He laughed quietly. “No, I don’t want ever to go back,” said De Largey, “even if I had the choice. Although, to tell you the truth, I went back once. I won’t be so stupid the next time.”

“I felt bad leaving Belfast, but then it was a relief as well.”

De Largey stood as he often did, with his arms folded, taking the rock of the boat as something natural, something that was always underfoot. Even as he moved from the table to the bar it was the walk of a man used to a confined space that was constantly moving. He came back with the pints and put them down very carefully on the mats. His eyes were unflinching, sometimes looking very closely at the darkened window, sometimes looking very closely into Jack’s eyes.

“What I reckon happens is a place moulds you,” said De Largey. “You grow up knowing nothing else. And one day you wonder when did it all start.” They drank. “You’re probably guilt-tripping.”

“Am I?” said Jack defensively.

“That’s up to you,” said De Largey. “Do you want to know about guilt-tripping?”

“Yes,” said Jack. “It’ll make a change from self-pity.”

“I’ll tell you about guilt-tripping.” De Largey moved the glass in front of him to a new position. “It begins in jail.”

29. Guilt–tripping

29

Guilt-tripping

“That’s why they have jails. Jail makes all the difference. Prison can break ye, or ye can break out of prison. It depends on your experience of prison and on your experience of family life. I’d a wain but I’d no family life. But when I went inside I started guilt-tripping. From day one I was hung up on my son.

“That’s what happens.

“Ye’d expect that I’d be going over what I did to bring me there. It was nothing like that. I’d no guilt over being put away. In fact, I felt safe.”

“I once asked a man about that,” said Jack.

“And what did he tell ye?”

“He told me about propaganda.”

“Propaganda’s one thing. It fucks ye up. We’ve all had to live with that. No one wants it. But it’s necessary. Propaganda’s one thing. Shootin’ someone is something else. They don’t tell ye that. In a shootin’ there’s the passenger and there’s the motivator. The passenger might do it easy – the actual shootin’. He’s the one who can break in prison. But the motivator is the opposite of that.

“I suppose, that’s what I was – a motivator.