Northern Spy(20)

I watched him enter the restaurant, this man with bristling silver hair and a tailored suit, greeting the host and waiter in his rolling Belfast accent. The staff all seemed to think he was a nice man, and I wanted to correct them.

After four glasses of wine, I asked, “Why did you leave?”

For the first time, my father looked tired, unpolished. “I was only twenty-two, Tessa,” he said. “I was so young.”

He hadn’t wanted to live in a council house with two small children. I knew from my mam that we hadn’t been particularly easy babies. Our father never mentioned those reasons, though. He told me about the lack of jobs in Belfast, especially for a working-class Catholic, until it sounded as if he’d emigrated for our benefit.

Since having Finn, I’ve thought often about our father’s decision. I’ve pictured traveling to a separate country from my son, and then staying there, but I’d crawl back here on my hands and knees.

“Well,” said Marian slowly, “you could be different from our parents.”

“How?”

“He could not emigrate,” she said. “You could not hate him.”

“Could I?”

“Of course, for your kid.”

While Tom and I were still sitting in the car, I’d looked down at the lip balm and thought, very clearly: This was my first marriage. And I am going to have a longer, happier second marriage.

In the weeks afterward, that thought had started to seem like nonsense, wishful thinking, but when I repeated it to Marian, she said, “Well, there you are. You already know what you need to do.”

“What if it doesn’t happen? What if I never meet anyone else?”

“You’ll have tried, Tessa.”

So we separated. He’s still with Briony, which seems like proof that it was the right decision. I’ve tried not to hate him. Tom was at the hospital for the birth, and he has Finn every Sunday. This long weekend is a special occasion, his mother’s seventy-fifth birthday.

When Tom arrives, I hand him the overnight bag and the folded travel crib. “Do you have a bottle for the drive?” he asks.

“In the fridge.” I hold Finn on my hip, dreading his leaving. From the window over the sink, I can see the gash in the field. “Do you see that?” I ask Tom. “They had an arms drop out there. I watched them come to dig it up.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Did you ring the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was scared.” There are only a few houses bordering the field. It wouldn’t have been difficult for them to learn who had reported them.

“Have you heard anything from Marian?” he asks.

“No.”

“But she’s in the IRA, isn’t she?”

“Of course not.”

“She robbed a service station, Tessa. The simplest explanation is usually right.”

I turn away from him, moving into the other room to pack Finn’s favorite blanket.

“Are you okay?” asks Tom.

“I’m fine.” Once Finn is buckled into the car seat, I wave goodbye from the street until they turn the corner, my throat tight.

A part of me had been looking forward to having some time on my own. I’d planned to read the weekend papers, go to the cinema, meet Colette for dinner, none of which is an option anymore, under the circumstances. Instead I’ve been knocking around the house, picking things up and putting them down again, staring into the fridge. I bring the rubbish out to the bins, surprised at the heat in the air.

It’s Saturday morning. Marian was supposed to work today. Her ambulance will be out in the city now without her.

I wonder if that’s how those men first found her. If one of them opened his door to her in an emergency, and Marian was standing there in her paramedic’s uniform, a badge pinned to her waterproof jacket. If he watched her work and thought she might be useful for them, this bright, competent woman, speaking in her lilting voice.

The police should be checking. They should be driving out to every address Marian has attended recently. I call her phone again, and it rings before going to voice mail. Her battery should have died by now. Has someone charged her phone? I imagine someone watching my name appear on the screen and throw my phone at the wall. For a while I stand there, panting, drawing the back of my hand across my mouth, then I gather my keys and the phone, its screen shattered, and drive to her house.



* * *



—

You can see the Black Mountain from her street in south Belfast. She’s just far enough for the mountain to disappear in a heavy fog, for Andersonstown, on its slope, to disappear.

Marian lives only two miles from where we grew up, but this part of the city is different. The paint on her neighbors’ front doors is different, and the sort of bottles in their recycling bins, and the bicycles locked to their fences.

I take out my spare key, and the door swings open onto a narrow, tiled front hall, a yellow paper lantern suspended from the ceiling. The flat smells the same as always, like rose oil.

It seems to have been cleanly, efficiently burgled. The police have taken away her laptop as evidence, and her old phones, the boxes of papers under her desk. They’ve left behind her coats, though, her tubes of lipstick, her coffee cups, and I move around the flat running my hands over them.