by Eoin Dempsey
“Everything all right in there?” he asked.
“Yeah, just fine, almost had an accident, but I caught it in time.” His palms were wet, and he used a sleeve to wipe them off.
Martin didn’t say a word, instead walking back to his place at the table and the timer mechanism he was building.
Mick stopped, his hands falling to the table momentarily until Martin sent one of his barb wire glances across at him.
“I think I need some air myself,” Mick said.
Twenty minutes passed before his hands stopped shaking enough that he could come back inside and finish the bomb he was working on.
Night descended and Mick lay in bed, with Martin asleep on the other side of the room. The bombs they’d built were on the table, ready to be packed up and taken back to the safe house, ready to destroy more lives. His original plan to purposefully blow up the shed itself in an ‘accidental’ explosion was idiotic, a quick route to the morgue, if they found enough of him to bury. But there had to be something he could do, some way of affecting this. He could disable the bombs now, pulling out wires and tearing off timers, but Martin was meticulous and double-checked everything. Mick supposed that was the reason he’d survived so long as a bomb-maker. Mick peered over at him through the dark. There were no guns in the hut, but he could pick up a rock outside. A few quick blows and it’d be all over. It was miles to the nearest road or house.
Mick turned over in the cot to face away from the explosives, which were taunting him now. He couldn’t call it in and he couldn’t kill Martin. There was nothing to be done except report a successful mission to his superiors.
Mick was still awake as the dawn came. He got out of the cot, his limbs like icicles in the dim morning light. The explosives were just as they’d left them. Mick could hardly look at them. He wanted to get back to the city, away from the shame of what he’d done here. The local IRA units were much the stronger for having him as a member. Martin awoke with a snort. Mick told him they were leaving and within minutes they were packed up and ready to walk back to the safe house, several miles away. Martin took the lead, with Mick trailing behind him in the mist of the early morning.
That night he had dinner at Pat’s house, taking his usual seat beside Siobhan, who always insisted he sit beside her. Somehow this existed in the same world where men trekked miles to sheds to make bombs to kill other men.
Dinner was roast beef, Mick’s favorite. Pat sat a few feet away at the head of the table. Seeing his children getting to know Mick had been one of the greatest pleasures of his life. It warmed him every time Mick threw Siobhan over his shoulder or when he played football with the boys. Things finally seemed the way they should be. All Mick needed now was a woman of his own, and while Pat had enjoyed the stories of midnight liaisons with random girls, he was eager for him to settle down.
“So, were you away this weekend?” Pat asked.
“Aye,” Mick answered. “I was away down the country. It was great. Very peaceful.” It felt wrong to lie, but this wouldn’t be forever. The chance to make a real difference would come, the opportunity to dull the pain of the guilt inside him that still burned after sixteen years inside.
“So, big night for you tomorrow night then, Mick,” Pamela said.
“My debut as a student? Aye, it’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.”
“You’re not gonna grow your hair long and start watching Countdown are you?” Pat asked.
“Nah, it’s different if you’re studying for your Masters. We have to ponce around like we know everything and complain about government policy.”
“You’d have plenty of people who’d listen to you around here.”
“Aye, I reckon I would.”
Mick smiled to himself, starting in on the meal. Pat had felt much the same pain he had, yet he’d been able to move on with his life. Why couldn’t he? The paranoia within the IRA had reached almost manic levels since the supergrass trials a few years before. He was fully aware of the torture and death that lay ahead of him if he was caught. Was there no other way for him to be happy? What happened to the huge operation Sean’s brother was planning? He reached over to Peter, ruffled his hair. Why wasn’t this enough? Siobhan stretched over with tiny fingers and snatched a green bean off his plate, bursting into laughter as he feigned anger.
Chapter 20
Melissa studied her own face, trying to remember how she’d looked at sixteen, at twenty, at twenty-five, at thirty. It was hard to remember the passage of something that moved so slowly, yet went so quickly as time, and she flicked the mirror back up and got out of the car. The warmth of the day was beginning to fade as evening encroached. She was early as usual, and would have time to get a cup of tea before class started. A younger version of herself might have felt self-conscious showing up alone and sitting in a café wasting time. Considerations like that had dissipated. Some things did change. Not that she’d woken up one day as a different person. Getting older was as gradual as slipping into quicksand. She still felt the weight of men’s eyes on her, but not like when she was younger. Back then, young men seemed to feast on her with lustful eyes. It was different now, more of a passing admiration from men of all ages, which, as in her younger years, she did her best to ignore. She kept the zipper on her jacket open as she walked up toward the student café on campus. She got a cup of tea and a scone and took a seat by the window, watching the students drift in for evening classes.
A young couple in their twenties stopped outside the window, a few feet away from where she was sitting. They were fighting. Melissa tried to resist the temptation of listening in, but with nothing else to do, her ears became attuned to their shrill voices. The girl, who had long red hair and piercing brown eyes, was complaining that she never saw the boy anymore. The boy, who had broad shoulders and thick arms, protested that he was too busy with training and that he was doing his best to juggle all the balls in life. Melissa smiled to herself. She knew how they felt. It had been hard after the divorce. Being a single mother was a lot more difficult. Even the paltry amount of help that John had given her when Jason was a kid had made her life a lot easier. But Jason was older now. Soon enough he’d be having arguments with girlfriends of his own. She just hoped that he wouldn’t do it in quite so conspicuous a situation as this. The girl stormed off, leaving the burly boyfriend to scuttle after her.
Melissa finished up her tea and brushed the crumbs from her scone back onto the plate. She didn’t recognize anyone around her as she walked toward the lecture hall. Night school wasn’t like being an undergraduate, nothing like her first experiences of a student all those years ago. Life was more serious now and she was here for a purpose. She took a seat at the back, thinking about Jason and what he might have been doing in his friend’s house, when Margaret, a woman in her fifties and one of the few people Melissa had ever spoken to in class, turned around to say hello. Melissa thought to tell her about her trip to Venice with David over the summer, but couldn’t bear the thought of having to field any questions about their break-up, so she stayed silent. They were still talking as the professor came in and took his place at the podium. Margaret turned back and Melissa started jotting down the key points they’d covering. The topic of the class was the partition of Ireland in 1920.
Melissa’s eyes flicked up as a door opened on the other side of the lecture hall, about twenty yards from where she was sitting. A man she thought she recognized stuck his head through the door and snuck into a seat in the back row. Most of the other people in the room who’d glanced up at the noise focused back onto their notes, but her eyes were like magnets on him. A glacier of shock ran down her spine. She looked over at the man again as he reached into his bag for pen and paper. It was impossible to believe. It couldn’t be him – he was in jail. It was Michael Doherty. Her heart felt like it was about to implode within her chest, and the glacial cold turned into a hot flash, which ran through her entire body. He was looking straight ahead, seemingly hadn�
��t noticed her. She unglued her eyes from him, but only for a few seconds, and they fell back onto him like pendulum returning. Was it Patrick? No, it was definitely Mick. He looked much the same. Maybe a little gaunt, a little more worn-looking but who wasn’t now? Mick glanced around the room and Melissa immediately turned her head away. She waited a few seconds until it was safe to look back. He was staring down at the pad in front of him, taking notes, as she should have been. The lecture was well under way, but she hadn’t heard a single word. She could get up and leave, but what would that achieve? She was going to have to take this class. She wanted to take this class. Why should he stop her? How was she going to take a class with him for the whole year? The pen in her mouth cracked with the force of her bite and Melissa drew it out immediately, checking for ink that wasn’t there. She felt her face flame red. He was going to see her. There was no avoiding that, just best to get on with things.
Melissa kept her head down, her arm shielding her face. The eight minutes of the class felt longer than some years she could remember. She allowed herself to peek over a few more times, never catching his eye. He seemed oblivious. Perhaps it wasn’t him. Perhaps it was Pat. She could tell herself that all she wanted, but she didn’t believe it, not even for a second. The memories that she’d tried to suppress were in class with her. There was no escape in this town.
Her anxieties tempered like boiling water cooling off. She knew Mick, knew his motivations for what he did. He didn’t need to know anything about her. She didn’t have to tell him. A few words, a hello, wouldn’t hurt either of them. Maybe he wouldn’t want to see her. He didn’t have to intrude into the life she’d chiseled out for herself. Seeing him here didn’t have to change anything. The swirling frothy feeling in her stomach began to abate, at least enough to get out of the seat when the lecture finished. He was still sitting there, peering out into the space in front of him as the other members of the class filed up the steps toward the door. He hadn’t moved. She waited until there were several people in front of him, blocking his view, before she got up out of her seat and made for the door. The feelings within her were like a relic of times past, how he’d made her feel all those years ago. She breezed through the door, looking as casual as she could, all the while eyeing every person around her. She whirled around, expecting to see him, suddenly disappointed he wasn’t there. The thought to go back inside, to find him, just to see him, just to say hello, came into her mind. She stopped dead in her tracks, not prepared to look for him but not prepared to leave either. The other students brushed past her, her eyes trained on the door. Twenty seconds passed before something broke inside and swept her away, her footsteps ever faster until she was almost running away.
She made it all the way back to the car before she finally began to slow down. She cast an arm out to lean on the car, her heart pounding. Was she going to have to do this every week? That would make for a difficult year. A few simple words would suffice, little more than a hello in all likelihood. She couldn’t leave like this, wasn’t going to run away. Melissa put her books in the car and made her way back toward the lecture hall, almost sure that he wasn’t going to be there. Surely he would have left by now, and she would have tried. The lecture hall was empty, and she turned back around, resigned to the fact that she was going to have to go through all of this again when the class met again on next week. She started back toward her car and was walking past the café when she saw him, drinking a cup of coffee alone. His eyes met hers through the pane of glass between them. She stood looking at him with no idea what to do next. He didn’t move, not even to put down his coffee cup, shaking ever so slightly in his hand. Somehow her feet carried her over to the door and inside. He was standing as she came to him.
“Hello,” she said, feeling the warmth inside come again despite herself.
“Hi. It’s so good to see you,” he said, his words slow, his eyes wide like a child. “Will ye join me for a cup of tea?” he motioned toward the empty chair opposite his.
“I don’t know. I was going to leave pretty soon… I just wanted to say hello.”
“You don’t have to get something, just sit down maybe.”
“All right.” He was still so handsome, still the best looking man she’d ever seen. She let out a cough. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. Jason was on her mind. Protecting him had to be her priority.
“I saw you in the classroom,” he said. “I was shocked. I didn’t want to bother you….”
“You were shocked? I didn’t even know you were out.” She lowered her voice, looking around at the other people in the café who seemed completely oblivious to their presence. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that out loud.”
“It’s fine. I’ve spent almost half my life in jail, it’s going to be difficult to hide that.” Her beauty was transcendent. It carried him away beyond his pathetic life, beyond the murderous gray streets of Bogside and Derry, to some other place. She was more beautiful than she’d been inside his mind every day of those sixteen years. It had taken him the entire class to notice her and when he did the sight of her struck him like a thunderbolt. He’d sat there transfixed, unable to move for several minutes after everyone else had left.
“It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, it has. When did you…?”
“Seven months ago, back in February. I did fifteen and a half years of my life sentence.”
“How did you get out?”
He picked up the cup, put it back down and took the spoon in both hands.
“A mixture of good behavior, pressure from my brother’s lawyers, and political convenience.”
“Well, it’s good to see you. I should be going.” Melissa went to get up, hoping he’d stop her.
“Can you stay a few more minutes? We’re not going to be able to avoid each other. I’d rather be friends, wouldn’t you?”
“Aye, of course.” She sat back down, feigning reluctance to do so.
“I’m still trying to get used to things on the outside. The world’s so different now. It's like the last sixteen years never happened. It's like I got into a time machine to the future. But I suppose I’ve changed too.”
“You look the same.”
“So do you.” He stopped himself there, too afraid to venture further, not knowing where he’d be able to stop. “So what do you do for a living? I don’t know anything about you.”
“I’m a teacher. I teach sixteen-year-olds English and History.”
“Sixteen-year-olds? How ironic.”
“If I could get it into any of their thick skulls what irony is they might agree with you.”
He laughed and took another sip of coffee. Someone behind him was smoking, and the thick scent of tobacco filled the air around them. The smell brought memories of jail. He ignored them. “You’re teaching sixteen-year-old boys? I’d say you’re popular.”
She smirked, fidgeting with her bag on her shoulder. “You get used to the stares. They used to make comments, but not anymore. They know better.”
“I wouldn’t mess with you either, Miss Rice or is it Mrs. now?”
She thought about how to answer him. His eyes were so honest. She’d tell him as much truth as she could. “It was Mrs. for a while, but I’m back to Miss again now.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“That’s just the way things work out sometimes.”
“Have you any kids?”
“Maybe I will get myself a cup of tea. Are you staying around?”
“I’ve nowhere to be. I’ve got nothing but time.”
He watched her as she got up to walk to the cash registers. She had filled out, her body more womanly now. Other men’s eyes flicked up as she drifted past them. The spikes of jealousy within him almost brought a smile to his face. She came back a minute later with a cup of tea in her hand and sat back down. It was hard to believe she was here. He’d thought about this so many times.
The teacup chimed as she stirred in the sugar. She thought she’d nev
er see him again, that he’d be in jail for the rest of his life, that the fire he aroused in her was finally extinguished.
“So what are you doing with yourself now? What are you studying?”
“I’m studying for a Masters in Engineering. I’m only doing this course for a bit of a lark. I always wanted to study history, maybe if everyone did we wouldn’t be in such a mess.”
Melissa blew on her tea before taking a sip. “It’s strange, but the students I teach were born after Bloody Sunday, years after the Troubles began, they’ve never known anything else. I’m trying to make them understand that there were times before this when we lived in peace or at least relative peace, and how avoidable this all was,” she said.
“How do their parents feel about that?”
“It’s a Protestant school, so there’s a certain way they want me to phrase things, but I do have a decent amount of latitude. It’s certainly no UVF training ground, but trying to get across the abuses the Catholic population suffered since the 20’s is difficult.”
“Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right, eh?” He remembered the old unionist saying from his own school days.
“A lot of the parents are still sticking to those old principles, but we’re making progress. I’ve no doubt about that. Attitudes are changing. Anyway, enough about politics, that’s what got us into this mess in this first place, that’s what put you in jail.”
“Aye. I’ve had a bellyful of all that rhetoric. I heard plenty of it inside.”
“I can’t begin to imagine what you went through.” The truth of it was that she had imagined, or at least tried to imagine what jail must have been like for him many times, particularly in those early days. “What are you doing for work?” she continued.
“I’m lucky enough to have a twin brother willing to employ me. A lot of my fellow republican prisoners aren’t so fortunate when they get out. You never answered my question.”