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they'd gone, when she went up to bed there was the smell of cigarettes in her bedroom and ash on the floor. She'd heard the raised voices.
    `Something big ... Shit, that's lovely ... I said I wouldn't.'

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    23
    **`Because of me, that wasn't why you said you wouldn't?'
    She blamed him for nothing. If the house leaked then that was the fault of the Brits who refused to come and repair it. If her man hadn't work then that was the
    fault of the Brits who wouldn't provide employment for the work force in the Nationalist housing estates. If Sean Pius McAnally was in the Provos then that was the fault of the Brits for putting their fucking soldiers on the streets of Turf Lodge and the 'Murph and Andy'town, and Whiterock. She would have thought
    the less of her man if he had not been in the Organization. She had nagged him
    once into going for a job at the De Lorean, and he'd been taken on, just after coming out of the Kesh, and the day he should have started he'd chucked it and
    gone with the A.S.U. ‐ that was somebody's fault, not her man's fault.
    Ìt wouldn't be because of me that you said you wouldn't?'
    She was glowing, she was wet. His hand was strong, good, brilliant. She had never argued when he'd said that he was going south. He'd sat that night, more
    than two years before, on the end of the bed and he had said that if he stayed he
    was either dead or he was in for àlifer'. He'd said that after a time any man had
    the right to quit. He'd said that staying alive and staying free was luck, that a man in an A.S.U. used up his store of luck. The bloody Brits with their army and their
    police and terror gangs of SAS murderers would take him. He'd said he wasn't a
    coward, he'd said he was just being smart. He'd said that some other bugger should do his turn. She hadn't blamed him.
    His chin was on her shoulder, the nipple of her breast was swollen hard between
    his fingers, his lips were beside her ear.
    `Not because of you. Perhaps it should be, but it's not.'
    `Why won't you do what they ask?'
    `Shit, I don't mind helping ... What they want isn't helping, it's fucking kamikaze
    ... Fuck, you're lovely . . .'
    The bed sang as he climbed onto her, spread her, wriggled inside her.
    Baby Sean had begun to cry, a clear sharp wail through the thin partition wall.
    Young Gerard was shouting at Baby Sean to shut his face. Young Gerard was the
    son of the night's loving in the hours before the southern SB came to the honeymoon room in Bray. Little Patty and Baby Sean were both conceived after
    he had run the risk of standing clear on a street corner to aim the R.P.G. at a Pig
    or at an armoured landrover. After that the risk of getting Roisin in family had seemed pathetic, unimportant. Baby Sean crying and Young Gerard shouting at
    him.
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    She pushed him off her. She swung out of the bed and he saw the gleam of damp
    on her legs. He lay on his back. He thought he saw tears in her eyes. She went out
    of the bedroom and through the wall he heard her speak to Young Gerard and croon to Baby Sean. She
    came back into the bedroom and laid the baby in the crook of her husband's arm.
    She started to dress.
    `So you've said you won't do it, so what's going to happen?
    'I'm to be taken to see a man.'
    `What man?
    'The Chief.'
    Ànd when he asks you to do it, what'll you say?
    'I don't know,' he said.
    Ì'll make some tea.'
    She wore jeans and a sweater and she was shivering in the chilled room as she pulled on her socks. She combed her hair perfunctorily, rich and lovely black hair
    that fell to her shoulders. She was tall, as tall as him, and he thought she was beautiful. He was blind to the worry bags under her eyes and the pallor of her cheeks. She kissed him on the forehead and went out of the bedroom and down
    the stairs. He heard her stumbling in the darkness of the downstairs front room
    for the packet and her first cigarette of the day. Beside him Baby Sean gurgled in
    delight and tugged at his Da's hair.
    He had had bread and