He went off duty at 3.30, and seventy-five minutes later the message of what he had overheard and its context were on their way to the intelligence officer of the Provisionals’ Third Battalion.
Chapter 8
Harry spent a long time getting himself ready to go out that Saturday night. He bathed, and put on clean clothes, even changing his socks from the ones he’d been wearing through the rest of the day, took a clean shirt from the wardrobe and brushed down the one suit he’d brought with him. In the time that he’d been in Belfast he had tried to stop thinking in the terms of an army officer, even when he was on his own and relaxed. He attempted to make his first impulses those of the ex-merchant seaman or lorry driver that he hoped to become. As he straightened his tie, though, he allowed himself the luxury of thinking that this was a touch different from a mess night with the rest of the regiment at base camp in Germany.
He’d spent a difficult and nearly unproductive first week. He’d visited a score of firms looking for driver’s work with no success till Friday when he had come across a scrap merchant on the far side of Andersonstown. There they’d said they might be able to use him, but he should come back on Monday morning when he would get a definite answer. He had been in the pub on the corner several times, but though he was now accepted enough for him to stand and take his drink without the whole bar lapsing into a silent stare none of the locals initiated any conversation with him, and the opening remarks he made to them from time to time were generally rebutted with non-committal answers.
It had been both hard and frustrating, and he felt that the one bright spot that stood out was this Saturday night. Taking Josephine out. Like a kid out of school and going down the disco, you silly bugger. At your age, off to a peasant hop. As he dressed himself he began to liven up. One good night out was what he needed before the tedium of next week. Nearly six days gone, and not a thing to hook on to. Davidson said three weeks and something ought to show. Must have been the pep talk chat. He came down a little after seven and sat in the chair by the fire in the front room that was available to guests. He was on his own. All the others scurried away on Friday morning with their bags packed and homes to get to after a half-day’s work at the end of the week. Not hanging about up here, not in the front line.
When the doorbell rang he slipped quickly out into the hall, and opened the door. Josephine stood there, breathing heavily.
‘I’m sorry I’m late. Couldn’t get a bus. They’ve cut them down a bit, I think. I’m not very late, am I?’
‘I think all the buses are on the scrap yards up the road, stacks of them there, doubles and singles. I’d only just come down. I reckon you’re dead on time. Let’s go straight away.’
He shouted back towards the kitchen that he was on his way out, that he had his key, and not to worry if he was a bit late.
‘How do we get there?’ he asked. ‘It’s all a bit strange to me moving about the city still, especially at night.’
‘No problem. We’ll walk down to the hospital, get a cab there into town, and in Castle Street we’ll get another cab up the Crumlin. It’s just a short walk from there. It won’t take long, we’ll be there in forty-five minutes. It’s a bit roundabout, that’s all.’
In Ypres Avenue the man and his wife were making their final preparations to go out. There had been an uneasy understanding between them since their talk in the early hours after his homecoming, and no further word on the subject had been spoken. Both seemed to accept that the wounds of that night could only be healed by time and silence. She had lain in bed the first three mornings waiting for the high whine of the Saracens, expecting the troops to come breaking in to tear her man from their bed. But they didn’t come, and now she began to believe what he had told her. Perhaps there was no clue, perhaps the photokit really did look as little like him as she, his wife, believed. Her mother was busying herself at the back of the house round the stove, where she kept a perpetual pot of freshened tea. All the children were now in bed, the twins complaining that it was too early. To both of them the evening was something to look forward to, a change from the oppressiveness of the atmosphere as the man sat about his house, too small for privacy or for him to absent himself from the rest of the family. It had been laid down by his superiors that he was not to try to make contact with his colleagues in the movement, or in any way expose himself to danger of arrest. It meant long hours of waiting, fiddling time uselessly away. Already he felt restless, but hurrying things was futile. That’s how they all got taken, going off at half-cock when things weren’t ready for them. Not like London. All the planning was there. No impatience, just when it suited and not a day earlier. Boredom was his great enemy, and the need was for discipline, discipline as befits the member of an army.
With his wife on his arm, and in her best trouser suit, he walked up his street towards the hut with the corrugated-iron roof that was the social club. He could relax here, among his own. Drain his pints. Talk to people. It was back to the ordinary. To living again.
By the time Harry and Josephine arrived at the club, it was nearly full, with most of the tables taken. The girl said she’d find somewhere to sit, and he pushed his way towards the long trestle tables at the far end from the door where three men were hard at it in their shirt sleeves taking the tops off bottles and pouring drinks. Harry forced his way through the shoulders of the men standing close to the makeshift bar, made it to the front and called for a pint of Guinness and a gin and orange.
As he was struggling back to the table where Josephine was sitting he saw a man come up to her and gesture towards him. After they’d spoken a few words he’d nodded his head, smiled at the girl and moved back towards the door.
‘Someone you know?’ he said when he sat down, shifting her coat onto 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 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.