Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

The older Blueshirt walked across to the bar. He picked up one of the glasses of whiskey Billy had just poured out. He sauntered back towards Vincent. Two of the others went to the bar and started to help themselves to drinks as well. They wouldn’t be sober long. The big man stayed put.

‘And you’re the bum boy. Vincent, is it?’

Vincent didn’t move. He still held a tray of glasses in his hands.

‘You’ve no business in here.’ Billy’s voice was firm. But he was puzzled. He didn’t know why this was happening. If they’d been drunk it would have been easier. He could handle drunks, even queer-bashing drunks. Nine times out of ten they wanted a drink more than they wanted the pleasure of pulping some queers. The thin-faced Blueshirt turned his attention back to Billy. He moved closer to him, pushing him backwards.

‘Were you at the Mass today, Billy?’

Billy said nothing. The man’s easy, conversational tone wouldn’t last. He knew that. He knew what was coming when the man stopped talking.

‘I hear Vincent was. Did you pray for Billy, Vincent? Because the old bugger needs all the prayers he can get. “Quia peccavi nimis cogitatione verbo, et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Right?’ And with each ‘mea culpa’ he slammed his fist into Billy’s chest, forcing him back against the door. ‘Get down on your knees, Billy. Say some prayers.’

Billy was coughing. He was in pain. Vincent took a step towards him but the publican shook his head furiously, choking. The Blueshirt by the door walked over to him. He put both hands on his shoulders and pushed him down hard, till Billy had no choice but to bend his knees and kneel.

‘If we put a white surplice on you, wouldn’t we take you for an altar boy so, Billy boy?’ The thin-faced Blueshirt smiled down at him.

‘The Guards aren’t going to like — ’

‘They turn a blind eye to you and your sodomite clan most of the time. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t think someone had done Dublin a favour if you were floating in the Liffey tomorrow morning. Once in a while you need to be reminded what being a queer is about. Why not now?’

Billy knew, just like Vincent earlier, that there was no reply he could give that wouldn’t provoke more violence. The older man turned to where Vincent still stood with the tray of glasses. He put down the glass of whiskey he was holding, very slowly and very deliberately. It was a simple act, but the very precision with which he placed the glass on the table was menacing.

‘You defiled the Eucharist today. Did I hear it right?’

He stretched out his hand and held Vincent’s wrist in a tight grip.

‘Is that the hand?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘There was a time it would have been cut off for that. I’d do it now.’

Billy was struggling to get up off his knees, determined he would take the beating himself if there had to be one.

‘Jesus and Mary, what is it you bastards want? Get out of here!’

The Blueshirt next to Billy slammed a fist into his stomach. He collapsed on to the floor. The man’s foot came down hard on his chest.

The older Blueshirt still held Vincent’s wrist.

‘A grand day for blackmail was it then, Vincent?’

‘I told you, I don’t know what you’re fucking gabbing about!’

Suddenly the man stopped smiling. He swung Vincent against the wall, knocking the tray of glasses out of his hands. They smashed all around him as he fell to the ground. The Blueshirt bent down and dragged him back up by the throat. Vincent was bleeding. There were cuts on his face, his hands, everywhere. Spots of blood were starting to show through his shirt.

‘All I need is the letters.’

Vincent stared at him. He knew now. It made no sense, but he knew.

‘Do you understand what I’m gabbing about now, bum boy?’

He let go his throat. Vincent leant against a table to get his breath.

‘Give me the letters and we’ll be gone. That’s not so hard, is it?’

After a pause Vincent nodded. He straightened himself up. The Blueshirt smiled again. No, it wasn’t hard. He picked up the glass of whiskey he had put down so deliberately and drank it, slowly, in one go.

‘Amen!’

He turned back to Billy, still on the floor, clutching his stomach.

‘And we’ll have something for our trouble, Billy boy. Go on lads.’

The other three Blueshirts moved to the bar and started to take bottles of spirits from the shelves. They were going to clear them. The thin-faced man turned to Vincent again. He hadn’t seen Vincent’s hand tightening round the neck of a broken glass on the table beside him. Nobody had.

‘Where are they?’ demanded the man.

He didn’t see the bottle coming either, as Vincent summoned every ounce of fear and force and love in his body and pushed the splintered glass into the Blueshirt’s face. As the man cried out in pain, Vincent was already through the door that opened straight on to the stairs. The other Blueshirts, racing from behind the bar they were pillaging, were too late to stop the bolt on the inside of the staircase door shooting home. The older man was screaming now; he was momentarily blinded by the blood pouring down his face. The others wrenched at the door. It wouldn’t take long to break through it. It was just about as rotten and rickety as everything else in Carolan’s Bar.

Vincent Walsh was already at the top of the first flight of stairs. He didn’t stop. He carried on running up the narrow, twisting staircase that led to the top of the house. He pushed open the door to the tiny room that was his home. An iron-framed bed, a lopsided chest of drawers with a drawer missing, a hat stand with a few clothes, a wash basin and a jug, a paraffin stove, a pile of second-hand books. There was no lock on the door but he slammed it shut behind him and pushed the chest of drawers a few feet across the room against it. He turned to the bed and reached under the mattress. He pulled out a small bundle of letters, four blue envelopes.

He looked at the letters for a moment, unsure what to do, knowing he only had seconds to decide. He pushed them into his pocket. Then he climbed on to the bed. In the sloping roof above it was a small, square window. He pushed it open and pulled himself through, out on to the roof.

Thick cloud hung over the city and there was a steady drizzle now. The slates were wet underfoot; many of them were loose. But Carolan’s Bar was tucked tightly into the side of a more substantial Georgian building. As Vincent scrambled and slid down the roof, his fall was broken by the parapet wall next door. He climbed over it, into the lead valley on the other side. He had been here before. He had lain in that wide valley on hot summer nights sometimes, when his room was too stifling to let him sleep. He heard the angry, vengeful Blueshirts as they burst into the room above, but in the seconds before one of them appeared at the window, Vincent had run along the lead valley to the back of the Georgian house. He had disappeared.

It was raining heavily now. It had been for several hours. The city was silent. The day’s celebrations had gone on long into the night and they had faded away, finally, with a reluctance that wasn’t hard to understand. Tomorrow ordinary life would return. And the rain itself seemed to carry that message. Vincent Walsh was soaked to the skin. The cuts that covered his body had long since stopped bleeding and the bruises could have been worse. There were plenty of times they had been worse. But pain and fear didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had saved the letters. And in saving them he had saved the man he loved. Even if he never saw him again, even if the priest never knew about it, Vincent believed he had done something that made him worthy of the love he felt. This was the romantic notion that had grown in his head as he walked the streets of Dublin, pushing out the real world again, as it had been pushed out twenty-four hours before, walking along the Quays to the Park. Perhaps it was all his head could find to keep the truth out of his heart. He would have to leave Dublin, for a while at least, but he could come back when things had quietened down. There would always be a place to stay with Billy. He knew that. It didn’t matter. One day, one day he would meet the priest again. One day he would be able to tell him everything.