The Glory Boys

When he had finished he felt his strength drain until he was totally weak. Mingling now with the pain was a rising nausea. He flopped back against the wall behind the headboard, on the sparse single bed in the girl's room, his feet on the yellow coverlet, smearing it with street dirt. He angled his body so that his weight was borne on the left side, and in that hand he held the rifle, pistol-like, the shoulder support still folded. Like a grotesque interloper he dominated the tiny room, blond hair dishevelled and lost in a myriad of Medusa patterns, his face, with its colour from the fields of South Armagh now vanished, showing only the anger of the eyes and the ferrule lines of exertion. The stains on his jacket were not rich and red but stark, damp and soiled. He had laid the rifle across his lap and pulled from his pocket the grenades, which he placed beside his hip. The good hand, the one he now relied on, resumed hold on the trigger guard of the M1.

Till she followed him into the room the girl had not seen the wounds, but when he shifted on the bed, awkwardly and seeking the comfort that the pain denied him, the blood run was visible, and she saw too the twin holes in the cloth. She sat on the end of the bed.

'Why have you come back here? What do you want of us?'

'Time, my little girl. Time for a friend.'

'For the Arab?'

'Time for the Arab. Time for him to stretch his legs, get on his wings.'

'He has gone?'

'You saw him, he's moved on. Further to go than I have.

This is where I finish; his post is a long way yet. It's as if he hadn't left the starting line. He's the whole course to run. I'm his handicapper. Big Ciaran ensures he starts in front, out ahead of the bastards. That's the way it is, my little cash-machine girl.'

No need to talk to her, nothing could be said that mattered, just an empty face and fingers that punched a till. Meaningless. Time to think of yourself, Ciaran-boy.

Famy off on course, but the fences are higher and the ditches are deeper and they've extended the track, the bastards. We held all the cards, he thought. Now we've none of them, and the silly bugger's gone on, and to his death, and he's taking you with him. His eyes were open, but he did not see the girl, just stared to the darkness of the ceiling. He wondered how he'd go, how death would close in on him. Had thought it might be in a ditch, or in the mess of a farm yard as the cordon tightened, or on the high wire of the Kesh, or being pulled by the legs from a sniper pit by a para. But never thought of it like this, not in a room eight by ten with rabbits and daffodils on the wall, and the smell of scent and a folded nightdress under his arse.

But even as the barometer of pain circled to hideous levels, so the preciousness of life remained hard to pass up.

His eyes closed, clamped shut, his upper teeth hard down on the bottom lip, and he waved with the rifle barrel for her to come closer. He put the gun down beside the grenades and began to drag with his left hand at the jacket.

She slid along the bed to him, and as he levered himself away from the wall she looped the jacket over his shoulders and down his arms. Once he cried out. When the jacket was off and he was free of it she dropped the garment on the fluffed, sky-blue rug. He rolled on his side, doubled up and panting for relief.

'Get some water, and something to clean it.' She barely heard the words. She was gone briefly, and came back into the room with a saucepan, the steam rising from it, and a wad of bright cotton wool. When she switched on the light he opened his eyes again, and then, with his help, she took off his shirt. With care she lifted his vest over his head.

The blood had caked far down his chest – dark, dried rivulets leading to his navel. With the swabs she worked her path closer to the neat, circular wounds in the flesh.

Not much time on the arm, priority to the shoulder. She felt the skin tighten, striving for escape as she neared the place of the second bullet's entry. Instinctively she pulled him forward so she could clean the expected exit wound in his back, and saw only the skin, unbroken and stretched across the tightened back muscles. it's still in there,' half a statement, half a question.

He nodded, and for the first she saw him smile. it has to come out. It'll kill you.'

'All in good time,' said McCoy. 'The lad has a long way to travel. I want him far on his journey before the heavies find it's just wee Ciaran McCoy that's holding the baby.'

'What will they do, the police?'