by Tom Bradby
‘And then when you’re in, you’re hooked. It’s not like … you know people do stupid things in their youth, they join the Socialist Workers or whatever and then they grow up a bit and realize the world is not black and white, it’s a thousand shades of grey much of the time, and they leave that behind. But violence ties you in. You kill, you suffer, your friends and family get killed, you go to prison, you’re badly treated, you’re bitter, and then suddenly, maybe, you open your eyes a bit and wonder what the hell you’re doing. But then it’s too late. You’re knee-deep in blood – like that scene from Macbeth. You begin to understand what your conscience is telling you, perhaps, but it is just easier to go on than to turn back.’
‘And that’s what she thinks?’
‘I don’t know what she thinks. I don’t think she knows what she thinks. There’s an element of that, but there may be many other things too.’
‘Do you trust her?’
‘No. Logically, no. The textbook tells you they are all devious liars.’
He sat down on the bed, looking out of the window, with his back to her. She reached out and touched him. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, his body wiry and taut.
‘But?’
‘But, instinctively, yes I do trust her. I don’t know why.’
For a few minutes they were silent. When Isabelle spoke, her voice was quiet. ‘You like her, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘No.’ He stood up again and went to look out of the window once more. ‘But I’m not sure any more. I don’t know whether there is a human being in there trying to get out – and I don’t know if I should let it.’
‘I think I’d like to sleep alone tonight, David,’ she said.
He didn’t argue. He dressed in silence and kissed her goodbye.
Ryan woke early the next morning in his tiny bedroom in the flat in Clapham. He spent a few minutes lying on his back and looking at the ceiling and then he got up.
He stood under the shower briefly and dressed and wandered round the corner to buy a couple of Sunday papers, The Sunday Times and the Observer.
Back at the flat, he made himself a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette.
The front page of The Sunday Times was interesting. The headline read, IRA HARDLINERS REJECT PEACE BID, and the article beneath it was clearly well sourced, either from the RUC Special Branch or from the likes of Hopkins or Jenkins. It was accurate, too, up to a point, but the impression it gave was that the peace process was as good as over, whereas he thought the reality was clearly somewhat different. True, the hardliners had rejected it, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to be forced to change their minds, though the article did leave open that possibility.
He thought of Gerry McVeigh and the meeting Colette had told them about. He wondered vaguely if the article in front of him was based on information provided by that meeting. The thought that it might be was oddly gratifying.
He thought of Gerry McVeigh again – the enemy he had never met. On reflection, he felt he knew very little about him, the files of information in the computers at Stormont and in London suddenly seeming deeply inadequate. When it came to understanding, there really was a gap as wide as the Irish Sea. He knew he could trot out the theoretical justifications and explanations as quickly as anyone, but that didn’t explain it. He found it easiest to understand when he put it in the context of a man pursuing the legacy of a dead father, but he wasn’t sure if even that was enough. The truth of it was that Gerry McVeigh and those like him were trying to condemn their people to further years of suffering for nothing. Surely his father wouldn’t have wanted that and, if he had – or did – why was it a legacy worth pursuing?
He thought about Colette. She didn’t think it was worth pursuing – he was sure of that now – but why not?
He thought it was what made her interesting. He thought it was what justified … justified what?
He asked himself a different question: was Gerry any less human? He asked himself why he was differentiating between the two of them.
Claire appeared. She was wearing a long T-shirt and was heavy with sleep. Ryan wondered whether she was more attractive like this, or less, and then reprimanded himself for considering the question in the first place.
She asked him, sleepily, whether he wanted to come to her parents’ for lunch.
Ryan finished the rest of the papers whilst Claire got up, and then they set off in her ancient blue MG. It was a clear, cold day and his ears were freezing by the time they pulled into the gravel drive of her house, just outside Newbury.
Ryan had never been here before, but it was as he would have imagined it: a modest, old red-brick cottage with a neat garden, looking a little barren in the January cold. They were met at the door by a black labrador and a large red setter and Claire knelt down to hug them and let them lick her face.
Claire’s parents were also as he would have expected them to be. Mr – Peter – was about 6 feet tall, with a tangled mop of hair so white it looked like it had been repeatedly bleached, Mrs – Sarah – radiated decency and gentility. They were, Ryan thought, what everyone in the office called ‘Middle England’.
He’d often noted that his less intelligent colleagues used the ‘Middle England’ label as a catch-all justification for their less logical prejudices (Jenkins always sprung to mind), but he thought that the people who could be said to represent Middle England were actually more interesting and diverse in their views than anyone in the office was prepared to give them credit for.
All of which was a way of saying that he was not surprised when, after the social chit-chat and reminiscences about the family house in Provence, Peter brought the conversation round to something he’d clearly wanted to ask about to begin with.
‘Claire tells us you’ve just gone over to Northern Ireland,’ he said.
Ryan nodded. ‘Yes, a few weeks ago now.’
There was a slight pause. It was almost awkward and almost funny. ‘What are you doing, or are you not at liberty to say?’
Ryan suppressed a smile and looked out of the kitchen window. The view from here across the fields to the wood below was fabulous. Truth or fiction?
Fiction. Despite the presence of Middle England, on this he stuck to the rules.
‘I’m just working at the Northern Ireland Office. Claire probably told you, I’m in the civil service, working on political matters.’ (Truth of a sort, he thought.)
‘Interesting times,’ Peter said. ‘What do you believe will happen?’
Another pause. Ryan took a mouthful of beef and was conscious of the fact that everyone around the table was interested in what he was going to say. ‘I think a group of IRA leaders decided a few years ago that it was time to call a halt…’
‘Some people say it’s because their kids are growing up. You know, they don’t want––’
‘Dad.’ Claire was looking at her father. ‘Let him finish.’
Ryan smiled and put down his knife and fork. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There were many reasons, some political – or tactical – and some personal. However, the hardliners – maybe twenty or thirty per cent of them – would rather go to the grave than give in.’
‘So what happens?’
Another pause. Ryan realized he was weighing this up properly for perhaps the first time. ‘I think the hardliners will be silenced for the moment. But they’ll always be there – always ready to go it alone, or strike back. I think the others are scared to death of a split and a lot of internal bloodletting.’
‘Are the politicians getting it right?’
Ryan smiled again. ‘I’m a civil servant.’
Peter smiled back at him. ‘Well, you’re allowed an opinion these days, aren’t you?’
‘OK. Well, I’m not sure they’ve asked themselves the right questions.’
‘Which are?’
‘What is possible and how do we achieve it.’
‘And what are the answers?’
Ryan looked around. They we
re all still listening and he felt like a fraud – as if his views mattered. He thought about it carefully, though, suddenly aware that his knowledge was good and improving. ‘Well, the first thing to understand and accept is that we cannot beat the IRA. So we have two choices: agree a deal, or let the violence continue.
‘If we do make concessions and offer a deal, then life would get very interesting. They won’t all accept it, so we would have to hope for a split with, on the best analysis, the hardliners being restricted to a tiny rump, which we could probably contain.
‘I think what we have to ask ourselves, therefore, is whether we want to make the concessions that are needed.’
‘I thought we made a lot of once-and-for-all concessions at partition,’ Peter said.
‘We did. Perhaps if the Protestants hadn’t made such a mess of ruling Northern Ireland, then it would have stood.’
‘But there’s always been an IRA.’
‘Yes, but it’s the Provisional IRA we have a problem with. They’re too effective. They can’t be beaten. They have to be dealt with.’
Silence. Ryan took a sip of his wine and ate another mouthful.
‘Interesting, coming from you,’ Peter said. He looked at Ryan again and smiled wryly. ‘As a civil servant myself, I can always tell a true fellow traveller.’
They moved off the subject of Northern Ireland.
After the meal and the washing-up, they went for a walk down through the wood below, and Ryan was conscious of the fact that he did not, as he might have expected, dread returning to Belfast – as he had done during his army tours, for example. Nor did he feel guilty about the fact that he was spending his only weekend in the country with a friend’s family and not with his mother.
He felt a sense of well-being that seemed out of sorts with the realities that confronted him. He couldn’t explain why, except that there was a peace to his independence. There are times, he thought, when one is company.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE HELICOPTER CLATTERED ABOVE THEM. GERRY WAS TEMPTED TO look up, but managed to keep his eyes firmly on the ground. He wasn’t going to give them the pleasure of seeing his face.
They were three men with a football, fooling nobody. Gerry picked up the ball and began to juggle it on his right foot. He counted, ‘One, two, three, four, five … bugger!’
He looked at O’Hanlon who was frowning severely. ‘Look like you’re interested, Terence, for Christ’s sake.’
Gerry took off his glasses and cleaned them on the sleeve of his coat. The helicopter seemed to rise a little higher and the noise abated slightly.
O’Hanlon crossed his arms. ‘So, we haven’t moved further on. We think we know, but we’re just––’
‘If you’re certain, why don’t you do something about it?’
O’Hanlon smiled. ‘Patience, Gerry, patience.’
In moments of real honesty, Gerry McVeigh knew he wasn’t as powerful as he liked to think he was. Consequently, he’d told himself that he was not going to lose his temper with O’Hanlon and Chico this time. He was quite determined and he’d thought about it carefully. ‘All right,’ he said.
‘Could be close to home, I would say,’ O’Hanlon said.
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Well,’ O’Hanlon said, smiling, ‘your brother certainly knew about Henderson – his unit was involved. He certainly knew about the greyhound attack – his unit again.’
‘So, what are you insinuating?’
‘What I’m insinuating is blindingly obvious.’
Gerry put his hands in the pockets of his jeans. ‘If you’re saying my brother is a tout, then I think we’re going to fall out very badly,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m not saying anyone is a tout.’
The helicopter descended again, the noise suddenly deafening once more. They stared at each other silently. How convenient, Gerry thought, if you were a tout. Turning everyone against each other.
They stood still for perhaps a minute before the helicopter began to lift again. They could all sense it climbing and moving away, though none of them looked up.
‘So tell me, Mr O’Hanlon,’ Gerry said sarcastically, ‘just so that I can be clear about this: you think my brother, my own brother, is a tout?’
‘It can happen to anyone, McVeigh.’
‘You should know.’
‘Watch it.’
‘I think it is you that had better watch it.’
O’Hanlon stared at him. The sound of the helicopter seemed distant now. ‘The facts aren’t changing,’ he said.
‘What facts?’
‘You’ve got a problem in there and it’s about time you faced up to it. You’re the brigade commander. I ask myself – we ask ourselves – how the Brits found out about the operation on Henderson. You say it might have been routine surveillance, but you and I know that is unlikely, and even if that was the case – even if it was – then they certainly would have seen Paddy, don’t you think? They’d certainly have spotted him, wouldn’t they?’ O’Hanlon paused for a moment before playing his ace. ‘In that case, why have the peelers made no effort whatsoever to pick him up? Seamus McGirr was inside for days, but they never touched Paddy.’
Gerry could feel himself teetering on the edge of physical aggression. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. ‘All right. All right. We’ve got a problem, I know that. Let’s talk about it. Just don’t go saying my brother’s a bloody tout.’
O’Hanlon tried to be conciliatory. ‘Look, I know Paddy’s not a tout. Everybody knows he’s not a tout. But there is a problem.’ He paused for effect, looking at Gerry. ‘We all agree there is a problem. A major bloody problem. So we’ve got to sort it out. How do we do it? We do it methodically. We test everyone out. Everyone: Paddy, Mulgrew, Colette – even those close to them.’ He was almost imploring now, trying to project himself as a voice of reason. ‘We’ve got to test them out. Sure, the Brits are probably playing games with us. Paddy’ll pass and then we’ll know. We have to eliminate people. We can’t be sure who it is without eliminating who it’s not. But we’ve got to know, with everyone.’
Gerry sighed. ‘All right. What do you want?’
O’Hanlon had obviously thought it out. ‘Something simple. Some guns being brought into the city and taken to a house, say, in Hugo Street. Early morning, day after tomorrow?’
Gerry nodded curtly. ‘All right.’
‘Mentioned casually. No big deal made of it?’
Gerry turned to go. ‘All right, but you’re wasting your fucking time.’
He stalked off.
Colette sat cross-legged on the bed, with Mark and Catherine lying on the mattresses beneath her. She read, ‘“Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not make thee forget?” said Gray Brother anxiously.
‘“Never,” said Mowgli. “I will always remember that I love thee and all in our cave; but also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the pack …” ’
‘Does Mowgli prefer to be with the wolves or with humans?’ Mark asked.
‘I’m not sure, love. I think he feels that his loyalties are divided – and, of course, that is very difficult for him.’
‘But where is he happiest?’ Catherine asked.
‘Well, I think we’ll have to wait and see.’ Colette took the opportunity to close the book and stand up.
‘No!’ Mark said.
‘Yes,’ Colette replied. ‘You’re tired. I’ll read you more tomorrow.’ She bent down to kiss them both and then turned off the light.
As she walked down the stairs, she looked at the battered front cover of the book, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The kids had been demanding it because of the mural of Mowgli and Baloo on the playgroup wall and Ma had ordered it from the library. Colette put it down on the table in the front room and found herself smiling at the irony of it. ‘Imperialist bastard,’ she muttered. She thought of that other poem by Kipling they’d read at school: ‘If you can keep your he
ad, when all about you are losing theirs … you’ll be a man, my son.’ Or something like that. It was sexist crap, of course, but for some reason it had stayed with her.
She switched on the television and watched the news on Channel Four. It washed over her head. She wasn’t concentrating.
There was an item on the peace process and as she saw the familiar pictures of streets in west Belfast – of soldiers, graffiti and Irish flags – she found herself thinking of what she’d been told by Gerry. The implications were so vast. If peace was really so close, she asked herself, how could Gerry contemplate throwing it all away? She thought her mother might be right, indeed certainly was right. It was time for it to end, but she asked herself how and on whose terms? There was no peace in dishonour and surrender. There would be no peace in a solution that insulted Davey’s and Sean’s memory and those of many like them. And if Gerry’s beating had proved one thing, it was that the Brits would never change and could never be trusted.
She considered the irony of that thought. It didn’t make her smile.
She thought of Gerry. He’d come to the house at teatime with Paddy, the bruises on his face still visible. They’d stood in the kitchen and talked about what they were going to do, or rather, Gerry had talked about it. He’d told them little about the operation and she still knew only that they were to go to London and that what they were planning was big enough to bring the peace process crashing to the ground.
They would be going soon, he’d said, and they wouldn’t be gone for long.
Colette was already thinking about being separated from Mark and Catherine. She felt terribly tired of it all. She desperately wanted to escape, but she didn’t see how she could. She wondered if she could tell Gerry she didn’t want to come, but she knew she was still frightened of him and that a part of her, a small part, still wanted to win his respect.
He’d said they were going in three days, leaving separately and flying via Paris to London. He had told them to be ready.
And there was something else. When she was in the front room giving the kids their tea, she’d overheard Gerry telling Paddy about some guns coming into the city, which were to be stored at a house in Hugo Street. She didn’t think it important – a routine Belfast Brigade matter – but she thought it might keep the spooks happy. She thought it might keep them off her back.