He lifted out the photographs and news clippings, and arranged them on the table, as if he could organize his fears and put them in their correct place. For a while, he switched the documents around, teasing apart the connections between the news clippings and his memories, rearranging the sequence of events, trying to work out the facts that had been hidden from him for decades, before returning them to their original order. His thoughts were so muddled he could no longer summon the energy to think logically.
He stared at the picture of Mary O’Sullivan and her baby with a sense of dread. What did it change? Everything. No one had told him about the infant, or what had happened to it after the traveller girl had disappeared. He had been infatuated with Mary, the obsession of a shy young man that had come to nothing. Or so he had believed. She had been a capable and resourceful worker on the family farm, but his parents immediately sacked her on the day they discovered she was pregnant. Fearing a scandal involving one or other of his sons, his father had given her cash to travel to England and procure an abortion. She had left with a large sum of money in her pocket. It was months before he saw her again, turning up at the farmhouse door, asking for her old job back. When his parents refused, she took to hanging around the periphery of their lives, bothering the other workers on the farm, until his brother and his friends in the regiment had taken her away one night for questioning, claiming she was an informer for local paramilitaries.
His memory of what had happened to her and the evidence of the photographs and the clippings contradicted each other. They were like two halves of a magnet, refusing to join, no matter how much he fumbled with the details in his mind. He was prey to all sorts of suspicions. His brother had told him O’Sullivan had eloped with a traveller cousin, and that not even her parents knew exactly where she had gone. Somewhere in the south, he had heard. O’Sullivan belonged to a world he knew very little about, and it had been easy to convince himself that she had disappeared in the back of a caravan into no man’s land, that web of secret roads zigzagging the border. It was a completely different explanation for her disappearance than that suggested by the news clippings detailing the travellers’ campaign to have her body found. Why the divergence? And why the secrecy around the baby when there should be no reason for secrecy?
In the midst of his suspicion, the sounds of winter drew very close. They were unlike the noises of other months, edgier and more hollow: branches groaning in the wind, the fidgeting of hungry birds on the roof, the weather vane rattling in the wind, doors creaking in the draughts, and the clang of church bells carried over a mile of frozen bog and gorse. He had little sleep that night.
When he struck off across the fields the next morning he was almost delirious with tiredness. The whole world felt lighter, the trees seeming to lift towards him, his fields uneven in the low sun, tilting beneath his feet, as though they might upend and sweep him away into the darkness of the valley and the gypsy camp. He hunkered low over the humps of weeds and made his way to the edge of his farm. There he stood still for a long time, staring through the thorns.
A small bunch of gypsy children lined the far side of the hedge. Their pale unreadable faces seemed to float amid the black twigs. Strictly speaking, they were doing nothing wrong, but their presence bothered him. They stood there, staring back at him through the holes in the hedge, without making any sound. He rubbed his watery eyes. He thought he spied another face amongst theirs, the face of the missing girl, rising up like doomed ballast from the depths of the past.
Farther along the hedge, he spied a couple of older boys removing a sheet of corrugated tin that he had used to fill a large gap. He roared like a bull and chased them, but they were quick, darting creatures, and wriggled beyond his grasp. He shouted at the remaining children and waved his arms in the air. They remained where they stood, their stubborn gazes haunting him like the eyes of the missing woman in the picture. He did not want to think of the past. The thought that it had returned and might be as close as the other side of the hedge terrified him. As long as the secret of Mary O’Sullivan’s disappearance was kept hidden, it endangered no one, he reassured himself. Panting hard, he strode back to his outhouses and equipped himself with a hook and pitchfork.
For the rest of the morning, he set to work on his hedges, hacking with his hook and ramming with the pitchfork. He filled in all the horrible holes with cuttings of branches, driving them in tight, blocking out the sight of the children. In his toil, he slashed his hands but he barely noticed the pain. Step by step, the hedge grew into a swaying fortification of thorns, the boughs creaking with the burden of dead branches. He stood back and stared at the impassable barrier with a grimace of satisfaction. Then he moved on to the next field and worked on the gaps there.
If only he had confided his concerns about the woman to someone else, he grumbled, then it would no longer have been his secret to carry. He had told no one and concealed the truth because that had been the easier course to take. His conscience had been yielding and passive, giving in to the demands of his brother. As the months and years went by, his silence and passivity had shaped the secret, adding gravity to it. He had allowed it to sink to the back of his mind, almost forgetting it, unaware of the grave danger it would one day bring him.
No matter how busy he kept himself on the farm during the rest of the day, tending to his pigs, repairing the outhouses, digging and cleaning the vegetable patch, he was unable to alleviate the sense of looming disaster. He felt sick with dread at the disarray the gypsies seemed to threaten, the nonchalant way they wandered the fields around his farm, the insolence of their stares as he strode by them. That evening he could barely settle inside the house. The transformation in his behaviour and mood was so complete it fascinated him. It was as though a stranger had supplanted him. Since the travellers had arrived he had become someone else. He tried to remember the sense of peace and contentment that had dominated his life before, but all that he could recall was a sense of aimless anticipation, an aura of mystery hanging over his hilltop farm, which had never dissipated, a set of questions he had never dared to ask.
*
The next morning Reid awoke with a start from a whiskey-induced sleep to the sound of whooping and cantering hooves in his yard. He pulled on his boots, feeling braver, ready to tackle what the day might throw at him.
Outside, a group of teenage travellers were riding their ponies around his outhouses. They circled him, showing off their horsemanship, marshalling their beasts with reins made from rope and straw. There was a sneaking admiration in his gaze at first, but as they raced by him, they began pulling faces and shouting obscene threats. He ran into the middle of them and spat out a stream of equally coarse insults to which they responded with delight.
The travellers rode into the nearby field and returned to the yard with sticks and branches, whirling them close by Reid’s cowering frame. The mood changed, became more threatening. He backed into a pig shed, his legs shaking. He steadied himself. Surely, they meant only to intimidate and not harm him. All he had to do was endure their little game and wait for the ponies to tire. To calm himself, he gave his full attention to his pigs. Disturbed by the commotion and squealing noisily, they shoved against his legs, treading on his boots with their hooves. He grasped their snouts and squeezed them back against the railings. For what seemed like an age, he was trapped with his livestock, listening to the gypsies circling the sheds in waves of shrieking and laughter, their ponies whinnying and snorting for breath.
The smell of smoke wafting through the air signalled a dark turn to the game. Through the slats of the shed, he saw the boys riding with balls of orange and red held aloft, circling the outhouses in silent glee. He caught another whiff, the sweet smell of an accelerant, most likely petrol. They were wielding burning sticks, he realized. It was no longer a joke, or a nasty exercise in intimidation. They were intent on harming him.
He hunkered in alarm as one of the sticks soared through the air in a low arc, marking its tar
get in a pile of bales at the back of the shed. More of the flaming missiles landed in, whizzing past Reid. Some burning embers touched his hair and he crawled about on all fours, shaking his head vigorously. Smoke filled the shed as the flames took hold, leaping from bale to bale.
Reid released the gate of the pig enclosure with his fumbling hands, and urged the frightened animals to stream past, but in their panic, they butted his body to the ground. When he staggered to his feet, the fire had already advanced up the stack of hay and was licking the timbers of the roof. Burning bales fell apart, unfolding into eruptions of yellow flames that climbed into thick columns of overpowering smoke. The loose hay around him ignited, worms of flame taking hold and eating their way along the floor. He felt as though a dirty rag had been stuffed into his mouth, the acrid smoke coiling its way into his lungs.
Gasping for air, he lay down on the barn floor. There were flames everywhere, immense flames catching hold of everything his eyes fixed upon, arching overhead with the sound of a ferocious wind, shaking the air with igniting sparks.
He was about to give up and close his eyes for good, when he noticed a tall figure quivering beyond the curtain of fire. With all his strength, Reid concentrated his gaze on the figure, watching it draw closer and wrinkle in the heat. He shouted hoarsely for help and through the blaze, a voice answered back. Miraculously, the figure loomed above him and, lifting him to his feet, dragged him out of the inferno.
‘They’re trying to kill me,’ croaked Reid, clutching at his rescuer.
‘Relax,’ said the figure.
Reid’s smarting eyes cleared, and he saw the face of the English journalist.
‘I was driving by and saw the smoke,’ he explained.
‘Where are the gypsies?’ Reid’s throat hurt with every word.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve chased them off.’
Reid smelled petrol on the reporter’s clothes. He stared wildly at the Englishman’s face, his emotionless eyes glazed by the flames of the fire, and the gloves on his hands.
‘What sort of game are you playing at?’ He choked out the words. ‘You rescued me too easily.’ He struggled to his feet as the reporter kept his silence. ‘It was you who gave the gypsies their starting orders and then called them off.’ He backed away. ‘Get out of my yard.’
‘I want to keep you alive.’ The reporter sounded exasperated, following him. ‘What’s so bad about that?’
‘Why do you care whether I live or die?’
‘Because no one has spoken the truth about what happened to Mary O’Sullivan.’
Reid tried to count the pigs in the yard to make sure they were safe. They were zigzagging across the cobbles, out of control. He turned back to the reporter, whose blank face was like raw fuel for his anger. ‘I told you to leave.’
‘I am your friend, old man. It’s time you started listening to me.’
‘You’re my interrogator, not my friend.’
‘You’re not fit to protect yourself, and I won’t be able to keep rescuing you from harm. You need to start talking to me, or leave this place for good. More travellers are arriving this weekend. They’re coming from a wedding up the country. Soon they’ll have you completely surrounded.’
Reid considered the possibility that the arson was just the beginning, a preliminary tactic, before the travellers got down to the serious business of interrogation and torture. The reporter’s eyes glinted, seeing that Reid had understood the message.
‘I’ll pay for the damage to the barn,’ he offered. The sun peeked out through the dark smoke, lighting up flecks of soot as they fell on his curly hair. ‘I can tell you want to find out the truth about her as well.’
Reid felt a vague sense of trouble welling from inside his chest. It was a religious unease, his conscience yearning to reveal everything that he knew. Deep down, he still hoped for some form of redemption, to be rescued from the cursed island of his farm.
‘Where did you get the photographs of the girl and her baby?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Who gave them to you?’
‘This has no bearing on what happened to Mary O’Sullivan.’
‘But before I talk you have to tell me what happened to her baby,’ said Reid.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that question.’
‘The baby survived, didn’t it? It was raised by its grandparents.’
The reporter shook his head.
Reid was troubled. ‘It must have gone somewhere?’
‘The baby belonged to nowhere and to nobody.’ The reporter shrugged. ‘We’ve more important things to talk about first. It’s time you told me what you know about its mother’s abduction.’
Reid turned back to the blaze, closing his eyes to the all-consuming flames. ‘There are secrets I must keep.’ He seemed to be addressing the fire rather than the reporter. To his surprise, the flames answered back with the sound of wood splintering and timbers crashing to the floor. Part of the roof collapsed, releasing the trapped roar of the fire. They crouched together as a heavy blanket of heat rolled over them.
‘Were you one of the men who raped her?’ asked the journalist.
‘I never harmed her. I warned her to be careful and that the others were planning to get her. I heard them say terrible things about her.’
‘Then now is the time to talk,’ shouted the reporter. ‘Who are you protecting with your silence?’
‘There’s no point twisting a story from me,’ complained Reid, the heat hurling his voice to the back of his throat. ‘I can’t say for sure who took her away or how many men there were. Maybe half a dozen, maybe less. I only knew their nicknames, and they changed them all the time. They came to see my brother, not me.’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘They belonged to my brother’s army regiment.’ He was stupefied by the fire, worn down by the interrogating force of its flames. ‘They moved from base to base along the border. They were dangerous men. Why should I risk my life by betraying them?’ A sudden whiff of heat blasted over him. He felt his legs weaken under the force of the encroaching blaze.
‘All I need are some lines of inquiry. Names and addresses. Did the police ever investigate this gang?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Reid’s voice was reduced to a bare croak. ‘All I remember is the name. They called themselves the Strong Ulster Foundation.’
The reporter hauled him back to the shadow of the farmhouse. He left and returned with a glass of water from the kitchen. He helped Reid sip it. There was a look of wolfish cunning in his eyes.
‘This is good,’ he said. ‘We’re making progress.’
‘What is it you want? Justice or revenge?’
‘I’m not the police. It’s not my job to collar criminals and drag them before the courts. I have a private vendetta to settle.’
They watched as the flames died back, the shed reduced to a skeleton of blackened rafters.
‘Give me a few days,’ said Reid. ‘I need to ask some questions myself. I’ll find out what I can and report back to you. And then you’ll tell me what happened to the baby.’
‘Don’t worry about the baby. It belonged to the next generation. It did not have to suffer as much as its mother.’
*
It took a considerable effort for Samuel to pick up the phone that evening and ring his younger brother, Alistair. Over the years, his brother had become more and more unreachable to him. Alistair Reid had not hidden himself away on a lonely farm to escape the past. He did not need to. He operated in a completely different environment, the arena of politics, but one that was just as steeped in secrets and shadows. Alistair had climbed through the ranks of local government, and was now a successful minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Surrounded by his political colleagues, the apparatus of power, and a cadre of excellent lawyers and advisers, he was impervious to criticism about the past. No one dared dispute the persona he had created or the stories he told about the dark days of the Troubles. He was too bi
g a fish and too accustomed to the highest levels of government power to be harassed by a bunch of itinerants and a reporter with a knack for barbed questions.
‘I need to speak to you,’ Samuel told him. ‘It’s urgent.’
Almost immediately, his brother’s familiar voice irked him. ‘Things are difficult for me right now, Sammy. What’s it about?’
‘The missing traveller girl. Mary O’Sullivan.’
His brother was silent for several long moments. He seemed to condense a lifetime of thinking in the pause, trying to straighten out the entanglements conjured up by that name.
‘I’ll tell you everything when we meet,’ said Samuel.
‘Where?’
‘Home, tonight. But be careful, the place is being watched.’
His brother turned up that night with a driver in a black BMW. He slipped into the house quickly, barely giving Samuel a glance, and sat down by the fire without taking off his coat. He acted like a man connected to important facts, the running of a country, the solving of sectarian feuds, the balancing of difficult financial budgets, the sort of things that were far beyond his older brother’s understanding. His shadow flickered in front of the fire, agile, sinister, as if getting ready to haunt Samuel in his sleep.
‘Who have you been speaking to?’ Alistair’s voice was tired. His eyes swept the room but avoided looking at Samuel.
‘There’s a reporter on the prowl. Asking questions about O’Sullivan. You remember her, don’t you?’
‘What sort of question is that?’ His brother sounded injured. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ He began rubbing the dog’s head, firmly and rhythmically. For the first time their eyes met. ‘What are you trying to do to me, Sammy, dragging me back here to talk about the dead?’
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