JOHN LYNCH

Torn Water

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - The Quarry

Chapter 2 - Sully

Chapter 3 - Teezy

Chapter 4 - Outer Space

Chapter 5 - The Rehearsal

Chapter 6 - The Bomb

Chapter 7 - The Fight

Chapter 8 - Plug and the Big ’Ammer

Chapter 9 - Al Pacino

Chapter 10 - The Grand Inquisitor

Chapter 11 - The Fury of His Other Face

Chapter 12 - Marion and the Aftermath

Chapter 13 - The Invitation

Chapter 14 - The Party

Chapter 15 - Kerry and the Fox

Chapter 16 - The Post-mortem

Chapter 17 - Logs

Chapter 18 - Amends

Chapter 19 - D-Day

Chapter 20 - The Performance

Chapter 21 - The Reward

Chapter 22 - Her Name

Chapter 23 - The Captain

Chapter 24 - The Last Night

Chapter 25 - The Checkpoint

Chapter 26 - The Man of Light

Chapter 27 - God Has a Flan for Us All

Chapter 28 - South

Chapter 29 - Dublin

Chapter 30 - Torn Water

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

To Mary

He remembers when he was very young standing by water, his whole being fastened to his reflection, which rose from the depths of the pond to sit shimmering on its dark surface. It seemed as if he was peering into his soul, into the dark matter of its substance, and felt a holy hush seize his heart as if, suddenly, the unseen channels of the world ran through his body.

How he had got there or where the pond was he couldn't remember, but he can vaguely recall a hand on his and being led through high rooms, to a large garden, where bees wove dozy patterns in the air. At the bottom of this garden lay the pond, and he remembers a face bending to meet his and whispering that they would be back in a little while. So he stood where he had been left, his small feet pointing at the stonework of the pond's rim. He remembers a wind brewing in the tops of the trees and tearing at the water for a moment before subsiding, his face then coming into focus like a TV channel being tuned.

He remembers believing he felt his soul flee his body to slip into the other him that now sat on the surface of the water. He felt it rise from the wrappings of his skin like a silhouette or the moving negative of a bird in flight, and squirm through the sharp reflection of his other self, beating a glow of joy on the dark water.

How long he was there he can't recall but those moments where he stood threaded to his other self, confused as to which was which, sit like suspended portraits at the very back of his memory. He often wonders if he has left his soul in the bottom of that pond, and that it has lain in the murky waters for years like a scarred jewel, covered in moss and the sediment of decaying fish.

1. The Quarry

Death was his friend. Mr Death dwelt in the spaces between his thoughts. It held his father in its wide blank palm. He had died when James was only eight, nine years before. One day he was there and the next he wasn't, and in his place stood Death with the endless come-on of its smile. As he had grown up James began to understand that Death was the fall at the end of his dreams. He is small and skinny for his age, like a house plant that has been stowed in the darkness of a kitchen cupboard, its pale stems reaching for light that isn't there. His eyes are blue, like the brilliant stab of a winter's sky, and they drink of the world in long distrustful slurps. His skin is freckled and his nose crooked and long. He finds it hard to sit still, and even harder to listen: since his father died, he has always felt poised on the edge of some great event, some momentous occurrence, and that he must be ready at all times, ready for the truth of it all.

He lives with his mother on a housing estate just outside Newry, surrounded by the border and its many secret crossings and pathways. His mother is small like him. She drinks. He believes it is his fault that she does. He believes that he disappoints her. He is supposed to be at school today, but they can keep it. They can keep the brooding silence of their study periods. They can keep their troops of well-heeled boys. He is different. He has always been different, he is a collector of deaths, and he stores them in the cool harbour behind his eyes, calling on them when his father's absence jags the running of his heart. He performs his deaths for anyone who will watch, or sometimes only for his own pleasure, for the closeness he feels to the lost memory of his father.

He walks down Hill Street past the shopkeepers leaning in their doorways, some tugging on cigarettes, their eyes scouring the streets, giving every face that passes them the once-over. He rounds the corner at the bottom and cuts through the deserted market, the steel frames of the stalls standing eerily on the rough concrete. He crosses Chapel Street scarcely looking at the muddle of bric-à-bric that fronts the second-hand shops. He enters the alleyway connecting Chapel Street to Fair Street, a short dark cobbled passage damp with lichen and urine. Beer cans stud the ground, some faded pale by the sun; he wrinkles his nose as the smell of old piss hits him. He reaches the roundabout at the bottom of the Dublin road and begins to walk the long, high hill towards the border.

A quarter of a mile from the Customs post a police Land Rover sits in a lay-by; he can glimpse slices of the driver's face through its wire-meshed windows. He wonders what it must be like for the men in the vehicle to live their lives wearing a rhino hide for protection, gated from life.

Two hundred yards from the Customs post he sees the roadside café, a small caravan converted to house two griddles and a host of kettles billowing large pillows of steam. A hatch juts out, creaked back on its hinges, and off into the distance articulated lorries line the road like huge boxed caterpillars.

Drivers stand below the awning above the opened hatch, their breakfast baps and steaming coffee fitted in between bouts of talk. James stands quietly at the back. He often comes here to hover on the outskirts of these men. He envies them their lofty cabs, their autonomy, their careless smiles and the pointed fingers of their speech. He has often dreamed at night of sailing across the tarmac of foreign towns and cities, high above the clamour of normal traffic, his all-seeing headlights blistering the upcoming road.

Two women flit back and forth along the hatch of the caravan, their hands glistening with grease as they stuff gaping bread rolls with sausage and bacon, and thrust them into waiting hands, wiping their fingers hurriedly on their aprons before they claim the money. James edges his way to the hatch and quietly asks for a coffee. The skinnier of the two women, black, heavily dyed hair peeping from beneath the edges of her cap, looks at him for a moment. ‘You're a funny-looking lorry driver …’

He holds his coins out quickly.

‘Shouldn't you be at school?’

‘No.’ He says it quietly, in a flat tone, trying to keep a lid on the exchange.

‘Milk?’

‘No … thanks.’

‘Sugar?’

He nods.

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

He takes his coffee, guides it down from the hatch, bending his head to meet it, and sips before he begins to move off. A main slaps his mug down and asks for a refill of tea. He looks at James, as if he is sizing up livestock in a pen. ‘Whereabouts are you from, son?’

‘Carrickburren.’

‘Carrickburren no less … Do you know a fella by the name of O'Brien lives up that way?’

‘No … Yes.’

‘Keeps the dogs … Francie O'Brien. He's some fucking horse. What's the name?’

‘Mine?’

‘Who the fuck else's? The Pope's? Yes, yours.’

‘James … James La very.’

‘Conn Lavery's son?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He was a good man, your old fella … The fucking best … A true Irishman lived and died.’

James gives his shoulders a shrug. The larger woman in the hatch hands the lorry driver his refill of tea, and as she does so James sidles off to sit on one of the bollards that dot the road. He watches as the man takes his tea and clears his throat with a large hawked spit; he hears the elastic band slap as it hits the tarmac.

‘Good to meet you, son.’

He often gets that. The nodded reverence once men find out who his father was. The grunt of respect.

He spends the afternoon at the disused quarry that lies about a mile from his housing estate, eating his packed lunch only when hunger spikes his stomach. The salmon-paste sandwiches taste damp and slimy, reminding the boy of the lorry driver's spit, arcing heavy and dense, landing with a splat on the black-sponge tarmac. He puts the sandwiches to one side, forcing one last bite down his throat.

He sits cross-legged on a shunt of rock that juts over the deepest part of the pond; birds scythe through the sky. Duckweed covers the surface in mats, interspersed with breaks of water the colour of liquorice. The air seems to hang heavy and doleful over the quarry, dense and thickened like the air in a forgotten room. It reminds him of the silences his mother weaves around the memory of his father. He thinks of the screams she carries in her mouth, cries that rise from her lips like disturbed crows when she drinks.

He can remember his aunt Teezy's arms round him, the smell of soda flour and carbolic soap. He can remember the whispered soothings, her rocking him back and forth on her lap. Beyond in the next room, he remembers seeing his mother's face. Around her people stoop to press her hands; suited men, their cigarettes winking like wizards' eyes in the darkened room, and women standing by her, their faces glowing like lanterns of concern. His mother, a coin head silhouette against the flank of her husband's closed coffin. All this a long time ago when his language rose like bubbles in his throat, and popped formless on the point of his lips.

He remembers the squeal of anguish that came from his mother when two men came to the house that day to pay their respects. They stood before the coffin with a stiff lock to their backs, heads stooped, fists clasped at the base of their spines. He can still see the change in his mother's face as they turned to pay their respects to her. A sound came from her mouth that had raised the hairs on the boy's arms and brought tears to his eyes.

He remembers endless nights in dark rooms, his eyes confused between sleeping and waking. Then there were the times when he woke in the middle of the night and felt the presence of someone nearby. He would lie there and listen to the sobs. He knew it was her, his mother, come to stand by his bed and weep hard tears, gin giving her tongue a loosened power, and a longing for the mouth of the one who was gone.

Then there was the time shortly after, when he had stayed with his aunt Teezy in her small house in the centre of town. He had been told that his mother needed some time, that she hadn't been very well, that she needed to be fixed just like a car when the road had got the better of it. He remembers looking up into Teezy's wide face as she told him, and the false smile of courage that his face suddenly wore.

As the sun begins to fade he leaves the quarry, throwing what's left of his sandwiches into the dark water, watching for a moment as they sit on the mat of duckweed, then disappear. As he climbs a barbed-wire fence to rejoin the main road leading to his housing estate, he frightens a pair of birds into scrambled flight. He looks at them as they veer skywards, watching them strain upwards. He thinks then of the lorry driver and his hushed respect for his father's memory.

‘A true Irishman lived and died.’ That was what the lorry driver had said. A true Irishman died only for Ireland, didn't he? Ireland herself would tolerate nothing less.

A Young Patriot's Death for Ireland

I love Ireland, I love her small narrow skies, I love her little shape on the maps, I am about to die for Ireland. I will become immortal, I will live in the songs that old men will sing … Women will cry in wonder at my heroism. My mother will carry my picture and show strangers who I was, and she will cry, I will take my gun and kill. I will destroy. My blood will be a river that other patriots bathe in, finding strength in my heroism.

She knows, my mother knows. This is the way it has always been, Ireland needs our blood to breathe, she needs our bodies to hold on to herself. My gun is old but it will do the job, I will take as many of them as I can. I will enjoy their dark-eyed fear as my bullets rip into their cold hearts.

I take my leave, I tell my mother to look for me in the night sky for tonight a new star will be there. She is crying. I tell her I am taking the dark journey. I tell her I will be joining my father tonight in Ireland's heaven, where the rivers are green like our fields. Yes, I tell her tonight, I will be with my father in Heaven, two true Irishmen lived and died. She smiles, even though she is crying.

The barracks is quiet. I tell the desk sergeant that my mother's car has been stolen. He doesn't glance at me but looks at his watch as I talk. I wait until a couple of his colleagues join him and then I rip my gun from the shopping-bag I'm carrying. I enjoy the surprise that flits across their faces and the lost expressions in their eyes. I kill two of them before I am shot. Not a bad return. As life leaves my ripped body I see heaven hover before me like an vast alien spaceship. Manning its bridge and beckoning me aboard is my father, another true Irishman lived and died.

2. Sully

‘Get up … James, up.’

‘What?’

‘Up … Out of it and up.’

He opens his eyes. His mother is standing over him, barking at him. She is hung-over: he can tell by the sideways droop of her head.

‘Come on … Up. We have a visitor.’

‘Who?’

‘Sully.’

‘Shit.’

‘Hey … None of that … Two minutes … And up.’

She leaves the bedroom. He catches her taking a peek at herself in the wall mirror as she exits, running a moistened finger across her eyebrows. She has a thing about her eyebrows, always teasing and pulling at them, coaxing them into arced crescents. It revolts him. She revolts him. Sully revolts him.

Sully was his mother's on-off, come and go boyfriend. He arrived one May evening five years before, announced by the rasp of his van's exhaust as it growled along their estate. James had been in the front field, guillotining the tops of ragweed with his hands and feet, when he heard the vroom of Sully's arrival. He had run to the hedge that bordered the estate and arrived just in time to see Sully get out of the van and run the toe of each shiny shoe on the back of his flared trouser legs before he sauntered up to the front door. James had watched the flush come to his mother's cheek as she had greeted him, the shyness with which she had received the small box of chocolates, then offered her lips to him, closing her eyes in a way that James found devastating.

‘Hey, kid – Luke Sullivan. My friends call me Sully, but you can call me Luke.’

He can remember looking up into his cat-grin face, squinting into the blister of the afternoon sun as it peeped out from behind Sully's head. He can remember the nervous way the man had tousled his hair, and how his mother had glared at him from behind Sully's back.

‘Get up.’

Eventually, he jumps out of bed and dresses, pulling on his jeans over his pyjama bottoms, cursing softly in the cold air. He can hear their giggles down on the pathway leading up to the front house.

‘Come on and see what Sully has brought us.’

Sully was back with his maudlin country music and his taunting smile. Crawling back to terrorise his mother once more, as he always has, as it seems he always will.

‘James, come and see,’ his mother shouts. She sounds like a fishwife, her voice cutting through the still morning air.

What had he brought this time? What peace-offering was he laying at her feet? Once it had been bricks freshly lifted from a building site he was working on. He had proudly shown them to James, saying that he was going to build his mother ‘the finest and securest garden shed known to man’. Another time it was the carcass of a freshly killed pig, which he had hung proudly from a hook in the garage, saying it was a neighbour's and that it had strayed out on to a busy road. He said that it had been looked after like a child when alive and that it would melt in their mouths. His mother screamed when she saw it, throwing her hands to her face and running for the house.

He thuds his way down the stairs and steps out of the front door, working up a large fist of spit in his mouth, hawking it deep from within his throat, then launching it just like the lorry driver had done the week before.

‘Look! Look, Jimmy – oh, please, don't do that. You're not an animal.’

No, but Sully is. He looks at them both. They look like they're posing for a photograph. On the pathway lies a huge mound of logs. It reminds him of a large goat dropping. His mother stands beside Sully, as if she has just won a raffle. So that was it, that was his penance: a mound of wet, mouldy logs.

‘Hi, kid. Long time no see,’ Sully says.

‘For fuck's sake.’ He says it quietly as he turns to go back in.

‘What did you say?’ his mother asks.

‘What?’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Don't be disrespectful.’

‘He says it.’

‘He's an adult. He can use those words.’

‘Leave him be, Ann,’ Sully says.

Before Sully there had been other men. James noticed that they all had the same tight force in their eyes. Some stayed longer than others, and some were so brief that their faces melted quickly from memory like a lantern lighting a man's way home slowly being swallowed by blackness.

He can remember looking up into each new face, his eyes narrowed in distress as yet another stranger tried to woo him. Sometimes James believes he dreamed some of them, but he knows this was not the case.

He remembers being in bed one night. He woke and felt the presence of someone sitting at the end of it. He can remember his body freezing in a spasm of fear. The smell of cheap whisky filled the room, and the pale sickly scent of aftershave.

It was a builder his mother had met a few weeks before. A large shaven-headed man, who didn't smile but viewed the world with thin-lipped distrust. When he had been introduced to James he had bent down stiffly extending his hand, his scalp pitted and cracked with scars. His eyes were large and seemed to bore straight into James. He didn't like the man. He didn't like the way he shadowed his mother as if she was a lassoed calf, following her about the house, watching every move she made. His left arm was covered in tattoos, deep blue-green drawings of half-clad women, their cartoon bodies pouting from the bristle of his arm. He frightened James, and when he was in their house there seemed nowhere to escape to, because he seemed to fill every part of it.

They had brought James with them to the local working-man's club earlier that night. He can remember riding in the back seat of the builder's Ford Granada. The seats smelt musty and were covered with dog-hair, and the ashtray in the well between the two seats was full of mint-humbug wrappers. The journey seethed with silence, punctuated only by the squeak of the passenger seat's visor as his mother pulled it down to check her makeup in the mirror.

Excitement scurried in his stomach as he looked forward to his evening at the club. His mother had told him earlier that the only reason they were bringing him was that she couldn't find a babysitter and he was too young to be left on his own.

He can remember the layers of smoke that hung in the air, the cigarette butts and the dried circles of spit dotting the floor like ringworm rounds. It was a large cavernous room with long runs of fluorescent lighting, filled with steel-tube chairs. Groups of drinkers sat together, ringed by empty and half-empty glasses. They were mostly men, their nicotine fingers jabbing the air like small yellow stems.

Young men carried laden trays of drinks to and fro, their slim hips slipping expertly between cluttered tables. They all wore white shirts and flared black trousers, and pocketed their tips quickly with deft thrusts of their hands.

At one point a man stopped by the table. He knew the builder and greeted him with a soft punch on his shoulder. ‘Hi, Clive, how's it hanging?’ He had only one eye, and the left side of his face was disfigured by a twisted mesh of scars.

Clive greeted the man as ‘Nelson’, then winked at James's mother and laughed. James couldn't take his eyes off him. He thought Nelson looked like a mannequin after it had been caught in a shop blaze. The man was drunk and at one point threw a look at James, staring at him with his one good eye, his head bobbing to a jaunty tune it seemed that only he could hear. James remembers trying to avoid looking at the scar, the dense shadow that nestled there.

Before he left Nelson turned to Clive and stuck out a hand. After a moment Clive reached into his pocket and placed a few coins in the man's palm. James watched him walk away, and noted that he hadn't said thanks, just took the money and moved on to the next table and hit a small wiry man who sat there a punch of greeting on the shoulder. James had been put at a small side-table, next to his mother's larger one, and given a Lucozade and a bag of crisps. He remembers his feet dangling from his chair, banging against its steel limbs. He watched as Clive and his mother sat and sipped their drinks, staring into the middle distance like people who had just suffered a loss.

As soon as they had finished, one of the young waiters was called over and a new tray of drinks arrived.

Periodically Clive would throw a hopeful glance at James's mother. James remembers how her eyes glittered. She looked as if her mind was hunting, stalking some hidden paradise, far beyond the thin walls of her life.

By the end of the evening they had been joined by a young red-headed man, his skin the colour of milk. He sat beside James's mother and seemed to know her quite well, a little sly smile coming to his face whenever he spoke to her. James can remember watching the three, from his side-table, sipping his flat Lucozade noting how their bodies were halved by the table-top. He became fascinated by the shuffling dance of their legs beneath it, seeing the red-head's feet slide to within inches of his mother's, his right foot begin tickling her ankle knot. Above, in the more visible half, he saw a smile flash across her lips and watched as she dipped her head.

‘I love this woman …’ Clive said suddenly, his body trembling with the force of his declaration. He leant into the middle of the table. He was now inches from the young man's face. ‘I fucking love this woman.’

This time it had the force of a confessional whisper, an offered secret, and James watched as, beneath the table, his mother allowed the young red-head's hand to advance slowly along the creamy run of her thigh.

James remembers feeling sorry for Clive. He felt anger towards his mother, a hard violent anger that wanted to stamp on the woman that had risen from the froth of beer and the snatched swallows of gin.

So, later that night, as he slowly opened an eye and peered at Clive sitting at the end of his bed, he felt fear give way to pity. He remembers seeing his bare torso glistening like lard in the moonlight, one hand laid across his belly. He was crying. He seemed to be saying something half to himself, half to the sleeping world. How long he sat there James cannot remember, but eventually his eyes closed, the big man's mutterings lowering him into sleep. He never saw Clive again, and knew better than to enquire as to his whereabouts. Sometimes he thought of him, and saw him lumbering across the landscape of his life, half of it hidden, the other half too painful to behold.

‘Glad I'm back, kid. I tell you what, I aim to be here a while this time.’

He is in the kitchen, filling the kettle. Sully has followed him into the house, leaving his stash of freshly thieved logs.

‘Listen, kid …’

James notices that Sully always addresses him as if they were characters in a Western, opening his shoulders and squinting into the middle distance, especially when he feels unsure. It irritates James: it makes him feel as if Sully isn't really seeing him, that he is just something in the way.

‘Those logs will come in handy on the long nights.’

James doesn't reply, pretending not to hear.

Sully sticks his oil-stained hands under the running tap. ‘I said – ’

‘I'm not interested.’ James looks deep into his eyes.

Sully just looks back and for a moment they stay that way as if they are lovers about to kiss. Then Sully says, ‘Holy cow! If looks could kill, kid, I'd be a dead man.’

Death for the Burning Power of His Mother's Love

They thought I didn't know. They thought I didn't see, They had plans and they didn't include me. After all I had done for her. Everything is clear to me now. She never loved me. She thinks only of herself, like he did, You see, they were one of a kind. As I stand here on the scaffold I think of all the times I have cared for her, looked out for her, I was her guardian, I know it sounds silly, a young son being his parent's guardian, but that's the way it was. That's the way it has always been.

I thought he had gone for good. I thought that we had seen the last of the smug, slap-happy Sully, I was wrong. I knew then something had to be done, that drastic measures were required to stop this man in his tracks. A small crowd has gathered. Some of the men in the crowd shout insults at me. All night long I have waited for this moment, listening from my cell as the workmen put the final touches to the wooden scaffold outside.

I think of the knife I stuck into Sully's heart, the knife that now lies at the bottom of the lake. I think of it buried in the silt. I think of the look of dismay that creased his face as the blade dug deep into his chest. I think of how I had used it to skin him, to gut him, and the hook to hang his carcass from the beam in our outhouse, just like the pig he brought home for her once.

I hear the trapdoor snap open and feel my feet plummet from me and a hard crack travel from the base of my spine as my neck breaks. Through the last thrashing spasms of my body I hear her call my name and see her face lift towards mine, but by then I am far beyond her, swimming in the depths of the lake, pushing down towards my gashed love for her, which lies buried hilt deep in the soft heart of the lake's bed.

3. Teezy

‘Don't say anything.’

‘I won't.’

‘Come on, Jimmy, don't be like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘You know full well like what. Just don't say anything to her about Sully.’

‘All right.’

‘I just don't want to get into it with her. Sticking her nose in.’

‘All right, Mum. All right.’

They are driving to his aunt Teezy's. A week has passed since Sully's return and his mother has been lost to him. She has run to the sanctuary of Sully's arms and hidden from him there. The pile of logs has stayed where it was dumped, bringing impatient looks from some of the neighbours, and one or two loud grunts of disapproval from Mrs McCracken across the way.

He is fond of Teezy. She is his ally. She is his great-aunt, his grandfather's sister, his father's aunt. His grandfather died before he was born. He had been a brickie, segmenting the world into brick-size pieces, adding mortar and building walls to seal the perimeters of his life. Beyond that James knows nothing, except that Teezy had loved his father dearly, but what is gone is gone.

She is a heavy woman, with soft, large shoulders. Sometimes when she is cooking she rolls up the sleeves of her cardigan, revealing Popeye-like arms and the little gathered parcels of flesh that hang about her elbows.

He feels safe with her, with the bulky force of her ways. She always keeps a bottle of Bols Advocaat on a high shelf in her living room, and at the end of the day she ceremoniously pours a capful into a waiting thimble glass. Then she sits by her small television set, prises her shoes from her feet and gently caresses the small bones of her ankle with one of her toes.

James had noticed from a very early age that there are two Teezys. First there is the serene Teezy, the ‘end-of-day woman’, with her glass, holding the world outside at arm's length. On the other hand there is the ‘street’ Teezy, who barges her way across town. A woman who is larger and angrier, who forces her way through checkpoints and grumpily ignores bomb scares, shouting at the top of her voice that it is her country and that no one is going to stop her buying her eggs.

‘My goodness, you are shooting up. You're still a bit mealy-looking, mind. A good feed would do you the world of good – do you hear me, Ann?’

‘You saying I don't feed my son, Teezy?’

They have arrived. Teezy is ushering them through the narrow corridor of her small townhouse, clucking and fussing like a mothering hen.

‘No, not at all, but sometimes, you know as well as I do, you have to stand over them.’

‘Well, I've better things to do, Teezy, no harm to you.’

‘Yes, and it begins with an S.’

She says it quietly, out of his mother's earshot; it brings a smirk to James's lips.

‘What did he bring this time?’ she whispers to him.

‘A pile of logs.’

‘The romantic’

One year he got hives. He remembers clawing at them with his fingernails, trying to avoid the heads, drawing red tracks either side of them, itching so much and so often that he numbed his arm. He remembers Teezy slopping palmfuls of calamine lotion all over his body, rebuking his cries by declaring firmly,

‘Too many scallions.

‘Not enough sleep.

Too many tomatoes.

‘Not enough greens.’

Almost immediately the calamine lotion would dry into a crust, the heads of the hives peeping through in weeping clusters.

Teezy and his mother had got together for the evening about a year after his father had died and they were preparing James for bed, fussing around him. His mother was drawing a large hairbrush across his head in hard arcs, bringing tears to his eyes. ‘You've hair like strips of wire,’ she had said, grunting as she pulled the brush across his skull. ‘Stubborn, stubborn hair.’

‘I wonder where he got that from,’ Teezy had said.

As the evening had worn on the two women had filled the house with their laughter. Every now and again James's mother would turn to him, eyes misty with booze, and ask him thickly if he was all right, if his hives itched, and if they did not to touch them. He remembers feeling like a prisoner held captive in his own body, encased in the chalky suit of dried lotion.

At one point Teezy had insisted that she was not able for more drink, raising her hand like a policeman stopping traffic.

‘What sort of a woman are you?’ his mother had said.

‘Oh, all right then, a wee one.’

James can remember seeing Teezy's glass welcome the sherry. It was the first and only time that he had seen his auntie drunk, the only time he had seen her take on his mother at her own game. Slowly the two Teezys blurred into one, and the angrier, the ‘street’ one, began to hold sway. Once she looked over at James in a way that prompted the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up, and caused his skin to itch once more.

His mother, he remembers, never took her eyes off Teezy. At the moment Teezy had looked at James, his mother had placed a record on the old deck she kept beneath some magazines by the television set. Then she began to yelp and dance at the edge of Teezy's vision, thumping her feet down heavily on the linoleum, and slowly began to advance on her.

It took a moment for Teezy to release James from her gaze and turn to look at Ann, a smile breaking across her face. She then had leapt to her feet, clapping her hands.

The two women began to dance. He watched as they made little jinking runs around one another, their arms held out from their bodies. When a slower ballad came on they looked at each other and laughed, and Teezy eased her body back into the fireside chair. His mother had then turned to James and offered him her outstretched arms, her eyes gaily dancing like the flames in the dark mouth of the grate. ‘Come on, dance with me,’ she had said. ‘Dance with your queen.’

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

‘Right, I'm off,’ His mother says.

They stand in Teezy's small scullery as if at a wake, unsure what to say or do.

‘You've things to do yourself, haven't you, Jimmy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘See you in a bit, then.’

‘Send my regards to the reprobate,’ Teezy says.

‘Did you tell her?’ his mum asks him.

‘No.’

‘I may be old but I'm not stupid, Ann,’ Teezy shouts after her.

He can remember the way her skin had slipped on to his like moss along a stone. He can remember her breath on his neck, the way she told him to put his sockless feet on her shoes. He remembers climbing on to them, and feeling his soles lie across the bridge of her feet. He remembers them moving together.

‘My strong man … my fierce, strong little man,’ she had said.

The song had finished and his mother asked quietly how his hives were; all right, he had said. They were still close together, his mother leaning down to meet the smile in his eyes.

‘If Conn was only here to see you …’ his auntie had suddenly said, her head nodding, the fire beating a crimson glow on the side of her face.

Suddenly his mother's eyes had clouded. She turned and ripped the LP from the turntable. A silence sat, fat and solid, in the air. He remembers inching his way back to his seat, its springs squealing as he sat.

James remembers turning the name quietly on his tongue, like a small fiery sweet, Conn … his father's name. A four-lettered bomb exploding in his heart. Conn … Conn … like a fist in his mind, Conn … Conn … Conn.

‘Don't ever mention his name again,’ his mother had said.

And with that she had retaken her seat, and filled her near-empty glass, the liquid spilling across its lip. The two women had sat in angry silence until his mother lifted the glass to her mouth.

He can remember sitting there, his small fists clenched, dried peels of calamine lotion falling on to the crotch of his pyjama bottoms, watching the two women glare at one another. He began to itch and scratch at his hives.

‘Don't,’ his mother had said.

He had stopped and held out his hands towards her, palm upwards, in protest, in defiance, sitting there, knowing that if a secret wore skin it would look something like his.

‘Do you not eat, son?’

‘Yeah … No … I'm fine, Teezy.’

‘You look like a pale streak of nothing. No harm to you …’

He sits alone with Teezy in her scullery. He can imagine his mother scurrying down the town, bustling past shoppers, on her way to meet the heathen Sully.

Teezy stands and gives him a twinkly smile. He turns her head away from her. He knows that look: he knows what's coming.

‘What about you, my boy?’

‘What about me?’

‘Are there any little ladies in your life that I should know about?’

‘No.’

‘That sounds a bit final, son.’

‘Teezy, please.’

‘Come on, son.’

‘What?’

‘You're so serious, son. Have a bit of fun. Find a nice young strip of a thing and have a bit of a time with her.’

‘Yuk.’

‘Yuk? What sort of a word is that? Your schooling needs to be shaped up, my boy. Yuk … Come on, son, lighten up those chops of yours.’ She leans down to him, her eyes full of mischief.

‘Teezy …’

‘You've a face on you would freeze milk and hell besides. Come on, let me fix you something and we'll have a chuckle together.’

‘I'm fine, Teezy.’

‘You're going to waste away, son, with that serious mug of yours, disappear before our very eyes.’

‘I think he's back to stay for good this time, Teezy.’

‘I know, son, I know … How about a nice boiled egg?’

Death from an Acute and Unrelenting Hunger

The fields are blackened from the blight. I can see some of my neighbours crawling across the soil scrabbling for one healthy potato. I feel sorry for them. I cannot remember the last time I ate, for in my dreams I have always been hungry. My mother died a few days ago, followed quickly by my aunt Teezy. They died in each other's arms. I didn't have the strength to bury them, and had to leave them where they fell.

Once I believed that God had given me the power to save everyone by teaching them how to eat stones and the fine dust that fell from the cracks of buildings, but no one would listen. Another time I believed that the clouds were edible and spent days building a flying machine from twigs and the trunk of a fallen tree, but I must have misheard God's instructions for it refused to fly.

Most of the time, though, I just sit on the headland that fronts my small village, watching the sea. Sometimes I think I can see my mother dancing in the waves.

It is late now and God is talking to me again. I like it when God speaks to me, I like the way it soothes my heart, and the way the world expands like a mouth being kissed.

I stand. My slender body sways like a leaf on a branch. I smile to myself as I realise suddenly that God has given me wings and that I am climbing to the roof of the world to join my mother, and that my hands are full of clouds and the icy sparks of stars. My flight doesn't last and before long the cold night sea is travelling towards me at speed. By then, though, it is too late to change my mind.

4. Outer Space

When he was younger he was obsessed with the pictures of the Apollo astronauts. He remembers the lonely slope of their shadows on the moon's lifeless surface and the blackness surrounding them, as if on every hand there was mystery. He remembers wondering if that was where his father had gone when he died – is that where everyone went? Did they melt into the darkness that held the earth and the other planets captive?

Sometimes he thought he could hear his father's cries for help, and he pictured him spiralling like a satellite in the outreaches of space, his body slowly blackening. He would wake and rush to his bedroom window, his eyes scouring the night sky, his heart yearning to join his father in the depths of the universe.

He had tried to tell his mother that he believed his father was lost far, far out in the cosmos. He had tried to tell her one morning, years before, as she had faced him across the breakfast table. He remembers the frustration of not being able to say the words, to push them from his lips. He remembers his mother scowling with impatience, sharply telling him to eat his breakfast and to stop the nonsense. Eventually he had stood, limbs quivering with frustration. Then he had yelled it, as if his life depended on it: ‘Daddy is with the astronauts! I heard him! I heard him crying …’

His mother had slowly placed her fork on the plate and stood, carefully pulling the creases free in her skirt. Then she had walked to where he was standing. She had clamped her hands beneath his armpits and lifted him up, then slammed him back into his seat. He had landed with a jolting shudder that banged his jaw shut. She had leaned very close into his face, and had wordlessly cautioned him, her eyes unblinkingly facing his.

It is the end of the second week of Sully's return. They are on Sully time: everything his mother says and does revolves around him. She is standing by the kitchen door. Her hair is mussed; a piece of toast hangs from her lips. Sully has just left, having stayed the night. He's only back and already they're playing Happy Families.

‘Sully wants to take you see Northern Ireland play.’

‘I don't like Northern Ireland,’ James says.

‘What's that supposed to mean? You're Irish, aren't you?’

‘That's what I mean.’

‘Oh, don't start that. Football's just football.’

‘No, it's not.’

‘he's making a real effort this time, Jimmy. Come on, meet him half-way.’

‘Why are you back with him?’

‘That's between him and me.’

‘No, it's not. I live here too … or had you forgotten?’

‘Don't be cheeky or – ’

‘Or what, Mum? Or what? You'll get Sully for me?’

‘Jesus.’

He slams the door on his way out and glares at Mrs McCracken as she stands in her doorway opposite theirs, her eyes lifting disapprovingly from the untouched pile of logs to meet his. ‘Is someone going to do something about those logs?’

But he ignores her and begins to walk towards the town.

‘Here, son, this is for you …’

He can remember looking up into Teezy's eyes as he took the photograph from her. He can remember the look on her face as if it was about to break.

‘That's your daddy.’

It was a small, dog-eared photograph of a man standing against a hill, squinting into the sunlight, right hand raised playfully to his face.

‘He died for Ireland … Sssh,’ she had said, as if the world was listening.

‘Sssh,’ he had replied, cooing it up into her face. ‘Sssh.’

‘Now, no more astronauts, no more stories. They only upset your mammy.’

‘Sssh.’

For days afterwards he had wandered around, whispering it within earshot of the grown-ups. ‘Sssh,’ he remembers saying, putting his small face close to his mother's. ‘Sssh.’

‘It's our secret. It's our private story,’ Teezy had said, as she had given him the photo. ‘Wasn't he a fine-looking man? As fine as Ireland herself.’

‘Sssh,’ he had said.

‘This is your father … He died for Ireland.’

He remembers how he had looked at the worn photograph, at the slender figure that grinned at him through the fallen years. Sometimes now he would bring it out from its hiding-place and quietly gaze at it, his eyes hunting its held landscape. He would hold the photo delicately as if it was made of silk. At other times he would quietly curse the man, damn him for leaving, hate him for his absence, his fingernails digging into the photo's edge so that they left crescent-shaped marks.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

‘Watch where you're going, sunshine.’

‘Sorry.’ He looks up into the fuck-you face of Malachy O'Hare, the estate hard man.

‘IRA or Prod?’

‘What?’

‘IRA or Prod?’

James looks across at Malachy's troops, small, hard-faced boys. ‘For fuck's sake, IRA.’

‘Don't curse when you say it. Don't disrespect the flag.’

‘Sorry … IRA.’ He goes to slide past them, careful not to look any of them directly in the eye.

‘Hold on a minute, sunshine. Do us one of your deaths.’

‘What?’

‘Jimmy Lavery, the Death Machine. Do us one of your deaths.’

‘Give us a break.’

‘Do one … or else.’ He raises a large fist to the tip of James's nose.

‘OK.’

‘Good man yourself.’ Malachy's face breaks into a big, muggy smile. ‘What have you got for us today?’

James looks skywards, and after a moment he says, ‘Well, there's this astronaut … and he's lost his mother ship …’

‘An Irish astronaut?’ Malachy asks.

‘Yeah, an Irish astronaut.’

An Astronaut's Final Message

Time: 0900 hours

Location: Support Capsule

The Erin Galaxy

Date: 12 Dec 2157

Message Received From: Captain Conn Lavery.

Dear Ann and Little Jimmy,

By the time you receive this transmission I will be dead. As I write this I am slowly suffocating. For the last hour I have been using my spacesuits reserve tank of oxygen, but even that now has begun to fail. The mother ship is ablaze, I can see it beyond, through my small porthole window, and it looks like a devil's eye, hot and fiery. All my comrades are aboard her, good strong men, with only one love in their lives: Ireland. It is strange to think that I will never see either of you again, that I will never hold you close and feel the full warmth of your bodies.

I hope you both remember me fondly, as a true Irish spaceman. We fought hard, my son, harder than you can ever know. We repelled the alien hordes three times before their greater military strength began to tell. We all die, son, we all die, and we must be grateful for the time we have had together. It is strange to think that space will be my grave; the huge black belly of space will be a mausoleum for my bones. Look after your mammy, my son. Let no one come between her and my memory. I love you both dearly, more than you can know. I have decided to leave my capsule, the oxygen has gone, and the little I have left in my spacesuit I'm hoping will sustain me on my walk to meet the face of God. I'm stepping clear of the capsule now … Air is going quicker than I thought. I love you both. Look for a new star tonight in the sky.

Love for as long as there is any, Captain Conn Lavery.

End Of Transmission.

5. The Rehearsal

He is following Mr Shannon, scrambling behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides, down High Street and across the Mall. The streets are full of schoolchildren scurrying for buses and with shoppers flitting in and out of stores.

‘Keep up, Lavery, keep up. You're letting the side down, old boy.’

Shannon seems to glide along on his own current of air, swaying to avoid a pack of schoolgirls, tipping his head in greeting to people he knows. James collides with a small dog, its body contracting into yelps as his foot finds its paw. Shannon comes to a halt and looks back at the dog, hopping around on three legs, and at James scurrying after it.

‘Hit it a boot in the hoop, Lavery, and look lively. Tempus fugit. Good day, Mrs O'Rourke.’

Mrs O'Rourke stares at James and pushes him away as he tries to make amends with her dog. ‘Clear off, you hooligan.’

‘I'm sorry,’ he whimpers.

‘Piss off before I take a lump out of you. Good afternoon, Mr Shannon, you're looking well this fine day.’

‘One can but try, Mrs O'Rourke, one can but try.’

He watches as Shannon struts away from him, delicately sidestepping a pushchair, full of fruit and groceries.

Mr A. G. S. Shannon is James's English teacher, ‘a force for literature’, as he likes to call himself. James can remember the first time Shannon had stood before him in classroom G14, seven years before, giving his new English lit charges the once-over. He wore moccasins and James can remember their slap on the floor as he paced, his heels making a small sucking noise as his feet travelled back and forth. His hair in those days was a Brylcreemed black with a kiss-curl that fell daintily across his wide forehead. It was his belly, though, that fascinated James: it was large; it seemed to begin at his sternum and end at his groin. James thought it looked as if it had been grafted on to his body for it seemed at odds with the relatively slender man that carried it.

‘My name is Mr A. G. S. Shannon and my business is literature, and your business is to make it your business.’ Then he had lifted his head and raised an index finger to his chin. ‘If you have knowledge of language, my boys, you have a shot at the truth. Without it you will remain in your Neanderthal twilight, grunting and pawing your way through life.’

Some boys had burst out laughing, some had let out a snort of protest, but James and a couple of others had held the thought he had given them as if it were fashioned from gold. He was different from the rest of the teachers. He didn't seem to have the same cranky dedication to authority, or the constant need to flex it. James would often hang around at the end of class, waiting to catch his eye, to be fed a small morsel of his attention. Sometimes he would put his arm across James's shoulders and walk him from the class. They would amble down the corridor, Mr Shannon's rich quotes from Shakespeare weaving seamlessly with the strong blades of sunlight streaming through the windows.

Rehearsals are in an old two-storeyed townhouse off Canal Street. The front door lies open, revealing a long, narrow hall lit only by a solitary lightbulb, with a wooden staircase at the end. They climb to the top floor, Shannon sometimes taking two, three steps at a time. Two men he has never seen before stand by a fireplace. Shannon guides him towards them, his hand delicately placed between the boy's shoulder-blades. The men look up from two tattered scripts; one wears a Paisley cravat.

‘Gentlemen, may I introduce you to young James La very? He is our Martini. La very, this is Cathal Murphy.’

The man wearing the Paisley cravat extends his hand, and James shakes it shyly.

‘And this reprobate, Lavery, is the inestimable Oisin “Chin Chin” Daly.’

Oisin “Chin Chin” Daly is at least six feet tall, with long, greasy, heavy hair. He has brown eyes that flicker watchfully from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Mr Lavery …’

‘Mr Chin Chin – sorry, Oisin.’

‘No, man, you scored the first time.’

Suddenly two women are in the doorway. One is small with red, short-cropped hair and a freckled face; on her shoulder is a green duffel bag with white trim. The other rummages furiously in one of two plastic shopping-bags. She is plump and short with greying brown hair.

Shannon eyes her imperiously, left eyebrow arched. ‘Ah, Nurse Ratshit at long last.’

‘Ratchet, Nurse Ratchet, you bollocks. Where the f—ing hell are my car keys?’ Suddenly she notices a set hanging from her friend's hand. ‘For Chrissakes, Patricia, why didn't you pipe up? And me making a complete arse of myself.’

‘You gave them to me not two minutes ago, Kerry, in case you lost them.’

The play they are there to rehearse is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. James has been roped in to play Mr Martini, a paranoid character who spends most of the play talking with an imaginary friend. Mr Shannon had crept into the physics class the week before and asked permission from Mr Bennett to steal James for ten minutes.

‘Of course, Mr Shannon, have him for as long as you'd like.’

As they stood in the science corridor, Shannon had dug a thin book out of his briefcase, and held it skyward, an awkward grin of triumph spreading across his lips. ‘Do you know what this is, Lavery? Do you have any idea?’

‘No, sir.’

‘An American classic, Lavery, a modern classic from the New World.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I want you to peruse it.’

‘Sir?’

‘Read it.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Because you are going to be in it.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. Your part is Martini. Rehearsals begin next Tuesday afternoon after school. Performance in the amateur drama festival at the Opera House, Belfast, one month from now.’

‘Why me, sir?’

‘Why not you, La very? Pray, why not you?’

James had watched as Shannon walked away from him, backside swaying, head held high. Just before he turned the corner he raised the fingers of his right hand and wiggled them.

Back in the physics class, he had turned the booklet over and over in his hands.

‘What's that?’ Seamus Byrne, the boy next to him, had asked, when Bennett wasn't looking.

‘A play.’

‘A what?’

‘A play.’

‘You poof.’

A week later, against his better judgement, there he is. With everyone now seated and settled, Mr Shannon calls for order, his briefcase resting on his knees. A curt businesslike smile announces that their evening's work is at hand. Behind them is the fireplace, full of debris, half-burnt parish circulars and cigarette packets. Barely at first, James sees the shape of something else lurking in it, blacker than shadow, a dead crow, its head wrenched and twisted back on itself, its beak frosted with ash.

‘Now, business of the first order … We have a new addition to our ranks, Master Lavery from Carrickburren. Lavery will be playing Martini.’

All faces are smiling at him. Cathal Murphy gives him a playful dig in the ribs, the two women whisper to each other and one blows him a kiss. Most excruciating of all, he can feel the doting beam of Mr Shannon's stare.

‘As you can probably surmise, we are a little short-staffed at the moment, due to teaching commitments, babysitter shortages … and downright laziness. But do not despair, all will be well – once I've broken a few heads.’

A siren wails outside. Shannon tries to speak but swallows his sentence, letting the noise bleed through and out of range. ‘Well, after that rather apt fanfare, let us get down to business. Mr Lavery, let us take a bold step. I would like us to begin this evening with the nightmare sequence involving your character, Mr Martini, and his brutal, painful memories of a particular airborne dogfight. Martini is sleepwalking, running, believing he is immersed in a very nasty gun battle alone, thousands of feet in the air and very, very frightened. You, of course, know the sequence I mean?’

James is confident that he does, despite the slow rush of blood he can feel building in his cheeks. He has read the play between homework assignments, sitting at the kitchen table as his mother fussed and cleaned.

‘What's that you're reading?’ his mother had asked.

‘Nothing.’

He had looked at her. He knew that mood, that brittle hung-over mood. She and Sully had been out until late the night before. They had woken him up when they got back. All day she had been in bad form, giving James that I'm-watching-you stare.

‘Don't give me that! What is it? You've been stuck in it for hours.’ She grabbed the play and began to read it. He made a lunge for it but she moved away. ‘Is this to do with your English studies?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Either it is or it isn't.’

‘Mr Shannon asked me to be in it.’

‘In what? In this?’

He nods. She hands back the play. ‘You mean appear in it?’

‘Yeah.’

She doesn't say anything, just looks at him. Then she says, ‘I'm not happy about it.’

‘Why?’

‘I'm not.’

‘Why, Mum?’

‘I'm your mother and I'm not happy. Mothers get to say things like that. OK?’

He had gathered up his books and stormed out of the kitchen. His mother had followed him to the doorway shouting after him: ‘I don't want you reading that thing. I don't like that Shannon one, I never did. He's far too smooth for my liking. Did you hear what I said?’

After that he had brought the text to bed with him and used a torch to pore over it in case his mother caught him. It was there that he had first glimpsed the world of the play. As the night had worn on he grew bored of the text and threw shadows on the wall by the bed. It was there that the characters had begun to live.

McMurphy, Shannon's character, had loomed before him, in hard dark lines. Chief Bowden had lurched across the wall, his arms and legs long timbers of shadow. Billy Babbit, the stuttering kid of the asylum, was a shake of the torch, so that its spilling light seemed to dance him into life. Then suddenly, with the force of a dark fist, his character Martini had come to life. It had thrust itself across the wall like a big black jigsaw bird, its beak James's trembling knuckles, its eyes two dark holes that seemed to drink the light.

‘When you are quite ready, Lav—’

Before Shannon can even complete his surname, James turns in his seat and, reaching into the fireplace, grabs the dead crow. In one movement he lifts it above him, raining ash all over Chin Chin's head. In his mind he sees his character perched in a helicopter gunship and the dead crow's wings its churning blades. With the bird now rotating above his head James runs round the rehearsal room shouting, ‘Bandits at three o'clock! Bandits at three o'clock! May Day! May Day!’

The two women scream.

‘Ratatat! Ratatat! Ratatat! I'm hit! I'm hit!’

The bird makes an eerie swishing sound in his hand. A hush falls across the room as he runs to and fro, the wings of the dead bird flapping above his head. Eventually exhausted he slumps to his knees. ‘May Day … This is Martini. May Day.’

The crow's glazed eye looks up at him, and feathers float down all around him. Slowly, he finds himself back in the room once more. He looks around him. He sees their stunned faces. He wants to tell them about the big jigsaw bird that had flown out of the shadows on to his bedroom wall the other night. He wants to say that it had seemed right to use the crow. He wants to say many things. He wants to understand the roar that had risen in him as he had run round the room, the hard bright anger that had bolted from his gut. He wants to tell them that his father had died for Ireland, and that Ireland didn't give a shit.

‘Sssh.’

That was what Teezy had said when she had secretly given him the photograph, her finger raised to her lips.

‘Here … your father died for Ireland … sssh …’

‘Sssh.’

He gets to his feet. The room is silent. Patricia peers from behind her fingers, Kerry's hands are over her mouth. Cathal Murphy's Paisley cravat is now hanging from his fingers. Chin Chin is nodding, a smile gleaming in his eye. Mr Shannon takes a deep breath, his eyes narrowing in concentration. ‘Hmmm … I think the accent needs a little work, La very, but full marks for the inventive use of available props.’

When the rehearsal is over Shannon asks James to stay behind. They sit in silence for a moment or two, James gazing fiercely at his shoes, not daring to meet Shannon's gaze.

‘I'm not going to bite, La very.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sean … Call me Sean.’

‘Sean.’

‘It was very imaginative, what you did earlier.’

‘Yes, sir … Sean.’

‘Don't be so hard on yourself, Lavery. You did nothing wrong, far from it. You used this.’ He taps his forehead and winks. ‘Now, off you go. See you on the morrow.’

‘Thank you, sir … Sean.’

‘No – thank yow, James.’

As he steps out into the night air, his chest swells with pride as he makes his way up Joseph Street. As he rounds the corner on to Hill Street he taps his forehead with his fingers in self-congratulation.

Death by Being Dropped into Ireland's Greedy Endless Mouth

The big black jigsaw bird has me. I can see the scuttling of the people below me, their small, scurrying shapes bumping and jostling each other. Above me I feel the heavy swoosh of wind from the bird's wing thrusts; I feel the steel bite of its claws along the run of my back. I can smell the stench of old carrion from its warm, sickly breath. Higher and higher I am lifted until the ground below is a distant memory. I think of the look of surprise on my mother's face when the bird swooped and gathered me in its vice-like grip, its large head cutting skywards. I remember how her scream broke the crisp morning air, and her hands flailed at the departing bird as if she was trying to deter a troublesome wasp. I heard my name fade on her lips, and I was sure I caught the glint of a falling tear.

I am not afraid, only puzzled. I had thought that the big jackdaw was my friend and I cannot understand why he is suddenly so aggressive with me. Clouds come and go like floury fists. Small thrusts and swirls of air play and tug at the soft flesh of my neck, and my feet bob and tick on the ends of my legs, like fishing floats. At first I recognise the countryside below me, and grin as I see my school rush by, its playing-fields like long green tablets, glistening in the morning sun. I even believe I see my aunt Teezy's house, small grey puffs of smoke rising from its short fat chimneys, and I wave. But then the countryside gets darker, and the wind fresher, and small dots of falling hail sting my eyes. We are flying through heavy, dense mist and I lose all sense of time. All I can hear is the swooshing beat of the bird's wings and the loud patter of my heart.

Suddenly, below me, the mist parts and I can see a mountain rising up to meet us, and in the middle of this mountain's peak is a large foul-smelling mouth. Ireland's mouth. I realise with horror that I am going to be fed to it. All around the fringe of the mountain's peak I see dismembered limbs and old bones: they cover the ground below me like forgotten stones. As the bird drops me, I realise that this is where all the young men of Ireland go; this is where my father went. As I hurtle through the air, the mountain opens its mouth and I see the blood and guts of a nation's men rushing to meet me.

6. The Bomb

The following Saturday morning a bomb goes off in the town. James and his mother had driven the three miles from the estate, and were on the small roundabout at Carrick Street when they heard the blast. James thought it sounded like a giant punching a huge fist into the Earth's mantle. The buildings that lined the street vibrated momentarily and some of the shop windows spewed broken glass on to the pavement. Ahead at the top of the street, just where it rounded into Canal Street, James can see a white puff of smoke rise; it reminds him of the knot of smoke that the Vatican uses to announce a new pope. A shop alarm sounds, its discordant wail puncturing the eerie silence that had settled in the aftermath of the explosion.

That means his town will be on the news tonight, James thinks. He can see the reporter standing before the tangled mass of shop frontage and buckled vehicles, cement dust falling like papery rain into the camera lens.

Two cars ahead of them have collided, the front of one pushed back on itself like a discarded paper cup. The drivers stand by the doors of their vehicles, a lost look on their faces, like children whose sweet ration has just been stopped. James's mother hasn't moved since the blast occurred. Her hands have left the steering-wheel and frozen midway to her face. She is gaping as if someone has just skewered her through the chest.

For what seems an age, the traffic, with its cargo of shoppers and children, sits where it is, the ball of smoke ahead seeping like squid ink into the sky. He hears the whine of sirens somewhere behind him, and turns to see a phalanx of blue lights fighting their way through the backed-up traffic. James looks again to his mother, and notices that her body is shuddering, and that two long tears are working their way down her cheeks.

Suddenly a fire-engine fills their rear-view mirror, like a colossal red whale, its siren squealing. The driver inches it closer and closer to their car, pressing the horn with hard, sharp bangs of his hand. James can see the co-driver wave his arms, furiously gesturing for them to get out of the way. ‘Mum, please …’ he says.

His mother grabs the steering-wheel and shunts the car out of the way, mounting the pavement with an ungainly thump. They watch the fire-engine stream past, followed by two police Land Rovers and a couple of army Saracens. Other drivers take advantage of the sudden slipstream of free road to shoot through, leaving James and his mother stuck, tilted on the high pavement.

His mother parks at the other end of town in a rundown car park, squeezing the car between two vans, cursing loudly as she bumps the side of one, then looking around nervously to see if anyone has noticed. For a moment she sits there, her hands laid out flat, knuckle up on the rim of the steering-wheel.

He wonders if anyone has been killed in the explosion, and about the threshold they might have passed across as they died. What was it like, he wondered. Did the souls of the victims leave the earth as they passed over? Did the sky peel back like ripped plastic sheeting and did their spirits hurtle through the opened heavens into the blackness of space? There, did the souls orbit each other, like fireflies, in the starry wastes of the universe?

‘I've a couple of things to do,’ his mother says.

‘Right.’

‘Will you be all right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don't want you going near that mess over there.’

‘I'm not a baby.’

‘That's not what I meant.’

‘I'll be fine.’

‘You're not listening,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘Stay close to this part of the town. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes, I hear you.’

‘Look at me! I said, look at me.’

He looks at her. She seems so lost, so frightened. ‘OK,’ he says.

‘Right. I'll meet you back here in an hour,’ his mother says, and gives him a fifty pence piece.

He begins to cross the small bridge that spans the canal, heading towards the shops on the other side. He looks back towards the car park and watches his mother cross the road. He sees her pause outside Campbell's bar. Then she casts a quick look back in the direction of the car park before she is swallowed by the dark of the bar's doorway. So that was why she didn't want him with her: she wanted her booze. Suddenly all the compassion he had felt for her leaves him. If she doesn't care, then neither does he. It's that simple.

Go on, he thinks. Go on, drown yourself.

The billow of smoke from the explosion has subsided: it now throws up only faint fumes, like the embers of a dying cigar. Using it as a guide, James begins to work his way to the site of the bomb, his legs pumping down the streets. As he gets closer he can smell charred wood and incinerated rubber, and hear the shouts of the men from the emergency services. People pass him by, their faces pale with fear. He feels as if he is running into the opened mouth of hell. He can see the beginnings of fires, on the rims of car tyres, licking at the wooden frames of doorways.

Suddenly he feels something whip by his ear, and sees what he thinks is a small tick of light, or a firefly hover in the line of his vision, then flit furiously down the street away from him. As it passes it warms his heart, and he can feel long fingers of heat work along his gut and a smile begin on his lips.

Ahead, he can see a line of RUC men. They straddle the mouth of the street where the bomb has gone off, ushering frantic figures through their human cordon, shouting for everyone to clear the area. He looks for the dot of light but it has gone, as quickly and as mysteriously as it arrived. He tells himself that it was nothing but sunlight bouncing off car glass or a shop window.

He slips down a side-street that runs parallel to Hill Street and the site of the bomb, avoiding the line of policemen, hoping to grab a quick look at the devastation.

He rounds the corner and is facing on to the middle of Hill Street. He stands and looks down the alleyway and sees a car lying in pieces on the ground. Behind it, the figures of two people are staggering back and forth across the mouth of the alleyway. One, a man in his forties, is shirtless, and his vest hangs in torn lips of cloth from his body. His left arm is bloodied and the left side of his face is matted with dirt and blood. He shuffles aimlessly across the alleyway, his arms weaving strange loops in the air, his mouth uttering soft moans of protest. The other person is a young woman. At one point she sits on the torn ridge of the car door and rests her head tenderly in her hands, her bone-thin shoulders quivering, her hands dotted with blood.

In the background people stream past, their heads fixed downwards, their limbs tightly held, as if they still wore the roar of the blast on their bodies. Firemen drag huge hoses, their heads upturned in the direction of a rogue blaze. Soldiers fill the sides of the main street, their short, spiked guns half cocked on their arms.

A man stands at the beginning of the alleyway. James hasn't seen him arrive, hasn't seen him round the corner, and the sight of him brings a shiver to his skin. He seems to be cut from the dense cloth of the alleyway's shadows, and so tall that James has to crane his neck to get a look at his face. The deep navy pinstriped suit looks familiar, as does the fist-sized knot of his tie. He is strangely untouched, his suit immaculate, his hair finely neatened, his clear eyes gazing unwaveringly at James.

It is the man from the photograph Teezy had told him was his father. It is the man of half-remembered fragments, the man he had been told was dead.

James steps forward. The man seems to beckon him. The noise and panic of the morning are falling away, and he feels as if he is walking across a shimmering sheet of light towards the man's hands. He opens his mouth to speak, but the words leave him like mute birds, flapping away into the smoky air. Still the man beckons, his eyes filled with the soft passion of someone who has waited a long, long time.

Perhaps he is alive: perhaps he has secretly lived his life and is now returning to reclaim him. Perhaps Teezy lied to him. Perhaps he has lived a life of quiet patience, biding his time before coming back for him.

As if released from a strong, invisible web, his body starts forward. His legs move towards the figure. A hard cry falls from his lips. As he shoots forward he snags his foot on a piece of thrown car metal. He sees the ground of the alleyway rush to meet him. He feels the breath leave his body in a winded gasp, and he scrabbles desperately to right himself.

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