Northern Spy(10)

I turn to see my mam standing in the doorway. She seems taken aback by the flour spilled on the counter and the cracked eggshells in the sink.

“What are you making, then?” she asks finally.

“A Dutch pancake.”

I continue whisking flour into the batter. My mother hesitates. I can tell she wants to ask if there’s not something more urgent for me to be doing right now than making a pancake.

I don’t try to explain my sense that the IRA wants us to act in a certain way, and we have to do the opposite. I’m so sick of having them decide how we will behave. They tell us when to be scared, when to be quiet. When Colette’s cousin tried to leave her husband, an IRA representative came to her house and said, “He’s going crazy up in that prison. You can’t be leaving him. It’d be bad for morale.”

If we refuse to play our parts, maybe this will be over sooner. Marian will come home.

The butter is starting to burn. I tug the pan from the heat, pour in the batter, and place it in the oven. I wipe my hands on my jeans. Out the window over the sink, a dull wash of cloud stretches across the sky. The rain will arrive here soon. Already the storm has knocked the heat from the air, when yesterday I was hot in only a linen dress.

“When will it be ready?” asks my mam. “Do I have time for a shower?”

“Twenty minutes.”

Neither of us will go to work today. I’ve already told Nicholas, and asked Clodagh to cover for me. When I rang the day care owner, to tell her Finn would be staying at home with me, I wondered if she’d seen the news. All my friends did, though I haven’t returned any of their calls or messages yet.

On the coast, rain will be falling past the mouths of the caves, drifting over the headlands, dripping from the lobster traps on the quays. Marian should be there. I keep thinking that she is, that this stricken feeling has nothing to do with her, that at any moment my phone will light up with a picture of Dunseverick castle in the rain.

When the timer sounds, I use a dish towel to pull the hot pan from the oven. I blow on a piece before handing it to Finn, while my mother settles at the table with damp hair.

“Do you want plum jam or apricot?”

“Apricot.”

I hand her the jar and we both start to eat, quickly, my mother with her usual neat strokes, and myself with more mess. Her generation holds a knife and fork differently than mine. I lick jam from the knife, my tongue grazing its sharp edge.

My mother sets down her fork and wipes the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “I’m going to try and visit Eoin today,” she says. “He might be able to help.”

“Eoin Royce?”

She nods. Her friend Sheila’s son was stopped last year outside the holiday market with two semiautomatic rifles in a duffel bag. He’d joined the IRA as a teenager. I can’t remember all the charges. Conspiracy to commit murder, membership of a terrorist organization, possession of banned weapons, enough for a life sentence.

“Where is he?”

“Maghaberry,” she says. “I’ve already requested a visitor’s order.”

“Will he give you one?”

“Yes.”

She used to watch him for Sheila sometimes, when he was little. I have a vague memory of him as a shy, skinny boy, playing with us in a paddling pool.

“Why would he want to help?”

“He’s changed. He’s become religious in prison.”

I laugh. “Wasn’t that always the problem?”

She levels her gaze at me, and I feel myself tense for the usual fight with something like pleasure. It’d be a relief, under these circumstances, to have our normal argument.

She says, “I’m not getting into this with you again.”

“Don’t say it like that, like it’s something I keep bringing up.”

“You did bring it up,” she says.

“No, you said Eoin Royce had found religion like it was a good thing.”

“It is a good thing.”

“How can you have lived here for fifty-eight years and still believe that?”

“Religion doesn’t make people violent, Tessa.”

“Yes, it does. It encourages them.”

Both of Eoin’s rifles were loaded, and the holiday market was crowded with people. He was stopped outside the north gate, near the carousel, where a dozen children were riding on the painted horses.

“Do you not mind that we have segregated schools?” I ask. Not only schools. Graveyards, bus stops, barber shops.

My mother turns from me to open the fridge, her shoulders hunched. Watching her, I feel myself come loose. She’s too distracted to fight with me. She starts to move things around on a shelf, searching for cream.

“There’s only semi-skimmed,” I say.

She nods, and tips the milk into her coffee. Normally she’d complain. I can hear Marian imitating her: Girls, you know I can’t be doing with semi-skimmed.

If Eoin does agree to help, he should be able to find information about Marian. He’s with other IRA prisoners, with dozens of visitors coming and going, bringing in news.

“Do you think it’s an act?” I ask.

“What?”

“His change of heart. Is Eoin actually sorry?”

“I think so,” she says.