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  Dawson raised his chin and blinked. “Listen, Dan. I’ve heard—” One dog barked and the other dog whined. “I’ve heard that you’re useful. Is that right? Chaps at that Matt Talbot Youth Club. They say to me, as Patrick did, Now there’s a useful guy.”

  “Pool,” Dan said. “Snooker. That’s probably all they meant.”

  “Come on now. No games. Ireland’s been modest too long. What are you good at, besides spoiling a story? An example. Let me think. My wife, the one-eyed one, she’s your bona fide whizz in the kitchen.”

  Had they really brought him here to talk about hobbies? He chewed his lip, lined up some thoughts.

  He hadn’t been a success at school but he was good at some things, small things. He had a talent for remembering. He was confident he’d be able to recite the right bits of the Green Book if all this went well and they swore him in. He could give them whole passages from the Bible too. Lines from the pulpit seemed to lodge in his head; he liked the slant and pop of bygone language. He could draw a map from memory, replace a tyre without a jack, run a decent hundred yards and lift some heavyish weights. He could masturbate three times a day and still tug out a fourth before sleep. He was good in the garden, good at sorting his mother’s drugs, good at making bets with other kids and good half the time at winning them. He did some DIY for the community: bits of plumbing, guttering, electrics like his father used to do after the job at Gallaher had gone. He was proud of his country and he thought it was OK to be proud.

  “I’m not modest,” he said. “I’m just shy with new people.”

  They chose to take this as a joke. One of the dogs bit playfully at the folds of skin around the other’s neck.

  “Do y’know how to use an auto, Dan?”

  He found himself looking to Mick for an answer. “No,” he said.

  Guns. A lot of the boys he knew wanted to join the Provos so that they could play with guns. Whereas his own reasons for wanting to join were…What were his reasons? To make a difference, long-term. To end the occupation, change people’s minds. To help fix up gutted businesses and protect the Catholic corner shops. To do service to the circumstances of his father’s death and to the fact that two of his brother’s friends, James Joseph Wray and Gerry McKinney, had been killed by the British Army on Bloody Sunday. Gerry unarmed with his hands in the air saying “don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” after which he was shot in the chest. James Joseph unable to move.

  “One at home,” he said. “For protection. But it’s not an auto, and I never fired it.”

  “Interesting. Hear that, Mick? Prefers picking up bullets to popping them. I bet you Danny’s the guy at a party who sticks to the hard H2O.”

  With a snigger that seemed stolen from television Mick zipped up the bag that had contained the balls. He opened the other one, took out a shotgun and a handgun. The handgun he gave to Dan.

  “Feel it,” Dawson said. “Lovely weight, no? Tend to jam, the autos, is the only thing. And now, if you don’t mind, you’ll shoot the dogs.”

  Dan laughed. No one else joined in. Their faces were flushed and attentive but there was no hint of humour at all.

  “Or,” Dawson added, “you can shoot one of them. Fifty per cent. You seem to be a left-hander—is that right, Dan? I could probably look after one dog. The thing is, looking after two, I don’t have the time, y’know? It’s cruel to have them.”

  Still their expressions gave nothing away. Dawson blew his nose.

  “I’d keep hold of the lead with the other hand,” Dawson said. “When you fire, I mean. Otherwise we’ll have a dog running around causing mischief, covered in bits of the other dog. Ugly, it’d be.”

  Mick snapped open the shotgun. He looked inside and closed it again. His eyes settled on the ground and his bald head shone.

  “Is this a joke?” Dan said.

  Dawson shrugged. “I’m asking you to stiff two dogs for me, my friend. I could do it myself, but they’re my dogs, and I’ve had them exactly a year. So, do me a favour, save me from having to kill my own, will you?”

  “Is it loaded?”

  Dawson smiled again. “I was told you were useful, Dan. Have I been misinformed?”

  “Like I said, I never used an auto.”

  “Same principle. Automatic. Manual. The thing they have in common is, you point them at something, squeeze the trigger, and the something stops being a problem.”

  “These dogs aren’t a problem.”

  “They’re a problem for me, Dan, you see.” Hard and low in the voice now. Grave. “I’m starting to wonder at your team skills. I’m starting to think you lack a bit of the interpersonal.”

  Dan looked at the two dogs and they looked back at him. Wet eyes. Wet noses. Excited. “I could take one home. Or both. I’ve got time to look after them, Mr. McCartland, and money for food.”

  “I like to get tight, Dan, but that doesn’t mean I’m tight.”

  “No, of course.”

  “You’ve just joined an army. Time to wind your neck in, Dan.”

  “All I meant was—”

  “You want to take on some new dependants now? Your ma not enough? The brother in the special home?” Dawson shook his head. “You think the British Army hesitate when they shoot dogs on our streets, corpses on the Falls to show us they’re keeping an eye? Nothing was ever changed by squeamish men, Dan. History clears away the blood, records the results, but that doesn’t mean the blood wasn’t there. An Ireland occupied by the Brits will never be free. An Ireland unfree will never be at peace. Do you believe otherwise? Do you prefer to stand back and observe? Are you a watcher, Dan, is that it, you like to watch?”

  Mick looked shifty now, embarrassed to be here. Again he touched his ruined ear. There was something newly benign in the calm sag of his mouth. A vulnerability, surely. It was Dawson who’d become the more brutish of the two. His thin neck had reddened, his thin lips had parted, his silver tongue was whipping up more words.

  Maybe the brown one, with the patches on its tongue. Maybe that one is sick. He wants me to kill the sick dog. He’ll tell me afterwards that it was sick, leukaemia or whatever, and I’ll have passed the test.

  With a steady left hand Dan lifted the gun and pointed it at the brown dog’s head. Be a person who does instead of says. With his right hand he gripped tight at the dog lead. Go on.

  He thought, This would be easier if the dog was ugly, if the dog was a rat, if the dog looked angry or unkind, and these thoughts made him sure he was being weak.

  If he got it between the eyes—the complex eyes, keen, watery they were—he’d kill it quickly. But if he aimed for the body he’d reduce his chance of missing. A body shot and then a follow-up? That’s what the RUC tended to do with guys they could label terrorists. But the other dog would be tugging, trying to get free, maybe covered in blood? Scared.

  The brown dog looked at Dan, expectant, breathing through its mouth. The other had gone flat, nose nuzzled into the grass. Mick seemed—could this be right?—to be putting bits of toilet paper in his mouth. He was sticking the damp wads in his ears.

  “I’ll incentivise,” Dawson said. “If you don’t shoot one of my dogs, Mick here is going to kindly shoot you.”

  “Kindly?”

  “He’s not unkind. Watch him around the bars of Belfast. He’s kissed all sorts of horrors.”

  “This is a wind-up.”

  “Is it?”

  “Why would you shoot me? I’m asking to join!” It was a wind-up. It was. He lowered the gun. “I’m not shooting any dogs.”

  “It’s your choice,” Dawson said. “I’ve made the three options clear.”

  “Three?”

  “Shoot a dog, one. Get yourself shot, two. Number three, you can shoot us. Although, for that option, you’d have to get cracking.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “We’ll give you three seconds to finalise your thoughts, Dan.”

  “This is, what’s the point of this?”

  “Three.”


  “Come on.”

  “Two.”

  “Please.”

  “One.”

  Mick lifted the shotgun. He pointed it at Dan’s chest and fired.

  The slam of impact. Shock of his body thrown back. A noise that put him deep inside himself.

  As he hit the ground his senses ceased to function. There was darkness, silence. Only the slightest light swirling through the old dim world, sluggish as the cream his mother put in coffee.

  —

  He was groping for where the wound must be, the wound. Block the blood. Should have killed the dogs.

  The leather of his jacket felt smooth. Nothing wet. Nothing ripped. Entry. Where was the entry? Slowly certain things came into focus: wind-swollen trees, a bird in blue sky.

  He rolled onto an elbow. The Land Rover was pulling away, its tyres giving up dust. Mick was standing over him, holding out a massive hand. There was sand and white stuff on the ground. Grains? Rice? Some on his jeans too. Dry white rice.

  Mick’s cool shadow. It looked from his face like he was shouting, a muscle jumping in the jaw. “Doctor the partridge,” he seemed to say. The ringing in Dan’s ears changed in pitch. His chest hurt, his skull hurt.

  “We fiddle with the cartridge. Pack it with a bit of basmati.”

  “What?”

  “Ruining the local carb market, the rice, so we steal it from the Indian importers. Slows the flight of the thing right down. Sorry if you hit your head.”

  Dan spat. “I might’ve. But I might’ve shot the dog.”

  Mick laughed. “Yeah. But as initiations go, not so bad, eh? Next time a gun’s pointed, you’ll up your game.”

  He had no clue where the handgun was. It wasn’t in his hand or anywhere near his hand. The dogs were moving wildly, happily, the lead snaking through the grass.

  “Useful to confirm his initial impressions,” Mick said. “There’s that too. Thinks you’re more of a distance man, doesn’t he? Your DIY skills. Devicecraft. More and more he’s looking to the mainland. First lad to call his bluff.” He pulled Dan up into a warm embrace.

  Dan blinked and tried to hide his shaking hands.

  “It’s over.”

  “What is?”

  “Welcome to your new life.”

  ONE

  Unaccommodated Men

  1984

  1

  After her Wednesday-morning swim Freya bumped into Mr. Easemoth. He was her old History teacher at Blatchington Mill, the benevolent dictator of Classroom 2D, a man always striving for facts. You got the sense it was pretty important to him to feel he was misunderstood.

  They exchanged a few words about the hotel. He grinned palely in the sunlight and said her future was bright. Mentioned also, awkwardly, that her father had given him a call. They’d discussed university options.

  “Very proud of you,” Mr. Easemoth said. “As well he should be.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Easemoth.”

  “Some of those marks were among the best in Brighton, I’d guess.”

  She smiled. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “No,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Thank you. A pleasure to teach.”

  Overhead a seagull screamed and wheeled. “Well, I guess I’d better…”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “It’s just.”

  “No no, don’t let me hold you up.”

  The quality of his smile in this moment made her sad. “See you soon then, Mr. Easemoth.”

  “And give my best to your father.”

  Walking. The breeze on her legs. Brine in the air. She was wearing a brand-new electric blue miniskirt. And would she ever actually see Mr. Easemoth again? What had undermined him above all in the corridors at school was not his sinusitis, or the stains in the weave of his tie, or even his anti-charisma. It was the unfortunate rumour that he possessed a micropenis, and probably that part wasn’t true.

  On rare September days like this, people in Brighton didn’t hang about. They threw off their drizzled raincoats and raided drawers for gaudy shorts. They cooked themselves on towels and bobbed about on waves. Gulls tottered across rocks, heads dipping low and feet lifting high, the motion mirrored by a kid checking his shoe soles for chewing gum. Old men watched the water through wavy iron railings and old women sipped tea outside cafeterias.

  The purple-and-pink signage of the hair salon was up ahead. Also the ice-cream guy. She could murder a 99 with double flake, but there was a long queue on the left side of the van.

  —

  Wendy Hoyt was the second-cheapest stylist at Curl Up & Dye, a curvy hypochondriac whose own bleached locks—an advert, a warning—took up a massive amount of airspace. With Wendy, headaches were often imaginary tumours. Back pain amounted to osteoporosis. She’d had suspected failures in all the main organs, suffered a non-productive cough caused by contact with livestock, and her neck bore a hairspray rash that she preferred to blame on sea breeze. Freya didn’t pay much attention to Wendy’s catalogue of invented catastrophes, but at the same time had an instinctive sympathy for people whose catastrophes didn’t get much attention, so it was a sort of draw and she kept coming back.

  “Thought any more about it?” Wendy said, tightening the gown around Freya’s neck. There had already been a discussion about why her hair was “pre-wash-wet,” a connected warning about the coarsening effects of chlorine, and a bonus tip about a girl who got pregnant when swimming because a boy had been masturbating in the shallow end. The hairdryers had been on. Wendy was breathing hard. The neon beads of her necklace shifted as her bosom rose and fell. From the top corners of the mirror hung two squiggles of silver ribbon that had survived the nine months since Christmas.

  “I’m thinking maybe not,” Freya said.

  “We have more fun,” Wendy said, winking. “Works like catnip in discos.”

  “Huh.”

  “I’m practically harassed. Blonde would flirt with your skin tone, too.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Different, I thought you were after. But if you want to stick with the flat brown look, we could always go side-ponytail, or fringe. Your friend Sarah—uni now, is she?—I gave her a lovely Cyndi Lauper.”

  Wendy took a sip of cranberry juice, a drink she claimed was effective in warding off infections. The wall behind the mirror was the colour of a fine lime. Another wall was pink, a third was purple. A girl sweeping up hair clippings was humming a chorus-only version of “Borderline” by Madonna, an undeniably awesome song, and her T-shirt said “All the Way to Wembley” under a picture of a gliding gull. Freya closed her eyes and imagined, for a moment, sitting here at Mr. Easemoth’s age, having the same conversation, counting the same neon beads around Wendy’s neck: three overlapping strings, twenty on the bottom, eighteen in the middle, sixteen on the top.

  A lot of time passed. At least half a minute.

  “OK,” she said. There was new heat in her skin. Live dangerously, right? “Cut it all off, Wendy, and turn me blonde.”

  Wendy raised an intensively pencilled eyebrow. A customer from Hove walked in. Several things told you a person was from Hove. In this instance it was the explosion of silk scarves around the neck.

  “You’re sure?” Wendy said.

  “Yep.”

  “All?”

  “No! To here, basically, and then bleached. Or highlights. Yep, highlights. But nothing that will look ginger.”

  Wendy’s features formed a grimace. She was an expert grimacer.

  “On a skinny little girl like you,” Wendy said. “A girl who’s pretty in that waify sort of way…” She took a further slurp of juice. With great caution she placed the glass down on a ledge. “Here’s what I’m thinking. This is the question on my mind. It’s whether you have the neck for it, Freya. Because, as your adviser, I’ve got to say a lot of light is going to be falling on that neck, is the thing, and—with your cute little features—going shorter might make you look a bit, how to say it…”

&nb
sp; “Boyish?”

  “Ethiopian orphan,” Wendy said.

  Freya lifted her chin and studied herself. What orphan-like qualities would a bob cut reveal? She was pale, brown-haired, brown-eyed, ordinary, but in the mirror now a starving Ethiopian stared back at her. She crossed and recrossed her legs. Barbed comments were Wendy’s brand of friendship, but they could also be a kind of contagion. You walked out of there worrying about problems you probably didn’t have.

  She thought about the Grand, her impending shift behind the reception desk. Her father, the Deputy General Manager, generally managed to fix it so that on Wednesdays she only had to work the afternoons. He too was a customer of Wendy Hoyt. On a quarterly basis he got his head, eyebrows and ears done, a 3-for-1 deal the barber refused to do.

  “Tell you what,” Freya said. “Just the usual trim.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The decision cast a spell: her heartbeat slowed. She felt herself relaxing back into the comfy disappointment of her life since leaving school.

  “Better safe than sorry, eh?”

  “Probably,” Freya said.

  “Let’s get you washed, then, with that strawberry stuff you like, and you can tell me your plans for Maggie Thatcher.”

  2

  Philip Finch, known to everyone but his aged mother as Moose, was driving to the hotel in his fail-safe Škoda 120, a car the colour of old chocolate gone chalky. His window was wound down so he could tap ash onto the street and blow smoke out of the side of his mouth. It was important that his daughter shouldn’t have to inhale his mistakes. She was in the passenger seat wearing her classic early-morning look: black skirt, white blouse, an elegantly expressionless corpse. Her hair had been cut yesterday. He saw no discernible difference. He told her it looked very good.

  They passed the Dyke Road Park and the Booth Museum. Freya started rummaging in the glove compartment, a minor landslide of cassettes. There was a system and she was spoiling it. “What are you looking for?”

  “Music.”

  “We’re five minutes away, Frey.”

  She yawned. Blinked. Considered the windscreen. “It’s hot,” she said.