I’ve got what I deserve. There is an order to events after all. The bomb has gone off. Revenge has begun. This is lads from Loyalist groups clutching their lists. This is the proper reciprocation of damage and it gets quicker every year. There were tears in his eyes. Ash in the air. Love in his heart. The anger had gone. He blinked and wiped his face. He looked for rumours of light in the sky. What a time to get sentimental, he thought, and cursed his wasted years.
He watched the dark loop on the roof. A ten-foot TV aerial he’d helped to install aged fourteen, melting. First thing he ever did that worked. He saw it and thought of his CB radio. He used that radio to talk half the night with people across the Province. Catholic, Protestant. One of the girls on CB had a handle, a call sign, which had caught his attention straight out: ‘Perfect Shankill Kiss’. They spoke for a few nights. They met in person outside a pharmacy in town. It was where all the CB freaks leaned against lamp posts. If he had anything worth swapping, she said, she’d swap it for a kiss. There were bins on the pavement back then. He took from the top of one of these bins an almost-clean copy of Rushlight magazine. Gave it to her. Wad of Wrigley’s on the corner of the cover. They kissed. She complained he kissed too wetly. There were happy months in which they went to the pool. Ridiculous to cling to a romance like that. When his CB radio broke, he took it apart under his uncle’s supervision. They put it back together and it worked. He used it less and less. The fixing was more fun than the listening. Perfect Shankill Kiss began kissing someone else.
His mother on the kerb was flanked by other women. They were smoking. He could not believe they were smoking. Through the soft haze of cigarette smoke mixed with the smoke of burnt belongings he saw up the skirt of one of these old women, glimpsing the beige mysteries of her underwear.
XI
HE HAD TO pick himself up. No one helped him. Maybe there were too many people for any one person to feel responsible. Maybe they just didn’t see?
It was all too hectic. A wedding reception times five. He begged Marina to get a grip on things, to use her feminine wiles, and she gave him a look that said he’d phrased that very badly. He went to the toilet to breathe deeply and be alone. The simple smells of soap and bleach. The dreamy tinkle of urine in the bowl. Took an aspirin. It left a bitter taste in his mouth. Imagined conversations drip-dripped through his thoughts.
Really, Margaret? Me?
You.
Me? The major national speech on leniency? Me?
I need a man I can trust, Moose. I think you’re the man to deliver the speech.
Not the Secretary of State for Education?
No.
Not the … not the prisons guy?
No, I’m asking you — you — to be the man to deliver it.
Even though I’m arguably lacking piZZaZZ?
Nonsense, you genius. The way you made those beer ice cubes, that time, so you could keep your beer cool outside without diluting the beer?
You saw that?
I see everything.
He woke with a jolt, a sense of being watched. Trousers around his ankles.
By the time he’d buckled up and straightened his tie and acknowledged to himself that sleeping on the toilet constituted a new low, the crowd in the bar area was of a manageable size. Good: he’d have proper time with the Prime Minister.
He leaned onto tiptoes and looked around. Was that …? No, not her. Maybe behind …? No, no. The crackle of a throat being cleared. A man with a cane saying, ‘I took a bus once.’ Whatever story followed could never live up to the audacity of that opening line.
A tall, needle-faced young man was standing in front of him — the man who had helped call for order on the stairs when the Prime Minister was working her way through the lobby. Moose had seen him a few times these last few days without knowing exactly who he was. He had a pointed chin that preceded him into confrontations with people you suspected he hated.
‘Hi,’ Moose said. ‘I don’t think we’ve —’
‘Edward Peterson,’ the man said. ‘Logistics.’
‘Right. The Prime Minister’s team.’
Peterson’s smile was pure hygiene, the expression of a guy about to floss. The teeth were big. The mouth couldn’t quite hold them. It was a miracle the lips didn’t bleed. There was saliva pooling on his gums and shining on his bottom lip and when he closed his mouth to swallow there was a faint, squeaky sucking sound, like a cloth being used to polish cutlery.
‘How can I help then, Mr Peterson?’
‘The Lady,’ he announced, ‘is now upstairs.’
‘Oh. Already?’
‘Amendments to her speech. End-of-day phone calls. It’s a busy time. Will there be coffee?’
‘Of course.’
‘Dark roast, or …’
‘Well, there’s a selection.’
‘French?’
‘I’ll show you some options, Mr Peterson.’
Edward Peterson looked a little crushed by this. One more decision to make.
‘Who showed her up to the room, Mr Peterson?’
‘Your colleague,’ Peterson said, pointing.
John strolled towards them. ‘Yo,’ he said.
‘Yo?’ Moose said.
‘It’s a greeting,’ John explained.
Moose couldn’t let the disappointment swallow him. He tried to smile. He sighed. Tomorrow, he thought. I’ll speak to her tomorrow. ‘You, John? You showered her upstairs?’
‘That I definitely didn’t do.’
‘Showed, I mean. Showed.’ His tongue was still asleep. ‘Is the PM OK up there, in the room?’
‘Yeah. Seemed happy.’
‘You showed her up there with who? With Freya?’
John shifted his weight from foot to foot. ‘I think Freya had something else on, maybe. I took her up with the boss, along with her secretary person. Cynthia?’
Edward Peterson nodded, the sharp drama of his chin swinging down like a pygmy pickaxe, or something very similar that made sense. Moose once again rubbed his eyes to bring reality back.
‘All good fun,’ John said.
‘Good fun?’
‘Yeah, she’s actually —’ John hesitated, flicked a glance at Peterson — ‘she’s actually really chilled, Mr Finch. I talked to her about wetsuits.’
‘Wetsuits.’
John opened his mouth. Moose held up a hand to indicate that he had no interest in hearing about wetsuits, dry suits, any kind of suit. ‘And the boss is …’ he said. ‘Our GM is here right now, John? That’s what you’re saying?’
‘Yeah. With this Baker bloke.’
‘Baker? There’s a baker here?’
‘Surname,’ John said, grinning. ‘Yeah, he’s the one who’s taking over, right?’
Moose shook his head.
‘The GM position,’ John said simply. ‘Richard Baker.’
Silence.
‘Yeah,’ John said, a new uncertainty in his voice. ‘You’ve met him before, right? Or he’s met you, anyway. He came in the other day, too. He’s the one taking over as overall manager here, is what he said. Came in with Mr Price from Head Office. They announce it before Christmas, right?’ After delivering these lines, John stood there. He looked increasingly unsettled by the silence around him. ‘Your new boss!’ he added cheerfully, then frowned again when this latest effort failed. ‘You knew the GM was stepping down, right?’