There's no room for love in the troubles

The smell of the air after it rains is the best thing about a storm. I stand at my front door, streetlights warm up the damp tarmac with their orange glow.

A light flickers on in one of the houses down the street, a fellow insomniac perhaps. I decide to throw on my coat and take a walk, it’s humid out, a navy blanket covers the sky.

I feel a loneliness as I walk, wishing I had the warmth of someone else’s hand in mine. But my thoughts are halted as I stand outside the house with the lights on. I hear glass shatter and a noise that sounds like a gunshot. It could just be a car backfiring but we’re amid the troubles, so, most likely someone in the house in front of me is now dead.

My reactions are slow; I stand still and stare at the door. A boy walks out, he has a black duffle bag in his left hand and blood trickling down the side of his face. He looks at me, pauses for a moment, then turns away and begins to run. My feet tell me it’s time to do the same, so I run back to my house and make sure both doors are locked. I stare out of the window at the house until the sun rises, no one else steps through the door.

A reporter on the news relays the deaths for the week, I hover over my coffee and think about the boy from last night. I think about the house, are there any bodies inside? Should I call someone?

He didn’t have the face of an evil person, although I saw him only briefly, his eyes didn’t seem cold to me, and why not shoot the witness?

The day goes on as normal, I take my little sister up the town to the shops, she points out the car on the side of the road that’s on flames. ‘Pretty fire’ she says innocently. However, she won’t be innocent for long, we don’t get that luxury growing up in Northern Ireland. By the time I was her age, I had already witnessed my uncle being gunned down in the street. He was taking us to the park, but the IRA thought he was someone else, (not that it mattered) and just like that he was gone.

The violence has only gotten worse, gun shots are as common as the sound of birds chirping in the morning. Instead of hearing a melody when we open our windows, we hear murder.

The crumpled-up note in Tia’s hand reads ‘bread & milk’ as if we needed a piece of paper to remind us to buy the two most common items people go to the shop for. The shop assistant has scruffy white hair and tired eyes. He flips through a car magazine with his wrinkled hands, scars cover his knuckles, I wonder what stories he would tell if I asked.

Tia and I skip down the street to the car, a large woman wearing a long brown coat and pushing a pram nudges into my shoulder and I drop the bag of milk and bread at my feet. The woman leans down and picks up the bag, I look into the pram to check if the baby is okay, but the pram is empty apart from a purple blanket.

‘Sorry love, here you go.’ I look up to tell the woman not to worry, but it isn’t a woman, it’s the face of a man. He smiles and walks on pushing the empty pram. He pulls a little black notebook from his coat pocket and sets it into the flowers outside the shop. Five seconds later he pulls out a gun from the baby-less pram, turns to the car on his right and shoots the two men inside. I drop the shopping bag and grab Tia in my arms and dive into the alleyway beside the shop, covering her eyes. A car pulls up and the man with the gun scrambles inside, leaving two bodies behind him. People scream and Tia cries, a boy comes running down the street, he pulls the flowers a part and pulls out the little black notebook; still covering Tia’s eyes, I stare at the boy as he runs past me, he glances to the side and looks at us – the boy from last night. He keeps running, a man and a woman follow, running after him, the man has a gun in the back of his jeans.

Tia can’t sleep. She keeps talking about the noise of the gun. My parents keep her in their bed, she hugs her teddy tight and stays under the covers. I can’t sleep either, I can’t get the boy’s face out of my head. I wonder is he still alive, did the man and woman catch him? My stomach sinks at the thought. So, I take a walk, the house down the street doesn’t have police tape around it, did no one else hear the shot?

‘I thought you’d come back looking for me.’

The boy.

I turn to run, he grabs my arm, ‘Don’t be scared.’

Looking into his eyes, I’m not scared. ‘I thought you might be dead.’

‘Not just yet.’ he says with a faint smile. He’s looks sad and tired.

‘Can we go somewhere? I can’t stay out in the open.’

I know I should say no, but my gut tells me I should help him. I bring him to the shed in my back garden. We sit down in the garden chairs amongst the welly boots and mum’s gardening essentials. I switch on the extra battery powered Christmas lights that wouldn’t fit in the attic, the multicoloured glow lights up his face as he takes off his hat and reveals his bruises.

‘Cosy.’ He smiles as he sets his bag on the ground and swallows before speaking, he seems nervous. It makes me feel more at ease, a dangerous person wouldn’t be nervous.

‘I’m not what you think,’ he continues, ‘I never meant to get mixed up in this nationalist/unionist insanity. But I couldn’t let it go. I won’t let it go’. He clenches his jaw and pauses, his struggle deciding what parts of his story to divulge to me scrunches up in his face. He looks at me and his eyes fill up, ‘They killed my brother. I had so many plans for us both, a life far different from this one. I wanted to do good, change the violent world that I grew up in. But they murdered that part of me when they murdered my brother.’ He stops himself before he says too much.

‘I’m sorry.’ A tear rolls down his cheek. He stops me before I can say anything else. ‘I’m only telling you this so that you understand, so that you feel safe with me. I need your help.’

He unzips his bag; the Christmas glow lights up a bag filled with money and on top sits the little black notebook.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask.

He looks surprised, and then he smiles, showcasing a dimple in his left cheek.

‘It’s Brandon, but people call me Hutch.’ It’s a common thing in Northern Ireland for people to go by names completely unrelated to their actual name. ‘And yours?’ He raises his thick eyebrows.

‘Heather’ I raise my eyebrows in retaliation, ‘people call me Heather.’

He laughs, a slight laugh but one of those laughs that makes anyone smile.

‘Well, just Heather, it’s nice to meet you.’ I feel a sense of warmth spread through my body, like I’ve just taken my first sip of a very hot cup of tea.

A week goes by, I’ve let Hutch stay in my shed, I couldn’t bare for him to leave. My attachment started almost instantaneously. I haven’t asked him what happened in that house at the top of the street, I pretend it’s because I don’t want to know, but really, I don’t think it would change how I feel about him.

He’s barely in the shed, he comes back late at night, I must stop myself going down to see him when he sneaks in over the fence. I’ve barely slept since I met him. I bring food and cups of tea for him; I don’t ask him where his new cuts and bruises have come from. We don’t talk about the troubles: we talk about ourselves, our childhoods, our families.

Hutch’s brother was killed by an ordered hit - a name in a little black notebook. He reads the book over and over again. If I sneak down and check on him while he sleeps, sometimes he cries out his brother’s name. All I want to do is hold him and stroke his hair. When he gets upset, he tells me to leave. As the nights go on, it gets harder, each time he leaves it hurts a little more. I never know if that time will be the last.

It’s been two days and he hasn’t returned; I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, my chest feels heavy and my stomach is in knots.

At 3am I hear a noise in the back garden, I rush down the stairs to the back door, terrified of what I’ll see. Hutch is slumped against the fence, his shoulder is bleeding, the blood stains his hand dark red as he attempts to stop the bleeding.

‘You’re going to end up dead if you keep this up.’ I breathe, swallowing my tears and my feelings.

‘Not until they’re all dead.’ He spits the words out with purpose, then gets up and walks into the shed.

‘Let me help you.’ He shrugs my hand off is arm.

‘It’s just a flesh wound; I’ll be fine.’ He pulls his jumper off and the blood taints more of his skin. He looks at me and I wonder are my feelings spilling out of my eyes like the blood spills from his wound. His next words answer my question. ‘I’ll be gone soon; I don’t want you to think about me in this way. You don’t need to take care of me. I don’t want you to.

I’m not going to stay. You need to understand that.’

My heart breaks. ‘I’ll get you something to cover the wound.’ I leave the shed hoping to leave my feelings for him in there in that instant, my heart beats faster as the minutes tick on.

I don’t say anything, I let him take the bullet out and sew up the gash, clearly he has done this before. His chest rises and falls as he breathes, ‘You should try and get some sleep. I’ll be fine.’

‘Okay.’ I say, but my legs won’t take me away. I lean forward and press my lips against his.

He doesn’t stop me. He holds me for hours.

The next night, when he comes back, he unzips the bag, the money inside, glares up at me.

‘This is for you and your sister.’

‘I don’t want the money. If you’re going to live a life on the run, you’ll need it.’

‘It’s blood money. It’s the money paid for my brothers hit. I stole it, I don’t want to be with it any longer than I have to. Get out of Northern Ireland. Go and travel with your sister, fall in love, forget about me.’

‘I don’t want to.’ I don’t swallow my tears this time. Neither does he.

‘You don’t have a choice. I can’t live in this life without my brother.’ He kisses me and grabs his things. He walks away from me and toward his brother.