An Unexpected Guest

by Anne Korkeakivi

  “How did you live?”

  “I got my ownself over to England on a boat and picked up work, shoveling rock or pushing sand. Day work you didn’t need a past for. When some other Nor’n Irish come along, I’d move on. Before he could start asking the questions.”

  He didn’t give any specifics, and she didn’t ask.

  “I saw when you got married,” he continued. “It was written up in the English papers. I saw too whose name you took. Servant of the British crown. That’s when I started feeling sure you must have done it for a reason. I took myself as far away as I could with no passport and no money to have a good one made, for a long time then. I’d seen you drawing. I knew you could do my likeness.”

  “I didn’t betray you,” she said. “I’d never have done that. Not on purpose. Ed—my husband has had nothing to do with it. I never told him.”

  Had he followed Edward as well? His enemy, suddenly so real, so intimately linked to his own time on this earth? Had he watched Edward leave the Residence just this morning, tall and increasingly solid in his well-made suit, seen him reach out one large manicured hand with its family ring on one finger and wedding ring on another, and open the door to the car waiting for him? Her Edward, who had protected her all these years. Her Edward, in Niall’s eyes. Had Niall shaken his head and asked himself, So, that’s what she chose?

  Her Edward. Clare started at the thought. She checked her watch. In two hours, Edward would be returning, bringing the P.U.S. with him, their guests following shortly.

  Everyone expected so much from her. She, of all people! She was pale, beige, remote. She was cool, calm, efficient. She had molded herself into something perfect. But she wasn’t perfect. She was anything but perfect. And still they would keep asking all these things of her. Now, here was Niall, wanting something from her also. Something she didn’t have to give him.

  “Why now?” she said, sharper than she’d meant to. She softened her voice. “If you’ve been following me all this time, if you decided to risk my being some sort of British informant, why did you step up to ask me about the money now? Why today?”

  Niall cracked his knuckles and looked away. “The flowers. I stepped in here once, trying to keep out of sight, and saw right away you must come in here of your ownself, to sit. Next door to your house, and all the flowers—I told myself, this is where I’ll get her alone. No one for her to run to. But the fecking rain in Paris.”

  “Today’s the first day of sunshine,” she said.

  He dropped his hands and nodded.

  She sighed. How could he know her so well? “Yes, but why now? If you were worried I’d turned on you, why not take the risk last spring, or last autumn, or last summer? Or ten years ago?”

  Niall studied her, as though he was figuring out how much he wanted to reveal. Finally, he said, “Because when they closed down the Maze, they transferred Kieran Purcell to another prison facility, where he met a lad I’d once been working an oil rig with up in the North Sea. It was good pay, a good team, I’d stayed on longer than I should have. And they get to talking about tattoos and the ways the R.U.C. had for distinguishing Volunteers, ’cause there was a time some were getting new identities, and this guy tells Kieran he met a boy who was pretending to be from the south but was from Derry—he knew my accent, see—about five ten, black hair and eyes as light as the sky on a winter morning, who kept saying he’d been out of Ireland since 1982 and didn’t have any family there, even though everyone has family in Ireland, who had this strange scar on his neck, looked like a sickle, and what could one do about that…Ol’ Kieran, he puts it all together. So when he gets sprung this winter, he goes to my cousin and tells him he’s been wondering whether it really were me in that coffin and might it not be interesting to have the old box dug out. They’ve got all those ways now for identifying a toenail and all that, don’t they. And then ol’ Kieran says if it turns out not to be me in there, where was I, and what did my cousin know about it, because he knew my cousin was like my own brother, and we queued up together to join the Struggle, and he the one who said it were O’Faolain he pulled out of the water. And that’s when my cousin put the notice in the paper, like we agreed twenty-five years ago, if ever any trouble come on him.”

  “You mean this man Kieran wants the money? If you hand it over to him, he will leave it alone? But if not…?”

  “Kieran was a good man. Dedicated to the Cause. Half the years I’ve been hiding, he spent in the H Block. He’s not looking to go back in there for no good reason.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean they’re saying it’s all peace and good neighbors now, but people remember. One tout tried to go back a couple years ago, had been hiding in some village in England. Did you read about him? He died an accidental death soon after. And twenty years in prison, you think ol’ Kieran’s going to get a job now?”

  “You mean this Kieran knows about the money that went missing and if he was to get it, he wouldn’t tell anyone you’re still alive? That your cousin covered for you?”

  “Feck, Clare, I dunno. Sure, he knows about the money. Maybe he’ll keep his gob shut and disappear to Barbados. Ol’ Kieran. Or maybe he just wants to know I wasn’t fecking with them—he gave his best years to the Cause, spent them in prison, didn’t he—and will give it all to the Church. Most likely he turns it over to whoever’s still kindling a flame, and gets a pension for his woman. It’s not like my cousin was asking him to spell out his plans. You don’t feckin’ ask questions of people like Kieran. I just know he wants the money, and if he doesn’t get it, he’s going to put trouble on my cousin.”

  She shifted on the bench. “But if you gave him the money and he handed it over to whomever… They’d know you were alive. Wouldn’t they, mightn’t they…?” She wasn’t sure how best to put this. “You know?”

  “Come looking for me?” Niall shrugged. “If they did, I’d feckin’ well deserve it. But my cousin’ll spin them some yarn about a tout going to the R.U.C. on me and the money, and that’s why I went into hiding. He convinced everyone it was me in the coffin, didn’t he? They’re old men now, the ones who knew me. They get the feckin’ money and that will be the end of it.”

  And she saw in his eyes the hesitation.

  He took her hand up, looked at the palm, then laid it back down on her knee, arranging it like a mortuary worker arranging the limbs of a corpse.

  “I mean,” he said, “if you still had it. If you hadn’t given it over to the wrong person.”

  He stood up and shook his head.

  “Forget it. Forget it.”

  But it had been there. For a moment, he’d been ready to ask her. Even though he knew she didn’t have that money. She stood up, too, still exactly his height, still eye to eye. He knew about her comfortable lifestyle. “Where will you go?”

  “Same place I’ve been all these years. Nowhere.” He turned to leave.

  “No.”

  He stopped and looked at her.

  She reached her hand out and, gently feeling her way between his hair and collar, ran her finger down the slick silvery length of his scar, a familiarity she’d never dared when they were lovers.

  He didn’t flinch but took her hand slowly away with his, lowered it to her side, left it there. They stood in silence, watching each other.

  “You never were like the other girls, Clare. Still aren’t.”

  She shook her head.

  “I would have come back, you know. I would have.”

  “Niall—”

  “There’s a church next to the Centre Pompidou.”

  He paused. When she didn’t say anything further, he squeezed her hand and stepped back. “Tomorrow I’m gone. That’s how you want it, you’ll ne’er lay eyes on me again.”

  He walked away, disappearing amidst the sharp-edged trees.

  She heard the lock-release click of the Residence’s downstairs foyer and leaned her weight against the heavy oak front door. Before stepping in, she took one l
ast look around the courtyard. The day was fading. The blue of the sky was thinning. Niall was somewhere out there.

  “Bonjour, Madame.” The door swung open behind her to reveal the concierge’s husband.

  She caught the jamb to keep from tumbling. “Bonjour, Monsieur.” She regained her balance as he held the door open for her and, stepping inside, nodded. “Merci.”

  He cradled a lightbulb in one hand. “Il fait très beau aujourd’hui.”

  “Oui, il fait beau.”

  “Le Ministre va bien?”

  “Oui, merci.”

  “Et les enfants?”

  “Oui, merci.”

  “Ah, bien. Alors, tout va bien.” He climbed up onto his step stool under the entryway light fixture.

  She pressed the elevator button. When she didn’t hear the cage begin its noisy descent, she pressed the button again. She could sense the concierge’s husband look up at the sound. In the Residence, there was still the same dinner to put on, still the same problem with Jamie. But a different woman would be handling them. She could even go to Dublin now. A new, limitless world expanded before her.

  Niall hadn’t betrayed her. And together they hadn’t done anything.

  “Will you help?” he’d said, and unzipped a corner of the duffel.

  The euphoria she’d felt evened out. Yes, she could go to Dublin now with impunity. Yes, she hadn’t provided money that was then used to buy guns or explosives. But she had still agreed to bring it over. The intention had been there. Plus, she’d rented that camper. She’d made that trip to the Eastern Shore. Niall, at least, had considered himself a soldier. And she? Just a pliable schoolgirl.

  Her phone hummed to signal a text message. She extracted it from her pocket.

  Where are you??? E

  Edward using multiple question marks? She checked her watch: 6:10 p.m. He would be clearing off his desk, readying to head over to the cocktail reception being held at the embassy before the P.U.S.’s more intimate dinner.

  Home, she typed back.

  But her phone showed three missed calls. She quickly switched to the voice mail, skipping over Edward’s to get to the other two.

  Jamie had called but had left no message.

  She rapid-dialed his number.

  His voice-mail message pounded her ear: “‘Don’t want to be an American idiot….’ This is James. Leave a message. Or don’t. Like I care.”

  She clicked off. If she didn’t find him at home now, she was going to call the house of every single friend he had in Paris until she tracked him down. Enough was enough.

  She could hear the elevator clanking its way down, but it still had not descended to the foyer. She drew her sweater close. The air was getting crisper as day walked into evening, in the treacherous way a warm spring day had; a cool shock that creeps up and, before noticed, has already invaded the body. Like aging: the world seemed so warm, and then suddenly was chill.

  The past twenty-five years felt like a dream. “Did you hear Niall’s disappeared?” her cousin Kevin had said, stopping by her room in Cambridge a couple months after she’d returned from Dublin. “Dad thinks he went home and picked right back up with what he’d been doing. You know. With them. And, sure enough, something went wrong.” She’d gone straight to the library after he’d left and checked every newspaper Harvard subscribed to, hoping in vain to find some additional information. Failing there, she’d been forced to get it out of her aunt and uncle. “Thank you again for last summer,” she’d said, making a special trip to see them, a Sunday before Christmas. “We all had such a nice time here. Do you think Niall will be coming back next summer?” And her aunt had buried her face in her hands, and her uncle had shaken his head and explained why that was never going to happen: Niall’s people had wound in a sheet what was left of his corpse after the fish and tides had got to it, and closed it up in a coffin. And so, over the years, she’d seen his face in the crowds and had thought she was seeing the memory of what she herself had been. But she had seen him. Just this morning, even, at Le Bon Marché, peering at her over the canned goods from Britain and the cheese from Ireland. Without doubt, also many other times. He’d been following her. She was not crazy. She mixed numbers up but not faces.

  The Turk. He, too, was still out there.

  The elevator clunked to a stop in front of her. She stepped in, rattled the door to the cage shut, pressed the button for their floor.

  She hoped there really had been a doctor and that he would come forward. Punto. She wouldn’t give another thought to the Turk today.

  But she couldn’t ignore Niall. He would be waiting for her.

  The elevator began slowly to rise. Upstairs were Amélie, Amélie’s cousin, Mathilde, this evening’s waiter. Maybe, if she was lucky, Jamie. They would all be expecting something from her. There was the rest of everything else waiting for her as well, the rituals—birthday celebrations, anniversaries, weddings, the baptism of grandchildren—and the attendant smaller routines, like straightening Edward’s ties in the morning. All the things that kept daily life in order and outlined her existence like the penciled edges of a still life, giving constant definition to what otherwise would seem like an endless tunnel, would feel like the same vacuum that had sucked her into the vortex of the Dublin airport two decades earlier and now was pulling her at every moment one minute closer to life’s inevitable conclusion. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. How wise she and her classmates had felt back in college when they’d studied T. S. Eliot. They’d torn J. Alfred Prufrock to pieces until they’d unveiled every nuance—without having understood a thing. “Can you read aloud and then translate Eliot’s epigraph from Dante’s Inferno for us?” the professor had asked her, she that class’s resident Romance language major, and she’d picked through Dante’s Italian like it was something she could defeat: “Ma perchiocce giammi de questo fondo/Non torno vivo alcun, s’I’odo il vero/Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.”

  And then she’d repeated, in English, “But since never from this abyss has anyone returned alive, I’ll answer you without fearing infamy.”

  She would walk through the front door of the Residence as she had a thousand times before. A marine landscape by Turner that greeted her every time she entered the apartment, hanging over the dark rosewood Regency console in which she would store her purse. The elegant silver bowl they’d received as a wedding gift from Edward’s scull mate at Oxford, now a powerful barrister in London, and which—like the Turner—they carried from apartment to apartment, where she would place her keys, then remove them, knowing Edward would worry they would scratch the silver. The small inlaid box acquired during a holiday in Croatia, hidden from sight within the console, where she would deposit her keys instead.

  A home, a spouse, children, a vocation if not a real career. She had all of these. Could Niall have somehow, along the way, picked up some version of these things also? A woman who was willing to know nothing about the father of her children? Maybe, a voluptuous forgiving Italian, with a long nose and laughing lips and thick, dark shiny hair, full breasts and hips. Or a young, independent-minded Scandinavian. Or both of the above, and many others?

  A surge of jealousy rocked her body, followed by a rolling wave of self-loathing. How petty she was! How foolish!

  A church next to the Centre Pompidou….Tomorrow I’m gone. That’s how you want it, you’ll ne’er lay eyes on me again.

  He hadn’t abandoned her. Could she now abandon him? Didn’t she owe him if not the money, at least the succor he’d now handed her?

  The elevator clinked to a stop.

  She remembered her unsent text—Home—and clicked “send.” She opened the front door; the foyer assailed her with its resplendence: the incandescent burst of the crystal chandelier, the gleam of the dark Regency console, a brilliant splash of yellow and green in a vase on top. She closed the door softly behind her, walked over to the console, leaned down to place her keys in the box from Croatia, not in the silver bowl.
/>   “There you are.”

  The broad forehead, the gray eyes, looking down at her, over her shoulder. “Edward!” she cried, knocking against the console in her confusion. She dropped her purse and grabbed for the vase of lilies and bells of Ireland, a massive green-and-yellow shudder in the corner of her eye, just before it fell. Water sloshed around her, on the shining wood, onto the floor.

  “I rang the landline,” he said, ignoring the flowers, looking right past the water, gesturing to the BlackBerry still in her hand. “Amélie said you’d be here.”

  “I was delayed—” she began.

  Amélie appeared from the direction of the kitchen, her thick legs moving swiftly. She blushed and stopped short. “Excusez-moi, j’ai entendu…”

  “It’s all right. Everything’s all right,” Edward said, stepping back, rubbing his hands together. Amélie withdrew a cloth from her apron pocket and began to wipe furiously at the spillage, careful to keep her eyes from either of theirs.

  Clare slipped her phone into her purse and stuck her purse in the console. “At least the whole thing didn’t fall over.”

  “Oui, Madame.”

  “How clumsy of me.”

  Amélie said nothing, wiped.

  “That’s good now.”

  “Oui, Madame. Excusez-moi, Madame, Monsieur.”

  “For God’s sake, Edward,” she said, once Amélie was gone. “You startled me. What are—”

  “I had a call from Barrow,” he said, cutting her off. “You knew?”

  She shoved Niall from her thoughts. All the twisting and turning she’d done to keep Edward from getting involved in Jamie’s mess before tonight’s dinner. She looked around the foyer for telltale signs—a knapsack, a sweatshirt, a bottle of Orangina—abandoned on one of Amélie’s well-polished surfaces. Nothing. “I spoke with them…,” she said.

  “Bloody Hell! And you didn’t tell me? Clare!” Inside his jacket, his own BlackBerry buzzed. He withdrew it, read the half-truth she’d sent before entering the front door. “Right,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Did you speak to James?”