Chapter 9
They’d come into the house on tiptoe and holding their shoes. Both knew the prim well-scrubbed hallway and stairs well enough to estimate where the boards creaked, and where it was safe to put down their full weight. Harry held the girl’s hand very tight. At first they had tried to go up the stairs together, and then, finding that impossible, he had gently led the way. There had been no talk about what they should do, where they should go when they left the taxi, no discussion whether she should come back to Delrosa with him. He had looked into her face at the doorway as he rummaged with his free hand for the latch key, seen those mocking, querying eyes turned up to his face, looking as if to challenge or dare him to take her inside. He’d squeezed her hand, and they’d gone in together. The message of silence was implicit.
Once in his back room a floorboard had erupted in protest at her foot and he had pulled her away from the place near the basin where she was standing wriggling out of her coat. That was where it would creak. That was the place where he had prised up the planks two days earlier to find a secure hiding place for his Smith & Wesson revolver.
She slung the coat across his easy chair by the window, and stood waiting for him to move towards her. He felt a tightness streaming through him. Clumsy. Gauche. Inhibited. He reached out towards the tall girl who gazed back at him, her expression one of interest, curiosity to see what he had to offer.
‘You make me feel… a bit like someone who’s forgotten most of it,’ he whispered into her ear, one hand holding the back of her neck, the other flattened into the small of her back.
‘You haven’t made me feel anything yet.’
‘Cheeky girl.’
‘Try a bit of cheek yourself. Might take you a long way.’
He pulled his left hand round, drawing back from her to give himself room to unbutton the few remaining buttons on her blouse.
‘Not much of an obstacle course here,’ he murmured as he flicked the buttons, small and transparent, through the opened holes of the fabric.
‘Who said they were supposed to be?’
His hand had moved inside her blouse, and he began to ease the soft cotton over her shoulders and down her arms.
‘I was never very much one for this. Getting everything off in the right order, like a bloody production line in reverse.’
‘And it takes so much more time. Let’s see to it ourselves. I’ll meet you under the sheets in forty-five seconds from now.’
In a welter of tights, pants, black skirt, shoes and bra she stripped herself and was away in the bed waiting for him. Harry was fighting with his right cuff link. She had started to follow the second hand of her watch with exaggerated interest before he climbed into the narrow bed alongside her.
‘You took thirty seconds over the limit. Bad marks for that, sailor boy.’
‘Wasn’t for lack of trying.’
He had curved his arms round her, as she came close to against him. His fingers ran their course across her skin, tight, cool and firm. Beautiful girl. Her eyes closed. She moaned. Calling for him, hurrying him. That first time there were few preliminaries, few subtleties. He found her fast, deep, easy. He poured himself into her. Both engaged in a frantic, uncaring race. He sagged away. Disastrous. Bloody Belfast. Like everything else — crude and rushed. No future for tenderness or patience.
‘Got a bus to catch?’
‘It’ll be better next time,’ he said, ‘it happened too quick for me. And I never got round to asking you whether… you know, whether you take anything… or what?’
‘There’s Catholics and good Catholics here. I’m one of the first. You don’t have to worry about that.’
The second time was better. Softer, calmer. Slower. He took a long time finding the routes and depths and contours of her body. Finding where she moved and squirmed, and when she thrust herself at him. Heat against his chest and his thighs. She called the time she was ready for him to come into her, called quietly in his ear. Her mouth open, almost soundless. He smiled down at her as he felt himself slipping away into the void. It was over and they lay together. Her hair strewn with the sweat out on the pillow, he on her softness waiting for the limpness to come. Still locked together.
‘You’ve no worries, then?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean? I don’t think so.’
‘You can’t screw if you’re really worried. Did you know that?’
‘Old wives. Where did you hear that? Who told you that?’
‘Just what one of the girls said in the bog tonight.’
‘Tell me what she said.’ He lay straddled across her, her mouth an inch or so from his ear.
‘She said she’d tried to do it with one of the big men, but he couldn’t manage it. She said he was all so tied up he couldn’t make it. She was ever so upset.’
Harry grimaced in disbelief.
‘No, that’s what she said. She was there tonight. She told me in the loo. She’s a bit frantic at the best of times. Then the army nicked the fellow who’d have had her on the way home. Peeved her a bit. On her own on Saturday night. Not right for her. That’s what she said. Big hero. Big deal. I’m all for cowards in this city.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Harry, very still now. ‘Which girl was it?’
‘I’m not telling you the best lay in Ballymurphy!’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re making it up.’
She pushed him back sideways. In the small bed there was hardly enough room, and he clung to her to save himself from disappearing on the floor. She rolled over onto him, half her weight supported by his hips and waist and the other half supported by an elbow.
‘It was Theresa. In pink. She had the tight skirt? Remember her? Believe me. You’ll be up to Ballymurphy sniffing round now. Randy bugger.’
‘I’d believe anything said by anyone as lovely as you,’ said Harry.
‘Bullshit,’ she said.
‘Who was the big man that didn’t slake wee Theresa’s thirst?’ His hands were on the move again now, seeking the closeness between her thighs. She rolled and rose beneath him.
‘Just like that. Go on. Just like that. The big man, the one they’re all looking for. The London man. The one that did the politician in London. Don’t stop there. Just like that. Faster! There’s bugger all time. The old girl’s alarm’ll be off in half an hour. She’s out like a flash then. Makes enough noise to wake half the folks in Milltown Cemetery.’
Minutes later she was out of bed, dressed and making her way quietly down the stairs to the front door. She refused to let Harry come and see her off, gave him a sisterly kiss on the forehead and was gone. He stood at his bedroom window and saw her some moments later walking along the main road under the street lights. When she had gone beyond the gap he lost sight of her.
After she had left Harry lay in his bed, stretching out his legs, searching out the new-found room, working over in his mind the information she had given him. No problem for the intelligence guys. A girl called Theresa, about eighteen or nineteen, in Ballymurphy. Sleeps around a bit. No problem. Should wrap up the whole thing. Not bad; one good screw in the line of duty, and the big coup. He could scarcely believe his luck — getting so far so quickly — all falling into his lap — and on a night out, at that. And the old woman, Davidson, who didn’t rate his chances, who fussed and clucked over him, what would he be thinking when Harry called through? A moment to savour, that would be. I’d like to see his face, thought Harry.
There was still the worry over being recognized by that stupid, gawping soldier. But they should have the man within forty-eight hours, and then what the soldier saw wouldn’t matter. All be academic by then. But where did the soldier come from? He turned over in his mind the military situations he’d been in over the last two years, trying to work out where he had seen the young man who had no doubts about him. Davidson would sort it out. Ring him in the morning. Let him know it’s just about wrapped up.