Brinn stopped in the middle of a sentence. 'Are you all right, Mr Starkey?'
I gulped and said: 'Uh, yeah. Sorry.' But even with that I could feel the bile in my throat and I swallowed hard. I shivered, shook my head. 'In fact, no, I don't feel all that good. Perhaps you could excuse me? This is your interview after all, Mr Parker. I'll go for a wander round the garden and get some fresh air, if you don't mind.'
I stood up. Brinn said, 'Not at all.'
Parker just glared at me.
As I closed the door behind me I heard Brinn say: 'He looks a bit under the weather, doesn't he? A hangover you think?'
One of the security men downstairs showed me to a small bathroom. I locked the door and bent forward until my head was in the pale-pink sink, the taps grinding into me just above the ears. I turned both taps on and enjoyed the cold water as it sprayed against my hair from either side, gradually growing hotter on the right until I had to jerk my head away to stop the burning.
I shook my head like a dog and looked into the speckled mirror above the sink. The droplets on the glass made my reflection appear out of focus. The way my life was. I pushed my sleeve across the mirror, but it made me look worse: fuzzy, indistinct, unidentifiable; the way I would have to be to escape, if it came to that. Where were they now, the police? Was Patricia being questioned somewhere, was she confessing it all? Patricia whom I had betrayed.
A phrase came back to me then, a phrase I had heard once and never forgotten. It had been another journalist, one of the first I'd worked with. A woman, maybe his wife, had accused him of having an alcohol problem. 'Yeah, two hands and only one mouth,' he'd replied. It had seemed hysterical at the time. Where would I be now if I'd not gone out drinking by myself after that stupid interview? Solo drinking, the sign of the alcoholic. Maybe they'd give me a reduced sentence for having a drink problem.
I dried my hair on a fading towel that might once have matched the pink of the bathroom suite and left the house by the front door. They didn't ask me about Parker on the way out.
I leant across the front of the car for a few minutes, wide awake now in the fresh sea air, and looked back up to Red Hall. I wondered if the Alliance appreciated the irony of having inherited a headquarters with a name like that. It was a party which espoused a milky socialism if you cared to read the small print of its manifesto. But its real message was reconciliation. It had failed to appreciate the historical lesson that if you try to kick with both feet you tend to fall over. I could see Brinn seated by the window, gesticulating animatedly, Parker's head nodding beside him.
A shrill scream twisted my head away from the hall. At first I could see nothing. There was a low wall about twenty yards in front of me that cut the garden in two, dividing the marching rows of flowers in bloom that shadowed the driveway to the front door from a rough lawn that was slightly overgrown and showed the crazy pattern you get from wind buffeting. The cry came again, sharper, and I realized it had come from the few feet of garden masked by the top of the wall.
Nobody else appeared to have heard it. I ran across to the wall and jumped on top of it. A boy, maybe four, was lying flat on his back, a figure bending over him.
I shouted, 'Hey!'
A woman looked round. 'What?' She said. The boy was laughing, screaming in mock pain. She had been tickling him. She was in her late thirties, maybe, small, not thin but not fat.
I said: 'Sorry, I thought...'
She smiled and said: 'No bother. We're only messing around.'
I turned to go back to the car, but the woman said: 'You're Dan Starkey, aren't you? He said you were coming. I enjoy the column.'
I turned back to her. I sat down on the wall and smiled down at the boy.
'Thanks,' I said.
It must have come out weakly. She said: 'Are you okay?'
'Sure.'
'Hangover?'
'Jesus
'I'm sorry.'
I bit back the flash of anger. It wasn't her fault. I pushed a smile where it didn't want to go. 'Nah, I'm sorry. If I write about alcohol all the time I can't really expect much more. No. Not a hangover. Flu, maybe.'
She stood up and came over to me. Her brown hair was flecked with grey, but it looked well and she'd a good strong face that lacked any discernible make-up. High above her, coming out of the sun, a seagull swooped down towards the shallows of the marina.
'Can I get you anything?'
'No. Thanks. I just wanted some fresh air. I take it you're Mrs Brinn?'
'Agnes, yeah.' Instead of putting up her hand she lifted the boy up onto her shoulder. 'And this is Robert.' Robert grinned like an angel. He looked like he needed a good slap in the chops. 'You're staying for dinner, aren't you?'
'I'm not sure. No one said.'
'Sure you are.'
'What's for tea, Mum?' Robert asked, endearingly. 'Stewed bugs and onions,' Agnes replied, tweaking his cheek.
'Mmmm,' I said, 'my favourite.' The boy twisted his face away from us in mock horror.
Agnes put the boy down on the top of the wall and I gave her a hand up. We jumped down together onto the gravel pathway and began walking towards the house.
'You finished with Mark already?'
'No. It's not really my interview. My American friend is doing that.'
'Can I make you a cup of tea before dinner? Come on into the kitchen, it'll only take a moment.'
The boy ran on ahead of us and opened the big oaken door by himself. The security man gave him a cursory glance and ignored me altogether as we made our way through a series of empty offices and into a small canteen. Agnes said she had the dinner already in the oven upstairs but it would be quicker to make tea down in the work's kitchen.
I shrugged.
She said: 'So are you as bad as you make out?'
I scrunched my eyebrows up at her. 'How do you mean?'
'Drinking, womanizing, ultra-Unionist.'
'I'm fond of drink, women and Unionism, ish. I don't think that makes me a bad man. Unless I find a drunk woman Unionist and then I'm lethal.'
'I'm safe then.'
'Oh, I wouldn't go that far.'
Her eyes steadied on mine and I looked away. Stared into a glass-fronted coffee maker.
'You're flirting with the wife of the next prime minister of Northern Ireland.'
I remained silent while she poured me a cup of tea from a pot that had already been on the cooker. She poured one for herself and poured milk for us both. She didn't ask me about sugar. She said: 'You look as though you've been in the wars.'
I shrugged.
'Want to tell me about it?'
I shook my head. 'I don't think that would be a good idea.'
'I'm a good listener. You could try me.'
I looked into her hazel eyes and I could see that everything she said was right. I could see my own sick reflection, her own sincerity. Here she was with everything ahead of her; here was me with everything behind me, everything closing in on me. For a moment I saw her as Margaret, then as Patricia, then as herself. I half-chuckled. 'I'm much better in print,' I said. 'You'd be much better off reading my confessions.'
10
We didn't have stewed bugs for dinner. When we sat down, the four and a half of us, we ate chicken. There was a radio playing jazz somewhere in the background, blending in with the faint hum of an electric lawnmower. Parker, Agnes and I drank cool white wine from a box. Brinn said he was off alcohol. He and the boy had orange juice.
‘I do too much rambling when I'm drinking,' he said. ’I don't want any cock-ups in the run-in to the election.'
'You mean you've made some before?' Parker asked.
'None I'd tell you about!' Brinn laughed.
'Ach, go on,' I said and Parker frowned at me as if the conversation should be exclusively his.
'You could tell them about the hospital, Mark,' Agnes suggested.
Brinn smiled benignly at her. 'That was nothing to do with alcohol.'
'Tell them anyway.'
H
e looked at us with mockingly narrowed eyes. 'I trust this won't find its way into print, gentlemen?'
Parker shook his head. I shrugged then shook. Just to be awkward.
'It was nothing really.' He put his elbow on the table, resting his chin lightly on the top of his knuckles and looked down, as if he was embarrassed. His nails were bitten to the quick. Despite the thinness of his face there was the hint of a double chin when he looked down. 'I was on a hospital visit. You know those tours of wards politicians do to make them look as if they are deeply caring individuals? The City Hospital, wasn't it?'
'Royal Victoria,' Agnes corrected.
'Anyway, there was a guy there had had his legs blown off by a bomb a few months before. He was cheery enough about it all, but there's not much you can say to someone like that besides make sympathetic noises.'
Giggling, Agnes cut in: 'So he asked him if there were many people in his shoes.' She sat back and roared like she was hearing it for the first time; Parker and Brinn laughed with her. I joined in as well. Laughing murderer and the prime minister. He giggled over maimed bomb victims while his lover was autopsied.
There was no getting away from it. They were a nice couple. And he was a nice enough man. So why did he give me the creeps every time I came across him in an official capacity?
We finished the food, then lingered over the wine. I said: 'I was given to understand you were booked up day and night with interviews. Yet we've been here for hours.'
Brinn sat back, yawned. 'You know,' he said lazily, 'we try to accommodate everyone as best we can. But there are always difficulties. For example, we had a Lithuanian reporter here the other day. We didn't have a clue what he was on about, so it was fifteen minutes and half a cream cracker, and he was lucky to get that. And then we do like to do something a little bit special for our American visitors. American support is very important for what we have in mind for this place. The Irish built America. I don't think we're amiss looking for a little bit of a return on our investment.'
'In many ways the Americans are more Irish than the Irish,' Agnes volunteered. 'Remember that St Patrick's Day parade in Miami, darling?'
Brinn smiled. 'How could I forget? Thousands of people all in green, drinking green beer, barely a word of English between them. It was most bizarre.'
'One of the big days of the year,' Parker said. 'I even get to feel a little Irish. Boston's the place to be, of course.'
'And it's where the IRA gets a lot of its money from too,' I said. 'It's not all cutesy shamrocks and top o' the mornin' to ya.'
'Which is exactly why we try to give people like Mr Parker here a little extra help. There are a lot of Irish-Americans who think it's romantic to support a civil war, which is really the situation we're in, though the Government will always deny it. A lot of armchair terrorists in that land of yours, Parker. It's up to you to put them right on a few things.'
Parker nodded. 'You gave me some very convincing arguments in support of the Alliance today, Mr Brinn. Power sharing, a largely autonomous state, freeport status, British but not British, Irish but not Irish. Independence with a safety harness. A Northern Irish Hong Kong really. Ideas that seem to be generally popular.'
'All I am saying is give peace a chance.' Brinn smiled, but it was a thin, cynical smile that said, yeah, I know they shot Lennon.
'You really think the IRA - the UDA, for that matter -will lay down their arms?' I asked.
Parker said: 'We've been over this this afternoon.'
'I'm only asking.'
Brinn leant forward. 'No. I don't think they will. The violence is too engrained in them. They've had their own way for too long. They won't want to give up what they have. I mean, it's long past the political stage, the Nationalist or Loyalist stage, for most of them. Now it's down to money. The rackets. They have their political thinkers, but they know they're on a lost cause, because we've got the people, a lot of the people behind us, and there's a genuine chance that what we're attempting will work. No, you'll see those political figures progressively eliminated from both sides of the paramilitary line and then we'll be down to a straightforward game of cowboys and Indians.'
'Which is which?'
'Depends on your point of view really. Depends whether you're a John Wayne fan or a Dances with Wolves revisionist.'
I poured myself another glass of wine and tried not to think of Margaret. I felt ashamed suddenly that she had only flitted through my mind briefly during dinner. But I would surely go mad if I kept thinking of her. And suddenly I was giggling and I had to clamp my hand on my mouth but it squeezed out between my fingers like vomit.
They were staring at me.
I swallowed hard. Pulled my cheeks in.
'I'm sorry,' I said, a little high-pitched. 'I'm sorry,' I repeated.
'Are you okay?' Agnes asked for the second time that day.
Brinn looked perplexed. Parker looked angry. 'Of course. I'm sorry, what with the wine and the flu, and that . . . it's just got to me. That's all.'
'Maybe we should be going,' Parker suggested. 'Well. ..' Brinn said.
'No, stay,' Agnes interjected. 'I'll make some coffee.'
'It's not the drink,' I repeated. 'It's not just the drink, I mean, I...' and I didn't know what I was going to say, I didn't know whether I was going to mention Margaret or Patricia or the way my world was caving in. Who better to tell than the next prime minister of Northern Ireland, and who worse?
There was a knock on the door. They all turned towards it, thankful for the relief.
It opened without a reply from Brinn and a man I recognized as Alfie Stewart, the Alliance security spokesman, walked quickly into the room. He was a big, impressive man with a ruddy Antrim farmer's face. I'd met him a couple of times at press conferences and been impressed; he reeked of sincerity and could maybe have given Brinn a run for his money if given the chance, but rumour had it that he had a bit of a drink problem, which was more of a handicap in his chosen profession than mine. He nodded to me as he crossed the room; his eyes, slightly hooded, widened momentarily at Parker's blackness. I'd seen him calmly breeze through the toughest of interviews, but his face now had assumed a daunting tautness, like the stretched leather of the devil's saddlebags.
Stewart said, 'Excuse me,' in a voice that was more of a bark than an apology and bent down over Brinn's right shoulder to whisper in his ear: a raspy sound like a wasp half-glued to sandpaper ...
Brinn's face gave nothing away, but his knuckles turned white as he squeezed tightly on his glass of orange. Agnes's hand instinctively dropped beneath the table, finding its way to his leg, although she could have heard as little as me.
As Stewart finished, Brinn turned his eyes up to him and shook his head slightly, then contradictorily nodded it. When he spoke, his voice was cracking with emotion.
'Thanks, Alfie. Uh, I'll be with you in a moment.' Alfie turned and left the room. Brinn turned briefly to Agnes. 'I'm afraid I have some bad news, darling,' and then his eyes flicked over us. 'You gentlemen may as well hear it now. I understand it will be on the news very shortly. It's our finance spokesman, David McGarry. His wife and daughter have been found murdered in the daughter's house in North Belfast.'
Agnes gave out a little squeal and buried her face in her hands.
I said: 'That's awful.'
Brinn was shaking his head slowly; tears appeared in his eyes but didn't fall. 'I knew they could sink low. God knows we've seen how low they can sink over the years - but this? An innocent wife and child, just to get at me?'
He banged his fist down hard on the table. Several glasses fell over, spilling their contents. Agnes began to half-heartedly dab at the mess with her napkin. Parker helped her.
'I'm very sorry,' Parker said. 'You must have been very close.'
'Very,' Agnes said.
Stewart appeared at the door again and signalled to Brinn to come over.
He stood up and crossed over while Agnes continued mopping up. The boy, neglected through dinner
, had woken up as the glasses were knocked over and was now demanding a drink. Agnes ignored him, her eyes glazed, as she worked at the stained tablecloth. Parker reached over and poured the boy a fresh drink and handed the glass to him, but he wouldn't take it.
Brinn came back over. Agnes put out a hand to him; the other held the tightly balled sodden napkin.
He took her hand. 'I'm going to have to go. You'll be okay? I may be some time.'
She nodded half-heartedly.
'You want me to come with you?'
'Better not. Things aren't going to get any better.' He looked at us again. 'David McGarry has been taken to hospital with a suspected heart attack.'
Agnes slumped back in her seat. Parker was quietly pushing the remains of his dinner around his plate; he looked embarrassed to be there, aware that he was in a unique position of seeing a future prime minister's reaction to a friend's murder but aware that he didn't have the tabloid ignorance to exploit it there and then, where it mattered. But it was all right for Parker. It was all right for Agnes. It was all right for Brinn. They hadn't killed anyone.
Brinn let go of his wife's hand, and marched quickly out into the hall to the waiting Stewart and together they clumped down the varnished wooden stairs.
I went and stood by the window and watched them leave in a green estate car. As they emerged into the traffic two police Land-Rovers joined them, one in front, one behind.
I walked to the other end of the dining room and looked out over the marina. The sky was overcast now and a bit of a wind had gotten up, rattling the masts of the boats.
Behind me Agnes said: 'It never rains but it pours.'
I nodded.
She said: 'They were a lovely family.'
'I know,' I said.
Divorcing Jack Page 8
