by Flynn Berry
“What’s he like?” she asks.
“He’s nice. You two should have coffee sometime.”
The odd thing is, I do think they would like each other. They’d respect each other. He doesn’t appear to respect me, but, then, he thinks I’m a liar.
The bus curves along the lough, past sodden meadows. Marian says, “Did you meet with Eamonn?”
“Yes.” She starts to speak, but I cut her off. “You could at least look surprised.”
Marian smiles. “I knew you would.”
“I’m not doing this to impress you,” I snap. “I haven’t forgiven you. Whatever you’re doing now doesn’t make up for it.”
Marian stiffens, then says, “I need you to tell Eamonn the name Charles Cavil. My unit’s doing surveillance on him this week.”
“Who is he?”
“A financier. He’s friends with the prime minister, their families go on holiday together. The IRA wants to bring him in. We’re looking for material to blackmail him.”
“Have you done that before?” I ask, which she doesn’t answer. We’re almost at Greyabbey, and I reach past her to signal for the stop.
“Can I see Finn?” she asks.
“No.”
“Please, Tessa. I miss him.”
“It’s not fair of you to ask me.”
Anything could happen to her, in her position. It could happen tonight, it could happen a few hours from now. Marian moves aside and I brush past her, with my head down, my eyes stinging. This might be our last conversation, her pleading and me leaving her alone on a bus.
* * *
—
On the beach in the morning, I drop onto the crest of sand and wait for Eamonn. The rising sun casts a path of shining light on the water, and I stare at it for long enough to see spots when I look away.
From the far end of the cove, Eamonn and the dog are coming toward me. The signal worked, then. Last night after leaving Marian, I stopped at Spar and bought a Mars bar with Eamonn’s gift card. I was starving but didn’t consider eating it. It was a signal, not actual food.
The collie bumps her head against my chest, and I lean forward, breathing in the comforting smell of her wet fur. Eamonn has on a blue marled sweatshirt with two white laces hanging from its hood.
“Is she really your dog?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, which is good. I want something in this to be real.
I tell him about the plan to blackmail Charles Cavil. “What are you going to do?”
If Cavil disappears from the province, the IRA will know there’s a mole.
“Whatever we do, it won’t lead back to Marian, I promise.”
I want to talk to his other informers. I want to know where they are now, if they’re still alive, if they’d do it again.
“Can I ask you something? Why didn’t MI5 help convict Cillian Burke?” Cillian’s trial collapsed earlier this week, as predicted. He’s a free man.
“We had reason,” says Eamonn.
“What?”
“The greater good.”
“Do you even care what happens here? Is this a training ground for you?”
“No, Tessa,” he says. “I’m not training.” He looks over his shoulder at the gray sea. “Is it cold?”
“Yes.” I start to untie the knot on my leggings and to pull off my jumper, undressing to my swimsuit. Eamonn hasn’t moved. “Is there anything else?”
He shakes his head, and I step around him to walk down to the water. I gulp in air, then duck under the surface.
* * *
—
Every night after work, I stop at an ATM and withdraw four hundred pounds. At home, I roll up the bills and hide them in an empty tube of sun cream. I’ll need the cash if things go wrong, if we have to leave suddenly.
I find my passport in the bottom of a filing cabinet and place it in my jewelry box, along with Finn’s birth certificate, and a scan of his NHS card and vaccination records. I move my canvas holdall to the front of the closet and run through what to bring—nappies, wipes, blankets, bottles, warm clothes—but don’t pack them. If the IRA ever searches my house, they can’t find a go bag.
On Saturday, Sophie drops Poppy off for a playdate. I set both babies in their high chairs and return with two jars of fruit purée. They watch me with wide eyes, bibs around their necks.
“Right, who’s hungry?” I ask, surprised at how easy it is to act like a normal person, like someone who doesn’t have two thousand pounds in cash hidden in her bathroom cabinet.
20
When I open the snaps on Finn’s sleepsuit, his chest is covered in bright red spots. My hands freeze. “Oh, god.” The spots look like measles. He had an MMR vaccine recently, but the virus might have already been in his system. Finn frowns at me from the changing mat, then starts to cry. I duck forward to kiss him, angry with myself for scaring him, for not having better instincts, and gently loosen his arms from his sleeves. The spots have spread to his back, too.
I lift Finn to my shoulder and step into the living room, turning my head like I’m about to find another adult, and say, Can you take a look at this?
At the clinic, the doctor says, “Let’s have you undress him and pop him up here.” Finn wails, outraged at being on his back in only a nappy. As he twists, the hospital paper crinkles under him. The spots look worse under the strip lighting, and I stroke his head while the doctor examines him.
“You had a vaccine recently,” she says to him. “And this means you’ve responded perfectly. Clever boy.”
“But his vaccine was two weeks ago.”
The doctor looks at her chart. “Ten days. The rash often takes that long. Or it doesn’t show up at all.”
I let out a long breath. “He doesn’t have measles?”
“This is only an immune response to the vaccine. He’s not ill.” She strips her gloves and drops them in the bin.
“Is the rash contagious?”
“No,” she says, and the day ahead of me shifts, like blocks dropping into view. After this appointment, I’ll drop him at day care, rush into work, finish the running order, produce our live broadcast, and return home to the babysitter around eight, none of which sounds feasible. I want to sit holding my baby for the next six to twelve hours.
“Can I feed him in here?”
“Of course.”
Finn nurses with his eyes wide open, like he doesn’t trust either of us at the moment. The doctor says, “How’re things otherwise?”
“Fine. Grand.”
“Any problems with feeding?”
“No.”
“Do you have much support? Any family in the area?”
“My mother.” Though I haven’t seen her since last week. She and Marian have been spending time together, meeting outside the city, and I feel left out by these visits.
The doctor waits, aware something is wrong. I look down, adjusting the nursing muslin draped over my shoulder. I could tell her. I could say, I’m informing on the IRA. Once she leaves, I’ll have lost my chance. I want to ask her opinion about informing, the way I’d ask for her opinion on, say, mastitis. I want to be prescribed a treatment, like ice packs and lanolin ointment, rest.
“You can ring me up anytime,” she says, and I nod furiously, wanting to thank her for her kindness. “And I’ll see you at his ten-month checkup.”
It might be over by then, by October. I would like to stay here with Finn until then, for some other version of myself to leave the clinic and deal with whatever is coming.
* * *
—
When I finally return home from work, the babysitter is watching Bake Off on the sofa. Finn has already fallen asleep, and I am bereft at having missed his bath and bottle.
“How was he?” I ask.
“Good,” says Olivia, yawning. “He went down at
seven thirty.”
I wait for more detail, none forthcoming. “Did you get enough to eat?” I’d left cash for a takeaway, if she didn’t fancy anything in the fridge.
“I ordered from Golden Wok, there’s some left in the kitchen.”
“Grand, I’m starving.”
At the front door, Olivia says, “You don’t have many things for him. You’ve only two baby bowls and two spoons.”
“Oh. Well, he only ever uses one at a time.”
“He could use more socks, too.”
“Right, okay. I’ll pick some up. Night, Olivia.”
“Night.”
Olivia babysits for other families in Greyabbey, who are apparently more organized. They never run out of clean laundry for the baby, or Calpol, or sticking plasters. They own bottle sterilizers, white-noise machines, wipe warmers. They make homemade fruit compotes and pour them into serving-size glass pots. They don’t ever long for unfiltered cigarettes or music festivals.
Though it’s not a fair comparison, given that all of them are married. I want to hear what the other parents in Greyabbey talk about after their baby is asleep. I want to know if they have calendars pinned to the walls of their kitchens, and what’s on them, what should be on mine.
Two weeks before my due date, over dinner, Colette told me all the tricks to induce labor—spicy curries, fizzy drinks, raspberry-leaf tea. “You’re ready?” she asked, and I nodded, resting my hand on my huge stomach. “I just want to meet him.”
A couple near us had a pram parked next to their table. The baby woke during their dessert, and the father lifted her into his arms. She looked between her smiling parents, and I thought, My son will never do that. No matter how amicable Tom and I are, he won’t have that. Colette must have seen the look on my face, because she said, “He’ll be lucky to have you, Tessa.”
* * *
—
My mother hadn’t told me why she couldn’t mind him tonight. She might have had to work late, too.
The babysitter cost forty quid. I stay up late, eating Chinese food straight from the container with chopsticks, sorting out the month’s gas and electric bills. Thinking about money at the moment feels like tripping at the top of a flight of stairs, but I’ve already decided to refuse if Eamonn offers to pay me, like the money would compromise me—which is stupid, since the IRA has the same punishment for paid and unpaid informers. I think of MI5 filling a numbered bank account in Switzerland for Marian, a pledge account. She didn’t tell me the balance.
I push myself back from the table. Finn’s room has a different smell than the rest of the house, like calendula lotion and cotton crib sheets. In his sleep, he stretches his arms above his head and rolls onto his side. One of his feet pokes through the slats of the crib, and I tuck it back inside. I rest my hand on his chest, feeling his ribs swell as he breathes, and wonder what exactly I’m doing.
21
Marian is waiting alone at the bus stop in Newtownards in a shift dress and high-heeled ankle boots. She walks easily in the boots, which is odd, since she never wears heels. I remember her saying medics should only wear shoes they can run in.
“Are those new?” I ask as the bus swerves back onto the road.
“No.”
My sister knows how to chamber a gun, how to transport explosives, how to perform unarmed combat. Who’s to say she doesn’t also know how to run in heels. These clothes must be camouflage for the Malone Road, so she can follow Charles Cavil into the expensive restaurants and shops around his house, while her unit performs surveillance on him. He lives in a modern glass mansion on Osborne Place.
“Have you found any kompromat yet?” I ask.
“Some tax dodges,” she says.
“So what happens now?”
“One of our lads will approach him,” she says. “MI5 will have told Cavil how to respond. I’m sure they’ve already briefed him.”
I think of Marian’s unit parked outside his house, and Cavil inside uncorking a bottle of wine or cooking dinner, knowing that he’s being watched. It all seems like a farce.
The bus slows to a crawl in the Friday evening traffic. “How well do you know Eamonn?” I ask.
“Not very.” She says they only had short meetings, rolling-car meetings. She’d offer him information, and then she’d be back on the road, continuing her walk, with barely an interruption.
“He told me he’s from Strabane, but I can’t tell if his accent is real.”
“Probably not,” she says. “Does it matter?”
“I want to know if he’s lying to me.”
“Don’t think of it as lying,” she says. “Think of it as another layer of protection.”
We drive past farms, meadows, quiet ponds. All of this is in a conflict zone, behind security checkpoints, inside a military cordon. In Marian’s mind, this phase will be the end of hundreds of years of war, the last ever surge. Even then, I wish it weren’t happening.
“Do you have any information for Eamonn?” I ask.
“I’m doing an arms drop in Armagh tonight.”
A pit lodges in my stomach. If anyone sees her, she could be shot. “Are you going alone?”
“No, with Damian and Niall.”
I can’t tell whether that’s better or worse. The shoveling will go faster with three of them, but they will be more conspicuous. Marian tells me the location of the arms drop, in an apple orchard on the Monaghan Road.
“What if someone sees you?” I ask.
“No one will be out at that time of night.”
“If someone sees you, will you shoot him?”
“No.”
“Would Damian or Niall?”
She doesn’t answer, and I press myself away from her against the bus window, staring out at the knots of roofs and church steeples. “What’s wrong with this place? What happened to it?”
“They’re not monsters,” she says. “They’re fighting the British the way you’d fight Nazis. They think they’re doing the right thing.”
“Was Elgin Street right?”
“That wasn’t us, that was loyalists.”
“I don’t care which side it was. How could you have kept going after that?”
“You don’t understand. Once you’ve done something terrible, you have to keep going, you have to win, or else the terrible thing was for nothing.”
“So in a united Ireland you won’t feel guilty?”
“I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life.”
We pass Mount Stewart, and soon the roofs of Greyabbey appear ahead.
“Can I see Finn?” she asks.
“Stop asking.”
* * *
—
While carrying Finn home from his day care, I find myself breathless with pity and guilt. I feel sorry for my sister, the way I would if she’d spent the last seven years ill, or an addict. Her life has been so much more difficult than mine.
Though I can’t only pity her. This wasn’t a car crash. It wasn’t alcoholism. She didn’t have a genetic predisposition for it, she decided to become a terrorist of her own free will. She swore a vow. I, Marian Daly, am a volunteer to the Irish Republican Army.
* * *
—
We’ll put surveillance on the arms drop,” says Eamonn when we meet at Ardglass, “and see who comes for it, and where they take it.”
“Don’t endanger her.”
“They’ll never know we’re there.”
After every meeting with Eamonn, I thrash through the water. My feet churn the surface and my arms plunge through it. At the headland, the current turns stronger, you can feel the cold drag of the tide, pulling you toward the North Sea.
In the water, I consider the information I’ve told Eamonn about her unit’s plans or routes or targets, and the ways his agency might act on it, and how that migh
t be traced back to Marian or, somehow, to me.
I was never a fast swimmer before, but now it’s like sprinting. By the time I come out, my legs are limp. Saltwater courses down my body as I walk back through the dunes. In the car park, I pull on a t-shirt and untie my bikini underneath it, relieved to tug off its clammy weight. I squeeze the water from my hair, push my sandy feet into shoes, and then drop to my hands and knees to look under the car for a bomb. Even after checking, I’m scared before turning the key. I sit there, thinking about Finn.
At home, the muscles behind my shoulder blades ache when I lift the baby, when I raise my arms in the shower, when I climb into bed at night.
* * *
—
Sometimes I stop far past where the waves break, treading water, and watch the fishing trawlers. “The IRA is bringing in a shipment,” Marian said. “That’s why I was in Ballycastle. They sent me to the north coast to look for a landing site.”
The shipment will be coming from Croatia on a private yacht owned by an arms dealer. Sometime this autumn, the yacht will be met in the Mediterranean by an Irish fishing trawler, which will load its cargo, return home, and land at night somewhere on the north coast.
“They need someplace isolated,” Marian said. “I found a beach west of Ballycastle, but they’re considering others.”
Neck-deep in the water, I watch the trawlers, and think about the yacht, a large vessel with a full crew, and wonder if any of them know what’s on board.
“Forty-five tons of gelignite,” said Marian.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s enough for thirty large bombs.”
22
I collapse into a chair next to my mother, tearful with fatigue. Finn is in his crib, but he’ll be up again in a few hours. He has never been a good sleeper. In his first weeks, I’d think he’d finally drifted off, then look in the bassinet and see his pacifier moving furiously up and down.