Shadow Dancer

by Tom Bradby

  He felt the curve of her back, scrunching the nightdress into his hands and then lifting it up.

  For a second, they stood apart.

  They touched. She closed her eyes, her breathing ragged.

  She took his hand and led him backwards, lying down on the cool cotton sheets. Her knees were raised and he kissed her tenderly, half lying over her, stroking her face with his hand – gently, as if touching something priceless. He searched for her lips again and then they were pressed together, she rising above him, stretching across him and letting her hair fall in his face.

  She pressed down, arched her back and closed her eyes again. She breathed in deeply, slowly, unevenly – not caring if ecstasy had a tomorrow.

  Later she sat close to him, in the silence, in the dark.

  She couldn’t be sure of the time now, but the temperature had dropped and the night seemed somehow darker. She was not quite touching him, her legs curled up under her. He lay on his back, breathing quietly and, she assumed, sleeping deeply.

  His chest was bare, the sheet just covering his waist.

  His face was turned to one side and she had to resist the temptation to run her hand through his hair.

  She felt as if she was guarding him.

  She wondered if he’d had time to think before sleep. What would the morning bring in him? What could it bring in either of them? She’d never experienced ecstasy. She didn’t know whether it did have a tomorrow.

  She woke to watch the first rays of sunshine quietly intrude. The breeze had not strengthened and the curtains still danced lazily. She lay still, enjoying the warmth of him against her back.

  She slipped gently off the bed and stood next to him. He lay, face-down, away from her. The sheet was loosely wrapped around him now, as if he’d been looking to hide the intimacy of darkness from the morning light. His feet protruded. His body seemed long.

  She felt guilty, as if her careless sleep had allowed the night to run its course.

  She moved round and stood in front of him. His hair was tousled, his cheek slightly distorted by the pressure of head against pillow. She smiled at his sudden ugliness.

  She picked up her nightdress from the floor and placed it on the chair.

  She walked to the mirror and stood sideways on, no longer sticking out her tummy.

  She looked to the window. The light seemed to be brightening before her eyes. She watched him for a few seconds more, listening to the sound of his breathing, then picked up her black and white hooped dress, slipped it over her shoulders and turned towards the door.

  She wavered, her resolve slipping. She looked down at the bag by her feet, packed, it seemed now, in a different time.

  She waited.

  She picked it up and passed on, closing the door quietly behind her.

  He must have heard them at breakfast. He smiled at her once as he came in and she tried to smile back, unsure of herself. He ruffled Catherine’s hair, but did not touch Mark.

  She busied herself, not looking at him. She cleared away the children’s bowls and put them into the dishwasher, closing its door quietly and setting it off. She took the packet of Frosties off the table and put it in the corner, next to the toaster. She told the children quietly to get their coats and go and wait in the car. They left silently.

  She washed and then dried her hands.

  She turned round and looked at him. He leaned back against the sideboard and raised his eyebrows. For a chilling moment, she thought he might be laughing at her.

  ‘We’d better go,’ she said and turned away, folding the tea towel in her hand and placing it next to the sink. She put her head down and walked to the door.

  They had only two bags and he picked up both in the hall before she could get to them. She followed him out and pulled the oak door shut after her, wondering if she should even bother to lock it.

  She stood in the middle of the gravel drive and looked back. The window of her bedroom was still open, but she did not want to return to close it. It was a pretty house – red brick, yellow roses, low doorways. It was a perfect house. She turned round.

  In the car, he drove. She sat in the back with Mark and Catherine on either side of her. The journey took more than an hour, but nobody spoke. To begin with, she thought one of them must talk, but after the first fifteen or twenty minutes, certainly by the time they reached the motorway, it didn’t seem so unnatural any more.

  Perhaps it had been because she was going, she thought.

  How could it have been anything else?

  As they pulled into the airport, she found herself touching his shoulder. He went first to find a trolley and then took both bags out of the back and placed them on it. For a second they stood awkwardly opposite each other, Mark and Catherine on the pavement beside him. She thought he might say something and stepped forward to stop him. As he tightened his arms around her, she thought she might cry.

  She walked away, Mark’s hand in hers, Catherine’s in his. At the revolving door she stopped and watched him drive away. He looked back once and waved, just as the Rover twisted out of sight.

  She stood and watched until Mark tugged at her sleeve. ‘Come on, Ma, come on.’

  She walked through the terminal. The check-in process and the security checks were now cathartic. She began to feel detached.

  On the plane the man next to her, on the other side of the aisle, had very brown arms and she felt an almost irresistible urge to reach over and touch them. She wondered how Mark and Catherine could be so quiet when she’d expected them to be excited. It was as if they sensed something in her which she wasn’t able to recognize herself.

  She ate the food that was put out in front of her and found herself thinking again of the holidays in Donegal. She found she spent so much time living in her childhood memories now. It was as if that was the only reality she could accept.

  As the plane began its descent, she looked out over the green fields and felt the first flutter of excitement in her stomach. Mark and Catherine seemed to sense the change in her mood. Catherine clutched her hand as the plane landed.

  They were almost the last to leave.

  As they walked down the aisle, Colette thought of how her mother would be with her. They’d spoken on the phone and they’d written, but the subject of what she’d done had never been mentioned. They’d talked about Paddy’s funeral all those months ago and Gerry’s impending trial as if the two events had nothing whatsoever to do with her. They’d talked often and Colette sometimes thought they’d never been closer, as if the unspoken horror of what she was and what she’d done had somehow brought them together in a way she couldn’t quantify.

  She saw their bags on the carousel and yanked them from the conveyor belt onto her trolley. She was running now – running down the new exit tunnel with its ludicrous patterned carpet and trying to stop the excitement from making her cry. The kids were with her, Catherine on top of the bags, Mark dropping behind as she ran.

  She reached the double doors and almost exploded with joy as she went out into the afternoon sunshine.

  She stopped. Ma wasn’t there. She’d expected to fall into her arms and she wasn’t there.

  ‘Hello, Colette.’

  She turned. He was wearing sunglasses, but with his ginger hair he was unmistakable.

  ‘Hello, Martin,’ she heard herself say.

  She felt Mark and Catherine by her legs. She looked at Mulgrew and Chico and felt the fear surge through her.

  ‘Where’s Ma?’ she asked.

  Mulgrew smiled. ‘We’re just looking after her for an hour or two. But there’s no need to worry. Chico will take the kids down to her and you and I are just going to take a little ride and have a chat.’

  Chico reached out, but Mark clung to Colette’s leg. A car pulled up behind them and Chico stepped forward to open the door.

  They all stood in silence. Nobody moved.

  Colette felt a sudden and overwhelming sense of resignation and self-loathing. She bent down
slowly. ‘It’s all right, love,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. It’s only for a few hours.’

  As they were put in the back of the car she looked at their faces and felt the tears run down her cheeks. Mark seemed to sense, at the last minute, that something was desperately wrong and he opened his mouth to scream, but Chico put his hand over it, dragged him down from the window and shouted at the driver.

  Colette felt Mulgrew’s hand on her shoulder and she wanted to scream or shout or run. She looked up to see Chico’s car speeding down towards the main road and she felt the pain bursting inside her.

  She doubled up, her face contorted by a silent scream.

  Mulgrew was kneeling beside her. ‘It’s all right, Colette,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

  EPILOGUE

  THE CONSTABLE WAS LOOKING UP AT HIM, WAITING.

  Brian Allen nodded and the young man set to work, cutting the bag gently from the end that looked … from the end that looked like the head.

  The rain was hardening, landing in large drops on his face. His hair was soaking wet. The young man looked up at him again and Brian Allen breathed in deeply and crouched down. For a moment he looked at the bag, and then he slowly peeled back the plastic. It felt wet and greasy in his hands.

  It was her; he saw that immediately. It was certainly her. Her face was white and her hair blackened by the damp of the earth.

  He wanted to recoil, but was conscious of the faces of the young men and women around him. He pulled back the black sheeting and turned to the young constable who had been doing the cutting, indicating with an outstretched hand that he wanted the knife. The young man stepped forward and gave it to him.

  Slowly, he cut the bag further.

  She was naked and he saw the cigarette burns on her breasts immediately – ten, or perhaps more, little black marks on her skin.

  He wondered what she’d told them of himself and David Ryan.

  He was glad Ryan wasn’t here to see this.

  He stopped cutting when he reached the base of her stomach. He saw now that she was completely naked.

  He looked at her face. The bullet exit wound was on the other side and from here she looked almost peaceful. There was a kind of frozen beauty to her.

  He looked down again and, for a moment, tried to look scientifically at the black marks that surrounded her nipples. He counted twelve. He admired her bravery. She hadn’t made it easy for them.

  He wondered what it had been like at the moment of darkness. So often, he thought, death came quickly, but she would have had time to contemplate it and turn it over in her mind. She would have had time to stare into the blackness, wanting to prevent it, but knowing she could not.

  The men would have enjoyed that, he thought.

  For him, wondering how she had been at the end was almost an academic discipline. It was his life’s work: the study of human nature in extremity.

  In this case, it was hard to tell. The cigarette marks told their own story. Only the very brave, or the very reckless, were capable of a last act of defiance.

  He imagined the two little kids standing by their mother’s grave, windswept and forlorn, and he felt a brief surge of emotion.

  He stood up. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Get on with it.’

  He walked slowly up the hill, wondering if the woman was still there somewhere. He still didn’t understand why she would have wanted to come here or how she’d found out. Somebody must have seen them and told the IRA, he supposed, and they must have told her.

  If only they knew the real truth, he thought.

  He got into the car and looked down at the tableau ahead of him. He thought about the mother and the irony of it all. The truth was that the first time Ryan had asked him who Foxglove – the other tout – was, he hadn’t known, but had enjoyed pretending to be omnipotent. It was one of the few pleasures in dealing with a green young man from across the water.

  But he’d read the files and he knew now that the mother was Foxglove. She’d been recruited after the death of her son Sean, at a time when another son, Paddy, looked certain of going to gaol for life for murder. She had hated the war and had done it all these years in order to try and protect her children.

  For a while, it had worked: Paddy’s case was dropped on a technicality and he’d escaped prison. But, Allen thought bitterly, you can’t protect your children from themselves. Not for ever.

  He thought of the body in the bag and the woman who had stood watching. Mother and daughter. He wondered what each would have done if they’d known about the other.

  He watched as they lifted up Colette’s body unsteadily and carried it to the waiting ambulance. He was glad once again that Ryan was not here to witness this. He’d spoken to him once since her disappearance. Ryan was compromised, of course, and his career here finished, but Allen had heard he’d been moved to the Middle East Department, so maybe he was more ambitious than he’d been prepared to admit.

  Allen wondered what had occurred between him and Colette. He wondered if the rumours were true.

  He wasn’t offended.

  Ryan would carry a burden of guilt, he thought, but he’d survived. Allen believed that was all that counted.

  He started up the Granada, turned it round and edged out of the quarry and back onto the road.

  A hundred yards further on he stopped the car in a lay-by and put his head on the steering wheel.

  ‘Christ,’ he whispered.

  He thought of Colette’s children again and told himself at least things would be better for them.

  He told himself it couldn’t last for ever.

  He thought of the naked white corpse and the vulnerable – for that was the image that now came to mind – young woman she had once been. For her now, he felt a deep and melancholic sense of pity.

  He gathered himself. He sat up straight and briefly looked over his shoulder.

  He saw her coming.

  He was on a bend here and could watch without craning his neck. The window was misting up, so he rubbed it gently. She was walking slowly, with her head down, looking misshapen and beaten and old.

  He opened the window, so he could hear the rain and feel the cold air.

  As she came closer, he heard the sound of her footsteps on the gravel. He wondered if she would look at him. He wondered if he should speak to her and, if so, what he should say.

  She was closer still. He felt nervous, suddenly, and uncertain.

  He wondered if he should get out. He put his hand on the door handle but didn’t open it.

  She was almost upon him. He wanted to look away, but could not.

  She passed and, as she did so, she looked up. For a moment, he saw quite clearly the agony and beauty in her face.

  And then she was gone and he was looking at her back, watching her methodical progress away from him, the image of her agony imprinted vividly on his mind.

  He thought she looked like Colette, or Colette like her. There was a beauty and elegance to their features that was unmistakable.

  He raised his hands to the steering wheel and noticed they were shaking. He watched the figure ahead of him and swore quietly under his breath. He got out of the car and stood for a few seconds by the side of the road. He took a few paces back towards the quarry and breathed in deeply. When he turned round, the woman had gone.

  He looked at the empty road ahead of him and felt the rain running down his face.

  He forced himself into the certainty of his past.

  He got back into the car and turned round, heading off towards the airport road. The warmth of the car, the beat of the windscreen wipers and the darkness of the night were somehow comforting. He found himself able to think abstractly of the victims – all the many thousands of them – and, as he did so, he felt his heart harden and the sense of melancholy slip away. There was so much to remember: so many colleagues murdered, so many children disturbed, so many wives bereaved, so many innocents blown to pieces, so much suffering in countless ways over so many d
ays.

  What was it he had said to her? ‘Those who live by the sword…’

  By the time he reached the motorway and turned back towards Belfast, all sense of pity had gone.

  About the Author

  Tom Bradby was made ITN’s Ireland Correspondent in 1993 at the age of twenty-six. He remained in Belfast for three years, reporting on the Troubles. He is now a political correspondent for ITN. Shadow Dancer is his first novel.

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD

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  Published 1998 by Bantam Press

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  Copyright © Tom Bradby 1998

  Tom Bradby has asserted his right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446422595

  ISBN 0593 042336 (cased)

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