get clear from the firing of the rubber bullet, and she stood on the dance floor interested to see what the army made of her merchant‐seaman escort.

Six of the soldiers, working in pairs, split up the line of men against the wall and started to quiz each man on his name, age and address. One soldier asked the questions, the other wrote down the answers. The lieutenant moved between the three groups checking the procedure,

while his sergeant marshalled his other men in the room to prevent any sudden break for the exits.

Private David Jones, number 278649, eighteen months of his nine year signing served, and Lance‐Corporal James Llewellyn, 512387, were working over the group of men nearest the dance floor. The man and Harry were there. The way the line had formed itself they would come to the man first. It was very slow. Conscientious, plodding. The wife was in agony.

Charade, that's all. A game of cat and mouse. They had come for him, and these were the preliminaries, the way they dressed it up. But they'd come for him. They had to know.

The lance‐corporal tapped the man's shoulder.

'Come on, let's have you." Not unkindly. It was quiet in the Ardoyne now, and the soldiers acknowledged it.

The man swung round, bringing his hands down to his side, fists clenched tight, avoiding the pleading face of his wife a few feet away. Llewellyn was asking the questions, Jones writing the answers down.

'Name?'

'Billy Downs.'

'Age?'

Twenty‐three.'

'Address?'

'Forty‐one, Ypres Avenue.'

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Llewellyn paused as Jones struggled in his notebook with the blunted pencil he had brought with him. The lieutenant walked towards them. He looked hard at the man, then down into Jones's notebook, deciphering the smudged writing.

'Billy Downs?'

'That's it.'

'We were calling for you the other morning. Expected to find you home, but you weren't there.'

He stared into the young man's face. That was the question he posed. There was no reply.

'Where were you, Mr Downs? Your good wife whom I see sitting over there didn't seem too sure.'

'I went down to see my mother in the south. It's on your files. You can check that.'

'But you've been away a fair few days, Downs boy. Fond of her, are you?'

'She's not been well, and you know that. She's a heart condition. That's in your files and all. It wasn't made any better when there weren't any of you lot around when the Prods came and

burned her out... and that's in your files too.'

'Steady, boy. What's her address?'

'Forty, Dublin Road, Cork." He said it loud enough for his wife to hear the address given. His voice was raised now, and she listened for the message that was in it. "She'll tell you I've been there for a month. That I was with her till four days ago.'

The lieutenant still gazed into Downs's face, searching for weakness, evasion, inconsistency. If there was fear there he betrayed none of it to the soldier a bare year older than himself.

'Put him in the truck," the lieutenant said. Jones and Llewellyn hustled Downs across the room and towards the door. His wife rose up out of her chair and rushed across to him.

'Don't worry, girl, once the Garda have checked with Mam I'll be home. I'll see you later." And he was out into the night to where the Saracen was parked.

The two soldiers came back to the line, and the lieutenant moved away to the other end where the youths, resigned to a ride back to barracks and an interrogation session at the end of it, snapped back sullen replies to the questions.

Llewellyn touched Harry's shoulder.

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'Name?'

'Harry McEvoy.'

'Age?'

'Thirty‐three.'

'Address?'

Jones had had his eyes down on his notebook till that moment. He glanced up to hear the answer. Harry saw an expression of astonish

ment take hold of him, then change to suspicion, then back to bewilderment.

'Bloody hell, what are you doing‐‐‐‐?'

Harry's right foot moved the seven inches into Jones's left ankle.

, the private ducked forward, caught off balance by the sudden

m, Harry lurched into him.

'Shut your face," he hissed into the soldier's ear.

Jones's face came up and met Harry's stare. Imperceptibly he saw

c head move. A quick shake, left to right and twice.

'I'm sorry," said Harry. "Forget it. I hope you'll forget it.'

The last words were very quiet and straight into Jones's ear.

lie men in the line, waiting to be questioned, still faced the

ill; the women, sitting at their tables, were out of earshot.

he exchange between Harry and Jones seemed to have passed un

)ticed.

Llewellyn had been diverted by a commotion down at the far end

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the hall, where four youths were half carried and half dragged

wards the doorway. He was concentrating again now.

'Come on‐‐what's the address?'

'Delrosa Guest House, in the Broadway. Just up from Beach

ount.'

Harry's eyes were fixed, snake‐like, on Jones.

'Bit off course, aren't you?" said Llewellyn.

'My girl's local.'

'Which one?'

'In the polka dot, the dark‐haired girl." Harry gazed past Llewel

n, his eyes never leaving Jones. Twice the younger soldier's eyes

ime up from his notebook, met Harry's, and dived back to the

ritirig.

'Lucky bastard," said Llewellyn and moved on.

Apart from Downs, the army had taken nine youths when the

iicer shouted for his men to leave the club. They went out in single

c, the last going out backwards with his rifle covering the crowd.

s the door swung to after him a hail of empty bottles and glasses

innoned into the woodwork.

A tall man at the far end from Harry shouted a protest.

'Now, come on, folks, we can do better than that. Lob things at

ic bastards, yes, but not so we cover our floor with our bottles and

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ir glasses and our beer. Now, we're not going to let those swine

mil the evening for us. Let's move it all back and tidy up, and see we can't get something out of the evening.'

It was a good effort on the part of the community leader, but doomed to failure.

Harry noticed that the girl in yellow was gone before the floor was half cleared. He shifted in his seat.

'We can't go yet. It's the principle of the thing," said Josephine. 'You cannot let the bastards wreck everything. What did you say to that soldier?'

'I just tripped against him, that's all.'

'You're lucky. You might have got a rifle butt across your face. There's men taken to the barracks for less.'

The band had started up again, attempting to capitalize on the angry mood of those left behind.

Armoured cars and tanks and guns,

Came to take away our sons ...

'Will it wake up again, or is this the lot for the evening?" asked Harry.

.. .Through the little streets so narrow...

'I doubt it," she said, "but it's best to give it a few minutes. Let's see, anyway.'