Fire

The ebb and flow of students through the nearby Queen’s University meant that few got to know us and we got to know few, even if that few lived a floor’s distance from us in the same block of flats. We looked for second or third floor flats to avoid the rabble of students stumbling home drunk from the Empire Bar on Botanic Avenue, or Renshaws Hotel on University Street, or The M Club and Lavery’s on University Road. But even on the upper floors we could hear puke splat and bottles smash, the inept amorous advances, the fights and arguments. Living on upper floors meant also that we had time to do something to protect ourselves if someone, some proud soldier, ever did wish to take out two innocent Proud Catholics. They had two locked doors to get through, and every night we blocked the flimsy inside door to our flat with gym weights and an old ironing board wedged between the door and the hallway wall. We knew the measures we took were never going to stop a determined Proud Protestant terrorist for too long, but it would give us enough time to call the police, to let them know where they could find our cooling bodies.

I had little furniture of my own to move with, and so was glad that our flat rental agency furnished the flats, albeit basically. The furniture in the flat made the furniture in The Vatican look modern and luxurious, but I was most glad of the wardrobe they supplied. It was old, made from a hard wood, and it was heavy. I moved it to the wall of my bedroom adjoining the hallway, positioning it in line with the front door on the other side of the wall. It became my bulletproofing, strategically placed where it might afford some protection if someone decided to shoot indiscriminately through the front door. There is a door, a divider wall, my clothes and two thick pieces of wood for a bullet to pass through before it gets to me, I thought. It offered little comfort, and I had a recurring dream of bullets sparking off metal coat hangers or an ancient lock, exploding from the darkness of the wardrobe then plugging my head softly and silently to my pillow. The end. A good ending, quick and painless; no fight, no martyrdom, no songs dedicated to my bravery. He died a coward in his sleep, they would sing, a scared little shit hiding behind an ironing board and a wardrobe. I would know nothing about it because it would happen so fast, leaving my brother to call the police and watch over my corpse. I hoped I would never be murdered on a Thursday because that would mean that my funeral would be at noon on a Saturday, and Arsenal might be playing. I would want my brother at my funeral, and holding it at the same time as an Arsenal match would cause him a crisis of conscience.

The Proud Protestant soldiers would wait across the street. Eventually the flat would darken. They would laugh nervously. Things needed to settle a while.

“Let’s give it ten minutes or so. Then we’ll go. Get yourselves ready.”

“How many, Jonty?”

“Two, maybe. One anyway.”

“It’s fucking freezing. Put the bloody heater on, will ye?”

“Relax fellas, will youse?”

“I heard Steeky say earlier that he followed one of them Fenian fuckers home today. Says he didn’t leave. Could be two in there. Shit! It’s fuckin’ freezin’ in here.”

“Now gents, now gents. You’ll all be warm soon enough, so youse will. Tell you what, let’s stick the radio on, see what’s happening tonight.”

 “Well I’m ready.”

“Houl yer horses, lads. All in good time.”

They would wear leather jackets and rubber gloves. Their hair they would have slicked back with a heavy common gel, and before getting out of the car they would smear Vaseline over their eyebrows, in their ears and in their noses. They would get in somehow, run up the two flights of stairs, pull their weapons from under their coats, flick the safety off, fire. Our front door is powder. Powder rains, and the ironing board and weights spark and disintegrate. By then I would be lying in my usual first position, foetal, on my right side, my hands under my head palm-to-palm, as though in prayer. I might hear the door in the hallway creak open, and maybe the start of a bang or a ricochet off a lock. In a second the left side of my head would explode, the bullet pass through my head, through my hands, my pillow would turn scarlet and skull fragments would lodge in the left side of my brain and in the pillow behind my right ear, where the exit wound would blow my skull apart. 

Dead in a second. That is just how it would happen; this is how I would die if I was ever to die young and off-guard and asleep. The undertaker would be under strict instruction to place my hands by my sides, not over my chest, exposing the wounds in my palms. And the priests and the bishop concelebrating my funeral would take great mileage from my dying with the marks of Jesus on my hands, letting the gathered few know that I had been sacrificed for a reason that might never be understood by anyone other than God Himself, but that my stigmata guaranteed my place at His right hand, me and Him having suffered in the same way, see? Some might place their fingers in the holes. Most would just accept it.

There was one way into our flat and one way out, and that was how we liked it. A week after we moved in we considered contacting the landlord to have a fire escape installed at the back, but we knew that not having a fire escape was safer than having one: it was one less way for someone to get to us. This was how we lived, balancing risk. Fire could take us; Proud Protestants would have to fight to get at us. Life in The Hollies had prepared us well for living anywhere - we needed to be vigilant at all times, but, by then, that was second nature.

Meeting someone new was a game, the winner getting to know the loser before the loser got to know the winner. Friends of friends came under examination, particularly those Proud Protestant friends and Proud Catholic friends crashing at our place after drunken nights. 

“Who are your friends?”

“Them? Oh, just some friends of mine. Why?”

“Do you know them well?”

“Yeah, course I do. I wouldn’t…

“Where do they live?”

“Jeez. What is this? Twenty Questions? They’re just friends I know from the east of the city?

“What part? What are their names?” Names and locations were perfectly foolproof indicators of religious affiliation. Almost perfectly foolproof.

“Will you relax, for god’s sake? They’re alright, lads. I know not to bring anyone back here, so just youse calm yourselves.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re gonna fuck her make sure she’s not connected to anyone who is connected to anyone else. The last thing we need is… Well, anyway. You know.”

“Of course. Beer?”

“Sure.”

The rules were simple, and anyone bringing anyone back to the flat to sleep with them or party with them had to follow those rules. 

First Rule: If you’re gonna bring anyone back make sure you know them, and that they never get to know us, unless you know that person well and know they’re not connected. 

Second Rule: You can drink. You can fuck. You can party. Then you get them out. 

Third Rule: The sooner the better: if you can get them here, fuck them and get them away again while they’re still drunk, then do it. There’s less chance of them remembering anything of who we are or where they were. 

Fourth and Final Rule: Enjoy every fucking moment.