He stopped abruptly and coughed as though he were weeping and trying to hide it. Then he laughed, embarrassed. “Soap box speech,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
Moira’s hand reached across the table to grip her father’s sleeve. “You’re right, Dada, you’re dead right. Listen, I just told Michael. I’m not running off to England. I’m not going to let them dictate my life.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Maeve said. “What is this? Another martyr for the cause? You’d stay here and get yourself killed to make a political point against the IRA. Is that what I’m hearing? Is it? Because, if it is, it’s a lot of nonsense. You’d be getting killed for nothing. I’m as Irish as anybody, but I can’t see that any of this is worth dying for. Getting rid of the IRA? Getting a fair shake for Catholics in jobs and at the polls? A united Ireland? Have some sense. The South of Ireland doesn’t want us and couldn’t take care of us if we were handed to them on a plate tomorrow. It’s all madness, this, madness, and don’t you be going and getting mixed up in it.”
“Did you hear what Dada said?” Moira turned angrily on her mother. “It’s people like us who’re the only ones who can stop them. And we’re not going to stop them by letting them run our lives. Do you know what I should do? I should tell the whole world what happened to us last night. I should tell the way they treated us. I should come out into the open and say this is what happened. My husband had to choose between saving his wife’s life or saving the life of the likes of Pottinger. We should stand our ground. And then, if we’re shot, the whole world will know why we’re being shot. And I don’t think even the most stupid of the people who back the IRA would say that it was fair.”
“You’d be surprised,” her father said wearily. “Who’s talkin’ about bein’ fair? The people who back them are used to shuttin’ their eyes to things they don’t want to see. If the pair of you are killed, it will just be a warnin’ to the rest of the people who’s afraid of them.”
“Would you listen to yourself?” Moira said. “Aren’t you the one who said, a minute ago, that we’re the only people who can stop them? Well, when are we going to start?”
Her father stared at her across the table, with sad, shamed eyes. “It’s all very well for me to talk,” he said. “But you’re my daughter. You’re what matters.”
“That’s right,” Maeve cut in. “Now you’re talking sense.” She turned to Michael. “Michael, you haven’t said a word. What do you think?”
“What does he think? It’s no use asking him,” Moira burst out angrily. “First thing today, he asked for a transfer to London. Didn’t bother consulting me. What does he think? He never wanted to come back here, he’s been waiting for the day he can get out of Northern Ireland forever. This is a godsend for him. Isn’t it?”
She turned, staring at him.
“Yes,” he said. “I left here a long time ago. It wasn’t my choice to come back. Now, I never want to see this place again.”
There was a silence in the room, a silence broken only by the dog, who rose up beneath his master’s feet and poked his snout out from under the tablecloth between Moira and Dillon, turning this way and that, silently begging for a scrap of food. Dillon put his hand on the dog’s head, fondling him.
At last, Maeve said, “Well, in a way I can’t blame you, Michael. But, listen, we don’t want any rows here tonight. You’re both dead tired. Michael, you’ll stay the night, won’t you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have things to do at the hotel. I’ll sleep there.”
When he said that, Moira pointedly looked out the window. “Do you think the rain’s over?” she asked her father.
“It was just a shower.”
“All right, then. I’ll take Rex for his walk.”
“I can do it. You stay here,” her father said.
“I want to.” She stood up. “Here, Rex,” she called, and went out of the dining room with the dog galumphing behind her. Her parents sat listening, as though waiting for her to leave.
When they heard the front door close, Maeve asked, “How has she been, Michael? Has she been all right?”
He shrugged as if to say he was not sure.
“She’s all right,” Joe said. “She’s a great wee girl. She has more spirit than the rest of us, that’s all.”
“Don’t you be encouraging her, do you hear?” Maeve said angrily. She turned to Dillon. “You wouldn’t leave without her, would you?” And then, as if ashamed of having said it, she put her hand on his and gave it a small squeeze. “Sorry. Of course not. Not to worry. Her father and I will speak to her.”
“She’s just high-strung,” Joe said.
SIX
He waited for almost an hour, but Moira did not come back to the house. Was she sitting in some field gorging chocolates? Or, more likely, was she walking in Lurgan Park, the dog weary behind her as she covered mile after mile, hurrying as if to catch a train? Her angers were like fevers. She fought them alone: running out of the house, sometimes taking the car, sometimes on foot, but always wandering restlessly, aimlessly, until her rage fell, like mercury in a thermometer. Then, silent, almost furtive, she would come home, avoiding him, going to sleep in the spare room, alone.
At nine when she had not returned, he said goodbye to Maeve and Joe. As he approached the rotary which led to the motorway he noticed two cars following him. He pulled his car over, waiting to see if they slowed down. But they blazed past him and, when he came onto the motorway and turned in the direction of Belfast, there were no vehicles in sight.
Twenty minutes later he arrived at the hotel. When he parked his car at the side entrance, crowds of celebrating students, many with drinks in hand, were wandering about in the fenced-off car-park inside. Floodlights, installed last year as a security measure, lit up the bomb damage, the rubble, the gaping walls, the sagging ceilings, like some macabre son et lumière spectacle. Inside the hotel, both bars were full. Groups of young people stood drinking in the lobby as though at some gigantic cocktail party. When he went past reception he saw that Collis had transformed the ballroom into an impromptu dining area and had put up a sign offering a prix fixe buffet “For Hotel Guests Only.” But there were three times as many people being fed there as there were guests in the hotel.
In his office a dozen telephone message slips lay scattered on his desk. He sifted through them to see if Andrea had called. His father had rung twice, other friends, fellow hotel managers. And there was a message from Keogh’s secretary. Mr. Keogh will call you tomorrow at nine.
That will be my answer; Harrison has told him. One way or another, he has made up his mind.
He rang down to reception. “Michael Dillon. Listen, I have to spend the night. Do we have any rooms at all?”
“We’re full up, Michael. With those rooms being damaged over the restaurant, we had to do a bit of reshuffling. And, of course, we were busy to begin with. Oh, wait—” She laughed. “There’s the Jacuzzi.”
The Jacuzzi was the staff’s private name for the most expensive suite in the hotel. It had been planned as a penthouse suite by the American decorator who had redone the Clarence, but even when Dillon offered it at a discount it was hard to rent: its appointments and price were still too rich for local tastes.
“The Jacuzzi, then,” he said. “I don’t mind roughing it.”
“I’ll check with the housekeeper and see that it’s made up for you.”
“Thanks, Sheila,” he said. He put the phone down. Suddenly, feeling he was being watched, he turned in his chair. Framed in the doorway of his office, staring at him fixedly, was a tall boy, his dark greasy hair long about his collar, his face deathly pale and wet with sweat, his eyes glazed as though on drugs. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans and dirty running shoes. His hands were deep in the pockets of an oversize leather wind-breaker. Dillon looked again at the jeans and the running shoes. The tall youth from last night?
“Yes?” Dillon said.
The boy’s hand shifted suddenly in the deep po
cket of his windbreaker. The pocket was large enough to hide a gun. Like an animal transfixed in a hunter’s sights, Dillon sat utterly still. The boy stared at him, sweating, silent. The boy’s eyes dilated. He opened his mouth as if to scream or shout, but no sound came. Then, in panic, he turned and bolted down the corridor. Dillon stood up shakily, and went to the door. He saw the boy stop, halfway down the corridor. Was he coming back? Quickly, Dillon caught the door, to close it, but as he did the boy leaned his head against the corridor wall and, bending over, retched. A stream of yellow vomit splashed on the carpet. Dillon stood, staring, as the boy wiped his mouth and went unsteadily toward the staircase. A frightened assassin? No, of course, of course, a drunk boy up here, looking for the men’s room. The corridor was empty now, the vomit a small smelly pool on the floor. He went back into his office and sat down. Fear, and the sight of the vomiting boy, had made him physically ill. A wave of nausea came and passed. From the mezzanine he heard the loud dull roar of bar talk, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter. It was as though he listened to voices from another world. In that world, last night, walking on the Lagan towpath, he had been filled with plans, free to make choices, a man in control of his life. Again, from the mezzanine, he heard the roar of talk, the shouts of student laughter. Here, in this room, sick with fear, it was as though he had left that world forever.
The phone rang. He looked at the panel and saw it was a house line. When he picked up the receiver, her voice, different from any other, said, “It’s me, will I come up?”
“Yes. I’ll meet you at the stairs.”
He went out along the corridor, past the small pool of vomit, saw her coming up the winding staircase, met her, held her and kissed her.
“Where will we go?”
“Wait,” he said. “I have to get a key.”
A few minutes later, on the top floor of the hotel, he unlocked the door of the penthouse suite. Andrea walked through the sitting room with its large sofa, swivel armchairs and outsize television set. She went into the bathroom, saw the Jacuzzi, then went into the bedroom with its large circular bed. When she saw the bed she turned and looked at him. “What on earth?” she said, and laughed.
“It was the Yanks’ idea. They didn’t realize they were dealing with a Third World country.”
Far below in the grounds of the hotel voices began to chant a song. With Andrea, he went to the sitting room window and looked down. Crowds of celebrating students had spilled out of the lobby into the front-entrance yard and now, under the security floodlights, they linked arms, singing and cavorting like actors on a stage. Andrea looked down at them, happy, young, drunk, then turned and looked at him. “Oh, God. What are we going to do?”
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s going to be all right.”
“How can it be?” she said. “Last night when you said you’d come with me to London I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. And then you went home and this happened.”
“Wait,” he said. “Let’s have a drink.” He went to the minibar and took out two little whiskey bottles. “Can you stay the night?”
“Yes.”
They sat down on the sofa. He poured her whiskey and she drank it down as though it were medicine. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Keogh, my boss, is going to ring here in the morning. My guess is he’s going to transfer me. Do you still want to go to London with me?”
“What are you talking about? What about Moira? You can’t leave her now, can you?”
“She says she’s not going to go. She’s making a crusade of it.”
“Why?”
“It’s too long to explain but she’s serious. She knows I’m going. I haven’t told her about you yet, but I will. I mean, if you still want to be with me.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“The IRA—all that. It could be dangerous, being with me.”
She laughed shakily. “But I always knew that,” she said. Then, serious, she asked, “Do the police think they’d follow you over there?”
“They didn’t say. But they did imply it would be more dangerous if I stayed here.”
“Then it could be dangerous right now. Right this minute.”
“Maybe you’d better not stay the night.”
She laughed. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she said, standing up and walking back into the bedroom. He followed her in. “Can you believe this bed?” she said.
“Can we live up to it?” he said.
She smiled and pulled down the zipper of his trousers. And, at once, it was as if his fear was transformed into an urgent, driving lust. She was unbuttoning his shirt as he unhooked her skirt and pulled down her panties. Naked, she ran around the big circular bed, then, lifting back the ornate coverlet, she jumped up on the bed like a child, using it as a trampoline. He stood, naked, watching her slim, almost boyish body shooting up and down like a diver on a springboard, her hair swirling loose about her shoulders, as jumping, she slowly turned to face him. Now, he saw the small dark circle of pubic hair on her flat athlete’s stomach. The room seemed to shake with her movements; the bed creaked under its punishment. It was as though she were on a stage, acting out some joyous festive rite while he stood, looking up, a spectator, seeing that world of spontaneous gaiety from which he was now shut out.
And, in that moment, as though she sensed his changed mood, she collapsed in the center of the great circle of bed and, lying full length on her stomach, looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
He could not speak. He sat on the bed, stroking her back, his hand moving up and down over the arch of her buttocks until, rolling over, she pulled him down on her, straining her naked body against his as though she would fold them into one person. And then, reunited, they entered that eclipse of time, the act of making love.
Later, while she slept, he lay looking at her in the reflected yellow glare of the security floodlights which were trained on the hotel grounds. She was not, like Moira, a beauty who drew instant male attention. When he thought of her he did not, at once, see her face. Was this, he wondered now, a different kind of love? With Moira it had been the love of her looks, pride in the temporary possession of someone other men admired, an obsession which thrived on the danger of being displaced by another, more attractive male. His love for Moira, he now knew, had not been love but a form of self-deceit. He had not tried to dispel her fears or to know and help that angry, sentimental, discontented girl who used the sword of her beauty to assure her the indulgence of the men with whom she dealt.
And what did he know of Andrea? He did not think of her looks but of the feeling he had that the hours he spent with her were the hours that mattered most in his life. It was a happiness he did not risk by any attempt to define it, a happiness which made him lonely each time she left him. She was more open, more honest, than any other girl he had known. She seemed to have no hidden fears. Yet did he really know her any better than he had known Moira? Who is Andrea, what is she? What is she dreaming now?
She stirred in her sleep. Her hand, small and plain, the nails cut short, twitched as her fingers plucked at the sheet. What if she, not Moira, had been with him last night? Would she have jumped recklessly from the bathroom window, would she have stood up to them, risking their anger? Or would they have seemed to her, as they never would to Moira, dangerous unknowns like airline hijackers who must be placated and obeyed but who, if one survived the hijack, would disappear from one’s life like figures in a bad dream? Of course they would. They were no part of Andrea’s life. Was he being selfish in involving her in all of this? If he really loved her he should stay away from her now. But he could not. He did not have the courage to risk losing her.
Shortly after dawn they woke and made love. The yellow searchlights had been turned off outside and the pale morning sky was the color of milk. Gulls wheeled and called in the early silence as, lying in each other’s arms, they heard the city waken, the heavy rumble of long-distance trucks movin
g toward the motorway, the distant thunder of a plane. At seven she lay in the Jacuzzi, laughing as he fumbled with the various faucets. Then, holding her, her back against his chest, his hands on her breasts as the faucets bubbled on their bodies, his mood soared. Suddenly, it was as if he was already away from Belfast, away from Moira, living in a new and permanent state of happiness. But at eight, when, bathed and dressed, they prepared to leave the room, reality closed in.
“We’d better not have breakfast here,” she said. “What do you think?”
Lies of Silence Page 11
