A Traitor in the Family

by Nicholas Searle

  Everyone knew young Liam was the cross the family bore and the shame of the street, not a patch on his two older brothers, not one of the boys, just a common criminal. Few concealed their contempt or their watchfulness, as if he might nick a fiver from a wallet or a handbag, but Bridget liked him.

  The O’Neills had eaten their turkey and pudding the previous evening and attended Midnight Mass at St Ethelburga’s. Before leaving, they had watched the late news and seen that Private Singh, shot in Calais by the IRA that morning, had not died but was in a coma and on life support. The reports were vague. He might be moved to a military hospital in England once his condition stabilized, or he might be left in a permanent vegetative state. Sean O’Neill had smirked sidelong at Francis, whose only expression was of mild boredom. No one had spoken.

  Soon after the mince pies, assessed by Marie as ‘not bad’, Bridget had seen Liam pull on a thin jerkin and slink out of the door with a backward glance, like a misbehaving dog that feared discovery and punishment. Now he was preparing to make his next furtive departure.

  Francis sat in the easy chair in Gentleman Joe’s office, sipping whisky. Joe was behind his desk, leaning back in his chair, holding his glass contemplatively, the bottle open in front of him. Kenny, Joe’s bagman, stood by the door.

  ‘I hate fecking Christmas,’ said Kenny.

  ‘Compliments of the season to you too, Kenny,’ said Joe. ‘Just relax. We all need our time of rest. And this is the centre of the Christian calendar. Is it not, now, Francis?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Francis.

  ‘You suppose so …’ said Joe ruminatively. ‘Well, I suppose I suppose so too.’

  It was two years earlier that the Prods had come calling for Joe Geraghty. He’d been visiting an old people’s home out near Dunmurry where an old volunteer from the 1940s was living out his days when his car was ambushed. Kenny, when drink had been taken, would describe it all vividly but with a professional’s detachment. He’d been driving and Colm Hawley was in the front passenger seat. Colm had been one of the movement’s thinkers, a man with six children advocating a political solution, arguing that the military campaign was heading up a blind alley. But Joe, the big man, was the target and the Prods’ intelligence had been good. They were laid up in force and a hijacked truck blocked the road. Kenny skidded the car into a J-turn and faced back towards the M1, shouting at Joe to lie down. The bullets shattered the rear window and thudded into the front seats. Kenny had been hit and was bleeding profusely but managed to drive on, just maintaining control and consciousness. Colm was slumped forward in his seat, dead.

  Francis had been part of the team dispatched to exact vengeance on the two shooters, identified by Joe’s Security Team. It was a routine job once they knew where the bastards would be drinking and Francis’s role was to guard the outside while Mikey Sullivan and Peter Boyle went in and offed them. A different team was sent to lift the tout who’d reported Joe’s prospective visit to the RUC. He’d been left in a ditch over Newtownards way. The news had been taken to Kenny’s hospital bedside as some form of solace. God knows what Colm’s wife made of it. The tout had been only too willing to name his RUC handlers, who were now on the list in Joe’s little black book.

  Since that time, Joe and Kenny had gained a reputation as the Odd Couple, inseparable, Kenny constantly moaning.

  ‘Well, I never could stand Christmas anyway,’ said Kenny.

  ‘Will you listen to yourself?’ said Joe. ‘Enough now. Have you nothing better to do than to stand around complaining? Go off and do something useful. Francis and I have things to discuss.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ said Kenny, looking into his glass as if calculating how many slugs would be required to empty it.

  ‘Carry on like this, Francis, and you’ll be going down in history as a hero,’ said Joe. ‘You’re royalty as it is.’

  ‘It’s just a job, Joe,’ began Francis. ‘Just a job.’

  ‘Well, you’re good at it. One moment, Francis. Would you be so kind as to shut the door behind you, Kenny?’

  ‘Boss,’ replied Kenny in the affirmative.

  ‘Now then, Francis. The soldier still lives.’

  ‘Sorry, Joe. I thought it was clean enough.’

  ‘No, no, don’t be fretting now. How could you know? It’s almost better. He’ll stay in the news for a few days at least. Will he, won’t he? Do they switch the machines off or not? No. Couldn’t be more pleased, the boys and me. I’m to congratulate you formally on the action. The message comes from the top. The very top. You’ll have more work in the future, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Thanks, Joe. It means a lot. Joe?’

  ‘Aye, Francis. What is it?’

  ‘I was wondering …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I need some time out of it. Just a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Got to you, has it? I understand.’

  ‘No, nothing like that. It’s just … I’ve been invited to a wedding.’

  ‘Oh yes. And?’

  ‘Tony Simons and Cheryl Maguire. When I was younger I used to hang around with them.’

  ‘Aye, I recall the names. Don’t they live abroad somewhere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah. I see. America, is it?’

  ‘No. Singapore.’

  ‘Right. And they’re not coming home to tie the knot?’

  ‘No, Joe.’

  ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘So I was wondering …’

  Joe Geraghty shook his head. ‘That’s a tricky one, Francis. That’s a fast ball, I’ll tell you. You know what I always say to volunteers, especially ones as important as you. You want to keep yourself beyond suspicion. You don’t want any of the boys to have reason to doubt you now. The struggle –’

  ‘I know, Joe. It comes first. But I was wondering …’

  ‘Whether I could make an exception. It’s a difficult one. At least it’s not America. America would be a total no-no. But even so …’

  ‘I’ll not plead with you, Joe.’

  ‘And little good would that do you. Now let me think about this.’ He looked from his glass to the bottle and decided against taking another measure. ‘Tell you what, Francis. Let’s deal with it like this. I’d rather you decided not to go. But you’re not going to do that, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Let’s just keep this to ourselves, then, shall we? It’s up to me, but I’d be expected to tell others. And if I did we both know what would happen next. It’s the example. If I’m seen to be letting you go off like this, what about the next boyo who comes and asks me?’

  ‘I understand, Joe.’

  ‘So we’ll keep this between us. Not even Kenny.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I’ll watch your back. We say nothing to anybody, but if I get reports back I’ll say I sent you off on some errand.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’ll have to magic up a cock-and-bull story. But that’s my problem. Leave it to me. How does that sound?’

  ‘Grand, Joe. Thanks.’

  ‘Never say I’m not a generous man, Francis O’Neill.’

  ‘I’d never say that.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t. You all right for money?’

  ‘You can always do with a bit more. But I’m fine. I’ll find the fare somehow.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can rustle up a bonus for this job. I always look after my boys, don’t I?’

  It had been more than fifteen years before. As a teenager he had been proudly presented by his father to the great Gentleman Joe Geraghty down at the club. He remembered the day, and the induction that followed it, with a shuddering vividness.

  ‘Yes, Joe.’

  ‘Well, you just be discreet about your going and coming. Tell no one. And I mean no one. You’re a marked man, remember, in more ways than one. And I don’t want any unnecessary explaining to do with the boys here if you’re seen on your travels. Understand?’

  1990

  * * *


  2

  What was it, then, this place that she came from? In the scheme of things. What did it amount to, the anonymous scattering of dwellings in the misty lushness of the very south of the North? Very little, Bridget told herself.

  She was not prone to such thinking, to this way of looking at the world. She had been brought up to be sensible and, largely, she was. This disconnection, though, this sense of living outside herself, had set her going. Set her racing, more like. She sat imprisoned in her seat, pinioned on the one side by Francis, spreading all over the place in sleep, and on the other by the cold vinyl lining of the aircraft’s fuselage. Oddly, noise seemed to be magnified and muffled at the same time: the constant droning roar of the engines and the air rushing through the cabin disrupted normal thought and set her mind on an unfamiliar course. Hence this. And the vain search for sleep in all this discomfort and noise, and all these people, snoring and coughing and moaning, added to the effect and unsettled her further.

  Very little, she repeated to herself. Just like herself: unprepossessing and insignificant in the scheme of things. Less significant than ever these days.

  She had grown up in the village. Her paternal grandparents had lived in what was now the North, while her mother’s parents had a cottage along the back road to Dundalk. Her father laboured in the local foundry and wanted nothing more than a quiet life.

  When she was young in Carrickcloghan there’d been a pub, a butcher’s shop, a baker’s, as well as a small grocery store and the post office run by old Mr Kennedy, where she’d worked after leaving school. Mr Kennedy’s father had started up the little shop, where he sold newspapers and stationery. The post office had come later, after the war. Mr Kennedy said that his father had been so proud that he’d bought a safe in anticipation. There’d been a stir in the village when it was delivered from London in 1951, so her parents told her when she got the job.

  She’d always been keen on her studies at school, always been good at her languages and her literature. She’d applied to Queen’s University to study English. The reading, she loved it, from Agatha Christie to what she thought of as literature. She tore through Shakespeare (though later found she preferred Marlowe), she devoured Austen, the Brontës and Dickens and then discovered early twentieth-century poetry: the War poets, Pound, Eliot and, the dearest of them all, Yeats.

  Her university application was successful and she’d felt intimidated but excited. She spent the summer reading and putting together the clothes and other belongings she’d need in Belfast. Then her sister, two years older, left to work in a bank in Cork and her mother persuaded her to put university off for a year or so. It all seemed so long ago now, that craving for culture. To be sure, she still read – though was reliant on the mobile library and found herself consuming cheap romances as often as what she would call proper books – and found her solace there. But it was a resigned escape and no longer offered the thrill of excitement to come.

  In those days her job and her books had almost been enough. Until the arrival of Francis O’Neill, that is.

  As the post office clerk, Bridget had been entrusted with one of the two keys to the all too large safe, that testament to Mr Kennedy senior’s unfulfilled ambitions – of what, Bridget had no idea – and dealt with the cash and the stamps and the certificates piled forlornly in the corner. The key was like a ceremonial item that Bridget kept diligently tied round her neck until she placed it in the drawer of her bedside table at night. The post office had never been robbed, unlike most others in the area, a fact that Bridget ascribed to Francis’s influence. Mr Kennedy had not asked for the key back even after she and Francis had married, despite his evident disapproval of all that Francis represented.

  The post office had closed so suddenly that she was told by letter in the Saturday post not to turn up for work on the Monday. There was a cheque covering the pay that was due to her and a little more. She had gone there to leave her keys but Mr Kennedy had already left. She let herself in and everything was gone except for the massive safe, which was presumably too cumbersome for the removers. The second key had been left in the heavy door, which instinctively Bridget closed and locked. For the remembering of it, she still kept the two keys at home. Later she’d realized that Francis had taken occasionally to filching one of the keys to use for whatever he did.

  Those had been happy times, working with Mr Kennedy. Or had she ever been happy? She later learned that Mr Kennedy had had a stroke and the police had come down to help the Post Office officials hastily clear out the place.

  All gone, the two other shops and the pub too, some years later. No one had troubled to redecorate the fronts or to clear the interiors. The butcher’s and baker’s were close to each other, on opposite sides of the narrow road that ran through the village and on which all the buildings were clustered, and their windows still contained the display trays that had been there the day they closed, simultaneously, some seven years before. At least the window of the grocer’s, just around the slight bend at the heart of the village, had been boarded up. The frontage of the pub was boarded too, the old swinging sign dragged down by youngsters for the fun of it a couple of years back. Mr Kennedy’s post office stood where it had always been – rumour had it he was still in the nursing home, but for all Bridget knew he might well already be dead – the proud sign, cream on red, faded now, the old Post Office logos long superseded. She could remember turning up at the place at eight in the morning, ready for work, keen to get started. It had not been much, but it had been something.

  The little library that had provided most of her reading closed down shortly afterwards. Now she was reliant on the van that came from Newry every three weeks and which, if Mrs Bryce was driving it, pulled up briefly at the cottage before going on to the village square.

  No one had thought of buying any of these premises, and so it was with the little terraced houses as their occupants grew old and passed away. Carrickcloghan itself was largely derelict and dying; the only discussion to be had was over who to blame. The overwhelming local view, encouraged by the councillors, was that this was the result of the occupying power’s choice to starve the border counties. Bridget doubted whether, even if the British government had been more benignly minded, Carrickcloghan would have prospered, but it was certainly invisible from Westminster.

  Over all this, like a malevolent warrior god, the Troubles had loured. This was what became normal as she grew up, a police station bombed in Newry, an ambush in Forkhill, the boy who’d worked on the petrol pump in Silverbridge shot dead, the soldiers and the police tramping through the village, in full combat gear, guns swinging round and levelled in your face, the helicopters, army checkpoints sprouting all over the place at no notice, latterly the towers. They’d not been present in her Swallows and Amazons or her Famous Five, or later her Pride and Prejudice, but then fiction was fantasy, was it not? Real life was insignificance, fear, the constant sense of being malignly observed from all sides, and finally death.

  It was nothing, this place where she lived. And here she was, flying thousands of feet above the ocean.

  She remembered the day when Francis first appeared in the village. He’d been leaning against a wall by the pub, smoking and smirking at her. He was not like the boys in the village. It was clear he was from the big city, the question was: Dublin or Belfast? And this was answered as soon as he spoke.

  ‘A good afternoon to you,’ he’d said, his smile broadening.

  She looked at him.

  He looked around him, as if she might be staring at something behind him. He said, ‘Sorry. Have I upset you?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Oh. Oh. No, I …’ she said.

  ‘I’m awful sorry if I have. I’m new here. I wouldn’t want to upset you. Not someone like you.’ The smile turned into something warmer. ‘I could do with being shown around here. You local?’ he said.

  And so it had begun.

  Francis O’Neill did not consider himself a bad man. Far from it. He knew
he could evoke fear, in his neighbour’s child or a fellow with whom he shared the counter of a bar. A catch of the eye, a gruff tone or an unusually swift movement was all it normally took. His reputation played the largest part in it, an occupational hazard, no more. Fear was the small change of his currency; violence and death its larger denominations. He was good at hurting people, in various ways, that was the long and the short of it. Technically good, and he had the stomach for it; he didn’t particularly enjoy it. He did it for the cause, and that explained and excused everything.

  But here at 30,000 feet he was no one and that was a good feeling. No one knew him except the missus, who sat beside him, in and out of sleep. To be sure, he could ginger up the flight attendant a little with a glare or a snarl, but beyond that he was just Joe Public. Flight attendant. Fecking air hostess was what she was.

  The announcement came that they would shortly be landing. He nudged Bridget and she looked at him, momentarily fearful before realizing where they were. She gathered herself, taking the crushed beer cans from his tray table and holding them in her lap until the rubbish bag passed by. He watched the air hostess as she fixed him with a bland smile, painted like her make-up on that bland face on its bland head with its blonde highlights piled neatly on top. She knows what I’m thinking, he thought. She’ll be glad when the flight’s over. Get her feet up, let down her hair and be glad to be rid of that unnerving man in row 47.

  Finally the aircraft lumbered to the ground at Changi airport, next to where the Second World War prisoner of war camp had been, the place his grandfather, fighting for the English, had died in 1944. The story had acquired the status of myth in the family: his mother’s father, once an IRA gunrunner, stunning everyone by volunteering for the British Army in 1941; his posting to the Far East; his capture by the Japanese; and his lingering death reported by fellow prisoners, from malnutrition and typhus. ‘A foolish, foolish man,’ Sean O’Neill would reflect sadly. ‘Thought he was a man of principle, fighting fascism. He was a dupe of the English. A lesson to us all.’ It had been a matter of shame to the family. It was only when he was looking at their itinerary that Francis had realized they would be landing at this place, so close to where his grandfather had perished.