I was close to the end of my endurance. There was nothing left to squeeze out of my exhausted brain. I moaned at the two of them to stop, but they went on. There was so little to tell. At the end of the day, no matter how many times they repeated their questions, I still couldn’t tell them who David Cornwell was or how he might relate to Noel or Eric or Frank. At last they seemed to come to the same conclusion. They handed me yet more pages to sign and left.
As the door shut behind them I stood up and began to pace, favouring my stinging foot. I was fully awake now, scared and impatient. There must be some sort of limit to how long this could go on. Why did I have to be such an ignoramus? I let out a long, loud sigh, and something about it put me in mind of a scale, so I sang some. Up and down, humming and trilling as though I were warming up for a performance. I opened right up into the top of my range, let every cavity in my head vibrate, didn’t care how much noise I made … until I recalled the camera in the corner of the room and stopped abruptly.
The silence that fell then was thicker and heavier than ever. I tried leaning against the wall for the sake of variety, but it didn’t help much. I considered lying on the floor, but I changed my mind when I took a closer look at it. I sprawled across the table for a while, which was not as comfortable as one might have thought.
I WAS, REGRETTABLY, STILL prone on the table when there was a tap at the door and Sergeant Hall came in. I scrambled to my feet.
The police officer was looking more pleasant than I’d seen her thus far. ‘Miss Houlihan, you’ve been extremely helpful tonight. Thank you for that.’
‘OK …’ I said.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘You’re free to go.’
An avalanche of relief poured down my slopes, engulfing all in its path.
Hall showed me out. Phillips met us in the corridor and handed me back Nicky Fay’s memory stick.
‘Goodnight,’ I said to the two of them, aware of how inappropriate it sounded. I stepped out into the icy air, feeling cautiously cheerful. I understood none of what had happened, but I was free. I started walking as best I could in wthat I hoped was a likely direction.
Every atom of cheer drained precipitously away when I saw Matthew standing under a streetlamp a short distance down the road. I was empty, barren of fortitude or firmness of purpose to bring to bear on this situation. I simply kept walking towards him. Past him. He fell into step beside me. We walked in silence, with just a little more space between us than there might naturally have been.
‘Um, hello,’ Matthew said after a while.
‘I don’t think I can talk to you.’
‘Please, Cate.’ He touched my arm. I shrugged him off.
I was looking for landmarks, hoping I was heading in towards the centre of the city, somewhere I might recognize. I felt utterly lost.
Matthew began again. ‘Look, I know you’ve had a difficult evening—’
‘You brought a gun to our concert.’ I spoke barely above a whisper.
‘That’s right, I did.’
I stopped walking. ‘So, who were you going to assassinate?’
‘Oh, no.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea.’
‘Look—’ Anger rose in me.
He reached out a hand and touched my arm briefly. ‘Cate, it’s all right.’
‘It’s bloody not, you know.’ I started walking again. It was better than hitting him.
‘I wasn’t going to assassinate anyone, OK?’
‘Yeah.’ I kept looking straight ahead. Some part of me was enjoying the moment. He’d spoken almost petulantly. He didn’t like me treating this as though it were something I had a right to know about. But he was the one who’d said love. ‘You weren’t planning to use the gun, then?’
‘I wasn’t!’
‘Who was the target? Which of the delegates?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Cate. I’m not a bloody terrorist.’
I wasn’t even particularly interested in the answer to my question, I realized. It was all the same. ‘You’d call it freedom fighter, would you?’
‘No!’ He darted round to intercept me and stood blocking my way, reaching both arms to me now, moving to touch me but stopping short. ‘Cate. Please. I’ve told you. You’ve got the wrong idea.’
I looked at him, his face earnest and strained in the streetlight, his eyes full of distress. Everything went very still. A monstrous thought was taking ghastly shape. ‘Well, what are you, then? Some kind of … undercover agent?’
He said nothing, but blinked his assent.
I gasped and took a step back. ‘You mean … like … MI5?’ I managed.
He gave me a distorted little smile. ‘Six, actually. Overseas work.’
‘Oh, my god,’ I whispered. I whirled past him and set off along the street, walking as fast as I could. He kept pace, saying nothing. I could see his worried face out of the corner of my eye, but I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t think of anything more to say.
There was a fire in my mind. This was unbearable. I had spent fevered hours absorbing the revelation that Matthew was a gunman, a terrorist, intent on causing harm in the name of some political ideal. A man on the run from justice. And now even that unsavoury picture was shattered. This man, the man I had thought of as rational and kind – maybe even one who might provide an antidote to past hurts – this man who had delighted me, who had held me in his arms in the dark, was not a terrorist. Not an assassin. Not a wrong-headed ideologue with romantic notions of armed struggle and blood sacrifice. Just a spy. A fucking British spy.
This was the twenty-first century. Surely things had moved on.
I was frozen. I kept walking.
‘Cate, please – just try to understand – it’s not what you imagine—’
‘How the fuck would you know what I imagine?’
‘Cate, this is me. I haven’t turned into a different person. I helped you, Cate.’
‘You helped me, did you?’
‘Yes, I fucking helped you! You’d still be in police custody if I hadn’t intervened. I took a big risk for you. A big risk. The least you could do is thank me.’
‘I should thank you, now? Oh, that’s fucking rich!’
I sped up. Matthew snorted in frustration and kept pace.
‘Look, Cate, slow down. I’m trying to talk to you. Stop!’ He reached out an arm to bar my progress.
‘No fucking way!’ I growled. I barged past him and was off down the street, running, stumbling, limping away as fast as I could. My heart thudded, and I kicked off my shoes before they twisted my ankle for me. I could hear him behind me, calling my name. Coming closer. How could I have let him touch me? How could I ever have thought that he would keep me safe?
I heard his breath, his feet on the pavement, felt his hand on my arm. ‘Get off me, you sick fuck!’ I shook his hand away, kept running.
‘Cate! Please! Listen!’ He grabbed at me again.
I spun round to face him. ‘How dare you! How fucking dare you lay a hand on me! How dare you even speak to me when you’re a … you’re a—’
‘Shut up, you stupid woman! You’ll land us both in even deeper trouble!’ His voice was a fractured whisper.
‘Are you OK, pet?’ A woman was leaning out of a car window. ‘D’you need a lift somewhere?’
I looked at her, dumb. She was blonde, petite, the passenger in a car driven by an older man. She was gesturing at the car door behind hers.
‘I …’ What was the right thing to do? Was it more foolish to take a lift from total strangers or to stay here with Matthew? A few long seconds passed. ‘I’m all right, thanks very much,’ I said.
‘Are you sure, now?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, and the car moved on.
Matthew was staring at me. Again, he took my arm.
I ripped his hand off me, twisting out of his grasp, and I was running again. Running. When I did not hear him follow, I looked over my shoulder to see him walking slowly back the way we had com
e.
I PAUSED TO RECOVER my breath, bowing all the way over to ease the pain in my side. My tights were shreds, my right foot bleeding where the blister had burst. I stood up and looked around. Miraculously, there was the Starbucks where I’d met Nicky Fay. So at least I knew the way back to the hotel.
Without money or phone, I had nowhere else to go.
One step at a time, I made my way there. As I approached the glass façade I saw for a split second the doors exploding out towards me, cruel shards plunging into my flesh, piercing and slicing me.
Nothing of the sort, of course. The lobby was its own bright, plush self. The thick carpet felt heavenly.
I went to the desk and requested a new key card. The receptionist listened to my story, asked me a few questions about the choir, and to my immense relief, consented to give me a new card.
The lift doors closed on me, and I shut my eyes. My throat and head hurt. I shivered violently. I felt strung out, grazed, disconnected. Skinned. Ice crystals forming in my heart.
Thankfully, I encountered nobody in the corridor.
I stumbled into my room – our room – and shut the door, leaning against it for support. Again, I wanted to run – run to the station, get on a train, go home. I escaped into the shower instead, undressing slowly, feeling as though I were peeling my bones clean. The water was like an assault – I was so cold – but gradually I thawed and began to enjoy the warming prickle in my fingers and toes.
I couldn’t think about Matthew at all.
He was standing by the window when I came out into the room again. He turned as he heard the bathroom door.
I roared.
‘It’s OK,’ he said.
I stared at him. The world rushed in at me from all sides, crashing and heaving and resolving to one absurd circumstance: he was holding my shoes. My strappy, pinchy, sparkly evening shoes, splattered with mud, dangled from his hand.
‘You went back for those?’
‘Thought you might miss them.’
I stood paralysed for a long time. Eventually mustered a whisper. ‘Thank you.’
We were silent as statues, staring at each other from either side of the wide bed.
He was still in his coat. My heart thumped.
‘Do you have …’ I couldn’t say it. I took a deep breath and gestured instead.
He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Yes, I do.’
I glared at him, and at last my voice returned. ‘Tell you what. I’ll go back into the bathroom and get dressed, and when I come out, there will be no … gun … in evidence. Capeesh?’ I moved to my suitcase and fished out some clothes, hugging the bundle to my chest as I went back into the bathroom.
I dressed and came out again. Matthew was in shirtsleeves, sitting on the armchair by the window. I hitched myself up on to the bed and looked at him.
‘Where is it?’
He indicated his rucksack.
‘Did you bring it with you from Dublin?’ My eyes were burning now, but my head was clear. Droplets of cooling water escaped from my hair, down past the collar of my shirt.
Matthew shook his head. ‘It was issued this afternoon.’ He looked away.
I sighed. As usual, the minimal answer to my question. Now it had an entirely different significance. One little piece of information had changed everything. I had the sudden sensation of missing Matthew, mourning him, as though he were not sitting here, four feet away from me. And perhaps it was as simple as that: perhaps the pain I was feeling came down to the banal fact that I’d been sleeping with a stranger all this time.
I did my best. ‘So … you were working today?’
He nodded. ‘They only told me yesterday.’
‘That explains a lot.’ I looked at him. This was a man I knew, after all. A man with whom I had felt more at ease than with most people. A man I had begun to trust, a little – to love, perhaps, a little. I breathed. I waited.
He said, ‘Cate.’ He stopped. ‘I can’t tell you any more. I’m sorry. I can’t. I shouldn’t have told you as much as I have.’
A blankness in my mind. A grey hole, expanding, almost blurring my vision. We sat motionless in the gratingly dim light from the bedside lamps. I was cold and tired, and my damp hair was starting an ache in my shoulders. More than anything else I needed a long walk, in daylight, on my own. Time to think, to draw towards each other the edges of this awful grey hole and see how they might fit back together.
‘I’m sorry,’ Matthew said again, and I heard his voice as if from far away. He reached across the bed to touch my arm.
I did not respond. Dispassionately, I noted the crack in his voice.
When Matthew’s phone buzzed in his pocket I almost yelped. The sound was an attack.
‘Hello … No, I’m back at my hotel … I’m here with Cate Houlihan … Look, it’s not a – oh … OK, then.’
He ended the call and sighed deeply. To the wall, he said, ‘I have to go out.’
To the wall, I nodded once.
As he furtively retrieved the gun from his rucksack and strapped the holster around himself, then put on his coat, I gathered together the energy I needed. ‘Matthew.’ There was nothing left over to animate my voice. ‘Will you do one thing for me, please?’
‘Anything I can.’
‘Take your stuff with you. Find somewhere else to sleep tonight.’
NEXT MORNING I left the ruins of the night behind and struggled downstairs, where I joined Donal, Linda and Anja at a breakfast table, eating silently and barely listening to their conversation. They did not ask me where Matthew was.
Diane and Joan moved from table to table, letting people know that the expedition to retrieve the choir’s belongings from the Waterfront would start from the lobby at ten o’clock.
As we sat waiting for the stragglers, it became clear that a good night had been had by many. Although most of the women had found themselves in the same position as me – bereft of money and phones after the evacuation – several of the men had had the luck to carry their things in their suit pockets, and they had bankrolled the rest. Drink had been taken. Eyes were bloodshot, heads sore. Debts were argued over in a good-natured way; ribald remarks were passed on the subject of payment in kind. The atmosphere resembled the rowdier sort of school trip. My attention washed in and out, and I was very grateful that nobody was trying to engage me in conversation.
At last we set out for the Waterfront. I succeeded in walking alone most of the way; the rest of the time I was with a group of basses who did not feel the need to include me in their talk. Without my coat, I was soon shivering. On arrival, we were ushered to the back of a long queue, which snaked round the entrance area and almost spilled out on to the plaza. I recognized some people from the other choirs.
‘How are you?’ Joan’s voice made me jump. She and Val were behind me.
‘Oh, fine,’ I said. I nodded, biting my lips together. ‘I mean. Not remotely fine. So, yeah.’
‘Did Matthew show up in the end?’ Val asked.
‘He did, yeah. And then I told him to go away again.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Joan. She lowered her voice. ‘Are you all right, Cate? I mean, do you need any help? You know you can come to us any time.’
‘Thanks.’ I sighed. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess, really.’ I looked at the two of them. They were on the other side of that gulf, and I had no way of reaching them.
Val said, ‘You know, it only just occurred to me there, as we arrived, that we never even got to sing that bloody peace anthem.’
‘I know,’ Joan said. ‘After all that.’
‘I was even beginning to like it,’ said Val. ‘OK. Slightly. What? Sue me!’
When Carmina Urbana finally reached the head of the queue, Diane stood with two police officers, vouching for each member of the choir. Once we were all identified, another officer escorted us to the backstage room.
It was strange to see it looking just the same as it had before. I felt as though it ought to be different, as I was.
My coat and bag were where I’d left them.
As we walked back to the hotel I fished out my phone and looked at it. Seven missed calls. Tingle of misery. I’d check them later.
I fled to my room the minute I could and sat for ages before I deemed myself ready to face the phone again.
Eventually I took it out and looked at it.
Froze.
Seven missed calls, but not from Matthew. Four from Ardee. Three from a private number.
I dialled and waited impatiently for the messages to begin. Mum’s voice, with an unaccustomed note of urgency. She had left the three voicemails last night, the third one well after midnight. Nothing of substance, just a plea that I phone home as soon as I could.
My fingers shook as I found the number. The phone rang, rang, rang. No answer. No answering machine – I’d grumbled to them about this, and so had Mícheál, but they insisted they didn’t need one.
I listened to Mum’s voicemails again, in case I’d missed something. My breathing felt constricted, and the sobs came on hard. I threw myself on to the bed, and lay face down, tears trickling. It’s just Mum’s way, I told myself. She’s so useless on the phone. She gets panicked and can’t tell the right thing to do.
Such as let her daughter know what the fuck is going on that has her in such a state.
Had something happened to Mícheál or Dad? Something shameful? Mícheál got someone pregnant? Dad embezzled the club funds? Or had somebody died? Surely if somebody had died, Mum would have found the guts to say it, even to a machine.
I tried Mícheál’s mobile. Switched off. I didn’t leave a message. His voicemail greeting was too jaunty, too offhand, to invite such a sombre query. I didn’t have the language to address him in that way.
I would just have to wait.
The rest of the day was a terrible jumble of hefting bags and milling in lobbies and shuffling in queues and edging along the train aisle and jolting through the improbably green countryside. There was no sign of Matthew at the station, and nobody mentioned him to me. At last we were piling off the train and saying our goodbyes. I took my leave of the others and escaped down the quays.
The Living Page 18