Field of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

side of his mouth. North country England, and a snarl from the side of his mouth.
    `You. Fart face. My officer's calling you.'
    McAnally stopped, looked around him. The officer was on the other side of the Drive, standing with his arms folded, waiting for him. The soldiers in the patrol had scattered and taken cover. The officer carried a rifle. He was distantly familiar to McAnally.
    `Here, please . . .' A voice of authority. McAnally bit at his lip, and started across the roadway.
    The officer looked at him. Not hostile, just careful. Examined him.
    `My name's Ferris, Bravo Company 2 R.R.F. My platoon works Turf Lodge ... I don't know you.'
    `Sean McAnally.'
    `Roisin McAnally, of 63 . . .'
    `That's my wife.'
    Ànd where are you when you're not at home, Mr McAnally?
    'Down south.'
    He remembered the name and he remembered the face. The road block of two
    nights before. McAnally shivered, his breath was spewing in front of his face.
    Under his tunic and his flak jacket Ferris wore a heavy knit sweater. Bastard would be warm enough. Bastard wouldn't be hurrying.
    `Work down south?
    'Kind of.'
    Ì hope you'll be able to stay with us till Christmas, be nice for the lady and the
    children.'
    `Suppose it would.'
    Ìt's a cold morning, Mr McAnally. You should have wrapped up better. Nice to have met you . . .'
    The officer, Ferris, walked on. The patrol materialized from their hiding places.
    McAnally set off again for the end of the Drive. He loathed himself for his fear, and the bastard officer had seen it and had cracked his little private joke about a
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    cold morning. When he turned round the patrol had almost reached the bend in
    the Drive.
    On his way to his rendezvous he went past the barricade at the Andersonstown
    R.U.C. station. Shit, the place had been well drubbed since he had been active.
    Smashed up and patched. Dirty, shitty place behind the screens and the wire netting and the concrete sentry boxes and the high tin gates. The wire netting was for him: The wire netting was to explode the armour‐piercing charge of a rocket propelled grenade.
    But he had said no to the men who had come to his house to get him back into
    the Organization. And because he had said no, he was on his way to meet with
    the Chief, with the Commander of the Belfast Brigade.
    He walked past the sentry box. He wondered if it was a rifle or a stub‐barrelled
    carbine that covered him from behind the aiming slits. It was one thing to turn down a messenger. It was a different thing to spit in the face of the Chief.
    The gates of the Milton cemetery on his right were open wide. Inside were the stones, and far away on the reverse slope and hidden by the stones of crosses and Jesuses and Marys was the Republican plot. That's where they all were, in that plot, all the Volunteers and the Company Officers and the Battalion Officers
    and the Brigade Officers, all the martyrs of the Organization. He knew what the
    Brit squaddies called it, they called Milltown thèhome for retired gunmen'.
    Fucking
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    **young, weren't they, all the boys in the Republican plot. Sean Pius McAnally hadn't wanted to join them, so he'd run down south. He still didn't want to keep
    them company, but he was going to see the Chief. Hands deep in his pockets, chin hard on his chest, cold, and shivering.
    Half way up the Whiterock Drive he saw ahead of him the boy who smoked and
    sat on the bonnet of a car. He reckoned the boy was twelve or thirteen years old,
    and he was wearing the local uniform of close‐cut hair, a windcheater and jeans
    and high laced 'Docs'. He reckoned the boy four or five years older than Young Gerard. The bugger was playing truant. He wondered whether his Gerard would
    be running messages for the Organization in four or five years. And if in four or
    five years his son was out of class and on a street corner for the Provos, then would his Da be shouting? Like father, like son. And if his son grew up and shot a
    Brit, or smashed a peeler, then