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jam for breakfast and more tea, and he had cleared his pockets of Republic currency that his wife would change at the bank in the Andersonstown parade, and he was listening to the radio news, when the knock
    came at the door.
    Not much on the radio, a quiet night it had been in the war. Three aimed shots at
    an army patrol in the Derry Bogside, all missed. An R.U.C. constable cops on that
    there's a bomb under his car when he does his morning check, defused. Waste of
    fucking effort ... The boy at the door was straight out of school. Roisin stood at
    the bottom of the stairs and watched.
    Ìn thirty minutes, Mister, you're to be on the corner of Westrock Gardens and the Parade. You'll be told then where to go.'
    The boy didn't wait for an answer.
    .
    Ìs you going out, Da? Can I come?' Young Gerard stood behind his mother, and
    two stair steps higher.
    Ìt's a school day, 'course you can't go with your Da.'
    McAnally took his anorak from the hook behind the door.
    19

    `You won't be knowing when you'll be back?' his wife asked.
    `No.'
    McAnally went out through the door, pulled it noisily shut behind him. The wind
    caught his face and he felt the light rain on his cheeks. He should never have come back, but he had not known how to refuse. His hands were buried deep in
    his anorak pockets, chin down on his chest.
    His home might be a caravan in a soddin' field down south, but it was better than
    Turf Lodge. He saw the decay of the pavement and the roadway of the Drive; he
    saw damp rotted windowframes of the houses,
    24
    25
    **he saw the neglect in the overgrown front gardens. The house in the Drive in
    Turf Lodge was a prison when set against the freedom of his caravan in a field beside the canal at Vicarstown. There were no trees here for his companion the
    kestrel. At the far end of the Drive he saw the foot patrol approaching, four on each pavement, moving warily. He saw the hackles on their berets, and thought
    it an act of insolence by the soldiers to wear the red and white feathers that would make a splash of colour for a sniper to aim at. He had never wondered where the soldiers hailed from, whether they had been kids in another faraway rotting estate that was no different to Turf Lodge. He had never imagined the soldiers as being anything other than cold bastards in uniform with a Self Loading
    Rifle tight in their khaki‐gloved fists. He knew that sometimes the soldiers were
    frightened, that sometimes they were arrogant; he knew that always the soldiers
    were his enemy. A woman came out of Number 11, and was pushing a pram and
    had three more kids with her. She set off towards the patrol and when she came
    to the lead soldier she walked straight on as if he didn't exist. The soldier hesitated and made room for her. The woman didn't see the soldier, nor the other three behind him, and she walked straight ahead, and the last soldier in the
    stick gave her a sign that wasn't for victory, but he stepped out of her way.
    As McAnally walked down the slope of the Drive, he closed on the approaching
    patrol. The soldiers had a stuttering movement. Jogging, crouching, lying flat and
    splayed in the aim position, up again and sprinting. Trying to create an absence
    of a pattern. Sniping wasn't McAnally's job, never had been, so he reckoned it wouldn't have been easy to take one of them out, difficult to bead on the ducking, bobbing, weaving figures. He took his cue from the woman with the pram. He passed the first soldier without a glance. He stared straight in front of
    him. He smelled the stale damp sweat of the soldier play at his nose.
    20

    `You, here . . .'
    McAnally heard the officer's command. Bastard Brit officers always had the same
    voice, always bloody shouted. He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and walked on. The second soldier in the line was bent low against a lamp post. His
    face never turned to McAnally as he covered the roof‐tops and the upper
    windows of the street. The soldier spoke from the