Trust her, p.12
Trust Her, page 12
It’s working, I think, crossing my legs on the kitchen stool. This is working. I barely even have to try. Both of us need the other to like us, to trust us, and the strange thing is that the trust already exists. I wonder if it has confused him, too, this affinity between us, if he’d expected to have to work harder.
We chat about Dublin, and the Temple Bar food market. “It’s no St. George’s, though,” I say. “I miss the dulse from St. George’s.”
“Nowhere else comes close,” says Eamonn.
“You visit it?”
“Of course,” he says, and it’s strange to think we might have run into each other. I’d never once imagined bumping into Eamonn when I was in the North. Or here, in Dublin.
“Is that not a security risk?” I ask, and for a second a look of discomfort passes over his face, vanishing before I can decipher it.
“No more than most places,” he says, and starts to tell me about visiting the night markets when he was working in Hong Kong.
Eamonn walked me to the door last time, and already I’m wondering if eventually I might hug him goodbye when I leave, in a casual way. That’s a thing people do after seeing each other, I think. I wouldn’t need to make a habit of it. Even if I only did it once, at least then I’d know what it’s like to embrace him. The idea of not knowing, for the rest of my life, seems sad and impossible.
“Have you been in Belfast this whole time?” I ask, and he nods. “Is it like an army deployment, though? Do you get breaks to go home?”
“Home?”
“I don’t know. London?”
“Belfast is my home.”
I never knew if he was telling the truth or not, about being from Strabane. He fit, on the beach in Northern Ireland, he seemed at home, but maybe it was a pretense, maybe he was actually born somewhere in England. “Is this your real voice?” I ask, and he laughs.
“Do you know how hard it is to fake a Northern Irish accent? Even actors can’t do it.”
“And you’re not an actor?” I ask slowly.
He takes a swallow of his beer, and I watch the bubbles sliding behind the glass. “No, Tessa. I’m not.”
Twenty
When I arrive at the Gravediggers the next morning, Royce is sitting at the same table in the back with a fry-up. “I hope you’re not here to disappoint me again,” he says.
“Do you want to know something? MI5 doesn’t threaten its informers. It doesn’t turn up at their homes, or kick their ribs in.”
“Don’t be stupid,” says Royce. “Of course they do. That just didn’t happen to be their approach with you.”
“You want to run informers on the British, but you’re doing this wrong. No one will do good work for you if this is how you act. They’ll be too scared to think straight.”
“Are you too scared to think straight?”
“No, but I’m special, remember?” Under the table, I press my knees together to stop myself from shaking. Royce dabs brown sauce onto the edge of his plate. “So how do the British run their informers?” he asks.
“They treat it like a relationship.”
He pauses with his fork in the air. “A relationship? You told me you weren’t riding him.”
“For god’s sake,” I say. “I meant their handlers take an interest, they ask after your job, your family. They act like a friend.”
“That sounds manipulative.”
“It works.”
“So, Tessa,” says Royce. “Tell me about your job.”
“I work for a newspaper. I’m a subeditor.”
“How much do you make? Did you make more as an informer or less?”
“I told you, they never paid me. Does that make you hate me less?” I ask.
“Not really. Are the hours hard on your son? Children need their mammies at his age,” he says, and I force myself not to flinch.
“Did your parents neglect you?” I ask.
“No, not at all.”
“And look at you now.”
Royce smirks. “Have you thought much about your future yet, Tessa?”
“Sorry?”
“When this is done, you know, we’ll pardon you. You’ll be free to move home.”
“I live here now.”
Royce considers me across the table, his knife and fork resting in his hands. “A lot of the other prisoners in Portlaoise did AA,” he says. “When you give up alcohol, you have to avoid certain things that you associate with drinking. People, places, things. You miss those more than the alcohol, apparently. What are your people, places, and things, Tessa?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you do. A certain song, maybe, that you have trouble listening to?”
I dig my fingers into my palms, shaking my head. He says, “I don’t believe you. What reminds you of home?”
Sheep, I think. I miss watching the sheep in the field behind my house in Greyabbey. I miss how steam rose from our laundry vent when I’d a load of washing on, I miss hearing the sound of my neighbors dragging their bins out to the road at night, I miss the poppadoms from the Indian restaurant in the village, and drinking a gin and tonic during the interval of a play at the MAC theater, and spending Christmas Eve in a house in west Belfast crammed with my aunts and uncles and cousins. I miss the other staff at Broadcasting House. Often, working at the BBC, I felt like I was at the very center of the world.
“What’s his name, by the way? Your handler.”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“But you met again yesterday?”
“Yes.” I tell Royce about our conversation. “And we drank together, he gave me a beer. So he’s not sober, and he doesn’t have a drink problem.” I could be wrong. Maybe Eamonn had another ten beers after I left yesterday, but I’d doubt it.
“Okay,” says Royce. “Where does he live?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in Belfast.”
“Get him to invite you to his house,” says Royce, and I laugh.
“You’re serious?”
“Come on, Tessa. You can do better than this,” says Royce, and the strength drains from my legs.
“I told you, I can’t rush it.”
“Well, you need to,” says Royce, stabbing a sausage with his fork.
“Do you want Marian’s house?” I ask. She’d mentioned offering it to him.
“Sorry?”
“There’s a mortgage on it, but you’d make a profit anyway,” I say, and Royce stares at me over his plate.
“How much profit?” he asks.
“Two hundred thousand euro, about. Maybe more, in this market.”
Royce looks at me for a long time. “Is that all you think you’re worth?” he says, and frustrated tears rise to my eyes. I thought I’d found a solution, a way out for me, for Eamonn.
“How much, then? How much to leave me alone?”
“Do you think I care about money, Tessa?”
“Yes. I know from Marian how hard it is for you to fundraise.” I stare out the fogged window, thinking. “Here, do you want to know something? My mam used to work as a cleaner for this couple in Bangor, the Dunlops. They’re art collectors. They own a painting by Agnes Martin.”
Royce looks at me blankly. “Never heard of her,” he says.
“The painting is worth ten million euro.” Royce doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t believe a painting by a woman could be worth that much. “It’s called The Islands. Look up the valuation.”
Royce reaches into his pocket and hands me a pen. “Write down that name.”
I write down The Islands, Agnes Martin, and push the napkin toward him. “Grand,” says Royce, leaning back from the table and slapping his hands on his thighs, like I’m a waitress and he has just finished his meal.
I stand to leave, then stop myself. “Why did you say that I need to rush? What’s the hurry?”
“We’re in talks with the government.”
“What is this, the seventh time? Nothing ever comes of it.”
Royce balls up his napkin and throws it onto the table. “This time’s different.”
“How? How is it different?”
“The prime minister,” he says.
“What are you talking about? Rebecca Main’s a hard-liner.”
I met Rebecca Main years ago, when she was interviewed on our program at the BBC. I remember the excitement in the building when she arrived at Broadcasting House. She was the justice minister back then, and already every speech she gave was drawing crowds. She came to the BBC with a team of close-protection officers, wearing a bulletproof vest under her suit. “She built her entire career around being hard on national security.”
“You studied politics, Tessa. You tell me why Rebecca chose to present herself that way.”
“Are you joking me?”
“This was always her endgame,” he says. “She wants peace. All that hard-liner shite was for show.”
Something is toppling through me. Rebecca Main pretended to be a war hawk, since that was the only way she could start negotiations with the IRA, or ever convince the government and public to accept a peace deal. She had to seem tough. I want to start laughing. “God almighty. What a con.”
“I know. We couldn’t have planned it better ourselves, to be honest with you,” says Royce. “She’s ready to draw up a peace deal as soon as we call a ceasefire.”
Dizziness sweeps through me. “So call a ceasefire.”
“We can’t, not unless the loyalists call one first. Otherwise they’ll use that time to go on a rampage.”
“Then tell the loyalists to call a ceasefire.”
“They won’t unless we call one first.”
I grip the edge of the table. “Are you hearing yourself? What’s your plan, then? This just goes on forever?”
“The loyalists will surrender.”
“They’ll be out saying the same thing about you. Jesus, you’re like children.”
Royce shrugs. From the corner of my eye, I can see the fog blowing at the pub window. Something has been nagging at me, something I’ve been trying to ignore, to stop it from complicating matters, but then Royce wipes a little spill of coffee from the table and the thought drops into my head fully formed. He wasn’t a cruel child.
“You’d a pet rabbit,” I say, before I can stop myself, and Royce shoves his plate hard across the table. “What was its name?”
“Piss off, Tessa. Whatever you’re trying to do, piss off.”
“I’m not trying to do anything, I just can’t remember its name.”
If I’d learned now that Royce had a pet as a child, I’d be terrified for the creature. But it was grand. He built the rabbit a hutch in their back garden, and an open run. He’s not a sociopath. However he is now, he wasn’t born like this.
Royce stares past me, and I say, “What happened to you? Was it just being bullied at school?”
His eyes have gone blank. “We’re done here,” he says.
I stand to leave. As I’m pulling on my bag, Royce watches me, with his arms folded over his chest and his jaw tight. “You missed out, Tessa. You were meant to join the IRA,” he says. “It’s in your blood.”
“What, because of my sister?”
“No, Tessa. Because of your mother.”
Twenty-One
On the bus from Glasnevin to my office, I sit with my hands in my lap, ignoring the roads flashing past the windows, staring straight ahead at a safety poster that says if you see something, say something.
My mam likes Rod Stewart. She fancies Michael Caine and your man off Holby City. She votes Soc Dem. She likes prosecco and margaritas, and her eyes swim when she laughs. She gives a standing ovation at most concerts and at every single musical, even the worst ones. She will often send me a picture of, say, a wooden cutting board or a pair of sandals, with absolutely no explanation. She distrusts therapy, open-water swimming, and all triathletes. She works as a dog-walker, and when people ask if she makes enough to live on, which they always do, she says, “Well, I’m not troubling the Sunday Times rich list.”
She has a glamour, like her sisters, like other women from west Belfast, that has nothing to do with clothes or money. They know how to dance, how to tell a story, how to have you wheezing with laughter. You want to be near them.
What else do I know about her? I know that her first memory is of walking up outdoor stairs at a holiday house by the beach in Bundoran, when she must have been only about two years old. She remembered the tar-paper steps burning under her feet.
But I’ve no idea what she thought about, during all the years she worked as a housekeeper. I don’t know where her mind went in those large empty rooms while she mopped the floor or scrubbed stains from the tiles. I’ve no clue what she prays about at church. I don’t know if she’s asking for forgiveness, if that’s why she goes to mass, week after week after week.
I’m an adult, but the word I hold for her in my head is mam, not her name. Her name is Catherine. My mam’s name is Catherine.
* * *
• • •
Mam is staying over at Marian’s house to help with the baby while Seb’s away filming. When I step inside after work, Marian is on her sofa holding Saoirse, and mam is in the kitchen rinsing the baby’s bottles. “Are you here for dinner?” says mam. “I made a fish pie. Where’s Finn?”
“Does Marian know? Did you tell Marian and not me?”
Mam sighs, and says, “Oh, for god’s sake.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, but she’s already turning away from me, sliding the clean bottles onto the draining rack.
“Tessa?” Marian calls through the open doorway, and I move into the front room with mam following me. “Is Finn here?”
“No, he’s on a playdate at Caroline’s.”
“At six o’clock? What’s going on?” says Marian, tucking her chin to check Saoirse, asleep at her shoulder, in a small green suit patterned with rabbits.
“Mam was in the IRA.”
Marian laughs. “Sure.”
Carefully, mam says, “No, I was never in the IRA.”
“Obviously,” says Marian, adjusting the muslin cloth under Saoirse.
“Not officially,” says mam, and slowly Marian lifts her head. “But when I was a teenager, I did lend them a hand.”
The room rings with silence. Marian is watching mam with an amused, patient expression, like she’s waiting for the end of a joke.
“Why can I not just have a normal family?” I say.
“You don’t mean that, Tessa,” says mam.
“Of course I do. I wish we had another sibling so I wouldn’t be the only adult in this room who was never a terrorist.”
Marian stares into the middle distance, not hearing me. “Lend them a hand?” she asks mam, her voice deadly. “How did you lend them a hand?”
“The lads had trouble at the security checkpoints, so some of us helped. The soldiers never thought to look inside our shoes, they were too busy searching the lads.”
“Stop calling them that,” I hiss. “Stop making them sound harmless.”
“I never said they were harmless,” says mam. “But they were my friends, back then.”
“Good,” I say. “Grand. Your friends ordered us to be killed for informing.”
“No, they didn’t,” says mam. “That was the younger generation coming up. They’re different.”
The air in the room has hardened. I remember playing dress-up in mam’s closet, trying on a silver lamé skirt, a sailor-collar dress, a pair of velvet platform heels. I picture mam, years before, balancing on those heels, drinking a Babycham at the Odeon or the Mint, then walking on them past an army roadblock, nodding at the soldiers.
“What was inside?” I ask, my voice faint.
“Messages,” she says. “Or fake papers, for anyone skipping town.”
“Did our father know?” asks Marian.
“That’s not why he left, Marian.”
“But he knew?” she asks, and mam nods. Our father lives with his second wife and teenage sons in Twickenham, outside London. For our entire lives, he has allowed us to take mam’s side against him, and he never told us her secret, which would mean more if he didn’t act like he couldn’t be bothered with any of us.
“You let me apologize to you,” says Marian. “For joining the IRA. You stood there and let me apologize over and over.”
“For your own sake,” says mam. “You needed to apologize. Hearing about me wouldn’t have helped.”
“But you could have saved me from all of it, you could have stopped me from joining in the first place.”
“I thought I had. As far as I knew, you were a paramedic all those years. I never told you because I didn’t want you two thinking you came from a republican family. You know what that does, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says mam. “Things were different for us. You weren’t even meant to tell your children if you’d been married before, or had a miscarriage. I thought I was doing the right thing for you girls.”
“Get out,” says Marian.
“I’ll take the washing down first,” says mam, and Marian snorts.
“Is this a joke?” she says.
“Does it make you feel any better?” I ask once mam has stepped outside, and Marian looks at me like I’m mad. “Can you forgive yourself now? Maybe that’s why you joined. It was in your blood.”
“You don’t inherit terrorism,” she snaps. “It’s not hay fever.”
We did inherit mam’s hay fever, though. Her eyes, her features. When Marian starts to cry, it’s mam’s mouth she’s covering under her hand.
During my pregnancy, I read that a female fetus develops eggs in utero, at around four months. So thirty-six years ago, when mam was pregnant with me, the egg that would become Finn was already inside my body, inside hers, like a set of nesting dolls.
