In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  He understood that Maggie had long considered Pamela the rightful mistress of this house. He supposed he had too, but Violet needed a home and he had hoped she would feel welcome enough to relax here until they could come to some sort of consensus over their marriage.

  Violet’s reappearance in his life had been like an atomic bomb, scattering him into particles too small to be seen so that there was no visible difference to his outside, but inside everything was in chaos. He didn’t trust her and with good reason. But he was careful and kept nothing in the house which would be of value to her if she was a double agent. The ludicrousness of his situation impressed itself upon him with regularity.

  He had loved her once. But it had been emotion formed under extreme circumstances. There was also the small matter of whether he had ever truly known her. So set aside love—what did honor demand of him? While at times it seemed an old-fashioned notion, he had long lived his life by its principles. He had married Violet, he had made vows to her and he had meant it at the time. If he broke his promises because he was in love with another woman, then what did that make him? He was also well aware that while Pamela loved him, there was still a part of her that was married to Casey, and likely always would be. What he was giving to Violet was no different; however, he could not give her something that had been given fully elsewhere. That none of this was her fault did not help. He felt like his mind had been little more than a hamster on a wheel over which he had no control ever since he had come downstairs in the house in Paris and found Violet and Pamela staring at each other across the expanse of the foyer.

  Kolya, normally a loving child, shied away from Violet every time she tried to touch or hold him. It was the normal aversion a child had for someone who wanted something from them too much. She in turn became frustrated and Kolya, sensing that, clung to Jamie if Violet so much as looked at him. It had made for less than convivial living conditions for all of them.

  He found himself haunted by those few days in Paris. He and Pamela had crossed a line and there would be no returning from what they had experienced and the ways in which it had changed things between them. There had been little hope of turning back after Maine and now there was none at all. What had come to fullness there had been a harvest slow to ripen, and they had partaken of its fruits for only a few days and then had it snatched from their hands before either of them could tighten their grasp upon it. And now his hands were empty and so were hers. He often found himself sitting at his desk, as he did now, reliving moments of their time together. Remembering how she felt beneath his hands, and how she had looked as she said I love you with joy and abandon.

  When Maggie announced Pamela, Jamie thought he might be hearing things at first. They’d not had contact since that last day in Paris and he had not expected any. It had been hard to respect her wishes, but he had felt he had to for both their sakes.

  “Aye,” Maggie said, in response to his look, “it’s her. She looks a wee bit done in, so be kind to the lass.”

  “I’ll try,” he said drily. “She could have just walked in; she’s never stood on ceremony before.

  “Aye, well things have changed, no? I think she can be forgiven if she’s a bit uncomfortable here now.”

  “Please just send her in,” he said shortly. Maggie had more than made her discontent clear over the issue of Violet.

  Pamela came in a moment later. Despite Maggie’s words she did not look the least bit ‘done in’ but rather looked particularly beautiful—softly flushed, healthy, hair a tumble of curls tied back with a shell pink ribbon. She wasn’t wasting away for want of him anyway. He felt a frisson of shame that he should want such a thing. He rose and moved around the desk, clenching his hands in an effort to squelch the urge to touch her.

  “I’m sorry to barge in here, Jamie, only I’ve called to try and set up an appointment with you a few times, but I never heard back.”

  “I apologize,” he said, “I didn’t get any messages. We’ve only just arrived back a few days ago.”

  “I know that,” she said, and he could see that she was nervous and hated that it had come to this between them. He thought of the last time he had seen her, in the house in Paris, fresh from his bed and cut the thought off as quickly as it rose in his mind.

  “Please, Pamela, sit down. Would you like tea? I can have Maggie bring some.”

  “No, I think it’s best if I just say what I have to say and then leave before your wife gets back home.”

  He sat down across from her in his grandfather’s old chair. He had a sudden feeling he was going to need the moral support of it as well as the physical.

  “That’s not necessary, Pamela. I am still master of this house, after all, and no one dictates who is welcome here other than myself. You will always be welcome.” He couldn’t believe the words coming from his own mouth, considering that only a few short months ago he had hoped this woman would be mistress of his home and heart one day, and just how close it felt like they were to that during those days in Paris. And now she clearly felt like an unwelcome intruder. That this was his fault did nothing to assuage the pain of the situation.

  She folded her hands in her lap and smiled at him, though it was a strained look. “I’m going to do what I usually do and just blurt it out—I’m pregnant.”

  “I…oh…I see.” He had been hit many times during his boxing years, but he didn’t think any opponent had ever flattened him quite as effectively as the simple statement he had just heard.

  She gave him a tremulous smile. “I considered not telling you, Jamie, but I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. Whatever else has happened, you are this baby’s father and I wanted you to know. What you choose to do about it, I will leave up to you. I want you to know that I have no expectations of you, I just felt it was your right to know.”

  He tried to take the information in and found that he couldn’t quite manage it.

  “Pregnant?” he croaked.

  And then he did what he had not allowed himself to do before; he really looked at her and saw that she was, indeed, pregnant. She wasn’t showing just yet in the obvious ways, but she looked softened in outline, and yes, fuller in the breasts and belly. She looked ripe and warm and soft. She looked like a place a man might find sanctuary of the sort that would last all his days.

  It seemed to him, suddenly, that the entire life they might have led hovered there in the air between them like a shimmering fairy castle, glimpsed and then swiftly discarded as illusion. And yet the pain the vision left behind was all too real.

  “There are practicalities which have to be thought about here, Pamela. You know that.”

  “This baby will be fine, Jamie, I know it will.”

  “There is absolutely no way to be certain of that.”

  “Yes there is,” she said stubbornly, two spots of pink appearing high on her cheekbones, and her eyes lowering to the table which sat between them. “Look, I didn’t come here to argue or make things difficult and I don’t expect you to do anything. I did feel, however, that you had to know.”

  “Pamela, please don’t say that. It’s my child, and that is not a thing I could ever take lightly. You, better than anyone, know that.” You better than anyone, he added in his head, know me.

  “I do know, Jamie. I also know things are rather complicated for you right now, I don’t want to make them worse.” She was blinking rapidly and he knew she was on the verge of tears.

  “There are things I would say, but I no longer have the right.” Everything in the study seemed surreally bright, outlined so harshly that he could feel the beginning of a headache stabbing at the back of his eyes.

  She nodded, tears trembling on the cusp of her lashes. “It’s best if you don’t, Jamie. This has been difficult enough for both of us, I think.”

  “If you need anything…”

  “I know how to look after myself. I will be seeing a specialist in Dublin once a month. If there’s anything that crops up, he will send me to London. I
don’t want to cause trouble for you. I just felt it was your right to know about the baby.”

  “I wish…” he swallowed, “I wish I could hold you and tell you that everything will be fine.” The few feet of study floor between them felt as if it was a twelve-foot-high barbed wire fence.

  “I think if you touched me right now I would fall apart. Just let me take what dignity I have and go.”

  He stood and walked her to the door. She looked up at him just before she crossed the threshold to the hall. The green eyes were filled with sympathy. It took every fiber of willpower in his being to not take her in his arms and beg her to stay.

  “It’s all right, Jamie. We’ll manage somehow. No, please don’t walk me out. I believe my composure has found its limit.”

  He nodded, mostly because he did not feel that he could speak just now. There weren’t words to reassure her, because the one thing she truly needed was him and that he could not give her much as he longed to.

  He sat for a very long time after she left, staring at the space where she had been. He could still smell her scent, that light soft green scent which was, since Maine, an utter aphrodisiac to him.

  The situation was ludicrous. Here he was married to a woman he did not love, while the woman he did love was carrying his child and he could not go to her; could not do that which he most wanted in this world—to bring her and Conor and Isabelle, here to his home, to live under the care of his love. This should be one of those moments in life they celebrated, a moment held still in memory, so that years later they would be able to recall the details of it.

  Their child. It hit him forcefully and he braced his hands on his knees, his whole body feeling as wobbly as jelly. Pamela was having his child. His child. He who had not fathered a living child other than Julian. He was frightened and rather stupidly elated at the same time. Because if he was to have another child in this life, he only wanted Pamela as the mother. And that he told himself sternly was the stupidest and most selfish thing he could possibly feel. And yet, he felt it, like a soft fizz in his blood that this was fated, had always been meant from the time he had seen that beautiful girl-child dancing on the shore so many years ago.

  There were the obvious issues—the medical ones, and that gave him no small pause, for he did not think Pamela could possibly survive the loss of another child, life had already been terribly harsh to her in that regard. It had been so with him as well, and he did not think he could manage such a loss either, not with a child who had been made with such love. The most obvious issue was, of course, that he was married and his wife lived here with him and was the mother of his adopted son. His beloved son whom she had threatened to take away from him if he refused to stay married to her.

  He needed time to make things right. He sighed; he also needed a damn good lawyer.

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Decisions

  June 1978

  FROM HIS VIEWPOINT up on the hill hidden in a patch of ferns, the scene laid out below Noah seemed like a child’s diorama with moving parts. A miniature lake, spread out blue and rippled like the cellophane a child might use to indicate water, sprinkled with sparkles to make it appear as if it moved. A miniature castle tower of grey papier mâché, carefully painted to make it look real, backdropped by the sweeping vista of mountains—those built of cardboard maybe and covered in rolls of emerald velvet. The islet upon which the tower sat, blazing green on this fine summer afternoon, might have merely been constructed of rocks and grass, glued together painstakingly. The army trucks rolling through, child’s toys from a Cracker Jack box. And the farm lorry, spilling with fragrant mounds of barley straw, placed innocuously in the corner of the parking lot near the castle tower—a toy of a little boy, forgotten in a corner of a grey bit of paper. But of course it was not a child’s toy with moving parts. The lake was Carlingford Lough, the mountains were the Mournes and the castle tower had once been an Elizabethan stronghold—one of many which had guarded the east coast of Ulster. And that rather bucolic looking lorry filled with straw was packed with 700 pounds of explosives tightly wedged into milk churns and surrounded by petrol cans.

  Trundling along the narrow road toward the neck, which was created by the point and the tower, was a Land Rover and two four-tonne trucks containing twenty-six members of the Parachute Regiment’s Second Battalion. It was the Paras that had killed thirteen innocent civilians during Bloody Sunday. Six years later the bill for that tragedy was about to come due.

  The line of sight they'd chosen as the point of no return was an old Victorian navigation tower. When the trucks passed that point it was time. A bee was buzzing around his head as he looked through the binoculars, probably wondering if he was some fantastically large insect with great goggling eyes.

  The trucks seemed to move slowly from this distance, army vehicles did at times, particularly when they moved in convoy. The slowness was a weakness. When the last truck passed by the sight line he turned to the young man who lay in the ferns beside him.

  “Now,” he said.

  The explosion was enormous, a ball of flames engulfed the lorry and blew the convoy into the air. In half an hour a receiver/decoder in a plastic lunch box would be activated setting off 1000 pounds of explosives lined up along the gatehouse wall in milk churns. The gatehouse was where the soldiers would seek cover after the initial attack and attempt to regroup. He would be well clear of the area by then. Within minutes it would be crawling with soldiers and helicopters, and he needed to be gone, every man involved in this operation knew where to scatter. By nightfall most would have made their way across the border into the Republic to designated safe houses where they could lie low for a time. Someone would bring him the information later with the final body count.

  He went to Slieve Gullion to wait out what remained of the day. He would walk it until his blood cooled. As he drove up the mountainside the sun was beginning its descent down the sky and the world was lit gold and crimson and the day still held a fine heat to it. He got out and walked the last bit, up a narrow trail to a spot where he liked to sit and do his thinking. Below him the six counties steeped in the setting sun. He could hear the dull thunk, thunk of helicopters and all the other sounds of this country when yet another atrocity had taken place.

  He sat down on a fallen tree, the roots of it fragrant with spilling dirt, the bark rough beneath his hands. Looking over the land below, he watched the sun recede like a slow tide across field and stone and water. He realized he was barely seeing it.

  His network spread through all six counties. From here he could imagine that he could pick out the byre on a piece of land he rented under an assumed identity. Concealed in the loft of that byre was a virtual command post of radios and descrambling equipment tuned into the frequencies used by undercover police and soldiers. There were military-style transmitters and position-fixing devices and telephone taps routed through British Telecom by people he had who knew how to break into the system. He had connections within the Ulster Polytechnic and an audio company factory, both of which had the equipment to produce the latest in electronic and radio detonation devices. It was how he had known to call off the bombing operation he’d planned for the Glasdrumman watch tower. This listening post was how he knew that the security forces referred to him as ‘The Falcon’ in their coded messages. Every PIRA commander was named after a bird, and in his view a falcon was far preferable to a chicken, which was what one Belfast commander who had long fancied himself quite the hard man, had been called. It told him that the army understood what he was and that he must be dealt with accordingly.

  He had everything he needed—the weaponry, the well-trained men, informants within both the police and the army—to start the kind of war the IRA had long dreamed of, and the kind of war the British had always feared might one day blaze up from the ashes of their history here in Ireland. Only sometimes, lately, he wasn’t sure he wanted it—that long dreamed of war. Long ago his British medic friend had told him when a man started s
eeing his own ghost it was time to get out. He said go while the ghost is still just a flicker in your peripheral vision because if you see that sucker walking in front of you one day, it’s already too late.

  He had found himself thinking about his childhood of late, an exercise in futility for he was a practical man and knew nothing had the power to change the past—neither praying nor wishing could change the pain of those moments which stuck fast with a man and made him, in part, who he was. He thought about the boy he had once been—the one who loved poetry and could be struck dumb by the beauty of the world around him. The one who’d had a Romantic’s heart. He’d once heard Romanticism described as ‘a search for a means to express an unappeasable yearning after unattainable goals.’ He’d quenched that young boy so thoroughly that he hadn’t heard so much as a whisper from him in years. He’d pursued goals that were attainable and let the unappeasable yearning go. Some days he felt like Rip Van Winkle having woken to find himself a hundred years old, body and mind scarred beyond recognition. A life like this was like having hundreds of fragments of shrapnel lodged in your body and never knowing when a piece might work its way out and cause the sort of pain a man could not ignore.

  He had always been harshly honest with himself; he preferred to live his life in black and white, always certain of his decisions and his next move. This had not been so the last year. He understood why. That he enjoyed Pamela’s company, he had long acknowledged, that he desired her also, he knew all too well. But those were simple things in comparison to what he now understood about his feelings for her. It was the sort of knowledge which brought some of that shrapnel up to the surface of a man’s skin.

  He’d had his weekly dinner with Kate a few nights before, and she had let slip a piece of news he wasn’t supposed to know, and yet he thought perhaps he had known it, after all, because he wasn’t shocked by it. He had mentioned that Pamela hadn’t been by to go riding of late. She sometimes came and borrowed a horse for an afternoon and he thought it was healthy for her and a way for her to move on from her beautiful silver horse which she’d lost last year.