The Journeyman Tailor by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online

bastards: "These terrorists are addicted to the adventure and thrill of killing."
    His fingers were clasped tight. They knew nothing of him, the pensioners and the yob kids and the bus driver and the newspaper seller, and they would lap up the shit that he was "addicted to the adventure and thrill of killing". They knew nothing . . . And they didn't know much in Dublin and Belfast, the bastards who had a bit of a girl speak to him on the phone like he was a wee brat who had messed his pants on the first day at school and a complaint had been made by the nuns to his Ma, and he a man on their business hunted by every policeman in their enemy's country, by all the detectives of the Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Special Branch, and by the faceless bastards of M.I.5. That was close to pleasure, the knowledge that they all hunted him, and failed. He would never be complacent, no. But if he were not complacent and never careless then he believed himself impregnable.
    But the shits in Dublin, they were something else. So, the kids had got blown away . . . What was the big deal? Legitimate tactic of war to spread fear in the enemy. Let them show him the army officer, the civil servant who hadn't cringed over his morning paper, or the wife or mother of an army officer or civil servant who wouldn't have been shaken rigid by what the zombies in Dublin and Belfast were going to issue an apology for . . . Jesus!
    A lone figure, wreathed in the mist of the sea fog, wet from the spray of the climbing waves that broke on the sea wall, walking back to the room that he rented behind the open-air swimming pool that was drained for the winter. It was a terrace of old houses. The Bed and Breakfast and the Vacancies signs rocked in the wind. God, and he missed his Attracta ... He let himself in. As he closed the door she came out of the kitchen at the back of the hall. She was small, she would have been blown away with a slap. She was his landlady.
    "Oh, Mr Robinson, I'm so glad you're back. Would you do me a favour? It's the back door, brand new this summer, and I suppose it's warped. I'd be ever so grateful ..."
    "I'll get my tools," Jon Jo said.
    "You're very kind. And there's something I'd like to say to you. This business in the papers, about the Irish, about the bombs and things. I just wanted to say how sorry I feel for all of you good and decent Irish people. I don't lump you ail together. I have a great respect for all of you hard-working Irish people who are prepared to come over here to find work so that you can keep your families, a very sincere respect. To me, they are the real Irish and not these awful guerrilla creatures. I just wanted you to know that."
    "I'll bring my tools down."
    Everybody on the mountain had a brother, cousin, friend, neighbour, who was skilled as a brickie or a sparky or a chippy or a painter/decorator. There was never money involved. A brother, cousin, friend, neighbour, did the work that was his trade, and the work was paid for in kind. Mossie Nugent was a painter/ decorator. He had repapered and repainted the two big bedrooms and the living room of the farmhouse, and he hoped that by Christmas he would have little Kevin's room done. In the freezer, in the garage beside the bungalow, he had the greater part of a quarter of a beef bullock from Attracta Donnelly's stock, and each week Siobhan was given free-range eggs. It was the way of the community.
    Siobhan had her eggs, and if she didn't like him going down, most Sunday afternoons this past year, to the Donnelly farm, then she could go feck herself.
    She was a great girl, Attracta Donnelly and pretty still, and going short because her man was across the water. Up his ladder, scraping off wallpaper, he listened to her quiet song as she washed the plates and saucepans from her lunch.
    "An outlawed man in a land forlorn, He
    scorned to turn and fly, But he kept the
    cause of freedom safe Up on the mountain
    high."
    He had thought her a great girl since the