Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

The Lynx circled at three thousand feet.

The camera's screen showed them the black of the plastic bag, the yellow of the shirt and the grey of the pullover and the green of the anorak. The jeans on the body were pale blue. White socks on the feet, and the helicopter's crewman wondered why they had taken the shoes from the body.

They had lifted off at first light, within an hour of the first report.

The crewman looked away from the screen and to the helmeted head of the pilot. He flicked his intercom switch.

Tell you what, Barrie. Seeing what they do to their own sort of shrivels my pecker at the thought of what they'd do to us if we came into their loving hands."

The distorted voice in his ear. 'Fly high, Fly sale Best answer to the problem, let the bastards butcher each other, faster the better, more the merrier.’’

When they had photographed the body, they turned to the other equipment they carried, the infra-red that could show them the path of a buried command wire to a booby trap beside the body and they switched on the high-frequency radio signals that would detonate a bomb laid for the recovery team.

They had been up an hour, and from that vantage point they could see across the rolling hills, the steep escarpment mountains, meadow lands, scattered farmhouses, villages, and tiny spires reaching a very little closer to God…

The crewman said, "Forget the body, Barrie, it's a pretty lovely place down there."

The voice crackled in his ear.

"Listen, my old darling…

MacDonagh and MacBride And

Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly; A terrible beauty is born.

That was Mr Yeats for you. 'A terrible beauty is born', but it's an evil beauty. It's beauty best seen at altitude."

The helicopter circled and its shadow flitted over the discarded body.

The priest came early to the Riordans' house. It was the priest who brought the news when a volunteer was killed in action or by the explosion of his own bomb, it was the priest who called when an outcast was executed.

The priest sat in the chair that was usually taken by Patsy's father, Patsy's father, wrapped in an old dressing gown, slumped on the setee in the place that was Patsy's mother's. Patsy's mother was on all fours in front of the fire, cleaning it and lighting it, and refusing to ignore it.

' They think it's the dear boy, but it is the sadness ol these times that it is not yet possible for them to approach him. It’s down in Armagh, a priest has already been to him, that should be of some comfort to you.

We cannot he positive yet because the military have only allowed the local parish priest forward, and briefly, and I am afraid to say that I… advised it may be a long time before he can actually be recovered and identified. There may be bombs put in that place for the military, one shudders at the wickedness of these days we live in We have to be brave and we have to be patient

…"

Patsy's father lit his third cigarette of the morning. "We're disgraced, right, Father? We did everything for the boy. His mother worked her hands to the bone for that little bastard. How does he repay her? He touts… How'll I hold my head up again, the man who fathered a tout, how-"

The priest clasped his hands across his chest. "We are not to feel bitterness, Donal'. We are all to be judged, in time, by God… I offer you this thought. There are many today who will carry the burden of guilt. Those who foully murdered dear Patsy. Those who cynically led him into mortal danger. Take pity on them for their wretchedness

…"

"The Brit feckers."

"May they live with their consciences, those who inveigled dear Patsy to renounce his own people for their false gold."

As Mrs Riordan had the fire alight, the priest was already hurrying away.

He was woken by the sound of broken twigs, scuffed wet leaves and voices and dogs.

The hide he had made was an angled strip of dark green groundsheet tethered by stones and tied with green garden wire to a low branch.

There were voices and then the barking of dogs. There were dead branches laid against the groundsheet. Jon Jo lay very still. He held his breath. A few inches from his hand was the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

The voices moved closer.

He had been warned away from the safe house in Hackney, flatly rejected from the haven in Guildford. It was the first time that he had felt truly threatened. He was more than ever before alone. In darkness he had made for the weapon cache. There had been a man before, one of the finest, a man who had taken the war to the heart of the bastards, and he had been turned away, rejected, when the going was fierce, and he had been alone enough to turn his own gun on himself… Jon Jo had gone to the cache because there was no alternative… He had taken no decision yet as to whether he would go back to the Torbay digs.

They had his photograph, they were checking wherever there were Irish. Not the time to make the decision.

He had fashioned the hide a dozen paces from where the dustbin was buried with the weapons and the explosives.

He had slept for five hours. There was clear light falling between the trellis of the upper branches of the trees. The rifle was within reach, the magazine was loaded. He had often slept rough. In the weeks before he had gone away to England, when he was hunted on Altmore he had made that vast expanse of forest his home, and slipped down to the farmhouse only in darkness, and evaded the surveillance… when he was younger, before marriage, before his first arrest and imprisonment in the Kesh. He could live rough as well as any soldier. Now the voices and the movements were nearer. He edged his body to the front of the hide.

He saw the boots and the bright-coloured stockings and the corduroys and the waterproof coats. He saw men and women. He saw stout walking sticks. He saw the leashed dogs. Thank the Lord. He pushed the rifle sideways under the groundsheet to hide it.

"God Almighty, look at this… It's not allowed, is it, the ranger would throw a fit… get one in and we'll have a whole camp of these people… next thing they'll be lighting fires, short cut to mega-problems… Who the hell are you? What the hell do you think you're doing here?"

His mind raced. His tongue seemed to flap and his lips moved, and there was no voice. He had the idiot smile on his face. To speak was to give himself away. His arms moved with his mouth, as if that were his communication. To show fear would be a catastrophe, to show aggression was disaster. He was thinking well. Irish accent, frightened, aggressive, a hide deep in forest… He gave the whole party the mad grin, and he said nothing. There were seven of them.

One of the women spoke as if he could not hear her, as if he were an imbecile.

"It's really just scandalous, these people should be in care. They've closed down all the sort of places where these people should be.

They're just put out on the streets to fend for themselves. It's criminal.

We've probably frightened the poor man half out of his wits.

Sometimes I look at the new face of Britain and I'm ashamed."

They made a collection. There were 50 pence pieces and pound coins, and the woman gave them to Jon Jo, and he cupped his hands together to receive them from the woman.

"But you've no right to be here." She spoke slowly and loudly. "We don't expect to find you here again."

They moved away. They left him shivering, huddled under the groundsheet.

They met in a house that was on the plateau of the mountain, on the road to Pomeroy. Only Nugent and the O.C., in the back bedroom upstairs. The warmth of the O.C. gushed over Mossie. Not a word of what had happened in the barn. That was past history, forgotten by the O.C.