Marcus crossed the road to where a clearly agitated Jimmy waited.
“You all right?”
“Aye.”
“You fix it?”
“I did.”
Jimmy beamed. “So you weren’t just blowing about being an explosives man?”
“No.”
Jimmy had a strange look on his face. A cross between respect and concern. “Right,” he said, grabbing Marcus’s arm. “You and me had better get the fuck out of here.”
“Why? It’s safe now.” He followed as Jimmy hustled them along.
“The fuck it is. Liam phoned the peelers.”
Marcus could hear the “nee-naw, nee-naw” of sirens. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Jesus,” said Jimmy, halting for a moment. “Nothing wrong? What’re they going to think when they find out a local lad defused the bomb?”
Marcus hadn’t considered that. It could get messy if he was held for questioning. And he would be. Here in New Lodge, anyone with explosives expertise would be suspect. Suspect PIRA. He didn’t have time to bugger about with the Security Forces. “Come on then, Jimmy.” He started walking rapidly, his longer strides forcing the smaller man to trot to keep up as they crossed several streets before turning onto Robina Street. Marcus could hear his companion’s laboured breathing. “Do you reckon we’re far enough away, Jimmy? I live up here.”
“Aye.” Jimmy gasped. “I need a wee breather.”
Marcus halted. Jimmy stood beside him, bent over, hands on his knees, sucking in air like a marathon runner at the finish line. Finally, he stood erect. “Fucking cigarettes.” He shot his jaw. “Jesus, Mike, you done good there the night. Bloody quick off the mark to spot what was going on.”
“I got lucky, Jim.”
“Bloody good thing you did. If it hadn’t been for you, we could be all over the place like raspberry jam. But you done enough just finding the fucking thing. Why did you bother staying to fix it?”
“Seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Rather you nor me. You could have been killed.”
Marcus knew that too well but said, “Jim, my job’s to use explosives to blow up rocks and tree stumps. If that bloody thing had gone off, it would have killed people, a bunch of folks I’ve got to know, like you and Eamon.”
Jimmy lit a cigarette, coughed, spat, and said, “And you, too.”
“Aye. It would.” Marcus controlled his desire to shudder. He had to be Mike the cocky Ulster-Canadian explosives expert.
“Liam’ll be quare grateful.”
“I suppose so. Anyway, I’d not want to see them Prod shites get lucky.”
Jimmy stopped the cigarette halfway to his mouth. “I hope the peelers don’t come looking for you.”
“They can’t. Nobody knows I live here.” Marcus grunted. “Hardly anyone knows I even bloody well exist.”
Jimmy threw his fag into the gutter and stood, head to one side, looking at Marcus.
“What did I say?”
“Nobody knows you.”
“It’s true. If it hadn’t been for you and Eamon, I’d still be sitting talking to myself.”
“So, I tell you what. You come round to my place on Monday morning.”
“What for?”
“I want you to meet somebody.”
THIRTY-SIX
SUNDAY, MARCH 31
He was going to be late. Marcus jammed the Morris Mini in gear and drove to the exit of McCausland’s car-hire parking lot. He forced his way into the traffic, but something was stopping the line of cars. He banged his fist on the steering wheel, “Come on. Come on.” He wound down the window and craned out. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Ten cars ahead he could see a couple of Saracens parked across the road. A police Land Rover stood at the curb. Uniformed police in bottle-green flak jackets, Ruger revolvers in waist holsters. A sergeant carrying a Sten gun walked along the row of cars, stopping at each, bending, looking in the windows. Mike watched the man approach.
The sergeant peered through Mike’s open window. Sweat streaked a haggard face under a peaked cap. Even in late March, the sun was warm.
“Yes, officer?”
“May I see your licence, sir?”
“Sure.”
“Canadian, sir?” he asked as he scrutinized the plasticized card.
“Not at all. I’m from Bangor. I just live in Canada.”
The licence was returned. “Sorry about the delay. There was a near thing in New Lodge last night.”
“Right enough?”
“Aye. Bomb in a pub. Someone defused it.”
“Oh,” Marcus’s hands tightened on the wheel but he forced a yawn. “That’s nice.”
“Shouldn’t hold you up much longer.” The policeman adjusted the sling of his weapon. “Do you think there’d be any jobs in the Mounties?”
“Dunno.”
“Just asking. I’m fucking sick of this.” The sergeant waved Marcus on.
“Have a nice day,” he called out of the window, and drove on, wondering if the officers had been looking for the bomber or the man who had defused the bomb. Good thing he’d not worn his Stampeders jacket last night. Someone might have given that bit of information to the police.
He parked outside Jimmy’s house and ran up the path.
Siobhan answered his knock.
“Sorry I’m late. I got held up by a police roadblock.” He scanned her face for any signs of irritation.
Siobhan smiled, sunshine in her violet eyes. “That’s all right. Happens all the time round here, Dad says. But he’ll be sorry to have missed you. He’d to go to see my uncle Davy.”
“I’ll see your dad again. I’d rather be seeing you,” he said. “How was Ballymena, anyway?”
“Boring,” she said, “but nice and peaceful.”
“Come on,” he said, taking a small rucksack from her, thinking for a second of last night’s rucksack and the bomb in the cinema on Tuesday. Ballymena might have its charms after all. “Picnic in here?”
She nodded and asked, “Where are we going?”
“Have you ever been to Gransha Point?”
* * *
The Mini bounced over the rough grass of a lane between whin bushes, bright yellow flowers clean against dark green spikes. The stunted evergreens bloomed year-round. He remembered something his mother had once said. When the whins are out of bloom, kissing is out of fashion.
He stole a quick glance to where she sat beside him, hair in a long ponytail, hands clasped in the lap of her black stirrup pants. Apart from remarking how sad it was that three people had been killed in the cinema bombing, she’d hardly spoken during the drive here. Marcus hadn’t minded, as long as she was there. Her blond hair was yellow in the sunlight. Whin-flower yellow.
A rusting five-bar gate blocked the path. He parked the car before the gate. “We’re here.” He leaned over into the back, opened the rucksack, pushed in a bottle of wine and two plastic glasses, and took the satchel and a blanket from the seat.
“Here,” she said, “let me take something.”
He gave her the blanket and slung the rucksack on one shoulder.
The gate’s hinges squealed. He took her hand, warm in his, and walked with her through the March noontime. Ahead, the mile of Gransha Point bent crookedly into the ruffled waters of Strangford Lough. The south wind made his hair dance on the collar of his denim jacket. The breeze pushed small whitecaps against the shore, and waves rocked the tidemark of bladder wrack and kelp. A rusted oil drum riding high on the rising tide scraped and clanged on the stones. Overhead, a flight of ducks beat into the wind, sunlight shining from the green of the drakes’ heads.
“Mallard,” he said. She seemed uninterested. He pointed at another flock of small, busy birds strutting like avian marionettes along the shoreline, dun-coloured, long sharp bills probing in the weed. “Those are dunlin. Watch.” He clapped his hands. The flock rose, wheeling and darting in unison like a wisp of blown smoke. “Pretty, aren’t they?”
> He turned to her. “My da used to bring me here when I was wee.” He could picture his father standing, shotgun crooked over one arm, shaking his head, saying, “How many times have I to tell you, pick a bird; don’t blaze away at the whole flock?” Marcus bent and plucked at the top of a grass tuft. “I’d come down on my own when I was older, whenever I wanted to get away from Bangor.” He decided not to tell her he had been a keen wildfowler. He knew Siobhan would not approve. “I’ve always loved the quiet of the lough and the birds.”
Siobhan said, “I didn’t know you were a bird fancier.”
“Indeed, I am. And not just the ones with feathers.”
She tried to pull her hand from his. “I am not a ‘bird,’ nor a ‘chick.’”
He wouldn’t release her hand. “No, you’re not. I’m sorry.”
He led her over the sea grass, past a peat-brown pool. He could see the Mourne Mountains, cloud capped, sombre where the clouds’ shadows fell. Between the mountains and Gransha, islands lay green and lapped by waters as blue as the painted Plasticine he had once seen beneath a ship in a bottle. Blue as her eyes.
Ahead, a rough heap of stones made a lee. He remembered sitting beside it with his father, drinking lemonade and watching shelducks flying. He set the rucksack down, took the blanket from her, and spread it on the turf beside the rock pile, “So? Do you like it?”
“Yes,” she said. The sunlight was caught by her eyes, her hair—sapphires and burnished gold.
“I thought you would.” The words caught in his throat as he looked at her. “Come on. Sit down.” He sat on the rug and held his hand up to her, taking hers and pulling her beside him, seeing the smallness of her feet in flat-heeled shoes, the tautness of her legs under the black stretch fabric as she sat, legs tucked, and he thought of the tail of a mermaid.
“This is what Ulster should be like,” she said, “beautiful and peaceful. Why do people want to spoil it? Thank you for bringing me.” She kissed him, but her kiss was perfunctory.
Perhaps she was still upset that he had called her a bird. He leaned toward her, but she moved away, reaching for the rucksack. He sat back and waited until she opened the satchel and pulled out greaseproof-paper-wrapped bundles. “Ham with lots of mustard. Cheese and tomato. Hard-boiled eggs. Apples. And”—her eyes widened as she produced the bottle of wine—“Pommard?”
“Same one we had at the Causerie.” As he leaned across her to find the plastic glasses, he smelled her perfume, sweet against the salt of the day. “Presto.” He produced the glasses and a Swiss Army knife, took the bottle from her, drew the cork, and poured. “You’re quiet today,” he said.
She took the glass and sipped. “Here.” She handed him a ham sandwich and took the other herself, biting into it, chewing. He watched the lines of her throat moving as she chewed and swallowed. “Come on. Eat up.”
He ate, all the while watching her, puzzling over her silence, as curlews cried overhead and the breeze blew to him the nectar scent of the whin flowers.
* * *
She wrapped the empty wine bottle in the sandwich papers and pushed it back into the bag. “I feel much better now.” She smiled and stood, brushing white bread crumbs from her black pants. Marcus rose, relieved to see her smile. She was half a head shorter, and he had to bend to find her lips.
He held her, kissing her mouth, her eyes, her hair. He stroked her hair, soft beneath his fingers. He unzipped the front of her anorak as she stood, head bowed, and he felt her breast beneath his palm.
She turned her head from him, leaning it against his chest. “Mike.”
He held her at arms’ length and looked into her blue eyes. He saw them mist, the early tears turning the sapphires to opals.
“What’s the matter?”
She shook her head, ponytail swinging. “You,” she said, “and the stupid things you do.”
“What? What stupid things?”
“God, Mike, you were great on Tuesday, getting those people into the clear, but then you said you’d have to think over whether or not you still wanted to find out about the Provos.”
“Maybe,” he said, knowing he was lying. “Maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea.”
“It’s not just that. Did you have to be a hero last night?”
“In the pub?”
“Yes. In the stupid pub. Dad told me what you did.”
“But…”
“No ‘buts.’ You could have been killed.”
“Come on. That was just like what I do for a living in Alberta.”
“I know that.” He saw her tears fall through her smile and wiped them away as she said, “Mike, I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“Just what?”
She closed her eyes. “Mike, I could fall in love with a man like you, but I couldn’t bear wondering every time he went out the door if I’d ever see him again.”
“But it’s not like that.”
Her tears flowed. “But it will be.”
“What are you talking about?”
He heard a shrillness in her voice. “You want to meet someone in the Provos?”
Marcus’s breath caught. He nodded, as a cloud veiled the sun’s face and cast its shadow over Gransha Point.
“Dad’s arranging for you to see somebody tomorrow.” She pulled away.
“Come on. I’m just going to meet someone. Talk to them.”
“About the Troubles. Did you not see enough on Tuesday?”
“That was different.”
“No, it wasn’t. I hate the violence. I don’t care about a united Ireland. I don’t give a damn about Catholics and Protestants. I wouldn’t care if you were a Protestant. I wouldn’t care if you were a general in the British army…”
God, if she was serious it might not be as difficult as he had anticipated, once his mission was over, to explain to her why he had been pretending to be another man. “Do you mean that?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You want to meet the Provos.”
“But—” His mind was as troubled as the waters frothing against the shore.
“You’ll meet them, you’ll join them, and you’ll be as evil as the rest of them. I want to love a man who does his job—not who fights a holy war. You saw what happened on Tuesday. Is that what you want?” She moved away from him and stood staring out over the lough. “I want to love you, Mike Roberts. I want to, but I can’t.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
MONDAY, APRIL 1
Belfast Waterworks lies off the Antrim Road, near New Lodge. There are two reservoirs, disused since the water from the Silent Valley in the Mournes started to provide for Belfast’s needs. Few people went there, except for some hardy water-polo players who thrashed in the frigid ponds on summer evenings. At break and lunchtime and after school, small knots of boys from Belfast Royal Academy, recognizable by their maroon and navy caps, would huddle against a hedge, furtively smoking. It was a good and private place.
Davy waited on a bench, watching the rain circles and rings meeting and overlapping on the oily surface of the pond. He remembered a day Da had taken him here. It had been raining and Da said the sky was crying for Ireland.
Jimmy should be here soon. He’d been bubbling with excitement yesterday morning, telling Davy how Roberts, the man he’d mentioned the night before, had defused a bomb in the pub. Jimmy was certain that if Davy wanted to know about Semtex, Roberts could tell him. He was bringing him here.
Davy hunched his shoulders. It was a grand day for ducks, but the rain was seeping through the fabric of his new raincoat—the old one had gone into the rubbish—and his leg throbbed. He looked out over the water and saw two men walking quickly around the granite-block banks of the reservoir. That looked like Jim, raincoat collar turned up, duncher pulled down. The other man was taller than Jimmy. Long dark hair, funny-looking moustache, the kind favoured by some of the younger Active Service lads. His jeans were dark from the rain and he wore a bright red windcheater.
Jimmy stopped in front
of the bench. “How’s about ye?”
“Rightly.”
“This here’s Mike Roberts. Lad I was telling you about.”
The younger man smiled and offered his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Davy took the hand, noting its softness. “Oil man, are you?”
“That’s right.”
“Where?”
“Alberta.”
“Hands is very soft.” Davy kept his gaze fixed on Roberts’s eyes.
The lad laughed. “I’m a specialist. Explosives.”
“That’s right,” Jimmy added. “Your man here knows all about Semtex, so he does. You should have seen him on Saturday night.”
Davy looked up at Jimmy. “Sit down and shut up like a good lad.” Davy turned back to the man who called himself Roberts. “Defused something, did you?”
“Aye.”
“You’d’ve been better off to run.”
“You’re right.”
Davy detected a note of sincerity but said, “Aye. Well.” He saw how Roberts stood, shoulders hunched to the rain, but otherwise relaxed. Roberts seemed innocent, but Davy was not taking any chances. “I’m going to ask you a few questions.”
“Fair enough.”
“Where do you live?”
“Robina Street.”
“You’re from Northern Ireland?”
“Bangor.”
“Where’d you live there?”
“Victoria Road. Number 4.”
“Semi?”
“Not at all, them’s all big tall terrace houses.”
“Are you a Catholic?”
“No. I’m a fucking Hottentot.” Roberts grinned and crossed himself. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord be with Thee; Blessed art Thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners—”
“—now and at the hour of our death.” Davy finished the line. “Son, I never seen you in my life. Jimmy here thinks I can trust you. He says you want to meet the Provos.”
“I do.”
Davy stood. He was only an inch taller than Roberts. “Well, if you do, sit you there beside Jimmy and answer the questions.”