Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

Two great religious buildings, and their matching magnificence to emphasise a community's separation, St Anne's for the Protestants and St Patrick's for the Roman Catholics. Two great school complexes to hammer home a community's division, the Royal for the Protestants and the Academy for the Roman Catholics. Two main shopping streets to bring home the opposition of the. cultures, Scotch Street for the Protestants and Irish Street for the Roman Catholics. Two spreading sports complexes where the people of the town were split, the rugby club to the east for the Protestants and the gaelic pitches to the west for the Roman Catholics.

Bren walked through the town community that was separated, divided.

He was the stranger.

He was the spy…

An old man had frightened him.

He walked because he had been frightened by the queer crack of an old man. God, and he wouldn't be telling Cathy Parker that he had run, tail between his legs, from an old man in a library. They were gathered on each corner of Market Square, the men who watched him.

He would have sworn that every eye was upon him. Old men and young men, cupping then hands across their faces to light their cigarettes, lounged against walls on the corners where Irish Street and Scotch Street and Church Street ran up into the Square. Eyes piercing him and stripping him.

He was trained to move on a street without attracting attention to himself.

It was just idiotic that he should feel fear.

He thought the training was nothing, the reality was the peering eyes from each corner of Market Square.

It was the separated and divided town. There were no high barriers of corrugated iron to divide off each community's ghettos. He learned, as he walked, the unspoken boundaries. The soldiers patrolled the streets that were set aside for Roman Catholic homes, laden with backpacks and radio sets and machine guns, marked the territory of the Roman Catholics. Young men, whipping orders in the patois of the north of England, questioning and frisking kids in a tongue that was foreign and hostile to the town. The police ruled the Protestants' roads and avenues. Crisply turned out, bulged by their bullet-proof vests, powerful with their carbine rifles and sub-machine guns, ties knotted neatly under their laundered collars… Each pace he took, so he felt the growing of the fear.

A community divided by history, tacked together by firepower, separated by suspicion. He thought he could have read for a year in London himself in an hour. A town that was no place for strangers.

"… They don't last, young man, the spies… There's no safety for spies…"

When did it happen?"

"It was two days back, they was here four hours."

It was still daylight outside. The light was filtered through the coloured glass of the old door and magnified the pattern on Jon Jo’s back. He thought the man must have been watching as his car arrived because the door had been opened even before he reached the porch.

He had been hurried inside and the door had been pushed shut immediately.

" There was nothing to find."‘

’But they came…I don't know how long they'd the house watched, and I don't know whether they still have us watched. I was talking last night to friends, they're the other end of Guildford, they're the only other Irish I know in the town, they were turned over two days back as well."

"It won't be for long."

Jon Jo saw the shake of the man's head. "Oh, no… no, no… don't get me wrong, it's been my family's cause more than a century; I stand by it; but, my friend, you don't come back… Perhaps it's just that they're searching everywhere, how do I know? You don't come back to a house that's just been searched. It's not right for you, it's less than right for me. It wasn't just uniformed men that came, it was detectives. .. Whose was the empty room? For any of the family from over the water… Was anyone expected? Not just right now… Why was there fresh bed-linen if no one was expected? Always clean bed-linen

… If no one's expected, why is the room kept free, don't I need the money?

Any time, any of the family might decide to come over… When was there last someone from the family over? Difficult to remember.. .

They searched hard. I don't know, maybe it was just routine, they were four hours going over the place. Jon Jo, hear me, I'm not Having them reason to come back." I have to have a place."

"You have to sort it yourself, and Jon Jo…"

"Do you feel no shame?"

"listen, damn it, they showed your photograph… they showed it to the English that lodge…"

He swayed against the wallpaper in the hallway.

I saw the photograph, what they were showing. It was you.

Didn’t put a name to it, but it was your photograph…"

He felt the shock and the sickness that followed. "I'm sorry, Jon Jo."

He didn’t help the man. He didn't say that he understood. There was the tightness all across him, like a noose at his neck, like handcuffs on his wrists.

‘’Jon Jo, my advice, get yourself out of here, get yourself home, Get yourself where you’re from…’’

’’ I might, I might, just…’’

He was wanted out and he went. Only on the mountain would he know friends.

They took Patsy Riordan, after it was dark, they turned the lights out and carried him out of the front door and they tipped him into the boot of the car that had been backed up close. They had dressed him upstairs. Vest, shirt, sweater, underpants, trousers, socks, anorak. His trainer shoes were carried to the car by a man who wore plastic gloves.

It was the old Irish custom from the dark past. A man with his shoes taken from him is a man disgraced.

His wrists were bound at his back. He was blindfolded. There was a gag at his mouth. The blindfold had been tightened and knotted again.

He was a young man who was going to his death and there was no love around him and no comfort.

The boot lid shut above him. He kicked and writhed and tried to scream. There was no one who would hear him. He was thrown against the spare tyre and bounced as the car hit the pavement edge as it turned out of the drive and made for the open country lanes.

I He struggled to free himself, to draw attention to himself, until he was too weak to move again. He prayed, mumbled words that were muffled by the gag, for the sound of the English soldiers' voices, for the knowledge that the car had run against a roadblock. He knew they went on winding and potholed roads. The Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army had been everything that he admired, everything that he had sought to be a part of. He heard no talk in the car, only the music from the Downtown station. He had lost all sense of direction. He began to lose the sense of time. The blindfold on his eyes was wet from his tears. He had done nothing, he was without guilt .. he was to be killed as a tout.

Patsy Riordan was already dead, his mind blown away by terror, when the car stopped.

He was dragged from the boot.

A bin liner was forced over his head and he lay on the wet, cold grass of the lane's verge as hands reached under the bag to remove the gag and blindfold.

He heard a voice. "Get it done."

He heard the splatter of the rain on the plastic of the bin liner bag that was over his head. He heard the arming of the pistol.

The darkness was all around him. There was the weight of a boot in the small of his back, as if to hold him steady.

"They've shot the Riordan kid."

Bren winced.

Cathy said, "It's not your problem."

"The little bugger had no chance."

Bren was just the minder, and the man with the gun, the protection.

Cathy said, "Don't give me any crocodile tears, Mossie. I don't want to hear 'it's a rotten old world'. You're safe, and you get paid."