Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

She should have cried, and her eyes were dry.

His mother minded the kids.

They sat in the shadow of the bar, sheltered from the music and the laughter. He wore his suit, and Siobhan wore her best frock. She shared her Mossie’s secret. Sometimes, during the long evening, she put her hand and gently touched his rough hands.

He drank pints of Guinness, fast. She toyed with gins and bitter lemon, slowly.

Men sidled through the noise of the band, came to bend close to her Mossie's ear, ignored her and whispered to him, and moved away.

The secret was now hers, and the weight of it pinioned her. If it were known then Siobhan would be without a husband and Francis and Doloures and Patrick and Mary would be without a father.

The drink going faster and the music louder and the laughter talk fiercer. It was where they were born and where they belonged.

Her secret was that her Mossie was a traitor.

She leaned forward. Her lips were against his ear. The noise was a wall around them.

"We don't need their money."

"They'll never let me go."

"Tell them you want out."

"You tell the bitch."

"Is it just a woman who has you on the end of her string?"

"I tried once…"

"What happened?"

"It's not the place to talk… What happened? The bitch, she doesn't let go…"

The band played. It was the "Mountains of Pomeroy", it was the song of Altmore mountain. It was the celebration of a highwayman from far back, who had no teeth. Shane Bearnagh Donnelly's song… She tugged his hand and pulled him to his feet and took him to the floor that was clear of tables for dancing.

'Fear not, fear not, sweetheart,' he cried,

Fear not the foe for me,

No chain shall fall, whate'er betide,

On the arm that would be free!

Oh, leave your cruel kin and come

When the lark is in the sky;

And it's with my gun I'll guard you,

On the Mountains of Pomeroy

She sang as she danced. She sang so that he would hear her voice.

'An outlawed man in a land forlorn, He scorned to turn and fly, But kept the cause of freedom safe Up on the mountain high.'

She had dragged it from him. She must live with his secret. In her arms she felt his fear and his weakness. The secret pounded in the mind of Siobhan Nugent. She thought that she knew every man and woman and youth and girl in the bar. She had been brought up with them, she had lived with them for every year of her life excepting the six that she had spent with Mossie across the water. She knew the tightness of the society that was her home. And her Mossie was a tout…

It was not anything that he said, but it was the look of the man. It was in the middle of the Sunday afternoon, and they were alone in an underground carriage on the Circle line. It was where they could talk and know that they were not overheard, and where they had the best chance of seeing if there was a tail on either of them. The courier didn't think that the big man had slept, not for two nights at least, He was haggard and unshaven and bowed at the shoulder, It was the first time that the Limerick boy had been in England. He was shocked from the time that he had first seen the big man shambling down the platform towards him. He had travelled by train through the night from the ferry.

His only fear, before, had been when he had to pass the Special Branch officers at Hollyhead. And he had walked straight past them and gone to the waiting train. It was the appearance of the man that unnerved the courier. It was like the man was hunted, like the pressure had weighed on him. He had not, of course, been told the man's name, only where he should meet him.

When the courier had arrived at Euston mainline railway Station, he had telephoned to Dublin from a pay phone. He had been told what else he should tell the man when he met him He put off as long as possible what lie had been told to tell the man.

The courier handed him four envelopes. The courier watched the man, dirty hands shaking, open the envelopes and skim with red-rimmed eyes from the first a wad of bank notes, in the second a newly-made birth certificate, in the third a long list of names and addresses and from the last a handwritten letter.

It was what he had been sent to do. Later the courier would stay overnight with his married sister in Wandsworth to solidify his cover, and then travel back to the ferry.

The courier gulped, breathed deep.

"What I was told to tell you… was that your home was done again last night, searched by the army. Your woman's alright, and your boy's alright, they said, but there was powerful damage to your home. They said you wasn't to call home."

He was too young to say that he was sorry for what had happened.

He watched the anger in the man's eyes, burning through the tiredness.

And then they were coming into a station and the man stood and said,

"Thanks for the letters. Safe journey home, son."

And then the big man was gone, lost on the platform as the train carried the courier on.

Howard Rennie thought that Cathy must have been shopping around She’d have preferred her escorts from what he called the Hereford Gun club, If she could have had them. Must have been turned down or she wouldn't have come to him.

She was frank enough with him, what he'd have expected of her. He was right. Special Air Service had a full programme of stake out and surveillance, couldn't deliver… Sunday afternoon they were standing on the doorstep of Rennie's home, his wife was in inside buttering the bread for the tea. He was in his carpet slippers and the out -of-shape cardigan, and his pipe nestled in the palm of his hand. He towered over the girl. He'd fix the back-up, of course he would, but only because it was for her. A hell of a way for her to be spending her Sunday. She'd have traipsed round the Hereford crowd, and then she'd have been up to I. isburn to the headquarters and tried to gel a car load or two of the "Dets" the army’s mob, those Detached In Special Duties and they would have found a dozen more excuses. Nobody liked Five.

Five was a pain in the arse in the Province. Five was the intruder who didn't share, too bloody high and mighty. Hobbes was Five, and Hobbes typified them. But if Cathy asked Rennie, then she'd get her back-up.

She looked bloody awful. She needed a bath and needed a rest and needed half a day in a hairdresser's chair. The pair of them stood on his front doorstep.

There wasn't any point in asking her in to take tea with his wife and daughters. He asked her anyway and she said no, for both of them. Of course she shouldn't have come to his home. She'd just said she was arriving and rung off, and he'd taken his pistol out of the drawer in the living room, slipped it under his coat and walked to the top of the cul-de-sac, and back and quartered the road. She wouldn't come into the hall, hadn't been inside the house since Christmas morning, and then for half an hour and one glass of sherry. She'd declined a place at the lunch table. He didn't know where she had eaten her Christmas lunch.

She was folding the map. It was a great smile she had with her.

When it was dark he'd be in front of his television, probably asleep and perhaps snoring, his wife would be knitting, and Cathy Parker would be out in the bloody jungle, off to meet her tout. His daughters might have stayed in and they might have gone to friends, and Cathy Parker would be chatting up that lump of pig shit they called Song Bird.

"You need a damn good holiday, get the hell out. Go on, get away for a bit. Give yourself a break."

"Oh yes, Mr Rennie, and where?"

"Anywhere a long way away. Anywhere you can forget all about us.

"Never seems the right time," she said.

He played the older man. "You can't win it on your own…"

She'd told him a bit ago, she didn't hold back from him, what it had been like when she had last gone home, and her mother had had a few of the local better families round for sherry. Cathy had told him it had been just a super-scale disaster. He doubted she talked with many others, not the way she talked with him, confidences. She’d told him about Sunday morning drinks in the English countryside across the water. All quiet, parked in the corner and watching every new fool and his wife come in and wondering why they had to shout so loud and laugh so much. She had stood away from the window and facing the door, her training. Her mother had dragged her to meet the guests. How was she? Where was she working? Going alright for her, was it?