H - Making History
By sirat
- 1335 reads
Making History
History is that account of the past that
is acceptable to a given community at a given time.
Winston S. Churchill
Every time he came into the local pub or the little fish and chip shop
by the quay he would catch them glancing at him out of the corner of
their eyes and hear the hiss of some whispered remark. He could hear
them now. Only to be expected, he told himself. Might have known he
would be a walking freak-show in a place like this. Their distant
politeness was harder to take than outright hostility. Maybe coming
back had been a bad idea. Maybe he should have opted for a big city,
somewhere in England or even America, where nobody knows or cares who
anybody is. He had lived in big cities too of course, and that was why
he hadn't chosen it.
He pulled one of the high backed stools up to the bar, making a
scraping sound almost deliberately to let them know that he wasn't
trying to melt into the background, and sat down a couple of feet from
two of the old regulars who were nursing their first Guinness of the
day. "Good morning Mr. Petrie," one of them greeted him, "'tis cold for
the time of year."
"Good morning Patrick. Cold indeed. Is that a Guinness you're
having?"
"Indeed it is Sir. The best thing on a morning like this."
"Two more for my friends, Dorothy. And a whisky for me. To keep out the
cold."
"That's very civil of you, Mr. Petrie." Behind the bar Dorothy nodded
her acknowledgement and started to draw the pints. "Are ye settling in
all right at the bungalow up there?"
He had lost count of the number of times he had been asked that
question. It was a safe, neutral sort of question. Probably the one he
would have asked himself in their place.
"The bungalow is fine. Absolutely fine. And I love the view out to the
islands. I never thought I'd get to live in a bungalow on the top of a
cliff. It's a beautiful setting."
"Nowhere else like it in the whole of Cork, Sir."
"You know, Patrick, all this 'Sir' and 'Mr. Petrie' isn't right.
Haven't I been here long enough for you call me Alex?"
A flicker of discomfort seemed to dart across the old man's face. Alex
knew what it was. When you start calling somebody by their first name
that means you're a kind of friend of theirs. Patrick was wondering if
he wanted a murderer for a friend.
"Aye, of course Alex. I didn't mean anything by it."
"My father used to sit here, you know Patrick. He always sat over at
the right hand side of the bar, so that he could see out to the bay.
I'm not a stranger here. My family weren't strangers here."
"Of course not. Sure there's manys a one remembers them. I can't say I
do myself. But your father and my father would have been the best of
friends, I'm sure of it."
Dorothy had reached the stage in drawing the pints when it was
necessary to let them stand for the froth to settle. Alex addressed
her. "Your family used to own the Sheen Hotel. Do you remember
that?"
"Not really, Mr. Petrie. I wasn't even born when they sold it."
"No, of course, stupid of me. But all I wanted to say was that I am one
of you. Even if I don't speak like you any more. I'm not an outsider.
We don't have to... be awkward with one another."
Alex realized that it was the first time in the few months that he'd
been back that he'd dared to mention the past. "It was Halloween two
nights ago," he went on quietly, "used to be a big event when I was a
boy. But nobody came trick-or-treating. Not one."
"The bungalow is a bit off the beaten track," Patrick's friend Liam put
in.
"No, it wasn't that. The fact is, the children here find me a lot more
scary than anybody dressed up in a witch's hat and a broomstick. I'm
the bogey man, Liam. And that isn't much of a role." Dorothy topped up
the two pints and put them on the bar. "I don't mind talking about it.
I don't mind answering your questions. I got into trouble once. I'm not
proud of it but I didn't deserve what I got, and I've paid the price in
full. More than I owed. I would like to put it behind me one day. I'll
never forget about it of course but the important thing is to move on,
isn't it? I want to enjoy whatever few years I may have left to me
without dwelling on the past all the time. Do you know what I
mean?"
The bar had become very quiet. The people at the tables had stopped
their own conversations and were listening to him. There was a
pause.
"Now, Alex, it doesn't matter to me what somebody's done thirty years
ago. I take people as I find them. Isn't that right, Liam?"
"'Course it is. No business of ours what's all over and done
with."
"It doesn't work that way though, does it? Do you want to know how it
happened, Patrick? How my partner ended up getting killed?"
Alex realized that all the people at the tables were sitting rigidly,
concentrating on his every word. This was his big moment. His aside to
the audience. He was centre-stage. A woman with a young daughter stood
up from one of the tables and ushered her swiftly and firmly out of the
bar. Alex waited for the door to swing shut.
"I was very young when I went across to England to look for work. Young
and headstrong and raw like a million others before me. It wasn't long
after the War and they were rebuilding England. The whole of Coventry
where I went was a pile of rubble. Lots of labouring jobs on building
sites, big money if you didn't mind working day and night. All night
shebeens in the Irish quarter. Gambling and whoring and bully boys who
had to be paid off, and thieving and terrorising of all kinds going on.
But there were a lot of people who didn't like it as well, and who
wanted to do something about it. I found a lad named Dennis Cochlan who
felt the same way about it as I did. So my partner Dennis and myself
got together and tried to get a few more people in with us to protect
ourselves, and between us we managed to set up a safe house for Irish
lads who didn't want to get involved in all that. The Catholic priest
helped us. We got a house to rent, nothing great to look at but big,
and we set it up as a clean boarding house for the new ones coming
over, so that they could keep what decency they had for as long as
possible. We got a woman in to cook and to do the laundry and to keep
the worst of the dirt down. It all seemed to be a great success. Only
there never seemed to be any money to pay the bills. Every time we got
a little bit in it seemed to be gone again. We didn't have any books or
anything, all we had was a red tin money box with a dinky little key
that we'd bought at the hardware store. Everything worked on trust. And
to cut a long story short, when I discovered where the money had been
going, I had a fight with Dennis and I left him laid out in the
kitchen, out cold as far as I knew but certainly not dead. But I'd
picked a bad time to do it. I didn't know he'd been trying to make
chips in that kitchen. There was a chip-pan on the gas and after I left
it went on fire and the fumes killed him while he was lying there on
the floor. That was the truth but the lawyers turned it around the
other way. They said Dennis had caught me with my hand in the box and
I'd killed him to cover it up. They said I'd started the fire
deliberately. They made out I'd committed murder for about the price of
two good pairs of boots. That's about how much was in that tin. Of
course without books or records it could have been a thousand pounds
for all anybody knew. Anyway, that's the truth of it. You don't have to
believe it. Nobody else did."
There was another pause while the people in the bar considered what he
had said.
"You mean," said Patrick, "they took away twenty-five years of your
life for having a barney with a crooked partner that was stealing your
money?"
"It was everybody's money he was stealing. Not just mine. And do you
want to know the worst part of all? I'd be in there yet if I hadn't
admitted to the crime. You see, if you won't admit you're guilty you
never get out. You're in there for life. I held out for a long time,
because I was a man of principle. Then I got too old to care. I woke up
one morning and I said to myself: What the hell are you playing at,
Alex? Who gives a shite whether you did it or not after all these
years? Tell them you're guilty and you can walk free. And that was what
I did. So the only thing I did wrong... my only dishonest act... was to
tell them I was guilty of a crime that I hadn't committed."
Patrick took a sip from his new pint without taking his eyes off Alex.
"But then, you aren't a murderer at all."
"I never felt like one until I signed those papers with all the lies on
them, a couple of days before I was released. But now I'm a murderer. I
must be. I said I was."
Liam shook his head. "Isn't it dreadful what them English lawyers can
force a man to do?"
Alex drank down his whisky. "I've got a little bit of shopping to do
and then I'm headed back to the bungalow. I hope you gentlemen won't be
strangers in the future now. Maybe we could get together on Sunday
evening for a game of cards?"
"Sure that would be great, Alex. Great. You could tell us all about
what it's like to be an innocent man in an English prison cell."
"I'll tell you stories that'll make your toes curl. Let's say about
seven o'clock - and I'll make you a bite to eat." With that he gave
them a cheery wave and left. A hubbub of quiet conversation started up
at the tables behind them.
Patrick turned to Dorothy behind the bar. "Sure, isn't Alex Petrie a
fine man when you get to know him?"
She looked distinctly unsympathetic and leaned in close to speak. "I
looked up the old press reports on the Internet when I heard he was
coming here," she said in a hoarse whisper that only they could hear,
"Chip-pan my eye. He poured petrol around to burn the body and the fire
killed an innocent man in a bedroom upstairs as well. And that was no
retreat for virgin altar boys he was running. He an' his partner were
slum landlords. He's as guilty as sin. You two don't want to be so
trusting."
After a shocked silence Patrick replied in an equally hushed undertone.
"Nobody can know for sure, Dorothy. Would you take the word of an
English newspaper reporter over the word of a man whose family has
lived here in the town this God-knows how long?"
She looked him straight in the eye. "He killed them, Patrick. He's a
murderer."
Unconsciously the two men lifted their glasses and drank from them in
unison. They looked at each other for a long time, each waiting for the
other to speak. "It'd be an odd man," said Patrick at last, "who's
never done anything he regrets."
"Sunday night then, Patrick. Will the two of us drive up together in
your car?"
"Aye, that would be fine, Liam, absolutely fine."
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