Lies of Silence

by Moore, Brian;

  As he took off the clothes he had worn last night he looked out of the bedroom window. His little red Renault sat, still parked in the entryway outside the garden gate. So they had not taken it away. Wearing only his underpants, he went to the drawer where his shirts were.

  “Wait a minute,” his captor said. “You’d better shave.”

  Naked, he went into the bathroom. As he lathered his face the masked, helmeted head moved into view in the mirror behind him. “Hurry, now,” it said.

  He took up the razor. He had always been nervous of shaving with somebody standing close to him, and now the sight of this menacing head behind his made him almost cringe, as though waiting for a blow. The hooded eyes watched as he shaved and wiped his face. He went back into the bedroom where, watched by his tall captor, he put on a white shirt, a blue tie, and the suit he would normally wear, then went over to Moira’s dressing table and put his wallet, his comb and money in his pocket.

  “Tidy up your hair,” the voice behind him said. He used his comb, watching his captor through the mirror.

  “Sit down. You and me’s goin’ to have a wee talk.”

  His mouth felt dry. He joined his hands together to still their trembling. Now they would tell him what it was they wanted him to do. He sat on Moira’s dressing stool while his captor sat on the bed, his blue-jeaned bottom on Moira’s nightgown.

  “You’re goin’ to leave here now,” his captor said. “It’s just like any other day. You’re goin’ to work. You take your normal route, down the Antrim Road, and at Clifton Street you turn right at Upper Library Street. You go across town the usual way and up University Road. You go into the Clarence and park your car in your reserved parking space. You’ll arrive at a certain time. We’ll discuss that later. When you park the car, you don’t go into the hotel. Do you hear me?”

  He nodded, staring at the masked eyes which watched him.

  “You don’t go into the hotel. You go straight back to the security hut and out onto the street again. If they ask you any questions at the gate, you say you want to get somethin’ at the wee shop across the street. You know the wee shop across the street, don’t you? Murray’s is the name of it.”

  He nodded.

  “You go into Murray’s for a minute, just long enough to buy somethin’, cigarettes, or somethin’, and then you come out and, when you do, there’ll be a green taxi cruisin’ by. You signal to him. You’ll get in and he’ll drive you home. OK?”

  “Is there a bomb in my car?”

  His captor hesitated. His eyes, circled by the oblong woolen eyeholes of his helmet, blinked, then shut as though he were trying to remember something. When he opened them again, he stared at Dillon for a moment. Then his voice, flat and mechanical as though he were reciting a speech he had memorized, said, “Yes, there is a bomb in the car. It’s set to a time device. Your job is to park the car in its proper place and come out right away. You speak to nobody. If somebody speaks to you, you just say hello, good morning, or whatever. Now, if you do exactly what I tell you, when you come back here your wife will be waitin’ for you.”

  “So you’re going to blow up the hotel?”

  His captor shifted his buttocks on the bed, rucking up Moira’s nightgown. “Never you mind what we’re goin’ to do.”

  “Are you going to give a warning?” He heard his voice go up a note as he asked the question. Easy, he told himself. You sound hysterical. “I said, are you going to give a warning? There are hundreds of people in the hotel, the people I work with, and guests, tourists, innocent people.”

  His masked captor stared at him. “Never you mind what we’re goin’ to do. You do as you’re told and your wife will be all right.”

  “But you gave a warning other times,” Dillon said. “When you bombed the Europa. And when you put a bomb in the Clarence last year, you phoned in a warning.”

  “That’s right.” The eyes behind the mask shifted slightly. “Will you stop worryin’ your head about things that are none of your business! This is our business. I’m not discussin’ it with you. I’m just tellin’ you. If anythin’ goes wrong because of you, when you come back here to this house, your wife will be here. But she’ll be dead.”

  In the triptych mirror of Moira’s dressing table Dillon saw his own face: strange, stricken, stilled. His captor began to drum his gloved fingers on the thigh of his worn jeans. Below in the hall he heard faint voices. But, while he saw and heard these things, it was as though he had been given an anesthetic and was going under. As in a dream he heard the muffled explosion of a revolver, saw Moira scream soundlessly, saw her fall as they shot her. His mind, pulling away from panic, skittered back to the only hope he had left. “But you’ll give a warning?” he said. “They’re innocent people.”

  “We’re not lookin’ to kill innocent people,” his captor said. “And by the same token we’re not wantin’ to kill your wife either. But, if it has to be done, we’ll do it. Those volunteers downstairs will do a nut job on her. Now, come on. Are you ready?”

  They went out onto the landing. At the foot of the stairs, watching him as he came down, were the two masked men he had seen earlier in the kitchen. When he reached the front hall the sitting room door was open. Inside, Moira sat on the sofa, with Kev sitting facing her and the fat guard, squatting on his heels, peering out at the street. Moira turned her head, saw him, and jumped up as if to run out to him. But Kev at once blocked her.

  Behind Dillon, the tall youth, watching, said, “Let go of her for a minute.”

  Released, she ran out into the hallway. “What are they going to do?” she asked in a shaky voice.

  The tall youth said, “Say goodbye to her now.”

  And there in the hallway of this house he had planned to leave today forever, watched by five masked and armed men, he held to him this girl he had wanted to leave, felt her body tremble, felt her fingers dig into his back. “God take care of you,” she said, as though it were a prayer.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he told her. “Take it easy, will you? Don’t do anything silly. Promise me?”

  “Good advice,” said the tall one. He tapped Dillon on the shoulder. “Come on, now.”

  But Moira held him, pressing him to her, forcing him to disengage himself from her grip. “I won’t be long,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “None of your business,” the tall youth said. He turned to Kev. “Take her inside.”

  Kev and the fat guard took hold of Moira’s arms. “Oh, Jesus,” she said, and began to sob.

  “Come on, you.” The tall youth poked his gun in Dillon’s side and led him down the hall and into the kitchen.

  As he went, he heard Kev’s voice say to her, “Get inside!” He is the one who would like to hurt her. He is the one who will kill her.

  In the kitchen, the tall youth stood facing him, while the other two masked men went to the back door, as if waiting for a signal. The tall youth looked at his digital watch and said, “Volunteer, what time do you have on you?”

  One of the men pulled back his shirtsleeve and looked at his wrist. “Seven thirty-five.”

  “OK. Check outside,” said the tall one.

  One of the masked men opened the back door and went out into the garden. He came in again. “All clear.”

  The tall one then put his hand on Dillon’s shoulder in a parody of friendliness. “Now, here’s what you’re goin’ to do. Drive to the hotel, as I told you. When you get there it’ll be just about eight. Don’t stop anywhere on the way, don’t try any funny stuff. Remember, you’re bein’ followed. We’re in radio contact. One wrong move from you and somebody back here will blow her head off. Right?”

  Dillon nodded. His mouth was dry.

  “You’ll not be stopped. There’s no police checks on your route this mornin’. We’re watchin’ out for that. You’ll not be searched at hotel security, you never are. The trunk of your car is locked. Don’t try to open it. If you’re not out of the hotel carpark five
minutes after you go in, we’ll know you double-crossed us. And one last thing.” The hand tightened on Dillon’s shoulder. “When the police ask you questions about us, we’re all wearin’ masks, you don’t know names, or what we look like, nothin’. Remember, we’ll know what you told them. And that goes for that wife of yours. If you value her life, you’ll make sure she keeps her mouth shut. I’ve been hearin’ about some of the remarks she passed last night. We know now she’s an enemy of Ireland. She needn’t think that bein’ a Catholic from the Falls is goin’ to save her neck. So, mind what you say, the pair of you.”

  His gloved hand shot up as if to strike Dillon, who instinctively flinched. But instead of a blow Dillon’s car keys were thrown at him. He caught them. The tall youth turned to the back door. “Volunteer?”

  At the door, a second masked face nodded. “All clear.”

  The tall one gave Dillon a slight push, saying, “On your way now. Be quick.”

  The one at the back door opened it. He stepped outside into the morning sun and looked left and right to the other back gardens on either side. There was no one in sight. As he went along the garden path past bushes and flower beds, he saw an empty beer bottle beneath the old picnic table, a bottle left over from the picnic lunch he had eaten there with Moira last Sunday. He was being watched. Coming up to the garden gate he saw the fuchsia bush and, below it, Teddy’s body, a small bag of fur and bones, the crushed skull clotted with blood. Flies were at it already.

  When he opened the back gate it made a squealing sound. Three gardens up from his, a woman came out to put rubbish in her dustbin. She was dressed only in a cotton nightgown and when she heard the gate squeal, embarrassed at being seen undressed, she did not say good morning, but hurried back inside her house.

  His car was where he had left it. Or was it? He thought it was parked a little way back from his usual place. It was locked. He turned the key in the door and slipped into the front seat, looking around for signs of change. The worn black upholstery, the box of tissues on the dashboard, the broken sunglasses in the gearbox tray, nothing seemed to have been touched. He listened but heard no ticking sound. When he put the key in the ignition he thought of films he had seen where cars exploded when the ignition was turned on. But the engine came to life and turned over quietly.

  He came out of the driveway into the avenue. The white Ford was still parked opposite his house. As he drove past it, going toward the Antrim Road, he saw the man in the driver’s seat and the girl beside him. Both were looking in the other direction to avoid his seeing their faces. But he had seen their faces last night. Especially the girl’s.

  When he turned onto the Antrim Road, the white Ford was following him. His route would take him from North to South Belfast, through streets little changed since his childhood. He would skirt the boundaries of poor working-class areas and drive past the large monuments and buildings at the city’s center. It was a route which on a normal day was far too familiar to evoke in him any thought of what he was passing. But this morning, in a car which was a moving bomb, followed by terrorists who could radio in an order to kill his wife, he was driving for what might be the last time through this ugly, troubled place which held for him implacable memories of his past life. Now, in ironic procession, he would pass the house where he had been born, the boarding school in which he had been a pupil, and the university where he had written poetry, edited a student magazine, and dreamed of another life.

  The house came first, at a turn in the road, not half a mile from where he now lived. It was larger than the houses which adjoined it, aloof in its own grounds with, at the back, a tennis court, a lawn, a vegetable garden, the whole surrounded by a high hedge which hid it from the surrounding streets.

  It had been his grandfather’s house, his grandfather who had started the family tradition of running hotels, his grandfather who had begun down on the docks with a pub and rooms to let above it and who, from that beginning, had made himself into A. D. Dillon, Importer of Wines & Spirits, owning two small hotels and supplying drink to a dozen pubs. His grandfather, who had died before Dillon was born, was known to him only as a figure in a family photograph. Bearded and broad-beamed like Edward VII, he was shown standing by a large Daimler car, on the running board of which sat his three children, dressed in sailor suits.

  The house was called Ardath. Dillon’s father had moved back into it in 1947, the year his grandfather died. Dillon was born there five years later and lived in the house until he was eleven, when his feckless father sold it to buy Kinsallagh, a large country house in Donegal, which he turned into a hotel. He remembered his father playing tennis in long white trousers on the old grass court: he remembered the greenhouse which was always warm and where he watched frog spawn turn into frogs. Now, as he drove past, he could still see the old name “ARDATH” on a stone plinth at the right-hand side of the gate. But a newer sign on the left read “Sisters of Mercy: School for Girls.”

  He drove on, passing the cinema where as a boy he had watched films in which men fired revolvers at other men and bombs blew up forts and other buildings, but where, always, in the end, the bad men paid for their crimes. It was now a quarter to eight. What if the bomb went off too soon?

  He stopped the car at a pedestrian crossing. A young woman, pushing her baby in a pram, moved onto the crossing, and, halfway across, turned and smiled at him. At once, irrationally, he felt a sense of panic. Hurry up. Get away from me. He looked in his rearview mirror but a heavy lorry loaded with aluminum milk cans had moved in behind him, so that he could not see the white Ford. When the girl and her baby reached the other side of the street, he drove on and at that moment saw the white Ford move up, passing the lorry, to pull in again at his rear.

  Suddenly, three little boys, whirling their school satchels in the air as if to attack each other, ran across the street, shouting and laughing in the middle of traffic. They wore navy blazers and white shirts, with the tie of his school knotted like frayed rope ends around their necks. Ignoring the squealing brakes around them, they gained the opposite pavement and continued their helter-skelter chase. Ahead, to his right, he could see the ornamental iron gates, the long tree-lined avenue, and, at its end, the redbrick facade of the Catholic school where for eleven years he had been a boarder, a school where teaching was carried on by bullying and corporal punishment and learning by rote, a school run by priests whose narrow sectarian views perfectly propagated the divisive bitterness which had led to the events of last night.

  Look at me, look at me, he wanted to shout as he drove past those hated gates. See this car on its way to kill innocent people, see my wife in a room with a gun at her head, and then ask your Cardinal if he can still say of these killers that he can see their point of view.

  He drove into the roundabout at Carlisle Circus. In its center was a stone plinth which had once supported the statue of a Protestant divine, a statue like many of the city’s monuments, toppled in the war and never replaced. The white Ford came circling around behind him as he entered Clifton Street and drove past the headquarters of the Orange Order, that fount of Protestant prejudice against the third of Ulster’s people who are Catholics. Above the ugly gray stone building was a statue which had not been toppled by war or civil strife, a Dutch prince on horseback, waving a sword, staring out over the damaged city at ancient unchanging Irish hills, a statue commemorating a battle three hundred years ago in which the forces of the Protestant House of Orange defeated, on Irish soil, the forces of a Papist English king. At the bottom of Clifton Street he turned right, driving along the edge of those Protestant and Catholic ghettos which were the true and lasting legacy of this British Province founded on inequality and sectarian hate. In ten minutes he would reach the Clarence. And then what would he do?

  If the car were to break down now, here in this street, he would have to get out and try to start it up, knowing that the people in the white Ford were behind him, watching him. Parking was strictly forbidden in these central streets,
so, within minutes, the police would come along to ask what was wrong. At that moment the people in the white Ford might radio a signal to the house. Moira could be shot. Besides, these streets were full of people. If the bomb went off here, dozens of them might be killed. If it went off in the hotel, after a phone warning, perhaps there would be no loss of life?

  He drove on, passing the large Victorian buildings in Fisherwick Place, moving in the line of morning traffic which went toward Shaftesbury Square. How many minutes after he parked the car in the hotel would it be before the bomb went off? What if the warning was phoned in too late? But they had not promised to give a warning. They promised nothing. The bomb could be set to go off as little as ten minutes after he parked the car. Even if he did tell the police, they might not be able to evacuate the hotel in time. And if he told the police Moira would be shot. And if the police were not able to evacuate the people in time, the people in the hotel would be killed. And he would be the one who killed them.

  Behind him, a car horn hooted, impatiently. He realized his driving had slowed to a crawl and he was holding up the line of traffic now coming up to a green light. He was approaching the entrance gates and grounds of Queen’s University. The pavements were crowded with students in rented gowns converging, with their families and friends, on the graduation ceremonies. Today these students will be given passports to a new life. He had been one of them once, hoping to find a teaching job in England, but ready to go anywhere, Africa or the Middle East if it would get him away from here. He had worn that rented gown, he had sat in Whitla Hall waiting for his name to be called: “Michael Patrick Dillon, Second Class Honors, English,” waiting to walk to center stage where some English captain of industry stood in his chancellorial robes, ready to shake his hand and give him his degree.

  And afterward he had hurried along this road to the Clarence, laughing and joking with his friends, flirting with the girls, ready for a celebratory booze-up, seeing himself as a coming poet, pleased with his success. He had not known then that degree day was not a passport to freedom, but the end of freedom. He had not found the teaching job he wanted in England, in Europe, or in some faraway exotic place. His grandfather had run pubs and a hotel, his father ran a hotel, and he had ended up, like them, a servant of sorts, arranging to feed people and pour their drinks and provide beds for them. Unlike his father and grandfather, he did not even own the hotel which he was now on his way to destroy.