The Living

by Léan Cullinan

  ‘Why didn’t they stop me there and then?’

  ‘They needed to find out who you were. And they reckoned they had a little bit of time, because the security on the door was good and tight, and the delegates weren’t in the building yet. So that’s when they went back and did those specific searches. And contacted me.’

  My fury flickered again. ‘See, what we’re avoiding discussing here is the fact that you were spying on me.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said heavily, his enjoyment snuffed out. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  Why did everything have to be so complicated? ‘So you believed I might be a terrorist?’

  ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘What – not cagey enough? Insufficiently glamorous?’

  ‘I just had a feeling I could trust you,’ he said miserably.

  ‘Yes, I thought I could fucking trust you, too, until you turned up at the Waterfront with a gun.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So … you were sent to shoot me? Was that it?’

  ‘No. No, I told you. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I argued with them, Cate. I tried to tell them you weren’t a risk, but they were just looking at the data in front of them. I was afraid you were going to get hurt. So I went to the Waterfront to try and find you. But by the time I arrived the evacuation was already in full swing.’

  Much to my surprise, I found that I was driving us to my flat. I wondered if I could bear to let him in there again. I wondered if he realized.

  ‘Ha,’ I said. ‘And here was I thinking the only vaguely suspicious thing I ever did was my heroic rooftop escape.’

  ‘Indeed. You might like to know, incidentally, I neglected to mention that in my report at the time.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I still don’t really understand why I did it.’ I remembered the night, how I’d been so frightened, how phoning the Gardaí had seemed such an impossibility. ‘I suppose I was brought up to distrust the police.’

  ‘You know,’ Matthew said, ‘I hate to say it, but that tallies pretty closely with the stereotype we have in Britain about the Irish.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t mean it’s the whole story.’

  ‘I used to think that if I knew all the facts I’d know the whole story,’ said Matthew.

  ‘More fool you.’

  We were moving more smoothly now, trundling down Patrick Street towards the canal. I sighed, bone-tired. ‘Go back to the bit about resigning from your job. What are you going to do now? In fact, why are you back in Dublin at all?’

  He was silent for a long time, looking out his side window. ‘Two reasons,’ he said at last. ‘One, I am in fact genuinely writing that PhD.’

  ‘Oh!’ This hadn’t remotely occurred to me. ‘Even though your supervisor is a Republican dissident?’

  ‘Yes, oddly enough. Although, to be honest, I’m not totally convinced that he is. Meanwhile, by the way, I’m enormously grateful to you for getting that recording from Nicky Fay. I very much doubt I’d have got hold of it otherwise, and it’s quite important to my research.’

  ‘Yes, because it shows your civil servant was at that meeting in Blackpool.’

  ‘That’s right. You’ve heard it, then?’

  ‘Just the first few seconds. George wouldn’t let me listen to the rest.’

  ‘I’ll e-mail it to you if you like. It was also apparently the basis for MacDevitt’s claim that he’d warned MI5 about Birmingham.’

  ‘Oh, of course. And does it support the claim?’

  ‘Not really, to be honest. The language is all pretty oblique. I don’t know if they actually thought David Cornwell was an agent, or if MacDevitt was just embroidering.’

  ‘Eddie’s an exaggerator,’ I said, echoing my mild, dead uncle.

  I felt sad now, imagining what Uncle Fintan might have said if he’d seen me chatting away to Matthew like this. Not to mention what Mum might say in real life, if things went the way I apparently wanted them to.

  I asked, ‘What was the second reason?’

  Matthew took a breath, and when he spoke it was as though I was hearing his real voice for the first time. ‘Cate, I’d like to go out with you properly. No big lie getting in the way.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I want you to be part of my life. I want to be able to tell you what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, who was on the other end of the phone. I know it’s a tall order, but do you think we could possibly start again?’

  ‘From the beginning?’

  ‘Da capo.’

  We were stopped at a red light. I reached across and took his hand, turned to meet his glistening eyes. The rope of meaning tautened. His hand was warm – real. We smiled at each other, carefully.

  I said, ‘I’m glad you joined the choir. I’m glad I know you.’

  The light turned green; I moved forward. We were nearly home.

  Acknowledgements

  THANKS TO MY agent, Zoë Waldie, for being the first industry professional to tell me that my book was worth publishing, for showing what needed to be done to improve it, and for guiding it surefootedly along its path. Thanks to my editor, Margaret Stead, for seeing past my ungainly draft to the novel I’d been hoping to write, and for holding me in the editorial crucible until the one had been transmuted into the other. Thanks to my copyeditor, Tamsin Shelton, for giving the text such thorough attention and for smoothing dozens of rough patches on which an unsuspecting reader might have snagged. (Copyeditors work to make themselves invisible. They should have their praises sung.)

  Thanks to Anne Enright. You taught me, back in the last millennium, to grab the guts of a story and kick against cliché. More recently, you offered support both moral and practical (and always kind).

  Thanks to Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin and Phyllis Gaffney, first for bringing me up to assume that I could tackle any creative project, and later for all your help with this one – not least that epic title-brainstorming session. (There were other parts in between. Thanks for those too.)

  Thanks to Kay Murphy, for always being ready to discuss Irish history and identity, and for those afternoons you spent absorbing the children’s energy while I wrestled and raged away at my desk.

  Thanks to everyone who read a draft for me – Órla Ní Chuilleanáin, Fionnuala Dillane, Helen Finch, Deirdre Ní Fhloinn and Barry McCrea (twice; you deserve a medal). Thanks to Iseult Fitzgerald and Gillian O’Brien for telling me about political and diplomatic logistics, to Aaron Gray for helping with some Belfast details and to Eoin Ó Cuilleanáin for a conversation about the Gaelic Athletic Association in County Louth. Thanks to the Mornington Singers – all of you, past and present – for inspiration, beauty, harmony and hilarity, and for allowing me to be a mole in your midst all these years. Thanks to the many, many people who weighed in on the internet when I had idiom queries. You are brilliant.

  Thanks to Niall Murphy for your poet’s eye on my drafts, your bloodyminded belief in my ability to finish this thing, and your agreement (ongoing) to share with me the joyful freedom of true partnership.

  Thanks to Oisín Ó Cuilleanáin and Fiachra Murphy for ensuring that The Living was not completed until I’d grown up all the way.