The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy

by Robert Power

  Sammy looks at Caitlin, sensing the aggression.

  ‘He goes everywhere with you these days, so I’m told,’ says the man, nodding to Sammy.

  Caitlin returns Sammy’s glance, putting her hand over his.

  ‘That’s right,’ she says, with defiance. ‘We’re to get married once we sort all this out. Get on with the rest of our lives and all that.’

  Liam, for Caitlin remembers this is the big man’s name, says nothing. He shifts slightly in his seat, lights another cigarette: an untipped Players, like her dad used to smoke. He inhales deeply. In the silence the fiddle from the bar intrudes.

  Caitlin feels a sadness come over her. A sadness for herself. For the person she was. The person who cared for others. Risked all for others. For their causes. And now when she wants something of her own, a life of her own, a man of her own, she senses it slipping away. A man she doesn’t recognize enters the room. He is even larger than Liam, almost filling the doorway where he stands, silently, arms crossed, face fixed, the brim of his hat casting a shadow across his eyes.

  ‘So, say what you need to say.’ Liam breaks the silence. ‘No one can hear us. We’re alone.’ He looks up at the other man, who gently pulls the door closed. ‘This is our pub, our business.’

  ‘It’s really quite simple,’ begins Caitlin, her voice faltering. ‘I want out. I want out of all this. I’ve …’ she looks at Sammy and some strength returns. ‘We’ve had enough. I want to get a life. All the normal things. No more hiding away from everyone and living half-truths. I feel kept and I’ve just had too much of it all.’ She pauses, measuring her words, as if her life depends on what she might say next. ‘I’ve done my duty. As much as any other and more … I have done my duty. Served my time, my dues, and now I want out. I want other things.’

  She looks to Sammy, for support, for solace, for reassurance that the past can be left behind.

  ‘What she says,’ he stutters, ‘is real … we’re together … in this …’

  ‘Shut your ignorant, spineless mouth,’ interrupts Liam before Sammy can say more, before he can try to make sense of the horror gripping him. ‘You’re just a bit player. She is the one that concerns me. She is the lead, the one we entrusted. The one we expected much of. Still do expect. So just keep your mouth shut and listen.’

  Sammy stares down at the table, his face ashen. Liam looks on with a stony, faintly contemptuous expression. He puffs on his cigarette. When he speaks again, his voice is sinister, his gaze fixed firmly on Caitlin.

  ‘You want out, do you? You and lover boy. Is that so? Is that indeed so? Let me remind you of a few home truths. First things first. You are a member of an army and that makes you a soldier. And soldiers take orders and, as assigned, take action. Is that not right, Michael?’

  ‘That’s spot on, Liam,’ says the man at the door. He winks at Caitlin, who feels a tear welling in her eye. She squeezes Sammy’s hand as hard as she can and when she looks up, the tear she swallowed is trickling down his cheek. Liam considers them both, pours himself another whiskey and tops up their untouched glasses.

  ‘You should both know better.’ His words are slow and calculated. ‘This is no club. It’s a war and you are in for the duration.’

  ‘You don’t own us,’ shouts Caitlin, finding strength for them both, a strength sharpened and honed in the mayhem of her childhood.

  ‘Don’t we? Don’t we now?’ says Liam, standing up from his chair, towering above her.

  ‘You don’t frighten me,’ she says.

  Liam raises a hand to strike her, the cigarette still burning between two fingers. Sammy lurches forward, but Michael is suddenly there, grasping him like a vice by the shoulders, pushing him back to his seat. Caitlin freezes at the click of a safety-lock. Michael has put a gun to Sammy’s temple.

  ‘You see,’ says Liam, standing so close that the ash falls on her shoulder, ‘this is your life, just like the TV show, but with no smiling faces from the past. And there are no exit or entry visas. I am your commander and you are my foot soldiers.’

  His hand is now on Caitlin’s arm.

  ‘We’ve been watching you two. The lovebirds in the trenches.’

  He grabs her hair, pulling her head back, staring into her eyes.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ entreats Sammy, his voice low and flat.

  ‘It’s all too late for anyone to be left alone. Left alone has got nothing to do with it. Like I say, we’ve been watching you two.’ He rubs his palm roughly across Caitlin’s cheek. ‘And the situation doesn’t look to me as simple as you suggest.’

  He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a brown envelope.

  ‘It appears you’ve been talking to some people. Some rather … how shall I put it … unsavoury people. People who might expedite your own very special exit visas.’

  He empties the contents of the envelope onto the table. A series of black-and-white photos fan out in front of Caitlin. Each one a variation on the same theme: a man entering and leaving her flat in Brighton. Each print is etched with times and dates spanning several weeks. Caitlin grips Sammy’s hand.

  ‘He’s not the pizza delivery man,’ says Liam. ‘Thin and crispy with extra anchovies. No, this is no boy on a scooter. We’ve been tracking him for some time. He’s turned up at a few addresses and we know he has links with the British. One visit to you would have been a concern, but four in three weeks set some alarm bells ringing, especially if you look at the dates.’

  The visits all took place in the two months leading up to the hotel bomb. The bomb that was intended to wipe out half the British government along with family and friends.

  Now, sitting in the dingy back room, with Liam breathing down her neck, Caitlin stares, confused, at the pile of photos. She remembers back to the previous year and the call from Kieran with the code to let her know the Brighton campaign was to go ahead. In those days she was so committed, so focused. Then, there was no Sammy to awaken her to other possibilities.

  It had been the Republican Army’s intention for some years to strike at one of the annual conferences of the government. As soon as the Brighton venue was announced, the wheels were put in motion and key players identified from the various active and dormant units on the mainland. Caitlin was to pose as the Aussie backpacking around Europe. So it made good sense she should be the one to get work in the hotel. There would be no suspicion – plenty of youngsters ended up at seaside towns, bumming jobs around the hotels, especially Australians on restricted work visas.

  That first summer, equipped with a false identity and a new life history, she found waitressing work at one of the larger hotels in the town. Just as the season was ending, she heard one of the silver-service waiters at The Grafton had been found selling pheasants from the larder to golfers at the club on the Downs. He was fired on the spot. Caitlin knew the head waiter of The Grafton, and, with a touch of eyelash fluttering, had him put her name forward as an experienced hand to fill the void. And so it happened, a year almost to the day before the conference, Caitlin found herself in the kitchen directly below the room where she would plant the large slab of Semtex on the ceiling to rock the seagulls from the pier and the cabinet members from their gin and tonics.

  Part of Caitlin’s brief was to stay out of trouble, make no close friends, go to work and wait in her flat to be contacted. She was to be low-key and anonymous; viewed by all as an established and solid member of the catering department of the hotel, as part of the furniture when security checks were made closer to the date of the conference. Coded telephone messages would let her know of any meetings or changes in plan. In that first year, Kieran visited her twice, just to check there were no problems and to boost her morale.

  Sammy was sent down from Liverpool to live in the flat with her and help her plan and execute the planting of the bomb. He had played a key role behind the scenes in the campaign in the north of the mainland and was still unknown to British intelligence. His role was also to pose as her lover, to be her excuse for
quitting her job just before the bombing, so they could go travelling. By the time the authorities did a roll-call, she’d be safely away. Three weeks after Sammy arrived they dropped the act and passionate kisses took the place of linked arms at the grocery store and shared popcorn at the cinema. During that time they had almost forgotten why they were there. So it came as a shock when the man who now looks up at Caitlin from the photos knocked at the door of her flat.

  It was her only afternoon off. She and Sammy were asleep. Earlier that week, both a bit drunk, a night of confessions led to each admitting they wanted to break free from the Army. The conversation played through her head as she padded along the hallway to answer the knock. The man at the door smiled at Caitlin. He had thick, black-rimmed glasses and an even thicker mop of black hair, giving him a youthful, unkempt look.

  ‘You must be Caitlin. I’m Gerard, a friend of Kieran’s.’ Another smile. ‘Can I come in?’

  Caitlin quickly reasoned anything to be dealt with would be better done so indoors, so she stepped aside and ushered him into the house. Once inside, Gerard’s happy demeanour disappeared. Sammy had wrapped himself in Caitlin’s dressing gown and was in the kitchen making a pot of tea.

  ‘So,’ said Caitlin, testing the water, ‘how is Kieran?’

  The man stared out the window.

  ‘You’re so lucky here. Do you know that?’ he said, looking over his shoulder at Caitlin, before turning back to the view. ‘The expanse of it. The whole sea. The millions and millions of gallons of water. The immensity of it all. You know, even when I was little I was fascinated by tidal waves. Gathering momentum somewhere. Quietly building up out there in the sea, during the black, black night. Rumbling. Bubbling away and growing as mountains. People sleeping in their beds, unaware. Maybe hearing something in the night and wondering if it was a train, or maybe thunder. But turning over and back into their dreams. And all the while the disaster waiting to happen was rolling in from the ocean.’

  He paused, looking beyond the horizon. ‘Yes, if I could choose how to die, it wouldn’t be at home in bed, next to a loved one. No, I would want to go with a bang, not a whimper. I would want to walk down to the beach and watch a tidal wave growling and towering on the horizon. I would want to hear its deafening roar as it thunders towards me and fills the sky. And then I would rush towards it and greet it. That’s what I think about sometimes, Caitlin. I just wanted to share it with you.’

  He turned away from the window, towards her, and she felt a cold shiver between her shoulder blades. ‘Kieran’s grand and sends you all the best. Oh, and he wants you to know,’ he paused with a conspiratorial wink to indicate the secret code ‘that he’s over the flu, but sadly his cousin Raymond was lost at sea.’

  No, thought Caitlin. I’d want to die for love. For love. Not washed away in the wake of a tidal wave.

  Sammy entered the room and placed a tray of tea and biscuits on a small table by the fireplace.

  Gerard poured himself some tea from the pot and settled himself in a chair. Then he told them to sit down and listen. Over China tea and digestive biscuits he explained he worked for both the Irish and British governments; well, the civil services to be more precise. He said he was sure they had both read spy novels or had seen films where there were double agents and double bluffs. Governments were always in collusion, all members of the same club. He told them there had been much discussion between all the interested parties.

  ‘You can think of me as a fixer, a go-between,’ he said. ‘It’s all a bit like a franchised chain store. Fast food. The board makes a decision based on the global markets. They’ve made their allies, sized up the opposition, gazed into the future. Let’s say it’s to launch a new burger. The management are told what they need to know. They send the orders out to the shop managers. All around the country shops develop a strategy to suit local needs, local context. The workers behind the counters and on the home-delivery scooters do the work of getting the burgers to the punters. Job done. Everyone’s happy. But the boy who puts the onions in the bun has no idea what the chairman is thinking. Do you get my drift?’

  The looks on the faces of Caitlin and Sammy confirmed full concentration if not total comprehension.

  ‘So what is happening here,’ he continued, ‘is that it has been agreed by the three parties, let’s say the two governments and the Army, that this campaign should go ahead. You see, it will be what we need to get the peace talks off the ground. The Irish Government will have to agree to participate, the atrocity being such that the Prime Minister, God bless her, will be as good as dead and all. A new start, with a less severe, more conciliatory, man in charge. And in time, the Republicans can join in without losing face.’

  When he finished, he smiled and looked out of the window again, as if checking for a tidal wave.

  ‘So,’ asked Sammy, ‘why are you telling us all this?’

  ‘Because it’s better that you know rather than don’t know. So that whatever happens you go through with it. That you know we are all on your side. That all of us … even those of us you don’t and won’t know … are rooting for you.’

  He paused, distracted by something on the horizon.

  ‘I am here to help,’ continued Gerard, still transfixed by some distant watery point, ‘in case there are any last-minute hitches that might put you off. I will always be here to encourage you, to iron out any difficulties.’

  After he left, Caitlin and Sammy talked through the afternoon’s events. The man was strange, his attitude and manner peculiar. On that they both agreed, but it was not unusual for lines of communication to shift and for cells to break away and to be allowed autonomy. Divide and rule, scatter the seed for a good crop. These were the principles. Keep the enemy chasing down blind alleys and dead ends. Much of the success of the campaign hinged on sudden changes of personnel. Channels of command were known to few and rarely to the combatants. During the course of the conversation Gerard had mentioned all the right people and used the correct codes and phrases to identify him with Kieran.

  All the talk of collusion between the governments, their propaganda and callousness, only confirmed Caitlin’s feelings that political expediency was becoming the order of the day. She still held her convictions. She still knew why she had got herself involved in the Cause, even though she wanted out now. There would always be others to continue the work, of that she was sure. But Gerard’s visit fuelled her resolve to get out of this business as soon as she could. Leave it to some fresh blood to sort out, to get the show back on the right track. They decided to let events take their course. To carry on according to plan and do what they had been trained to do. One last time.

  After Gerard’s first visit there had been no further contact from Kieran or any of the other cell members. Gerard had told Caitlin and Sammy this would happen; that all concerned had agreed it simplified things if he remained the single point of contact. He phoned almost every other day to check if they needed anything and visited on two or three further occasions. It was he who told them to leave by the train station immediately after the bombing, to go to North London and await the call from the cell commanders.

  So this is the now for Caitlin and Sammy. Sitting in a bar in London, with the refrains of a wake wafting along the corridor. Having risked their lives, they’re now being accused of complicity: photos of Gerard as evidence of fraternisation with the enemy. That the bombing has been a success, that the Prime Minister is on a life-support machine, is neither here nor there. All the double-double talk spins through Caitlin’s mind.

  ‘You’re a coward,’ says Liam calmly. ‘You’re in too deep, you know too much and your talk of desertion is too dangerous.’

  But Caitlin barely makes sense of his words. She doesn’t know anymore who is who or what is real. There is a short silence. A lull in proceedings. Caitlin feels as if she is suspended in the air, her head buzzing the way it used to when, as a child, she hung upside down on the swing in the garden. And at the same moment she fe
els strangely resigned, sensing she will never now be a mother, never have a life of her own. She feels the calm of the convicted. There is nothing more she can say. They have made up their mind about her. She has been betrayed. She tucks her hair behind her ears and stares hard into Liam’s eyes. It comes as little surprise to Caitlin Malloy when the big man cuffs her hands, places a heavy sack hood over her head, and tells her to stand up. Something deep inside tells her that this is the last she will ever see of Sammy.

  ‘I’m so excited,’ I say to John down the phone. ‘I haven’t touched a drop of booze or sniffed or smoked a drug since the Friary.’

  ‘Great,’ he says, ‘but one day at a time.’

  ‘I’m into double figures, creeping into weeks. And that’s not all, my life’s work, my one-use syringe, remember I was telling you?’

  ‘Yes,’ says John. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, it’s all taking off. I just need some backers and we can get it into production and get it out there. Things are just going great. My boss has been really good. He told everyone I was at a monastic retreat.’

  ‘That’s excellent,’ says John. ‘That’s what we mean by anonymity. It’s entirely up to you who you tell.’

  ‘And,’ I can’t help babbling on excitedly, ‘I’m meeting my daughter in a short while. I’m so happy.’

  ‘Have you been to any Aftercare Meetings since you came out of treatment?’

  ‘Not yet, I’ve been really busy.’

  ‘Don’t be too busy to put your sobriety first. You sound like you’re on a pink cloud, but be sure to get to meetings to keep you there.’

  ‘Yes, I will, I will,’ I say, hearing Lottie’s key turning in the door. ‘Got to go, John, Lottie’s here. Speak to you later.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ says John. ‘Call me and we can link up at a Meeting.’

  ‘Sure, bye for now.’

  Lottie enters the room hesitantly. She smiles uncertainly at me and I move to greet her. As I hug her I feel the tension in her body.