There was a warren of rooms underneath the house, most with obvious uses, some merely empty and gathering motes of dust and silence. He poked his head in a few and found more casks—these empty—shelves of decorative bottles and undecorated ones as well. Cobwebs abounded, unlike the cask room where everything was clean, dry and orderly.
Suddenly he could hear his wife’s voice as though she were standing next to him. He looked up, eyes roving the ceiling. It was likely the room was vented to keep it properly dry. It must have a grille in the kitchen for he heard the clink of pottery and the slow rumble of a kettle put on to boil. Conor was winding himself up. The laddie liked his meals on time and made his wants known in no uncertain terms. Casey might have been standing in the kitchen with them, the sounds were so clear. Old houses were like this sometimes, the acoustics performing strange and wondrous permutations so that you could hear a conversation one floor down and three rooms over as though it was right next to you.
Pamela was singing to Conor now, distracting him until his food was ready. Her voice was soft, bubbling with laughter at the edges. He stood and listened, his heart suddenly aching and full with love for his wee family. His wife, his son, all that was most precious to him, right there, singing and laughing in the kitchen above his head.
It came to him then that when you are lucky, when you are redeemed by love, when you have in your life a full measure of goodness, of happiness, that you have to try, at least, to set other things right. You have to extend a bit of faith and hope for, if not believe in, miracles.
He left the room a moment later to walk back up the tunnel and out into the smoke and fog of the winter woods.
The conversation with Casey recalled to David one with James Kirkpatrick. They had been sitting in his study late one night, curtains drawn and fire lit, whiskey at hand, chessboard laid out and a game in mid-play. David had made a comment—light enough in itself—about the labyrinthine nature of any sort of dealings in Ulster, both political and business. Jamie had laughed.
“David, if you think you can accomplish anything here in the North without severely compromising everything you believe in, thought you believed in, or were about to believe in, think again.”
“Is that what you’ve done?” David asked. Jamie had looked up from the board, one gull-winged eyebrow arched, but seeing that it was an honest question he answered in kind.
“More than I care to admit, even to myself, David. Unfortunately, I’ve found that it’s utterly impossible to get anything done without enormous amounts of compromise. There isn’t a lot of black and white in this country. It’s about a million shades of grey instead. I imagine your next question is—do the ends justify the means? That I do not know, but I hope for it. Otherwise I wouldn’t be up to my eyeballs in this mess, would I? And nor, I suppose, would you.”
Jamie’s tone had been light but David had understood the implied threat. That if he had an agenda with Jamie beyond the sharing of information and the actions that sometimes resulted from that information then Jamie would not hesitate to take him out. And David had absolutely no doubt that he could and would do it, and not lose too much sleep over it either. This had only increased his fascination with the man, for he had never met anyone quite as skilled as Jamie Kirkpatrick at presenting a glittering façade of civility while underneath being as ruthless as a shark in pursuing what he felt was right for his country. David had been warned what to expect by his handlers when they had set up the first meeting with Jamie. Still, he had not been prepared for the man himself—and all credit to his handlers—no one could really have prepared him adequately. The first meeting had left him feeling as if His Lordship had whisked his brain with a gently-applied eggbeater.
The hour was late and David knew he must leave soon. He loved this house, loved the mellow ambience of it, the feeling of all those generations having lived here imbued in the very air. And he enjoyed Jamie’s company immensely. The man cut little slack and suffered no fools, and David enjoyed the effort required to keep up to Jamie’s mind, or at least to bask in the illusion that one was keeping up.
David sipped contemplatively at his whiskey, reveling in the smoke-gold taste of it, allowing it to purl at the back of his tongue before swallowing it. When David put his glass down, Jamie refilled it from a decanter he kept near the chessboard. Jamie’s own glass, though filled with the requisite two fingers, remained untouched. As it always did.
“I’m frustrated with how things work, or don’t work, in this business of ours.” David said, thinking of the naïve soldier he had once been and of the cynicism—hard-earned—that had become a central facet of all his waking hours. “People are naïve about what it actually takes to get anything accomplished, especially in a society where the dealings, by necessity, are dirty from the word go. I can never make my handlers understand that compromises are necessary for even the smallest deal here. Which I suppose is why they keep the Secretary in the dark as to what’s on the table.”
Jamie smiled, but it was a tired smile.
“David, you know as well as I do that foreign policy often consists of polite diplomacy in public and a deal of compromise and dirty dealings behind the scenes, well away from the sensitive gaze of the public. It’s the only way to get things done.”
David had always found Jamie’s honesty refreshing. It was indeed how things were done, only not many people would admit to it so baldly.
“Just how many languages do you speak?” David asked, for Jamie was well used to his curiosity and never had trouble following his non sequiturs.
“Adequately—maybe twenty. Fluently? Less than that. I only know the vulgar words for some.”
It was the way many of their conversations went, David noticed with no small frustration and yet an admiration for the man at the same time. He answered any question asked, only the answers often left one feeling more confused than before. David often found himself so enthralled with the answers that were given, he didn’t realize until hours later that Jamie had not addressed the heart of the actual query.
“Why do you stay?” he asked. “You have money and the talent to live anywhere, do anything. Why do you stay here?”
The green eyes looked long over the gleaming chess pieces before Jamie answered. But when he finally did, the answer took David by surprise in its simplicity and honesty.
“Because this is my home, and there are people here whom I love. I have three sons in the family burial ground and an ex-wife out west in a convent. Such life as I’ve lived, and by that I mean the things that have true meaning, has been lived, in great part, here.”
In hindsight now, he realized that one of those people who Jamie loved was Pamela Riordan and that he likely stayed in some part to watch over her. Which, knowing what he did of the woman, must have been no small feat on Jamie’s part. It also spoke of a love that was selfless. He was a little surprised by it as well, for Jamie had, at times, the brutal practicality of a freshly-sharpened scalpel. He wondered too, as he watched Jamie remove his bishop from the board with a move he had not seen coming, what it would be like to know that this extraordinary man loved you?
“I had a brother,” David said, surprising himself by the admission.
“Had?” Jamie said, voice casual, as he moved a knight up diagonally.
“Yes, he’s dead.” David cursed under his breath, realizing the man across from him was anticipating him at least three moves in advance.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said with such sincerity that David suddenly missed his brother, Edward, as he had not allowed himself to in a very long time.
The evening ended with Jamie beating David with a combination of moves that was Machiavellian in its simplicity. Somehow it never bothered David to lose to him, for Jamie created, from various twisting strands, a whole cloth of congeniality and mellow goodwill, and David had long known it was the game that mattered, not the wi
nning.
Standing now on the edge of the Kirkpatrick land, breathing in the smoke from a not-too-distant peat fire, he remembered what Jamie’s final words had been that night.
“We will none of us come out of this unscathed, and that’s only if we’re lucky enough to come out of it at all.”
Chapter Twenty-five
December 1973
The Soldier
Belfast, some days, seemed little more than a crematorium. A crematorium for cars and lampposts, tires, baby buggies, piles of rubble, blasted brick and tossed doorways thrown about by the latest bombing episode. A crematorium that held the ashes of a thousand dreams and hopes and false starts and talks and prayers.
Walking through the dank evening air, a chill wind blowing straight through him, Casey smelled the sharp tang of cordite and heard in the distance the popping of sporadic gunfire. Ballymurphy maybe? It was always a hotbed of trouble, though no more than his own old neighborhood, the Ardoyne.
It had been a long day and he longed for the warmth of his home in a visceral manner: fire, food, bed, and warmth with a full belly and the sweet respite of unconsciousness. The car was parked away from their latest building site, if one could call it such, for they were merely repairing the structural damage from a pipe bomb thrown through the open doorway of a pub. Still, it was a chancy site and he had no desire to leave his car to the mercy of the feral hooligans who infested the area.
He thought about leaving sometimes, moving to the Republic, making a fresh start in a community near Dublin or Cork. But something in him always retracted a bit at the mere idea. There was no place in the Republic that was home to him in the way this burning wee city was, no place that called to his bones and blood the way his own bit of land did. The house and the property surrounding it had felt right from the moment he clapped eyes upon it. Something in his soul had settled in right then, and wasn’t happy about the idea of being rooted up once again. And the North was his country; the Republic was not.
But for the sake of his wife and son, perhaps he ought to give up this notion of country and tribe and belonging. Because in some ways it wasn’t his truth anymore. Leastwise, he didn’t belong, not in the circles that he once had. And he was more aware each day of how dangerous such a position was. He was still on the British Army’s hit list and he wasn’t entirely in favor with the local lads either, though not so out of favor that he hadn’t managed to convey David’s message. The gentlemen with whom he had spoken throughout a tense hour had not been quite as skeptical as he himself had been regarding British withdrawal. Which made him think it wasn’t the first time they had caught wind of such a thing.
He was jolted from his musings by the sound of steps behind him and knew through long experience that it was the measured, heavy gait of a soldier—of a nervous soldier. And well he should be nervous. He was a little off the beaten path for a soldier. The man must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
“Hoy—you there, stop!”
He kept walking, hoping to disappear into the shadows that sat heavy between the narrow, dirty buildings. Bloody boy must have a death wish patrolling in this area, because this was Republican territory and a British army uniform was as good as a pulsating bullseye in these streets.
“I said stop—you there!”
There was a point at which a man had to stop or risk having his spine shattered. Casey was all too familiar with exactly where that point lay.
“Get on your knees!”
Casey stopped and put his hands in the air, pushing the fury down under his immediate concern for breathing. He lowered himself down to one knee, making sure to keep all his movements slow and steady. The slightest unexpected move and he would have a bullet through the brain, and there would be none to enquire whether his killing had been justified or not. It was the way of things for a Catholic in Northern Ireland. The cobblestones glistened under his knees, the damp immediately soaking through his trousers.
These boys lived on their nerves, and many of them were just that—nervy boys, ready to shoot at their shadows. Northern Ireland wasn’t exactly a prime posting and they only sent in the big guns when the natives got truly restless.
He could hear the rhythmic steps closing in behind him, and kept his head tucked down, eyes fixed to the pavement, but every other sense was alert and scanning for overt hostility and itchy trigger fingers. If the soldier was older—say his own age—the trouble could be much worse. The young ones were never as hard, nor as willing to kill a man in cold blood. The veterans didn’t have as much compunction about it. They tended to suspect even Prods of nefarious acts of terrorism. And if they had been posted here long enough, they might recognize him. He knew, by virtue of past acts and his family name, that he was on every watch list.
The muzzle, cold and intrusive, was on the back of his neck now, the soldier breathing heavy—scared or angry? Probably scared. He sensed a boy behind him, not the full menace of a man. A boy he might be able to talk his way round.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Walking,” Casey said, unable to keep a weary dryness from his tone, though he knew it was foolhardy to behave so.
“Walking where?”
“Home. My car is parked just another block from here.”
“Why isn’t it parked closer to wherever you were?”
Casey understood the subtext of this question all too well. If a suspicious looking Irish bastard like himself was walking the streets of his own city, it could only be that he had planted a bomb and was now casually strolling back to IRA headquarters. Tempted as he was to say this aloud, he had learned the hard way to bite down on his tongue and keep his thoughts to himself.
“Because I’m workin’ on a building site where there’s a few gangs of boys about who slash tires an’ such for after-school entertainment, so I don’t park there.”
With every encounter he endured of this sort, he felt more and more that his luck was running out. What were the odds of coming through an unofficial war, that was seemingly never-ending, unscathed? With family and life intact? These boys came and went but he lived here. This was home, and home was an unceasing battleground.
The muzzle was still there on his neck, intimate in a cold and stomach-dropping way. A split second was all it would take. He felt the fragility of his body all too clearly at present. Unbidden, a vision of Pamela sitting up in the bed that morning—sleepy, hair a wild corona around her head, nursing Conor—flashed through his mind.
No, no—he couldn’t think about his family or the panic truly would set in and he might do something that would cause this boy to pull the trigger.
“Go then,” the boy said roughly. Casey rose up an inch at a time, not wanting to give the soldier any excuse for leaving his body in the roadway as so many others had been left. His knees were stiff and there was that itch in his backbone that one got when it was a target. It was an itch that had been present much of his life, only of late he seemed to be aware of it all the time.
He walked a small distance away before turning back, the drizzle making the boy’s face little more than a flushed blur in the night.
“Ye were hopin’ I wouldn’t stop, weren’t ye?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question and the boy knew it as well as he did.
“Maybe I was,” the boy said, caught off-guard into answering honestly.
Casey nodded. There wasn’t anything to say to that, and the entire idea of it lay at the bottom of this ungodly war in which they were all engaged.
He could feel the soldier’s eyes on him until he reached the end of the road and turned the corner. But Casey, having lived in this city too long, did not look back.
Chapter Twenty-six
Bandit Country
South Armagh had long existed as a place apart, even from the rest of Northern Ireland. It was a Republican stronghold with roots in rebellio
n that went back to the hanging, so the locals claimed, of Big Charley Caraher. Big Charley had, so the story went, stolen a cow and paid for it by having his privy parts cut off before he was hanged. After his death, his body had been quartered and sent to the four corners of the country, and his head displayed on a pike set high so that none might miss it. If this was meant to scare the natives into behaving, it didn’t have its intended effect.
Just as some land was sacred, some seemed to foment trouble in its very soil, and South Armagh was such a place. Its entire history was one of betrayal and murder, of disappearances and deceptions that led to some of the bloodiest crimes committed on the entire island. The very geography seemed to encourage such acts. Slieve Gullion rose out of the mists of legend. The mountain was home, it was said, to the Irish hero Cuchulain. Finn McCool was reputed to have been lured into the mountain’s lake by the trickster hag, Cailleach Beara, and to have re-emerged from the lake, no longer a young warrior but an old, bent man. The mountain itself was ringed by the depressions of a ring dyke, ancient sentries guarding it since time immemorial.
It was some of the most beautiful country on the entire island, but like a woman whose countenance is exquisite but whose heart is cold, a man took up with South Armagh at his peril. From the beginning of its history, it had been a frontier zone, the no-man’s land between the English Pale and the gateway to the world of the Gael.
Certainly there was no piece of ground in the six counties more steeped in blood and violence. It was by far the most dreaded posting for a British soldier. The odds of dying in South Armagh were far higher than in other parts of the Six Counties—even rubble-strewn Belfast was relatively safe in comparison. A soldier’s closest companion in South Armagh was pure terror.
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