Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

"I can't…"

"You feckin' well will."

"Don't ask me."

"What's this? It's?500 a month, first of every month. It's interest paid every year. Two years and more…"

"Don't ask me."

"It's money we don't dream about. It's more than fourteen thousand feckin' pounds. When did we have fourteen thousand feckin' pounds?

When did we have?500 paid in each month, clockwork?"

"Siobhan, don't ask me."

"Correction, not 'we'; when did Moss Aloysius Nugent have fourteen thousand pounds and more?"

"It's not for talking of."

"I want to know, I've the right to know. I darn the heels of your socks. I turn the collars of your shirts so's you can go on wearing them. I buy cheap. Damn you, I've worried myself sick about money, and there's fourteen thousand feckin' pounds… Who's paying it?"

"You don't need to know."

"Why's they paying it?"

It was the twelfth year of their marriage. Her own mother, rest her soul, had told her she could have done better. A new life, a good life, in England, six years of it, and then he had insisted that they come back to bloody Ireland. Nearly six more years of living cramped in his mother's bungalow, because they had no money for a place of their own, and the Housing Executive list stretched away above them because they had been away and lost places on the ladder.

"I want to know, damn you." She stood her full height. She felt her lips against her teeth.

"Best you don't ever know."

"Is that your last word?"

"You can't be told. You'll not be helped by knowing, believe me.’’

She heard the pitch of her own voice rising. "What do I believe?' 1 find a Building Society book that has been kept a secret from me, fourteen thousand feckin' pounds. What should I believe…?’’

There was the click of the front door. There was his mother's voice, and the babble of the kids and the loud laughter from the television. She saw his face lighten, as if his rescue had come. His hand reached out and he took the building Society book from her.

His face seemed to say that he was safe, that he had seen her off, that she would not raise her voice now that his mother was back. He slid the Building Society book down into the hip pocket of his trousers. Her hand was in the pocket of her trousers. Her fingers were round the shape of the box. His mother called out, to let them know she was back, that she was putting on the kettle. He went to go past her. She stood in front of the closed door of the bedroom. His hand was on her shoulder and she felt the gentle pressure as he eased her sideways.

"And what's this?"

She held it in front of his face.

They were very close, almost touching

She held in front of him the small steel box that was the size of a cigarette packet.

"What's this, then?"

The blood colour running from his face. ‘’Give it me.’’

Her thumb rested over the red button that was recessed into the box.

"Tell me, what is this?"

"Don't, for the love of Christ, please, feck you, don't…"

There was his mother's voice again, penetrating into the room, telling them that their tea would be ready in a minute.

She felt her power.

"What happens if I press this…?" Her thumb lay across the red button.

"Don't…"

"Is it a bomb switch…?"

He shook his head. It was as if his voice had died, and him never short for words.

"Is it a warning bell…?"

She saw the fear in his eyes.

"Do they come running? Who'll come? The slob that you bloody jump for? The Devitt boy? The half-wit Riordan kid? The little Brannigan bastard…?"

Again the shake of his head. The smoothness of the red button was under her thumb. He would have known that he could not wrench it from her, not before she had pressed the button.

"Who comes running when little Mossie presses the button…?"

His mother was outside the door. Siobhan leaned against it. His mother said that the tea was poured. The door was pushed against her back.

Siobhan's weight took the pressure. She called, the loving daughter-in-law, wheedling voice, that they would be out in a moment. She heard the footsteps shuffle away.

"Who comes running?"

"Please, Siobhan, you can't know."

"Or I press the feckin' thing…"

"Don't!"

"I press it."

She held the steel box right in front of his face, where it would have filled his eyes. He was breathing hard. His face was white.

"You don't know…"

"I press it,"

He crumpled against her, pushing her against the door. The steel box was driven into his cheek. She had destroyed him. She did not know how, nor did she know why. Her arms slipped round his neck. She held the box against the frayed collar of his shirt.

His voice was in her ear, in her hair.

"It's the army that comes running, or the police. I'm theirs, I belong to them…"

For a long time she held him, fearful for herself, fearful for him. His breathing had slowed and steadied.

"You're a tout?" she said, still not believing it. "You tout for the Brits?"

"Since way back." She wondered if, before, he had ever been near to telling her.

She had no more anger, only fear.

"Jesus, Mossie, you get killed for touting."

Siobhan gave him back the steel box. She put it into his hand and closed his fingers round it. She had seen the helicopter land in the field that evening between her home and the home of Attracta Donnelly. She had seen the soldiers bent low under the flailing rotors, running to the farmhouse. The box was her husband's link to those soldiers. There was a woman in the village, and her son not more than ten years older than her Francis and the boy had been shot dead by the army. And she knew the woman and made small talk with her after Mass or in the queue at the Dungannon supermarket cash desks. There was another woman in the village, Her husband had been killed by his own bomb, detonated by the electronic sweep of the army. She knew the woman, and thought she was lovely and brave, and talked with her at the school gate before Doloures and Patrick came out.

Her arms slid from his neck.

‘’The book’s your give away. You take a risk with the book."

Mossie said. "We goes to Belfast four times a year, right? We all go, you and me and the kids; that's known, you tell everyone that’ll listen that we go to Belfast four times a yearfor the big shop, and I get my new brushes… Everyone Knows – And I leaves you, because you and the kids don't want to buy paint brushes, right? I buy the brushes and I get the entries marked up into the book

"You's bloody stupid, Mossie, keeping the book here.’’

"I need it."

"That's idiot talk, Mossie. Why's the book not in a bank safe, why's it not in Belfast?"

"It's all I have. It's the future. The bleeper box, that's feckin' present.

It's a future that matters. Yours, mine, the little ones'."

"You carried it all with you, you poor love."

"I thought you'd hate me, if you knew."

"God, why?"

"For turning, for being turned."

She blazed her eyes at him. "You think I'm a Provo? You think they matter to me? Do you know nothing of me?"

"I didn't think you'd want it told you that your man was a tout."

"If we're going out tonight, we'd better be changing," she said.

Through all those days and months and years of marriage, he had lived in fear with his secret. He was still slumped against the door. ..

Just madness, but she could have giggled. For all she had known she might have been living with a child-molester or an adulterer or a rapist.

Could have been worse, her husband was only a traitor against his community. She giggled because she remembered the story of Ann Flaherty, gone with Maeve who was her friend, to see her boy sent down for eight years at the court in Belfast for possession of explosives and kidnapping. Eight years, and not past his nineteenth birthday, and Ann Flaherty coming out of the courthouse and dabbing her eyes, and her friend Maeve who had travelled up on the bus from Dungannon with her had said, "Don't be upsetting yourself, dear, could have been worse, could have got eighteen months for thieving…" The whole of Altmore knew what Ann Flaherty had been told by her friend Maeve.