“It won’t be,” Eamon snapped, then grinned. “But if it is, I don’t know about the rest of the lads, Father Davy … you and me’s going to run like the hammers of hell. There’ll be a whole lot of very angry screws in the Kesh.”
Davy grimaced. He’d not want to be one of the men who had volunteered to stay and keep the guards in H-7 quiet to give the escape party time to get away. Sooner or later, the guards would be released, and they’d be boiling for revenge.
Too fuckin’ bad. The stay-behinds were all Provo volunteers. They were following their orders just like him. They knew what they were letting themselves in for. Did he?
Davy touched his coat where it covered the revolver’s bulge. Was he going to have to use that wee gun? Could he honestly believe the whole bloody escape wouldn’t turn into the same kind of fuckup as his attempt to blow up the bridge at Ravernet nine years ago?
Even if everything did go smoothly, how the hell was he going to get to Canada. And if he did, what gave him the right to believe Fiona would give him as much as the time of day? It had been all very well for him to have seen her photo and decide without thinking, after just one glimpse of her face, that he would take the chance he’d been offered. What was he going to say to her?
He’d had nine years to think only of her. She’d had the same nine years to meet other men. He couldn’t bear to think about that. Davy tried to remember what Jimmy had said in his letter. She’d been having dinner with a doctor, but she wasn’t married. At least that meant if she had been out with fellahs, they hadn’t been important to her, except—except when Davy had asked her to marry him back in ’74, she’d refused because—he could remember the words clearly—she “didn’t believe in the bourgeois convention.” Maybe she still didn’t believe and was living with the doctor the way she’d lived in the wee house with Davy.
But he had to believe. He must believe as strongly as a Jesuit believed in his God that everything would be all right, even if he was deluding himself. He had to believe, and, he smiled at himself, if desperation was a great manufacturer of dreams and delusions, so what? He was desperate; as the whole of Northern Ireland, awash in its desperation for years, had nurtured its dreams and the delusion that it would be free.
“Cheer up, Davy. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Davy shrugged, glanced at Eamon, and gave a thumbs-up. There was too much water under the bridge, all of his bridges, to turn back now.
* * *
“Get a move on, for fuck’s sake.” Hughie Wilson pounded the steering wheel and peered through the open driver’s window of his high metal-sided food lorry to see how far the tailback stretched. Not more than a hundred yards from the police checkpoint up ahead. Checkpoints were a fact of life in Ulster, but he didn’t need one. Not today. This one had bloody well better not keep him too long.
It hadn’t been his turn to drive, but his mate who shared the duty had phoned in sick. Hughie had been planning to go fishing. Still, the time-and-a-half money for driving on a Sunday would come in handy—bloody alimony—and if he could finish up reasonably early, he’d still have time to get down to Ballysallagh Reservoir near Bangor for the evening trout rise.
The traffic ahead inched forward. He followed. He heard the whicker of rotors and watched as a Wessex chopper hovered, veered, and headed toward Lisburn. It was probably going to Thiepval Barracks, headquarters of the British army’s 39th Infantry Brigade. Helicopters were another fact of life in Ulster, like Saracen and Saladin armoured cars grumbling through Belfast: shootings, kneecappings, bombings, and still more bombings. Ireland, the “land of saints and scholars”? In a pig’s arse it was, here in the charnel house of the Wee North.
The car behind him honked. Hughie engaged the gears, swearing as the worn clutch ground and the lorry jerked ahead until it was level with a grey, armour-plated Hotspur Land Rover. He stopped and waited for a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer to approach, bulky in his flak jacket, Sten gun menacing.
“How’s about you?” Hughie said, resting his uniformed elbow on the edge of the window.
“Sick of doing these fucking checkpoints, that’s how I am.” The constable spat, but lowered the muzzle of his gun. “Prison dinners?”
“Aye.”
“Off up the road?” The constable nodded to where the watchtowers of the Maze seemed to gnaw at the skyline.
“I’ve the bad lads’ grub in the back of this here. Feeding time at the fucking zoo. I don’t want to be late.”
“They’ll hardly die of starvation for the want of a few minutes. Come on. I’ve to look in the back.”
“What the hell for? Do you reckon I’m a Provvie in a stolen uniform come to bust my mates out?”
“I’ve my job to do.”
“Yeah. Right.” Hughie climbed down from his cab and walked to the back of the lorry. He was not a patient man at the best of times. He could feel his chances of getting a bit of peace and quiet on the water slipping away because this silly bugger had “his job to do.” Could the peeler walk round the truck any more deliberately? The shite probably trained racing snails for a hobby. “Just get a move on, would you?” Hughie growled and rolled the flexible back door up to let the constable climb inside.
Hughie paced. Short, angry steps. It would take another twenty minutes to reach the barbed-wire fence that marked the perimeter of the prison property, and then he’d to drive half a mile to the Tally Lodge, the main and only entrance through the outer perimeter wall. He’d be held up there and at two more security gates ahead of the final gate into H-7 itself before he could deliver the 180 precooked Sunday dinners to the Fenian bastards.
The constable reappeared. “Away you go.”
“About fucking time.”
“Watch your lip.”
“Right, Your Eminence.” Hughie climbed back up into his cab, grunted as the gears clashed, and drove off. “And fuck you, too,” he muttered. It wasn’t his fault if checkpoint duty was boring. It wasn’t his fault that wearing the green uniform was an open invitation to any Provo sniper with a place to hide and an ArmaLite. The fucking peeler just, “had his job to do”? Well, so did Hughie. Peelers weren’t the only ones that the Provos might target. They’d just murdered a couple of civilian contractors who’d been doing construction work for the army. They could switch their attention to anyone involved with the Security Forces, and that included food-lorry drivers. He spat through the window.
He knew he was going to be late. He didn’t give a shite if that meant the prisoners would have to wait for the meals that were congealing in their tinfoil containers behind him. Hughie wanted to finish the delivery, get back home and out of his fuckin’ uniform, and escape to the peace of the reservoir nestled safely behind a wall of pine-scented trees, away to hell from Belfast. He could imagine the evening sun as it would glint from the dark waters, its reflection dappled by the rings made by trout that would rise as soon as the insects started to emerge and rest on the surface to dry their wings before trying to escape from the hungry fish. And the caddis-fly hatch wouldn’t be held up by fuckin’ checkpoints.
* * *
Inside block H-7, the prison officer, George Smiley, buttoned his dark-blue tunic and turned to the communications officer, John Adams. “I’m telling you, it’s all right for you in here in the Communications Centre with all your switches and alarms, steel bars round the place, electric doors.” He pointed past a solid steel door. “I’ve got to go out there, like Daniel in the bloody lions’ den and do the head count. Some of them buggers scare the living bejesus out of me.”
“Come on, George. You know as well as I do there’s panic buttons all over the corridors. One sign of trouble…”
“I know. I know. One sign of trouble, I’ve to push the button and alarms go off like a bunch of banshees.” George thought that John Adams looked just a shade too smug. No wonder. All he had to do was flick a red switch on his console and the whole block would be locked up tight, with sirens screaming and guards running to the
ir emergency stations.
The communications officer would be in here behind as much armour plate as a Crusader tank while he, poor old George Smiley, would be locked in there with a bunch of men who were doing life for murder. Butchers who thought nothing of kneecapping some poor bastard and letting him writhe and scream before cutting his misery short with a head job. Not a day went by that he wished he’d not been laid off from the shipyards. If he hadn’t, he’d not be in this bloody steel and concrete rat trap. Retirement couldn’t come soon enough.
Bile burned his guts and rose in his throat. He stuck a hand in his pocket. Shite! He’d left his antacid tablets in his civvy pants in his locker.
He swallowed, tasting the sourness, regretting his carelessness and the remark he’d made about the banshee. He said, “I was just thinking I should never’ve said, ‘banshee.’ When do you hear her? Would you mind telling me that?”
“Before someone”—Adams made his voice quaver like Peter Cushing in an old B movie—“d-i-i-i-e-e-s-s.” He rolled his eyes.
“Ha-fuckin’-ha,” Smiley said flatly.
“I’m sorry.”
Smiley saw how Adams peered at him before he said, a note of concern in his voice, “Are you starting to get the willies, George? After all your years on the job?”
Smiley crammed his peaked cap on. “I don’t know. I’ve just this feeling…”
“Sure, we all get feelings sometimes. Cheer up. Don’t let it get to you. Look on the bright side. It’s not long to shift change, and we’ll be out of here.” Adams yawned and stretched back in his chair. “D’you fancy a jar on the way home?”
“A jar? Maybe.” Smiley held himself more erectly. “You’re right. I’m just being an ould worrywart.” He wondered if he was reassuring Adams or himself, but said with a forced grin, “I would go for a pint or two, right enough.” But whatever was bothering him would not go away. He muttered under his breath, “If the bad lads behave themselves.” He was relieved to see that John Adams hadn’t heard that remark.
He’d been too busy studying the clock above the control console. “A pint it is, George, but it’s time you were on the go.” He leaned forward and pushed a button. The steel door of the Communications Centre hissed open. “And quit your worrying. It’s Sunday. The customers’ll be quiet as mice. Just you think about us having a few and them buggers in here with their tongues hanging out for one.”
George Smiley said nothing and walked to the door. A prisoner stood outside, broom and dustpan in his hands. Smiley recognized Gerard Kelly, whose job it was to clean the control room; Gerard Kelly, who in 1973 had been one of the team that had bombed the Old Bailey courthouse in London, killing one man and injuring 244. “Kelly,” he said.
“Mr. Smiley.” Kelly bobbed his head to Smiley and spoke to Officer Adams. “Permission to come inside and dust, sir?”
“Come on in, Gerard.”
Smiley shrugged. Why should the guards be expected to work like a bunch of skivvies when there was plenty of free labour in the place? He let Kelly sidle past, walked away, then turned to look back along the corridor of the central bar of the H that housed admin offices and the Communications Centre The Circle, as it was known, was the most secure part of the most escape-proof jail in all of Her Majesty’s prisons.
He heard Gerard Kelly say to John Adams, “Boys-a-boys, Mr. Adams, but you’ve a brave power of electricals in here. What do they all do?” and Adams replying, “That’s for me to know and you to wonder, Kelly. Just you clean the place like you always do. Now come by. I’ve to shut the door after Mr. Smiley.”
As the door to the Communications Centre door began to hiss shut, George watched Kelly dust the console’s countertop. The man’s hands were huge. Powerful. Smiley frowned, but if John Adams was happy enough to be shut inside with a hard bastard like Kelly, that was Adams’s concern, not his, but somehow it wasn’t right. Not in the Circle. Shutting yourself in alone with a man like Kelly was about as sensible as locking yourself in a cage with a rabid pit bull. The burning in George’s stomach nagged more fiercely, but he shrugged and headed for his area of responsibility—D wing.
CHAPTER 20
VANCOUVER. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1983
The hummingbird’s wings flickered so rapidly that they appeared to be transparent. Fiona stood looking through her kitchen window at the tiny creature hovering beside her nectar feeder. She believed that fairies would have wings that looked like that but didn’t think fairies in flight would make the same high-pitched, frenetic buzzing.
She belted her dressing gown more tightly. The kitchen was cool with no sun yet to drive away September’s morning chill. She ignored McCusker’s head butting against her bare shins and watched the bird in profile, its green back shining gently in the presunrise light. When it was full day, it would sparkle like a tiny, living emerald.
McCusker bit her shin. It was only a love bite, but she stooped to push the cat away. Her movement alarmed the bird. It gave a high-pitched “chip,” spun to face her, and flared its tail feathers into a fan. She saw the orange of its chin and breast, a white collar between. That was very interesting. Only the male birds had such intensely orange chins and only a small percentage of them had green rather than orange backs. A flying metaphor for Northern Ireland, she thought. Orange and green together in one place.
The bird gave one more scolding “chip” and rocketed vertically. She watched the little dot soar over a tall pine that looked in the early light as if its ragged silhouette had been cut from dark cartridge paper by a child with blunt scissors.
She wished the creature Godspeed. The hummers that took up residence locally in the summer and came to her feeder and her hanging basket of fuchsia had all left three weeks ago, so he must be one of the last migratory birds from farther north stopping to feed before his long flight down to Mexico. She admired the stamina of the tiny bird and envied his ability to travel where he wished, when he wished. Not like someone she was trying to leave behind.
She’d not see the hummingbirds again until next spring, when the males returned to claim their territories, woo little females by sky dancing in great swooping parabolas, mate, and raise their families. She’d miss them in the dark winter months ahead.
She remembered Tim’s remark about male rufous hummingbirds. “I reckon if there’s any truth to this reincarnation business, I want to come back as one of those.”
“Whatever for?”
Thinking of what he had said made her smile.
“Because all they do is drink nectar, make love, and spend the winters in Mexico.”
She’d laughed and readily agreed when he’d asked, “How about you and me nipping down to Puerto Vallarta for a couple of weeks next year?”
“Only if you promise not to drink too much nectar.”
“Well,” he’d kissed her, “two out of three won’t be bad.”
McCusker’s butting was more insistent. “All right,” she said, “all right, cat, I’ll get your breakfast.” She filled his bowl, plugged in the coffeemaker, and poured cereal for herself.
She sat at the table. Tim would be back tonight. She hadn’t realized how much she’d miss him until he had gone off to San Francisco last week. A trip with him to Mexico in the winter would be wonderful if it could be fitted in with the school holidays. Knowing Tim, he’d probably offer to pay. She’d certainly let him take care of the hotel room, but she mentally checked her last bank statement and was pleased that she should have enough to buy her own airline tickets.
She munched her flakes and listened to McCusker crunching his tuna-flavoured soy pellets. The light was stronger now, filtering in through the window, glinting off the chrome tap over the sink.
Outside, the pine’s branches were more distinct, each one fletched with green needles. The leaves of the maple next door had looked grey, but now she could make out the yellows and ochres and the details of their dark veins, each leaf like a sheet of old parchment that someone had scrawled over with ancient ink. Be
neath the tree, heaps of dead leaves lay on the lawn. Someone would have to rake them soon, and that someone was her, dammit.
She remembered neatly raked piles under the chestnut trees in Barnett’s Park in Belfast. When she was a child, she and her brother Connor would take the bus from the treeless Falls Road to the Upper Malone Road and walk to the park. They’d go to collect shiny horse chestnuts and take them back home, drill holes in them, soak them in vinegar, and when the chestnuts were properly seasoned, they would tie each to a string so that after school they could play conkers.
She could feel the prickles on her palm of a chestnut’s green outer shell, which had to be broken to release the nut inside; could smell the scent of the turf beneath as they ran laughing and squealing through crispy, crackling piles; could hear children’s laughter as they rolled among the heaps, leaves in her dress, leaves in his hair.
The picture pleased her. She felt no sadness remembering her childhood. It was not the same as the way she often ached about her grown-up years, but she was ready to accept that Tim and Becky were both right; she should grieve and heal and put the misery of Belfast behind her. They were right, and she had resolved to take their advice, but she had no intention of letting the happy memories go.
She glanced at the leaves in the garden and thought about having to rake them. She could feel an ache in the small of her back at the prospect of the job. She understood now why the park keeper would run after them yelling, “Get away to hell out of that.” They hadn’t spent hours raking.
She and Connor would run down the hill to where the Lagan chuckled over the stones of the shallows below Shaw’s Bridge. The river was clean up there, not the sluggish, scummy, debris-laden thing it became in the city under the gaunt gantries of the shipyards. Higher upstream it was hemmed in by the grey granite slabs of the Lagan embankment. The embankment where, thirteen years ago, she’d met Davy.
She heard the “ting” of the coffeemaker, rose, poured herself a cup, and went back to sit at the table. Davy. Davy. What had she just promised herself? No more unhappy memories? Well, now was as good a time as any to start working on that.
Now and in the Hour of Our Death Page 18
