Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

He was allowed out for exercise each morning. It was four miles to the city centre.

She had gone with him the first morning. All the way back up the hill and the carbon monoxide from the car exhausts catching in his throat, dragging into his lungs, the whole time she was jogging comfortably at his shoulder. Once he had lifted his pace, and made no impression on her at all. They had come back inside the house. Bren felt a little sick, and his legs were stiffening again, but that was because of what P.T.I. Terry had put him through. He had trudged up the stairs, paused once to steady himself against the banister, the first morning.

Into his room. He had flopped into the one easy chair.

"Get me a towel," she'd said.

Bren had come back into the living room of the flat, and she had been standing naked in the centre of the room, her track suit and T-shirt and bra in a heap on the floor by her feet.

Thanks," she'd said.

She had dried herself hard. She had pummelled the towel down round her thighs and up round her stomach and across her breasts and under her armpits and across her throat and her neck and her head, and she had tossed the towel back to him and dressed again.

The first morning she had left him with a wad of papers, everything that he needed to know about the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland.

He had made himself a sandwich at lunchtime, and grilled some sausages for the evening meal.

He knew nothing about Cathy Parker. He had seen the muscles in her body, the biceps and thighs and the tightness of her lower belly. She would know everything about him because she would have seen his file. He had seen the slender dull gold arms of the crucifix that hung low on a chain and rested between her breasts. Everything about him was in the file that would have been sent from Personnel at Curzon Street, his childhood and his education and his earlier work. She had big nipples on shallow breasts, and she had a bruise the size of his palm on her ribs. He knew nothing about her.

And it would be the same on the second morning – the run, the towelling off, and her passing him more papers to read, then leaving him to kill the day with them.

He had never met a woman remotely like Cathy Parker before.

"You didn't find work?"

"No, I got there a day too late. Just missed."

"But it was the weekend." The landlady was confused.

"There's friends of mine, they know what's around, they said there was nothing more."

"You were so hopeful of finding work."

"That's the way it goes, better luck next time I try…"

She thought he had a lovely smile.

"I do hope I'm not interfering, but wouldn't you do better looking for work at home?"

"None there."

He wore a wedding ring. She had noticed that when he had first come to her door in answer to the advertisement she had placed in the

Herald amp; Echo. She thought he must have been married for several years, because since he first chose the ring his hands must have thickened with work and the flesh around the ring now furled over it so that it was tight, too tight to take off if he wanted to wash his hands thoroughly. She was very observant.

"Your wife must miss you dreadfully,"

She saw him start, as if she had nicked the hidden nerve "She understands."

"She sounds a very good woman."

"She knows what has to be done…"

She should not have mentioned the wife, she realised it. She enjoyed so much these brief conversations with her lodger. She was afraid she had spoiled something that was precious to her. She would have rather liked to have told him that she had defended his nationality against the busybody next door, but he had loped away up the stairs.

Later, from the kitchen, she heard him go out again.

The third day of the week. Bren had been ready, waiting in his room and changed, and looking down into the side street that ran to the Malone Road. From the high front window he saw her Astra swing across the traffic flow, causing two motorists to brake and almost collide. He heard the belt of their horns and she seemed to ignore them, didn't slacken her speed until she stopped outside the house.

She looked a wreck when she came through his door.

There was mud on her face and her hands. She wore a boiler suit that was too large for her, navy blue where the material was not obscured by the dirt smears.

"Am I late? Sorry…"

Bren said, "It's only a couple of minutes past eight."

"Sorry…"

She had a duffle bag and she dropped it on the floor.

She started to wriggle out of the boiler suit.

"My things are in there," she pointed down at the duffle bag.

She was kicking off her boots and the mud from them was spread out across the carpet of his room. She was out of the boilersuit, peeling off a sweater and then her jeans.

" Bloody cold old night," she said.

He had the grip open. First into his hand was the Heckler and Koch rifle, stock folded. Second into his hand were the two magazines taped upside down to each other. Third into his hand was the personal radio.

He laid them on the floor.

"Quite a heavy frost," she said.

He found her track-suit trousers and her T-shirt and her running shoes.

He put them on the floor beside her, and then he bent to pick up the mud that she had spread.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," she mouthed. "Does it matter…?"

He didn't ask her where she had been, what she had been doing, and he didn't think she would have told him. In a ditch, or in a hole like the one Jocelyn had dug. Out on a hillside, or damp in a bog field. And he had been asleep, slept pretty well through the night. The weapon was old, its paintwork was scratched, but the grease was fresh on it. He looked down at it. He saw where the serial number had been rasped away. The Heckler and Koch was a killing weapon. He felt the winnowing of the fear in his stomach.

"Are you all right?"

"Course I'm all right…"

"Honestly, Cathy, wouldn't you rather rest up for an hour?"

"Come on," she said, and she was going for the door.

They didn't speak when they ran, and they made up the time that she had been late by running faster.

From her car, back at the house, she gave him his file for the day.

She was in his bathroom, and she hadn't closed the door. The first day he had had the file on the Department of the Environment's work in the province. The second day he had had the file on the state of the war throughout the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, designated SECRET.

The file was marked "East Tyrone Brigade". It was stamped "NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM SECURE PREMISES". It was another SECRET file. He saw there were ninety-three pages, closely typed, and then bound separately inside the outer folder were photographs of men and women and of buildings and of countryside, and there was a large-scale map folded into the back of the file. It was the world he had walked into.

"Would you like some coffee?"

She murmured from the bathroom, "Be great, lots of sugar."

He put on the kettle. He was scared, couldn't hide it, couldn't help but admit it. He thought that it was the skill, the smooth talk and soft soap, of people like Mr Wilkins that they could con young men like himself to join up in total ignorance. The file he had read yesterday, he reckoned that back at Curzon Street they didn't know the half of it. The place had terrified him, and all he had done was read.

The place had him on a barbed hook, He made the coffee. He knocked gently. No answer. He took it into the bathroom.

She was stretched out in the filled bath, the water lapping at her ears and mouth. She was asleep. She looked so bloody vulnerable.

He poured the coffee down the kitchen sink.

After she had dressed, a long time later, gone, left her mud on the carpet, Bren settled with the file. He studied the digest and the faces and the farmhouses and the countryside of Altmore mountain. The names of the officers of the Brigade were typed out. The man who was O.C. and the man who was Quartermaster, and Mossie Nugent who was Intelligence Officer. And the young men who were learning the trade, ranked as volunteers. The names of the hopefuls, the couriers and the watchers… and the same photograph of Jon Jo Donnelly that he had seen on Mr Wilkins' desk in Curzon Street. He would work until his eyes misted in tiredness. He was again a prisoner in the flat on the second floor and would be until the morning, until she came for him again.