Randall frowned. The man drew his head back. ‘Wait, you are coming back with us to Belfast, aren’t you?’
And the look in his eyes, it was as though he fully expected the answer to be no, because that was what life had taught him to expect, that just when things seemed as though they might actually be starting to go well something always happened to throw them into doubt.
Randall slipped out of that look by turning to the bar and ordering another pitcher. Pitchers all round, make that.
*
It was quite possible that he was still drunk the following afternoon when he rang Dan Stevens. Certainly the woman whom he had rung a couple of minutes before thinking he was ringing Dan Stevens told him that he was, or at least she did the second time. ‘Read the goddamn number, or get someone sober to read it for you.’
(It was the third three, for some reason he kept seeing it as an eight.)
Stevens cautioned him not to be too rash. It would be understandable if he was feeling a little conflicted. Hell, if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be the man Dan took him to be. So by all means vent some spleen — let rip, in fact — but promise Dan this, that he would call back in a couple of hours when he was…
‘I am fine just as I am.’ He held up a random selection of fingers in front of his face. Three, not six, or eight. He thought maybe he let a laugh escape, much to Dan Stevens’ audible displeasure.
‘I am bound to tell you you are doing a very foolish thing. Some doors you will find do not open twice.’
‘I appreciate your concern, Dan, really, but what can I tell you? Turns out I am the sentimental type after all.’
He was betting his stash on the same square as DeLorean.
*
There were still army-issue hoses in the corridors of the administration building when he got back to Dunmurry, sand-filled fire buckets stationed outside the doors, one of which now bore the name Bill Haddad.
Whatever had happened to change his mind in the days since Randall had spoken to him in his office (the funeral pictures might not have been incidental), DeLorean had decided that the image of the factory at least was under threat and accordingly had dispatched Haddad from New York to oversee PR. Randall had not seen him since the un-festive Christmas drinks in the Waldorf Astoria, in the course of which Haddad had repeatedly pulled rank, dropping names (mostly Kennedys) and boasting of his in-depth knowledge of the Northern Irish political scene. So obviously he reacted to actually being there as though it was some sort of punishment.
Or that at least was the impression he gave at the meeting that Don, at Randall’s suggestion, called between management and unions to try to minimise the impact on production of any future hunger strike deaths.
‘Let’s not beat about the bush here,’ said Randall, ‘how many more do we think are going to die?’
Haddad pushed his glasses up on to his forehead and with the same three fingertips massaged the bridge of his nose. Has it come to this?
One of the union guys, taking his lead, threw his pen down on the table. ‘I object,’ he said.
‘And I am only trying to be rational. The worst thing we can do is to leave ourselves unprepared.’
‘Well…’ Anto broke the silence that ensued, ‘there’s the three boys who started in March… Hughes, McCreesh and O’Hara… And then there’s Joe McDonnell who went on’ — he cleared his throat of nothing — ‘who went on as soon as Bobby died, and presumably if any of the other three die there will be boys go on after them.’
Randall had been writing all this down. He stopped a second after Anto did. ‘Do you really think Thatcher will let it go that far?’
The guy who had thrown his pen down grunted; at least he was still in the room.
‘Nobody thought she would let it go this far,’ Anto said. ‘And I can’t see the hunger strikers backing down now. They’re inside. It’s like its own wee world, prison. Their loyalty is to each other before their families or even the IRA.’
The other men nodded.
Randall readied his pen again. ‘So, what are we saying… Four? Five?’
Anto shuddered. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘But we have to think about it.’
‘Maybe five, but after that… wiser heads would have to prevail, wouldn’t they?’
‘Let’s say six,’ Randall said. ‘Worst-case scenario. And if we were to allow half a day per funeral, all those who wanted to attend, that is…?’
The men looked at one another. Anto again spoke into their silence.
‘They’ll not all be in Belfast. Hughes and O’Hara are both Derry, McCreesh is South Armagh. The like of those I think we could keep down to a symbolic walkout — two minutes’ silence on the road in front of the gate sort of thing.’
Randall nodded. Finally they were getting somewhere. ‘I am sure we can work around that. Just one thing… You see that banner they’ve been carrying — the car smashing through the big H Block? Do you think they could lose that?’
For the first time since they had walked in the door the union men smiled. The guy who had thrown down his pen was slipping it now into his inside pocket. ‘What if they just kept it out of sight of the cameras?’
Haddad sat forward. ‘Point of order, that is a PR matter.’
‘Well what do you want them to do with the banner?’
He gathered up his things and headed for the boardroom door.
‘Bill,’ Randall called after him. ‘They’re waiting for an answer here.’
‘Keep them out of sight of the cameras, of course,’ he said angrily.
*
One of those who joined the strike after the first few deaths had been a member of the IRA gang (they would have preferred ‘unit’) that bombed the Conway Hotel. The car they were making their escape in had broken down before it was even out of the driveway. That was when, as the security guards at the Conway had told it to Randall, they burst into the off-duty police officer’s house, demanding the keys of his car. (What were the chances of that, indeed?) This particular guy had managed to get away when the shooting started, but only a few months later he was out again, right in the heart of downtown, on his way to plant a bomb, again, when who should appear but the cops — again — and give chase to the van he was driving. He ditched that and tried to hijack another car, but the engine at the crucial moment cut out on him.
It could happen to anyone with any car. Ask Johnny Carson.
On such small mechanical details did fortunes sometimes turn.
He died after seventy-three days without food. Twenty-five, he was.
A waste, whatever way you cut it.
14
The one thousandth car came down the assembly line in the second week of June. Men and women were kissing it before they passed it on to the next section. By the time it got to their end of the shop there were balloons attached to the wing mirrors, streamers hanging off the rear bumpers.
‘Didn’t we do well?’ said TC, an unconvincing Bruce Forsyth, barely even in the same language group, said Anto.
Like the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine that had come down the line before it, the car, its streamers and balloons catching in the wind, was driven straight out of the assembly shop doors and into EVP. ‘Fine-tuning’ was the term used now, to minimise the work required when the cars were taken off the ships at the other end, because, despite the weeks of retraining, work ‘Stateside’ was still needed, although listening to some of the stories the men brought back from over there Liz didn’t wonder at it. The ones the women brought back were even more lurid. (They all of them, women and men, sported badges on their overalls, given to them by their American co-workers: Honorary POG. Look like a Pig Work like a Dog, it stood for. There were no letters for Party like a Wild Animal.) If you were to believe even the half of it they must only have gone into the workshop in the mornings for respite from the nights.