Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

"They's fine books."

Bren looked up. He saw the strong country face and a thin chin not shaven that day. Behind the man was the sign requesting "Silence". The old man wore a rain-stiffened overcoat and under that was a grey jacket and then a shirt without most of the upper buttons and then a high-necked and yellowed vest.

‘’Yes’’

‘’It 's, the book I like the best here."

"Is it?"

It, the book that tells best of the injustices done to us."

"Really?"

The hand, grimed fingernails and bloodless knuckles, snaked out over the table The old man pulled the book to him.

"So. You’s reading of Shane Bearnagh…?"

"I am.’’

‘’Gave the English a great dance. A whole barracks they built for the soldiers hunting him on the mountain. Is you’s English?’’

"Yes."

There was a cackled laugh. "You've not much of a tongue."

Bren felt the colour in his face. The book was pushed back towards him. "Well,…"

"So, what brings an Englishman to Dungannon to read the history of Shane Bearnagh Donnelly, rebel and patriot?"

"I had time to kill. I've always been interested in history."

"You won't mind me, course you won't, what's your business?"

Bren tripped it out. "Department of the Environment."

"Ah…" As if so much was explained.

"Just learning about this community…"

They were clear and pale blue, the eyes were on Bren's. Bren thought that it was like play at the surface of the eyes, and only mirthless cold behind. To leave now would be to draw attention to himself. It was harmless enough. The eyes followed Bren as he shifted his head.

"Have you's found a fine welcome here?"

"Only just starting."

"You'll find a grand welcome. We're friendly people."

"Yes."

"Even friendly to an Englishman from the Department of the Environment."

"Good to know."

"You'd not get a welcome, but you'd be knowing that, if it was thought you were of the Crown Forces."

"The Department of the Environment has nothing to do…" Bren said.

"Crown Forces aren't welcome, nor their spies."

I wouldn't know," Bren said.

"There's a way round here of showing people they're not welcome, if they're spies."

His page was blurred in front of him. "They're difficult times."

" They don't last, young man, the spies."

Bren looked up and saw that four girls at the next table, trim in their school uniforms, seemed to hear nothing.

‘’Ther’s a nose for spies in this town, on that mountain out there.

Spies smell.’’

"If you'll excuse me,,’’

The sudden smile splintered the weather-beaten face. "Talking too much again, always Hegarty's problem, talking too much. You'll be wanting to be back to your reading."

Bren stood up. He gathered the books from the table. The old man had hunched himself over the day's newspaper. Bren returned the books to the pretty girl downstairs. He thought he might be sick. He walked out through the wide glass doors of the Library and into the end of the afternoon. The wind caught at him and the sweat ran chilled on the back of his spine. A stupid old fart, just a prattling old windbag… So they wouldn't last, the spies. He thought of Cathy, tired and sweet and lovely Cathy. Cathy who would be there tomorrow, and the next month, and the next year, in the town and on the mountain. He had time still to lose, so he walked briskly away from the Library, forcing himself not to look back at the first-floor windows, and he believed that every eye in Market Square was on him.

On the site, two heavy packets of nails and screws and bolts and inns had been delivered. Nothing out of the ordinary. A van driver unknown to Mossie had called at the foreman's portacabin for a signature. A trainee chippy had been sent back to the van to fetch the delivery.

Nothing there to disturb Mossie as he got on with Innslini)', the undercoat onto the fresh plasterwork. But he had 'seen the sullen expression of the apprentice. Next time he passed, he called the boy quietly, not drawing attention to himself, and asked him why so cross, laddie. The boy had spat it out. The driver had been the lippy one at a vehicle check point three nights back when the boy had been tipped out of his old car, and his girl, searched down to his bollocks, given the chat that was always roughest when the U.D.R. part-timers were flaunting their bullet-proof flak jackets and their high-velocity rifles.

The boy had recognised the driver as the soldier who had humiliated him in front of his girl. And Mossie had noted the smart new logo on the side of the van.

He had left work early. He had no problem getting away early because he was on piecework and he had already achieved the account for the day for which he was paid,

He sat in his car. He was down the road from the gates to the builders' merchant's. He saw the van come back, checked the number plate against his memory. He wrote nothing down. His memory served him well. He recognised the driver. It was his task, that of the Intelligence Officer of the East Tyrone Brigade, to identify targets for the Active Service Units. He was way off safe territory, he was up past Stewartstown, and that was danger, particularly for a man who was Charlie One, Stop and Search. He watched the man, changed out of his overalls, drive from the yard in a dark blue saloon car. He followed cautiously. Most often he would have left this work to a young volunteer, a kid, even a girl, who was on the edge of the Organisation's operations, who was being tested. Not always. Mossie thought that it was only sometimes possible to involve the kids, but the time always came when it was necessary for him to take the risk himself. On the far side of Stewartstown he saw the car pull up outside a small and clean-painted bungalow. That was when he held back. A part-time soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment would have been briefed, had it pounded into his skull, that he was most in danger from ambush when he left his home and when he returned to his home. When the man was inside, through his front door, Mossie drove past the bungalow. He could do that once, only once. He saw an elderly woman, the hem of an apron peeping from under her raincoat, sweeping leaves from the front path, he saw the glower look that the mother of a U.D.R. part-timer would reserve for any car going slowly past her home.

It was a nugget of information. It was a beginning. There was no race to kill a man who was a part-timer with the U.D.R. the critical moment was already past, the linking of the chain, the identifying of the bastard.

He drove away. He looked for the proximity of the part-timer's neighbours, and for the cover that the winter hedgerows would offer, and the fall of the trees back across the first field on the far side of the road. It might take weeks, months even, to learn the habits of the soldier, whether he always left home and returned home on his own, whether he was sometimes collected by a work colleague or a soldier colleague. He would learn at what pub he drank, where he worshipped, his shift pattern at the barracks. He would learn whether his mother always made it her business to be in the garden when he left and returned, and whether he drove away fast, and whether the car was securely locked into the garage at night. He would find the name of the soldier and the history of the soldier. And he would never speak of him to the apprentice boy at work.

A man was marked.

Only when he was quite satisfied would he present his plan to the O.C. That Cathy might then throw away the plan, because he would report all of that business faithfully to his handler, that was of no importance to him. It had grown to be the miracle of Mossie Nugent, that he could live with a life divided.

He was the stranger and he tramped the pavements of the town.