Ordinary Decent Criminals. Lionel Shriver
back. There’s a powerful lot of phone calls to return. And two boys from Turf Lodge rang up, with word they’re to be knee-capped. They want to spend the night in your office.”
“Check their story; only the outer room; no beer.”
“Then it’s time for Oscar’s, isn’t it? I know the food is desperate, but when you ignore them they’re hurt. They miss you.”
“What they miss is our sixty-quid checks. No, I’ve something on this evening.”
“Oh.” She did not know everything.
“I’ll ring you when I get home,” he offered.
“That would be lovely.”
“… We had dinner together last night,” said Farrell.
“Yes.”
“… and the night before.”
“Yes.”
“And lunch! And probably will dine tomorrow night as well!”
“Of course, if you like,” she said graciously. “If you’ve nothing else planned.”
“What do you bloody want, then?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to!”
Farrell scowled into the collar of his overcoat. They did not hold hands.
The Green Door, or Everybody Likes Lancaster
The Green Door had no such thing. Caged across the front, the club was coiled with razor wire; even the little neon sign, burned out, was fenced in. The entrance wasn’t green but brown, its peephole rheumy.
“O’Phelan,” the guard at the door grunted. “Trouble himself.”
“I’ve gotten as many pillocks out of trouble as in. A good record, for this town.”
“Right you are, our own Captain Marvel. Though I hear tell, you don’t muck in as you used. Keep the nails clean and that.”
“Excuse me, but at eight o’clock,” Farrell towered, “I have a date in there with a curvaceous little glass of wine.”
“For you, O’Phelan, the glass is sure only as wee as a mate could do laps in.”
“I don’t swim.” Farrell made a move for the door.
“We’ve yet to explore,” the guard said grandly, barring the way, “what makes you feel so comfortable in these parts.”
“In the last ten years,” said Farrell calmly, “I’ve been credited as a Provo, a Stickie, an Irp, and a legman for branches of the IPLO you haven’t even heard of; as a propagandist for the UDA, eccentric fop for the SDLP, CIA agent, Special Branch hit man, British supergrass, and IDA occupational safety inspector. I imagine with those credentials I can waltz into any pub in town.”
“Och, you think it’s all a game, man.”
“Yes.”
After three separate grillings to get in, each more suspicious than the last, Farrell was bewildered why he bothered. He hated catering to their self-importance.
Inside Farrell shook his head—a whole city full of warm, intimate bars, the Crown, the Morning Star, the Rotterdam, and West Belfast crammed into these grotty drinking clubs. By what poor guidance or misfortune did the American drink here? For the Green Door was the worst: bare bulbs overhead, long, laminated tables, crumbling ceiling tiles. A wooden Armalite mounted like a marlin over the bar; a collection of plastic bullets on the counter, long, round, heavy boles fondled gray, like merchandise from a secondhand sex shop. The usual Gerry Adams posters and H-block brouhaha covered the walls: REMEMBER BLOODY SUNDAY!; DON’T FRATERNIZE! THIS BRIT COULD BE STANDING BESIDE YOU—WATCH WHAT YOU SAY; SOLDIERS ARE WE, WHOSE LIVES ARE PLEDGED FOR IRELAND; BRIT THUGS OUT; SS RUC … but Farrell had read these so many times before that they faded into so much wallpaper. The best thing about propaganda is its short shelf life—successfully familiar, it disappears.
“Hulloo, Farrell!” Though they hadn’t seen each other for five years, Duff hailed him as if that were just the other day—and in Duff’s way of thinking, Farrell supposed, it was. Time was like everything else in Duff’s life that he swallowed in quantity—Guinness, sausage rolls, other people’s stories. “How are you keeping?” As he pressed Farrell’s hand, Shearhoon’s eyes squeezed tight. Strange, for such an expansive character he had a nervousness, a flinch. Then, Farrell had spent enough time around rapacious politicians to enjoy the more leisurely ambitions of Shearhoon tonight. He was one of those affable men out to take over the world simply by consuming it. Duff’s steady advance on occupying space would make a pleasant low-budget horror film.
“Wasn’t I talking you up the other day, just. Remembering back in ’72 on the barricades, do you know? Brits lined up just outside the no-go all confused like, mothers and wains about, houses afire. Every wee soldier sure he’s tomorrow’s headline in the Irish News for shooting a toddler. It’s the lads! your women all cry. Make way for the lads! And if Farrell O’Phelan doesn’t climb on top of the burning bus like Moses, do you follow? Hair out to here and eyes out farther. Farrell, you missed your calling as a priest, so you did. You’d put the fear of hell in a bottle of Baby Cham.”
“So were you one of the lads?”
Farrell turned and didn’t recognize her at first: she was on the wrong side of the bar. Sweet Jesus, she worked here. Farrell felt immediately he’d made a mistake, and wondered why he’d come. Idle curiosity, he supposed, since this was the only plan for the evening whose sequence he couldn’t quite foretell, while Shearhoon’s tale here, for example, was strictly pub liturgy. He had liked that he couldn’t write her lines. But now he could fill them in easily enough—she was another one of those NORAID bims from Boston with Irish ancestors. How exciting, working in a Republican club with the hard men—
Farrell rubbed his face. “No, my dear, I was not one of the lads. Disappointed?”
“Hardly.”
Right answer; he would treat her at least to the story. “That was the day the British interned thirteen activists from the leadership of the PD. Dragged out of bed without time to wash their teeth. Searches all morning. The Falls was roiling. Whole families on the streets.”
“Sounds like quite a party,” said Estrin.
Of course it would to you, Farrell swiped, but had to admit, “It was. Though for me in ’72 every day was a party.”
“Meaning your youth, or the festivities?”
“Talisker!” cried Duff.
“Closer,” Farrell explained, “to a premature old age.”
Estrin shook her head. “A malt’s a waste on a bender.”
“Low as I ever sank, I never drank less. A matter of principle.”
“Style,” she corrected. “There’s a difference. So what possessed you to climb on top of that bus?”
“To tell the mothers not to go inside.”
“Why?”
“Strategy, my dear. Those soldiers had been trained for snipers, but were stymied by prams. They could plow up the barricade if it were manned by lads, but not if they were two years old. So I said, Bring up the prams! Best front line ever invented.”
“What happened?”
“I fell off the bus.”
“On