Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  The Belfast that Casey returned to in 1968 was not the Belfast he’d left in 1962. Even Ireland, lost like a jewel on the Atlantic, could not ignore the seismic quakes that were shaking the world out of a long slumber induced by the horror and exhaustion of two world wars. The times, in the words of a folksinger he’d heard, truly were ‘achangin’. He’d felt it first in the waters of nationalism, so long tepid to the touch, now hot and ready to boil over and take a nation with it. In the waning days of the sixties, it seemed that anything was possible. Not in America anymore, there the revolution was beginning to wane, the conflict in Vietnam tearing it asunder and leaving a generation bereft and disillusioned. Ireland, slower to change, was only now beginning the slow grinding shift on its axis.

  Casey knew he would have to be a fool not to anticipate change, even in Ireland where the Church had held back progress for hundreds of years. But even he, with a shrewd intellect and a capacity to embrace change without actually succumbing to it, was surprised by the feeling that had gripped Belfast. The city was the flashpoint for a nation more than ready to catch fire. For the government, the old policy of standing on the necks of the oppressed, which had served them so well in the past, now no longer held the power of intimidation. Television was in great part to blame or praise for this, depending on which side of the coin you were looking at. Coverage of riots begat more riots which in turn begat more coverage and so the wheel of protest turned ever more quickly. Thousands of bodies shouting ‘We shall overcome,’ could turn a man’s head, could make a man believe that all roads now ran downhill to a glorious future. But Casey was not a man easily turned and so watched with caution and yet could not quite squelch a yearning that rose up and ached inside him as he saw the great tidal surge of youth cresting across a nation some had thought irreversibly sunk in old age and half-baked myths. They were not quite his generation though and he could not hope in the way that pure youth finds so easy. It was simpler, though perhaps wiser to be cynical in a system where a march for peace was disrupted by police, and an Orangeman’s parade, long a symbol of oppression, blood and bigotry was led by the future Prime Minister and guarded by six hundred armed police and complimented by dogs and armored cars. The right to oppress would be protected, served and cosseted by the fearful and the right to be free and live as man was born to would surely be crushed and violated by the same.

  Casey understood these things but knew that not to fight, even in the face of such odds, was to lay down and beg for a beating. He saw, as well, that the Celtic Twilight that Yeats once dreamed of was actually a possibility. The era of ‘the Big House’ epitomized by the huge Anglo-Irish estates was over and the men that came from that world were no longer fit nor needed to lead.

  Regardless of the rhetoric that was always applied to revolution despite the largeness or smallness of it, Casey knew that in his own particular country it came down to two very simple things, jobs and housing and the ability to achieve the skills that were necessary to acquire either of these things. In a system, though, where one-third of the vote managed to get two-thirds of the seats in parliament even such basic fundamentals seemed far beyond reach. Such a system bred hopelessness deep within the bone and to turn apathy, which was fairly disguised as a realistic view, was no easy task. Protestants hired Protestants and they liked it that way. They felt their superiority was a given, something they were born with and like any group in such a tenuous position they would hang on with tooth and nail before they’d give an inch. Catholics did not get a fair crack at the vote, therefore did not get the jobs and therefore did not get the housing. It was an ugly cycle that no one could see a way out of. He was the first to grant there were no simple solutions and that anything less than actually ripping the country apart and waiting for the blood and smoke to clear was not going to achieve much of anything.

  So, if indeed the dogs of war must be let slip, then he was the man to untie the leashes. He came from a long line of men who did what needed to be done and didn’t make a fuss about it. The speeches and glorying of ideals were best left to other men, but if something needed to be done, if someone needed to strike the first blow in order to crack the long, insular column of Northern Ireland tradition, then he certainly knew how to wield the hammer.

  Unrest was brewing, and the head of militancy was rising from its dreamless slumber. Across the north were disparate people, like pearls waiting to be strung together to form a long unbroken chain, that would not, this time, be broken by those who felt themselves the rulers by divine right. The time for the old ways was gone and those who grasped these things to their chest, like children in a sandbox, were going to have to learn to let go or get the hell out of the way. The back of British supremacy, be it of the Loyalist persuasion or the Conservative Party mold, had long needed to be broken and if someone died and there was blood upon the hands of others—well no sacrifice came without its price, being a Riordan he understood that all too well. It was long past time for Ireland to emerge from the shadows of eight hundred years oppression, time to become a real nation and not just a sentimental dream of green hills and fairy stories in the eyes of the world. Ireland, lovely and wistful, but easily forgotten, even by those who should know better than to forget.

  No longer, he had promised himself, on the night he’d returned to his own country and seen the lights of the city he’d been born to shining before him. No longer, he’d sworn when he’d seen his brother ablaze with student slogans and the pure fire of youthful ideal. No longer, he’d said to himself on the day that he married the girl of his dreams, dreams he’d never thought he’d a right to. No longer to the bruises of oppression, the degradation and despair of unemployment, the hopelessness of living in a gerrymandered system where your vote meant no more than in a dictatorship. No longer to peace without justice, which really wasn’t peace at all, only a mock-up for the powerful to hide behind in their comfortable homes and schools and jobs. No longer would he accept being treated as less than a man, as less than free.

  No longer.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Divorce Me, Darling

  Spring had arrived on the hill. A cold, wet, damp spring filled with the scent of beginnings. First feathers, greening grass, burgeoning tendrils of vine and leaf. She would miss all of this, Pamela thought, as she opened the footgate. Miss the cypresses with sun sifting down through their ancient branches, miss the isolation, the swift smell of the pines, the wind that never seemed to descend into the valley and the city below. She’d miss the books and the chats and the quiet evenings with only the crackle of a fire and the sound of Jamie slowly turning the pages of a book. She’d miss the stars and the lilt of his voice telling her the stories of the sky. But, she stopped and gazed at the house, its long windows bathed in light, the cream lines of it softened as winter’s chill gave way to spring’s soft aura, she would miss him most of all.

  She found him in the study, as she had supposed she might. There was no fire in the hearth, only ashes, dark and cold. Jamie sat beside the empty fireplace, a near empty bottle of whiskey at hand. He rose as she entered the room, a gentleman first and foremost.

  “You’ll have to forgive me; I wasn’t expecting to see anyone today. I’d left instructions—”

  “That you weren’t to be disturbed, I know. Maggie thought perhaps I might be the one exception to the rule,” she said and sat opposite him, arranging the delicate folds of her dress around her.

  “How well pale colors become you,” he said, “such contrast, I suppose.”

  “Compared to what?” she asked, “The shade of my soul?”

  Humor, she quickly realized, was a mistake.

  “Are you quite certain you want to drag the state of your conscience into this?” he asked, a dark, refracting fire simmering low in his eyes.

  “Am I to take it that you think I’m suffering from pangs of guilt?”

  “Inconvenient damned things, emotions, but nevertheless it would
seem rather inescapable. Of course one has to wonder just where the guilt is directed.”

  “And why would I feel guilty?”

  “Because dear girl, men are really rather conventional creatures and prefer the woman they marry to be in love with them, solely.”

  “I do love my husband,” she said stiffly, “I don’t know why you’d presume otherwise.”

  Light, filtered through the willows outside the walls, played fretfully across the bindings of books behind Jamie’s head and slanted, dappled and rippling across his face, alternating in shadow and stippled gold.

  “Because it’s not so tidy as all that, is it?” he said and she began to fear the strange glittering in his eyes, the fire in the air that signified an abundance of drink. “Because we don’t love who we’re supposed to, do we? I mean look at our own small circle, would you? My wife has decided to love Jesus, to devote her life to an idea, the embodiment of madness that is swiftly going out of fashion. My wife who loved marriage, or at least some spent idea of it and all its darker accoutrements, she embraced those and she embraced me, in times,” he saluted her with a bitter rise of his scotch, “less golden than these.”

  It was more than mere drunkenness she knew fueling his bitterness, the spite in which his words were well-bathed.

  “Jamie, I think perhaps,” she made to leave her chair, “I should go now.”

  “I think,” he imitated her words and tone with prim exaggeration, “you won’t. I think perhaps,” the green eyes blinked slowly and menacingly, “you will allow me the dignity of saying my piece, you will grant me the favor,” his voice lowered to a chill hiss, “of your listening ears. I think perhaps,” his voice spun the words like sugar through vitriolic acid, “you owe me that little thing.”

  She slid back into her chair, wishing the opulent, buttery wings of it would allow her to disappear into some altogether more comfortable world.

  “Fine,” she said tightly, “speak your piece.”

  Jamie raised one fine golden eyebrow at her. “Thanks for the permission slip but I don’t actually need it. I’m not certain what you expected here today, that I should say congratulations warmly, isn’t it lovely that you’ve married a terrorist, what’s your household in need of, guns or rounds of ammunition?”

  “I didn’t expect,” her voice was grating on the edge of tears, “a damned thing.”

  “Didn’t you?” he smiled. “Don’t lie Pamela, you don’t do it half so well as the rest of us.”

  “I came to tell you I was married and to say that circumstances made it such that I cannot come back here to work.”

  He tapped his hands together lightly, “Applause if you’re wondering,” he said to her confused stare, “ for your pretty words, which mean exactly nothing. Smoke and mirrors are my stock in trade, dear girl, I’m not likely to be fooled by terse little rehearsed lines.”

  “Jamie, please will you just say what it is you wanted to say?”

  “Why the hurry,” he asked giving her a look that trod the border between cold and fury, “can’t wait for the last word to be uttered so you can run home to hubby? But please take a moment and define circumstances for me, would you?” He balanced his glass on the palm of one hand as condensation pearled and gelled and rolled down to form a rivulet of water that dripped from his hand.

  “Just that Casey and I feel that it would be best if I no longer worked here.”

  “Casey and I, or just Casey?” he asked tossing the words into the air lightly and letting them all fall, as intended, into her court.

  “Casey and I,” she said keeping her eyes fixed on the water that dropped steadily from his hand now.

  “Very loyal of you,” he said bitingly, “but you’ll need it, the loyalty, blind and otherwise, it’ll be most important in the years to come, won’t it? Loyalty will keep you warm when he doesn’t come home at night, it’ll keep you snug and secure when he can’t look you in the eye and won’t answer your questions. And even you, my curious darling, even you will learn not to ask those questions. And what of the night when he just doesn’t come home ever again, what then, what will loyalty have bought you, other than early widowhood?”

  “What would you have had me do, Jamie?” she asked in a level tone, “Wait for you to quit anguishing over your sons and lost wife until you felt capable of loving someone again? What if that never happens? Is a life of waiting in vain better than making the best of the situation you are in? Have you found it to be so yourself?”

  “Did you marry him to spite me?” Jamie asked his tone a little less malevolent.

  “No more than I would marry any man to spite you, but I love him a great deal, more than I think you give credit for. Jamie.” She sighed, “What is the point of this? I’ve lived with him for months now, you had to see this was inevitable, this is where I’ve been headed with him from the start.”

  “The point,” Jamie said leaning towards her so that she could smell the whiskey on his breath, “the point is I’ve gotten a divorce and I’m not finding it as liberating as I’d hoped.”

  “Divorce? I thought your marriage had been annulled,” she said in confusion.

  “It was. The annulment was enough for a long time, there was never, shall we say, any impetus to make it more formal, to sever the ties in a way that I felt was irrevocable.”

  “I don’t understand, Jamie.”

  “Don’t you? Or do you just not want to understand?” His eyes had turned an unnerving shade of deep, hard green, the hand that gripped the glass strained to the point of shattering the crystal it held.

  “You told me to go away Jamie. You said you could not love me and that I was not to love you. I thought you meant it.”

  “And I thought your feelings were genuine.”

  “You’re drunk,” she said angrily.

  “Yes,” he smiled, a poisonous show of teeth and parted lip. “Yes, I am. I’m drunk and I’m being honest. It’s a change for me, I’ve gotten so used to lying I can hardly recognize the appearance of truth much less the actuality of it.”

  “What is it you are trying to say, Jamie?” She made an effort to gentle her voice, perhaps to undermine some of his hostility.

  “Don’t try to handle me Pamela, I’m better at that particular game than anyone you’ve ever known.”

  “I’m going,” she said rising quickly from the chair and knocking his drink flying from his hand in her haste.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll get something, a cloth.”

  “Don’t.” Jamie’s voice was ragged, exhaustion breaking through the sharp edges.

  “It’ll ruin the rug; it’ll only take a minute.”

  “I said don’t, I don’t give a good goddamn about the carpet at present.”

  “Alright,” she replied quietly, standing still in the pooling, sinking whiskey.

  “Do you know what it is I’m trying to tell you?” Jamie asked, willing her to look up and meet his eyes.

  “I know what you think you want to say, but it’s maybe just the whiskey talking.”

  “Will you please look at me, Pamela?” his voice had softened, drifting down around the edges beyond anger and spite.

  She looked up as he’d requested and he almost wished she hadn’t such was the misery in her face.

  “Do you think I don’t know my own feelings?” he asked, standing, crossing to her and taking her arms in the grip of his hands.

  “No I don’t,” she said firmly, two white spots blazing along her cheekbones. “I think you’re panicking because I’ve distracted you these last few months and now I’m leaving and you’ll have to face yourself again. It scares you.”

  “I love you,” he said, standing very, very still as if constrained by the air itself. “Don’t you understand?”

  “What I understand, Jamie, is that you couldn’t feel that, nor certainly say it until you knew there was
no possibility of my being able to accept and return those feelings equally. And that’s not love, that’s fear.”

  “I divorced my wife Pamela before I knew you were married, before any of this seemed impossible.”

  “Your wife, listen to yourself Jamie, you still call her your wife, not ex nor quite former. You are still a married man in your heart and no amount of legal papers is going to change that.”

  “Now who’s afraid?” Jamie asked bitingly.

  “I asked you once,” she said softly, tears gathering in the corner of her eyes, “not to hold me in your hands if you couldn’t hold me in your heart. Now I’m asking you not to hold me in your heart because you can’t hold me in your hands any longer.”

  “And if I find I can’t let go?”

  “You can,” she said and gently disengaged her arms from his fingers.

  “Do you love him?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “No, I don’t suppose I do.”

  Through the canted windows of the study came a sighing breeze, fluttering the pages of an open book, turning it on to the next chapter without the allowance of finishing the present one. A breath of lilacs, white and heady, accompanied it.

  “You came with the spring, perhaps it is fitting that you leave with it as well.” His hands dropped to his sides, the long, graceful fingers unfolding and releasing. He drew a ragged breath and then continued in a voice so tired and low she had to strain to hear. “I apologize for my behavior; the whiskey can hardly take the blame for such a display. From knight errant to court fool in one move, how swiftly the fates canter across our little stage.”

  The telephone rang and he cursed softly.

  “Answer it, it may be important,” she said, welcoming the momentary respite.

  The conversation heard only from her end was terse, accomplished mostly in one word sentences.