The Cold, Cold Ground

man I did not know. An old man startled from sleep, muttering words over me and holding a crucifix above my forehead. “ Dómine sancte, Pater omnípotens, aetérne Deus, qui, benedictiónis tuae grátiam aegris infundéndo corpóribus, factúram tuam multíplici pietáte custódis: ad invocatiónem tui nóminis benígnus assíste; ut fámulum tuum ab ægritúdine liberátum, et sanitáte donátum, déxtera tua érigas, virtúte confírmes, potestáte tueáris, atque Ecclésiæ tuae sanctae, cum omni desideráta prosperitáte, restítuas .”
    A night boat. A night boat crossing the Irish Sea. A journey through darkness. The moon smothered by fragments of the dark. The stars mouthing hermetic songs.
    A curlew on the lava beach. Auguries in the movement of the birds …
    Time passed.
    I could tell the different nurses by their perfumes.
    I could sense the difference between the shifts.
    I could tell when I was awake and dreaming.
    “Ach, you’re doing much better now,” the one with the lovely Scottish accent said, touching my bruises with her fingers.
    I had had surgeries to remove shotgun pellets from my stomach, right lung, ribcage and one that was nestled against my aorta.
    The surgeries had been long though not difficult.
    Then there had been complications.
    Haemorrhaging.
    An immune system attacking itself.
    I had been put in an induced coma for four weeks after they had trepanned my skull to relieve the pressure on my brain.
    For another fortnight they had kept me medicated and semiconscious.
    When I became fully aware of where I was, it was the middle of July.
    Six weeks of intensive care followed.
    My condition moved from “critical” to “serious” to “improving”.
    I wasn’t starved for visitors.
    My mum and dad. Aunts and uncles dredged up from all over Ireland. Most of Carrickfergus RUC.
    Laura.
    Eventually I was moved to an open ward.
    I got to know the heart patients and the car-crash victims.
    The world outside the hospital continued without us.
    Prince Charles married Lady Di in St Paul’s Cathedral.
    Shergar won the Derby by ten lengths.
    The Deputy Chief Constable came by to tell me that I had been recommended for the Queen’s Police Medal. He also told me that he personally had seen to it that I would get my full pay, minus my uniform allowance, until I could return to duty, butthat to do this I would have to wave my claims under the Victims of Terrorism Compensation Act.
    I signed his forms and he went away happy.
    My dad went round my house, ripped out the stair and rebuilt and repainted it.
    He told me that everyone on Coronation Road had been “asking for me”.
    The riots continued.
    The hunger strikes continued, but it was clear that they were winding down. The families of the hunger strikers appealed to the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Daly; he pleaded with the men in the H Blocks and many of them began ending their fast.
    Seamus Moore came off along with several others.
    Michael “Mickey” Devine was the last man to die on 21 August 1981. I’d known Red Mickey in Derry. Not a bad lad. He’d been arrested and sent to prison for possession of a stolen shotgun.
    In the English papers the suspending of the hunger strikes was portrayed as a massive victory for Mrs Thatcher. She had not given in to the terrorists. She had won.
    Nevertheless, she quietly sacked her Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – the incompetent Sir Humphrey Atkins – and brought in James Prior. Prior immediately flew to the Maze Prison and promised that if the hunger strike was formally brought to a close then the British government would “strongly consider all of the prisoners’ demands”. Journalists began leaving Belfast for new trouble spots around the globe.
    In my world it was much the same.
    The “gay serial killer” case was closed. Billy White was tagged as the chief suspect. Shane Davidson had been his accomplice. Two repressed self-hating secret homosexuals. They had killed Tommy Little and Andrew Young and all the others …
    They were disowned by the UVF and their families. Who knew why they had done it? As a pathology or because of somedispute with Tommy Little and then the others to cover up their crime? Who can see into the hearts of men?
    But I knew. There had never been a gay serial killer. Northern Ireland was not the soil in which serial killers grew. If you wanted to murder a lot of people you joined the paramilitaries and used that as cover for your sociopathic