Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

Nothing she could answer… and nothing said by her mother and father after the guests had gone, just their unhappiness and anxiety paraded in front of her.

"Leave it to you buggers and we'll never win," she said.

He laughed with her and closed the door. In the drawer in the hall was the secure phone. He arranged for two back-up cars.

He didn't really think that this was women's work, but then he was only an old-fashioned copper. He settled himself at the end of his table and ate his tea.

She had followed him round the bungalow. All he had told her was that he was going to be out in the evening. She followed him round like she knew he was going to see the handler. He could have counted the words she had said to him that day on the fingers of one hand, and his mother had never stopped her bleating, and Francis had kicked Doloures on the knee, as if to show that he was affected by the strain between his father and mother.

If he went into the bedroom then she followed him. If he went into the sittin room to sit down in his chair then she was hovering behind him. If he went out into the back garden to fill the basket with wood for the fire then she was waiting halfway down the path for him.

It was as if she didn’t believe him, was waiting for him to say that it hadn't been real, just a feckin' nightmare.

Mossie had just gone into the bedroom to change his shoes, put on a clean shirt, when the doorbell rang. He heard the voices, and his name called.

Patsy Riordan was in the doorway.

The boy was always used for messages.

It was how it would end, he knew that.. It would end with a call to a meeting It was what they always did.. They called the tout to a meeting, and they kicked him inside and they had the hood over his head, the tout's head, and the twine round his wrists, the tout's wrists, and the beating would start… That was how it would end.

"Yeah, no problem, tell him I'll be right down."

A few minutes later he was gone out into the night and Siobhan had followed him right to the car.

Her father was down with his drill to get the shelves back on the walls.

Her mother, with a needle and strong thread, worked to repair the ripped fabric of the chairs. Melvin had been and gone, satisfied himself that the wiring in the roof had not been damaged. Mrs Rea, from the far end of the village, had brought new plates and new mugs, her own spares. Gerry Brannigan had hammered the floorboards down hard where they had been lifted, and muttered all the time that, so help him, the 'boys' would make the bastards pay for this. Help poured through her door, comfort was Attracta's company, and the priest after Mass had held her hand longer than usual and then put the same hand on Kevin's shoulder and called him a fine young fellow, and smiled on mother and son.

Now Attracta laughed.

Il was the first time she had laughed, smiled even, since the soldiers had been.

The whole of Altmore laughed with old Sean Hegarty.

Two plastic hip joints, and a waddling walk, Hegarty had breezed into the farmhouse half hidden by the television set he carried. Up in his barn over the crest of the mountain Hegarty stored enough appliances to fit out half of a new housing estate.

"Is the cooker working, missus, did the feckers break the cooker?"

"cooker's fine, Sean."

" 'Cos I've cookers when you need one."

"Not this time, Sean."

If she'd wanted a tumble drier, she had only to ask. If the refrigerator was damaged, she had only to say. Hegarty would have it She laughed out loud.

Hegarty was the most popular man on the mountain, no doubts. He could bring down from his barn the oldest and dirtiest cooker, and if he was asked he had the skills to make it spark like it was a death trap. Not last year, would have been the year before, Hegarty had carried around his pride and joy, his very worst cooker. Fourteen families had taken in the cooker in the one twelve-month, and then gone down to the Department of Social Security in Dungannon, and demanded the Inspector come out, and had received the grant for a new cooker. The Inspector had caught on after seeing the cooker only twice, but he didn't want his car torched so he signed the grant papers. The original cooker back in place, Hegarty back up the mountain with his filthy dirty cooker; money for the bar and the horses or for a deposit on a new car.

It was said that Hegarty was the best-read man on the mountain, and not a day of college education in him, and that when he could be bothered, he went down to the priest's house and beat the man at chess.

She made tea for all those who were in the house and helping her.

Jon Jo's name was never spoken. It was Attracta's surprise that kind Mossie Nugent had not been back that day.

As the darkness fell across the mountain she waved them all away from her door. Her parents, and Mrs Rea and Gerry Brannigan. and Sean Hegarty. Hegarty tweaked her cheek with his sharp fingers.

" They’ll be an answer for this, Missus, there'll be a debt paid." She kissed the rough stubble of his cheek.

Attracta shut the door, she leaned back against it, her eyes were closed. Kevin was beside her, not touching her and not crying. Kevin had never cried since his father had gone away. She yearned for Jon Jo’s return… God forgive her, and she yearned for the body of a soldier, dead, torn, bleeding, brought to her door as payment.

They were in the shed at the back of the Riordan house, where Jimmy Riordan kept his caged cannaries.

The O. C paced as he talked, and twice when he faced away.

Nugent had stolen a glance down at the watch on his wrist, because time was running out.

The O.C. talked fast.

"… If there's a tout here then they'll think we'll lie down. They'll think we'll go to ground. It's the best time to hit them, you with me, Mossie? There's a 50-calibre coming up from Monaghan. Look at the map, see, we can get inside the house and we're right across from the barracks. The big house in the barracks is where they're at for lunch.

And the beauty of it is, the house is right in the middle of the estate, what's they going to fire back at? You and me knows, no other beggar.

No one else has the picture, Mossie. The lads who do the shooting, the drivers, they won't have the target and the routes out until my say so.

You'll be in charge of the house, Mossie. Just you and me, Mossie, we're the only ones who'll know. Tight as a duck's arse, that's how it'll be. You with me?…" The door opened.

Patsy Riordan came in. He smiled. He held two mugs of tea. He put the mugs on the bench where his father kept the canary seed. He let himself out.

There was the O.C.'s savage glance at the closing door. "How long was that little bastard there…?"

Fifteen minutes later and Mossie was away, driving fast because he was late.

There were two unmarked cars assigned, three men to each car. They were parked up now. There was a disused quarry near McCready’s Corner off the Armagh road. The radios of both cars were tuned to the frequency that had been given them. They knew the drill. One car was north of the quarry in the direction of Blackwatertown the second car was off the winding lanes to Bally-troden, to the west. The policemen, heavy in their anoraks and waterproofs, smoked in the cars. No talk. To have talked might have meant missing the call on the radio frequency.

They thought the quarry was secure. They had driven past it twice, each of them, and they had cruised the lanes and seen nothing that was suspicious. It was part of the work of theE. 4 section of the R.U.C. that they should provide back up for handlers out in the night to meet a player. The engines turned over quietly. It would have taken the one car four minutes to reach the quarry if the handlers' panic button had gone, it would have taken the second car forty seconds longer. Tense, quiet, waiting.