Breakfast on Pluto (16 page)

Only for Dessie’s adroitness in playing peacemaker that night, there might have been a lot more broken than the window in the toilet which Horse put his fist through, cursing: ‘Pigs!
Fucking pigs!’ as the golden arc of his urine irrigated practically every spot on the wall in front of him, bar the chipped white section of it marked Armitage Shanks. It was particularly
fortunate that they didn’t arrive on the scene on this evening too because, on account of a new arrival home from Portlaoise prison, where the volunteer had been serving five years for
membership of an illegal organization, spirits were higher than usual, with any number of ‘The Boys of the Old Brigade’, ‘The Broad Black Brimmer’ and the current favourite,
‘The Sniper’s Promise’.

The volunteer concerned was understandably overjoyed at the welcome he received, for the solitary in which he’d been placed for an attack on a prison officer, had come close to driving him
clean daft. As he observed to the Horse and Jackie who had just bought him a triple vodka and were insisting he drank it, ‘It’s good to be home.’ Which prompted Jackie and the
Horse to toast: ‘Cheers!’ after which they lapsed once more into what a keen-eyed observer, whose perceptions were not dimmed by either alcohol or euphoria – as those of the
volunteers most certainly were – might have termed ‘a sullen silence’. The cause of which no one, apart from themselves, could possibly have known, simply because it wasn’t
the sort of thing you could tell to anyone, possibly even for as long as you lived. ‘It was sad,’ ran the thought through Horse’s mind, ‘having to kill someone.’ But
particularly when you liked them.

And Horse liked Irwin Kerr, all right. So did Jackie. They had gone to school with his brother. Knew the whole family, for God’s sake. But what could they do? Already they had lost three
valuable volunteers because of his informing and were likely to lose God knows how many more if it were allowed to continue. Not to mention God knows how many arms dumps. They supposed that he
possibly knew what was going to happen to him. All sorts of hints had been dropped by other volunteers (down to ‘The Dead March’ being hummed one night when he got up to go to the
toilets) and he had been warned more directly on a few occasions by Jackie. ‘If they are putting pressure on you,’ he’d said to him, ‘the cops – whoever . . . tell us.
Tell us, OK? Don’t let it go until it’s too late.’

But he had and now he was going to die. Jackie and the Horse truly wished the job had been given to someone else but they were both the top local men so that was that. They decided to have one
more drink. ‘Before the cops come!’ they laughed, and then headed out to Carndonagh Lake where the job was to be done.

It was a beautiful night – an unblemished moon hanging over the steely water like a child’s wondrous toy. What made it worse was that when Irwin arrived – or the
‘tout’ as they forced themselves to call him now – he insisted on cracking stupid jokes as if they’d all gotten together to go on a fishing trip. ‘Did you hear about
the Cavan man who went on holidays . . .?’ as Jackie barked: ‘Shut up!’

After they had tape-recorded his confession, they put the black plastic refuse bag over his head and brought him off. By now he was wetting himself and defecating. Jackie was on the verge of
getting sick as he took out the pistol. Horse looked away when he did it and out of nerves Jackie attacked him. ‘I thought
you
were going to do it!’ he screamed. The trickle of
blood mixed with the sound of the water lapping as he tried to drown it out with even more shouting. What he was dreading was lifting Irwin and putting him in the boot, having to drive to the
quarry to dump him, which was why he cried out again and started flailing at the air and clutching his throat as if for him too now the stench was no longer bearable.

Which it certainly was for Puss as now upon her prison settlebed she shrieked: ‘I’ve come for you! You see I’ve come for you at last and you’re going to
pay now! Just like
him
, you’re going to pay!’

Meaning Father Bernard, of course, her own dear father whom she could not forgive!

‘You’re going to die, Daddy!’ she squealed. ‘You and all of you who brought the poison to the valley! I’m going to burn your church with you inside it! You think I
won’t! But I will, you see, I’ve got all night and till I’m finished I won’t stop!’

A wicked fairy squealing as havoc she would most definitely wreak! But nonetheless a little nervous now as Big Vicky opened the door and stood back to view his visitor.
‘O pray God that I look luscious!’ Pussy said to herself and raised her skirt a tiny bit. Big Vicky was the only one looking at her because the others were too busy cleaning up the mess
after their torture victim had expired – not Pat McGrane, but a neighbour who lived not far away from him, in fact. And, as usual, they were cursing and complaining about all the hosing and
whatnot they had to do each and every time they went out on a job. They were still at it when Vicky drew his flak-jacketed arm across his mouth and sank his tongue in his cheek as he said:
‘Say, boys. Looks like we’ve got a visitor.’ Now it really was a wise precaution for a cute little Pussy to have chosen the most expensive underwear one could find because you
could tell by the exasperated comments regarding the tiresome nature of the night’s work that these were men whose patience could be tried very easily (‘Fucking Big Vicky! Fucking,
fucking Big Vicky – always ordering us about!’) and Pussy didn’t want that, ending up being hung from the rafters by the tootle with all those nasties poking blades into her pale
white flesh!

I was so pleased Vicky was fond of salmon pink. ‘I wore it specially for you,’ I said and gave him a mischief-smile. ‘But we can only play in private! Sweet Puss is shy,’
I said.

And did Big Vicky’s eyes go – jump – or what! As he winked at all his tattooed friends and led Puss by the hand to show her his big pistol.

Which he did! O! And did she get excited!

‘Gosh! It’s such a great big gun!’ she gasped as she saw it peeping out from behind his great big army jacket. ‘What is it?’ she enquired meekly, for she knew
nothing at all about guns. As she informed him with her finger in her mouth.

And which he was ever so glad to hear, he said, because he’d tell her all about it. ‘Oops! Look! Your tootle is hanging down!’ thought Puss but didn’t dare to say it
– for Big Red he might not like it! All of a sudden, maybe, go and shoot poor whoopsies in the doo-doo! But no – he’s too busy taking it out – his great big gun, of course!
and stroking it like it’s the most precious metal in the world and saying: ‘Like Dirty Harry says – it’s a Magnum, and it’s the most powerful handgun in the world. You
want to see what it can do to a man’s face?’

‘Or a girl’s face, Vicky-poosy!’ Puss says, all shivery-shaky at the thought, then pleading with an eyelash flutter: ‘May I?’

‘But of course!’ says Big Vicky with a wink, meaning: ‘But I’ve got an even bigger one to show you after.’

Which he has, of course, as Pussy well she knows, except that there isn’t going to be one, an ‘after’, that is, as Big Vicky knows right now, what with Pussy pulling the
trigger and making a huge hole in the middle of his disagreeing face. Disagreeing because it is as if he is saying to himself: ‘You can say this is happening but I don’t agree with
you.’ Which didn’t matter very much anyway because before he had any time to continue the argument with himself, or some person whose face he was imagining inside his head, Pussy had
gone and done it again – this time aiming at his you-know-what! And not a bit ashamed! Not in the slightest bit perturbed as she flicked a tiny particle of lipstick into her mouth from the
bottom of her lip and said: ‘Let’s see what you do with it now, Big Darling! Big big darling, Vicky!’

(This piece I hate to read because I know Terence was right about forgiveness – and it contains everything he asked me not to feel! But here it is – with old
‘Fly-By-Night’s’ fingerprints all over it. Sorry, Ters. I don’t mean that. Why do you think I keep them? If I hated you, I’d have burnt them long ago, along with every
memory I have of you. Some chance!)

Father Bernard is busy washing his hands, whistling to himself as he wonders: ‘Have I got everything now?’ for sure as God he would leave something behind him as he
did every Saturday night when he went off to the church to hear his confessions – only remembering it, be it his rosary beads or prayerbook or his Silvermints when he was halfway there,
having to come all the way back down the hill to the presbytery to get them. ‘No,’ he mused now, ‘I’m nearly sure I have everything with me,’ and, wiping his hands on
the towel which his housekeeper, Mrs McGlynn (still with him after all these yars – her only time away being for that short period in the mid-fifties when –
No! No! Please!
) had
delicately, fondly laundered for him as always. Checking his accoutrements one last time – sometimes he hated himself for his fastidiousness – he sighed and, closing the door behind
him, set off up the hill to make his way to the Church of the Holy Saviour.

The first penitent he laid eyes upon was Mrs McGivney, a devout woman in her sixties who, God bless her, had never committed a sin in her life greater than harbouring uncharitable thoughts
regarding her neighbours. Close by was P. Counihan, a solicitor of advanced years who, in all his time in the town, as far as Father Bernard could remember, had never once missed his daily
Mass.

To these two kind people, Father Bernard nodded warmly, appreciatively, before stopping at his confessional and clicking open the door, casually wondering to himself who perhaps the stranger
might be, the headscarved woman in the drab overcoat who was kneeling over by the side aisle, praying fervently with her head in her hands. He said to himself as he took up his place inside the box
that he must say hello to her before he left – if she was still there of course.

Which indeed she was! After all, you are hardly going to come all this way to do something and then at the last moment, turn around and not do it. At least, the dark, dreaming Avenger
wasn’t! Not after all that she’d been through!

Which was why she was as giddy as a young goat! Remember – it was the first time she had seen her father since before being expelled from school and going to England! And before that had
seen precious little bar the tail of a soutane as it went flapping by, or a shy smile as Daddy quickened his step on the street and thought to himself: ‘O no! It’s
him
! My
twilight zone son! And he’s going to come over to talk to me!’

Which begged the question, of course – what did he mean – him?

‘What do you mean –
him
?’ it was Pussy’s plan to say – and then open her coat at that precise moment!

Obviously, it was going to be a little bit of a shock! After all, you don’t see someone in an old housecoat and headscarf in the mid-fifties and then suddenly meet them again in 1974
sporting check yellow blouses and Mitzi Gaynor Capri pants! Of course you don’t!

Is it any wonder he’d cry, poor Father Bernard, ‘Who – who on earth are you? And what are you doing in my church?’

Which, of course, would be quite enough, for by now and would you blame her, Puss would have had just about as much of that particular line of questioning, not to mention:
‘
What
are you’s!’ which she’d also to endure and it really was as much as she could be bothered with and why she scratched his face and scratched it again and he
cried no no no. ‘O no!’ she hissed, ‘I’m not your son, correct, my father, because what I am’s your daughter or hadn’t you noticed you gorgeous man in lace and
serge, you’ve passed me on your journeys,’ raising her hand to gouge his eye as back across the candle flames he fell and begged for mercy just as ‘Ah!’, poor Saviour on the
cross, did plead for some, but none it came I fear, not one scrap was to be found, as out in the night a bad bitch burned and burnt it to the ground, with petrol splashing about its doors and into
its heart a bluelit taper thrown as out across the valley all her madness – for what else could you call it now – like a cackling nightbird of the blackest hue took wing, as the flames
they licked the sky and in her wild and daring eyes, flesh melted on an old man’s bones.

‘You fucking bastard!’ she squealed, bad gremlin on a fern-furzed hill. ‘You fucking fucking bastard! Never will I forgive you! Never never never!’

There is not much happening in Mulvey’s. The crowd generally doesn’t appear in until nine or thereabouts. Which is why there is no commotion at all apart from the
newscaster repeating details of some murders in the north and requesting keyholders in Ballymena to return to their premises. ‘Ho hum,’ sighs Dessie as he washes the glasses under the
tap. As one of the customers puts his Major tipped cigarette to his lips and takes a long, deeply satisfactory drag. Just as the pebbled glass of the front window comes in and a tongue-shaped shard
knocks the ciggie out of his hand, almost shearing the side of his cheek off into the bargain. For a moment or two, Dessie is on the verge of saying: ‘Ah now, lads! Stop this!’ But soon
thinks the better of it as a harp in a glass case – fashioned by a prisoner in one of the country’s top high-security prisons – falls to the floor and breaks in bits. The
customer, still, ridiculously, on the high stool, is thinking to himself: ‘What is this – the end of the world or what?’ as another burst of gunfire rakes the walls and from
outside is followed by a wicked, girlish chuckle. For it is Puss, of course – who else – now retreating in the dark, giddy and sweating all over and sad that she has had to do it
– even though she knew she would – watching the Church of the Holy Saviour, as it once was, light up the entire valley, nasty flames so tantalizingly weaving as if to say: ‘You
weren’t expecting this, people of Tyreelin!’