Northern Spy(13)

He shrugs, and I know what he’s about to say. “I’d rather be here than anywhere else. They’ve already hit this once, haven’t they?”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

For a moment we look at each other openly. Neither of us believes a word of it, of course. No one knows where the next attack will be.

Marian and I were talking over breakfast last summer when the café shook. Closer to the explosion, windows had blown out, showering glass over the road. Belfast confetti, a poet called it. I thought we’d seen the worst of it, but then we turned the corner onto Elgin Street and saw that a block of flats had collapsed, sliding forward into the road, like a slumped cake.

“Oh, god,” said Marian, and we started to run. I found myself on a fire line moving rubble, clearing the way for the rescue workers. I lost sight of Marian. She had run toward the front of the line to help treat the survivors, and I was scared for her. From my position, I could see a boiler in the rubble, and people climbing around it, shifting large pieces of wood and concrete. The gas line was leaking, you could smell methane in the air.

We saw a survivor, an old man, brought out from the rubble, his hair and beard white with plaster dust. I remember his large bare feet on the stretcher and his calm expression, which must have been shock.

Hours later, we were in a Japanese restaurant, sitting at a black lacquered table. Nowhere else in the neighborhood had power. The entire restaurant was silent, our faces fixed on a television showing live coverage of the search for survivors.

We still had masks hanging around our necks, as did some of the people walking by outside. “You should eat something,” said Marian. I didn’t bother to answer. The chefs and kitchen staff were all standing behind the bar, also watching the screen.

There was a girl trapped inside the debris. One of the rescue workers had heard her, but almost two hours had passed and they couldn’t find a way to reach her. They were using thin slats to build a tunnel between the pressed layers of wood and concrete and furniture.

A woman appeared on screen, standing at the edge of the cordon, and someone handed her a bullhorn. “Grace, sweetheart,” she said, “it’s mum. I’m right here. Don’t be scared, darling, we’re coming to get you.”

Beside me, tears coursed down Marian’s face. Another hour passed. On television, the rescue worker on top of the rubble raised his arm and closed his fist, and everyone else repeated the gesture to ask for silence while they listened for the girl.

I can still see, very clearly, the man who was sitting next to us in the restaurant. He had one arm crossed over his chest and he was gnawing on the edge of his thumb. His eyes never left the television screen. He was the first to let out a sound, before anyone else knew, even before the presenters had realized. By the time they noticed, he was already on his feet, shouting, and the entire restaurant burst into cheers.

A rescue worker was coming back out of the tunnel, crawling through the splints with one arm, and in the other he was holding a child, who was looking out of the tunnel with a firm, steady gaze.



* * *



—

I call my mother from the car park outside the service station. “Can I say hello to Finn?”

In the background, she says, “Who is that? Is that your mam?”

Finn coos, and I say, “Hi, sunshine. I miss you, I’ll be home soon.”

“He’s smiling,” she says.

I follow the motorway back through the city. Farther ahead, Divis stands like a watchtower at the start of west Belfast, a stained concrete council block, with balconies sometimes used by IRA snipers. The men who took Marian might be from west Belfast. The block draws closer, looming overhead, and I exit onto the Falls Road.

On the roundabout, I drive past a mural of masked gunmen pointing their rifles toward the road. I look out at the dripping lines of black paint, then the light changes and I roll forward. The murals continue. Brits out. Resistance is not terrorism. Join the IRA.

Above the Falls Road, green, white, and orange bunting twists in the rain. Larger flags drip over the street from the Rock bar. I was there a few weeks ago for my uncle’s birthday. The Rock smells like piss everywhere except, somehow, in the toilets themselves.

I continue onto the Andersonstown Road. This isn’t a safe area at the moment, but my body still relaxes. I know every inch of this street. The leisure center, the Chinese takeaway, the fish van, the corner shop where my granny sent me to buy her twenty unfiltered Regals.

I judge all other places against here, and often find them lacking by comparison. Too anemic, too shallow, without our humor and liveliness. But it’s not where I want Finn to grow up, even without the conflict. It’s too close knit for me, too watchful, with its grudges, feuds, and gossip. If you held hands with a boy at school, within an hour someone would have told your mam you had a new boyfriend.

Despite the rain, there are kids in the park this afternoon. Boys in tight tracksuits, their hands in their pockets, girls in jeans and cropped shirts with contoured eyebrows. They look so much more sophisticated than we did at their age. Still doing the same things, though. Shoving each other off the paths, drinking bottles of cider, pairing up. Will you see my mate?

I pull onto our road, on the lower slopes of the Black Mountain, and stop the car. I don’t know why I’m here. It’s not as if Marian is inside, at our mother’s table, having a cup of tea.