The Cold, Cold Ground

knowledge that I once possessed and now have lost …
    The breeze stirs the grass and, yawning, I open my eyes.
    My belly is empty and my stomach rumbles.
    I haven’t eaten as an act of contrition. Tonight I will attend midnight mass and take the sacrament of penance. In a state of grace I will go home and consume flat bread and cheese and wine.
    It’s dusk now and the colours are from another latitude: the sky is an epic Sicilian red, the sun sinking into the far Atlantic is a football in a Hockney swimming pool.
    Evening has come to the north Belfast suburbs with a surprising sense of style.
    I get to my feet, put on my jacket and walk past two children hiding behind a burnt-out car. The field behind Coronation Road has become a dumping ground for firebombed and carbombed vehicles and these warped and twisted hulks of steel and aluminium possess a strange, minatory beauty.
    I touch the side of a Ford Transit Van that has been turned almost inside out by the apocalyptic power of Semtex plastic explosive.
    I reach the street proper and nod a hello to my two terrace neighbours, Mrs Downey (a stylish, Joan Bakewell look-a-like) and Mrs McCaghan (a skinny, dangerously good-looking redhead) while the music swells and Barbra tells it like it is.
    Mrs Downey dabs at her cheek. She gives me an impoverished smile. I smile back.
    The sky, the song, the tear: this moment has been carved with such precision that it will scratch the iris of my mind’s eye decades from now.
    If the Lord spares me.
    I put the key in the lock and go into the living room.
    I pour myself only a glass of water.
    I open the window and listen to the kids, already adept at thestreet demotic you never hear on the BBC.
    “What are ye gawping at, ya big wean? Keep your neb out, or I’ll smack your bap into last Tuesday, so I will.”
    I listen to it all wind down.
    I lie on the leather sofa and watch the clock.
    The children’s game ends.
    The lights come on all over Belfast.
    The army helicopters take to the skies.
    The phone rings.
    “Hello, Duffy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s Kenny Dalziel from clerical.”
    “What have I done?”
    “The situation is a disaster. A total disaster. I’ve been pulling my hair out. You don’t happen to know who started all this, do you?”
    “Gavrilo Princip?”
    “What?”
    “What’s this about Kenny?”
    “It’s about your claim for overtime in the last pay period. You and your mates cannot claim for time-and-a-half danger money while also claiming overtime. That would be triple time and believe me, Duffy, nobody, and I mean nobody, is getting triple time on my watch …”
    I stop paying attention.
    When the conversation reaches a natural conclusion I tell him I understand and hang up the phone.
    The clock moves slowly but when the time eventually comes I walk back outside and drive to the chapel sandwiched between Kilroot Power Station and the old ICI factory.
    I know why I am here.
    Revenge is the foolish step-brother of justice. I know that. I know that in spades. I have lived with that thought for eight months. That night on the shores of Lake Como: I have confessed my sin and been absolved.
    And tonight I will confess again.
    To the crime. And to the feeling of satisfaction.
    I park the car and get out.
    The chapel is ancient and barely used, covered in moss and yellow ivy. It lies now in the shadow of Kilroot Power Station’s sixty-storey chimney, an enormous penile tumour on the north shore of Belfast Lough.
    Father O’Hare is only twenty-two. He is nine years my junior. But he is an old soul. In defiance of Vatican II and for the benefit of the five other aging parishioners he conducts the mass in Latin.
    The ancient words comfort us.
    When the service is over I enter the confessional.
    Father O’Hare sees Mrs McCawley to her car and returns to the chapel.
    He enters his side of the booth.
    He slides across the partition.
    Only the carved wooden lattice protects me now.
    “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I tell him. “It is one month since my last confession.”
    I confess to the mortal sin of murder and the venial sins of pride, lust and adultery. I confess that I do not regret what I have done and I tell him that I would do it all again.
    He listens.
    Does not approve.
    But understands.
    Technically he should not offer me absolution until I have explained that I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life but Father O’Hare is no sea lawyer and can’t afford to be too harsh