Northern Spy

by Flynn Berry

  “I can’t go, then.”

  “You have to go,” says Marian. “It’s what you’d do normally. It will look worse if you don’t turn up. Have you met her fiancé?”

  “No.”

  “His uncle’s Cillian Burke,” she says, and I groan.

  “What’s Cillian like?” I ask, hoping Marian will answer that he’s not so bad, that the media has exaggerated him.

  Marian looks thoughtful for a moment, then she says, “His nickname is Lord Chief Executioner.”

  My heart sinks. She says, “Cillian likes the Balfour. They have a private bar, did you know that? I think the army council meets there sometimes. I need your help,” she says, but I’m already shaking my head. “I want to place a listening device.”

  * * *

  —

  After the ceremony, we’re handed confetti to throw. I stand smiling on my high heels in the crowd outside the church, talking with my mam and my aunt Bridget. Soon the confetti will be in the air, as the bride and groom run under it, and then this part will be finished. Everyone will stand around for a bit, as the confetti starts to disintegrate on the damp ground, and then they will turn from the church toward the Balfour.

  Cillian Burke is standing in the center of a group on the church lawn, shaking the packet of confetti against his palm. He’s one of those vigorous, forceful bald men, whose baldness seems like proof of vitality, his eyes two bright chips under a smooth, heavy brow. He has on an expensive suit and a pressed white shirt. He must have a gun on him, tucked into the band of his trousers. I wonder how many guns are in the crowd at this moment, and how many other people are also scared. Statistically, I’m not the only informer here.

  Cillian smiles, shaking another man’s hand. The trial against him collapsed, but he must still be under surveillance. Police or intelligence officers will be in a vehicle parked somewhere nearby, monitoring him. How fast will they get here, if something goes wrong?

  I’ve been near Cillian before. When I was a teenager, a Portakabin on the Falls Road was turned into a sort of nightclub. The walls were covered in plush pink fabric, which always smelled faintly of vomit. The Ballroom of Romance, we called it. We went sometimes, and the local hard men went, and I remember Cillian sitting with a girl on his lap, my age, maybe a year older, maybe sixteen.

  Bridget laughs with my mam, glitter flashing above her eyes, and I smile, pretending to have heard the joke. I have on a black dress sprigged with white flowers and a velvet blazer. I shouldn’t feel self-conscious. This is my home. I grew up three roads from here. My granny’s Requiem Mass was at this church. My father’s initials are carved on a tree on the Black Mountain. The bride is my sweet cousin Aoife, who used to take baths with me, used to sleep over on a trundle bed, and still eats off my plate at family dinners.

  I’m not the imposter here, they are. Cillian Burke, and the rest of them. Marching in memorial parades, in ski masks and mirrored sunglasses, like we’re meant to be proud of them.

  “How’s your wee one, Tessa?” asks Bridget, but then a cheer goes up from closer to the chapel, and we toss our confetti in the air.

  When we reach the Balfour, I look up at the red lights of the utility towers on the mountain ridge, then follow the crowd inside. The smell is instantly recognizable, unwashed carpet and whiskey. Waiting inside are the guests who couldn’t attend the ceremony. Because of Cillian, the police will have been monitoring the chapel. They will have used long-range lenses to photograph every guest. The ones waiting at the hotel are IRA members, trying to stay underground. They’re safe here, though. The police have never raided the Balfour. Too dangerous, presumably. Marian is standing among them, in a blue crêpe dress, the only woman. When she sees me, she breaks away from the group and comes to hug me.

  “What are you drinking?” she asks. “Want to try mine?” She hands me her old-fashioned, and I take a long swallow, the bourbon settling my nerves a little. “Come meet my friends,” she says. My pulse is racing fast enough that they might see the vein jumping in my throat. “Lads, this is Tessa.”

  They greet me like I’m their sister, too. Damian brings me into the circle, his arm around my shoulders, and Seamus and Niall smile at me. They seem uncanny. I’ve spent months picturing them, and here they are, exactly as they were in my head.

  I shake hands with them, feeling slightly hysterical, like I want to let them in on the joke. I had some parts wrong, though. Niall seems younger than I’d imagined, a young twenty-six, his pale ears sticking out from his head. And Seamus doesn’t come across as threatening. He has on a beige suit with wide lapels, his red hair brushed to the side. He looks, in that suit, with his faded red hair, vaguely silly, like a lost member of Monty Python, which must make him more effective as a recruiter.

  Marian starts to tell a story about us and Aoife as girls, and the three men listen. They don’t suspect her. You can tell from their faces that they adore her.

  I spend a while talking with Damian about cooking. He’s tall and handsome, rocking his weight back on his heels, leaning forward to hear me when the crowd becomes too loud. He seems completely at ease, despite having participated in a felony robbery last week.

  When Aoife and Sean enter the room, we break our conversations to cheer. They start to circulate among the guests, and the crowd at the bar grows louder. One of our neighbors from our estate, Michael, appears at my shoulder. “Tessa Daly, how are you keeping yourself? Still at the BBC?”

  “I am.”

  “How can you do it?” he asks, and I’m aware of Seamus turning to listen.

  “You can’t change it unless you’re in it.”

  “Sure, sure, but tell me this—where’s your boss from?” asks Michael.

  “He’s English.”

  “And his boss? Is he English?”

  “She’s from Manchester.”

  Michael nods gravely. “They’ll let you work for them, but you’ll never run the gaff.”

  Another of our neighbors walks past and says, “Hiya, Michael.” He holds up his hand. “Gerry.”

  “Where do you get your news, Michael?” I ask.

  “Al Jazeera,” he says. Behind him, Seamus smiles into his glass. “Serious, love. I can’t be doing with the shite in the news here.”

  After Michael makes his way to the bar, Seamus comes to stand with me. He says, “Is Finn here?”

  My chest tightens. He knows my son’s name. “No, he’s with his father.”

  Tom is away for work this weekend. I shouldn’t have lied, but I don’t want Seamus to know that my baby is home alone with a babysitter.

  “It’s for the best,” says Seamus. “He shouldn’t have to see this.”

  I can’t tell if he’s serious. The crowd is already getting leathered, and we’re only in the first hour, we haven’t even started on the bottles of wine and prosecco with dinner. Aoife told the bartenders not to serve shots, so guests are ordering vodka, up, in a rocks glass.

  White balloons nudge against the ceiling, their long strings dangling an inch above the floor. Niall and Marian are ordering drinks, Damian is behind us talking to a woman in a dress with black feathers on its shoulders. As she laughs, the feathers move a little. I’m aware of Cillian Burke behind me, like he’s a magnet and the back of my skull is covered in iron shavings, all of them standing on end.

  “How old is Finn?” asks Seamus.

  “Ten months. Do you want children?” I ask, so we’ll stop talking about mine, my son, my heart.

  “Not given the crisis we’re in.”

  “In Ireland?”

  “With the climate,” he says drily.

  “Oh. Because you’re worried about what they’d suffer, or because you don’t want to add to overpopulation?”

  “The second,” he says. “You can never predict what your children might suffer.”

  I try to ignore that. It wasn�
��t directed at me.

  “Which population models have you seen?” I ask, and we talk about demographics as Marian, Niall, and Damian drift back over. I still feel shaky. Seamus knows my son’s name, his age. I try to stop myself from thinking that means something, that I’ve failed to protect him.

  Niall messes with one of the balloons, fidgeting with its string. “Don’t tie that around your neck,” says Marian. “Idiot.”

  As we move into the banquet room, Seamus falls into step beside me. “Marian told me what you said to the police.”

  My shoulder blades draw together. Here it is, finally. Here’s the accusation. I feel myself harden, preparing to deny it.

  “About her being pregnant,” he says, and the knot in my stomach loosens. “That was clever. Fair play to you.”

  We’re seated at separate tables for the dinner. I slide into my chair and take a sip of ice water. Under the tablecloth, my legs are shaking. My mother sits down across from me, and our eyes catch. She knows, I realize. Marian has told her. She’s aware of this situation, that I’m an informer, at an IRA wedding.

  I don’t understand. She’s my mam, she should be making any excuse to get me out of this hotel.

  Around us, the others talk and pour wine. My mam must see the hurt in my face. Her own expression is blank, but when she reaches for her glass, she misjudges, jolting red wine onto the tablecloth. “Slow down, love,” says her brother, laughing. “You’ll never make it to ‘Rock the Boat’ at this rate.”

  My mam says, “Get away with you,” as she spreads her napkin over the stain. Her hands are trembling.

  The waiters offer us bread rolls, and a choice of the chicken Kiev or the salmon. I seem to have forgotten how to use silverware. I keep jabbing myself with the fork tines, biting the inside of my cheek. My mouth tastes like iron.

  During the dinner, Aoife sits in the center of the high table, between the two families. I wonder if she understands what she has gotten herself into, marrying into Cillian’s family.

  When a waiter appears near the high table with a microphone, Marian glances at me. “Do you need the toilets?” she asks, and we slip out of our seats before the toasts begin. A few people are at the bar, and we walk past them, around the corner and down a hallway.

  Marian pushes open a door and we step into a small room with wood paneling, flocked wallpaper, and a mounted stag’s head. From a shelf behind the bar, she takes down a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses and sets them on the counter. I press my ear to the door to listen for footsteps.

  Something has happened to my eyes, making the light smear at the corners of my vision. Marian takes the listening device from inside her bra and uses a penknife to wedge it under the glass eye of the stag’s head. She presses the eye back in place with a small tube of glue, the kind meant for applying fake eyelashes.

  “Marian,” I say, as she adds another drop of glue. She steps away to meet me at the bar, and I pour tequila into the glasses, too quickly, spilling some onto the bar. I wipe the liquid with my palm as the door opens. I recognize the man from outside the chapel earlier. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Cillian Burke.

  “What’re you doing in here?” he asks.

  Marian holds up the bottle. “The other bar won’t do shots. Do you fancy one?”

  26

  Finn stands at the sliding door with one hand pressed to the glass, like a king greeting his people. I kneel behind him, my arms around his waist, and consider the garden with him. His snub nose touches the glass, as does the rounded curve of his forehead. He makes a series of short, urgent sounds, and I long to know what they mean. Past the garden wall, sheep move through the drizzle. Finn turns from the door and pats his hand, cold from the glass, against my face.

  Raise the drawbridge, I think. Finn will be one year old soon. He will never be this small again. Everyone needs to leave us well alone. No more informing. No more work, no commuting, no day care, no friends, no answering texts or calls or WhatsApp messages.

  I carry the baby, balanced on my hip, to the sink to boil water for tea. Through the parted window, the air smells like leaf loam and rain. This afternoon, I’m taking Finn to pick mushrooms in the woods, gold chanterelles with billowed edges.

  Last night, I might not have left the Balfour. I might have died in that room. When the man came inside, I was so scared my body seemed to be molting, like my skin was turning inside out. Apparently he didn’t see any of that, he saw two wedding guests in nice dresses and a bottle of silver tequila. “Do you fancy one?” asked Marian, and he said, “So I would, a double, now.”

  The listening device is in place inside the bar. The first word it transmitted was my voice, saying my sister’s name. If he’d opened the door seconds earlier, it might have transmitted our interrogations, or beatings, or executions. We’ve been lucky once. It might be time to stop. I pour water for the tea, thinking how if I were taken away now, Finn wouldn’t remember me, or any of this. He’d grow up without any idea of how much I loved him.

  * * *

  —

  Seamus thinks you’re sound,” says Marian.

  “Oh, good,” I say, then notice her expression. “Isn’t it? What’s wrong?”

  “He wants to recruit you.”

  “No.” The bus is only at Comber Road, miles from Greyabbey, but the panic makes me want to run out at the next stop. Marian says, “Seamus has wanted to recruit you for years. He thinks you’re a sympathizer.”

  “Is that what you told him?”

  She nods, and I clasp my hands to stop myself from slapping her.

  “He can’t use me as a scout anymore,” she says, “since the police know my face from Templepatrick.”

  “A scout?”

  “Someone to drive ahead of the car on an operation, to warn them about police or army roadblocks,” she says. “And he needs someone for surveillance.”

  It’s good, actually, that we’re having this conversation on a public bus and not, say, in my kitchen, where I would have thrown a pot at her by now.

  Marian says, “He wants a woman.”

  “That’s not my problem,” I say, and Marian looks down, twisting a thread on her sleeve. “What is it?”

  “I’m so sorry, Tessa,” she says. “If you say no, he might wonder why. He might look at you more closely.”

  “Then I’m moving. I’m done with this, Marian. It’s too much.”

  “All right,” she says. “Of course. It’s your decision.” She presses the button for the next stop, and I watch her disappear into the crowd on the pavement.

  Before collecting Finn from day care, I stop at Spar to use Eamonn’s gift card. I make a purchase for over ten pounds, so he will know we need to meet immediately. Then I bring Finn round to Sophie’s house, apologizing for interrupting her dinner, making an excuse about a work crisis, and drive to Ardglass.

  We’ve never met on the beach at night before. I wait for Eamonn on the crest of sand, trying not to be scared of the darkness, reminding myself that this beach is just as safe now as in daylight. I don’t know how long Eamonn will take to arrive. He might have been an hour away when he received my signal.

  I huddle in my coat, watching the lines of white foam as the waves break. When I hear footsteps, I turn to the figure coming toward me, narrowing my eyes against the darkness. But this man is the wrong height, he’s walking differently. It’s Seamus. Of course he wasn’t going to let me leave. I scrabble backward away from him, then Eamonn says my name. He crouches on the sand in front of me, resting his hands on my knees. The vision of Seamus fades. I can just make out Eamonn’s face in the darkness, his grave expression. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “Seamus wants to recruit me,” I say. “They need a scout.”

  He lets out a long sigh, rubbing his jaw. I remember my attraction to him, the feel of his knuckles against my bare back, wi
th a surge of annoyance for both of us, acting as if we had time for that sort of thing. “Did Seamus ask you at the wedding?”

  “No, he told Marian. I’m not doing it, Eamonn. I wanted to tell you I’m moving. I’m going to pack tonight and leave with Finn in the morning.”

  “That won’t look good,” he says.

  “I don’t care. We won’t be here anymore.”

  “Not for you,” says Eamonn carefully. “For Marian. If you leave now, he’ll be suspicious of her.”

  “Marian didn’t mention that.”

  “She was probably trying not to influence your decision.”

  I bury my face in my hands. The frustration makes me want to claw at my face. I feel like Finn, in the grip of a tantrum. “This isn’t fair.”

  “No,” says Eamonn.

  “Did you know this would happen?”

  He shakes his head. “You must have made a good impression on him,” he says ruefully. I listen to the waves collapsing in the darkness. “You said he wants a scout?”

  “And someone for reconnaissance.”

  Eamonn turns quiet, considering it.

  “You’re not serious,” I say. “What about Finn?”

  “A scout is different from a full member. You’d never be used on armed operations, you wouldn’t even be given a weapon. It’s more like support staff,” he says. “Look, I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Halfway home, I realize that, in my anger, I forgot to check under the car for a bomb. Some of their devices are activated by an incline, and the road has been flat so far. I pull over to the side of the road, and crouch on my hands and knees, shining my phone under the car, lighting up its machinery.

  27

  Gallagher’s pub is hidden in a warren of residential streets behind the Falls Road, in an area run by the IRA. A few months ago, a fight at the bar ended with a man being shot. When the police tried to interview witnesses, seventy-two people said they’d been in the toilets at the time.